Die. Respawn. Repeat.

It had been a long time since He-Who-Guards had attempted a phase shift.

The first phase shift was usually something that occurred almost at random. When a practitioner's Firmament reached the right state—when they were sufficiently in tune with both themselves and their power—the base, foundational layer of their core would evolve. Any practitioner nearby, if they were willing, could donate samples of their own Firmament to help with this process, influencing that base layer of the core in turn.

Guard remembered legends about this, even. Legends that a long, long time ago, ancient practitioners would sequester themselves away with powerful imbued artifacts for precisely this reason. They didn't need donors if they could use those artifacts instead, and they wanted their first shift to be something that matched whatever their plans were for the growth of their power. Someone who was wealthy enough might, for instance, carry an imbued lightning stone into a deep cave and meditate until they struck their first shift.

It was different these days, of course. For one thing, imbued artifacts weren't nearly so easy to acquire anymore, and even those that could be acquired were relatively weak. Shifts were not nearly as easy to predict in terms of when they would happen. As a result, most practitioners made do with whatever they had when the shift triggered.

And then there was He-Who-Guards. It was a little different for him.

Failing that first shift wasn't unheard of. It was common, even. The process often required a practitioner to do battle within their own cores against a daemon created from their own Firmament. More often than not, a first-time practitioner would lose that fight.

As He-Who-Guards had.

His first shift had triggered early in his life, when he was little more than a wispling. He'd lost that fight almost immediately—hadn't even known what was going on, for the most part. But a failure to complete the first shift didn't make for a permanent failure; the Firmament donations were locked in place, but a practitioner could always rest and try again.

Guard had tried it at least a dozen times over the course of his formative years, and he'd never once won.

There was a little caveat when it came to that first shift. The more powerful your Firmament, the harder it was to complete. The core daemon within Guard's soul was an ugly, monstrous thing that tore him apart the second it laid eyes on him and every time he'd tried thereafter. It hadn't mattered what strategy he used—hadn't mattered how fast he tried to be or how much he prepared himself. It hadn't mattered even when he poured every fragment of his will into resisting that first hit.

It was nothing new, really. He'd spent most of his life fighting against his own Firmament. He'd known since he was young enough to understand that he would die early—that the force of his own power would unravel his soul from within. It came as no surprise that it proved an obstacle even in the one area it mattered most: gaining the strength he needed to protect those he loved.

"Are you okay?" Ethan asked. He could hear the concern in the human's voice. His hands were warm against the metal of his back, and Guard thought he could almost feel the slightest tendril of Ethan's power brushing against his core. Observing. "I thought I felt you start the phase shift just now and I think I sensed something, but you stopped it."

"I am fine," Guard lied. "I was simply nervous."

Ethan frowned. Guard couldn't see that he was frowning, but he could certainly feel it. Ahkelios was mirroring the frown, too, so now both of his friends were frowning at him.

"I will be fine," Guard amended. "I am... contemplating. My memories of past shifts are not pleasant."

"If it's that bad, we don't have to do it right now," Ethan said.

"I would like to." Guard fidgeted slightly, suddenly self-conscious—a rare emotion for him. "It isn't the shifts themselves. Those end too quickly for me to experience much more than slight disorientation. But it is... difficult, to think of how much I've lost. How little a chance I've had to live."

To say nothing of what Whisper had done to him. Her intentions may have been for the best in the beginning, but everything she'd done since tainted all his memories with her. Now even the good ones were a bittersweet reminder of what he'd lost and what he'd been forced to become.

Ethan seemed to understand. "You know you don't have to stay with us," he said. "If at any time you want to, I don't know, explore the world—"

Guard snorted before he could stop himself. "I see more of the world with you two than I ever have on my own or with Whisper," he said. "And I enjoy your company. Even if you are a stressful charge to have."

"Hey!" Ethan's hands left his back, and Guard could imagine him crossing his arms to glare at him. "I am not your charge."

"You may as well be." Guard let a little bit of amusement filter in through his voice—Ethan and Ahkelios were both rather easy to rile up if he wanted to. He probably shouldn't enjoy it quite as much as he did.

Ethan made a grumbling noise, and Guard felt his hands press against his back once more. "Just try your phase shift already. I want to see what's happening in there."

"Very well." Guard found, to his surprise, that even that short exchange had settled his nerves. He was no longer unsettled. Even ruminating on the past just glanced off the bubble of the present.

He was amongst friends, now. How long had it been since he'd just been amongst friends? No expectations, no pressure... Even his friendship with Whisper had always been tainted by the knowledge that he was technically beholden to her. A knight in her employ, so to speak.

This was nice.

Guard triggered his phase shift a second time, and this time he let his soul consume him.

Something was different this time. He-Who-Guards sensed it before he saw it, and even then he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. His core daemon was right there in front of him—a massive, spiderlike monstrosity built out of countless shards of prismatic Firmament. It hung in the air in front of him, clinging to a web built out of even more of that Firmament.

He-Who-Guards thought, briefly, that what he was looking at reminded him a lot of Isthanok. They were both shattered, imperfect things, made out of the shards of something that had once been whole.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Where did that thought come from? he wondered. Guard wasn't sure that his Firmament had ever been whole.

And yet this time, unlike all the others, his core daemon wasn't attacking him. It was just staring at him. Watching, waiting...

Guard had heard that it was, technically, possible to simply cooperate with the core daemon and accomplish the first shift that way. He'd even tried doing exactly that more than once. He was rarely even given the chance to speak before being struck down.

And yet now it was just watching him.

"...Hello?" he tried.

Nothing. The daemon didn't react. Somehow Guard was surprised—he'd been half-expecting it to rip him apart as soon as his voice rang out into his soulspace. He saw himself being reflected eight times over in each of its eyes, and for the first time, felt that he was somewhat at a loss. This was the farthest he'd ever gotten in a phase shift, and he didn't even know how he'd achieved it.

There were two flames next to the spider, one pink and the other green; they were donations by each of his parents. He hadn't even seen them in so long. Both of his parents were long dead, struck down during the chaos of Hestia's Integration.

Guard missed them. It struck him here how much he missed them. He hadn't had much occasion to even think about them of late, but here and now, with the last remnants of their power floating in front of him within his soul...

He let himself soak that in just for a moment. It felt almost like they were here with him.

When nothing else happened, Guard took a few steps forward, forcing himself to keep moving when the spider-thing's eyes tracked each movement. He stopped only when he was right in front of it, and when he spoke, he surprised himself with how steadily his words emerged.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

There was a long pause. He-Who-Guards waited.

Eventually—to his surprise—there was an answer.

"To complete your first phase shift, you must decide on an identity," his daemon said. Its voice was strange, like the layered reflections of a dozen different individuals echoing across one another. "You must have an answer to the question of who you are. And you have never had that answer before now."

"I have," Guard said. "I have always had that answer. All silverwisps do. It is in our names—written into our souls from the moment of our birth."

"Ah, but is it?" the daemon asked. It began to move, eight legs balancing precariously on webbing that only appeared when it took a step. Guard turned as it circled him, trying to keep it within his line of sight. "That is what our people believe, certainly. But is that true, or is the name we are given simply one of many threads in the web of our potential?"

Guard floundered. He'd come in here preparing for a fight, not for a philosophical debate. "It... is true that not all of us choose to do what our names pertain to," he admitted, though not without some uncertainty. "It is an accepted possibility. But I am the one that guards. It is the path I have chosen and the path that feels most true to my self. The name is correct."

Even as he spoke the words, he wondered if he was speaking the truth. There was little information out there about core daemons that were willing to speak. Maybe it knew something that he didn't. Maybe it understood some part of himself that he'd never allowed himself to understand.

"Why speak to me now?" he asked finally. "It cannot just be that my answer has changed—not if I do not even know how that answer has changed."

"Perhaps a demonstration, then," the daemon said.

And then it struck him.

Or it attempted to strike him.

Guard hadn't reacted in time—he'd never been able to when it came to matters of the soul, but this time, he didn't need to. A shimmering wall of dense blue-gold Firmament met the prismatic blade the daemon launched toward him. Another millisecond more and it would have torn through the makeshift construct that represented him, but...

Ethan. The human had defended him with a wall of power so thick even two of the daemon's blades would have struggled to pierce it. Behind that power, the daemon watched him, unsurprised and unmoving. Guard half expected it to attack a second time, but it didn't.

Understanding came to him then.

He had changed.

It wasn't that his name was inaccurate. Even as a wispling he'd been a stalwart guardian, first of the little toys he was given to play with and then bigger, more important things. Eventually, he'd been pledged to Whisper as her own personal friend and guard.

He enjoyed the job. He found fulfilment in it. Even Whisper thought it was his purpose—when she took control, she gave him what she thought he wanted. She'd turned him into a one-man army that stood as Isthanok's only real guardian.

In doing so, he'd slowly learned—though it was a realization that hadn't crystallized until this very moment—that he didn't like this framing of who and what he was.

It was too lonely.

How many decades had he served? It would've been one thing if he had a single body, a single mind—but split across countless proxies with a single main, overengineered elite, he'd experienced decades of collective time. Maybe centuries.

It wasn't that he'd grown tired of it. He hadn't been tired of it when he'd finally been freed. He hadn't hesitated for even a moment to help Isthanok as it was besieged by the Integrator's puppets.

But he hadn't done any of those things alone.

He didn't want to just guard what he was told to guard. This wasn't a job to him, and he wasn't defined by some single object or location he stood over.

There was a better word for what he did, he thought. A word that resonated with him not too long ago.

"You see it," the daemon said. "The misalignment in your self."

"I am not a guard," Guard said. "I am a protector."

And he didn't act alone. He didn't want to serve as a vassal, didn't want to guard whatever was deemed important. He wanted to stand as an equal among others that cared as much as he did.

Ethan had recognized that before he did. Guard almost laughed to himself—of course he had. The barrier faded, and the daemon lowered itself to meet his eyes; Guard found himself surprisingly unafraid.

"Now you see," it said.

"I do." Guard could feel it now—the alignment between his soul and his self. All he needed to do was push...

But there was a barrier. He frowned.

"One more task before you are ready," the daemon told him. "A single answer would suffice for a single shift, but you hold more than heart within you, and the second one is incomplete."

"A second..." Guard took a moment to process this, and when he did, the realization struck hard. "The AI?"

"It remains incomplete," the daemon said. "And we cannot move on while it remains shackled to us."

He-Who-Guards opened his optic, feeling the attempted shift fade away. For a moment, he sat there, processing how different the world seemed with just the simple realization of who he was.

For now, though, there was something more important. Both he and the AI core bound to him were victims of circumstance. Guard had his freedom—the AI hadn't. He hadn't really considered the possibility that it might have been just as alive as he was. Just as trapped as he was.

His feelings were complicated. They had imprisoned one another, in a way, albeit only because of Whisper.

But he was free now, and it deserved the same. Guard finally moved, turning to face both Ethan and Ahkelios. There was only one person who knew enough about the AI core within him to offer a solution. One person that had been there at the start and helped develop it.

Before he could speak—

"We need to find out what happened with Miktik, don't we?" Ethan asked.

Guard blinked. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised.

"I know it has been some time," he said. "Do you think it is possible to see what happened?"

"It wasn't possible yesterday," Ethan said. He glanced down at his hands, and Guard saw the flex in the air before him as the human channeled pure, condensed Firmament on the cusp of the fourth shift. "But now? I think I have a way."