Despite the torn up forest from the two giants wrestling, Jeb was able to identify the place from memory, his Nerve allowing him to precisely identify landmarks, even from a different angle.
Having learned his lesson about Fairies and their willingness to volunteer information, Jeb turned to Smartass, who was perched on his shoulder.
“Smartass, why does the World Tortoise always come back in the exact same spot?”
“The World Tortoise isn’t the biggest or strongest titan, but there’s a reason it’s never been killed. You remember the safe zone timer?”
“Yeah?” Jeb asked, his skin breaking out in goosebumps.
“Well, the timer isn’t arbitrary. That’s the amount of time it takes for the titan to create a Vitgheist.”
“A what?”
“A vitgheist?” Smartass said, peering at him quizzically. “A personal point in space time that the body and mind is restored to if it’s ever destroyed?”
“Like a save state?” Ron asked from over Jeb’s shoulder, the necromancer’s voice quavering.
“Yeah man, there you go. Whatever that is.” Smartass waved dismissively Anyway, there’s only a two week period of time in which the World Tortoise even can be killed.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that!?” Jeb demanded, glaring at the fairy a handful of inches away from his face.
“I couldn’t!” Smartass shouted back. “Everyone in the Tutorial is under a geas! You have to ask!”
“You little–!” Jess growled, tensing in Amanda’s grip.
“It’s not her fault!” Jeb interrupted before Jess could piss off their only source of information.
“When is the next two week period going to take place?” Jeb asked.
“A hundred and forty years, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Smartass said, giving Jeb a look that screamed ‘ask me why’.
“Why shouldn’t we get our hopes up?” Jeb asked.
Smartass sighed as if some invisible restriction had been lifted. “The wipe is coming in a couple weeks, so you should probably focus on enjoying the remaining time before you stop existing.”
In the distance, Felicia’s rhythmic pounding started to slow. They watched as the mountainous creature clutched its chest and staggered backwards, looking for all the world like a man suffering a massive heart attack.
The mountainous creature sank to its knees, the flames jetting out of its body diminishing as it slumped to the ground.
The World Tortoise shrugged Felicia off and placidly went back to grazing on trees, a living whirlpool of monsters swarming around it.
Nobody had any words for the dread creeping up their spines.
It couldn’t be killed. Not anymore.
Jeb recovered first.
“If we can’t win the Impossible tutorial, how do we escape?” He asked, changing tactics. In this situation survival and winning were synonymous. “Do we have some kind of trackers or I.D.s on us that they can use to ‘wipe’ us?”
“you can’t ‘escape’.” Smartass said. “We’re in a magic cage. The System pinched off a bit of the Death wilds and made it wrap in on itself.” Smartass said, spinning her fingers. “Go too far one direction and you’ll wind up right back where you started. It’s very big but it’s still a cage. There’s no access point either, nothing comes or goes, and at the end of the allotted time, everyone that isn’t supposed to be here gets unmade.”
Jeb’s skin went cold.
“Hold Ron,” he said, handing the ginger kid to the cluster of bodies, lowering them to the ground before taking off.
Jeb shot straight up at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, forming a large bubble of air trapped around himself, enough to last him a good half hour before he passed out.
He didn’t need nearly that much.
As he rose above the world, he paid close attention to the curvature of the planet.
It rapidly curved further and further as he pulled up, growing smaller and smaller as he rose literal miles above the planet.
There. Oh god.
Looking down at the rapidly shrinking marble beneath him, he could see the at the very edges, Felicia the Fire Titan, duplicated and stretched across the horizon, in more than one place at once.
Out of morbid curiosity, Jeb looked up, his lungs seizing as he spotted an identical marble of forest slowly growing above him.
Jeb screwed up his courage and went full steam ahead, watching the world above him grow and grow, its every detail an exact match for the one he just left.
It rapidly grew above him, until Jeb flipped himself upright, landing beside the rest of his party.
“You see anything?” Brett asked. Jeb glanced at him from the corner of his eye glancing up at the direction he’d come from. At some point the tiny planet he’d come from had faded from sight.
Was this Brett the same Brett as before, and Jeb just got turned around by twisted space, or was there some kind of parallel dimension fuckery going on?
Did it matter?
“Yeah, I saw that we’re screwed. The forest’s in some kind of bubble of twisted space.” Jeb said. “There’s no way out.”
“Fuck that. Fuck this! Jess shouted, glaring at all of them. “Are you telling me I’m going to die because that idiot Eddie was on a goddamn power trip? Why do I have to…” Her fists clenched, teeth digging into her lip until blood began to drip from the corner of her mouth.
“Should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” She said. “Maybe I wouldn’t be in this fucking…” She bit off her words, glared at Jeb for a moment before leaping away, sailing through the air with her Ability.
Jeb’s stomach sank as he scratched his head and sat down on a nearby log, idly wiggling his ill-fitting pegleg, contemplating death.
Not like it’s gonna make a huge difference anyway. Maybe if someone else makes a Blue
