I raised my head. I looked at the Arcanist. At the Adepts. At the red door that was almost closed, Orath’s silhouette was just visible on the other side.
When did death stop scaring me? Maybe it was when I died the sixth time, or perhaps it was the seventh. I was about to die for the fifteenth time, and I wondered when that day would come when I no longer counted, not because I could not, but because it would no longer matter.
I struggled to come to my feet, and it was difficult, but the Adept did not attack me; they seemed to be waiting for me to get back to my feet. This was a sign of respect, I knew it, but I did not want their respect.
There was nothing to be proud of in falling to the hands of your enemies. Death was my mistress, but these Adept did not know that; they were about to send me into her arms, but I could leave and arrive again in the morning, and this fall would be carried over in my soul... they would never know what happened here, but I would... I would.
Pain did not matter to me much anymore, and against all common sense, I stood up and looked at the Arcanist, and all seven Adepts in front of me, oh, six, one of them no longer had a staff, but he was making do by slowly creating a spell configuration over his left palm as his right hand was twisted from the explosion.
Was this the best I did? It was not enough, far from enough. I had made progress, but the road ahead of me was still too long. I think I could be able to stand against an Adept Mage one-on-one, but there was still a slight gap between us; the true wall was this Arcanist in front of me.
How many times did I die to reach this point? Well, that no longer mattered.
"I’ll be back," I said, my gaze focused on the Arcanist, and his eyes narrowed. He did not understand; he only dropped his arm, and the spells from the Adepts rain down on me.
The fire hit first. The ice followed, then what should be poison, earth spikes, metal needles, and the force came last, and it was the force that was the last straw that undid me, that tore my right arm from its socket, that shattered my left femur, that crushed my ribs into my lungs.
I felt myself come apart. Piece by piece. It hurts a lot, and I took longer to die, as another wave of spell smashed into my body.
The Hollow Avatar, in a rare moment, spoke up, "Withdraw into the Hollow Space," it said. "You can survive the body’s death there. You have done it before."
I could have. The hollow place would have taken me and held the spark of me while the body came apart, and I would have felt none of it.
No, I told it.
Because everything I have learned about life, what old Tomas had said to me about the importance of knowing the right time to act, and my father when he said I should stand, all of them were important... yet none of them, not one, ever said you hide from your own death when you have spent it well.
The pain was mine. It had always been mine. It was the last thing I owned in this place at this time, and I was not going to hand it to the cold to hold like a coat at the door.
I kept it, and I felt all of it.
Mortal Shell had been holding up my body far beyond what any mortal body could ever maintain, and finally, it let go, and seven kinds of unmaking finished what they had started, and Elric Voss came apart, and his sister’s bell ringing once, small and silver, on a wrist that was no longer attached to anything.
The last thing I saw was the eyes of the Arcanist, it was filled with shock.
If I could, I would have laughed.
In the darkness, I heard the sound of a gigantic engine grinding perpetually in the darkness, and it sounded so close and yet so distant.
∞
I woke up drowning.
The welded soul, I just discovered, does not wake gently; it surfaces me through black water with stones in my pockets, the way it has since the loop folded me into something that could survive having no soul at all, and somewhere above the water, my sister’s voice was already calling me names.
"Up, up, lazy cur. The sun’s been awake longer than you, and it’s done less complaining."
What was happening? That did not sound right... These were not the words my sister said to me when I left the bosom of death.
My eyes flashed open, and I turned to the floating silver orb above me, and waited with my breath held inside my chest for the half second before it repeated its words.
"Up, up, lazy cur. Elric, I say, wake up!"
The breath rushed out of my chest, and I nearly gasped in shock. For a moment, I nearly doubted my sanity, but what had just happened may be one of the hidden costs of my new soul state, dying inside the pyramid, or just the act of dying and going back in time... it could be anything, and I was too weak and ignorant to know the truth.
This recording brought me back from madness, and from the moments my soul was nearly extinguished. It could not fail me now... if I no longer had the voice of Mel to draw me from the hands of death in the morning, how much longer would I be able to bear this loop?
I lay still for a moment and took the only kind of inventory that matters.
My legs were attached. I had watched them unmade below the knee a few minutes and one lifetime ago, and now they were attached. My right hand was whole. My back did not burn. And... I felt for it, and there it was, leaning against the tent pole where it lived at the start of every loop... my staff.
It had reverted back to the Elemental Fuchsia, but in return, it was intact, unburnt, and the three charms all were where they belonged, because the staff is a physical thing and physical things come back.
The things that do not come back are the things that were never in the tent to begin with; they were the things inside me... My memories and my soul, all carried the scars of death.