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After Tesilid escaped with Ailette through the portal, he soon realized that the realm they’d ended up in belonged to Evixinous, as denoted by the melted crescent moon.
It was not the worst place to end up; it would have been near impossible to find a place to rest in the barren wasteland of the Abyssal Dunes, but this territory had buildings and forests they could hide out in.
He was lucky to have Agnes with him. Her keen senses quickly picked up on the presence of demons, giving Tesilid plenty of time to hide—time that he frankly needed, because carrying both Ailette and the two swords she dropped mid-fight was an awkward task.
They came across an old temple with multiple floors and only a few demons hanging about—at least for the moment. They snuck into the attic, which, judging by the buildup of dust, seemed to be a long-forgotten storage room. Tesilid set down the swords and maneuvered Ailette onto his back, freeing up a hand to grab a rag and make the place at least somewhat hospitable.
Once assured their surroundings were as clean and secure as could be hoped for, he laid Ailette down gently on the wooden floor. Her uniform was a mess; the back was torn and covered in bloodstains, the front marked by holes and rips. He didn’t have access to her inventory, so changing her clothes wasn’t an option. The best he could do was remove her overcoat to make her a little more comfortable.
Underneath, she wore her usual black shirt. Although the dark color mostly hid the bloodstains, two distinct tears in the fabric stood out to him: a crescent-shaped hole above her breast and a hole at her abdomen.
His heart clenched painfully. He took off the overcoat of his holy knight’s uniform, intending to lay it over her, only to realize it was in worse shape than hers had been. It was almost in shreds, both from the battle with Anaxia and from Reed spearing and tossing him around like a child's rag doll.
With a deep sigh, he set it aside and tried not to stare at the place where she'd been stabbed.
The image of Ailette plunging the sword through her stomach was burned into his memories, replaying over and over. His fingers still felt numb from where he’d grabbed the blade. Ailette’s wound might have transferred to Reed, but the transfer wasn't instantaneous—her blood had been coating that sword as he pulled it out, mixing with his own.
Agnes stood nearby, her transparent form gazing through the window at the blighted landscape outside. She hadn’t said a word since their arrival, though she kept throwing concerned glances at both him and Allie.
Tesilid didn’t want to deal with the supposed revelation of his doomed fate. There was only one question ringing in his mind. “Did you know?”
<Know what?>
His gaze swept down to Ailette’s abdomen. “What she was planning,” he said quietly.
Agnes didn’t respond right away.
He looked up at her. “You must have been with her when she learned that skill, the Prophet of the Start Command. Did you know how she planned to use it?”
There were multiple questions wrapped up in that. Because to know how Ailette planned to use it, she would’ve had to have known Reed’s true identity, and she would’ve had to have tacitly approved a strategy that might have ended in her pupil's suicide.
Agnes sighed, her violet eyes somber. <Not exactly. I knew she intended to activate Reed’s Defend Partner skill, but I thought it was meant to be a last-resort defense. A way to reflect any injuries he gave her back onto him.>
Tesilid looked back at Ailette and had to stop himself from reaching out to caress her face. “He would never hurt her,” he said quietly. “Not seriously, anyway.”
<You sound sure of that.>
“Well.” He clasped his hands together. “We're the same person, after all.”
She snorted. <Don’t get maudlin on me. You two might have a shared past, but that doesn't make you the same person.>
“You must have noticed that Reed hasn't used his full strength on Allie. He’s holding back because he doesn’t want to hurt her.”
<Cocky bastard,> she grumbled. However, she didn’t disagree. <All right, I get it. You think he's just as stupid in love with her as you are.>
He coughed, a shade of red dusting his cheeks.
<He certainly acts like he thinks he owns her. What was all that crap about not ‘letting’ her go to the Unisus Dungeon? Seriously. They've met how many times?> She started counting on her fingers. <The two of you met twice before the Loops started, fine. Then she saw Reed outside Greenwall. Next, after the fight with Helkaion. Then when she was supposed to meet with the Pope—>
“She met with him then?”
Agnes gave him a flat, unimpressed look. <Don’t play dumb. I know you already figured out that much.>
Tesilid diverted his gaze. He hadn’t known, exactly, but… he had suspected that was the case.
<And look at that! I can count all of the times they met before today on one hand. He’s got some serious problems if that's all it takes to get him that obsessed.>
He couldn’t really argue with that. Even after a thousand years of repeating his tiresome and torturous life, Tesilid hadn’t stopped wanting to see her again. She was one of the few rays of hope and light in a murky sea of loss and betrayal. Even as Reed, he'd had a moment or two when he wondered, in the depths of his insanity, whether if he tore enough of the world apart, he might uncover a corner where she was hidden.
As he watched Ailette pant from the fever, he thought that maybe it was for the best that she hadn’t been in his hundredth Loop. Reed never directly inflicted any critical injuries on her, but that didn't mean he never hurt her. Every near-death experience she'd faced these past few weeks was ultimately because of Reed. When she vomited blood trying to heal him after the battle with Helkaion, when Anaxia slammed her into the wall, when she threatened to strike through her own heart just to get Reed to retreat…
It made Tesilid sick to his stomach to think that could have been him hurting her.
But then, he wasn't entirely free of blame, was he? If he’d just been honest with Ailette about who he was, what loop he was really from, she might not have gone so far.
His fingers began to tremble again—his pitifully weak hand. How useless could he be? If he let himself, he could imagine the worst outcome all too easily. How many thousands of deaths had he witnessed by this point? How many people had he desperately wanted to save, but was too weak, or too slow, or too foolish?
He didn’t want to get lost in such useless, despairing thoughts. He would much rather hold Ailette and never let go. Maybe then he could finally convince his muddled senses that she wasn’t dying, and wasn't going to die.
But what right did he have to touch her? He couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t even be honest with her.
Pressing a hand over his face, he tried desperately to regain some semblance of composure as his half-forgotten companion looked on.
Agnes evaluated Tesilid’s current state with a concerned eye. Physically, he was doing mostly fine; Ailette’s healing spells had fully stitched up his wounds, so the only issue that remained was some weakness due to blood loss. That would resolve itself with time, so she didn’t spare it a second thought.
His mental state was another story. He was clearly wracked with guilt at how far Ailette was forced to go to get them out of there. He must also be having trouble coping with the revelation that their ultimate foe was a future version of himself. She’d like to tell him to just not think about it—because really, what else could he do?—but such a flippant remark wasn't going to improve things here.
She couldn’t help but be reminded of a similar situation when, right after the Helkaion subjugation, the three of them sat crouched in a dungeon after Reed tore into the scene. Tesilid had been a mess back then as well. At the time, he had been pretending he couldn’t see or hear Agnes, so all of them had been as silent as a grave for those two agonizingly long days.
Agnes herself hadn’t been in the best state either, shocked at Ailette throwing her away so she could enter the Demon Realm’s dumping grounds alone.
The violet-eyed saintess still felt a prickle of rage when she thought of that. A part of her understood why Ailette did it. She didn’t know if she would make it out alive, and she didn’t want to drag Agnes down with her. But Agnes knew all too well what it meant to give one’s life for a greater cause. She did not regret for a moment her own sacrifice, but she wouldn't wish anyone to face that yawning darkness alone.
At the very least, Agnes wanted to be a comfort to her pupil and friend in her last moments, whenever they should come. Even if it meant the destruction of her necklace and her final link to this world, it would be a worthy cause.
However, now was not the time to get caught up in such thoughts. Although Agnes couldn’t do much to fix the horrible truth Tesilid was no doubt wrestling with, she could at least give him the tools to stand up against it.
Tesilid was still staring at the ground, so Agnes tried cajoling him first. <Hey. Didn't I tell you not to get maudlin on me?>
It took him a few tries to get the words past his lips. “I think if there was ever a time to be maudlin… it would be now.” And he lapsed back into silence.
Yeah, no. Trying to be soft and pat someone on the head really doesn’t suit me. And it’s not what he needs, either. Just like that, Agnes switched to her Drill Instructor voice. <All right, listen up!>
Like the well-trained knight he was, Tesilid’s head snapped up, his back straightening as he met her amethyst gaze with wide eyes.
<I won't hear that kind of weak-minded talk! Drop and give me twenty, cadet!>
“What?”
<Push-ups, cadet! I won't have any arguments! Let's go! One! Two!>
With a baffled expression on his face, Tesilid complied, mechanically dropping and lifting his weight as Agnes counted his reps. Once he hit twenty, she ordered him to a new position.
<Excellent form! Next, sit-ups!>
They repeated this process a few more times, the Vatican's harshest drill instructor barking orders while the silver-haired knight followed the sudden exercise regime. She made sure to stick to quieter exercises—no need to risk alerting any demons of their presence, after all—but she didn’t allow him a break until she could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Some might say she was being too harsh on someone who had just been through a fierce battle and hadn’t yet fully recovered. But in Agnes’s experience, a bit of training was the best way to yank someone out of a whirlpool of negative thoughts before they spiraled out of control.
As he sat on the floor, wiping a hand over his face, Agnes spoke. <Good work, cadet. Remember, a strong body leads to a strong mind. If you're being overtaken by weak thoughts, you get up and tell them to sit down!>
He stared up at her from his position on the floor, listening quietly.
<We can’t go back and change the past. Whether a plan went too far, whether there was no other way—that’s not what’s important right now. You both made it out, and you’re alive. That’s something to be grateful for.>
As she spoke, his gaze drew back to Ailette. His hand clenched at his side. “I can’t watch her die, Saint Agnes. I can’t… there’s no point in living in a world without Allie in it.”
Geez, this guy really is a fool for her. Pushing that thought aside, Agnes focused on something that might actually help: setting a goal. <Then there’s only one answer, isn’t there?> She put her hands on her hips. <You get stronger. And next time, you give that guy hell.>
He gave a short, dry laugh. There wasn’t much humor in it, but it was an improvement over the empty-eyed stare he’d had earlier. “Yes… you’re right about that. I’m way too weak as is.”
She assessed him for a moment. <Give yourself at least a little credit. You’re working with decent starting material, and that’s more than can be said of most. Your biggest weakness isn’t your aura or your swordfighting, anyway.>
“I’d hope not…”
<It’s your mentality!> she interjected, ignoring the remark. <You’ve been living too long thinking that you can just try again in the next Loop.>
Tesilid froze. “That—I haven’t…” But the denial died on his lips.
Agnes’s mouth thinned into a grim line. As I thought. Ailette had never said so directly, of course, but it certainly sounded as if he’d adopted a “just try again” mentality from fairly early on in his Loops. Like he didn’t have any real hope of succeeding.
His mind seemed to be running along those lines, too. “I don’t… I don’t want that. I don’t want to try again in another Loop. Allie’s only in this one.” His voice trembled.
<That’s why you have to change your way of thinking,> Agnes said. <You’ll never succeed with that ‘try and fail’ tactic. You put everything you've got into it or don't bother at all! That's the only way you can live without regrets.>
“Without regrets…”
<That’s right. How do you think Ailette has been living these past ten years? She's only managed to come this far because she always pushes as hard as she can.>
He didn’t have a response for her, but she could tell he had taken in at least a little of what she said. Now, he just needed some time to process.
<You should rest now,> she said. <A good sleep is just as important as training. I can wake you if anything happens.>
“All right.” Then he said, quietly, “Thank you.”
Agnes nodded, satisfied.
He lay down beside Ailette, gazing at the side of her face. He reached forward and combed the hair back from her forehead, letting his hand linger in the pink strands before slowly drifting off to sleep.