Gabriel could hear the figure’s breath reach him, like a soft whisper on his ears. But he couldn’t feel anything, he could only hear it. Tempting him, guiding him towards his tenets. Don’t let it go, do whatever you must for it. The easiest way. The best way. The logical way.
"…Show me outside."
Gabriel felt his head ache as he spoke. The grating, the words, they were beating down on his skull. And then there was the knock… No, calling it a throbbing was more correct. The throbbing was incessant, painful.
"Of course, &¤%&¤%. Time is something we have more than enough of, so look to your hearts content."
The figure touched the screen again and finally erased all the loops, all the miserable Alice’s. Back to the frozen mountains. Back to the Alice that looked at his bouncing figure as if the world was about to end. She was pale and the tears were messing up her face.
"Go back further. You can do that, right?"
"Of course."
The figure touched the screen and everything rewound. The point of view changed as it did so, seemingly hopping into Gabriel’s head. Entering the mountains, moving through the frozen wastes, chatting by the campfire, leaving the Barong estate, chatting inside the estate.
The screen kept rewinding, kept showing the days that had passed. Everything was from Gabriel’s point of view this time, from his own eyes, his own memories. He saw it in the screen, the memories. Alice.
No matter what day the screen showed, no matter what event it showed, Alice was always there somewhere. No matter where Gabriel looked, she was always there. Was she really always there, wherever he turned his head?
"…"
No. It wasn’t that Alice always happened to be wherever he was looking, it was his eyes constantly being drawn to her. The colours she represented. The crimson she painted on the grey sky, the violet she draped across the white world. Dull, lifeless, grey, she took his meaningless world and she started to paint it with her own colours little by little.
Unconsciously, he had started to seek out her and her colours. And tracing his memories like this he understood. Each time, without fail, she would match his gaze, as if she had been looking at him all along, and smile at him.
That smile. It didn’t exist in the ‘show’ if something like that ever even existed in the first place. It didn’t exist in the ‘possibilities’ that this figure was showing him, it didn’t exist in the loops. Only here, it was only here.
"You’re right. I was a page."
A tool. A dagger. A sword. He did the mission and had nothing else, knew nothing else. Emotions were pointless, ambitions were pointless. A dagger didn’t need them, they just needed a wielder. A page didn’t need them, they just needed a pen. But what if…
"But that one right there… She took a page and turned it into words."
What if there was someone willing to take a page, fold and twist it, shaping it into words that they would then glue onto another page? At that time, couldn’t even a page become words, couldn’t even a tool become a human?
The screen flickered again, as if to respond to his words. Away from the past, out of his point of view. Time flowed back to the possibilities, or the loops, or the illusions, whatever they were at this point. Again, Alice was crying at his side.
Gabriel lowered his gaze slightly. His fist was right there. His own. Five fingers on each hand, ten in total, not seven like the figure that whispered. He clenched them and raised the resulting fist.
Thud
A heavy thud rang in the darkness like an echo. Gabriel’s knuckles ached and he could feel a bit of warm blood streaming down his clenched fingers. The screen in front of him didn’t budge even after he punched it, but the blood that was spilling out from his bruised flesh started to stain the image of the crying girl.
"Oh? That doesn’t work, ¤%&¤%&¤, that thing won’t break."
The figure spoke, grating his ears as it did nothing but worsen the ache in his head. Still though, the thumping in his chest felt worse so he pulled back his arm and smashed it forward again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
He punched the screen until his hand was a mess, until the image of the crying girl was so stained with blood that it could no longer be seen. It was pointless, it was mindless, it was illogical. Hell, it was barely better than venting. But still, he felt a bit refreshed for once after he did it.
"I’m not trying to break it, I’m just trying to cover up that picture."
Really, it was just too disgusting to look at. Even with his blood covering it he could still see it a bit too clearly. The tears that streamed down beyond the blood.
"Don’t like seeing your Lady cry? That’s why you should just go back, &¤%&¤%&%, stop it all."
The figure kept grating him, tempting him. Yeah, go and set things straight, do the right thing. It would be so easy. But no, the thumping in his chest told him everything he needed to know.
"I’m not going back. I’m getting out of here."
Back into the past, back to when he first met Alice. He could still remember the way she hesitated when she stretched out her hand, the way she couldn’t even raise her head in front of a knight. To go back to that day, to give her a bit more help…
"You’ve decided to break your own tenets? Were you not he one who taught her about them to begin with?"
The figure almost seemed as if it was trying to smile. But with how messed up Gabriel’s old face was there was no way something like that was possible, it just looked like a mangled grimace. The tenets. One of the first things he taught Alice, one of the first things he was taught back in his old life, the very core that once formed him. Would he break them?
"I’m not breaking them. The thing you keep showing me. The possibilities, the loops, none of them are my Lady."
No, he wouldn’t break them. He would follow them perfectly. The girl that kept crying, the girl who couldn’t get a happy ending no matter how many attempts were made… That wasn’t Alice De Vritara.
His hand landed on the screen, the warm blood sticking to his palm. He wiped it aside, the image flickering as it was replaced. Revealed behind the streak of blood was an image from earlier, from when Gabriel had unconsciously looked at Alice in the Barong estate while sparring before the expedition. She was smiling softly, gently, looking straight at him.
"That… That there is my Alice."
That one. That smile, that person, that was Alice De Vritara, his Alice De Vritara. None of the others mattered, nothing else mattered.
"She made me human. She took the tool and gave it emotions, she formed words out of a blank page."
It wasn’t the Alice in the loops, it was this one. She comforted him, she returned his words back to him. When he lost his mission and had nothing to do, she was the one who showed him a new way. She was the one who gave him a reason to not just die again.
"I interfered in this world once, and the result is that the villainess I pitied died, she was never even born."
It wasn’t the Alice in the ‘show’, the villainess he pitied and wanted to give a better life. It was this one. She was the one who took a dull world and gave it colour.
"If I go back and I do it all again, yeah, she won’t cry this time. But that lady… It won’t be my Alice. It won’t be the one who made me human."
It wasn’t the Alice of the possibilities, it was this one. This was his Alice, the one who returned to him the things he had abandoned. Desire, ambition, emotion. Things he had long since stopped understanding, she returned it to him so that he could learn it again. It was this one, right there.
"I’ve decided, spectre. That’s the one I’m going for, that’s the one I’ll do it all for. That one. Not one of the loops, not one of the possibilities, just that one."
No loops. No possibilities. No do-overs. This one, this lone Alice, this unique one. It was this one that he would not give up, this one that he would do everything for, this one whose hand he would never bite. It was for this one that the tenets existed.
"Is that your answer, ¤%&¤%&¤?"
An indescribable expression, a lower lip that curled slightly. The figure, the spectre looked between Gabriel and the screen.
"Then do you want to get out of here?"
"I must."
The answer was obvious, the answer was fast. His Alice wasn’t in here, she wasn’t in the screen, she wasn’t past or the future. She was out there, she was waiting for him.
"Good. Then let us teach you how to burn souls."
For the first time, Gabriel felt like he could understand the expression of the figure. Content, it was satisfied. The figure looked straight at him, a twinkling of light appearing in its eyes. And slowly but surely, that light was growing.
"Good, evil, cruel, kind, violent, peaceful. It can be whatever soul, whatever person. The fire will burn regardless of the firewood."
When the figure opened its mouth, Gabriel could see that light was also rising from within its throat. Light and smoke. It welled out with each word as it looked at Gabriel, its arms slowly rising.
"We are many, ¤%&¤%&¤. We have lived, we have died. We have loved, we have suffered. We have all come here, but there is no home for any of us in this world even if we get out, that’s why we accepted you, occasionally became part of you if you were worthy. We just want rest, oblivion."
The name still grated him, added to his ache. The light in its mouth became flames that spilled out with the smoke, tongues of fire licking up along its cheek. And so too did the light in its eyes, which started to melt and drip away as the fire rose.
"So burn us. One by one, ten by ten, thousands upon thousands. Burn us, eat us, devour us… Turn ‘us’ into ‘I’, into You."
Its hands landed on his face, cupping his cheeks. Fire burst forth from its chest and spread across its body, its face already a ball of raging flames.
"We’ll be your ‘Shield’, #¤%#%#, your ‘Sword’ still rests with Akasha. So burn us until there is nothing left. Stoke the flames until you’re the only soul left, brighter than any other, fatter than any other. To do so, you must burn us."
Gabriel couldn’t move as the burning hands held him, as the fire swallowed the entire figure. It started to crumple, tilting forward as if to rest its forehead against his. Its legs were gone, reduced to ash, yet its flaming grasp kept it attached to him.
"So burn, Gabriel, burn."
The fire spread from the figure, which finally spoke his name. The black box burned. The screen burned. The figure burned. Everything became a sea of fire where nothing else could be seen. And then Gabriel burned, then Gabriel became the fire.
——
His eyes opened. His body ached, he could feel the air rushing around him. The number in the sky, he was looking straight at it. Still bouncing. He couldn’t tell how long he had been in that black box, how long he had burned, but it seemed as if barely any, if any, time had passed out here.
His head turned slightly. There she was. A blotch of colour on this dull world, a figure his eyes couldn’t help but linger on. She looked mortified, tears already welling up in her eyes.
Ah, Alice, don’t cry.
He had to move, he had to prove that he was fine. That way she would cry less, that way he could comfort her with more ease. So he moved. So the folded page became words. So the sword moved on its own.
1,100,067,989.
The number in the sky, always so high it felt unreal. It looked down at him, just as he occasionally looked up at it. But he spun around and turned his back to it, a hand digging into the ice and snow beneath him to force his bouncing to an end.
"Katush."
A simple word, an instant spell. He was out of mana, but the formation was completed all the same as water gathered on this frozen land. But despite the ever-present chill he had to previously counteract by lengthening the spell, the water remained liquid.
1,100,067,988.
"Katush."
Again he cast the spell, his fingers dragging lines in the ice because his momentum had yet to stop.
1,100,067,978.
"Katush."
More water. Snow melted, ice melted, everything just became water that gathered at his command.
1,100,067,968.
"Katush"
White snow vanished. Light blue ice vanished. Deep blue water replaced it, covered it.
1,100,067,958.
"Katush."
1,100,067,948.
"Katush."
1,100,067,938.
The water rose without end, drowned the world without end. Gabriel spoke the words, cast the spells. And so, Gabriel burned.