With her arms folded, Merry tapped a finger. “Alicia, what’s with all of your domains?”

The apprentice answered, “I was wondering how well I could control them from a distance, so I set up a few around the forest.”

“Did you ask Cyg to help you place them? Some of these are remarkably far...”

The thief, listening to their conversation in the living room from the study, approved in silence. Alicia’s lies were becoming passable.

“Sorry,” Alicia replied, “If they’re a bother, I’ll remove them right away.”

“No, it’s fine. That said, your progress has been impressive! In fact, I think you might even be considered a genius at this rate.”

She let out a shy laugh. “I’ve just been studying hard, that’s all.”

“Is that so?” the witch said, “I’m going out to Murkwell tomorrow. Is there anything you want? Consider it a reward for your efforts.”

“Oh wow...” Alicia said, frowning and twirling a strand of hair in her fingers, “I can’t really think of anything.”

Merry considered it strange that her reply was so unenthused, but she left it be. “Then, tell me if anything comes to mind.” With nothing left to say, she dismissed her apprentice to her studies.

This week had been bizarre. She was expecting the thief to be as restless as he currently was, but he wasn’t on the lookout for anything. Rather, it was as if he was waiting, but for what? He’d also been getting along quite well with her apprentice, and Merry was sure they’d never met until now. His presence had seemed to positively affect Alicia, so she’d been accepting thus far.

By Sunday morning, when she got ready to leave, Merry couldn’t help but find it too bothersome. Tonight, she’ll get to the bottom of this, she thought. But when she stepped out the front door, Cyg was waiting, one step ahead. He was wearing some kind of chest armor and a buckler, and he had a sack slung over his chest and another by his side.

“Good morning, Merry.”

She split her attention to her surroundings. A quick scan yielded nothing around them—but Alicia was gone. She was in the house just a minute ago.

“Cyg,” the witch replied, “What are you up to?”

Twirling a stick in his hand, he replied, “I’m here to kill you.”

She laughed, and her amusement faded when she saw how serious he was. “So, should I ask why you’ve decided on this ill-conceived task?” When she noticed the sack at his hip contained Alicia’s mana, Merry stopped taking this as a humorless joke.

“Who knows?” He was the first to move, circling her and starting his swapping.

Merry, unsure what he was up to, attacked by shooting forth an arm. At the same time, she began to peer over her domain, only half-following Cyg. He dodged her attempts one after the other as if expecting it, and she took notice. He threw something else at her, and on the first swap, she realized what he was doing, sending a burst of mana to intercept.

He was shielding it, pushing through her mana in a condensed arrow. But, the thief messed up the secondary swap to change angles, and she cracked through and repelled the piece of wood, all the while her next attack was underway. She tunneled underneath to try to grab him, but he seemed to see everything she was doing, placing plenty of trees between himself and her.

Augury? Divination? No, she was coming up with attacks on the fly, and reading new futures would take too long.

“How?” Merry asked.

“That’s my question,” he replied, running into the trees, “How did you decide that you were going to get rid of me today?”

“Intuition.”

She raised her arm and tried to capture him with a net, only to see him deflect it with the help of the buckler and his chest plate. It must be rune-powered, Merry concluded. Channeling into her domain, she collapsed the space around him and nothing fired off, and she took notice of Cyg’s immediate reaction and solid defense.

Soul magic. None of the circles triggered, meaning it was keyed. They were well-prepared. Yet, the witch was careful to never show off her soul magic in front of anyone she left alive.

“You kill people out of intuition!?” Cyg shouted.

Mind reading?

“Of course; it’s better to be safe than sorry. The last time it happened, I learned the hard way what happens when you give someone the benefit of the doubt” she said, thinking to herself the follow-up answer. No reaction on his face. “I had to raze half of Murkwell.”

“You... what?” Shock, anger. Crossed off the list.

“It was that, or let that blabbermouth spread word all the way to the royal court, in which case I might as well invite the Sun itself to strike me down,” she said, “Luckily, a few blight beasts did the trick. A ‘natural’ disaster, swept away and forgotten in history.”

Clairvoyance? There aren’t any other sources of mana nearby. No personal reflective surfaces to gaze at.

Gritting his teeth, the thief tossed out another object while still defending his soul. This time, the two swaps were perfect, and Merry tried to guard herself with her other hand. Behind her, Cyg performed a third swap, and a basilisk nail bomb went off at the time as the one airborne. She was caught in the blasts and blown around, but more or less she was fine, faring far better than the landscape around. At this point, she was frustrated at how well he was defending his soul against her constant barrage. His technique was basic but experienced.

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Then, was it Premonition? How would she test that?

She tried another net, this time wider and meant to leave no avenue for escape. In response, he performed two swaps: one to send a gem past her reach and another to move out of the way, both performed in rapid succession, and the net closed on the gem and smashed it to pieces. The prior explosions created plenty of loose soil for his Aspect to target, and he was no longer worrying about being backed into a corner.

He attacked with a spike. The delays between his attempts were mostly even, Merry saw, and that it must be done with the help of a setup somewhere. The witch’s interception was ruthless this time, hammering down with her domain and crushing it in an instant, but he was sending his mana everywhere with great waste. It became a hopeless game of catch-up, ending with a blast of nails raining onto her and a flying bolt striking the upper portion of her hat, trying to carry it off. Bit by bit, she was getting overwhelmed.

Merry snapped her accessory back into place, too preoccupied to stop the strangely large bomb that appeared behind her. It was almost twice as large as the prior ones, and it was powered by taking advantage of the witch’s defensive measure of radiating mana. Try as she might to form a shield with her arm, it was too violent, too sudden, and too low to fully dodge, and the explosion sent her tumbling. She lost consciousness, and her soul disconnected partially to stay aware. A few seconds later and she managed to claw back control of her body, only to find the thief tossing away her hat.

She rose, her bones snapping into place and her flesh swirling back into human form. Her layers of bloodied, ragged cloth were ruffling in the wind, twisted steel and ashen wood ejected out piece by piece. “Did you attack me because of what my intuition told me? Or was my intuition warning me of your attack?”

“I wouldn’t have attacked you in the first place,” Cyg replied, throwing out one more bomb.

It flew at her, and she reached out to grab it. The thief could see the runes activate, but it vanished in her hand. And then, the wind changed, as if there was suddenly a vacuum in her fist, drawing everything inside. The thief crouched to steady himself, trying not to fall over. It ended after a few seconds, and she stuck her hand into the torn-up ground, her palm facing Cyg.

Everything was blown away, showering him with dirt and grass, as if a giant had placed a finger down and flicked it. He covered his eyes but could sense Merry flying at him, and panicking, he used another gem to teleport. In that moment of chaos, she had retrieved her hat and reset the fight.

But, Cyg wasn’t worried about that. As soon as he knocked her down, he knew he had won, and in the actual fight he would never give her a chance to get back up. The thing was, he had never seen what she was about to do—Merry flicked a marble and it shot in almost a straight line toward him. At that moment, the thief realized what her third Aspect was, and he made as large of a sphere as possible around the ball of mana, swapping it as far as possible. The marble bounced and rolled... and nothing happened. She had never intended to activate it in the first place.

He turned to Merry, and he saw her laughing. It wasn’t any premonition, and all that was left...

“Are you kidding me? Time travel?” The sudden change in both of them. His knowledge of all of her usual attacks. The ability to still be surprised. This must be the first time they’ve gotten so far in a fight with her. “Did the court send you? No, they’d be more direct with something like this. No need for such a strangely surgical move.” She fired off one marble after the other, sending them off in seemingly random directions into the forest. One of them struck a tree close by, and the pocket dimension exploded as water endlessly poured out, transforming the landscape into a flooded wetland.

Cyg took a step back. The ground shook as another marble went off in the distance. “What the... how did you...?” They have to reset, now. Using a backup domain laid out near the edge of the forest, Cyg crouched and swapped himself out into safety before the water could reach him. When he landed, his entire body was chilled to the bone except for his heart. Just three teleports had him feeling as if needles were stabbing him all over. Still, he had to act quick, and he reached inside of his buckler to tap Alicia’s domain in a rhythm, signaling it was time to reset.

He waited, and there was nothing. The thief, shaking his head, wondered what Alicia was doing. When he checked the runes on his shoulder, he confirmed that Alicia hadn’t died yet. They were crystal clear on this, but she wasn’t listening. For a moment, he considered going on ahead when he recalled what Merry said. She knew.

A minute passed, and the domain-gems he was carrying began to fade while the sigil became half-lit. Did she die on her own, or did the witch get to her? His mind was racing. Merry was absolutely hunting him down sooner or later, but he considered what could have possibly happened.

If an immortal knew her foes were travelling through time and that they were going to reset the clock, what would she do? There was only one thing she could do, a way to alert her other self before any of them could act.

He heard an awfully close rumble followed by the noise of surging water. Cyg had to come up with something that very moment, something to wake him up, and all he could think about was how terrible his sleep was after that one fight. The thief took a deep breath and wound himself up, and he thrashed with his soul. Something tore. He toppled over, stars in his eyes, and before he passed out, he forced a reset.

— ! —

His entire body was simultaneously on fire and yet frozen. It was night, and he was also barely conscious, teetering right on the edge, taking him ages to even fall out of bed. Moonlight brightened the room, but the darkness at the edge of his vision blinded him.

Turning his head, Cyg considered his situation. Above was Merry, and across from the witch was Alicia. The house was full of “tripwires”, ones he couldn’t even see. If he tried to enter her room normally, he’d likely be caught.

He laid there, thinking, chest rising and falling, slipping in and out of reality. No, they couldn’t die here, they were so close! Clenching his fists, he pulled himself to his door and up to the handle to open it. Bit by bit, Cyg crawled over to the study, propping himself up on a chair.

Staring at the ceiling, the thief asked, how the fuck was he going to get to Alicia?

Cyg thought and thought, and he must’ve passed out for an hour or two, because when he opened his eyes again, he felt a little more stable. Clear enough to think properly. There was no way to physically reach her or use his Aspect to swap her down. He could try and cut through the wood, but if something happened to Alicia and she couldn’t wake up, then it would be impossible to answer any incoming questions from Merry.

He climbed onto a desk and placed a chair on top, and kneeling on it to not fall over, he placed his hands on the ceiling and closed his eyes. If Merry could do it, why not him? Cyg probed his soul, trying to figure out how to manipulate it, and eventually he caught wind of the trick. It wasn’t hard, but his body was yelling at him to stop. Go a little too far and he’ll end up extinguished, his instincts told him.

But bit by bit, he peeled himself away, pushing from his legs up to his fingertips, shoving his other self out into the elements. Immediately, he felt himself begin to wither away, but he pressed on. He reached, and he reached, until he made contact with Alicia’s soul.

Her soul was erratic, similar to when Merry was reinforcing the contract, except during that time, the effects disappeared as soon as they reset. And now, there seemed to be a pattern engraved into her being—a message meant for this week’s Merry, one that persisted through time.

There was no choice but to cover it up. If he could talk, he would’ve mumbled an apology for what he was about to do, the only thing he could do.

He had to carve up her soul until the words were unrecognizable.