Master of the Loop

Chapter 148

Day Colored in Red

What followed Sylas' proclamation was violence. Pure, raw, unadulterated, primal violence that knew neither humanity nor empathy. It was a battle of no civility, no acceptance, no tolerance, no high-strung ideas that tied mankind into a loose group of like-minded souls. All Sylas saw were creatures that had to die, and all the others saw was a monster from their gravest nightmares come alive to hunt them down like animals.

He didn't bother with torture; immediately dispatching the eight, white-robed figures with a simple slash across their throat, he began his hunt. Hundreds screamed in agony, a few dozen rushing toward him, while most others began to mindlessly run away. Cult tied to the dead though it may have been, with various capabilities, at the end of the day, they were all only ordinary people, it seemed. Made of ordinary flesh and ordinary bones. And Sylas... was, indeed, a monster in compare.

He cut through them like butter, remorseless in his wanton, unbridled ruin of all things good. Screams didn’t daunt him, tears didn’t slow him down, and his eyes didn’t draw any distinction between men or women, young or old.

Blood flowed ceaselessly, creating cascading, grim waterfalls that leaned off the islands’ edges, and bodies began to stack into molehills. There wasn’t a direction one could look at that didn’t have a corpse strewn someplace. Or two. Or ten. Or fifty.

His eyesight red, he didn’t think--he knew that letting himself think might pull him out, might de-color the world around him from the hell he’d envisioned into what it actually was--just a cruel, vile, and blood-colored therapy for just a cruel, vile, and blood-splattered monster.

Even he began to feel exhaustion two hours into it--by now, he'd killed most of them, he imagined. However, stragglers have run far and hid well--after all, the mountain was large and islands were many and all the canyons, gaps, and possible caves he didn't know about made the hunt far more tedious than anything else. Inevitably, he elected not to pursue them any longer--there was little point. He'd come back, eventually.

Instead, he elected to climb the mountain toward the top in hopes of finding some answers. On his way up the strangely-shaped mountain, he saw many, many, many houses embedded directly into the rock-like caves. Most were, interior-wise at least, similar to those on the island--very simplistic, ordinary, and single-roomed. There was little of interest in any of them, besides to tell the story of a society that lived very simply and humbly, it seemed.

The further up he went, however, the more decorated the houses became--eventually turning from single-roomed into double or even triple-roomed. Beyond just the basic necessities for life, he also began finding some paintings, tiny sculptures, books, journals, and more and more elaborately-woven clothing, occasionally even encountering genuine ball gowns.

Eventually, he even encountered a full-blown bath, some four miles up the spiraling road 'round the mountain. It was half-filled already, as though left overnight for the morning but never used. He'd encountered similar things before, such as prepared breakfast that was never eaten, clothes to be washed that were never washed, and so on.

Stripping himself of the bloody, drenched clothes--well, they used to be drenched, at least. By now, they had cleanly stuck to his skin, the blood having dried. He even peeled parts here and there but ignored the mild pain in the process. He was red from head to toe, dipping into the bath and immediately turning the clear water scarlet. Even still, he had to scrub himself off with nails, since the dried blood seemed to have gone under the skin itself, changing his hue.

He stayed soaking for a few hours at least, leaning into the wooden tub, closing his eyes, and drifting. He let his mind wander to life before he started considering acts such as the one he committed as 'normal'. Well, not normal--but acceptable in any capacity. Sighing, he stood up, looking down at the lake of red--it didn’t quite quantify the sheer amount of blood he’d spilled over the course of the last night and this entire day, but it was horror-inducing still.

Rather than putting on his old clothes, he fetched a fresh set of robes from within the house and tossed them on. They were fairly comfortable and loose, while also being surprisingly warm. No wonder they could live in the frigid mountains, he mused as he left the house, continuing the climb.

Soon enough, his surroundings were misty and the horizon closed in on him. It was strangely silent, eerily still and unmoving, as though that patch of the world was cut off from the rest and lived within its own, isolated reality.

Past a certain point, he ceased encountering houses--there were no holes in the mountains, and even the path became somewhat cumbersome, entirely unmaintained unlike the one beneath. He pressed onward, wanting to see the summit for nothing else but the experience at least. With the refueled supplies and vigor, though the climb was somewhat difficult, it was more than manageable.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one memory accompanying every one of those. It was strange, having lived lifetimes at this point, how unaffected he was by it, mentally at least. While it was difficult to judge his mental state at this point, even on his own, he still expected some retaliation to emerge. But there was none. He wasn’t bored or particularly tired of life. He was tired of circumstances, but those were a different beast. It felt as though he could live for another hundred years and be fine with it. But then again, it might just be his mind fueling itself in a desperate bid for sanity.

One slip, he knew, was all that it would take. And yet... it wouldn’t matter. When there is an eternity laid before him, he can go insane as many times as he needed to, simply waiting it out each and every time. It was all so... inconsequential.

Soon enough, the image of the summit emerged from the mist, pulling him out of his thoughts. Emerging, he immediately felt the world shift--the atmosphere changed, and even the air became... lighter. The mist vanished, revealing the world bleeding out into the horizon on all sides. It was a flat plateau, some mile in circumference, entirely unremarkable beyond a singular thing: a person seated on top of a stone table of sorts.

It was a masked figure, though evidently a woman judging by the bumps in the silver-moon robes. The mask covered her whole face, sharp toward the chin, with only a pair of holes for the eyes on the otherwise porcelain-white surface. She was sitting cross-legged, as though meditating, facing south, her back toward the north. As Sylas stepped onto the summit and pushed forward, her eyes slowly fluttered open. They seemed somewhat familiar, though the distinct coldness in them was something Sylas only ever saw in a mirror.

Neither spoke, staring at each other emotionlessly as the wind whipped and lashed out, dragging their robes against their frames. The sun bled over toward the distance as it began to descend, slowly inviting the lonesome night to emerge.

“Forty-six escaped,” the woman spoke in a soft, melodic tone. “Two thousand, eight hundred, and fifty-five died.”

“...”

“Four hundred of them children under the age of ten,” she added.

“...”

“Nearly a thousand sinless women,” she said.

“...”

“Of those you killed, only eighty-eight deserved it in any capacity, even within your frame of morality.”

“Do you?”

“Hm?”

“Do you deserve to die in my ‘frame of morality’?” Sylas asked.

“I understand the hurt,” she ignored his question. “I understand the rage. Anger. I understand wanting vengeance for what happened on that day. I don’t understand... this.”

“Were you there?” Sylas asked.

“... no,” the woman replied. “But I watched it.”

“You watched it once,” Sylas said, cracking a faint smile. “I lived it over and over and over and over and over again. Every single thing, every single action, every single moment of that day is ingrained in the very fabric of my brain. I can no longer recall the face of my mother, father, or sister, cannot recall my first love’s name or smile, anything from my childhood, and most of the rest of my life... but that day, that day I could recount to you better than the omnipotent gods themselves. Life after life, I watched it all collapse. I watched it all die in ravenous vigor. Until one day, until one day... we won. We won. We knew it. In that singular moment, in that singular breath, the whole of the castle stopped and looked at each other. And we knew. We won. And then... that victory was ripped from our clutches.

“You’re quite right. What I’ve done to this place goes beyond just vile cruelty. But see... I can undo this. All of those who are dead will come alive. What you have done... it cannot be undone. Those who died can never come alive again. A young girl will never see again because of you. A young boy will never walk. And nobody will ever be the same after that day, carrying those horrors. You won’t understand it. And you don’t have to. Just answer my question: do you deserve to die, as you put it, under the ‘frame of my morality’?”

"... I do," she replied. "After all, I was the one who brokered the deal with the dead. However, of the many sins you wish to ascribe to me, one I did not commit--the magic that swept through the yard, the hand of God, was not of our doing."

"I know," he said. "Someone capable of that wouldn't have let me run rampant through their home."

“And you don’t care?”

“That hand... was merely the final lid,” he said. “And I blame myself more for it than even whoever ushered it. But you--you specifically led to that day. Sending the dead repeatedly.”

“If you indeed can undo all of this as you say,” she said. “Then ask me why, the next time.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” she said, taking out a knife from within her robes and pressing it against her throat. “The Desdors are a vile and cruel and evil lineage of demented men and women. What they’ve done and what means they’ve used to accomplish their goals pale in comparison to my actions. Standing by their side... makes you a devil.”

“Then a devil I’ll be,” Sylas said.

"... then a devil you'll be, but at least be the kind of devil that keeps the young girls safe," she echoed, slashing her throat yet defiantly staring back at him for a few moments before toppling to the side, dead. Just then, the world grew darker as the sun fell beneath the horizon, signaling the coming of night. To Sylas' shock, he saw the woman's corpse wither at an incredible pace until her skin was mangled up and dry and entirely unrecognizable. It was as though she had stopped aging eighty years ago... and dying forced all those years into her appearance abruptly.

“No,” he shook his head, sighing in regret as he walked over. “A trick,” he mumbled, crouching and pulling away the mask, revealing an old and wrinkled face he didn’t recognize in any capacity. “To hide her identity, probably. It sounded like she meant Ryne... maybe it’s that master of hers? I’ll have to ask some cruel questions, it seems.”

Walking over to the edge, he sat down and popped open the gourd of wine he found in one of the rooms, sipping it slowly while admiring the vast expanse of mountains that likely seethed with one or another form of life. The sight, more so than even the loop of time itself, put into perspective how tiny he was and how little reach he had, even with magic at his fingertips. There he was, in a tiny corner of a world, battling battles that already had him reeling. And yet, beyond the borders of his tiny mind, there was a vast world of wonders and lives and stories unraveling every day. Even these mountains, he suspected, thrived in their own little ways, while he struggled elsewhere.

In a world vast beyond compare, he was overwhelmed by its tiny patch. And yet, to him, that tiny patch... was the world. He didn’t care for what lay beyond the oceans, or even the Kingdom’s borders. He didn’t care what these mountains held, or what the world at large needed. He didn’t care for the gods’ wars, mankind’s champions, or the creatures like the crow and the doe. Not anymore, at least. He had become single-minded in his pursuit, and the times for distraction and off-tracking were over. Well, not quite yet; he’d be back on this mountain, likely twice or thrice still, before it is all said and done.