I'd been facing the right way to see it happen, but by the time I realized what was going on it was over. A form had swung down from the ledge above - glowing crystal heart plainly visible - and threw something towards Aestrid. There was a split second of relief as I saw it was going to miss, but he wasn't aiming at her; he was aiming at the door Mila had sealed on our way down, to hold back the countless feral undead.

The explosion made me stumble back and cover my eyes, and when I looked up with spots still swimming in my vision I saw Aestrid already being swarmed by zombies. They poured out of the doorway like a flood, and with the pit so close the only thing that wave could break against was Aestrid. She had taken a step back and was far, far too close to that crumbling edge - her powers were protecting her from the surge of bodies but as they piled onto her the ones behind continued to push - more and more were forced off the side but as they did they grabbed at Aestrid and at each other; quickly there was a clump of living corpses hanging from her out into the void.

Cyne backed away as some of the zombies made it past - some by climbing over Aestrid who was now barely visible - and began to charge at us. Katrin pushed past me and began casting, and right as the first one reached her it bounced off of an invisible wall. It was immediately crushed against that wall by the next layer of walking dead, and I could see Katrin grimace with effort.

"No. No! I didn't do it right, there's no edge! I can hold them back but I don't know for how long!"

Mila had an oddly focused look like she was using all of her willpower to keep her head together and make a plan, but it didn't matter. There was a barely audible cry of "Shit!" and the clump - including Aestrid, somewhere at its center - tumbled into the bottomless pit. That was it. No scream, no flash of desperate magic. Just a single curse and then silence.

There was only one hope. I abandoned the others and began to climb up after Connie. "Connie! Rewind!" I yelled as I went, moving as fast as I could. "Connie! Rewind, now!"

The hole was, as Sige had said, a great shortcut - but it wasn't easy to climb up. There was a pillar with handholds carved into it, then the side of a mausoleum - but at a different angle which meant you had to stop and reposition yourself. Once a rope was in place it would be trivial, but scrambling up without climbing gear while in a panic was a tall order. I was maybe forty feet up with my throat going raw from screaming when it happened.

I stumbled, and flailed my arms as the wall vanished leaving me holding nothing... and also safely on the ground. I spun around, and sure enough Aestrid was still standing on the narrow walkway by the zombie door.

"Aestrid, run! Now, to me!"

To her credit, she only hesitated for a split second - but then the bomb was flying through the air again. It wasn't happening the same way; I was certain we were ahead of schedule, though I couldn't say by how much, and of course Aestrid was in a different place. The bomb still hit right where it needed to, however, and the zombies still swarmed out at her.

With the new positioning they couldn't get on multiple sides of her, and she was less staggered by the explosion. Slightly better prepared, Aestrid was able to totally block the walkway and keep the rest of us safe - but there was no way she would be able to do anything about the man with the glowing heart, who had vanished the second he threw the bomb.

A rope dropped down from the shaft - of course, Connie would be in a hurry to come and find out what went wrong. Meanwhile, Cyne was backing into a corner to prevent being snuck up on and stabbed again and Katrin had her spellbook out and looked like she was just trying to find a way to do something that wouldn't hit Aestrid. Mila and I were scanning around us, waiting for the next attack.

"Good reflexes, dear." Mila said, "I didn't see him at all until after you yelled."

"Neither did I."

"Oh. Well that's even more impressive. Do you expect he'll attack again, or wait for us to relax?"

"I don't know. Do you think he has more bombs?"

Cyne looked at least as shaken as when he'd been stabbed through the heart. "The empty box we found could hold six," he said, "so it's unlikely he has more than five remaining. Small comfort, I suppose."

I wasn't sure what to do. If we clumped together, we might just get blown up. If we spread out, we'd be picked off one by one. I spared a glance at Aestrid, and saw that the zombies were starting to climb over her and each other - even with the minorly improved starting position the sheer number of them was impossible to deal with. "Everyone back up!" she yelled, and let off a pulse of force again.

Just as it had when she had used that method before, it flung the zombies back - sending at least seven or eight into the void. But unlike the floor in the last hall she'd used it in, this walkway didn't just crack - it shattered. Aestrid flung a hand out to catch herself, but managed only to grab the leg of a zombie she had launched off of her back. It slid with her out of sight into the bottomless pit. I could only stare - she was gone for the second time in the span of a minute. This time she had been in a different spot and kept the zombies at bay, and the collapse of the walkway had made it impossible for them to reach us which meant we had a moment to stand there in shock.

Something crashed behind me, and I spun to see Connie and Sige in a heap - the rope had been cut as they climbed down. "Are you okay?" I yelled, trying to help her up. "Fuck! You have to be okay!"

Connie winced, and looked at me with unfocused eyes. "What? I think I hit my head."

"You have to rewind again. Right now."

She blinked, unevenly. "I already did."

I made her look at me while simultaneously shoving Sige's leg off of her. "I know, you need to do it again."

"I'm... shit, Callie. I'm out of mana. You know I can only do that once."

Sige finally managed to get up without kicking Connie in the face, and pulled her up behind him.

"Aestrid is gone, Connie. She fell in the pit, you need to rewind."

She glanced in the direction of the pit, but still seemed confused. "Someone cut the rope. Are we under attack?"

"Yes, stop asking stupid questions and rewind!"

She finally seemed to focus on me. "I'd have to burn out my Dumine to do that. All that work, gone. What if it's you I need to save next time, and instead I've got a blank Dumine?"

We were burning time with this argument. "So use that time mana!"

She shook her head, and then swayed as if doing so had made her dizzy. "I can't. I could maybe, with a little trickle, but in the time it took to get enough of a charge it would be too late anyway. And if I released it too fast it could kill all of us. It's volatile shit."

"So just do the Dumine thing! Hurry! We can train it back up together!"

"No."

I staggered back. I scanned the group for support, but Sige and Mila were looking at me with pity - there was no trace of anger, no sign that they were going to argue with Connie. This was how the job worked, this is what the risks were, and nobody could ask someone to burn out their Dumine. Wordlessly, we began to trek deeper into the Necropolis - it was clear our current location wasn't safe, nor was the shaft that led up.

We hurried, taking almost random turns, until finally Sige waved us all into a tight side tunnel that was nearly invisible from the wider path we had been on. We slowed down, attempting to be stealthy, and when we came to a dead end Mila climbed on Connie's shoulders to make a crack in the ceiling we could climb through. She spared the mana to seal it shut behind us, and we picked a new direction.

Not long after that, Connie stumbled and nearly collapsed. Cyne rushed forward and examined her, and as he pressed a hand against her head she jerked and accidentally elbowed him in the face before looking around like she'd just woken up. "Shit. Sorry. That healing felt... very strange. Sorry. I feel better, though. I think I had a concussion. Fuck, I'm tired. We need to stop and rest."

Cyne waved off her concern about his face, and we picked out a mausoleum to sleep in. Still, almost nobody talked. I was supposed to do things right. I'd been trying to do things right, to prove I wasn't what my mother said I was. Or at least, that I didn't have to be. And what could be a more simple rule to follow than this? Someone is dying, you can save them, you do that. My favorite morality, the really simple kind. But Connie had decided the time it would take to re-train her Dumine was more important, even though at the end of that time Aestrid would still be dead and - I shuddered at the thought - possibly still falling. That mental image sent me into a mini panic attack, but I doubted that anyone even noticed - they were all getting bedded down, and I was slumped in a corner already with my hyperventilating muffled by the sleeve of my jacket.

The panic attack might have actually helped, because at some point my brain just overloaded and I passed out. There were nightmares, obviously, but I was used to that. I hadn't gone a whole week without a nightmare or two in my whole life - it was only a few years ago I had even found out that wasn't normal. In this case it was simple, Aestrid kept dying every time I turned around and then I would turn back time to rewind it and she'd do it again. Sometimes I saw her die, sometimes I'd just look back and she would be a zombie - once she shrugged, as if to say "yeah, I don't know where the other half of my face went either". It normally would have been almost funny, but that's the thing with nightmares; your brain can just label them as scary and they are.

Stolen novel; please report.

When I woke up, my head was clearer. The shock and anger at Aestrid's death had dulled enough that I could think about the situation and ask some important questions - how differently would it have gone, a third time? The bomb would get thrown as soon as she started to run, that seemed clear. And once thrown, the zombies would swarm. I could have told her not to use that force wave thing, but she must have known there was a risk involved; she used it because she was covered by zombies and they were getting past her. And Connie was right about potentially needing her Dumine. This wasn't going to be the last dangerous thing we did - even if you didn't count the immediate danger involved with getting out of the Necropolis. The reality of that, the fact that we would need to climb all the way up with one less fighter, hit me in the gut. Aestrid had been the one watching our backs.

The others were waking up too, and getting bags together. I pulled out some jerky and chewed on it while I thought about the problem. There was no way I was going to take up the rear, and Mila would get distracted and fall behind. Cyne would just get killed, and we needed him to get into Nusos - or did we? Sige could do that part too, even if he had a bit less experience with it. Maybe Sige in back though, since this guy had attacked the rear of the group both times and Sige was most likely to be able to take him out. Then Mila at the front, she could fight in a pinch - she'd shown that - and couldn't wander off if she was in the lead. No, wait. She could wander off and take us all with her. Bah.

I stood and pulled my pack on, still eating. Katrin came over and hugged me for some reason - maybe the darkness was still getting to her. I patted her arm and she hesitantly stepped back before looking at me. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I replied, "just trying to figure out the new marching order. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass, I had taken it for granted how easy it was before to just put one fighter at each end. Anyway, I'm thinking Sige at the back, but then the front is giving me trouble."

"No. I mean... Aestrid just died."

"I know. Did I say Aestrid instead of Sige? Sige at the back."

She sighed. "That's not what I mean, Callie. I mean I was asking if you were okay because you just watched someone die."

I mentally retraced my steps. Ah, that was why she had hugged me. But I wasn't mad anymore, Connie was clearly right about not reversing time again so... but that was wrong. It shouldn't just be about whether or not Connie had been logically correct. That was just my stupid fucked up brain doing its thing. I should be sad, and maybe still frustrated, and... got it. "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to hold it together and if I start thinking about her I'll be a wreck all day."

She shook her head and walked away. Had I still not said the right thing? No, that had been the right script - but she knew too much about how I thought and must have realized I was lying which made it worse. I wasn't sure how to fix this. This was why I normally didn't tell people about my... empathy issues.

A memory surfaced, one of the loose ones that didn't seem to be real. It was simultaneously vivid and frustratingly vague. "I love you too," I had said, because that was how you replied when someone told you they loved you - and you have to use the right lines or they'll know you're a monster. "No you don't," the other person had replied, "not today."

I remembered freezing up, ready to be called a sociopath or get kicked out onto the street. I needed him to believe me. I needed him to let me stay. A hand came down on my shoulder, and that voice spoke again. "If you don't mean it that day, you don't have to say it. Maybe you'll mean it tomorrow, maybe you won't, and it doesn't matter. I'm saying it because I mean it, and I'll mean it whether or not you have those emotions that day - or ever." and there was this warm feeling in my chest, even though I wasn't... huh.

I snapped out of the fuzzy memory and saw that everyone was filing out of the mausoleum. I grabbed Katrin and pulled her into a hug, whispering into her ear. "I'm a little dead inside today, and I don't like how people treat me when they realize I'm... broken. I probably really will be a wreck about Aestrid again later, tomorrow or the next day. But I need you to know that even though I don't... I don't love anyone but maybe myself today, I would still do anything for you and Connie and Errod. And when I do feel like I love anything, I love you guys. I've only known you for like a month and you're the best friend I've ever had. Please don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad," she said, breath warm on my ear, "it just caught me off guard. It's fine. It's part of you. We're okay." And she squeezed back. I couldn't tell if it was my imagination or if I could feel it again like in the memory - some tiny warm speck of emotion I couldn't put a finger on. Either way, I felt some tension release - some subconscious anxiety that Katrin would call me a monster like mom used to had lifted from my shoulders.

We started climbing again. As I had expected Connie put Sige in the back, and she solved the issue of who would take lead by doing it herself. We went slowly at first, expecting an ambush, but of course that didn't happen until we had started to relax. We had been forced back to the edge of the pit after almost having to deal with another large group, this time a pack of about twenty zombies that we thankfully saw in time and avoided. That seemed to confirm the pattern of bigger clusters of undead further away from the pit, and we felt we had gone far enough to have lost the possessed delver so we made our way back to the center.

If the attack had come right away, we would have been ready for it - but of course it was another hour before anything happened and we were just hoping for a place to rest when I saw the bomb coming. It was a speck of red light, and I focused on it in the darkness thinking it might be the crystal heart on the delver's chest - but if it had been it would have been far away, so I didn't yell at first. When I saw it was moving, I still couldn't tell size or distance well with everything so black all around it and so for a split second I actually thought it was some sort of ember or firefly moving around; we'd seen very few magical lights in the depths but as we got higher up they would presumably be more common since the newer magic items wouldn't have had time to fail. The idea that the light was the fuse of a bomb flying towards me didn't really register until it was far too late to do anything but dive away. I think I yelled "bomb" but I wasn't really certain.

The explosion came just as I hit the ground, and I felt something score across my outstretched arm and another fragment of stone slam into my upper thigh. Thankfully most of my back was covered by the backpack. I scrambled up and groped for a wall, my ears ringing, and tried to get my bearings. Sige was gone, which I took to be a good sign - he had been behind me, so it seemed unlikely he had been hurt worse than me - and if he was already gone he was presumably in hot pursuit. The ground where the bomb had gone off was mostly still intact but badly cracked, and out of paranoia I decided to go around. That image of Aestrid dropping off into the darkness - twice - would probably stay with me for a long time.

The small mausoleum I tried to circle around backed right up to one of those long stretches of walls where it was made entirely out of artfully stacked bones, so I turned back around and tried another path. I had my light mostly covered, just moving my hand every few steps to get a glimpse at the path ahead before proceeding in darkness. Somewhere in the distance I heard yelling, but I couldn't make out words. There was a searing green light for just a moment, and I crossed my fingers that Katrin had just unleashed some spell that took the delver's face off. After that, it was quiet.

I was turned around, but too afraid of drawing attention to call out or even just keep my light uncovered. I heard a low, rattling moan nearby. Great. Walking faster, glad for my silent shoes, I did my best to follow the slight breeze I had sometimes been able to detect coming from the direction of the pit. Just as the edge came into sight, I felt a blade slip into my side. I tried to say something, or even just scream, but it only came out as a sort of 'hurk' noise. Stabbed, again. Son of a bitch.

He was right up close, as if savoring my last moments, and so I threw my head back as hard as I could and was rewarded with a loud crunch. He stepped back and I ran forward, the blade doing more damage on its way out. I knew I had to get to the pit, to a place where I could call for help. When I got there, however, it was a dead end.

There was a crumbling railing at the edge of the yawning void, but the path in either direction only went for ten feet or so before being obstructed. I ducked to the right since there was a door visible, but I couldn't slide it open and I could feel myself getting weaker as blood soaked down my side. It wasn't as warm as I would have expected. I hammered on the door, and heard a groan from inside. Shit. I stumbled a few more feet to the dead end and collapsed. I was out of ideas, and didn't even think I would have the opportunity to bleed to death. Sure enough, a second later the possessed delver came around the corner with its crystal heart now exposed and glowing once more. Not only could I see some damage around its nose from my backwards headbutt, there was also a hideous dark bruise encircling its neck from the previous encounter where it had been twisted around. That was reassuring, at least - it couldn't be killed easily, but it didn't fully heal.

I felt dizzy, and suspected I was in shock. The thing raised a short sword, and for the first time I heard it speak. "Any last words, little one?"

"Yeah," I mumbled. "Do me a favor and do a swan dive into that pit for me."

Staring down my death, I felt a wave of cold ripple through me. This was it. He began to thrust, and then the door I had been banging on a moment before popped loose and crashed into his shoulder. He stumbled and was flattened against the railing as a zombie began to climb through the doorway over him. He pushed back, lifting the stone slab like it was nearly weightless, but then the railing behind him gave way and the delver, the door, and the zombie all vanished from sight.

Unlike Aestrid, he screamed the whole way down.

I pressed a hand against my wound and took a deep breath. I was still shivering from the near death experience, and worrying it would be an actual-death experience soon. But out of nowhere some fuzzy orange arms lifted me up and Sige began hurrying through the darkness. I hadn't even seen him walk up to me. "You sprung a fucking leak, kid."

"He got me. But he's... gone. He fell."

"Well, I hope it was worth it," Sige said, somehow managing to keep from jostling me much despite sprinting though the darkness. "Fuck. I told you to be careful with overspending mana, didn't I? Fucking kids never listen, have to go and strain themselves."

Maybe it was the blood loss, but I felt like I had missed part of the conversation. "Wait, is she okay?"

"Who?"

"Katrin. You said she overdid it again. I saw the flash."

Sige sighed. "No clue what the flash was. I was talking about you, dumbass."

"No, I can't do magic. I don't know any."

"Yeah, and you're shivering like a fucking nudist in a snowstorm why exactly?"

Oh, that. "No, that's just... I get cold sometimes when I think I'm going to die. That's normal. Also maybe blood loss?"

"Okay, whatever you say." Sige muttered, sarcasm dripping from every word.

But obviously I hadn't done any magic. After all, nothing happened. He just fell. Cyne fixed me up good as new, leaving me utterly exhausted. We all agreed it was best to find somewhere to rest for a while - Mila had been hurt too, and Katrin was emotionally worn out from thinking I was dead for a few minutes. As we headed down the hall, something was bothering me. Something sounded wrong. It took me a moment to realize my boots weren't silent anymore for some reason - I really hoped they weren't broken.