Die. Respawn. Repeat.

The worst part of this fight, Ahkelios decided, wasn't that Soul of Trade was a difficult opponent. She was, but at this point he'd faced far worse with Ethan and come out alive on the other side; the fact that she was powerful wasn't really a problem for him.

No. The problem was that they were fighting in the middle of a massive cavern crowded with civilians, and Soul of Trade kept eating them.

Guard was doing his best to run interference, and to his credit, the evacuation was going well. He wasn't the only one helping with the evacuation process, either—a good number of Inveria's citizens and guards had started to try to organize, creating clear paths for evacuation rather than allowing a stampede that would crush more than it helped. Ahkelios and Gheraa kept Soul of Trade relatively contained in the center of the cavern.

The problem was that every so often, a metallic tendril would burst from her back, moving entirely too fast for even Gheraa to react on time; it would travel hundreds of meters in an instant, pierce the heart of a random civilian, and turn their flesh to metal.

She was doing it to heal, and it was making the fight a lot more difficult than it had to be.

The worst part was perhaps the fact that Ahkelios could tell that Soul of Trade hated every second of it. Tetrachromacy showed him the color of her Firmament, and it was a tormented swirl of fear and despair; she was trying to fight this rampage as much as they were. Every so often she would jerk herself to a stop, or slam a fist into the ground like she could anchor herself there.

It didn't work. Whatever had taken her over would reassert itself in a matter of moments, and the fight would begin all over again.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Gheraa said. Ahkelios glanced at him—he seemed to be taking the fight more seriously now, at least. "That skill's gone haywire. It's not supposed to look like that."

"What do you mean?" Ahkelios asked warily. A haywire skill didn't sound very good.

"The Interface handles the integration of a skill construct into your soul," Gheraa explained. "It's basically making sure your Firmament interacts with it only when you want to use it. Input and output is handled pretty strictly. This looks like someone just jammed the skill halfway into her soul and then forgot what they were doing."

"Sounds unpleasant." Ahkelios yanked Gheraa out of the way of yet another shot. "How does that help us?"

"I'm not sure yet." Gheraa frowned. "I think I can target it—"

"Excuse me!"

Ahkelios blinked, startled, as one of Inveria's guards ran up to them, panting. He kept glancing nervously toward Soul of Trade, who was currently busy destroying one of the larger sculptures within the central garden. One of the few benefits of her current state: she wasn't exactly fighting them with any sort of focus, instead alternating between that, destroying everything around her, and trying to fly through the ceiling.

"You two," the guard said. He tried to catch his breath and glanced around. "Three? I don't know. Look, can you try to lead that thing south? We've mostly managed to clear that side and we're trying to get everyone to go north. Hoping it'll reduce her range—"

He was cut short as one of Soul of Trade's tendrils suddenly sped toward him; fortunately, Ahkelios was close enough that he could conjure a quick series of Crystallized Barriers, then use one of his own skills to slice that it in half before it could break through them.

"Good plan," Ahkelios said. "Go!"

The guard nodded, eyes wide, and ran. Ahkelios turned his attention back to the fight.

Leading her south was easier said than done. Soul of Trade didn't have a specific target in mind besides the ceiling, apparently, and he didn't exactly know why she was targeting the ceiling...

Well, no. She was probably targeting the ceiling because that was where Fyran was. Could he use that? One of his skills did allow him to create something very close to an illusion. It wasn't a combat skill, though, and he needed some sort of liquid to make it work.

Ahkelios's eyes landed on the waterfall still pouring down through the center of the cavern. It would have to do.

"Gheraa!" he called. "Can you distract it?"

"I've been trying, if you haven't noticed!" Gheraa yelled back. Ahkelios watched as he did something strange with his Firmament—another one of those skills he had yet to see, he figured. The air in front of the Integrator twisted strangely, and a sudden beat filled the air.

It took a second for Ahkelios to place what that skill was. "Is that boss music?" he asked incredulously.

"You asked for a distraction!" Gheraa grunted in pain as Soul of Trade lashed out toward him; Firmament flickered to life in front of him and bent, and there was a moment of strain before the weight of the blow was shunted off to the side. "This is only going to last about twelve more seconds! Go!"

Right. He could ask his questions later. Ahkelios darted off to the water, pulling an assortment of brushes from his toolbelt; this wasn't something he'd actually planned on doing in combat, mostly because of the amount of setup it required.

Painter's Hand. It was one of the first fully non-sword related skills he'd received, and at the time he thought it promised absolutely no combat utility. The only reason he'd gotten it was because he wanted something out of the Interface that wasn't another way to kill people. Something he could keep using when the Trial was over.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The primary function of the skill was that allowed him to use just about any liquid as paint, freely modifying viscosity, color, and other properties. The secondary function he didn't like as much—if he poured enough Firmament into the skill, the painting would begin to mimic the qualities of whatever it was he'd painted. It made looking at the painting feel like looking through a window.

Ahkelios was of the firm opinion that he could do that without the magic of Firmament helping him out. But he was flexible enough to concede that this was a circumstance where that would, in fact, be helpful.

Brush glowing bright with Firmament, Ahkelios dipped it into the deluge of water pouring down from the ceiling and rapidly began to paint on the closest boulder. He wasn't going for perfection here. He just needed the broad strokes of a silhouette, the slightest impression of form, and the bright-blue fire that made up Fyran's body.

"Ahkelios!" Gheraa sounded slightly panicked and much, much closer. Whoops. That probably meant he didn't have much time. He yanked the boulder out of the ground—it wasn't particularly well-anchored, and one of the benefits of merging with Zhir's body was that it had a lot more muscle than his original body did—and whipped around with it.

Soul of Trade froze. Ahkelios noted that she was quite literally inches away from him and grimaced. If he'd been even a second slower...

"Okay," Ahkelios said. "Go fetch."

He swung around and threw.

The boulder sailed through the air with impressive ease, considering it was made of metal. Ahkelios decided that was a testament to how much strength he'd gained. He hadn't even needed to use a Strength skill for it. Some of that was due to Firmament enhancement from his third-layer core, and some of it was from training in the Quiet Grove, but he wasn't about to complain.

Both he and Gheraa waited to see if his plan would work. One second passed, then two—

Soul of Trade roared and charged after the boulder to the now-empty southern section of Inveria's caverns.

"That was close," Gheraa said.

Ahkelios glared at him. "You said I had twelve seconds."

"Believe it or not, that skill takes a lot of Firmament when it's holding... that thing." Gheraa gestured toward Soul of Trade's receding form.

"You know she's not going to stay there, right?" Ahkelios said. "She's going to destroy the boulder and come back here. We need a way to take her down properly."

"I know. I'm working on it." Gheraa frowned, already starting to take leaping steps toward the dragon; Ahkelios followed, keeping pace with him. "Now that she's not in the middle of everything, we could probably just kill her, but..."

"But?" Ahkelios raised an eyebrow when Gheraa hesitated.

"I'd give it fifty-fifty odds her core explodes and takes out most of Inveria with it," Gheraa finished reluctantly.

Ahkelios winced. "We can't contain it?"

"We probably could." Gheraa shrugged. "Do you want to risk it? Because right now, we're in a past Trial. A temporal anomaly like this is unprecedented. I don't know what's going to happen if we trigger the wrong paradox, so all things considered, I'd rather restore Soul of Trade and not kill her."

"Very practical," Ahkelios said dryly. "And you're not just saying that because it's what Ethan would do."

Gheraa coughed. "What we need to do is pull that skill out of her. Problem is, it's very strongly anchored to the target she had in mind when she received it."

"Which means it'll be easier if we have Fyran's help." Ahkelios frowned. "You think they're almost done with whatever they're doing up there?"

"Ethan? No." Gheraa looked up at the ceiling. "But Fyran... you should be able to feel it too."

Ahkelios did, now that Gheraa mentioned it. There was a shift in the Firmament all around them, like it was beginning to stir—and the more he paid attention, the more he felt the way it all began to move in concert, like the waves of an invisible ocean.

"I guess he found his Truth," Ahkelios said.

When Fyran opened his eyes again, Ethan's eyes were still closed; the human sat at the edge of the underground ocean, water lapping at his feet. Fyran watched him for a moment, unsure if there was anything he needed to do. He didn't know if there was anything he could do, for that matter.

He remembered the first time he'd tried deepening his core. It hurt. There was an overwhelming sense of wrongness, like he'd done something he shouldn't have. The result had certainly been worth the pain, but encouraging anyone else to go through the process felt... risky.

Still, Ethan didn't seem to be in pain. Fyran thought for a moment that meant that he hadn't managed to connect to the Web yet, but the reverberating pulse he felt in the Threads around him told him otherwise.

Ethan was connected. More than that, he seemed to be deeply entrenched within the Web, his core bound to it at a point Fyran's own senses couldn't quite reach. He took a moment to examine that connection—something about it spoke to him. It felt like there was something he could learn from this, something he could draw on to deepen his own core even further.

He could just ask Ethan, of course, but Fyran knew not to interrupt the process. Instead, he memorized everything he could for later examination, then took a step back.

His job here was done. Ethan had completed the first step of deepening his core, and Fyran could already feel it trying to compensate, straining to exceed the natural limits placed on it. Perhaps he should have been surprised, but...

Fyran thought back to the moment Ethan just reached out and froze all Firmament in the area, stopping a phase shift that would have destroyed everything he was.

He chuckled to himself. No, he wasn't surprised. If anything, Ethan had just given him a new target. A new goal to chase.

He was a third-layer practitioner now. Firmament flowed within him more easily than it ever had, and his own connection to the Web of Threads was stronger than it had ever been. With it, he felt the movement of Firmament below, saw the interplay of intent that led to the chaos beneath.

And with the addition of his Truth, many more things were clear. He saw the lines of what-would-be, the alignment of possibility and probability.

It would be moments before Ethan and his friends were shunted back to their own time. He felt the tides of their ocean pulling them back—dragging them to their own temporal pocket.

He would stay, of course. He wasn't done here, and Soul of Trade had many things to answer for. A part of him regretted that they wouldn't get the chance to say goodbye, but he wasn't so sure it would be the last time he saw them.

Fyran felt for one of his movement skills. There was a skill that he'd created in one of his earlier loops and registered with the Interface. He wondered if Ethan had ever encountered it. It worked better for his species than most others.

Firestep.

He poured through the ocean as a blaze of living fire, wearing a fierce grin.