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Rylan hustled Autumn out of the scarlet foyer, where they would be well out of earshot of Sunny and the gentleman who seemed so very keen on keeping her safe. There seemed an increasing sense of urgency, of time running out. He'd sensed it ever since Sunny had told him as much in their first meeting, but now more so than ever.

"Okay, so, here's the deal. I've... I've been told some stuff that I'm not even convinced is real, but if it is?" He paused, throwing a glance over his shoulder, back toward the foyer. "It's a big deal. I don't know how it'll help us tonight, but something tells me that... in the grand scheme of things, it matters."

And the bottom line was, he couldn't bear the burden of knowledge by himself anymore. Not when there was so much at stake. Not when he knew so little besides.

"I'm not a detective, so I hardly know where to start with all of this. But the more brains working together, the better, right?"

He'd forgotten how nice it was to catch up with friends. It had been too long, and he wished bitterly that it was under better circumstances. Under ones where they could actually catch up, do what friends did, instead of worry about what all was going on around them.

"That's because I usually don't," he said in agreement, and in a brief moment of levity, added, "Too dumb to know when to be scared."

But that certainly wasn't the case now. He didn't know who the eldritch gentleman was, but the man certainly was not good news.

"God, where do I even start... Okay. The first time I met Sunny? I saw her through Imp - my bird's - eyes. She was... this thing that defied comprehension. Completely alien. When I asked her about it, she muttered something about 'kin but not kind,' and didn't say anything more."

That Sunny wasn't human was perhaps not news, but that she was so utterly alien and incomprehensible? Maybe that was.

"So, okay. I ended up in the Other Library. Saw a bunch of stuff that didn't really make sense. I don't know what's true and what isn't, but I saw Michael Mitchell." He paused, thinking back on what he and Lucas had seen on their trip to the library.

"He was a memory of some sort, but in it he said he died in the 19th iteration, which means... the timeline has changed. Something about this cycle is different, and I don't know how or why, but it is.

"He said everything is like a rollercoaster - there are certain points that you have to hit. The first one, meet Heliodora. Then we meet Michael, which obviously ended poorly for us. Maybe that's why things are different. And then we meet Adoelle. Tonight."

Which was why, he supposed, that feeling of urgency had set in.

"He said we have to break the seal. He said if the cage exists, the Enemy is protected. Without the cage, it can be destroyed. And I talked to Adoelle earlier... she said as much. She said we're better off letting her and Heliodora die so we can root the Enemy out. Mentioned a spell, but she didn't know what it was."

And then, finally, the reason they were out here and not in the scarlet foyer...

"This bit. I don't know, Autumn. Michael said - and we found a journal in the Library that said basically the same - that Sunny is the Enemy's child. She's the physical manifestation of the cage. He thinks for this all to end, she has to go too.

"He said, Someone's going to have to get rid of Heliodora and Adoelle. It was me, in our timeline, and then I got ripped apart. But it's only ever been us that can do what must be done."

"Yea..." he said, leaning against a wall near her, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger. "I don't know how helpful that is to anyone but there you go. We saw a lot of other stuff too. A baby Sunny who kept calling me 'Papa,' a... Liam Noor in old Edwardian clothing talking about how to raise a boy. I don't know what any of it means."

Not to mention any of the stuff he'd seen and heard and experienced before that. All of the talk with Vivien's mother, with Liam, with Vivien herself... the catalyst for his visit to the library itself, really.

"I don't know how to do any of this," he said with a helpless shrug, gesturing to any and everything around him. "I'm not a detective. I'm not... the puzzle guy."

"You met her?" he said, eyes snapping up. "I saw her too. She said some people shouldn't be saved... we just have to let 'her' go. I'm not sure who. And she asked me where Imp was, said he shouldn't be alone..."

He wondered what that meant, wondered if that was a quiet warning for him to find his warg before something bad happened to either of them.

"I met her a few weeks ago, for the first time, out by the sea cliffs," he continued. "She led me to this old leather jacket. I eventually found her mother, talked to her. Vivien died in 1982. She had an inoperable brain tumor, which led to hallucinations... She saw something in those cliffs, something that made her obsessed with climbing them until she killed herself in an overdose."

He remembered the way Mrs. Hawken had sounded when he'd first talked to her, the unintentional pain he must've caused by suddenly calling her about her daughter.

"And there was a ring, in that jacket I found, silver and garnet. It was an engagement ring, given to Vivien by Liam." He shrugged. "I don't know what it means. But Liam loved her, I could tell that much. In the little time I spent talking to him."

He made his way over to Autumn and sat down beside her, letting himself sink tiredly to the floor.

"You're not a failure, Autumn," he said, shaking his head. "The current you can't change what a past version of yourself did. But now you know, so maybe this time around, you'll do something. That's all we can hope for, isn't it, when we're all in so far above our heads?"

"The more I learn, the more I think that's possible," he said wearily. Not directly, no, but in a roundabout way, maybe it had led her to overdose. If that was true, he'd just about had it with this magic, this seemingly endless cycle in which they were all doomed to fail and fail again. Was there even a point if they had been at this more than a dozen times and found the same result time and time again?

In short, "Yea. Yea, I do feel that."

The scope of all of this seemed too vast for him even to understand, much less defeat. There was simply too much to learn in too little time before apparently inevitable doom befell them. It was ridiculous.

And yet.

"But I've felt that way before. In front of a massive fire about to reduce an entire house to charred rubble. I know what it's like to feel like the whole world is burning and there's no way to stop it. But in the end, we always do," he said. "So far, anyway." The town was still standing.

"You have no idea how many times I've felt exactly that way in the middle of a fire," he said with a wry smile. "You'd be surprised how similar they can be." And for him, the firefighter, there was nothing quite human about fire. It was the main reason he'd never once used his ability to generate fireballs after he'd discovered what he could do with it. There were too many ways it could go wrong.

"Well," he said, unsure whether or not it would be any sort of consolation to her. "Apparently Blackfriars was a new development. The Michael we met said he didn't die until a later iteration, which I guess means the timeline has changed."

It didn't necessarily mean much. Maybe it just meant they were that much closer to inevitable doom. But then...

"Maybe that's a sign for us to take advantage of this. If things are different this time around, that could mean the Enemy is as thrown off as we are." Rylan shrugged. "I won't go as far as to say the playing field is level this time around, but we might be at less of a disadvantage. In a game of inches, all you need is that first one."

He was prone to optimism, even in the face of blinding desperation.

"Just too dumb to accept reality, really," he said with a grin. "But it's served me well."

He gave Autumn's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and leaned up against the wall, taking a moment, taking a break. Pretty soon they'd both have to get up and reenter the fray. And then, who knew where their actions would take them.

"Hey, you've got yourself a deal," he answered, nodding. "When we get out of here, we can get all the drinks you could ever want in the world."