Part 3 Verdant Island
Chapter LIII (53)
Mitsuko witnessed a flash of color as the barrier dropped. The smell of the sea’s air. And she was falling to the deck.
*Ding!
*Mend Level 6
Mend, Strengthened
Mend’s Aura, Radius Enhanced
Mend Self, Strengthened
Mend Others, Strengthened
Again, Mitsuko fell towards the deck, her balance utterly thrown off. And again. And again. It flashed in her vision time after time before finally getting interrupted by another notification.
*Ding!
*Mend Level 7
Mend, Strengthened
Mend’s Aura, Radius Enhanced
Mend Self, Strengthened
Mend Others, Strengthened
Mend Self - Aging - Self, Unlocked
*Ding!
*Retrospection Level 2
Retrospection, Strengthened.
She hit the deck. Her brain rattled in her head. An intense vertigo made her want to puke. But she flicked her wrist, creating a blade of ice and used it as a crutch to push herself to her feet. She needed to check on Sterling. A tear trickled down her cheek and she chuckled. Despite her body being completely repaired and returned to normal, the memories of being crushed beneath the clockwork cog teeth made her limbs shudder with every step. For her, it felt like mere seconds ago.
She desperately wanted to sit down and take a deep breath. But the ship was sinking and more water flooded in every moment. There would be time to rest later.
Holly said something to her as they passed one another, there was a look of concern on her friend’s face.
“I’m fine, Holly,” Mitsuko muttered. A lie, but she didn’t have the time. She needed to find Sterling.
She slipped and fell down the steps leading into the hull and collapsed on the floor. It was so stupid that another burst of laughter exited her lungs. Her body had completely healed. And yet, it trembled with the memory of pain. She forced it to obey her. Dragging herself against the wall, she regained her footing and continued.
Only as she hobbled forward, down into the cargo hold, did it finally dawn on her what she’d truly done. She’d yanked the boy back after he’d shoved her off the edge. She’d killed a child. That thought nearly brought her back to her knees, but she took another step.
“Saluations, my friend,” Sterling said. The cat leaped off a crate and onto her shoulder, nearly knocking her off her feet. “Glad to be together again after all this time. What a mess this has all been.”
“Time?” Mitsuko asked. “What mess?”
“Surely you noticed the notifications? You don’t believe that all to be the result of a single loop, do you? Achieving higher levels becomes exponentially more difficult.”
“Sterling….” Mitsuko shook her head. Her brain felt foggy and she still wanted to puke. “I need to save the kid. The one hiding in the storage room.”
Her legs were still a bit wobbly, but she’d regained enough of her balance to stumble forward without needing to use her sword as a cane.
“Of course,” Sterling allowed. His voice sounded almost somber.
Mitsuko dully told the boy in the wooden box to get onto the deck above. After familiar back and forth, the boy relinquished his plan to her common sense.
Once above, Mitsuko collapsed down in the final lifeboat and took a deep breath of sea air. The lifeboat began to drift away from the rest of them.
Only then did Mitsuko realize Holly had boarded the lifeboat bound for Ashen Island. Her head was clearing up. She didn’t want to be separated from her friend. And so she decided not to be.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Mitsuko raised a hand. The radius of her control had expanded tenfold. She cast Mend, dragging Holly’s lifeboat back towards her, the water splashing up the flat stern as the lifeboat skid across the sea.
“Row in this direction,” she commended them as she released the spell. “Don’t let the current take you.”
Then she turned her attention to the main ship. She cast Mend on it as well. Unfortunately, creating material with her spell remained out of reach. That familiar internal block kept her from accomplishing what she wanted there. But she still rewound the clock enough to raise the broken ship back up a bit so it no longer slumped into the sea.
People were yelling at her, shouting and surprised. But she ignored all those distractions, instead focused on preventing the disaster to come.
So far she had managed to keep the captain from leaping off the edge of the ship with his elementalist. Instead, he stared in utter befuddlement as his ship stabilized. That was good because it meant she wouldn’t need to drag him back by his clothes. One less concern if he never dove into the sea.
That half a minute of delay was enough. The water roiled as the kraken emerged from the depths. One of the tentacles slammed into the bottom of one of the lifeboats. But, before it could capsize, Mitsuko forced it back down with Mend, simultaneously repairing the damage to the lifeboat’s hull.
Then she cast Mend on her own lifeboat, bringing it back up against the ship, but stopping before it traveled back up onto the ship. From there, the captain and the elementalist were able to jump into their lifeboat, safely joining them.
Mitsuko let time flow normally again and they drifted away. But she continued to ignore all the questions directed at her.
The kraken thrashed about wildly smashing its tentacles into the boats and Mitsuko had to reverse time two more times to keep lifeboats from capsizing. Just avoiding that first disaster didn’t mean this new timeline would be without complications. The kraken hadn’t gorged on the flesh of humanoids in this loop and it was more agitated than ever.
After an attentive half an hour, Mitsuko finally let herself relax. She allowed herself a small smile. She’d done it. Every person had escaped the sinking ship safely. A score of lives saved.
Then her satisfaction slipped as she remembered what she’d done. A wrong she had no further chances to right. The child had died by her hand. Her magic had cast him down into the clockwork mechanics below. She hadn’t seen him die, just the blur of his body falling from above as she reversed everything around her and mended her body back together. But she wouldn’t have unlocked a new spell without freeing the sage.
“Did I die of bloodloss?” Mitsuko asked Sterling.
“Oh?” Sterling flicked his tale. “Finally snapped out of it and listening?”
“I needed to focus. And I want to know exactly what happened. And it doesn’t count as my question.”
“Well, you sadly lost the right to barter for those sorts of demands from me. From this moment forward, I cannot be lenient with you in regards to information. But this isn’t anything secret so not question worthy regardless. Yes. You died of bloodloss.”
The captain was trying to talk to her, ask her about the magic she’d just been casting, but she ignored him and continued to address the green-eyed cat.
“You said that shouldn’t be possible.”
“Well, under normal circumstances, it isn’t. Your blood restores faster than normal people thanks to our souls melding into yours. But your spells do still cost blood. And the amount you cast in there was far more than you could normally manage.”
“Not much more than I just cast to save everyone just now,” Mitsuko pointed out.
“The ratios are substantially different and difficult to compare. But I remind you that most of the clock tower was enchanted. Rewinding enchanted objects with the use of Mend is far more taxing than the minimally enchanted ship you just disembarked. Regardless, you are far more powerful now so the point is moot.”
“Why did I level three times in Mend?” Mitsuko asked, moving on to that topic.
“This will cost you a question,” Sterling said. It was uncommon for him to warn her ahead of time. Usually he just launched into an explanation and then announced the use of a question after the fact.
“Fine. I have questions to spare right now.”
Sterling looked out over at the sea, then back to her. “Okay. So you lost twelve loops. You have thirty-two remaining.”
“What?” Mitsuko’s eyes widened. “How?”
“Every loop would start and you’d find me missing, then you kept throwing yourself at Verdant Island. There is a foe there that uses mental magic so the Prismatic Spiral was forced to wipe your mind, resetting your consciousness.”
“Why weren’t you here?”
“The sages decreed that I was…unfit. Not following the rules close enough. So they pulled me from interfering. If you’d gone back to Ashen, you would have still found me in my temple. Alas, nobody was around to direct you off your single-minded path forward.”
“They took you from me?” Mitsuko said, voice cold. Her fists clenched. Her opinion of the other sages dropped substantially. “Because you told me information.”
“Yes and, um, about that. They decided that I was allowed to return but it would cost you one of your questions,” Sterling said sheepishly.
“So now I only have three remaining.”
“Correct.”
Twelve weeks traded for a few levels, half of which she didn’t even get questions for. Not an ideal trade. Before she had been on track to have more than ten weeks for each island. Now her time was half gone and she’d only unlocked two of the six sages.
“Where’s the new sage?” she asked. “Why didn’t he direct me?”
“Rather than waste another question on that. I believe it is better for us to visit him ourselves and for you to come to the obvious conclusion.”
Annoying, but she didn’t have the energy to argue. She slouched back, letting herself relax.
“Are you mad?”
Mitsuko glanced over at the speaker. Every single person on the lifeboat stared at her, with varying levels of fear, respect, and awe. But it was the captain who addressed her. She’d been ignoring him up until this moment. His brow was scrunched as he watched her one-way exchange with the ship’s cat.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think I might be.”
15 more chapters on my !!
