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— Layer 5. The foothills were brushed with heather, rivers carved their way through valleys, buzzing with insects, and the mountain range cut into the sky. Eirlys and Saheel followed a gravel path as it wound along a ridge. From here, they could see verdant wilderness for miles.

— Eirlys slipped into a flow state of putting one foot in front of another, the comforting weight of her rucksack bobbing up and down, letting the wind and sun and birdsong swirl around her, occasionally holding up a map to jot down some notes. Everything she needed, she carried. All that was left was the beautiful simplicity of following the path.

— Judging by what was in her rucksack, she was near the middle of a weeklong hike in Haden's Seat. The guide hadn't sold too well, she recalled. She certainly didn't remember coming across anyone on the walk.

— She loved her job.

— Next to her was Saheel, panting and sweating. His black robe caught the sun like a solar panel, and she could feel the heat coming off him. He looked rather dapper in the camo sunhat she'd given him, like a well-to-do uncle.

— Well, they'd been going uphill for an hour, and the path was brushing up against a forest now, so maybe he could use a break. Eirlys had no doubt she'd spent today marching militarily, probably only stopping to cook dinner and set up a tent, but figuring out who she'd killed was going to be a mental challenge, not a physical one.

Once they'd come adjacent to the treeline, and they were graced by shade, Eirlys said, "Let's stop and rest here."

"Oof," said Saheel, clasping his knees. "Thanks, sister. I'll be honest with you, I don't really get much exercise back in Sandbank. It's too hot over there to go on walks like this."

"Here's a boulder we can sit on." She slung off her rucksack and sat on the dirt, pressing her sweaty back against the cool stone. The only thing more refreshing would have been to swim in a river, but Eirlys would only ever do that alone.

Saheel chose to perch awkwardly on the boulder, and he kept shuffling around it, trying to find a spot that didn't dig into his butt. Then he shot his Holy Water Pistol into his mouth and hair.

— It didn't seem possible for it to run out of water. Could that be exploitable?

— She made a note of the boulder in her journal. The conifers here threw up their needles to blot out the sun during noon, making for a perfect rest stop. The air was thick with phytoncides, a refreshingly earthy, woody perfume.

"So," said Saheel. "Did you come up with any more ideas about who the American woman could be? I've been looking out for her, but it's clear we're smack bang in the middle of nowhere."

Eirlys shook her head. "We'll just have to keep an eye out."

"How often do you do these walks? You're doing this for a book, right?"

"We get one out every quarter. They have a team looking out for potential routes, and then they send me out to make sure they're a) traversable and b) quiet."

Saheel smiled, watching a bumble bee pottering around a tuft of heather. "And do you get a lot of people buying them? I suppose you must do, if they can afford to send you out here."

"Enough to get complaints that the routes are too busy. A lot of people don't have the confidence to just go out into the wilderness. Look," she said, gently sending in her finger to stroke the bumblebee. It sat there, docile, and she appreciated its fuzziness.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I didn't know you could do that," he said, leaning over to stroke a different one, impressing Eirlys by how careful he was in his approach.

"Just watch they don't put their arms up," she said, but they didn't, and then they buzzed off down the mountainside.

— Time to get serious. She got the remote out of her rucksack, and pressed pause.

— Everything stopped. The distant meadows looked strange without the wind ruffling them. The silence was uncanny, but while it was 'fucking cool', as Faust had said, it didn't represent much utility.

— But that was just its intended use. Eirlys was far more proud of managing to pass a motion that had given them a weapon of absolute destruction. She'd tricked the mound into giving her the keys to the castle.

"Running some experiments, sister?" asked Saheel. "The breeze was nice and cooling, and I wouldn't mind having it back."

— Eirlys pressed play. She got out her Swiss Army Knife, found the serrated blade and sawed a branch off one of the trees about the length and thickness of a baseball bat.

— The stick didn't break apart when she smashed it against the trunk, so hopefully it would be strong enough.

"What are you up to?" asked Saheel, pushing himself onto his feet. "Let me know if I can help."

"Let's play baseball, Saheel. Can you find a rock about the size of one?"

— It didn't take him long. He brought her two candidates.

"This one's rounder, but it's heavy," he said. "The other one's lighter but less aerodynamic. Which would you prefer?"

"The heavier one. Come over here." She walked a little down the path to a point where one side was a sheer drop and the other was a solid wall of rock.

"Don't slip," said Saheel, tossing the stone from one hand to another. "I'll throw it underarm, alright? I don't want to 'cast the first stone' on you. But sister, are you left handed? Why aren't you trying to hit it out over the drop?"

"I want to hit the wall." She gripped the stick in her right hand and held up the remote in her left, her thumb over the pause button.

"You ready?" he asked.

"Go."

He drew his arm back, then followed through in a perfect arc, throwing the stone into a range where it would be an easy hit. But instead of swinging, she pointed at it and paused it. It floated there, midair, entirely divorced from gravity.

"Okay, then." Saheel walked over, crunching gravel under his boots. "I guess that gives you enough time to get infinite home runs? But then, the bowler could just walk over and pluck it out the air..."

"A question for you," said Eirlys. "Currently no forces are acting on the rock. When I unpause it, what's going to happen?"

"I suppose it will fall as normal."

She motioned for him to stand back, then put all her body weight into swinging at the stone with the stick. For a brief moment, it dislodged towards the cliff face, but as soon as the stick stopped touching it, it froze again.

"What about now?" she said. "What direction will it go?"

"Down and towards the rock face."

She hit it again. And again. And again. Each time, the stick only pushed it slightly.

"What about now?"

"We should get out of the way if you're going to unpause it. It'll probably bounce off the rock at considerable speed and break a bone."

She nodded. "Get out of the way, then. Have a drink of water. There's some dried bread in my rucksack. I'll call you over when I'm ready."

"I see," said Saheel. "The death of a thousand cuts. We studied a little mysticism at uni. It's an ancient Chinese torture method. Individually, you might not bleed a lot, but when everything adds up together, you get an incredible effect."

"Yes. Do you know how many bouncy balls you'd need to stack on top of each other, so that when they all bounced off each other, they'd go as high as the moon?"

"Normal bouncy balls?"

"Assuming we start off with a large ball, and each is smaller than the last so that they can be placed to bounce up vertically."

"Lord knows," he said. "Hundreds."

"Seven," she said.

With that, he went back to sit on the boulder and stroke more bumblebees while she swung at the stone with all her might, nudging it a millimeter towards the wall with each blow. Eventually, she got it so close to the rock face that hitting it any further would risk adding more friction from the stick.

— It only took half an hour, and it looked so innocuous, practically invisible.

She called Saheel back over, and standing at a safe distance while he kneeled down to pray, she pointed at the stone and pressed play.

— The noise was disappointing, like a vacuum accidentally sucking up a sock. One WHOOP, a cloud of dust, and the stone was gone.

They crept down to investigate the hole. The stone had carved a clean pipeway through the wall as far as the eye could see, and when Eirlys strained, she could just about see a pinprick of light on the other side, possibly over a mile away.

— She hadn’t lost a hundred hours of her life speedrunning Breath of the Wild for nothing, then.

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Saheel wiped his brow, shivering despite the heat.

"Let's do it again," said Eirlys. "Over the valley, this time."