Naru stumbles backwards, clearly stunned. It's not like I've done any actual damage to him — the raw Firmament pumping through him is enough to deflect my fist, and it's only the use of Barrier that prevents me from breaking my fist again.

It's satisfying, though. Especially the look on his face — this combination of stunned and outraged, his feathers puffing up around his face in a way that looks utterly ridiculous.

The Firmament I tried to inject into him is, unfortunately, useless. I blame it on him having a thick skull; I might as well have tried to puff air aggressively at him, for all the effect I had.

Still worth it. What an absolute ass. I'll have to practice more if I want to get that technique working.

Naru smooths out his expression after a moment, doing his best to look unruffled and unbothered. "Interesting," he says.

I don't like interesting. I didn't punch him to be interesting. Naru gestures in the air, like he's pulling up his own version of the Interface, and frowns at it.

"It's been eleven loops and a few days... You're stronger than I would expect for that amount of time." Naru frowns. "But it's not that impressive," he adds, like he needs to make sure my ego stays in check. I try not to roll my eyes, and he makes a noise not unlike the sound of a human clicking their tongue.

When I don't respond, he continues. "This must be the first time we're talking, or you wouldn't have punched me. Or I suppose you could be very stupid. Not unlike some of your fellow Trialgoers. One of you died on the second day of their Trial, can you believe that?"

He gives me a glance, like he's trying to bait a response out of me. I stare at him, keeping my expression carefully blank.

Inside, my mind is racing. Whether he's aware of it or not, he's given me a crucial piece of information — the time loop is restricted in its scope. The rest of the Trials are still running, and people are dying.

I don't have as much time as I'd hoped.

Naru seems to misinterpret my silence as fear. He laughs a single, short laugh, and then waves an arm dismissively. "You are, at least, clever enough not to respond to that," he says, and then a note of something more serious enters his voice. "But I do need answers. Why don't you tell me about how this Hotspot appeared, and we'll pretend you didn't try to kill me?"

It's not like I know. But I don't tell him that. It's the one piece of leverage I have over him.

"Why don't you tell me why the Integrators are targeting Earth?" I challenge him instead. "You can't tell me the Interface is actually meant to reward us, and frankly, I don't believe that they're testing us with the Trials. They want something."

"I don't know, and I don't care." Naru shrugs. "I was rewarded enough."

I suppress the wave of disgust at that statement. Tarin and Mari are both wonderful people. What happened to Naru to make him this way?

He's not the only person on Hestia that passed their original Trial, either; that's something I'm going to have to be wary of. Tarin told me as much, and I wonder now if he'd meant it as a warning. There are others here, likely working for the Integrators, likely to be just as or even more powerful than Naru himself.

Though whether they feel the same way about the Trials as Naru does remains to be seen.

"Why was I chosen?" I ask instead. The original message from the Interface claimed we were randomly selected, but I don't believe that, either; if the selection was truly random, something like a quarter of us Trialgoers would be children. They'd end up with infants in the pool, even.

Also, I'm just lying to see if he'll slip up. It's entirely possible it's a random selection from a limited section of the population—

"I'm not in charge of Trialgoer selection," Naru says, and I resist the urge to smile. "Besides, you should be grateful. I started my Trial nearly being eaten by a large cat."

I got stabbed by a giant mantis four times in a row, but you don't see me complaining about it.

"Now, are you going to tell me how you activated this Hotspot?" Naru glances around. "I don't really want to be here for too long. The air makes my feathers itch. And it's too close to home."

"Why aren't you worried?" I snap. "Tarin's your father! Mari's worried sick over him!"

Naru gives me a flat look. "I don't owe you any answers," he says. "If you aren't going to cooperate, I'll just take you with me. We need to investigate why exactly you're so strong, anyway, so I guess I'm going to have to do that anyway. Don't worry — we'll make sure you don't remember a thing. Gotta keep to the spirit of the trials, after all."

He smirks at me.

He moves so much faster than I can. Mental Acceleration does almost nothing to help. I catch the briefest of flickers, and then my throat is suddenly caught in his talons, a thin layer of Firmament stretching over my body like a perfectly hard seal.

I can't move, no matter how much I strain against it. He gives me just enough leeway to speak.

"Last chance to give me an answer," Naru says. His tone is almost playfully friendly. "I might take it a little easier on you if you did. Leave myself a note to only catch you in two or three loops, instead of doing it in this one. Give you a little more time. What do you say?"

"I'll give you answers when you tell me why you don't care about your parents," I snap back at him. "I watched Tarin die."

...I give away a little more than I intend, with that one. Naru doesn't seem to think much of it — he just gives me a disgusted look, as if he can't believe he's having this conversation. Then he lets out a long-suffering sigh, and obliges me with a response.

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"It's the nature of the Trials," he says. "They knew what they were getting into when Hestia was selected to host a Trial."

God, I can't wait to punch him again. Preferably harder. I'm going to invest in Strength skills just so I can punch this guy in the face more effectively. I don't bother keeping my disgust out of my voice when I respond.

"No, they didn't," I say. "And neither do you."

Naru rolls his eyes, his voice tinged with distaste. "You sound just like my father," he says. "We don't know enough about what the Integrators want. We don't know what they're doing. Who cares? We get power out of it. Isn't that enough?"

I stare at him, and come to a conclusion.

I need to die.

I need to do it quickly, before he can leave a note for himself. I'll figure out what to do about the Hotspot and the Phantom Roots in the next loop, when Naru has no idea who I am and what I've learned — from what he's said, he seems to be a part of the loops. As long as the Integrators don't tell him what happened this loop...

That's a long bet, but it's better than nothing. I don't think I'll be getting anything else out of this conversation, and the longer it goes, the more likely he'll capture me. He's faster and stronger than I am.

But he's arrogant. His ego hinges on his power.

"Power? Knowledge is power. You don't even know why this Hotspot is here," I tell him, feigning exasperation. "I bet the Integrators know. They've been watching me. Between the two of us, it sounds like they just don't trust you."

His grip on me tightens. Without Tough Body, I'm sure my windpipe would be crushed already — not that it would take him much effort to crush it if he wanted to. "You should watch your words," he advises.

"More than you watch your parents?" I try to amp up the biting sarcasm in my words. Maybe I'll roll a Firmament skill for it.

I see the rage flash across Naru's eyes. He's apparently not used to dealing with lippy humans.

Getting my throat crushed has never quite been so satisfying. It helps that he looks briefly horrified and angry with himself — not that I can tell very well, with my fading vision and all.

[ You have died. +12 Strength credits. +21 Durability credits. +7 Reflex credits. +3 Speed credits. +4 Firmament credits. ]

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

Neat. I got some Firmament credits again, even without killing. I'm going to have to figure out how that works sometime.

I should probably be a little more concerned about how easy it is for me to ignore the pain and trauma that comes with dying. I've only died — what, eleven times, now? That shouldn't be enough for me to get used to it. But I have, functionally; there's only so many times I can wake up with the terror and adrenaline of having my skull crushed or a blade pushed through my heart.

Now I just roll out of the way and take care of the mantis-monster with a single cast of Temporal Fragment, echoing back to my fifth loop, and then I stare more closely at the corpse of this monster.

There are a lot of similarities to Ahkelios. I don't exactly want to bring the mantis out just to stare at his own corpse, but this isn't exactly his corpse, is it? It's a twisted version of his past, if anything. Or a manifestation of the thing that made him give up. Or...

I still don't know what it is. I don't know what those Laments and Elegies were, either, except they seemed the same in some way — a manifestation of something. Ahkelios' words echo back to me, his suspicion that the Integrators don't have full control.

I'm starting to think that understanding what these monsters truly are will be a crucial piece of the puzzle.

The echo of Firmament in the air that I've come to associate with Ahkelios' presence as a looper isn't there, and I still haven't established any kind of pattern. I don't know what makes Ahkelios' last loop manifest. When I check the clearing, it's empty, with not a trace of his body — whether that's because I've created a connection to his fragment already or because this just isn't a loop where he's going to appear, I don't know.

I leave a flower in the spot where I buried him anyway, and then think about what to do next.

The obvious next step is to talk to Mari again, and see if there's anything she can tell me about her son. I'm early enough in the cycle that I think she might not even have checked on Tarin yet — it gives me an opportunity to get to her and talk to her before she does.

As for Naru... he's an asshole. That much we've firmly established. But I'm going to need to get past him. Either I wait him out — and I don't know if that will work; it depends on whether he's waiting for me or not — or I find a way to bait him into leaving.

There's more I need to understand, too: he'd said the color-pooling Hotspot was used in the fifty-seventh Trial. How many Trials have there been on Hestia?

I know someone that might know the answer to that question.

Ahkelios springs up as I activate Temporal Fragment, his mantis-form balanced steadily on my shoulder. He hops up onto a nearby log as I try to find the right words to broach this topic.

"You recognized him, didn't you?" I say.

Ahkelios nods, but it's a restrained nod. He's not as eager to speak as he usually is. I'm no expert with mantis body language, but the feeling of fear resonates down through our bond, followed by a complicated feeling that translates roughly to 'really doesn't want to talk about this.'

He does anyway, after gathering himself for a moment. "I don't remember the specifics," he says. "But I think he hurt me. A lot."

I'm not surprised, but I feel something in my chest tighten in anger anyway. "Do you remember that particular Hotspot?" I ask. "He said it was supposed to be from the fifty-seventh Trial. Maybe that was yours?"

"If it was, I don't remember it." To his credit, Ahkelios gives the topic serious consideration, but eventually shakes his head in frustration. "I'm only a small piece of myself."

A fragment. He doesn't say it, but I hear the words anyway.

"Are there others like Naru?" I ask instead. "He said he was the seventh successful Trialgoer. There have to be others on the planet."

"There are." Ahkelios pauses, straining to recall something, and I give him the time he needs. "There are... ten in total, I think. Naru is the physical one. There's one that can fuck with your mental Firmament. She's terrifying, but she doesn't usually show up unless you do something that really disrupts the loop. That's all I remember."

Shit. That's important information. "You think Mari will know more?"

"I don't know who that is?" Ahkelios tilts his head at me. Right. I haven't introduced him to the crows yet. "Are they a local?"

"She is, yes," I confirm. "I uh... I think she's Naru's mom."

Ahkelios visibly winces. "Oh."

"She's nice, don't worry." I give the mantis an encouraging smile.

"If she's a local, she probably knows a bit about Hestia's Trialgoers, but the Integrators aren't very public about what they can do," Ahkelios cautions. "Name, species, appearance — stuff like that is pretty public. But their abilities are locked up pretty tight."

"Right," I sigh. "That would be too easy."

Ahkelios gives me a smile. "You'll figure it out."

I raise an eyebrow, and I don't think when I speak next. "Is that really you speaking, though? Or just the Interface?"

Ahkelios falters slightly, and I see something that looks like genuine pain and worry in his eyes. "...I don't know," he says.

I feel a bit like an asshole when he cuts off his own connection, there, his Firmament fading into atmospheric noise. I shake my head and force myself to my feet. I'll find him some cool plants or something to apologize — I'm clearly still shaken from my encounter with Naru.

But first, I want to talk to Mari. Let's see what she can tell us about her son.