Shadow Slave

1488 The First Plague

Sunny felt a headache approaching.

Something was very wrong here.

How could the Six Plagues exist?

The Great River was a time loop — just like Aletheia's Island had been, but also different.

On Aletheia's Island, time moved in a circle. A single day endlessly repeated itself, and a new cycle started each time that day ended. The Great River, however, was a bizarre place where time and space were one and the same — it flowed from the future into the past, and so, those who traveled it were also traveling across time.

The cycles of the Great River did not start once a certain period of time passed. They were both a measure of time and a measure of space — to reach a new revolution, a person had to travel all the way to the Estuary, which was also the Source, and cross the boundary between the past and the future.

Then, they would be sent to the point in time and space when they had first entered the Tomb of Ariel. So, if the Chain Breaker sailed past Verge and braved the Source, the members of the cohort would be sent to different places on the first day after they had entered the Nightmare.

Sunny would find himself on a piece of flotsam, Nephis would be stranded on the corpse of the Black Turtle, Cassie would return to Fallen Grace on the day the other sybil succumbed to the Defilement, and Jet and Effie would be back to living the harsh lives of the River Nomads.

Sunny shifted slightly.

Still, it did not explain how both the members of the cohort and the Six Plagues could exist at the same time. If their version from the previous cycle had braved the Source — on purpose or by accident, while searching for the entrance into the Estuary — they would have disappeared.

More than that, the Plagues had been rampaging across the Great River for decades, perhaps even centuries. How could that be?

'Well, why not? There's all kinds of weirdness happening with time in the Tomb of Ariel. Do I really want to doubt that something like that is possible?'

Especially now that Sunny knew about the Source — a misty place where the past and the future met, and where the meaning of time lost all reason — he could not be surprised by anything.

What would happen, for example, if someone entered the Source, but then turned back and left the way they had come instead of crossing the boundary of the future? What would happen if they left from a different point than where they had entered? What would happen if they stayed inside the Source for a while, allowing the current to move past them?

He did not know.

Sunny did know one thing, however.

The method of starting a new revolution might have been different from Aletheia's Island, but its effect would be the same.

Once someone returned to the past, their memory of the previous cycle would be erased. Their soul would be restored to how it had been before. No signs of them having traveled the Great River in the past would remain.

Which meant…

Sunny shivered.

'Not again, please!'

while waking up, on the first day in the

how many times have we challenged this

Plagues proved that there had been at least two cycles. But there could have been more. Ten cycles… a hundred cycles…

remembered the previous revolutions, nothing would change when a new one started. They would repeat the same actions over and over again,

became

his heart

'Wait…'

know how long it had taken,

Solace was stuck in his mind, and the loathsome sword wraith

the verge of realizing something extremely

'The Sin of Solace…'

haunted by the odious apparition, as

trapped in the

ability to remember the previous cycles of the

'D—damnation!'

Sunny's eyes widened.

even an earlier versions of himself… would have realized the cyclical nature of the Great River. And from that point forward, each cycle would have been

had become

must have tried to change things. He must have tried to conquer the Nightmare desperately… and in such a way that

Nephis survived till

for some reason, he

that mission had been doomed from

become aware of the grand loop

all… was knowledge. Terrible knowledge that corrupted the souls of those who possessed it. So, even if Sunny reached the Source and returned into the past after being infected by the Defilement,

or had he found the true Estuary and been driven insane by

first of the Six Plagues, and

In any case…

the previous cycle was corrupted by the Defilement, why is my soul free of

He flinched.

Wasn't the answer obvious?

the infection of

…Oblivion could.