Caelus, in the flesh! Now what happened before might seem weird, but trust me: it gets weirder today. I also posted a chapter just before this one, less than a day ago. Make sure you have read that one first.

Loop 83 Year 267 Day 341 (Continued)

I hear noise. In the center of the portal, on the cusp of the wormhole. I hear a noise; it’s calling out to me. Forcing itself upon me.

I fight it. My body requires no nutrients for several months at a time. I require no sleep. I feel the presence encroaching upon my mind. I wail against it. I will NEVER release myself to its control.

My fight seems to keep it at bay, but I cannot think of anything else. Every time my mind wanders slightly, the presence gets ever closer to my mind. I instinctively know I will be under its control the moment I think of anything else.

Loop 83 Year 267 Day 351

This is the tenth day without stop I am fighting the presence. It is closer than ever. Only a breath away. I feel the putrid stink of its thoughts muddle with mine. It is harder to think. My thoughts are so slow now. I think at the same speed as I did before I gained my power. I feel so stupid.

Loop 83 Year 268 Day 1

I feel the wormhole quiver. My mind is momentarily distracted. Suddenly, I can’t control my body. I begin to move forward. Why? I concentrate my body on, try to force it to still.

It moves against my wishes. I walk into the portal.

???

The automatic door opens as I arrive.

LE is trying to break free of the restraints, but to no avail. They are made of such tough fibers that even my bots have trouble breaking them with force.

I remember this. This is the day Little Emperor returns. Why am I here? I have lived through this part already. What’s happening? Am I finally dying? Is this what it means to die? I’m seeing my life flash before my eyes.

“Tsk tsk tsk. That’s not how you act in someone else’s house.” I make sure he can see me. I feel like I have control of myself now. I enact exactly what happened before. “I’d have thought that you’d be able to learn something as simple as that. You are a Looper after all. You have all the time in the world.”

He stares at me, first in disbelief, then in anger. He tries to shout something, but the gag stops the sound.

“What’s that? You want to feel pain? Ok. AI!”

The shock makes his body twitch in exactly the same way as before.

“I guess that answers one question. AI note that subject has regained all cognitive abilities upon looping. Past causes cease to have the effect upon his mind. Also note that the body did not return to normal. Physical causes continue to have the effect upon his body.”

I go through several hours’ worth of experiments after LE loops. I do the exact same ones as 260 years ago. It seems that was the exact amount of time I was forced backward. After everything is done, I have the bots unlock the piece where LE’s mouth is. Having conversation with another human after all of this time sounds interesting.

“You bastard! Why twice!?”

LE furiously demands answers. The important bit was that they are different than the first time.

He continues.

“I’ve already refused to tell you once! Why do this again?”

I see something in his eyes. Worry. Depression. Franticness.

“Heh. I’ll keep you here for eternity until you tell me the secret of your Looping ability.”

I leave him. I order the same tests as last time. I leave.

Loop 83 Year 8 Day 60 (Second Time)

My mind is whirling. Things are going much differently than last time. It is because LE has experienced this already. Today he agrees with AI to tell me the truth of the matter. According to him, it is better than an eternity of torture.

I walk into his room. He is still restrained.

“SO! You finally wish to tell me the answers I seek? First, why were you obsessed with killing me?”

LE takes a deep breath. He no longer has the gag in.

“I wanted to be the only ‘Looper’ as you put it. You were always messing up my plans.”

A look of confusion passes my face.

“What do you mean? I never did anything to you before you started killing me.”

LE smiles pedantically. “Hah. You really DON’T remember? That’s great! HAHAHA-AHHHHHH” AI shocks him for insolence. Good call.

“Sorry! I’ll tell! I’ll tell!”

Going through all of the torture once was hard on him. I am honestly impressed that he could manage that. His will power is amazing. The idea of going through that forever must have broken down any willpower he has.

“Three Eras ago, you asked for my help.”

A shiver went down my spine. The moment he spoke the word Era I knew something was wrong.

Loop 82 Abyss

Suddenly I realize something. The blurry, indistinct voices, are speaking to me.

No not to me. Through me? I don’t know. But I can hear snippets.

I make out several words. They are disturbing.

They form a single thought. The voice seems excited, even happy, as if it had just discovered something utterly amazing.

“forget all loops… end of the first era!”

A bank of darkness begins encroaching in my mind. The same as the one inside the portal.

LE continues. I can barely pay attention.

“You randomly came to me one day. You had discovered my power. I didn’t know what it was. You showed me how to harness it; how to control it even better.

“You told me the truth about myself, and I promised to help you. You wanted to seal all of your memories. But you were afraid.”

The other is becoming more violent. Trying to encroach upon my mind again.

The look on his face shows that he is resigning himself to a terrible fate. “My real power isn’t that of mind control or Looping. It’s-“

An unknown memory is forced upon me.

Little Emperor is standing before me. We are in China. In the middle of a rundown city. I just saved his life from other power users that freed themselves of his control. I don’t have AI with me. AI doesn’t exist in this time.

I reach out my hand.

“Join me. I will show you true power. I have friends with incredible powers. One can even search for others as long as he is given a specific power to search for.

Your power isn’t mind control. It’s-

“Soul manipulation.”

“You asked me to take out part of your soul, and graft it on to mine. You want to eradicate your own memories.”

Another flash.

I am asking LE to help me. I want to erase my memories, to live a new life. But I am afraid. I think there is ‘another’ me. One far older than I am. Possibly from doing this. I don’t know.

I ask LE to make sure my next Era has me get as powerful as possible. I need to be able to resist the ‘other’ me. It has already started attacking me. It is only Loop 10.

“That is the reason I can time travel as well. I have your power inside of me. You showed me I could take others’ powers for my own. I could only have one at a time, so I spliced yours into mine.”

A terrible pain. It feels as if my mind and body are being split apart. Something foreign is forced into me. It is LE’s soul-fragment.

“But your soul was too powerful. You had lived for too much time. I could only take a small portion out before it killed me.”

I die.

My mind is in confusion. I can’t think. I fall to the floor at the start of the Loop. My mind and body are in turmoil. The pain is unbearable! I die instantly.

Next Loop. I feel better, but cannot move. The pain courses through me for hours. I die.

Next Loop.

Next Loop.

Loop 10.

I can finally move, finally think. The memories of the pain are quickly fading. My perfect memory is gone.

Another flash.

Loop 15 Year 10.

Little Emperor comes to see me. He explains the situation. I don’t believe him. He has a code phrase:

Unlock Era 1913483, Memory Link Establish.

Memories of the previous Era flood my mind.

LE is still talking. The more he speaks. The more memories flash before me. They seem to push the ‘other’ sometimes. Sometimes they make it grow closer.

LE continues.

“I helped you during that Era, but something about your personality began to rub off on mine. I believe it has something to do with our souls being fused. I always get my powers at the moment I took in part of your soul into me. When I am eight years old.”

While LE continued, memories sprang up from the recesses of my mind. I knew I had never experienced these memories, but I had at the same time.

“But something went wrong. You began to feel the other presence again. You had already used the memory recall code, so you knew it was later this time, but it still happened. So you asked me to take more of your soul.”

My body is in even more power. The hundreds of years LE had to master his power proves to be too much for his own good. He is able to harvest a quarter of my soul before I tell him stop. But he doesn’t.

He gets greedy. He continues. He rips my soul to shreds, and absorbs them all. I die as he absorbed half.

The ‘other’ begins to grow angry. It attacks with unsurmountable power. It doesn’t want me to pay attention to what LE is going to say. LE looks to be in pain.

“Unfortunately I absorbed a horrible part of your soul. It was the part you had been scared of the entire time. Hah! Think of it! I tried to get greedy, and lost my mind to your soul! Can you blame me for hating you?

“I had an urge to kill you more than anything. Even now it is hard to hold back my lust for your blood. The part of the soul I took from you contained the majority of this ‘other you’ that you told me about. He constantly tries to take my mind over. But you are so weak willed. So easy to beat. That’s something you gained from me. A stronger will.

“Your second Era self told me of flashes of memories. Memories from even before the first time you came to see me. Memories from prior Eras. But they were fragmented.”

I am in the abyss. Voices of past selves whispering into my ears. They want to come out. They NEED to be free. They have been squashed by the first ‘other’. They are his play things. They know it. I know it.

One whispers to me. I can hear it clearly.

Another scene begins.

‘I am dying, because the ‘original’ decides it is time. He wipes my memories, but leaves the type of death scene for the next Era to remember. It amuses him when he is free.’

My older self feels the fear of it coming to get him.

The ‘original’ me.

The Eras.

My mind trembles. The ‘other’ me trembles. I know what it is now. I can stop it.

“Unlock Era 1913483, Memory Link Establish! Unlock Era 1913484, Memory Link Establish!”

The memories of the previous two ‘Eras’ course through my mind. I remember how the ‘original’ works.

He is bored. Always bored. He is too bored. He knows how everything is going to happen. He has been alive for too long. He only has one form of entertainment. Seeing how the new Eras move about their lives. But they would all be the same, so he makes them envision a gruesome death before letting them live again.

My mind is stronger than the previous two Eras. LE is right. My willpower is weak. It is only thanks to his soul that I am able to keep control of myself. The ‘other’ two versions of me try to fight for control. They have no chance.

I am the only one that can survive. The other two are suppressed. I control their memories now. Unless I am controlled. I must not let that happen. The weakened ‘original’ fights desperately against my mind. The pain in my mind causes a break.

Loop 83 Abyss

The voices. They are all so clear now. I can hear them. They whisper things they want me to hear. There are too many. More than ten thousand. More than a hundred thousand. More than a million. 1913484! That’s where the number came from! I am the 1913485th incarnation!

I feel my presence expand. I begin to assimilate the other versions of me. One at a time. I find one voice. I concentrate on him. I force my ‘self’ to surround him. His voice is weak, almost dead compared to the others. He is my first prey.

He fights against me. He is the final version of himself, before the ‘original’ took over his mind and soul. I am going to fight the original. They are going to help me.

It doesn’t matter if they hate it. I am more powerful. I am dominant.

I consume him. He is mine. I gain his memories. His willpower bolsters mine. Everything that he was, is now me. I am still me, but now I am him.

I search for another. I begin to feel a hunger for them.

The Abyss ends. I am back in Chelsea’s home.