I watched Ptokt dissolve the newly-restored tips of her fingers apparently at will and reform them a moment later, the segments splitting into a cloud of tiny silver insects. The Sanctioner stared at them through eyes lacking pupils or irises, then dissolved and reformed them again.

She spoke a few incredulous words to Ipoh, who replied in a serious manner, and once again I wished I knew the language.

“She is the swarm,” the Servant translated, appearing faint. “Including the parts that aren’t with us here. Only one day into your new cycle and you’ve taken one of the world’s greatest mindless terrors and turned it into something with an intelligence. You may have doomed us all.”

I glanced at the segment of that intelligence still experimenting with its fingers. “She’s not hurting us,” I said, “even though we were her targets for Blue.”

“All we know is that the razorlings have access to her memories and intelligence,” the Servant replied with a grimace. “It may be using them to imitate her personality and take her place.”

“Why? To charm its way into access to more food?”

“Who knows what the razorlings want?” Ipoh snapped sternly, the stress plain on his features.

“I think it’s still her,” I argued back, watching her lift her head and stare into the distance. I followed her gaze.

A shimmering cloud of silver insects filtered slowly into the locus room with us, sending both Ipoh and I into alert. There were no attacks. The razorlings settled in piles on the walls, floor and ceiling around us, coating each surface in soft silver mounds nothing like the rigid cubes we’d seen earlier.

Poking my head outside the chamber, I found plenty more of the same material outside swirling in from multiple directions. There were enormous quantities of it, and I didn’t see an end.

Ptokt spoke to Ipoh, nudging her chin in my direction.

“She owes us,” the Servant translated. “And for that, she’ll spare us our lives, returning to Blue empty-handed.”

I toggled on Magnetism and watched the razorlings scatter from under my feet. “More like she can’t. No part of her can touch us,” I pointed out, and waved a hand at her body in illustration. Ptokt’s torso fell apart into insects and reformed as the hand moved past. She glanced down in mild surprise, placing a silver hand on her belly, then fully transformed into silver dust.

A moment later, her voice sounded from outside.

We followed it out onto the barren street, where another Ptokt stood in a different cloud of particles. A twin coalesced before our eyes into another, quickly followed by a third. The three silver women glanced between each other and patted their faces. They barely made a dent in the dust.

“You see what you’ve done?” Ipoh asked.

--Parameters updated,-- the Guide broke into my thoughts unprompted. --Converting resources. Culminate upgrade, ‘Master of Acceleration’, integrated. Conversion decelerant adjusted from exponential to linear.--

I hadn’t understood any of that.

--In essence, your long-term capacity efficiency has greatly improved.-- the Guide clarified. --This upgrade was prearranged to activate upon overcoming one thousand regional or greater hazards, as was this information. Activating it consumed resources far exceeding my theoretical capability. Between this and the activation criteria, I conclude they were accumulated, stored and segmented over multiple previous cycles. The specifics remain unknown to me.--

I struggled to process the information. One thousand hazards the size of the Razors, dealt with? Even allowing for earlier cycles, the number sounded implausible. If I’d averted even just one large-scale disaster in every cycle, I’d had to have lived through a thousand. If each of those lives averaged only ten years, that made me… ten thousand years old. At least. In a… warped sense.

And how could there be a thousand disasters as bad as the Razors to avert?

And that was assuming I’d known it was a goal to pursue. Assuming each of the affected lives had been as ignorant as mine, not knowing the possibility of an overarching goal existed – I couldn’t reconcile it. Assuming they survived to be older, perhaps significantly so, the scale of time started to lose its meaning. Too long to make sense of. Maybe that was why I couldn’t remember.

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Or maybe that wasn’t the reason.

Guide, I asked, not entirely sure I really wanted to hear the answer, what are the resources you keep mentioning?

--They are fuel. I am not aware of their origin. But I suspect as much as you: that they are our memories.--

Then Orange had been right; I was never going to get them back. And neither would he.

Whatever these upgrades were and why they were started, I hoped they were worth it.

Because I wasn’t at all sure they were.

I was aware I’d been staring at the razorling-filled tunnels for a while. Ipoh’s question had been rhetorical, but I answered it anyway.

“I see a deadly, uninhabitable territory brought under control,” I answered, glancing back at him.

The Servant glowered back. “You got lucky. And that luck may run out still. In fact, it probably will. You’d better hope I can convince our loyalist here to split ways from Blue, or you’ve just delivered a reign-ending weapon into the hands of a dangerous enemy. Artifacts are her speciality, too.”

I burned at the unfairness of the words. He’d wanted to save the Sanctioner, and I’d managed to beat the odds and do it. And deal with a horrifying mass threat into the bargain.

The gleaming dust moved to the sides of the walkway as he approached Ptokt’s nearest humanoid avatar, and the two fell into deep conversation. It went on for some time. With distractions gone, my stomach ached in burgeoning pain, my head somewhat dizzy. I felt a little sick as well.

Stopped a disaster I might have done, but I desperately needed to drink and eat. Belatedly I realised I was still in my underwear and went to retrieve the rest of my clothes. They were a little damaged from being scraped for half an hour across the ground, but not yet broken.

Ipoh and Ptokt were still talking when I was done. Even more mounds of razorlings filled the wide tunnels, and more continued to pour in in whirling trails. Tentatively I dipped my hand into one, ready to activate Magnetism at the first sign of trouble. The insects hovered up from my palm.

The pair continued to talk for half an hour. Eventually Ipoh peeled back towards me, slightly mollified though no less stressed.

“I’ve convinced her to hold off on her return,” he revealed. “Simply by telling the truth; that once Blue learns of this, she’ll never let her Sanctioner go. Among all Ancients, Blue is the artifact specialist; she’ll have a hundred different ways to enforce control and then some. Whatever you did here just now is nothing compared to the horrors Blue can unleash.”

I blinked in surprise. “Then why didn’t she simply shut down the Razors earlier? I managed it and I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

“We’re far from her territory,” Ipoh replied. “It benefits her to keep the problem going, even if only as a future bargaining chip should someone need it removed. That, and she would still have to pass near the swarm. Remember, it killed an Ancient once; it’s not without its dangers.”

“So what will Ptokt do?” I asked, concerned.

“Part of her will accompany us to see Red,” he answered, as if it was a decision I’d already agreed to. “The rest will stay behind and explore. Little is known about this part of the world thanks to the last three hundred years of death. It may be a few relics were resilient enough to survive, much like the travel network. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t. Such relics are valuable to any Ancient.”

“You’re setting her up to be a supplier,” I observed.

“Just so. I have my loyalties, too.”

I only had his word Red was any better than Blue. A dubious feeling settled into my stomach next to the hunger. “Will she be okay down here on her own?”

“As long as she doesn’t run into Blue,” the Servant said. “With any luck, she’ll be assumed dead with the rest of her party and no one will go looking. Even if they do, it should buy us a few days’ grace. And she’ll have us for company.”

“Can she survive without food and water?”

“I don’t see why not. There’s really no reason for her to keep up a human form. In fact, I suggested she didn’t. The way she looks now, there’s a good chance she’ll be mistaken for Silver. Attention we don’t want.”

Having experienced it for myself, I couldn’t disagree. My ears perked up at the mention of the other Ancient. Part of the largest ruling block, the alliance including Green.

Who was dead at the hands of Orange. I was guessing his allies wouldn’t be happy about that. If they hadn’t been more directly involved already. I still didn’t know who had killed my last cycle.

I held up the lettering awkwardly scratched into my arm. “This is where the network station leads. What does it say?”

Ipoh peered at the arm, bending his face closer in. “It’s a location in the Drift. Good. That’s exactly what we need.”

“That’s fortunate,” I remarked.

“I doubt luck comes into it,” the Servant replied. “Red wants to see us. He must suspect something important. Perhaps heard the rumours of your sighting. This is him calling me in.”

“How would you get that impression?” I asked, bewildered.

“Over time, you get a sense for different types of coincidences,” came the reply. “This has ‘promise’ written all over it. I’m not complaining; it makes the journey much faster.”

“I see,” I said. “So Red uses them.”

“He shouldn’t,” said Ipoh. “He’s not immune to the backfire. I’ve seen them take pieces off him and others around him. Promises are an easy answer and they’re alluring. You may have made it work for you this time, and that’s what makes them so dangerous. Any one of them has the potential to go wrong. Any promise can be a curse. But I can’t force him to listen to my advice. You should do better.”

I chafed a little at the hypocrisy; he’d been the one to tell me to use them. But Orange had warned me the same.

So far, other than that first promise in the grove, I’d been relatively lucky. And if this was luck, I didn’t want to find out what wasn’t.