“Shera, Shera, you were right!” Myra ambushed the girl on her way to class in the usual spot, taking her hands in hers. “Measuring down to the second was a good idea!”

“Ah-uh—” The girl sputtered. For a second, Myra was worried she had broken the poor girl.

“I’ll tell you later. I’ll meet you in the astronomy tower, okay?” She waved and ran off, leaving the girl dumbstruck.

Ordinarily, it would be time for the Mastery course with Shera and the rest of her friends, but there was something else Myra needed to do early in the day. Specifically, she needed to do something in the event hall, which would be locked up by the end of the day. She wasn’t entirely sure when her window of opportunity would close, so she had to act as quickly as possible.

She grabbed the supplies she needed—some tape and a spool of thread—and headed right to the event hall. Luckily, the building was open when she got there, and thankfully it was empty of people. It was quite a bit different than it was during the peace talks: the table hadn’t been brought in yet; instead, there was a podium that was sometimes used for assemblies. The suits of armor were in the same place as always.

The suits were what she was here for. She carefully got the helmets off—they were empty, no surprises there. Myra’s objective was to make sure that if anybody hid in one of these suits, they would leave some kind of trace. To do this, she cut up her thread and taped it into the interior of the suits, having it cross through the torso, the arms, and the legs. It would be impossible for anybody to hide in one of these without interfering with her handiwork.

If the culprit was using the hiding spots to get in or out, she would know.

◆

She finished in time for the math class, where she sat next to Shera as usual. Shera, it turned out, was far more anxious to hear what Myra had to say this loop.

“I was thinking,” she said without any greeting or small talk, “y-you said measuring to the second was a good idea, but I th-think measuring to the—”

“Yeah, yeah, measuring to the millisecond is even better.” Shera nodded. “That’s actually really hard to do.”

“Why?”

“I’ll give you all the context later.”

Shera didn’t seem content with this, though. As the class began, she passed Myra a scrap of paper out of her notebook. The top was labeled, in Shera’s usual perfect handwriting:

Explain here:

There was a box for Myra’s explanation.

Faced with Shera’s unexpected enthusiasm and the prospect of a lecture she’d be sitting through for the fourth time, she grabbed Shera’s arm and dragged her out of the room. Shera let out an ‘eep,’ which was awkward because class was starting and it made Myra look like some kind of kidnapper. In the end, though, the classroom was too enthralled by the definition of a homotopy group that was burgeoning on the blackboard, and nobody interrupted them.

Compared to the last loop, it was night and day. As Myra explained all the circumstances, Shera didn’t listen indifferently, but she kept interrupting with questions, and when Myra finished her story and explained about the half-hour time difference, Shera began speculating right away.

“So the disappearance of the Common Library and the time loop are connected in some way,” she said. “The standardization of an hour as 1/24th of the mean solar day is only about 60 years old, so that helps us constrain when this mechanism was invented.”

“Oh, uh, I guess that’s true!”

“But what’s the connection? Maybe the time loop is some emergency mechanism that is activated by the disappearance of the Library? But why does the timing also line up with the volcano? Was the loop started to avert the destruction of the city?”

It was a good question. Why was the loop started? Truthfully, Myra probably needed to speculate more on the subject. The loop coinciding with the natural disasters was suggestive, and Myra also thought it was unlikely that the original intent of the loop was for Benkoten Talzatta to get into her skirt. Myra wanted to believe in a benevolent intent. The loop might have been started to avert the natural disasters or the destruction of the Common Library.

But…

“I don’t know,” Myra admitted. “If I have an ally in this loop, I haven’t met them, and anyway, the natural disasters happened after the Library disappeared. If the loop is caused by the disappearance, then that can’t have anything to do with the volcano…”

“But the Common Library disappearing is what causes the barriers around the volcano to fail, right?”

“Yes, by causing the aura distribution channels powering the volcano barriers to fail.”

“Right… so if we assume a malicious party wants to destroy the city, and they know the volcano is going to erupt at a certain time, they could destroy the Common Library in order to disrupt the barriers and cause a catastrophe. Unbeknownst to them, this triggers a time loop through some emergency mechanism. How does that sound?”

“Maybe. But how would this hypothetical group know what time the volcano was going to erupt?” Myra asked.

“The… time loop? Oh—”

“Then it doesn’t explain how the time loop started in the first place.”

“Oh… yeah.”

◆

Once the hour let out, they went back to the lecture hall to get their bags and escaped before anybody could question them on skipping out of class. Myra went to rearrange her schedule again, dealing with the annoyed registrar administrator, and then she went to lunch. She got lunch with her usual group plus Aurora, same as in the previous loops, though for the first time, she invited Shera along as well.

At lunch, Myra zoned out through most of a conversation that she had now heard twice. Nathan talked about the weird crater of unknown cause that killed a cyclist on the other side of town, and Aurora brought up a death that had happened in Jewel City.

“You all know of Emmett Massiel, right?” Aurora asked.

“Former Sage of Magical Infrastructure,” Nathan said.

“Right. He died just after midnight in his home. Of course, Sage Emeritus Massiel had his mansion decked out with the absolute, state-of-the-art home security system. All kinds of alarms, tamper-proof recordings, that kinda thing. There was nothing that pointed to any intruder. And he lived alone.”

“So how did he die?” Cynthia asked.

“Hole burned through the heart. There was no murder weapon at the scene, but of course, the authorities checked the records for any sign of a spell being cast. Coinciding with the estimated time of death, 1:09 A.M., someone cast a spell to burn a laser beam straight into Emmett Massiel’s chest. And that—”

“Wait!” One word had caught Myra’s attention, snapping her out of her trance. She stood up and slammed her hands on the table. “What time did you say?”

“Huh? It was 1:09 A.M. Something wrong?”

“N-no, no, sorry. Uh—” She made eye contact with Shera who had, of course, caught the same thing she had. Everybody else was just looking at her oddly, so she uncomfortably sat back down. “Go on.”

“Right…” Aurora went on just as Myra had heard before, explaining that Emmett Massiel had apparently lasered his own chest in his sleep. Myra tuned out of the conversation again, her mind whirring while she wolfed down her lunch.

If the time reset occurs at 1:09, it’s not too much of a stretch to guess that the loop start might be at 1:09 as well, making the duration of the loop exactly 28 days. Which means that the retired sage committed suicide at what is probably exactly the loop start?

And Massiel isn’t just any retired sage, but the retired sage of magical infrastructure, the most important person in the empire’s development of the Common Library…

That can’t be a coincidence, can it?

No, there’s no way. But what’s the real meaning behind his strange somnial suicide?

Myra reviewed what she knew about the man and his death from past loops. He had been a hugely important sage, influential in the early days of the empire. He had retired four years ago, succeeded by Hazel Ornobis, who would die in the event hall at the end of the month. Massiels’s death would be followed by a barrage of canned, probably pre-written obituaries.

However, despite the large coverage, there would be very little on the specifics of his death, only a short note that amounted to what the same things Aurora had told them. Weirdly, the news wouldn’t break in Casire until the next day, even though Aurora already knew about it somehow.

How’d she get her information?

Myra was only mildly curious about it, but when she finally got a chance to talk to Shera later, this was the point she wanted to start.

“You want me to follow up with Aurora and ask about her inside source?”

“Where else would you start? We could go to Jewel City and try to break into his house…”

“The house with the state-of-the-art security system?”

“Or we could ask Aurora.”

“But I mean… Aurora’s ‘inside source’ is probably, you know, her family business.” That business being the Blank Cloaks, the assassin clan specializing in untraceable crime.

“That’s just a rumor.”

“It’s a pretty persistent rumor, once which is supported by Aurora having an inside source on weird death news.”

“You’re in a time loop,” Shera reminded her. “If there’s any time to look into th-the—to their p-personal b-b-business, it’s now.” Shera, too, was hesitant to say ‘Blank Cloaks’ out loud.

“All right, all right.” Myra massaged her forehead, adding this to her to-do list, along with visiting Jewel City at some point. “I dunno what her afternoon schedule is, but her dorm’s in Cynthia’s building. I’ll track her down tonight.”

“What do you think of the other case?” Shera asked. “The inexplicable crater that killed a bicycler?”

“I dunno. That one never gets solved either. I don’t have a reason to believe it’s related to the loop, though, other than just being… weird.”

“And that it occurs on the first morning.”

“Fine. That too.”

“I think we should look into it for its own s-sake, anyway. When’s it take place?”

“Early in the morning, I think it was 5 A.M.? It’s too early for me to go witness it. It’s just across town, though, do you want to go look at it?”

Shera nodded. “We should go before they clean it up.”

◆

Myra found a newspaper to figure out where they were going, and the two of them took the subway across town. The location, as Nathan had faithfully relayed, was a bike trail by the river bank. The trail was part of a park, a shaded wooded area.

“It’s a very pleasant spot,” Myra mused, “but isn’t it kind of odd to be here at 5 in the morning? In the cold autumn weather?”

“I don’t think it’s that weird,” Shera said. “It’s easy to imagine someone commuting along this path. But we already established the victim’s kind of suspicious, didn’t we?”

“That’s right. The article said he had a fake I.D.”

It wasn’t hard to find the crater. It really was exactly as advertised, a giant bowl carved out of the ground, about six or seven meters in diameter, charred and with chunks of pavement and dirt strewn everywhere. There was blood spattered about, and even a dent that looked like it was where the cyclist might have been slammed into the ground, though the body and the bike had both been moved already.

The entire area was taped off by a police perimeter, and there were a couple of men in the shining golden robes of the Ralkenon police force. The robes were reflective and very bright in the sunlight, making it difficult to look directly at them.

Myra could barely observe one officer giving them strange looks, especially Shera. In the last loop, Myra had gotten accustomed to the weird stares the girl gathered while walking around town. Her striped hair and especially her mismatched, monochrome eyes tended to catch attention.

“Can I help you lassies?”

“What happened here?”

“Can’t you see?” He gestured his arm at the crater. “Crater.”

“I mean, how did it happen? Was there a meteorite? And has the victim been identified yet?”

“We don’t know who he is.” He walked away.

“But what caused it, then?” Myra called out. “And which direction was the cyclist going?”

The police officer didn’t even turn around or acknowledge that she’d asked additional questions. They tried the other one, but they similarly got a cold shoulder.

“I guess we’re on our own.” She closed her eyes and sensed around for anything she might have missed with her eyes, but nothing caught her attention. “Anything stand out to you, Shera?”

“The trees.” She pointed them out. “These are Billowing Elms. It’s the national tree of Casire.”

“Is that important?”

“Billowing Elms are one of the few plants to emanate a substantial domain like human mages do. So if the projectile was enchanted, and it passed right by one of these trees—” She traced her finger along a hypothetical path, illustrating. “—Then it would break the enchantment.”

“Huh.” Myra had been vaguely aware of animals that had domains, especially wolves and llamas, but never plants. “So those work like human domains?”

“Sort of. They do allow some enchantments, usually ones the plants are evolved to rely on. I took a botany class, and we studied flowers that allow magical bees to pollinate them, but which knock out wasps on contact. So it’s similar to humans, in that they’re selective to allow enchantments that help and kill enchantments that hurt, but they’re a lot less complex. Oh! Also, I think Billowing Elm bark is used in those teleportation disruption fields you were talking about.”

Oh, huh. That could be an important clue for how to subvert them.

“Okay,” Myra said, “but a magic projectile would have helped explain its disappearance from the scene. If it’s unenchanted, that doesn’t help anything.”

Shera shrugged. “We need information about this crater.”

“Are you an expert in, uh, crater impact analysis? Is that a field of study?”

“Let’s ask that guy with the slide rule.”

There was, indeed, a guy with a slide rule on his belt. He was an older guy in his fifties or sixties, kneeling and inspecting the ground, scribbling away at a notepad.

“Hey, excuse me, sir!” Myra called out to him from behind the police tape, kind of shouting but speaking quietly enough to not catch the attention of the officers. “D’you know what made this crater?”

“Hoo-boy,” the old guy responded. “You and everyone’s cat’d like to know that.” He stood up and brushed the dust off his pants.

“It’s not just a meteorite?”

“You’da think, wouldn’t ya? But there ain’t any meteorite here.”

“Did it… disintegrate on impact?”

“Well, we checked the composition of all this debris—It’s all rocks and dirt that’d be ‘round this park.”

“Could it have just been… a magic pressure wave?”

He shook his head. “Nah, you can tell that sorta thing from the shape. You ladies with the paper?”

“Oh, no, we’re just interested students.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Well, this’ll interest ya. This crater here was definitely a physical collision, not any destructive magic I know of.” He held his hands out to form a ball, a bit smaller than a bowling ball. “Object would have been yea big, based on the examination of the, ah, deceased, may he rest in peace. Trajectory was, near vertical, interesting enough.” That would have put the trajectory right next to one of the trees, just like Shera predicted. “Energy on impact was… 5 to 20 million Joules, far as I can tell.” He tapped his notepad, where Myra could see some figures worked out.

She asked her last question quickly since she saw they had finally caught the attention of a police officer. “Do you know anything about the victim? Which direction were they going, or anything?”

“Ahh, they were headed thataways.” He waved his hand down the trail. “Officers think he was coming from the train. That’s not my department. Here, you can ask Inspector Mumps.”

Inspector Mumps, in fact, was not happy to answer any questions, and they were promptly shooed away.

“I think if they want us to stand farther away, they should have placed the tape farther out,” Shera grumbled. “It only makes sense. They should have demarcated exactly the area they don’t want people to be, not less of it.”

“Let’s just enjoy the park for a sec.” Myra found a nice spot to sit down where it didn’t look like she’d get too dirty. “It would have been a nice day for a picnic.”

“So what do you think?” Shera asked. “Is there anything actionable?”

“Well… I’m wondering if we can figure out where he came from.” Myra took a map out of her pocket. “That guy said he might have come from the train station, right?”

“We could have guessed that. It’s easily the most prominent place that direction. Do they allow bikes on the train?”

“They do—hold on, let me check the schedule.” The city of Ralkenon kept train schedules and other public service information at an accessible location in Abstract Space, so it was easy to pull the information into her mind. “The guy was struck at… around 5, right?”

“The article said 5:10.”

“So if they came from the train station, they probably got off the… 5:02? It looks like a quick ride from the station.”

“Seems fast for the dark, though.”

“Yeah, maybe. And I dunno, do you think they boarded before or after 1:09 A.M.? If it’s after, there really aren’t that many major locations he could be from.”

“I don’t really see an argument for either. It’s not like we have a concrete way to connect it to the loop.”

“Do you think this was a waste of time?”

“No. Even if it’s not connected, it’s not a waste of time. It’s still interesting to investigate, and—and—” She twitched. “We got to come en-enjoy the p-p-park.”

“True.”

“H-hey,” Shera said, still kind of twitchy. “We d-don’t know where he came from, but can we guess where he was going? Is there anything in that direction?”

Myra pulled out her map. “Well… not really. It’s just that tacky tourist trap area.” She looked closely at the map. “Actually…”

“Yeah?”

“Hotel Caldera is right here.”

“That’s the famous upscale hotel?”

“Yeah… it’s just, I vaguely remember hearing the imperials were staying there for the summit.”

“When do they arrive?”

“I don’t know. The rumors about her being here started at least a week before the summit. I’d been meaning to try to get some information on what they’re up to for most of the month, but I didn’t know where to start.”

“Well, we could start at the hotel.”

“I suppose.” Myra stood up and brushed herself off. There was no reason to not start walking.

“What are we gonna do? W-we’re just gonna get stonewalled again.”

“It’s the receptionist’s job to talk to people.”

“I presume they’re not in the habit of giving away their clients’ schedules.”

“Well, I got an idea. All we have to do is ask when their penthouse suite is free, take the complement of that, and that’ll be the days the imperial family has reserved.”

“Unless other people have it booked at other times.”

“Okay, sure, maybe one group will check out in the morning, and then the imperial family checks in that same afternoon. That’s how it usually works, right? So we just have to say we’re looking to book the penthouse for a couple of hours right around noon, and we want to know when it’s free—oh wait, I have another idea.”

“G-good.”

“We’ll say, ‘We want to book the penthouse suite the first week of December.’ And the clerk will be like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, we’re already booked.’ And I’ll say, ‘Ahem, we’re here on behalf of Prince Humperton Raine,’ and they’ll gasp, bow, and say something like ‘I’m so sorry, ma’am, there must be a misunderstanding. We have already taken the reservation from the imperial family. Do you need to adjust it?’ And then we’ll get all the info we need.”

“Okay.”

The inside of Hotel Caldera looked like the inside of a volcano, or maybe it looked like what people expected the inside of a volcano to look like. The walls were rugged and craggy, and bright orange foam flowed down ridges at the bottom of the walls. The front desk was at the end of the main hallways.

Myra flopped her arms on the desk. “We’d like to book the penthouse.”

“Of course, ma’am.” The clerk spoke professionally and didn’t give Shera any weird looks. “Which one?”

Myra blinked. “There’s more than one?”

“There are four. The tephra suite, the chamber suite, the conduit suite, and the vent suite.”

“We, uh… which one is the best one?” Are those parts of a volcano or something?

“None is strictly better than the others. They are incomparable.” He passed Myra a brochure. “You can find information about our first-class accommodations here.”

“The v-vent is the best,” Shera said. She didn’t look at the brochure. “It’s the highest p-part of a v-volcano.”

“We want the vent—wait, no, we want whatever’s available,” Myra said.

“If you tell me which one you want, I can tell you what’s available.”

Great, how am I supposed to figure out when the prince and princess are in if we don’t know which room they’re going to be in? Why is there no total order on the penthouse suites?

“Is there anything available the first week of December?”

“You mean December of next year, correct?”

“Uh… what?”

“I’m afraid we’re booked fully for the next 8 months.” The clerk nearly dropped his professional demeanor, as Myra could see him barely suppressing a snicker.

All right, it was time for the bluff. Myra leaned forward. “And what if we told you we’re here on behalf of the imperial family?”

“And who the hell are you?”

Myra nearly jumped at the sudden voice behind her. She turned to see a well-dressed woman with pink hair and a golden wristwatch, clutching her own forehead and looking extremely pained.

“Oh—”

The woman shoved her way past Myra without so much another word. “You,” she barked at the hotel clerk, “do you have anything for headaches?”

The clerk, of course, was immediately bowing and tripping over himself to assist. “Ah! Yes—yes, Your Highness. We have several options. Would you like—”

“Anything. Whatever your medical officer recommends.”

“Of course, Your Highness” The man bowed. “I’ll be right back!” He left into the back room, not offering a word of explanation or apology to Myra.

The princess placed her elbow on the desk, barely propping her head up. She looked like she was about to collapse.

“A-are you a-a-alright?” Shera asked.

She looked at Shera out of one eye. “Who are you again?”

“I-I-I-I-” Shera short-circuited as she was questioned by the imperial princess.

Myra jumped back in. “Hi, I’m… Myrabelle.” She hesitantly decided to give her real name. “We’re students at Ralkenon University.”

“I thought you said you were with the imperial family.”

“Well, uh—”

The receptionist returned with her elixir. The princess spent a moment inspecting it, probably with an analysis spell, then drank it. She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Ah… that’s better.” She took a moment to enjoy her newfound relief, then headed back towards the stairwell.

“Hey—wait! Your Highness!”

“Oh, what did you want, again?” She squinted. “Hold on, you aren’t representatives of my family.”

“Yeah, I told you, we’re students at Ralkenon.”

The princess looked at her in confusion for a bit. “Bah, seems I was pretty out of it.” She walked back to the stairwell, but slowly. “Hey, what’s fun to do in the city?”

“Well—there’s the volcano—”

“Already saw it.”

“Anything at the Verj-Sandzar Theatre; the Ralkenon Museum of Ancient Art; you could go see a waterball game, the Ralkenon Pufferfish are doing well this year—uh, I hear the river cruise is good—you can go canoeing, too…” Myra racked her brains for things a cultured person would do.

“The s-s-skating rink is good.” Shera spoke up from where she was hiding behind Myra. The princess flinched, either from Shera’s stutter or from making eye contact with her for the first time.

“Eh, all right, thanks.” She turned back to the stairs, but she smiled before she left. “You know, I have some business at your university. Maybe I’ll see you two again.”

Myra almost let her get away. But her last sentiment seemed surprisingly genuine, and before she could disappear, Myra snapped back into it. “Hey! Can we ask you a couple of things?”

“Sure, why not?” She stopped and leaned against the rail. “Myrabelle, was it?”

“Yeah, and this is Shera.” Shera waved, but the princess probably didn’t see because Shera was still behind Myra. “Did you know about the weird incident just a few blocks here last night?”

“Say what? When?”

“Yeah, there’s this weird unexplainable crater—” Myra quickly explained the weird circumstances of the crater. “I was wondering if, uh, I don’t know, you were targeted, or something.”

She tilted her head. “What, so you knew that I, Princess Malazhonerra, was staying here?”

“No, no,” Myra said quickly, “we just knew the hotel was here. We certainly didn’t know you were here until the clerk addressed her.” That was almost technically true. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“It’s just a vacation, mostly.”

“But you weren’t outside when the crater happened?”

“Well, we got in at around midnight… or one…”

“From where?”

“We hiked here from Kashthwarn.”

“Oh, wow. You walked all the way? Through the Nurjan forest?”

“Yeah, my calves are killing me. Whole trip took us twelve days, though that was with a detour up the volcano. We went scuba diving for a bit in the magma. Then we got in last night, walked all the way here…”

“Wait, you dived in the magma?”

“We’re both perfectly capable mages,” she explained.

“And the ‘both’ of you, that’s you and…”

“My friend Vi.”

“Okay… and then you didn’t leave the hotel or see anything suspicious? The crater appeared around 5 in the morning.”

“No, I went straight to bed. I was out like a light. Then I woke up around noon with this raging headache. I didn’t want to get out of bed, ‘cause you know, I’ve been sleeping on the ground for two weeks, so I tried to just sleep it off, but that didn’t work. I finally made my way down here.”

“And Vi—that’s your friend?—she didn’t go out, did she?”

“I don’t think so—she was showering when I nodded off—oh, speak of the devil.”

“What’s going on? Who are you talking to?” Another familiar voice came from the stairwell. Violet Penrilla appeared from around the corner, then did a double-take when she saw Shera, still peeking out behind her. Damn, she really does have it rough.

“Myra, this is my friend, Violet. Vi, they’re trying to figure out if we saw some mysterious crater.”

“Crater? I heard about that. Why would we have seen it? We were asleep.” The duke’s daughter looked suspiciously at Myra. Shera started breathing harder. “How’d you know Her Highness was here?”

“Uh—we didn’t—”

“We just met, Vi,” the princess said. “Chill out.”

“It sounds like they’re interrogating you.” Despite the princess’s support, Violet’s suspicious stare only intensified. After enough time glaring daggers through her teal-tinted glasses, she turned back to the princess. “Mala, did you get something for your headache?”

“Yes, I feel much better.”

“Let’s get outta here. We’re almost late for our boat ride.”

“All right.”

Get out of there, she did, and she did it fast. She grabbed the princess and teleported out, barely giving the other woman time to wave. They were gone before Myra could call out.

“Wait—damn!” When she processed the empty spot where they’d been, she nearly slammed a fist against the wall. “Damn!” she cursed again.

“V-violet, sh-she’s—”

“She keeps slipping out of my grasp,” Myra said. “I wanted to talk to her in a previous loop, and she teleported without notice then, too.” She turned to face her companion, who had an oddly flustered look about her. “Everything okay?”

“I-I dunno. Never mind. Both of them seem very skilled at magic.”

“I won’t dispute that.” She tried to collect herself so they could head out. “The princess was no slouch in her duel with Ben. And Violet doesn’t need a staff.”

“Maybe she can teach you the advanced teleportation you’re looking for.”

“Yeah, sure. If I can catch her.”

◆

“Well, we learned some stuff,” Myra said as they rode the subway back to campus. “I can’t believe the princess is here the whole month and I never thought to check.”

“The princess was happier to talk than I expected.”

“Well, that’s not that surprising. Someone manages to invite her to Melanie’s party each time, so she’s gotta be reasonably social.” For that matter, Myra still had no idea who actually did that.

“It sounds like her father isn’t here yet? Just her and her friend.”

“I… think so.” She let out a long sigh. “I guess we’ve still got a lot of information gathering ahead of us.” Staking out the hotel sounded like a pain in the ass, and it was probably useless if the imperial family was in the habit of just teleporting in and out of the building. “We learned a lot of stuff on accident, I just need to learn how to do it on purpose.”

Shera didn’t laugh at her self-deprecating joke. “I had f-fun learning stuff w-with you.”

“Aw, thanks.” She gave the girl a hug and got one of her adorable squeaks.

After regaining herself, Shera asked, “What are your other plans for this loop?”

“Ehh, work on my anti-Benkoten defenses, try to investigate what Mirkas-Ballam Pharmaceutical is doing—I told you about that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I have an idea to figure out what spells are cast inside that event hall. And I would like to figure out how to wake up early next loop. That’d make me safer, and I could just go check out what’s happening with this crater, or ambush Ben as he’s leaving, or something. But I really used up all my ideas last time.”

Shera thought about it, but she remained silent.

“I’m honestly kinda mad it didn’t work. I mean, this looping mechanism moves all my memories back, so why doesn’t it move back my other alterations?”

“Well, neither of those were purely neurological, were they?” Shera asked. “Whatever stimulant drug you took was carried through your bloodstream. And circadian rhythms are controlled through a hormonal signaling process, right?”

“Yeah, but it originates from the brain. I looked this up, it’s controlled by the… something nucleus, I forget the name, but it’s in the brain.”

“But what happens when your brain is suddenly out of sync with the rest of your body?”

“I… I don’t know? I guess the body wins? That doesn’t make any sense. When you put it that way, it’s a wonder I’m not more fucked up, isn’t it?”

Shera shook her head. “Not if we assume the loop was designed intentionally, which is a good bet, given the exact half hour. It makes sense that the designer would make the reset process smooth and undo alterations that could be undesired. What if you’d been poisoned?”

“That’s a good point…” Actually, it made her feel better about the possibility of Ben catching her and injecting her with whatever-the-hell-it-is.

“Have you thought about doing another apprenticeship this loop?” Shera asked.

“Well, I don’t really want to build that frequency detector again. I’m not sure what I’d gain from it, either.” She could try to warn them about the fungus in advance, and maybe learn something about how it gets into the pipes, but she already had Frederick Penman’s name and address, and getting the apprenticeship would take a while without Benkoten recommending her. She wasn’t sure reconnecting with Rose Tara would help that much.

“I was thinking you should work with Professor Bandine.”

“The biomechanical systems professor? You think I might learn something about brain interfaces?”

“Maybe. It could also be an avenue to learning about Mirkas-Ballam’s project. That’s not why I suggested it, though.”

“Then why?”

“Didn’t you say Benkoten pushed you out of working with her?”

“Oh, yeah, he did.” And his reasoning didn’t hold up in retrospect either… “You think he wanted me to avoid her for some reason? On its own, that’s a pretty good reason to try it out… Oh, fuck me.”

Myra buried her face into her hands. She had already switched out of her class, the same as she had in the last loop, so she would need to switch back…

God, it was going to be awkward at the registrar.

◆

Come evening, it was finally time to track down Aurora Ferara. With some help from Cynthia, she was able to locate the senior girl’s dorm room. She took a deep breath and knocked.

Aurora Ferara answered quickly. The tall, olive-skinned girl was dressed casually, with a knee-length skirt made of multi-colored, interlocking fabrics and a crop top. As usual, she also wore ruby earrings and had her black hair tied back in a long braid.

She also had a knife sheathed in a belt at her hip.

“Heyy…” She snapped a finger. “You’re one of Isadora’s friends, yeah? From lunch today?”

“Yeah, hi, I’m Myra. You brought up that weird suicide of Emmett Massiel.”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Uh… I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about it. About whatever you know, I mean.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, come on in.” She opened the door for Myra, and she crossed the threshold into Aurora’s bedroom.

The bedroom was clean. It looked like she had been working—on her desk was an open textbook. It looked like it was for the class she was taking with Iz. Then, of course, there was her famous knife collection. The vast collection covered two walls of her room, and its pieces ranged from curved and jagged to straight and narrow, from simple to decorated, from familiar to foreign and exotic. None of them were in a protective cover.

She plopped onto her bed. “Close the door, would ya? Don’t like the heat to escape.”

“Y-yeah, of course,” Myra said as she complied. Not scared of the murder-gossiping knife-collecting assassin heiress. Nope.

“So, I dunno if I can help ya, but whatcha need?”

“I was just wondering where the heck you got your info about Emmett Massiel. It hasn’t hit the papers yet.”

“Nah, it was in the evening paper.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Why, you don’t believe my info?” Her tone was playful, though, not offended or accusatory.

“I was trying to find more information about it.”

“Well, where do you think I got it?” Still leaning back in her bed, she unsheathed the knife at her hip and began twirling it in her hand.

“I dunno, maybe you have… connections… in the uh…”

Murder industry, Myra didn’t finish.

“Yep. I got a connection at the Halnya Times,” she said. “He’s an old childhood friend, so he gives me inside scoops sometimes. We happened to be catching up over the phone this morning, so he let me know about it. That’s it.”

“Oh, that’s a pretty normal explanation.”

“Yeah, what’d you expect?” She switched from twirling the knife around her hand to twirling it up into the air. It looked like her objective was to get it as close to the ceiling as possible without hitting it, and from the scratched-up look of the ceiling, she must have had a lot of practice. Myra slowly backed to the other side of the room.

“D’you know anything else? Beyond what you said about it today?”

“Nah.”

“Could you get me in touch with your friend?”

“Hm… I don’t see why not, I guess.” The playfulness started to leave her tone, though. “What’s this to you, exactly?”

“It’s, ehh… there’s this personal thing I’m caught up in—”

“Oh!” She stopped what she was doing suddenly and sat up. “Kent. Prua-Kent. You’re that, ah, con artist’s daughter.”

“That’s—yeah—”

“Ugh, sorry about all that. I won’t pry into your business.”

“Thanks. Sorry if it, uh, seemed like I was prying into yours.” Misunderstanding aside, Myra was glad the girl had backed off.

“You’re all good. Anyway, if you really want to find out more… call Halnya Times main office and ask for Sky Mishram. You can tell him I sent you.”

“All right, thanks.” She wrote down the name so she wouldn’t forget, then turned to leave.

“Close the door on the way out, would ya?”

“Sure, sure. Won’t let the heat out.”

As she was on her way out, though, she hesitated. There was one other thing she came for, wasn’t there?

This was a bit harder to ask… but she really needed information.

She took a deep breath. “Hey, actually, one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you, uh, know much about… security systems?”

“Oh~?” Her playful tone returned. “What do you want to know about them?”