Die. Respawn. Repeat.

"He is pushing himself too far," Guard said.

Ethan was deep within a Road Not Taken trance. Ahkelios paced around him, clearly anxious, and He-Who-Guards sat with Mari. She radiated with worry about her husband—and her son, although to a lesser extent—and Guard was trying to lend her what comfort he could.

Admittedly, Ethan's repeated failures weren't helping, although Guard wasn't entirely sure that failure was the right word at this point. He'd last heard the human muttering something about completing a shift? He wasn't sure he'd heard it right, but it was very possible he'd once again pushed past "complete the task" into "overachieve the task".

Very Ethan. Guard could guess at his motivations, too; if he was going to leave Tarin behind, let him guard the village, then he wanted Tarin to be strong enough to stop anything else the Trials or the Interface tried to throw at him.

But he was pushing himself too hard. Ethan was clearly exhausted: he'd been sweating enough that the dirt beneath him was now starting to turn more into mud, and "damp" was no longer an accurate descriptor of his clothes. He'd probably be in a worse state if the rest of them hadn't insisted he take breaks to drink water and scarf down some food, but even then, Ethan had been going at this for...

Eight hours and forty-three minutes, his internal clock helpfully supplied.

Yes. That. More than was healthy for any human to strain at a task, Guard was pretty sure, in part because using the skill seemed to put a sort of physical stress on Ethan. He wasn't sure how or why, exactly, but his sensors detected muscle fatigue and lactic acid buildup and microtears just as if he'd been running a marathon for the past eight hours.

And forty-three minutes, his internal clock helpfully supplied again, and Guard sighed.

Yes. And that.

His AI partner was... partially back online again, but only partially. Apparently his automatic repair systems were enough to restore some of the damaged wiring and circuitry. He'd thought time would reset long before that happened, but here they were, still alive. How long would this loop last, he wondered?

Not long, if Ethan pushed himself to the point of having a heart attack. Guard was starting to get more and more concerned that that might happen.

"That's the kind of thing he does," Ahkelios muttered beside him; he rubbed at his face in what was either exasperation or affection, Guard wasn't certain. Perhaps both.

"We should stop him," he said. "Or convince him to take a break."

"Let's give him another hour," Ahkelios said. Guard tilted his head, a silent question, and Ahkelios shrugged. "Another hour to figure it out, and then we make him take a break. He's focused enough that it's probably a bad idea to force him to stop unless he's really going to die or something."

"You know this from your travels with him?" Guard asked curiously. Ahkelios snorted.

"No," he said, and then reconsidered. "Maybe? I haven't seen him this focused before. But he sometimes gets it into his head that he has to do something, and honestly, he usually succeeds. You've seen it yourself, right? I get the feeling if we interrupt, it's just going to cause more problems."

"A feeling," Guard asked, "or a memory?"

Ahkelios grimaced. "You caught me," he said dryly. "Yeah, I might have glimpsed a memory or two. Not on purpose. Trust me, you do not want to interrupt that man if he's focused."

At some point over the past... however long it's been, my goals shifted slightly.

I'm still trying to heal Naru and transfer the Interface shard to him from Tarin. But there's an opportunity, too. That Interface shard sitting inside Tarin, slowly reinforcing his soul? It's created just enough of a core that I think I can accelerate the process. Push him all the way until he's at the cusp of the third shift.

I can't push him across myself, but just giving that to him will be enough. If he manages to complete the shift, the Cliffside Crows are almost guaranteed to never be in danger again, even if a Trialgoer targets them. Unless it's one of the really strong ones, but even then, they have a sort of truce with each other, don't they?

That truce exists because they know they're more trouble for each other than it's worth. I can put Tarin in that same position, if he wants it.

And he does. I've asked. He knows as well as I do that the Cliffside Crows have attracted enough attention that they're unlikely to stay safe, in this loop or any other.

The alternative is leaving Tarin with the same network of cracks Naru has now. A permanent mark that prevents his core from healing itself properly, from allowing him to achieve his next shift. He knows this—is willing to take that risk—but I'm not willing to leave him with it.

Besides, figuring this out will help me guide both Ahkelios and Guard to their next-layer shifts. It's more or less the best opportunity I've got for this kind of thing.

It is, however, exhausting. Every use of The Road Not Taken—every time I go back and load my path with more changes and choices and knowledge, it costs more Firmament. It draws a physical toll on me, too. I think something about the skill actually discharges all that lost, alternate time through my body. How it does that or what the side effects are I have no idea, but in practice it feels a little like I'm forcing myself through a full-body workout for the entire period I spend in that alternate path.

I tell myself it's fine. Physical pain is nothing. I'm ensuring the future of my friends. I'm ensuring Tarin's future and all the little crows he takes care of.

It's worth it.

I think that's the reason Tarin doesn't say anything. Guard and Ahkelios are quite clearly worried, and even Mari doesn't quite understand why I'm throwing myself into this with the fervor that I am, but Tarin does. He's felt it in my Firmament, that determination to make sure I've given back to the crows, and any protests he might've had died before they escaped his beak.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Now for the... sixth try, I think. Maybe seventh. I've lost count. I've been told to take more breaks, and I will; I am certainly going to take a break before I try this for real. But I feel like I'm on the cusp of a breakthrough. I just need to figure out how the layers fit together, how to create a supplemental Concept that Tarin can replace with his own when he breaches the third layer.

I reach for the skill and brace myself.

The Road Not Taken.

The world warps around me, and I try again. Trigger the Knight Inspiration, and then the Generator Form; the boost it gives me to Firmament Control is exactly what I need to touch the Interface shard delicately enough that it doesn't trigger that defensive response. Use the Abstract Crown to layer my own network of conceptual roots atop each Fixture, then bind them together with metaphorical glue. Draw them out so slowly they don't realize what's happening.

That's step one. I place the Interface shard carefully to the side; I figured this out several tries ago. It's not the part that's difficult. The part that's difficult is constructing something of my own in its place. The placeholder roots aren't enough. It needs to be something solid, something real...

Something Tarin.

I can't use another shard of the Interface—it's too complicated for me to hope to break apart safely, let alone manipulate into Tarin's soul, and it wouldn't fulfill his request besides. Nor can I just stuff Firmament into the hole and hope it draws in more, though a part of me was hoping it'd be that easy. If I want to use something for this, it has to be something of Tarin's own, something so very him that it can act as a calling card for the rest of his soul...

Slowly, I call upon Intrinsic Lightning. A trickle of black Firmament flickers around my fingers, sparking with electricity.

Every skill construct contains copies of itself. That's what Gheraa told me. Even small fragments can regrow into complete skills, given enough time. That's all Tarin needs here—just a small piece of Intrinsic Lightning, a skill that was only ever granted to me because of him in the first place.

Now I'm giving it back to him, in a way.

Slowly, I mold the skill fragment, working it into a new shape. It struggles in my grasp—it wants to be used, wants to unleash itself as lightning and fury and power—but I keep it corralled and contained, pushing it down, compressing it.

I've tried this twice already. Each time it exploded the moment my grip loosened, unleashing itself in a violent torrent of energy. Lightning doesn't like to be contained, and neither does Tarin. It's something I should have expected.

So I try something just a little different.

I remember the way Tarin used his Firmament back in the Arena. The way it flickered over his feathers, wild and free. I remember the way he gave himself over to it, allowed it to control his reactions to things he couldn't possibly have reacted to on his own.

Chaos and adaptability is a part of who he is. He's not the type to plan far ahead or to sit back; he makes his decisions in the moment, allows himself to go with whatever he's feeling at any given moment. It's frustrating, sometimes—he mirrors me in recklessness—but it's gotten him this far, hasn't it? Throwing himself into things with his whole heart, allowing himself to be led by his emotions.

It's how he nearly died and ended up with me in the loop. It's the reason he spent a whole loop looking for me when I was thrown forward through time in a temporal storm.

It's why he's Tarin.

So when the shard of Intrinsic Lightning in my grasp lashes out, fighting back, I let it. I release my hold on that piece of it and allow it to strike out. Firmament shoots outward, a burning tendril of black energy that forks and sputters—

—and settles into the perfect shape of one of the cracks left behind in Tarin's soul. I watch in something akin to wonder as it weaves itself into Tarin, settling in like it belongs there. Already, I can feel Tarin's Firmament beginning to shift in response.

"Ethan?" Tarin calls. "It working? It feel weird."

"It's working," I say.

I keep a tenuous grasp on the skill shard. I can't let go of it entirely—it still needs to be compressed and molded to even have a hope of fitting. But this time, when it tries to push back again, I just let it.

Another tendril of lightning settles perfectly into one of the cracks. Progress. I push down on the rest of the skill, trying to remember what Gheraa taught me. There's too little skill fragment here for me to convert into a Firmament engine the way he taught me, but I can mimic the construct in smaller ways. I can make it process Firmament more efficiently, make it able to take in more than just Tarin's own Firmament...

It's a long, slow process. Compression, conversion, all while letting the skill do what it wants whenever it tries to break free. It's taxing and dangerous, and I know if I let go of it at the wrong moment, it could do some serious damage to us both.

I do my best to keep myself still and focused. The Knight helps me, too, though it seems to find this sort of work beneath it; it grumbles in my head, but lends me the power it has.

It takes one more try after this. I slip the first time—the skill combusts in my grasp as I try to move it one step further, and I have to take a short break. My limbs barely obey me when I'm back in the real world, and I'm drenched with sweat.

I cannot wait to take a hot shower.

But first things first. I try a final time, reaching through time with my skill...

And it finally, finally works.

Naru's own procedure is simple in comparison. After everything with Tarin, it doesn't take more than a few minutes for me to transplant the shard into him, to push those Concept roots through the cracks in his soul and seal them shut. There's a pulse within him, like his entire core is finally taking a long-awaited breath, and a smoothing out of his breathing that tells me he's in a more natural form of sleep.

I poke him awake.

"Wha—" Naru's eyes widen as he takes in what I look like; I remember belatedly that I'm still in the Generator Form. He lets out a squawk of terror and promptly falls off his bed, trying to throw some Firmament skill or the other at me. I don't even know what it is, but I Phaseshift so I can grab it and shatter it. "Ethan?"

"I made it so you'll remember the loops," I tell him, my voice distorted by the armor. He stares at me, nonplussed and unsure how to react.

"Why did—Thank you?" he looks around. "What..."

Eh. He's not immediately attacking me or anything. Good enough to make sure he wasn't planning on some immediate betrayal.

I end the skill.

"I need a shower," I announce. "And to sleep for twelve hours or something. I'll do this for real after."

Tarin blinks at me. "It work?"

I grin at him. "It worked," I say. "Now we just need to do it for real."

And I have to be very sure I don't mess it up.

When I exit the shower, I find Guard heating a makeshift cauldron with the blasters in his hands. I blink at him, and he makes a beeping sound I interpret as a sheepish grin.

"It was the fastest way to get hot water," he says. "It is not a shower, but that will have to wait for Isthanok."

I could hug him, but given I'm covered in sweat and mud, I decide not to.

Instead, I collapse into the makeshift tub, clothes and all.

Which is a bad decision. I realize quite quickly that I don't have the energy to lift myself back into a normal sitting position from how I've collapsed into the tub. Ahkelios has to pick me up to get my head out of the water. "Thanks," I say.

"Just making sure you don't drown yourself before you do the surgery you just worked so hard to perfect," Ahkelios says dryly.

"I was trying to pretend I didn't just do that."

"I know." He grins. "You're not very good at it."

"Shut up, 'Kelios." Did he always have a tongue? Because he's sticking it out at me right now. How mature.

It's a good moment, though. A clean victory, for once. I let out a sigh and allow myself a smile.

Just one more step and I'll be done. What could go wrong?