Silence fell over the gym, the heavy impact of raindrops the sountrack to my oversharing. I traded looks with Jun, who seemed just as nervous about this as I was, then scanned Harvester and Scalovera’s expressions for anything out of place. Luckily, all I saw was confusion, and I could chalk that up to Persephonia’s sudden silence instead of my own words.

“Matria Persephonia, if we’re going to be helping these two with their health stats, then shouldn’t you tell us how we’re going to do that?” Jun asked, breaking the silence and drawing everyone’s attention to her. “We all had the same workout regimen back home, but I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do to help. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to improve my health, since I was in the best shape of my life just before I came here.”

Persephone nodded tersely. She obviously hadn’t forgotten how close I’d come to revealing myself, and for some reason she seemed as invested as I was in keeping my secret a secret.

“It’s simpler than you’d think; eat well, train your body and mind, and get enough rest. Anything you would do to become healthier in your normal lives increases your health stat. It’s those last ten points that are imp… monstrously difficult.” Persephonia gestured through the air, and the floor shifted into a running track. “To gain those points, you must overcome the barrier of possibility. Godblood aids immensely, but you will be relying on outside methods to enhance your bodies to the point of becoming something more.”

I nodded in agreement, but couldn’t make sense of why Harvester and Scalovera were so far behind Jun. The two of them didn’t have a single scrap of fat between them, and Harvester looked about as much like a bodybuilder that I’d seen out of his people. Scalovera looked more like a professional swimmer, and I knew that both of them could take me in a fight if we were unarmored. Persephonia didn’t have any obviously huge muscles, and she seemed far more lithe than any of the three recruits. Like a dancer who you might not notice how muscular they were until you saw them up close.

“What’s your health stat, Matria?” I asked, stepping up to the track and pressing my foot down on it. It sank in like the wood had become sand. “You’ve been here so much longer, so you must’ve found something to help push you into the nineties.”

No response. I checked over my shoulder to see Persephonia frowning at me. “Did I say something wrong?”

Persephonia ruminated for a few seconds, then sighed and shook her head. “No, recruit, you didn’t. You just reminded me of something I myself wasn’t content with years and years ago, and have now found myself on the other side of. My health stat is ninety-one.”

“What?! No!” Jun blurted out, turning to stand face to face with the Matria. “You’ve been here for so long! What happened? Is there a law against going above ninety-one?”

“There is no law. Simply a lack of reason. Ask no further.” Persephonia said firmly. “The first exercise for you three will be to run this track at the exact speed that I constantly message to your interfaces. You will learn to control your body as well as your interfaces. Ask recruit Keratily if you require aid.”

Scalovera and Harvester shared a look, then Harvester spoke up. “The three of us, Matria? Isn’t Blue joining too?”

Persephonia shook her head and made for the door. “No, he is not. We have to discuss his place within this settlement, and we will return in one hour. Keratily; ensure they do not hurt themselves, and that they do not underwork themselves either.”

Jun saluted as Persephonia donned her armor minus the black hovering plates. “Yes, Matria.”

I shrugged back at the three recruits before following Persephonia out into the freezing downpour. She slammed the doors shut behind me and pressed her hands to either side of it, two rings encapsulating her hands as a sound like a lock clicking shut rang out.

“So… my place in this settlement.” I said as Persephonia turned around and once more gestured for me to follow her. “You aren’t taking me out into the woods to kill me now, are you?”

Persephonia snorted in amusement. “No, Sebastian. The furthest thing from it, if I’m being honest with you.” She slapped me on the shoulder, and a notification told me that I’d been ‘blessed by the shearing winds’. “I have a feeling that I don’t need to tell you how to control that blessing. And yet another feeling that there is far more that you’ve been hiding from me from how you’ve been speaking.”

That couldn’t mean anything good. I readied my sword to be called out at a moment’s notice as I matched Persephonia’s ever-increasing speed. I thought back to all the people who’d betrayed me in my last life, to everyone I’d trusted who’d stabbed me in the back in the end. They ended up feeding the worms while I lived on. And the same fucking thing would happen to Persephonia if she tried anything.

“You want my truth? Give me yours.” I said harshly, causing Persephonia to stop dead in her tracks. She turned to look at me, her orange eyes blazing through her helmet, and I knew I’d said the right thing. And also very much the wrong thing. “Jun said you were a hardass. Bullshit. You care so damn much about everyone here. So why didn’t you come searching for her? You’ve got the speed to search every fucking hazard in a thousand miles if you wanted to, but you couldn’t find the one we were in?”

I shook my head and crossed my arms, changing my sword into a spear and calling it to land with a squelch into the dirt between my feet. “Talk, or I leave.” I decreed, nodding off to the right. “And I’m taking Jun with me if I go.”

Persephonia mirrored my pose, and three long diamond plates slammed into the ground between her feet. The wind picked up and carved faint symbols into each individual plate, then everything around us went still. As if the very air had stopped moving. No rain fell, I felt slightly off balance at the utter lack of resistance, and all sound had died.

All sounds except for Persephonia’s voice.

“When I first came here, we were at war.” She started, then chewed on her words for a few seconds before shaking her head and sighing. “And not the slow, methodical war we’re in right now; a blazing and bloody one that left just as many casualties as new recruits. We weren’t trained. We were selected, given a two-day bootcamp, and sent out to die for a world that wasn’t ours. And that was only eighty years ago.”

Persephonia’s three scales cut a groove into the ground, maneuvering themselves behind her so she could lean against them. “In those eighty years, us survivors rallied around what little we had left to ensure that anyone who came through would have a fighting chance. We taught the kids about the horrors of war, brought in a tenuous rule that let people walk around without the fear of someone plucking their core from their chest and absorbing it for a quick boost in power, and generally improved the lives of everyone we touched.”

I sensed a ‘but’ coming, but when I tried to interject, my own voice wouldn’t leave my helmet. It echoed around inside of it, but the unnatural stillness only allowed Persephonia to act normally.

“That is why you’ve no doubt noticed so many people wandering the streets without their armor. But I saw the repulsion and fear in your eyes when you first noticed it. That was not the revulsion of someone’s imagination getting the better part of a theory.” Persephonia leaned forward. “That was the revulsion of someone who understood perfectly well why people walked around armored each and every minute of each and every day.”

She knew.

“I understand what you’re feeling better than anyone alive. Whether you wish to believe that or not, it is the truth.” Persephonia said sadly. “I’ve buried far too many friends, and far too many enemies who wished not to fight. Far too many monsters lived, gained, and continue to gain from the atrocities committed in the name of our people. The wrong people lived and prospered. The wrong people died and suffered. Does that ring true to you?”

Persephonia stepped up to me and pressed her knuckles against my spear, leaning in close in a way that was both threatening and vulnerable. “I know it does. Because you are not as young as you claim to be.”

Ohhh shit, she knew.

“I want someone to trust. I haven’t had that in so long. Juniper trusts in you. I… I wish to do the same.” Persephonia admitted. “But I cannot choose that for myself. The people of Walkalong deserve safety and comfort, and if I must continue being paranoid for their safety, I will. So no, I will not tell you my story in exchange for empty words. You ask for the truth, as do I. But I. Will. Not. Speak. First.”

Persephonia punctuated each of her words with a scale slamming into the ground, trapping me in a circle that I knew was far more dangerous than it seemed. She turned her back to me and walked back to her three scales, flourished her hand, and suddenly she stood before a simple chair of small black metal scales. She sat in it and swiveled around, leaning one elbow against her thigh as her eyes locked onto mine.

Did I want to trust Persephonia? She seemed… familiar to me, now that I saw her like this. Someone who had seen too much, gained more than enough, but still not enough to be comfortable. To stop looking over her shoulder every time she took off her own armor. Which, now that I thought about it, I’d never once seen her do outside of a building. She was just as paranoid as I was. Just as scared as I was. And about as strong as I’d been, if not a little more, except for the handicap of not having one-hundred health. She reminded me of a more militaristic Ali.

I decided that I wanted to trust her. But the question was if I could, not if I wanted to. “The human embodiments had a chance.” I started, my words falling out of my helmet in a stream that I somehow knew was only going to Persephonia. “They chose their chosen, sent them to this place, and let them live their lives until the last one died.”

Persephonia slowly nodded when I paused. “You are also one of the chosen.”

“No. Fuck, no.” I chuckled grimly, leaning forward against my spear. “I lived. I saw the system reset, pulling all of humanity back in time to just before Earth was destroyed. I’m pretty sure everyone who wasn’t a chosen had their memories erased, but I had something else taken from me by the Embodiment of Will.”

I tapped my fist against my chest. “Tarel took my core and gave it to Garrett, his chosen. Tarel told him that everything I’d done was what he would do, that my comrades in arms were his comrades in arms, and I’m fairly sure he’s still telling him how to manipulate my friends into working with Garrett.”

“You remember?” Persephonia murmured, then leaned forward with obvious interest. “How far did you progress?”

“Far enough.” I laughed. “We had to survive before anything else. We weren’t at war, but we were terrified that someone would come in in the middle of the night and kill us for our cores and gear. We never stayed in one place long enough to make anything permanent for two decades, and settlements had only started popping up around the twenty year mark. I cleared so many hazards, fought so many monsters, and worked so damn hard to survive.”

I laced my fingers together, and voiced the thought that had been eating at me for so many weeks now. “And it was all for nothing.”