MAGUS INFINITE

I stepped out onto what was left of the peak, and the wind was blowing so hard that my long white hair was blown to the side... without Lightning Edict, my white hair that had grown past my neck could no longer be dyed black.

After months inside where there was nothing but darkness, to be outside, feeling the wind on my skin almost made me want to cry out, and for a moment, I just closed my eyes and let the wind touch me; it was so dense with essence from the elements that I could almost taste it.

Finally I opened my eyes to the world, and the first thing I looked at was the mountain. I had removed the top third of it, and there was no summit anymore, only a raw grey stump with a hole punched into it, and the ridges fell away below me in every direction. Snow on the far peaks, catching the light from the heavens. A range running north and south further than I could see.

Ah, it was so beautiful, and it was my world... I knew it before I thought about it. The air was right; there was essence in it, and it was thin and cold at this altitude and tasted faintly of stone, and after six months of a place with nothing in it at all, I stood there and breathed like a man who had been held under water.

Whatever comes after, for about a minute I was simply happy... sometimes, it was the simplest things that brought the most joy, and you could never really appreciate life until you have been in a place where there is none of it.

Then I looked up, and my smile slowly faded, as the stars were wrong, and I did not understand what I was seeing.

Sure, the heavens looked familiar, but there were more stars than there should be, and they were brighter, and they sat closer to the earth than they normally appeared. The shapes I have known since I was a boy were in there somewhere, buried in company.

I found the moon, and it was thankfully the same. Large and silver, sitting where it belonged, and then, low on the horizon, sitting exactly where a setting sun sits, I saw a second moon.

∞

My soul was sealed, but I knew I was not suffering from any illusion, especially as the suspicion that I was fearing was nearly set in stone.

To make sure of this, I ran tests with every sense I had available to me... despite the fact that I had been sealed, my senses were hardly dull.

I could sense the mass of the second moon. It pulled at the air, and if we were closer to the ocean, I could have seen its gravity affecting the tides.

It was smaller than my familiar moon, and reddish, the color of a bruise three days old and going brown at the edges, and it hung there without any explanation as if it had always been part of the sky.

It was a good thing that my status screen and the mechanics of the loop had gone crazy, or I would have thought that I was going crazy.

Also, it helps that this was not the first time I had seen this sky... and this moon.

The first time I had seen this same sky, I was lying on my back in a field of blue flowers. I knew how that vision had ended, with the roar of a massive dragon, and the destruction of the red moon as a falling Caelith coming from the depths of the void pierced through the moon, and fell directly on my face.

This was not the first time I had had visions, but those were the things about visions: they were supposed to be different from real life. Yet every piece of evidence I had was pointing to one indelible fact... I had returned to my world, but whatever spatial pillar I had entered had taken me to a different when.

I am at least ten thousand years from home.

My feet went out from under me, and I sat down on the broken shoulder of that mountain, and I laughed for a while, and it was not a good laugh, and there was nobody in the world to hear it... Nobody in this world, nobody in the one I came from.

You know there were moments when I was in the darkness, and I had the sudden thought that maybe I would not leave that place, and that I would die in the darkness and be forgotten, but I tried not to think about it, because such a fate would be too horrible to contemplate.

Now, I was in the same situation, but now I could not hide from the truth. I could try to kill myself and see if my soul would be able to travel the impossible length of time to reawaken in my tent, ten thousand years or more in the future... or I could see what this world had in store for me in the past.

And in the moment that this thought entered my head... everything changed.

From the beginning, what had been my greatest disadvantage? It was always time!

Theoretically, the loop gave me infinite time, but the nature of the time it gave me was one that was filled with conflict. I did not have the time to truly solidify my powers, and my abilities were too one-dimensional.

My second problem was that the enemies I faced were too powerful, so much so that it was insane to even contemplate fighting with them, but what if everything could be flipped on its head, and instead of being so ignorant about the world and the true nature of magic, I could see everything from the beginning.

I had been thrown into the loop as an Acolyte; I had no understanding of politics, the Sovereigns, gods, and demons. The spells I used were very powerful, but all were born from moments of desperation.

I did not know who to trust because I did not know anything, but what if all of that could change?

I had been thrown ten thousand years into the past. I had lost access to most of my powers. I was alone in a world that did not know me, in a time that had not yet produced the enemies I had sworn to destroy.

But I had also been given something I had never had before.

Time. Real time. Time that was not measured in the frantic, desperate hours of a loop that reset every time I died. Time that stretched out before me like an open road, waiting to be walked.

I stood up on the broken shoulder of the mountain, and I looked at the second moon hanging low on the horizon. It was red and small, and all I could see was the vision of the stars falling and the world burning and the Caeliths crashing into the earth.

But that vision had not happened yet. Not in this time. I was standing at the beginning of everything, and I had the chance to change it, or even if I did not change it, I could witness it, learn from it, and grow.

I was always late to the game; maybe it was time to change this.

"Oi... Are you the whelp of a goblin who broke my mountain?!"