My Trial has changed my relationship with death ti and ti again. For once, though, I feel like I'm finally in control of those deaths.
Not that I'm under any illusions. I'm well aware that as much ti as I've spent training—as much as I should be above any new problem the Fracture might throw at —I'm not invincible. Neither are any of my friends, even if they're quite possibly three of the strongest Firmant practitioners on the planet.
The difference now is that I'm not afraid. Even if it happens, I know exactly what to do and where to go. The Integrators made a mistake when they gave the power to co back from death.
Call it a Premonition.
We stand at the edge of the Fracture. It's enormous—larger than I rember it being, in fact, and I can't tell if that's because of all the ways my senses have grown or if it's actually gotten bigger. It's a chasm rent into the planet on a continental scale, stretched out over the horizon farther than I can see and so deep that even with the sun directly above, the bottom is nothing but a featureless black.
Then there's the sheer volu of Firmant practically gushing out of it, so much that it threatens to match the quantity found in the Interdiary. The only difference is that there's so much more space here that all that power is diluted. If it were any more concentrated, I can only imagine the kind of impact it would have on anything and anyone that lived nearby.
Like the Cliffside Crows. I grimace at the thought. I suppose that explains, in part, the artifact they were able to give . As far as I can tell, it contains a truly baffling amount of information—far more than it should, given what Tarin and the others have told about how they created it.
I suspect it's going to be critical to navigating the Fracture, once we get a little deeper.
"Uh," Ahkelios says. He gestures awkwardly at the flow of Firmant pouring out in front of us. "Was it always this... powerful?"
"No," He-Who-Guards answers. He steps closer to the edge of the Fracture, optic flickering as he runs a series of scans. I hear the telltale whirring of his systems as he processes the data. "It is larger by 37 percent, and its baseline Firmant output is an order of magnitude greater than its recorded baseline."
"That doesn't sound like a good thing," Ahkelios says worriedly.
"We've been in this loop for a while without getting reset," I say, pulling up the Interface to check. "22 days, not including all that ti we spent training. The planet doesn't survive past 180, but we know that any action that disrupts the Fracture can accelerate that tiline. I'm assuming the whole ti-dilation-training thing wasn't great for planetary stability."
"Great for us, though!" Gheraa interjects cheerfully. I turn to look at him, and he has the grace to look vaguely embarrassed. "What? It's true."
"Gheraa," I say with a sigh, and then shake my head. I can deal with him later. "Look, the point is, we're going to have to be ready for anything. We're going deeper than we have before—deeper than anyone has before. Call out if you even think sothing is wrong, got it?"
All three of the others nod. I turn back to the Fracture, then promptly take a step backwards as a Premonition screams at .
A mont later, a concentrated blast of pure Firmant roars through the chasm of the Fracture, so bright and charged it leaves spots in my eyes. I blink a few tis, and Gheraa makes a noise that's halfway between fear, awe, and...
"Do not say that was hot," I say before he can say anything.
Gheraa looks startled, then offended. He crosses his arms over his chest, putting on an indignant scowl. "Do you think I go around being attracted to every large beam of Firmant?"
"Yes," I say.
"Yup," Ahkelios adds.
"Correct," Guard agrees.
Gheraa sighs dramatically. "Woe is ," he says. "It seems I will never live that down. If only you could be distracted by an even more embarrassing mont." He takes a step back—
—and falls backward into the Fracture. We watch him as he falls, saluting the whole ti.
"You know," Ahkelios says. "I like that guy a lot more than the Integrator I got during my Trial."
"He is different than I imagined the Integrators to be," Guard admits. "Though I understand that he is sothing of an exception?"
"Let's just go after him before he does sothing to get himself killed," I say with a sigh. "I don't think I trust him with the real world just yet."
One thing we learned about him during all that training: Gheraa's experience with anything other than Integrator society is entirely restricted to his observations of various planets and Trials during Integrations. That ans his practical experience of reality for the rest of the galaxy is limited at best.
"I still think we should put a collar on him," Ahkelios mutters. "Maybe one with a bell."
"Don't tempt ," I say dryly.
We follow after him. Fortunately, we find him quickly: he's waiting for us on a ledge just out of sight. I'm both surprised and grateful that he rembered all our discussions about how we're going to approach this delve.
"What're we waiting for?" he says cheerfully. "Let's go!"
Not long after that, we run into the first problem.
It's a problem we anticipated, at least. Most of the monsters in the early layers of the Fracture are, at this point, easy enough for any of us to deal with. Most of them.
And then there are the Ti Flies.
They were able to wipe our entire group the last ti we encountered them. We were lucky enough not to run into them when we ca down to release Rotar and Ikaara, but given how long we intend to spend in the Fracture this ti, it's not likely we'll be able to avoid them again.
So we've co up with a plan.
The flies are little monstrosities that reach through ti and into the past to steal Firmant from their victims. They can't be dealt with in any conventional way—we can't attack sothing that isn't even there yet, after all. Thankfully, I have not one but two skills that can deal with this now.
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The first is Temporal Static, which causes a sort of localized temporal storm; it creates pockets of disrupted ti that fluctuate into both past and future. It's an incredibly situational skill I haven't had much of a chance to use, but this one is pretty much perfect for it.
The second, of course, is Tistrike. What better way to deal with future parasites than a skill that punches into the future?
All things considered, that plan goes surprisingly well. When He-Who-Guards reports that his systems are reporting a drastic and sudden reduction in Firmant, we know what we're dealing with, and I flood our little corner of the Fracture with Temporal Static.
Once it's active, ghostly images of grotesque, bug-like parasites flitter around the small platform we stand on, flickering in and out of sight. We take the opportunity to strike them whenever they beco visible, with Ahkelios and I alternating between using Tistrikes whenever they fade away. It's a lot easier to hit them when we know where they are, because after that, all we need to do is figure out when they are.
"That... was a lot easier than I expected," Ahkelios comnts when we're done. There are small piles of bug corpses scattered all around us, slowly dissolving back into Firmant. I try to ignore the sight. They're parasites in ti, and frankly I've had more than my fair share of dealing with parasites in these loops.
Gheraa feels the sa way, judging from his expression. The usual cheer is gone from his face, and in its place is sothing troubled. No doubt he's thinking about Rhoran again.
"Gross," he mutters.
Or not. Though the word could apply to Rhoran, I suppose.
Neither of us had pegged the possibility of his erstwhile supervisor being petty enough to turn himself into a Firmant parasite just to hound us. We certainly hadn't accounted for him sohow managing to infect an entity like the Sunken King, who is—best as we can tell—so far above even the strongest of the Integrators that we may as well be ants to him.
If all goes well, by the ti we face him, I'll have completed my next phase shift and stand as a fourth-layer practitioner. That by itself won't be enough, but...
Well, we'll worry about it when we get there. The warning I sent back to myself echoes in my mind.
I don't have many options left. I'm sending back this warning so you'll have one more choice that I didn't have—but you're not going to like it. You'll know what I an when you get there.
We've talked it over ti and ti again, but none of us are entirely sure what it ans. With the way Paradox Warning works, we're probably only going to figure it out when it's ti for to send the warning back to my past self—self-fulfilling paradox and all that—but not knowing is like having an itch I can't scratch.
I know I need to be ready. I know what's coming. I hope that'll be enough, because from the tone of that warning, whatever conclusion I ca to?
I must've hated it. I know what I sound like when I'm trying to hide the truth, especially from myself.
"Yeah," I agree after a mont, turning back to Ahkelios. "But from here on out, we don't actually know what else we might run into, so let's be careful."
The upper layers of the Fracture are a series of stairs and ruined buildings carved into the cliffside, the apparent remnants of a long-dead civilization. Even with how ancient the remains are, there are clear hints that sothing great once occupied this space. The still-surviving golem constructs are a part of it, but so are the skill fragnts.
And there are so many skill fragnts. The upper layers of the Fracture feel like a gold mine to my Firmant sense—they glitter with the scattered pieces of dozens if not hundreds of different skill constructs. They're tucked away into corners that would've been impossible for to sense before, buried under layers of stone and circuitry and charged with only the faintest hint of power, but now I can see the sheer extent of their spread.
"Should we gather them?" Ahkelios asks when I bring this up. I shake my head, laughing a little when he stares at with disappointed, pleading eyes. I can see the appeal for him, but...
"If we had infinite amounts of ti, I could maybe see it being worth it," I say. "But it'd take a hundred pieces for us to make one complete skill, and there's no telling what rank it might be. Maybe if we find out about a skill that's here that we want, we can try to dig it up, but gathering them at random? It'd take days for us to get them all, and that's not counting the ti it would take to put them together."
"I know that you're right, but I hate it," Ahkelios grumbles. He stares longingly at the ruins above us.
"It is strange that there are skill fragnts here at all," Guard comnts. He tilts his head. "Gheraa. Do you know what this place may have to do with the Interface?"
"What?" Gheraa blinks like he's surprised that he's being asked the question. Then he brightens, twirling his cane around. "I'm glad you asked! Hestia isn't ntioned anywhere in our records prior to Integration, and there's nothing in its history that should link it with the Interface that we know of."
"So you have no idea," Ahkelios says.
"Well, yes, but I wouldn't put it like that." Gheraa sighs. "If you read through the anomaly log, there are one or two prior Trialgoers that have managed to put together a skill from the Fracture. Ethan?"
"I haven't had the chance to read through the logs," I admit. It doesn't feel like the best excuse, given all the ti we've spent training, but there's always been sothing more pertinent.
That and altogether too many people use those logs as a place to leave their final words. It's... unpleasant.
"Suffice to say the skills here are strange, specific, and unlikely to be worth recovering," Gheraa says, giving a look. "I believe one of the skills allowed for pottery creation."
Huh. I frown a little, turning that thought over in my mind before pulling up the Interface and skimming for the log in question. It takes a while for to get there—there are a lot of logs—but eventually, I find the entry. It talks about how the skill feels clunky, different from all the others. It takes more Firmant and more ti for less of a result...
Sothing clicks.
"Prototypes," I say quietly. "They're prototypes for the skills that eventually went into the Interface."
Ahkelios, Guard and Gheraa share disbelieving looks. "Are you sure?" Gheraa asks.
"Think about what you told ," I say. "The three gods—Kauku and the two we don't have the nas of. We know they had to experint to make it work. I bet this was one of their test sites. It must've been how they learned how to make skills."
"That..." Guard pauses, then frowns. "I do not like how plausible that is."
"Does that an we could learn from them?" Ahkelios asks hopefully. "Figure out what they did?"
"Maybe," I say. I'm not hopeful. Ti has ground this place down into little more than dusty remnants of what was; if not even a single intact skill remains, I doubt we could say much more of the research notes. The fact that none of the logs in the Interface ntions anything of the sort corroborates that idea.
But that context lends a different perspective to this place.
The hos built here are small. There's not much room to navigate between them—no real location that might hold a town square or anything of the sort. Without the ability to climb or fly, the people here would be stuck navigating tiny, dangerous pathways.
I thought I was looking at the remnants of a great civilization. There are signs everywhere that the people here lived as best as they could—remnants of art and culture, ingenious technology implented via Firmant.
Now I can't help but wonder if I'm in fact looking at the remnants of a prison of sorts, abandoned and then reworked into sothing of a functioning society. I really need to get the truth out of Kauku, one way or another. Find out exactly what it is those so-called gods did in their pursuit of power. To do that, though...
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There's a lot more Fracture waiting.
"Let's head further down," I say. "I want to see how much deeper we can go. We can co back here when we have a better idea of what's waiting for us in the depths."
As I speak, I begin to draw Firmant into myself. I'm close enough to the fourth phase shift now that I can initiate the process as soon as I find that final, foundational elent—but that doesn't an extra Firmant is useless to .
On the contrary, every drop of Firmant I take in makes the ocean of power I call my core grow slightly deeper.
I will be prepared for what's coming. I have to be.
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