A break finally came from, of all people, Cynthia.

“Hey, are you still looking for information on that pharma company?” her friend asked one day. Myra had originally inquired to Cynthia in case anyone in her herbological alchemy class knew anything, but she hadn’t really expected results.

“Well, sure. You learn anything?”

“Nah, but I was thinking, why don’t we just go downtown and ask the employees?”

“How, exactly? Just walk up to their front desk and ask about their confidential projects? Ambush employees on the way out?”

“Don’t be silly. I had a friend who apprenticed there last year.” She tapped a finger to her temple and grinned. “I got the intel.”

◆

The ‘intel’ turned out to be the bar the top alchemists at Mirkas-Ballam went to in the evenings, a bar called Mixopolium. Apparently, the cafeteria in their main office building was even named after it.

Myra couldn’t deny it was a good idea if they really could find the top alchemists there. They would be looking to brag about their work to young women, and they’d be drunk, which meant they’d have looser lips. And so Myra fetched Shera (and this resulted in curious looks from Cynthia, who had grown increasingly interested in the pair’s sudden friendship this month), and the three set off.

Anyway, Mirkas-Ballam’s building complex was downtown, between the banking district and Halibar Hospital. The bar they were looking for was several blocks away, not one they would have picked if they’d searched around on their own. It was a dimly lit but spacious place, playing jazz off the radio. There was a dance floor area, though it seemed unused at the moment.

“Emptier than I expected for a Friday,” Myra muttered.

“Weird.” Cynthia shrugged. “Hey!” She flagged down the bartender. “Where the heck is everyone?”

The bartender, a muscular guy with a thick mustache, actually had the answer. “Low crowds lately. Lotta my usuals seem tied up in something or other, so I overhear.” He tapped his year. “Can I get yinz anything?”

“Yeah, I’ll have… whatever you recommend,” Cynthia said. They all ordered, and Shera tried asking someone in the corner for “information about drugs,” but they refused to talk to her. Eventually, though, Cynthia eyed a promising candidate.

“That guy, in the green robes.” She pointed to a solitary man in thick glasses and wearing the mentioned robes. “Hey, you!”

“Ah?” He was startled as the three women surrounded him, Cynthia on one side, Myra and Shera on the other. “H-hi?”

“What’s your name ?”

“I’m… Vikram.” He adjusted his glasses and seemed to gain his confidence. “Could I buy you ladies some drinks?”

“Why not? I’m Cynthia, by the way.”

“And your friends?”

“Oh, this is Myrabelle, and the lovely one on the one on the end is Sherazyn.”

Huh. Guess Shera’s short for Sherazyn, Myra thought. I’m just going to pretend I always knew that.

They settled in, and Vikram ordered the aforementioned drinks. “So what do you do?” Cynthia asked.

“I’m a neurologist.”

“Oh.” Her voice faltered for a minute. “Like, at the hospital?”

“No, I work for a pharmaceutical company.”

“Ohh. You know, I’m actually taking an alchemy class at Ralkenon U. You must be at Mirkas-Ballam, I presume? Do you make, like, brain drugs?”

“Ordinarily, yes.”

“Oh?” Myra butted in. “So you’re working on something different, then?”

He cleared his throat. “That’s right. The entire brewing and synthesization department has set aside everything to meet a special contract. We’ve been working ourselves raw.”

“But you managed to sneak away, I see,” Cynthia said.

“W-well, my role is a little tangential, so I won’t need to work over the weekend.”

“Over the weekend?” Cynthia acted horrified (or maybe she was horrified). “Why so much urgency?”

“Well, it’s top secret, you understand—”

“Is it always like this? I always wanted to pursue alchemy, but if they’re gonna have me working like a dog—”

“No, no!” He quickly clarified. “The whole thing is highly unusual. The buyer is paying us… numbers I don’t even know how to fathom. It might as well be infinite money. And they came with the entire synthesis process detailed to a tee. In exchange, all we have to do is meet a deadline.”

Myra’a ears perked up. Deadline…?

“Does that mean Mirkas-Ballam didn’t invent it?” Cynthia asked, puzzled.

“It’s a slightly strange situation, as I said. This formula—I’ve never seen anything like it. No other company in the world would have the expertise of equipment to create it so quickly.”

“And the deadline,” Myra asked. “When is it?”

“Mm? It’s… December 3rd. And we only got the contract a couple weeks ago. You see what I mean? The timeline is absurd.”

“But what is it, though?” Myra asked, her mouth beginning to dry out.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, still confident. “It’s a marvel.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Well, hah.” He fanned himself. “You know how it is with innovation. Some inventions, by their nature, send shock waves through the world, and this is… well. It’s not like most of the cures we put out. When it’s unveiled, it has to be handled delicately.”

If Myra didn’t know better, she’d think he was full of hot air. But given everything she knew…

“C-can you s-say who the c-client is?” Shera asked. “Or is that c-confidential, too?”

He shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“I thought your funding sources were all public record,” Cynthia said.

“You’re rather well-informed. But actually, I don’t even know. It’s a private contract, mediated through the, uh—” He hesitated. “Through the contract negotiators—”

“Wait—” Myra cut in. “You mean your company doesn’t even know? That’s what you’re saying? It’ll send ‘shock waves through the world’ and you don’t even know who you’re selling to?”

He grabbed his collar. “Oh, ah—I meant—ah, no, I didn’t say—”

“You don’t know who they are, what they’re going to do with it or who they’re going to use it on—” She felt Shera yank at her. “—but that’s okay ’cause you’re going to make infinite money.”

“My-Myra.” Shera pulled at her again. “C-can we t-talk?”

“What?”

“C-c’mon.”

She let the girl drag her halfway across the room. “What is it?” she asked again.

“H-he was getting really ag-agitated. He was reaching for his staff under the table.”

“But—”

“Just let Cynthia s-soften him up a-again.”

“You agree with me, right? He just wants to brag about how he’s making infinite money to women in bars, and you know who he means by ‘contract negotiators’—”

“I kn-know, Myra.” She looked away.

Myra let out a deep breath. “Sorry. I just. God, I’m overwhelmed.” She buried her face in her hands. “The deadline is the last day of the loop! I thought Ben just… stumbled upon something they were already doing, but the person who ordered this must be looping!”

“That’s n-not n-necessarily true. The deadline could be because of the summit.”

“But look at the other evidence. The contract started—what, a couple weeks ago? That would have been just after the month started. And Mirkas isn’t even doing R&D, you heard what Vikram said, they had all the materials and procedures lined up. How many loops did it take them to work this whole thing out? Who am I dealing with, Shera?”

“Do y-you not think it’s B-Ben?”

“I don’t know… where would he get infinite money?”

“I d-don’t think it’s literally infinite.”

“Yeah, I got that, Shera.” (Some economists had attempted to introduce infinite ordinals into the imperial currency, but as far as Myra knew, none of the attempts had gone anywhere.)

“Well, he’s looping, he c-could probably find a source of money, easy. You could win at gambling, or the prediction bazaars in Tzurigad. Maybe he found hidden treasure after N loops… It’s more likely than tricking those—” She twitched, harder than normal. “—negotiators of a-anything.”

“It still doesn’t have to be Ben. There’s—whoever it is that brings the drugs into the event hall. The ‘culprit,’ I guess.” Myra overhead Cynthia and Vikram were laughing about something. They seemed to be doing fine. “Well, I guess we know why Ben doesn’t attack until the last evening. It’s because he can’t acquire the drugs until then.”

“Actually, now that you say it, I think this could have been deduced from your first loop.”

“The first—like before he even attacked me a second time?”

“Yeah… the situation you described was a bit complicated, so I wrote it all down and thought some of it was a bit odd. Ben had the date-rape drugs to incapacitate you in his shoulder bag, but I removed those from his bag. But he still had some to put in your tea, which paralyzed you. I got that right?”

“Right, yeah… I think the tea was his Plan A, he’d arranged that in advance, but if, say, I hadn’t agreed to go to his room, he’d have a spare dose on his person so he could improvise.”

Shera nodded. “I think that makes sense. But the syringe drugs were different, right? After he saw that they had disappeared from his bag, he had to run off somewhere and get another dose. That means he didn’t have any already stocked in his room. So he double-prepared the date rape paralysis drugs, but he didn’t have extra syringe drugs cached anywhere, and they were evidently the more important ones—so why not?”

“I see… because he only just got them. He probably showed up at the party right after acquiring them.” That didn’t seem super important now, but at least it clarified some things. “Nice work.” She gave the girl a quick head pat. “Should we join back up?”

“I-I guess so.”

They tried, but Cynthia made subtle head gestures prompting them to hold back for the moment, and Myra decided to trust in Cynthia. The trust paid off: Cynthia was able to arrange a tour of Mirkas-Ballam’s main laboratory for the next morning.

◆

Cynthia also decided to make a larger outing of it, inviting Iz, Nathan, and Tazhin. It wasn’t entirely clear if Vikram was expecting a larger crowd—actually, it wasn’t clear if he was expecting anyone other than Cynthia—but Myra went along with it, so the six of them showed up bright and early at the Mirkas-Ballam laboratory. Vikram greeted Myra awkwardly but didn’t seem incredibly perturbed. Cynthia had smoothed it over, apparently.

There was light security at the entrance, but they were able to pass through the main barrier after signing the guest scroll. The laboratory was primarily architected around a massive, centrifugal cauldron. It wasn’t operational, so they got to see the inside of it.

It was a big cauldron. There wasn’t much else to say.

Vikram’s neurology lab was on one of the upper floors. He showed off a fun experiment where he connected a bunch of electrodes to someone’s head, and then told them to move a marble telekinetically. A runescript would process the neural impulses and predict when the subject was going to move the marble, then move it in the opposite direction just before they did. Cynthia tried it first, and it really freaked her out.

While they were distracted, Myra took a look around the room for any information about the secret project. It was hard to know what was important—there was a ton of crap that was probably from normal work that had nothing to do with the special project. There was typical neurology stuff, a poster detailing parts of the brain, a poster detailing parts of a neuron (presumably all decorative, not legitimate references) a nanoscale magnifying glass, probably used to observe neurons in action, and so on.

She quickly realized, though, that this wasn’t the ‘actual’ lab. It was a recreational area, a nice spot to take a break, great for guests like the one they were doing now. The real lab, where they presumably did all the confidential work, was off-limits. The entrance door was tied shut by a long piece of yarn in an elaborate knot, stretched between the door handle and a nail in the door frame. She’d never seen yarn used to lock anything before—it was probably a state-of-the-art security system.

She did, however, have access to Vikram’s cubicle desk. On it…

“You do runework?” Myra asked the scientist.

“Not a whole lot.” Vikram, despite his overall friendliness, had been eyeing her suspiciously all day, and this wasn’t an exception.

“Oh, I just noticed PKB open on your desk.” PKB was the most popular text on 3D runes, referred to by the initials of its authors, Prikata-Kyanizev-Begani. “I was just curious ’cause I’m a runecrafting student.”

His suspicious gaze didn’t let up. What gives? Cynthia had seemed to have a lot of luck just talking about her own interest in alchemy. Why could it not work the same talking about runes?

“When I was a teenager I tried to make some 3D runes out of clay, but I almost burnt the house down.” (She was overstating it a bit. She had started a fire, but the house had strong anti-fire wards, so there hadn’t been much actual risk.) “Father was so angry, heh.”

Vikram did soften a bit. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about the subject, which is why I had to dig out the reference. You might even know more than me. It has to do with the confidential project. So…”

“C’monnn.” She tried on her best doe eyes. “Maybe a hint?”

“Yeah, c’mon,” Cynthia encouraged.

“Well…” He took a deep breath. “The thing is, if I give a good hint, it’s against the spirit of my employment agreement, and if I give a bad hint, it’s like saying nothing at all. You know?”

Lean forward. Chest out. “What about a medium hint?”

He shook his head. “Think of it like maximizing a convex function. The optimal point lies at one of the extremes.”

Goddd what a fucking tool. Cynthia actually blanched from behind Vikram, though when he looked back at her, she immediately shifted to a pout with a puffed-out cheek.

“What I’m saying is, the middle ground is the worst of both worlds. Communication should be all-or-nothing.”

He wasn’t going to budge on this, was he?

◆

Vikram showed them around the more traditional alchemy labs, which Cynthia and the others seemed genuinely interested in. The rooms were full of transmutation circles, steam compressors, and cauldrons full of weird goop burning bright with aura. The floors were all kinda busy, though, so they had to move through quickly. They stopped by a break room to make tea.

“N-now’s as g-good a time as ever,” Shera encouraged her.

“He’s just gonna evade again.”

“Pretty sure the t-tour’s about up. And look, I’ve sensing around the trash, and I found this.” She pulled something out of her robe. It was a damaged syringe, not particularly interesting on its own, but… “Does this look like the ones you saw before?”

“Yeah, I got a good look in the second loop. It’s exactly the same.”

“These are self-sterilizing, see.” She pointed to a rune script in fine print around the edge. “They’re not c-common. Hospitals don’t use these b-because most nurses aren’t mages and d-don’t know how to check that they’re functioning properly.”

I see… so it’s more likely the assailant got it from a research lab like this one.

“Okay, I got an idea. Hey, Vikram!”

“Yes, Myrabelle?”

“Can I talk to you in private for a second?”

His eyes narrowed, but he beckoned her into the hall, and she followed.

“This syringe, is it one of yours? Your company’s, I mean?”

“Where’d you get that?” he snapped.

“Well, someone attacked me with it, and I think it was the secret project you were working on. This one had a red chemical in it, and there was another syringe with a blue one.”

His mouth hung open.

“It is the secret project,” Myra said.

“Now hold on! That’s impossible. They aren’t done yet. Any similarity is a coincidence.” He spoke quickly. “How did you even draw a connection to our plant? Why didn’t you go to the police?”

He started striding down the hall.

“The police didn’t believe me. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find someone who can deal with an issue like this. You said there was a chemical, where is it?”

“I already got rid of it. I-I—” She searched for an excuse “I didn’t know what the police would do if I had an unknown drug!”

“You better not be pulling a prank here.”

He led Myra to the office of someone named Kiera, a woman with deep bags under her eyes and thick, curly black hair who was downing a mug of coffee.

“Vikram… you’re in on a Saturday…” she said in a sleepy voice.

“Yes, I met—no, never mind that. Kiera, this young woman came to us for help because she thinks she encountered someone in possession of the same drugs we’re manufacturing. She says they tried to inject her with the—with the red and green drugs.” He took the broken syringe from Myra and showed it to the woman. “Apparently, they used this.”

“Oh, that’s concerning,” she said in a flat voice. Then, incredibly belatedly, the shoe seemed to drop in her head, and she physically jolted, her eyes popping open. “The red and green—you mean—those drugs? How is that possible?”

“It shouldn’t be possible. I’m trying to convince her she’s overreacting.”

“What is she claiming, then? Did someone else synthesize them before us? Was there a prototype I never heard about it?”

“Wait—” Myra tried to cut them off.

“I don’t know,” Vikram said. “I’m trying to figure out what the possibilities are.”

“But the—” she tried again.

“Well, tell me what happened. How do you know it’s the red or green drugs?”

“I’m trying to tell you!” Myra waved her hands frantically. “I told Vikram they were red and blue. There was no green, where the hell did you get ‘green’?”

The two researchers looked at each other.

“Uh… what kind of blue, exactly?” Kiera asked. “Like a… greenish-blue, or a teal, or…?”

“No, a dark blue, nearly purple.”

They looked at each other again.

“You sure there wasn’t a third one?” Kiera said.

“No, there wasn’t—What are guys talking about? Why do you think there should be a green drug?”

“Okay, look. There’s three… uh, drugs.” Kiera counted them off on her fingers. “Red, blue, and green.”

There’s THREE drugs? There’s motherfucking THREE? This is fucking BULLSHIT, fuck this—

“See, there’s no need to worry,” Vikram said. He sounded extremely relieved.

“You’re saying if my assailant had the green drug, I would have to worry?”

“Well, ye—” Vikram started, but his colleague shushed over him.

“Look, I’ll explain this so you can relax,” she said. “The way it works, there’s three. The red, blue, green. The red just… it just initiates the… uh, effect. The blue neutralizes the red. You can’t, it’s not good to have the red in your system too long. To prolong the effect, you need the green.”

“So you’re saying that without the green, they can only affect me for a couple of minutes before I die, or something.”

“No! I mean, the, the red does nothing on its own. Red sets the effect, the green determines its duration. Neither of them can do anything without the other. But they’re just inert dyes, they don’t mean anything. If your attacker got them from another source, they could be swapped—”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. They’re from here, they used your special syringes—”

“Well, we’re not the only lab that uses those,” she pointed out. “And I told you, the red drug won’t be done for another couple of weeks! If they are from here, they’re something else, and if you have a sample we could help identify it. Otherwise, we can’t help you.”

An odd wording choice caught on Myra. “You said the red isn’t done. Does that mean the others are?”

She winced. “Well—yes, the others are much simpler molecules. The red is the one that needs the—uh—”

“Kiera,” Vikram warned.

“—That is the, uh, complicated one.”

“See. It’s not a drug from our company,” Vikram said, increasingly anxious. “If they didn’t have the green one, there would have been no point.”

“You’re completely sure? The drugs can’t do anything without the green one?”

“Of course,” said Kiera.

“Absolutely,” Vikram said, though his voice was drier and raspier than it had been, and he was sweating so much his glasses were about to fog up.

“This isn’t important,” Kiera said. “As long as the red drug isn’t finished, we can say for sure that whatever happened to you had nothing to do with our current contract.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

◆

There really was nothing Myra could say to convince them, and to be fair, Myra’s claims were only possible because she had literally gone back in time, so she could hardly blame them. Maybe she should come back on the evening of the last day or something.

Vikram had been unnerved by the whole thing, so he ushered the group out pretty quickly while unsubtly hinting to Myra that she needed to keep quiet about everything she learned. Apparently, their contract with the mysterious buyer had a very strict secrecy clause, and Myra could read between the lines to see that Vikram was extremely concerned about his infinite money.

“Should we get lunch while we’re out here?” Cynthia asked. “Nathan, didn’t you tell me about some hidden gem in the banking district?”

Nathan bit his lip, trying to think what Cynthia was talking about, then lit up like a lantern, his mouth making a round O. “Oh yeah, that place! It’s just a few blocks from here!” He nearly started salivating.

“Well, I guess that’s settled then,” Myra said. She needed a treat just about now, and she was a little curious about this mysterious ‘hidden gem.’

“Lead the way!” Cynthia cheered.

The restaurant in question was an unnamed hole-in-the-wall squeezed between a couple of far more popular cafes. There was no seating, just a window to order. At Nathan’s insistence, Myra got the specialty, the ‘Slithering Onion.’ It came in a handheld carton, deep-fried onion strips slathered in a spicy mayonnaise sauce, with bits of bacon and steak mixed in. Grease dripped not only through the box carton, but through the extra buffer of napkins as well, so it was impossible for Myra to hold it without her hands becoming a mess. That was before she even got to eating it.

“10/10,” Cynthia said through a crunchy mouthful. “Another Nathan rec knocks it out of the park.”

The group had settled on a bench across the street to eat. Myra was casually eyeing the place, idly watching the occasional banker or other well-dressed businessman stop by while she sifted through the information in her head.

A drug is required to prolong the effect, but Ben never brings it, and it wasn’t in the event hall, either.

She was halfway convinced that Kiera and Vikram were right. It really didn’t make sense.

Some kind of neurological effect?

Why did Vikram call his role “tangential”?

3D runes…

“It’s pretty good,” Shera said. She had found the only winning strategy, using telekinesis to avoid touching the Slithering Onion with her hands. Myra was inclined to agree with Cynthia, though. It was more than ‘pretty good.’

“I think Zrinka mentioned this place before,” Iz said, referring to a classmate Myra didn’t know.

“I might get another one,” Cynthia said. “Myra, you wanna split?”

“You know they have other dishes,” Myra said. “But sure. It’s not every day I’m gonna make the trek up here.”

Shera considered it, then followed them as well, and they got in line behind a short, teal-haired woman in a dress.

“I’m g-g-going to try the p-pudding,” Shera said. Myra wasn’t paying attention.

Hold on, that’s…

“Violet Penrilla,” she said just as the woman turned around. Violet Penrilla flinched like she’d been jump-scared in a haunted house, almost dropping the Slithering Onion she’d just picked up, then quickly sank into a guarded defensive pose.

“You!” Violet’s eyes flickered back and forth between the group. Myra heard the others, getting curious, approaching from behind. “You, and you.” She calmed herself down, easing into a slow and deliberate tone. “You were poking around at the hotelll…”

“You know this woman, Myra?” Cynthia asked.

“Could I get your all’s order?” the restaurant server asked.

“Yeah, another Slithering Onion, please,” Cynthia asked. “Who’s this? Did you say Penrilla, like, the duke?”

“What do you want?” the young woman snapped.

“I-I’d like a p-pudding,” Shera called to the server.

“Wanna hang out with us?” Cynthia asked. “We’re not sure what we’re doing, but we’re open to suggestions.”

“No, I don’t want to hang out with the weird creeps bothering us at our hotel,” she snarled.

“What’s going on?” Iz and the others had joined.

“Nothing’s going on. I’m leaving,” Violet said that, but she didn’t teleport out in the blink of an eye this time. “Actually.” She hesitated. “You look familiar.” She pointed to Iz.

“Um…” Iz looked embarrassed. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met…”

“Hey, I bet it’s from that contest!” Nathan pointed out. “Your face was in all the papers.”

Violet snapped her finger. “Yeahh, that’s it. I remember that, I was in the audience. You shocked everyone! What’s your name, again?”

“Oh, thank you,” Iz said warmly. “I’m Isadora.”

Violet bit her lip, thought for a while, and then let out a deep sigh, then said to Cynthia, “Fine, I’ll join your group for a bit.”

“I still haven’t caught your name?” Iz asked.

“I’m Violet Penrilla.”

Iz’s eyes flickered as she recognized the last name, and her voice turned to ice. “Oh.”

◆

Cynthia selected bowling as an activity, which was met with general agreement. Bowling wasn’t the greatest sport in the world, but nobody hated it either. Even if you sucked, you could have fun aiming for some high two-digit score.

“The extra f-frames at the end are so in-inelegant. No sane p-person would come up w-with this.”

Shera had opinions on the scoring rules.

“You have to be rewarded if you get a strike at the end, though,” Nathan said.

“It could wrap a-around. If you get a strike on the tenth, it should add y-your score from the f-first frame instead of adding an e-extra frame. It-it’s c-cleaner t-to go in a circle th-that way.”

“Wow,” Cynthia said.

“I guess we can score however we want,” Myra admitted. Shera beamed.

“… How are we scoring?” Violet returned from the lane, having made her third strike in a row. It seemed like she hadn’t heard the whole thing, but her face wore a profound skepticism anyway. Shera looked to the floor, blushing, while Iz swapped in for her turn. After some deep concentration, she bowled a perfect trajectory, straight and true, but which lacked the momentum to knock down all the pins. She got a spare.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Myra said, responding to Violet’s question. “So, Violet.”

“Yeah?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Um!” There were a shitload of things Myra wanted to ask, and she suddenly realized she didn’t know what to ask first. “So what were you doing in the city? And where’s your friend?”

“Malazhonerra,” she clarified.

“Y-yeah.”

“Well, I was in the city on business. My family holds a lot of assets in Casire. Malazhonerra—God knows. She’s tied up in some royal business, probably.”

“Ah. I had the impression you two were… vacationing here together? I mean, that was just an assumption I made at the hotel, I guess.”

“Eh.” Violet cracked her neck from side to side. “It’s half and half. We both have a lot of obligations… I was going to take the whole month off, but we got back from our hike to find we’d missed the biggest financial scandal in the empire since the Cod Counterfeiter.”

Myra flinched, but Violet probably didn’t notice. “Was the Penrilla duchy hit hard?” she asked.

“Us? Nah, we’re just bailing everybody out.” She smirked.

“Oh.” Myra remembered just who, exactly, she was talking to.

So her family’s probably going to come out ahead when all is said and done.

“You got to go hiking for a couple of weeks, though. What was that like?”

“Oh, that. Yeah, it was… fun. It wasss…” She was suddenly very hesitant. “A lot of exercise.”

“Myra! Your turn!” Cynthia called.

“Oh, coming!” Forgetting about Violet’s odd reluctance, she stepped up to the lane.

Myra got nine pins. The tenth one wobbled a bit. “Damn.”

Violet was up again. She got a strike without even looking like she was trying, casually flicking the ball off her left wrist.

“You’re not using telekinesis, are you?”

“No, where’s the fun in that?” she scoffed at the idea. “What about you?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“What are you and your friends doing in the city? You’re students, right?”

“We were touring a pharmaceutical plant!” Cynthia cut in. “It was amazing, we saw their giant cauldron and did this fun neuron experiment!” She explained about the experiment from the neurology floor. “Do you know much about pharmaceuticals?”

“Can’t say that I do. I studied business and civil engineering.”

“Ooh. Where did you study?”

“Jatzerr.” (That was one of the top universities in Halnya.)

“Hey Violet,” Myra jumped back in as Cynthia went up for her turn. “Can you think of a reason someone would want to massacre the royal family?”

“Ha. What the fuck?” Her voice was sharp and derisive. “Why? You know of some plot? Do you have something you need to report? Ha ha!”

“Uhh…”

“I mean, what kind of question is that? Loads of people hate the royal family. They probably thwart an assassination attempt every month or so.”

No. No, they don’t. They actually do the opposite of that.

“It’s not funny,” Iz said. These were the first words she spoke to Violet since she realized she was related to a powerful imperial duke. “They have so many enemies because they hurt so many people.”

Violet almost responded, then clamped her mouth shut. Iz stared her dead in the eye.

“Hmph,” Violet finally said, still in her derisive tone. “Well, they’re certainly controversial. Maybe you should tell it to their faces.”

“Maybe I will. Would you introduce me?”

“No.”

“So, uh!” Myra interrupted, trying to steer away from conflict. “Did you ever learn about that crater? The one we talked about when we met earlier?”

◆

Violet didn’t know anything of interest about the crater, though she begrudgingly admitted it was “more interesting than I thought.” Myra grilled her on Emmett Massiel’s death as well, but she insisted she didn’t know anything, and that she probably couldn’t say more about it even if she did. Were there any leads? She didn’t know. Was there anybody who would want to kill him? She didn’t know.

Violet won the bowling game with a 299 by the usual rules, having botched the very last bonus frame. That meant that with Shera’s new and improved scoring method, which ignored the bonus frame, it was a perfect 300.

“You all want to do something else?” Cynthia asked. “Ice cream, skating…”

“I have a lot of work to do…” Iz said.

“Bah, you all should enjoy yourselves,” Violet said. She was levitating the bowling ball a few centimeters above her palm. “You all are in the primes of your youth, don’t waste it doing homework.”

Iz looked annoyed.

“O wise elder, we are humbled that you should deign to share your wisdom,” Cynthia said.

“You’re not that much older than us, are you?” Nathan asked.

“I’m twenty-one, if you must know. But I wasn’t talking about your age.”

“Are you going to join us, though?”

She thought about it for a second. “I don’t think so. I should go find Mala.”

“What did you mean?” Myra asked.

“Mean… about…?”

“Just now. You were like, ‘I wasn’t talking about age.’”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “You wanna let this go?”

“Well, now we’re even more curious,” Nathan said.

Violet lifted her glasses and rubbed her eye. “Well, it’s actually pretty simple. First of all, I started university when I was twelve.”

“Oh, wow! That’s really impressive,” Cynthia said.

She shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a Penrilla, so my father likes to remind me. He insisted.”

“Was it hard?”

“Academically? Not really, no. I just read all the books, did all the homework, you know. Not a whole lot to it.”

Iz nodded along, for the first time not looking like she wanted to murder the nobleman’s daughter.

“But honestly, I was miserable. Right, like, most college-age kids don’t want to hang around with a twerpy twelve-year-old.” She looked intently at her bowling ball as she spoke. “I mean, it was mutual. I was too young to be interested in the older kids’ activities. So I never really made any friends. I didn’t even take any fun classes, just went down the list my father picked out. Four years, all the mage training and education I’d need to inherit the Penrilla duchy, and then it was back to high society. Don’t waste your opportunities, that’s all I meant.”

“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said. “But hearing a twenty-one-year-old wax on about this is bumming me out. We need to give you the college experience you’re obviously yearning for.”

“Nah, I shouldn’t, I’ve bothered you all enough.”

“No, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. You just poured your heart out, and we’re going to make you have some more fun. Come on, we’re going to go to campus, get some drinks, and sing bad karaoke.”

Violet turned bright red. “Well… I mean, I guess I am on vacation…”

Cynthia smirked. “You could invite your friend, too.”

“Mala? Mm…” She vanished.

“Uh, what?” Cynthia said. “Did she go to find the princess?”

“I don’t want to meet the princess,” Iz said.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Cynthia said.

“I thought you wanted to talk shit to her face?” Myra asked.

“I dunno…”

Violet popped back. “Yeah, she doesn’t wanna come. Sorry, I think karaoke might be a little…”

Beneath her, Myra could fill in the blank.

“Oh.” Cynthia sounded disappointed.

“But—um.” Violet was a little red, and she was tapping her fingers together. “Can I—”

Cynthia grinned again. “Of course!”

◆

They cleaned up, and then they all filed out of the bowling alley to their next destination, led by Cynthia and Nathan, with Violet close behind. Myra waited at the back for Shera, who was watching Violet closely. She had the same flustered look about her as the day at the hotel.

Not just flustered, she looked…

Oh.

Hehe.

“Shera.” Myra crept up behind her and whispered while the rest of the group was still ahead. “Do you think she’s cute?”

“Wh-wh-what??”

“C’mon,” Myra said, continuing to whisper. “I see the way you’ve been looking at her. You’ve got a crush.”

“N-no, I-I-I mean—” She turned beet red, stopping in her tracks. She held Myra back until they were farther from the rest of the group, obviously anxious. “I-I-I-I d-don’t—I d-don’t—”

“C’mon, you don’t need to be embarrassed,” Myra assured her. “I mean, she’s pretty, and rich, uh… she’s good at bowling, uh… she’s a talented mage… and it was kinda cute when she starting pouring her heart out—”

“I d-d-don’t have a c-crush on her. I just—Think she’s—She looks—” She stopped and bit her lip so hard, Myra thought it was going to bleed. Even though she was keeping her voice sufficiently low, she kept glancing ahead at the group to make sure they weren’t overhearing her. “I-I don’t know how to put it in words,” she finally said. “Sh-she’s elegant.”

“Elegant?”

Well, she was a noblewoman, and she was certainly pretty, but her business dress didn’t really stand out. She had a nice haircut, but she didn’t wear any jewelry.

There was really only one explanation for Shera’s opinion. “You do have—”

“No, I don’t! I j-just she looks elegant!” Shera dashed ahead to rejoin the group, clearly done with the questioning.

◆

They walked back to campus while Myra tried to drop subtle hints that it would be great to have someone who could teach her long-distance teleportation, though she didn’t get any response. Violet, instead, spent most of the trip answering Nathan’s complex questions about the Penrillas’ mining operations in Northern Halnya, apparently a topic he was interested in.

Myra felt a little scummy about it, but she also used the trip to sense around in Violet’s bag. Unfortunately, it was all parchment that she wouldn’t be able to read without actually looking at it.

They arrived at Cynthia’s dorm, where they found the karaoke setup in the basement, and she got started setting up the projector and the pulley system that synchronized its lyrics with the phonograph. It looked excessively complicated, so Myra kept her distance and let the expert work.

“How about this song?” Nathan suggested. “It’s about coming out of one’s shell. Seems appropriate.”

“Sure, why not?” Violet said. She wore her usual skepticism, though.

And frankly, she was right to. The song Nathan picked turned out to be a bizarre science-fiction song about a slug who was forced to disguise himself as a turtle as part of a government experiment to increase biodiversity due to ill-conceived incentives in environmental policy. The ‘coming out of one’s shell’ part was extremely literal. Myra didn’t know if Nathan had picked it as a joke or what.

They poke and prod my pneumostome. ♩♬

I’m under a microscope ♪

They make theory after theory, ♫

Is that not right? No, it’s not even wrong. ♩♬

Despite the bizarre and frankly off-putting lyrics, Violet seemed to get into it, finding her groove at around the part where the slug-disguised-as-a-turtle beats a hare at a foot race.

On the victory stage, height of turtledom ♩♬

They demand, how did I do it? ♪

They treat themselves to their answers. ♫

Am I not real? No, I’m not even fake. ♩♬

For the last thirty seconds of the song, the projector only said “make slug noises,” which Violet didn’t know to do, but they had all started drinking and somehow had a good time anyway.

◆

They rotated around for a while. Myra and Cynthia sang a fairly ordinary song about romance. To Myra’s slight surprise, Shera happily volunteered for a turn, choosing a ballad based on an old fairy tale. It went about the way Myra expected, but Shera seemed really into it anyway.

It was difficult to continue her interrogation without ruining the upbeat mood. Myra was surprised, then, when it was Violet who broached a difficult topic.

“Myra… I couldn’t help but notice… You’re Prua-Kent, right?”

Aw, fuck.

“What of it?”

“Kent as in Kent Arcane.”

“Yes, as in Kent Arcane. Yastmar Kent was my father, this whole thing has nothing to do with me.”

“Well, then, I should apologize for earlier. I was being pretty insensitive about it.”

Myra sighed, half relieved to clear the air about this, half annoyed to give up an easy way of redirecting her resentment. “It’s fine, you couldn’t have known.”

“Well, I might have suspected.” She cracked her neck. She seemed to like doing that. “Pretty sure I saw an article or something or other that said Yastmar Kent had a daughter at your school.”

“Oh, I don’t think I saw that. I, uh, kinda tried to avoid the news for a while.”

“Were you close?”

“To my dad? Well, I mean, he was the only family I had… except my stepmother and her family, but, they’re not—well, I don’t count them.” She looked to the ground. “He sent me a letter, but I haven’t even opened it yet. I don’t know how I can face him, knowing what he did. How many people he scammed.”

“I can only imagine how that feels,” she said. “To have someone close to you hide a crime like that.”

“Well, I hope you never have to know.”

“Have you gotten a lot of flak for it?”

“Sorta. I got kicked out of an apprenticeship I wanted. I think they figured out my connection because they had my banking information. I think most of the students at school didn’t realize.” Except the first loop where Ben told everyone so that I’d get flustered. “I feel like shit complaining about it, though. I’m not the one in jail forever.”

“Nah, it’s fine to be frustrated being in the fallout from a mess someone else made.”

◆

When they finally parted ways, Violet said she’d consider coming to hang out again, though she’d be spending her vacation with Malazhonerra.

The group disbanded, and Cynthia debriefed with Shera for a bit, then turned in for the night with Cynthia as usual. Myra was still camping in Cynthia’s room just to make herself a little harder to find. In the previous loop, she had executed her sleep-schedule-shift plan about halfway into the month. This loop, it felt like she had properly moved in.

“You’ve been a ton of help today,” she told her friend. “Today and yesterday.”

“Aw.” She plopped on her bed and held her arms out. “Snuggle.”

“Okay, okay.”

Myra slid her into her arms and closed her eyes. “Mm. Really, thanks.” Meeting Violet Penrilla had not been anywhere close to the range of projected outcomes for the day, and it absolutely would not have happened if it hadn’t been for Cynthia.

Now, if only I can get her to teach me teleportation…

Cynthia ran a hand through Myra’s hair. “You know,” she said, a hint of mischief sneaking into her voice, “Shera doesn’t get jealous, does she?”

“Huh?”

“Sherazyn Marcrombie. You know. The girl who hangs off your every word. Does she get jealous of you spending the night here all the time?”

“C’mon, it’s not like that.”

“Pffft.”

“Cynthia! Seriously, she’s attracted to Violet Penrilla, anyway.”

Cynthia twisted around and pushed Myra onto her back. “You cannot be serious. You think she wants to date Violet over you.”

“No, really! She said she’s elegant.”

Cynthia looked deeply skeptical. “She’s pretty. I dunno if she’s elegant. Honestly, she looked a lot like any young hopeful banker you’d see around that part of town.”

“Well, tell that to Shera!”

◆

Unfortunately, Violet never did get in contact for the rest of the month. When the prince came to give his campus speech in the lead-up to the peace event, she didn’t show up then, either. (Not that Myra could blame her.)

Myra got back to investigating Mirkas-Ballam. She sought out Aurora, who said she was willing to help analyze their security system, though again Myra needed to wait a few days for her to be free. She learned that Sky Mishram was in town, though he hadn’t contacted her yet. According to Aurora, he was pretty busy.

The apprenticeship with Professor Bandine continued to challenge Myra, though not entirely in a good way. On one hand, she was exercising the runecrafting skills she wanted to exercise, but the professor seemed quick to grow impatient at Myra’s lack of progress. She seemed a bit deficient in the “there are no stupid questions” mentality, which meant it was hard for Myra to ask her for help. Sometimes, especially in runecrafting, just working out the proper way to phrase a question was almost as hard as answering it, which meant that someone who wouldn’t help with ill-formed questions was no help at all.

The last straw came three days before the end of the loop. She had gone into the lab to test a component, and the professor took the chance to reiterate how important it was that Myra finish her component in a couple of weeks to keep on schedule. Obviously, anything two weeks from now was extremely not Myra’s problem, but that wasn’t what pissed her off. In fact, two weeks even seemed like plenty of time under normal conditions. No, the issue was that Professor Bandine was going on vacation. Professor Bandine was asking her to finish her project over a time span when she wouldn’t even be around.

It was clear, now, that there really wasn’t a deep reason why Benkoten had pushed her away from this apprenticeship.

It just sucked. It put her in a foul mood.

It was like she had thought originally: Ben had steered her clear of this shitshow to induce her gratefulness.

“If you’ve got anything you need from me, be sure to ask it by Monday.” That was the whole of the instructions the professor gave. She didn’t even point her to a backup mentor, or—

Wait.

Monday?

“Hold on!” She caught up to the professor as she ambled out. “So your vacation starts—”

“On Tuesday.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going on a cruise with my son and his family.”

“Okay. Um, well, I hope you have a good trip.”

“Thank you.”

She’s leaving Tuesday? December 3? With her whole family, she’s getting out of here the same day the city’s drowned in lava?

I mean… people take vacations all the time. It could be a coincidence…

She hadn’t seen any other evidence to suggest the professor was involved. Her building was one of the ones to be destroyed, if that meant anything. But still.

Myra filed it away in the back of her mind.

◆

On Dec. 1, with less than seventy-two hours remaining, Myra spent most of the day with Iz. They had their self-defense class, the last one of the loop, and then finished up their plans for the aura measurement. Iz had really poured everything into it, managing to finish it before their deadline. She had even floated the idea of publishing a journal article on it.

They celebrated by making cupcakes.

“How’s your class going, by the way?”

Iz was stirring the batter. “Elemental composition? It’s fun. The first week we learned how to make a ‘book’ element. It’s really useful for looking up stuff in the library.”

“How’s that made?”

“Its main components are wood and information.”

“‘Information’? That’s not a base element, is it? I hadn’t heard of it.”

“Well, that’s its unofficial name. It’s technically called dalet-three—You know, those obscure, unnamed elements in the astral channel that nobody knows what they do? There’s talk of renaming dalet-three to ‘information.’ But it’s this huge, controversial standardization thing, you know. All the sages need to have this long comment period before it goes official… Here, this should be ready.” They moved to fill the tins with the batter. “It’s a tough class, though,” she continued.

“Heh. Hard for you?”

She faltered a bit in her aim as she tried to fill the tin. “It takes a lot of creativity, it’s almost an art. I think you’d be good at it.”

“Oh c’mon, if even you find it tough, mortals like me don’t have a chance.”

“Would you stop?” she said sharply. “You know there are a bunch of people in the class, right? It’s not like some impossible undertaking.”

“Uhm. Sorry. I really think you’re amazing, though—sorry. Am I reminding you of… uh…?”

“You mean when I blew away everybody’s grades as a freshman and got a bunch of shit from some insecure rich kids?”

“Yeah, that.”

She sighed. “Myra, I don’t think you’re anything like those guys. But like, yeah, it was frustrating and frightening to have them on my case when they could have just, I don’t know, applied any amount of logic to any homework problem and gotten great grades. Sorry, I really don’t mean to compare you.”

“I know what you mean.” Myra tried to sound less hurt than she was. She’d wanted to take that class. Iz just didn’t get that not everybody swallowed up advanced algebra the way she did. Myra didn’t say it though.

Besides, Myra was too anxious about Iz’s fate to be annoyed at her friend for long. In the previous loop, she had kept her word to Iz and not interfered with the bogus duel on the very last day… but she didn’t feel great about it. Her attempt to help Iz win had been feeble, having her take the defense class with her, but nothing had prepared for such an underhanded attack.

This time, Myra had some hope that they would just avoid the whole thing entirely this time, now that they were on friendly terms with Violet which could turn fate in any number of ways.

She didn’t want to bank on it, though.

So she thought, if the princess was going to use a nasty trick, why shouldn’t they?

As she had in the second loop, she had steered Instructor Yam towards teaching them about lava. Originally, her intent had just been to make sure Shera got the training, though of course, it had the side-effect that Iz would learn too.

And the surprise lava marble had worked out quite well before…

On the whole, she was pretty proud of the effort she’d put into defense this loop, especially given how much time she’d had to sink on the apprenticeship. She had continued practicing dodging with Zirphilia, and she was actually improving rapidly. She was pretty sure she could dodge a tranquilizer dart, now. Her barrier was improving as well.

Benkoten Talzatta was like the specter over everything, the big unknown that could throw her plans for the end of the loop into chaos. After humiliating him last time, he was sure to up his game. She’d escaped him three times, though, she was getting better. Surely, she could do it again?

She had to believe she would.

◆◆◆◆◆

Six thousand kilometers away, deep in the Ptolkeran mountain range, separated from the nearest city by a treacherous and cold ten-day hike, there was a settlement. From all sides, it was surrounded by a wilderness crawling with danger, where wolves lurked and yeti slumbered. But those who knew of the settlement would have said it was the most dangerous of all.

On the surface, it seemed like an ordinary village, if you ignored the location. There was a schoolhouse and a lively town hall. There was even, of all things, an inn.

This village, and the complex of labyrinthine caverns that had attracted the settlers, was where Benkoten Talzatta spent around half of his loops these days. On this day, like most days, he was engaged in practice.

Specifically, he was practicing and losing.

Ben held a thousand ice crystals in the air. Brother Jatta held half as many.

A thousand ice crystals shot in a thousand different angles. Not one hit its target. Every crystal was struck down by a defender. A perfect defense by Jatta, despite his handicap of one to two.

Ben’s partner looked at him with eyes colder than the air outside. “What are you waiting for? Again.”

Ben gritted his teeth and pulled his projectiles back into the air. They hung in loose, disorganized clumps, not like the perfect ring around Jatta. He tried again, focusing on the thing that couldn’t be put into words, the thing that a childhood of imperial mage education had not prepared him for. He pushed forward and bombarded his opponent again.

Again, every single one was knocked out of the air. It happened over less than a second: Five hundred were knocked down by five hundred defenders, and then every one of those defenders moved to strike again until every last projectile had been knocked out.

Screw up. Incompetent.

“You will defend this time.” Jatta waited—it was slightly insulting, but he waited to give Ben a fighting chance—as Ben tried to push away distracting thoughts and reverse his mindset—

The volley came. Ben acted, moving his pieces, but it wasn’t right at all. Ben’s pieces clumped together, failing to spread out. Ten, no, twenty pieces all locked onto the same invader, all getting in each other’s way. Too many invaders went unobstructed. Some of Ben’s defenders missed their targets entirely.

Ben had experienced his share of hail, having faced the elements on the way to the village. This was worse.

You’re not improving in the slightest.

“Not even close,” Jatta agreed, reading the thoughts on Ben’s face. “You are losing focus. Take a break and return when you are ready to give your all.”

He left, and Ben slumped against the wall.

What are you going to do about this? he demanded of himself.

She keeps her barrier up constantly.

She refuses to talk to you. You won’t be able to get in her head.

That’s even if she’ll even let you find her this time.

How long before she starts committing suicide just to escape?

If she understands what’s going on, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

He needed the powerful methods of the sect, so he could come at her with everything he had, all at once in perfect synchrony, but he couldn’t even master their parlor tricks.

This was a mistake. I bit off too much, betting on this direction.

“Brother Benkoten.”

He was snapped out of his spiral. Jatta had returned, and Benkoten had not regained his focus in the slightest. “The Master has asked to speak with you.”

Ah.

That’s strange.

When Ben had first joined, when he had first figured out how to be accepted here, his relations with the master and the other students varied wildly from loop to loop. Over time, his skills started to plateau, and perhaps more importantly, his early loop routine had started to crystallize, so now things usually moved fairly predictably. A summons from Master Quoil wasn’t expected.

Not that Ben would complain. Unpredictability was welcome these days.

“He is in the meditation room.”

“Of course.”

The meditation room was deep in the caves, a long, winding walk through the narrow tunnels, lit only by a faint glowing moss that the sect had planted on the roof. The beautiful, dancing bright lights of the meditation room were, as always, a welcome sight to Ben’s eyes.

The master sat on the pillar at the center of the room, his legs crossed and back straight. The pillar was adjusted, as always, for the height of its occupant, so that the old man’s head was positioned in the center of the ‘apparatus’: the enormous number of pseudo-stalactites, the spiked, glassy rocks that jutted from the ceiling at odd angles, all focused to a single point. Moss crept along the spikes in thin strands, all of which connected to the back wall, where the moss was arranged in strips, rows and columns that interleaved in a large rectangle. Upon the rectangle, a bright line glowed, moving back and forth with a regularity that only the Master could achieve. The Master observed this rectangle, his eyes wide open.

Absent was the enchanted headband that prevented the need to blink—the Master didn’t need it.

Does the masked looper know about this place? Ben had wondered this more than once. Did it give them their idea, or did they invent it independently? It was so different in its execution that Ben had failed to see the commonality for quite some time.

“Master, you have summoned, and I have answered,” Ben said. He kneeled, though the Master would not see it.

“My newest pupil,” he said, his tone gruff but reassuring. The lights continued to move, unimpeded. “You have been disturbed, these last few days. Your seniors agree with me. You have been distracted while you train.”

So that’s it.

“It’s… it’s the woman I told you about.”

“The criminal you must apprehend.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me again, when is your obligation?”

“It is the eve of the full moon.” (They didn’t use the imperial calendar, here, obviously.) Ben wasn’t entirely sure why he had told Master Quoil of his obligation in the first place—it was of no consequence to leave on the last day.

“What is special about that date?”

“It’s the only time I know where she will be,” Ben lied. He couldn’t explain that, not without explaining the loop at the very minimum.

“Tell me, Benkoten, my pupil who vanquished the Belligerent Bird with the courage of a thousand men, what do you fear?”

“I have… failed to apprehend Myrabelle Prua-Kent before,” he said carefully. “Each time, the situation has only grown worse. She grows more wary, more paranoid, more difficult to catch off guard. And if I fail yet again—well, you see.”

“What do you fear?” he asked again.

“I fear that with just one more failure, success may be indefinitely out of my grasp, that I will try and fail forever. I fear that this may be the case already.”

The master was silent for a while.

“What I do not understand, my pupil—” His voice was cold and harsh. Suddenly, the lights on the back wall stopped, and the master stood up. He approached Ben where he was kneeling, his eyes piercing, drilling into Ben’s skull.

And then they softened.

“—Why do you not ask for help?”

“It-it’s—it’s too—” It’s too complicated. How can I share this? How can I navigate all the lies I’ve told? It would be impossible.

“It’s my burden to bear,” is what he finally settled on.

“Your burden? Your burden? My pupil—no, my son—have you forgotten your new family? Any burden of yours is a burden of The Sect Gazing Inward. It is my duty as your master to assure you of this: In apprehending this vile criminal, you will have our full backing.”