Before I can do anything else, a warning blares into my skull, making me wince from the sheer force of it. I have to blink away the spots in my eyes to even begin to parse what just happened, but when I do, my eyes widen.

[Let it kill you.]

It's a Paradox Warning. The skill construct resonates within my core, and I stare up at the volley of golden spears. I don't like the idea of letting it kill me. I don't like the idea of not pushing this fight to its limits and getting everything I can from it. Almost unbidden, I can feel something rising within me, responding to my desire to keep fighting.

The Knight. It struggles to free itself, and already I can feel its influence leaking into my Firmament; my skin hardens, gaining the glint of solid metal in odd, mishappen spots. I grit my teeth, forcibly pushing it back—I can't afford this right now. Not if I need to let myself die. I don't know how I know, but I feel certain that if I allowed it to take over, I won't die. At least not easily.

And if I let that Seed get destroyed... that's a failure that has a chance of blowing back into other Trials. As much as I'm interested in seeing that process, I don't think I'm ready for it. I need to have something that allows me to—

Oh.

I suddenly understand, and the moment I do, I trigger the skill.

Paradox Warning. I feel the skill activate, then feel the way it coils around me, asking me to complete the loop, to send back the warning that gave me this train of thought in the first place.

So I do. Sending the message just a second or two into the past doesn't cost me as much Firmament as it might have otherwise, but the cost is still staggering; I feel nearly a quarter of my Firmament supply empty out of me in a way that I almost never feel these days, leaving me to stagger and grit my teeth.

No time to let this slow me down. The Seedmother's skill is seconds away from firing, and if I don't make sure I'm hit first, both Guard and Ahkelios are going to suffer more than I will.

"Guard!" I call out. "You know where to meet me?"

"I will find you," he calls back gravely, apparently sensing what I'm planning. Good enough for me. Ahkelios calls out in alarm, clearly also sensing what I'm planning and disapproving of it, but before he can try to convince me otherwise, I Accelerate up to meet the spears.

I have to admit: as many times as I've died in the loops, I don't think I'll ever quite get used to the feeling of being stabbed multiple times over.

[You have died. +57 Strength credits. +15 Durability credits. +32 Reflex credits. +50 Speed credits.]

—

When I wake up, I'm lying in the dirt, staring up at the sky. Ahkelios stands on my chest, his arms folded across his chest.

"You let yourself die again!" he complains.

"I did," I agree. I reach up to pat him on the head, and he flails for a moment as he tries to push my finger off before he reluctantly accepts it, huffing. "I know you're worried about me getting used to it, but... I'm in a time loop, Ahkelios. I need to take advantage of it while I can, especially if it gives me an advantage."

"How does this give you an advantage?" he grumbles.

"We've got some time before Guard manages to find us." I push myself up to my feet, prompting Ahkelios to hop off and then reclaim his spot on my shoulder. "Why don't we find out?"

"What are you talking about—" he begins, but I don't quite give him the time to finish the question.

The Road Not Taken.

It's the realization I had. I might have been able to fight off the Seedmother and protect the Seed, especially with the help of the Knight—but that's not what I need right now. What I need is information, specifically on the consequences should I fail a Ritual stage, and that Seedmother set up the perfect opportunity for it.

I'm changing a decision that's a fairly limited amount of time in my past, but even then, it's a costly use of Firmament. I feel about half of my reserves drain out of me, leaving me with barely a quarter left, and I groan against the strain; I feel Ahkelios's worry flicker down the bond as he reaches out to support me with his own Firmament. It's an automatic act, but it still makes me grin.

And then the power of the skill envelops us both, and we find ourselves back in the battlefield.

Mentally, anyway. The Road Not Taken is ultimately an observational skill—I can't just rewind to a point and redo things the way I want to, I have to pick a singular decision to change—but the decision I'm changing here is a simple one.

I choose to fight.

Now that I'm actually using the skill, I'm realizing that I need to grow a lot more to be able to use it for everything I want to use it for—going back long enough to interrogate Whisper, for example, is going to take exponentially more Firmament than I have available to me right now. That's a problem for future Ethan, though, and preferably one that's been through a few more phase shifts.

Right now...

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Let's see.

I let the Knight take me over. Metal plating emerges from my skin, and I hear a guttural snarl emerge from my throat as vocal cords change into something other, a combination of metal and Firmament and conduit-flesh. The transformation is painful, but not nearly as harrowing as it was the first time. Unlike my first attempt at using this Inspiration, the Knight and I are... somewhat coordinated.

Not perfectly coordinated, as it turns out. Not yet. We try to dodge the spears and to keep the Seed safe, but we don't quite agree on the same direction to move, and the result is our combined body flailing awkwardly through the air and toward Ahkelios; we still manage to protect the Seed, but only because several spears glance off our armor.

A few manage to pierce into us partway before we bat it away in retaliation, and we snarl in response. Pain is unpleasant.

The Seedmother is an enemy.

Before Ahkelios or Guard can stop us, we bound off the building and toward the Seedmother with enough force that we shatter the windows and create a small crater in the side of the building; that momentum transforms into a punch that's empowered with Amplified Gauntlet, the appearance of the skill changing entirely as it moves through the Inspiration's construct.

It's my first time using a skill with the Knight like this, and the difference is incredible. It's draining, certainly, but instead of covering my arm with a gauntlet of Firmament, it transforms my arm—changes it into a thick, powerful thing, bulging with dense, compressed Firmament. The moment our fist makes contact with the Seedmother, all that energy bursts out of us and into its carapace, causing a deafening crack and a shockwave that sends us flying back.

It's not too much of a concern. We flip midair, readjusting ourselves so we land feet-first on the horizontal surface of a nearby building; the claws in our sabaton grip into the concrete, and we send in roots of metal and Firmament to stabilize ourselves and watch the result.

The Seedmother roars. It's in pain. Its carapace is absolutely shattered at the point of impact, revealing pink-white flesh that pulses in an almost grotesque fashion. The circuitry on its carapace almost immediately reorganizes itself, rerouting around the wound and forming into a new pattern, a new skill construct.

This one is new. It looks almost like a tree, branching outward along the shell. A pulse of Firmament goes into the newly-formed construct, then a green forms at the tip of its horn—

We don't have time to react to this one.

The orb flickers, and when the skill is cast, it turns into forks of lightning that blast through the air. It passes through my armor and barely affects me; Guard jerks in place from the impact, as it apparently severely affects his systems; Ahkelios tries to dodge, but the near-instantaneous nature of the attack...

The lightning passes through the Seed and shatters it.

Almost immediately, the Ritual blowback begins.

I try to push back the Knight so I can better examine what's happening, but it roars in defiance; it is hurt and angry and right, and it wants to kill this thing that hurt its friends. I'm briefly surprised by the intensity of that emotion—it hasn't known the three of us for that long—but it has evidently decided that we are friends, and that it wants to protect us.

That's flattering, but it's a problem right now. My Firmament sense isn't as strong when the Knight is integrated with my being, and so my sense of what the Ritual blowback is doing is dampened. I can't spare any attention to push the Knight back, either; the more I do that, the more I miss what the Ritual is doing.

So I let it have control. Better to focus what attention I can on the Ritual's failure.

Almost immediately, the Knight takes action. I feel a surge of power rush to my limbs, feel my claws sharpen and my shell harden—but my mind is elsewhere. I'm focusing on the Ritual, on the blowback.

It all starts with the Seed.

The Seed is tied almost haphazardly with the Interface, like the Integrators couldn't quite make the Interface to do what they wanted and had to brute-force it into doing what it wanted; limited though my senses are, I can feel how tiny threads of phased Firmament thread through the Seed and into the Interface, reaching a core of something that's beyond my ability to sense. The destruction of the Seed causes a ripple that echoes into the Interface...

That makes sense, actually. If the Intermediaries serve as a primary means of connecting different planets, then the Interface must serve as a secondary one; it is a single construct that ties together all Integrated planets.

What, then, do the dungeons have to do with it?

I have to push my senses farther. The Knight resists, but I manage to wrest enough control to activate both Firmament Sight and Phaseslip; it pushes everything just a little bit farther into clarity, and allows me to see...

What is that?

I can't be sure what I'm looking at, but it feels almost like the dungeon is part of the Interface—like the threads that lead into the core of the Interface also attach to the edges of this dungeon, right at the corners of what I can sense. The entirety of the Empty City is twisted into itself, creating a self-sustaining bubble of space that's stored in the Interface.

Is that what this is? Does the Interface somehow take these dungeons and... contain them within itself?

Before I can think on it any further, a second attack slams through me; this time, it's one of the Seedmother's legs. The Knight snarls in retaliation, resisting as much as it can. Our armor survives for a moment as the street cracks around us.

Another moment.

Two more.

Impossible pressure rises around us, and we resist with everything we can—but eventually, the street beneath us cracks, and we plummet into darkness—

The skill ends. I come back to awareness, my chest heaving; even Ahkelios looks a little bit shaken. He climbs off my shoulder, looking a little bit dazed, and neither of us say anything for a long moment.

"First of all," he manages to say, his voice not entirely steady, "that's cheating."

"Was it?" Even in my current state, I manage a cheeky grin at the mantis. "I'm pretty sure I'm just using what's available to me."

"It's cheating," he insists stubbornly, though he can't quite resist the grin that steals across his face. "...You think you can use what we found?"

"I'm sure I can." It's going to take me a while—I'm not dumb enough to think I can mess around with the Interface without severe consequences just yet. But once I've got Gheraa back... well, who knows?

I hear Guard's thrusters in the distance. He wasn't kidding about being able to find me.

"Wanna take bets on how many tries it'll take us to beat the Seedmother?" I ask, injecting a bit of levity into my tone. Ahkelios looks up at me.

"Five," he says.

"Three," I say easily. And only because I want to study those skill constructs on its back.

Guard lands a moment later. "Four," he says, having apparently heard the conversation. "I will adjust my strategy, but it is not an easy battle."

"We will adjust our strategy," I say, smirking. "But fine. Let's see who's right."