22. Tarot IV; The Emperor Is Reversed, The Tower Clashes With The Chariot

The world snapped back into place as I was spat out of a portal.

I was certain I had a braindead look on my face after whatever the hell that was.

I looked up to see Kirin Edo scowling down at me, his golden eyes blazing with a fury that could rival the sun.

"Are you a goddamn moron, successor?!" He roared with a fury in his voice that I had never heard from him before echoing through the ethereal training ground that was our meeting place between loops.

"I didn't save you from oblivion so you could get your soul yanked out and your body puppeted by a champion class threat that had turned himself into a goddamn devourer who you poked out of ignorance! That bastard is not meant for YOU to deal with at your current level! He was living out his stupid 'sealed master' fantasy that sealed monsters like to play at and you jumped in like a moron! Your soul could have been trapped in THAT SPECIFIC timeline forever while your body shambled around doing busywork for a goddamn senile nutcase who would only wake up upon prime-devourer calling him! What the hell, successor?!"

Do you fucking hear me yet, Me/You/I?!

His words were like physical blows, each one punctuated with a wave of his hand that sent ripples through the air.

I felt the weight of my miscalculation.

I hadn't realized the danger and I had been dancing with a pile of knives slathered in soul-killing poison.

I could have been stuck there permanently.

It wouldn't even be me anymore, either!

I looked behind him, my heart sinking further.

Anna was there, her scowl mirroring Kirin's disapproval, her violet hair shimmering with an almost angry light that somehow matched her furious expression.

I grimaced and guilt smashed through my heart and soul as I had a full body shudder run through my entire being.

Beside her, Jessa had her palm firmly across her face as her amethyst eyes avoided mine.

The look of sheer disappointment on her face that was barely visible behind both of her hands hurt more than the fraying of my mind caused by my own fuckup in walking into the den of a pile of cobras on steroids.

Her typical sarcasm was replaced by a palpable sense of disappointment that radiated from her in place of any words at all.

"I needed to know," I managed, my voice sounding weak even to my own ears. "I thought if I could just uncover what was happening there, I could stop it and get an in with the military. If I uncovered-"

"Uncover what? Your own damn permanent death?" Kirin cut me off, his tone softening slightly but still edged with frustration. "You think you're ready to face a necromancer-turned-devourer of that caliber? You've got spirit, Darren, but maybe gain a sense of GODDAMN SCALE!"

Maybe if you would stop wiping our/my mind, I might understand the scale that you forgot that you taught me and then erased by accident!

Anna stepped forward as her expression crumpled but her voice was gentle, and that hurt even more. "Darren. I am furious with you. You should have listened to your instincts and turned right around when you felt the weight of the room. You weren't even close to the nexus and you could have just left the domain by walking outside. Did you even read the book on witchery that Kirin made us all study? We were watching you from Kirin's perspective divination technique the whole time. What if He hadn't noticed you were in real danger?"

Her words hit harder than any blade could. I had been so focused on proving myself, on gathering information, that I'd lost sight of the bigger picture. The thought of being trapped, my soul lost to some dark magic while my body was used as a puppet, chilled me to the core.

Jessa finally looked at me, her face a mix of concern and exasperation. "We're in this together, remember? We can't do this if you're off playing hero and getting yourself killed for real. Use your head, Darren. Not just your swords. Just think." Her face crumpled into an expression of absolute agony, then. "I love you, and you promised to try to love me. So stop. Stop. Just STOP!"

Her tears flowed from her eyes as she barrelled towards the ethereally shifting clearing and that made my heart feel like knives were being shoved into them.

I already loved her, didn't I?

She stormed off and started swinging her wakazashi in her new style that she had adapted from two styles.

A hidden knife and a loud katana that was as distracting as it was deadly.

That style of fighting...

She still hadn't named it, but it was elegantly deceptive.

She had, though, more things Ki&*n has stolen from us!

I clenched my fists, the reality of my folly settling in. "I'm sorry," I said, looking at each of them in turn. "I didn't think... I won't make that mistake again."

Kirin's scowl eased into a more contemplative frown. "You better not. Because next time, I might not be able to pull you out. You need to learn when to fight, and when to gather intelligence in safer ways. But also when to leave the hell alone until you can handle something, even if that's goddamn never because it can be handled in a better way. We'll work on that but for now, go through your forms."

He then turned, his chains clinking softly they had loosened for some reason. I noticed as he noticed and then they yanked them with will back into their cracked armor form.

I nodded, feeling the weight of their disappointment and the gravity of my near-fatal error.

As I prepared to resume training, I pondered on what I did wrong.

The main thing was that I was treating the loops as a get out of jail free card.

I now knew that it wasn't an invincible armor and some things couldn't be fixed once broken.

My limbs were heavy, each movement an act of defiance against my own body. They felt wrong in a way I couldn't quite describe – as if they were filled with lead and not muscle, or as if someone was using me like a puppet through strings that I couldn't see or feel. 

I tried to move through the forms, the familiar katas that had been drilled into me, but it was like wading through a pool of thick machi, each step a struggle against a viscous, resistant force. My body resisted, each muscle rebelling against my will as if it belonged to another, a stranger, a weapon that was not to be used by me. 

My hand twitched, wanting to grasp my Daito's hilt, to feel that familiar, reassuring weight, but it recoiled at the very thought, as if the very idea of it was an anathema, a forbidden thing that was no longer mine.

 I hurt Anna's feelings and should feel like garbage. I hurt Jessa, too, so wanting to draw the Shoto should also disgust me. 

The metal was cold and unforgiving. It was not something I could ever allow myself to touch again.

Why was I hesitating?! I needed to train…? 

Huh? 

Why am I being forced to do this? 

The questions, some filtering in like something I remembered asking, some newly coming to be answered in ways that made no sense swirled in my mind, becoming an insistent buzz that I was desperately trying to ignore, a growing sense of dread that started to push away all of my earlier training.

Time was a resource that was too precious to waste on things that would resolve themselves if I were strong enough to get out of this mess.

"Send me out," my voice was rough and strained, barely a whisper that seemed to be echoing through a tunnel, "I need to think."

Kirin's expression flickered. A subtle downturn of his lips, a barely perceptible shift in his golden eyes that then vanished too quickly. Had I imagined it? It was a spark of something, but gone so fast that I wasn't sure it was ever there, leaving a chilling sensation of unease that settled deep inside me. Not like before. It wasn't playful this time. The amusement had a different tint. There was more cruelty to it than before and it scared me more than anything he had previously done.

"Sure," he said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual taunt, "Get back here soon. Don't fuck around and you won't find out. That necromancer nearly erased you, and I can't have my successor getting knocked off permanently, you hear?" His words were a statement, but they were also a threat. There was something under his words. Something that made him excited. Something I hated.

Then, everything went black, and I was falling. The world twisted as reality gave way as I was slammed into the darkness of unreality and then slammed onto the dusty road outside the city. My boots hit the hard packed earth with a dull thud. The air felt cold, biting, and the taste of metal clung to my tongue like blood, an aftertaste of something that had not happened yet, but I still remembered so vividly. Why did it taste like that?

The road stretched out before me, the cobblestones uneven and cracked. Each step felt awkward, my movements heavy and ill defined. I moved to the gate and noticed that the guard was different. 

His mustache was too short, and his smile too kind, too forced, his eyes tracking me with an unsettling familiarity as if he knew exactly who I was, but in a way I knew he didn't. 

I paid the fee, my hand moving almost on its own as my mind recoiled with that strange feeling of wrong. 

It was as if my past self was moving, but my new self was simply along for the ride, a passenger in a vehicle that had started to move on a path of its own.

The city itself felt wrong. The scents were too muted, almost artificial. The sounds were too hushed, the usual clamor of the marketplace replaced by an unsettling silence. The layout was subtly off, all of it creating a sense of dislocation, as if this place was a poor imitation of something I had experienced, or was about to experience again for the first time. Everything felt just wrong enough to make my stomach churn. It was a place that was almost but not quite as it should have been, and that made me feel uneasy, because I knew that it should not be like this.

Where the hell was the Grand Darkness Dojo? They just almost killed me for good! 

I forced myself to move forward, putting one foot in front of the other, following a path set by someone else, not myself. I needed to focus.

The recruitment poster caught my attention as I moved to pass by. It was the same poster, the message almost the same as the ones I had memorized, but with one key difference that made my breath catch in my throat. Fifteen? It was supposed to say 18. It had always been 18. There had never been a world where it was 15.

Then, a whisper, "Sorry, kid, you can't know this. Not yet," The voice, my voice, yet not mine, echoed within my mind as the nausea crashed into me and my vision swam as if I was being pulled down into the depths of some horrible ocean, as dizziness hit me with a force that was almost physical and made my body feel as if it was made of lead. I staggered back to lean against the nearest wall, as the world seemed to tilt dangerously, the street before me becoming a shifting, swaying, and unstable thing that I wanted to throw myself away from.

Kirin! You motherfucker!