Blackmailing Rhebina was straightforward, once Jair finally found her. Hint at her brother’s past, bring up the organization’s standards, promise never to use it against her again as long as she did him this one favor…

She agreed to distract the receptionist, albeit very confused as to why he was using such major leverage on something so seemingly insignificant.

Jair collected his team from Astralla City and they all strode confidently into the administration building as though they had completely legitimate business to conduct.

True to her reluctant word, Rhebina had contrived to lure the secretary away somewhere, leaving the entry hall empty.

Yast moved straight toward the first trap to begin dismantling it. Jair quietly counted seconds as the expert did his work, marveling at just how adept he was with those tools of his.

Jair himself could probably have done it with time, but it would have been an hour-long and messy process. He'd picked up a lot of miscellaneous knowledge over the centuries, but always remained focused on his own specializations. Better to be an expert in three fields than a journeyman in a hundred.

Also, practicing these sorts of fiddly physical things were boring. Much as he'd never learned to play the kalini with any degree of proficiency beyond the most basic, he'd never put in the time to master the subtleties of wardbreaking. Not that subtlety in general really was Jair’s strong suit. Most wards he encountered could be dealt with more… directly.

Ran had fully described the trap’s workings from his previous loops, so Yast took it apart with clean efficiency. The warded door took only slightly longer.

Two minutes after they entered the building they were past every obstacle and out of sight, descending the staircase to the labyrinth.

Jair put a hand on the wall and felt for the subtle lines that Firdon had included so that other teachers could find their way through if necessary, a very basic map that would mean nothing if you didn't know the code.

"Left, right, right, straight, left, straight," Ran recited, leading the way.

That wasn’t what the guide indicated. Jair ran his fingers across it again, more slowly. Straight, left, straight, right, right.

He suppressed the instinct to protest and take over guidance. Ran had done this several times before. Was Firdon changing the maze right now? Or perhaps he only updated the guidance markings at certain times?

“Lorsit, can you scan the area for shifts?” Jair whispered to their stone mage.

Lorsit pressed his hand and forehead against the nearest wall. His eyes shifted to Jair in surprise. “Yes, the way is changing even now.”

Jair nodded, suspicion confirmed. He noticed Yast watching the exchange and gave a brief summary. It might perhaps be a bit manipulative, but the more times Jair could demonstrate his foreknowledge, the better poised he’d be in the constructist’s estimation.

He had big plans for Yast Mebort. Though unappreciated at present, his potential was remarkable. Potential Jair fully intended to draw out to its fullest. Both for Yast’s sake and his own future plans. Having a devoted master constructist available would save a lot of time in later years. Dealing with the first incursion in particular, hm, he’d need to be sure he got Yast started on the Adamir path, come to think of it. Would be useful even with standard shields, but adamirite was the closest thing to–

“Here,” Ran confidently declared, pointing to the wall ahead of them.

Jair pushed away the lingering thoughts of the future, mind racing through all the possible paths to attaining his aims, and refocused on the present. All of that wouldn’t be for a long time yet.

They all stepped aside for Lorsit to do his thing. The stone mage raised his arms and gestured with slow heavy motions.

The plain wall in front of them tore in two, spreading open like a curtain drawn away from a window, then settled into a slightly rounded rectangle of a doorway to admit them to the vault beyond.

Jair ran to the general pile of swords he remembered Maelstrom being from their tour the previous time, running a hand across them until the spark in his soul jumped into action. Racing down his hand, it reunited with its physical form with a flare of silver relief, the blade morphing into its familiar proper shape.

It rejected his hand, forcing him to drop it, but at least the strain was gone of trying to hold a protesting blade inside his soul. A quick scan of its stats showed it remained the same, unharmed by their few days' delay. Returned to its physical form, there would be no further quality degradation.

Ran was already stepping forward, a holding cloth ready to wrap around the sword. He handed the bundle to Jair.

Jair held the sword to his chest. Even unable to feel its energy through the fabric it felt right having it within reach again.

One source of tension eased, even as the other increased.

Halfway there. Now they just had to escape without being caught and imprisoned.

“How many times did we get this far?” Jair asked.

"Three, if you count the time you went alone. I don't know what happened, but I assume you got at least this much."

"Two. What did we try?"

"Tunneling up, and breaking through one of the side walls to traverse the maze another way. Firdon cuts us off if we use the maze, he can shift it at will, and the tunnel up he just crushed us."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"He's reacting way too fast to this. Shouldn't he be in a class right now? Why is he paying such attention to the maze in the middle of the day?"

Unless it was his fidget toy, that he used to keep himself sane during the monotony of teaching students.

"You suggested he might be using it to entertain himself during dull classes."

Jair felt a moment of dissonance, hearing Ran's voice echo his thoughts so immediately. "Guess this really will take some getting used to."

Lorsit was pressed against the wall, and now leaned over and called out, "Someone has entered the maze. If we are going to go, we need to go soon."

"What if we send them away?" Jair asked. "Does Firdon come here, or pursue Lorsit?"

"That's not something we’ve tried yet."

"Then let's do it now. Lorsit, take Yast and evacuate out into the desert. Find a place below the cliff to hide, and I'll come find you after to get us across to the city. I'm going to assume the transit platform isn't an option."

Lorsit complied, opening a hole in the floor.

“Go with him,” Jair told Yast.

"You just sent away anyone who could get us out of this."

"They're foreign. If they get caught involved in this, things will escalate. I doubt they'll go nearly as far for a pair of students. As long as we can talk our way out of it before they find Larenok, it doesn’t matter that they know it was us."

“It’ll matter to my father.”

Jair paused. He’d long ago become accustomed to having complete autonomy. With only himself and Ran, there was no need to worry about Astralla at all. Once they were away, they could go anywhere and do anything.

But if they had to worry about the repercussions against House Serin, Lord Ajriol Serin, and legal nonsense… that would complicate things.

“So we really do need to make a clean escape. Urgh. Then we’ll call this loop information gathering.”

They started walking back the way they’d come, fully prepared for Firdon to come running and shouting at any moment.

No angry stone mage made his appearance.

“When you do revert, try to pull yourself out sooner. Don't wait for the cactus. Claw at the sand if you have to, grab anything you can find and get out. I wish we had a longer stretch to practice on. I have some thoughts about how the spell works and a couple theories I’ve been dying to try but I couldn’t test by myself."

Ran turned to look at him funny. “You’ve been theorizing on how to make use of multiple people in your soulspell?”

“Not specifically, more ‘what could I do if I had tools’ but a second person works too.”

“Didn’t you say any items you brought with you would explode or disintegrate? Also, wasn’t there a turn here?”

“Yes, which is why it annoyed me not to have them.” Jair looked around at the surroundings, confirming the missing tunnel. He shrugged. “Must have shifted around again. We’ll keep searching.”

“But even if you need tools while going back in time, how would I help with that?”

Jair grinned. “Because you come with cactuses.”

“I don’t understand how that’s relevant.”

“Just wait until we have a good long stretch of time to do some tests in, and I’ll show you. If I’m right… well, we’ll see. But I think it might change everything.”

“You really can’t help being mysterious, can you?”

“Why would I ever want to be anything less?”

They finished exploring the last of the dead ends, only to arrive back at the vault where they’d started.

"So we're sealed in, but no one's coming to deal with us yet. That means Firdon is following Lorsit. This could be a problem.”

“It will be. Any time they capture us all, they go into full traitor-prosecution mode.” Ran shivered. “Would rather avoid that.”

“Still. I’d like to see it for myself. Once they start doing something uncomfortable, go ahead and bring us back. Until then, I’d rather we collect as much information as possible.”

“I can tell you what’ll happen. They’ll confine us, argue, find Larenok, get the Hyperion involved, and we’ll end up bound for Crelys by nightfall. You tried a bunch of things to convince them to let us go, but this isn’t something we can sweep under the bush. The other time you went for ‘I’m just a really ambitious student, look at my sword’ and that somehow escalated things further. I got the impression that if it weren’t between lunar passages they’d already have us in front of the Provisional.”

Jair pondered this. If not for Ran’s involvement or the fact that Maelstrom remained locked out of his soul until he could receive the Mageblade class, he’d have been tempted to try playing along. He hadn’t actually tried breaking out of Crelys in the past, as usually by the time he’d be strong enough to try he’d also be strong enough to be confined somewhere truly formidable.

But without Maelstrom, without his imprints, and with Ran being very much involved, it didn’t sound worth the risk. If they suppressed Ran to the point he failed to activate Temporal Reversion, if this was serious enough that they would even involve the Provisional? There was a good chance they’d end up executed without any escape route.

“You could be right. Let’s try again. Remember, grab the first thing you can find, if you can before hitting the shelf.”

Ran nodded, tense, took a deep breath, then activated Temporal Reversion.

They fell.

Jair watched Ran, fuzzily visible through the ghostly cliff of their timeline, flailing frantically for a grip.

The fall was too brief. Ran didn't find anything to grab before they slammed back onto the same shelf a few hours previously.

They stepped off the Astralla Institute arrival platform, Ran stumbling as Jair instinctively moved to steady him.

Ran waved away the help, one hand pressed against his chest as he took deep breaths. After a few moments he shook it off and straightened.

“You good?”

“Yeah. What next?” Ran started ticking things off on his fingers. "Rhebina works well for the distraction and the timing was good. Should we send Yast back after the entry? Nothing in the maze requires his expertise. His presence is one of the things that makes things more complicated when we get caught. It would leave us one fewer person to worry about in the maze.”

Jair thought it through aloud. “If we give him the authorization token, we wouldn’t be able to transit ourselves out, but since Firdon is going to be between us and getting back up anyway it won’t matter. Up is too slow, through the maze he has too much control. Down. We need to try down.”

“He won’t catch us just as easily?”

“I have some ideas on that I’ll need to discuss with Lorsit, but for the moment we’ll put that on hold. You’re right that we won’t need Yast in the maze or the vault, but you forgot one other person.”

“Huh?”

“You won’t be needed for the infiltration at all. So you’ll be the one in charge of securing our escape route.

“If we split up you might get left behind again.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ll tell you everything I’ll need to know before we try it for real. I might forget, but as long as you don't it won't matter.” Jair grinned mischievously. “This loop, though, will be all practice.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

“Experience and wisdom. Follow me.”

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