From atop a deactivated train myself, Anika and Wukong all watched a lone spaceship enter Trannorri's atmosphere before flying down. Unaware of the various train tracks filling the atmosphere and ramming their spaceships right wing straight through a floating train track beginning to crash down onto the planet.
"Their pilot must not have a license." Anika tutted her tongue.
"That even matter?" Wukong asked while he was doing a handstand before flipping around onto his feet. "These guys are going to get the ass-kicking of a lifetime soon when they enter Sathuna's trap."
"They already have." Anika said with a cheeky grin. Getting up she walked along the train cars spine before reaching its edge. "I will head to my position now. Try not to to have too much fun you two and forget your purposes in Sathuna's script." Diving off the edge Anika vanished out of sight before a train rushed past catching her mid fall and taking her to another part of the planet.
"Does she think we're children?" Wukong complained.
"There's no maturity in either of us to prove the opposite frankly." I muttered.
"You're just insane. I on the other hand am just a fun guy. Hehehe~." The monkey man said with a casual shrug. "Oh this is going to be a fun day. It'll be just like storming through the jade palace. No restraints, no allies and all enemies. Oh what a fun memory that is to me."
"Just keep in mind Trannorri isn't as tough a world as Diqiu. Sure its an upper-silver grade world but if the two of us go all out it'll be dust in hours. Sathuna already gave us both a lecture this morning, remember?"
"So what? Once the attackers arrive we'll only have to hold them away from the ritual site for an hour anyway." Banging his staff down atop the train Wukong lifted himself up to sit atop it. "And who'd be watching some no name mortal on the
Nodding my head i had nothing to say. "Can't argue with you on that."
"Ooh! Sifo Ren is getting his repaired body back finally, no?" Remembering suddenly Wukong began to balance with one foot on his staff. "Haha! He'll finally be able to get out of that scrapheap armour the ronin forged for him as a backup. No doubt he's excited to be back at full strength on the eighth sequence."
Glancing down at me Wukong finally noticed how i was being extra quiet.
"Whats got you grumpier than usual?"
Tapping my chest above my hearts i moved about aether slightly where Thorn should be but i barely got any reaction from him. His presence had dramatically gotten weaker compared to last week in the bar with Anika. I doubt he would be able to managed another week before causality fully wiped him from existence.
"Is it the shadow parasite?" Wukong asked. Landing close to inspect me.
Removing my hand from my chest i nodded. "Thorn's gotten so weak all he can do is sleep. He's completely out of my head now and no longer influencing me like he has been lately. Fortunately the ritual isn't happening any later."
"Good thing you didn't take long to escape your madness." Wukong nudged before hanging himself over the train and looking down at the ground thousands of miles away. "Thorn is an annoying and arrogant little demon but he pulls his weight when it matters. I'll admit that he's not half bad. Almost reminds me of myself in my younger days." Wukong said proudly.
"If Thorn heard that he'd try to wring your neck." I said matter of factly.
Having a chill run up his monkey spine Wukong quickly backed away from me. "Without Thorn i really can't tell if your joking or not anymore, Strife."
Looking at the monkey man confused i wondered what part of my sentence made him think i was telling a joke. Thorn was too full of himself to ever think anyone could compare themselves to him. Not even Wukong whose pride matched his own.
Glancing away my focus turned on the distant explosion of the smoking spaceships crash landing right in the side of the mountain with hundreds of train rails going in and out of it. A small plume of fire rising into the sky a minute after the crash.
"Well, I'll go set the stage for the guest actors."
"Try not to break them too much at the start." Wukong reminded.
Falling off the side of the train my back-foot kicked off the train carriage before my whole body struck through the atmosphere and down into the mountain like a thunderbolt.
Landing amidst the crashed ship's wreckage fire was engulfing me but with a thin veil of psychic energy it could in no way burn my skin. Looking ahead through the wreck and flames i saw Ben Lake's and his crew accompanied by Arthur Moonleaf and the angry hostage he carried, Seer Qilin.
Looking back at me the three of them, the three prodigals and Clarity's keys to salvation, saw me stood amidst their ships wreckage. Ben and Arthur wearing mortified expressions turning around to quickly run away but were far too slow and mundane to do ever succeed.
[skill: horizon chain — nightmare feather]
"What have you done to them to make them so afraid of me, Sathuna?" Tapping my foot atop the burnt ground black chains wrapped in ribbons of feathers spread across reality rattling into existence. "What a fun scene this will make for your story."
Sprinting down the tunnel the group of seven mortals huffed and puffed running as fast as they could from the chains of feathers and darkness that pursued them.
Tripping on part of the train track the gunslinger of Ben Lakes crew, an oni named Dante, tried to pick himself up to run but was too slow as a chain stabbed into teh back of his neck and teh darkness swelled him.
"Dante!!!" Ben yelled, trying to turn around before the blue haired swordsman with a katana and broadsword on his waist grabbed him.
"He's done for! We need to go now!"
"But Dante! He—"
"He's already done for!" The witch yelled as she tried to pull out a talisman only for it to burn in her hands before she could use it. "Dammit! Whats he trying to-"
Stopping in their tracks the group of now six were forced to pause as they saw me sitting and waiting ahead of them at the train terminal. Chains hanging from every surface and even slithering through the air around me.
"Traveler?" Seer Qilin muttered from Arthur Moonleaf's shoulder triggering scared shivers in all of them.
Fiddling with an amber-silver glowing feather, twirling it between my fingers i lifted it up and said, "have fun nightmares everyone."
Remembering the black wave pursuing them they all trie dot begin running again only to be forcefully stopped as chains rammed into their napes and the darkness consumed them all.
"Lets have a look at your darkest thoughts shall we?"
Diving into the mental realm of all my victims i wondered who to pick. Simplifying the choice i turned their minds into a deck of seven cards before shuffling it. Tossing each card up into the air with the captive mind inside before randomly selecting one as i peeled it from the top of the deck.
"Oh. Arthur Moonleaf. You're my personal victim." As i said this six shadows dove into the other six cards to torment the others he brought with him.
Ripping the card in half with my teeth it replaced the darkness surrounding me with the location of a manor in the sunny countryside and a confused Arthur Moonleaf standing at its gate. Not liking this setting i changed it with a thought.
Immediately the manor burst into flames and the heads of dozens of people were impaled on the manor's fence.
"No!!!" Arthur Moonleaf yelled. "This... this is the future i unmade."
"You never undid anything. All you did was cheat history." I criticised like an echo of doubt, while Arthur was unaware of me stood right behind him. "Arthur Moonleaf, the regressor. The favourite being of time itself. Tell me, what was the first timeline you lived through like?"
The scenery changed and now Arthur was inside of a classroom of an academy. A second later he was being beaten up and bullied by other students while everyone laughed at him.
"What a sad long tale your life has been. In your first life you were a nobody. A backstage character in someone else's story you weren't even mentioned it. No knowledge of a future, no work in the past to lift you up. Just a naive fool letting time carry you along its current like a dead fish."
Changing again the scenery turned into the moment Arthur was about to die in his first life, before the regressions. On the world the [fail-safe dial empyrean] was stripping of metal to create a giant tree with while the kralscell's of memory and invention duelled before Arthur was shot through the chest with a bullet of energy.
Watching the scene freeze with the kralscell of memory's face frozen in dread, weeping over his dying body. Arthur wore a desperate expression, "how... how do you know about this?"
"We were there. Just like you we remember the past four timelines. The zeroth regression."
The scene unfroze but continued at a different angle, showing the kralscell of invention being shot at with an abyssal black arrow before it expanded into a terrifying black phoenix with silver blazes of destruction pouring out its feathers.
The location changed and now we were on a new world with a devil hoisting Arthur up in the air with a spear made of ice. "The first regressed life."
Wind blew past and now it showed Arthur being abandoned in a burning structure while a girl laughed at his plight before he died. "The second regression."
Clawing apart reality, the final vision appeared and it showed Sifo Ren kidnapping Lumine, the elf with pink hair, while Arthur was wounded with a stone going through his gut.
"Then there's the now. The third regression. How many more regressions will you go through before you find out the reward at the end of this endless journey of yours? Before finding out there's no escape from this torment until someone is finally bored of your suffering."
Freaking out Arthur's mind was already beginning to collapse and i had barely even started. "Who are you?!? Show yourself!? How do you know about my regressions?!"
"So curious are we? Fine, I'll tell you as a brief recess."
With a thunderous boom the location changed yet again and now Arthur was floating in the air before an inverted tower. Above him was a golden tree whose roots reached into the black void with neon feathers for leaves. Below him was a small part of a massive serpent whose body was made of black ink and frill's of silver ribbons wafted in the air like a broken horizon.
"I am a fellow immortal wanderer." My voice echoed against the inverted world tree's walls beginning to crack them. "My first title was [traveler on a journey], for my expeditions have no final destination. My second title was knight of maddened imagination, my logic was broken and my freedom is pure. My third title was [Concept's hollow pillar], the monster all never realised was within their sight. And my most famous title of the current eon is: [evil spirit of revelation], the villain who destroys galaxies with the truth of my existence."
Tearing in two the golden tree shattered apart revealing a glitched and broken universe outside of it that was far too much for any human mind to comprehend. Witnessing broken inversions of mirrors, assimilations of alien ideas, and severances of pure logic all being syringed straight into Arthur's mind.
Arthur's body was forced to spilt apart and stitch itself back together in the strangeness of this place. experiencing every maddening thought i had for a few seconds before I vault him out.
"—worthless! Die! You'd do better!—"
"—whats a frog to a frog? Whats a boat to a reef?—"
"—all that is shall be, but all that is uncertain can be undone—"
Glistening from a golden crack in the endless and broken world he saw, a gilded horizon opened before Arthur Moonleaf into a gargantuan silver-crimson eye. Brimming with madness and staring through the very atoms of his tiny existence.
"I am the kralscell of sentience, the apocalypse of all minds. And your playing with time has thoroughly bored me. Turning this universe into an endless repetition of meaningless actions with no consequences."
Shuddering in fear Arthur Moonleaf went into a cold sweat. Pissing himself as his mind struggled to understand what was what anymore before the scenery suddenly turned into something far too simple. A plain meadow of red grass.
With wobbly steps Arthur turned around seeing Ben Lakes and Seer Qilin staring at him in disgust.
"It surprises me that you're a child of prophecy like them." I said using Ben's mouth. "Without your regressive ability to go back in time upon death rewinding universal existence you're just... so plain."
"Your first life proves how useless you are without your [aspect's] power." I said using Seer's mouth now. "Unlike you, these two have real talent. Real characters. They have strange [aspect's] just like you capable of incredible power but they are powerful without them."
With a snapping sound glass shattered across the meadow and every person Arthur cared for appeared. Shouting curses at him with their own voices at my command.
"What real talent do you have?!"
"If you didn't know the future would you have any worth?"
"You've lived your fourth life now and still you achieved nothing!"
"Why were you ever chosen as a child of prophecy if your this pathetic?!"
"How are you any better than than a backstreet swindler!!"
"Why should you be happy if you can succeed in nothing even with this power!"
Ceasing the shouts of anger, disappointment, disapproval. I walked through the crowd of mental creations staring down at Arthur who was huddled into a ball crying to himself. Already broken. Already fragmented in will and reason as he wept atop the grass.
The shouting had been completely replaced by Arthur's tears.
Grabbing the crying man by the hair i lifted him up and stared right through him in an eldritch form of black ink and blades. "Your future self was far more impressive than this... feeble thing. Tearing you down to build the version of you i know was the right choice it would seem. Even if the future you does kill my younger self once or twice."
Plunging my arm through Arthur's chest he choked and coughed blood as my hand went through his spine clutching his heart. Barely resisting as depression and darkness gnawed away at his sense of self.
"Looks like i went too far in my excitement." I shrugged. "Try to be an actually useful protagonist from now on, little human."
[skill: horizon chain - nightmare end!]
Ripping my arm out Arthur's chest blood sprayed everywhere in the illusion then in the moment after he awoke on the cold floor of a train terminal. Groaning in pain before lifting himself up and seeing no one else was nearby him anymore in the train terminal. Arthur clutched his head trying to understand what was going on as a dreadful metal rattling went through his head.
[skill: horizon chain — partial memory wipe.]
"Can't have you break this soon, prodigal of fate." Hiding away in the shadows i made a cutting motion with my fingers, now holding the last minute of mental torture i did to Arthur before he was completely broken like it was a film reel. "You still have more suffering to experience but not by my hand."
Tossing the film reel of memories away it vanished into the wind before i departed in a silent bolt of lightning.