Starting Life From Zero: Far From Home

Chapter Thirty-Four

The daylight was harsh, sudden. Peter had in one instant been in the murky darkness of the White Whale fog and then found himself standing in front of Emilia. She was one step above him on the carriage steps and it almost made up for their difference in height. The glint of sun off of her silver hair was almost blinding to him.

He remembered this exact moment. In fact, he remembered it twice. He had only just been showing Aunt May a photo of the girl in the picture that she had forgotten and now he was standing in the very spot that happened only minutes after it had occurred.

"Please don't make this more difficult for me than it already is."

He knew the words before Emilia said them and he knew what came next. She touched him in her very deliberate and proper way, her guard was still up. Though that faltered when she brushed her hand over his cheek.

"May the spirits bless and protect you."

Those were the words, Peter guessed, that must have done whatever this was. Either knowingly or unknowingly Emilia had bound him to this moment, like a Save State in a video game. Something she had done had granted him do-overs to get this right.

Peter wasn't sure what the exact win condition for this whole thing would be though.

Her lips, when she spoke, had brushed over his skin and they lingered there. He didn't remember this lasting for so long, but he also couldn't have reacted this way before. In piecing things together he was actively changing the course this day took.

The first time he had gone on trying to do what he was told and he just remembered May and Emilia dead. Rem and Ram too. And everyone in the village near the manor.

The second time he wasn't quite sure what had happened. He had been back at school—

Sure you know what happened, your Spider-Sense went berserk because of whatever was happening to you.

"Um, thank you for that," Peter said. "But—I can't let you go," he said looking at Emilia and then May.

"Peter, it's really sweet. I know you're worried about me, but I'll be okay," Emilia said with a reassuring smile that told him already that she wasn't experiencing this day over. He blinked back the thoughts of his Aunt crumpled over on the floor and holding a lifeless child who had her eyes gouged out.

"It's not that," Peter said.

He jumped onto the carriage, feeling the vehicle rock beneath his feet and causing the driver to glance back at him and the rest of the eyes in the garden to turn upward and look at him.

"I can't explain how, but something is coming," Peter said. There was a tightness in his chest with a pang of something else. "Look, I lived this day already and died and um, most of you died in one way or another too. Uh, uh, May I saw you holding Petra and—and Rem and Ram were dead too. All because the Witch Cultists—"

Suddenly it was quiet, the world around him had gone still with time locked in the single moment. Peter couldn't move, his whole body felt as if it were just not there. Though he could still see his hand from where he was gesturing frozen at the side of his vision.

Purple and black smoke filtered in through the front gate of the mansion and rolled over the walls hiding the street and rising up overhead to blot out the sky.

For some reason Peter could still move his eyes and he looked around in a panic, eager to know what was happening.

Then he saw her—a ghostly black figure that was made of writhing smoke with tendrils licking at the air around. Her eyes were little more than white voids that were far too big for her face.