"I don't know if I like that you're resorting to dying as a solution," Ahkelios says.

It's not the first time he's shared this sentiment. It's probably the third, actually. I groan. "Look, I want Whisper's attention to be directed away from what the rebels are doing," I say. "There wasn't any way that fight was going to end well for me, and Miktik and the others were basically seconds away from being discovered. I had to end the loop there."

"Yeah, but what about when you get out of this?" Ahkelios argues. "You aren't going to be in a time loop anymore, but what if you've gotten used to doing this and you do it by accident?"

"I—" I sigh. I appreciate that Ahkelios is worried about me, I really am, but I can't imagine any world where I'd jump to death as a solution. It's not like I enjoy the process of dying. "Look, that's why I'm asking you to do it, isn't it? I'm not building any reflex for it. You'll be able to refuse me if I try to get you to do it once we're out."

Ahkelios grumbles under his breath. "I guess you're right," he says. He doesn't sound happy about it.

I change the subject. "You seem way more willing to believe that I'm going to get out of this," I say, half-joking. "Why the change of heart?"

Ahkelios looks up at me, narrowing his eyes. "I never said I didn't think you'd get out of this. You didn't use the link to read my mind, did you?"

"No," I say. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. "It's just that you've never talked about me getting out of the Trial. Ever."

There's a short silence there. Ahkelios looks away, and I realize with a start that I'm closer to the mark than I realized.

"I don't know what it is," he says eventually. "But the more time I spend with you, the more sure I am that you'll figure something out. You just keep... doing it. Finding a way out of things. And it's almost never what I expect or would have done. And it works out better for you than it ever did for me."

I almost don't know how to respond to that. "Thank you," I say.

"Do you know what you'll do when you win?" Ahkelios asks me. "I don't know what you did on your planet, but I doubt it's anything close to this."

"I have not even begun to worry about that," I grunt. "And I don't think I want to just yet. I'll figure it out when I get there."

"Or we will," Ahkelios says softly. "Or... I don't know. Do you know what's going to happen to me?"

I don't have an answer for that.

"...I'd like to figure out a way to get you back into a body of your own, not just one made out of Firmament," I say eventually.

"But that doesn't mean I'll have a home," Ahkelios says. "I don't even know what the Integrators did to my planet."

"Then I guess I know what I'll be doing once I'm out of here," I answer instantly. The words come out before I'm even aware I'm saying them, but... they feel right.

Ahkelios's eyes widen a bit as he looks up at me. "You'll help me?"

"You're helping me right now, aren't you?" I say, holding out a fist. "I figure I owe you a favor."

Ahkelios gives me a tiny fistbump, suddenly looking much more cheerful. "Time to find Tarin?" he asks.

"Not before I get you some moss," I say with a laugh. Ahkelios looks delighted.

I don't have that much time to take breaks in this Trial. The clock ticks away with every second I spare.

But without moments like these, I think I'd forget what I'm fighting for.

----------------------------------------

There are two things I need to do at the Cliffside. The first of them is meet up with Tarin. This time he's ready and waiting. Considering Mari's lack of reaction, he doesn't appear to have told her about the loop this time, and that's... probably for the best. It's not like the village's imbuement stones are going to work for me, anyway.

She does give me a suspicious once-over. "Tarin say he helping you fight."

"That's... true," I say.

"Good." Mari nods. "You need. Your Firmament soft."

At least they're not calling it unstable anymore — but what's soft supposed to mean? Before I can question her on it, she disappears back into their hut, muttering something about needing to make preparations to protect the village if Tarin was going to be away for a while.

"Was it actually that easy to convince her?" I ask Tarin.

"Yes!" Tarin nods, looking at me as if offended. "She understand. Sometimes hatchling need help."

"Are you calling me a hatchling?"

"What else I call you? You still no feathers."

"I— Tarin, I'm an adult human."

"You baby crow."

If it weren't for the shit-eating grin on Tarin's face, I would've been a lot more exasperated. As it is, I just laugh and shake my head. "...I'm going to go talk to Virin before we leave. I promised I'd help him out with some imbuement stuff."

Virin is still asleep when I knock on the wall to his hut. His daughter is not, and I wince when she jumps on top of him to wake him up. He shoots out of bed with a squawk and enough force to send his daughter flying.

Right back into her nest hanging from the roof. Huh. Have they practiced this? Judging by the giggles, they might have.

I smile a little. He's a good father.

"Hey, Virin," I greet. "Listen, this is going to sound really strange, but..."

To my surprise, the moment I explain the loop and his own plan to him, his eyes light up — there isn't even a hint of hesitation or doubt. When I describe what happened to the rock, he doesn't seem surprised or concerned. "I always wonder!" he exclaims, taking the moss-covered rock out of a nearby drawer and examining it with interest. "Means activation need to be different. You say last time I just pour Firmament in?"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Yes." I remember it quite distinctly, mostly because I hadn't been expecting to watch a rock burst into flames and then evaporate.

"Okay. Now you need remember activation point. You watch." He aims for a specific part of the rock — something outlined in concentric circles of moss — and stabs it with a needle of Firmament.

The rock melts into liquid.

I stare at the rock, then at Virin. "Was that supposed to happen?"

"You remember," Virin insists, already pushing me out the doorway. "I need more sleep! Next time you not come so early."

Bemused, I make my way back to Tarin.

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The rest of the loop up until Isthanok goes much the same way. The guards at the Great Gates don't give me any trouble, and the ones at the Isthanok border have clearly been told to look out for someone going for the Arena, so they don't even give me a second glance when I tell them I'm there to visit Thys and Thaht.

Perfect.

Tarin and I head straight for Miktik's workshop. Tarin skips all the confused preamble and just knocks sharply on the fused crystal that hides the entrance to her workshop; there's a long pause, longer than the one we experienced in the previous loop, before it reluctantly slides open. Just like before, Miktik frantically waves us in.

A little less like before, she's noticeably more suspicious of us. "You weren't surprised that door was missing," she says. "Tarin. How did you know?"

Tarin squawks in impatience. "You open door for me last time," he says.

I sigh.

"What do you mean, last time?" Miktik is more visibly agitated. She trusts Tarin, I can see that much, or she wouldn't have let him in in the first place — but I guess being under Whisper's rule is pretty stressful. I imagine it's hard to tell if someone might be acting under the effects of a Whisper. That said, though...

"I think we both know if Tarin was being manipulated by a Whisper he'd be a lot louder about it," I say dryly. Tarin's not the type of bird to just listen to whatever a mysterious voice tells him to do. For the most part.

"Who are you, anyway?" Miktik pivots her attention to me nearly immediately.

I don't bother with the games. "I'm the Trialgoer," I say. "The Trial's started, and I need your help to evade Whisper."

"And why should Miktik trust you?" Miktik asks. She's nervous, but she keeps glancing between Tarin and I — clearly his presence is enough for this encounter to be a lot smoother than it otherwise would be.

"You don't have that much of a reason to," I admit. "But Whisper is as much an enemy to me as she is to you guys, and I've already worked with you and been here before. Look, let's get further inside with the others and I'll tell you the full story."

Miktik blocks my path. "What others?" she demands. I almost open my mouth to retort that we're wasting time, but... I see the look in her eyes and stop.

She's not disbelieving me or just stubbornly denying the existence of the rest of the resistance. She's testing me.

Okay.

"You've got the kobold brothers — Thys and Thaht. A crow like Tarin named Bimar. A silverwisp named He-Who-Wanders. And a morphling..."

I hesitate. I don't remember his name.

"Vahrkos," Ahkelios supplies. The sudden movement and sound from my head is enough to startle Miktik into letting out a small yelp. Her legs twitch, and she swings a miniscule tool at her belt to point at Ahkelios before forcing herself to relax.

"You're kind of jumpy," I observe. "What happened?"

"You tell us your story first and I'll tell you ours," Miktik grumbles. "This way."

----------------------------------------

It doesn't take much time to get them caught up on the time loop thing. They're all a little disbelieving of the idea, but it's not like I don't have a half-dozen ways to prove it — from knowing about Miktik's Firmament sink to knowing what would happen if Whisper tried to overload it, to Ahkelios's own knowledge of Hestia and the recounting of some of his own loops.

I stop him when he begins to get a little too into his retelling. I can see the little guy starting to shake a little. Whatever memories he has, he doesn't seem ready to face them yet.

The Interface has taken a bit more from us than any of us know, I think.

"So," I say eventually. "I'm going to need your help."

"Let me get this straight." Bimar is unsurprisingly the most skeptical of the lot. The crow's wings tap impatiently against the makeshift table they're all seated at. "Your plan is to make Whisper think that you're here for the Arena, distract her from the fact that you're actually here to help us develop a new Firmament sink and to... what, abduct He-Who-Guards?"

"Abduct implies that he's unwilling," I say. "I doubt he's unwilling."

"Your doubt doesn't guarantee our effort won't be wasted," Bimar says sharply. "And these loops of yours might, but only if they're real. Even then, they seem unreliable at best." She gives Tarin a pointed look. "Who's to say something doesn't get preserved that permanently ruins us?"

"The Trialgoer is still the best option we've had in a while," He-Who-Wanders says. "The risk of working with him is no greater than the risk of any of the other tasks we undertake on a regular basis."

"Whose side are you on?!" Bimar demands.

Thys sighs. The kobold leans in to give me a stage whisper. "Bimar's just angry because you messed up our plans," he says. "She'll calm down eventually."

I just blink. "What plans? You had plans?"

And now it's their turn to tell me what happened at the start of this loop. Miktik takes the lead, and Bimar declines to participate for most of the discussion, instead watching me and Tarin with sharp eyes. She doesn't trust us, I can tell.

But I notice her gaze lingers on Tarin more than it does on me, and I find that... strange.

"Whatever you told her about the Arena made her change the format of it," Miktik explains. "It's a tournament-style arena now, at least for the next couple of days. The points it rewards are multiplied the higher in the tournament you go."

"...That sounds like an obvious trap," I say. I don't bother hiding how bewildered I am. She believes I told her the truth about wanting prizes from the Arena, but why the change of format? The rules technically benefit me, if anything; it means it'll take much less points for me to earn what I need...

Of course, it'll also put me directly in her sights, which is probably what she wants. I have no intention of spending multiple loops trying to perfect my performance in a tournament.

Miktik nods, agreeing. "We were wondering what that was about. Between the new guards she put out, He-Who-Guards being missing, and the sudden change to the Arena, we figured she might have been on to Thys and Thaht."

"Kinda glad to hear that's not the case," Thys quips.

Vahrkos speaks up. "I would assume the tournament exists in order to identify you," he says, his voice a low, smooth rumble. "One that can travel through time would be easy to spot in a series of fixed combat challenges."

"It would've been just as easy to spot me in the regular Arena," I say.

"That would depend on your level of skill," Vahrkos says. "But this announcement will attract many new combatants, including ones not from this city."

Tarin's eyes gleam. I groan. "Tarin, we're not—"

"Training," Tarin insists.

I sigh.

----------------------------------------

Despite Tarin's insistence, I refuse to actually join the tournament and walk straight into Whisper's trap. The setup is alarmingly specific — if all she wanted to do was identify me, she could Whisper to every contestant walking inside the Arena grounds. Unless, of course, there's a cost to her Whisper that prevents her from doing it at that scale.

The point is, whatever she's doing, I don't trust it. And neither do any of the rebels.

"We're going to resign from the Arena this round, I think," Thys says, glancing at his brother. "No point getting involved in whatever this is."

"Yeah, getting involved in this sounds dumb," Thaht agrees.

Bimar rolls her eyes. "You set yourself up for this," she tells me bluntly. "You want to keep playing whatever game you're playing with her, you're going to need to do something, or she'll figure out you tricked her. And that you have a counter against her Whispers."

...Well, she's not wrong there.

"I enter tournament," Tarin declares.

I frown. "That's not going to work," I say. "She knows the new Trialgoer has to be an offworlder. You're from Hestia."

"I not say I pretend to be Trialgoer," Tarin says, scoffing at the idea. "I say I go tournament. My turn for training, yes?"

"He's going through the loops too, isn't he?" Bimar speaks in her usual brusque manner. "If Whisper is on the lookout for someone that acts like a time traveler, Tarin's going to check all those boxes eventually. Even if she figures he's not the Trialgoer, she'll know he's connected to you."

"Right. Because he is connected to me." I think for a moment, then let a devious grin curl up into my lips. "I think I can make that work."