Myra had dug up a spell that would help her eavesdrop on the summit participants before they entered the event hall. It was somewhat complicated, and it relied on complex acoustic calculations stored in the Common Library, but it was easy enough to use on the exterior of the hall without getting noticed. Undoubtedly, the individuals would have no expectation of privacy in the first place, but she still felt it would be worthwhile to listen in. As in the previous loop, Myra found a spot in a nearby building where they could observe without being noticed, and she settled in with Shera.

The conversations did turn out to actually be moderately interesting. The sages mostly talked about trade, but from the way they greeted Hazel Ornobis, the sage of magical infrastructure, it was obvious that she was grieving from Massiel’s death, which got Myra’s attention.

Hazel Ornobis was an elegantly dressed woman, thinly built with a shaved head and earrings. She indeed looked forlorn, her eyes slightly sunken. It was Aiko Ueno, the sage of magical practice, who brought up Massiel explicitly.

“I’m glad to see you’re back,” she said gently.

“I am glad to be back.” Sage Ornobis didn’t sound like she meant it.

“Has there been any update on the… on the circumstances of his death?”

“You know there hasn’t.”

It went on for a bit, and Myra learned that Hazel was somehow involved in the process of selling off Massiel’s estate. They must have been close?

Opposite them, Marcus and Linda (forestry and seafaring) were concerned that Unkmire would be put off by the emperor’s absence at the meeting. They were speaking to Judge Krasus, who was somewhat put off by the last-minuteness of their worries and felt confident it wouldn’t be an issue anyway.

The most interesting bits were from the imperial family.

The princess, all nice and dressed up again, was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and avoiding all eye contact. Her maid was with her, also standing in silence. Every once in a while, the princess seemed to exhale intensely, each time garnering a look of concern from the maid. Eventually, her father walked over to the pair.

“Pull yourself together,” he said bluntly.

“Father,” she said. “I—” Whatever she was going to say got caught in her throat.

The prince did look like he was waiting for a moment, but he eventually said, “I don’t want to know about whatever foolishness you’ve been up to. You have eight minutes to get your head in the game.” He walked away, leaving his daughter with her mouth hanging open. She shivered, still holding herself.

The maid suddenly seemed to make a decision, going after the prince.

“Sir—” The maidservant looked the prince up and down, contemplating something. “Sir, if I may speak freely—”

The prince said nothing, but he looked at her expectantly, as if to say, get on with it.

“Even now, it’s not too late to postpone the event.”

“Postpone? What reason could I have to postpone at this hour?”

“Your—your wellness, sir.”

“My wellness? Surely, this is not about my appetite today.”

“You must be on your best form for the negotiations. If you need an excuse, I can find some issue with the venue, or make a scene of some nature—”

“You can, and will, do nothing. If I believed I was unable to negotiate on behalf of our empire, then I would have said so already.”

“Sir—”

“You are taking this far out of proportion. I am fine.”

“Sir, you were vomiting not twenty minutes ago. This isn’t acceptable—”

“Vomiting?” He almost spat the words. He drew some attention, too. A few sages looked at him oddly, startled out of their own conversation. “What are you on about, woman? I did no such thing.”

The maidservant boggled at the denial. “S-sir, I saw it all in the sink. I don’t know why you would choose now of all times to succumb to overpride, but this is—”

“You are mistaken. I have no time for this. You are dismissed for the night, Cornelia.”

The maidservant didn’t argue with this order, and she left, her cheeks burning red. The princess watched her sadly.

Myra looked over at her friend. “Uhh… what was that?”

“I d-don’t like the way he spoke to her.” She shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah, I don’t either.” Even after she was even apparently willing to eat a lot of blame for something that had nothing to do with her.

Myra took another hard look at the prince and his demeanor. “Maybe I’m just primed now, but… he does look kinda sick, doesn’t he?” He was swaying on his feet, and he looked like he wanted to vomit.

“D-do you want to go find that sink? See if sh-she’s telling the truth?”

“I dunno…” Interesting though this had been, it was probably just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the massacre. “Why would she lie about that?” Myra finally said.

In the end, they (thankfully) didn’t go try to find Prince Humpteron’s excised dinner. The Unkmire group arrived, and the relaxed chatter among the imperial group ceased and the state of conversation shifted towards pompous, hollow greetings. The princess did seem to pull herself together and joined in with the sort of grace that would be expected of her. Myra started to zone out from the surveillance and think about her other obligations.

They needed to get Iz. Myra felt awful asking anything of her, especially as she’d once again failed to keep her from getting cut open, but… they needed to get Iz. For their plan to work, there was a fairly specific measurement they needed to do when the event hall opened up, and Myra wasn’t at all confident she could do it on her own. So they needed to get Iz. It was the sensible thing to do.

“I’ll go,” Shera volunteered. “I think you should stay close to Iwasaki. You said Ben seems unwilling to fight around him?”

Myra was a little concerned about how that conversation would go, but she also trusted that Iz wouldn’t need too much convincing to see the results of her hard work all the way to the end. Shera snapped one of her teleport sticks (for they had decided to stock up with sticks configured to various important points on campus). Myra joined Iwasaki, giving her usual spiel about how someone was after her, eventually leading to the pair of them standing around in awkward silence. After an uncomfortable number of minutes, she decided to try to consider what information she could get from the security head.

She had a (quite vague) plan to get Iwasaki to be more accommodating of their investigation. She’d observed that, in Loop 2, the man had been the most helpful after the volcano had erupted. She could theorize why that was all day—sheer panic, the impending destruction of the evidence, who knew—but that wasn’t so important. She had an idea that if she led with her knowledge of the volcano, he might be convinced.

Well… maybe it was a bit of a stretch.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?” He was serious. Professional.

“Do you expect anything to happen tonight? With the event?”

“Are you asking why our security is so intense? I realize it’s a little abnormal for the university to hold something quite like this, but this level of privacy is standard for any kind of meeting with the imperial heads.”

“Oh.”

That answer sounded really… normal. Iwasaki was perfectly relaxed. It wasn’t quite what she was expecting.

“If I might ask, why was the university chosen?”

“I believe a set of suitable candidates was agreed upon by all parties, and then one entry was chosen at random. The Unkmire heads, if I understand correctly, preferred a city in Casire because it borders Unkmire. That’s all I know—though if I knew any more, I doubt I would be able to say.”

“I see.” Not particularly interesting.

“Pardon, it’s protocol that I check the status every 7 minutes.” Iwasaki moved to check the cabinet that Myra had inspected with Aurora at the beginning of the month.

Myra considered what to say next. Should I bring up the volcano now…?

“Actually, I’m gonna go,” said a voice that sounded exactly like Myra’s.

“All right,” Iwasaki said, somewhat absentmindedly.

“Huh?!” Myra cried. “Where the fuck did that come from?!” To her shock, though, the security head didn’t respond to her outcry at all. He was turned completely away from her. The ground beneath her feet jolted, and Myra’s first thought was that it was too early for the tremors to start.

It was a very unhelpful thought. The ground was moving, and it was moving her. In fact, it was moving her fast. A strip of the stone pavement, about a meter wide, was moving like a conveyor belt, and it was pointed far away from the event hall. The sudden jerk had resulted in her crashing to the ground, where she was swept away. She screamed again, and it was strangely muted, and Myra quickly realized why. Her voice wasn’t echoing against the nearby buildings. Something invisible was blocking her voice.

She tried to roll off of the strip, but the strip merely adjusted to follow her, new cracks forming in perfect response to her movements. The ground continued to drag her along, violently scraping and cutting up her legs.

Shit, shit, shit!

She snapped one of her teleport sticks—she was slow, she should have done that first thing—but it didn’t do anything. She panicked and tried to teleport herself, but of course that didn’t work either. There was obviously a disruption field.

You fucking idiot, of course he had a plan for dealing with Iwasaki this time! You thought barriers and dodging things would be enough?

Where the fuck did he learn to make the ground move?

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Ben had planned out the route well, taking her through deserted alleyways all the way to the side of campus. Thinking carefully about it, the ground beneath her—the ground in the small bubble that was her own domain—had to be under her own control. She grabbed onto it with all the telekinetic might at her disposal and tried to force it to stop. It was impossible to fight the current, though. There was too much force trying to push her along.

Right. Obviously, the direction I need to go is up.

Levitation, of course, was just telekinetic motion. It wasn’t super easy—there was always something disorienting about moving yourself, and there wasn’t really an ideal element for controlling human flesh—but it wasn’t very hard, either. Myra yanked herself for a reprieve from the treadmill.

It was a very brief reprieve. The senses she’d been honing from rock dodging told her that something was flying towards her very fast. She put her force barrier up by instinct—another thing that she’d been slow to do, so caught off guard from the absurdity of her situation. She was confident in her barrier, though. Thanks to her defense class, she was confident it could stand up to substantially more force than it would have two iterations ago—

But there were a lot of projectiles. That shouldn’t have been an issue either, but—

They all hit the barrier at the same time.

It was like Aurora had explained just the previous night. A force barrier wasn’t a static thing—it reacted to threats, and that meant it could only defend against so many things at once. Again, this usually wasn’t a problem in practice. To actually coordinate on hundreds or thousands of attack lines at once to have them contact at exactly the same time, even accounting for the internal fluctuations of the barrier…

It was something a criminal organization would do to break into a building. It took analysis and preparation. It took runescripts and complex equations in Abstract Space. It wasn’t something you prepared to face in a street fight.

It didn’t really matter what she had prepared for. She was facing it. The thousand-some projectiles broke through her barrier in an instant, raining down on her clothes and skin. They seemed to be small ice crystals.

Well, that wasn’t actually so bad—

She put up another barrier. The world was still.

She decided to push herself up a bit further, to see if she could fly off and escape.

Something was wrong, though. She was heavier than she expected—

No, her telekinesis was weaker.

And her senses were blurring—Her barrier faltered—

And she realized one of the projectiles had not been a small ice crystal. In fact, it was sticking out of her neck.

Oh—

As the world continued to blur, she lost her ability to support herself. She fell back to the ground, landing on a mattress.

When did that get there…?

The mattress continued along the path. It was, if nothing else, more comfortable than the flowing cobblestone had been, but only by a little because it was also covered in glue that had her completely stuck in place. It seemed completely redundant—she already couldn’t move from the paralysis drug in her neck.

Finally, the mattress took her to her opponents, who turned out to be multiple.

The group was stationed on the opposite side of the athletics field, near the shed she had visited once with Shera. There were more than a dozen of them, imposing figures with thick winter cloaks and wool caps that looked familiar. None of them held a staff. They were all wearing earmuffs, too. What the hell? It’s not that cold!

It took Myra a moment, in her altered state, to recognize one of the men at the front.

It was Benkoten.

He looked confident.

He even looked… relaxed.

One of the individuals wrenched Myra’s staff out of her hand—not a hard feat given she could barely move—and snapped it in two. Another individual, a woman with a hardened face and graying hair, stuffed her mouth full of cloth and taped it shut.

At this point, the lava marbles were her last hope. She could barely control her own magic now, and her own delicate grasp on the marbles was slipping. If she hadn’t gotten used to managing them unconsciously, she was sure she would have lost them already. Who do I go after first? Ben? The others?

She pulled them closer, closer…

The marbles were still there, thank god. She could barely see from where she was lying, but she could see them. They hadn’t been secretly teleported away. She decided to go for Ben. She brought them over the shed…

Then there was a large crash. The creaky old shed burst apart, specks of dilapidated wood spraying everywhere. Something, some thing, burst forth. It was massive, the size of four persons, with snow-white hair covering its entire body, wearing nothing but trousers. It brandished a large club.

Is that a fucking yeti?

The beast swung its club like a bat, aiming straight for Myra’s incoming marbles. Its aim struck true, deflecting their momentum up into the atmosphere, and Myra’s only hopes vanished into the night sky.

Resting its club on its shoulder, the yeti took a spot with its allies, completing the circle they now formed around her.

Okay. This is really bad.

“Did you really think that would work twice?” Ben finally spoke. He kneeled on the mattress, looming over Myra as he loved doing so much. Somehow, the glue didn’t seem to affect him at all. “We’ve prepared for everything you’ve ever tried and more.”

“Whddyandayetedofendaganmlavamrrbls?” Myra tried to say through her gag. Ben only smirked at her.

“We stuffed this thing with our fingernails, too.” He knocked on the mattress. “Your cute little incorporeality trick won’t work this time.”

I’m not even in a state to create something complex like a corporeality enchantment! Not drugged up like this, not without my staff!

What, does he think I’m going to escape through the fucking ground?

No, actually, that wasn’t a completely terrible idea. Cutting my losses at this point with a suicide…

And that’s when Myra truly understood the position she was in. That’s when terror truly gripped at her heart.

If Ben succeeds, it will be over.

For all that Ben’s actions were mysterious and inscrutable, this one fact was—somehow—crystal clear.

If Ben succeeds, I won’t get another try.

If Ben succeeds, this will be my last loop.

Another of Ben’s team members came to inspect her. His gaze was analytical, less lecherous than Ben’s. He looked a little familiar.

“I saw this woman earlier,” the man said. “She was running from that ruckus.” Oh, I bumped into him, didn’t I…? I thought he was odd…

“Hang on,” someone else said. It was the woman who had gagged her. “I thought she wasn’t supposed to arrive until midnight. Did we miss something?”

“I said I would know where she’d be at midnight,” Ben said. “That’s all.” He sounded maybe a touch defensive.

“Isn’t she a student? Wouldn’t she be here every day?”

“Enough of this,” came a new voice. “We should wait until the circumstances are safer.” This was from a man who, in the circle that surrounded her, was closest to Myra’s feet. He was ancient, wrinkled with a thin wispy beard, and his peers had left him a lot of space on either side, perhaps deferentially. Myra suspected he was the leader.

“Benkoten,” he said. “You said you had a means to nullify the allure of her voice.” Uh, what?

“Yes, I will use it immediately.”

Benkoten pulled out his favorite syringe.

Oh, no.

What do I do? Should I commit suicide? Would that even help? Could he use my dead body to do what he needs to do?

Myra wasn’t even sure how to do that. She really didn’t think she could do anything beyond telekinesis right then. Can I snap my own neck? I think the glue might stop me…

Been wasted no time preparing the syringe, placing it near the same artery where the tranquilizer dart hadn’t been removed. Do something do something do something—

At the last second, the syringe was close enough that it came under her control instead of Ben’s. It was difficult to initiate a new telekinesis, but she did it, bending the shaft of the needle into a right angle, then twisting it all around for good measure. The bent-up edge struck her skin ineffectually.

For a second Ben didn’t know what had happened. “What the f—” He finally noticed had happened.

“Is something the matter?” the old man asked.

“She ruined my syringe.”

One of the other members of their group looked at it and even tried to fix it, but that wasn’t an easy thing to do. Eventually, they gave up, while Ben looked increasingly agitated.

“Worry not, my son,” the old man clasped his shoulder. ‘My son’? “We should get back to the village before we’re found. There we will have time to get the information out of her.”

“No, no, it has to be—Wait, I can get another one of these! It’ll just take me five minutes!” He vanished before anybody could protest.

Then he reappeared. “And don’t take that gag out! No matter what, don’t let her siren’s song ensnare you!” He vanished again.

The yeti made a long series of grunts.

“Yes, we’ll be getting the explanation for this,” the old man said. He crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. “For now, we’ll wait.”

Now what the hell do I do?

Myra knew the reprieve wouldn’t last long. Ben had been very quick the last time.

What can I use? She sensed all around for anything she could use. There was the forest. There was the shed, and all its junk: sports equipment, a fancy kite… nothing she could use. The closest building—the only building she could reach in her state—was Professor Bandine’s lab.

Maybe… I can control the professor’s mega-golem? She sensed around for it. She located its massive, bulky arm. If I can pull this out of here… make a ruckus, maybe a distraction? Maybe even attack them with it?

The golem still had a lot of control issues, and all of Myra’s apprenticeship had scarcely done anything to fix that, but maybe, just maybe, she could have a breakthrough right now…

Come on, shit—

Drugged up as she was, it was so hard to do even simple magic, let alone this. Just making telekinetic contact with the thing felt like trying to balance a bowling ball on her head. In desperation, she cupped her fingers like she was still holding her staff and went through all the ‘textbook stages’ like she was a novice, step by step in a way she hadn’t had to consciously think about in years.

Come on—

The mega-golem was mostly made out of a fancy synthetic polymer that was specifically supposed to be easy to manipulate through auraspace. Surely, she could get it…

Come on—

She desperately hoped they wouldn’t notice her fingers moving around, and—

Got it!

When her telekinetic connection took, it was sudden, and in her haste and panic, she tried to force the whole thing upwards, but of course, the golem was locked in place. Quickly, she tried to force the arm around the back to reach the locking mechanism. This failed utterly. The shoulder joint became jammed, and her effort forced the entire torso to turn. A couple of fasteners snapped, and the entire golem swiveled where it was hooked into the workstation. The entire construction—torso, head, and scaffolding—came down to the floor, but it was no closer to freeing itself. If anything, it was even farther. The noise could barely be heard from where Myra was, and one of her assailants did look idly in its direction, but correctly determined there was no threat.

Okay.

I am fucked.

I am really, really fucked.

What can I do when I can’t move, can’t talk, and can barely use telekinesis? Is there anything I can use as a signal for help?

“How did she know we were after her?” one of the men broke the silence to ask. “She told the security officer she was being pursued. That was right before I extracted her.”

The yeti made some more noises.

“Maybe.”

Part of Myra was dying to know what the yeti’s theory was, and not just academically. What was up with them? Was there something important about them that she could glean? Something she could use?

Who even were they? She could sort of guess: they were probably from the Ptolkeran mountains, where Ben had mentioned he went for training. Unfortunately, that barely told her anything. What sort of organization were they? How had Ben met them? What had he told them? It was obvious, at least, that he was lying through his teeth, ascribing crimes and powers to her so they would take her seriously as a threat. He’d done it to quite an unnecessary degree. Calling her a siren of all things…

That one, at least, was easy to explain. He needed an excuse to gag her. Whatever insane lies he’d woven would fall apart if she got one and a half words out. Or that’s what he was worried about, anyway. How much did this team trust him? How flimsy was his story, and how hard would it be to knock it down?

He’d told another lie, that he hadn’t known where she would be until midnight, which seemed harder to explain. That was a lie, right? Did he really think she’d be off-campus for some reason? That didn’t sound right… and the drug had been finished by Mirkas-Ballam since around 7. Why did he need to wait so late?

Was there a time window for what he needed to do? Could she use that?

She searched desperately for something she could use.

Oh!

There’s—