MAGUS INFINITE

’How much more can I take... How much more can I bear?’

I felt that alluring edge of madness coming for me, but I refused to allow it to hold my soul. I had made that mistake once, and the heavens had punished me.

I raised my faceless skull to the heavens, and I wept; above me there were barely twenty million souls left. The fires of the Sovereign had returned these souls to the cycle, and if I died now, instead of a hundred million lives vanishing, there would be fewer.

Still, it was too much; my work was not done, and I could not die with all the weight of these souls, or everything that I fought for would be over; I slowly raised my last hand to the sky, and I whispered, ”No.”

Then I died.

It was sudden, but I had pulled strength from everything inside of me, and even my channels were ash. My hand was raised to the sky when I died, and a gust of wind blew across the crater, and my body began to collapse; my ash carried away slowly by the wind.

The souls above began to weep to the heavens, crying their wrath at the Sovereigns, and at the madness that I had to endure. Suddenly, all the souls froze, and they turned towards my diminishing remains, and they all whispered as one, ”The Beloved Calls for your favor and you shall give it.”

The mountain of ash that was my remains was about fifteen feet tall, and as more of it blew away, something was revealed in its center, revealing... me.

I had returned to my mortal form, stepping away from the ash of my previous Death Titan physique. Death Consort was my Title, and despite the fact that it came with so many disadvantages, there were several abilities that made this Title extremely powerful, and one of them was the Beloved Call that returned me to life regardless of the matter of death.

However, Death could have used a certain loophole to deny my resurrection, as she could simply delay it until it was too late, and the machine of the loop seized my soul and was broken by the weight attached to it.

It was the reason that before I died, I had sent my intent into the souls, compelling Death to obey the rules of my Title; as much as this Title binds me, it also binds Death as well.

Still, Death had played a longer game, and the body she gave me was extremely weak; it had the core of an Arcanist, but the body of a mortal, reminding me of what I was before the loop began. Of course, my body was changing to fit my soul, but it would take time... time that I did not have.

I had barely blinked after my resurrection when the chains of blood binding the souls above pierced into my back, and I was crushed flat to my face. Without the power of my Death Titan’s physique, my real body could not carry the weight of all these souls.

I lay face down in the ash, and the weight of the dead pressed me into the earth like a nail being driven into a coffin. The chains of blood that had been freed from my Death Titan body had been reattached to my mortal form, and they were heavier than I remembered. By all the light in heaven, they were so heavy.

The souls above me, which had been reduced to twenty million, had wept and cried as I was reborn. They now screamed my fury into the heavens as they tried to be free.

But I could not move; the weight I had carried with the body of a hundred-foot giant had now been placed on a body that was barely six feet and mortal in every way that mattered, despite the fact that I was now an Arcanist. My bones cracked, my flesh split, and the souls around me shrieked as I struggled to find the strength to do anything.

∞

”You are awake, Beloved.” Death, and she was tired now, which I had not known she could be. ”You forced me. Your own Title, turned against me. Clever, and... painful. I did not think you had it in you to make me keep a promise.” A pause, and under the tiredness, there was that fondness that made my skin crawl, and under the fondness, the impossible weight of her will. ”But you are a boy under twenty million souls, and I am Death, and you cannot lift them, you cannot free them... you cannot even stand. So what was it for, my love? What did forcing me buy you, except a moment to feel how heavy I am?”

”It bought me a chance,” I gritted my teeth and whispered into the glass that the earth had become, since I could not raise my head to say it to the sky.

”That’s all I’ve ever needed. One chance, and the thing everyone forgets I can do.”

”Hmm, and what is that?”

”Lose,” I growled. ”And get back up anyway.”

∞

I got a hand under me, and I pushed. There were twenty million souls on my back, a mortal body, ash where my channels should be, and I pushed. At this moment, my body was connected to the earth, and my channels had finally gained that connection that I had been seeking for so long, and its completion that was still so distant began to draw near.

Strength began to pour into me in trickles, and I pushed, and the glass cracked under my palm, but I could not rise.

”Stop,” Death said; her voice was almost kind. ”You will break yourself. There is no shame in this. No one lifts me. Lie down, Beloved. Rest. Let the loop come, or let it break; it makes no difference now... either way you are mine at the end of it. You always were.”

And she was right... that is the truth of it. I could not lift them. A boy, even assisted by the strength from the earth, cannot carry twenty million souls and stand, and I was a boy; she had made sure of that. She returned me to exactly the frame that could not do this... and I pushed anyway.

I would never forget the words of my dad. It did not matter the size of the problem before you; what matters was how you faced that problem. Would it be on my face, grovelling in the dirt, or would I stand on my damned feet?

I got perhaps an inch off the glass, and my one arm shook, and I began to go back down.

Death cooed inside my ears, ”You cannot win.”

And the voice of the Moon Fox emerged from beside me, ”Bitch, he is not alone.”