Die. Respawn. Repeat.

We learn a few things over the next couple of minutes.

One, Rotar and Ikaara are both safe — or at least as safe as they can be. Being half a step out of phase with everything else comes with downsides, obviously, but it also comes with the upside of nothing being able to interact with them. We first notice this when we realize that their feet aren't quite touching the ground, and it becomes more obvious when a stray dust breeze blows a cloud of dirt right through them.

No telling how they'd interact with Firmament, but given the Fracture explodes with Firmament every once in a while and neither of them seem to be dead, they're probably not in that much danger.

Temporal Fragment might be able to pull them back into phase, and Ikaara should be able to get them out of the slipstream after that. That's the first step of the plan, anyway. If it doesn't work, we'll have to rethink our approach.

Even getting there is easier said than done, though. The Fracture is far from here, and unless we go around or above, we'll be going through all the chimeras to get there. Tarin can dodge them all with his speed. Me? I'm not quite there yet.

So we're talking through our options, and Miktik's telling us a little more about her talent as a tracker.

"I can use it to find anything!" she says cheerfully. "It makes me pretty useful."

"It does, doesn't it?"

The voice is new. It's a gentle voice, almost musical in the way it sounds, but something about it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand. I try not to show how startled I am and slowly turn to greet the newcomer.

Tarin, on the other hand, has no such compunctions. He lets out a startled squawk. "Who you!" he says, pointing an accusatory wing at the silverwisp standing behind us.

Almost as soon as he does, a bolt of Firmament flickers out from that silverwisp. It's small but it's dense, and moving fast enough that I'm not sure Tarin would have reacted to it in time even if he had the same ability to sense Firmament as I did. It's a warning shot — the Firmament strikes one of Tarin's feathers dead-center and blows it clean off, but does no more damage than that. Unless you count the hole it drills deep into the dirt, anyway.

Tarin squawks hops backwards, staring indignantly at his wing. It's telling, though, that instead of saying anything else he just stares cautiously.

"I am She-Who-Whispers," the silverwisp says. She doesn't wear the collar that a lot of the other silverwisps use to express themselves; instead, she wears a pendant beautifully embellished with tiny pearls of Firmament, each one swirling with a different set of colors. On the face of the pendant is a small, delicate smile that's perfectly matched with her voice, and so far removed from the threat of her attack that I immediately distrust it.

Also, those pearls on her pendant. I note with no small amount of concern that all of it feels like Firmament belonging to a person. Multiple people. Ambient, aspected Firmament feels distinct from the unique Firmament that belongs to a person — It's not something I've thought about until now

"Ah!" Miktik scurries forward, sweeping herself into a low bow. For her, this mostly looks like bending even closer to the ground, with her antennae also bending with the application of some Firmament. I don't fail to notice how nervous she looks. "Welcome! What brings you to Miktik's store? You normally wait for my visits!"

"Yes, well, I couldn't help but feel something interesting happening over here," She-Who-Whispers says. She glides forward, peering with interest at the discarded oracle orb that Miktik's left on the ground behind her. A flick of her finger, and the orb levitates into the air, curled in a vice grip of Firmament. She peers at it curiously. "The Fracture, hm? Very few people know to call it that."

Shit.

I haven't mentioned the Trial outside of Miktik's privacy-imbued walls, but now that I think about it, plenty of people should be talking about the Trial. They know their planet is going to be used to host one. The words that the city's spies are going to be on the lookout for are words only a Trialgoer might use.

Like Fracture, in the context of a landmark. I should have known those were Interface names — Cliffside Crows is very clearly not the name of Tarin's village. Even then, though, I didn't consider that they might be on the lookout for Interface-only names. They'd need to either be backed by a Trialgoer or be a Trialgoer to even be aware of those names.

I look at She-Who-Whispers again and feel myself tensing up even more. There are only a few things she could be, and the pendant of Firmament around her neck is making me lean towards her being one of Hestia's Trialgoers.

"You are being very quiet," She-Who-Whispers notes. She turns back to smile at me. "I'm just curious where you heard the name, is all."

"It just looks like that," I say. I'm aware the excuse is terrible. Quicken Mind doesn't give me enough time to find a reasonable excuse. What am I supposed to say, that I heard someone else say it on the street? "Like a fracture in the earth."

She-Who-Whispers says nothing. She examines Miktik's pocket oracle for a moment more, and then I sense the pressure from her Firmament abruptly increase. A crack appears in the glass.

Miktik whimpers, twitching forward like it's all she can do not to run forward and wrest her oracle from the silverwisp's grip. Honestly, I'm barely holding back from doing the same. She's showing off — this is a threat, implied in everything from her calm demeanor to the casual way in which she destroys one of Miktik's prized possessions.

But she's also way, way out of my league, and considering what Naru has said these Integrator-aligned Trialgoers can do, I don't think I want to provoke her. I doubt she'll be as easy to trick into killing me as Naru was. Even if I need to die...

...No, she's fast enough to stop me. Inspect tells me that with eerie certainty.

"Miktik, dear," the silverwisp says. "You haven't been by for your usual visit in a while. Nothing new to show me?"

"Not yet!" Miktik says. I'm surprised by how composed her voice is, because her actual body is shaking like a leaf. Her saleswoman voice is back, though. "Miktik ran into some hiccups with the fabricator. Just got it fixed, actually! Miktik was going to come in tomorrow."

"I see." She-Who-Whispers hums. She turns around finally, letting the cracked oracle fall from her grip, and I notice Miktik visibly holding herself back from darting forward and grabbing it. "Are these two gentlemen responsible for fixing the fabricator?"

Miktik hesitates, which surprises me. She doesn't want either of us to be implicated even more.

"We are," I say, cutting in before Miktik can answer and taking the pressure of the silverwisp's attention off of Miktik. "Is there something we can help you with?"

"I was simply curious." She-Who-Whispers steps forwards towards us, and I force myself to stay very, very still. Premonition isn't firing, but every other instinct is telling me to run. The fear has crept up on me, but it's now so abject and unnatural that I automatically reach out, trying to understand.

It takes me a moment. My Firmament sense is overwhelmed to the point of being nearly useless. But I manage to recognize faint traces of her Firmament wrapping around Miktik, Tarin and me.

Intentional. She's testing us.

"I realize I may have been a little rude earlier," I say, plastering a fake smile onto my face. "We should have introduced ourselves. My name is Ethan, and this is Tarin; we're new to Isthanok. It's beautiful."

"It is, isn't it?" She-Who-Whispers agrees. She seems a little surprised by my recovery, and I feel her testing the limits a little — increasing the pressure of her Firmament on me, just to see if I react. "I'm glad you've enjoyed my city. I take it you came here to engage Miktik's services in finding your friend?"

"We did," I say. My city. She governs Isthanok, then. "She's been very helpful."

"The Fracture is a rather dangerous place for your friend to be in," She-Who-Whispers says. "Allow me to build upon Miktik's hospitality, and lend you one of my soldiers to help retrieve that friend of yours. Miktik will be coming to my palace tomorrow; the two of you will follow along, and I will grant you your soldier there."

She's... really making a lot of assumptions all at once. "Did you say palace?"

"I did." There's a tinge of amusement in her voice there. "It's the largest Shard in the sky. I look forward to seeing you there. Don't disappoint me, now."

There's an implied threat in those last four words. I feel the strength of her Firmament abruptly increase, even though her expression remains perfectly pleasant. The meaning is clear — disappointing her will have consequences.

Not that she gives me a chance to reject the offer to begin with. She disappears moments after speaking, and if she does that through sheer speed, then it's fast and stealthy enough that I neither feel the wind from her movement nor see her move, even with Quicken Mind. My best guess is that it's some form of teleportation.

Only once she leaves does the Firmament in the air lighten. It's like being allowed to take a breath of fresh air. I take a deep breath, Tarin unfreezes from staring at his missing feather, and Miktik gradually calms herself down.

"Rude!" Tarin declares.

"Let's go back inside," Miktik says. She pauses only to pick up her pocket oracle, tracing one of her legs over the cracked glance and wincing slightly.

I let Tarin follow after her. It's only then that I realize that Ahkelios has been gathering Firmament while standing on my head — gradually and subtly, but now there's a mass of Firmament he's holding on to that he's slowly releasing. I blink, climbing back into Miktik's workshop before I speak.

"...Ahkelios, were you preparing to attack She-Who-Whispers?"

"She did forget about me," the mantis says thoughtfully. "But no. Well, kind of. I was preparing to hit you really hard and force a reset if I needed to."

I think about this for a moment. It's a lot less disturbing than it probably should be. "Good call, actually."

"Thank you." Ahkelios preens.

—

It takes a while for Miktik to settle down enough to talk to us about She-Who-Whispers.

She is, in fact, one of Hestia's Trialgoers. She's also a regular and involuntary client of Miktik's, apparently, and also the contact that gets Miktik access to the Integrator scrapyard she mentioned. She almost never shows up in this part of Isthanok — it is, apparently, too much of an eyesore for her — so her presence today was both terrifying and deeply unexpected.

"Involuntary client?" I ask.

Miktik grimaces. "I am... one of the few people in the city that can produce the equipment she wants, and the only one she has leverage on. She's the reason I got that privacy imbuement installed — you saw how she can listen to anything that happens across basically the entire city."

I raise an eyebrow. Two important questions, there. "What exactly does she need from you?"

"It varies." Miktikk clicks her mandibles together, agitated. "Usually it's replacement parts for her pet project — she's working on some kind of elite automaton, I think. I don't know most of the details. She commissions the parts from me and I get them to her."

Elite automaton. It can't possibly be the same thing that attacked me in the Fracture, can it? "What about the leverage she has on you?"

Miktik looks frustrated. "She has an AI core I made. I didn't sell it to her, I sold it to an old friend of mine — but she either stole it or convinced him to sell it to her. I can't let her keep it."

"Why?" Tarin squawks. "Let her keep! You not let her use you. She evil. She hurt feather!"

"Because the core is basically alive," Miktik says. "I didn't realize it until after I sold it. It's alive, and she's just keeping it in a vault. I can't... It doesn't deserve that."

Ah.

As far as reasons go, I have to admit: That's a pretty convincing one.

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