Chapter 485: The Three Doors

I recognised more of the engine than before. As my soul grew stronger, I could see more of this engine inside me, and I still could not see its full shape.

I had been here before, in the darkness between my deaths, and I had never once got used to it. The vast grinding sound, the slow turn of something the size of a continent, the cold that was not cold, the dark that was not truly dark.

Peering into the void, I had learned certain truths, even though I did not fully understand them. What I was hearing was the sound of the universe folding itself back into a shape it had already been, and it did not care about me, and it never had... I was only a part of it.

I hung in the engine and looked at the three doors.

The first one was bright. So bright that I could barely look at it directly. That was the checkpoint I had made on the mountain where I met Dorrik. It was the nearest anchor. If I let the engine take me, that was where I would go. Back to the beginning of that journey, to do it all again.

The second one was dim. So dim that I could hardly see it, a point of light at the far end of everything, and I could feel that it was not simply far away. It was old, or perhaps I should call it new. It was the tent outside Caelith Mourne.

That light was my first morning in the loop. Mel’s voice, the smell of porridge. It was the home I recognised, and it was at least ten thousand years away.

The third one was dimmer still. Barely a spark. The vat in the Sky Fortress. The second anchor.

Three doors, three places I could go, and one last Temporal Anchor, unused, that I could spend if I wanted to stay in the past and try again.

There was always the temptation to spend that last Anchor here. It would have been wasteful. If I did not have a seal on my soul, I would have seen a reason to spend it and resume the journey, but I was unbalanced, and my path could not follow a single timeline.

I had spent that whole age learning that the past was not where I could grow. The past had no mages, no teachers, no Academy, no libraries, no knowledge of the shards, no Caeliths. The past had gods and monsters and gods who were monsters, and it had given me a great deal, and it could not give me what I needed most.

I needed to go to the tent and take my destiny into my own hands.

I reached for the second door.

∞

Usually, going through a Temporal Anchor was easy, almost effortless. At the beginning of my journey, when I was an Acolyte, I was not even aware of the process happening.

Being pushed so far back into the past, I had feared the return might be different.

The engine did not want to take me there. It was almost as if it wanted to follow the path of least resistance and carry me to the nearest anchor.

Crossing those space fractures had bent the rules of this loop, and if I wanted to use the engine to cross that gap, I needed something more, or it would keep refusing me.

But I had learned something in the past that I had not known before. I had learned that the loop was more like a machine. And a machine, like a Script, can be persuaded if you find the right way to ask. Otherwise I would never have gained two new Anchors back there.

I pulled back for a moment, and then I pushed my intent against the door, the way I had treated the crack in the seal of my soul, and I put my hand on the second door, and I said the same thing I had said to everything that ever tried to make me fall and stay dead.

This is where I belong.

The engine groaned, and all the doors began to flicker. I felt an immense sense of scale and power, and then the engine turned, bringing the far door closer, and the darkness started to fold.

I had a moment to give an incredulous laugh, and then I was falling towards the tent.

The last thing I saw before I died for the last time in that age was the bright door, the one I had left behind, going out.

I will be back.

∞

I woke up in the tent, and I was breathing. That was the first thing. Air going in and coming out, both lungs, without any interference, and that alone was enough to tell me I had made it.

Then I noticed the smell. Canvas, dust, and the faint sourness of morning. Then the grey light coming through the walls of the tent. And finally the voice.

"Up, up, lazy cur. Elric, I say, wake up!"

Mel’s voice... and in hers I could hear Aurora... I was back.

I lay on the cot and looked at the ceiling and did not move. My body was whole. My arm was whole. My eye was whole. The stranger’s arm was not through my chest, and the warband was not kneeling around me in the dust. I was not in the past.

I was home.

The alarm repeated itself three times, and then I reached out and took the orb and held it in my hand and stared at it, and I did not let go for a long while.

It was almost laughable how defective the Script I had made for this alarm was. It would barely last a year, and I could correct every one of those errors, and I thought I would keep it as it was for a while.

With a sigh, I sat up, and my long white hair fell past my eyes as I put my face into both palms and stayed like that in silence.

Inside my head, my Status Screen was vibrating like crazy.

It was vibrating so hard that I could feel it in my teeth. I had felt it vibrate before, never like this, as if it had been waiting a very long time to tell me something and could not wait any longer.

I held the orb in one hand and put the other flat on the cot and took a breath. Then I took another. Then I called up the screen.

And the notifications came like a river of white.

[Return confirmed. Temporal Anchor: Tent — Caelith Mourne.]

[Loop integrity: restored.]

[WARNING: Multiple unauthorised transfers detected.]

[...]

[Processing...]

Hmm... the System was going crazy, and it should not blame me. I go to the most interesting places.

[Title: Godslayer (Mythic) — preserved.]

[Title: Heaven Beast Tamer (Mythic) — preserved.]

[Title: Lightning Arcanist (Legendary) — preserved.]

[Title: Storm Bearer (Legendary) — preserved.]

[Title: Death-Consort (Mythic) — preserved.]

[...]

[Law of Flesh — preserved.]

[Law of Blood — preserved.]

[Law of Sharpness (Pen) — preserved.]

I looked at the top half of my status screen and I braced myself for what was to come as I call up my full status screen.