Die. Respawn. Repeat.

So the summary of it all is... simple. I think. It's a lot of information at once, but I've got the gist of things.

The Great Cities, it turns out, are a loose coalition of various cities in the center of this particular Hestian continent, with the very rough goal of appropriating the resources allocated to the Trial for themselves. They have the view that since Hestia is their planet, and they bear the cost of the Integrators rearranging their landscape and introducing monsters to their ecosystem, they might as well reap the rewards meant for the Trialgoer.

I'm surprised the Integrators haven't interfered, but I can't say I blame them. I'd admire them, even, for the blatant show of defiance.

Except according to Rotar more than half of their resources are wasted spying or stealing from one another. Or defending from the underground groups in their own cities that are trying to do the same thing. Or accidentally blowing up the resources they're trying to get in wildly reckless experiments.

I'm going to say my admiration stops at 'eh, they've got the right spirit, I guess'. I'm not sure how they managed to wrangle themselves into a loose collective and still fight among one another.

The Serpents that K'hkeri mentioned are one of those underground groups. It's short for the Serpents Beneath — a pretentious title if I've ever heard one — and they are, unsurprisingly, an underground organization that performs research on the Interface. They're led by one of the Hestian Trialgoers, who as best as I can gather from Rotar is some sort of metallic golem that wants to gift the Interface to all of Hestia.

Sure. Okay.

"And they want you dead because they're worried you're going to leak what you know about their plans?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at Rotar. He fidgets, fingering the doom-predicting device he holds in his feathers.

"Yes," the crow says. I guess I can understand why he's so anxious about the thing — if he fears for his life, something like that would be a game changer.

"I don't suppose that thing says we're not in danger anymore?" I say, peering at it. There's a chance the danger it was predicting was Rotar's upcoming assassination by K'hkeri. But Rotar holds it up, and the dial is still spinning wildly.

"No," he says. He sounds nervous. "We're still in range of... whatever it is."

"Or it's malfunctioning," I remind him.

"Pocket oracles are unlikely to malfunction," K'hkeri informs me, and I glance over at the morphling.

"Exactly!" Rotar gesticulates wildly at K'hkeri, vindicated by the morphling's words. "Even if something is wrong with it, whatever damaged it is going to be really dangerous in and of itself!"

In a fit of ego, I wonder if it's my presence messing with the... pocket oracle. Probably not. "When did it start going haywire, exactly?"

"I don't know." Rotar looks glum. "I was trying to check it less. I hadn't checked it for... at least a week. You saw me when I first checked it — I went to talk to Mari about it."

That places the first time we know it was detecting danger at just after I returned from the Hotspot. If I loop again and I manage to find Rotar, I'll have to see if the pocket oracle senses anything wrong earlier in the loop.

I very carefully don't think about how I framed that sentence in my head.

"Right," I say instead. "Thanks for filling me in. Maybe let's hurry to the Great Cities a bit, yeah?"

No one argues.

The problem, of course, is that our group of two — three if you count Ahkelios, though he doesn't need to be accounted for when it comes to transportation — is now a group of three, with K'hkeri taking the lead. They claim to know a 'shortcut', and neither Rotar or I quite trust them enough to let them take up the rear.

Not that it matters, either way; Ahkelios has taken it upon himself to watch K'hkeri like a hawk. I don't think he's looked away from the morphling for the past thirty minutes, and considering how easily distracted he usually is, that's saying something.

"What exactly is this shortcut supposed to be?" I ask. I glance through the Interface as we talk — I have more than enough processing power now to multitask with Quicken Mind, although it's more akin to just rapidly shifting my attention back and forth.

Two new deaths. Two new humans dead to the Trials. My heart tightens in a mixture of fear and anger.

Seven in total, now. It's a small number out of three thousand; I would have expected more deaths. But it's clear that the selection process isn't as random as they claim, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Especially since my Trial is supposedly one of the hardest, and the single caveat it has is that I can't die, because I'll just loop back in time. My mouth tightens into a grim line, but before I can ruminate on it further, K'hkeri speaks.

"It is..." the morphling pauses, as if trying to find the word. "A slipstream of Firmament. It can carry you, if you know how to use it. It is how morphlings travel."

"Are you sure you want to come with us?" Rotar asked. It's not the first time he's asked this question — I see him wringing his wings together in worry, and I sympathize. The crow knows exactly what the Great Cities did to K'hkeri. That they were so willing to walk right back into them...

"I have nowhere else to go," K'hkeri says simply.

Not much I can say to that.

"I think it's weird that you want to go back there with us." Ahkelios is pretty vocal about his suspicions; it's not like the thought hasn't occured to me, but I've chosen to bury that concern for the moment. "If I were you I'd want to go anywhere else, even if I had to do it alone."

"...We are a social species," K'hkeri says after a moment. "Not having any others to speak to is akin to torture. The Voidsuit was one such torture."

It just keeps getting worse, doesn't it? Even Ahkelios goes silent at that, though I notice he doesn't look away from K'hkeri, which is... probably for the best.

A Firmament slipstream.

The more I learn about Firmament, the more aware I am that I'm vastly out of my depth.

If nothing else, I'm curious to see how this will work.

As long as K'hkeri isn't leading us into a trap, that is.

Concentrated Power is still active, and I've seen no reason to turn the skill off. I'm stronger than I've ever been right now, even if that strength is only going to last for a single punch. With the Amplification Gauntlet, I would estimate this to be enough to hurt Naru, so if there is a trap, I'm as prepared as I can be.

"We are here." K'hkeri's voice is soft. They spread all four of their arms out towards an empty space marked only by a small circle of stones on the ground; the stones look old and worn, with dirty moss creeping over them. Rotar looks at it, confused, and I focus on my other senses.

There is something strange in the Firmament here. Not something I would have noticed without K'hkeri here to guide me. It's almost like a small slit in the air where the Firmament isn't quite aligned with itself — and if I pay attention, I can see why.

The small traces of ever-present Firmament in the air are disappearing and reappearing, like they're falling out of reality just for a second.

"Slipstreams are normally quite difficult to travel," K'hkeri says. "But you have me as a guide."

With that, they step forward, and I witness firsthand why their species is called a morphling.

Carapace cracks and shatters, and K'hkeri grows. Taller, mostly. They stretch upwards, their features growing thinner and their four arms melting into two; compound eyes shrink and split, separating into six distinct ones.

It lasts only for a moment, and then chitin snaps back into place, and I'm faced with an entirely different version of K'hkeri.

"I find most other species are uncomfortable when we change," K'hkeri says. Even the voice is different. "For your comfort, I will introduce myself again. I am she who navigates the streams — Ikaara."

I blink. "For my comfort?" I ask. "I'm fine if you want me to keep referring to you as K'hkeri. I know how shapeshifting works."

"With morphlings, our identity also experiences a shift," K'hkeri — or Ikaara, I suppose — explains. "The names help us stay distinct. Not all morphlings adopt the custom, but I find it keeps the memories nicely sorted."

"Ikaara it is," I say. I wonder how many forms she can change into. "Want to tell me why you changed?"

Ikaara cocks her head slowly, considering the question. "...Slipstreams are most easily navigable in these forms," she finally says. "With it, we can see where the streams lead. Losing yourself in a slipstream is a quick way to find yourself very, very lost, and occasionally torn apart."

"Slipstreams are dangerous, got it," I say. Poor Rotar looks terrified. Ikaara rolls her shoulders as she stares at the slit in the air — then thrusts both of her hands forward and pulls.

There's a strange Firmament I don't recognize at play here, strung along her fingertips like the threads of a cobweb. It sticks to whatever the slipstream is made out of, and she tears it open like it's paper.

What I see beyond is... hard to describe.

Tetrachromacy activates itself, sending Firmament up to my eyes — it occurs to me that this is likely what Ikaara needs this form for. I go from seeing a dizzying array of nothingness to a vibrant stream of Firmament in colors I find impossible to name, all vanishing into a single point in the center.

Ikaara touches on that point like it's nothing, even though the pressure of all that Firmament looks to me like it should crush her.

"This way," she says. She holds out a hand. I glance at it, shrug, and place my hand in hers; Rotar joins us so that we're all holding hands around the slipstream. Ahkelios perches on top of my head, watching curiously.

"What now?" I ask, but almost as soon as I finish asking the question, Ikaara steps... sideways.

Not literally sideways. Firmament gathers around her, and she moves in some direction that was invisible to me until the exact moment she moves; suddenly, I perceive an entirely new direction, an entirely new spatial dimension.

It is, incidentally, very difficult to describe moving in four dimensions.

I feel the Firmament moving around us. The scale of it is immense, far larger than I can hope to comprehend; I can't tell if it encompasses the continent, the planet, or every single planet in every single star system in the galaxy. There's an immensity that destroys my sense of scale.

Rotar is disoriented, and I feel him trembling slightly; I grip his claws reassuringly — not that I'm much better off. I have no idea where we're going.

Ikaara, on the other hand? She floats forward like she's perfectly at home. She knows exactly where to go, exactly where to step, and Firmament parts in front of her like she's doing nothing more than opening curtains over the windows.

There is a certain raw beauty to the sight, and yet... I get the sense that something is wrong.

Ikaara leads us forward, and I stop paying attention to her, casting my mind about to try to understand that strange sense of wrongness that suddenly aches within my chest.

It takes me a second to understand that the reason the sense is coming from my chest is because that sense of wrongness is coming from within.

It isn't the Void. It's the Interface.

The Interface... does not like the slipstream.