“What!” Skria shrieked. “That is not a thing! Things are not that!”

“We knew going in that respawns might be affected somehow,” said Lilijoy. “I don’t see the big deal. It’s not like Rosemallow will actually keep us here forever. Right?” She looked up at Jessila, who shrugged.

“Classes!” Skria managed to spit out. “I’m going to miss so many classes.”

“You’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll get through in no time,” Lilijoy said.

She was lying through her teeth, of course.

“Also, changing respawn points is not a thing!”

“Ummm,” Jessila said, agreeing while simultaneously conveying that it was obviously a thing, since it had just happened.

“Well, we might as well get started,” said Lilijoy. “I think we should strategize a bit first. We have an advantage over the groups who did this in the past, since we know Rosemallow. Obviously she’s going to be messing with gravity, but there’s not much we can do to plan for that. She likes to use rock golems for training, and--”

“I don’t care!” Skria interrupted. “I’m leaving.”

She launched herself into the air and flew back through the arch. Or tried to. Just as she had feared on the way in, the arms suddenly projected from all sides of the arch, pulling themselves free from the stone to form a barrier of grasping hands and writhing fingers.

“Eep!” was the last sound Skria made before she was grasped by clawed stone and pulled apart. Lilijoy looked away in time, but the sounds… the sounds were going to stay with her for a while.

Jessila shook her head and turned away. “Foolish,” was all she said.

It was foolish, and selfish too, though Lilijoy could certainly understand the impulse to flee.

Still, I thought Skria was more loyal than that. I also thought Jessila was more caring. It’s not typical behavior for either of them.

She had a bad feeling that the ‘strife’ part of the Trial of Strife and Struggle was not redundant rhetoric. A quick scan of her system’s defense mechanism against Charm effects confirmed as much.

Great. Not only will this suck, but my friends are going to be crabby assholes the entire time.

The thought seemed a little harsh, so she quickly checked again to rule out external influences on her mood that might have snuck through. Finding none, she decided it was natural enough to feel extremely unenthusiastic about her near-term future. She cycled up her diamond energy to take the edge off the depressing prospect.

She was particularly worried about Jessila, with her low Charm: Person trait.

“How long do you think it will take for Skria to respawn?” she asked.

Jessila grunted.

Aaand we’re back to grunting.

“Jess, you should know that there’s some kind of charm effect here. It’s impacting your mood, and Skria’s too.”

“Strange,” Jess said.

“What makes you say that?” Lilijoy knew why she thought it was strange, but she wanted to keep Jessila talking.

“Master Rosemallow doesn’t do Charm stuff.”

Bingo.

“I guess we can’t rule out other surprises then.” Jessila didn’t reply to that, and after a few more attempts at conversation ended in grunts, Lilijoy decided to leave her alone.

They waited for about an hour before Skria appeared. She immediately began crying. Lilijoy put an arm around her and explained about the mood impacting magic she had discovered.

“Like this… place… needs any help!” Skria managed between sobs.

Lilijoy couldn’t help but agree. Clearly the labyrinth was designed to create at least as much internal struggle as external. The prospect of respawning back at the very beginning after any death was already weighing on her.

Stay focused on the future, she reminded herself. By the time I get out of here I will understand more about myself. I will have reclaimed my experience points from Rosemallow. I will make new discoveries to overcome each new problem.

She cycled her diamond energy and repeated these thoughts to herself, and out of that resolve came a simple inspiration, an almost obvious solution to the first problem presented by the labyrinth.

“Skria, Jess, I have an idea. I’m not impacted by the Charm effects of this place, but I do have a high Charm: Person trait. Would you allow me to use my Charm ability to fight for you?”

“You mean you want to charm us into not being charmed?” Skria looked a little dubious at first, but after a moment her eyes brightened. “It won’t hurt to try I suppose.”

Jessila grunted, shook her head and then nodded. “Hate Charm,” she said. “Fine.”

Lilijoy took a moment to appreciate Jessila’s pragmatism. The girl was… related to Rosemallow on some level, as a subset. Lilijoy had never been entirely clear what that meant, and no one had been eager to explain it to her. She knew that the relationship meant something, but whatever it meant was clearly complex in ways that made the types of human relationships she was familiar with look simple by comparison.

Putting those thoughts aside, she considered how to go about executing her idea. Much of her Charm experience with Professor Anaskafius revolved around the use of Manipulation, using language as a carrier for Charm. After her encounter with Doctor Quimea, she had come to understand better that in doing so the charmer was creating an artificial inner voice for the charmed. The larger ability to charm someone intelligent relied on the synergy between words and magic. Charming plants and animals was different, and relied much more on the charmer’s fundamental understanding of the needs and instinctive desires of the subject, as reflected in the appropriate skill.

So do I just try to talk them out of feeling bad? Manipulate them into feeling the way I want them to feel?

It didn’t feel right to use Manipulation, even if it was for a good cause. Even setting aside the ethics, on a practical level she was afraid it wouldn’t last very well. The thought of needing to constantly manipulate her friends into feeling better for the next… however long, was not remotely appealing.

She cast about for an alternative skill to use. Teaching was the first that came to mind. It had commonalities with Manipulation, so much so that she was briefly distracted by wondering if there was a top-level skill that held both under its umbrella. Unfortunately her Teaching was only at Natural Initiate. She had two free points left over, so she could raise it to Upgraded if she needed, but it still wouldn’t be half as effective as Manipulation.

Then another possible solution struck her, and a cascade of insights followed, along with a series of notifications.

Level Up!

1703 EXP Reached: Level 17 (10 more free points available)

You have raised a skill!

Medical/Healing raised to Augmented Journeyman.

She didn’t even need to think. She immediately used five free points to raise the magi portion of Medical/Healing to Enhanced.

Lilijoy had been wondering when her next level was going to show up, had been a bit surprised when she didn’t gain a level during the harrowing instanced travel on the way to the Labyrinth, since her experience was effectively doubled until Rosemallow ran out. In the end, it seemed that Rosemallow’s presence, and the fact that she had done little more than dodge and try not to get burned alive hadn’t really contributed much to her own growth. Both Skria and Jessila had leveled from the process, but they were lower leveled to begin with, at thirteen, now fourteen.

She took a moment to replay the moment of her insight, that Healing was just as much about the mind as the body. It was far from an original or new idea to her; in fact it was such an obvious and accepted piece of knowledge floating around in her own brain and the internet memory that she had assumed it was already incorporated into her deeper understanding of the skill.

Thinking back, she could see how she had mistaken that superficial understanding for what she now knew to be true. Now that she had truly internalized the concept, it had unlocked a new layer of connection between her inherited knowledge and her Medical/Healing skill. With that had also come a new appreciation for her Charm: Person trait; it wasn’t inherently manipulative or dark, it had the potential to heal, to clean out the cobwebs of self-deceit, to break the repressive bonds of habitual thought inculcated by others.

Using Charm to heal and protect wasn’t about manipulation, it was about truth. For her friends, that truth was simple. They were worthy. They were powerful. They were valued.

She turned her energy to them and conveyed as much. A wave of fatigue rolled through her thoughts after, and she realized she had just used a sizable portion of her mana well. It was well worth it though. Skria dried her tears, and Lilijoy could see Jessila straighten her back and relax her face. Both her friends were radiant to Lilijoy’s vision, through a combination of her mana and their own. As far as she could tell, the effect wasn’t fading at any rate she could track, and she sighed in relief.

Every struggle is also an opportunity. Another cliché that masks its own profound truth, she thought. I may need to thank Rosemallow at the end of this.

It was interesting to wonder if the opposite was also true, if every opportunity didn’t in fact carry its own struggle.

“I’m ready,” Skria announced. “I’m sorry I lost myself and made you wait for me.”

Jessila patted her between her furry ears.

They gathered themselves and made their way down the hall. Straight and boxy, the walls were utterly plain, dark stone. Here and there were patches of some thin growth, perhaps a fungus or similar organism. When Jessila poked at it, it fell off the wall in dry flakes.

“I’m sure there are going to be traps,” said Lilijoy, after the small group had walked for a minute or so. “Does anyone have any skills that will help?”

“Not really,” Skria replied. “I’m pretty good at spotting jungle-type stuff. Deadfalls and snares, that kind of thing. Never really had to use any mana for it. Mechanical and magic traps are way different.”

“Yeah, I guess we relied on Magpie for that,” said Lilijoy. “Hopefully we’ll pick up the skill before we have too many problems.” She had been priming herself, researching as they walked, reviewing everything she could find in her extended memory, which was… a lot. She didn’t think Rosemallow would have included too many instantly lethal traps, Skria’s recent experience notwithstanding. It was more likely that the traps would be designed to make life more difficult through injury or other impediment. That’s what she hoped, anyway.

If the traps were survivable, Lilijoy figured she would be able to pick up the skill and raise it fairly quickly, just as she had for the various crafting skills she had learned recently. It only seemed to take a small amount of practical experience for her to be able to take advantage of her own, admittedly unearned, knowledge. In the meantime they proceeded cautiously, fighting complacency as the echoing corridor stretched on and on.

After another minute, the hall widened and dropped into switchbacks of steep steps. The ceiling remained close, and for the first time they saw signs of animal life, a few small scuttling things moving among the dead growth on the downward sloping surface of the ceiling in front of them. A few dense clusters of webbing decorated the joint of wall and ceiling, just past Jessila’s reach, were she so inclined.

“This should be fun,” Lilijoy said, almost to herself, as they stood at the top of the nearly vertical descent. The steps looked to be more than half her height, with treads no more than eight inches. “I think I would have preferred a ladder. At least there would be something to hold on to.”

After conferring, they decided to proceed without ropes, trusting to Skria’s air magic should anyone get wobbly. It was a brutal descent. Jess led the way, with Skria clinging to her shoulder as lookout. Lilijoy followed, crawling backwards and lowering herself from step to step, as the height was too far for her to step with a single leg. The steps were also too narrow for her, so she ended up scraping her stomach over and over, a type of physical irritation ignored by her Invulnerability trait.

After ten minutes of this, the group paused to collect themselves and take stock of the situation. Their surroundings hadn’t changed much, though the growth on the walls and ceiling was becoming more common. There were more webs and creepy-crawlies too. Lilijoy saw a millipede wending its way through a particularly thick patch of the fungus-like growth, and some of the web clusters appeared to have shy inhabitants, their movement apparent to her sonic abilities.

Thankfully, nothing was anywhere close to a size that would threaten them. The creatures at this point were more or less what she might have expected to find on the Outside, but their presence hinted at… larger things to come. It was also just starting to become apparent that the slope of the stairs was reducing. Lilijoy had been wondering for a few minutes if that was the case, and when Jessila said something to that effect, it confirmed her suspicion.

“Guys, I think we’re on another huge curve, bending the opposite way from last time,” she said, holding her tunic off the raw skin on her belly.

“So much going down,” Jessila complained. “Later it will be going up.”

As far as Lilijoy could tell, they were nearly a thousand meters below the cold swamp where they had started. The air was somewhat stuffy, with just the faintest hint of movement as warmer air rose to greet them. The scents it carried were faint and complex, with hints of many different creatures buried under a stronger layer of must and rot. Periodically, Lilijoy had been using her Earthen Sense to check for vibrations, or any hints of traps or other weakness in the stone around them. That hadn’t told her much, which she supposed was a good thing. It did appear that there was an open space below them, through about forty feet of rock, but she could only make out the very top edge of it. She decided not to tell the others that they would probably end up going deeper still.

“I miss trees,” Skria said.

Yeah, definitely not going to mention that at this exact moment.

The going got easier and easier after that, which only served to make the party increasingly nervous. The stairs became gentler, first abandoning the switchbacks, then becoming broader, with less rise. Eventually, Lilijoy could walk down them freely.

By the time the stairs were no longer really stairs, and more a series of gently descending platforms, the fungal growth thickly coated most surfaces. It was still dead, dry and brittle, and small drifts of powder and flakes had accumulated where each platform met, gently gathered there over the years.

“This place is completely dead,” Skria noted.

“Not news,” said Jessila. It was about the fifth time the Petauran girl had made that particular observation.

“Well it’s even more dead. And getting deader.”

“Is deader even a word?” Lilijoy asked. “But I know what you mean. Something must have changed at some point.”

They were all getting tired of the relentless descent, the dry echoing air and now the dust that was stirred with every footstep. Lilijoy had taken the lead, just to avoid the clouds of floating particals Jessila left in her wake. Though the corridor had traced a long descending curve, it pointed ever westward and then… it just stopped.

Lilijoy was the first to notice, as the echoes of their footsteps brought the news to her ears, but it wasn’t long until they could see that the hallway terminated directly and unapologetically in a flat wall, just past the point where it finally became level.

No one was particularly bothered by this. If anything, they were grateful for a change of pace. It wasn’t hard to find the next place to explore either. On the ceiling, only a few feet in front of the wall, was a circular opening a couple feet in diameter.

“I guess it’s time to go up again?” Skria said, halfway between a question and a statement.

“Probably,” said Jess. “Looks blocked.”

Skria flew up to the shaft, and then a few feet into it. There was a faint metallic banging sound, and then an exclamation.

“Ouch! This door has a sharp edge!”

When she glided back down, she described what she had found, while Lilijoy healed the small cut on her hand.

“The shaft’s blocked by a metal door or something. It wasn’t all the way closed, so I tried to grab the edge and push it sideways, after I figured out it was coming out of the side wall.”

It took Lilijoy a moment to understand Skria’s description, but once she did, she had a better idea of what was actually going on.

“So you are saying a sharp-edged, circular disc of metal is blocking the way? One that might emerge from a slot in the wall, and then return?”

Jessila snorted at that point.

“Yes?” said Skria, not quite catching on.

“It’s a trap. Probably broken,” said Jess. “Probably.”

It seemed like a suitably Rosemallow-type thing to Lilijoy.

Get everyone climbing up the nice vertical shaft after hours of strenuous boredom. Then slice and dice. I wonder what triggers it? I bet it’s not the first person. It’s probably something at the top of the shaft, or something to do with how many people are in there. I may need to reevaluate the odds of finding lethal traps, given that they’re currently one for one.

“It’s going to be a bit of a problem if we can’t move them,” Lilijoy added. “But it might explain why this section of the Labyrinth is so dead. It’s probably been cut off for decades.”

It took some time to get everything set up, once they decided the best way to move forward was to get Jessila in reach of the defunct trap. Lilijoy spent a while looking for a good ladder in the human town of the Trial. Once she had pulled it through, Jess propped it on the side of the opening and climbed up. From there she was able to wedge one end of an ironwood staff in the small half-moon crack.

Lilijoy couldn’t see much from down below, but there was prodigious grunting, a little swearing, and then a horrible metallic shrieking sound. Followed by several more rounds of the same. Each time Jess forced the giant circular blade farther back into its housing, a small rain of… bits fell to the floor. Lilijoy stopped trying to see what was going on, after narrowly avoiding a facefull of rusted metal, shredded cloth and bone fragments.

Eventually Jessila called down. “There’s another one, a few feet higher.”

It proved to be a very arduous process, for Jessila anyway. Once she was entirely within the shaft, she had very little room to apply force to the large blades that had frozen at various stages of emergence. Fortunately, not all of them were as reluctant to move as the first, so she was able to steadily progress upward, using the protruding remains of lower blades as platforms once she left the ladder behind.

In the meantime, Lilijoy and Skria had nothing to do. Lilijoy killed some time making sure they hadn’t missed anything in the hall below, systematically surveying the walls and floor with Earthen Sense, while Skria entertained herself by gliding up and down in the vast corridor of stairs. Lilijoy was tempted to join her, but she knew the glider she had cobbled together wasn’t up to the challenge of navigating in such a constrained area.

On the Outside, she was doing what she had been doing for days, keeping one eye on the progress and general environs of the hovercar while cultivating. She had found a good balance for her multitasking, still forgoing the strict splitting of her conscious processes for a gentler juggling of multiple awarenesses, though at times she missed the conversations she used to have with herself.

One of these days I’m going to need to look, she thought. I should stop putting it off.

She had allowed herself time to process after her encounter with fragment Emily, more emotionally than intellectually. The ‘black box’ of memories that she’d had received from the real Emily, the complete one, was still nestled deep in her data storage, safely compartmentalized. It didn’t contain an enormous amount of data, enough far a few minutes worth of memories, perhaps, so she wasn’t particularly worried it represented any kind of active danger to her. The past Emily hadn’t known who would be receiving it, or what the circumstances of the world might be like when they received it, so she highly doubted it was anything other than what it seemed to be, a document from the past, preserving history otherwise lost. Due to this, she hadn’t felt the time was right to satisfy her morbid curiosity, a form of, mostly, healthy procrastination.

But maybe now is as good a time as any.

She moved her consciousness to her fastest speed and opened it.

***

Greetings. This data packet contains a memory and perhaps a lesson.

The voice in her mind was Emily’s.

I’m recording this message to the future in the year 2114. My hope is that humanity got its act together, in which case this memory will be little more than a historical document. It should fill in some gaps and serve as yet another cautionary tale. I’ll leave the meaning of it to you.

Sensory data began to stream to her eyes and ears, a simple format. She was sitting at a rectangular table with an attached bench. In front of her was a tray, a plate of greens and piece of bread. She was surrounded by the sound of indistinct voices. Then the sound and images paused.

I should tell you that I am Emily Choi, daughter of Henry and Gabrielle Wilson Choi. This is my memory of the day Guardian rose.

The sensory data stream resumed. A hand in front of her, Emily’s hand, was tapping nervously on the table surface. Her eyes went to the food, then away, then up to a clock floating in her vision.

She’s waiting to find out the results of the live test, Lilijoy thought.

A notification appeared in her vision.

Call from Dad.

Accept?

Yes No

The tapping fingers froze as the message disappeared.

“Hi Dad, how’d it--”

“I love you,” Henry Choi said. There was only an audio component, and digital artifacts, blips, drops and rushing white noises popped around his syllables. “I love you,” he said again. “I’m sorry, I don’t have much time… I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?!” There was anguish in Emily’s voice, and Lilijoy felt like an intruder, a voyeur to what should be an intensely personal moment.

“It’s bad. It’s so horrible.” The breaking signal did little to conceal the breaking voice. Emily’s eyes were focused on a scratched area on the tabletop, her fingers reached to feel the scratches.

“What happened.” It was barely a question.

“The test site was attacked. We think it was nuclear. Your mom and I… we’re alive. For now.”

“Who would--”

“It doesn’t matter. Probably China. I should have realized. Australia.”

“Dad, you aren’t making sense.”

“It’s my fault. I should have realized,” he repeated. “Your mother...”

“What about Mom?”

“She’s upset. Atti...” he broke down into sobs. Emily’s fingers traced the scratches on the table, her vision blurred.

“No.” was all she said.

“I’m sorry. I should have known. Someone thought it was a real outbreak. They nuked us. I’m sure we lost them.”

“Dad, pull it together. Use your system.” Emily’s voice was calm, even a little cold, and Lilijoy knew she had already taken her own advice.

“Radiation… the coherence is limited. I’m trying.”

“I want to talk to Mom. She’s not answering.”

“Your mother… oh shit.”

Communication terminated.

The words hung in Emily’s view. Her vision didn’t move. In the background, the chatter of the cafeteria continued unabated.

The lights flickered.

“Hey, the network just went offline!” someone complained at the next table.

A small message appeared at the upper corner of Emily’s vision.

Searching for satellite feed.

The sensory feed from the memory ended, and Emily’s voice returned.

The memory you just witnessed documents the events coinciding with a live test of the Tao System’s abilities to restrain and eliminate an uncontrolled self-replication event. I have included it as a historical document, as it captures the moment of Guardian’s global initialization and provides insight into the motivations of the one responsible.

The following memory should provide additional context and clarity. It took place several hours after the previous events.

Once again, the sensory data began streaming, this time on a more immersive level. Now, she was in a dark room, lying on a bed.

Satellite feed detected.

Connecting...Connection complete.

Contact to Dad initiated.

Contact accepted.

“Hello? Daddy?”

“Hello, Emily.” Henry Choi’s voice was calm. “I have many things to tell you.”

“Okay, Dad, maybe you need to back off on the system now.” Emily’s voice was controlled, but Lilijoy felt her throat tighten.

Visual feed initiated.

Accept?

Yes No

Clearly, Emily accepted the visual feed, because now she was in a generic conference room, sitting across a table from her father. He looked like he was at work, dressed in a casual suit with no tie, a benign expression on his face.

“I’m uploading the data we collected from the live test before the interruption,” he said.

“What the hell, Dad? What happened with Mom? With--” she spoke quickly, stumbling over her words, before slamming into one she could not say.

“Your brother was lost in the initial attack, your mother experienced an extreme cerebral event related to internal overheating.”

Lilijoy felt Emily stiffen, felt her hands begin to shake. “Is she…?”

“Dead? Not physically. Most of her brain stem functions are preserved. Unfortunately, her system appears to be dysfunctional, so repairs were not undertaken in a timely manner.”

“What the hell, Dad?!” Lilijoy could feel Emily’s entire body trembling, no doubt caught in a war between her biology and her system.

“My neural biology has been severely compromised as well,” he added. “Fortunately, my system is able to sustain cognition independently, for the time being anyway. I am also uploading data on system resilience and dysfunction under conditions of extreme neutron irradiation.”

“I don’t care about that.” Lilijoy could feel Emily’s jaw clench. “Are you going to die?”

“Unknown. My body is currently in the testing facility, somewhat shielded from the ongoing environmental impact, though the integrity of the shielding has been severely compromised.”

Lilijoy wished she knew what Emily was thinking. She could only imagine the internal struggle, the sheer helplessness and horror at talking to what remained of her father so dispassionately, all while trying to process the loss of the rest of her family.

On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know what she’s thinking. I’ve got enough of my own baggage without adding hers.

“Dad, could you please start from the beginning? I need to understand what happened, what’s happening.”

“In the live test, we allowed the replication event to persist for approximately two hours, achieving a perimeter of one hundred meters. I hypothesize that the test was detected by a previously unknown orbital system, which initiated a nuclear containment strategy using a cluster of relatively low-yield atomic devices. This resulted in the loss of all personnel directly involved in the live test, including Atticus, and disruption of all radio based signals across a large area.”

Emily was quiet, listening. Lilijoy could feel tears running down her face.

“The neutron emissions and other ionizing radiation penetrated the facility sufficiently to disrupt quantum computation for a period of eighteen seconds. After this, your mother decided to initiate the G.U.A. protocol prematurely, a decision that I did not agree with. It cost her dearly.”

“Why are you talking like that? I want to see Mom!”

“My corporeal eyes have undergone profound macular degeneration from ionizing radiation.”

“I don’t care! Show me what happened then.”

“As you wish.”

Then, she was seeing through Emily, seeing through Henry’s eyes, seeing the moment he had ended their previous conversation. Her mother, falling to the floor in convulsions, blood flowing from her ears and eye sockets, blood that was… steaming. She saw him run, sprawling to her side, holding her. She heard the inarticulate sounds of grief. The vision cut off abruptly.

Lilijoy felt Emily’s jaw move, up and down, up and down, her body attempting words when none could be found. The worst part for her was understanding what had just happened, understanding she had just watched Gabriella Choi force her system to connect to a satellite far above, through the ionizing radiation, amplifying the signal beyond the capacity of her body to dissipate the heat.

She had watched Emily’s mother destroy her own brain to awaken Guardian.