Chapter 90. No Way Out (Patreon)

“I need to sleep,” Ian moaned, rolling over in bed.

According to Hor’well, the business of seizing a country was best done in the light, where there were witnesses: In the shadows, there was only confusion and chaos. While Ian thought a sneak attack would be more successful at night, Var’dun’a assured him that the time of day wouldn’t impact their stealthy entry. She sided with Hor’well, adding that the Godoran authorities would be under pressure to protect more civilians midday. They were thus leaving in the morning with the intent to charge the mainland in the afternoon.

Ian tugged at the Death energy surrounding him like a blanket.

Power is the ability to say no and carve a new path. It’s not too late, he thought to himself, though the words rang hollow: Ian had spent the past two days attending high war council meetings and participating in group drills and exercises. Throughout that time he’d never outwardly expressed a word of doubt.

Why am I like this? Ian wondered, tearing furiously at the Death energy around him with his fingers. Why can’t I just say what I want, say no? Just because this strategy is possible doesn’t mean it’s what we should do.

Ian had eventually inquired about the best way to drill what would happen when they reached Corvid. Var’dun’a had suggested that he practice killing people in the royal dilation chamber, to which Ian had laughed: If he knew that he was in a mundane dilation chamber, then killing people meant nothing.

The problem was placing his faith in the enemy’s unwillingness to sacrifice their entire capital city before surrendering. If I kill thousands of noncombatants today, my intentions won’t mean a damn thing. ‘Sorry I killed everyone you loved; I did it to force your nation to surrender’ won’t persuade anyone.

“But what else could we do?” Ian murmured softly. “We need to conquer Godora.”

Ian’s brow furrowed in frustration, a low groan escaping his lips. Stop overthinking things. Y’jeni, overthinking the first layer of the Infinity Loop kept you trapped inside it for years. You’re not acting alone tomorrow: Follow your orders and stay calm. Try to get some sleep.

A knock on the door interrupted his train of thought. Ian sat up, startled. It’s not yet time to depart, he reasoned. So why did he recognize Euryphel’s vital signature in the early hours of the morning?

“Come in,” Ian called out, his back leaning against the headboard.

“Hi,” Euryphel muttered, the door opening and closing behind him with a soft click. He looked more-disheveled than usual, his hair hanging loose down his back and his features appearing particularly sallow. “I didn’t think you’d be able to sleep.”

Ian grunted. “Unfortunately. Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Euryphel chuckled and pulled up a chair next to the bed, sitting down. “I had a nightmare. How about you?”

Ian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Y’jeni, I don’t know...I’m nervous.”

“You’re going to be in the best of hands,” Euryphel said. “At the end of the day, any bloodshed you cause will be on General Var’dun’a’s hands as well as my own. Do as she tells you and consider yourself free of any–” Guilt? Wrongdoing? 

“Eury,” Ian cut him off. “You must know that kind of logic is no comfort to me.”

The prince exhaled roughly. “Ian, nothing I say offers you any comfort, and believe me, I’ve tried everything. Even so, people tend to like when others comfort them, even using false words. It lets you know I’m at least trying to ease your burden.”

Ian gave him a small smile. “It’s a show of compassion.”

“Right.”

Ian chuckled. “The fact that you’ve looped through scenarios trying to find the best way to comfort me...well, I can think of no greater comfort.”

Euryphel’s laughter joined his own. “Sometimes I wonder what will become of us. Not today, tomorrow, but ten years from now. You’ll be dead or gone, and I’ll be dead or married, probably to someone I don’t like.”

Ian snorted. “Hey, at least you won’t have to marry the Eldemari.”

“Y’jeni...what a burden off my shoulders,” Euryphel joked.

“What was your nightmare about?” Ian asked. “You’ve mentioned a nightmare before, but didn’t want to speak of it. It’s fine if you won’t want to share, but if you do...”

“Thinking about it makes me tense,” Euryphel murmured.

“I’m not the worst at giving massages,” Ian replied, a grin lighting up his features. “For a while Mother had back and neck pain from one of the odd jobs she took.”

Euryphel narrowed his eyes. “I was kidding.”

Ian patted the bed in front of him. “I swear I don’t bite.”

Euryphel took a deep breath, then moved onto the bed, giving Ian the impression of a doused kitten

“Tell me,” Ian said, his arm tentatively reaching out to probe Euryphel’s shoulders for knots. “Get it off your chest. You haven’t told anyone else, have you?”

“...Not where they’d remember.”  Euryphel looked away, a mad grimace contorting his features. “I hate my dreams,” he said, his voice cracking. “They remind me how empty I am.”

Ian shifted position, angling himself toward Euryphel’s half-obscured face. I’ve never seen him so...raw.

The prince bowed away from Ian. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“What is this dream about?” Ian persisted, his fingers starting to knead a chain of knots. He wasn’t joking about being tense.

“This one was a bit...different. It was about the day that I became Crowned Prime.”

“When you killed the former Crowned Prime, O’osta Selejo,” Ian stated.

“You probably don’t even know why I killed him, do you,” Euryphel said, sighing. “There are no friendly duels in the SPU, you know at least that much. When princes fight to advance to the Council of Princes, outcomes are often bloody. But sometimes, people take things too far. O’osta was such a person.”

“I know,” Ian said softly.

Euryphel snorted and shook his head. “He ruined my life, Ian. He killed my father. Humiliated him.”

“I wouldn’t expect that memory to leave you empty,” Ian murmured. “Angry or exhausted, perhaps.”

Euryphel leaned forward, his loose hair falling in a tangle toward the bed. “That’s funny; I’d think you would know exactly how I feel remembering the day that I avenged my parents.”

Ian continued to rub Euryphel’s shoulders, steadily working out the prince’s knots. Why would I know? He wondered. I’ve never truly avenged anyone. Perhaps I’m thinking about this from the wrong angle.

After a period of contemplation, Ian thought he understood “You were too obsessed with one goal. Like me, fixated on escaping the loop, suddenly lost upon escaping.”

Eury’s head bobbed forward. “Like your mother when Jupiter burned. Sometimes we focus on one thing so much that we grow twisted.”

“We go in too deep,” Ian continued, “until there’s no way out.”

“Like an arrow,” Euryphel said, flexing his left hand. “Sunk mid-shaft. It only goes one way: forward. And its extraction almost destroys you.”

Ian smiled. “Almost. I heard about that day from Ezenti. Rather, I experienced his memory of your duel with O’osta.”

Euryphel grunted in acknowledgment.

“You were so young, back then,” Ian said lightly, grinning. “You matured late.”

Euryphel rolled his eyes, but remained quiet.

Ian sighed. “The way you came at O’osta...it was incredible, Eury. Words fail.” He paused. “I haven’t seen you fight that way during our practices.”

“What you saw was the result of desperate obsession,” the prince uttered hollowly. “I don’t want to feel that way again, nearly going insane. Recursing far too many times, practically losing all sense of reality.”

“...What do you mean, recursing far too many times?”

“Mm...There’s a method that I refined during the few months after my father’s disastrous duel. Eventually, when we start to reach the apex of our practice, we practitioners begin to diverge along different paths. You’ve noticed this, haven’t you?”

Ian nodded. “It’s why 90% is considered such a daunting threshold, right? That’s around the point at which one’s affinity begins to differentiate.”

Euryphel cocked his head. “Rather, to reach peak affinity, you must gain a key insight, one that’s often completely unique to yourself. This differentiation happens right at the cusp of the ninetieth percentiles.”

“And you broke through to the barrier during those months?” Ian asked.

“That’s right. You have to understand, Ian, that doing so was considered impossible. On the day of my father’s death, my Regret affinity was around 88%. On the day I defeated O’osta, it was 93%. That’s a 5% jump in just under eight months.”

Ian knew by now that such growth really was unheard-of. One’s potential was suggested upon first awakening, and determined within the first five-or-so years thereafter. After that point, advancing by more than a percentile or two per year became difficult. Moreover, the more one advanced, the more difficult advancement became. At age seventeen, Euryphel had been long-past that five-year period of initially-rapid advancement.

“I often wonder what path I would have pursued had O’osta never defeated my father,” Euryphel said, his head leaning to rest on his right shoulder. “The path I took was twisted; I’ve regretted it since.”

“What, exactly, was the insight you received before advancing?”

“You’re a glossy programmatics major, you should know better than most,” Euryphel said, a wry grin on his face. “I said that the insight I received was recursion.”

Ian frowned. “Nesting your scenarios, then? Being able to use your Regret affinity...within a temporary scenario?”

Euryphel nodded. “Imagine you’re seventeen-year-old me. Your mother is wasting away, refusing to eat. The man who you hate is standing at the top of your country, moving to unravel the peace that your father worked for. You’re desperate. And all you need...is more power.”

“But to gain more power, you need time,” Ian whispered.

“Yes, I needed more time. A seventeen-year-old, no matter how talented, shouldn’t be a match for a practitioner powerful enough to defeat his father. And so I decided to make my own time, carve it out by force.” Euryphel took in a deep breath, then fell onto the bed, curling up. “Time flew quickly because of my focus, at the very least. I was so determined to destroy O’osta that I trained for weeks every day, recursing to the point of living out hours within each single base scenario. The further I recursed, the more the scenario dissociated itself from reality. But it didn’t matter: I just needed time.

“It was especially effective, you know, because once I locked in a useful scenario...I could essentially repeat it over and over again, zooming in on particular moments. For instance, whenever the Prince’s Assembly came together, on the first of the month, I would attend...and I would see O’osta. In my scenarios, I attacked him brazenly, literally throwing myself at him without warning.” Euryphel snorted bitterly. “I fought that man so many times, Ian. It’s difficult to understand the kind of desperate hatred that allows someone to do something like that.

“Looking back, I remember, but I don’t understand. It’s as though I was someone other than myself.”

They were quiet for some time.

“Since becoming Crowned Prime, I’ve progressed steadily, one could say, gaining 3% affinity in a decade. At my level, that’s not a bad growth rate. And I’ve increased my End affinity, which was only in the early seventies when I became Crowned Prime, by over 10%.

“But it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. When I think of my father, then think of myself...I can’t help but feel inferior. After all, what kind of accomplishment is it to say that you can defeat someone after specifically training against them in combat for over a year?” Euryphel paused, wincing as Ian kneaded a deep-set knot. “I’d much rather be someone who can disable others with impunity. Someone with enough talent to reach 99% affinity in one straight shot, never once being held back.”

“It’s interesting that you say that,” Ian said. “I’d rather be someone who isn’t a walking weapon of destruction, always feeling like he’s on the edge of some insatiable hunger.”

“Hunger?” Euryphel asked, turning his head slightly.

“My power demands to be used,” Ian said simply. “And in more...versatile ways. You should know exactly what I mean.”

“You’ve been holding yourself back,” the prince observed. “When you fought in the loop, it wasn’t like how you do now, controlling yourself entirely like a puppet. In there...you fight recklessly, instinctively, viciously.”

“It was easy to go all out when I didn’t think my actions had consequences,” Ian murmured. “I’m afraid of what's going to happen today.”

Euryphel backed away, leaving Ian’s hands to grasp open air. He took in a ragged breath and gave Ian a knowing look. “Me too. Whether the SPU lives or dies will be decided in large part by whether we capture Godora. If the strike fails...I’m not sure what I’ll do. Not only will I have sacrificed my father’s peace, becoming the kind of man I sought out to destroy...but I’ll become the man who doomed the Union.”

“Ezenti said it was a waste for you to be Crowned Prime,” Ian suddenly said. “That you became a Prime too young. That you should have waited, should have seen more of the world.”

“There’s a lot to regret about how things turned out,” Euryphel responded after a moment of quiet. “But what’s done is done; no use worrying about what can’t be changed.”