After borrowing the money from the bladesmith to repay the banker, Zu Mari found himself feeling quite tired from the day's exertions. He wasn't planning to do anything more today, and evening was well and truly falling by now. The darkness made the amber light of Luja Ni's loop boundary plainly visible, and Zu saw more than a few people pause to frown at it before deciding it wasn't worth their time or trouble and continuing on their way.

He re-activated Shadows Darkest Secrets Surrounding, then found a comfortable pile of refuse to sleep in. No one disturbed his slumber, and he awoke in the morning with the glimmer of dawn and feeling fully refreshed and rejuvenated.

"Good morning," he said aloud, half expecting Fire Twilight Death to answer him, but his sword was still missing. "Right, I need to break in the replacement, and figure out how to retrieve my old friend. Then we need to decide where to begin with burning this place to the ground."

The godsword stirred in his spirit, a feeling of vengeful wroth emanating through their soul bond.

"Oh ho, you wish to join me on my crusade of vengeance?"

YES

It was not a word, but an absolute essence of affirmation. If the concept of 'agreement' were boiled down to its most basic core, that would be the sensation that flooded Zu's connection with the godsword.

"Excellent. Do you have a name?"

YES

"Can you tell me?"

The sensations shifted, from confirmation to a baffling array of concepts. Ruling, leadership, oversight; comfort, companionship, not-being-alone-ness; observation, suggestion, optimization.

The tangle didn't convey anything that could be called a 'name', but it did at least give him a sense of the sort of deity whose last remaining essence imbued his sword.

"So, ideal unity king?"

The sensations flashed again, this time with an emphasis on leadership and companionship and suggestion.

"Not a king. A... what. General? Army person? No. Advisor?"

Oversight. Comfort. Together not alone. Watch. Optimize.

"You're giving me too much to work with here. How am I supposed to guess your name from that whole jumble? How long will it take before you learn to talk?"

Uncertainty.

"Phoenix, Luja Ni, any help here?"

The phoenix nestled snugly against Zu's soul, as though to say 'I was here first and I don't need to speak either.'

Zu sighed. "Sure. Be that way, phoenix."

It did not deign to respond.

"Luja Ni?"

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"I do not know how gods of this world exist in comparison to those I know. It seems they are not bound to the same concepts as in my home world."

"That's... helpful, I suppose." Zu blinked, then sat up straighter. "Of course! The word for what he is isn't in my native language. It's a collection of concepts that don't mesh because I don't know the word he's trying to describe. Hah."

The godsword emanated confusion.

"It's fine, don't worry about it. I'll call you... Watcher Commanding Friends? No. Companion Advisor? No. I do like watcher though. The Watcher Who Advises In Unity?" Zu frowned in frustration. "None of these works right. Why is it so hard, naming a foreign god?"

"Do not try to encapsulate its whole essence in words. Instead, give it a simple name that can be remembered. I am Luja Ni, but I am also the essence of rebirth and time unending and beginning anew and reversing past mistakes. You would not try to name me something that says all of those things."

"Like how Serena is goddess of peace, but also has the power to move someone from world to world."

He nodded to himself. That was wise. He could find a name for the godsword without it needing to be complete shorthand for its entire essence. "You shall be... Smoke of Progression.”

Vague discontentment radiated from the sword, but Zu paid it no mind. He had more important things to do at the moment. Sheathing Smoke of Progression, he brushed himself off and got to his feet. Then he walked up the air to the nearest rooftop. He had gotten a bit turned around in the dark and wasn’t sure where he was going.

The vague problem remained that, as much as he wanted to utterly destroy the Green Flame and everything associated with it... the people here were powerful on a level beyond anything he'd experienced back home. Viha and Xashu had both been able to retain memories between loops, and the chances that none of his adversaries now had a similar advantage... were minimal at best. He had to assume that everyone he met in the castle and towers would remember him and work against him more and more each loop.

He would survive, but he couldn't be too reckless. Not if he wanted to win.

The fact that the loop began with him chained and his spirit restrained meant that anyone who knew who he was and where he was from could get to him in those vulnerable minutes before the prisoner-capturing ladies released him and have him at their mercy.

Thankfully, Menya and Nira didn't seem to have any recollection of the loop themselves. They were low level flunkies, dregs sent out to scavenge for initiates with potential, not serious threats to Zu.

But anyone else...

He had to be on guard constantly.

He was getting ahead of himself. His top priority was growing strong enough to summon Fire Twilight Death. Once he had his sword back to help him plan, then he could decide how to destroy everything. In the meantime, Smoke of Progression would have to do.

He mentally prodded the godsword. "You figured out how to talk yet?"

Discontentment.

"Yeah, I'm not happy about it either."

DISCONTENTMENT.

"Okay, okay, I hear you. You're not happy. Hurry up and learn to speak, and we can converse like civilized people."

He withdrew from the sword before it could get even more aggressive with its unhappiness.

But that left him with the question: now what?

If he couldn't start assassinating powerful people, and he couldn't make progress on his sword connection, what was there to do? He could murder a bunch of merchants, but that would raise a fuss and probably not accomplish any real damage to the Green Flame's plans for conquest. He could try to leave through a portal to somewhere else, but he had no guarantee that would be any better. He was right here, at the heart of the enemy's power. He should be able to do something.

The answer waited in the corner of his mind, just out of reach as he pointedly ignored it. Zu Mari refused to admit that he was afraid to return to the towers. He specifically did not consider that exposing his Protagonist Fragment to the powerful in a succession would be his surest line to success, that sucking up to the scions of the Green Flame would allow him to slowly but surely turn their entire organization to his allies, and then set them against each other in a glorious bloodbath that would satisfy Serena's need for them to be gone from her world.

That kind of plan would require subjecting himself to their dominance again and again, to slowly convince them that he was worth their time and then only rising up against them after weeks or months of subservience.

He knew there had to be a better way.

He was still not thinking about it when Menya and Nira found him.

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