Chapter 29: Second Beast
The hall dissolved into the same chaos as before — Eleanor’s composure cracking, Mark’s hand landing on her shoulder, the crowd’s murmuring rising into a wall of noise Lucas barely registered.
Just like before...
’It didn’t change. I died and came back but it still didn’t change...’
His mind raced even as his body went through the same motions as last time, watching Mark begin steering Eleanor toward the hall’s exit. ’So it’s not the timing this time Or it’s not just the timing. Something else is driving this, and I don’t know what yet.’
He followed them this time instead of staying behind like last time...
Mark noticed him trailing a step behind and didn’t object, just cast him a brief grateful look over Eleanor’s shoulder, and the three of them made it to her quarters in near silence, Eleanor’s breathing ragged, her arms wrapped tight around herself the same way they had been the last time this had happened.
"I’ll leave you two," Mark said quietly, once the door was shut, glancing between them with something unreadable in his expression. "I’ll be outside if you need me."
He slipped out and Lucas turned to find Eleanor already pacing, the same restless, panicked energy radiating off of her that he remembered from the loop before.
"There has to be a way to—"
"Eleanor." He said her name gently, cutting her off before she could spiral into the same frantic plan making that had gotten dozens of people killed the last time around. "Don’t... Not yet. Just breathe with me a second."
"I can’t just breathe, Lucas, I need to—"
"You need five minutes where you’re not trying to solve this." He crossed the room and took both her hands, steady and deliberate. "I promise you, panicking into a decision right now isn’t going to help either of us. Just sit with me let’s talk about something else. Anything."
Something in his tone must have carried more weight than he expected because she actually stopped, some of the frantic energy draining out of her shoulders as she let him guide her down onto the edge of the bed beside them.
They sat in silence for a while, her breathing slowly evening out, and Lucas used the quiet to steer the conversation somewhere safer... somewhere that wasn’t a rushed departure that would cost fifty lives before the sun set the next day.
"Tell you what," he said eventually. "Let’s talk about something else. You wanted to know about my ability properly, right? We can do that, right?"
Eleanor glanced at him, surprised by the shift. "Yeah, okay... tell me."
He walked her through it again — [Ignition], the misfires, the late notifications, all the same true, careful half truths he’d given her before, though this time he let himself elaborate a little further, described the heat of it, the way it sometimes felt like holding something barely leashed....
She listened, asked questions and somewhere in the slow, methodical rhythm of it, Lucas watched her fully return to herself. Sharper and steadier, the raw panic folding back beneath something more controlled.
"Three days," he said finally, once the conversation had run its natural course. "Let’s stick to the plan. The actual one. Full preparation, full drills, everything Jed’s vision was supposedly already accounting for."
Eleanor hesitated, old fear flickering behind her eyes. "Last time this happened—"
"I know... Jed’s visions had never been wrong" Lucas said carefully. "But rushing it doesn’t change the outcome. It just changes how ready we are when it happens. Give the vanguard the real three days, Please..."
She studied him for a long moment before finally, slowly, nodding. "Okay, three days... The full plan."
Relief loosened something in Lucas’s chest and then, almost immediately, curled back into the same cold weight that never fully left him these days.
’I still die. Whatever changes, that part hasn’t’
He must have let some of it show on his face, because Eleanor’s hand found his arm, gentle. "Hey. We’ll figure it out, I’m not going to just let this happen."
"I know," he said, even though some small, exhausted part of him understood something she couldn’t that this wasn’t really about her figuring anything out. It was about him surviving something Jed’s visions had never once failed to predict, over and over, no matter what either of them changed.
She didn’t understand that. She couldn’t... not fully. She saw a problem to be solved, a variable to adjust, while Lucas carried the actual, visceral memory of dying to prove every attempted solution wrong....
’Ahhh fuck my life...’
***
Three days passed properly this time, real drills, real formation practice, real rest and by the time the column set out at first light on the appointed morning, the vanguard moved with a cohesion Lucas hadn’t seen from them before.
It didn’t stop his mind from racing the entire march.
’Last time it was the Hestia. This time we’re ready for the Hestia. So what changes? What kills me if the formation actually holds?’
He didn’t have an answer, and the fact of him not knowing sat heavier in his chest with every mile they covered.
The Gateway came into view exactly as it had before — twin spires, crackling blue energy arcing between them and exactly as before, the ground began to shake with heavy, deliberate impacts.
[Warning: Hestia Class entity detected.]
[Objective: Successfully Pass through the Gateway]
[Survival probability: 30%]
’Did it just drop?’
However, that thought didn’t hold...
The creature emerged from the treeline, enormous and burning...
However, this time the vanguard didn’t break.
"Hold formatioin!" Eleanor’s voice was carried clean and confident across a line that actually listened, actually moved as one, and Lucas watched with grim satisfaction as fighters who’d drilled together for three real days met the Hestia’s charge without the confusion that had doomed them last time.
’Left paw does wider swings. It moves with a shift in its shoulders a moment out.’ Lucas caught the pattern almost immediately, memory of the last fight bleeding into this one despite the different outcome so far.
"Left paw swings wide. Watch the shoulder!"
Fighters adjusted, Bertram’s machete catching the follow through of a swing that would have caught him unprepared last time, Iris’s arrows finding spaces in the creature’s hide with far more precision now that the vanguard wasn’t dissolving into chaos around her.
[Skill: Ignition has been activated]
Lucas threw himself into the fight properly, [Ignition] roaring around both fists and for the first time against this creature, it actually felt like an even fight.
His fists collided with the beast and the fire creeped up his arm and setting him on fire.
"Lucas!!" Eleanor’s voice rang from behind as the flames spread burning the ground around him.
However, Lucas stumbled out, confused...
[Due to Ignition skill, Player is impervious to fire.]
Eleanor, Mark and every other person were shocked as to why he wasn’t burnt to ash.
Lucas just stared at his system window and blinked. "Convenient..."
Bertram and Iris landes coordinated strikes that bruised the beast leaving it barely anytime to recover... The Hestia’s roars shifting to genuinely furious as the vanguard held its ground instead of scattering.
’It favors its right side after a wound. Overcorrects when it’s hurt, opens up its flank trying to protect the injury.’ Lucas called it out the instant he spotted it, voice carrying over the din. "It’s guarding its right! hit it that on that side while it’s hurt!"
Bertram surged forward on the cue, machete carving deep into the exposed flank, and the beast reeled with a shriek that shook loose flaming tufts of its own mane onto the ground around it.
Iris loosed arrow after arrow into the same widening wound, each one finding purchase in flesh that had never had to defend that angle before, and for several exhilarating minutes the fight tipped decisively in the vanguard’s favor— coordinated and disciplined, nothing like the panicked slaughter Lucas remembered from the last attempt.
"It’s working!" Someone shouted somewhere behind him, disbelieving. "We’re actually—"
The ground shook again, different this time. A second, heavier impact from the opposite treeline.
[Warning: Hestia Class entity detected.]
A second beast, identical to the first, crashed through the tree line from behind the column’s rear ranks and Lucas, entirely focused on the fight in front of him, never saw it coming.
"Lucas, behind—!"
Iris’s scream came a moment too late.
The second Hestia’s jaws closed around him from behind, some instinct in the creature clearly marking him as the single greatest threat on the field...
There was no pain exactly, just an instant, absolute pressure and then nothing at all.
[You have died.]
[Regression Activated.]
***
"...We’ll succeed," Jed said. "The Faction crosses the Gateway. We make it through."
[Player has returned to designated checkpoint.]
Lucas’s vision snapped back into focus in the hall, the same words hanging in the air, the same attention on Eleanor and Mark’s faces and he stood there for a long moment, breath ragged and processing the fact that a second beast, one nobody had accounted for, nobody had even known existed had been the actual cost all along.
[Checkpoint has been restored to the last stable moment prior to death.]
’Not the timing. Not the formation. There were two of them the entire time and nobody knew to prepare for a second one.’
The unfairness of it sat sharp in his chest, colder somehow than the previous failure had been.
He’d solved the actual problem, convinced Eleanor to hold the timeline, watched the vanguard train properly, fought a fight that had genuinely been winnable and it still hadn’t been enough, because the piece that killed him hadn’t been a mistake anyone had made.
It had simply been a piece nobody could have known to look for.
’Two Hestia, Not one.... I need to warn them about the second one this time.’
Small comfort came with the thought. At least now he had something concrete to work with, a specific danger instead of a vague dread. It didn’t make the memory of those jaws closing around him from behind any less vivid, or any easier to carry into whatever version of this day came next.
"At what cost," Eleanor asked, exactly as she had every time before.
Jed held her gaze, solemn, the hall falling into its familiar, heavy silence.
Lucas held his breath, waiting for Jed to speak...
And the moment his mouth opened, Lucas’ eyes widened as what Jed said wasn’t what he had expected at all...
Comments