Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 50: Foundation

The second set of blows resonates through both of us. The Firmament-creature roars, an erratic, flickering sort of thing, a mouth gaping open in its featureless face with an appearance not unlike television static. I grit my teeth as a sudden headache pounds through me, and Ahkelios clings more tightly to my armor, his entire form vibrating with the force of the roar.

And then he makes an admittedly much smaller roar of defiance. He stands up on my shoulder, even as I'm forced to take a step back; he fuzzes out for a moment, flickering, and then he breathes in

and all the flickering static of the Firmament-creature's roar vanishes. Ahkelios seems to take it on instead, his arms and legs briefly disappearing into static in turn, and when he speaks, his voice is strained.

"I took on some of the burden," he says, the words half-growled out. "Go, Ethan."

He doesn't need to say any more. I go.

The Interface fragment is still roaring at me, but this time it's soundless and there's no effect attached to it; black lightning coalesces around my gauntlet again, and I smash it into its face, feeling the Firmament resist for a split second before Tarin's Firmament blasts into it and sends it sprawling. I follow up immediately, his speed running down my body and into my legs to boost me forward.

With my next blow, Mari's Firmament shines a bright green, and the force of it is tripled. The sheer shock splits the Interface fragment in half, Firmament veins temporarily splitting apart before desperately trying to knit back together; at the same time, its arms turns into blades, and it swings blindly at me, trying to stop me.

Trying.

Mari's armor stops the blade before it can connect with the mental flesh that makes up my body in this space. It glows brightly as it does, and I can almost hear Mari's proud caw as she stops it outright. I take the moment of shock to grip on to its arm with my gauntlet, just below the blade, and crush.

There's a snap. A loud cry of anger, Firmament warbling in an emotion too close to pain. It jerks backwards sharply once, twice and the third time it rips hard enough to tear off a piece of its own arm. Long tendrils of Firmament trail behind its arm like broken strings of cobweb, and the Firmament blade half-buried in my armor remains left behind.

Just for a moment. Then it dissolves into nothing, merging neatly with Mari's Firmament and healing the small hole it had created. The excess flows into me, and I feel it empowering Tarin's Firmament within me, on top of my own. The black lightning surrounding me grows stronger.

I don't give it the time to recover.

I flash forward, and the Firmament around me crackles into a storm. The Interface fragment lifts a hand up to defend itself, snarling in defiance, and my gauntlet smashes into its blade; Akar's Firmament flares together with Mari's, and the sky-blue gauntlet flickers once, pulses

the second blade shatters, and I absorb its fragments. This time, Ahkelios flares a little brighter, and he lets out a little cry of accomplishment; I chuckle slightly at his antics.

"Wanna take the next blow?" I ask.

Ahkelios bounces on his feet, eyes sparking. "Yes," he says.

Before I get the time to say anything else, he darts off, zooming ahead like a bright, tiny meteor of Firmament. The Interface fragment doesn't pay attention to him, lazily sidestepping as it tries to rush towards me again.

A mistake, of course.

Ahkelios turns rapidly and slams into it from behind, rocketing it forward directly into my fist; its head splits apart again from the force of my blow, and it struggles to put itself together. I feel it reaching out, tugging more power from the Interface towards itself.

And though I make no move to do it, my own Interface responds.

It has no physical presence here, in the space of the phase-shift but I feel it emerge like a seed buried inside my soul, suddenly stretching out from me. Filaments of dark blue reach out from my fingers, empowered by different glittering sparks of green and black and purple; it reaches up, into the sky, and it cuts through those tendrils connecting the fragment with the greater Interface.

I don't have time to wonder what that means, because the moment it does, the fragment goes berserk. Its form flickers for a moment, unstable without access to the greater structure of the Interface.

Then it begins to grow.

"Phase two," I say. I feel the Firmament within me pulse in response, readying itself for a second battle.

Ahkelios, on the other hand, can't resist the urge to snark. "What, have you fought Interface monstrosities before?"

"I'll have to show you some Earth media sometime," is all I say in response. The tendrils of Firmament that make up the fragment lash outwards erratically, and while I'm confident Mari's Firmament will protect me, I'm hesitant to walk blindly into it. Instead, I wait for an opportunity. I'm obviously not going to wait for the transformation to complete, but

There.

Ahkelios reacts faster than I do. He shoots forward ahead of time, a bright little star that darts out to the right and distracts the fragment just long enough for me to get in through the window of opportunity. I duck under one lashing tendril, jump over the next, and catch the third one on the side of my gauntlet; Ahkelios' distraction means I don't have to deal with the fourth, fifth, or sixth tendrils.

At the center of it all, Firmament knots into a structure that looks almost like a ribcage though very far from a human one. Within it, a heart of Firmament pulses, locked into a strangely organic shape that thumps and throbs.

I don't have time for hesitation.

Akar's Firmament wraps around my fist, Mari's empowers me, and Tarin's pushes me forward.

The makeshift ribcage shatters beneath my gauntlet. The heart protests for a moment, beating rapidly, struggling against my grip.

It lasts for only a second before the shape loosens and unravels, and Firmament flows up my arm and into my body

The void around me vanishes. Ahkelios disappears, his Firmament once more relegated to nothing more than a skill housed within my body; the thread that connects us is dim, here.

I am alone.

There is a pearl of Firmament before me. Unlike nearly every other form of Firmament I have seen, it is perfectly calm and stable. It has no color I know it's there only because I can sense it.

It is, I realize, my own Firmament, coalesced into a single drop before me. Surrounding it are small sparks of blue and purple, green and black; the Interface, Akar, Mari, and Tarin. They orbit loosely around the pearl.

It calls to me. It tells me to find a truth to find something that will bring all these disparate forms of Firmament together, and distill it into a single core that I can carry forward with me. What I create here will be my foundation, and so it asks me a simple question.

Who am I?

I consider the question. I take my time with it, too. The edges of this space are purely defined, and there's no hint of the crumbling stability there was before; there's something about it that reminds me of the Inspiration-space, but more... personal. Less artificial, for lack of a better term.

Who am I?

When I lost my brother, and lived through the subsequent years with grieving parents who either blamed me or didn't quite know what to do with me, I felt like my world had ended. I made my way through with force of will alone, promising myself to find something better, to build a life of my own. Those events shaped a large part of who I am.

But I am not my trauma.

When the Trials began, I was angry. I'm still angry now, in truth. Days into this Trial, and I've only seen more of the injustices committed by the Integrators. Naru's attitude towards his parents, the implications about what the Interface might have done to society on Hestia, the knowledge that people Ahkelios, other humans, that harpy girl I still don't know much about the knowledge that they've been killed in these Trials only serves to infuriate me more.

I clench my fists.

But I'm not my anger, either.

The Trial I'm in would have been much more difficult to handle without Ahkelios. Half of what he does is almost an act, I suspect; he's playful and charming and a little too obsessed with plants, and some of that he uses to cheer me up or disarm me. He's good at what he does, too. It makes me wish I could do more for him.

Mari has been impossibly trusting. Every loop, I tell her my story. She's more angry some loops than others, but she has nearly always just chosen to trust me, to take my words at face value. It's a trait I suspect comes naturally to her, mothering those around her and taking their problems seriously. I've come to care about her a lot.

Tarin died nearly sacrificed himself in an attempt to protect his village, even if that sacrifice might not have been intentional. The crow-guards all fight to the death to keep their village safe. The children in the village are young and bright-eyed and full of hope for their world, for all that it's controlled by the Integrators.

And yet... I'm not defined by the people around me.

I sigh, cupping my pearl of Firmament in my hands, and watching the sparks orbit around it.

"This is a stupid question," I say. "There's no one thing that's ever going to define me.

"I'm whoever the fuck I want to be."

Firmament pulses. Something falls into place. Four different types of Firmament join with an invisible pearl in the center, and it becomes something solid, something real.

A single pulse of Firmament, newly refined, blasts through me.

And when I open my eyes, I'm back in Tarin's hut. The old crow is sitting up in his bed, staring at me with his beak open.

"Do I have something on my face?" I ask jokingly. He smacks me on the head with a wing.

"You ruin all my furniture!" Tarin huffs. "Now I need make furniture again!"

"I missed you too, you old fart."

"I not fart!"

I laugh, and Tarin grins at me. Then I take a peek at my Interface.

I have a lot of messages to get through.