Path of the Extra

”Lu-”

”...”

[The ??? Skill, [Redo], has successfully been activated.]

”A waste of garbage like you is not even worth the effort of playing with.”

Another death, and this one just as unavoidable as all the rest. There was nothing in his surroundings he could use. Jasmine was asleep. Yelena was bound. Celestina was too far away. And Azriel, Azriel was perhaps the reason any of this was happening at all.

The pain of the knife plunging into his throat, the immediate and sickening sensation of his own blood bubbling up as he began to choke on it, all of it snapped his eyes back toward Pierre on pure instinct.

After every death, his senses, his mind, and his physical state reset entirely, yet he retained his memories. He retained the trauma. And that trauma, carried forward through every single reset, only quickened the pace at which his mind continued to unravel. The worst part of the loop was always these few seconds specifically, the moments his mind spent being reminded of every time he had already died, the familiar and inescapable pain he could never quite grow used to, right up until his heart was torn from his chest all over again.

But what truly unnerved him most was that this man, despite possessing only a single eye, could convey such profound madness through that one eye alone. Lumine was close enough now to see it with total clarity, that darkness swirling and coiling behind the Immortal Eyepatch’s one remaining eye.

This man was utterly, irredeemably mad.

Bracing himself, Lumine’s jaw tightened in anticipation of the inevitable once more, never once permitted to grow accustomed to it. Still, some instinctive part of his mind kept searching, uselessly, for any way out of this hell.

’What do I do...’

’His smile widened, only in that one loop, right when I thought he was evil, as though Azriel had read my mind and known I had finally figured it out. But after that, nothing changed. It was as if it had never happened at all. His... his smile is gone now too, replaced by lips pressed into a hard, flat line.’

Lumine clenched his eyes shut, feeling Pierre’s fingers press against his chest.

’I am almost starting to doubt myself. Maybe it was only my mind playing tricks on me, trying to distract me from all of this. I do not know. But... it all felt so convincing as well. What if I am not crazy? What... what if...’

”Disgusting.”

”...?”

’What?’

Disgusting?

Slowly, Lumine peeled his eyes open, some part of him registering the strange and unfamiliar gap where he should have already died, where his heart should have already been torn free and the loop should have already reset around him.

It was horrible. This gap was absolutely and utterly agonizing. His throat burned as though it had been set alight, and he found himself choking, distant cries and pleas from Yelena reaching him faintly through the haze of pain.

But between each new and intensifying wave of agony, Lumine’s eyes fixed on Pierre, whose entire face had scrunched up as though he had just caught the scent of something foul.

His eyes locked with Pierre’s single remaining one.

”What a disgusting scent has suddenly come over you.” Repulsed, Pierre released his grip, and Lumine dropped to the ground, meeting the full force of every new sensation at once. Blood pooled and drowned at the back of his throat while somewhere beyond the pain he could hear Yelena crying his name, over and over again.

’What is this... what happened? A scent? What is he talking about? Why is this happening now?’

He was choking, and yet all he could think about was this new experience, something that had never once occurred in all his time trapped within this loop through hell.

”I do not like it,” Pierre muttered quietly, taking a step back.

”What is the matter, Pierre?” the Plague asked, tilting his masked head.

”Aside from the blood, he smells quite pleasant. As does the girl.”

”...”

Pierre went still and simply stood there while Lumine, unable to move, lay choking beneath him, lightheaded, a low ringing beginning to build in his ears.

”...It reminds me of that whoreish wolf.”

”Dear, oh dear, you should not make the poor boy suffer so much, no matter your reasons.” The Plague shook his head and stepped past Pierre, intending to end Lumine’s misery himself.

Only for, at that very moment, a condensed shaft of light, thin and silvery white, to come hurtling toward him, forcing the Plague to vanish at the last possible instant in a swirl of black smoke and reappear behind Pierre instead.

A second later, Celestina slid into view before them, her glare cutting through the space like a blade of its own.

*****

Azriel walked in slowly behind her, while Celestina had already sprinted to Lumine’s side, one hand pressed against his neck as she began working her healing affinity into him. With her other hand, she conjured a small blade of pure white light and used it to slice through Yelena’s bindings before the light dissolved away entirely.

”Quickly! Force him to drink a health potion while I try to close the wound!” she shouted.

’I suppose if she had gone even a few seconds later, he would already be dead,’ Azriel thought, guilt needling at him. Had it been left to his own read of the situation rather than Celestina’s judgment, Lumine would not have survived at all.

The eyes of the Plague and the Immortal Eyepatch drifted, almost inevitably, from Celestina toward Azriel.

Azriel looked back at them and sighed inwardly.

’I need to buy them time.’

A wide, bright, and unsettlingly polite smile spread across his face, one that sat in stark contrast to his blood-soaked appearance.

”This is quite unexpected.” His words came out a touch too cheerful, and strangely, they were not aimed at the Plague or Pierre at all. He ignored the two of them entirely, his attention settling instead on Corven, and as it did, his eyes cooled considerably, lending that smile an edge of real cold.

”I never expected you to be such a sore loser, Corven.” A dark chuckle followed. ”To side with the enemy, to need their help just to bring me down. I cannot decide whether I should feel flattered or disappointed.”

What startled everyone in the room was Corven himself, the very man they had assumed to be sleeping, letting out a sinister chuckle of his own.

”You sell yourself too high,” he said, turning his blindfolded eyes toward Azriel.

”Is that so?”

Corven rose slowly, bracing his hands against his knees. The very same hands Azriel had once severed from him during their last confrontation.

”I merely sided with them for their health potions, so that I might regenerate my hands as swiftly as possible. I do not need their help to kill you.”

Hearing that, Azriel felt an odd flicker of amusement.

”The last time you tried to kill me, you ended up running with your tail between your legs, and it was because of me that you needed to strike a deal with them in the first place.”

Massaging his bloodied chin, Azriel continued.

”And well, now that you have made a deal with the revolutionaries, you cannot kill me, can you?”

The moment he said it, Corven’s smile turned visibly strained.

”I can still have my fun with you before I deliver you.”

He shrugged.

”Besides, from what I can see, it looks like you did not walk away from our fight entirely unscathed either. Eh?”

”See?”

Azriel repeated the word, gesturing with a hand held low at his side toward Celestina, a silent signal for her to stay exactly where she was. She continued healing Lumine without looking away, while Yelena held him steady, having already gotten the health potion down his throat.

’If I play this correctly, I can get us out of here.’

”Right about that. Then again, why bother still wearing that blindfold?” Azriel took a step forward, tilting his head, and an arrogant smile spread across his face, the kind that belonged on some insufferably cocky bastard. ”I thought that after I exposed you as nothing more than a miserable, hypocritical fraud, you would have ditched it by now. There is no point in wearing it anymore, is there?”

He licked his bloodied lips, casting them both an infuriatingly smug look, while Corven’s eyes behind his blindfold widened slowly with seething hatred.

”I mean, we both know the real truth all along was that you were simply weak. So weak that you could not bring yourself to take revenge on your king, so instead you used your dead wife as an excuse to become some sad, sanctimonious snob.”

”Shut up...”

Azriel laughed, raising both arms.

”It is amazing, actually! To delude yourself for so long, telling everyone ’I miss my wife,’ ’I will not use my powers,’ ’I do not want to see the world, so I can go on remembering my wife and the colors she loved.’ But the second I beat you until your head met the ground, you showed all of us exactly what kind of liar you truly are!”

”Son of a bitch, I told you to shu-”

”Why the hell would I listen to some old man who pathetically hides behind his dead wife as an excuse to stay frightened and weak, rather than grow strong enough to face the man who actually killed her!”

Corven vanished without warning and reappeared directly in front of Azriel, who felt the breath torn from his lungs as his back slammed hard against the wall.

”You will die for this!”

”Back off!” Pierre appeared at his side in an instant, seizing Corven by both arms.

”Or I will rip those arms clean off of you, and there will not be a cure for them this time!”

”Go ahead and try. I am fully capable of killing every last one of you at once!”

Watching them bicker, Azriel could not hold back his laughter.

Pierre narrowed his one eye and looked at him.

”Your mouth is made of filth, just like your sister’s.”