It had been a lot of work to telekinetically connect to the mega-golem, and now Myra had to do it again. It should, at least, be a little easier this time. The object she was after now was significantly smaller.
Come on, shit—
In the outer hall of Professor Bandine’s lab, in one of the display cases, there was a small device, a series of matchstick-sized links. She just needed to—
God damn.
Augh…
She felt a mental ‘click’.
Phew.
The links seemed to be made of copper, ordinarily an easy-ish metal to take hold of. Myra pulled the links out of their case, out of the building, and to her.
These links, which could be arranged in letters, were an artifact that a mute sailor had used to communicate some four or five hundred years ago. Myra would make use of them now.
Now what’s my angle?
The full truth? Do I convince them they got entirely duped by Ben? Do I tell them he’s a rapist?
‘He just gets off on drugging me and gagging me and he tricked you into helping him do it!’
I mean, that’s true.
‘I’m not a siren. Please believe me.’
‘You’re just pawns in his time loop.’
Actually, I’m not 100% sure they don’t know about the time loop, am I?
‘I know you all trust Ben, but you should trust me instead.’
‘Epistemically, it’s 50/50 odds, whether you should believe him or me! It’s literally no difference if you switch sides.’
In the end, there really was only one way to start.
HI
The elder frowned when he saw Myra’s greeting. “Where did this device come from?”
ALWAYS HAVE IT
Wait, why did I lie about that? Shit.
Wait, no. This works.
PEOPLE FEEL SAFER
The man rubbed his chin. “I suppose that makes sense. I hadn’t considered the unique challenges a siren would face integrating into society.” The yeti grunted in sympathy.
On balance, it probably made sense to not directly contradict Ben if Myra wanted them to take her word on anything.
(Even if that meant playing along with the stupid ‘siren’ thing.)
Yes. If she wanted them to take her seriously, her best bet was to fill in the blanks on whatever questions they had about Ben’s pursuit. So far as she could tell, Ben’s story was that he was planning to use the drug to interrogate Myra. That was probably made up, and he really just wanted to do whatever he’d been trying to do in the previous loops.
I HAVE INFO WHAT BEN WANTS
Maybe I should just give them a bunch of predictions, the earthquakes at 12:42, the event hall, and so on, under the pretense that I think it’s the information Ben’s looking for. Those predictions will all check out, I’ll earn their trust…
BUT WE NEED TO HURRY
“Hurry?” The individuals looked at each other in confusion. “What deadline are you referring to?”
SUMMIT IS GOING ON NOW
“The summit? What are you planning? What’s that got to do with the locations we’re looking for?”
Uh, shit. We’re not on the same page at all.
One of the younger members stepped forward. “Sir, she was standing near the summit when we extracted her.”
ARE YOU NOT HERE FOR SUMMIT
“Of course, not! We’re here for you!”
WHAT DO
Myra was frantically trying to put together her next sentence when Ben popped back into existence.
Fuck.
“Okay, I’m ready. I got a special syringe that shouldn’t be an issue this time.”
“There won’t be any need for that,” the elder explained.
“Pardon me?”
“We have been using this useful little device to communicate.”
“What?” His face twisted in confusion. “How? What did she say?”
“She claims to be willing to part with the information we’re after, but she seems to be ‘playing dumb’ regarding her conflict with you.” Oh, damn.
“I see.” Ben grinned. “All right, I’ll see what she has to say. Whatever she offers, it should be easy to check.”
He stepped over Myra, the corners of his mouth curling. “So. Myrabelle. Care to tell us? If we can resolve this now, there won’t be any need for a full interrogation.”
Fuck, Myra still didn’t know what the hell his fake story was or what kind of information he claimed he was here to interrogate her for. Government secrets? Hostages? Love affairs? His story could have been arbitrarily convoluted. Ben knew damn well that there was nothing Myra could say, not when Ben himself was the arbiter and Myra had no idea what the criteria were.
Was there a hint somewhere? What did the fuck would a combat sect from the Ptolkeran Mountains want from a Casirian college girl?
If I was coming up with this lie, what would I say?
Information…
Information he wants…
Wait—
Maybe there was an entirely different angle she could go.
Hm…
It felt like a bit of a long shot.
But maybe…
What if she really did have information Ben wanted…?
I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF GETTING IT
“Hah? Getting what?”
THE SPELLS
“What spells?”
THE SPELLS CAST IN THE HALL
WHAT YOURE HERE FOR ISNT IT
WERE GOING TO MEASURE THE SPELLS CAST IN THE HALL
This was getting exhausting, but at least she could reuse some words.
“What’s she talking about?” the elder demanded. “What’s this hall? Is she speaking about the summit again?”
“Yes, she’s talking about the event hall where the summit takes place…” Ben murmured, but he was fixated on Myra. “How the fuck are you going to do that? The measures they took for privacy are insane. I couldn’t even get a camera-flower in there.”
Myra’s heart raced. This might work! I just need to convince him I’m telling the truth…
MEASURE AURA DEPLETION
“That can’t possibly work. And if it can, I’m sure I could figure it out myself.”
CAN YOU?
For once, she bothered with the punctuation.
“Of course I can!” Ben barked.
“How is that?” the elder asked, butting in. “Once the summit ends, it will be too late to measure anything.” Oh, huh. The elder was following along surprisingly well.
“That’s not what I mean!” Ben said. “I mean I can—I can—” Use the time loop, obviously. But he wasn’t saying that.
He bit his lip and looked back where Myra’s question was still floating.
“Actually, no, fuck this. I don’t believe you can do that. You’re full of shit.”
JUST MEASURE AURA DIFF BEFORE AND AFTER
NO PROB
WE WORKED MATH ALL MONTH
“Who is ‘we’?”
Oh, shit.
If I tell him about Iz, he might just go to Iz next month.
Would she do it for Ben, though? Honestly…
Probably not, no.
And anyway, there was no way to keep Iz out of the equation indefinitely, not if this plan was going to work…
Ugh.
In for a penny?
ISADORA
“Ah.” He put a hand to his chin. “That is more believable.”
… Hey!
The elder put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I need you to catch us up. Why is she so concerned with spells cast inside the summit building?”
The elder wasn’t even accusatory or anything. He was just confused, but Ben looked like a trapped animal.
“And why are you concerned about it?” one of the other members asked. Okay, that was a little accusatory.
“Sir—” Ben started. He scrunched his face up. Finally, he spoke slowly and deliberately, as if every word were excruciatingly painful for him. “I may have… made a severe misunderstanding.”
The elder nodded, though his eyes were sympathetic. “We all make mistakes, son. If we reevaluate our course and act swiftly, our mission may yet be salvaged.”
◆
The group discussed together in private. When they were done ‘reevaluating,’ Ben fed Myra some kind of paralysis antidote, explained that he ‘got everybody on the same page’ somehow and that they had all agreed to wear their earmuffs so that Myra could speak normally while executing her plan. While doing so, they would be reading lips, which apparently they had all learned to do specifically for this mission. In exchange, Myra had to give up her alphabet links to the yeti, because yeti phonology was entirely guttural and it would be impossible to read his mouth movements.
Ben stayed close to her side as they walked. He was tense, to say the least, his face plastered in a familiar-not-familiar expression, outwardly confident as always, but obscuring an anxiety bubbling under the surface. He looked like he might renege on the truce at any moment just to be done with it. Fearing the worst, Myra stealthily pulled a small object from the remains of the athletic shed and hid it in her robes.
It was insurance for when this would all inevitably go to hell.
“How did you know I regularly investigate the event hall massacre?” Ben asked. “I thought you would assume I was the culprit.”
“It was just a hunch, I guess.”
“What’d you say?” He pointed emphatically towards his earmuffs.
She turned so he could read his lips clearly. “It was just a hunch,” she repeated. She spoke louder this time, too, even though that wasn’t particularly useful. “The massacre has gone the same way every time, while your own actions have varied wildly. You’re clearly out and about while they’re locked inside. You even committed suicide in Loop 2.”
“Should that even matter? You’ve surely noticed how impossible the whole thing is.” From his annoying smirk and knowing tone of voice alone, Myra was half-ready to decide he was involved after all. “What’s one more impossible feature, like the culprit not being present?”
“It’s inexplicable, not impossible. Nothing rules out a murder-and-suicide by one of the victims.” Ben looked skeptical, but Myra went on. “And the last time we spoke, you were asking about some masked villain or other. I thought that they might be the culprit. Behind the massacre and… everything else.”
He put a finger to his lips and hummed.
“That’s all you have to say?”
“The truth is, I can only make conjectures on that point. Incidentally, have you ever encountered them?”
“No.”
“Have you been making splashes, or keeping a low profile?”
“You want to talk to me about splashes? Fuck off.”
Am I making splashes? Myra really wasn’t sure. She wasn’t making news or anything, if that’s what Ben meant. But tracking down the princess or going to the Mirkas-Ballam office could count as ‘splashes.’ It all depended on who was watching.
◆
Ben and Myra both came to the realization that Ben’s ‘sect’ or whatever-the-hell would probably spook Iwasaki into not opening up the building at all. The resulting plan was for the sect to hold back, while Myra and Ben approached the hall entrance in order to help Iz with her equipment. Once Iwasaki opened the door, Myra supposed, all bets would be off.
Iz was waiting by the entrance to the hall. She was still in the robe she’d gotten at the infirmary, but she had already fetched the aural measurement device she’d invented. The device was constructed out of a pair of staves taped together at the ends, and she was leaning on it for support. The whole thing was rather slapdash, but Myra trusted Iz’s assessment that it was adequately calibrated. Iwasaki, meanwhile, was already busy with the orb that controlled the event hall security. He had probably dismissed Iz’s device as some clever class project or other.
“Iz! Are you—are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said, though her voice was so hoarse it made Myra thirsty. She looked briefly at Ben. “Oh, you’re back.” It wasn’t a greeting so much as Iz registering the observation for herself.
“Iz, where is—I sent my friend to get you.”
“Huh? I must have missed them. I left a while ago to get our stuff.” She shook the device in her hand. “I made sure Cynthia took off with that teleporter you gave her.”
“Oh. Good.” Myra bit her lip. “Thanks for, uh, taking that seriously. Why’d you do that?”
“Myra… it’s pretty obvious you’ve been hiding that you know something huge is going to go down. Between the teleporter, this thing—” She shook the aura measurer once again. “—your weird foresight in training me for a duel, and your inexplicable insistence that we avoid a dependency on the Common Library, all suggested something dreadful was going to happen. I even considered… um…” She tilted her head uncomfortably.
“Did you consider time travel?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“‘Cause that’s right.”
She looked relieved, if anything. She had probably been embarrassed to suggest it.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Well, you would have thought I was crazy!”
“Did you try?”
“Well, no… But a couple of loops ago, you figured it out on the last night, like you did just now, but you were confident that you wouldn’t believe me until after my weird premonitions turned out to be right.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “But you didn’t actually try to convince me, though?”
“Not really.”
“You should try, at least. I’m sure previous-me didn’t mean to discourage you.”
“You need to get ready,” Ben cut in sharply.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Oh!” Iz closed her eyes and focused on the staff amalgamation.
It was good to be prepared, but actually, Ben had called it a bit early. By Myra’s watch, they still had about 30 seconds.
“Were you listening in?” she asked him quietly. “Or watching our lips flap, or whatever you’re doing?”
“I got the gist. It’s nice, isn’t it, when someone believes you?”
“Yeah.”
“You should be more grateful.” Bitterness dripped off his every word.
How many people has he tried to convince? How many people thought he was stark raving mad?
He’s probably been ridiculed more times than he can count. Of course, there was a limit to how much sympathy Myra could extend him.
Myra checked her watch again. Any second now…
She looked again at her friend, preparing her advanced magic without protest, even while she could barely stand up.
“There we go,” Iwasaki announced the successful reconnection.
Iz winced in pain, clutching her stomach with her free hand. “Iz, Iz, are you all right?” Shit.
“I’m fine.” She took a few deep breaths. “I got it. I got the—” She swayed, then stumbled. Myra reached out to steady her friend by the shoulder.
Another hand slipped onto hers.
Ben, too, had held his hand out to steady Iz. His eyes caught on Myra’s, piercing through her and sending a shiver down her spine.
“Th-thanks, you two,” Iz gasped. “I’m fine.”
There was a creak as the door to the hall finally opened. “I’ll head in first,” Iwasaki said. “I’ll explain what’s going—What in the hell?” He cried out in alarm. Ben’s team had reappeared, the dozen-and-a-half individuals, yeti and all, now striding straight towards the hall. “Identify yourselves!”
The sect did not identify themselves. In fact, they made no motion to slow their approach or appear harmless. Iwasaki thrust his arm out, and a lightning bolt skewered the air. Against an ordinary opponent, it could have been a fatal attack, but here, it was utterly ineffectual, redirected around them as if blocked by some spherical barrier. Iwasaki tried a ground attack next, uprooting the entire stone pavement. The walkway cracked like a whip, and by rights, it should have crashed down upon Ben’s allies, but it all turned to dust, evaporating into the air.
Then there was a massive fireball.
Myra didn’t even know who cast it—it seemed to come from the middle. Something blocked the flames from reaching the three of them, and Myra wasn’t sure who was responsible for that, either, but Myra could feel the heat on her face and the sting in her eyes. When it cleared, the group had advanced even further. They hadn’t even slowed down.
The air around Iwasaki spun. A vortex engulfed him, and he cried out as it lifted him off the ground, spinning him rapidly like a top. The vortex carried him high, multiple stories off the ground, then far into the distance.
“Myra… was this expected?” Iz asked nervously.
“Y-yeah, kinda.”
“It was necessary,” Ben muttered. “That guy always blocks the investigation.”
The elder approached the door. What exactly is he expecting to see in there…? She almost whispered it to Ben, then remembered he wouldn’t hear. She supposed it wasn’t very important.
The elder froze midway through the door, then turned back to the group. “We’re too late.” Myra had kind of imagined that he would stride in and dispassionately analyze the scene, but in fact, there was a deep regret in his voice.
“What happened?” Iz asked.
“They are dead. All of them.”
The group entered one by one with Myra and Iz trailing from the back. She put her arm around Iz to support her for the inevitable shock.
Iz shuddered when she walked in, and Myra let her take a moment. Finally, she walked up to the table, where the princess was in pieces. Iz looked over her, frowning to herself, her eyes fixated on the young woman’s stomach, where there were two large slashes, same as always.
Huh, now that I think about it… it’s a lot like Iz’s injury, isn’t it?
Iz shuddered again, and she crinkled her nose. Finally, she pried her gaze away from the grotesque sight, pushed a couple of the seated corpses to the side, and placed a piece of parchment flat on the table. Immediately, she got to work, scribbling numbers in some form that made sense only to her. The result of their earlier measurement had been an enormous quantity of data, arranged in a tableau in Abstract Space. Myra felt the numbers shift slightly as Iz worked.
Iz heard a new person enter the room.
“Shera!” Myra pulled her into her arms and swung her back and forth. “God, I was worried, where the hell were you?”
“Wh-wh-wh-what’s g-going on? Wh-who—?”
“These are, uh, some of Ben’s allies, who are… helping us.” She blinked a bunch of times. They had not worked out any kind of signal like ‘blinking a lot means I am under duress,’ so she just had to hope Shera would pick up the hint.
Shera watched her, wide-eyed, then finally blinked several times in return. Myra was pretty sure she had replicated Myra’s timing perfectly.
“Shera,” she whispered through gritted teeth, “I think Ben is going to try to drug me like always.”
“Y-yeah…?” She looked like Myra couldn’t have said anything more obvious in the world.
“Right, um. Where were you?” Shera still hadn’t answered that question.
“I-I-I couldn’t find Iz at the infirmary. I looked for her at th-the dorm, then I w-went back here, and I-Iwasaki s-said you left. I f-figured you m-must have gone to find Iz s-so I went to find the sink the p-prince got sick in.”
“Oh.” Really? “Uh, did you find it?”
“Y-yeah. It smelled awful.”
◆
It was funny how it all worked out. On one hand, every movement Myra made was scrutinized by a group that could overpower her with a flick of a wrist by any of its members.
On the other hand, the sect seemed to view an investigation of the crime scene as their right, or maybe as their duty. Most importantly, they didn’t have any hang-ups about preserving the scene for the ‘proper’ authorities.
Finally, Myra could investigate to her heart’s content.
She started with the suits of armor. At the very beginning of the month, she had decked out the suits’ interiors with tape and string that would have to be disturbed if the culprit was to hide inside of one. Now, it was finally time to inspect her own handiwork for anything amiss.
Unfortunately, Ben continued to hover over her the whole time, and he seemed deeply amused about something that he refused to say outright. Trying her best to ignore him, Myra had to conclude that her additions hadn’t been tampered with at all. Thus, the culprit probably had not infiltrated the room by hiding in one of the statues.
Meanwhile, the same pieces of evidence that had been there in previous loops were still there. The green goop, the diamond disc knife sharpener, and the syringes. She watched Ben carefully for a reaction, but for once, he maintained a steady poker face.
They performed a deeper inspection of Judge Krasus’s clothes to see what was up with the strange skeletal brace hidden in the seams of his clothes. Like they had discovered before, it seemed to be locking his body into the strange, outstretched pose. Runes were carved into the ball joints. They were very tiny, and they would have been impossible to read without a magnifying glass. (Myra had brought a magnifying glass.)
Seemingly, the brace could be ‘activated’ with a very simple psychic command. Upon activation, the joints would immediately lock into these particular limb angles.
“I had thought it would be some k-kind of disability accommodation,” Shera muttered. “What disability accommodation would require you to lock your limbs into an unusual position like this?”
“There’s not even a command to unlock it,” Myra muttered in disbelief. “It’s a one-time use thing. There’s no way this is a normal feature for somebody’s clothes.”
“Look at us when you speak, girl,” the elder sect leader growled.
Ugh. She craned her neck and repeated what she’d said. The entire investigation had been like this, but it was still better than being gagged.
How was this device activated in the first place? The only person who could issue the psychic command would be Judge Krasus himself since nobody else could access it while it’s so close to his person.
Well, no. His personal domain would be snuffed out when he died, so after that, anybody would be able to activate it if they knew it was there.
◆
“Hey, did you figure out what weapon was used to slit everybody’s throats?” Iz asked idly. It was the first comment she’d made, having paid little attention to anyone else’s investigations.
“I actually hadn’t thought about it much. I just assumed it was the sword…
“I-I figured it was a fingernail or something,” Shera said. “A t-tunneler.”
“You should look for it,” Iz said, her voice still somewhat vacant.
Myra kneeled to the floor putting her head to the ground, but the lighting was kind of bad, and she didn’t immediately see anything. A shadow crept over her.
“Do you know where it is?” Myra asked. “Save me some time looking for it, huh?”
“Why would I know where it is?” Ben sneered. “I haven’t been in the room longer than you have.”
Asshole.
“We should check to see if anybody has a fingernail out of place,” Myra said, pulling herself off the floor. Partly, she didn’t want to spend any more time in a position where Ben could hang over her like that.
It was a bit of a tedious inspection, untying everybody’s boots, though it could at least be done telekinetically to avoid crawling all over the floor. (Tying and untying shoes was a classic exercise for novice mages.) Shera helped, inspecting all of the imperial sages while Myra got the other half, which was nice because if anybody was detail-oriented and trustworthy enough to meticulously look for an odd-looking toenail, it was Shera.
Last but not least, they checked over Princess Malazhonerra. Of course, Myra already expected to find part of her toenail missing from when she had assaulted Iz. To be exact, it was the big toe on Malazhonerra’s right foot that had a big chunk removed. As Myra checked, Iz looked up for once, biting her lip.
“How’s it going…?” Myra asked her.
“Fine, I just need to focus.” She put her head back down.
Myra shifted. “Just so you know, it really needs to be done in the next 10 minutes.”
“It’ll be done, Myra.”
She got back to work. To Myra’s surprise, someone was able to locate the object that may have been used to slit everybody’s throats. It wasn’t a fingernail, though.
“I think this is it,” he announced, pulling a small object out from between two of the floorboards. He grimaced as he looked at it. The object was dark red with blood, though that might not have solely been from the slit throats. “This could have been used as a tunneler.”
Myra stepped closer, unsure that she was seeing it right. A tunneler, of course, could be any part of your body. The only requirement was that you be able to project your personal domain through it. Fingernails were just a convenient choice.
“Is that a… tooth?”
◆
The tooth was an upper molar; that is, it was one of the teeth from near the back. Nobody could prove it really had been used as a murder weapon. Nobody could guess why anyone would choose their tooth as a weapon of choice, but nobody had alternate explanations for its presence, either. It was like Ben had said earlier—you couldn’t rule out a particular possibility just for being inscrutable and baffling, not when every possibility was inscrutable and baffling.
None of the victims were missing a tooth, incidentally.
“So.” Ben had wormed his way to her side again. He was angling himself, deliberately, in such a way that the members of his sect couldn’t see them, and he was speaking pretty softly, too. “That sword sharpener is new.”
“Huh? The—that diamond disc?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you mean, ‘new’?”
Ben moved, and Myra flinched, but he was only crossing his arms. “Surely you thought of this possibility?” He smirked. God, would he stop making that fucking face? “Surely you considered that the culprit might adjust or adapt from loop to loop?”
“I… I had considered they might be looping.”
“Good.” He pointed at the diamond knife-sharpener, which he’d already drawn her attention to. “In all the times I’ve investigated this place, I’ve observed a number of changes in the circumstances. The last I saw, that sword wasn’t moved at all, and there wasn’t anything resembling that blade sharpener. Back then, there was a pocketknife instead.”
“The culprit sawed through Malazhonerra’s bones with a pocketknife?”
“That’s correct. And long before then, the statue played a different role entirely. I assume you saw the footprints on the table?”
“Yeah.”
“These footprints are evidently of bare feet. But back then, the prints matched the boots of the armor, the one in the middle, there. And the armor itself would always be out of place. I spent many loops studying that armor trying to see if the culprit hid inside it or whatnot. I wasn’t at all prepared for everything to up and change on me. Today, it seems the suit of armor is barely involved at all.”
“Did anything else change?”
“Oh, no you have no idea. The first big change was when I found Judge Krasus shredded to bits, just gore and viscera all over the floor. I was absolutely beside myself, you can imagine, and it took me several loops to notice that the footprints had also changed. The judge really went through a bunch of iterations—presently, we have him bludgeoned to death, not to mention this baffling business with his clothes.”
“Judge Krasus was shredded to bits?” Myra repeated, her brain barely keeping up. She half-believed that Ben was just bullshitting all of this.
“Yes, that’s what I just said. And then on top of all that, there was the business with the bust of Larpus McMacgerwermonbermon IV.”
“The—the what of the who?”
Her ‘bullshit’ probability estimate went way up.
“The bust of Larpus McMacgerwermonbermon IV,” he repeated. “You know, the one from the alchemy building?” He slowly moved his finger until it was pointing at one of the Unkmirian men on the other side of the table. “That man, the High Ambassador Lluruma. He used to carry the bust in. Larpus IV was a peacemaking hero both to the Unkmirians and to many in the empire, so I initially assumed it was a prop for some rhetorical point or other.”
“... Makes sense.”
“But the odd thing is, it was always smashed into pieces once the room opened up.”
“Guess they didn’t like his rhetorical point.”
Ben clicked his tongue. “Cute. But I don’t think so. See, I decided to interview Lluruma about it, and I learned that he was bribed to carry it inside this building. I was over the moon about this discovery, as you can imagine. I thought it was my big break. And then…”
He paused for emphasis.
“And then it stopped.”
“The bribe?”
“Nope. The whole thing.”
“Huh?”
“For the next seven iterations of the loop, there was no massacre. Iwasaki opened up the building to find everyone alive and well, and we took refuge in the building until the volcano erupted. Seven iterations of nothing, then it started back again, but there was no bust anymore.”
“You actually took refuge in here? With the imperials?”
“Well, not as such. They tele-evacuated pretty quick—”
“Hey!” Iz suddenly spoke up, remaining hunched but craning her neck up. “Aura crystals, what quantities do they come in?” She spoke breathlessly.
“Y-you mean standard quantities, like you’d find from a s-supplier?” Shera asked.
“Yes. What are the ones above 100?”
“144 gigaquargals is the st-standard size.”
“Bigger than that.”
“192, 240, 360.”
“Two… forty…” Iz repeated the number under her breath. Seeming to find it satisfactory, she put her head back to the parchment. Shera watched her for a while before she concluded Iz didn’t need anything else.
Myra realized she’d taken her eyes off Ben, and she snapped her head back to him. He didn’t seem to have moved.
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to know your opinion. Do any of these differences mean anything to you?”
“You think I’d have any idea? I’m not even convinced you aren’t bullshitting all of this.”
“I’m really not. I would like your opinion.”
“If you really, genuinely mean that, you’d stop withholding so much information from me. The syringes in the suit of armor. What are they for? I’m positive they’re the same drug you keep using on me. You know a lot more about what’s going on in here than you let on.”
“Truthfully, I can only make guesses about the syringe.” That’s what I mean, asshole. “I really don’t have a clue what the culprit’s objective is. Surely you don’t doubt that? I put all my plans at risk to get some more information here.”
“And yet, you continue to not share information that might help us both.”
Ben kept his jaw clamped shut.
“Fuck you, then.”
“Oh!” Iz slammed her hands on the table and bolted upright. “Okay, I’ve got it all.”
Everybody turned their attention towards her, all moving to a position where they had a full view of her lips.
“First of all, the culprit, or—someone, I guess—brought in a 240-gigaquargal aura crystal full of the space elemental.”
“Are you sure?” Myra asked. “We never found anything like that.”
“Yes, I’m sure, Myra. It was a 240-gigaquargal aura crystal. And they used up pretty much all of it. All the space aura in this room was completely spent.” She pointed a finger toward the green goop in the armor. “Furthermore, we can infer someone transmuted 4.6 kilograms of matter into the green goop. I’m sure you all know this, but green goop is a common transmutation target because it’s very aura-efficient.”
“So it didn’t take much aura?” Ben asked.
“No, it took nearly all the ambient aura in the room. The efficiency must have been a necessity for the caster. After that, there was very little aura left, and I believe they used that little leftover aura for telekinesis.” She coughed. “Telekinesis is very low in aura-usage, to be clear. At least on the scale we’re talking about, it is. The fact that it was so noticeable in our calculations suggests they did quite a lot of it.”
Well, we already suspected they used telekinesis to sharpen the sword and to slice everybody’s throats. “So that’s it?” she asked. “They spent all their aura on telekinesis and the transmutation spell?”
“Sorry, I’m being unclear. Those two spells took up all ambient aura in the room, but when you subtract those out, they were left with a significant quantity of aura from the space-elemental crystal, and all of that was used up as well. It’s hard to say what they did with that, though.”
“I see… so for this last mystery spell, they didn’t have any elements to work with besides the space elemental?”
“Correct.”
“What could even be done with pure space aura? Could they have performed advanced dimensional magic to build an extra wormhole to teleport out of the room?”
“No. That’s flat-out impossible. The entire interior was spatially severed, right? It wouldn’t matter what elements they had available.”
“Eh, right, sorry, ignore me.”
“Certainly, they could have teleported,” Iz clarified, “but only within the room. And they could have warped space, curving it or tearing it. And they could have manipulated gravity. Those are the purest applications of the space elemental.”
“Oh, oh!” A younger member of the sect clapped her hands. “I got it! The culprit warped space so they could hide on the way in. They came in a pocket, or a purse… you know, they made something bigger on the inside.”
“That doesn’t explain how they got out—” Myra tried to point out, but Iz cut them both off.
“No, it wouldn’t work at all. 240 gigaquargals is not close to the quantity of aura you’d need to pull that off. For space expansion, the aura expenditure would be exponential in the scaling factor. With the amount they had, they could manage… maybe 1.5x or 2x. There’s no way a human being could fit in someone’s pocket or whatever it is you’re thinking. Not a chance.”
“And if they did that,” the elder said, “they would not weigh any less. The person who smuggles them in would need to be a conspirator, and they would need to be very strong.” He looked to Iz for confirmation.
“That’s right, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s impossible anyway, like I just said.”
“Teleportation, bending space—what was the third thing?” Myra asked.
“Manipulation of gravity.”
Everybody present looked to the ceiling to check if the culprit had been hiding on the ceiling with anti-gravity magic the whole time.
“Yeah, I don’t see how reversing gravity would help…” Myra muttered.
“I-I have a-an idea.”
Shera crouched and crawled underneath the table.
“Are you checking the underside for something?”
“Th-there’s something here!” She shouted. “On the underside of the table, there’s—th-there’s—oh.” She backed out and stood upright, holding a dirty, dark blob in her hand. Her expression faltered.
“N-never mind. It’s just gum.”
“What could the culprit possibly accomplish with gum on the underside of the table?” the sect elder asked.
“That’s just a… a table… thing,” Myra said hurriedly. “Iz, you said they did telekinesis. Is there any way to tell what materials they were manipulating?” Telekinesis was always easier when you matched the element to the material, so they might be able to guess based on which elements were used.
Iz lifted her glasses and rubbed one of her eyes. “It’s really hard to be definitive. But I picked through all the numbers and, well… I kinda feel like the ratios are the kind you’d see if you were manipulating life. You know, plants, or… people.”
“People?” Myra asked, confused. There were no plants in the room; obviously, that had been rhetorical. But manipulating people was uncommon for obvious reasons. “I mean, we were talking about the tooth earlier…”
“Sure,” Iz said. “That’s so small, though. It’s not the scale we’re seeing here.”
“The culprit could have levitated themselves around the room.”
“Yes, they could have done that.”
“Th-they could have manipulated the corpses,” Shera said with her eyes fixated on Judge Krasus, whose position on the floor still unnerved her to no end. “B-but only after they died, obviously.”
Ben clapped his hands and Myra nearly jumped out of her skin. “Hey! I just want to double-check that I got everything. The culprit did a lot of pure space magic, 240 gigaquargals worth to be exact, and they did the transmutation, and they did a lot of elementary telekinesis which may have disproportionately focused on human bodies.”
“Yes,” Iz said.
“And that’s it? You’re sure there’s nothing else?” Ben asked insistently. “No more clarifications? No more specificities to specify?”
Suddenly, Myra remembered to check her watch. She’d been so absorbed in all the information, that she’d let time slip away.
“Yes, that’s everything,” Iz said.
Oh—Shit—
It was 1:01 A.M., and Ben was hurrying to the finish, and it wasn’t because he was ready to teleport to safety.
There was a loud, familiar bang from the direction of the volcano.
Then a lot of things happened at once.
The room shook, which Myra could only surmise was the yeti trying to warn them. On any other building, the action would have brought it to the ground. Meanwhile, the room was flooded with bright light and a loud buzzing noise, drowning out her senses. A bony hand grabbed her; she was sure it was Shera.
Finally, her head went fuzzy and the paralysis returned. This was the most baffling of all: she hadn’t felt anything hit her body. What the fuck? She thought she was going to throw up. How did they—
Her legs almost gave out, and she nearly dragged Shera to the ground. Another hand grabbed her; this one was certainly Ben’s.
Myra didn’t waste any more time. She had to use the ace up her sleeve now.
That ace was a small object she had pulled from the remains of that athletic shed, now hidden in the chest of her robe. It was a sharp, rusty nail. Praying that she would wake up at 8 A.M., she pierced the nail straight into her heart.