Draft Update 14/02/24 (Patreon)

(This chapter ends at a bit of a weird spot because I suddenly realized I'd written 7000 words and there was no sign of a decent off-ramp. Still, at least we'll be right into the thick of things next chapter.)

Fortunately, it was a glancing blow. The weapon - which didn't even feel especially sharp, at least compared to what I'd have expected a spear to feel like - landed square against the back of my rib cage and slid right off, not even meaningfully tearing my clothes. The most it managed to do was leave a nasty cut right over the bone which would probably bruise to high heaven.

Of course, that didn't stop me from freaking out. I choked on the air, making a bizarre mix of a grunt and a scream I wouldn't have even imagined my throat capable of, then frantically spun 180 degrees. My hand went instinctively to where my scepter should have been, only to flail against the fabric of my skirt (which of course had fallen immediately into the water) due to its absence. This was unfortunate, since it was easy to spot my assailant, who must have snuck up on me through the trees.

Though, the sight was so strange that my mind almost rejected the information. It was a young man - Inotian, at least based on his features - dressed in a... Well, the word I want to use is 'costume', but to be strictly accurate, he was wearing a set of simple leather armor that looked like something out of the Old Kingdoms era. The cut was rough and only covered his chest and waist, and the tanning process had failed to remove all the staining from the cowskin. Further, a crude buckle that looked like it was made of copper was displayed prominently on his belt, the emblem seeming to depict some manner of big cat.

He was holding a wooden spear in both hands, with a leather satchel filled with smaller ones - javelins? - at his waist. His grip was excessively tight, and he was pointing the thing at me threateningly, a scowl on his face.

"Gallû ṣuhārtu!" he shouted. "Me'a temen? Dabābu!"

I couldn't understand a word he was saying, and if it weren't for the fact that I was an arcanist, I wouldn't have any clue what language he was speaking at all. Because I was, though, I was able to recognize that it sounded very similar to Eme, even if the intonation and vowel sounds were completely different. That said, most of the words one spoke when using the Power were related to mathematics, so even with that understanding, there was no chance of me comprehending regular speech.

More to the point, though, why was he speaking it? Eme had been a dead language as early as the New Kingdoms era. Had I somehow traveled back in time? Why was he trying to kill me? What the fuck was happening?!

"Dabābu!" he repeated, insistent, poking the spear forward. Sweat was rolling down his face.

"W-Wait!" I said, holding up my hands. "Hold on! I, uh-- I mean you no harm! Look, I'm unarmed, see? Un-armed!"

Speaking slowly and raising your voice isn't going to make him understand what you're saying any better, idiot.

They didn't seem particularly put at ease by this, yelling something else at me while advancing another step forward. I was starting to think about making a run for it, but before I had a chance, another four figures rushed out of the woods to my left, all with the same garb and equipment, led by a woman who looked Saoic or maybe Viraaki. She began shouting at the man - who seemed quite taken off-guard - while the other three proceeded to surround me, their spears raised as well. They all looked just as angry and spooked as he did, the shock visible in their eyes.

The man soon started yelling back at her, to which she retorted with several complex phrases involving a lot of variations on the word 'arratu'. Eventually, she slapped him in the face, pointing angrily with her finger, then finally returned to regard me, her gaze wary.

"Demon!" she yelled in heavily-accented, broken Ysaran. "You break seal on temple! You break pact!"

My eyes boggled. "I-- I'm not-- What?!"

At this point, I was so taken aback by both the situation's total absurdity and the speed at which it had developed that the rational part of my brain felt like it had metaphorically flipped the table over and stormed out of the room. I was operating on pure reactive impulse.

"You break pact!" she repeated, baring her teeth. "Try escape!"

"No, I... T-This is a misunderstanding!" I protested. "I'm not a demon! And I'm not trying to escape anything, I just woke up in a-- Look, if that's the problem, I'll go back inside, okay?" I reached for the door handle. "I'll just go back inside--"

Without warning, the woman reached for a javelin in her own satchel and tossed it straight at my hand, almost impaling it against the wood. I squealed, jumping back reflexively.

"NO!" she yelled. "Seal is broken! No temple back! You come with us!"

"Come-- Come with you?" My eyes darted from side to side for some sort of route of escape, but came up short. "Where?"

"No more speak!" she commanded angrily. "You try and curse! You hear? No more speak!"

It was clear that diplomacy had failed, but without a weapon, I didn't have much choice but to go along with what they wanted. If these people weren't used to dealing with arcanists - and I, uh, had to assume they weren't, considering - I'd grown proficient enough at tracing incantations that I could probably get one passable attack out unnoticed using the same method as I'd employed to escape the coffin, but doing so would require a drop in body heat so severe I definitely wouldn't be in a position to run for it afterwards. It either take out all 5 at once or nothing, and that seemed like a fucking long shot. They all looked pretty muscled, some of them even having visible battle scars; not the types who would be easy targets.

After speaking with me, the woman, who at this point I could only assume was the commander of the group, went back to talking to her men. Whatever decision she was making right now seemed to be causing no small amount of controversy, and the others looked uneasy even if they were seemingly unwilling to challenge her authority. Another member of their party - a Mekhian woman - cut in with what came across as a suggestion based on her tone, only for everyone else to immediately look horrified. The commander glanced at me nervously, then leaned forward and whispered something, prompting the others to crane their necks back awkwardly as they struggled to hear her while also keeping their eyes and weapons firmly on me.

Finally, the commander turned to me again. "We bind you. If move, you die!" She tapped the tip of her spear with her forefinger. "Silver!"

I squinted. It didn't look like silver.

Without further warning, the group closed in, the commander and two of the spearmen - including the first guy - staying somewhat at a distance, while two of the others partially lowered their weapons and rushed to my side.  The one on the right took a short length of rough, thin rope from his belt and bound my hands behind my back, while the other unbuckled a strip of leather from part of his armor and began forcing it crudely into my mouth.

"Hey! I-- Mmmph!"

He tied it around the back of my neck, and though it wasn't completely effective as a gag, it was sufficient to keep me from speaking properly. As soon as this job was done, the two - with expressions that looked a mix of anxiety and disbelief - shoved me forward, then withdrew sharply, raising their spears once again.

They're all terrified of me, I finally realized. Could I have used that, somehow? Scared them off?

Well, that seemed like it would be a lot more difficult now.

The commander, seeming to have calmed down slightly, yelled another series of commands as she pointed to various members of the group, then regarded me once more. "We go to elders. They fix this. Walk in middle."

"Whffgh mmre mmffse 'emdffshh'?' I tried to ask.

"No talk!" The woman commanded. She prodded my torso with her spear. "Walk in middle!"

I stepped forward, and the group assembled around me, two of the spearmen behind me and two ahead, with the commander taking the lead. She barked a few more orders, and then we set off, marching rightwards from the abbey and its garden and deeper into the marsh. She set a practiced pace, and every time I slowed down even slightly, I got prodded in the back or butt.

This ended up happening quite a lot, because as it turned out, trying to walk through swampland at any sort of pace in sandals and leggings was profoundly unpleasant. The humidity quickly left me feeling exhausted, the ground was so slippery I could barely keep my footing, and squishy detritus of every flavor quickly accumulated on my feet and legs, leaving my skin feeling encased in cold, cloying slime.

Needless to say, my feeling of optimism from a few minutes earlier had swiftly gone the way of the chicken. I doubted very much that Neferuaten had in mind whatever this insane scenario was. Part of me felt like I'd stumbled into one of those fantasy stories where the protagonist gets spirited off to some psuedo-historical world of magic and adventure, except the fucking Order's guest house was here. What was this place? Who were these people? The only mercy was that the process of walking was so exhausting that I barely had any energy to think.

Another thing I'd realized a couple minutes had passed was that, despite the landscape around me seeming lit as one would expect for a sunny afternoon, there was no lamp in the sky to speak of. It was as if the light was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The more time passed, the more certain I was that this couldn't be real, at least not in a strict sense. It had to be some sort of unreality like the one from back then, probably borne of the same phenomenon.

So... was this not my real physical body? Was the real 'me' lying collapsed in the Bastion, just like I'd really been in bed in my room in the abbey? Or--

No, wait...

Suddenly, an unpleasant idea came to mind. Though my memories of our conversation were fuzzy and dreamlike, I was pretty sure the other me - the one who'd apparently lived through all those countless versions of the weekend of April the 28th, 1409 - had largely confirmed my theory that whatever power facilitated the loop had made 'copies' of all our minds, or at least the minds of my classmates. At the time, we'd been some kind of special case, which was why I was able to remember the final loop having happened at all.

But just now, hadn't the last 'normal' thing I've experienced been a sort... diverging of my thoughts, with the 'me' that had been in the transposition chamber? Where 'I' had suddenly been unable to control my body, while the other me had just continued along with her business like nothing was wrong?

What if... What if I'd just been copied? That 'I' had been created wholesale for whatever this was just a few moments ago, never to escape?

I quickly shook my head. No, it's too soon to assume something like that. It could just as easily be the same situation as last time, or even something wrought of an entirely different cause. This could just be some bizarre but ultimately mundane physical place I'd been transpositioned to, with what I'd experienced getting here just being a drug-induced hallucination or something. There were always stories of people getting drunk or high and ending up somewhere weird, then swearing from the bottom of their hearts they'd been spirited away by devils or aliens; the human mind was great at convincing itself of that sort of crap.

It didn't feel likely at this point, but, well. One could always hope.

Anyway, I knew I could at least access the Power, and if I could just do so safely, I'd be able to use Divination to determine more about what was going on. Without a scepter and in some weird low-technology setting like this, my best bet in that capacity would be to start a fire, and to do that I'd need to escape from my captors.

I didn't know why they thought I was some kind of demon, but they didn't seem to want to kill me for whatever reason, and more importantly they'd only bound my wrists and not my fingers, so I could still trace arcana whenever I wanted. The wise play was obviously to wait until they left me somewhere or at least under lesser guard, then make a break for it. They couldn't keep me surrounded like this forever.

Doesn't have to be forever to be pretty unpleasant, though. My foot half-slipped as I stepped on what might have been a living creature, almost spraining my ankle. 

Without a clock or lamplight it was difficult to tell, but it felt like we marched through the marsh for maybe a half hour, at which point the landscape - which I'd been able to see coming on account of the ring's curve - dried up and gave way to dusty plains with sparse vegetation. We soon came to a dirt road that was barely a road at all, which was a considerable improvement, though still not great. By this point I felt desperately thirsty, the leather feeling like it was sucking up every ounce of moisture on my tongue.

Then, after another 20 or so minutes, we arrived.

It was, at least by the most basic definition of the term, a town. A wall of mud and rough stone about 6 feet tall encircled a small number of brick buildings and a much larger assortment of wood and straw ones, broken up by the occasional leather tent. There was almost no rhyme or reason to the layout, and the streets were little more than well-trodden earth between the various structures. The air stunk of sweat and excrement and worse. A banner with the same cat symbol that the soldier's belts bore hung from the walls.

With two spears still held firmly against my back, we headed through the gates-- Though they weren't even really gates at all, just a tight archway where the road terminated. The streets were fairly crowded with people doing hard, physical work with extremely simple tools - carrying pots, grinding wheat, forging metal over dangerous-looking fires, and even skinning and butchering animals. Most of them only wore the simplest tunics or even just loincloths, almost universally going barefoot. Many were filthy or bore serious injuries; I saw missing eyes, fingers, hands, ears...

Honestly, I'd never witnessed people living in such squalor. I couldn't suppress a small gasp of shock at the sight of it, my eyes gaping. The smell alone made me feel like I might vomit.

In addition, no one was wearing a veil, or any sort of face covering at all for that matter. That hadn't felt particularly strange for the small party of ambushers, but seeing it like this in an urban area felt surprisingly uncanny and uncomfortable. I felt an instinctual urge to reach up and cover my face, then to stare at the ground as I realized I couldn't.

As we entered, the commander ordered the Mekhian spearwoman to blow a horn - it produced a deep, almost animalistic sound - and most of the people nearby turned sharply in our direction, many stopping what they were doing. They looked at me with the same faces as the spearmen; apprehensive, fearful, angry. Some ran indoors, while others pointed their fingers and yelled 'suhārtu!' or similar words. Once the situation had settled a bit, a few approached closer, and spoke more complex phrases in mocking, triumphant tones. A few laughed at me, prompting others to look at them warily.

One man who looked almost as old as Anna ran up very close, shouting something at the commander with an expression of intense anger on his face. She shouted back at him, only for him to raise his voice further, gesturing wildly at me and towards the gates. After a few moments of this, she screamed a single, frustrated word and grabbed a dagger from her belt, gashing him across the face. He howled in pain and fell to the ground, and half the crowd fled in a panic.

Oh my god. This is fucking insane.

The commander kicked him to the side and ushered her men - and by extension, me - forward towards the town center, which was already in sight. There couldn't be more than a couple thousand people living here at most.

I hadn't even finished digesting what had happened when we arrived at our ultimate destination. It turned out to be a circular building possessing slightly better stonework than the rest, with an open dome roof and and a statue that I was pretty sure was meant to be a lion at the gateway, which was in turn guarded by two more spearmen - a Saoic man and a... Lluateci man? - in the same uniform. Like everyone else, they stiffened at our approach, their grips on their weapons tightening.

Upon our arrival, the commander made a halting gesture to the others, then marched over to the guards by herself. After a few moments of intense discussion, one of them ran into the dome while the other joined her in training their spears on me as well, all six ultimately hemming me against the outer wall of the structure. One of them, a bald Rhunbardic-looking man who hadn't spoken much yet, began chanting something under his breath, his eyes half-closed.

At this rate, they're going to have every soldier in the city doing this, I thought to myself. Just what do they think I can do to them without a weapon, especially since they don't know how the Power works? Hell, do they even know what it is?

After a couple minutes, the guard returned, an expression of apprehensive urgency on his face. He declared something to the commander, pointing sharply at me. For maybe the first time, I also heard some words that I recognized from Eme - the number '7', as well as the initiating word, 'An'.

Whatever he was saying, the commander nodded in approval at it, then barked another order, causing the others to back away from me slightly. Finally, she grabbed me by my robes and pulled me several feet, then shoved me in the direction of the entrance, quickly thrusting her spear to block any route of escape. Some of the others gasped, and I could feel the sweat from her hand and hear the sharpness of her breath-- It came across like she was trying to show off her bravery, or something.

"Go," she spoke firmly. "Elders inside."

Wait, they're just sending me straight in to see their leaders? No rotting in a dungeon or a cage for a bit, or something? Shit.

"M-Mmphgh," I told her objectionably.

"Go," she insisted.

I glanced to the side. Well, I guess there's not much of an alternative...

Hesitantly, I turned and walked towards the threshold, passing through a small tunnel into the structure's interior, which managed to be quite dark in spite of the partially-open ceiling. To my surprise, it had a design reminiscent of a small arena; a circle of open space surrounded by a seating several meters up. However, instead of being intended for a crowd, there were only seven seats visible-- Thrones, I wanted to call them, as they were obviously intended to be imposing, covered with animal skins and framed by braziers that cast long shadows. These were in turn occupied by seven hooded figures, many of whom looked visibly aged. Evidently, these were the 'elders' in question.

What struck me the most about this chamber, though, was the floor. It looked like it was made of metal, and not even a simply-manufactured one like copper or bronze - my guess would be titanium, with how it was reflecting the light. It seemed completely out of place in the setting to the point of being incredibly distracting.

As I entered fully, the fourth of the seven figures - the one seated in the center, a man with a long, white beard - lifted a wooden staff and thumped it loudly against the stone. He looked squarely in my direction.

"Demon," he said, in a far calmer tone than anyone I'd encountered so far. "Step forward to the central podium."

I blinked in surprise. Unlike the others, his Ysaran was perfect. If anything, he had even less of an accent than I did.

I glanced forward. In the center of the chamber was a slightly raised section of the flooring, subtle enough that it was barely discernible. Still, this was probably what he meant. I walked over and stood on it.

"Demon," he repeated again. "Enemy of the Ring of Heaven, betrayer of the Fourteen True Gods. You have broken free of your anointed slumber and imprisonment within the Temple of Binding prior to the time of reckoning, violating the covenant forged by King Alulim at the dawning of the age of mortal men, and defiling sacred ground with your fell presence. Speak your intent before we, the elders of the Taruff, 19th of the 35 tribes."

He raised his hand with his palm open, and suddenly the leather binding around my mouth flew off, flying to the other side of the circle. Wait, what? This guy is an arcanist?!

Suffice it to say, this wasn't going remotely like I'd hoped. But if he spoke Ysaran so fluently, maybe there was a chance that reason could still get me out of this. Even if the details were unclear, there was obviously some connection between whatever this place was and the normal world. If I just spoke calmly and tried to clear this up...

"Um," I said nervously. "I-I'm sorry, but I don't really understand what's going on... Listen, I just suddenly woke up in a coffin in that, uh, temple an hour ago. I don't even know how I got there; the last thing I can remember, I was in the Empyrean Bastion. I wasn't trying to harm your soldiers or anything-- One just threw a spear at me on my way out. Look, see for yourself." I turned partially around, exposing the gash on my gash. "I'm really sorry if I violated some taboo, but I'm not a demon, I'm just a regular person. This is all some weird misunderstanding."

The room's lighting seemed set up such that the people in the stands could easily see the face of the person standing below, while rendering the opposite impossible - the cowl cast the bearded man's face so deeply in shadow that I couldn't discern any sort of reaction. He looked to a few of the others. They whispered in uncertain tones.

"Demon," he spoke yet again after a few moments. "Do not attempt to fool us. We know that your kind wears human forms as easily as a tortoise wears its shell. Your garb and your unnatural beauty betray your nature, as does the fact you only speak the demonic tongue."

I glanced awkwardly to the side. I guess I should take that description relatively, considering the situation.

"Still, on the off-chance that the will of your vessel has subsumed that of its profane inhabitant, we shall offer you a choice," he declared. "If you wish to forsake your nature, then we offer you the chance to undergo the ritual of purification. The abyssal spirit within you shall be expelled, and your mind cleansed of black knowledge. Thus you may begin to walk on the road to humanity." He raised a hand, and an object levitated into the air from beneath the throne - parchment bound together in a strange loop.

My eyes flickered with recognition; it didn't matter how much time had passed, I'd recognize just a distinctive object anywhere. That's Samium's book! How did he get his hands on that thing?!

"Otherwise, if you refuse or insist on speaking lies, we shall banish you from our lands outright, and you shall be denied even your prophecised role in the end of all things," the man went on, a ferocity coming into his tone. "What say you, demon?"

Something was up here. The discordant metal floor, the fact that he'd almost ignored everything specific I said to segue into what came across as a prescripted demand, and now the reappearance of that thing. Had everyone here been brainwashed, or something? Forced into wiping their own memories? Was this some kind of weird primitivist cult? Assuming this whole thing wasn't just some fucking vision quest I'd been thrust into, that was easily the most logical explanation.

If I read between the lines of what the man was saying, though, it sounded like the ultimatum he was giving me was actually pretty convenient. Though there were probably things that were going over my head, the fact that he was offering me a chance to join suggested that 'demon' was just a code word for 'outsider'. With the alternative being 'banishment', the message seemed simple: Join or get out.

Obviously, the second option was still vastly preferable. But before that, maybe I could get him to break character for a moment. If I could get just a little context, any knowledge as to what was going on...

"L-Listen," I said. "I think I understand what you're trying to say... and I'm not going to try and interfere in whatever you're doing here. Okay? But I know that we're speaking Ysaran, not 'demonic', and that the book you have there is a tool for suppressing people's memory. Or, well, maybe it's a different one by the same guy, but the point is, I've seen it before. So I know this isn't some stone age civilization." I furrowed my brow. "So, could you please tell me what this place is? Maybe how I could have got here in the first place?"

It was hard to discern, but I was pretty sure I could see a twinge of unease on the faint outline of the elder's face. Once again, he turned to the others, and they whispered among themselves for a few moments.

"...demon," he eventually said severely. "I warned you against speaking lies."

He reached out a hand again. This time, my mouth itself snapped shut against my will.

Wait, how the hell did he do that? I didn't even feel my resistances break!

"We have made our decision," the man declared. "By my authority under Gahrat, king of the Taruff, we, the council of elders, do banish you from this realm, never to return. You shall be stripped of physical form, and unmade!"

Suddenly, all seven of them raised their hands at once, and in an instant I completely lost control of my body. My arms shot to the side and my legs and back went as stiff as a board, everything below my neck suddenly feeling as though it were made of lead. My body levitated sharply into the air, putting me at eye level with the elders in the space of a half-second.

Absolute panic surged through me. How the fuck is being 'unmade' a kind of banishment?! My inner rationalist, which had convinced itself it had finally started to get the situation in hand, protested.

The elders began chanting under their breath, but whatever they were saying, it sure wasn't an incantation, sounding more like some manner of religious mantra. They repeated the same few phrases over and over, their voices rising higher and higher in volume.

Oh, wow! What a great plan. Appeal to the rationality and empathy of the weird cultists! Almost as smart as when one of them tried to kill you with a spear and you decided the best course of action was to just go along with what they said and do nothing. We'll die just as we lived-- Uselessly passive and a total social fuckup!

I was stupefied. With their hands held flatly in the air and their mouths occupied babbling nonsense, I couldn't understand how they were even casting at all. On top of this, the brazier flames beside them were starting to sway from side to side, glowing brighter and brighter by the second. This was the opposite of what should have been happening; assuming they were drawing on them for eris, they should have been dimming and fizzling out. How were they doing this?!

Right, the flames, some small part of me that wasn't completely melting down realized. I only had one chance. With my arms out like this, I could probably just about draw eris from the ambient heat of a couple of them. It wouldn't be enough to directly counter whatever they were using to hold me in the air, but I could at least make a tremendously loud noise and flash of light. If they didn't know I was an arcanist too, the shock could be enough to throw them off.

They'd sealed my mouth shut and I couldn't move my fingers, but I could still use my tongue to trace an incantation, like war-arcanists. I'd never been formally trained in it, but I'd practiced a bit back when I was really into spy dramas! It couldn't be that hard! I traced the initiating word, a couple of figures-- Actually, this was kind of difficult--

Abruptly, I was decapitated.

𒀭

Huh.

I floated in the room where I'd died, time seeming to have frozen. The world seemed to have been drained of color, having taken on a golden sheen, and felt strangely distant, like I was looking at it through a foggy window. My mind felt clear - strangely so, even, considering I'd been freaking the fuck out a few seconds earlier - but I only had a vague sense of my own body, which made sense since it had been cut into more pieces than a goose on Akitum.

'Decapitated' was the only part I'd managed to process in the split-second before giving up the ghost, but looking at it like this, that wasn't even the half of it. Even 'bisected' didn't cover it. Were there higher forms of that word? Quadsected? Octsected?

Using what looked like slices of pure energy, my body had been cut in half, not only horizontally at the chest but vertically too, killing me almost instantly. Yet as if that wasn't sufficient, just about every major joint had been sliced through as well - my knees, my elbows, my wrists and ankles, and of course my neck. My head had even been carved yet again at the jaw level, resulting in a skull that had been fractured cleanly into four equally-sized chunks.

Now, in the moment of frozen time, the various pieces of flesh that had previously been 'me' were being left to drop unceremoniously back to the floor. Macabre as it was, the visual sort of reminded me of someone throwing meat into a pan as the start of cooking a stir fry. I'm no connoisseur of executions, but I had to say, it seemed a little excessive.

It was strange. I probably should have been more concerned about what had just happened to me. Was I now a ghost? Somehow, it didn't seem like a big deal at all.

Suddenly, I experienced a feeling akin to being lightly shoved, and the scene retreated away from me, flying sharply into the distance like the entrance of a tunnel on a speeding train. My body shifted too, feeling somewhat tangible again, though there was still something very peculiar about the way I was presently experiencing reality. I glanced around, taking stock of my new surroundings.

I was standing in a place that defied description; not because it was peculiar (though it was peculiar), but rather because I was overcome by the sense of not even really being able to process what I was looking at. It was... an open space, I wanted to say. Flat. Featureless. Ill-defined, both in landmarks and dimensions, but unarguably large. I had the sense that anything could fit here, but also it wouldn't take particularly long to walk from one end to the other. I know that sounds contradictory, but still, I knew it to be true.

I realized after a moment that I'd been here before, although my mind felt much clearer this time around. It was the same place I'd had that final conversation after the loop. Sure enough, depending on how I chose to conceptualize it in the moment, the way my mind visualized it changed just as it had back then. The 'default' seemed to remain an endless white beach, but if I shifted my thinking a bit, it could look like a stage, an open steppe, or even an impossibly vast, shallow ocean. It was like a lucid dream.

Or, uh, at least I assume it was. Like I said a while ago, I've never been able to make my brain do that.

I wasn't alone here, I soon observed, but rather one of many figures within this vast expanse. I couldn't discern any of their features, but their presence was nonetheless extremely tangible to me, almost to a distracting degree - if I had to convey it in terms of physical imagery, they were sort of like glowing lights, each with a distinctive shade and aura that set them apart from others. There were more of these figures than I could possibly count directly, thousands upon thousands upon thousands, yet they were also not indescribably infinite. If I had to take a stab at it, I'd have wagered they numbered around the population of a medium-sized city.

Right now, I was in front of a large cluster standing together, itself consisting of many thousand. I intuitively understood that this was the group I'd just been with, and that even if I approached them again, I was no longer permitted to be a part of whatever they were doing.

I realized I was holding something. I looked down at my hand. It was a small piece of white parchment.

I unfolded it and looked at the text. It read:

You have been permanently expelled from Magilum Domain.

Reason given: Off-theme behavior.

I stared at it for a few moments, blinked, then crumpled it up, discarding it.

I decided that it would be intellectually economical to forget about the absolutely insane events of the past hour-and-change for now. What was important was that this effectively confirmed my suspicions: This had to be the same reality in which the loop had taken place. Regardless of how I'd got here, that much was all but certain.

But why were there so many people here? And more prudently, why did it still exist at all? I'd assumed whatever it was had only been there to facilitate the loop.

I looked around. There were a lot of other clusters of presences, most of them much smaller than the one in front of me. Some weren't even clusters at all, but individuals standing in total solitude. More distantly, I spotted three that were around the same size, and one huge cluster that was an entire order of magnitude bigger, so disproportionately colossal that the others were like mere moons caught in its gravity well.

Once again, I could tell instinctually which of these I was allowed to approach. It seemed the smaller they were, the more likely they were to be closed off to visitors, while on the other hand all the larger ones seemed open to visitors. It was a dynamic that was instantly recognizable, even if I still had no idea what context it existed in: Exclusive, closed gardens versus generalist, all-accommodating spaces.

I frowned, thinking about what to do next. After a moment, I decided that my best bet was probably to head to the largest cluster. Generally speaking (emphasis on 'generally'), the more people you have in one place, the more difficult it is to maintain an insane or deluded social dynamic. So if I was going to get answers, it would probably be there.

I began walking towards the cluster, but as I did, I felt the strange sense that I was leaving something in the one I'd just been expelled from behind. Not anything vital, but something that was distinctly associated with me, like a scepter, a logic engine, or a set of house keys. I hesitated, but didn't know what to do with this feeling, so ultimately just kept going.

After making this choice, I started to feel lighter; not per-se in a positive way, but more akin to the feeling of there being less to keep track of sensorily when you're naked. With this change, I was suddenly able to notice I was still carrying something with me. It was small yet insistent, like a speck of dirt on a clear window, and I could tell I couldn't leave it behind.

It was an hourglass. Mostly full, and with the sand falling at such a preternaturally slow pace that at first I didn't think they were falling at all, as if the grains were frozen in time like that the scene I'd witnessed a moment ago.

...yet, they were falling. One by one, as inevitable as the flowing tides on the horizon. 

Somehow, this felt upsetting to me.

Nevertheless, after a... period of time, I arrived at the massive crowd of presences, their collective auras so bright as to almost feel blinding. I leaned in, stepping among the assembled people--

𒀭

I blinked. Suddenly, I was back in a normal reality again, my mental state quickly returning to the sense of panic I'd been feeling back in the dome. I inhaled sharply, grasping frantically at my neck, which I quickly realized was fine. As were my limbs, my torso, and most welcomely of all my skull and face. I was, now in a more quantifiable sense, decidedly not dead.

I shivered, feeling equal parts relieved, confused, and terrified.

Looking down at my body, it was like none of that whole series of events had even happened-- Not just my execution, but any of it. I was still in the same set of clothes, but all traces of filth from the swamp were completely gone, and I no longer felt exhausted or even particularly thirsty. It was like the whole event had just been some weird nightmare.

...or, well, that's what I would have said, if it weren't for the fact I'd apparently found myself in somewhere even weirder still.

From what I could see, I was standing on what could only be described as a floating island, seemingly perfectly circular in shape. It was not very big - from what I could see, one could probably circumnavigate the whole thing in less than 30 seconds. I currently stood at the periphery, which consisted of about a meter and a half of featureless, grey stone, so smooth it felt almost uncomfortable to walk on. It reminded me of my father's old legal office, the lobby of which had this marble floor that was always polished to the point of being borderline frictionless.

Beyond that point, the interior of the island was encircled by a black fence. It was tall and sleek, with an ornate design of spiral patterns that struck me as a mix between Saoic and Rhunbardic. Behind this was a small lily garden, and beyond that, a building that dominated the center of the island. Or, well, at least I was pretty sure it was a building... The thing was monolithic and windowless, not even having a discernible roof.

But this wasn't what I meant by 'weird'. No, that was the sky. It was a flat, yellowish-orange - the same color reality itself had taken on after my 'death', I realized - utterly bereft of any sort of distinguishing features, yet seemingly emitting a strange, stark light that caused everything to cast long, sharply-defined shadows. Below the line of the horizon (which I could easily see since, again, floating island), the color slowly darkened, giving way to increasingly deeper reds and then, at the absolute nadir, total darkness.

I said before that I didn't have a fear of heights, but this sight, more than anything I'd ever seen, was pushing it. I felt a pit forming in my stomach as I gazed into the seemingly infinite abyss.

Fortunately, a moment later, I realized that I needn't have worried at all, because in the process of craning my neck to examine this feature, I noticed that my hair was starting to float at strange angles. Gravity, it seemed, only existed as far as the island's boundary. My body tried to gasp in shock at this realization, but instead choked painfully, causing me to fall back against the gate. No air, either.

I processed this for a few moments. So... I was stranded here, on a tiny circle of land in the middle of an infinite sea of nothingness, with certain death by asphyxiation being the only realistic outcome were I to attempt to leave.

How was this worse than the last place? Where were all the people that were supposed to be here? My time in the 'flat space' already felt strangely distant and difficult to understand. Had I misinterpreted something? And was I going to have to suffocate or die of thirst here if I wanted a chance to try again?

I felt like the glue that was holding my mind together was starting to erode. I was desperate for something to ground me and make the situation I was in more comprehensible. I was starting to feel like maybe I'd never gone to the Empyrean Bastion at all, and had instead just lost my mind.

I looked at the building again. Well, my inner optimist said. Let's at least go all the way around. There might be a way inside.

Slowly, I started to circle the structure, keeping my hand on the fence out of an irrational fear I'd slip on the stupid floor. It luckily took only a few seconds to find what I was looking for. About 160 degrees off the position I'd been standing, there was a gap where the fence folded into two thin metal columns that met overhead to form a little archway, then a red stone path that led up a step to an steel door shadowed by a meter-long overhang. It gave a vaguely ominous, disquieting impression.

However, the path to it was blocked. Just in front of the overhang, placed in such a way as to make it difficult to access, was something extremely out of place: A comfortable-looking plush lounge chair with... a young woman sitting on it. She looked Inotian, with a prominent nose and reddish-brown hair tied into a small ponytail, and was quite short. She seemed to have fallen asleep, her eyes closed and her head tilted slightly to the side against the headrest, with soft breaths escaping from her nose and open mouth.

In addition, even if the style was slightly odd, her clothing was significantly more normal and modern than the stuff the people I'd seen earlier were wearing. Actually, if anything, it looked quite luxurious, bearing the small details and deliberate threadwork of having been handmade by an expert. She was wearing a longskirt with a multi-colored chequered pattern, a pale pink tunic with silver buttons, and an extremely fine-looking green cloak that looked like something from a uniform, pinned in place by a metallic badge bearing an 'X' symbol.

I frowned, looking over her shoulder. I definitely couldn't see a way I could get in without waking her.

Once again, I only really had one option.