Die. Respawn. Repeat.

It feels good to have my Firmament flowing through me again. I waste no time in kicking things off, activating the Knight Inspiration and feeling myself change; this time, the transformation is smoother than ever, and the pain that usually accompanies it is reduced to nothing more than a dull ache. Like my physical body itself is more malleable as a result of the changes to my core.

That's step one. I follow up by activating a secondary transformation—the Generator Form. The plating of my armor shifts, revealing a torrent of blue-gold Firmament blazing with enough density to rival Guard.

And with a thought, the Knight and I move, a blast of energy propelling us forward.

The ground disappears beneath me. A fraction of a second later, the Hand is in front of me, still pointing toward Ahkelios and Guard—it hasn't had enough time to react. Neither have I, in all honesty, even with Quicken Mind to amplify my reaction times.

An Amplified Gauntlet coalesces around my fist a fraction of a second before it makes contact. Pure energy jets out of the openings in my right arm, and that energy wraps itself around me all the way up to my shoulder and half my chest. It's the furthest an Amplified Gauntlet has ever gone, and I can feel the way it energizes the force I'm already generating with every step.

And then it makes contact.

A boom reverberates through my skull and the dungeon around us, shattering ground and stone alike. There's a moment where I worry I'm going to send the Hand flying into another part of the dungeon entirely—there's enough of a shockwave from the blow that I'm thrown back a few meters, even with the grounding from the new Physical trait. It's an unnecessary worry, though. Guard's chains are still holding strong around the base of the Hand, anchoring it into the dungeon's floor. On top of that, the sheer amount of force I generated, channeled into the surface area of a single punch?

Even with the Gauntlet to spread it out, I blast a hole straight through its flesh.

Its Firmament, really. Whatever it's made out of is pretty similar to what the Integrators are made out of—pure Firmament, compressed and reconfigured into a substance that has the resilience and look of stone but the malleability and flexibility of flesh. Even with a hole burned through it, it doesn't lose its mobility; instead, it immediately whirls around, its index finger directly at me.

I know what's coming. I can feel the skill being formed. I can dodge it, but if I do, that damage is going directly into the dungeon again.

Crystallized Barrier. Verdant Armor.

One more, the plating on my armor opens. This time, forest-green Firmament pours out of the holes, filled to the brim with life; it infuses itself into my plating, turning my armor a rich shade of deep oak trimmed with gold. At the same time, a beam of Firmament erupts from my chest and turns into a shimmering field of crystalline force in front of me, almost a meter thick.

And then the Hand discharges its skill.

I feel the blast of nothing it discharges cleave deep into my barrier. The sensation is almost like a pick being driven into my brain—I can feel the Concept embedded in the skill trying to dig into my Firmament and tear through my skills. The barrier cracks, and the whispers of power that leak through stab at my armor, trying to find an opening.

They fail.

I may not have embedded a defensive Concept into my skills, but right now, I'm operating at a peak I've never been at before. There's a new flexibility in my core, a new meaning in my skills. My skills already hold fragments of Concepts, expressed through Firmament.

As I am now, even those fragments are enough. The skill dissipates. I feed what remains to the Void Inspiration, hearing it coo in delight as the Hand roars in anger.

And then—to my surprise—it speaks.

"Fools," it snarls. I stare, the shield in front of me dissipating as the Hand whirls around to confront all three of us. The sounds it made before were distorted and ugly, created through the vibrations of its Firmament. Now, though... Ȑ𝔞ΝŐ₿ĚŠ

The hole I tore into it has healed into something that vaguely resembles a mouth. Or a maw of some kind. The sight isn't exactly pleasant.

"Fools," it repeats itself. "Why do you help this traitor? This pathetic creature that has done nothing but betray its purpose?"

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"What are you talking about?" I ask, keeping my voice even. Something about this feels strange. It's whirling around like it's disoriented, unsure of itself.

"The creature!" The Hand twitches like it's aggravated. "It is dead! You cannot help it! I will make sure you cannot—"

It lurches forward, then staggers, a drunken movement that's nothing like any move it's made so far. "It does not deserve your help!" it shrieks. "It is nothing! A pest! A traitor! It cannot listen and it cannot obey!"

"Someone's projecting," Ahkelios mutters, making me snort. He's made his way over to me while the Hand staggers around, trying to compose itself. "We gonna kill it while it's doing... whatever this is? Because I'm gonna be honest, I don't feel like waiting it out."

"Now would be the optimal time to attack," Guard agrees.

"Can't say I disagree," I mutter.

Whatever this thing is, I'm pretty sure it isn't alive. It's speaking like it is, but with the way the Firmament within it is twisted... I'm pretty sure this is more a projection of will than an actual, sentient being. There's a separate presence there, split apart and so carefully hidden I wouldn't have been able to sense it before today.

Which means there's nothing more to gain from this.

All three of us act as one. Guard's chains blaze with sudden power before abruptly turning an impossible black; a Firmament circuit hovers in front of him, shining with power. He's found a way to incorporate the black hole skill with his chains, it seems, and to great effect—the Hand screams in protest as they sink into its flesh.

Ahkelios darts forward, a sword in his hand fashioned from some of the dungeon rubble around us. It drips with golden Firmament and a hint of Gheraa's own power, but infused with Ahkelios's ability to Cut. His first move slices off the Hand's pinky in a single clean stroke even as it tries to dodge.

At almost the same time, I'm there, activating two Amplified Gauntlets at once. With both my arms burning with power, I wrap them around its index finger and pull. Even with the finger itself being larger than my entire body, the base Firmament tears with a sickening crack and groan, and I toss the dissolving finger into the rubble.

Just like that, it's missing two fingers. Deep cuts have melted halfway through its palm, courtesy of Guard's chains. It can't retaliate without the finger it uses to fire those beams at us—

—and yet, it hasn't stopped babbling.

"Weak," it cries. "It is weak! Why would you help such weakness? It is worse than nothing! It will pay!"

"We're hurting it faster than it can heal!" I call out, trying to ignore it. "Keep going!"

We're winning, despite its resilience. That's all it really seems to have going for it. An astounding resilience and incredibly rapid healing. Even with that, we're making progress—from two fingers disabled to three, then from three to four.

I consider a strategy like the one we used on the Seedmother, a well-timed Causal Shattering that causes all the damage to reflect on it at once, but it's healing fast enough the windows of time I'll have to target are incredibly precise. I'm as likely to accidentally heal it as I am to hurt it. I'll have to try anyway if this goes on long enough, but we are winning.

Together. I don't think we've ever fought at this level before—perfectly synchronized and on the same page. There's something comforting about being able to rely on one another to this extent; any slight slip-up is caught by Ahkelios or by Guard, and we defend one another before the Hand can do anything to us.

It might be slow, but it's a decidedly one-sided battle.

And then I realize that something's wrong.

The pattern in the background is shifting. Premonition is beginning to blare, warning me there's something coming. Something is about to change. There's no direction to it, no hint as to what it is, but...

"Be careful," I say. "Something's coming."

Both Ahkelios and Guard give me a sharp nod, no questions asked. Guard's sensors whir to life as they activate, and I can sense Ahkelios activating some sort of sensory skill, examining the horizon. I do the same, extending my Firmament sense as far as it can go.

Nothing.

But there's something wrong with that nothing. It feels almost like the Firmament around us is too plain. Too uniform. Too ordinary.

Something's hiding from us.

Ahkelios comes to the same conclusion only a second after I do, evidently. He narrows his eyes, then reaches up, tearing off his remaining antenna—

"What are you doing?!" I have to physically stop myself from grabbing him. I trust him to know what he's doing, but the sight throws me off enough that I'm running on pure instinct.

Ahkelios throws me a pained grin. An infusion of Firmament later, he's suddenly holding a new sword; this one looks like it's constructed from chitin, but there's an odd lining of tiny filaments that twitch and move like they're alive.

I think I understand what he's trying to do, but I'm starting to think I might be a bad influence.

Because of what it's made from, this new sword is aligned—however minimally—with the Concept of Sensing. And when he uses it to cut, the blade tears through the illusion surrounding us like it's little more than paper. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

We haven't been fighting an illusion, fortunately. I'd been worried about that being a possibility, but that's not what was being hidden from us.

The truth, admittedly, isn't much better.

There's a storm of Firmament arriving. It's hard to make out because of the sheer volume of it, but I'm reasonably certain that individually, none of the fragments are particularly strong.

Together, though, they might pose something of a problem. For a moment, I think that Firmament is coming for us. That the plan is to overwhelm the three of us with corrupted Firmament and interfere with the fight. That wouldn't be enough to change the tide of the battle—

—except that Firmament isn't coming for us. It's going for the Hand. I put two and two together.

Shit.