If not for Quicken Mind, I might have spent a few too many seconds staring, dumbfounded. I can sense no outside Firmament at work here, and Premonition hasn't alerted me to any new danger. Whatever just happened, it's something specific to Guard.

I just don't know what it is.

I do know his Firmament is running rampant within his body. He twitches and jerks on the ground as power so thick it's almost liquid pours out of him, pooling on the ground as puddles of purple light. Tarin and Miktik both take a step back, Miktik's antennae waving cautiously and Tarin's wings held up in front of him defensively.

My thoughts are racing. Maybe this is related to the Fracture somehow. If I'm right, and Guard is the reason the Fracture exploded early — if he somehow accelerated the anomaly just by being here — then this could be a part of how.

And there's also the fact that part of me feels sympathetic, I suppose. There's too much I don't know about Guard for me to put him in the same irredeemable category as Whisper. There are too many hints that he's not entirely in control of himself, like so many people around her.

"Guard?" I ask. He twitches a little at the sound of his name, but that's the extent of the response I get. I reach out cautiously, touching his shoulder and gently rolling him over so I can take a better look at him.

He looks... dead. There's only the faintest thrum of Firmament left inside of him, flickering weakly, like a flame about to falter and die. None of it is the immensely dense and powerful purple Firmament that normally powers his body. Instead, it's a smaller, multicolored core — the same color I see peeking through the purple every so often.

There just isn't enough of it here to power the body.

Before I can try anything else, though, the liquid Firmament around him starts to move. This time, I do take a cautious step back, and I watch as small shapes begin to form out of the Firmament. These shapes almost look like miniature versions of him, though they're small and faded and weak.

I pause. Mechanical Remnants? It would fit. I'd need to kill one of them to be sure, and I'm not convinced that's a good idea—

One of the little Firmament shadows launches itself at me before I can complete the thought, and I bat it out of the sky with an instinctive combination of Barrier and Crystallized Strength.

[ You have defeated a Mechanical Remnant (Rank F)! +5 Strength credits. +1 Reflex credit. ]

I'm surprised I got anything out of it at all. But that confirms it, then — these are the things that were periodically dying. Whatever is happening now must have happened back when I knocked Guard into the Fracture, triggering a slow stream of these Mechanical Remnants to emerge from his leftover Firmament.

Except this time there's no blast of Firmament from the Fracture to explain why this happened to him at all.

I look around, suddenly cautious. I realize that I'm being a bit too relaxed about the lack of warning from Premonition, the lack of sensation from Firmament Sense. Miktik and Tarin have good reason to be cautious.

"Did anyone see what hit him?" I ask. Both Tarin and Miktik shake their heads, Tarin with a little more trepidation.

And then as if in answer to the question, a swarm arrives.

It's hard to describe exactly what the swarm is of. It's some kind of insect, certainly, but they're closer to mutated lumps of flesh and chitin. A single long proboscis droops low below their bodies, swaying with the breeze. There's an iridescent film that coats their bodies, too; it looks sticky. I see a few of them bump clumsily into each other and struggle to pull apart.

They're slow. They'd be slow even if I was facing them without the Interface and without the benefits of Quicken Mind and my various speed skills — they don't move so much as drift vaguely in the same direction.

Miktik collapses. Tarin caws with worry, moving to her side and shaking her to no response; I don't need to look over at her to notice that her Firmament is fading, just like Guard's. She's dead, and she's died without even a whisper of an attack. I didn't see anything, and neither did Tarin.

I need to figure out what's happening. There are only two of us left now, and odds are good this loop is going to end soon. We could run, but with how little information we have, we could very well end up running directly into the thing that's killing us.

And I'm not sure I'd be able to convince Tarin to leave anyway. The old crow looks devastated.

It's related to the swarm. It has to be. They don't look particularly threatening, and Premonition still isn't triggering; I don't know if that's because they're not attacking me specifically or because their vector of attack is some kind of blindspot in the workings of Premonition.

Tarin cries out and staggers. He's the only one so far that hasn't been instantly downed — but his Firmament is suddenly weak and flickering.

Enough. I know it has something to do with the swarm, and that's all I need. I'll figure out how this is happening afterwards. Firmament floods my body as I trigger my Speed skills and launch myself at the swarm; at the same time, I call on Ahkelios with a pulse of intent. Temporal Fragment triggers, and the mantis flickers into existence on my shoulder, his little eyes alert and landing almost immediately on the swarm.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Fight?" he asks.

"Yep," I say.

Impact.

My fist crushes the first bug apart with almost no resistance. It's disgusting, the way it splatters against my fingers; I call up the Amplification Gauntlet a second too late to protect me from the splash of its guts. The second one falls apart, too, and I grimace as it pops like a balloon, splattering warm viscera onto my face.

[ You have killed a Time Fly (Rank A)! +1 Firmament credit. ]

[ You have killed a Time Fly (Rank A)! +1 Firmament credit. ]

Almost no reward, but... they're Rank A. The lack of Firmament is probably just because there are so many of them, and they're relatively easy to kill — but that makes the danger ranking all the more concerning. What makes them Rank A if they're this easy to kill?

Is the name a hint? Time. Whatever they're doing is related to time. That might explain why Premonition isn't triggering, why no one is reacting or responding before they're killed. It might explain why Tarin lasted a little longer than the rest — why I'm the last one to be targeted. Tarin and I both have a little piece of the Interface within us that keeps us stable between loops. A small fragment of something temporal.

I'm clearly not killing them fast enough, because I feel the last spark of Tarin's Firmament fade away even as I'm fighting through the swarm. I can already feel something vital being drawn away from me. My body's a little weaker than before, and my skills aren't as bright. My Firmament is flagging.

Premonition still hasn't trigg—

There.

There's a spark from Premonition, but I notice something almost immediately wrong — this is warning me that Guard is about to get attacked. My gaze darts to the automaton's body, lying still on the ground, and then jumps to the cloud of flies hovering just above him.

Not above him. They form the outline of him. It's where he was standing a minute ago.

They're attacking backwards through time. That's why Premonition isn't triggering — the effect is happening before the cause. I see something vital get sucked out of thin air and into the flies surrounding Guard, get a brief sense of barrier and separation and protection through my Firmament sense.

They pulled out something vital from him?

They descend around Miktik next. I wonder what will happen if I manage to kill them before they manage to kill her. And I try, I really do. But even though I'm conscious, even though I can think... I can't move.

I get the faint impression of a single large proboscis stabbing into my stomach. There's nothing there, of course. I reach for my only Temporal skill — Temporal Fragment — and I can feel something lying there, out of sync with time, sucking vitality away outside the boundaries of causality.

Rude, I manage to think.

[ You have died. ]

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

Time Flies. It's a pun.

I stare up at the sky, expecting the mantis scythe to descend upon me any second. I'd welcome it, too. I don't think it'd kill me, at this point — not if I use the right defensive skills, or even if I just flood Firmament into my head and neck to reinforce it, the way crows do — but it'd be a welcome distraction from the fact that the Interface has apparently chosen to name a deadly, causality-breaking plague after a pun.

"Um... You okay, Ethan?" Ahkelios asks. He's standing on my chest, and he waves his hands over my eyes, worried about my lack of response. When I blink, he looks relieved. "Oh, good. I thought you died."

"Time Flies," I say out loud this time. "The Interface calls them Time Flies!"

Ahkelios pauses, and when he speaks again, his tone is measured and careful. "I can see that this bothers you," he says. "But I'm gonna be honest, I have no idea why."

I throw my hands up. "Time flies! It's a pun based on a common Earth saying. Time flies when you're having fun."

"Oh." Ahkelios blinks. "I'm sorry for saying so, but I don't think fighting those things was very fun."

"That's part of why I'm mad about it, yes," I grumble. I force myself to sit up — my body aches in strange ways, presumably because of whatever method of attack the Time Flies use. My Firmament feels a little more unstable than it should, and I briefly hope that Tarin hasn't been affected in some deeper way due to his connection with the loop.

If nothing else, Whisper probably didn't get to see much of my abilities, considering Guard was the first one that died. She certainly wouldn't have had the time to send anything back to herself, even if she wanted to.

"Hey, aren't we supposed to get attacked here?" Ahkelios looks around. "Where's the... uh... scary version of me?"

I snort a little at Ahkelios' phrasing. "I have no idea," I admit. "But you absorbed something from it last time. Maybe it can't come back each loop anymore."

In fact, as I say it, I'm convinced that that's exactly what happened. Ahkelios has absorbed a piece of that Broken Horror into himself — that piece of him no longer belongs to the loop, or to the Interface. It's been restored to him.

For his part, Ahkelios looks thoughtful. "We should find the others," he says. "There are gonna be other pieces of me lying around, right? Maybe higher ranked ones?"

He sounds a little hopeful at the last part. I narrow my eyes at him, though my tone is playful. "Why do you want higher ranked ones?"

"I was pretty strong before I died, I'm pretty sure," Ahkelios says. He puffs out his chest. "If I get those fragments, maybe I'll be even stronger! Also, I'm kind of offended that the only me-variant we've seen attack you is a Rank F monster."

I can't help but laugh. "I feel like you glossed over a lot of deeply horrifying things in those sentences."

"I went through the loops too," Ahkelios says seriously. "Trust me, glossing over deeply horrifying things is a skill you need to develop."

He's... probably not wrong about that. I shake my head, smiling in spite of myself. "Come on," I say. "Let's go find Tarin."

"Can we find some moss first?"

I chuckle. "Sure."

It'll be a good opportunity to bank some of my credits.