Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 144: Book 3: Talents

There's a whole mess of notifications that come right after that notice, but my attention is briefly taken up by the Interface's phrasing. It says I retrieved a Talent—not that I unlocked it. Not even that it's been granted to me. The way it's phrased, I almost feel like it's not something built into the Interface.

"Interface," I say. "What do you mean by retrieved?"

No response. I let out an aggrieved sigh. I don't know why I expected it to start answering all my questions now. There's a chance that the rest of the notifications answer my questions, though, so I continue reading.

[NOTICE: The Talent you have retrieved is the [Anchor]. Note that another usage of your Talent may result in severe consequences, including but not limited to the severance of your Interface from the wider Intermediary Network, including contact with your Integrator overlords.]

Yeah, well, a bit late for that, I think to myself. Ahkelios lets out a snort next to me, clearly thinking the same thing. The blatant usage of the term overlords there is new, too; it doesn't feel like it's a message written by the Integrators themselves. Mostly because they're usually a little more subtle than that.

[NOTICE: Second usage of [Anchor] has been logged. Talent signature identified. Processing...]

[NOTICE: Protocol ANCHORED HERITAGE has been activated.]

"I guess that explains that," I say, studying the notice intently. I wasn't able to put a name to the ability before—it felt like a combination of authority and speak and command, in a way that was difficult to find a specific word for. [Anchor] feels... correct. Or at least as close as I can get in English.

It doesn't explain what it is, though.

"You did something weird, didn't you?" Ahkelios folds his arms, still reading alongside me. "What the heck is an Anchor?"

"I have no idea what I did," I admit with a shrug, my gaze flicking down to the next window. "The Interface seems to know, though."

[NOTICE: A description of your Talent has been provided as per the Heritage Protocols. It is as follows:

[Anchor]

All practitioners carry a Truth, but not all Truths nor all wills are strong enough to shape the world around them. To create the power that is Firmament, we first needed the power to Anchor—the power to will a fragment of Truth into reality.

Know, however, that to Anchor is to pit your Truth against that of the world around you. One Truth must break for an Anchoring to succeed.

Be sure it is not yours.]

I stare at the notification, unsure what to make of it; for a moment, there is no sound around us except my own breathing. That last sentence, the one clearly phrased as a warning—it feels like there's something more to it. Like there's a kernel of Truth embedded in that warning, impressing upon me how important it is that I not allow myself to be broken.

Whoever made this warning wanted to be very sure that anyone who read it would understand how serious it was. I only wish they had also given me more details. What happens if my Truth breaks? How can I be sure that mine won't?

Ahkelios breaks the silence first.

"Did that thing say to create the power that is Firmament?" he asks, his voice slightly strangled. "As in this is part of the reason Firmament even exists?"

Right. There was that, too. "It does sound like that, doesn't it?" I say faintly. My voice sounds distant, even to myself. There's so much to process. Too much, almost.

I've apparently unlocked a small piece of a much, much bigger puzzle. More importantly, this might be a puzzle that the Integrators themselves haven't figured out yet. Judging from my last conversation with Gheraa about it, it's a blind spot in their information—they've noticed that there's something there, hiding beneath all the layers of Firmament, but they haven't been able to reproduce or observe it reliably enough to study.

Neither have I, in all fairness. But even the momentary glimpses I've had seems to have unlocked something, and it's something that could turn into a real advantage against them. If what I'm discovering is some sort of fundamental secret about Firmament, then I might have found a piece of what the Integrators have been looking for all this time.

In fact... it's possible that this is part of what the Interface is for. That's what Gheraa told me, isn't it? That the Interface isn't even created by them; they were the first to discover and use it, but their mastery over it is incomplete. They don't know the purpose of it, and they're following its guidelines in a mostly-blind hope that it'll lead them somewhere.

Maybe I can find where it's leading first. I certainly seem to have taken a step along that path.

[NOTICE: Feature "Transcendance" has been partially unlocked.

1/3 of the Heritage Protocols have been activated. Transcendance will be fully unlocked when all Heritage Protocols have been activated.]

Scratch that. I've definitely taken a step along that path. Ahkelios and I both stare at that notification for a moment. I'm mostly bemused, considering how much the Interface has already thrown at me. Ahkelios, on the other hand, seems a combination of excited and wary.

"That sounds important," he says. "And powerful."

"And dangerous," I say dryly. I feel almost instinctively cautious, even if a part of me is excited. "The Interface clearly has its own game here, and it's not the same game the Integrators are playing."

"Yeah, no kidding." He stares at the window for another moment. "You're gonna try to unlock it anyway, though, right?"

"Of course I am." I let a small grin slip into my features. "I mean, imagine Gheraa's face once we get him back."

"Ethan..."

I know what he wants to say. "Don't."

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"You don't know for sure—"

"I know," I say. "I know I don't. But I need to try."

Ahkelios looks at me, and I can tell what's going through his head. This isn't healthy, he's thinking. In almost any other circumstance, I'd probably agree with him, but I just... have a feeling that it'll work. And it's a feeling I can't shake off—I've tried, more than once.

Something tells me I'm going to need Gheraa to move forward. And didn't the Heart of Hestia say the same thing when it contacted me what feels like weeks ago?

...This is all beside the point, anyway. I'll deal with what happens when it comes up.

"Transcendance, huh?" I say, changing the subject and staring back at the Interface. Ahkelios sighs, but decides to go along with it, climbing up onto my shoulder so he can read more comfortably. "I wonder what it means when it says it's partially unlocked. The Interface doesn't usually bother to tell me when I'm just going to unlock something."

"It did say the programming's different now," Ahkelios says. "Maybe that's just one of the things that's different."

"That'd be convenient, wouldn't it?" I hum thoughtfully. The Interface doesn't usually do things for no reason. "Maybe that's all there is to it. But I wouldn't bet on it."

"Figure it out later," Ahkelios suggests, giving me a nudge. "You haven't even used your credits yet."

I laugh. "Eager to see what happens, are you?"

"Who wouldn't be?" Ahkelios protests. "You have Inspirations to unlock!"

"Yeah, yeah," I say. I glance back through my notifications one final time—there's something I'm still worried about. Whatever it is that's dangerous about Anchoring, the Interface doesn't seem fit to elaborate on, which means I'm going to have to be careful if I want to keep using it.

I don't think I can afford to abandon it. The Talent is too powerful for me to discard. But until there's a safer way for me to test its limits, until I understand what I'm actually doing... it might be better to shelve it, or at least limit my use of it.

"Ethan," Ahkelios says, annoyed. "You're overthinking things again, aren't you?"

"Am not," I deny reflexively. "I'm just thinking about the Anchoring thing. What happens if my Truth breaks instead of the world's, or whatever the Interface means by that."

"Not that I'm not also interested, but use your credits already." Ahkelios folds his arms across his chest, looking very much like an angry mother. I snicker a bit at the sight, reaching up to give him a flick.

"Fine, fine." I finally open up my status window.

[Status | Skills | Mastery | Inspirations | Dungeons]

[Ethan, third-layer practitioner]

Talents: [Anchor]

[Credit Distribution]

Strength: 1,221 (179 banked)

Durability: 899 (632 banked)

Reflex: 2,117 (360 banked)

Speed: 1,147 (273 banked)

Firmament: 1,715 (376 banked)

[NOTICE: Interface currently running on backup protocol ANCHORED HERITAGE. Features and rewards may be different.]

It really does look different. The organization of information is much cleaner; it'll be nice not to have to look at an enormous list of things every time I look at the Interface. This is much more manageable.

"I still can't believe you actually made the whole Interface change," Ahkelios murmurs.

I glance at him wryly. "Didn't really sink in until now, did it?"

"Nope."

There's still a pretty big question on my mind. According to both Whisper and to the Interface itself, the Integrators are cut off from Hestia. What happens when I bank in my credits for a skill? I'm past the threshold to obtain a new Inspiration for every skill category. Normally, banking those credits freezes time around me and opens up a connection with the Integrators, allowing Gheraa to speak with me and present me with my options.

But Gheraa is dead. None of the rest of the Integrators can reach me.

Who will I meet, if anyone?

Only one way to find out.

The choice of which category to bank first is an easy one. Of the five I have available, Firmament skills are the ones that are most likely to form the core of any combat strategy—they're the outliers among the skills, after all. It's not certain, but there's a chance that I'll get something I can build my other skill picks around.

[Are you sure you wish to bank 1,715 Firmament credits?]

I hesitate briefly. It's tempting to hold on to the credits—1,000 credits guarantees me a Rank S skill, but 5,000 will guarantee me a Rank SS skill...

Nah. The only one I'll hold off on for the time being will be Durability. Waiting for the next jump is a trap; I'm already low on skills after losing so many of them to the phase-shift. Either I'll get enough credits to hit 5,000 again quickly or I won't.

I just wish I didn't have to bank all of my credits. It'd be nice to save the leftover for next time. Maybe that's an Interface feature I can unlock?

Or maybe I'll get lucky and roll something higher. I hold my breath.

[1,715 credits banked! Rolling for results...]

[Select between:

A Stitch in Time (Rank S)

The Road Not Taken (Rank S)

Phasic Integrity (Rank S)

Stasis (Rank S)]

[You have unlocked an Inspiration. Bonus will commence once skill selection has taken place.]

I breathe a sigh of mixed relief and disappointment.

No Rank SS skill, but a part of me worried that with all the changes to the Interface—and with the Integrators no longer having access in particular—that I wouldn't get an Inspiration this time. It's good to know that that's not the case; I'll need every advantage I can get.

As for the skills... I have a difficult choice ahead of me. The good news is that I was right: my repeated usage of Temporal Link along with a time-based rewind skill has clearly influenced the skills the Interface is offering. The bad news is that this isn't going to be an easy choice to make.

A Stitch in Time is a skill that allows me to maintain two separate timelines at once, essentially allowing me to explore two options within a single loop. There's an argument to be made that its functionality is limited—it's only doing what the loops themselves already do for me—but considering time-based skills seem to bypass loop-based restrictions like the permanent deaths in raids, I can't afford to discard it just for that reason.

The Road Not Taken is similar. It's a skill that allows me to pick a point in time in the past and see what would have happened if I had made a different decision. It's an informational skill more than anything else, but it's instantaneous and allows me to explore much farther in the past. I could, for example, still use it to extract information from Whisper, even if she's now going to be technically missing from the loops.

Phasic Integrity does something similar to what Phaseslip does, but on an opposing scale: it reinforces my current 'phase', so to speak, making it so that I can't be pushed out of phase or forced away from a battle. More than anything, Inspect tells me this is a weapon specifically for fighting against the Integrators, which is... fascinating. Not a piece of information I would have expected the Interface to freely offer.

And last but not least, Stasis. It freezes time in a bubble for as long as I can maintain it; the larger the bubble and the longer I try to hold it, the more Firmament it costs, with exponentially increasing costs on anything that tries to resist it.

"...Do you know what you're going to pick?" Ahkelios asks. "Because, uh, honestly... I have no idea."

"They're all amazing," I admit, but I find myself drawn to one in particular.

There's no doubt that these are all powerful skills, but...

Miktik's death. Whisper's secrets. I have questions that can't be answered without one of those skills, and if I use it right, I can mimic the functionality of the Stitch in Time skill as well—especially if I can regrow Once More into the Fray from that small, broken fragment I still retain.

I'll have plenty of time to get the others later. I doubt this will be the last time I see these skills. Their Firmament feels familiar to me, and if I try to peer beyond the layers of the Interface, I can almost, almost sense where those skills are kept.

[The Road Not Taken (Rank S) obtained!]

[Inspiration commencing...]

Time freezes around me, but something's different.

The force of it feels like jaws closing in around the fabric of my existence. It's nothing like any Inspiration I've had before. There's an abrupt end to the movement of all Firmament, and I feel the strain on time like an ache in my teeth.

More importantly, there's something else here.

And it's not an Integrator.