The second set of blows resonates through both of us. The Firmant-creature roars, an erratic, flickering sort of thing, a mouth gaping open in its featureless face with an appearance not unlike television static. I grit my teeth as a sudden headache pounds through , and Ahkelios clings more tightly to my armor, his entire form vibrating with the force of the roar.
And then he makes an admittedly much smaller roar of defiance. He stands up on my shoulder, even as I'm forced to take a step back; he fuzzes out for a mont, flickering, and then he breathes in
and all the flickering static of the Firmant-creature's roar vanishes. Ahkelios seems to take it on instead, his arms and legs briefly disappearing into static in turn, and when he speaks, his voice is strained.
"I took on so of the burden," he says, the words half-growled out. "Go, Ethan."
He doesn't need to say any more. I go.
The Interface fragnt is still roaring at , but this ti it's soundless and there's no effect attached to it; black lightning coalesces around my gauntlet again, and I smash it into its face, feeling the Firmant resist for a split second before Tarin's Firmant blasts into it and sends it sprawling. I follow up imdiately, his speed running down my body and into my legs to boost forward.
With my next blow, Mari's Firmant shines a bright green, and the force of it is tripled. The sheer shock splits the Interface fragnt in half, Firmant veins temporarily splitting apart before desperately trying to knit back together; at the sa ti, its arms turns into blades, and it swings blindly at , trying to stop .
Trying.
Mari's armor stops the blade before it can connect with the ntal flesh that makes up my body in this space. It glows brightly as it does, and I can almost hear Mari's proud caw as she stops it outright. I take the mont of shock to grip on to its arm with my gauntlet, just below the blade, and crush.
There's a snap. A loud cry of anger, Firmant warbling in an emotion too close to pain. It jerks backwards sharply once, twice and the third ti it rips hard enough to tear off a piece of its own arm. Long tendrils of Firmant trail behind its arm like broken strings of cobweb, and the Firmant blade half-buried in my armor remains left behind.
Just for a mont. Then it dissolves into nothing, rging neatly with Mari's Firmant and healing the small hole it had created. The excess flows into , and I feel it empowering Tarin's Firmant within , on top of my own. The black lightning surrounding grows stronger.
I don't give it the ti to recover.
I flash forward, and the Firmant around crackles into a storm. The Interface fragnt lifts a hand up to defend itself, snarling in defiance, and my gauntlet smashes into its blade; Akar's Firmant flares together with Mari's, and the sky-blue gauntlet flickers once, pulses
the second blade shatters, and I absorb its fragnts. This ti, Ahkelios flares a little brighter, and he lets out a little cry of accomplishnt; I chuckle slightly at his antics.
"Wanna take the next blow?" I ask.
Ahkelios bounces on his feet, eyes sparking. "Yes," he says.
Before I get the ti to say anything else, he darts off, zooming ahead like a bright, tiny teor of Firmant. The Interface fragnt doesn't pay attention to him, lazily sidestepping as it tries to rush towards again.
A mistake, of course.
Ahkelios turns rapidly and slams into it from behind, rocketing it forward directly into my fist; its head splits apart again from the force of my blow, and it struggles to put itself together. I feel it reaching out, tugging more power from the Interface towards itself.
And though I make no move to do it, my own Interface responds.
It has no physical presence here, in the space of the phase-shift but I feel it erge like a seed buried inside my soul, suddenly stretching out from . Filants of dark blue reach out from my fingers, empowered by different glittering sparks of green and black and purple; it reaches up, into the sky, and it cuts through those tendrils connecting the fragnt with the greater Interface.
I don't have ti to wonder what that ans, because the mont it does, the fragnt goes berserk. Its form flickers for a mont, unstable without access to the greater structure of the Interface.
Then it begins to grow.
"Phase two," I say. I feel the Firmant within pulse in response, readying itself for a second battle.
Ahkelios, on the other hand, can't resist the urge to snark. "What, have you fought Interface monstrosities before?"
"I'll have to show you so Earth dia soti," is all I say in response. The tendrils of Firmant that make up the fragnt lash outwards erratically, and while I'm confident Mari's Firmant will protect , I'm hesitant to walk blindly into it. Instead, I wait for an opportunity. I'm obviously not going to wait for the transformation to complete, but
There.
Ahkelios reacts faster than I do. He shoots forward ahead of ti, a bright little star that darts out to the right and distracts the fragnt just long enough for to get in through the window of opportunity. I duck under one lashing tendril, jump over the next, and catch the third one on the side of my gauntlet; Ahkelios' distraction ans I don't have to deal with the fourth, fifth, or sixth tendrils.
At the center of it all, Firmant knots into a structure that looks almost like a ribcage though very far from a human one. Within it, a heart of Firmant pulses, locked into a strangely organic shape that thumps and throbs.
I don't have ti for hesitation.
Akar's Firmant wraps around my fist, Mari's empowers , and Tarin's pushes forward.
The makeshift ribcage shatters beneath my gauntlet. The heart protests for a mont, beating rapidly, struggling against my grip.
It lasts for only a second before the shape loosens and unravels, and Firmant flows up my arm and into my body
The void around vanishes. Ahkelios disappears, his Firmant once more relegated to nothing more than a skill housed within my body; the thread that connects us is dim, here.
I am alone.
There is a pearl of Firmant before . Unlike nearly every other form of Firmant I have seen, it is perfectly calm and stable. It has no color I know it's there only because I can sense it.
It is, I realize, my own Firmant, coalesced into a single drop before . Surrounding it are small sparks of blue and purple, green and black; the Interface, Akar, Mari, and Tarin. They orbit loosely around the pearl.
It calls to . It tells to find a truth to find sothing that will bring all these disparate forms of Firmant together, and distill it into a single core that I can carry forward with . What I create here will be my foundation, and so it asks a simple question.
Who am I?
I consider the question. I take my ti with it, too. The edges of this space are purely defined, and there's no hint of the crumbling stability there was before; there's sothing about it that reminds of the Inspiration-space, but more... personal. Less artificial, for lack of a better term.
Who am I?
When I lost my brother, and lived through the subsequent years with grieving parents who either blad or didn't quite know what to do with , I felt like my world had ended. I made my way through with force of will alone, promising myself to find sothing better, to build a life of my own. Those events shaped a large part of who I am.
But I am not my trauma.
When the Trials began, I was angry. I'm still angry now, in truth. Days into this Trial, and I've only seen more of the injustices committed by the Integrators. Naru's attitude towards his parents, the implications about what the Interface might have done to society on Hestia, the knowledge that people Ahkelios, other humans, that harpy girl I still don't know much about the knowledge that they've been killed in these Trials only serves to infuriate more.
I clench my fists.
But I'm not my anger, either.
The Trial I'm in would have been much more difficult to handle without Ahkelios. Half of what he does is almost an act, I suspect; he's playful and charming and a little too obsessed with plants, and so of that he uses to cheer up or disarm . He's good at what he does, too. It makes wish I could do more for him.
Mari has been impossibly trusting. Every loop, I tell her my story. She's more angry so loops than others, but she has nearly always just chosen to trust , to take my words at face value. It's a trait I suspect cos naturally to her, mothering those around her and taking their problems seriously. I've co to care about her a lot.
Tarin died nearly sacrificed himself in an attempt to protect his village, even if that sacrifice might not have been intentional. The crow-guards all fight to the death to keep their village safe. The children in the village are young and bright-eyed and full of hope for their world, for all that it's controlled by the Integrators.
And yet... I'm not defined by the people around .
I sigh, cupping my pearl of Firmant in my hands, and watching the sparks orbit around it.
"This is a stupid question," I say. "There's no one thing that's ever going to define .
"I'm whoever the fuck I want to be."
Firmant pulses. Sothing falls into place. Four different types of Firmant join with an invisible pearl in the center, and it becos sothing solid, sothing real.
A single pulse of Firmant, newly refined, blasts through .
And when I open my eyes, I'm back in Tarin's hut. The old crow is sitting up in his bed, staring at with his beak open.
"Do I have sothing on my face?" I ask jokingly. He smacks on the head with a wing.
"You ruin all my furniture!" Tarin huffs. "Now I need make furniture again!"
"I missed you too, you old fart."
"I not fart!"
I laugh, and Tarin grins at . Then I take a peek at my Interface.
I have a lot of ssages to get through.
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