I did not hear the sound of the massive engine that gathered my soul from death, and I could not decide if this was a good or bad thing... I was becoming used to hearing its massive grinding gears.
Sigh, I hope this was not a bad thing, but I cannot be worried about what I cannot control.
The spike came free of my skull, and the world came back with it.
Everything crashed into place at once. I was no longer on my cot inside a tent, and the voice of my sister was gone... The system did not lie; I now had a second checkpoint, and I remembered that there had been a brief moment of disorientation when it felt I could have paused my awakening and selected my destination, but I had allowed this feeling to pass.
The second I pulled the last inch of bone out of my head, the checkpoint took hold and the moment locked, as the piercing cold of Death Touched shook away the shock of my last death.
I did not become Lightning Incarnate, since I already knew the exact dimension of the blade that was sweeping towards my neck. I bent my body to the side, and the blade swept past me with a few inches to spare, and with the bone spike I had just pulled from my head, I stabbed it into the chest of the knight behind me, and the force from my blow, plus his momentum, drove the spike through his chest and out his back, cutting his spine in two.
The knight fell to the ground, his body beginning to shudder, without a functioning spine, even an undead could not move.
I sighed and sat on the knight’s back and bent my head in thought. I did not know if I had made a mistake selecting this spot as my second checkpoint, since I had a freaking Sovereign inside this facility with me.
I had died in so many ways that a part of me was now fully numb towards death and pain, but there was something about being choked by darkness that carried a Will that stayed with me despite the fact that my rebirth was supposed to wash away these things.
Looking around me at the bright surroundings of this temple, I knew all of this was a facade; underneath it all was a layer of darkness, and I was in its belly.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my brows, my thoughts flying to a thousand places at once. What did I know about the Sovereign, from the first time I felt his attention to the end, when he thanked me for freeing him?
There did not seem to be much, and somehow, there seemed to be too much information. With my experience in the loop, I know that what I had to focus on was where I should start; deliberating too much on the matter was just a waste of time.
So the question remained... where should I start?
The fox padded up beside me, silver fur glowing faintly in the dim light. I sighed again when I realized that I had been treating my companion in a manner that was a bit unfair.
The Hollow Avatar had referred to the fox as ’she.’ I had not met any talking or thinking animal before, and so I had defaulted to the terms that I knew, but the Moon Fox was so much more, and it was time I stopped thinking of her as an animal and understood my Mythic Title properly.
With that out of the way, I really need to think about a name for her, or better yet, why not have her pick her own name?
The Moon Fox looked around and then she sniffed at the fallen knight, and then sneezed.
"Dead things," she said, in Mel’s voice. "Why is it always dead things?"
"It’s just the places I find myself; there are so many other places that are better than this."
Her blue eyes widened, "Oh, will you take me there?"
I smiled, "Yes, I would. When we leave this place, I will take you to the best places."
The Moon Fox wagged her three tails and began walking around, her nose in the air, and her thoughts were unknown.
I looked at my hands. The light beneath my skin was dim, and I could still feel the lingering shadow of the demon’s darkness in my channels. But there was something new, too. A faint glow, deep in my chest, where the Hollow had touched the anchor, as if there was a shadow of that knot left behind.
Thinking about the complex knot gave me a headache, and I stopped. Whatever bound the Soul Flayer to the Sovereign was beyond what I could understand, and it was in this instant that the direction of this loop solidified in my head.
Fighting Sad was too risky — not because the Soul Flayer could kill me, but because, with a Sovereign’s power, it had the power not to.
This was a very important distinction, and I did not need to look at my Status Screen to know that I had not made much progress in my abilities as I usually did when I fought demons outside Caelith Mourne, as the mountain in front of me was just too damn big.
There was a difference between lifting a rock to get stronger and trying to lift a mountain. I could slowly lift bigger rocks, but I would break myself against a mountain, and it would not budge.
The Hollow Avatar knew this, and its last sight, showing me the knot binding the Soul Flayer to the Sovereign, was the key, because no matter how I looked at that knot, it resembled an Inscription.
I looked at the struggling knight below me. I turned around until I straddled him, and I ripped off the helmet. I paused when I noticed that although the body beneath me was decaying, the features of its face were delicate and its hair was longer... this undead knight had once been a woman.
Her dead eyes tried to turn towards me, and her mouth was opened as if she were trying to snarl, but I don’t think there was any air in her dead lungs, or if she even had lungs at all.
Pushing her head to the side and pinning it down with a finger, I was careful not to crush her head, since it felt so delicate under my fingers.
I looked at the chip embedded in her skull, and I could not help but frown. This thing was a dense treasure trove filled with Inscriptions beyond anything I had ever seen before.
If I were going to make any difference in this loop, then it would not be coming from my lightning, but from my understanding of Inscriptions.
With this in mind, I pulled up my status screen to see what had changed from the last loop till this moment.