Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 21: Another First Meeting

As early as I am, the Cliffside Crows are still pretty active. I see the kids playing in the town center as usual, and just like before, Mari approaches me while I'm looking around the village, seeing as I didn't head directly towards Tarin's hut.

"You!" she says. It's just like the first time she greeted me. "Trialgoer?"

"I need to talk to you," I say. I know from experience her force of personality is overwhelming; if I just say yes, she's going to drag me to Tarin before I get the chance to explain, and that's just going to cause more problems than I want to deal with this loop. Part of it is that I'm still on edge Naru's not here, but he's close by, or he will be. If things proceed the same way, and they should...

The Integrators being external to the loop is a complicating factor. It means that at any time, they could send Naru or any one of the Hestian Trialgoers a message, and it might throw off my plans for a loop. It's not something I can anticipate or plan for.

Not yet.

Tarin was careful with how he phrased his words, and I'll have to be, too.

I realize after a moment that Mari's been staring at me, and I've been too busy ruminating about the Integrators and the Trialgoers to register her response. I give her a slightly embarrassed cough. "Sorry," I say. "I got distracted."

"You want meet husband?" she says. "He know Trial. He help!"

"He's..." In a coma. "Not who I need to talk to."

Mari stares at me for a moment. I see something flicker in her uncertainty, then concern, then a few other emotions that flash by too rapidly for me to catch; I feel her Firmament rising for just a split second before she quells it.

"You said you spent one hundred and twenty-six days on Tarin's courting rock," I tell her, in case it helps.

She stares at me for a moment more, and then bursts into cackling laughter.

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"Tarin idiot," she says, with something like gleeful adoration in her eyes. "Courting rock just rock! I throw at him because he noisy. Then he come up to me, starry-eyed, and tell me he accept."

She shakes her head, smiling affectionately. "I accept too, of course. Tarin handsome. Smart, too, but stupid in heart. But I stupid in heart too. I tell you one-two-six? I play prank on you. But it tell me I can trust you."

...Well, now I feel kind of foolish. But Mari is smiling at me with a familiar sort of smile, and I can't bring myself to...

"But why you say I talk to you?" Mari continues, and she frowns a little. "We find Tarin. Good to talk with him! He help."

"We can't," I say softly.

Mari tilts her head at me, not understanding. "Why not!" she says. "He there! He in house. Sleeping. He always sleep for the whole day, silly husband..."

She trails off. I think she sees something in my eyes, then, or she catches on to the demeanor I've been carrying all along; I think she might have caught it earlier, even, and just tried to deny it. She doesn't want to believe that something might have happened.

"...Trial hurt Tarin?" she asks, just to confirm, and I give her a slight nod.

She rushes off without a word.

I follow her, but I don't rush after her. She needs time to find him, and to understand what's happening in her own terms. I don't think anything I can say will really help her. She'll find him sleeping, find that she can't wake him up... and we'll figure out where to go from there.

Hopefully, she'll still be willing to talk to me.

When I reach their hut, the curtains are closed, and Mari's whispering fiercely with a doctor outside. She glares at me when I arrive not with anger, but with this sort of frustrated impatience. "You wait," she snaps at me, and then visibly seems to try to withhold herself. "...We talk later. I need understand what happened."

I only nod, and she gives me a grateful look in return. I can explain what happened, really, but looking at her...

I think she needs to put in the work herself before she can accept whatever answers I have to give her. In the meantime, there's something else I need to do.

It takes me almost half an hour of foraging in the forest to find something I think Ahkelios will genuinely find interesting. In the end, I find something I think he might not have already studied: a small patch of moss growing in the bark of a tree. It wouldn't have caught my attention at all if not for the faint sense of Firmament wafting off of it, this time reminiscent of a scent instead of any of the other ways I've seen Firmament manifest.

Not for the first time, I wonder what Firmament is. It's a far cry from what I've seen in depictions of magic. It doesn't seem like any singular type of energy the only thing I understand about it is that I can sense it, but I've sensed it in a dozen different ways. A buzz, a tingle in the air, a sense of power, a flash of heat, a moment of speed...

And now a scent. A pleasant one, too. I stare at this small piece of moss, and I swear it smells like homecooked lasagna. Of spiced meat and rich sauce and freshly baked cheese. It's my favorite food. I haven't had it in a long, long time, and suddenly my mouth is watering.

...I tear the piece of bark off the tree, using a flash of Crystallized Strength to help my fingers dig into the wood. I don't need to drool over food right now.

But I do need to eat and sleep. The physical need isn't there, but I've been processing things non-stop for days; there's an exhaustion there that's not physical in nature. Even if the reset eliminates my need to sleep, I still need time to process.

But there's so much to do. I can't help but wonder what state the Trials are in. How long do I have, really, until humanity passes or fails the Trials? How many people have been lost already?

The loop gives me an advantage in my Trial: I can't die unless I give up. But at least fifty-seven people have given up already, if what Naru said about the fifty-seventh Trial is correct. I doubt anything about this Trial is as simple as it seems on the surface.

...I'm putting off talking to Ahkelios again.

Temporal Fragment.

The mantis manifests in front of me, in hues of blue and flecks of gold. His arms are crossed, and he glares at me with a pouty sort of anger.

"I was kind of an asshole back there," I say without preamble. "I'm sorry. I got you a plant to make up for it."

Despite himself, Ahkelios perks up. "Is it a good plant?"

I chuckle slightly. "You tell me. You're the plant expert."

I present to him the ripped-off bark with the little bit of moss on it, and he turns up his nose in a surprisingly human gesture. "You ripped it off! It isn't as valuable if you rip it off. I need to study how it's feeding on the tree. And it's just a piece of moss!"

"It's emanating Firmament," I say, trying to placate him. He's twitching, though, and barely restraining himself from giving it a once over. "And it smells like an Earth food."

"What? No it doesn't. It smells like... my favorite..."

Ahkelios trails off, then cautiously hops over to take the piece of bark into his hands but not before he points a finger at me, half-threateningly. "You are forgiven," he says dramatically. "For now."

"I know, I know," I say. I can't help but smile a little, despite his words; he's clearly just pouting, now, and he's climbing back up onto my shoulders without any hesitation or discomfort.

I should be a little more careful about what I say around him. I'm just still worried about how much the Interface has messed with his agency. He's compelled to be helpful, to some degree, and the way he phrased his words about getting an assistant suggests that mine isn't the only skill that can do something like this.

"I am sorry," I add, my voice just a bit softer, and Ahkelios pauses in his fiddling with the piece of bark on my shoulder.

"I know," he says. "I'm a little worried about it, too. But it's something I don't want to think about for now, until we find a solution, so let's just... not talk about it. Please?"

His voice is almost pleading. I acquiesce without a word, changing the topic with only a slight nod to acknowledge what he'd said.

"How about we go introduce you to some birds, then?" I say. It's about time I introduce him to Mari. I'd wanted to introduce him to Tarin, too, but... that can come later. After I save Tarin.

"Uh... birds?" Ahkelios suddenly looks awkward. He looks down at himself at the small size of his body, presumably, at least in this form and then at me. "They're not going to try to eat me, are they?"

"What?" I blink. "No."

Then I actually think about it. I had eaten a dish from them, and it had contained a number of insects. Ahkelios is giving me a skeptical look. "...Maybe?" I say, and he gives me a flat stare. "You're made of Firmament, they're not going to be able to eat you!"

"I don't want them to try," he complains.

"I'll make sure they don't," I promise, and he seems to relax a bit at that. He still gives me a glare, though, and he hugs the piece of tree-bark and the moss on it close to his chest.

I find myself suddenly wishing I could've introduced him to Tarin. I'm sure the old crow would have gotten a kick out of him.

Just another reason to save him.