Die. Respawn. Repeat.-Chapter 217: Book 4: Culminated Tear

Guard tells us a little more about Inveria as we make our way through the tunnels, and from the way he talks about it, it's clear it means something to him. His voice softens when he describes the Great City's network of interwoven caves; according to him, it's the prime place to trade on Hestia, with merchants from all around the globe visiting to sell their goods.

"Every tunnel has its walls and ceiling painted with luminescent paint that draws on the city's Firmament," Guard explains. "Often by visitors to the city, though a few of them are reserved for various competitive groups within Inveria. I believe there may even be an annual competition to repaint its central tunnels."

I glance at Ahkelios and have to stifle a laugh—he started practically vibrating with excitement the moment Guard said the words "luminescent paint". "I'm guessing you want to go there," I say, amused.

"It sounds really pretty," he says defensively. "Besides, think of all the paints I could make!"

It's a nice thought, and I can't blame him for having it. Of the four of us, Ahkelios spent perhaps the most time in the Grove reconnecting with his past self. Every time I dropped into his cabin there were a half-dozen discarded paintings, along with one or two hung up on the walls with clear pride.

He needed it, I can tell. There's a spark of joy in him now that wasn't there before.

"I'm curious about it myself," Gheraa adds casually. "If that helps. Inveria is quite difficult to monitor as an Integrator, you know."

"Don't tell me you can't monitor things that are underground," I say, raising an eyebrow.

Gheraa chuckles. "It's mostly just that it's inconvenient to navigate a camera through miles of stone."

"Ah, yes," I say. "Inconvenience. The greatest enemy of an Integrator."

"You'd be surprised how true that is," he says with a little smirk. "If you ever have to fight one of us, just make it really, really inconvenient, and they'll probably just leave."

"Unless that Integrator is you?" I ask.

Gheraa puts on his best innocent smile. "I cannot imagine why you would make such an accusation."

I snort and shake my head. "Well, if you two are set on it, we'll put it on our post-Trial itinerary," I say, giving Ahkelios a friendly nudge. "Not that we aren't going to visit it during the Trial, but..."

Ahkelios winces at the reminder. "Guess we wouldn't get much of a chance to sightsee," he says. His voice turns hopeful. "Maybe Guard can just tell us more about it in the meantime? What about that painting competition?"

Guard hums. "It is quite the event," he says. "Inveria is known for it, and the winning teams are well-rewarded. There are five winners in total, for each of the five central tunnels of Inveria; each tunnel is themed after something different. I believe the themes are Sky, Ocean, Home, Past, and Future. Of the five winners, two positions are reserved for Inveria's locals, to ensure that there is always a piece of its culture within its heart..."

He continues to describe the history of Inveria's tunnel-painting competition for a while as we move through the Fracture. It's a pity that the ones we're moving through don't mimic Inveria's art—Guard's description of the city is genuinely compelling, and I find myself looking forward to an eventual visit.

It's almost too easy to think about, really. I have to remind myself that there's no guarantee that there's an "after the loops." There's no guarantee that we'll win.

If there's any downside to all that training in the Quiet Grove, it's that I'm probably more confident now than I should be.

The first sign that anything's wrong is the way Guard falters mid-speech. Ahkelios's question was innocent enough—he wanted to know how Guard knew so much about Inveria.

"I have been there," Guard says. "I hold the memory close. I believe I even participated—"

He stops, hesitating. "I do not know if I participated," he says, fumbling a little. "I believe I did, but I do not remember what I painted. That is... strange."

"You don't have to tell us if it's embarrassing," Ahkelios teases. He seems to sense that something's wrong quickly, though—Guard doesn't seem to be embarrassed, he just seems confused.

"I have lost memories to Whisper's procedures before," he says. There's something like a distressed whine emerging from his systems, a sound I've never heard him make before. "This is different. The memory is clear, but it is wrong. Smudged."

I frown, casting my senses back along the tunnels. There's nothing strange in the Firmament here—as far as I can tell, whoever's been following us still hasn't caught up.

It's mostly a cursory check, though. This isn't the only time Guard's reported a memory that feels strange. There's been a few ever since he completed his phase shift, and it's something he's talked to me about once or twice during our time in the Grove.

"Another one?" I ask quietly. He nods.

"I still do not know the cause," Guard says. "The others I mentioned... they were not nearly as clear as this one, Ethan."

"I'll look over your Firmament again when we're done here and see if I can find anything," I say. I haven't been able to the last few times I checked, but my skill with Firmament is growing all the time. If this particular memory has been tampered with even more than the others, I might finally be able to find something.

Maybe not while we're here in the middle of the Fracture, though.

Ahkelios and Gheraa both look curiously between us, but opt not to say anything. Ahkelios casts worried glances toward Guard every once in a while, and Gheraa mostly seems absorbed in examining the stone around us.

He does care, in his own way. I know because of the way he changes the subject—softly, and not without concern, but also to give Guard an out from the topic at hand.

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"The walls of these tunnels are interesting," he says. "They're perfectly Firmament-matched to the air around us. It's a little like how we build stuff for ourselves, actually. If you get the resonance right, you don't need to worry about stability."

Guard seems grateful for the shift in conversation. "Yes," he says. "Inveria's tunnels are enormous and have little in the way of support. That must be how they hold themselves up."

"Makes me feel like I'm home," Gheraa says cheerfully. "Not that I like being home all that much, mind you. I'm even starting to like all this dirt stuff. Which is good, considering we're surrounded by it."

"Do you like the dirt, or the hot springs we had in the Grove?" I ask dryly. "I hope you realize we're not going to have access to that for a while."

Gheraa looks horrified at this reminder.

We continue in this vein for a while—small pieces of banter to help distract Guard from whatever's wrong with his memories. Ahkelios jumps in every now and then, apparently feeling a little guilty for his part in asking for more information about Inveria's competitions.

All the while, we keep moving. We're getting deeper and deeper into the Fracture, now, the pressure of Firmament around us slowly increasing as we do. Every so often, Guard hesitates before nodding to himself and turning either left or right; navigation seems to be getting progressively more complicated. Gheraa frowns a little after the fifth or so turn like this.

"Does anyone else think these tunnels don't make a lot of sense?" he asks. "I'm no expert on material reality, but I feel like we've been walking around in circles. Unless that's normal for tunnels."

"I believe it may be normal, but in this instance, you are correct," Guard says. "The Fracture's tunnels are geometrically looped. The signals from my sensors occasionally echo back to me through the paths. We are making progress, do not worry."

He's right. I can sense it, now that Gheraa's pointed it out—the downward slope of the ground beneath us has long since vanished, but we're still making progress toward that anomaly. Physically, it feels like we're walking around in circles, but in actuality we're apparently still moving down.

Disconcerting. I decide not to think about it too much. I can only imagine how navigating these tunnels might have gone without Guard's assistance.

It's a few more minutes before the tunnel we're in begins to open up into a wide, open cavern. Even before we arrive, though, it's clear that we're almost at our destination. I don't even need my Firmament sense to tell.

Reality here is broken.

Whatever the cavern itself looks like fades in comparison to the way the air looks like shattered glass. Thick, jagged cracks spiral outward from a central point, seething with Temporal Firmament so bright it leaves an imprint on the eyes. The sheer amount spilling out is enough to saturate the cavern.

"Whoa," Ahkelios says.

Which is just a bit of an understatement.

"Do you think we found it?" he asks. "Is this what's making Hestia blow up?"

"I don't think so," I say, although I can't be sure. It certainly feels like it could be. The only other thing that's ever made me feel like this—small, somehow, in spite of everything I've gained—is meeting with Kauku for the first time.

The only difference is that this isn't alive. It's an imprint left behind by something massive. Something impossible.

We make our way to the source of the cracks, senses on high alert. If this is anything like a Tear, then it might be yet another record of something that happened on Hestia, although I can't imagine what might have created something like this.

What we find leaves us all a little speechless. There's a small hole in reality right in the middle of all the cracks. That in itself isn't surprising—it's sort of an expected result, really.

The thing that's surprising is, well...

"Is it just me, or does this look like someone punched a hole in reality?" Ahkelios asks after a moment.

It's that the hole is distinctly fist-shaped.

"It does look like that, yes," I agree. I almost reach out to touch it, but hold myself back. I'm not exactly eager to cut myself on the edge of time. "I don't think it's causing the explosion—not by itself—but it's definitely part of it somehow, I think. It's at least linked to a bunch of the Tears all around Hestia."

"You think this one crack is causing all the Tears?" Ahkelios asks. I shake my head.

"No. Maybe half of them, but probably less. I bet we'll find other anomalies like this deeper in the Fracture."

It certainly explains the thin cracks I saw spreading through the sky. They must all originate from anomalies like these—spreading through the planet, causing time to be a little weaker in some places than in others.

All it takes then is a catalyst. An event that's powerful enough or repeated enough times through the loops to become powerful and etch itself into the weakened fabric of time. That creates a Tear, and the Tear causes even more instability to spread.

I feel the Thread of Insight resonating within me, as if to confirm my thoughts, and yet it seems to tell me there's something missing. A part of the picture I'm not yet seeing.

Is this what we're here to find? It's part of it, I think. It has to be. But learning this alone doesn't put us any closer toward finding a solution; if our job is to repair these holes, then we're nowhere close to learning how.

"Ethan? I do believe something's happening," Gheraa says casually.

He's right. The hole in reality is stretching open, warping and growing before our eyes until it resembles something like a doorway. The four of us stare at it, nonplussed—

—and almost at the same time, I finally, finally sense something through my Firmament sense. A hint of something foreign entering the tunnels behind us. Teluwat's agent.

Except the agent's Firmament is twisted. Not just in the way that Teluwat twists his victims. It's corrupted, infected with the same thing that took over the Hand back when we were in the Intermediary. That's a complication I wasn't expecting.

"Seems like Kauku's got more of an influence than we thought," I mutter. "Or Rhoran, I suppose. That might be more accurate."

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Gheraa stiffens. "They followed us in here?"

"Seems like it." I frown, glancing back along the corridor. We could wait for it to get to us and fight, but... something tells me that allowing Rhoran or Teluwat to find these cracks would be a bad idea.

Their abilities already let them spread through Firmament. What are they going to do with access to something that has roots throughout the entire planet?

As long as we're here, they can track us down. From what Aris was able to find, they're using an oracle to do so—they're anchored to our Firmament, and they're using that anchor to trace a direct path toward us. That means the geometry of the tunnels here won't be enough to stop them.

But my Firmament sense returns nothing when I try to probe the doorway, and the way it stretched out for us—it's almost like it was waiting. Like the Heart is trying to guide us to make the right play.

If this anomaly cuts off all Firmament, it'll cut off their ability to track us down, too. We'd leave them lost in the tunnels until we find another way out or until the loop resets.

I make a decision. "Through the door," I say. "Guard first, then Ahkelios, then Gheraa. I'll go last."

"Are you sure?" Ahkelios shoots me a worried glance, but Guard is already climbing through. Gheraa ushers him through without waiting for me to respond, following shortly after.

I glance behind us one last time, then slip through the hole in reality after them.