Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 23: Mother and Son

The color drains away the moment we step into the Hotspot, just like before. Unlike me, Mari doesn't seem impressed at all she barely gives it a glance before she stomps her way deeper into the Hotspot, like she's planning to tear her way through it. I stay a good distance behind her, as per the plan that I'm absolutely not planning on keeping to.

"Are you sure about this?" Ahkelios whispers to me. "This could go really wrong!"

"About as sure as I can be," I whisper back.

I don't actually know what Naru will do. Everything hinges on his actions I can't plan for a situation I've never seen before. But I do know how Naru fights, and unlike last time, I now have a Temporal Fragment I can call upon.

I also have Ahkelios, who, now that he's forced to come along, appears to be determined to be helpful. I'm not sure where that's coming from, considering how afraid he was last time; I try to remind him that he can back out if he needs to. I'm not interested in traumatizing the only companion that can remember me between loops.

But I'm not going to stop him if he wants to help, either.

It takes a bit longer before Naru shows up, this time. I worry for a while that he won't show up at all that he's been told not to come again, now that I'm aware that he exists. Or that I've done things differently enough this loop that he won't get whatever alert he got that brought him here in the first place.

But Mari doesn't seem worried. She stands with her wings folded just at the edge of the radius of the obelisk's Firmament pulses, looking for all the world like she was ready to punch her son out of the sky.

...Which happens in a much more literal way than I expect. I feel the Firmament spike before I see her do anything. Then she waves a wing, and there's a loud, startled squawk in the air; Naru comes barelling down through the sky and crashes into the dirt. I'm amazed that Mari's done anything to him at all.

"Naru," she says. "What you been doing? Helping Integrators?"

"What are you doing here?" Naru says. He doesn't seem that affected by the fall. He pushes himself to his feet, and his gaze flickers around the clearing, suddenly suspicious; I feel the spike of Firmament in his eyes.

I duck behind a tree, praying he doesn't see me. It's not time for me to interfere, yet. I need to find the right moment.

Thankfully, enhanced eyesight or no, he doesn't appear to be able to see through solid objects. "Did you just come here by accident?" he demands. "Are you following me?"

"You not answer question." Mari is stoic. Her expression doesn't flicker.

"You kicked me out," Naru half-snarls. He recovers from the fall, but it takes him a moment I realize that something about his Firmament is a little off, this time. Is it something Mari did? Her ability to knock him out of the sky is deeply unexpected; she's never displayed the ability to do anything at range. "What did you expect?"

"That you learn!" she snaps. "Not go back to Integrators! They using Hestia!"

She's not even trying to hide it, at this point. Her husband is clever and wily Tarin hides what he means through layers, and I still wonder if he's told me something important already, and I just haven't realized it yet. Mari, on the other hand, is proud; she says what she means, and she doesn't give a damn about who's around to hear it.

Maybe it helps that she's seen what happened to Tarin anyway, despite how careful he was.

"Oh, please," Naru says. He dusts himself off like he wasn't just yanked out of the sky like a wailing child; I wonder for the first time how he flies, if he doesn't have wings. A Firmament skill?

I'm suddenly very interested in the array of skills he has. Like me, he has access to the Interface. He's likely seen a far different set of skills. What makes his build different from mine?

How can I exploit it?

I'll have to keep it in mind.

"It's not like we can do anything against the Integrators even if we wanted to," Naru continues. "You're just going to have to accept it. They can do whatever they want with Hestia, and the sooner we join them, the better. No one on this planet can even scratch me now."

"Except other Trialgoer," Mari says. It reminds me that I wanted to ask her about those other Trialgoers; her insistence on confronting her son had startled me into forgetting. "You weak, for Trialgoer. Like baby crow."

Naru snarls. It's the most angry I've seen him, even when I provoked him. Mari knows how to get under his skin, clearly. Or get under his feathers. "Still strong enough to beat you, mom."

"You want bet?"

I was really hoping this wouldn't lead to a fight.

Hoping, but not expecting. I've got a pretty good idea the type of person Naru is, and while I've seen Mari be fierce and compassionate in equal measure, this is definitely her fierce side. She isn't willing to budge an inch.

The problem is that Naru outclasses her by a mile. I can feel that in their Firmament, even as they both cycle it to begin to get ready for a fight. Naru is a mountain compared to her, and although she knows some tricks I'm going to have to ask her how she knocked him out of the air like that I cannot imagine that those tricks are going to be enough.

"Get ready," I whisper to Ahkelios. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I need to be prepared for it. Mental Acceleration is working at full capacity, and I have Firestep and Triplestep active. The moment I move, I'm going to burst forward.

It's not likely to be enough to catch Naru completely off-guard. It's not likely even going to be enough to beat him. I'm not after either of those things, really.

What I'm after is information.

Mari's admitted she doesn't know that much about what her son is capable of. I asked her about it, on the way to the Hotspot; Naru's secretive about the full extent of his capabilities. I know what she's told me about what he did to the other crows at the Cliffside, and that speaks to enormous physical capability, but aside from that?

Nothing.

I need to know what he can do before I can begin to formulate a plan of action. I won't be able to find everything he can do, but even the smallest trick, if he's surprised that's going to help me find a way to beat him for real.

For a long moment, neither Mari nor Naru move. I wonder if they're even going to fight at all, or if one or both of them are going to back down; I have to admit I'm not exactly eager to see another family come to blows.

But Naru makes the first move. I get the sense that it's what Mari was waiting for that she doesn't want to be first.

The younger crow springs forward in a flicker of movement. He's holding back, I'm pretty sure. He knows the nature of the Hestian Trial, and he knows for a fact that any death won't be permanent, but I suppose that he passes the very, very low bar of not wanting to kill his mother.

It doesn't stop him from slamming a punch straight towards her gut.

Mari, by contrast, doesn't move much. She takes a single step forward and focuses all her Firmament into a singular point. I hear a soft grunt as she takes the blow on her stomach, but the manipulation of Firmament is so precise that the blow does little more to her. Even Naru seems startled he takes a step back, automatically bringing his arms up to prepare for retaliation.

So of course, she kicks him in the groin.

The subsequent caw is startling. I wasn't even aware that would be a point of weakness for their species it's not like the Earth analogue has anything remotely similar but evidently, their species does. The expertly-controlled Firmament is enough to actually damage him despite the sheer amount of Firmament he has loaded into everything.

So of course, that's when I make my move. He's feeling vulnerable right now. He's been hurt in a way he hadn't expected, and he's trying to recover. I'm well aware of what that feels like. It's the perfect time to make him panic. Off-balance, you don't have the time to fully process everything that's going on. I'm sure he's got something like Mental Acceleration, but his guard isn't fully up...

"Ahkelios," I signal.

Temporal Fragment flares to life. The tiny mantis on my shoulder shoots forward, utilizing his own Firmament in a way that I hadn't known he could do until now; it trails behind him like a stream of visible light. He makes a visible effort to move away from me before he activates whatever skill he's using, too, so he doesn't give away my location.

The other function of Temporal Fragment causes no such worry. Naru is standing, rather conveniently, in a spot that's almost exactly where I'd punched him before; it helps that Mari was standing in just the right spot to bait him there. Pure coincidence, this time around, but I'll have to remember it for the future.

In any case, a temporal clone shimmers into existence just a few feet away from Naru, and several things happen at once.

Naru looks up from between his arms. His brain is scrambled, clearly he's trying to cope with what his own mother just did, and he's failing to contain his own rising anger and so when he sees a streak of blue zipping towards him, he reacts with pure instinct. A wave of an arm sends a kaleidoscope of colors ringing out of his fist, crashing into Ahkelios and near-instantly dissipating the skil; I feel Ahkelios' presence disappear abruptly.

He's fine. His form was disrupted, but my bond with him is entirely intact. I'm more interested in exactly what that rainbow-wave did it seemed to fundamentally alter Firmament in some way, distorting Ahkelios' physical form and dismissing it. I'll have to keep it in mind: it looks like an all-purpose Dispel, for lack of a better word.

Then he looks up, and he sees my temporal clone charging at him. He takes a step back and nearly falls backwards; he waves an arm again, but nothing happens. I take a note there: That Dispel likely has a cooldown. He reaches for it as a reflexive defensive skill, which makes perfect sense, but if I can trick him into wasting it on something that won't hurt him...

That's one piece of information.

The punch doesn't do anything to Naru, but I don't expect it to; the temporal clone vanishes a second later in a flash of paradox, and Naru stares at the spot where it disappeared. He whirls back towards Mari. "This is a trick," he says. "You're working with the Trialgoer!"

Mari gives him the most deadpan stare I've ever seen from her. She looks mildly annoyed that I interfered, but not too annoyed; more just begrudgingly understanding. "I not say I not work with Trialgoer," she says. "What trick? You just stupid."

Naru's expression of disbelieving anger is, honestly, the highlight of my day.

THIS CHAPTER UPLOAD FIRST AT NOVELBIN.COM