Jun shifted me until I saw her helmet staring back at me, but I couldn’t see anything through her visor.

“How do you know he’s got his eyes open?” Jun asked. “I can’t see anything through his visor.”

“Augmented senses.” Okeria said, then didn’t elaborate, as if those two words explained everything. “He moved his head ta watch what I did ta Endra’s bug, so he’s gotta have his eyes open. Or he’s having a very strange dream. Again, now, keep running.” He gently tapped Jun’s shoulder with his free hand, and smacked his pistol against his hip. “We’re actually close this time, and I really don’t feel like being mulched this close ta safety.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Jun said with a vigorous nod that rocked my body.

The next handful of minutes were filled with full-tilt sprinting and the sound of electricity-enhanced gunshots. Okeria fired at anything that even remotely looked like a bug, and every now and again, the sound of a woman screaming echoed through the tunnels. Each and every time it sounded less and less like Nia, and more like the chittering monster that had killed her.

By the time Jun reached the entrance to the hazard, I’d regained the use of most of my body. But not the strength to accompany it. I craned my neck to try and get a better look at the stone arch that stood in the center of a small room, a collection of misshapen brown rocks that somehow stacked on each other to form a near perfect half-circle. Each and every one lit up as Okeria approached, small brilliant indentations that began leaking crystal clear water onto a stone slab below.

Okeria gestured with his gun to the center of the stone slab. “Set him down in the middle there. The hazard won’t take long ta open, but we can’t be too careful now. Endra can’t burrow through that stone there, so he’ll be as safe as can be.”

“How safe can I really be?” I ground out, the words feeling like sandpaper against the inside of my throat. “Isn’t Endra just going to follow us through?”

Jun winced as she set me down, propping me up against one side of the arch so I wasn’t staring at the ceiling. “You don’t have to talk right now, Seb. It sounds like it’s torture to you.”

“He’ll live. He isn’t soft like most new recruits, are ya human?” Okeria half asked, half stated. “Anyone with enough courage ta go toe-ta-toe with an Embodiment, no matter how weakened she was, is someone with the sky’s blessing. And no, Endra isn’t going to follow us through. She doesn’t have access to the system like we do, even if she tried to take Persephonia’s body for that specific purpose.”

I frowned at Okeria; I could’ve sworn I didn’t tell him that much. Was someone feeding him information through his interface? “Are you talking to Jun’s grandma right now?”

The watermelon slayer shook his head. “Keratily won’t use the transmitter I gave her, even if it was an emergency. I just had time to check the cameras I’ve got all about while we were running from Endra.”

Okeria lifted a finger, and a small silver cube appeared perfectly balanced on it. A carving of four eyes, just like the ones every Staura had, glowed electric blue then split apart into a field of static. In that static, I saw Nia’s massive monstrosity fighting off all of Addia’s chosen. I saw Endra emerge from Nia’s death. And finally, I saw myself fight off the obviously weak Embodiment, before she wrapped herself in a cocoon and I took Nia’s body to try and find help.

A curtain of water fell over my shoulders while I tried to process just what Okeria’s core function was. As I looked up to see why the drips had turned into a deluge, I witnessed the moment the hazard opened itself to us. The water suddenly disappeared, and a foul-smelling oil instead cascaded over my head and shoulders. It was the kind of dirty, thick oil you’d find in a car that hadn’t had a change since it rolled off the lot in the late eighties, and it didn’t so much as flow as fall in semi-liquid clumps.

The tunnel shook, and pairs of spines began shooting out of the ground from the far edge of my vision, then angled slightly towards the next pair that emerged. As if something was curling in on itself to try and trap us.

Okeria leveled his handgun at the approaching spines and fired off three quick recoil-less shots. Far more than three spines burst into shards of black scale-plate and bright orange blood, the advancement slowing ever so slightly but not stopping in the slightest.

“That’s cue number one and two!” Okeria called over the growing rumbling, grabbing Jun around the shoulders and diving into the oily curtain of the arch. The both of them disappeared, and a notification inviting me to join my party member in the Dredged Switchport appeared in their wake. I watched with morbid interest as the spines grew closer and closer, Endra’s shrieks growing louder and louder as they approached.

“You’ll regret not being strong enough to kill me then.” I said quietly, mentally pressing [Y] to accept the invitation. Oil overtook my vision and I felt myself slipping away, taken by whatever force controlled the hazards to the Dredged Switchport.

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

My armor was gone, and so was the pain. It was dark, but I could see a glowing copy of myself sitting in a chair a good dozen steps away. The End nodded at me with my own overweight chins and gestured for me to take a seat.

I sat without looking to see if it had manifested something under me. Luckily, it had. {Is this going to happen every time I go into or leave a hazard?}

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The End opened its mouth to speak, then shut it. As if it was about to say one thing, but another instead came to its mind.

//ER, YES.

//IT WILL HAPPEN EVERY TIME.

//THE… UNIQUE NATURE OF OUR AGREEMENT REQUIRES US TO SPEAK EACH AND EVERY TIME YOU TRAVEL THROUGH THE TEARS IN EXISTENCE.

//YES; OF COURSE THAT IS WHY.

It nodded a little too vigorously to itself between sentences, and I narrowed my eyes at it. Something was off in its explanation, but I couldn’t quite place it. There was no way this all-powerful being was making an excuse to talk to me.

Was there? I shook my head and chuckled to myself. No, it couldn’t be.

{Alright, then. So are you making any progress with my memories? I’d like to get the feelings that go along with them back sometime soon.}

//UNFORTUNATELY, NO.

//THE SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES THAT YOU FOUND YOURSELF IN MAKE THEIR RECOVERY SOMETHING OF AN ARDUOUS TASK.

//ONE WITH DIFFICULTY AKIN TO PULLING A SINGLE STRAND OF SPIDER SILK THROUGH A MAZE OF TIGHTLY WOVEN COTTON THREADS, AND IF THE SILK TOUCHES THREAD, IT IS LOST FOREVER MORE.

Silk and thread. Two things that were very similar, but not quite the same. There had to be meaning in The End’s choice of words, but I was a little too focused on getting back to Jun and Okeria at the moment to consider them.

{How long do we have? And how long will it… how do I say this…} I sighed and shook my head. The End waited patiently for me to gather my thoughts, simply staring me down with my own damn eyes. {Did you do the same thing to this place that you did to Nia’s storage room?}

The End nodded.

//IF YOU ARE REFERRING TO TIME DILATION, THEN YES.

//OTHERWISE WE WOULD HAVE BUT A HANDFUL OF FLEETING SECONDS TOGETHER IN THIS SPACE.

So no matter how quickly I wanted this to go, I would still end up in the hazard at the exact same time. I’d run into a few hazards where time flowed a little faster or slower than normal, but nothing like what The End was capable of doing.

{I’ll take your word for it, and I’ve got a whole lot of questions about what the hell just happened. Which one of those people was actually Addia’s chosen? And did the rest of them just, I don’t know, swear allegiance to Addia? Or Endra, I guess.}

//OH, AN EMBODIMENT CAN HAVE MULTIPLE CHOSEN.

//THOUGH IT IS A GRUELING PROCESS ON BOTH SIDES BEYOND THE ABSOLUTE FIRST.

//INOPSY, SEFFLARIA, AND BOTH OF THE ENDRA REPRESENTATIVES AT THAT TABLE WERE CHOSEN.

Sefflaria? Was that the woman I’d just been calling the ‘other Matria’? {Okay, I guess. That makes this a whole lot more complicated, but okay.} I sighed and looked down at the absolutely dark floor, trying to make sense of what this meant for me. {How many chosen does each Human Embodiment have?”

The End held up a single finger.

{Okay. I can… I can work with that. Will whoever our Embodiment of Endurance is work with me to kill Endra? Or is that a hopeless cause?} I asked. I didn’t think The End would send me on a wild goose chase, but there was always a chance.

//I CANNOT SAY.

//AND NOT AS IN I AM WITHHOLDING INFORMATION, BUT AS IN, I TRULY DO NOT KNOW IF HE WILL WORK WITH YOU.

//MY INFORMATION ON THE HUMAN EMBODIMENTS IS SEVERELY LACKING.

//WHEN YOU LEAVE, I WILL GATHER AS MUCH INFORMATION AS POSSIBLE AND PRESENT IT TO YOU WHEN WE SPEAK AGAIN.

{So Endra isn’t going to stop hunting me as long as she’s alive. How am I supposed to–}

Light suddenly flooded the darkness, a perfect square that silhouetted the shape of a very hunched over creature that I’d seen once before. The End turned to look at The Custodian, then gestured at me as if to say ‘I’m busy with something’.

“I’m sorry, but you have a burial to attend to.” The Custodian said in a non-apologetic tone, then turned to me and nodded. “Hello again, Sebastian.”

I didn’t really know what to say, so I just waved hi at the hazard 99 monster that stood at the open door like an annoyed mother. It looked at me for a moment, tilted its head to the side, then waved back.

The End sighed, my own voice splitting into the deep rumblings of a glacier crushing everything under it, and shifted. It was no longer me, but some sort of cloth-clad monstrosity that flowed soundlessly towards the Custodian.

//SO I DO.

//REMEMBER PERSEPHONIA’S INHERITANCE, SEBASTIAN.

//SHE WISHED TO AID YOU, EVEN IN THE FACE OF HER OWN MORTALITY.

//DO NOT WASTE THAT SELFLESS ACT.

The Custodian stepped to the side to let The End pass, then walked towards me as the door instantly shut behind it. It waved at the chair The End had sat in, the piece of furniture wobbling and shifting until it settled on the form of a large boulder. The Custodian curled on it like a snake, then cleared its throat with a light cough.

“The End wishes it could help you more, but it is strictly bound by the rules others tend to skirt around. When you get to Rainbow Basin, accept the invitation Keratily Keratily extended to you. Moricla’s worshippers are the closest you have to allies among the Staura.”

{Not Addia’s chosen?} I asked. I felt like I’d made a sort of freakish connection with Inopsy, but now that I thought again, it probably wasn’t a good thing to have.

“Inopsy doesn’t speak for all of Addia’s chosen, and definitely not for all of their allies. You can trust him, but do not count on him for anything whatsoever.” The Custodian answered seriously. “Your only true ally in the all-world should be obvious to you. Trust her before anyone else.”

I did trust Jun before anyone else, but it was reassuring to hear that from something else. {You don’t have to tell me that.}

The Custodian laughed, a sound that leaked out of its body rather than being pushed. “I don’t, do I? Good luck down there, Sebastian. May //NULL protect and guide you.”