She held the hard black material in her hand while her mind reeled from the evening.
It had been her reward for clearing 9F, but the reward felt hollow. They’d drunk potions to top themselves back off, but Judah had been too shaken to keep going. It hadn’t taken Frederica long to convince Dawson to sub back in for the rest of the day.
Dawson’s poison had worked well against the lower number of wolves, while Penelope had focused on the snakes with Oakley.
They’d cleared the four squares and then moved on to 9J. The fights had gone a little better, but it was still after midnight before they called it.
Penelope leaned forward as she pulled her dirty red hair out of the scrap of one of the Demon’s robes that she’d started using to tie up her hair after her rubber band had snapped for a second time.
She sighed as she sank back against the barrier.
“You know, you could take a bath.” Jeru wrinkled his nose. “I can’t smell, and even I can tell you stink!”
Penelope shook her head.Not with this pervert waiting to sneak a...
“I heard that!” The blue Elf slid in front of her. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen you—” He bit off the rest of the sentence.
Her eyes widened. “You little—!” She couldn’t find the words to finish. “Just how many times have you spied on me!”
Jeru vanished. “Nate was in the loop for five-hundred-twenty-eight years!” His mental shrug ran through her. “You think I kept count?”
Penelope was still wearing her red robe, but she felt very naked. The parasite in her head had seen her doing things that she couldn’t remember. Things that this version of her had never done. She touched a finger to her lips as she thought about the kiss. It had felt so familiar, yet…
“It’s the echo.” Jeru appeared in front of her again with his hands up. “For the record, it doesn’t matter if I close my eyes. I can’t stop seeing.” He peeked around his fingers. “I did learn how to focus on a different area than where the Looper is looking a few hundred years ago, but even then, when the Looper is emotionally wrapped up in what they are doing, their focus becomes everything, and I—”
“It’s fine!” Penelope glanced over at the camp to see if anyone had reacted to her outburst. She was back at 6A, and the others were between 7E and 7F, so there was almost a half of a mile in between them. From what she could see, no one was looking in her direction, but that did little to calm her rattled nerves.
Penelope let out a deep breath. “What do you mean an echo?”
“The way the loop works is there is an anchor on one end.” Jeru drew a line with his fingers, holding them up like goal posts. “When time resets, the person holding plot armor..." He arched his right finger over the line back to the left. “Has their soul pulled back and everything new gets added on?" He rubbed his chin. “Kind of like a scoop of ice cream.” He twirled his right finger around the pointed left one. “But in order to make sure all of you come back, you bring along a little of what’s around you. The farther the people next to you are from your starting place when you reset, the less of their fragmented parts are able to come back.”
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He shrugged. “So instead of memories, most of them will get feelings and emotions.” He held up his hand. “Anne tried to party with the eight people around her, and the best that she was able to bring back was fragments of memories, like a dream you’ve forgotten. Because…” He shook his head. “We aren’t adding to a new save every time. We’re throwing what’s been learned on this one back on the original.”
Jeru poked her in the chest. “So you can’t build memories because all anyone gets is one shot.”
“Why—”
“I’m bending the laws of time and space, and you think I wouldn’t have made an ARMY of loopers if I could have!?” Jeru shook his head. “The math gets too tangled, and the spell breaks apart. Maybe my father could have managed more than one, but even if I had all of the New Elders, I don’t know if it would be possible to make more than one Looper.”
“Oh.” It was the only word that could form in Penelope’s mind. “So that’s why..." She tried to remember the name that Jeru had just leaked.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t remember anything.” Jeru shook his head. “He knew giving you the card would erase the two of you completely, but hey—” The blue Elf shrugged. “The two of you had almost four hundred years together. That’s more than most soulbonded Elves.”
“Four hundred years that only you remember.” Penelope scowled.
“There are over fifteen hundred years that only I remember.” He shrugged. “It all ended with the person I was attached to dying.” Jeru looked away. “Trust me, this is not as easy as I thought it’d be when I set it all up.” He closed his eyes as he turned back at her. “The first few times I was able to make modifications, but I ran out of the power to do that over a millennium ago.” He opened his eyes. “So now, this is what we’ve got.”
Penelope yawned and looked at her watch. It was almost two in the morning, but that just meant that her five hours of sleep would put her close to when everyone else was getting up. Still, they’d been too tired to try 10J, even though they’d planned to.
“How much harder is the tenth column?” She looked north, then back at her encyclopedia parasite. “We have seventeen squares left, and if we can’t beat them all before time runs out..." She sighed. “I really don’t want to have to reset.”
Jeru snorted. “You’ve got thousands of resets left.” He held up his hand. “But I get it.” The blue Elf thought for a moment. “Honestly, you’ve got a good chance. The last column is more straightforward, but both monsters have
Penelope shook her head. “I know I said we could just let the time run out and fight the boss over the whole floor.”
“Not a good idea.” Jeru interrupted. “Every time that’s been tried, people come down from outside and they aren’t geared to fight a level two monster, let alone level ten bosses.”
Penelope began to imagine the scene of Oakley’s team in 2E, but magnified by ten. She shuddered as she pushed the image out of her mind. “So what you’re saying is, we have enough time to fight hard tomorrow, get a little rest, then start fighting the bosses that no one is prepared for?”
“Which means you need to get as much sleep as you can.” Jeru pointed at the soft, hide rug that Judah had brought over for her to sleep on. “We both know that you’re going to be able to stay up as long as you keep thinking about things.”
Penelope closed her eyes. There was too much to think about. Too many things that still needed to be done. She was cutting it so close, which had her wondering if she shouldn’t just reset things and try to fix some of the mistakes that had been made along the way while also trying to buy more time.
“Don’t reset too much.” Jeru warned as he pulled her out of her thoughts. “You’ve already seen some of the distrustful glances that have been thrown your way. If you start getting too familiar with how things work, then you’ll spend more time fighting the other people than you will against the Demons.” He clicked his tongue. “And it’s really hard to unlearn how to do things.” His eyes narrowed. “Like your accuracy.”
Penelope thought about arguing, but she knew that her need to do things the best she could would make it even more obvious that she was faking, which she knew would only draw more attention to herself.
“Fine.” She rolled one of the spare robes up and used it as a pillow. She hated how the option to redo the Dungeon felt more like a punishment than a way to make things better, but it was the world she was living in now. Penelope closed her eyes and tried not to think about just how different life on the surface was.
She chuckled as a random thought ran through her head again.
“I guess I’m not in Ar-kansas anymore.”
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