NOVEL NEXT B 3 C 31: Finally Over. Or Not?
B 3 C 31: Finally Over. Or Not?
Wait, she’s grabbing him with the tendrils and dragging him to the ground as she falls. That works too, I guess? They fall beneath the canopy at the edge of the cliff, but I can tell that Luni is pulling out the phoenix feather on the way down. Mataalii is already exploding internally, he’s beginning to derez. One of Lu’s hands holds the last phoenix feather we may ever receive, and the other holds what must be the fourth tome.
Something small and silver drops out of Mat’s hand into a tiny patch of lava that he seems to be conjuring as a last-ditch effort. Was that the bell he was using to taunt us? Is that silver thing a bell, or the censer to summon sylphie? Or maybe both? My overstimulated aura vision isn't letting me make out objects that well.
I glide below the treeline to gaze down at this frankly ridiculous happenstance. This can’t be real. She told me to make the choice, to live with the consequences, to go on my vengeance quest. I did it, I killed him, and here she is, bringing him back to life. He might not have been able to be found or revived if I had struck him with Gae Buidhe. I gaze at my own bloody left stump, where my hand should be. He gets to take me down, nearly inflicting a fatal blow with a miniscule scratch, but if I do the same, she’ll hate me forever.
This doesn’t seem right, or fair. This can’t be real, can it? I hover in place near the canopy, gazing down to Luni at the ground. She begins to pick up Mataalii, roughly squeezing him in the tendrils, keeping one wrapped around his head, with the book squeezed over his face. She isn’t exactly treating him tenderly, but she’s beginning to walk away with him.
She shoots me a glare. I can’t see her eyes since I blinded myself with a double dose of aura toxin. But her aura is full of anger and hatred, as well as pain and loss, but there’s love behind it all. I can’t even be certain who the anger and hatred is for. Current me? Future me for giving her this task? Mataalii? Her stare defiantly says, “Try to come after me, prove you no longer trust me.” Her speed picks up, and she heads off to the west, away from all of our loved ones and family.
But I do trust her. I trust her, and she’s leaving with Matalii. At least there’s a book slammed around his face. But I can’t shake this feeling of having been betrayed.
This is why she’s leaving the family? To be with Mataalii in the end days? I allow myself to drop out of the sky without bothering to break my own fall as I crash into the ground. I hear a sickening crunch as several bones fracture, snap, and break. Luni, my beloved Lu, My-Anchor. No longer willing to anchor me, leaving me with only commands and pleas of what not to do, she’s gone. I may never see her again as the world ends. I know she’s one of the six souls, but if she has betrayed us, or given up on us, we’re doomed.
Maybe the latest version of future-me simply wanted Luni to be happy in the end? Maybe that’s all this was for. Knowing I had hurt her, I devised a timeline where she ended up with Mataalii to, I don’t know, provide his salvation. Do they just reconcile to forgive one another in their last days? Do they fall in love because of this? Lu in the past would have said the mere idea is gross, since they lived like brother and sister. Also because she thought Mat was a bit of a butt, or jerk, or a really big butt, depending on the day. But we know that no pair of critterkin are actually biologically related. I still don’t have clarification if twins hatch from one egg or two when they spawn. They would be the closest to actually being biologically related, but if it’s two eggs, then even twins aren’t actual siblings.
Ugh, my distractibility is always so strange. Should I have followed Luni? Her gaze spoke volumes that I wasn’t supposed to. She went west, away from everyone else. What is even over there? A beach that I personally glassed, the crew of the Undine, and oh, some otters. One of those otters might be Penina. Okay. Yeah. That’s fine. The world can end. I know how important Penny was to Lu. Maybe to Mat as well. If they can be reunited before the end, I guess I can just give in now. No reason to bother worrying anymore. I can just lay here and cry until doom takes me.
Still, I should try to see what was left behind by Mataalii and Luni. Hm, where was that patch of lava? There it is, it’s still melting something. If there was a bell, it’s completely melted, but the censer is still partially intact. I claim it to my inventory, pondering over its possible usability in its current state. How did Mataalii get his hands on the censer? What would he have used it for? Has Luni been working with him this entire time? Did she give it to him a long time ago? Or did he send it to his future self, sometime when she had it out? She might have been contemplating whether or not to try resummoning Sylphie, to see what her reincarnation would be like. I don’t know any more. I don’t even know if I care any more. Maybe Luni will get to see Penina one last time at least. Penny was so important to Lu. We didn’t talk about it much in meatspace, but theirs were many of the memories that Luni liked to share in the accelerated time of think-space. I’m just going to lay here, and cry until the world ends, or my hand regenerates, whichever comes first.
The world trembles, and the air temperature rises significantly. Really!? That soon!? I wasn’t serious! Let me cry in peace, you stupid fire deity! If I could give this thing a piece of my mind I wou, wait. I can. I learned how to view creatures’ brains and talk to them with the tiniest spark. I just need to find a piece of this Fire God’s body near enough to its head that my mana and spell range can send a spark into it. Can I just politely ask it to go back to sleep? Order it? Trick it?
I guess I can try it in that order. Maybe reverse the last two. Still, getting to its head before it surfaces is going to be a challenge. I remember where it was located. I could try blasting my way through solid stone in the cliff face for miles and miles, or I could follow a lava vein most of the way down. That would mean swimming in lava, holding my breath for nearly half of an hour, without cooling the lava down at all. If I cool it, it will harden. At minimum, that will slow my speed, more likely, I’ll trap myself in a pocket of stone.
If I need a break, I can claim the lava around me to my inventory while cooling the lava that inevitably falls atop me to replace it. If only I could bottle air.
Wait, I can. I mold clay, mud, and stone into a sphere in my inventory, but I leave a small hole in it. I summon an Umbral duplicate of the sphere in front of me, claim it to my inventory, wait out its five minute timer, and bring it back into meatspace. Let’s see if this works, shall we? I place my hand near the hole, and begin using my FFS to pack more and more air molecules into the sphere, as much air as I can muster, making sure to bring in the various oxygen atoms, nitrogen atoms, hydrogen atoms, and other impurities that make air breathable. When the inside of the sphere feels suitably compressed with breathable air, I plaster clay over the air hole, and fire-harden the clay.
I finally have bottled air. After so many times almost drowning, I can finally save myself, and others. I’m tempted to go back and teach myself to do this, to save our family from the Night of High Water, or to save Sylphie at the dam. Oh Sylphie, you shouldn’t have died for my hubris. My need to save others. My guilt. I find myself mentally breaking down, remembering the events of the dam. No, no I don’t have time for this, please. The world itself is at stake.
I can’t help it, my breathing becomes shallow hiccups as I rapidly gasp them, barely letting any oxygen into my system. My pulse pounds, sending a vibration rocketing through my body that culminates in a screaming pressure in my temples. My vision tunnels as it floods with nightmare imagery of the Mind Blower, its tentacled face stretching open around my skull. My guilt and fear driving me to save the ungrateful Mind Controlled Faction of beavers, instead of simply escaping with Sylphie.
Oh, I’m somehow semi rational as Reggie there continues to panic. Am I out of body again? I couldn’t have taught earlier-me to bottle oxygen to any useful degree. I didn’t have the manipulation of umbral energy way back then. I didn’t have the space skill required to duplicate objects long enough to claim them as permanent duplicates. I didn’t have thermokinesis which is needed in order to draw in and pack the air molecules.
Oh, also, teaching myself any one of those things earlier than I learned them, I might not have been able to create Lucky with Luni. Wow, yeah, the Fire Biome trip would have gone a lot different if I had been practicing thermokinesis for ages beforehand, or even umbral duplication. I might not have even used the time skill, or ever sent Luni to make sure the time skill is diverted to me, or whatever. If I had umbral energy manipulation before the Fire Biome trip, I probably wouldn’t have let Teuila or Lil use radiant forms, and they wouldn’t have had their near-death experiences in the cragbeast warren. I wouldn’t have had those two days with Luni as My-Anchor. I wouldn’t have fallen so much more in love with Lu or learned to trust her even more than I already did. Lucky wouldn’t have been born from siphoned off radiant-umbral corrupted energies that mingled between Lil, Teuila, and myself.
Lucky has to have been born, Lucky is part of a key to all of this, to the books. They’re somehow necessary, and their owners must be able to access them, together, at some point. No wonder future me said Lucky must survive. It wasn’t just about getting us out of that lava tunnel. Lucky needs to be around until the end. Oh, hey, look. Reggie stopped panicking. Wait, Reggie, how are you getting up without me piloting you? Hey, poot for brains, where are you going? The lava vein that leads towards the Fire God’s head is north ya dingus.
Wait, what’s that? Is that an entire stash of copies of Gae Buidhe? Were we that close? Was Mat about to use them on me? Would I have turned them around on him? I would have, I’d have claimed them all and fired them back at him in a massive swath. They’d have blanketed Mat and the area right where Luni was going to be.
As I regain control of my senses, I claim all these horrid spears. Someday I’ll learn how to destroy them. I don’t want to risk selling them to the shops. I wonder if Teuila has been selling them to the shops, and they’ve been ending up here? I should warn her not to do that. We still don’t know too much about how the shops operate. They provide currency and magically take items away that we intend to sell, from our inventories. They take currency, and provide seemingly endless supplies. Some items have limited quantities, like the rubber duck that Agwai uses for Lucky to play with like a chew toy. Right, stop getting distracted, lava vein.
This is still going to hurt. I broke my legs in my final attack against Mataalii, to get into position in time, and then further broke them as I broke down and let myself fall out of the sky. This draconic form of mine is in pretty bad shape already. I wonder if my limbs are still broken or missing in other shapes as well. Hm, yep, cherubic Reggie is similarly busted up and missing a hand. Tall Reggie is also looking equally rough. I guess we stick with draconic. The scales weather heat slightly better than softskin flesh. I wish I had the time to self actualize a new hand. I know I can grow new organs, limbs, bones, muscles, and so on. My draconic form proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But it would probably take hundreds of transformations to generate a new hand, maybe thousands. I don’t have time for that kind of thing. It’s exhausting and would knock me out. Come on Reggie, stop getting distracted, let’s go.
Alright, up we go. Let’s make a harness, hm, can I make one out of umbral energy? No, it would be rigid. The best I can do is make a harness that places a few valkyrie shields in strategic places to let me carefully Jettison-Thrust around. If I use JT at too high of a velocity, the harness they’re in will snap. Still, we’re covering ground to the lava vein fairly quickly. I remember the sensation of feeling every atom of this Fire God’s being. With my sense of direction, and my familiarity with atypical senses as replacements for the usual humanoid senses, I’m fairly certain I’m correct about this location.
Okay, deep breaths, deep breaths, now exhale, blow it out slowly. One massive, long deep breath, and top yourself off with shallow sucking sips of air. Now hold in all that air and dive into lava like your life depends on it. Because it does. Everyone’s lives depend on this. My thermal resistance isn’t high enough to swim in lava without consequences, especially not with a limb that ends in a stump. At least the searing pain is closing off the wound so that I don’t have to keep it frozen shut. I’m going to vomit from the excruciation though. Ugh, did I just swim through my own sick, while swimming through lava? Yes, yes I did. I’m so glad my eyes are shut. Hm, this draconic form is sort of nice for swimming through lava, if I just sway like an eel, I can propel fairly nicely by using my wings as flippers, or rudders. My tail is long enough that each bend and swish is like a whip crack that propels me further downward. I had to abandon all my gear though, I’m swimming naked, and I can’t even use Jettison-Thrust movement to dive faster, because I don’t have a safe surface to strike myself at high velocity with inventory magic.
The swim is excruciating, even my impressive draconic scales are starting to crack and allow lava to get to the serpentine scaled skin beneath. I’m maybe a quarter of the way down, but it feels like my eyeballs are going to melt out of their sockets. Even with my eyes clamped tightly shut. Between scarring them with aura-toxin, and now swimming in lava with them squeezed this tightly, I’m honestly surprised my eyes don’t just take a vacation and leave my body. I’d be entirely empathetic if my eyes said I was too toxic to stick around, and that they had to see other people. Hah, oy vey, I’m cracking under the pressure. Agwai would have laughed though.
Regardless, I really do need a short break. Now, do I try to duplicate my bottle of air, or will that only duplicate the container? Sadly I think it’s the latter. I should have practiced on the surface. I can’t afford to be wasting mana on the trip down. Wait, how does Linti turn into lightning to travel? Can I do that? Hm, no, not yet. I could barely manage a flimsy lightning bolt without a limit break. I was barely able to set up some internal timed-detonation sparks to follow my lightning breath.
Alright, time to claim some space for a second, and chill the area around me. I can’t keep going like this. I’m maybe a third of the way down. Okay, a couple hundred liters of lava in my inventory, and a quick Flash Freeze Storm allows me to sit on some cooled pumice to at least regenerate my mana. Ugh my head aches. My scales are in shambles, the leathery webbing in my wings is scorched and the outer one third has disintegrated entirely.
Okay, ignore the damage, take a few seconds in lotus position, just breathe. Actually, before you do that, widen this area out and summon your bottle of air. Wait, can I use my thermokinesis to scrub carbon out of the air? Can I turn CO2 into just O2? I mean, I can draw individual molecules to a point in space. I might be able to nearly perpetually breathe the same air over and over if I continually separate the carbon elements out of it. Huh, neat. These fakeworld memories have come in handy once in a while. They let me learn thermokinesis and electrokinesis, and they’ve given me a broad range of applications of thermokinesis that seem far greater in scope than any of the fire or ice mages I’ve seen.
Yeah, I don’t even need my bottle of air for this journey. As I slowly exhale in lotus position, I feel the atomic structure of the air around me with my thermokinetic senses. If I draw the carbon to one side, slowing its atomic motion to a crawl, I regain energy and clean the air, so that I can re-breathe it. Huh, I’m my own rebreather. Still, my cellular structure is using up oxygen, so it’s not exactly infinite.
Ugh, this pressure behind my eyes is nearly unbearable. It’s the hint of an oncoming migraine. I suppose I’m lucky to have escaped migraines mostly thus far in my life. Hm, why do I feel that way? Did I have another life where I frequently had migraines? Those mysterious memories that plague me. I wonder if Elder Tolkenstein knows more. Maybe the spent soul shared images of another life. If I manage to save the world, or even if I don’t, I should probably head back and see the Fairies.
Okay, the pain isn’t getting any better, and I still have a job to do. Let’s get back to it. After I refill my lungs, I claim the pumice below me and dive down once again. The terra firma, the crust of our planet, is vibrating intensely. It’s like this God of Fire being is slowly awakening with one last ultra-long snore.
I underestimated how hard it would be to swim through lava with my currently broken body. I’m not making nearly as much progress on a lungful of air as I had hoped I would. I’m going to have to stop to rest probably at least two more times. I huff as I heave a sigh, and immediately regret it. Now I have to scrub that oxygen clean to reclaim it. Not too big of a deal, but still annoying to be making my own job harder, even if only slightly.
Now that I’m resting once again, and my eyes hurt so strongly from being clenched tightly shut, I finally risk opening them to let them blink and flex at their own pace. It’s almost as if I can see through the rock around me. There’s a massive source of aura nearby, and it’s not the godly beast below, I’m not close enough to see that yet. This is more like a river running through the planet just below the surface. If I thought the lava-blood of the great beast was a lifestream, this is even moreso. It’s like some kind of planetary leyline. It seems weak somehow though, massive though it is. There’s something about its radiant aura that seems unstable, corrupt, feeble, almost anemic even. Is this the planet’s lifeblood? Do radiant spells come directly from this? Looking to the south, it’s like there’s something special in that direction, but I’m far too many miles away to see what it is. South is the direction of the jungle, the forest. I wonder. Hm. I need to stop pondering though, stop getting distracted and keep on with my job. Unless I want to take a nap here, I’m probably not gaining any benefit from these breaks, other than a few moments to scrub my oxygen, and let my lactic acid buildup die down slightly.
Plunging downward, ever downward once more, I repeat my resting process as necessary, topping off my air when needed with bottled oxygen. My migraine is incredibly intense at this point. It’s all I can do to keep from curling up and sleeping it off in my next two pumice rest-holes. I’m finally about one last lungful of air’s distance from where I’ll need to start tunneling towards the creature’s head.
Oh, this I didn’t expect. Its shifting has left hollow pockets beneath the surface of the planet. There’s some room to move around, and I can seal off the lava flow behind me. This allows me to angle into a drop all the way to the creature’s massive head. Huh, thinking more about its general shape, and facial structure it is incredibly similar to Lil’s greatwyrm shape from our longest timeline. Odd coincidence. Currently though its soul aura is such a bright red that it feels like it’s burning my eyes out of their sockets even through closed, scaled lids.
As I allow myself to fall and glide a few dozen meters, I land on this creature’s face, right between its eyes. Each reticulation of its scales is a massive armored plate that’s dozens of times larger than myself, all stony crags and emanating power and heat. Still, that also means the gaps in its scales are easy enough to stick a hand beneath. From there, I have to hope my spark can travel back and forth to some speech area of the creature’s brain.
I reach out with what is hopefully a respectful greeting, “Hello, great and powerful entity, I am Reggie Shellcracker. Please forgive my intrusion into your psyche. Your stirring from your slumber has frightened those of us who understand your enormity.” The spark containing my message travels inward, and as it returns, I get a sense of just how massive this thing’s mind is as well. It has layers upon layers of subconscious that it is waking from.
Still, it responds, “Hello little one. I am Deckard Agni, the Pure and Desolate. I have never been spoken to before by a mortal. This amuses me. Stay a while and listen?”
Phew, I find myself whistling low in appreciation and then blowing a breath out through puffed cheeks. I send back an affirmative, that of course I’m willing to listen. I sit in lotus position between Deckard’s eyes. Or maybe I should refer to him as Lord Agni in my mental logs. That’s probably more respectful. Huh, another similarity to Lil, Lil’s given name, by me anyway, is Lilagni, or L Agni.
I begin to send sparks at a rapid pace to Lord Agni’s speech centers of his brain. I enable this such that they return in a nearly simultaneous flow, so that we can communicate uninterrupted.
Lord Agni begins his tale, “We, the lesser gods, my brothers and sisters came into being in ages long since past. My sister, Tenith Grayl the Sky Unending was both messenger, and, hm, spectator. Some have mistakenly named her Quetzalcoatl. I’m getting ahead of myself. Long, long ago, our world did not exist, we did not exist. We were brought into being at a singular point, and from that point, a history was formed before us. We were to have always been here, to have formed the land and the seas, to have molded the lifeblood of our world. Ours was an existence meant to give way to the feeble lives of the lessers, the mortals, so that they may reach their heights, setting a path free of destiny.”
Lord Agni chuckles, and the entire world rumbles with his laughter, “One destiny stands in that path however. We, the four lesser gods of this continent are meant to be awakened if the path must be corrected. I feel my siblings stirring, so I will soon join them. I can not sense what must be corrected, I only know that when the four of us rejoin for the first time, all will be made clear.”
I hesitate to ask, “Lord Agni? What if you’ve been awakened, stirred by an outside force? One not meant to exist in this world? Would you still follow that destiny? Do you want to destroy all of us mortals?”
Lord Agni ruminates, “Were such a thing possible, I suppose I would sleep on it for some time, I don’t mind another few days, months, decades, centuries of napping. My siblings certainly have no pressing matters that they cannot await my awakening. I have no fondness, but no ill will for the mortals either. Theirs is but a brief glimmer of a candle flickering brightly. The path before me has no limit, no time in which it must be accomplished.”
This is it! My family, they’re safe! Lord Agni doesn’t actually want to kill us! I respond, “Oh great Lord Agni, this news warms my heart like the molten stone that is your lifeblood. What I ask is not a hypothetical, it is a truth. An entity has somehow entered our world, one not meant to be here. Its very presence has contaminated time itself. One of your siblings, us mortals know it as Leviathan, master of the seas, has been awakened, and has been destroying the coasts for years now, under the entity’s sway.”
Lord Agni scoffs, “Preposterous, something powerful enough to impress its will upon the lesser gods? Not even the greater, or elder beings could force us to act against our will. Even the weakest among us, Leviathan the Storm of the Endless River would not succumb. Nothing within our universe can have such power. Perhaps to have journeyed so deep, and to become as injured as you are, your brain has been addled.”
Dang it, Lord Agni is starting to get irritated with me. Still, I try to recover, “My apologies Lord Agni, I can share my memories with you, if you are willing to accept them. If Lilagni were here, they could invite you to a party and you could just read my mental logs. I don’t know how to operate that part of our interface however.”
Lord Agni ponders, “This would be a new experience. The mortals have come a long way to be able to wield such power. Perhaps there is more to their candle yet. It may in fact be a shame to snuff it out early. Please, share what you have learned.”
I pass along a torrent of sparks in an unbridled flow like the rapids of the river that I’ve spent so much of my life in. Each contains a memory, an image, some of which trigger trauma and panic within me. I show them out of order, the destruction of the obelisks unleashing the red eyed entity into our world, the first red eyed possessed creature attacking me, the cragbeast queen gaining red eyes as the entity possessed her, the Leviathan having stark red, pupil-less eyes as it causes the Night of High Water. I share the news that the Leviathan has destroyed the frontier of Geawerene, the ability for Mataalii to somehow spread the red eyed influence. During all this time I’m hyperventilating and clutching my chest, trying not to feed my hallucinations to Lord Agni. My lungs and heart feel so tightly constricted, my aura-induced blindness is dying down as my vision tunnels. I share the knowledge shared with me by the chameleon tribe, and their legend of the four gods meeting, which mirrors Lord Agni’s own fated awakening. To rejoin with his siblings in some manner.
My hallucinations and panic grip me and I’m unable to continue. Between fearing for the end of the world, and reliving my nightmares of Day One, I feel as if my heart is going to burst in my chest. My heart seems to seize for moments at a time, then beat such that it expands three times harder and wider than it should be able to, and to refract and tremble near its fully extended shape, vibrating, palpitating. After trembling, my heart then crunches into the deepest, most terrifying squeeze to send blood rocketing through my body.
Lord Agni startles me from my reverie by asking directly into my mind. I feel drops of lava dripping into my draconic auditory orifices, scarring my ear canals at his psychic intrusion. Lord Agni asks me if I’ve always been prone to such panic, and what my title is.
I tremble as I send sparks back, “I’ve had this debilitation since I first took on this body. Apparently I was once a free-floating soul, with several lumps. If souls are supposed to be perfect spheres, it’s like I had four other smaller spheres attached to my own shriveled sphere. As for my title, I have none. One dearest to me calls me Hero, but that is not what I am. I am a murderer. At best, one might call me Adventurer.”
Lord Agni responds, sparing me the lava droplets to my brain, letting my electrical sparks carry back his message, “Adventurer Shellcracker, it seems as if you may be telling the truth, as far as your understanding of the situation is capable of interpreting it. I will sleep for a time. What is that presence behind you?”
No, oh no. I feel an incorporeal entity pass through me, and I’m treated to another shared memory. The theft, a lumpy sphere, a self sacrifice, a birth, the rage at my escape. The entity passes me as it works its way into Lord Agni’s skull, settling into his brain somewhere. Lord Agni keeps his eyes shut tight as he roars in frustration. His thunderous din causes massive chunks of our planet’s crust to rain down around us, harmlessly striking his snout, but nearly impaling or crushing me.
Lord Agni’s thoughts continue to be carried to me through my constant stream of electrons, “Whatever you are, leave my mind or I shall make yours a hellish existence.”
“No, no you won’t, you are now mine. You will meet your siblings.”
“I shall not, not until the appropriate time, at the earliest. The mortals will have their chance, their candle will reach its brightest flame.
“The candle should be mine! The critical point was nearly at hand, I have to begin anew, nearly. Or I would, but now that I have you and yours, I’ll have all that I need.”
“Cease your rambling and leave my mind you cur!”
“I won’t. I have you now. You already have a fate, a desire to meet your siblings, you will rise and join them!”
“If I cannot expel you, then I can at least settle myself into slumber. Good night you ungodly cretin.”
With that, I feel Lord Agni’s mind retreating into subconscious thought, his body relaxing. Still, I can feel the entity’s presence, it isn’t giving up. It will follow Lord Agni’s thoughts into his deepest subconscious, and eventually rouse him. I don’t know how long I have, but I need to get out of here, I need to share this information with someone, anyone. The remaining Nagas, the remaining chameleons, the Fairies. Someone has to know.
TQ knows something about our timeline’s eventual collapse, right? Lord Agni doesn’t want to kill us, so would likely avoid even harming the mortals even if he is awoken. I have a feeling though, that when the four gods meet, the calamity that strikes will be too deadly to prevent loss of life. Lord Agni might be willing to walk around us, or leave us be, Leviathan is seemingly already on the warpath. Perhaps I can convince the one known as Quetzalcoatl, Tenith the Sky Unending, to not join her siblings? I don’t know the fourth sibling. I only need to convince one, to keep a single one from being possessed by the entity. There’s still a chance.