It's hard to describe exactly what Miktik does.
She feeds her Firmant into the orb that part I can read easily enough with my Firmant sense but imbued within the orb is a blob of Firmant that looks nothing like any imbuent I've seen so far. It looks almost like a spiderweb. Small strings of Firmant reach out and connect to one another and to the edges of the orb.
Miktik's will acts as sothing like a filter. The orb itself passively pulls on all the ambient Firmant around it, dragging it into all the different strings within. I can sense Miktik plucking away at those strings, sohow manipulating them so that different types of Firmant get sorted into different strands.
She's extracting information out of the Firmant around us.
"Don't you have privacy wards all over this place?" I ask. "That filters out a lot of the Firmant getting in and out, right? It's gotta be harder to use if you do that."
"Shh," Tarin scolds , but Miktik actually looks up.
"That's why I've been having trouble with divination lately!" she says. She doesn't exactly snap her fingers, but she does sothing that's a rough equivalent, rubbing two of her legs together and producing a spark of Firmant. "I didn't even consider that! You're right; we should do this outside."
She scampers off her table, grumbling all the while. "I'm gonna have to make the contractors co back and redo the ward. You'd think professionals would warn about sothing like that. Would it be so hard to make it a one-way privacy imbuent?"
"We'll catch up with you!" I call after her. Miktik's voice fades away as she makes her way through the tunnels of her own ho. I look at Tarin with a raised eyebrow, and he concedes with a grumbling sort of huff.
"You know," I say. "While we're here and Miktik isn't around next ti we loop, how should we et up? I don't think you and Mari should be risking life and limb to rescue from chiras every loop."
A little bit of scouting will let evade most of the chiras, I think, but the best thod so far seems to be to just fly over them all and flight is unfortunately not on my list of Interface-granted skills yet. Maybe the next ti I bank my credits.
Then again... maybe if I use Crystallized Strength and Warpstep to get enough Air, and then use a few Barriers to keep myself moving?
"Easiest if we et in village," Tarin says. "You fight chiras! It make you stronger."
"I'll fight one or two, but I don't think I can fight the entire forest," I say dryly. He's not wrong, and if I just charge into the next fight without preparation I'm liable to get myself killed but I can't just spend a few loops doing nothing but fighting chiras, either.
I an, I can. It doesn't sound like a good idea. There's too much I need to be doing that would also function as training regardless.
"I think I can find a way to get to you," I say eventually. "I'd rather you don't have to co out to look for . Can you stay in the village until I find you?"
"I sleep." Tarin nods. I laugh; he does spend the start of every loop sleeping.
"Just don't tell Mari about the loop," I add. "We can prank her. Make her think it's weird that we know so much."
The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. Tarin looks, conversely, awed by the idea though there's a flicker of sothing in his eyes that makes wonder if he knows what I'm trying to do. What Mari and I are both trying to do, really.
He seems willing to go along with it. "Okay!" he says. "I wait. You co soon. I not wait long. If you take too long I go Great Cities myself."
"Works for ," I chuckle. "Mind going to check on Miktik? I want to talk to Ahkelios for a bit."
This is probably the greatest opportunity for to talk to Ahkelios about his experiences with the Integrators. Even if the privacy Firmant around this workshop is relatively weak, it's better than the nothing we usually have.
Ahkelios remains silent until Tarin squeezes his way out through the tunnels, then hops up onto the desk in front of . "What's on your mind?" he asks.
"We know other people have looped here," I say. "But... I think that's what the number behind the planet's na is. Hestia 307B I'm the three-hundred-and-seventh looper. There have been three hundred other Trials on this planet. The entire planet's been temporally locked for however long it took the Integrators to run three hundred and six Trials."
Ahkelios doesn't respond, but his Firmant does flicker slightly in distress. Three hundred is a bigger number than either of us were expecting, I think.
"How do you know?" he asks.
"Back when I spoke to the Heart," I say. "Or when the Heart spoke to , I guess. It said it's been through this whole thing a little more than three hundred tis. The numbers feel too close to be a coincidence."
Ahkelios closes his eyes. I don't know what's running through his head. It's a long mont before he speaks again. "Then they're all probably gone, aren't they?" he says softly.
It takes a mont to grasp what he's saying. "...Probably," I say.
I don't know what's happened to his planet. But depending on how long the Trials run, it's very possible that everyone he's ever known is already dead. The Integrators never specified how long we have to complete the Trials probably because they don't care how long it takes, as long as we eventually get to the Heart and if that's the case, then who knows how many decades have passed since Ahkelios' Trial?
Centuries, even.
Naru said the Hotspot I explored was used in the fifty-seventh Trial, and Ahkelios has mories of that Trial. Accordingly, he's probably the fifty-seventh Trialgoer, which ans there have been almost two hundred and fifty Trials since him. If every Trialgoer lasts for a month, that's still twenty Earth years. If every Trialgoer lasts for a year, then it's been more than two centuries since he was last alive. "Do you know how long you were in your Trial?" I ask gently.
It's not an easy question for him, I sense. Ahkelios winces a little bit, rubbing his head, and I feel the draw on my Firmant increase as he tries to recall. "...Years, I think. I don't know more than that."
His voice is quiet and subdued far from his usual cheer. I hold out a hand for Ahkelios to climb into, not knowing what else to say, and he climbs up on it gratefully.
"You should tell about them soti," I say. "The people you left behind."
Maybe it'll help in so small way. Ahkelios hesitates before he answers. "I will," he says. "But... not yet. I don't think I'm ready yet."
Because talking about them will feel final, in so way. He doesn't need to say the words out loud for to understand; I'm familiar enough with grief. It's hard to grieve properly when you don't even know for sure, and everything about Ahkelios' situation is uncertain.
We don't even know if his people ultimately succeeded in the Trials.
"Let's go see what Tarin and Miktik are up to," Ahkelios says, nodding back towards the tunnel-entrance. I nod in silent agreent.
Miktik isn't very far outside. There's a small clearing by her workshop full of assorted junk and gadgets, heaped up in disorganized piles, and she's sitting at the center of them while performing the sa Firmant-sorting I saw before. The only difference is that she's actually doing it slower.
Which makes sense, I suppose. If the Firmant out here is more information-dense, I imagine it's harder to sort through, but also a lot more useful.
"How long does she usually take?" I ask Tarin. The old crow is standing by the side, digging through one of the piles of junk.
"Not long," Tarin says. "She fast. Unless Rotar hard to find. Then maybe take longer."
"Doesn't look like she's anywhere close to done," I mutter. The strings of Firmant within the orb are only multiplying, like her search query is getting more and more complex. "She hasn't t Rotar before, right? How does she know how to find him? Is the na enough?"
"Na enough," Tarin says with a nod. "Too many things make harder. More variables. You no worry! She will find."
My concerns are less about her capabilities and more about what the Heart said. Temporally dislocated. It's possible that they're just not possible to find yet.
"These are so really strange results!" Miktik says. I blink. Is she done already? "Co take a look!"
Tarin and I both approach her, and she holds out the orb and channels Firmant into it. A half-dozen strings of Firmant spin into light, forming tendrils that look disturbingly like worms reaching out of the glass. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see, exactly
but then Miktik does sothing strange, twisting the orb and injecting a different type of Firmant into it. The threads unfold and expand, and reconstruct themselves into a picture of...
"Rotar!" Tarin says excitedly, hopping to the orb to take a closer look.
I, on the other hand, am frowning and Ahkelios is equally silent.
The picture of Rotar that Miktik has generated is surprisingly high-resolution and in full color, but several things about it are strange. For one thing, Rotar and K'hkerior Ikaara, I suppose, in this formare both transparent, like they aren't fully there. For another...
I recognize the stone buildings, the dangerous-looking stairs. That's the Fracture.
"What're they doing in the Fracture?" I ask, frowning.
"Why he invisible!" Tarin flaps his wings agitatedly.
"Most importantly," Miktik says. "This is live."
Ah. That makes things worse. Because both Rotar and Ikaara are standing completely still, frozen mid-step.
Temporally displaced. I turn the words over in my head a few tis. They look a little like they're stuck in ti, shifted slightly out of alignnt.
"They're moving," Ahkelios says. "Just really slowly."
I blink. He's right. It's almost unnoticeable, but they are moving just a little bit, with Ikaara moving just a little faster than Rotar.
They were mid-slipstream when the temporal storm happened. My best guess is that they're shifted in space and in ti, a half-step out from the rest of reality.
"The hell're we supposed to do about this?" I mutter.
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