Chapter Text
When Reed asked Ailette Rodeline to fall into the abyss with him, he didn’t think she actually would.
Once they had crossed the gate’s threshold, the demonic energy of the Demon Realm’s landfill latched onto them, accelerating them through the air into the gathering place of dungeon remains, a violent mass of destroyed buildings, turbulent landscapes, and unslain demons.
The first thing Reed realized as they hurtled towards the ground was that the flight spell he called upon wasn’t working, and the next two anti-gravitational spells he tried fizzled as well. The ground was fast approaching; he’d have to use aura to soften the blow.
He was so busy concentrating on the timing that he almost didn’t notice Ailette raise her hand in his peripheral.
“Breath of Calm.”
She began coughing immediately after casting it, but it controlled the winds around them and slowed their descent. Combined with his aura, it minimized the impact when he landed feet first on the ground, Ailette cradled in his arms.
Reed took a moment to assess their surroundings. The landfill was vast, filled with hills of rubble and gaping valleys, its sky like a black void streaked with strange bursts of color. Gravity seemed to be more of a suggestion than a law, with island-like masses moving sluggishly through the air. There was, presumably, ground somewhere beneath his feet, but it was covered with so much detritus that he couldn’t say whether it was dirt, stone, or a mound of corpses.
Considering this was the Demon Realm, it was probably the latter.
Regardless, everything—the floating islands and the detritus alike—was slowly being pulled toward a black hole at the very center of the landfill. Even Reed could feel its tug on him, his long hair fluttering in that direction as if teased by an inexorable breeze.
Staying in one place for long would not be wise, but there did not seem to be any immediate danger for the time being. He relaxed somewhat and turned to Ailette, but was taken aback to see blood dripping between her fingers from where she held them against her mouth.
“Ailette Rodeline?”
She seemed unable to hear him, and it took him a moment to understand that the blood was a result of her using divine power despite the Holy Fever setting in.
He knelt on the ground and freed one hand to wipe the blood from her mouth. She offered no resistance, her brow furrowed and her face red from the fever that had already taken hold. Her eyes were still open, barely. They seemed to be asking a question—why, perhaps, or what are you planning? Then they fluttered shut.
All was quiet.
For several minutes, he simply stayed there, staring at her. His hand was still hovering near her face. With only the slightest hesitation, he moved that hand toward her.
And poked her cheek.
She didn’t react.
He poked her again. Her skin was soft. He gave it a gentle pinch.
“Oh, this is fun.”
He went on to touch and stroke her face a bit more before a crashing noise distracted him. A portal had opened up some ways behind him, spewing rocks and the crumbled remains of a building.
Well, he was still in the Demon Realm’s landfill. It was a treacherous wasteland, even for someone of his powers. He looked at the woman in his arms and wondered what he should do with her.
She had saved him twice in his youth, and was one of the few people in this world who showed genuine concern for his wellbeing. For hundreds of years, he’d gone between wanting to see her again and trying to forget her.
But as much as he had longed for her, her existence itself was suspicious. A Divine Emissary of a god who had abandoned the world, whose very presence the Loops seemed to reject. And she knew too much; she must have known of his eventual corruption, even before his Loops began, or else how would she have known to greet him with Divine Advent the moment he arrived back in time?
And now here she was, trying to stop him. Even though she’d said she was on his side.
Still, he had no intention of leaving her behind to die. Whoever she was, whatever she meant to him, were things he still wanted to explore.
The real question was, what was the best way to carry her while also fighting off whatever obstacles came their way in this demonic garbage dump? They certainly couldn't stay in the same place, and a few more tests proved what he'd already half-figured, that this realm automatically canceled out flight and levitation spells—which did make sense, or else closing gates might spit something out before shutting down.
He eventually settled on carrying her piggyback. The hold made it easy enough to free a hand to summon his sword—just in case.
As he carried her through the wasteland, she radiated heat, her short and ragged breath a mere inch or so from his ear. She woke fitfully, mumbling incomprehensibly. He caught an occasional, intelligible word; once, he heard his name—the one he'd had before his corruption. The most frequent coherent word was “voice,” as if she was searching for someone calling out to her.
He wondered who it was, and whether it was him.
When she was ten years old, her temperature hadn't gone down even after a full day had passed. After that, Cardinal Cartelaya had taken her back to Gilette County, so he didn’t know how long it had taken her to recover. Would she still be weak once the fever was gone? A part of him hoped so. It meant she would be beholden to him for a while longer.
Another part, however, was growing more concerned as time went on and neither her temperature nor her suffering seemed to abate. Having Ailette all to himself wasn't as fun when he couldn’t talk to her. And not when she was in so much pain.
When he took breaks, he would place her on his lap or, if there was a ledge or other structure that could anchor them against the realm’s gravitational pull, on his cloak laid out on the ground next to him. The first break, he dug out a potion from her inventory. Potions hadn’t seemed to work last time, but that was, for her, ten years ago; she might have some now that would be effective. He tilted her head back and trickled a bit into her mouth. She swallowed the first mouthful, but then a hand on his wrist stopped him.
“Don’t—won't work.” She had opened her eyes and was looking at him blearily. Her hand fell, lacking the strength to keep it raised. “’S a waste. In two days… I'll be…”
And she passed out again.
“The recovery time, I presume,” he said—not that she was awake to hear it.
Then, two days after their trek began, the fever faded. And Ailette woke up.
Ailette came to slowly, her senses muted like they were underwater.
Then her instincts picked up on the danger in the air. Before she’d even consciously registered her surroundings, her sword was in her hand and she leapt to her feet.
That turned out to be a mistake. Pain shot through her skull, and her vision blurred until everything was a mess of dark and grungy colors. She stumbled half a step, but managed to keep her footing.
“That was unexpected.”
Her head swiveled around and locked onto a black and white blob sitting nearby. As she blinked, her vision gradually came into focus and she saw it was Reed. Her every nerve was on high alert, but he seemed at ease.
He glanced toward her feet. “I’d appreciate that back, if you don’t mind.”
“Huh?” She looked down. She was standing on a length of dark fabric. She stepped off, and he picked it up. He gazed at it for a moment, and she felt a slight tingle of power in the air—and then the dust clinging to it disappeared.
She had a distant, vague thought of Magic sure is handy, but she didn’t dare let her guard down. The ground beneath her was stable, but only seemingly thanks to a rocky overhang that split the stream of rubble surrounding them, creating a small oasis of calm. A quiet reminder that she was not in a safe place.
Reed stood up and put the cloak on. And simply stared at her.
Ailette’s memories rushed back at once. The battle with Helkaion, forcing Reed into the Demon Realm’s garbage dump, casting a desperate spell as they hurtled towards the ground. She was shocked enough when he’d protected her from the impact, but to see that he was still with her was mindboggling. She was certain he would have abandoned her the moment they landed. Reed from the original novel only felt apathy, if not outright hatred, for humans.
But if he was here, didn’t that mean he stayed with her throughout the Holy Fever? Why would he do that?
“You seem to be doing better.” He tilted his head slightly, observing her just as she observed him. “It’s been a while, Ailette Rodeline.”
“… That’s an interesting thing to say when you’ve been looking after me for the past two days.”
“You can’t be surprised about that. Isn’t that why you were willing to join me at all?”
She kept her silence, still trying to get the measure of him. Before this, she thought she’d had a fairly good understanding of his character. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“You know who I am, don’t you?”
Something in his low voice made her spine prickle. She refocused her attention on him. No point in beating around the bush. “Then, Reed, Newborn Chaos… Tesilid Argente. What did you want to talk about?”
His eyes didn’t move from her face. “If you know who I am, then surely you know what I’m planning.”
He spoke, of course, of destroying the world. His red eyes seemed to glow with madness as he talked with delight about how much he hated this world, how he looked forward to ending it all. And he asked her to join him.
She had been half-expecting it ever since she woke up from the Holy Fever. Why else would he have spared her, if he didn’t have plans for her?
What she didn’t expect was his answer when she asked why her, when he didn’t need a healer—didn’t need anyone, really—to destroy the world. He said that there were some things in this world he wanted to hold onto, even if he didn’t need them.
There was a tightness in her chest that made it difficult to breathe. All she could feel in her heart was pain—for what he had become; for the suffering, loss, and betrayal the world put him through. She didn’t have any hope of changing his mind. He’d been pushed too far for too long. But she made her offer anyway, to work together to find another way to end the Loops.
She wasn’t surprised when he turned her down, and as if in response to the impassable line drawn between them, the ground beneath them surged and split. A geyser of murky, boiling liquid shot into the air between them, clouding the air with steam. Both jumped away in opposite directions, each calling up their own barriers as the muddy water rained down. Where it hit the ground, it sizzled and melted the debris around it.
That’s no ordinary water, she thought grimly.
There was no telling how long the geyser would keep going, so each moved away from it, Ailette in one direction—and Reed skirting dangerously close to the spouting water to follow after. They stopped when they’d gained enough distance, even though Ailette privately wanted to shake him off her tail.
“Not trying to run away, are you?”
“This isn’t a good place for a conversation.” She brought up the system map, but didn’t have any real hope of finding a sanctuary. Not in this ever-chaotic wasteland.
As if reading her thoughts—or perhaps just observing the obvious—he said, “I don’t think there is such a thing here.”
She didn’t respond. What she really needed was a way to lose Reed, but her map didn’t have any answers for that. The sudden geyser only reinforced that she needed to get out of the landfill as quickly as possible.
It wasn’t just about her life being in danger, either. The Vatican almost certainly considered her dead; no one had ever come back from the Demon Realm’s landfill. Without her there, Tesilid would be shoved off into another division and be put through who knows what. He might even end up meeting an early death since his future in this Loop was so uncertain.
Her only chance of fixing things would be if she could get back soon.
She took a moment to plot out the best route. The landfill is a problem by itself, but it’s only the beginning. The original novel didn't say a lot about this place, just that it was connected to the rest of the Demon Realm—meaning she’d still have a ways to go before she could return to the Vatican and let everyone know she was alive.
From the map, she could see that the dump was a huge circle, its entire circumference marked as the exit. Will it transport me to a dungeon at random?
[The Voice that Shapes the World confirms that it’s random, but that he might be able to help push the odds in a certain direction.]
Thank you, Lord Voice. That gave her a little peace of mind; she just had to focus on reaching the exit. And luckily, the map gave her enough information to find a relatively swift path out. Calculations done, she began walking without so much as a glance back.
A voice interrupted her. “Oh my. Are you so desperate to get away from me that you’re willing to take the long way around?”
Her steps paused.
“Surely you understand how dangerous this realm is. Perhaps you would do well enough if the gate was something that could be reached within a week, but from here…” His gaze seemed to turn inward as he thought it over. The horizon was only partially visible from their current vantage point, but even if it had been invisible, Reed didn’t need to see the gate to know where it was. “I would say it would take three, four weeks. Including rest stops. If you’re going the right way.”
Three weeks? Looking again at her map, Ailette tried to calculate how he came up with that number. As she did, she realized something very important.
Reed might know where the gate is, but he doesn’t know what the terrain is like. The only route she could see that could be reached in as little as three weeks was a straight line from here to the nearest part of the gate, but in between was nothing but swamps and gaping holes into the void. That wouldn’t be a problem if he could fly, but judging from their initial entry into this realm, that wasn’t an option for him.
Meanwhile, the route I have planned will probably take about six weeks, maybe less—depending on what this realm throws my way.
She battled with herself for a long moment. Finally, she turned to look him in the eye. “Reed, you helped me, so I'll give you a hint.” She pointed over his shoulder. “If you’re thinking of going that way, you’re right that it’s the closest as the crow flies. But if you’re on foot, it’ll be more like three months, not weeks.” She pointed east and also northeast. “The terrain is much better this way and that way. It'll cut down the time to get out of here by a good amount.”
She didn’t stick around to study Reed’s expression. Instead, she began walking in her self-appointed direction. Until she heard footsteps following behind her.
She looked back at him. His red eyes were calculating.
“I forgot. You’ve always known the way, haven't you?”
The way he said that made her feel uneasy. He was likely talking about her knowing her way through the Toy Mansion—which, for him, would have been a thousand years ago. Was it really such a memorable detail?
“You say it’s ‘this’ way or ‘that’ way… surely you don’t mean the quickest way is a straight line?”
“You want me to draw you a map?”
“A map isn’t much good without a compass.”
She didn’t like where this was going. “What are you getting at?”
“Perhaps we can make a deal.”
Yep. She really didn’t like it.
“You know the quickest way out of here. Meanwhile, demonic creatures in this realm won't dare attack me. Or anyone I'm traveling with.”
She could see the truth in his words. He was Chaos and Evil, after all. Demons worshipped him. Meanwhile, she had no idea what kind of demonic creatures she might face here. She was stronger than most, sure… but the landfill spawned new and strange beings constantly, and she had no way to prepare against them.
It was no exaggeration to say that surviving this realm would be difficult alone, especially as time wore on. With two people traveling together, they would at least be able to take breaks, one resting while the other kept an eye out. It would increase chances of survival exponentially.
Well, her chances, anyway. Reed didn’t need to rest as much as a normal human, and he was far more powerful than she was. He would be able to get out of here fine without her. The only benefit he stood to gain from this deal was getting out of the landfill a bit sooner than otherwise.
And that was the exact problem. Why is he offering to help me? She’d already made it clear she wouldn’t join him; surely there was no more reason to keep her alive.
Was there?
“I don’t see why you’d make such an offer,” she said finally. Testing the waters.
“I already told you. I want you by my side. And if I can convince you to stay there while we travel together, why would I not take the opportunity?”
She felt suffocated. “If that’s why, we should part ways now. I'm not changing my mind.”
“Fine. Let’s put that aside.” He glanced at the treacherous landscape around them. “We both have the same goal right now: to make it back to the Human Realm. Doesn’t traveling together make the most sense?”
Not for you. However, pointing that out would only make the conversation go in circles. And if she was being honest with herself… she wasn’t confident she could make it out of here on her own.
She let out a sigh. “I’m not going to hike on an empty stomach. You can do what you want, but I’m going to have lunch first.” With that, she pinpointed a large, flat boulder moving at a slower pace compared to the rest of the garbage around it. She laid out a picnic blanket on top, and dug through her inventory to see what she had available.
Reed followed after, finding a seat on the boulder’s edge. He refused her offer to sit on the blanket, as well as the suggestion to eat with her.
“Do you have so much food in there that you can afford to waste it on someone who doesn’t need to eat?”
“Yeah, actually. I’ve got an item that replicates food, so I basically have an infinite supply.”
“Convenient.”
“It is,” she said with a hint of pride. The picnic basket had been a reward from Lord Voice, after all.
It also occurred to her that traveling together didn’t have to be a double-edged sword. Reed might use it as an opportunity to sway her to his side, but two could play at that game. Especially now that she could be reasonably certain he had no plans to kill her.
She checked her inventory. Loop Seventeen Tesilid never expressed a preference for any particular type of food, so unless that had changed in the past eighty loops, she couldn't exactly tempt him with a favorite dish. But the landfill was a bit chilly, and warm, hearty stews always paired well with cold weather.
She pulled out a bowl and held it out to him. “Take it,” she said. “What’s the point of ditching the Seven Heavenly Virtues if you’re not going to indulge in a little gluttony every now and then?”
He stared at her for a while longer, and Ailette kept her smile in place. Finally, he accepted, his face as expressionless as ever.
Thus began their journey through the abyss.