Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 165: Book 3: Compare and Contrast

The dagger the mother threw at me clatters to the ground, useless; the barrier I called up dissipates back into raw Firmament. She stares at us, her eyes still burning Firmament, but the more I look at them the more I see them for what they really are.

Cracks.

Cracks that run from her eyes and down her face like glowing tears. She's an echo of an echo—an imprint left behind by countless copies of countless people put through the same tragedy over and over again—but that fact makes her no less real. The emotions that made her are all visible in the color of her Firmament.

Red for blood and anger. Blue for misery and tragedy, swirled through her form. Powerful because she's the culmination of so much that has happened, though still not beyond me.

And yet for all that power... trapped.

"Just let us through," the mother pleads. "Don't make us do this."

The cracks on her face bleed blue, trickling down to her neck. She's following a script, not actually reacting to me.

I respond anyway. I can't help it.

"I would if I could."

She doesn't—can't—hear me. It's not me she's pleading with. It's the specter of a hundred different guards, each one denying her entry into the city with her family; it's the specter of a hundred different guards that watched her starve. She looks at us like we are those guards, the ones stopping her from getting through. Even when I try to step aside, she turns to track me.

The rules are clear. The Tear wants us to kill her.

I wrack my mind—how do I change the outcome of all this? I could use my Talent, could try to Anchor a change... but now that I know what that power is and what it involves, trying it could very well kill me. I wouldn't just be trying to change this situation, I'd be trying to change every time this has ever happened, across every single loop and Trial.

That's not an option for now. Not until I'm a lot stronger and more confident in my ability to Anchor, and that's going to require more of Kauku's teachings.

Something else. Something different. What options do I—

"Ethan!" Ahkelios calls out, his voice panicked; I glance up just in time to see Naru launch himself toward the mother, and I bite back a curse. Idiot bird.

He has to know as well as I do that the mother matches him in strength. If I had to guess, his past attempts at closing this Tear through the loops might not have worked at all; maybe that's the reason it's as big as it is. I open my mouth to yell at him to come back until we've worked out a plan, but he's already locked in a fight with her.

For a moment, at least. Then the mother lets out a low cry, picks him up, and tosses him, throwing him several feet away and making him crash into the guardpost with a squawk.

I groan. The timing of it couldn't be worse, either; shortly afterward the draconian man at the guardpost also turns toward us, his eyes glowing with the same Firmament I see in the mother's. It's not quite the same in presentation, though. The cracks grow along the ridges of his brows, bleeding angry crimson.

"I'm not letting you through," he growls. "You lot are so entitled. You think you deserve to get in, what, because you have family in Carusath? So what? I've got family in Isthanok, and I'm here doing my job. You should've stayed where the Integrators put you."

No point responding to him. Just like the mother, he looks straight past me. He also moves with enough speed to put a dent in the ground—I doubt Naru's actual guards are this strong, but this one's being empowered by the Tear, more a concept of a guard than an actual guard.

Premonition activates just in time to tell me the mother is attacking, too, two more daggers appearing in her hands. Too much going on, and Naru's attacks are ineffectual. I need time to think.

Crystallized Barrier. I form them along my forearms like a makeshift gauntlet, deflecting both of her intended blows and kicking her in the stomach just hard enough to push her back; she staggers, but not as far as I expected.

No matter.

Guard intercepts his border guard counterpart with a well-timed shoulder charge, knocking him off-course and stealing his attention. Ahkelios buzzes between the two of us, trying to decide what to do, who to help.

"Check on the kid," I grunt at him. Ahkelios's eyes widen, and he flies off.

The kid in question still just leaning against the side of the guardpost, as far as I can tell. He's curled up into himself, looking frailer and thinner than a child should ever have to look. I want to reach out to him, but I don't have time; my attention is on defending myself against the mother, and on making sure Guard doesn't die to... well, to the other guard.

Naru, thankfully, doesn't require any additional attention; he's lying on the ground and bleeding from a stab wound, but it shouldn't be fatal. He seems more stunned than anything.

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Ahkelios can handle this. The problem isn't that I can't defeat these blood specters—both the guard and the mother are strong, but not so strong that I can't beat them if I wanted to.

It's just that I don't want to.

The problem here is bigger than what the Tear wants me to think it is. So I'm relegated to defense, and my offense is stronger than my defense, unless—

Unless.

I turn my focus inward. "Let's take this together," I tell the Knight.

The Inspiration stirs and responds. Approves.

My previous attempts at using the Knight have always been painful. The transformation itself is one thing—having my bones evert out and turn into armor is, in simple terms, among the worst pains I've ever experienced.

But there's an understanding between us now that's more than what we've ever had before. Ever since that conversation with Ahkelios, ever since it learned more about who I am and the way I think, it trusts me.

It's not that the pain goes away. It doesn't. But the Knight takes on its share of the pain, this time—suffers through it with me.

And when we act, it's with perfect synchronicity.

The mother lunges at us again, a desperate, all-or-nothing attack; she throws everything she has into it, her daggers shining with cutting Firmament that would have torn through any of Naru's real guards. In fact, I'm certain it would have torn through Naru himself. It deflects off my new armor harmlessly, though, the impact of my reinforced bones and the Inspiration turning it into little more than a glancing blow.

The Knight and I lean down and draw her into a hug.

She's much smaller than I am with the Knight Inspiration running. I'm not exactly short even without it—but with it, she barely comes up to my chest. The hug is a little awkward, in part because she's fighting against it and trying to cut through my armor, in part because I'm just not used to moving around in this body. I have claws I have to be careful to tuck away and more strength than I know what to do with.

But eventually, her struggles slow. Her cries of anger and distress turn to quiet sobbing.

"You can't hear me," I say quietly. Not just me, in fact—both me and the Knight are speaking, our voices and intent folded together as one. "And you're not real. Not really. But we're going to fix this."

"I just..." the mother starts—the Firmament fades away from her eyes, and this time, when she looks at me, I get the impression that she might actually be looking at me. That she's speaking to me, and not just playing the role she's been given in the Tear. "I just want it to end. I want us to stop suffering."

There's something different in her Firmament. This is...

Her eyes are intelligent. She's not looking past me. She is speaking to me. And now that I'm paying attention, there's a small, subtle change in the Firmament around us, a fissure in which a tiny fraction of my power has been buried.

"Knight," I start. "Did you—"

"Your strength is mine, as much as my strength is yours," the Knight responds calmly. "We cannot change all that has happened. But we can give her the power to see it and change it for herself."

"I remember," the mother says quietly. Is 'mother' the right word? Even as we speak, I see her form changing, becoming more nebulous—because she isn't just a mother. She's everyone that's ever been stopped from seeing their family at this guardpost. "Every time we weren't allowed to go in. Every child that died. Every dead husband, every missing wife, every starving child."

"Was this the right thing to do?" I ask the Knight. "Because remembering all this... it must be torture."

"One must have their memories in order to truly anchor a change," the Knight responds. "Do you not feel as much when it comes to your little friend?"

Ahkelios, huh?

He isn't wrong, I suppose.

"We're going to end it," I promise the mother quietly, though I'm not sure that's the right descriptor anymore. I reach into my pocket. Naru's approval papers are still there, and they're technically signed to my name, but that doesn't really matter when it comes to something like this.

This Tear is largely symbolic. To break its routine, I need a symbol.

"Here," I say, pressing the papers into her hand. I feel her fist closing around it, and she looks up at me; something hopeful and determined shines in her expression.

I can feel the Tear protesting. The whole thing strains around us, the fabric of it beginning to buck and rock. I'm going too far off-script.

Good.

He-Who-Guards is still fighting the other guard, and a hug isn't exactly going to stop him, but it's the principle of the matter. The mother pulls away from me and stands, then takes several steps toward them; He-Who-Guards disengages as soon as he notices, hopping back several steps to join me.

The guard stops.

It's almost surreal to see it. He takes the papers in a mechanical, jerky way, like he doesn't want to but the script of the Tear is forcing him to. It has to follow the rules it's established.

Slowly, she begins to move to collect her child. Ahkelios is still talking quietly with him, though I don't know what they're talking about; whatever it is, though, it seems to work. The kid straightens, and he looks up toward his mother, reaching up for her hand—

And Premonition triggers. The Tear trembles, something within it ripping itself free. I can feel it being channeled through the guardpost. The entire structure rips itself free of the ground, the red Firmament it's made of wavering and becoming something blackened and twisted. A malformed version of Temporal Firmament spiderwebs through it, and it melts together into a shape that's only vaguely humanoid.

I'm watching a monster form. The thought comes to me suddenly. This thing gives me the same impression as all the monsters I've fought—the Guilty Chimeras, Broken Horrors, the Elegies and Laments from the raid on the Cliffside Crows. Is this how they're formed? One of the ways they're formed?

Either way, this thing is powerful.

But it doesn't target me. It doesn't target the mother, nor her son, nor the guard. It doesn't target Guard or Ahkelios.

Instead, it launches a blade of pure, destructive Firmament straight at Naru—one poised to cut straight through his core.