Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 159: Book 3: An Old Foe

As satisfying as Naru's fear of me is, there's a part of me that recoils from it. It's a well-deserved reversal of our first meeting, but our first meeting was me punching him in the face after he was particularly crass about Tarin being in a coma; there's a difference between that and... whatever this is. It's like he thinks I'm going to tear him apart just for touching me with his Firmament, and that I don't particularly like.

Not that I'd prefer his usual reaction, either. I haven't forgotten the way he talked to me about his own parents. Or the way he treated Mari in that fight.

"You're the Trialgoer," he says, recovering. That conclusion's probably easy enough to reach now that I'm stronger—only a Trialgoer would be able to reach the third layer, and he already knows all of Hestia's Trialgoers. Naru's eyes dart left, then right, as if assuring himself that there's a means of escape. "This is your fault, isn't it?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I say. Which is a lie, mostly; I'm pretty sure he's talking about how the Integrators have been cut off from the Interface. I just want to figure out what he's doing here before I say anything else.

"Ethan!" Tarin pokes his head out of his hut. "You finally here! Why you die so much?"

I blink, then let out a snort of laughter—so much for intimidating Naru. The old crow is acting like his son isn't even there, and the way Naru glares at his father in protest almost makes me feel bad for him. "Now you come out of your hut?" he demands. "When the Trialgoer shows up?"

"He earn it," Tarin says dismissively. It almost makes me wince, the way he says it. Naru flinches at the words, then scowls, turning his attention to me instead.

"So you've been dying a lot, have you?" Naru asks, the words a half-sneer. "You might as well give up on your Trial—"

Tarin baps him in the side of the head with a wing, making him sputter in protest. "You quiet. I need talk to Ethan."

The old crow turns back to me. "You die too much! This idiot keep visiting and you die before he finish talking."

Tarin's as blunt as ever, although his words have a way of diffusing the tension. It probably helps that with me here, Naru seems almost afraid to act. "That'll happen sometimes," I tell him. "I was fighting something powerful. I beat it, though. We should be done for a while."

Unless the next stage of the Ritual tries to kill me right off the bat, anyway. Even then, it's another eight hours until the dungeon opens again; there should be plenty of time to deal with whatever Naru wants.

"Good training?" Tarin asks. I hum, glancing at the Mastery tab of the Interface.

[Mastery: Causal Shattering | 1 of 3]

Gain improved control of temporal distortions created by Causal Shattering. You may manually target one part of your target's timestream.

"Good training," I agree. The skill credits weren't bad either. "Sorry for all the resets."

"As long as it good training," Tarin says. He sizes me up for a moment, then nods. "Good. You grow a lot. No wonder Naru scared."

"I'm right here," Naru growls. "And I'm not scared." He takes a few steps forward, pouring Firmament into his arm to reinforce it; it feels more like a threat display than anything, like he's trying to make himself look bigger than he really is.

"I asked you a question, Trialgoer."

Premonition doesn't activate.

"And I told you I have no idea what you're talking about," I say, raising an eyebrow. "You're going to have to be more specific."

Naru lets out a strangled noise. "The Interface," he says, struggling to keep his temper in check. "I can't contact the Integrators. And I can't—"

He snaps his beak shut before he finishes what he's saying. I frown slightly. There's something he doesn't want me to know, then?

I bet I can figure it out. I watch Naru silently for a moment. His breathing is a little frantic, and unlike most of my encounters with Hestian Trialgoers, he doesn't seem prepared to bring up his Interface.

Now that I think about it, I remember a notification that mentioned the Interface reverting to baseline programming; something about all the damage that was done to the Intermediaries.

That has implications, doesn't it? I don't know what 'baseline programming' is, but more likely than not, it means that the Interface doesn't have any of the features the Integrators programmed into it.

Features like contacting the Integrators, yes, but more than that. Trial-specific features. The things that give their Trialgoers an advantage in the Trials. In the context of this Trial, that means...

Have the Hestian Trialgoers lost access to their loop-specific privileges?

Being able to tell what loop I'm in, for instance. Or that ability they have to make notes for themselves so they can reference it at the start of each loop. It'd explain why Naru seems so uncertain—without that information, there's no way for him to know how much I might have grown through the loops. No way for him to know what I might have done.

"Can't check your notes?" I ask. Just to test the waters. Naru tries to control his reaction, but he flinches, and it's enough.

"None of your business." He says the words through a gritted beak.

I shake my head. "The Integrators brought it on themselves. All I did was fight back." I pause in a pointed sort of way—I remember very well how insistent he was that fighting against the Integrators was impossible. "You're welcome."

"Welcome?" Naru nearly explodes. His feathers puff up all at once, and I feel his Firmament surging within him. Premonition still doesn't activate, but he looks like he's only seconds away from throwing a punch. "Do you know what this means? The Integrators are the only reason Hestia is still here!"

...This is new.

Now that I look a little closer at him, he seems... frazzled. It's been a while since I last met him in the loops—I remember being pissed at him because of the way he treated Tarin and Mari, and in particular because of his cavalier attitude toward Tarin's coma.

Stolen novel; please report.

I remember his argument with Mari. His insistence that fighting the Integrators was pointless. His pride in the power he'd gained, even at the cost of his own home. Mari mentioned something about him killing the other crows in the village—not on purpose, but because he couldn't control the amount of power he wielded.

Rather than learning to control it, he'd chosen to leave. To use his power to assert himself in one of the Great Cities, as the other Trialgoers did. It's a huge part of his estrangement from his family.

But now the Integrators are gone. He's staked his pride on them, in a manner of speaking—his entire philosophy has been that it isn't worth fighting them. That it isn't possible to fight them.

He's shaken, I realize. On some level, he's afraid, and not just of me.

"Why did you come here, Naru?" I repeat my question. Naru looks at me—really looks at me—and something in him seems to deflate.

"I don't know."

There's silence in the village for a moment. Most of the other crows are desperately curious about what's going on. I see them casting fearful looks at Naru, peeking out of their huts or around a corner. They're all otherwise keeping their distance, though; the village as a whole is quieter than it usually is, like the whole place is holding its breath.

I wonder who he killed. I wonder how it happened. I never asked, now that I think about it; I'd accepted Tarin and Mari's words at face value.

Did he just come here because he was afraid? Because when everything he believed in began falling apart, he grew desperate enough to just... run back to his parents?

I wasn't particularly expecting to feel sympathy for Naru. Time loops make anything possible, I suppose.

"You were yelling at Tarin when I arrived," I say.

"He wouldn't talk to me." Naru clenches a fist in frustration. Come to think of it, the fact that he's got hands instead of wings has to be one of the physical upgrades from the Interface. "He just kept telling me to wait! But he's fine talking to you, apparently."

"Because Ethan Trialgoer." Tarin says the words as if they're obvious. "I try talk to you before. But loop keep resetting. It annoying. Wait for Ethan better."

Whoops. I hadn't particularly considered how my repeated deaths might impact Tarin, but then I hadn't expected Naru to suddenly show up, either. The Hestian Trialgoer grits his beak again in response, sputtering for a moment before falling silent; he doesn't seem to know what to say. "How do you two even know each other?" he eventually manages.

"Tarin helped me in the Trial for a while," I say.

"You?" Naru almost seems at a loss before he whirls around to Tarin. "You helped the Trialgoer?"

"He fighting Integrators. Of course I help."

"You didn't help—" Naru cuts himself off again as he speaks, forcing himself to take a deep breath. "What did you do?" he asks, turning to me. His voice is almost pleading.

"Stopped the Integrators from destroying Isthanok," I tell him honestly. "And most of the other Great Cities, too, probably."

Naru stares at me. "You're lying."

"He not lying." Tarin sounds exasperated, like he's had this conversation with Naru before. "He save village too."

Naru turns to stare at his father. "Save... what do you mean, he saved a village? This village?"

"What other village there?" Tarin asks, looking affronted. "They start raid. Ethan stop raid. He not stop raid, village gone. Same with glass city."

Naru opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. It takes a moment before he speaks. "They aren't... supposed to..." he starts, and then he trails off, sounding lost.

Ahkelios has been silent this whole time. I can feel a strange mix of emotions from him—some of it is contempt, but there's also sympathy. He's familiar with how Naru's feeling in some way.

"Integrators lie, Naru," he says.

"I know that!" Naru snaps. He glares at Ahkelios—and then he freezes, as if paying attention to him for the first time. "Wait—Aren't you—"

Ahkelios doesn't respond. He stares right back at Naru challengingly, waiting for him to finish his sentence, but eventually Naru just shakes his head.

"Even if you're telling the truth," Naru says, and he says it almost desperately, like he's trying to convince himself more than he's trying to convince me. "We still need them. We can't—Hestia needs them."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because," Naru hisses. "They're the only ones keeping us in check. The rest of the Hestian Trialgoers, the Disconnected. The only reason there's a balance is because we all know the Integrators are watching us, and even then it doesn't stop most of us from acting against one another. We're just a little more subtle about it. Take away the Integrators, and—"

The ground rumbles. I glance around sharply.

"Never a break, is there?" I mutter.

Technically, this isn't my battle to fight. If the Trialgoers don't have access to their loop privileges in the Interface, then they aren't a threat to me—all that will happen is that they'll cycle their actions again and again with every loop.

But just because they aren't a danger now doesn't mean they won't be eventually, and in that sense, this is the perfect opportunity to find out everything I can about Hestia's Trialgoers.

"I can't tell if you actually care about your village or not," I say to Naru. He stiffens a bit at my words. "Last time I spoke to you, Tarin was dying, and you didn't give a shit. You fought Mari and punched her through several trees. I don't trust you."

Naru says nothing, but there's a flicker in his eyes, and his jaw tightens. There's something he wants to say.

"But I'm willing to concede I might not have the full story," I say, eyeing him. "And something's coming that's got you on edge. You said you don't know why you're here. Is that true?"

Naru mutters something under his breath. I stare at him, and he snarls—not at me, but at himself. "No. Yes. I don't—I don't know why I ran here, but I'm being chased. Another Trialgoer. Versa. She's got a grudge against me."

"And you brought her here?" I ask, my tone disbelieving.

"I didn't know where else to go," Naru finally snaps. "The loops are killing Hestia and it's going to die even faster without the Integrators and no matter what else you think of me, I don't want that to happen. None of us do! Is that what you wanted to hear?"

I press my lips into a thin line. That's a lot of important information that's apparently been withheld from me. "It's a start."

Good enough for now, anyway.

Premonition activates. The ground shakes again, and I feel foreign Firmament being channeled through it—no, more than that. The feeling's familiar. This is...

Phaseslip.

I match her phase, then grab the newcomer's fist and tear her out of the ground. Her Firmament makes contact with mine—she's strong. Stronger than Whisper and Naru, and close enough to me that I can't tell which of us would win in a fight.

"Pleasure to meet you," I say. Versa hisses at me, though it seems more like reflex than actual hostility.

She's also a spider lady. Great.

Rhoran took a moment to understand where he was, to understand what Ethan had done. It had been difficult for him to put the pieces together, until now.

That human had triggered a Ritual. It must've been a Ritual for that dungeon he'd gained access to, though Rhoran couldn't remember the name of it for the life of him. What he cared about was the fact that he had an opportunity.

Ritual stages were generally things the Integrators couldn't interfere with. It was the natural progression of a dungeon, quantified and held in place by the Interface.

But Rhoran wasn't an Integrator anymore. And even if it was accidental, he was in a place where the next stage of the Ritual was being... programmed, for lack of a better word. Generated.

Everything in the dungeon itself was too powerful for him to infect, but this?

It was the perfect environment for a parasite.