Recap Episodes: DRR

A/N: First off, I want to thank everyone for the well-wishes and the patience. It means a lot to me. I'm still feeling a bit antisocial, but the writing is going now! I'm posting one chapter today and two more chapters tomorrow; I didn't want to start delaying again.

New chapters will drop roughly at the end of every week going forward.

Important: Quick note in that Patreon's bill-pausing thing is kind of terrible and requires you to re-pause it every month, but doesn't let you pre-emptively pause it, so if anyone got charged (I think a few people did, but there's no easy way to check through Patreon) please let me know so I can give you a refund. I'm leaving this post public so anyone that left the Patreon can also see it.

This post is basically a recap is meant for anyone that doesn't want to reread the entirety of Book 1 before continuing, and contains a little bit of a recap for Book 2. It's written in the form of an interview because I thought it would be fun, but it's basically non-canon.

...Mostly.

It could be canon. But it's not. Yet.

Anyway, this is about 3k words of interview. It's not necessary to read it at all, but if you do, I hope you enjoy it. :)

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Book 1 Recap: Interview 1

It begins with a spark of Firmament. A single, tiny spark of one of the fundamental forces of the universe, parallel to all the rules of matter and energy.

Or something like that, anyway. I'm not exactly a scientist.

The void around me burns into focus from that single spark of Firmament. I look around at the clean, alabaster-white halls, the rounded benches and the perfectly potted plants placed perpendicular to their length.

"Ethan!" a voice calls, and I hold back a sigh at the familiar voice. Gheraa. It's been a while since I've seen him. He's been on my mind, but with my only means of contacting him being accumulating an enormous amount of credits, I haven't really been able to follow up on anything as far as he's concerned.

"Gheraa," I say, trying to keep my tone polite. I turn around to greet him. The Integrator is dressed even more ostentatiously than before, if that's possible; a white-and-gold trimmed form-fitting suit, clearly stolen from human fashion and 'upgraded' with Gheraa's particular tastes.

"I've been asked to conduct an interview to assess how your experience of the Trials have been so far," he says, sweeping into a low bow and manifesting a microphone in his hand. Strangely enough, now that I'm a little better at reading him, I can see all the ways he's hiding the way he really feels. I can see the grimace he's hiding in his eyes, the frustration in his shoulders. "Rate your experience so far? One to five?"

"One," I say dryly. Gheraa puts on a faux-shocked expression.

"One? But you've gained so much from it!"

"I've gained a set of skills I never would have needed in my day-to-day life," I correct, which is more or less true. "Also, you introduced yourselves by threatening to destroy Earth. Not exactly a good first impression."

"You might have a point, there," Gheraa says in a too-cheerful voice. "We've had similar responses from other Trialgoers! I'm actually surprised you're being so polite."

"Would attacking you actually do anything?"

"Nope!"

"Then I'm not going to waste my energy." Not that I would attack him anyway, considering the situation I suspect he's in. But we're both playing a role for the metaphorical — and possibly literal — camera, now.

"Why don't you recap your journey for us?" Gheraa asks, leaning forward. "Some of us missed key moments in your Trial. Take us through your journey."

I stare at Gheraa for a moment. The look on my face says it all: really? Gheraa gives me a tiny shrug, as if to say "Just go with it, I don't know why they want this either."

I sigh.

"Well, it all started when you dumped me on an alien planet — while I was sleeping, might I add — underneath a monster that immediately killed me."

"Truly one of the entrances of all time," Gheraa agrees. I give him a look, and he shrugs innocently. "Human internet is entertaining."

"Right," I say, and decide to move on before he derails me further. "I suppose one of you Integrators thought it would be funny, seeing as my Trial is a time loop and I can't actually die."

"Unless you give up."

"Right." I give Gheraa a look. "Unless I give up."

"Or you get your mind broken."

"The fact that you consider that a possibility is worrying," I mutter. Good thing I picked up Iron Mind as a skill. Hopefully it's enough.

"Anyway. Where was I? Woke up on a foreign planet, discovered I was in a time loop. Died a lot, because you decided to start me off under a monster. I finally beat that monster, and encountered the dying moments of another looper, which I feel like you put there intentionally to try to traumatize me."

Gheraa studiously avoids looking at me.

"Then I run into the crow village, which I still don't know the name of, because the Interface just calls it the Cliffside Crows. They get attacked by a pack of harpies and I watch them all get slaughtered."

"Ah, yes." Gheraa hums thoughtfully. "That was a bit controversial among our viewers. Not enough death."

I consider responding to this, and decide not to.

"The Interface calls it a raid," I continue. "I get three attempts, or else the Cliffside Crows get erased entirely."

"A very desperate situation."

I shoot Gheraa a dirty look. "That the Integrators engineered." My tone is sharp. "I only got through it with Mari and Tarin's help, and even then Tarin nearly died permanently in the process. I had to find a rare herb to help him heal, which was hampered by the fact that Hestia is an Integrated planet and already has its own set of Trialgoers that have not only passed their own Trials, but apparently see me as an opponent. I would have appreciated a warning."

"What would be the fun in that?" Gheraa grins. I ignore him.

"Naru's the first one I met. Big, strong crow. Arms instead of wings for some reason. His skills all seem to focus heavily on destruction. Also it turned out he was Tarin and Mari's estranged son, so that was fun to find out."

"Was it?" Gheraa looks genuinely curious.

"No," I deadpan. "I managed to get away from him. Barely. I did bring Mari to him and she kicked him between the legs."

"A very well-received moment with our viewers."

"Do I want to ask you about these viewers you keep mentioning?" I finally ask, and when Gheraa opens his mouth to respond, I shake my head. "Nevermind. I don't want to know. Uh, let's see, what happened next..."

"If I didn't know any better, I would think you're trying to finish this as fast as possible so you can get away from me." Gheraa pretends to look hurt.

"Trying to get away from this situation," I correct. "I hate interviews."

Which isn't a lie. You'd think one good thing about being mid-apocalypse would be not having to go through interviews.

"Anyway. I met Naru because he's investigating one of the Hotspots that spawned — a Hotspot that just so happens to have the exact rare herb I needed to heal Tarin." I stare at Gheraa as I say this, one eyebrow slightly raised. He just whistles innocently. "...That Hotspot also had an obelisk that was emitting pulses of destructive Firmament. Ahkelios recognized the writing on it and said that the key to deciphering it is in the Fracture, so since we couldn't beat Naru yet, we went there."

"You skipped a step," Gheraa says, leaning forward in anticipation. I sigh.

"Before going to the Fracture I banked some of my points and met you," I say dryly. "That's when I learned what an Inspiration is."

"How would you rate my introduction? One out of ten?"

"Five." Gheraa looks disappointed, and I relent. "...Seven."

"Good enough," he decides.

"Anyway. The Fracture is where things really started to go wrong. The Fracture itself was emitting blasts of Firmament on a cycle, and I had to shield myself against them just to avoid getting disintegrated. It's also where I met Guard for the first time, the place I found what I think are partial skill shards, and where I got attacked by golems that felt like they were using skills." Maybe it's my turn to ask a question. "Do you happen to know anything about that, Gheraa?"

"Nope," he responds, far too casually.

That's an answer in itself.

"Right." I move on. "I met a Guardian in the Fracture that said some cryptic stuff about the Fracture being a Way to the Heart, which I think has something to do with Hestia's Heart, although what a Heart is I still don't know."

"Neither do I," Gheraa says, unnecessarily. I give him a look, then narrow my eyes slightly when I notice the way he's fidgeting. He's tugging on his sleeve, but it almost looks like he's pointing.

I stretch and take the opportunity to glance in the direction he's pointing in, where an empty Interface window sits, and consider what he's trying to tell me. That the Heart has something to do with the Interface?

"That's when I got attacked by Guard," I continue. "I managed to push Guard into the Fracture's blasts — which I'm starting to think he somehow let me do — and run away. At this point Naru's had enough time to investigate the Hotspot and move on, so when I go there I don't have to deal with him anymore, which was... probably for the best."

I don't know that I could have gotten strong fast enough to beat him and save Tarin, and frankly, I'm glad that I didn't have to find out. "After that I healed Tarin, I went through my first phase shift with help from all the crows."

I hesitate and stop myself before I describe what happened next, because that's my next meeting with Gheraa, and the one in which I promised I would try to help him. As best as I can tell, he doesn't agree with what the rest of the Integrators are doing, although he clearly has to put on some kind of show, since he's being watched.

Now that I think about it, his sleeves are hiding any bruises he might have. I hide a frown before continuing.

"I was going to go back to the Fracture and try to figure out the whole Heart thing, but one of the crows — Rotar? — showed up and began talking about how his danger-detection divination device is registering a lot of danger. He thought it was Naru, but I'm pretty sure his pocket oracle was registering the literal end of the world."

"Tell me more about this literal end of the world," Gheraa says, leaning forward, fake interest in his voice.

"...When I went into a slipstream with Ikaara and Rotar, it interacted badly with my Interface. Specifically, the part of it that controls the whole time loop thing. Whatever happened, it catapulted me into the future and did god knows what to Rotar and Ikaara."

"The future!" Gheraa sounds impressed. "And this is where you witnessed the end of the world?"

"This is where I witnessed the entire planet blowing up, yes," I say dryly. "You know. From the Fracture spreading all over the place. You couldn't have warned me?"

"That would've made things too easy for you." Gheraa clicks a tongue that I'm not even sure he has, then waves a hand at me. I'm abruptly shoved out of whatever pocket of Firmament I'm in and back in reality.

I sigh. Time to get back to the Trial.

Book 2 Recap, Part 1: Interview 2

"Again?" I stare at the unfamiliar Integrator in front of me. It's not Gheraa this time. "Don't tell me this is another interview."

"It is another interview." This Integrator doesn't seem nearly as interested in putting on a show as Gheraa is. I can practically feel the hostility emanating off of him. It's reflected in the physical form he's chosen to take, too — unlike Gheraa's more humanoid form, this one is a hulking monster, half his weight resting on arms quite literally as wide as tree trunks. "Describe your journey so far."

"From the beginning, or from the last time I did an interview?"

"From the last time." The Integrator is starting to look impatient. At least, I assume impatience is what that emotion is. Pulses of red-tinged Firmament burn through the otherwise golden filigree of his bluestone skin.

"Where did I end the last interview?" I genuinely don't remember.

"You died witnessing the planet exploding from Anomaly 006."

"Right." I think back to that moment. Might as well get this over with. "I was pretty used to dying by that point, so we fought off your mantis monster — Broken Horror, whatever you want to call it — without much trouble. Ahkelios absorbed the fragment from it and grew a bit, and it seems to have refined his Firmament more? We're still not really sure what happened there, but he's bigger now, so... there's that."

"He's bigger." The Integrator's voice is flat. "You have observed no other changes?"

Despite the flatness in his voice, I spy a slight shift in his Firmament, and activate Firmament Sight. He's very difficult to see with it on. All Integrators are. It's like trying to stare directly into the sun. They're made of Firmament so dense that it's nearly impossible to make out anything in detail.

But I'm not looking for detail. I'm looking for a shift in color. And there's one right there — a small change to the yellow of curiosity and deceit.

I narrow my eyes. The Integrators are interested in Ahkelios?

I suppose he might be an anomaly to them.

"No," I confirm. It's technically a lie; Ahkelios's capabilities have clearly expanded, to the point where he's now able to merge with the Firmament in my skills. He reinforced my Amplification Gauntlet when I first fought that Guilty Chimera, for example. He's also expressed greater ability to express himself freely — the Interface still binds him, to a certain extent, but not completely.

"Interesting," is all the Integrator says. "Continue."

"Can you at least tell me your name?"

The Integrator stares impassively at me for a moment. Just when I think he isn't going to reply at all, he speaks. "Khorra."

"Pleasure to meet you," I say, injecting as much sarcasm into my tone as I can muster. "My name's Ethan."

"I am aware."

I sigh. Being sarcastic isn't nearly as fun when the target doesn't get it. I almost wish Naru was the one interviewing me instead.

...Almost.

"I went to go find Tarin and Mari again, to see if the reset affected them," I say, moving back to the story I'm telling. "The last loop ran really long, so if I'm being honest, I was afraid to see them again. Afraid to see them not recognize me."

"That is one of the reasons this Trial is rated at SSS difficulty," Khorra notes.

"Right. Well, almost as soon as I stepped out I got attacked by a new monster entirely that nearly killed me. Whole forest was infested with them. Guilty Chimeras, they're called. A surprise you guys threw at me to make things harder?" I raise an eyebrow at Khorra.

He says nothing, which is about what I expected.

"I managed to kill one of them, but it took just about everything I had. They're Rank B monsters and they've basically populated the start of my loop. Which is still a problem, by the way."

"One of many you will have to overcome as part of your Trial."

"I'm sure." I cast Khorra an irritated glance, though he doesn't even seem to register it. "...Tarin and Mari rescued me. It turned out whatever happened to Tarin, it let him remember the loops."

"We did register an anomaly with the crow." Khorra's fingers twitch like he's writing an invisible note. "We considered eliminating him. But you put enough effort into rescuing him that we deemed such a thing detrimental to your Trial."

I feel a hot surge of anger at his words. It takes an effort of will to keep it in check — fighting an Integrator as I am right now is a bad idea. Especially in his own domain.

...I should figure out how to take over Firmament that's under someone else's control. That sounds like a useful skill to have.

"We found out that Rotar was missing from the loop, and later found out that the temporal storm in the last loop threw both him and Ikaara... basically outside time, as far as we can tell. I couldn't get them out." I grimace a little as I say this. It's not a pleasant memory, that failure. Not to mention the way we all died only moments after.

"You're skipping ahead," Khorra notes.

"It was relevant. But yes; after we found out Rotar was missing, we went to visit the so-called Great Cities. Isthanok, specifically. City of Broken Glass. Led by the Hestian Trialgoer She-Who-Whispers, a silverwisp with some geas-like Whisper ability that she uses both for surveillance and control." I decide to skip over mentioning what I learned about Firmament and its layer-like nature, as well as my encounter with the Heart of Hestia. For obvious reasons.

...As funny as it is to imagine Khorra's reaction to the planet itself working against the Integrators.

"She is one of our more promising servants," Khorra says. It takes me a moment to remember he's talking about Whisper.

"I doubt she'd enjoy hearing you say that." Really, I'm not sure her pride would survive the hit.

"Be that as it may."

"In any case, Isthanok's where we're able to get help from Tarin's friend — an inventor with a special ability to track things down. That's how we were able to find out where Rotar is. A bunch of other stuff happened in Isthanok; Whisper threatened us, we learned about how she's basically holding one of Miktik's AI cores hostage, I met some interesting kobolds in the Craven Arena..."

"We have reports from some of our viewers that they are disappointed that there was not a..." Khorra trails off, staring at what I assume is his interface with a slightly puzzled expression. "A 'tournament arc'?"

"I have no plans to engage in a long-form tournament," I say dryly. I can think of better ways to spend my loops. I'm not going to discount the possibility entirely, but time loops trivialize tournaments anyway. I decide to rush through the rest of my recollection. "Whisper caught us while we were tracking down Rotar and insisted on sending He-Who-Guards along with us. We all died in the Fracture to some sort of Firmament parasite that attacked us through time. I learned how to punch the future and now we're trying to figure out how to perfect Miktik's Firmament sink design so we can counter Whisper's geases. That's about it."

Khorra looks a little annoyed at the way I sped through the last part of it, but he doesn't protest — I imagine he wants to get out of this interview as much as I do. "I appreciate your time," he says, not sounding like he appreciates my time at all.

"I don't," I say.

Reality fades back in. I catch the look of irritation on his face a split second before he disappears entirely, and I can't help but smirk.

If I'm going to have to go through these recap-interviews, at least they're kind of entertaining.