Tarin's packed up and ready by the time I get back. Mari shooed me off after our conversation, telling me she needed to go visit some of the other crows in the village to get our supplies ready. I don't question her — this version of her doesn't know me as well, and I imagine she still wants some time to herself.

Tarin, on the other hand? The old crow looks surprisingly excited.

"First time you've gone out in a while?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.

"No! I went look for you, remember?" Tarin crosses his wings, looking indignant, and I laugh.

"Guess you have a point." I hesitate. "Did you find anything interesting in the Great Cities? Anything we should take note of?"

Tarin pauses, then takes a second to think about the question. "I mostly focus on finding you," he says thoughtfully. "But I think I see big fight in city. That about thirty days after we meet."

"How big was the fight?" I ask, more out of curiosity than anything.

"Very." Tarin actually frowns a little as he speaks, which worries me more than anything else he's mentioned so far, considering he's talking about a fight. "I think it Trialgoer fight. Hestian Trialgoers... I not sure if Naru there. But many things destroyed. I run."

"You mean you didn't try to join in?" Ahkelios peeks over my head curiously, which he's... actually kind of worse at doing now that he's bigger. It's not like my hair can hide most of his body anymore.

"I not going to fight Trialgoer. Unless it Naru." Tarin says, huffing. "And finding Ethan more important! Also Trialgoer fight... very strange. I not join even if I want."

"That makes it sound like you tried to join in," I say dryly, and when Tarin doesn't say anything in response, I groan and stare at him. "Tarin."

"I need see how strong our enemies are!" Tarin says, which is absolutely not an excuse for someone who at the time was not in the loop and — from his point of view — would have suffered a permanent death if he had been even a little bit less careful. I hadn't considered that time loop existentialism could potentially be infectious. "And it help, see?"

I don't think I'm up for a conversation about best practices in time loops right now. It's not like I'm an expert—

To my surprise, Ahkelios speaks up.

"You still need to be careful," the mantis says seriously. "What're you gonna do if you leave Mari alone, huh? She would've had to experience you being missing for two months if you died."

Tarin looks briefly nonplussed. "I not think about that," he says awkwardly after a moment. "I be more careful in future."

"Please do," I say. I haven't tried this before, but I pluck at the Firmament bond between Ahkelios and I, sending a resonant feeling of gratitude down the line; Ahkelios responds with what appears to be the emotional equivalent of a thumbs up.

I should talk to him more later, now that he's regained a little more of his memories and a little more of his agency.

"Do you have any idea what the fight was about?" I ask after a short pause. "I don't suppose they were yelling their motivations at each other or anything?"

Tarin gives me a strange look. "No, they only fighting," he says. "But I think I see... strange Firmament coming from building. Not from skill."

Now that's interesting. Tarin isn't even as sensitive to Firmament as I am, so if there's something visible to him, it must have been strong enough to be visible to anyone. "Any idea which building it was?"

Tarin shrugs. "If we in city again, I show you," he says . "I remember!"

Well, that's where we're headed — and it seems like that's the best I'm going to get out of him. I glance up at the ceiling, a little bit worried that the robot that attacked me in the Fracture is going to show up again. For no particular reason, really. Just a strange impulse, like I'm being compelled to look at something that isn't there.

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It feels a lot like a premonition.

—

It's not long before we're ready to leave. It all feels eerily familiar, with the only difference being that Tarin is heading out with me instead of Rotar, and Mari is the only one staying behind. We're bringing out practically the same set of supplies, with a little extra handful of berries that Mari had informed me were Tarin's favorite and that I would have to ration them.

In retrospect, I feel I should have questioned the berry thing a bit more, but I can't ask her about it now without Tarin seeing. I'll probably just ask Ahkelios later.

"You careful, okay?" Mari says firmly. She says it more to Tarin than to me, although she does acknowledge me with a slight nod of her head; I try not to think too hard about the lack of recognition in her eyes. She sees me as someone she has chosen to trust, but she doesn't really see me as the person who saved her husband.

In this loop, I'm the one taking him away from her.

"We careful!" Tarin agrees. "I protect Ethan!"

He says that to reassure her. I see her glance at me out of the corner of her eye, her brow slightly raised, and I hold back a chuckle. It's not that Tarin isn't able to protect me — it's that she's expecting me to pull my weight.

"We'll protect each other," I say, and some of the tension in Mari's shoulders bleeds out a bit. She gives both of us a broad smile, sweeping Tarin into a tight hug that I look away from and then giving me a less affectionate but equally gentle one — I've forgotten how easily these two trusted me, and how much they gave me just on my word alone. Tarin's one thing in this loop, since he remembers, but Mari...

Over and over, she's been choosing to trust me. I almost ask her why.

But I don't.

We depart from the Cliffside Crows with much more fanfare than before — the crows are all quite understandably attached to their village grandpa, and several of them want to delay us a little bit so they can throw a farewell party, but Tarin is very firm about saying no. He doesn't stop them from crowding around him and giving and well-wishes, and I watch as half the children in the village come up to give him a tight hug. Tarin gives every single one of them a personalized message about being good.

...Sometimes he also gives them a training regimen, which they seem to be very excited about.

I wait through all of it. It surprises me, but some of the crows come up to me, too, telling me they hoped the trip would go well and that they were excited to see us come back. That touches me in an unexpected way. I'd expected resentment for taking someone away from them, but I don't see any of that. They all just genuinely wish me well.

I'd save this village from a dozen more raids if I have to. The thought occurs to me just out of the blue. It was worth the pain of those loops. I mean, I already would have. But now the thought of the possibility of the Integrators calling down another raid on them — of Naru attacking them, or the upcoming Fracture anomaly wiping them out — makes my blood boil.

"You ready?" Tarin says, interrupting my thoughts. Most of the crows save for Mari have retreated by now to give us a bit more space, although quite a few of the children are still waving frantically at Tarin. I notice among them the one kid I saw die during the raid on this village.

It's hard to forget these things, sometimes.

"Yup," I say, hoisting the makeshift satchel over my shoulder. I've chosen to carry my supplies this time instead of dumping them all into the Empty City. Mostly because I have no idea if it's safe to open, and Ahkelios isn't sure if the safe area timer has reset, either. "Let's go."

—

Okay, so there is in fact a significant difference between traveling with Rotar and traveling with Tarin, and it's that this time around it's hard for me to keep up with him. As fast as I am when I stack all my speed skills together, he's had years of experience and all his Firmament is attuned to speed; Intrinsic Lightning helps me mimic some of that, turning the main body of Firmament I control into a conduit for speed, but it still doesn't match up to him.

Flashstep lets me keep up in bursts. Warpstep is too expensive to use to teleport the distances I need to to be able to keep up with him. Accelerate... Well, I keep that skill on, because without it I would already have fallen far behind Tarin.

"What wrong?" Tarin calls back to me. "You slow!"

"You're just ridiculously fast!" I yell back at him.

Ahkelios is clinging on to my hair for dear life. He doesn't have to, of course — the nature of our bond will keep him with me — but apparently teleporting every couple of meters is very disorienting for him. Which... fair.

At the pace we're going, we won't even need a slipstream. I'm a little worried that we'll get attacked by K'hkeri again, but although I keep my eyes out and my senses peeled, I don't notice them around at all. That's probably for the best, and yet I can't help but be worried.

K'hkeri is missing. So is Rotar. There are new monsters in the loop, and they're scattered throughout the forest; the only reason we're avoiding them now is because of how fast we're going.

What else in the loops have changed?