Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Soul of Trade was both confused and terrified, and that was a state of affairs she hated with a passion. The last time she'd ever been that far on the back foot was when she had to deal with Teluwat, which she refused to do without a lengthy chain of proxies. The second-last time she'd ever been that far on the back foot was when the Disconnected came to her about establishing a presence in her city.

She had categorically refused, of course, even with their promises of skill vials and the terrifying power of their representative. Soul of Trade knew what would happen if the Integrators caught wind of such a thing.

Of course, she wasn't She-Who-Whispers. She couldn't keep track of everything that happened in Inveria. Undoubtedly some of the Disconnected would be able to do their work under her nose within her city—that was none of her business, as long as her coffers were full and she acted on any illegal trade she knew of. She'd made all those things very clear to the representative who came to her, and that representative had been so terribly upset he left his briefcase behind on his exit.

It was a briefcase full of skill vials. That was the briefcase Soul of Trade looked at now. The Firmament within those vials was thick and potent—Rank S skills at the minimum, she imagined, though how the Disconnected had gotten their hands on such things she had no idea.

They were dangerous too, of course. Unlike the skills offered by the Interface, the constructs stored within these vials had nothing to stabilize them. She'd called in a favor and had a single vial tested once before.

The skill that emerged was potent. She didn't know the name of it, but that single skill had nearly collapsed one of Inveria's tunnels, and that was with her defending against it.

It also had none of the protection that most skills came with. The poor test subject's arm had been shattered in the test, along with most of his ribs, and even with healers, he came back wrong. Part of it was that his Firmament core simply couldn't handle the skill he'd received—it had mangled his soul, to put it simply. Any attempt at healing...

Well, he was still alive, at least. He had a few eyes in places he didn't need them, and he'd grown back two legs in place of an arm. She'd eventually put him down at his own request.

So that was the fate that potentially awaited her if she took one of these skill vials.

On the other hand, there was the fate that potentially awaited her if she didn't.

Her handler—Shaara insisted on not using that word, but that was essentially who the Integrator was, and they both knew it—had made it quite clear exactly what would happen if she allowed Fyran to achieve his "true" shift.

It had been difficult to set up the altercation to begin with. Even as important as the Integrators claimed this was, they refused to allow her to retain her memories through the loops; Soul of Trade was beginning to get the impression that they simply couldn't. There was no button they could press, no simple switch they could flip.

Which meant that she needed to figure out a way to manipulate Fyran with only the notes she left herself across each loop.

It had taken a lot of credits, and Soul of Trade was, frankly, still a little sour about it. The few she'd managed to trade with Fyran in exchange for their so-called "deal" did little to make up for it, and it still stung that she had to go back on that deal at all. If there was anything she took pride in, it was keeping her word when it came to her deals.

There was a reason she had her reputation, after all.

That and her signature Firmament skill. A Fair Trade allowed her to bind her Firmament with another to enforce a contract. To convince Fyran, she'd had to establish exactly one of these contracts, and while she'd allowed herself enough of a loophole that the backlash from reneging on the deal shouldn't have been too bad...

That thing had showed up. Who was he, to command an Integrator like that? She couldn't get a good grasp of how powerful the Integrator was, but he had to be at least fifth-layer, even if there was something strange and murky about his core. The other one—the creature made of bone-like armor that exuded terrifying presence—he was a third-layer at best.

And yet his core felt nothing like a third-layer practitioner's.

"Why would there be a third-layer on Hestia to begin with?" Soul of Trade muttered. "I do not understand."

There were too many things she didn't understand. His appearance must have been the backlash from A Fair Trade; if she went back on her word, karmic circumstance would wring a consequence from her. But for something like that to appear?

What was she missing?

Soul of Trade sighed, then retrieved the most potent-feeling vial from the briefcase. She stared at it for a long moment. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

If nothing else, the bad luck given to her by the effects of A Fair Trade had to be gone by now, considering what it had thrown at her. That thing could have killed her a dozen times over. That meant that if she took a vial now, the risk was... normal.

It wasn't great. Soul of Trade didn't like taking risks. But there was a difference between drinking a skill vial with a virtually guaranteed chance of experiencing some kind of soul mutilation versus drinking one with a relatively normal chance of that.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

And she really, really couldn't afford to let the Integrators down here. She'd already been testing the waters too much. She spent too much time and too much money trying to identify exactly where the lines were, exactly how much she could do without triggering their wrath.

Integration would eventually lead to Hestia's ruin. Soul of Trade could see that.

But she saw no way out, at least for now.

She closed her eyes. Unlike most of the others, she had no mouth or throat through which she could swallow the contents of the vial. Instead, she had to very gingerly pry apart the stones that comprised the core of her being until the heart of her Firmament lay exposed in the air.

Soul of Trade hesitated one last time, then dumped the contents of the vial into her core. Her stone snapped shut around the liquid skill, sealing it in.

A moment later, she began to scream.

Ahkelios blinked up at the waterfall, then glanced at both Guard and Gheraa, who were staring at it with equal bemusement. "I hope Ethan doesn't expect us to follow him up there," he said after a moment.

"Oh, but imagine what's up there!" Gheraa's eyes gleamed with excitement, though he made no move to climb the waterfall himself. "A chamber full of jewels, perhaps? A secret laboratory?"

"It is a very large lake," He-Who-Guards said. "Or an ocean. It depends on how you would define it."

Gheraa pouted. "You're spoiling my fun, metal man."

Guard shrugged. "I do not think we should follow," he offered. "My sensors do not indicate any danger above. If there is to be any danger, it will come from below. This garden holds the only entrance to the lake above, regardless."

"Through the waterfall?" Ahkelios asked skeptically. "I feel like most people aren't going up that way."

"A little to the left," Guard said.

Now that Ahkelios looked more closely, there was a trapdoor in the ceiling that undoubtedly led to the lake above; the staircase was cleverly hidden among the faux leaves and false trees, along with a small array of pumps that was no doubt required for an airlock of sorts. He snorted.

"I guess Fyran decided to take Ethan there the more exciting way," he said.

"Which is the only correct way to do things!" Gheraa said cheerily. He glanced thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I could follow them. You think I should follow them?"

"I do not think you should follow them," Guard said, deadpan.

"I think..." Ahkelios frowned at the ceiling in Ethan's approximate direction. "I think they're doing something with their Firmament," he said. "Probably best we don't interrupt them. It feels delicate."

He didn't have Ethan's exact Firmament sense, but he could sense what was going on through their link. So could Guard, to a certain extent, and Gheraa had his own ability to sense Firmament. He suspected the Integrator already knew, and that was the reason he hadn't followed already.

Sure enough, Gheraa just shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. "Plenty to explore down here! We can smell the flowers, harass the workers, defeat the rampaging beast..."

"We are not harassing the workers," He-Who-Guards said.

"Defeat the what?" Ahkelios asked.

Gheraa grinned at them. He turned around and spread his arms wide like he was about to introduce something grand—

—and at almost the exact moment, the sculpture of metal behind him exploded into a shower of glinting shrapnel.

"The rampaging beast!" Gheraa said. "Formerly known as Soul of Trade, her soul has, somewhat ironically, been mangled beyond recognition. A rather impressive feat, if I do say so myself. Not many things can so thoroughly destroy a soul. Observe how her hide shines! She has forcefully given herself the Rank SS skill Metallic Symbiosis, but the skill has been shoved rather haphazardly inside her core; the result is more skill than person—"

Ahkelios grabbed Gheraa and dragged him out of the way a second before a metallic scythe would have sheared through his skull; instead, that same scythe sliced through his arm, making golden blood blossom through his clothes. Gheraa blinked down at his injury.

"Ow," he said. "That hurt."

"Because this is the real world, you idiot," Ahkelios hissed, turning to face the monster. Guard was already moving to clear the area of civilians, though many of them had long since run away; the ones that hadn't...

Ahkelios grimaced. The ones that hadn't had somehow been drawn into the monstrosity that had apparently once been known as Soul of Trade. Long spokes of metal lashed out from her back, grabbing anything and everything they could before drawing them in.

A Rank SS skill shouldn't have been this destructive. But this one was rampant. Ahkelios could feel how the skill itself was distorted, leaking its fundamental Concept almost like radiation into its surroundings. Soul of Trade stood at the center of it all, an amalgam of stone and metal crushed into the form of a growing beast.

Nor was it done growing. The more metal that beast devoured, the bigger its wings grew, until they began to blot out the light from the ceiling; a snarling jaw snapped at anything that came close, teeth dripping with raw, broken Firmament. Claws crushed both the ground and anything that came near.

Ahkelios thought he remembered Ethan describing something like this once, when he'd been talking about Earth's myths and legends. The word seemed to fit.

Dragon.

"Gheraa," Ahkelios said, not taking his eyes off Soul of Trade. "We really need to talk about your showmanship thing. It gets a little sociopathic sometimes."

"It's a coping mechanism!" Gheraa protested.

"The worst part of that is that I believe you," Ahkelios said dryly, channeling a bit of Ethan. "You know we're going to have to stop this thing from getting up there, right?"

The dragon flapped its wings, leaping for the ceiling. Even as large as it was, the ceiling was too far away, and its wings weren't nearly large enough for it to take flight.

"Because it really wants to get up there," he added.

"I know," Gheraa groaned. "Is Guard handling the evacuation? We're not going to be able to fight this thing if we're trying to keep people safe."

"He's handling it," Ahkelios answered. He didn't have a direct bond with Guard, but he could feel what he was doing through his bond with Ethan. Communication wasn't as clear as it was with Ethan, but it was good enough. "Ready when you are."

"I'm always ready," Gheraa retorted. Ahkelios had a bad feeling he knew what was going to happen next. "Lights! Cameras!"

"We've been over this," Ahkelios said. "Stop yelling out skill names!"

Gheraa just grinned. "Action."