MAGUS INFINITE

”Elric!” Aurora appeared at my side, and I slowly turned towards her, a broken smile on my face, but my smile vanished when I noticed that her tails had reduced from four to two.

When I was resisting the flames from the heavens, I knew that the chief reason I could last for so long was due to the intervention of the Moon Fox. I tried to speak, but no sound came out.

She had spent a lot of herself already just keeping me alive through the pillar, and I had been drinking her vitality through the bond the whole time I burned, without asking, without knowing, and she had let me, and there was very little of her left. I felt it, as if she was burning down to a coal.

Fear filled my heart, because what the Moon Fox was sacrificing was not something that the loop could necessarily fix. She was not like me, who could burn their soul to ash every time, and what she was losing here may never be returned... and this thought scared me to almost madness.

”No,” I growled, pushing past the unreasonable pressure to talk to her. ”No, Aurora. You’ve given enough. You’re almost out. Don’t...”

”We cheat every time.” Her voice was faint, but it reached into the core of my soul, because for the first time since she was born, the voice I heard did not belong to Mel, or Dara or the thousands of voices that she could copy... this voice was her own, Aurora had finally found her unique voice, and even though I could hear the strength in her words, I could not help but feel how much she had given me had cost her,.

I felt her vitality beginning to gather inside of her, being pulled into her center mass, and the moon that she always kept hidden appeared over her head, and it was slowly becoming full, when its usual appearance was always a crescent. In front of my eyes, one of her tails vanished, leaving her with her last tail, but she did not stop gathering her vitality.

”We cheat Elric, that means this time too.

Tears poured from my face because I understood what she was going to give to me. ”No, please, not you, anyone but you. You could die, Aurora.”

”I won’t, well, not quite. I’m cleverer than that... I’m cleverer than you, remember?”

There was that ghost of the old smugness in our link, but even that was fading. She must have sensed that I felt this, and she shook her head. ”I’ll go down, not out. I will be somewhere deep and dark where you’ll have to come and find me. And you will. You’re stubborn like that. You never let go of anything.”

She paused, and then, softer, the last of her vitality compacting into her core, ”Let me be the thing that gets you up one more time; that’s what I’m here.” She winked at me and raised her head, her lone tail flowing behind her like a cloud, ”I am Aurora, the great and powerful Moon Fox; I am here, and I am magnificent!”

I stopped arguing with the fox, because it would be an insult to her sacrifice. I must free these souls; she understood this, and was doing what was necessary.

”Then get me up,” I finally said. ”One more time.”

Aurora smiled and howled at the sky before pouring the last of herself down the bond.

∞

I cannot describe what she gave me, because it was not power, exactly, and it was not vitality, as I once thought. It was... her.

This was the accumulated self of a Moon Fox that had fought to survive inside the body of a demon, that had fought through a tribulation with me, and had followed a mad boy across a burning world, just to find the one solution that would change everything... without her I would be lost, and she was giving me that strength that had broken past every barrier.

The full moon over her head drifted towards me and settled over me, as Aurora collapsed.

∞

With a growl of resolve, I struggled to my feet.

It should not be possible, but I stood anyway; the flesh of a mortal boy should not be able to hold up the weight of all these souls, but the endurance of the earth was pouring into me from my channels, and the strength of the heavens above was pulling me up.

Even in her silence, I could sense Death’s disbelief, but there was no feeling of smugness in my heart. All I could see was the body of the fox in front of me, and I did not know where I found the strength to look away. I... I could not waste this gift on mourning.

I looked up in the sky to the souls hovering above; their numbers were so numerous that they painted the sky with the color of blood... and I finally understood what to do.

You see, I had spent a hundred deaths refusing to let go of things. My anger, my grief, my guilt. It was the reason I was so successful in this loop; by the heavens, I had made a whole apocalypse out of not letting go, and I could see a reason why Death had been attracted to me.

And the Moon Fox, a being of the heavens that was meant to roam all through the vastness of creation, had taught me the final lesson from giving herself to me... It was okay to let go.

Let go.

∞

I reached back, with both hands, and I took hold of the chains where they rooted into my soul, twenty million of them, and the pale beautiful hand of Death closed her hand over my own.

”They are MINE,” she said, and there was no longer any hint of fondness in her voice, just something incredibly cold. ”What comes to me does not leave, and will never leave. You cannot take from Death, boy. No one takes from Death.

”I’m not taking them,” I whispered, and I opened my hands.

∞

That was the trick that she never expected, because Death understands taking and hoarding and cannot, in her nature, understand the opposite. I had felt her enough that I was able to understand this truth.

If I had tried to pull, she would have stopped me, and she is the stronger party here, so I did what went against her nature, and I let go of the chains. I gave the souls bound to my soul the chance to see the heavens and the earth, even as I released my hold over them.

A soul without my hold was free, and Death cannot hoard what is not being kept. Twenty million chains fell off my back, and twenty million souls, held by no one, owned by no one, rose off a dead continent into an empty sky and scattered into the turning of the world.

Death screamed, and I did not just hear anger in her voice; there was something worse there; I could hear loss.

There was no feeling of jubilation in my heart, because I knew what it meant to lose. I silently let go of the Title of Death Consort. I had been doing this all wrong, and fighting with Death, when I should have been letting go.

I picked up the body of the fox and held her close to my heart. Her body was going cold, but I held her close to me, willing my warmth to enter her body.

”Was it worth it?” Death whispered, and her presence vanished.

The sky went white again, and I held the fox tighter, as white flames fell and erased me from existence.