When the next loop begins, I die again.

It's not too much of a surprise, I suppose, with my Firmament drained as severely as it is. I can feel small pieces of it sparking to life, trying to collect into Tough Body and give me a fraction of resistance, but all that happens is that the mantis — or Broken Horror — takes slightly longer to kill me. The scythe stops halfway embedded inside my skull, and I take a little too long to die.

On the other hand, it's more time for my Firmament to recover, so there's that.

The next loop, I try a little harder to move out of the way, forcing my body to move with an agility it doesn't quite feel up to yet. I'm not entirely successful, and I die again.

On the third try, that strange crackle of Firmament reappears, and it gives me just the jolt I need to roll out of the way; I spit the metallic tang out of my mouth, and force myself to redo the fight. It's fortunate the first thing the mantis does is get its scythe stuck in the ground, because I'm in no state to fight it properly; as it is, however, I manage to bury the scythe into its brain with some effort, and roll over onto the ground, panting.

If the loop ever lets me change my 'designated location' — or spawn point, whatever — I'm taking it. As long as it's not somewhere worse.

I don't know how long I sit there, but it's not for very long. The charge in the air seems to help my Firmament recover, and there's nothing physically wrong with my body, so I eventually force myself to my feet and start walking.

Not in the direction of the crow village. I don't... I don't think I'm ready to find out. Not yet.

I let myself wander. There's too much for me to think about, and I don't know what to make of any of it, I need to just walk. I've walked for almost a full hour before I realize I've turned myself around, and am now walking in the exact direction of the clearing where I first encountered the mantis-person.

My steps slow. Is this where I want to go?

...Yes. It is. I don't know why, but acknowledging a death feels right, even if it's not Tarin's.

I walk. I take a moment to absorb the sights — to breathe in the smell of the forest around me, to pay attention to the planet. I've yet to take the time to appreciate how different this place is, compared to Earth. I've been in fight-or-flight mode pretty much as soon as I entered the Trial, no thanks to the way the Trial itself started, but I can't keep that up forever.

I haven't even slept. I grimace a bit at the reminder, rubbing my temples. I'm not... tired, exactly. The reset makes me feel alert and awake. But I can't help but wonder if maybe I should sleep anyway; my mind is clearly exempt to some degree, and it's going to need the time to process.

Watching Tarin die is, in some way, a reminder of that need to sleep. I didn't manage to get to know him for long, but he and his wife both made it a point to take breaks. There were moments during our spars where he'd take the time to entertain a child, while commanding me to rest and take a drink of water.

They're good people. They don't deserve whatever the Integrators have done to Hestia.

I still don't know how he died. I don't remember the harpy throwing anything his way, or any stray attacks hitting him. Maybe it's internal wounds from his time fighting the Lament with Mari; it would make sense... Or maybe something else happened. Something I didn't see, that Mari didn't get the chance to tell me about before the reset hit.

But speculating doesn't help me.

I just take the time to appreciate the planet he called his home. The purple skies above me are strange and foreign, and the orange leaves on the trees even moreso; the ground is filled with the bristles of strange, prickly plants, things that look something like a cross between a fern and moss, with fuzzy-looking leaves and thorny stems. Every so often, there's the quiet song of a bird, or the buzz of an insect.

It's surprisingly peaceful.

And then I walk into the clearing, and almost immediately stumble, stopping in my tracks.

The mantis is there.

They're leaning against a tree, their breathing shallow and uncertain. That they're still alive at all is a miracle, although I don't really remember how long it was in the initial loop when I first found them.

Like before, they seem to sense my presence, and they open their eyes.

I hadn't brought the mantis-scythe with me this time. I'd had too much on my mind, and bringing a weapon hadn't seemed particularly important — I'd made it a point not to wander too far from the starting point anyway.

It's a coincidence, but it probably does help that I'm not holding the body part of a dead bug that bears a remarkable similarity to them, because they observe me for a moment and speak, surprisingly candid.

"You're... new," they say. The words are familiar, but they're not stay away. That's promising. "I don't usually see new things."

"I'm going through the Trial of the Integrators," I say, because those are the words I didn't get to say last time. I don't know what's giving me this second opportunity, but I don't want to waste it. If I'm right, and the mantis is going through something similar...

The mantis just looks at me. I can't quite read their expression — it's somewhere between tired and surprised, some mixture of suspicion and hope. "Funny," they say, and they manage a small, hacking laugh. "So am I. But this is it. I give up."

"You don't have to," I say, because I don't know what else to say. This isn't something I'm experienced with; I don't know how to comfort people that have given up. That's a job for a crisis counselor, not... not me. "We could try to take on the Trial together. You don't have to be alone."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The mantis looks at me and gives me something I'm certain is a smile. "That's a nice thought..."

They're fading away.

In that infinitesimal second between life and death, only noticeable because Mental Acceleration is once again active, I feel the barest flicker of resonance with Temporal Fragment — and without thinking, I activate it.

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

He was a painter.

There's something about this resonance that's so much more present than a simple vision. I'm connected to the mantis in a way I can't describe — like a small part of myself is him, experiencing what he's experiencing. It's part of the reason I know and understand his joy, his love for art and painting.

The other part is the enormous canvas in front of him.

I'm looking at things through his eyes, I think. It's strange. One eye shows things in a multitude of beautiful colors that I can't describe. It throws the environment around into a dazzling spectrum. I don't have names for some of these colors.

The other eye sees things in a dim, muted way that's the rough equivalent of human vision. I see the mantis peering through his augmented eye, using it to pick out flecks of color in paint that would otherwise be invisible.

In front of him is a painting that, to my human eyes, would be a beautiful splash of abstract art — paints layered over one another with no real rhyme or reason, still pleasant to the eye but never forming any particular shape.

To the mantis' eye, though...

There's a painting within a painting — an image hidden in little flickers of glowing paint, only visible when the sun catches off the canvas at just the right angle. He shifts slightly, and that second painting becomes suddenly startlingly present — silver and gold marking a defined silhouette of a flower. The edge of every petal is etched in flakes of gold, and delicate stamens reach out in blueish-silver.

I'm not one for art. I appreciate it, but it's not something I've ever really been able to make a connection with, no matter how much I try. With a small piece of myself connected to the mantis, though, I understand.

I understand how much this means to him. It's an extinct species of flower on his planet, I understand. He's a biologist of some kind. He works on restoring these extinct plants, and in his spare time, he paints. He's never shared his art with anyone.

The scene shifts.

He's in the Trial now. The feeling I get from him is harder, more rugged; he's been shaped by his experiences through the loops. There's a small part of him that's still the artist, the painter, the biologist — but that part of him is muted, buried beneath layers of combat-hardness and grief and regret. This is someone that's fought and killed.

He's facing off against something large. Another monster. Not one I've encountered before, certainly. It's a cross between a centaur and a spider, wicked limbs of metal emerging from its back. It's fast, for all that it looks physically awkward and bulky. I can barely keep up with the fight.

I wouldn't be able to keep up with the fight at all, if not for my connection to the mantis. My shared perception lets me capture pieces of the fight in flashes, impressions. Metal flashing against metal, sparks flying; Firmament being thrown around, the volume and degree of it far beyond what I'm capable of or have even seen. I see a brief impression of the mantis stepping forward, and forcing flowers to grow out of the centaur-thing's skin, the roots digging in — and I see a retaliatory wave of Firmament that multiplies the gravitational pull the mantis is experiencing tenfold.

And then something happens.

I don't know what that something is. It's beyond me by a mile, in a way that brings to mind what it felt like when the Interface pressed down on and killed me when I failed a raid. Even with me sharing the mantis' vision, I can barely perceive it. It's a shadow in the distance. A giant. It's something that's stretched into the world, entrenched deep within time and space.

It's an attack, but it's something far beyond anything the centaur should be able to do. It reaches out, and the mantis tries to dodge, to flicker out of the way; I feel layer upon layer of protective Firmament wrap around him—

—but it rips through that protection like paper, and his eye, the one that sees all those extra layers of color, is obliterated.

The scream echoes in the vision. That single touch kills him, and he loops.

But when he wakes again, he's still blind in one eye.

Even through the vision, I feel his despair.

And the vision fades.

This time, there's something intangible that stretches between us as the vision breaks off. I've connected with the mantis on a deeper level than I did with the harpy, for no particular reason that I can say — except the harpy was a 'monster', and the mantis appears to just be a looper in his final loop.

Maybe that's the connection. Maybe it only allows me to fully connect with someone that's left a huge imprint on the timeline, like any Trialgoer here would.

Temporal Fragment is still going. The skill is doing something, though I'm not nearly skilled enough with Firmament to understand what. The bond between me and the imprint of the mantis stretches out, and a thin layer of Firmament coats the bond, seeping into it.

Not my own Firmament. It's from the Interface, I think. The feel to it is different, distinct from the feeling that Temporal Fragment itself gives me. Something about it feels... wrong. It's washing out any real trace of the mantis, leaving behind only a sterile connection.

I get the feeling that I have a fraction of a second to do something about it.

I react without thinking, reaching out with Firmament Manipulation and injecting my own Firmament to protect what remains of the mantis' presence. It's precious, I think. It's someone's last moments, and those are always precious. I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but it feels infinitely more wrong not to do something about it.

And then the skill fades entirely, and I stagger.

The mantis is dead. Time doesn't stop when I'm in one of those visions, but both of the people involved are caught up in its flow. My hope is that the mantis died while we were watching him paint. Let his final memory be one of joy, at least, and not the despair he felt fighting the... whatever that thing was.

I sigh to myself and quietly begin to bury his corpse. It's a distraction, at least, from what I've just witnessed. From the thought of what might have happened to Tarin and the rest of the crows. From the idea that I might be stuck here as long as the mantis was, slowly losing the things important to me.

How many people have the Integrators done this to? How many raids have others failed, causing villages and people to be wiped off the map?

Anger is a good response, but it'll only last for so long.

I'm distracted again from my musings by a sudden tinny voice.

"Hello," it says, and I blink, startled. I look around.

Standing right on my shoulder is a miniature version of the mantis, looking almost exactly like one of my temporal clones — sheathed in a faint shimmering blue. "My name is Ahkelios," he says with a small bow and a cheery smile. "Might I ask where I am?"