Chapter 54. The Last Layer (Patreon)

Still asleep? He thought to himself, shaking his head; he could see Aunt Julia and Mother’s slumbering figures from beyond the walls. He opened the door to the guest room, taking care to step lightly lest he wake the two tigers.

After dressing himself in the only pair of clothes he owned–a plain, beige shirt and dark trousers purchased in Yivyiv–Ian walked out of the room and ventured out toward the guest dining room, a spacious hall where meals would be served buffet-style. There was also the option to have food delivered to his room directly, but Ian figured it would be faster to go himself.

Before he made it more than two twists down a corridor, a guardswoman intercepted him.

“The Crowned Prime will be having breakfast with you. Please follow me, Mr. Dunai.”

Ian frowned, but followed. Wasn’t Euryphel busy?

They meandered down a few corridors before arriving at an unmarked door. The woman knocked, and the door promptly flew inward, startling her. Ian nodded his head toward her in acknowledgement and walked in, giving Euryphel the honor of closing the door behind him.

“Welcome back,” the prince said, gesturing to a seat in his personal salon, the one with the attached kitchen. Ian could smell food cooking in the other room.

“I believe this is my first time here,” Ian said, raising an eyebrow.

The prince’s eyes were slightly red, and he had a large pot of coffee in front of him.

“I obtained the video,” he said. “I’ve been watching it all night.”

Ian froze, his mind racing. What video? It couldn’t be...That video? He felt himself blush.

“...Really?” he asked, voice quiet. How!? How did Euryphel get his hands on the loop video? Even if the researchers gave the video to Selejan authorities, Ian had no idea how Euryphel, the Crowned Prime of the SPU, would have gotten hold of it.

Euryphel fingered his coffee cup and gave him a mysterious smile. “The Godoran uniform suited you. I should send for someone to bring you more clothes...”

“I spent years in the loop,” Ian said, disregarding the prince’s last sentence. “It’s only been a few hours since you might’ve gotten your hands on the video. Y’jeni smite me dead if you’re lucky enough to have found the small month-or-so of time I spent in the Godoran command layer.”

Euryphel smirked and cocked an eyebrow.

Ian narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you used your Regret affinity to dilate time...the entire night?”

Euryphel shrugged and smiled like a naughty child.

Ian sighed. “I’d rather burn that video than let anyone watch it. I’m not sure how I feel about you watching it, to be honest.” It didn’t necessarily feel like a betrayal of trust, since it wasn’t like Ian had asked Euryphel not to watch the video, but...

It still felt as though he had been violated. Years of his life were on that recording–it should have captured everything he did, from using the restroom to destroying Menocht in fits of rage. There were numerous stretches of time that he’d rather never happened.

Euryphel’s voice softened. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t watch all of it.”

More like even you didn’t have enough time to watch all of it in one sitting. Euryphel’s binge-watching put even Germaine to shame.

“What’s done is done,” Ian said, breathing out harshly. “So, then, tell me: What do you think of me? You’ve probably seen me at my worst. I also know that you asked Mother a few questions and I doubt she left you a particularly flattering portrait of me. She’s honest to a fault when it comes to complaining about her useless son.”

Euryphel took a sip from his cup, then tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “What do I think of you? You’re the youngest peak practitioner I’ve ever met, let alone heard of. That you awakened your power in a dilation chamber does nothing to diminish the accomplishment.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Euryphel’s words could just as easily be said after simply seeing his potentioreading.

“I did see you go through difficulties,” Euryphel acknowledged. “Your mother called you weak and indecisive, which I find interesting.”

Ian’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“From the very beginning, when you knew nothing and feared everything, you never gave up.”

Ian snorted. “I didn’t have much of a choice, between dying on the dinghy of heat stroke, drowning in the ocean, dying to skeletons, and dying to ginger-maddened townspeople. Every time I awoke, it was a new foray into my own undoing. Even if I did nothing, I’d still die.”

“So you wouldn’t consider solving the first layer...a feat of perseverance?”

“You could call it that. Regardless, I wouldn’t agree that I’m decisive–Mother is still correct on that front.”

Euryphel raised an eyebrow. “Just because the decisions you made in the loop didn’t have real consequences?”

Ian chewed his lip, folding his arms. “Maybe.”

The prince placed his coffee down on a saucer and leaned back in his chair. “Being decisive is a habit. You become decisive by doing; and you’ve already done quite a lot.”

Ian understood what Euryphel was saying, but couldn’t agree. He currently felt like anything but decisive. Sure, he’d stuck with his plan to leave Selejo for the SPU, but now that he’d carried it out, he was aimless again. There were things that still needed doing in the coming days, like ensuring Germaine’s safety, but they were all short-term tasks. In the grand scheme of things, what was he supposed to do now?

Euryphel beamed, his expression the polar opposite of Ian’s emotional state. “You know why I’m happy I watched the video?”

“Why?” Ian said, despondent.

“Because now I know all the things we already did together, so we won’t need to repeat ourselves. Isn’t it better this way, now that I remember all the same things you do?”

Ian’s mouth curved downward. “No comment.”

“It was quite interesting to see the loop video for the sake of the loop itself,” Euryphel noted. “It’s unlike any dilation chamber I’ve used before. The people in it were uncanny in their realness.”

“Indistinguishable from the real thing,” Ian agreed.

The prince sighed. “I’m not sure how they were able to do it. It’s not even a question of energy at that point...but I digress.”

Ian shook his head. “Isn’t it a question of energy, though? Did you get the chance to see the last loop layer?”

“The last loop layer? The wedding, with the necromancer?”

“You really did watch most of the video,” Ian murmured under his breath. “No, that’s not the layer I was talking about. There’s one more.”

Euryphel began to laugh. “What do you mean, there’s one more? I watched the recording until the very end.”

“There’s another layer,” Ian asserted. “Could someone have tampered with your copy of the recording?”

“I don’t believe so,” the prince muttered, expression pensive. “What happened in the last layer, then?”

Ian had never explained the layer to anyone, not even Aunt Julia and Mother. It had been too short, too inconsequential to be worth mentioning.

“I appeared on an empty mountain top inside of a hunting cabin with nothing outside but trees and snow. There was a knife with an exquisite handle half-hidden on a table; It’s difficult to describe, but it was particularly eye-catching. Suddenly, there was an avalanche in the distance; I went out looking for its source, only to find Germaine buried in the snow. I brought her back to the cabin, but when I looked away for a moment she disappeared, and...well, you appeared.”

Euryphel poured himself more coffee. “Out of nowhere?”

“That’s right. You seemed oddly comfortable appearing out of thin air.”

The prince nodded his head slowly. “This layer seems far more surreal than any of the others.”

“I’m not sure if it was supposed to be like that, though; when you appeared, the world was shaking, the surroundings melting to formless white. You said something about the world collapsing. I assumed it was because of the energy cost of the loop, since I’d been stuck inside it for so long.”

Euryphel closed his eyes for a moment and massaged the space between his eyes. “Have you considered that the last layer might just have been a dream? Sometimes people experience vivid dreams when leaving dilation loops.”

“Why would it be a dream?” Ian asked. “Just because the last layer was possibly malfunctioning? I’m certain I was still in the loop.”

“Well...for some reason, the layer isn’t in the recording.”

Ian felt like they were going in circles. “If the last loop layer malfunctioned, not showing up in the recording makes sense.”

“But it wouldn’t have malfunctioned like that,” Euryphel muttered. “If it really had run out of energy, the loop would’ve just stopped.”

The two of them paused for a moment, collecting their thoughts.

“Didn’t you call me here for breakfast?” Ian pointed out, attempting to change the subject. He was hungry, and the savory smells from the adjacent kitchen weren’t helping.

Euryphel looked slightly aback. “That’s right, I did; It should be ready in a moment.”

As though on command, a woman came out of the kitchen with two plates, each holding flat discs of what looked to be a mixture of potato, egg and chives as well as juicy sausages. She grabbed the coffee pot off the round table between Ian and the prince, then set down the plates.

“Do you really have spare time to talk to me? I figured you’d be scarfing something down just before your first meeting of the day.”

Euryphel speared a sausage with a two-tined fork. “I have time set aside to spend with my new retainer. Moreover, our conversations are interesting.”

Ian gave him a critical look. “Aren’t you busy running the SPU?”

Euryphel chuckled. “That’s what I do after breakfast. Besides, I worked everything out regarding you and Selejo yesterday. Can I get a thank you?”

Ian swallowed. “Worked...everything out?”

“You’re no longer a fugitive of Selejo, and you’re officially my personal retainer.”

“What does that mean, exactly? That I can go into Selejo and nobody will bother me?”

“Well...they might bother you, but more in a desperate, ‘please work for us’ kind of way,” the prince chuckled.

A smile tugged at the corners of Ian’s lips. Knowing that Selejo wouldn’t be coming after him–at least in the immediate future–was a load off his shoulders.

“You’re rather exuberant when you’re tired,” he observed.

“I’m also exuberant when I’m highly caffeinated,” the prince chuckled.

“Also, what does it mean to be your personal retainer?”

Euryphel nodded and set down his fork. “It means that you follow me everywhere, all the time, if I want. Or you want, though I’m not sure why you’d want to follow me into boring meetings of your own volition.”

“So...you want me to be your bodyguard?”

Euryphel shrugged. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Don’t you have the Guard for that?”

“I do; you wouldn’t be replacing them by any means. I expect you to spend most of your time working on other tasks rather than guarding me.”

“What other tasks?”

The prince paused, as though considering his words. “Are you dissatisfied being my personal retainer?”

Ian sighed. “I’m just trying to understand what you want from me.”

“For now, it’ll be useful for you to get a small taste of what my day-to-day life is like. After that, I have some general tasking for you to work on, such as filling the treasury.”

“What did you have in mind, exactly?” Ian asked.

The prince smirked. “Soul gems. I’ll be pleased If you can produce the quality of gem you created from the leviathan rift beast.”

Ian laughed. “Setting a bit of a high bar, there.”

The corners of Euryphel’s mouth twitched upwards, as though he were trying to conceal a smile.

Ian pushed his finished plate away, expression serious. “I take back what I said before: I’m happy you watched the video–at least the part when you were in it.”

Euryphel paused. “Huh?”

Ian looked him straight in the eyes. “You were treating me differently yesterday. I was worried that you weren’t the same Euryphel I remembered.” He didn’t like considering that the jovial, forthright Euryphel from the loop was a lie.

“I’m definitely the same Euryphel,” the prince said. “Seeing a copy of myself in the Infinity Loop video was extremely uncomfortable, mind you. You’re not the only one who doesn't want that footage getting out,” he added, raising his eyebrows expressively.

“So, if I’m following you around today, what are we doing?”

The prince looked behind him, then made a motion for the staff to take away their plates.

“First things first, more coffee.”

—

Ian soon found out that being Euryphel’s personal retainer meant that most of his day was spent guarding the door to Euryphel’s personal office where he held meetings with various officials. It was an understatement to say that he was bored out of his mind. By the fourth hour of door-watching, Ian began adjusting the thickness of his Death-energy coat, trying to get it to sit as thinly as possible against his skin, so as to be invisible under clothes.

Unfortunately, this task soon proved fruitless, as a dark skinsuit of energy that shone from beneath clothes was more conspicuous than a dark coat of energy that covered them. So he then began to work on making the coat even more realistic, giving it lifelike stitches and proper buckles. He redid the design again and again.

When the door swung open from behind him, Ian almost jumped in fright. He coughed as he turned around, watching as two old men left Euryphel standing in the doorway, stern expressions on their faces.

“What’s up with them?” Ian asked, coming up towards the prince.

“They’re just their normal selves, cranky and mean-spirited,” Euryphel replied hotly. “It’s time for lunch, at the very least, so we can take a break.”

Ian gave the prince a guilty look. “Euryphel, is there anything more interesting I can do? If you want, I can go and clear out the vermin from the kernel of the palace,” he suggested.

“You can make soul gems if you’re bored,” he said. “Just go out over the Bay of Ramsay and make as many as you can.”

Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”

“Why else? Make me some money, personal retainer; my coffers are much shallower than I’m used to.”

“When should I be back?”

“If you leave right after lunch, just be back before supper at six.”

Ian smiled. “Fine; let's see how much money I can make you in a few hours.”