Chapter 133: The Goodbye

Ainash frantically turned to me. “Memories! Have memories, from future! Know what will happen! Need to get to the outpost, with Humans, they will help!”

For a moment, I stood there, trying to process what she was saying. Memories? From the future? How in the hells—

Erani spoke, breaking me 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 me, 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 me—”

“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 something 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 mental 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 me a moment. I have to think.”

Ainash pouted, but relented in her speech.

“Index,” I said, “why is this happening? Why can she remember?”

“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 remember 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 met 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. Something had happened to Ainash, not me. What had happened with her that had never happened before? My mind instantly went to those other Humans she’d met. Could they have done something? I don’t know, cast a Spell that Ainash hadn’t noticed?

“Check Time Loop’s description again for me,” Index said, clearly trying to steer me onto the right track.

I looked over the description.

Time Loop – Rank 18

+Extended Loop

Type: Activated

Go up to 5 hours back in time, resetting your Health, Stamina, Mana, and other Talent cooldowns – as well as the rest of the world – but preserving your memories 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 something here that was supposed to tip me off to what happened? I looked over it again, eyes drawn to the phrase “your memories and the rest of your Status.” If something was happening, it had to have been happening there—it was what talked about what it preserved.

So, my memory and the rest of my Status. Obviously, my memory was being preserved as intended. What about my Status? I looked it over, too. Yes, yes, everything seemed to be in order. Even the next Rank of the Bond I’d gotten in the previous timeline was there.

Wait. The previous Bond Rank? How did that work? It made sense that it was preserved, I supposed—Time 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 something real. The actual emotional connection between me and Ainash. And that emotional connection was made up of…memories. Memories that, in the System’s attempt to preserve my Status, it preserved, too.

And so, since at least some of those memories were housed in Ainash’s mind, that meant that the System decided to allow her to keep them. That all made sense. Except…

“You’re wondering why she kept all of her memories of the past loop, right?”

Index was spot-on. Sure, she kept her memories of what increased the Bond Rank. But why did she also keep her memories 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, memories are really, really complex things. And the System…doesn’t really like complexities. It operates in numbers, right? And sure, it can sometimes make programs like me that can better understand your little minds, but it’s one thing to understand something, and a whole other thing to change it. To selectively keep some memories while deleting others? That just isn’t something it’s meant 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 time to a point before I increased our Bond Rank, then she’ll keep all of her memories, no matter what?”

“Precisely.”

That was certainly good to know. I mean, the implications of the many ways this could be abused practically flooded my mind, threatening to keep me locked in place forever just pondering the opportunities. But I got myself back on track. That was neat and all, but I needed something that could help now. It was good that she remembered everything, but without any more uses of Time 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 me once I’ve died to something, and I’ve died to him twice. Does he have some great weakness, or something? Something 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 some of the general societal concepts of the Underworld. But as for some 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 some gods-damned reason, he has it through his dumb fucking head that the only way he will ever be happy is by killing me. 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 time to get to them,” I said. “Those visions came from my Talent. I know as well as you do. By the time you got to them, it was too late. I was already dead.”

“Just needed little bit more time!”

“The Demon killed me the moment 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 me. It’s me 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 some 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 time. And even if I did stall him for a bit, he’d still just end up killing me and then he’d… he’d…

He’d go home.

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 me. 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 me 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. Something to keep me alive,” I lied. Of course I didn’t have anything. They just needed to get away from me. “If I can stay alive for long enough, you two can get help and come 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 me 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 time 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 me—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 me, I’d make sure they’d have a bit more time 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 me,” I said. “You’ll be safe. This is the only way.”

Ainash looked at me strangely, but didn’t protest.

“Listen,” I continued, “we’re wasting time 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.”

Hours passed. Hours where I went over everything I knew about my enemy. And hours where I came up with nothing better than just letting him kill me and fuck off forever. After everything, after coming so damn far, I was going to die here. Minutes from safety. Minutes from being able to live the rest of my life. But the effort wasn’t wasted. I’d tried to save myself, and I’d failed. I made my peace with that. But if I could save the people I cared about, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

And that was what I intended to do.

Erani tried asking several more times what I planned to do over the course of the first couple hours, which I of course denied telling her each time, but after a bit she stopped asking. Both she and Ainash were quiet for that time—I supposed they both understood some of the gravity of the situation, even if I was hiding most of it.

Eventually, it got to be time. Around ten minutes before the Demon had arrived in the previous timeline. I stopped, and motioned for them to stop, too. I’d been using most of my Mana to keep us moving quickly with Expedite, and I needed to stop now if I intended to regenerate it all in time—I wasn’t going to put myself in any sort of weakened state before the fight. If there was anything I could say, it was that the timeline Xhag’duul remembered killing me in would not have him remembering it as an easy fight. He wouldn't get to feel good about it, he wouldn’t get to feel proud. It’d be a beatdown both ways, one where I did my damndest to kill him, too.

“Erani, Ainash, you two still have your invisibility rings, right?” I asked. I’d used both of mine back in the fight with Astintash, so I didn’t have any left. But Erani and Ainash had only used one each, so they still both had one remaining.

“Yes,” Erani said, looking at me strangely. Ainash confirmed, as well.

“Good,” I said. “Use them now, when you leave to go to get help. That way, if Xhag’duul manages to slip past me or something, he still won’t be able to find you.”

“Sure,” Erani said, nodding. I was glad she wasn’t arguing anymore, at least. My worst-case scenario would be her and Ainash coming back after leaving and realizing I was going to lose the fight, trying to interfere, and then dying themselves. No way I would let myself lose my life for nothing.

“Okay,” I said. “Then this is where we part ways.”

“It is,” she said. “Don’t die, okay? I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Father, if you get in trouble, try to sever the Demon’s head from his body. It will kill him.”

“Sure, kiddo,” I laughed and patted her head, though it ended up being a bit awkward, with her being taller than me. “Erani, I’ll do my best to stay alive.”

“You say that like you don’t know whether you’ll succeed.”

“Everything’s a risk.”

“But you shouldn’t take any unnecessary ones.”

“But sometimes you just have to.”

“Arlan.” Tears were welling in her eyes. “You absolutely cannot die, okay? Don’t play with me like that. You just can’t. It’s not allowed.”

“I wasn’t aware you made the rules,” I laughed. I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t do much to hold back tears of my own, either. “But if you say so. I’ll try not to break your rule.”

“Promise me?”

I stepped forward, wrapping my arms around her. Our faces were close enough that I could see the salty tears roll down her cheeks and fall to the dry ground. “...Yeah. I promise.”

“And if you break that promise?”

“I think I’ll be dead if I break it,” I laughed. “Not sure I can do anything about it then.”

“Then you’ll just have to pay it forward. Give me something. Call it collateral.”

“What, you won’t give it back to me if I die? Not sure if I’ll be using anything at that point.”

“Just humor me, dammit,” she chuckled, body pressed against mine, shaking more tears from her cheeks.

“Fine, fine. Tell you what. I think I have a great idea of what to give you. If I live, you have to give it back to me, though.”

“And what’s that?”

I leaned forward and pushed my lips against hers.

For a moment, a brief moment, it was like nothing was happening but that. But that small, insignificant kiss. A brief moment that meant everything in the entire world. Everything and more. Something that consumed my mind and my worries, refusing to allow me to think about anything else.

She froze for a second, then leaned into it, herself. A few seconds passed, and then she pulled away. Our cheeks had pushed together and made watery messes of both of our faces, and we were each blushing hard enough to make it look even worse. My heart was beating faster than it had in any fight for my life, and I could feel hers pulsing to the same rhythm.

“I expect you to give me that back if I live,” I said.

She smiled a bittersweet smile. “I guess that makes for some good encouragement. But it just makes it worse for me if you die, too.”

I sighed. Telling her this one lie over and over felt like it’d kill me before the Demon would. “Trust me. I’ll live.”

“Okay. You better.” She took a deep breath, and I could feel her hands tightly clench the fabric of the back of my shirt. “I love you, Arlan.”

And then she vanished into invisibility. I looked over, and Ainash was gone, too. I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, but I said quietly, “I love you too. Goodbye.”

And then I turned around, looking toward the empty stretch of road I’d just traveled, canyon walls on my either side.

“Alright, you Demon motherfucker. Do your worst. Because I sure as the hells just did mine.”