I let the words of the Hollow Avatar remain in my head for a while before I brushed them aside. There would be time for thinking about all of this if I survived what was to come.
Originally, I wanted to enter the pyramid in the last loop and take the essential step to begin ending the oncoming eruption, but the presence of the Moon Fox was a complication that changed my plans, and if things went the way they should, then this madness may end today.
For the last eleven loops, the morning had meant one thing: wake to Mel’s voice, deal with Orath, Rel, and Rex, and then wait for the eruption to grind.
This morning, the crater had nothing left to give me, since my channels were complete, and it was time to change the pattern, although I did wonder if Vrakth still had the Moon Fox inside his soul, or if he could become a new place to farm for the elevation of the Moon Fox’s powers.
However, I did not want to distract myself from the plan I had already made. There was a subtle trap that I needed to avoid in the loop, which was the trap of never enough.
The loop was a vital resource for me, but I had experienced how reality seemed to break down the more I died, and that cold voice that haunted my soul before I woke up... the loop was not infallible.
I wonder if the voice that chased me into death was the Pale Matron, but I did not want to focus on things for which I could not easily get the answers. What was important was that if I had the power to change the present, I should use it and not endlessly grind for power without breaking this situation.
Besides, I could not be sure how long my sanity could withstand waking up to this same morning. I had changed so much that I would not recognize the Elric that woke up from this cot hundreds of loops ago, and I fear that if I kept going like this, I would not know myself anymore.
Right, it is time to change the present.
And for the first step, I did not need to use my eyes to do this. I closed my eyes and tiny threads emerged from my fingers, and I let them drift away from me, and they slowly moved across the entire camp, and through them, my senses expanded.
I saw Rex, Bari, and Dara at the fires, and the moment my thread brushed past them and continued, Dara froze before turning to face my tent in astonishment, but I had seen her surprised face many times, and it no longer struck me with the intensity it did the first time.
Soon, the threads spread until they touched the eastern face of the pyramid itself and they bounced back, and in this instant, I had the entirety of the camp and thirty souls it contained in my mind... and what was funny was that, except for Dara an Acolyte, no one here knew that they were all in my visions, including Orath who was tapping the golden sheet inside his satchel.
The bastard could not wait to enter the pyramid and begin the ritual. By the lights in heaven, I had killed this man eleven times, and I was not tired of killing him again.
I hoped that this was the final time I would kill him, but if not, then it would be one of the reasons that the loop would be tolerable for me one more time.
I raised up my right hand and conjured a tongue of silver fire above it... Soul Forge. I had killed Orath enough times to know that he had a unique spell engraved on his soul that made killing him in any conventional manner a waste of time.
His soul would simply jump to another suitable body, and over the last loops, I had learned to recognize all flavors of Orath’s soul, and it would not matter which body he jumped to; I would be able to track him.
Still, I was not going to allow him to run, and the silver fire made my tent glow for a moment before I blew it out.
The flame did not vanish; it travelled through the lines of my expanding lightning web and drifted into Orath’s body through the back of his head. There was a brief moment when his soul and all the passive defenses he had around him felt the presence of the flame, but it was too late.
Soul Forge refined his soul to ash, using it as fuel, and I knew how painful it was to have your soul burn in this manner... I had died like this, many, many times.
Silver fire burst out from the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth of Orath, and his screams were so loud that the entire camp became agitated.
My mind went towards Commander Rel; she was one of the first to respond to what was happening to Orath, and I could see the shock and disquiet in her eyes.
My threads had already covered the entire camp, and I wrapped a few around her throat and kept them in place as she was moving forward towards the distraught mages.
Her momentum was not very great, but my threads could slice through the plates of a Khaazim; her neck, while durable for a mage, was nothing in comparison to that.
Commander Rel watched in horror as her body kept moving forward, but her head was left behind.
My threads supported her head in the air for a whole minute, long enough for her dying brain to watch her headless body take several steps into the camp before stumbling around like a broken toy while spraying blood everywhere.
This sight drew another round of panic from the camp, but I was no longer there to observe. Lightning Edict cloaked me from all visible sight until I reached the eastern face of the pyramid, and sending out a pulse of the Caelith that I was familiar with from my soul, I opened a passage and entered the pyramid.
It was time to end this.