Chapter Fifty-Three

Darkness so encompassing, you didn't know if you were in a large room or a tiny one.

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Choose a bond to work with.

Adric's primal bond was at the tip of Harmony's tongue with that same compulsion to answer that had made her choose violence the last round. No, you don't! Harmony braced herself and acted before she could speak. [Final Silence] shut her mouth, as the question prodded her to answer now. Speechless, she couldn't. Nothing happened in response to her thoughts. If it worked that way, there would have been a problem.

Time to think. But not a lot. With Adric not being here, choosing him could result in an immediate failure or teleporting him into the fray without his consent. Rose's sudden shift to wanting a note for Adric to convince him to give up his anchor was more rank than fish left to rot in the seedier sections of Hazeldown's docks.

Rose and Adric weren't the only considerations. Every round of this competition stressed a challenge of improvement and advancement. Authority and violence pushed to their limits. Not that cheating couldn't bypass results, but if you wanted to improve, this was your chance. It also seemed to have some overly strict aspects. The quantum bond, mixed with [Stride Before the Fall], had her dancing on the edge of being both dead and alive, which could have less-than-ideal implications. Night was back to being hungry again, but not starving. It was probably the safest choice. Improvement, however, often meant an increase in knowledge. The debate stretched on as long as it could.

As the silence slipped free from her lips, Harmony spoke. "I choose my theocratic bond."

Half expecting her heart to skip a beat or seals to be lifted, Harmony held her breath. The darkness receded at the choice, transitioning from dim to blindingly bright, as a pure white room, complete with a white table and a white ball at its center, became revealed. Seals remained in place, and her chest didn't implode. She let out her breath. Time to explore the competition.

The first thing she did was sacrifice her sense of smell for some fate to feed to her heart. The true sight produced was remarkably lacking in the overwhelming amount of information. Like the room had been sterilized for her, by removing all aspects that could cause issues. The room was single-sourced stone with no seams; the table and ball were made of the same material. But as expected, one thing was hidden in the whiteness.

Energy on the table, painted black in her vision to reveal the hidden text. Move the ball off the table without touching it.

Several ways to cheat immediately came to mind, from tilting the table or breaking a leg of it if she had the strength, or grinding away with [Disintegrate]. That wasn't the point of this challenge if she wanted to understand [Eternal Fables Heart]. There was a clock on this, and if her hunch was right, this was the final round, and three contestants would be eliminated.

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Harmony broke down the problem. How to move the ball with no understanding of how to do so with her [Heart] skill. Stamina was out as that aspect operated the same as other Heart skills. It was the unique aspect mentioned by Tyler during their discussions about his [Mana Heart]. Sensations could be fed into hers to create fate that could be fed back to boost all her senses, both physical and magical. Nothing in any of its uses has suggested it could move anything physical using that sight. The only time the skill acted on the environment was when the mimic attempted to use the unknown and paid for it.

The seals were still in place. Even after all the new things she'd discovered about [Eternal Fables Heart], she could feel that and, more importantly, she could test it by reaching inward.

Break Seals? After 100 seconds, you will be removed from the Ascendant Games if broken. Yes/No?

Not yet. That should limit the risk of sudden catastrophic death. The Ascendant Games shouldn't give her a challenge she couldn't master in her current state. While there was a possibility that there was a circumstance she hadn't figured out, right now, one option remained.

Shutting off her senses, Harmony built up an overabundance of fate inside her system. Why the skill wasn't fate-bonded was confusing, but she knew almost nothing about theocratic bonds. But here was a substance she knew could affect the world.

Fate kept Tyler protected. It altered the battle under Felix. It could conceivably move the ball off the table. Too bad all she'd managed to do so far was make her hands feel sticky as it dissolved the moment she pushed it out of her container. The mimic's death had stalled much of the experimentation, not just out of fear, but out of a lack of direction. Here was a goal. Move the bloody ball.

For the third attempt, rather than uncomfortably lean over the table to reach close to the ball and dribble fate from her fingertips on top of it, Harmony adjusted her size. It was only rather than, because she already tried leaning and stretching in close, and it was a pain in the back, legs, and arms. That resistance against using Vital Body for such a mundane thing as having a longer reach should have forced her to come to terms with herself on the value she put on being small, but there was a clock on this task. Instead, [Recall] filed away that introspection for later. Touching the ball would probably eliminate her, or would it reset?

After the tenth attempt, [Recall] Timed her heartbeat to keep track of how long she worked on the problem. One hour. Two hours. Three hours. Why wasn't she eliminated yet? Anger born of frustration flashed with a desire to pick up the ball and throw it.

It wiggled.

Rather than forcing herself to be angry, because any skill controlled by irrational or even rational emotions wasn't worth the value of having, Harmony painstakingly worked on directing the ball to move. Having true sight helped and hurt. What she saw was true, but then she had to convince the fate dripping from her hand that the mental image she designed was actual reality. A story helped. It was easy to envision fate as ink writing a story. The original form of the skill stone she used [Ink Heart].

Was this the skill [Ink Heart] had? A fate-bonded skill that allowed you to afflict reality with the story you told. The theocratic aspect must have come from her removed tattoo, but how had it changed the skill? The ability to write your personal destiny, only to have it modified.

Implications of the change inside her twisted her in her chest. [Eternal Fable's Heart] a little more understood, a touch more useful, and an enigma she knew she barely cracked. In more than one way, she finally got the ball rolling.

Ten fresh attempts later, it fell over the edge.

"Yes!' Harmony yelled, ready to see how she could use this skill on the next problem. Instead, a door greeted her. After hours of wrestling with the problem, it was time to see if it would send her back to Hazeldown in defeat or move her further along in the Ascendant Games.

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