The Unchanging Smile

Sitting up straight with a jerk, Erel felt the same familiar ache in his muscles as his eyes blurred slightly.
‘I died again.’
As his vision cleared, he took in the exact sights he was already expecting to find. The same tent, the same sword, the same sounds around him. And before he even heard it, he already knew it was coming, the glaring sound of the bugle, pointing towards the deadly impending battle beyond them.
‘What the fuck is going on!’
This time, Erel was even more certain, though; this was not his ability, cycle of rebirth, it was something else entirely. His flux was still there, hardly drained. These were not mere visions; it was like he was actually dying every time, only to come to the same point back in time.
‘Almost like a loop…’
That was when it dawned upon him, he was stuck here, for god knows how long, looping back here to this exact moment every time he ended up dead. The chilling reality settled upon him, almost making his spine shiver.
‘What am I even supposed to do to break it? Win the war? Is there a limit to it?’
He had many questions, each more important than the last, yet he was clueless about what was actually going on.
But deep down, he knew that no matter how many times he tried, some things were simply impossible. Their army was just too big to even consider it a war. It was a one-sided slaughter. And knowing that he was stuck in this loop made him realise that he would keep dying gruesomely until he figured out how to win.
‘Or maybe after some time, my soul caves in to the pressure.’
It seemed obvious; his mind simply couldn't survive dying repeatedly. Sure, he had higher resistance due to the nature of his abilities, but soon he, too, would reach his limit. What would happen then?
And soon, she was finally here, in the same script she had followed twice now, barging into the tent as she threw open the flap.
“Didn’t you hear the horn, soldier? On your feet, now!”
This time, however, the words only seemed to settle on him like an ultimatum of what awaited him. Bringing him to his feet, he allowed the familiar weight of the sword to settle, almost feeling like a part of his limb now, as he followed her out.
Everything was exactly as he remembered, all the events exactly playing out in their same horror of a sequence. Torik, the entities, the kins, his battalion getting slaughtered, the soldiers dying like rats, too scared to even retaliate.
Yet, he didn’t give up. He was almost like the only blaze of will in the entire army, cleaving through the abominations. Every step, every swing, every move forged something deep within him. Every kill solidified something further into his battle style, something that he hadn’t even realised yet. His own sword art.
Every time he moved, the moves Lyra had drilled into him gave way for something more instinctive, and with every kill, something seemed to settle deep within his very soul, subtle enough for him to not even realise the fourth pillar rising within him.
He continued his slaughter, killing more entities than before, his blade dancing like a serpent, his feet focusing on building up the momentum, yet nothing changed. The more he killed, the more took their place, as the familiar sights continued to swarm his vision. The bodies of mutated soldiers piling up, the commanders too dying on the onslaught of the kins.
The kin from before attacked too, but this time Erel was more ready than before. Stopping its advance, saving Rena, and then seeing her strike it down. But he knew it was not the end, as the same hulking kin from before was already on its way. However, this time he did not collapse; he stood with his spine straight, his sword ready, willing to fight it head on.
As its club-like hands came at him, he retaliated with a parry of his own, being thrown off the ground into a pile of bodies nearby, yet he managed to buy Rena enough time to attack.
However, he failed to account for one thing, Rena simply didn’t have the strength to defeat it, as the abomination stopped her attack in its way, its club-like arms swinging, battering her body into pieces as the finality of his impending death settled on him.
Its sights settled on Erel this time. His bloodied figure still struggling to get up. He could see Torik coming to help him, running past the mutilated corpse, however before he could reach him, the kin did, as his bloodied arms came in a swing closing on his vision before everything went black.
This repeated. The same sequence, the same script, the same events. He kept finding himself in the tent, being led out to battle. Every time he was slightly faster, slightly stronger, his swordplay more deadly, the number of abominations he slew higher, yet every time the same end awaited him. Death.
No matter if he managed to kill more of the kins, be it three or four, more took their place, killing him brutally in the end. Yet he persisted, almost losing the sense of time, losing the sense of purpose, almost forgetting who he was, his mind focusing on only a single thing.
To do better in the next loop, to spill more blood, to kill more of the abominations. He kept going, after some time, even losing the count of the number of loops that he had endured, the number of times he had died. His mind seemed to enter into an almost frenzy, forgetting about everything, his sense of purpose, his will, his thoughts, as the only thing that remained was to slaughter the abominations before him.
His sword work, though, kept improving. At one point, he simply gave up on saving Rena, as he himself battled out the Kins, managing to slay one at first, then two, then maybe even three before he ended up dead.
He tried everything too, not just fighting. He tried running away from the battle even but was heedlessly slaughtered as the commander converged on him, treating him like a deserter. That was when he started realising this was no war; it was simply a prison, and he was the prisoner, meant to suffer in its onslaught.
After some point in time, he finally felt it. His mind grew weary, his soul felt burdened as all the pain simply vanished. No matter how many times he was cut, no matter how many times he died, he simply couldn’t feel it anymore.
A few dozen more deaths followed, when a sudden idea caught up in his mind.
‘How long does this have to go?’
‘Why do I even keep fighting?’
‘Why not just give up?’
And that idea soon bloomed into a desire. The desire to just end it all for once. As he realised that even dying was simply better than this.
But he simply didn’t have that liberty. He tried killing himself, bringing the sword down his neck, only to find himself in the tent again, the same sword that killed him now lying beside him, almost as if mocking him.
‘Please…I can’t do it anymore…’
But no one heard him. After god knows how many times he had died, he found himself in one of the loops, standing beside Torik, the army waiting for the abominations to appear.
“H-hi, I am T-torik,” he mumbled beside him, looking into his eyes expectantly. This was the only sort of conversation Erel had in all those loops; every time, without a doubt, Torik would greet him, if he didn’t greet him himself.
After a few dozen loops, he had simply given up on even replying to him, simply ignoring him, but when his weary eyes fell on Torik’s almost quivering eyes, something struck him, almost as cold as ice, as his mind finally seemed to have sprang back together.
All the times he had died so far, or at least the ones that he remembered, played at the back of his mind. No matter what he did, there had been one thing that was almost certain in every loop.
Him waking in the tent. But now that he glanced at Torik, his eyes growing clearer by the second, something finally settled upon him.
‘This fucker, I never saw him die.’
No matter which loop he tried to think of, he simply had never seen Torik die. The times he tried running away and didn’t meet Torik to begin with, or the times he ended his life before Rena could even lead him out; there had been loops where only one thing had remained concrete: him waking up in the tent. But now, when he tried digging for a memory of seeing Torik die, there was simply not one. He had never died. Everyone around him, all their faces were now etched in his memory; he had seen them die in various ways every time, be it the guy with the beard in front of him, or Rena, or the commander leading the battalion beside them. All of them had died numerous times.
But Torik, not even once. He was a Tier 1 anomalite, just like Erel, yet despite all the while, after the countless abominations, even under the onslaught of the kins, he never died once. It was simply not possible.
So Erel tried testing his theory, his weary mind that was on the brink of collapse, finally converging with some vitality presented by only one aspect, hope. Hope of finally having found the key to this prison.
So for the next few loops, he did nothing but stick with Torik, never letting him out of his sight. He continued his slaughter, fighting irregulars first, then fighting the Kins, and then finally dying when he could no longer move. Yet, in each iteration, he never saw Torik die once. Sure, he got wounds, grew weary, but his eyes never faltered once, almost knowing as if he could simply not be killed.
At times, there were abominations just a hair’s breadth away from ripping him to shreds, to tearing him in pieces, yet every time, somehow, he managed to come out on top. And slowly and steadily, it became painfully obvious to Erel, who realised with cold certainty that something was very wrong.
So he finally made a decision: he would find out for himself if the bastard could bleed. He would kill him himself before the battle even began.
And now he was standing right before him, in their ever-present formation, waiting for the abominations to appear, but this time Erel’s sword did not lie in its sheath; this time he held it beside him, allowing the serpent to coil around the blade. Noticing Torik’s gaze lingering on nothing in particular, far away. And without hesitating, with a quiet slash, he made his move.
Bringing the blade in a silent arc, almost slithering it like a serpent cutting through the air, he aimed for Torik’s neck, his blade reaching from his blind spot, too quick for him to even react.
Erel’s eyes quivered, knowing that there was nothing to block him, that this time, this bastard was about to die. And finally, when he felt that the blade was mere inches away from digging into his skin, he felt it before he could see it. The loud rattling of steel as his blade was blocked in the last moment, his arms rattling under the pressure, almost making his fingers go numb.
Torik’s own blade hovered before his, in a vertical stand, blocking his blade from advancing, his face now turned towards his, his deep brown eyes glaring at him almost as if looking into his soul. In his face lay a cold smile, one of a predator, looking at his prey with the cold satisfaction of slaughter, a marked departure from the precious frightened expression there, almost as if he had just shed a mask.
“How did you figure it out?” he muttered with an almost chilling voice that crept through Erel’s spine, the previous childishness of Torik’s voice now replaced by something far more sinister and deadly.

Chapter end