Chapter Text
This time it happens in the school.
Imogen runs across the quad, littered with the broken bodies of students who were cut down as they ran and a few who stood to fight. She sees the shattered remains of a lacrosse stick and lies to herself that the body that fell next to it is too big to be Orym, that maybe he made a tactical retreat with the rest of the team and got out before the slaughter.
It’s just a little lie, but it keeps her moving, moving, moving, eyes up on the red moon burning as if it were made of hot coals above the school, pinned in place by the Solstice ritual. None of these corpses were necessary to complete it- they were all just for her, a horrible ‘welcome home’ party for the lost moon princess. A sweet sixteen with a theme of blood and entrails.
She finds Fearne, a wreck of a fairy tale creature in bloody chiffon, cradling a dying coal in her hands that used to be her familiar. Her eyes are black and burning with desperate embers, sucking all the oxygen from the air to make herself burn brighter. Imogen wheezes as the air thins and Fearne, with sympathy for mortal lungs, diminishes the wildfire within her.
If only Imogen could quell hers so easily.
“Where’s Laudna?” She asks.
Fearne raises a shaking, ash-black and clawed hand towards the roof of the school where Otohan Thull stands, holding Laudna by the back of her neck like a writhing, recalcitrant cat. The shadows that usually cling to her form are choppy and fading and there’s a dullness to her dead girl eyes that normally doesn’t exist. She’s the brightest, happiest corpse that could ever exist most days, despite everything that made her that way. Imogen tastes copper on her tongue and the pull to the moon lifts her feet off the ground.
She always ends up here, one way or another- facing down Otohan after she cut a swath through her home to get to her. All these bodies just to make her angry, but she can always resist… Right until this moment. Her ears are ringing, so she can’t hear anything at all- not Laudna begging her to be careful, not Fearne warning her not give in. If Otohan speaks out loud, she can’t hear that either.
But she always speaks in her head.
”Is she your favorite?”
The implications in those four words are staggering. Did Otohan feed her blade on all these lives, over and over again, for nothing? Was there no loved one she could slaughter that would make her break from her duty as protector of this city- of the whole of Exandria if she wanted to be arrogant about it, even if there were other magical girls all around the world? None of them had ties to the moon like she did and for that she suffered more thoroughly, more potently.
But all of those lives were fine to put on the pyre. Imogen would grieve, but she would commit to the promise she made to Essek when he finally revealed the truth of what she was and what she was meant to do.
It was always Laudna that shattered her.
She knows this script by rote and yet she can’t look away when Otohan drives her blade up through Laudna’s spine and out her chest, puncturing her unbeating heart and spilling black ichor. Some splatters, hot and caustic, on Imogen’s face and her eyes well up with tears that have nothing to do with the way it burns.
Laudna falls like a boken doll onto the stones below, to land next to Fearne, who screams out in a wrathful, mourning cry. She ignites into a fireball, but it’s too late for her to get to Imogen. The moon moves the tides within her and they surge violently upwards and out like a tsunami.
And the moon begins to crack…
-
Imogen woke to the sound of her alarm blaring and a cumulative assortment of aches and pains weighing her down. She groaned and rolled over to fumble for the pain killers on her nightstand before even bothering to shut off the furious beeping of her phone. Aspirin downed with a gulp of lukewarm bottled water, she slapped her hand against the phone to silence it.
A soft voice from her left immediately sighed. “I can’t keep doing this, Imogen.”
She thunked her head against the edge of the nightstand on purpose, letting the cool woodgrain soothe the encroaching migraine the aspirin hadn’t had time to hit. “Yeah, you can, Essek.”
“It’s been twenty loops and they all end the same. You have to learn to control yourself and not give in.”
“Or,” Imogen cut in, rolling over so that she could face him, “I could stop Otohan from killin’ Laudna.”
Essek blinked at her from his perch at the foot of her bed. It was impossible to tell what kind of creature he was- some awful ugly-cute chimeric abomination that was neither insect nor mammal nor reptile and yet somehow had the qualities of all three- a snake-like body, an oddly wormish face, soft white-and-violet fur, and, to cap it off, he had multiple sets of legs that looked more like bird talons than anything else. He had no name for his species when asked about it and she had just accepted him as a part of her life for the last five years, ever since the day he fell into her lap when she was twelve and told her that the mother who left her years ago was actually a princess of a kingdom on the Red Moon and she was heir to that throne.
She’d learned he hadn’t told her a lot of things he probably should have that day as time went on, but they’d been through enough together for her to forgive him for it by now- including, as he said, twenty loops.
And she was feeling all of them.
But today it was another opportunity to get it right, so she sighed, tossed her comforter aside, and began the loop again.
-
When Imogen was six years old, her mother vanished without a trace in the night, called by some phantom wind that her father had no way to explain to his little girl. When she was nine she began to hear the thoughts of others, driving her to react to things that weren’t said out loud and forcing her father to move her across Marquet. Every so often she would upset the balance of the community by revealing sensitive information she picked out of someone’s head because she didn’t know any better and she would be forced to move again.
When she was twelve, the dreams of a red storm began and then a creature from space told her that her mother had been the heir to a kingdom on Ruidus and that she was a princess and had powers that made her special. It was the first time anyone had ever given her a straight answer about what she was and why her mother had left. Of course she trusted Essek implicitly. He introduced her to other magical girls and told her that the world was full of them, that some made contracts with otherworldly beasts like him, while others had been born in other worlds and come here to protect this realm from threats. None of them operated by the same rules, as unique as their powers, but they had one goal- protect Exandria.
And then when Imogen was fifteen she learned that her goal was never to protect Exandria at all.
Jrusar had three magical girls as its protectors- Imogen Temult, The Red Storm; Fearne Calloway, the Wildfire; and Matilda Bradbury, the Wraith, who preferred to be called Laudna among her friends, because Matilda had been a girl who died and Laudna was the girl who came after. Fearne, like Imogen, was royalty from another world, sent here to protect her from those who would cause her harm. Laudna had been killed as a sacrifice and made a bargain with her killer to survive, turning her into a half-living, half-dead construct of dark magic. The three of them spent three years together fighting off monsters and becoming closer than kin.
Fearne was like a sister to her, but Laudna was something else, something Imogen was too young to realize at first but grew into, until having Laudna in her life was as necessary as breathing. Fearne had whimsy on her side and could easily make friends, but Imogen and Laudna were outcasts when they weren’t fighting. They stood together, hand in hand, against the normal world, and fought back to back when the night came.
And when everything she thought she knew crumbled that night after her fifteenth birthday, it was Laudna who held her.
Their primary enemies were the Ruby Vanguard, a group of powerful otherworldly beings who seemed to hypnotize people into doing their bidding. It took Imogen far too long to recognize the red in their victims’ eyes for what it was, that these people she was fighting against were her people and by the time she thought to demand an explanation from Essek, Otohan Thull showed up for the first time and beat him to the punch.
Her mother had fled from her duty as the Harbinger of the beast within the Moon, the god-eater that would destroy the beings that made magical girls- Predathos. She hadn’t wanted to destroy everything at the time, but she saw too much on Exandria that made her realize that this was the right thing to do and she fled to rejoin her people. Unfortunately, she lacked the strength to release Predathos- the role of Harbinger would have to fall on her daughter.
Everything the Ruby Vanguard did was in an effort to make her stronger- all that death and senseless carnage and destruction was all in the name of building a better monster. She ran to Essek and he told her that it was true, that he had been sent to guide her for their ends, but had been trying to steer her away from the path that the Vanguard set. He could not bear to see what would happen when Predathos was unleashed.
“It might be the end of magical girls, but it might also be the end of everything,” he explained.
And so for the past two years, Imogen, Laudna, and Fearne set their sights on destroying the Vanguard and it had worked thus far. They had hobbled their plans, turned countless people against their civilian forms, and done everything they could to bring about the end of this nightmare.
And then the Solstice happened.
She, Laudna, and Fearne had known something was wrong when Ruidus seemed locked in place, the air filled with the buzzing of a dozen leylines like live wires sparking. They had flown fully off the edge of the tiered city to reach the bottom where the Vanguard waited and Otohan among them. A brutal fight had occurred, culminating into both Otohan and the leader- a politician calling himself Ludinus Da’leth- imploring Imogen to break the seal and unleash her powers and with them, Predathos.
People died all around her, all of them sacrifices in the name of awakening her powers. Imogen fought and fought and fought with Ludinus monologuing all the while about what a great new world there would be without gods or monsters from other worlds to threaten Exandria, refusing to believe that there was no guarantee that Predathos might not stop and that there would be nothing left to protect them from it.
And then Otohan had skewered Laudna and the world simply stopped.
And then time stopped.
And then time reset.
And it did that nineteen more times. Over and over, always ending on the Solstice right before Imogen felt the agonizing tearing of grief in her soul that promised nothing but destruction. The only way to stop the loop was to accept the loss, fight against the pull, and destroy her enemies, rather than give into them.
But all Imogen wanted to do was save Laudna- that was the key to victory, to have it end well. She knew it, even if Essek didn’t buy it. There had to be a way.
There just had to.
-
The thing the movies get wrong about time loops was that they were a constant, endless repetition of the same events over and over again when, in truth, there was a lot more probability involved. The events leading up to the Solstice would never run the same iteration twice and the only thing that seemed to be consistent was that everything would pop off on that day and that day alone, Laudna would be killed, and Imogen would break down and unleash the full power of Predathos, thus kickstarting an apocalypse.
There wasn’t even a guarantee of how Otohan would begin her assault or where, which called into question exactly how much she might be aware of the loops, despite Essek’s theories. Surely, if she knew she would be taunting her through the whole week leading up to it. At least five loops had seen Imogen desperately trying to bring the fight to her, even trying to reach out in the dreams that bound all Ruidusborn together, but nothing ever came of it.
So all she could do was wait and plan and hope for the best.
If you spend your nights fighting evil and constantly looping the last seven days twenty times, then you should be excused from the banality of a normal high school existence, in Imogen’s opinion, but life continued on whether you were a moon princess or a normal high school girl and, unfortunately, truancy officers didn’t give a single cuss who her mother was and what she ruled over or whether there was a horrible moon monster connected to her powers, desperate to wake up and consume the world- ergo, she had to go to school.
At least Fearne was in the same boat. She viewed the rigorous structure of the Jrusar school system to be anathema to her entire fairy druid aesthetic, but gods forbid she accidentally do anything that might reveal her as something other. She found creative ways to skip, but mostly she remained steadfast as an unyielding terror to every teacher at the academy, who would have probably thanked the gods if she chose not to show up.
Speaking of Fearne, Imogen almost tripped on her coming out of her house. She stumbled back away from the porch steps and pressed a hand to her head, cursing that she hadn’t even heard her thoughts. The house was so quiet with her father away at the ranch from early dawn to well after dusk that any indication of an intruder would ping no matter how dazed she was from the aftereffects of a loop. Fearne just had a way of not thinking that was almost admirable if it didn’t get her and everyone around her into trouble.
“Pelor’s glow, Fearne, you’re gonna make me cuss.”
She tilted her head up to regard Imogen with a wry smile. “You’re late.”
“No, you’re early.”
“Whatever time I show up is the right time. If you don’t beat me, you’re late.” She brushed imaginary lint off her crisp white school uniform shirt, embroidered with dozens of vines and flowers which was the compromise of her glamour- without it, she was always covered in green and growing things from horn to ram feet. The fact that her seafoam hair had past muster at the Academy without being hidden by a glamour was clearly due to Imogen having had that fight when she first arrived as a doe-eyed freshman and insisted that her lavender hair was natural. The Marquesian private school system simply had to accept it.
“Right. I forgot.” Imogen huffed and scuffed her boots against the porch, waiting for the question she knew was coming. If Fearne was here early, then she definitely had something to say, otherwise she would have dawdled.
“What was it like this time?” She finally asked, eyes alight with some excited fire. Imogen pressed her lids together with a groan. Call it fairy magic or call it something else- something tied to the Fate-Stitcher that Fearne called “nana,” but every time a loop ended, Fearne was aware of it. She didn’t know the extent of the loop, but she knew that time had been reset.
“Laudna died, Fearne. Again.”
Fearne wrinkled her snub of a nose. Imogen could almost see the true doe-like shape of it beneath the glamour. “Well, that’s stupid.”
“No kidding. I think Otohan knows.”
“Like I know or like she really knows?”
“If it was just like you knew, I think she’d be… dumber about it.” Imogen leaned against the porch rail. “I think she remembers the same way Essek and I do.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” And with it being impossible to track her down before she was ready to appear, there was no way of ever knowing for certain.
”Oh Imogen~” a voice trilled in her head suddenly, bringing her back to alertness as she practically flung herself off the porch to reach the sidewalk, much to Fearne’s indignant dismay as she nearly tripped over her again in the process.
And there was Laudna, rushing down the street, shockingly alive or as much alive as a living dead girl could be. No glamour could hide her wraith-like features, only gussy them up a bit to make them look intentional, rather than just a side effect of her existence. Unlike Fearne and Imogen who were born into their gifts, hers were chosen for her through the machinations of a terrible woman who had sacrificed her and brought her back as a potential thrall, only for Laudna to fight back. And just like her and Fearne, her powers had the potential to be a dark, corrupting influence. There was a reason the three of them had been encouraged to group up as a trio when most magical girls were solitary- each one had the potential to break very badly.
But only Imogen was the key to unraveling the world.
Laudna had been the first person Imogen met who knew what it was like to be chosen by something. Maybe her destiny wasn’t written in family blood, but the pen had blood in it all the same. She would do anything for her and the feeling was mutual.
And yet all Imogen saw when Laudna finally stopped in front of her was that same vision from the last twenty loops- Laudna dead. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and hissed at the image, unable to fully appreciate her being alive for what it was- a miracle. Laudna wasn’t a corpse now, but she had been only an hour ago before Essek reset time. And if things stayed the same way, she’d be a corpse again. Over and over, the same pattern, all because she mattered so much to Imogen. A punctuation mark on a horrible, unending nightmare that all waking up from it promised was that she might have to do it again.
Is she your favorite? How could she deny it when her heart swelled every time she saw her. Of course Otohan could tell- she didn’t have to be aware of the loops. She only had to be paying attention.
“Is something wrong, darling?” Laudna said with concern, reaching over to place a hand over her forehead, cold and clammy and yet with a faint pulse thrumming beneath her fingertips. It was all Imogen could do to not lean into it and break.
“Just had a bad dream last night, Laud’,” she sighed. She glanced Fearne’s way, as if half expecting her to burst in with something blunt, but she was tight-lipped and adjusting the strap of her wiggling messenger bag- her familiar, Little Mister, was never far from her. Unlike Essek, he didn’t talk back or resent being carried around like a purse dog. For how chaotic she was, she also knew there was a time and a place for everything. The Feywild had more rules than even the Material Plane- it wasn’t hard for her to adapt to them, even if she thought them arbitrary and silly. Laudna couldn’t know about the loops. Imogen didn’t want to hear her say that she wasn’t worth so much misery.
“Another one? Well, you’ll have to tell me all about it,” Laudna said, dropping her hand from her forehead to grab her wrist, instead. There was a gleam in her eyes. “I’ve been looking into books on dreams, you know? Maybe there’s something that can help us with the Ruidusborn. Ooh. If we leave now, we could go see Chetney before class even!”
Imogen gave a tight smile that hid the amount of screaming she wanted to do, but at least that suggestion pushed the loops out of her head. Chetney was the last person she wanted to talk to on any given day, but he had a near encyclopedic knowledge of the occult and he hadn’t been consulted during any of the previous loops. He could be useful for a silly, sometimes gross, old man. “Great idea.”
Laudna had a smile like moonrise over a crypt- bright in a dark place, but still a bit unnerving. Imogen loved seeing it and she would fight until her last breath to make sure she kept seeing it.
As the three girls set off to school, she spared a glance to her window where Essek sat, watching her. Maybe it was her imagination, but he looked genuinely pained, as if he was already bracing for the next loop and the next until he finally ceased to be able to stop the inevitable.
She sent him a little telepathic ping before she got out of range. I’m gonna save her, Essek. You can’t ask me to choose between her and the world. I can have both. I know it.
Essek didn’t answer.