I can't believe how long this has been in my drafts folder. Is the Unraveler Ex even considered hard anymore? I'm way behind on Inn challenges. And guests don't seem to be allowed anymore either.

Welp, I had fun finishing this, anyway. Enjoy the read?


Ash has no idea what to do. When he'd agreed to come with the Hero, Riese, along with her dragon, Adriel, and her Soul-Ally Aegis, to help her out on a quest that she said was going to be 'a little extreme', he absolutely expected it be a disaster on an unprecedented scale—

But not like this.

By the looks of things, he isn't alone in feeling this way. Aegis—he is still staring wide-eyed and wild-eyed at the many sights to be seen in this strange place. Ash isn't that well-acquainted with the Soul-Ally personally but he feels closer with him than ever before as his brother-in-arms amidst all this. As for her dragon, he is... well, he is still sleeping without a care in the world. And, he really does envy him for that. He's never begrudged that dragon anything, not even the calamity unlike so many naysayers had in the immediate aftermath of the Black Winter, but he definitely begrudges him for this. For being able to escape all this... this.

"Ash?" It was the Hero and she sounds worried. Before she'd brought them… here—wherever here was— she had tried to explain what to expect but everything sounded so insane, he'd thought she was joking or half-asleep or something. Alas. "Are you okay? I can take you back to Falconreach if you want. You look..."

"N-no, I'm fine," he manages to say. Though a large, no, gigantic part of him is definitely tempted to take her up on that offer... it was so rare for her to ask for help these days, so he is loath to decline now, especially not after he'd had to decline the last time. It's for her sake, he'd told himself, given her mysterious equipment-related memory issues but still. Before they got here (wherever or whatever this here was), whenever she had no new forgotten equipment in sight, he'd always been downright eager to offer her his assistance. He tries to channel some of that eagerness now. "So, what were you saying about this challenge?"

She perks up. "Well, you know how I got these wings from a big white moth thing?" she asks, her Wings of the Unraveler flaring of their own accord upon her mentioning them. "Well, it turns out there's another one, only... more extreme? I could probably handle it on my own but this one is—"

He's not listening as well as he could be, not really. He can hear her speaking but he can't seem to understand the words and, even then, it was just so hard to pay attention when every other person around them made him want to stop and stare. Even as he's forcing himself to look at her, as the one, safe person to look at in this haven of... weirdness.

After all, she's a familiar face. Reassuring even. He's known her for years, in battle and out, serious and not. He knows her enough to recognize when she's shifted gears from laidback adventurer to Hero with a capital H. He knows her enough to recognize whenever she was truly off-duty and not questing, looking for a quest, or fulfilling physical needs so she could go back to quest-related activities. Dealing with villains when on-duty and knitting for charity (and fun) when off, she is the Hero of Falconreach.

Even now, after years within the ice had grayed the brown of her hair and gave her a certain wariness during winter, she is still... The Hero. A force to be reckoned with, a force of nature, a pillar of strength all around, and someone he knows and trusts—even knowing that she is not invincible, after years of fighting in her absence had forced him to grow into a hero all his own. How could he not? She is Riese, the Hero of Falconreach. She practically radiates heroicness.

... and therein lay the problem.

"—and that's why Aegis is here," she finishes, clapping her hands, the sound muffled by her gloves—not Cryptic-standard but these days, she never handled ice weapons bare-handed if she could help it. Her gray eyes were limned with lilac as she uses Cryptic telekinesis to show him her weapon, a scythe seemingly crafted from mirror-polished ice. "Not to diminish your part, of course! I'm going to be counting on your defense just as much."

"Oh?" an unsettlingly similar voice interrupts, sounding amused. "Shouldn't you be counting on yourself for defense, Cryptic Riese?"

Riese smirks. "That's a given, obviously," she says casually. "As you should know, my fellow Cryptic Riese."

At his side, Aegis lets out the tiniest, most plaintive, most strangled-sounding squeak. Ash doesn't blame him.

The man who speaks—he is Riese. Just like almost everyone in this inn in the so-called edge of time—is also Riese. Just as the glowing white woman behind the inn's counter is Riese, he is Riese, the Hero of Falconreach. Just as the man in brown and teal armor who welcomed them is also Riese, the Hero of Falconreach. Just as literally everyone he's seen milling about the dining area is Riese, Hero of Falconreach, from the little girl with pigtails to the burly, bald DoomKnight, they are all Riese—

Just...

All of them. They are all the Hero of Falconreach. The Hero. They are all Riese.

He thinks of Riese as a friend. A good friend. He still has never wanted or asked for there to be more than one of her.

And this man—he is even more... well, Riese-like than the rest. He's how the Riese Ash knows would look if she'd been cast with gender-changing magic. Graying brown hair, gray eyes, muscles, Cryptic armor—everything, down to the purple ribbon in his hair and even the gloves for handling ice weapons. This person is Riese. Undeniably Riese. Just as everyone aside from him and Aegis are Riese too.

And he knows they are all Riese, no matter what logic might dictate. He just knows somehow- the same way he recognizes Riese regardless of whether she's covering her entire face or wearing some unrecognizable set of armor. She just is... Riese. And the same applies for all of the others in here. It's as if each and every one of them exudes a kind of... undefinable Riese-ness. Even with all the variation between them, they are all just so... Riese, it's like if you could see their names over their heads whenever they spoke and all of them read 'Riese'.

All of them.

All of them.

"Juuust making sure," that male Cryptic says, smirking. His expression radiates Riese-ness. "Hey, Ash, Aegis. Always nice to see you," he adds upon seeing them. His voice, also, emanates with Riese-ness. "I am surprised, though," he says, this time to Riese. The image of him speaking to her, it's like he's talking to a mirror. Or she's talking to a mirror. It's more than a little unsettling. "From what I wrote in my notes, you don't usually bring anyone. Aside from your Adria—sorry, Adriel, of course. "

"And I don't! But given all the warnings, I figured some backup would be good. Usually, Adri and I can handle everything just fine on our own," she says, patting her dozing dragon on the head. Then she frowns. "Or at least I haven't written otherwise... I think I'm pretty good at maintaining my notes, though?"

"I wrote in mine that you are," he assures her. Then, after some hesitation: "...That is, if I haven't made a terrible mistake in assuming you're 1337?"

Wait, wh—

"What do you mean by that?" Ash blurts out as she nods, unable to stop himself from asking. The way the two of them (both Riese) turn to face him is almost enough to make him regret asking but he forges on anyway. "1337?"

"Oh, that? That's my number here," she says. "I think it stands for how many of me were around when I first came here but I'm not totally sure."

His head swims at the thought. "That... would mean a lot of yous," he says weakly.

Enough to build an army of Riese(s?). An army like that could save the world thousands of times over. Or destroy it. Or both.

Probably both, really.

He forces the thought from his head. "So there's at least 1337... others in here?"

"Way more than that, actually," he, the other Cryptic, replies, words half-laughed and so disconcertingly Riese-like that Ash has to force himself not to stare. "There're tons of us. Outside of the inn, you're... what was it again, Riese?"

She has to think for a moment before answering. "9513753."

Ash chokes.

"There's over nine million of you?" he asks weakly. Not demands or screams. Asks. He deserves something for that, shouldn't he? Like a world that made sense, maybe?

"Possibly," she says. "It's probably better not to think about it."

He chokes back what would've likely been a truly desperate laugh.

"You got that right," the other Riese says. "I'm 1263 here, by the way," he adds, this time facing him, making it much more difficult to resist the urge to stare. "But you can just call me Riese, of course."

He tries a smile, determined not to meet his (Riese gray) eyes. "Sure... Riese."

"No, 'Riese' isn't just a girl's name," he says, apparently misunderstanding Ash's expression. "Honestly, Riese Witherfork has a lot to answer for..."

"Sure," drawls the Riese he knows, smirking at Riese, the male one, and that sentence was not one that he should have ever thought but here he was and he was not happy about it. "You know, I was decently sure you're 1263, but it's nice to know for sure." Then she sighs. "This memory-erasing business is confusing stuff."

He freezes. Did she just say...

Memory-erasing business?

"And yet necessary all the same!" calls out the glowing white Riese at the counter loudly. He can't see much of her face given her helmet and, well, glow—but there is something decidedly Riese-like in her bearing as she stares them down and it is, again, more than a little unnerving given that Riese, the Hero he's known since his childhood, is on the receiving end of it, along with the other Riese who is basically her male clone. "You are all aware of the rules."

What rules?!

"Yes, of course," Riese—the Riese he knows—says airily as he gapes. "We forget everything that happens in this place the moment we leave it to guarantee no spoilers about possible futures but we get the chance to fight challenges for really good gear in exchange. It's just..."

... It's just that Riese has just explained everything he and a whole bunch of their allies have been worrying about for, oh, was it a year? More than that? Pffft no—it was only that, right? It wasn't like anyone had legitimately worried about her sanity or anything, right? Right?! Right?!

He suppresses the urge to laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh. Or cry. One or the other. He should be taking notes about all of this, the others needed to know it was apparently nothing harmful, they all cared about her too. But instead, all he can do is stand. Stand as she blithely breezes past something that had been the cause for town-wide concern, confusion, and wild speculation as if it was just—

"It's just kinda confusing," the other Riese finishes for her, his tone equally airy. "That's all."

... yeah. Just that. Just 'kinda confusing'. The reason he and a multitude of others gathered together every month with lists about her wardrobe, was just 'kinda confusing'. That was all it was. Absolutely, that was all it was.

Again, he has to suppress the laughter threatening to bubble over the surface. If he lets it go, he may never stop.

The Riese behind the counter only stares blankly back. "You will endure," she says, very slowly and deliberately. "And Ash? Aegis?"

He tries not to look too rattled when he looks at her. "Y-yes?"

"Would you like any food? Drinks?" Her tone is very even, very mild. "Everything we serve is consumable by all manner of entities, living and not. On the house, of course."

He looks from Riese, who flashes him an encouraging smile, to the person she was talking to, Riese, who flashes him an identical encouraging smile, before finally turning to Riese, still waiting for his answer. Aegis is way ahead of him. Literally, he is way ahead of him. There is now a trail of ice on the floor leading from where he just was. If nothing else, Ash definitely wants to be near a non-Riese right now. Free meals are just a bonus. Even if it means being served by a Riese who wasn't Riese.

"Yes, please."


It took quite a while but, now, he is mostly calm. He can't claim to understand any of this, not even after the innkeeper Riese (who is apparently an Avatar of Time [?!]) had tried to explain everything, but he has adjusted enough to at least maintain some semblance of sanity. After years of adventuring, warring, and Cysero, he knows that dealing with insanity was all a matter of fortitude, stubbornness, and determined compartmentalization, all of which he had in spades.

Along with alcohol.

The last isn't required (or recommended) obviously but it helps and he's getting it free. Just this once, he is indulging and it is amazing how much it helps make the world seem sensible.

"And that's how I jumped through the big, swirly rip in the sky," Riese concludes, looking up at him with expectant eyes. "Did you get here the same way, Mister?"

This Riese is... maybe twelve years old, with dark hair in pigtails and butter knives dangling from the belt-loops on her trousers. A little girl, a very far cry from the already experienced adventurer Riese was when they had first met and yet still undeniably the Hero Riese all the same. Earlier, this might've been the cause for hysterical laughter. Now...

He drowns hysteria with Fireball Sinnomen before it can happen. A vast improvement, he is sure.

"I just followed... Riese... over there," he replies, pointing at Riese where she is talking with some others by the bulletin board. Other Riese. A lot of other Riese. Riese was talking to a lot of other Riese. He drinks. It helps. "She... teleported us. Me and that guy over there with the inn lady. Aegis."

Aegis, after confirming that he really could eat and drink what the Avatar of Time Riese had to offer, has taken it upon himself to try literally everything. He actually seems to be enjoying himself. Even if Ash could see that as he eats, he is also determinedly avoiding looking any Riese directly in the eye.

"He sure is hungry," the little girl Riese comments. "He is... Mister Aegis?"

"His name's Aegis," he says. "Mine is Ash, by the way," he adds belatedly. "Ash Dragonblade."

She beams at him, bright and Riese-like. "Nice to meetcha, Mister Ash," she says cheerfully. Looking at her might give him a headache but he couldn't deny that she was a cute kid. "I'm Cereza. But call me Riese, everyone does."

"Nice to meet you, too, Cer—huh?"

"I told you, call me Riese," she says, pouting. It was decidedly Riese-like. But Riese wasn't—

"Hey, Riese?" he calls out before he can stop himself, looking to the Riese he knows with raised brows. "What's your full name?"

"What?" She seems distracted. "Oh, it's Cereza. Cereza Marion D'Sal. Née Madrigal," she adds off-handedly. "I do prefer Riese though. I registered as that when I became an adventurer."

So Riese isn't really her name. That is...

Well, that is actually pretty common with adventurers. He's not sure why he's never asked, come to think of it.

"I'm gonna register as 'Riese', too," the little girl Riese declares, bringing him back to the present. "When I become a hero, I wanna be known as 'Riese'. It's cool."

"It is," he says, after downing another fortifying swig of his drink, draining it as he did his very best not to think about what that might just mean. "Excuse me, I'm going to..."

He stands, if shakily, and goes over to make his way to where Aegis is sitting. "Hey, did you know about... huh?"

Aegis is no longer eating. Rather, he is staring openly at someone who'd just come in, someone decidedly not a Riese (though there is a Riese next to him)a man with stark white hair wearing a distinctive long coat, arms encased in gauntlets.

It's been a long time but Ash knows who he is even before Aegis sputters his name.

"Tomix?!"

The new arrival looks up at the sound of his name. "...Who are you?"

Aegis flinches. "I'm..."

"You're a Soul-Ally, aren't you?" the Riese who's accompanying Tomix says brightly, staring at Aegis with open curiosity. "Cool! See, Tomix, I told you I saw a portal!"

"I… " After making sure that Riese, the Riese he came with, is distracted (she was, apparently by a heated argument on the benefits of daggers for poison), Ash walks closer, leaving his bottle on the counter, staring at this new Riese all the while.

This one... with her red rogue leathers, gray eyes, and loose, brown curls, is undoubtedly the Hero he knew but... as she'd been years ago. Before the ice, the myriad Fire Wars, or even the Great Eclipse, hair still long, unbound, and without a trace of gray. She looks... young.

She is also looking at him, he suddenly realizes, eyes bright with interest.

"You know, you look a lot like a friend of mine," she says. "Is your surname 'Dragonblade' by any chance?"

Before he could answer—or, rather, begin to conceive of an answer—another Riese barrels past him from behind and quickly crushes that Riese's companion in a tight embrace, obviously knocking the wind out of Tomix's lungs as he is, for a moment, lifted bodily into the air as that Riese holds him, her own gray eyes red and glistening, her breathing choked and heavy. He is released barely a second later but he looks rather dazed all the same.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry,'' Riese stammers, wiping at her eyes. "It's j-just... I'm s-sorry..."

This version of the Hero—she definitely more closely resembles the Hero Ash had come with than most of the others he'd seen, with the same eyes, face, and hairstyle. He didn't know the name of her current class but he is fairly sure he'd seen it before—only... flashier with semi-translucent pieces of iridescent, glowing armor over the muneate-and-pants combo and an orbed pendant gleaming fiercely on her chest. Something about her is... just intense, even compared to Riese as he knew her, eyes wearier, hair grayer, muscles—

Okay, wow.

The younger Riese (the one who'd just entered with Tomix) only looks confused. "Is... something wrong?" she asks worriedly. "Are you alright?"

"I'm f-fine," she manages, still sniffling. "H-here for a ch-challenge? I wouldn't recommend going in as a Rogue if I were you." She then gave a slightly watery smile. "Which I am."

All the while, Tomix is staring at her and... the thing hovering over her shoulder that he only just notices, a vaguely humanoid green blob. "Is that Envy?!"

"D-don't mind him," she says airily. "He's harmless."

'They are you but they have so much that you don't, how unfair is that?' Ash could hear it whispering, its voice tinny. 'Isn't it unfair? You deserve—"

Without even sparing it a glance, she makes a shooing gesture at it, smiling apologetically at them as she casually says: "Shut the fuck up."

He recoils. There's an audible gasp in the room.

"Riese, come on," a DoomKnight(?!) Riese admonishes. "Language!"

"I'm right here!" the twelve-year-old Riese shrieks, looking outright scandalized. "Watch it!"

"Seriously," the floating Riese in teal and brown armor chides, frowning. "Not cool."

The foul-mouthed Riese looks unphased. "What? We already have a T rating," she says. "And it's not just because of me."

"No spoilers," the self-proclaimed Avatar of Time Riese sighs. She seems more exasperated than anything. "And do watch your tongue, Riese."

She raises her hands. "Alright, alright. I won't be..." she smirks. "Un-Riese-onable."

Ash sputters.

"DID YOU JUST—"

Through all the outrage and outcry that just erupted, that older(?) Riese looking rather satisfied at the center of it all, he spots the younger Riese as she surreptitiously grabs that younger Tomix's arm. "Let's just uh, go," she says, looking suitably bewildered. "I don't think we need to be here..."

"Y-yeah..."

As that pair turns to leave, Ash couldn't help but overhear another Riese talking nearby, a female Cryptic like their Riese but with loose green hair and darker eyes. "You know, Tomix is a bad guy in my timeline. Real piece of work, too."

"Really? In mine... I think he may be the male version of an ally of mine, Tamsix," her lunchmate, a female Paladin Riese with a shock of red hair, answers. "Huh, so that's what Tamsix'd look like as a guy. Not bad. Ashley, too. Hey, in your timeline, is Ashley Dragonblade—"

—He promptly stops eavesdropping because no. He refuses. He refuses.

"Ash, Aegis, over here," their Riese finally calls out, standing, to his relief, finally alone by the bulletin board. "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. Let's get going."

Both of them rush over to her. Her smile was welcoming, familiar, and thankfully not mirrored by a multitude of myriad Riese.

"Yes, let's," Ash says loudly. "Where did you say we were going again?!"

"As I said, we're going for a challenge!" Her scythe ready by her side and her dragon awake at her feet, she looked ready for adventure. "It's going to be a rough one—extreme evenbut as long as we go by the strategy earlier, I think we should be fine."

Strategy fromoh, no, he hadn't been listening. She'd given an entire strategy meeting earlier and he hadn't been listening! For a challenge that she of all people called extreme! "Wait, Riese, I"

Without waiting for them to reach where she is, she reaches out to touch the board and—

omake (?)

"That me," Eternal Epoch Riese says after the light of the party's departure finally faded. "She's from the same timeline as me, isn't she?"

Her notebook is on the counter, open to a rough sketch of a creature that resembles a great white moth.

"You know I cannot answer that," the Avatar of Time sighs. "And, technically speaking, it is not our intention to allow note-taking."

She didn't make any moves to take her notebook, however.

"I never make notes about meeting me me," she says reassuringly, her smile wan but genuine. "I do know the rules."

"As you must."

"...So, the Unraveler Ex," she says, toying nervously with her journal's pages. "Real challenge, that one."

Though her journal is battered to begin with, that section looks particularly ragged. The writing is speckled with rust-like stains. While most sections were mere paragraphs, the one for this foe is several pages long. She couldn't remember ever facing it herself, of course, but she could certainly read between the lines. Similarly with the squirrels, she must have gotten her irrational hatred of white moths from somewhere and it almost certainly hadn't been from home.

The Avatar Riese hums. "Many have fallen to that particular challenge, yes."

"I guess so..."

After some consideration, she takes out another item from her bag, holding it this way and that.

The item is a metallic creature of steel and gold, burning from within with teal flames. When she releases it, it hangs before her as if waiting for a command, 'head' bowed, spindly steel legs waving in the air. After a few moments of scrutiny, she sighs, remembering the last time she'd actually used it.

"And it really isn't worth it."


Hacked Magi Drone serves an invaluable purpose in making my bank look nice.