EdgeCases

DRR Book 3, Chapter 42 - Transferral

"He is pushing himself too far," Guard said.

Ethan was deep within a Road Not Taken trance. Ahkelios paced around him, clearly anxious, and He-Who-Guards sat with Mari. She radiated with worry about her husband—and her son, although to a lesser extent—and Guard was trying to lend her what comfort he could.

Admittedly, Ethan's repeated failures weren't helping, although Guard wasn't entirely sure that failure was the right word at this point. He'd last heard the h...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 41 - Soul Surgery

The first Road.

Tarin and Naru both lie on little nests of twigs and leaves in front of me. Mari stands nearby, her usual confident demeanor marred by an anxious wringing of her wings—she knows what this means. Knows what we're risking. There's a decent chance that if I give Naru the ability to remember, he'll... well, he'll have the chance to use it against me.

But I've already decided what to do. The only thing that's right. If it backfires, if he tries to betray me, ...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 40 - Festival

When we return to the Cliffside Crows, there's a celebration.

It's not that we want a celebration. It's that Tarin and Mari both insist on it, with flailing wings and loud squawks. I think the thing that turns me around on the whole idea is the fact that they've clearly been preparing for this the entire time we were in the Empty City. Tarin hadn't doubted me for a second—the moment we left, he and Mari began the preparations.

"You do this for me," Tarin says, gest...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 39 - Walk and Talk

There's a sort of unspoken agreement that as soon as we're done with this stage and with Tarin and Naru, we're going to have to sit down and figure out what this means. He-Who-Guards seems a little put out, probably because he's now the only one in our little party that doesn't have an Interface of his own; there's not much we can do about that, but I point out how he's apparently able to copy what we can do.

That cheers him up a bit. We'll have to focus some of our efforts on specifica...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 38 - Bound Battle

All three of us are ready to fight. I feel it like a charge in the air, and I'm not the only one; the Concept-Bound senses it, too. Phylus stills, and there's suddenly a note in his voice that sounds a lot like concern.

"Something is different," he says, half-musing the words. Talking to himself, for some reason. "I can delay no longer."

That's all the warning we get.

The ropes that Ahkelios brought in—I don't know what they are, but those things are strong. They ...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 37 - Inspired (x2)

Once the pain in my skull fades, I note that I feel a lot better—maybe Zhir was telling the truth. I certainly don't feel like I'm out of Firmament anymore, though it's possible that has more to do with... whatever it is about Inspirations that causes time to freeze around me. I've always felt that this place is more mental than physical, even if Kauku's abilities tend to blur the line between the two.

"I would enjoy hearing your tale regardless," Kauku says casually, le...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 36 - Renewed Bonds

There's not much time to think about it, because the Concept-Bound is upon us in a moment, and it's only Guard's quick thinking that saves us. He steps in front of me and blazes with a Firmament shield strong enough that a shot I didn't notice just ricochets off, slamming into the tunnel walls and blasting a chunk into it.

Then and only then does the Concept-Bound emerge from the darkness of the tunnel. It's no surprise that it resembles a large, mutated scirix—it's on four legs inste...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 35 - Primordial Foray

It's hard to describe exactly what happens when I activate the skill.

Space warps around my fist. That's one part of the effect. Light bends as it approaches a threshold around my gauntlet and creates a distinctly odd visual effect, complete with a flickering halo created by stray escaping beams. I can feel the impact of it too, just by waving my hand around—there's a distinct pulling sensation that accompanies every movement.

But that's not all that happens. More significant is...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 34 - Household Battle

Author's Note: Edit notes! First, uh, I misread my notes and have been spelling Yarun's name as Yorun. Sometimes my eyesight is bad when I'm tired. I've fixed it now--his name is Yarun, as per the first book.

Also, a small addition to the end of the last chapter:

--

Somewhere in the space between spaces, Kauku sat up, intrigued.

Ethan was fascinating. Out of his depth in almost every way imaginable, certainly—he couldn't remember the last ti...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 33 - All-Seeing Eye

Abstractions, I'm told, are the product of another Talent. It's a counterpart to my ability to Anchor, in a way—an Anchor changes an aspect of reality and grounds it into the world, and an Abstraction takes an aspect of reality and rips it out, giving it life and shape and presence beyond what it should have.

The problem with Abstraction? There's no way to control what's created. It's an incredibly dangerous Talent that more often than not kills the people that unlock it, in large par...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 32 - An Abstract Problem

It takes a while, but we settle into a pattern.

It turns out that the Regrets in the second stage only know one skill—Death Fog—and as difficult as it is for me to counter, He-Who-Guards and his Breath of Life keeps us perfectly safe while the skill is running. It helps that the Regrets don't seem to be able to move while they're channeling the skill; the fight would be a lot more complicated if they tried to attack us at the same time.

Though given the way they're escalating,...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 31 - Death Fog

The moment Guard yells it out, I see it. I almost curse myself for not seeing it before—it's not like I didn't see the Firmament flowing between them. But it looked entirely random. I'd assumed they were automatic exchanges of Firmament that occured because the ghosts were too close to one another, not that they were intentionally recreating a circuit.

By the time he warns me, though, it's too late for me to stop it. I pour on every defensive skill I can. This is the fourth w...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 30 - Simulations

[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 mak...

DRR Book 3, Chapter 29 - Twisted Time

On some level, I feel like I should have expected something like this—I'd sensed the Remnant's presence in the dungeon even before the Ritual moved into its second stage. Why the Remnant is in the dungeon is another question entirely, but whatever transformation the Empty City went through, it must have affected the Remnant as well.

That, I presume, is the reason it's currently taking the form of a scirix and smiling at us like nothing's wrong.

"Why is your Rem...