Die. Respawn. Repeat.
Chapter 269: Book 4: Tidebreaker

Kauku couldn't believe what he was sensing. What he was seeing.

Those damned unintegrated Trialgoers were multiplying.

It was bad enough that there were somehow other humans here—every one of them was in the middle of a Trial of their own, and they had all been holding off on completing their Trials for one reason or another. That meant that he didn't have access to whatever specialized Firmament they'd gained control of during their Trials. He couldn't automatically block or dismantle their skills.

But now there were—these were Trialgoers from Hestia's past, for crying out loud. How was Ethan doing this? All of them were going to have time skills, and he didn't have anything that could automatically defend against—

He gritted his teeth.

Fine. If this was how Ethan wanted to play it, he'd make sure the human regretted summoning so many others for help.

He'd seen it, after all. If there was any way to hurt Ethan, it was through his allies. And there were plenty of Remnants he could corrupt with the Talent he'd stolen from Teluwat.

Ethan wasn't the only one capable of summoning an army.

I sense it before I see it—the wave of corrupted Firmament that erupts out of Kauku and into the tendrils he's seeded all around the world. The other Trialgoers glance warily at one another. Next to me, Ahkelios narrows his eyes, and Guard begins to charge up a Firmament blast. Gheraa, as always, lounges a little bit behind, casually adjusting his coat.

"I hope he doesn't think an army like that's going to stop us," he says noncommittally.

I chuckle. "You know we shouldn't underestimate him. He kicked our asses the first time."

"That was the first time, and we shouldn't put him on some impossible-to-beat pedestal, either." Gheraa grins at me. "There's a reason he's summoning an army, you know."

"Yeah, I know." I glance up. At this distance, Kauku is basically just a speck in the sky, visible more by the mass of tendrils sprouting from his back than by his armor. The Knight within me stirs at the sight, and I feel it resonating with a complex array of emotions. Regret and determination are chief amongst them.

"We must stop him," it declares. I nod, and with a thought, I feel its armor coalescing around me once more.

The distance between us is too thick with Firmament to easily bypass with Warpstep, and too many corrupted Remnants stand in our way besides. We end up joining the fray at the head of our so-called army, forcing a dozen skills to break and slough off our armor with the sheer intensity of my Aspect of the Spirit.

Then I whip out some of the newer skills I've gained.

Variable Strike.

It's a Force skill that allows me to land any hit I would have been able to land in a set amount of time—that is, it's a time-based skill that allows me to realize multiple different sets of attacks at once. The downside to it is that any damage I take in any of those timelines all get reflected back onto me, but the risk isn't that great when all we're facing are Remnants.

Roars of anger sound out all around me as every nearby Remnant shatters, parts of their bodies exploding into gore. I feel the feedback mostly as pressure on my fist and a series of failed scratches on my back, and flex my fingers grimly.

Next: Positional Replay.

This one is an Energy skill that allows me to essentially teleport into the position of any strike I made in the last ten seconds. It plays incredibly well with Variable Strike and is significantly less costly than Warpstep—I'm able to flicker almost instantly between almost twenty different positions, right in the faces of the Remnants I just hit. With each flicker, I make sure to finish off any Remnant that was able to survive.

Easy enough, with the use of Decay, which is the skill I got from banking my new Spirit points. Anything I touch without sufficient Firmament to resist simply melts away as hundreds of years tear through it in an instant.

I ignore the flood of points and focus instead on the array of power building up in front of me, frowning. There's a massive influx of Remnants all pouring their Firmament together into some kind of enormous skill construct—Kauku's work, no doubt. Whatever this is feels familiar—

"Ethan!" Guard calls sharply, and I feel information flow to me through our link. I narrow my eyes.

It's an upgraded version of the Singularity skill construct Guard was able to build. Kauku's about to create a black hole out of matter and Firmament. I doubt I'll be able to stop it with my armor alone, but...

Null Body.

My newest Body skill essentially turns my armor into a material not unlike the blessed brick used in the city of First Sky. I hadn't been too sure about the skill at the time, given my worry that it would prevent me from using my own skills effectively—which it certainly does—but in this case it's perfect.

I get there a second after the Firmament singularity is created. Already, I can feel it beginning to suck away everything in its vicinity.

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I clamp both my hands around it and squeeze.

The skill shatters. The Remnants that were in the middle of generating it all stare at me for a moment, and though I'm pretty sure I'm just imagining it, they look like they're stunned.

"Sorry," I say. "Can't let you do that."

They roar and attack—

—but before they can take more than a step, Adeya appears, crystalline wings flared brightly. I raise an eyebrow in surprise, though it's not her presence that surprises me. Clarity of Fate, my newest Mind skill, allows me to share some of my own processing speed and precognitive abilities with my allies.

No, the part that surprises me is the cat sitting on her shoulder. Is that just... a regular orange cat?

"He's trying to stop you from getting to him," Adeya says. "Go!"

"Right." No time to wonder about alien species. I glance up, frowning—the air is thick with Remnants, to the point where Kauku almost isn't visible at the end of it all. I'm going to need a better strategy if I want to get to him anytime soon.

If nothing else, though, it's at least clear that the Remnants are losing. If Kauku allows this to become a battle of attrition, then we're going to win by sheer virtue of the fact that none of us can really die—even Adeya and the others are linked back to the Trials they entered through the power of Fyran's Time Tether. Any time any of the other Trialgoers die, they simply reappear back inside their own Trials, ready to bank their credits and come back stronger.

And they are coming back stronger. Already, I can sense more than a few Trialgoers making it to their third phase shift, many of them humans.

Dhruv is off in the distance somehow commanding what looks like a physical entity made entirely of sound—a distortion in the air made of compressive force so strong it shakes apart any Remnant that dares to touch it.

Over in another section of the battlefield is a sphere of what looks like pure night, where the sky simply transitions into a rendition of a starry sky. Within, I can feel Taylor wielding the power of the stars, wrapping his opponents in astral cloaks that sap their energy.

Fyran wields his flame like a fortress in the sky, almost like he's carrying with him a mobile star. Ghost, restored to his former glory after finding and merging with his own Trial, manipulates a massive skill array that resembles a cannon, blasting out different skill combinations and reprogramming and optimizing them with every moment that passes. Lilia's knives dance around her, flaying anything that dares to come close.

Then there's Eyka and Reyfa, the lizards I met in one of the later Tears. I found them again when I used Shatter Time on the Heart—my suggestion had worked, it turned out, but they'd needed a little more guidance on how to grow in strength together.

It seems to have worked, though. Eyka commands massive waves of water, and Reyfa is able to turn them into shards of piercing ice. They're a lot stronger than I might have expected based on those skill sets alone—like all Trialgoers that have been through Hestia's Trials, there's an element of time embedded in their skills. The water accelerates time for anyone trapped in it, and the ice keeps things in perfect temporal stasis.

Even with Kauku powering his Remnants, he can't hold us back. And he's trying. I can feel him far above, his core spinning wildly as he pumps out monstrous amounts of Firmament into his army. Every time a Remnant dies, he brings it back, stronger and better.

But he's running out of juice. He can't run an army forever.

On the other hand, neither can we, and this is still too close to a stalemate for my comfort. Worse, a few of us are beginning to lose to the newer, better Remnants as they pull out skills we've never seen before.

A thick haze of green-white smoke erupts from a cloud of buzzing Remnants, draining the Firmament of any Trialgoers that drift too close; Adeya darts off to beat it back, creating massive gusts of wind with her wings, but parts of it try to resist, forming moving tendrils of gas that dart past her tempest. Another Remnant sits at the center of a bizarre electrical storm, creating nodes of lightning that empower other Remnants while disabling the Trialgoers. I almost move to help—

But something familiar appears within my Firmament sense, and I glance sharply toward it, almost disbelieving. The loud voice that accompanies it is, for the first time, a relief. "Ethan!" Naru calls.

"Naru?" I ask, blinking. "What are you—"

I look behind him. It isn't just him—almost all the other Hestian Trialgoers are here, including several I don't recognize. Some of them look at me like they want to bite my head off, but instead turn their attention quickly to the Remnants.

Tarin and Mari are there too, standing behind their son. That alone almost makes me hesitate. I don't want them here, in danger.

But who am I kidding? These are Tarin and Mari we're talking about. I'm pretty sure Naru's already tried and failed to get them to leave, judging by the stubborn frown Tarin is wearing.

I can't deny that it's a relief to see them.

"We're here to help, obviously," Naru says. "Can't just let our planet die and do nothing. All the Tears started to seal, but there was so much Firmament radiating from the Fracture we figured something was wrong."

"You could say that," I mutter, glancing up at where Kauku is. Tarin is staring at the other Trialgoers in a combination of admiration and disapproval.

"They need train more!" Tarin says. "They not fight good. You not train them?"

"Not to your exacting standards, no," I say, a little amused by Tarin's fixation on training.

"I train them!" he announces. I blink. "Loops down in Fracture, right? I join inside. Make them learn."

"I help husband," Mari says. Naru looks uncomfortable for a moment, then draws me briefly to the side.

"I couldn't convince them not to come," he whispers. "Is that going to be safe?"

I shrug helplessly. "Probably safer than letting them try to fight Kauku or the Remnants," I say. "Tarin's got a pretty good grasp of the basics, and a lot of us keep dying to underhanded tricks." I wince as a Trialgoer proves my point by flying straight into a grid of cutting Firmament; Temporal Firmament snaps around them, pulling them back into their loops.

Naru follows my gaze and shudders. "Dad could probably make a real difference, huh?"

"Of course!" Tarin says, his head popping up between us with a squawk. Naru falls back, startled; I just shake my head and smile. It's good to have him back, even if only briefly. I'd missed him.

"Head down and talk to the guy made of fire," I say, pointing to where Fyran stands near Hestia's Heart. "He'll get you linked into their Trials, assuming this is possible. Everyone else, I need you to help me clear a path to Kauku."

"That's the guy messing up our planet, I take it?" Naru asks as his parents fly down and out of sight. I nod.

"Versa's met him," I say, indicating her with a tilt of my head. She scowls at me.

"I still can't believe you're actually fighting him," she says. "And I can't believe you're winning. Kind of. I'm not as convinced you'll actually beat him when you're face to face."

"Can you clear a path, or not?"

Versa cracks her neck. "You may have fought these Remnants, Ethan," she says. "But we've had to live with them. You just make sure you take care of Kauku."

"Trust me," I say. "This has been a long time coming."