Die. Respawn. Repeat.

"Whoa, whoa," I say, holding up both of my hands. It's not that I'm against fighting — it's that I'm not prepared. This is the first I'm hearing of this. The Interface is a massive, powerful thing that the Integrators control, and I've tried directly fighting it once to no avail; I can't imagine a second battle will go well, no matter how much I've grown since then. If I'm going to fight the Interface, I need to bank all my credits, get every Inspiration I can, try out every combination I can make with the All-Seeing Eye...

...Except there really isn't the time to do all of that, is there? I can bank all of my credits, certainly, but I don't know how comparable this fight is going to be. I don't know anything about this upcoming fight.

"You scared?" the healer-crow asks, shooting me a withering look. I look at Mari for help, but she's distracted looking after Tarin. Ahkelios pokes me in the cheek with a hand and shakes his head.

"He's not scared," he says confidently, puffing out his chest.

I mean, I'm not, but I don't like Ahkelios answering for me. "I just need to know more," I say. "Shouldn't we take him outside? We don't want to damage the hut, or hurt anyone, right?"

"No need," the healer-crow says, shaking her head dismissively. "Willpower fight. You help Tarin fight Firmament. Mari and I help. It lose."

"Because Tarin was already fighting it off on his own," I guess. Healer-crow gives me a sharp nod, but doesn't spend any more time on my questions; she's already dipped that paintbrush into the paste she made with the Phantom Root. It's a strange, sickly-green sort of color, and she paints a circular streak on his forehead, then his chest with a quick, skilled motion.

Lacking anything else to do, I pay attention to what I can tell is happening with my Firmament sense. The paste itself is filled to the brim with the Phantom Root's Firmament, and what's particularly interesting is that the nature of it doesn't appear to have changed. For all that the Root's been mashed up, its Firmament remains entire intact, and I can sense small tendrils of Firmament reaching out like the branches of a tree — not unlike a miniature version of the Root when it was still planted back in the Hotspot.

All this changes when it's painted onto Tarin's feathers. I can feel those filaments of Firmament reach down into him, pulling Firmament out and into the paste — somehow, it's doing this intelligently, picking out only the foreign Firmament and concentrating it into a pulsing mass on his chest.

If nothing else, I can certainly see why the healer said there would be a fight.

The Interface Firmament is an ugly, misshapen blob, though it's not nearly strong enough for me to see it beyond a faint misty haze in the air. I hesitate only a little before diverting some of my Firmament towards the new skill, Tetrachromacy.

A burst of color emerges, just above Tarin's chest. There's a little more resolution to it than my Firmament sense offers, and so I see what's happening in much more detail — the way the Interface is being slowly drawn out of him through the two circles and into the air above him. Contrary to my Firmament sense, it doesn't quite sit on his chest. What I'd parsed as a blob is instead a shape that's slowly getting more and more humanoid.

Tarin is stirring, though, so I know this is working. I prepare myself, though I'm not sure what exactly it is that I need to do — I sense both Mari and the healer-crow cycling their Firmament and bringing it to the forefront, so I attempt to mimic the motion, using Firmament Manipulation to cycle it through my body and up to the surface.

The change is immediate.

It's like every sense sharpens immediately. It's nowhere near as powerful as the skills I have, of course; even Tough Body provides more of an upgrade than this does. But I feel more, with Firmament coursing through my body. Just a little bit more durable, just a little bit stronger, just a little bit more perceptive. Every brush of wind against my clothing is like a spark in my mind.

The Interface Firmament continues to gather above Tarin. The healer-crow narrows her eyes at it, and then at me.

"You not fight it now," she says, warning me. I tilt my head in a slight nod. I hadn't been planning to. If they hadn't tried to disrupt it already, there must have been a reason, and that reason is probably related to the tiny tendrils of Firmament that continue to fuel it.

Tarin stirs.

The old crow shifts in his bed, probably for the first time in days, and then lets out a small groan of discomfort; the healer-crow and Mari react almost immediately, and I'm only a split-second behind. Both of them shoot a wing forward, plunging it into the mass of Firmament and flooding it with their own. I join in a second later, pushing all the Firmament I've collected into my hand and into the foreign mass once I see what they're doing —

— and there is a resonance.

I feel it a moment before either Mari or the healer-crow do, although I see the alarm on their faces. I see Tarin suddenly sit up, his eyes sharper than I'd expect for having been unconscious for days, and he forces a flood of Firmament out of his body far in excess of anything I'd thought he had. That Firmament spikes into the mass of Interface Firmament, and it flares, turning into a chaotic jumble of raw power that sucks greedily at all three of us.

For a moment, I resist — but Ahkelios pokes at me and shakes his head. "I know what this is, I think," he says, his voice tinged with a small amount of wonder. "Let it take you. Trust me."

Do I trust him?

Yes.

The Interface Firmament draws on me, and I let it, staggering forward as it pulls until there's almost nothing left save for a small core remaining inside me; the rest charges into the Interface, mixing and pulsing, a thin thread connecting me and the Interface Firmament and then Ahkelios.

My vision pulses, and then I'm standing in an empty void. Ahkelios still stands on my shoulder, looking around in wonder, though he clings a little to my shirt as he looks around.

"It's a phase shift," Ahkelios says. "Your phase shift. I didn't think it'd happen this early..."

There are sparks off in the distance. One of them is enormous, and growing larger by the second; it's an off-blue network of Firmament that stretches off into the distance, farther than the eye can see. The others are smaller — one a pitch-black bundle of Firmament, another lilac purple, and the third a vibrant forest green.

Somehow, I know exactly what they are. Tarin, the healer-crow, and Mari respectively; their Firmament donations lie in this void-space, shifting erratically around the large pillar of Interface Firmament.

"What's a phase shift?" I ask.

"It's a shift in the quality of your Firmament," Ahkelios answers quietly. "The first one is almost always random — it happens when you've accomplished something that's personally important to you, and you've gathered and trained your Firmament enough to make it happen. A phase shift isn't as important for an Integrated user like yourself as much as it is for non-Integrated users like Mari and Tarin, but it's still a significant change..."

"It takes six months for your first phase shift, usually," Gheraa pipes up. I startle, taking a step back and glancing around — but I don't see him anywhere. It's just his voice echoing within the void, and he sounds regretful when he speaks again. "Sorry, I can't join you in this one. It's purely mental. But I can give you advice."

"I'm not sure I should be listening to your advice," I mutter. Gheraa is silent for a minute.

"In matters of the phase shift, we Integrators do not lie," he says, though there's a note of something in his voice. I'm not sure what it is. It's unfamiliar, certainly. There's an undercurrent of bitterness in his voice that I do not recognize, and I wonder how different he would look if I could see him. "And I am sure your companion would tell you if I did."

"I will!" Ahkelios says defiantly, crossing his arms. Then he cringes slightly as if he's expecting lightning to strike him, and lets out a small sigh of relief when it doesn't. I chuckle slightly and give him a small pat on the head.

"Listen carefully. You are new to phase shifts, but you are also extremely lucky. Your first phase shift determines the base layer of your Firmament, and most individuals only get to make use of their own. You have three Firmament users with healing, earth, and speed cores to help you, and you have a massive pillar of Interface Firmament to help you out. This has quite literally never happened before.

"The Interface is a unique thing. It can handle all different types of Firmament and transform them in ways that are impossible for any individual species. It combines the strengths of every living species it has ever recorded, every—"

A small pause. "...I cannot say," he says, a small hint of regret in his voice.

"But before you lies an opportunity. For every piece of Firmament you can hold, your baseline layer of Firmament will be stronger. You will be able to raise yourself to greater heights, to handle greater skills.

"Begin by approaching the Firmament cluster. Keep your own Firmament at the ready, guarded, around you. The Firmament may be adversarial and fight you, or it may be cooperative and join with you. You will have to fight it with your willpower or with your fists, whichever works more easily for you. Understood?"

"Any lies?" I mutter to Ahkelios, and the little mantis shakes his head. I don't think so, he mouths.

"I'm hurt," Gheraa says, although he mostly just sounds tired. There's maybe the smallest hint of teasing in his voice, mixed in with more melancholy than anything. "There isn't much time left. Go."

I go.

The Firmament sparks are much bigger than they seemed in the distance — the pillar of Interface Firmament looms above me, stretching out into the sky. Even the sparks from Tarin, Mari, and the healer-crow whose name I still don't know are larger than I am. Out of more instinct than anything else, I head for Tarin's spark first.

I don't want it to fade. If he needs his Firmament, and I can give it back to him...

As my hand makes contact with the pitch-black, sparking mass, though—

Trialgoer? I haven't heard Tarin's voice in so many loops it's almost unfamiliar, though I almost stagger with the relief I feel when I hear it. Trialgoer! You here! What happen? I remember raid. I not remember what happen after.

I'm startled. I'd forgotten for a moment that this was a different loop — that he shouldn't be able to remember me — and yet it appears that he does, even if his memories are from several loops ago. I'm briefly overwhelmed; I'd expected him to forget, and I'd just wanted to make sure he wasn't permanently dead.

"You died," I say quietly, and Tarin's Firmament stills.

Oh.