Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 119: Book 2: The Present, (1)

Tarin struggled. Light-purple bands of Firmament strung themselves around his wings, and every movement caused them to burn through his feathers and into the bone and muscle beneath. He could break through them if he could just reinforce himself, but...

Firmament suppression. He hated the tactic. It was cowardly. It was un-crowlike! Whatever Whisper had done, she had locked down his ability to manipulate his own Firmament, and Tarin hated it. He didn't even know why she'd chosen this approach. She had the ability to force people to do whatever she wanted with that weird Interface skill she used! What was the point in locking him down like this?

For that matter, he didn't know why she'd wanted to speak to him personally. He still gave her his best crow-glare, though. Even if he couldn't see very well.

"I'm over here," Whisper said, her voice holding a touch of condescending amusement. Tarin adjusted his glare a few feet to the left, away from the remarkably similar silhouette of the nearby lamp.

"You suppress Firmament!" he squawked. "I not see."

Whisper looked curious, or so he imagined. He couldn't exactly make out whatever expression she was wearing on her pendant. "You're nearsighted?"

Tarin scoffed. "I see near things better," he said.

"...I suppose that is a refreshingly optimistic take on nearsightedness." She-Who-Whispers stepped away and back toward the glowing table. Her hands were folded behind her back, Tarin could see that much, but he thought he could see her wringing her fingers together. Was he seeing that right?

...eh. No point trying to make out what his eyes refused to see. He focused back on the Firmament sense he'd been trying to develop—now was as good a time as any to try to observe his surroundings through it.

Ethan's Firmament sense came about from an imbalance in the upper layers of his Firmament. No doubt in the first couple of loops, that imbalance had prevented him from properly controlling his Firmament. Now, though, that imbalance had been solidified as part of the young Trialgoer's first phase-shift; he'd effectively embraced it as a part of himself, that he was many different things.

Cheater. Tarin scoffed, but couldn't help the slight smirk that entered his expression at the thought. It was better than Whisper's cheating. It was the clever sort of cheating, the sort he could get behind.

Not that he'd let Ethan stay ahead of him!

There was something about the loops that affected his Firmament. He didn't know what it was, but he'd been carefully nudging it ever since he noticed. The more he did, the more it destabilized his Firmament—not so much that he couldn't control it, but enough for him to be able to begin to sense Firmament with the same detail that Ethan did.

Really, Ethan was bound to soar ahead of him. All Trialgoers were. The sheer resources they had access to through the Interface alone, nevermind the skills and the way it pushed their Firmament into alignment—those with full access to the Interface had an insurmountable advantage.

But he had to try to keep up. If he could keep up, if he could stay ahead and lend Ethan a guiding wing, maybe... well, maybe he could prevent another Naru from happening.

Tarin was no stranger to the secondary effect of the Trials. To the way they were designed to exacerbate a person's worst traits in an effort to more easily control them. It was selective, of course—nothing that made a person difficult to control would typically be encouraged—but it was, for the most part, effective.

It was what had happened to Naru.

The thought of what his son had become sent another echo of anger through his heart. Tarin ignored it, pushing it aside as he often did; more important now was the situation he was in and the Firmament sense he was trying to develop. He could, in a very vague, fuzzy sort of way, sense a humanoid-shaped lump of Firmament on the table Whisper was standing next to.

He-Who-Guards. Tarin remembered the layout of the room from the last time he'd been here, though he didn't know why Whisper had chosen to take him here, exactly. What alarmed him was the fact that the state of the Firmament on the table had very clearly deteriorated.

Guard was still alive, but only barely.

Whisper slowly reached out with her Firmament in an act Tarin recognized as an attempt to support him with her own strength. Her Firmament began to dig into Guard's, trying to provide a structure he could subsist on.

The moment He-Who-Guards sensed it, he fought. Tarin could feel the prismatic Firmament spasming and diminishing itself in an attempt to get away from her.

"Stop!" he squawked without thinking. "Why you do this? He fight you!"

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"He will die if I do not assist him," She-Who-Whispers hissed at him. "What do you expect me to do? Watch? He-Who-Guards is not allowed to die!"

"You make him die faster!" Tarin retorted—

Pain.

Tarin smelled burnt flesh and feathers. It took him a moment to even realize what had happened. The ragged, desperate breathing was his own; the burnt feathers came from the purple Firmament wrapped tightly around his wings. She-Who-Whispers had a hand held out to him, and the aura he sensed from her was... dangerous.

He'd pissed her off, then. He would have laughed if his throat wasn't sore from the screech of pain she'd torn out of it. Was she a child? Even his most stubborn pupil had withstood more criticism than this before snapping.

"You will not tell me how to keep my own partner alive." She-Who-Whispers's voice was low. Icy.

"I not talk, he die," Tarin answered simply.

He-Who-Guards's Firmament was that close to self-destruction—and if Whisper's silence was any indication, then she knew it, too. Tarin was starting to understand one of the reasons she might have decided to bring him to this room in particular. She might think that he had something to do with Guard's state.

Or she might want help, and she was simply too proud to admit it.

"I talk to him," Tarin said. "You let me close."

"What could you possibly say to him?" There was an edge in Whisper's voice. Tarin ignored it. He dragged himself over to the table, noting with some satisfaction that the ropes of Firmament binding him didn't resist his attempt to move.

Connecting to another person via Firmament was difficult at the best of times. Tarin could only barely do it with Mari—

...He missed Mari. The thought struck him suddenly. He took a deep breath.

No time to think about that now.

Connecting to another person via their Firmament was difficult, and he could only barely do it even with someone like Mari—but this was a special scenario. He-Who-Guards was all but stripped of every layer that would have proven a hindrance to such a connection, and Tarin had been studying how Ethan's connection with Ahkelios worked.

He was relatively certain he could do this.

"You not suppress my Firmament," he requested. After a moment, he felt the suppression lift, though the ropes remained to bind his wings. He could have chosen this moment to attack, but he didn't stand a chance against Whisper, and besides...

Ethan wanted to help Guard.

"What are you doing?" Whisper asked.

"You quiet," Tarin said. He could feel her bristle in response. There was a sharp spike of Firmament that threatened to debilitate him once again—but almost as soon as it started, it stopped. He was too close to Guard now; any attempt to hurt him had a good chance of hurting the very fragile state the ruined silverwisp was in.

Now he just needed to find a way to speak with Guard privately, and for that... he had an idea.

Firmament manipulation wasn't as simple for him as it was for Ethan. What came naturally to him was reinforcement—moving his Firmament within his own body. External manipulation of Firmament was for other species; it never really came naturally to crows.

It wasn't impossible. It was just very, very difficult. Crow Firmament was very tightly bound to them, with the sole exception being when they were performing an imbuement. That was how they were able to gift Firmament to one another, usually to the one chosen to be the next village leaders. The process was... very much like imbuement, actually.

That was the process he tried now. Tarin gathered his Firmament, brushed his wings against Guard's core, and attempted an imbuement. A gift of Firmament—not forced, not insistent. An offering.

All he had to do now was wait. He'd learned a few things from observing the bond between Ethan and Ahkelios.

He-Who-Guards... hesitated.

His core was unstable. He knew this—could feel his life slipping away every time he fought off Whisper's control. A part of him wasn't even sure why he bothered to cling to life at all; he'd long ago accepted his death, after all. It was She-Who-Whispers that couldn't accept it.

He could have let go. He didn't know how much time had passed, but he did know that he could have chosen to simply let go at any point. He could have allowed his remaining Firmament to disperse into nothingness...

Ah, but of course, Whisper would stop him. That was what the machines around him were for. Everything here was designed to lock him down, prevent his Firmament from leaving the table, let alone the room.

He-Who-Guards was still aware that part of him was still clinging to life. He wondered if he'd developed that will to live somewhere along the way.

Which left him with this choice: the question of what to do with that strange, foreign Firmament he suddenly found offering itself to him. Instinct told him to reject it and fight it as he did with every other attempt to interact with him, but something stopped him.

What was this Firmament, anyway?

It wasn't Whisper, he could tell that much. It wasn't even anyone he could see Whisper intentionally associating herself with. It didn't feel like a doctor or a healer, anyone that might be able to help him cure this malady. An intruder, maybe? But Whisper was right there. She would have stopped the stranger if she didn't want him around. He-Who-Guards was under no illusions as to how much power she wielded these days.

And yet... it didn't feel like this stranger was on Whisper's side. It felt like he was a friend.

Why?

He had no real reason to feel that way. He could tell that something had happened in the room, but his senses and his thoughts were far too dull by now to parse the nature of those events. By all accounts, the stranger should be someone hired by Whisper to once again subvert and subdue him.

...But the Firmament was being offered to him. There was no sign that he was being coerced, no sign that it was trying to take him over. And the nature of the Firmament itself felt strange—like lightning and earth bound together, packed with power but somehow still grounded.

Tentatively, fearfully, He-Who-Guards accepted the Firmament, and waited for the worst to happen.