Die. Respawn. Repeat.

The first solution is obvious—reach out with my Firmament sense as far as I can and try to locate Adeya and the others that way. If I can find them, then we could, in theory, dive straight through the ground and into the Sewers using Phaseslip.

That, unfortunately, is where I run into the first problem: the sewers are apparently composed of the same "blessed brick" that blocks my Firmament sense. Why the scirix would build their sewers out of something like that is beyond me, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were some sort of dungeon-specific modification. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Worse, there's enough density of Firmament in them to block an easy use of Phaseslip. I consider the problem for a moment, then sigh. No way around it.

We're going to have to ask for directions.

I check with the first scirix I see. He's thin—malnourished, I think, given the gauntness under his eyes. "Excuse me," I call. He turns, startled by the sound.

"What—" he starts, then stops mid-sentence as he registers that I'm not another scirix. He takes in my appearance, the two others standing next to me, then rapidly comes to a conclusion. "Are you looking for the expedition team?"

He seems to be more or less caught up with what's going on. Not surprising, I suppose. With the state First Sky is in, I imagine everyone still trapped within the city would keep themselves appraised of events, especially things that might result in their freedom. I nod. "You know where they are?"

"Yes. You should hurry." He seems worried, which makes me wonder if he knows something I don't. "They've been in there for days. We don't know if they're still alive."

"They are," I say. I don't mention that their lives are definitely at risk. If the Interface wants me to keep them alive, then it's going to make sure that doing so is a challenge. "How do I get to them?"

"It's not far," he says, pointing. "Go that way, then take your first right. You can't miss it. There was a small cave-in."

I nod. "Thank you," I say.

Before I leave, I reach into my core with Soul Space. I've begun keeping a small set of supplies in there to allow for long-distance travel—there seems to be more than enough space. Alongside tents and various forms of equipment, there's a decent supply of both food and water. I don't know if that food is compatible with scirix physiology, but I can't leave without offering at least this.

They're renewable supplies for me. Not so much for the scirix, given how hungry this one looks.

A modest selection of food manifests on the closest available surface: a nearby bench, with a few cans and boxes appearing on the pavement nearby. As it does, however, I feel an odd sensation in my core that makes me wince.

I'm still in the deepening process. Something about Soul Space seems to make my core stretch, for lack of a better word. It's not harmful, I don't think—instead, it seems to be helping the process along—but I make a mental note to keep an eye on it.

"It's not a lot, but it's most of what I have," I say, trying to keep myself on track. The rest of it I'm holding on to in case the expedition team needs their supplies replenished. If they've been down there a few days, they might need it. "Can you get this distributed?"

The scirix's eyes go wide. "Wha—Of course," the scirix says, stuttering a little; he looks like he hasn't seen a spread of food like this in months. He visibly restrains himself from going over to dig in. "I... thank you."

"Don't worry about it. I wish I'd brought more." I give him a brief smile. "Just make sure you can eat it. I'm not sure what kinds of food you can digest."

"At this point, I'm not sure how much that matters," the scirix mutters. "But you're probably right. I'll get it tested. You should probably get going. You're... you must be Ethan? And Ahkelios?"

"We are," I say. Ahkelios brightens at being recognized. Gheraa hasn't been here before, so he doesn't seem too offended; he seems instead interested in examining what's happened to the city around us. "And you?"

"Havu," he says. He gives me a small, grateful bow. "Thank you for the food, and if you can..." He hesitates. "Bring them back safe. Please. My wife and friends are in that team."

His wife, huh? I wonder if that's the reason he's one of the few scirix still wandering around on the surface. "I'll do my best," I promise.

With that, I head for the entrance to the Sewers. I'm fast enough these days even without the benefit of skills like Firestep. Which is a good thing, because Firestep might set the city on fire and Warpstep would likely leave Ahkelios and Gheraa behind. I feel Ahkelios activating a skill to keep up—

—and in the corner of my vision, a number ticks up.

Current saturation: 91%

I freeze. The timing's too close to be a coincidence. More than that, I feel what happens the moment he uses that skill—all the residual Firmament generated immediately flows down, joining the swell of power that's growing below us. Soul Space is a purely internal skill that doesn't produce much in the way of residuals, but...

That's the challenge of this Ritual stage, then.

"No skills!" I call out. Ahkelios skids to a stop next to me, startled, and Gheraa joins us a moment later.

"What?" he asks. "What happened?"

I nod toward the Interface. Ahkelios follows my gaze and frowns. "You're kidding," he says, sounding a little indignant. "We can't use skills?"

"If we use them, we have to use them carefully," I say. Especially since there are other Trialgoers in this dungeon that don't know we're here. We can't plan for one another. Even if Adeya and the others did know not to fail a prerequisite, all we'd need to do is use two skills at the wrong time.

The best option here would be to reset the Ritual stage entirely, but I don't know if I can. If I'm the only person running the dungeon, then dying would cause it to reset—but I have a feeling that that won't be true if there are other Trialgoers running the same instance.

"Alright," Gheraa says. "No skills."

I glance at him. He seems unusually focused—no quips, no witty remarks, no attempts to distract from the severity of the situation. It makes me wonder if he's as worried as I am about all this or if there's something else on his mind.

"This way," I say.

Thankfully, Havu's right—the entrance to the Sewers isn't far at all, even if "cave-in" was a bit of an understatement. An entire section of the street seems to have collapsed, and the rising stench from below tells me in no uncertain terms where the hole in the ground leads.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

No time for hesitation.

We make our way past the rubble and into the dark tunnels beneath the city.

He-Who-Guards had, on some level, always known where She-Who-Whispers had most likely gone to rest. He wasn't sure if she was dead, but then she was never the type that would admit defeat one way or another. Holding back that asteroid as long as they had, long enough for Ethan to show up and stop it... it was the sort of thing that would drain every last ounce of Firmament from one's core.

There was a time when he and Whisper were close enough that he might have been able to restore enough Firmament to her to stabilize her. But that sort of transfer of power was an intimate thing for silverwisps; without the connection that he and Whisper once shared, he wouldn't have been able to help her. Not even if he'd wanted to.

And he wasn't sure if he would have, even if he could.

She'd done a lot to tear down the trust they'd built between them. On some crude, abstract level, Guard could understand every step in her decision-making that had led her this far astray; the problem was that she'd never stopped. Never paused long enough to look back and see how far she'd gone or how much she'd changed.

Some part of him missed the old her, but for the most part, he was quietly—and perhaps a little guiltily—relieved she was no longer in his life.

So it was with some trepidation that he entered the small crystalline shack just outside of Isthanok's borders. It was just like he remembered it, except for all the dust. Every memento and piece of furniture lay there untouched from the day they'd left it.

There were some odd gaps in the shelves, maybe. Empty spots in the walls. Whisper was enough of a perfectionist that she would've tried to use all this space as efficiently as possible. But there was no indication that anything had been stolen—the dust in those gaps was as thick as it was anywhere else.

Guard moved deeper into the shack, bending over to make it through a doorway. He stared silently at the bed for a moment.

He'd expected this, he told himself. And he had.

Even still, Guard found himself not knowing how to react.

Whisper was here, technically. She lay in the bed, quite literally unmoving; the ethereal flames that normally animated her were instead frozen in place as something solid and ash-like. Enough time had passed that they had begun to gain a distinct, crystalline sheen, of the sort that only appeared when a silverwisp body was well into decay.

She was dead, then.

She-Who-Whispers was elegant even in death. Guard had no idea how she found the time to change into her best dress, but apparently she had. He supposed he couldn't fault her for choosing to die how she wanted, but he was surprised she'd made the choice at all.

It was strange how peaceful she seemed like this.

There was a time when her death would have torn him apart. There was a time after that when it would have made him weep with joy. He had lived through many, many loops of vague and tortured memories, going back and forth between hatred and desperate hope, and now all that remained was a strange sense of numbness.

"I do not forgive you, you know," Guard said out loud. The words tasted bitter, and he was conflicted about saying them, but they were honest. Better than a lie, he thought. "But... I hope you were at peace, nevertheless. Rest well, She-Who-Whispers, and may the wind carry your spark."

That would have to do. It was one chapter of his life he could finally close, one more step he could take toward the people who had become something of a family to him.

He wasn't done, though. He was here for a reason. Guard reached forward, gently moving Whisper's hands away from her neck, and unclasped the necklace she wore.

Even now, it glowed with power. Whisper had told him about it once, in one of his few moments of lucidity. She told him it held the memories she considered most precious to her, locked tight and behind so much power that even Teluwat's influence would struggle to reach past it. That was what he was counting on now.

For all her faults, Whisper did know how to think ahead.

Sometimes.

Carefully, he separated the first of the pearls from the necklace, unwound the Firmament around it—it was still keyed to him, he realized with a pang—and felt a memory blossom in his mind.

"What is his name?"

"I think..." A small moment of hesitation as Whisper searched the bond she shared with her son. Then she smiled. "He-Who-Harmonizes. Or Harmony, I think."

"Oh!" Guard was surprised, then delighted. "Do you think he will sing?"

"Perhaps." Whisper chuckled softly, fondly. She stroked a finger along the small silverwisp's cheek. "Or perhaps he will lead Isthanok into a brighter future."

"Or perhaps he will bring us together." Guard grinned at her.

She snorted at him. "We are already together."

"Yes, but we could always be more together," he insisted.

"What does that even mean?" Whisper asked, laughing.

"I do not know," Guard said. "But perhaps this little one will help us find out, yes?"

Whisper's eyes softened. "Perhaps," she said. "I think that would be nice."

—

The realization struck Guard like a physical blow. This was what he'd been missing. These were the memories that had been stolen from him.

He was pulling apart the next pearl before he even realized it.

The memories came to him recorded from Whisper's perspective, from her mind, but it didn't matter—just the slightest remnant was enough to jostle his own memory, tearing away the paint that obscured his history. Not all the pearls contained memories of their son, but the ones that did captured a small glimpse of a history he hadn't even known he had.

Harmony's first steps. His first words. The time he'd first picked up a brush. Their trip to Inveria to join the annual competition. The joy in his eyes when they'd won—

The final pearl unwound, a final memory bleeding into Guard's mind, and he stilled. It revealed to him something he'd never seen before. The one memory where he hadn't been present.

Guard watched with a slowly-growing rage as he witnessed the moment Teluwat stole their child.

Firmament flickered wildly in his chest, bright and powerful, casting the shack he was in with prismatic shadow. It took all his power to keep himself under control lest the entirety of the shack around them was destroyed. This explained it all—the gaps in the shelves, the empty spots in the walls.

Guard couldn't remember the last time he'd experienced such cold fury.

It was no wonder, then, that he didn't notice the presence at the entrance to the shack until it coughed.

He glanced up, optic narrowed, at the stranger that stood with the casual bearing of someone that knew too much. The stink of Firmament around him was recognizable. One of Teluwat's agents. A crow, it looked like, but... modified, body warped into something considerably more humanoid.

"So," the stranger said with an easy drawl. Not his own voice—Teluwat's. Projected through one of his agents. Guard hadn't known he could do that. "Would you like to see your son again?"

Then the crow grinned, mocking. "Whoops, sorry. Slip of the tongue. I mean my son, of course. But I'd be happy to discuss visitation rights."

Guard stood slowly. He kept his tone polite, even as Firmament lashed violently within his core. "Are you offering to bring me to your real body?" he asked.

"Why, of course!" Teluwat's agent bowed. "I'm here to serve. Quite literally, in this case. Besides, we all have greater things to worry about, don't we? The end of the world—perhaps even the end of the galaxy as we know it! In such dire times, we should work together. Form an alliance! What do you say?"

Control, Guard told himself. He knew what Teluwat was doing. He knew this was a trap. More importantly, Teluwat knew he knew this was a trap. He was counting on the timing, on the rage, on blind acceptance of a bad deal.

But that was a game they could both play.

"Fine," he said. It took a monumental effort of will to keep his tone even, especially with everything else he was trying to control. "Lead the way, Teluwat."

Teluwat laughed, putting a wing to his beak. "In this form, I'm Raskar," he said. "And I'm very pleased to meet you, He-Who-Guards."