An outlandish vista rolled out before me, as vast and wide as the eye could see. My studies had covered geography extensively, yet, the rolling mounds of hellish embers and ash looked entirely alien. Dwarves, elves, and infernals battled twisted flesh amalgams of corrupted red beasts.

There was a whoosh of wings directly overhead.

I tried to move, to duck. But the signal my mind sent to my body went unrecognized, pathways that connected them sundered.

Right, I was nothing more than a spectator here.

Slowly, almost lazily, the me that was not me tilted my head up, watching as a gold metallic form blurred by motion flew overhead and plummeted straight down in a screeching dive, bathing the battlefield in white flame, pulling out of the dive at the last moment and flying low above the aftermath.

Considering the reptilian shape of its head and massive, bat-like wings, the image was unmistakable.

It wasn’t a wyvern or dragon-hawk. That was a genuine dragon, straight out of legend.

The only thing more shocking was how unimpressed I was. Instead of awestruck, or terrified, the alternate version of me almost felt… disappointed. As if the appearance of a dragon was little more than routine.

Dimly, as my awareness slipped further and further away, I realized what I was seeing.

The end of all things.

“This iteration was always going to be a failure.” Thoth’s voice. She lacked her usual malice, and when I turned away from the battlefield, there were dark bags under her eyes, and a slump to her shoulders. She looked exhausted. In her fist she held an elf’s head by the dark, blood-sodden strands of his hair. “If we ever pull this off, it will be without fighting a two-front war.”

A series of images flashed before my eyes. I remembered shaking his hand, a lifetime ago as he joined us as an ally. Weeping with him as he broke down, losing more and more of himself until there was almost nothing left. The three of us standing together on this very tower, watching the world end.

Ume.

“Tie his knot before you killed him?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“He’s gone.”

I swallowed, knowing the answer before I voiced the question. “Was it quick?”

She didn’t answer, for a moment, shame and rage struggling for dominance across her harsh features. “As quick as his cowardice deserved.”

“Gods. He wasn’t a coward, Thoth, he lost his mind.”

Who could fucking blame him?

Rage won out, and her mouth pulled wide, pointed teeth showing in a tight grimace. “It’s so tiring when you make excuses for them.” She stood close enough that I could smell blood on her breath. “Why were they all so weak? We—we’ve been here since the beginning. Hands just as bloody. Souls ragged and threadbare. Yet we are still standing.”

“Maybe. But can you really say we’re better for it?” I stared out over the chaos.

There was no answer.

“How are the casualties?” Thoth asked, disquieted but clearly ready to move on.

“Considerable. In line with expectations.” I watched a clutch of dwarves under attack by a group of primate-style aberrations that always gave the infantry so much trouble. Magic flowed through my veins as I prepared to form a multifold glyph, outer circle formed from super-heated fire while the inner runes served to heal the dwarves. The dwarves all died before the outer circle formed as their defenses crumbled, and the sadistic monsters tore them limb from limb. I hissed, feeling annoyance. Not that the dwarves had died, but at myself, for trying to save them at all. “Half left. Maybe less. Same as it always was without the orcs. Like you said. Ume screwed us from the start.”

“Any of the titans show yet?”

I shook my head, melancholy as I always was at this point of the cycle.

“Every soldier that falls in a hopeless battle is a possible mage in the next iteration.” Thoth pointed out. She was trying, in her own way, to comfort me.

It wasn’t working.

“With just as many souls scattered to the void, never to return again.” I watched out of the corner of my eye as she reached out toward me. “Don’t touch me.”

The hand dropped before it made contact.

“That is the cost.” She said, a ring of finality to the statement.

“Not much for us to do until the titans appear. Show me your forms.” I said.

Thoth jolted at the command, staring at me in disbelief. “Now?”

We had little of this iteration left. She knew it as well as I did. In a way she was playing for time. Something that in the grand scheme of things, we had so much of, yet never enough.

Begrudgingly, she held out her hand and focused. Air moved around it, currents visible through the bits of dust and detritus that swirled in complex patterns. With a practiced motion, she raised her arm skyward in a masterful display of the second form, clouds above us swirling downward in the cyclone that descended. I anchored myself to the stone floor with earth, as the cyclone intensified. The first and second had never been an issue. It was the third that proved problematic.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Beads of sweat dripped down her forehead as she grunted in effort, attempting to reverse the flow. There was a part of me that wanted to let it be, make her work for it, maybe even let her suffer the embarrassment of failure for what she’d done to Ume.

But the truth was, regardless of how, in the end she’d only done what I’d asked her to do.

And I was about to ask for more.

Thoth shuddered as tendrils of life magic sunk into her, aligning her mana pathways, redirecting stray mana from where it idled to its intended destination. Her eyes widened in surprise even as the dark hole formed in her palm, creating a dimensional vacuum, absorbing the tornado above and the detritus until the air suddenly stilled with an audible crack.

A long silence passed.

“It has been ages since you taught me so,” She finally said, turning to clear a stray piece of dust from her eye.

There was a flash of guilt. The distance between us had grown significantly over the last dozen or so iterations, but there was a part of me that believed she hadn’t noticed. Maybe that was naïve. After all, I could barely stand to look at her, routinely felt ill if she was anywhere near me. And she was as perceptive as they come.

“Again.”

I watched silently as Thoth ran through the first and second form, and after a struggle, managing the third entirely on her own this time. There was a sense of wonder in her expression, and a giggle as the hole in her palm disappeared. “Wait. Did you interfere—”

I shook my head.

She smiled wide and grabbed my shoulders before I could step away. “Does that mean…”

Air had always given her trouble, and now, she’d finally overcome it, almost entirely of her own power. “Congratulations, Arch-Mage.”

Thoth’s mouth dropped open, and before either of us realized what she was doing, scooped me up in a hug. “Thank you for the lesson, master.”

I pushed her away gently and gave her a dull look. “Don’t call me that.”

“You used to like it.” She scowled.

The title was a joke, and not even an accurate one. We’d both started at almost nothing. As I’d learned faster than she had, I’d helped her along the way, but the pace of my learning meant I reached the inevitable plateau that much quicker. While her own progress was slow, it was steady. She had to put in significantly more effort than I had to reach the same height, but when my progress stopped, she’d slowly closed the gap, continuing at the same glacial pace.

With this ultimate achievement, we were equal.

I let go, watching her expression shift from elation, to confusion. “And with this grand accomplishment, the conditions have been met. I need to leave for a while.”

Any trace of excitement disappeared, replaced with full-blown panic as Thoth stepped back. “No.”

“We talked about it.”

“Lifetimes ago.”

“You’d rather every sin we’ve committed be in vain?” I asked coldly.

Her eyes darted back and forth. “With Ume undermining us this iteration, and that shit in Lese the iteration before, we haven’t had an ideal iteration in a while. What if we tried again—just one more, now that he’s out of our hair?”

Out of our hair…

I stared down at where Ume’s head had landed, after she’d tossed it away. The nausea returned, so powerful and overwhelming I nearly wretched. Once he’d started showing the signs it’d escalated quicker than the others. His inability to sleep, anger, and constant lashing out at everyone who looked at him wrong almost effortlessly transitioned to killing without purpose. The last time I’d talked to him, he’d barely made sense, spouting more half-babbled delusions of grandeur than anything approaching sane.

And when I’d told Thoth how far gone he was, she’d immediately volunteered. Saw it as more challenge than tragedy.

Had he really meant so little to her?

“It’s time to face the facts. This isn’t working,” I said, extending my arm out towards the battlefield. “One more run isn’t going to change that. Even if you found a way to put the fear of the gods into the Orcs and brought them to our side in a single iteration—which, be honest, it’s going to take more than one to get it right without Ume—it wouldn’t matter. We’ve had them on our side for this before. Every time they fight, they fall. If we expend ourselves to mitigate the losses and engage the titans in a weakened state, they skewer us. If we save every portion of our reserves for the titans themselves and miraculously survive the battle, we, and everyone else, dies in the aftermath.”

“But—”

“We need a stronger force. And for that to happen, I need to reach the summit.” I said, my voice final.

After letting that settle, I whispered. “It’s been decades since I reached the third tier of life magic. And ever since, I haven’t progressed. Not even a little. I need the power that only you can give me.”

Thoth’s face grew paler, skin ghostly white. But after a moment, her jaw set. “Because of the numbness.”

“Nothing shocks me anymore. Nothing hurts me anymore. It’s like the person I was died a long time ago, and my body and mind are simply going through the motions. My soul hasn’t changed in countless iterations. I’m stuck in equilibrium.”

Though the whites of her eyes grew red, Thoth didn’t cry. It was possible she wasn’t even capable of it anymore.

The sound of battle grew distant, more scattered. Another loss. Same as always.

“How many iterations do we even have left? A hundred?” I asked quietly.

Thoth shook her head.

Less than that.

“It’s not just my soul.” As I continued, a feeling of heaviness pressed down on me. “I can’t even see them anymore. They’re all just numbers in my head. People who can contribute to the fight… and people who can’t.”

No answer.

Even if we’d agreed on it as a hypothetical, it was much harder to face in practice. She needed more. She needed hope. I bit my lip, already regretting the cruelty of what I was about to do. “It’ll take some time to get my head right. And a lot of focused, intentional effort to break through. But maybe, after a few iterations on your own, after all this accumulated blood is washed away, I could see you—and myself—without the taint of everything we’ve done… and we can start anew.”

Thoth froze, every muscle in her body taut. I saw the calculations behind her eyes, the possibility of loss suddenly tempered with how badly she wanted the potential gain. “Do you really believe that?” She asked me.

“Yes.” I lied.

The truth was, all I wanted was a way out. To breathe again. To get away from the constant reminder of the person I was, the person I’d become. The monster I’d created.

And I would have said anything to make that happen.

Slowly, Thoth reached towards the sheath on her belt. And drew the ceremonial dagger, reflective silver still red with Ume’s blood.

I tensed, instinctively reaching for my blade.

“You ask too much.” She growled.