Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 250: Book 4: 'Neath the Wooded Shrine

It doesn't take us long to find the chamber where the Seed is kept. In fact, it almost feels like the Sewers are rearranging themselves to make it easier for us to get there. I can feel the rumbling beneath my feet; the movement of stone; even the limited reach of my Firmament sense tells me the tunnels are shifting and turning in a way that places the Seed right in front of us.

And I know that because the Seed is, at this point, the single strongest source of Firmament in the Sewers. I don't even need to unspool my Chromatic Strings to feel the tug toward the nexus of this Ritual—the Seed is going to be the center of every Ritual stage from here on out, I'm sure.

We know when we get there, because the chamber that houses it is massive.

It's immediately clear that this chamber wasn't originally built as part of the Sewers. It's an add-on, a construct that was built specifically to hold the Seed, and I'm not even sure if it's a dungeon construct or if it's built by the citizens of First Sky. For one thing, the size of it is impossible: the ceiling alone extends beyond what should be street level in the city above.

For another? The center of the chamber is essentially an altar. It's a raised circle of stone that's packed to the brim with fertile dirt, and there are detailed inscriptions carved into the stone that look almost like they have religious significance.

The sight of it is, of course, a little ruined by the state of the Seed itself. Thick, grotesque roots that pulse with dizzying color have begun to emerge from the Seed. They've torn through large sections of the stone to dig into the earth beneath, cracking through the foundation.

If that weren't enough, there's a single thin string of pure black Firmament that stretches from the Seed all the way up to the apex of the domed ceiling, where another set of roots have begun to grow. I'm surprised the roof hasn't collapsed—there are cracks everywhere—but I suppose the roots are somehow holding it together.

"Looks like it's already begun to grow," I mutter. The other humans exchange nervous glances behind me. Ahkelios and Gheraa are both tense, waiting for something to happen.

The scirix, on the other hand, are examining the chamber and muttering to themselves in growing consternation, no doubt coming to the same conclusion I have.

Align the Sewers. No doubt every one of the valve chambers we've been through activated one of these water channels. The Seed appears to be sucking down every drop of water delivered to it greedily. My first instinct is that the water is the cause of the growing saturation, but...

No. The Interface hasn't tracked any increase in Firmament saturation since we've arrived, in fact.

More importantly, the way this chamber is built leads to only one possible conclusion about how all this happened. I wince slightly as one of the scirix lets out a scream of frustration mixed with a broken sob, slamming a hand into the reinforced stone of the chamber.

None of the others look much better. Juni takes a few steps forward until he's standing next to me, and when he speaks, his voice is tight. "They did this to us on purpose."

"Sure looks that way, doesn't it?" I mutter.

This chamber was clearly purpose-built to house and nurture the Seed. The valve chambers were built so the Elders could control its rate of growth, buying themselves time to escape First Sky before its citizens were trapped in place. I can see the understanding and anger reflected in the face of every scirix present: they were abandoned, intentionally, so either the Elders or the Scions they served could study the effects of this Seed.

They had known this already, in part, but there's nothing quite like evidence to hammer that fact home.

"Ethan," Adeya says. She looks just as pissed as the scirix do—I think I saw the moment she understood what happened, the moment her expression changed and her fists clenched. "What do we do next?"

"I'm not sure yet," I answer. "We need to find out what's causing the saturation to go up. I'm willing to bet this is a timed stage—we need to prevent the chamber from reaching max saturation while the Seed gets watered."

"But it's not the water that's causing it," Adeya says with a frown. She glances around the chamber, then narrows her eyes. "There."

I glance at where she's looking, then frown in turn. There, hidden among the pattern of the brick, is a small opening in the chamber's walls. It's suspiciously placed, considering there's no apparent purpose to it, and the way it's camouflaged against the walls tells me we're not supposed to notice it. What exactly is it for?

We're at a total of 88% saturation. Every jump in saturation so far has been 4% intervals, spaced about a minute apart. That gives us three more jumps before we hit maximum saturation, and about three skills we can use without changing that fact.

"Two more." Adeya points them out. Each opening is positioned a few feet above one of the grates. All of us are tense now, watching the openings as if expecting something to happen.

And then something does. A flicker of movement, almost too fast to see; I sprint forward, Generator Form propelling me almost instantly into position. There's a tangle of vines crawling along the chamber floor, each vine painted a stark white to match the colors of the chamber. It's hidden in part by the bulk of the altar and its own color scheme.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

That changes the moment I get close, of course.

A flower on its back blooms, pulsing wildly with supercharged Firmament and a nauseating saturation of color. My eyes widen in understanding. "Root Acolytes!"

Even as I shout, I'm winding back to kick it away. The vines reach forward to try to tangle around my calf, but the thorns can't find any purchase thanks to the armor provided by the Knight. I can feel its smug satisfaction as the tendrils slip off, and then the force of my kick hits and sends it sprawling into the chamber wall.

That, apparently, is enough for the Ritual stage to move forward and for its pretense at stealth to fall away. A notification flickers into view.

[Ritual Stage 3: Water the Seed.

40% complete. 15 minutes to completion.

Each successful approach by any Sewer Inhabitant will increase Firmament by 4%. More powerful Sewer Inhabitants may cause greater increases.]

At the same time, the three openings in the chamber walls expand into yawning entryways, pushing the grates down and slowing the flow of water to a trickle. Each one of them alone is enough to allow for a flood of monsters to push through, and from the chittering I can hear deep within each tunnel, they're already coming.

"Shit," Adeya says, scowling.

I can't help but agree.

Avegoth was, thankfully, quite amenable to listening once Ghost managed to get him to calm down. He was a little surprised—all his attempts to speak to the squid-like Trialgoer during his own loops had almost always failed violently—but the man was remarkably well-spoken when he wanted to be.

The problem was that most of the time, he didn't.

He was still rather bemused to find himself seated across both Whisper and Avegoth at a makeshift table, with the other two both sipping casually at their tea while he explained the situation to them. He didn't tell them that they were just a simulation of a past event that existed specifically inside a Tear, of course. That seemed like a little too much existential dread for one meeting. But he did tell them exactly how Teluwat was manipulating the both of them—which agents were compromised, how they were compromised, and how they would detect such things in the future.

"Fascinating," Avegoth murmured. He intertwined his fingers, facial tendrils coiling around his own hands in thought. "You have a thorough understanding of the extent of his manipulations, I see. This must have taken you many loops."

"I'm rather annoyed Teluwat has compromised so many of my agents," Whisper said with a scowl. "You are certain the ones you listed are compromised?"

"I have informed you how to test for them," Ghost said. "Teluwat's changes cannot be tracked conventionally, but they do leave traces behind. You must look for—"

"Statistical anomalies, yes." Avegoth's tendrils seemed to curl with... delight? Ghost wasn't sure. It was hard to interpret his expressions. "To think the feared one's weakness would be bureaucracy."

"It is not a weakness, exactly," Ghost said. "But paperwork does not have a particularly strong Firmament signature, which makes it difficult for his power to infect. Birth certificates and identity cards all carry some level of emotional sentiment that serves as a vector for his abilities, but survey records and censuses do not. It is a gap in his reach."

"Regardless," Avegoth said. "I appreciate this information greatly. Perhaps a reward is in order? I could use someone like you in my court."

Whisper snorted. "Really? You're trying to recruit the Trialgoer right in front of me?"

"One must be ready for opportunity whenever it strikes, my dear." Avegoth smiled.

"Do not call me that," Whisper said, her tone frosty. "And you're one to talk."

"I do allow my temper to get away from me," Avegoth said. "You have my deepest apologies, Trialgoer."

"I am afraid I cannot commit to anything at this time," Ghost said carefully. He checked in with Ethan again. He seemed... busy? But he'd given him a sort of hurried approval, and so Ghost carefully extracted the relic in Soul Space through their link, careful to hide it from view. "But perhaps you could share some information that would allow me to speak to you without fear of instigating a fight?"

"Of course," Avegoth said cheerfully—and then, to Ghost's surprise, the Hestian Trialgoer spoke directly into his mind, presumably to bypass Whisper. "Simply allow me to read this mental key from your thoughts, and I will calm enough to speak. Most likely. If not, you may always repeat your performance today."

Ghost's optics flickered as Avegoth delivered a surprisingly complex encrypted key directly into his thoughts. He wondered if Avegoth had any particular experience with coreminds like himself.

Probably not. It only took him a second to break and reverse engineer the encryption.

He said nothing about it, though. Evidently, befriending Avegoth qualified as a passing condition for sealing the Tear—he could already feel it beginning to fade, and that meant it was time for him to work.

Because he could feel the traces it was leaving behind as it began to fade. He could see the pattern manifesting, an echo of a temporal crossover he needed to pull forward across a single loop. Normally, that would have been impossible, but...

Well, right now, Ghost was a manifestation of Temporal Link. He had a relic that mapped out all of Hestia's messy temporal history.

He could do this.

The first wave of Root Acolytes was, fortunately, relatively easy to deal with. Sheer quantity isn't quite enough for them to break through our collective strength, especially not with the way we've set ourselves up. We've formed pairs to handle each of the three entryways: Ahkelios and Dhruv keep the leftmost one clear, Adeya and I are at the center, and Gheraa and Taylor handle the far right.

The scirix, on the other hand, form a ring around the Seed just to make sure that any stragglers can't sneak their way past us. It's a good thing they do that, too—the Root Acolytes are sneaky, and they're not above trying to distract us with enormous swarms while one or two camouflaged Acolytes crawl past us.

They even try to fling themselves across, a move that I quickly stop by switching to Projector Form and throwing up a force barrier like a wall across the chamber. Most of them smack directly into it and fall back to the ground, stunned. The few that aren't covered by my barrier are quickly taken care of by the scirix.

There's another factor working in our favor: we can finally use our skills again without it counting against our saturation level. It's Adeya that first discovers this—she calls on her team to use a single buffing skill each, based on the knowledge that three skills is the maximum we can use without changing the saturation math.

We can afford to allow two Acolytes to get through us. The third will trigger full saturation whether we use three skills or not. Her team needs the buff skills more than my team does, and they get more credits out of the fight. So we agree on them using their skills, only to find that saturation no longer goes up when we use them.

Of course, then the second wave of Root Acolytes begin crawling out of the entryways, and we find out exactly why.

They're firing our own skills back at us.