Revenant Day Six
Margarita woke up groggy. She blinked her eyes open, wondering precisely what happened to her; she was in the room at the inn, but… oh!
She sat up abruptly, which caused the other occupant in the room to sit up and away from her in order not to be hit. "It's okay, Margarita. Don't worry; you're safe right now."
Margarita turned to find that none other than the Mage Consul Lillet Blan, her best friend from her time at school and a young woman who… she had effectively betrayed, and claimed had forgiven her for it. Being alone with her made Margarita bite her lip. The other time that she could remember telling Lillet who she really was there was still the job to do. Lillet had been understanding but… there was unaired laundry here, and Lillet was effectively law enforcement for the sorts of things that Margarita had been running around doing.
"Are you alright?" Lillet asked, as the silence had extended for just a hint too long.
"Oh! Oh, yes. I think I'm alright," Margarita said, moving all of her limbs to make sure that she wasn't lying about that. She wasn't, but that left her with not all that much in her head to talk about.
"That's not what I meant," Lillet said, shaking her head, "even if I'm happy to hear that you're physically all right, there are other things that I'm a little more worried about right now." She paused, looking at her, as if she was trying to will her to understand something that she just wasn't getting. Lillet continued, "How are you holding up… mentally. Perhaps even spiritually."
Ah. "I'm…" Margarita trailed off. How was she? She had been so obsessed over the past week about the minutae of schedules and making sure certain people did or even didn't do certain things at certain times in order to set up… what had just happened — she looked out the window to find the barest wisps of light coming from the eastern horizon — yesterday. "Exhausted." The word came from her lips before she really understood it, but it was the truest thing she had said in a very long time. "How long have I been out?"
"From late afternoon yesterday to what appears to be sunrise this morning," Lillet said. "Some fifteen or so hours all told? I'm not sure. You probably needed it, having used that dagger. Twice, according to Miss Foster."
"…Yes."
"That was quite the risk you took."
"I didn't have a choice," Margarita said, looking down at her hands playing with the hem of the sheet. "There were two devils, and much as I would have liked to take a page out of your book and trick them, I couldn't think of anything. I… I've been much better at the 'force' argument since I left the Tower, so that was the best solution I came up with."
"I'm not saying that it was the wrong option, per se," Lillet said, "but I do think that it might have been a good idea to spread the risk around a bit? You did have access to all of us yesterday. Given the stakes that you explained, I hardly think any of us would have objected."
"I felt just lucky enough that you all believed me," Margarita muttered. "I didn't want to press my luck; it took me several… erm… cycles… to figure out that there were two devils myself. I kept thinking that…" she trailed off, noting that Lillet's soft smile had gotten significantly wider. "What?"
"There are a few things that I think you should know but I'll start with this: You just confirmed to me with your wording there that you are in, shall we say, a similar situation to one that I have been in in the past. True?"
"…Yes."
"Good, then I have more for you. First, of course we believed you. You certainly remember how harrowing it was to be in the Silver Star Tower during the events that Grimlet and Calvaros were orchestrating, yes?"
Margarita would have remembered those events even if she hadn't been the form through which Calvaros's followers were affecting the proceedings. "Yes, of course."
"It was just as hard on all of us, and we were all equally victims of a battle that had begun long before any of us had gotten there," Lillet said. "I can only speak for me, and my personal experience of the event was… unique… but I believed we five forged a bond then. One that hasn't broken even with all of us scattered to the four winds. With four of the five of us happening to end up here at the same time during a crisis… why wouldn't we trust each other more than anyone or anything else? There wasn't any need for you to think that there was a possibility that we wouldn't believe you. You wouldn't do that to us, and we know it."
"But I did do that to you!" Margarita snapped. She bit her lip again and took a breath to steady herself. "Of all of us, I am the least trustworthy. Bartido's made something of himself with all of that ambassador stuff. I'm kind of proud of him for pulling that off. Hiram is a prince, and clearly only deceived anyone for safety reasons. You… you saved us all, when you didn't have to, and some of us didn't even deserve your mercy. I'm the one who's running about the countryside—"
"Margarita Surprise."
Margarita stopped mid-sentence. Despite the fact that it had been quite a few years since she had been last taken to task with her Sunday name by her mother, Lillet had managed to put all of that censure into her tone and Margarita reacted with the same conditioning that she had when she had been a tiny child. Lillet gave her a look before she said, "You're my best friend. Why wouldn't I believe you when you go to all this work to make sure I understand how serious you are about it?"
"…I thought Amoretta was your best friend."
"Amoretta is my lover," Lillet replied, giggling a little. "That's hardly the same thing as my best friend. Did you know that I keep track of the rumors as to where you are? To think that some of them were wrong enough to have you out of the country at the moment. I probably should have known better than to take that one into account, but it's difficult, not having news of your friends. I imagine that you know that pain yourself, considering the situation that you so often have put yourself in." She paused, still looking at Margarita with that soft smile. "We miss you, even if we understand."
Margarita blinked. Why was it hard to see? "But… I…" She was only able to summon a tiny bit of her voice. "I'm your best friend?"
"Of course. Ever since we met on my first day. It never changed."
"I don't deserve it," Margarita said. Lillet opened her mouth to respond but the words were tumbling out of Margarita's mouth, and it was too late for her to stop them. "Our relationship began with me lying to you that night, and somehow, even when you knew that I was not who I seemed, you still forgave me. And since I left the Tower, I've become a murderer! I kill people, Lillet. You know that, since you said that you've been keeping tabs on me. That's what I do. It doesn't matter that my conscience rags on me whenever I have quiet times alone on the road, or that I believe it's worth condemning my own soul to Hell in order to make sure that the followers of Calvaros never have the ability to rise again. I kill people. It's what I do." She couldn't see, and one of her hands was suddenly hit with a droplet from her face. She quickly wiped her eyes with her hands, but it didn't really do much. "That's not the sort of person who would be the proper best friend of the prodigy Mage Consul who saved more lives than were deserved to be saved."
"Margarita, you're fighting a war with an army of one," Lillet said, reaching over with her handkerchief to wipe her face, like a mother to a child despite their ages. "While my position as the Mage Consul likely can't forever turn a blind eye to what you are doing, there's an argument that you're actually doing me a favor. I am well aware that there are followers of the Archmage who have done heinous things, and they need to be tried and punished for their crimes. I was also relatively sure — though meeting Amy Foster and talking with her for a bit yesterday evening confirmed this — that there were others like you, who had been forced into their positions, and likely deserved at minimum a lesser sentence than their peers. That's a lot of work on something that I really can't handle right now because my duties keep getting caught up in politics and other events at the capital. Unless there's something that happens nearby that would affect the capital itself, there's little I can do.
"Do I wish that you didn't kill your targets? Yes, but not really because I don't think they deserve it — I'm well aware that after trial a good portion of your targets would be burned at the stake. I wish that you didn't kill them because it's not a burden I want placed on you. I'm also aware that as one person, you hardly have the resources to hold and transport any prisoners to send to me for processing, even if I had the time to do it myself. Vigilante justice may not be something that the kingdom or I in my position want to encourage, but that doesn't mean that it is 100% bad. You're well aware of the ways that it is not good, so I won't go into those; you're probably beating yourself up over them too much anyway."
Margarita said nothing.
"We can talk more later, though. I do want a promise out of you that you won't disappear from Sallah without talking to me, okay?"
Margarita shrugged. "If you need to arrest me, I under—"
"I do not. A lot of what we're talking about are secrets only really known to those of us who were at the Silver Star Tower. When you're all done, tell me you're done and we'll figure out what to do from there, but… I think your cause is noble, despite everything. Please remember that. But that's not even the most important thing for you right now; just something I needed to make sure I didn't forget."
Margarita finally looked back up at Lillet. The Mage Consul's soft smile was still there. "What's the most important thing?"
"You need to break the loop. Do you have any ideas on how to do that?"
Margarita blinked. "Only a couple, but…"
"How much time do you have?"
"I have most of the rest of the day."
"Then you're going to need to use it," Lillet said decisively, rising. "You should eat something, and then you need to get a move on. I'm not sure that your soul can handle too many more uses of that bone dagger, if that's your best solution to your plight. It also seems like this is your good ending." She leaned in to hug Margarita and whispered, "Seize it." She stood up. "If you need me, I'll be in the Magistrate's office if I'm not at Astoria's or the inn. I have a bit that I need to discuss with him, for any further magical complications that come up."
Margarita blinked again. Then she nodded. Lillet was right. Lillet was always right; Margarita should have really remembered that.
The first thing that Margarita had to check was the theory… that her problem had something to do with whatever Ribbon had been making. It was clearly Alchemy in nature, so Margarita's mind immediately went to a particular expert in Alchemy she could talk to about it.
When Margarita approached him, Bartido looked up and smiled. "And what does the heroine of the hour wish with little old me?"
"I have an Alchemy question for you," Margarita said, sitting down at the table with him.
"Oh, there I am extremely happy to help," Bartido said. "But it certainly seemed like you had everything but the expert parts down pat. I was quite impressed with the range of magic that you showed. I'm pretty sure the only mage in the country who can hold a candle to your abilities is Lillet, but she doesn't count."
Margarita couldn't help but smile at that. No, Lillet didn't count, but then again, neither did she. "No, this is about something specific, and very likely way advanced. Probably more advanced than Lillet ever went into Alchemy, for that matter."
"Ah, well then I am all ears," Bartido said. "It's been a while since I've been able to talk shop with anyone but Lillet, and she doesn't have all that much time for me between our duties. So! What is this Alchemy question that you have?"
"What Alchemy ritual or experiment requires thirteen distinct parts?"
Bartido blinked. "Oh. That… oh. Only one of a couple things, really."
"Do you have some time? I'd like to show you a… schematic, I think you would call it."
"…Now I am more than just happy to help, I'm downright compelled to," Bartido said as he rose from the table. "Lead the way."
Margarita lead him to the house that the previous day's battle had taken place around, and it showed. While the house was actually in decent shape, all of the ground around it that wasn't the brick pathway was ripped up with many divets of dirt and clumps of grass just laying haphazardly, where it wasn't just burnt away to hard clay beneath. As they stepped gingerly through the wreckage, Bartido commented, "Amazing that there isn't more damage, really. That's another thing that I remember from Lillet's battles at the Tower: there was never as much damage to the Tower as I had been expecting. Seems like the same sort of thing happened again here."
Margarita shrugged. "Maybe." She didn't really care; other than the poster that she was hoping was still there, she didn't really care if the rest of it was taken back to Hell with the devils.
Margarita lead Bartido over to the entrance to the basement, and they walked in with Bartido providing light from a small contraption in his hand that he held aloft as they descended. The place was just as Margarita remembered it when she had snuck in just a few days prior. Most importantly, the large poster was still on the wall and appeared to not be particularly damaged. Margarita pointed at it, which caused Bartido to hold his light higher and approach the workbench that was in front of it in order to get a better look, until suddenly he stopped cold, blinking up at the plan. "What is it?" Margarita asked.
"Something we can't leave here, for sure," Bartido said, putting the light down on the table and climbing up on it himself to rip it down. Margarita rocked back, shocked at the reaction. What could it possibly be in order to get Bartido to react like that? Thankfully, he was willing to answer her unvoiced question as he carefully detached the thing from the wall. "This is not something I really want to talk about right here, but suffice to say I'm pretty sure I know what this is, and what we need to do with it."
"What do we need to do, then?"
"We need to either destroy this, or give it to Hiram so that he can give it to the Headmaster for safekeeping, ideally without Opalneria knowing that it exists."
Well, that wasn't ominous at all. "But you know what it is."
"I'm about 99% sure, which is 99% more than I'd like to be."
That's it. "I swear, Bartido, if you say something vaguely ominous one more time I'm going to have to thump you."
Bartido looked back and gave her a shaky smile. "Sorry."
Dammit, that was worse.
Margarita took the light contraption — apparently it functioned like a conveniently portable lamp that Bartido could keep in his pocket — while Bartido folded the plans into something that he could transport without too much suspicion as to what he was holding. They left quickly and returned to the inn, where Bartido quickly pulled Hiram aside and pulled both of them into Bartido's room. He shut the door and locked it behind them. Margarita went over to the chair and sat down, folding her arms on her chest. "This had better be good."
"Those were clearly plans for the Philosopher's Stone," Bartido stated flatly. "It's the only thing currently worth making that has thirteen distinct parts. It's not all Alchemy, but the way that it is put together absolutely is."
Margarita cursed.
"My God…" Hiram breathed. "No wonder you want to keep this under wraps."
"Where were we for that? Who was making that?" Bartido pressed Margarita.
"Who else?" Margarita answered. "Pabst Ribbon, the former servant of the Archmage that I originally came here for. That was his lab." Her mind was going a mile a minute. Sure there was always a chance that one of the former servants of the Archmage would try to resurrect the Philosopher's Stone the instant that they knew that it had been destroyed. But how did Ribbon have the plans? No, she could think about that later. There was something far more pressing about it that she hadn't quite put her finger on. "So the items that were crossed off, they were still necessary, right?"
"Yes," Bartido said. "Unfortunately it looked to me like he had succeeded in making two of the materia."
"So, what are these materia?" Hiram asked.
"Well, the thirteen materia, or materials, used to make the Philosopher's Stone are referred to by their ancient names: the Tredecim Materia. The two that were crossed off the list on the plans that we found were the Lux Materia and the Tempus Materia."
Margarita's eyes widened. She was pretty sure what Lux Materia referred to, but she was absolutely one hundred percent sure about what the "Tempus Materia" meant. "Tell me more about the Tempus Materia. What is it, what does it look like, that sort of thing."
"Are you going to go find the materia that he had succeeded in making?" Bartido asked. "The materia are pretty dangerous artifacts if they're created and not stored properly. I mean, we all here know about what the full Stone could accidentally do without anyone having it try, and that was stored successfully enough for us to all have no idea it was there until Lillet figured out what was going on with her. You just killed two devils and you want to go after something that is far more unstable than the Stone that caused Lillet to loop through time?"
"I have my reasons," Margarita said. "And it would be worse if we just left them here if they are stored improperly. At minimum, I want to make sure that Astoria knows where they all are, so that someone who knows her way around a Grimoire might be able to fix anything that went horrendously wrong."
Hiram nodded along. "I agree. Should we split up and figure this out?"
Margarita shook her head. "No; I got this. I just need to know what I was looking for. All I knew about what Ribbon was doing was that it wasn't going to be good for anyone but himself. While I didn't expect it to be on this scale, perhaps I should have. In the end, I'm not sure that it matters what he was up to; I just need to make sure that it's all clean before I move on."
Bartido's face clearly portrayed how much he thought that the idea stunk. "I think that while we need to keep the level of knowledge low, there's no reason why the two of us can't help you—"
"Both of you need to get on your way as soon as the blockade lifts, which Lillet is working on," Margarita said. "I don't have anywhere pressing that I have to be for some time, so I can make sure to have this fully taken care of before none of us are here to control the blast radius."
Bartido sighed. "You're not wrong about that; that doesn't mean that I like the concept of you running into one of the Materia and not having any backup for it."
"I'll have backup," Margarita said with her best smile. "I'll have Lillet."
Hiram snorted, and even Bartido smiled. "She certainly is the backup of choice. Fine, fine. But come to us if you need us?"
"Of course I will," Margarita said. "I already came to you all about yesterday."
"True," Bartido admitted. "Well here's what you need to know about the Tempus Materia…"
Once Margarita had collected what she needed to know from Bartido (and been admonished at least a few more times to make sure she came for help if she needed it when trying to locate or do something with any of the materia that she found), she headed across the street to Astoria's shop. She hoped that she would find all three of the women who she had been interacting with all week there, as that would save her some time… but she found that her heart perhaps wanted to make sure that the three of them were safe more than her head wanted to talk about what she needed to find out. Either way, it was obvious what her next move was.
When Margarita entered Astoria's shop, all three of the women inside turned to look at her, and all three smiled. "Welcome back, Miss Surprise," Astoria said. "Our Mage Consul told us more about your story."
"I see," Margarita said, blushing a little. "I…"
Amy cut her off by running across the shop and throwing her arms around Margarita. She stumbled backward a step, blinking in surprise. "Thank you," Amy said, squeezing. "Thank you so much."
Margarita hesitated a moment, but a powerful rush of emotion flowed through her: how many times, during her trials before and while at the Silver Star Tower, did she wish and dream for someone to do what she had just done for Amy? She put her arms around the other woman and merely said, "You're welcome." She felt like she was going to cry again, but didn't mind as much this time. These were the sorts of tears that made things better, not worse. "I'm glad that you're okay."
"And I'm glad that you are," Amy said. "That wasn't really an easy thing that you did."
"No, but it was worth it. Honestly the biggest thing that I lost is that I can't use the Gertrude Silvaner look and name anymore. I'll need to come up with something else." Astoria looked like she wanted to ask about that, but Margarita shook her head. "Before I get into why I'm here… how is Cavan doing?"
"He's still resting at the church," Amy said. "The priests say that he's going to need a lot of rest and food to recover from the ordeal to his body. But also that he's going to make a full recovery."
"We were also able to get an Elf to heal him," Sammy said. "I don't think the priests were happy with us about that though."
"I imagine when the healing took, they just pretended it didn't happen," Margarita said. Then she sighed. "I wish I could talk more about happy things like that, but I have one more thing I have to do before I can actually relax."
"After killing two devils, there's something else that you have to do?" Sammy asked. "Wow, you're busy."
"Given everything that has happened, what else could possibly need to be done?" Astoria mused.
"This one is… mostly personal, but it might involve something that Ribbon did."
Amy pulled away just enough to look at Margarita's face. "What do you mean?"
"Something… weird is happening to me right now, and it might have something to do with what he was doing," Margarita said.
Amy frowned. "Well, I can bring you to where he did it—"
Margarita shook her head. "I know where that is." There was no need for her to mention that she had seen Amy there; she wasn't about to embarrass the other woman with things that she probably was still fully processing for the first time. "I need to know where he put his successes."
"His successes?" Astoria asked. "What had he succeeded at?"
"I don't know," Amy said. "I know that he managed to create a couple things, but he didn't tell me too much about them and I wasn't about to ask. I tried to stay as… quiet and unobtrusive as possible when I was with him, so that he might forget…" she trailed off.
"It's not all that relevant what he made," Margarita said. That wasn't quite true, but it would have been way too distracting to explain. "Do you know anything about where he stored the things that he had completed that he couldn't keep with him in the lab?"
Amy thought for a moment. "Maybe. There was one time that he handed me something that he told me to hide, but he asked for that back a long time ago…"
"Where did you put it, when you were hiding it for him?" Margarita asked.
"Oh, I just hid it in a drawer in my room," Amy said. "I'm only there when I sleep, and then after that barely long enough to dress again to head out to do things."
"I think you'll be getting a lot more rest and sleep in the coming days," Astoria said with a hint of bitterness that Margarita detected. She wasn't sure whether the other two young women had detected it, but they were ignoring it in front of the guest at least.
"Hmm…" Margarita tapped her chin. "What was the thing that he had you hide?"
Amy shrugged. "It was a small sphere, but I never actually looked directly at it; it was wrapped in a bunch of cloth. It was weird though, since it seemed to manage to produce light through the cloth. I always remember that clearly. But again, he took that back from me weeks ago, and I'm not sure where he would have put it."
"Okay," Margarita said, thinking. Amy didn't know as much as she would have liked, so it was looking more and more like Margarita was going to have to figure this out from more… physical evidence. But there was one last question that she could think of that might send her in the right direction. "Do you know what places he liked to frequent other than his house and the lab?"
Amy looked skyward in thought. "I mean, I know that he liked to go into the woods on walks from time to time, but that's all I'm really thinking of right now."
"I know a place."
All eyes turned to Sammy. Margarita smiled at her. There was certainly no reason to discount information just because it came from an unexpected place. That was something she had had to learn the hard way and had no interest in being taught again. "Could you tell me, then?"
"I think it might be better if I showed you," Sammy said. "Just the two of us," she added, as both Amy and Astoria moved to speak. Amy stopped, blinking, but Astoria smiled and merely nodded.
"Alright," Margarita said. She wasn't sure what that was all about, but she would take the clues where she could get them. "Lead the way."
Sammy and Margarita left the shop, but Margarita glanced back to see Astoria and Amy discussing something closely and quietly. Perhaps she'd come back to see what that was about… but probably not. Amy had a lot of healing to do, and that wasn't what Margarita was good at anyway.
Sammy lead the two of them across the street to her garden, which given all that had happened was actually in okay shape, but Sammy pointed through one of the smaller gaps between the buildings on the other side of the main road from there. "It was only twice, but I saw him go through there one evening when I… wasn't supposed to be out here."
Margarita looked at the space that Sammy was indicating. It was so small that she wasn't sure a Demon would fit through it without causing some damage to the shop on one side and the stable on the other. "Is the timing the reason you wanted to do this without Amy and Ms. Waldorf?"
"No," Sammy said, shaking her head. "I did want to say something to you while neither of them could hear me, though."
"Alright," Margarita said. She wasn't sure what this was going to be about, but it didn't feel like Sammy was as hostile as she used to be, so there probably wasn't going to be any danger in letting the girl say her piece.
"It's actually a question," Sammy said after a pause. "Were— were you the one who sent those familiars to me when the Beast was out that one night?"
Of all the things that Margarita thought that this was going to be about, that wasn't one of the ones she had thought of. "Yes," she answered simply.
"Why?"
That was a good question from Sammy's point of view. While Margarita had had to be very specific about the things that she did and didn't do in the lead up to the battles of the previous two days, some of the things that she had done didn't make all that much sense from the outside. Sammy — if Margarita had her guess right — was probably thinking about the hostility that she tended to show to outsiders, and had shown quite well to Margarita when she had shown up in Astoria's shop before then. Given that hostility, it made even less sense for Margarita to then go and save her life specifically. And Margarita's true reason for saving Sammy's life specifically wasn't one that she wanted to noise around too much.
But it then struck Margarita: even if there was no reason for Margarita to specifically save Sammy, there was definitely a reason for Margarita to save someone randomly in the line of fire. She didn't relish having to twist the truth a bit for this answer, but having to explain the looping time was… well, they had kept it secret on Lillet's request last time, and now she certainly saw why she had asked.
"I was trying to distract the Beast from his victims that night," Margarita said, after a moment of gathering words for her intended answer. "You — among many others — didn't deserve to die. And as it turns out, I imagine it was best for Cavan not to have killed you."
Sammy winced, but nodded. "Okay. Um… thank you for that. I'm in your debt."
"Don't worry about it," Margarita said. "We're fine. Besides, I'm not going to be around for all that long now that my task is done. Before you know it, I'll be out of your hair and you won't have to worry about me anymore."
Sammy made a face that Margarita was having trouble reading, and said, "I guess, but…" Then she shrugged. "Fine, if that's your wish."
Margarita blinked, a bit confused at that remark. But if Sammy was satisfied for the moment, so was she. "Thank you, Sammy. I now have something I need to check out."
"Good luck, then," Sammy told her, and then she turned around and headed back to Astoria's shop, not even looking back. That was probably good anyway.
Margarita carefully inserted herself into the small alley, her eyes and ears ready for whatever she might see and hear. If she thought about it, the alley wasn't like any of the others that she had checked out for that night that she had saved Sammy. Rather, she wasn't sure why it existed at all. The shop on one side was for horse-related items, and the stable on the other was where that shop did its demonstrations and even measured your horse in order to make sure that they were selling you an item that you would be able to use. Why weren't they connected? Hell, why weren't they just the same building?
It turned out that the alley turned a hard right after it got behind the stable, though still buttressed up against a building that Margarita didn't recognize on the other side. After that was a left and a right in quick succession, and then it went for quite a while before Margarita noticed that she had been slowly sloping down, and she reached a door underneath the overhang of some other building's balcony. Had this alley been built this way specifically to allow for the hiding of this door? That's… odd. There was no reason that Margarita could think of for a town like this to have something like that. Cities like the capital, sure. Any place that could be called a city, for that matter. But this was a small town that grew up around a crossroad. There were hardly a thousand souls within several miles of where she was standing, and that hardly made enough people that alleys like this were required to hide something.
Margarita realized that it didn't really matter. All that mattered, for the moment, was what she had come to that door for. She steeled herself and prepared to draw at the slightest provocation, and opened the door to step inside.
Inside, she found something that surprised her to the point that her mouth dropped open.
It was a fairly simple storage room, maybe six paces across and deep, with mostly empty racks taking up most of the walls. But the thing that captured Margarita's attention and surprise was in the back sitting on a simple chair was… well it was herself. She was older, and sometimes her features flickered to some of the disguises that Margarita remembered wearing since her time in the Silver Star Tower. But there was no denying it: she was looking at what she would likely look like in some years.
Margarita apparently stood there with her mouth gaping at the sight long enough for her older counterpart to fill the silence. "Welcome, Margarita. The events that we ended up dodging back at the Tower… I guess this is our payment for it. You do remember what Lillet told you about her own experience, right?"
"Of course I do!" Margarita said when she found her voice. "I just… the Philosopher's Stone is so powerful, I didn't expect that a mere successful piece of it could pull of some of the same effects."
"It's not nearly as stable, I've discovered," the older Margarita said, looking down at the sphere that rested on the table in front of her. It glowed eerily, with a color that reminded Margarita of Alchemy, but not so much that the candles around the rest of the room were unnecessary. "Despite the set up being analogous to Lillet's own experience, such as this room being below and somehow magically tied to the room that you have been sleeping in this whole time via that secret way out, it's not quite the same as the story she told us. I may exist outside the boundaries of looping time, but the time that I experience is not… linear, per se. I imagine Lillet's elder counterpart had an easier, if more boring, time of it. The amount of time that you've looped has changed a couple times."
"Yes, it made it harder to figure out what was going on," Margarita agreed.
"The loops are now stretched as far as they can go, and they'll snap after one more go through," the elder Margarita said. "If you didn't make it here this time, you were going to have to start again."
"So I… I did it?"
"There's just one more thing to do," the elder Margarita said. "I don't know why, but I can't do it. The Tempus Materia has me trapped here, but I don't think I'm truly physically in this room."
"You are… a shadow, then? Of the self I've been looping back through?" Margarita asked.
"Something like that," the elder agreed. "But the point is, you've made it this time. Unlike our best friend, it should be easy for you to destroy the materia and be able to break out of the loops of time. Do it."
"I still have some time, right?" Margarita said. "You… you're going to disappear, after all."
The elder chuckled. "Oh, you remembered. That's a shame; I don't matter. I don't want to be stuck here; you'd be doing me a favor as much as yourself if you get me out of here, even if the result is me ceasing to exist. Don't waste your time worrying about an old ghost like me."
"It's hard not to worry about yourself," Margarita deadpanned.
But the elder shook her head. "You've hardly been thinking of yourself this whole time. If you had been, you would have figured out a way to escape Sallah once you had killed Ribbon and moved onto your next target. But that all changed when you watched Amy die, then Astoria, then you heard Lillet die."
Margarita paled. If there was anything about the loops of time that she would like to forget, it was that scream that she heard and knowing what it was without being able to confirm it or do anything about it. "I didn't exactly turn out well from there either."
"So? You knew that there were 'solutions' to this that didn't require you to save all the ones you thought were innocent. According to our rules, the only two people who really had to survive were Amy and yourself; and there were also probably ways that you could have made sure that Bartido, Hiram, Opalneria, and even Lillet would not be here when the chaos slammed through the town and killed everyone, like you knew was coming."
"Maybe not," Margarita said quietly.
"As I said, it's to your credit that you thought like that, and were able to come up with a proper solution on time," the elder said. "And now all that's left is for you to destroy it, and break your own chains. Just like she did." The older Margarita smiled in a sad way. "I hope… I hope maybe we'll feel like we actually did something to make ourselves… even."
"Nothing will make it even," Margarita said.
"We don't get to decide that," the elder disagreed. "Our opinion on what we have done matters, but it's not the important one. Who did we betray the most at the Tower?"
"Professor Gammel, and Lillet," Margarita said. It wasn't quite a tie; Professor Gammel had done a lot for her, even after he knew that he had been manipulated into taking her in, but Lillet was the one who saved her life when she didn't deserve it.
"Those are the two that we need to have forgiven us," the elder said. "And perhaps we can… not have to avoid them from here on. That would be a result of all of this that I think we'd like. Don't you?"
"…Yes."
"Then break it, and make your own life again, outside the chains of the Tempus Materia."
Margarita's hand came down, smashing the sphere into shards. All of the candles in the room instantly went out, dousing her in darkness.
16
