PART 1/2
Ainash frantically turned to . “mories! Have mories, from future! Know what will happen! Need to get to the outpost, with Humans, they will help!”
For a mont, I stood there, trying to process what she was saying. mories? From the future? How in the hells—
Erani spoke, breaking from my thoughts. “Arlan, did you hear her? What’s going on?”
“I…I don’t know,” I shook my head. I was still reeling from the recent death, and now this? I couldn’t think. “I just got back. Xhag’duul killed , and—”
“Wait, you had to go back again? So our new plan didn’t work? We’re on our last try?”
“Y-yeah,” I said. “Just let —”
“There was this bad guy Demon, and he broke a big rock, and there was this big Dragon, and it told on us! And then I went and talked to Humans, and mother, you were there too, and you said ‘please help’ and the Humans said sothing and I couldn’t understand them but I could tell they wanted to help but they were scared and so were we and then—”
“Please just hold on!” I said. Her ntal words were loud and frantic enough that I physically couldn’t hear anything else. I took a deep breath and sat on the ground, trying to calm myself.
“Father, why are you sitting? We have to go! There is a bad guy coming! He killed you!”
“I– I know,” I said. “Just please give a mont. I have to think.”
Ainash pouted, but relented in her speech.
“Index,” I said, “why is this happening? Why can she rember?”
“Well, think about it. What happened differently in the last loop that hasn’t ever happened before?”
I tried to calm my still-racing thoughts and rember the events that’d transpired. What had happened that hasn’t ever happened before? It couldn’t have had anything to do with the Demon Xhag’duul, we’d already t him and it didn’t seem like he’d done anything. And I couldn’t think of anything Paiiniak could have done, either. What else was new?
No, I was thinking about this wrong. Sothing had happened to Ainash, not . What had happened with her that had never happened before? My mind instantly went to those other Humans she’d t. Could they have done sothing? I don’t know, cast a Spell that Ainash hadn’t noticed?
“Check Ti Loop’s description again for ,” Index said, clearly trying to steer onto the right track.
I looked over the description.
Ti Loop – Rank 18
Extended Loop
Type: Activated
Go up to 5 hours back in ti, resetting your Health, Stamina, Mana, and other Talent cooldowns – as well as the rest of the world – but preserving your mories and the rest of your Status.
This Talent activates at will, or automatically when you would die.
This Talent may only be activated twice per day.
Yeah, everything looked normal. But apparently there was sothing here that was supposed to tip off to what happened? I looked over it again, eyes drawn to the phrase “your mories and the rest of your Status.” If sothing was happening, it had to have been happening there—it was what talked about what it preserved.
So, my mory and the rest of my Status. Obviously, my mory was being preserved as intended. What about my Status? I looked it over, too. Yes, yes, everything seed to be in order. Even the next Rank of the Bond I’d gotten in the previous tiline was there.
Wait. The previous Bond Rank? How did that work? It made sense that it was preserved, I supposed—Ti Loop said it would preserve my Status, so if it was a part of my Status, it would be preserved.
But the Bond wasn’t a simple arbitrary number, like my Level or Stats. It represented sothing real. The actual emotional connection between and Ainash. And that emotional connection was made up of…mories. mories that, in the System’s attempt to preserve my Status, it preserved, too.
And so, since at least so of those mories were housed in Ainash’s mind, that ant that the System decided to allow her to keep them. That all made sense. Except…
“You’re wondering why she kept all of her mories of the past loop, right?”
Index was spot-on. Sure, she kept her mories of what increased the Bond Rank. But why did she also keep her mories of what’d happened after? She only spoke to the Humans after the Bond Rank had increased, after all.
“Well, you’re pretty much there, so I can take you the last bit. Basically, mories are really, really complex things. And the System…doesn’t really like complexities. It operates in numbers, right? And sure, it can sotis make programs like that can better understand your little minds, but it’s one thing to understand sothing, and a whole other thing to change it. To selectively keep so mories while deleting others? That just isn’t sothing it’s ant to do. So, instead, it just keeps the whole lot of them.”
“Wait,” I said, thinking about the implications of this. “So if I ever reset ti to a point before I increased our Bond Rank, then she’ll keep all of her mories, no matter what?”
“Precisely.”
That was certainly good to know. I an, the implications of the many ways this could be abused practically flooded my mind, threatening to keep locked in place forever just pondering the opportunities. But I got myself back on track. That was neat and all, but I needed sothing that could help now. It was good that she rembered everything, but without any more uses of Ti Loop, I couldn’t abuse that quirk of the Talent any further. I needed to make due with what I had.
“Index, do you know what we can do to escape that Demon? You said before that you get a bunch more information you can tell once I’ve died to sothing, and I’ve died to him twice. Does he have so great weakness, or sothing? Sothing I can exploit to kill him, or at least make him go away?”
“Well, I definitely have a lot I can tell you about him—I can tell you about Devils as a species, about that one’s specific abilities, and about so of the general societal concepts of the Underworld. But as for so great weakness that’ll kill the thing instantly? I’m not sure.”
“Fuck,” I said aloud. “Fuck!”
Erani put a hand on my shoulder. “Arlan? Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not. We’re fucked. We’re going to die. That thing—that Demon. He’s way too strong. We can’t run, we can’t hide. And for so gods-damned reason, he has it through his dumb fucking head that the only way he will ever be happy is by killing . So I can’t do shit to convince him to leave us alone.”
“Are not going to die!” Ainash said. “Have visions! Can go to Humans and ask for help.”
“We don’t have ti to get to them,” I said. “Those visions ca from my Talent. I know as well as you do. By the ti you got to them, it was too late. I was already dead.”
“Just needed little bit more ti!”
“The Demon killed the mont he knew you were talking to them. The only reason it was so close was because he let it get so close. We’re fucking putty in his hands.”
“I…” Ainash paused, brows furrowed in thought. “You go with mother, I will fight Demon.”
“What?! No. Absolutely not.”
“If I fight Demon, you get help, you will not be hurt.”
“But you will. And he’ll end up killing us all anyway. In fact, he’s probably quick enough that he’d just go right past you and still attack . It’s he wants, not you. You wouldn’t do anything but be an obstacle he has to run around.”
“Arlan.” Erani looked into my eyes. “Don’t talk to her like that. We’re going to survive, because that’s what we do.”
I sighed and shook my head. She was right; I didn’t need to be so harsh. “I’m sorry. But we can’t fight that Demon and win. It’s obvious.”
“Then what can we do?”
I rubbed my temples, wracking my brain for so semblance of an answer. We couldn’t fight, we couldn’t run, we couldn’t hide, and I was the only one who even had a chance of stalling the Demon for ti. And even if I did stall him for a bit, he’d still just end up killing and then he’d… he’d…
He’d go ho.
He’d leave if I died. It was obvious. He didn’t give a shit about Erani or Ainash. He didn’t want them dead. They were just obstacles in his goal to get to . That was why I worked as a distraction in the first place.
“Erani, Ainash, I do have an idea,” I said. “I just don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“What?”
“I’m the one he’s looking for. He wants dead. So if I’m with you two, I just endanger you both. We need to split up. You two go ahead, and I stay here to keep him busy.”
“You just said you’d die if you did that.”
“I…I have an idea. Sothing to keep alive,” I lied. Of course I didn’t have anything. They just needed to get away from . “If I can stay alive for long enough, you two can get help and co back, and then you can fight him off and we’ll all survive.”
“What? What are you talking about? What could possibly keep you alive?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. There was no way they’d let leave them otherwise. They had to believe I wouldn’t be in danger. But if they went to the Barinruth Empire while I was fighting Xhag’duul, they’d be safe. And by the ti they got back, Xhag’duul would be long gone, and so would I. I didn’t intend to just lay down and let him kill —I’d fight for my gods-forsaken life—but I didn’t expect to win. At the very least, if I had a bad read on the thing and he did want to kill Erani and Ainash after he killed , I’d make sure they’d have a bit more ti to escape.
“Arlan,” Erani said, “what is this plan? I can’t just go along with it without even knowing what you’re talking about.”
“Just trust ,” I said. “You’ll be safe. This is the only way.”
Ainash looked at strangely, but didn’t protest.
“Listen,” I continued, “we’re wasting ti standing around and arguing. He’s already on his way. We need to move as far as possible before he gets here, so it’s a short distance for you to travel when you get help.”
She exhaled. “Fine.”
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