326 (I) Loop [I]
I am Hero-Sister Uva Mettabon. I am of the Order serving Her Lady Arachne. I am of the Triad of the Unwanted Flame—a title bestowed upon me, the Deathless, and the Gate Lord of Piety by my fellow Sisters and the tabloids of Weave. It appears our deeds and misadventures have made us heroic caricatures from the perspective of the public.
I suppose there's no small bit of irony in my current plight, as I am quite literally trapped as a figment of a story. One that is constantly narrating her own history to herself, so as not to forget, so as to keep myself grounded through all these cycles I endure.
I think I'm on my fourth now. The Usurper-Narrator resets things every time she discovers what I have done, how I have unbalanced the minds of her denizens in these Fairwoods. She despises me for making them act out of character, and she seems to have a sort of arc planned for me as well. A development that suits her satisfaction as a reader.
Despite her control over this realm, calling her an author would be giving her too much credit. She wants the story to be told to her, yet intervenes when she encounters a scene or a moment she dislikes. I think my sister had a word for this. Ah, yes, “a fan's fiction.” She scribbles her own desires over existing words and refuses to accept that the story has taken a life of its own, that we have our own agency.
I must confess to possessing a growing disgust for tyrants and authoritarians everywhere. My Psychomancy allows me to usurp a mind, to bend someone to my will. It's not so different in one way, but I do it for my mission, and they do it because they wish to be pleasured. But recently I've been having thoughts as well. Thoughts that I might not be so different, that it is easy for me to slide down a new path, to be an author in my own right. No, not an author, but a hostile invader, a foreign writer seeking to usurp someone's own tale, twisting their understanding of themselves.
I stammer, I babble, but with each cycle, this existential angst seems to grow. I am getting more clarity with my own actions, with what they do to others. I am beginning to empathize with the creatures of this land. So many of them act as stereotypes or archetypes on the surface, devoid of personal identity, lacking that novel soul that is present in practically every individual I know. But deep down inside, buried under so much memory, so much forgotten history, they were different once. They had choices once, but after a time, they were curtailed. They were herded and then conditioned like dogs to serve the bidding of an unseen master.
Whoever Evanescia is, she does not belong here. She was an insertion, a self-insertion by a foreign author. You can see it now: Udraal's mother performing something that allows her to compromise the Fairwoods from the roots up. I don't know what she was doing exactly, but I have a glimpse.
I've faced Evanescia twice, and even though she cast me out from the bodies I was mantling, I managed to gain a peek into her mind, just a brush with her consciousness. She is like a shadow drifting from character to character. She lives vicariously through them, and her own identity is something that can only be described as second-person at best.
Her history is their history; her needs are above their needs, but she needs them to perform regardless. She needs me to perform. The longer I resist, the more frustrated she gets, the more authoritarian she gets, and she does not see how tightly she clenches the borders of her own realm. She does not witness the damage she does.
There is a way out: I need to destabilize her. I need to keep her unbalanced. I need to be as stone—no, harder—unchanged by the winds and waters across eons. I need to endure. I need to remain. I need to find the others, and then we need to bring this place down. We need to free the story from its most unworthy reader.
—Uva Mettabon’s Subconscious Psy-Log (Hidden within the sub-personalities archived by her Paracosm of Pacts and Flesh)
326 (I)
Loop [I]
“Eighth cycle.” Adam was gasping for breath. His mind raced. The implications were clear, but they were also hard to accept. “The world's been reset eight times. She's turned the pages back eight times already. Eight times… So why is the last cycle the only one I hold any recollection of? Why did I only evolve in the last cycle? Why are my skills retained? The levels…”
“I have no memory of any cycle before this one.” There was a quiet hint of dread in the voice of the Culturist beside him. Not much, but enough, and a slight bit of dread for an ancient Legend was an existential crisis for practically anyone else.
Before they could ruminate further, a wave of petals descended upon them. All colors of the rainbow brushed across Adam's skin as fragrant flowers assailed his senses. From the air came a dappled rain of floral wonder, and through the gales, he saw something, looming in the distance, flapping its wings. Enough flowers were drifting along the crashing tides of the sea that even the waters were changing color, the pigments staining the blue with purple, red, violet, and more.
A perfumed assortment of greenery, further speckled by the scent of nature, drew Adam's attention and compelled him to cast his Awareness far. There, he saw that Green Dragon in which the Culturist hid him during their last cycle. “Is that why?” Adam breathed. “You hid me within the guts of that dragon. Is that what protected us?”
“We departed from its insides. You fired an arrow, and I went with you. We rested inside the Deathless. We were bound to his soul; then we were wrenched out from it. If the dragon was our sanctuary, it did not serve as such when the cycle was reset.”
The colossal dragon let out a pitched shriek as it continued soaring through the air. Tumbling winds wrenched a new tide across the waves, this one perpendicular to all others crashing upon the surf. Adam took in his former abode and realized that it lacked any winged elves dwelling upon its back between the folds of its wings. “I've woken earlier than I did before. My body still aches, but my soul… there’s no pain there.”
He was still missing an eye, and blood seeped forth from the refreshed wound. But aside from that and a few other aches and pains, he felt fine. Better than fine. He felt like a flame hungering, emboldened with righteous purpose. “I remember trying to rise several times and then collapsing again, vanishing back into the darkness.”
“You were only semi-conscious when I emerged from you,” the Culturist said. His eyes glowed a pale blue as he examined the Paragon. “And your soul: the mutilation is missing. The flame of your Divinity endures. That is the reason. I'm sure of it. Gods are usually spared any alterations made to a dimension's timeline; even if they do not possess a Domain connected to Chronomancy, their individual soul and the Avatars they invest themselves in count as sovereign territory in the eyes of the System, and remain unchanged.”
“Then that brings us to another question, doesn't it? Why didn't this take effect before?” As Adam posed the question, a potential answer wiggled out from his mind. “How long did it take before I woke up last time? How much time did you spend mending my soul and mind?”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The orc took a second to recall. “Eight hours, perhaps closer to nine. I had you moved within the first ten minutes of my arrival. We resided inside the dragon for the remainder of the cycle. Up until the end, when we were carried away by your arrow.”
“Maybe the critical difference in the last cycle was time. We had enough time for you to finish fixing me, for my Path to evolve. Uva provoked a premature reset every cycle prior, so you never completed your treatment, and my Path never evolved.”
“A most plausible theory,” the Culturist responded. “And I think the Usurper-Narrator made a mistake including her as part of this story. She, more than you or the Deathless, has the capacity to ruin the finer aspects of a tale. As such, I think we should focus on locating her first. Before this Evanescia inflicts that promised penalty upon her.”
Adam reeled his Awareness back. “What do you mean by ruining the finer aspects of a tale?”
“She is a Psychomancer. A very, very potent Psychomancer that is empowered by madness and trauma rather than succumbing to it. She also likely tore some information out from Lady Harkness’s mind. If Evanescia has not stripped your friend of that knowledge, picture what absurdities she might be able to inspire in the local fae.”
The Paragon tried, and slowly, though he could only envision vague outbreaks of chaos, it was enough to paint a mischievous smirk on his face.
***
“I said you were being reckless. That you were impatient. Did I not say that, girl? Did I not tell you to stay your hand and wait? Now look where we are, eight cycles in, and nowhere nearer to freedom. I swear, if I had your power, if I had your favor, if I could do just a modicum of what you can do, I would have—”
Uva rolled her eyes. “You would have been far too consumed by your own arrogance, done something careless and stupid, and found yourself trapped by our warden.” She knew there was little point in arguing with Harkness. For one, this wasn't actually Harkness, merely a Psychomantic reconstruction of her. A magical simulation, as it were. Not that talking to the original would have been any different. Lady Eileen Harkness wasn't just consumed by pride. She was a slave to it. And unfortunately, she wore those shackles so proudly that she thought them jewelry.
Harkness' replica scoffed in disgust. “As I told you before, if you seek to insult me, let it out. There’s no point in holding it in your chest. We are of a mind.”
“No, I'm of a mind with myself. You are stolen architecture from a most recent victim.” As Uva declared that, she sank a puppeteer string deeper into her subconsciousness, connecting her mind directly with the hidden aspects that comprised Harkness. “And since you are how I'm smuggling memories between cycles, you should know the futility in chastising me about something you said during the last loop. I don't remember, and what I will remember is harvested from segments I hid within you.”
With the strings securely fastened, Uva drew her power back, and a rush of translucent mana carried memories over from the hidden aspect of her subconsciousness. Harkness briefly vanished, turning into a complicated assortment of spell shapes surrounding another instance of Uva’s ego. Creeping deeper down the byzantine spider web that was her mind, the bulk of Uva's consciousness faced a slight aspect of herself, obscured from Evanescia and the Fairwoods' narrative loop.
“He's right. We got carried away last time. We picked our targets carefully, but failed to entrap our main quarry.” The hidden instance of Uva turned thin and ethereal as the Psychomancy composing her being flowed back into the totality of her consciousness. “We couldn't breach her mind even with the element of surprise. As such, it is time we abandon our attempts to assassinate Evanescia directly. Her life remains beyond our reach for now.”
“For now,” the rest of Uva concurred. But an unspoken desire lingered between her many instances, even as she absorbed a package of leftover memories from her last attempt. A rush of information passed through her mind. But before she could run through things again and consider a new approach, she felt someone prodding at her face. Dirty fingers jabbed at her cheek, and Uva's skin depressed inward unnaturally, her Eldritch Physiology complemented by her Non-Euclidean Morphology. She briefly pulled up the levels for both those skills and scowled internally as she realized her recent gains had been reverted.
This damned place…
“Hey, hey, psst, wake up, wake up. I know you're alive. I can see your eyes fluttering. Please, wake up! We need you! We need your help now!” The Seeker held back a sigh as the hand that was once prodding her face now switched to shaking her by the shoulder. “I need you to wake up now, mage. We need you now. If you wait any longer, they're going to eat you alive while you slumber! We're all going to die if you don't wake. Please…”
The pleading man's voice was cut off by a heavy impact that shook the world, at least what felt like the world. A metal cage groaned and rattled. Uva felt herself tip to the right, then tumble back left again. The other prisoners inside the cage cried out. Bodies collided against hers, rolling over and crashing down on the ground. Sobs followed, the whimpering voices of children, the choked groans of the wounded, the snarling hatred of the martial Pathbearers. Even before she was finished reintegrating with her hidden memories, she got a strong sense that she'd done this before, had lived through this moment time and time again. It just made her feel tired rather than wise.
“All you need to shut up! The food does not talk! The food goes into the pot! The food boils in the stew! And then it feeds the tummy of Long Belly Gru!”
Slowly, Uva opened her eyes and looked to her left. She peered between the grimy titanium bars that trapped her and a dozen other people within. They were suspended in the air at a 45° angle from the ground, anchored to the back of a huge, snot-colored ogre. The green hide of the beast was covered in a layer of sickly mucus. A foul smell emanated from his body, and the rags he wore to guard his modesty were constantly dripping with festering sweat. To the left and right of the cage were two other ogres. Both of them held uprooted tree trunks with metal nails driven through their heads. The three ogres were man-hunters, two tasked with watching the prisoners, one bearing the burden of their weight.
In accordance with all the cycles before, the one-eyed ogre Uva knew only as Squinty glared at her and the other captives from outside their cage. With the hushed whispering quelled, the half-blind ogre took a step back, his immense weight causing the rotted floorboards beneath him to crack and splinter. He remained blissfully ignorant of how Uva regarded him. The jingling of a rusted chain bade her to look right. Fingers, the other guard ogre, was turning a wheel at the center of the platform upon which they all stood. With every revolution, the platform descended, bringing them lower and deeper into the cavernous depths of the Great Jaw. Flickering torches festooned to the cavern walls rose by as the platform dropped in awkward intervals.
Looking up, Uva gazed at the fading light of the surface. They were about fifty meters down, but even if she got back up there, it didn't mean freedom. It meant that she had to contend with the Court of Winter’s hidden stalkers hiding in the pale frost. She reflexively rubbed at her right collarbone. She retained instances of memory from the third cycle. Uva remembered the frosted hook that tore into her, that dragged her through the snow as the Wild Hunts galloped ahead. Against a normal piercing attack, she could simply displace the dimensions of her own flesh and let the blow sink into her without piercing anything. The same effect couldn't be achieved against a Wild Hunt or anyone who possessed a Narrative Weapon Proficiency Skill.
When the Wild Hunt’s harpoon greeted her body, she tore, she bled, she shattered. The frost that seeped through her very marrow made everything worse. There was no avoiding them either. The Wild Hunts were ethereal. They chased you across realms of mind, space, and matter. Once they had their eyes on her, their irises glowed a baleful violet beneath their helmets, and they would never give up, not until they dragged her before the Queen of Moons and offered her as a gift to the court.
I have better odds braving the Great Jaw for now, Uva decided. I'm more familiar with all the players and rules down in the subterranean depths. Its environment is more suited to me as well. I dealt considerable damage to the Gnomish Council during the last cycle. This time, maybe I should just focus on completing my escape instead of hunting down Evanescia—whoever she might be self-inserted as.
Though part of her wanted to facilitate another rebellion to see if she could collapse the Gnomish civilization in full, she knew that doing so would incur Evanescia’s wrath. The Usurper-Narrator didn't scare Uva, but the Umbral wasn't stupid either; to invite a penalty when she was trapped within the Fairwoods with no escape in sight was asking to bite off more than she could chew. She didn't even know where Shiv and Adam were—if they were anywhere near her location or even in the same story at all.