Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 38: Questions

When I wake up, I roll to the side. It's an automatic reflex by now, and it's only when I crack my elbow against stone that I realize that I'm not, in fact, about to be stabbed in the head by a giant mantis; I breathe a sigh of relief, and then look around, trying to take in my situation.

I'm in... no small amount of pain. The ache is only obvious when I move and my skin scrapes against the stone, and then I wince as I realize that I feel like most of my skin is sunburned. It's an angry red, when I pay attention to it.

I'm in the same room. Half of the stone is scorched black. I'm alive, somehow, but I'm only alive because...

The golem.

I jerk awake fully, sitting up and wincing as a wave of pain shoots through my body. Most of it is skin-deep, but my shoulders feel like they've each taken a sledgehammer and there's a persistent, familiar ache in my head that tells me I've strained my Firmament too deeply.

I almost wish the Interface had mana values. At least that way I'd have a better way of tracking how close I am to running out of Firmament besides how bad my headache is. Maybe it's a feature I can unlock, or maybe I can work on a solution myself...

There's nothing around me. I'm half-expecting to find the golem in the corner of the room, stacking its rocks, but I can't even find the polished stones it was stacking; the only thing remaining in the room is the translation stone I'd picked up earlier, sitting innocently on the floor. I wonder if the Firmament blast eroded everything else, though I find the prospect strange. I would expect far more damage to the walls and floor if the blast were capable of that kind of damage.

Good thing it didn't damage the translation stone, at least. That thing looks as pristine as ever.

After a short pause and a grimace as I prepare myself, knowing this will hurt I call on Temporal Fragment and bring out Ahkelios.

Ahkelios is silent when he first appears. It's uncharacteristic of him. He takes in the room slowly, hopping up onto my head to survey the whole room, and then looks at me seriously.

"It found you?" he asks. He looks almost guilty.

"It did," I confirm. "It was some sort of automaton. Did you ever fight anything like that?"

Ahkelios relaxes a little when he realizes I'm not angry at him for disappearing. "I don't think so," he says carefully. "I tried not to interact with the Integrators much."

"If only I had that choice," I say dryly.

Gheraa, Naru, and now this robot-thing. Meeting an Integrator is fundamental to earning an Inspiration, but Naru being sent to investigate a strange Hotspot, and then this robot-thing investigating an unusual burst of Firmament...

It could be a coincidence, but I'm starting to think it isn't. They keep telling me I'm an anomaly. Naru thinks I'm growing too fast, and the robot said my Firmament was too unstable. Something about my loop seems to be fundamentally different.

"What happened?" Ahkelios asks. He glances around at the blackened room, and I get the strange impression that he'd be wrinkling his nose if he had one. "Did it do this?"

I shake my head. "The Fracture erupted again," I say. "I pushed it in. Still have no idea why the Fracture's doing this, though, and it doesn't look like the Integrators know either. I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

Ahkelios shakes his head mutely.

Now back to the question of how I survived.

There's no sign of the golem anywhere. There's ash on the ground, but the ash isn't nearly thick enough to be the remnants of the golem and if the blast had been powerful enough to turn it to ash in the first place, I can't imagine I would have survived. I take a breath, nearly choking at the overwhelming smell of burnt stone, and then take a step outside.

Somehow, I'm not entirely surprised to see the golem there. It looks... damaged. Fragments of stone have chipped off its shoulders. It sits with its legs dangling over the Fracture, staring up into the sky.

I sit down next to it, and it doesn't move.

Ahkelios is silent, and I appreciate that he doesn't interrupt the moment. I wonder if I'm projecting emotions onto the golem. It's sitting and staring in a way that seems almost longing. I imagine it's never been out of the Fracture the charging alcoves, the murals, the stacked stones they're enough to tell a story. I wonder how far it was able to make it before it needed to go back for charging.

But maybe those emotions are too human. They don't explain why the golem chose to save me.

I sigh, and lie back onto the ground. The stone is still warm underneath my back. It's uncomfortable, especially with my bones and skin aching as they are, but I don't really care at the moment.

"It's dead, isn't it?" Ahkelios asks me after a moment, and I tilt my head in a slight nod.

"I can't sense any Firmament from it," I say. "The charging alcove is dead; the Firmament blast burned away all the circuitry it could've used to charge up."

"That's sad," Ahkelios says. He hops off of my shoulder and up onto the golem's, peering up at its face. "Do you think it just wanted to see the sky before it died?"

"I think so," I say. My words are soft. I imagine what it must have done blocked me from the worst of the blast, then looked up to see that its alcove was destroyed. It put me down carefully, in a part of the room that wasn't glowing with heat, and made sure I was safe.

Then it went outside to look at the sky one last time.

I feel a muted sort of sorrow. Ahkelios clearly feels the emotion much more keenly. I see him pressing his forehead against blackened stone, looking distressed, before he hops off of the golem and rejoins me on my shoulder. Together, we lie on the stone for a minute, staring up at the sky.

The loop will bring it back, of course. But it didn't know that when it chose to make that sacrifice, and its choice of final moment says a lot.

"Let's go back," I say finally. The translation stone is still sitting in the room. I have my skill shard in my pocket, along with the two other Firmament-imbued stones, though they feel like just ordinary stones now. The imbuement must have unraveled at some point.

Even as I leave, though, I know I'll be coming back to the Fracture.

Maybe not soon. Rank C or not, there's something happening here that's beyond me. But there are too many mysteries here to leave unanswered, and what I suspect is a clear connection to the Integrators.

Hestia 307B.

That 307B has to mean something.

If there's anything I've failed to consider about the Fracture, it's the stairs. Walking down a long flight of stairs into a chasm-city is one thing. Walking back up, even with Tough Body keeping my stamina up? Torture.

"I'm glad I'm not the one that has to do this," Ahkelios comments from his perch atop my head. I grumble, briefly consider giving him the finger, and then decide that I'm too tired for even that. It's funny how different this is from training.

Triplestep shortens the time I spend climbing back up the stairs, at least.

I keep a metaphorical eye up for another buildup of Firmament as I do so. There's obviously something causing these Firmament eruptions, and there isn't much in the way of shelter if I'm just climbing up. Nothing seems to stir, however.

It's when I'm halfway up the steps that my blood runs cold. I double check the Interface.

There's no message for defeating the robot. No credits gained. No death confirmation.

I hadn't even considered the possibility that it might survive. The Firmament blast had scorched everything, and I'd assumed that if it had managed to survive, I'd either be captured or dead. I curse myself I should've checked it first thing but hopefully, there's still time. If I haven't been captured yet, then my best hope is that it's half-alive somewhere, disabled and unable to chase after me.

I'm not willing to bet this loop on that, though.

Without a word, I speed up. Ahkelios clings to my hair to avoid falling off. "Hey!" he starts to complain, but then he seems to sense the urgency in my steps. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't have an Interface message about the robot that attacked me," I say grimly. "It might still be alive."

"After that?" Ahkelios, at least, sounds as stunned as I do. Strangely enough, that's almost a relief for me it means that I'm not completely off with my understanding of the Firmament power scale. The idea that I might be is somehow more worrying.

Then again, considering the robot had apparently survived...

I pick up speed. "Maybe it just doesn't count since all I did was push it in?" I suggest.

"Assisted kills give you less credits, but they still count," Ahkelios asserts. The worry in his voice is almost infectious, but I keep my focus on running; the adrenaline makes the stairs less exhausting, at least. I'm almost at the top. "Anything with Firmament should count if you helped defeat it."

Well, that's not promising. I speed up a bit, ignoring the burn in my legs; I spare only a second to bring up the Interface and glance at the Timeline Tracker. It doesn't look like I was out for very long two hours, by my estimation, and that's corroborated by the setting sun in the sky.

It's the longest I've ever been alive in a loop, and I intend to keep it that way.

Fortunately, despite extending my Firmament sense as much as I can, I don't sense any hint of the robot's return even as I exit the Fracture. My lungs are burning by the time I do so, and I don't stop; instead, I bring up the map and orient myself so that I'm headed straight towards the Cliffside Crows.

"Don't push yourself too hard," Ahkelios says, worried; he's clinging tightly on to my shoulder so he doesn't fall off, not that he has to worry about it, with the range limitation of Temporal Fragment. I don't have the breath for a response, so I just push Triplestep even further, taking long strides into the alien forest.

There's a small part of me that worries that all I'm doing is leading it to the Cliffside. But if it manages to follow me, this loop is doomed regardless.

I run faster, trying my best not to leave too much of a trail.