"Whoa, whoa," I say, holding up both of my hands. It's not that I'm against fighting it's that I'm not prepared. This is the first I'm hearing of this. The Interface is a massive, powerful thing that the Integrators control, and I've tried directly fighting it once to no avail; I can't imagine a second battle will go well, no matter how much I've grown since then. If I'm going to fight the Interface, I need to bank all my credits, get every Inspiration I can, try out every combination I can make with the All-Seeing Eye...
...Except there really isn't the ti to do all of that, is there? I can bank all of my credits, certainly, but I don't know how comparable this fight is going to be. I don't know anything about this upcoming fight.
"You scared?" the healer-crow asks, shooting a withering look. I look at Mari for help, but she's distracted looking after Tarin. Ahkelios pokes in the cheek with a hand and shakes his head.
"He's not scared," he says confidently, puffing out his chest.
I an, I'm not, but I don't like Ahkelios answering for . "I just need to know more," I say. "Shouldn't we take him outside? We don't want to damage the hut, or hurt anyone, right?"
"No need," the healer-crow says, shaking her head dismissively. "Willpower fight. You help Tarin fight Firmant. Mari and I help. It lose."
"Because Tarin was already fighting it off on his own," I guess. Healer-crow gives a sharp nod, but doesn't spend any more ti on my questions; she's already dipped that paintbrush into the paste she made with the Phantom Root. It's a strange, sickly-green sort of color, and she paints a circular streak on his forehead, then his chest with a quick, skilled motion.
Lacking anything else to do, I pay attention to what I can tell is happening with my Firmant sense. The paste itself is filled to the brim with the Phantom Root's Firmant, and what's particularly interesting is that the nature of it doesn't appear to have changed. For all that the Root's been mashed up, its Firmant remains entire intact, and I can sense small tendrils of Firmant reaching out like the branches of a tree not unlike a miniature version of the Root when it was still planted back in the Hotspot.
All this changes when it's painted onto Tarin's feathers. I can feel those filants of Firmant reach down into him, pulling Firmant out and into the paste sohow, it's doing this intelligently, picking out only the foreign Firmant and concentrating it into a pulsing mass on his chest.
If nothing else, I can certainly see why the healer said there would be a fight.
The Interface Firmant is an ugly, misshapen blob, though it's not nearly strong enough for to see it beyond a faint misty haze in the air. I hesitate only a little before diverting so of my Firmant towards the new skill, Tetrachromacy.
A burst of color erges, just above Tarin's chest. There's a little more resolution to it than my Firmant sense offers, and so I see what's happening in much more detail the way the Interface is being slowly drawn out of him through the two circles and into the air above him. Contrary to my Firmant sense, it doesn't quite sit on his chest. What I'd parsed as a blob is instead a shape that's slowly getting more and more humanoid.
Tarin is stirring, though, so I know this is working. I prepare myself, though I'm not sure what exactly it is that I need to do I sense both Mari and the healer-crow cycling their Firmant and bringing it to the forefront, so I attempt to mimic the motion, using Firmant Manipulation to cycle it through my body and up to the surface.
The change is imdiate.
It's like every sense sharpens imdiately. It's nowhere near as powerful as the skills I have, of course; even Tough Body provides more of an upgrade than this does. But I feel more, with Firmant coursing through my body. Just a little bit more durable, just a little bit stronger, just a little bit more perceptive. Every brush of wind against my clothing is like a spark in my mind.
The Interface Firmant continues to gather above Tarin. The healer-crow narrows her eyes at it, and then at .
"You not fight it now," she says, warning . I tilt my head in a slight nod. I hadn't been planning to. If they hadn't tried to disrupt it already, there must have been a reason, and that reason is probably related to the tiny tendrils of Firmant that continue to fuel it.
Tarin stirs.
The old crow shifts in his bed, probably for the first ti in days, and then lets out a small groan of discomfort; the healer-crow and Mari react almost imdiately, and I'm only a split-second behind. Both of them shoot a wing forward, plunging it into the mass of Firmant and flooding it with their own. I join in a second later, pushing all the Firmant I've collected into my hand and into the foreign mass once I see what they're doing
and there is a resonance.
I feel it a mont before either Mari or the healer-crow do, although I see the alarm on their faces. I see Tarin suddenly sit up, his eyes sharper than I'd expect for having been unconscious for days, and he forces a flood of Firmant out of his body far in excess of anything I'd thought he had. That Firmant spikes into the mass of Interface Firmant, and it flares, turning into a chaotic jumble of raw power that sucks greedily at all three of us.
For a mont, I resist but Ahkelios pokes at and shakes his head. "I know what this is, I think," he says, his voice tinged with a small amount of wonder. "Let it take you. Trust ."
Do I trust him?
Yes.
The Interface Firmant draws on , and I let it, staggering forward as it pulls until there's almost nothing left save for a small core remaining inside ; the rest charges into the Interface, mixing and pulsing, a thin thread connecting and the Interface Firmant and then Ahkelios.
My vision pulses, and then I'm standing in an empty void. Ahkelios still stands on my shoulder, looking around in wonder, though he clings a little to my shirt as he looks around.
"It's a phase shift," Ahkelios says. "Your phase shift. I didn't think it'd happen this early..."
There are sparks off in the distance. One of them is enormous, and growing larger by the second; it's an off-blue network of Firmant that stretches off into the distance, farther than the eye can see. The others are smaller one a pitch-black bundle of Firmant, another lilac purple, and the third a vibrant forest green.
Sohow, I know exactly what they are. Tarin, the healer-crow, and Mari respectively; their Firmant donations lie in this void-space, shifting erratically around the large pillar of Interface Firmant.
"What's a phase shift?" I ask.
"It's a shift in the quality of your Firmant," Ahkelios answers quietly. "The first one is almost always random it happens when you've accomplished sothing that's personally important to you, and you've gathered and trained your Firmant enough to make it happen. A phase shift isn't as important for an Integrated user like yourself as much as it is for non-Integrated users like Mari and Tarin, but it's still a significant change..."
"It takes six months for your first phase shift, usually," Gheraa pipes up. I startle, taking a step back and glancing around but I don't see him anywhere. It's just his voice echoing within the void, and he sounds regretful when he speaks again. "Sorry, I can't join you in this one. It's purely ntal. But I can give you advice."
"I'm not sure I should be listening to your advice," I mutter. Gheraa is silent for a minute.
"In matters of the phase shift, we Integrators do not lie," he says, though there's a note of sothing in his voice. I'm not sure what it is. It's unfamiliar, certainly. There's an undercurrent of bitterness in his voice that I do not recognize, and I wonder how different he would look if I could see him. "And I am sure your companion would tell you if I did."
"I will!" Ahkelios says defiantly, crossing his arms. Then he cringes slightly as if he's expecting lightning to strike him, and lets out a small sigh of relief when it doesn't. I chuckle slightly and give him a small pat on the head.
"Listen carefully. You are new to phase shifts, but you are also extrely lucky. Your first phase shift determines the base layer of your Firmant, and most individuals only get to make use of their own. You have three Firmant users with healing, earth, and speed cores to help you, and you have a massive pillar of Interface Firmant to help you out. This has quite literally never happened before.
"The Interface is a unique thing. It can handle all different types of Firmant and transform them in ways that are impossible for any individual species. It combines the strengths of every living species it has ever recorded, every"
A small pause. "...I cannot say," he says, a small hint of regret in his voice.
"But before you lies an opportunity. For every piece of Firmant you can hold, your baseline layer of Firmant will be stronger. You will be able to raise yourself to greater heights, to handle greater skills.
"Begin by approaching the Firmant cluster. Keep your own Firmant at the ready, guarded, around you. The Firmant may be adversarial and fight you, or it may be cooperative and join with you. You will have to fight it with your willpower or with your fists, whichever works more easily for you. Understood?"
"Any lies?" I mutter to Ahkelios, and the little mantis shakes his head. I don't think so, he mouths.
"I'm hurt," Gheraa says, although he mostly just sounds tired. There's maybe the smallest hint of teasing in his voice, mixed in with more lancholy than anything. "There isn't much ti left. Go."
I go.
The Firmant sparks are much bigger than they seed in the distance the pillar of Interface Firmant looms above , stretching out into the sky. Even the sparks from Tarin, Mari, and the healer-crow whose na I still don't know are larger than I am. Out of more instinct than anything else, I head for Tarin's spark first.
I don't want it to fade. If he needs his Firmant, and I can give it back to him...
As my hand makes contact with the pitch-black, sparking mass, though
Trialgoer? I haven't heard Tarin's voice in so many loops it's almost unfamiliar, though I almost stagger with the relief I feel when I hear it. Trialgoer! You here! What happen? I rember raid. I not rember what happen after.
I'm startled. I'd forgotten for a mont that this was a different loop that he shouldn't be able to rember and yet it appears that he does, even if his mories are from several loops ago. I'm briefly overwheld; I'd expected him to forget, and I'd just wanted to make sure he wasn't permanently dead.
"You died," I say quietly, and Tarin's Firmant stills.
Oh.
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