The world was white.
That was all that surrounded him. A white-hot inferno twisting and broiling like it wanted to burn down the whole world. Well, it already had burned down the whole world. And still, it wanted more. Still, his Spark craved to devour and consume. It should’ve consumed him. James was sure of it.
Yet it couldn’t. The Spark found itself caught because to devour the looper would mean to devour itself and try as it might, it couldn’t.
Suspended in a loop.
So James curled himself in the fire, basking in the radiance of brilliant white. A molten core of power and potential clashing. The fire devoured his skin, stealing its colour and moulding it into deep black scales of charred death. It boiled his organs until they were no more and filled their place with more fire that bleed out of the looper’s body.
The fire stole away James' senses till all he felt was heat, and all he saw was white. It took his sense of time, his sense of purpose, and his sense of being till all that remained was the fire. There the looper drifted, consciousness shifting between one and the whole. Merging into the flame in one moment, then splitting into a thousand echoes of himself in the next.
Between the small slips of consciousness, in the gaps where the looper found his mind close to one whole, he pondered.
What has happened to me?
The fire had happened, but James found it so hard to remember anything before the fire, so maybe the fire had always been. James remembered no sensation besides the freedom of burning, so maybe that had always been his purpose. The echoes thought otherwise. Between the glimpses of sanity, he felt the echoes of himself within the fire stir to him.
There was a time before the fire.
They spoke.
A time when we were a thing of our own, not the core of something grander.
James found it hard to understand. He had been less at some point? His consciousness was spread between the embers, making it hard to form a whole undertanding. But he did understand one thing. When the echoes spoke, trying to remind him of a time before, they did so in a mourning tone.
The echoes were a sad thing.
James didn’t know why, but they made him feel sorrow too, in the moments he could feel instead of burn.
You were so close to freeing yourself.
They would say in hope. Then, in that mourning tone, they would remind him of another truth.
But you were betrayed.
James didn’t understand the betrayal. The echoes tried to explain it, but the looper couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. In the short moments of thought between the fire, he found the notion of betrayal so odd.
How could one go against another, for the sake of their own self? At the core of his being, the idea simply didn’t find ground.
The moments of James' memory were divided. A simple, clear-cut division. One between when he was the fire, and when he was not. Times when the burning fully assimilated him into itself, and times when it let him seep out of it and become James again.
Then, in an instant, there was another.
Fire was a simple thing. It was a hungry devourer, and that was all it knew how to do. So James did as the fire, and tried to devour this new thing. To grant it the sweet gift of burning. But this presence didn’t burn. No matter how the flames of James being licked at it, its mighty existence cradled him in its being.
The presence was unknown to James. Yet it felt gentle. Gentle was strange, unfamiliar to the looper, but the echoes had spoken of it. Gentle was kind. Gentle was welcome.
Then it spoke, and its voice sounded gentle. Sounded kind. For some reason it spurred a feeling in James he couldn’t quite describe.
The echoes had said it was hate.
But the voice was so gentle, so why did he feel hate?
What are you?
James. He was James. The core of a mighty Spark. He had been something before, but that had burned away in the Spark. Now all that mattered was the flame.
How did this happen?
James didn’t know, but the echoes said he had been betrayed. That another him had set a trap, created a false plan, then in the final moments, tricked him. The other him had exploited fears that had burned away with the Spark, and all but pushed him into the fire to free himself.
You have suffered. I will keep you safe.
It lies. The echoes sprouted at once, but it was too late. Until that moment, the fire had burned freely. He had burned freely. Or rather, he had been free to burn and burn all else. But in an instant that felt like an eternity, suddenly he wasn’t
He felt swords of metal pierce into his heart. They were giant in comparison to his humble size but paled by many magnitudes in comparison to his Spark. James tried to free himself. Tried to burn away the swords that stabbed into his being and restricted him. But he could not.
So the flames of his Spark smoldered and James clashed against them regardless. The fire did not know restraint. It did not understand defeat.
All it knew was to burn.
So James just burned.
When he couldn’t burn the universe, and he couldn’t burn himself, James was left with only one thing to burn. The fire, the Spark and… the Source. The three had clashed against each other in constant harmony, balancing out. Each force too weak to quell the other two. But James wasn’t weak.
So he burned them. He burned his potential.
It did something strange.
James saw things. Things besides the endless white fire that engulfed him. In the smoke of his sulphur potential, James' slim consciousness slid down the path untread.
Down one, he watched the great Spark he had become burn, and burn until it had swallowed planets and suns alike in its unmatched appetite. It knew no peace, so it burned till it could no more.
The Spark grew fat with power and flame as he burned away suns and stars, then space, then time until even existence itself was no more than a treat.
He became the grand final white at the end of all. An ever-burning flame that devoured all.
Down another, James saw beyond the Spark. His smoldering form felt and bound the power around him to logic, turning imagination into fact. Fact, into magic. The great white Spark saw itself devoured by the scaled beast at its centre as James grew mighty wings of black fire and wrote himself into reality.
A great beast that stood as a pillar as an integral part of existence instead of an affront to it.
Down more, James saw a version of him that had never left the Loop. He saw a version of himself that had given up, accepting his part as the prisoner. Centuries and millennia whittled away his will to dust and vanished any fight the looper had to escape. He fell into the depths of deep unruly insanity, giving into every urge, and every craving like a mad beast.
He became a scourge on life, that trapped those who were looped along with him in an endless cycle of bloodshed. A mad king with a court of victims to soothe his dark mind.
Down the last, James saw a world where he was the Loop. A construct at first, meant to be a vessel for James to have power. But instead was twisted and bled, forced to feel things. To be when it was never meant to be. He watched that Loop be imprisoned by its prisoner, both locked in a cycle that would never end, as was their nature.
He watched the Loop plan, watched it trick, watched it snap itself off at James command and break away until it was another him. James watched him plan. Watched him scheme and lie, twist and steal. He saw the great deception play out as the Spark growing lessened the facts of the Loop.
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Allowed its snapped-off pieces to build and lie. A trap. A snare to force James into the fire. Because a prison didn’t have to just be a prison, so long as it had no prisoners. In showing James the way to escape, he had trapped him down a path and made a way for himself to escape. To live the life James was meant to live. Walk around in his shoes while James burned eternal.
Like a rat.
Like a parasite.
Like a-
Something rippled in James' head. His consciousness turned away from the path untread and towards something strange. He felt a presence near, but it was unlike all the others, even the gentle presence. This presence, this person, was the same. The same as James. The same as the echoes.
It observed him.
He observed it.
Then the presence spoke, into his mind, trying to crawl his way inside like a worm.
“You deserve to burn, you know it as well as I do.”
The words burned. But not because they held any power. They burned because they woke James up. Woke him up to the burning. Woke him up to the betrayal. Woke him up to himself. Suddenly, the looper wasn’t okay with burning forever. Suddenly, he could feel it charring his skin and cooking him alive in an endless cycle of pain and misery. Suddenly, James could see himself again.
And he could see Fig.
I SEE YOU
James' head felt clear again. The pain of being charred alive and yet on the edge of death made everything so clear. The echoes of himself waned at the arrival of the true James. Not the burning mess of consciousness and certainly not the imposter. The looper tried to flex his burning body and found that while it was possible to move, he was in the heart of a sun. The gravity should’ve been crushing him into dust.
The fact it hadn’t was simply due to the nature of his Source, which was burning inside the Spark too. The Loop had looped him, leaving James incapable of suffering a true death.
These shackles are weak imitations. James thought as he pulled against the Spark. The white fire tried to restrain his will and they failed. The Spark was his. The Source was his. The Loop was his.
The body Fig stood in on the edge of a cosmic metal cage was his.
Hatred and rage poured out of James like oil, igniting his Spark and causing it to flare out against the giant metal beams that restrained him. Countless layers of energy collapsed around the Spark, trying to quell it. But where once that had met a directionless fire, they instead met a scaled demon.
He roared in a voice that wasn’t his own, in deep and abrasive tones that spelled hellfire.
James could feel that little brittle pile of flesh and filth quaking in fear. It seeped out of him and into the looper mind for which they shared, and the hungry demon drank it with glee. That traitorous bastard.
His body felt spurred by an immortal desire for vengeance. Even in the heart of a sun, his scaled hands still found purchase on sweet echoes of what he’d once been. James pulled himself forward one clawing hand at a time while his Spark lashed out towards Fig.
Burning away the only barrier between the betrayer and the betrayed.
It makes sense to me now. I see all your little pieces.
And all of it would be nothing but futile. All of Fig’s struggles. His scheming to become more than just a power that James possessed. That lust for freedom he didn’t deserve had borne poison fruit.
Greed might not be Fig’s downfall, but crossing the looper would be.
James clawed himself to the edge of the white sun, feeling the invasive presence of the ring of steel around him try to compress his form. To tame him. He would have none of it. With a wave of his will, his Spark washed away the powers of the ring-ship.
He felt his burning charred feet step onto one of the swords of metal that stabbed into his heart, melting the thing red hot with each step. The cold of the space washed over him, trying to seep into the cracks between his skin and steal his heat. James rebuffed them with a flick of his Spark.
Then he narrowed on the cowering Fig, who took shelter behind a presence of great power. The only calm in the storm of the loopers will. The gift of fire had given him a new understanding of the nature things possessed. Instinctually he saw the truth of the matter. The presence was confused, but not alarmed.
Do you think shelter will save you? Do you think benevolence will let a sin like yours go unpunished? It won’t harm me, and it won’t protect you. Don’t you understand, traitor?
He felt anger deeper and rawer than any he’d ever experienced run through him. James voice. His real voice boomed towards Fig with every intention of what he would do.
YOU CAN’T RUN FIG
Many physical kilometres of space and metal separated the centre of the ring from its rim which Fig hid on. The long swords of metal were many tens if not hundreds of kilometres away from the ship's edge. But it mattered not to James. Space was as brittle as time in his eyes.
With the power of his cosmic Spark and his broken-apart Source, James tore at the space between the two of them and felt it warp. A great distance bent into a few heavy steps that thundered in silence into the emptiness of space.
Like that, he stood on the edge of the gigantic ring that caged his Spark, gazing down at the quivering mass that was Fig.
His grey granite eyes stared into a mirror of their own.
They both gazed into each other's soul.
But only one quivered.
“Despite difficult and alarming circumstances, I would encourage you to think about your next actions wisely.” The great presence beside them both warned. It’s a voice like steel.
James glimpsed at the figure and-
The swirling of dark emotions inside James came to a screaming halt.
The pain subsided and anger quelled as the looper stared.
His eyes were almost unable to process what they were seeing as James felt himself freeze in place.
Everything in his head told James it had to be a lie like it was in his dreams. But the looper couldn’t shake off seeing the arbiter of his worst nightmares in the waking world. He couldn’t help but hear the same gentleness in between the layers of steel in its voice.
He knew the figure wasn’t her.
He could understand that it was just using her form to mirror his own emotional state.
But at the sight of Mary Janet Groves, his mother, James just stood there.
Then a new fire was added to the furnace of his hatred.
A small whisper in the back of his mind brought forth something James could only describe as pure malevolence in his heart.
They’re using her.
“I sense turmoil towards myself in you. It is unwarranted.” The robotic voice stated without the slightest hint of fear or annoyance. Not a touch of emotion. “My visage is merely a reflection of your mind.”
“Pick something else.” James' voice sounded like dead coals, compared to the raging fire it had been while he was in the raging Spark. Yet somehow, it rang with far more power.
“Why?”
“I wasn’t asking.” The looper said simply.
And with that, he discarded the thing’s existence from his mind, focusing back on the traitor. Back on his rage. It felt no duller, yet it simmered with less of an inferno. It felt calmer but still of the same burning hatred he felt for the traitor on his knees before him.
Even as Fig struggled to stand from fear, he still gazed back at James with a mirror of his hate.
He was a copy in every way. A cruel joke, that had long overstayed its welcome.
James took one molten step towards Fig, closing the distance just a little.
“I don’t regret it.” Fig stuttered out.
James took another step, the distance closer a little more.
“You deserved it! What I did, I did for everyone and everything you’ve ever cared about.” Fig said, falling on himself and crawling backwards.
James took another step, and he was almost upon Fig.
“You’re a monster!” Fig spat out like a curse, pointing his own finger at him. “The Spark didn’t burn you at all, it just stripped away the facade. This is what you look like on the inside. You’re a scourge of existence with nothing but misery and hate left in you. A scaled and hungry beast with no goodness to give.”
With a final step, James stood over Fig.
His form still burned with the heat of the Spark and it started boiling the skin of Fig’s legs. The imposter tried fruitlessly crawling away in some last-ditch effort while the looper watched on.
James imagined the scene, to an observer, would look much like a sickly demon coming to collect on the soul of a fool who had bargained with it.
Fig ceased crawling when his arms no longer could resist the heat and slowly started to burn. He cried in pain and then shot a look of pure disgust, horror, and hatred at James.
“You’ll get them all killed James! I’m the only hope you have left!”
James didn’t respond, instead leaning down towards Fig. He burned faster, skin turning a disgusting shade of red and then pink as the imposter screamed in agony.
With a charcoal-scaled hand, James grabbed Fig by his neck and hoisted him into the air.
“Say something!” Fig screamed into his face as he struggled against the claws that melted away his skin.
His skin boiled and liquified at James' touch. For a moment, Fig got to experience an ounce of the pain he’d inflicted on James. Red skin started running down the looper's hands as he brought Fig’s face closer to his. That terrible silence was held between them. Only words found purchase in this place. The looper didn’t hear the terrible pop as Fig’s eyes exploded under the heat, or the cracking of Fig’s neck breaking under his grip.
He only heard his own voice, filled with a type of malice that nothing besides a monster could conjure.
“No.”
Then the looper opened his maw and showed Fig just how right he was to fear him.