I'm just about to cross the border into the hotspot. The sun is low in the sky; it's the longest I've survived in the loop so far, and the evening sky is painted in shades of blue and silver. It's oddly familiar the closest thing to ho so far.
I don't let myself feel hosick.
There's nothing particularly different about the area in front of that I can tell. It's just more endless forest. But I trust the map more than I trust my senses, at this point, and so I reach for my skills.
I've had most of them besides Temporal Fragnt turned off, just to let myself rest and recover. Now I activate them again, a loose breath escaping as I feel the power echo through my body.
ntal Acceleration. Triplestep. Tough Body.
Not Firestep. Not yet. I don't feel like setting the forest on fire.
I briefly consider banking so of my points. I have a lot of Firmant credits at this point enough to grab a Rank C skill, according to Ahkelios' chart. But another eight points will be enough to push over the edge into the hundred-credit threshold, and I want to see what bonus I get for Firmant.
I'm in a similar situation for Speed and Reflex. I have enough points to break past the hundred-credit threshold, but I'm five points away from a guaranteed Rank C skill for Speed, and eighteen away for Reflex. I don't know exactly what kind of danger I'll be in yet, so...
I'll hold on to the points for now.
I step forward into the hotspot, and almost imdiately, the wind picks up. I tense.
Color drains from the world. It starts with the sky, lilac purple physically draining away and leaking down into the trees like it's a two-dinsional canvas. Purple bleeds into vibrant orange, and then the orange trickles down the trunks of each tree, pooling onto the ground in thick, viscous puddles.
Everything is in grayscale. I stare at it for a mont, nonplussed, and glance at Ahkelios.
He's still glowing the light blue of Temporal Fragnt, at least, though he seems just as stunned by the sight in front of us.
"I've never seen this before," he mutters.
"Maybe you just don't rember it?" I suggest.
"Maybe," he allows. "Be careful. Those are probably traps."
"Or monsters," I mutter. I take a quick step back, just to see if this is sothing I can escape; I need to know what my options are. I'm not at all surprised when my back hits a solid wall. I glance behind to see a deep-red barrier that fades into invisibility as I step away from it.
"Can't get away from hotspots once you enter them?" I ask.
"Sotis," Ahkelios confirms. He sounds vaguely embarrassed. "Sorry. I didn't rember that detail."
"Eh." I shrug. It's not like I was particularly intending to retreat, but this restricts the amount of space I can fight in.
I take a mont to observe the scene in front of . Besides the strange puddles of mixed color on the ground, everything else about the forest seems normal. A quick Firestep leaves a trail of bright-orange fire behind , licking at the leaves and burning them into ash.
I watch it for a mont, just to see if anything happens with the color. As the Firmant leaves and the Firestep becos ordinary fire, the color drains out of it, oozing onto the ground in a tiny puddle.
I frown. "Only things with Firmant keep their color," I say out loud. "Is this supposed to be so kind of puzzle?"
"Keep going," Ahkelios advises. "There's usually sothing in the center of a Hotspot. We won't find anything at the edges here."
I shrug. I give the pools of color on the ground a wide berth I might not know what they are, but it seems foolish to just touch them. I do find a long stick and poke at one of them with it, but all that really happens is that so of the goo cos off onto the stick.
"It's almost like paint," Ahkelios mutters to himself. "I wonder if I could use it to paint sothing..."
And that statent makes realize that this particular Hotspot might have more to do with Ahkelios than I had initially thought. Just how closely are the Integrators watching?
The radius of this Hotspot is a large one. Even with Triplestep active, it takes a few minutes for to start to approach the center but I don't have to get all the way to the center. The source of the color drain becos obvious once the trees begin to part. In the center of the clearing is what I can best describe as a massive, obsidian obelisk, absolutely radiating with Firmant.
"Any idea what that is?" I ask, and Ahkelios shrugs.
"Nope!"
Figures.
I watch the obelisk for a while, trying to determine if any part of it is a trap. The Firmant it's radiating isn't consistent every five seconds or so, there's a near-solid pulse of it that's almost blinding to my senses, so much so that I take a physical step back the first ti I see it.
It explains a lot about the clearing, at least. There's almost nothing in about a fifty-ter radius around it. I toss in a stick, just to see what happens, and when the Firmant washes over it...
There's nothing left.
Okay. Avoid the deadly wave of Firmant. Good to know.
I take note of everything I can, just in case I have to do this again. It's fourteen hours and twelve minutes after the start of the loop, according to the tiline tracker on the interface. I can't asure the exact distance from the obelisk, but I can take note of exactly where the do of Firmant seems to end there's a half-dissolved tree I can use as a marker. One branch in particular splits off and then imdiately ends, the ends of the branches stained a dark black like they were burned by contact with the obelisk's Firmant.
I pause.
Sothing's strange about the Firmant inside the death-radius.
I narrow my eyes slightly, and try to tap into my senses just a little more. Firmant would be a little more obvious to , normally, but the obelisk is emitting a level of it that's suffocating my ability to sense anything else in detail.
And yet... there it is. Right next to the obelisk, the faint sense of a pattern, Firmant distributing in branches out above the ground.
It's the herb the doctor was talking about. The Phantom Root. I'm almost certain.
I could try to dash in. The distance doesn't look impossible to cover using Triplestep, and Firestep on top of it should make it relatively safe; I can run in within thirty seconds and make contact with the obelisk. Just retrieving the Root won't be enough there's that barrier around the Hotspot I need to think about.
But I don't know if the challenge is just to reach the obelisk in ti, and I might be toast if I can't get back out of the radius before it explodes again. We'll chalk that particular idea up as 'let's do that if I have no other options'.
I'm not particularly eager to add 'roasted by pure Firmant' to the list of ways I've died.
There is one thing that I fail to notice at first, though.
There are no pools of color around the obelisk.
The absence of sothing is so much harder to spot than the presence of it. The grayscale world is uncomfortable to look at, but everything about Hestia is so alien that it's harder to pay attention to what should and shouldn't be there. There are so pools that exist just outside the radius of the obelisk, but they're not close enough for the Firmant to touch them.
At first.
The radius is increasing ever-so-slightly with every pulse. I notice it when a branch suddenly collapses, the joint eroded by the obelisk's Firmant and that sa pulse of Firmant marks the mont when the radius is large enough that to brush against one of those pools of liquid color.
In the sa mont, Ahkelios stirs on my shoulder, suddenly frightened.
"Hide," he says, and I blink. I open my mouth to question him, but then think the better of it if he's telling to do sothing, he probably has a reason. I dart back into the trees and the foliage, hiding behind one of the tree trunks. It's not the best hiding spot, but it's the easiest one to get on short notice.
A mont later, I feel a presence. Two presences, really.
One of them erges from the pool of color. The touch of Firmant stirs it up sohow, and the liquid rises, forming into a vaguely humanoid shape. I don't have ti to look too closely at it, because a second presence quickly arrives, and that one is...
That one is familiar.
It's a crow. Not one I explicitly recognize, but sohow familiar, nevertheless. He is, rather notably, wingless; powerful-looking, and built with muscle, but if he's ever had wings then he's lost them.
I wonder if I should be sympathetic, but Ahkelios' fear makes cautious instead.
"This Hotspot is an anomaly," the crow mutters, glancing around. He stands right in the clearing next to the obelisk, and doesn't seem to be bothered by those pulses of Firmant at all it crashes against his feathers and bounces back, like the sheer solidity of his presence can't be affected by anything as aningless as the ocean of power pouring out of that obelisk. "Co out, Trialgoer. I know you're there."
A mont passes, and then he adds: "Don't make look for you."
The threat in his voice is hardly subtle, and I feel Ahkelios cowering against my shoulder. I reach out and dismiss the skill, allowing the Fragnt to fade away with sothing like gratitude echoing down the bond; I'm not sure why Ahkelios reacted so strongly to this crow's presence, but now isn't the ti for questions. I can always ask them later.
Then I step out from behind the tree.
"Ah, there you are," the crow says. He looks... bored, for lack of a better word. He gives a slightly disgusted once-over, then shakes his head. "Really? You're the new Trialgoer? You're so... naked. Where are all your feathers?"
"I don't have any," I answer automatically. My mind is racing, trying to pinpoint who this crow is. He's nothing like the ones at the Cliffside, except he does look familiar, and it only takes a mont to realize why.
He looks like Tarin.
A younger version of him, but still. I think back to how Tarin had been so cautious with his knowledge about the Interface, and I wonder if this is why.
"Whatever," the crow mutters, shaking his head. The liquid pool of color lets out a guttural sort of roar complete with a wet sort of burble, and charges towards the crow; he glances at it in irritation, then waves a hand at it.
I sense the rapid movent of Firmant, but I don't see what happens to the liquid monster. It's just... gone.
"So!" The crow puts his hands on his hips and stares at . "You want to tell how you activated this Hotspot? This shouldn't be here."
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "Who are you?"
The crow sighs. "Making this more troubleso than it needs to be," he mutters, half to himself. I don't like or trust him, partly because Ahkelios doesn't, and partly because of the way he's talking. He looks so much like Tarin that I want to, but that's not a good enough reason to trust him.
Well, the other reason is that Tarin didn't ntion him, so I automatically think he's probably an asshole.
"My na is Naru," he tells plainly. "I am the seventh successful Trialgoer in Hestia, performing basic maintenance for the Integrators. This Hotspot was used in the fifty-seventh Trial, and should not be here. You have done sothing to the Interface, and I would like to know what, so I can report back. If you make this take longer than it needs to, it will be very unpleasant for you."
I stare at him for a mont, speechless.
He's working with the Integrators.
That much was fairly obvious, I suppose, but he's just so... casual about it. Like there's nothing wrong with it.
"Do you know Tarin?" The words leave my mouth before I think them through, and he freezes.
That's about the mont I realize I've made a mistake. His voice turns low, dangerous.
"What do you know about him?"
"He helped in the Trials." I should be afraid. Every part of knows I should be afraid. Naru is beyond the sa way the Interface is a whole magnitude of scale beyond anything I can reach right now.
But those are the key words, aren't they? Right now. As long as he can't do anything permanent to ... and that's a dangerous assumption to make, so I'm not making that assumption. I probably shouldn't antagonize him.
"Of course he did." Naru rolls his eyes, and the danger fades away from him. It's like he was only worried that I knew too much about him he doesn't care that I know Tarin personally. "Sentintal old fool. Sotis I wonder how he's my father."
"He's in a coma," I snap, my words sharp and angry, and he gives a bored, confused sort of look.
"And?"
Okay. Rember that part just now where I said I shouldn't antagonize him? I've changed my mind.
Crystallized Strength. Firestep. Barrier. Firmant Manipulation.
The last step is improvised. If there's anything I've learned about the loops, it's that anything that happens to your Firmant seems to carry over between loops. It's been true for , and it's been true for Tarin.
And then I punch Naru in the face, forcing as much Firmant as I can directly into his stupid bird brain.
Reviews
All reviews (0)