[Charge the Seed: 32/100] The fight's advanced enough to become harrowing. Novi knows enough to stay a good distance back, thankfully; the plan for Guard to take the lead doesn't quite work as well against these Regrets. If they get close enough to him, they can just phase themselves through—and from the looks of things, that does quite a bit of damage to his systems. "Are you alright?" I ask, steadying him. There's some smoke coming out from his systems; he makes a sound that's a little bit like a cough. He nods, but leans a bit more weight on me than I'd expect if he was fine. "I will be fine," He-Who-Guards says. "I simply need to make sure they don't touch me." True enough. I take the lead anyway; as long as Phaseshift is active, I can basically act as a physical wall. A barrier. They seem drawn to me when I do it, too. Only a few of them slip past to try to get at Novi and the Seed. Guard, meanwhile, doesn't take long to adapt to his role as backup. His Firmament blasts can still hit them, and his chains work as long as they're charged through with his power. At first, it's barely even necessary—but the farther we get down the tunnels, the more the Regrets swarm. More and more of them get past me. And that's where Guard really shines. From the way he's fighting, I get the odd feeling that he's frustrated—there's an aggression to his movements that I'm not used to seeing from him. Maybe he feels he isn't contributing as much as he should. He fights with an expert precision, launching charged chains of Firmament that anchor themselves into the walls to block off paths, firing bursts out of his palms that take down two or three ghosts each. It's pretty cool, if I'm being honest. I'd sit back and watch him if I didn't have to fight myself. We make steady progress , and for a while it's enough. "I'm just trying to figure out what they're doing," I answer. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He's right, though. Whatever I've latched on to is occupying most of my mind. I'm still fighting, but it's like my body is moving on autopilot—the Knight is helping me, now that I'm paying attention. I'm not fully engaging the Inspiration, but it's reaching out to guide me in battle, helping me grab and tear each Regret apart as they approach. And my mind is running full-tilt, almost out of my control. He-Who-Guards wasn't quite sure what Ethan meant by that, but there was something in the human's voice that made him stand a little straighter. His journey with Ethan so far was... he wasn't sure he had the right words for it. He felt like he was falling behind, in a way. He had an immense amount of Firmament and very little he could do with it other than blast it out of his palms—he hadn't even quite figured out skill circuits yet. All of them were in his memory banks, and ever since he'd captured them he'd had his AI running in the background, trying to analyze them and figure them out. But they were complicated things, even put into a format he understood. The last time he'd tried to invoke a skill circuit had been while they were repairing the Carusath Tear, and that had backfired and failed. He hadn't shown it at the time, but the backfiring had failed in a spectacular way, too. All the Firmament he'd poured into the circuit flooded back into him, nearly overloading his systems. If the AI hadn't quickly taken over and shunted the majority of the force into its own circuits... It meant that it would be partially fried for the rest of this loop, and in some ways, Guard missed having its company. He hadn't needed it the way he needed it before; not since Ethan had fixed him. But they were... friends, after a fashion. They knew each other better than anyone else did. Now he was just left with his own thoughts. It was lonelier than he'd expected. It surprised him, though, how many of those thoughts were centered around the idea of protecting Ethan. Ethan didn't even really need that protection. Half the time, it was the other way around. But it was like the human had entirely supplanted She-Who-Whispers in his mind—once upon a time, he would've given up his life for her, and now... Well, now he was pretty sure that if he suggested anything of the sort to Ethan, Ethan would just stare at him and refuse in that very human way of his. Silverwisp society was quite different from humanity, he'd gathered. Silverwisps considered a pledge of allegiance the highest honor one silverwisp could bestow to another. There was a whole ceremony for it, even. He'd take a piece of his Firmament, that wispy, ethereal substance that made up his form, and he'd give it to the person he was pledging himself to. They'd give him a lesser, smaller piece in exchange. There was an importance to it. A lot of their society revolved around little exchanges like these. The people you shared your essence with were few and far between—most often for romantic arrangements, less often as a pledge of allegiance, and rarer still for truly close friendships and bonds. The one time he'd suggested pledging himself to Ethan was shortly after the asteroid strike, while Isthanok was building. He didn't know the human that well yet, but he'd seen enough through the loops that he admired him. Looked up to him, in a way. Wanted a piece of that determination that let Ethan keep pushing himself through adversity, a piece of whatever it was that made him keep fighting when the odds seemed impossible. Ethan had looked at him like the suggestion was an insult. "You know you're not serving me, right?" he'd said. "Because if you think that, we probably shouldn't travel together." "I know that," Guard had said. He did, but the response made him feel warm anyway. It was good to have confirmation. He remembered, still, what it was like. Trying to hold back the weight of an entire asteroid about to hit Isthanok. Knowing that if he failed, the entire city would be wiped out—likely far more. He remembered pouring all the Firmament he'd had into it. He'd never been lacking for Firmament; the disease he'd been born with ensured that. He had a nearly neverending pool of it, to the point it had begun to unravel his soul. And Ethan had just... fixed it. Stitched his soul back together. Even with all that power, he couldn't hold back the asteroid. It didn't matter how much Firmament he had if there was a limit to how much of that Firmament he could channel at any given time, and the body Whisper had given him, powerful as it was, simply couldn't output enough to stop something like the asteroid. And even without those restrictions, if he simply opened up his core and blasted it, the calibration alone? Too much Firmament would drill through the asteroid and do nothing, leaving the rest of it to crash into the city; too little would do nothing; too wide and he'd again run into the problem of not channeling enough; too little and he'd once again just drill through it. Using all his Firmament and all his proxies was enough to slow it down, but just barely. And then Ethan had come in. Looked at the asteroid. Hadn't even considered for a second that their task might be impossible. It was like he'd looked up and decided it didn't deserve to be there. The sheer force of what he'd done... He didn't think Ethan knew how it felt to everyone else. It was like reality itself had bent to obey him. Bent around Ethan, first and foremost, changing him into something somehow more solid and more real—a magnetic presence that was unto perception like gravity itself. It was impossible not to notice. Then his fist, lay flat against the asteroid, as he commanded it to move. Forced it into a new direction. Again, Ethan himself most likely hadn't noticed—but the shockwave of it was something he'd felt in his soul. Not just him, but every citizen of Isthanok. He was certain it was what had destabilized Whisper, too. She was a proud woman, but despite everything she said... She'd been closest to Ethan and incredibly drained of her Firmament when that had happened. He-Who-Guards didn't have the level of Firmament sensitivity that Ethan did, but even he could guess what had happened. When his soul unraveled, it was because there was too much Firmament bubbling up from within. She-Who-Whispers began to unravel, and it was due to the shockwave of reality that Ethan had conjured from without. Not that she would admit it. Nor would she ever stoop to the level of asking for help—not for herself, and not from someone she'd already tried to mess with. She was too proud for that. He-Who-Guards wondered if she was telling the truth about waking up, because if he was right, then it was likely she wouldn't wake up at all. He didn't know how he felt about that. That was all beside the point, really. The point was that what happened that day had shaken him. Forced him to reconsider the core tenets of what he believed in. Made everything shift, just a little bit, toward Ethan. Back in the fight against the Seedmother, he'd started to consider that he could perhaps become something more. Started to consider that he might be able to learn to do what it did, might be able to grow the way a Trialgoer could. But he'd run into a roadblock—all those skill circuits he'd memorized practically burned in his databanks, but he still hadn't been able to do anything with them. He was relying on the AI in his systems, expecting it to eventually have some sort of breakthrough, but it was currently fried. This one's for you, Ethan had said. He-Who-Guards stared at the flickering Firmament passing between the ghosts. Observed. Tried to understand, for the first time in a long time, without the help of his AI. They were passing Firmament through one another, in a long, convoluted way, some of them charging and flickering, others inverting the signal, Firmament bouncing between each and every one of them like a long and hard to observe— His single optic widened. "Ethan!" he called out; there was a flare of panicked static in his voice. "They're using a skill!" At the same time, their first circuit completed. A rush of Firmament poured down the tunnel. It was nothing like Guard had ever seen before—it radiated pure death. Death Firmament, literal and visible, creeping down the tunnel like a black fog. Guard operated on pure instinct. He didn't even have the help of his AI. But he had experience, he had his observations, and his mind had never stopped calculating. It saw the circuit in its entirety. The thing about the way the ghosts were doing this? It was slow. It was visible. He-Who-Guards held that circuit in his mind's eye...