I shook this time, seated on the bench in the clean fresh air, far from the heated metals and blades.

The pain from the torture that killed me still fresh in my mind. Perhaps forever in my mind.

This body was whole again, never damaged, yet the memories remained.

I shook again, more a whole body shudder than anything else. Not that it was my body that was shuddering.

I knew it intellectually, but the shaking hand I lifted off my lap, fingers spread, obeyed my will as my own body would have. There were scars on it’s hands I never earned. When I’d had to piss during the last loop, I discovered the tackle was about the same, penis and testicles and such, one above the other in the correct order. Though this body was uncircumcised and of course things weren’t exactly the same.

Scratching my face felt like scratching my face, an action that could pass without notice, but pissing- pissing felt like a violation of some sort. I could walk, mostly fine, until I thought about it, then I grew award and uncoordinated. Everything felt like I was growing into it.

I started out more puppeteer than puppet, but was integrating into the puppet. I had fewer and fewer thoughts about it being someone else’s body, and fewer incidences where I was surprised by the differences.

I was taller now, significantly so, and wider across the shoulders, deeper in the chest.

And I was fit. I didn’t have like washboard abs, but I was fit. And younger. And stronger.

When I learned Mrs. Kine was twelve years old, I was disgusted, until I learned I was only thirteen. Not that we were children.

There were twenty months, eight day weeks, and six hundred and fourteen days in a year. Children were children until about four when they went through puberty which ended at around eight years old. They tended to apprentice at that time, and most were married by ten years old.

She didn’t like to talk about why we had married later in life.

In my first loop, I died from whatever she’d given me from the medicine chest. I died from the ambush during the next loop.

The third loop I tried to warn everyone, to the point they thought I was mad. The guards were attacked at the fallen trees and made it back to the wagon camp. We didn’t survive but we lasted much longer and cost them some lives.

The fourth loop I learned as much as I could from Mrs. Kine, my wife. Learned everyone’s name the best I could, and then volunteered to help the guards remove the fallen trees from the road.

I noted where the ambushers attacked from even as I died.

The fifth loop, I warned Henry, who seemed to be the most competent killer among the guards. I waited until we were working the trees and they had gotten through the first tree. Then I pointed out where the ambushers would come from and Henry and I moved into the woods with the intention of ambushing the ambushers.

Except the Ambushers hit the workers from a different angle. By the time we got back to the road everyone was dead. The ambushers were shooting at us and Henry was screaming at me. I didn't understand what happened but I understood when Henry put his knife in my chest before he stood to fight. At least I understood how he could think I had betrayed everyone.

I mush have done something though to change the ambusher's plans.

The sixth loop I demanded we leave the wagon train. Mrs. Kine cried and broke down and Gus, the mustached leader of the train had me tied and then gaged.

I lived the longest that time, but only because the ambushers had a good laugh when they were searching the wagons, and decided to leave me tied up.

I made it four days before I sort of passed out, though I did kinda of wake up a bit here and there. I think on earth it took three days to die without water. Here it took four.

The seventh loop I bought a horse from Gus, and left the wagon train completely. I camped for two days, until I was out of food and then followed the road until I came to what remained of the wagons. My intent was to track the ambushers back to their base and then try to get a horse as soon as possible, ride out there with Henry and his men, and kill them all.

Two of the wagons were damaged enough they couldn’t be moved. Four onya were dead, two milled about. The dead men lay where they died.

The dead women.

The dead women were tied and staked to the ground. It was clear they were raped until their throats were slit. One was- mutilated didn’t seem to be a strong enough word.

The eighth loop I stared at the livestock bundled up and hanging from the wagon in front of us.

There were chickens or turkey-chicken hybrids in woven nets hanging from the sides and back of the wagon in front of us as well as small round headed lizards and a few goats.

Mrs. Kine sat beside me, still angry about something the previous Mr. Kine had done before I arrived.

What had the simulation said? He died from his canteen? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Maybe someone here was working with the ambushers.

The canteen was full and on my left hip, while the revolver was on my right. I’d drank from it in the other loops without dying so whatever poison it had held was gone.

“Take these,” I said handing the reins off to the unhappy woman beside me.

“I’m sure I don’t know how to drive-”

“Then learn!” I snapped.

I was still thinking about those bodies. About how I had left them all to wait it out because stopping it was proving difficult.

She closed the book in a very expressive way that told me what she thought of me and took hold of the reins.

I turned around and pulled the rifle from where it rested behind me.

The wagon swayed slightly over the uneven road and I tried to get down. My foot caught, like it always did, on the lip of the floor and I caught myself with a curse that Mrs. Kine turned her nose up at.

The onya were huge things with thick stubby legs.

They moved faster than they looked like they should.

I jogged forward and tried to explain that sixteen men had set an ambush on the road just after the river.

“The downed trees Gus,” I said serious, “You send scouts ahead because the river crossing is slow and splits your guards, but they don’t attack there. They attack at the trees. Except your scouts report the trees so you circle the wagons up. We can’t go backward quickly because we have to recross the river and we can’t go forward because of the trees.”

“And this was a dream?”

“Yes. The kind that come true.”

Gus shook his head and then puffed at his pipe.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Gus,” I sighed, “This isn’t-”

“That’s enough,” he said, “You should go while I’m still being polite about it.”

I didn’t know Pip, the guard in the heavy plate armor, but Henry always took charge during the ambush.

I tried speaking directly to Henry, who didn’t say anything.

“Do I need to gag you?” Gus asked. He didn’t know it, but he’d done it before.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I spent the day talking to the men and families paying Gus to protect them. I wasn’t as forceful but I mentioned attacks out here and since we hadn’t yet been told of the river, I mentioned attacks being more common after river crossings.

Mrs. Kine was disgusted with me at dinner, and implored me to keep my thoughts to myself.

“You are scaring the children,” she had pleaded.

When the attack came, I fought and killed at least one man I was sure of.

I was shot in the thigh with an arrow but a belt one of the women had kept it bound. The arrow to my shoulder took me out of the fight but didn’t kill me. Much to my later regret.

They waited until the sun was up to enter the wagon’s circle.

The bearded man ordered the women and children into the center. He claimed they would be unharmed.

Mrs. Kine would not leave my side, no matter my urging.

Beard took an interest in Mrs. Kine then, and because of her, took and interest in me.

They circled the wagons putting down any of the surviving men. Mrs. Kine begged them to spare me. Beard made her an offer. That if she did as they said, he would let me live.

He took enjoyment from her pain and humiliation as he used her mouth in front of me.

Then we were all forced to produce the valuables in our wagons. They would check behind us and if anything was missed of any value, they would be raped.

Two of the wagons were loaded. We were marched down the road, past the trees and the dead who had died while trying to clear them, and eventually into a camp.

For four days I was tied and gaged while Mrs. Kine followed orders to keep me alive.

They let her feed and water me from the tiny amounts they gave her. If I spoke when the gag was out beard would burn her with a metal rod that rested in the fire.

They beat and slapped the women while they raped them. I was actually grateful when one of her eyes was bloodshot and she stopped responding.

Beard tortured me, explaining as he did that she could still see, still hear, just couldn’t move.

They didn’t stop raping her, but they added torture as well.

By the fourth finger I simply chewed and swallowed.

Whatever he cut off me, he made me eat, else she received a beating or a burn.

She didn’t react to anything except the hot metal rod. For that she screamed.

I died in the early morning. Beard was still sleeping and I could feel it happening. The slowing of my heartbeat.

Back on the bench. Planetary rings stretched out above me showing we were close to the forty-fifth parallel by their angle.

Bird, insect, and animals noises behind the sound of wagons rolling.

Mr. Wellworth’s wagon shifted slightly in front of us.

I looked at her. Whole. Unmarred.

She wouldn’t remember what she had sacrificed to keep me alive, but I would never forget.

“I want to apologize for whatever it was I said or did that’s got you so angry with me.”

“I am not angry with you sweet husband,” she said, her voice brushed with acid, “I’m having trouble being a good wife is all.”

“You are-” I turned away, the emotions overwhelming me.

“There is no need to try. You are the best wife a man could ask for. If there is a failing between us, it lies with me.”

I couldn’t look at her. Not now. Not whole and undamaged. It felt wrong, like I was forgetting the sacrifices she had made. Like I was dismissing-

Her gloved hand found mine and I looked down at it resting on the bench between us.

I squeezed the parts of it I could reach.

I needed to be better.

I inhaled the fresh air and held it, eyes closed.

This was a gift.

Phil had used his time to date a woman and robe an armored car, but I could groundhog my way though murdering a bunch of rapists.

I needed to get better every loop. Smarter. Plan better.

That meant shooting. I was shit at it. I had this weird revolver and the rifle but if I couldn’t hit what I was aiming for what was the point.

I searched the area around the driver’s bench and found the hip pouch. It slotted onto the metal device on my belt where the canteen was attached.

It had an assortment of items. Small cloth purses of different types of ammo, but not much of each type. Exactly eleven in each pouch. Eleven of the thin wooden bullets fit in the revolver’s cylinder.

They were covered with tiny script so small it had to be made with lasers or needles or something.

One of the pouches had wooden bullets capped in a greenish metal I thought might be old copper?

How the hell did these fire? I knew it was magic and not gunpowder but what was the mechanisms that did the firing.

The gun had a trigger but there wasn’t even a hammer thing for a thumb to pull back.

I was more scared of the noise as the gun jumped out of my hand than anything else at first.

Then pain in my shoulder, and Mrs. Kine screaming for help.

I managed to look down and see the mess of my upper chest.

I was back on the bench.

I leaned back and stared up at the alien sky and closed my eyes.

I’d killed myself by looking at a loaded gun like some sort of Darwin award recipient.

When I took the gun out Mrs. Kine reacted.

“What’s wrong?” fear was laced through her voice.

“What if I told you I could see the future?”

“I’d say that there hasn’t been a card in recorded history that granted the power of foresight. I might also think, privately, that you were an idiot.” Ah yes the bite was still there.

I nodded without looking at her.

I had the cylinder out and on my lap. I aimed the revolver to the side and pulled the trigger. Then pointed it up and looked inside.

The mechanism to actually fire the bullet was unknown. I could see mechanical bits that turned the cylinder, but nothing that made contact with the bullet.

“How do these fire do you think?” I asked her.

She blinked at me and laughed a bit.

“I’m sure you’d know better than I would.”

“Why’s that?”

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked with concern in her voice.

“My canteen was poisoned,” I said after a while. I made sure I was looking at her when I said it.

“Oh,” she said with a small smile that faded quickly.

“Is that why you were in such a foul mood this morning? I thought you said it was stomach cramps and to let you rest?”

“Did I?”

She nodded.

“Do you think someone has designs on your equipment? What antidote did you use?” she asked quickly, “do I need-” she was covering her mouth with her gloved had.

“Did we kiss?” she asked more, I think, to herself than to me.

“How do these bullets- fire?” I paused trying to say fire, but it hadn’t worked. Then I thought of something burning and said fire.

“Fire?”

“Shoot-” I paused a moment to think of how to word it, “by what physics, errm mechanism do they, umm, shoot?”

“Mr. Kine, are you well?”

“Please answer the question.”

“The bullets are enspelled, enchanted as they are wont to say here in the new world. You enchanted them.”

“I did?”

“Mr. Kine,” she said seriously, “I am growing very worried. If this is some manner of joke-”

I shook my head seriously.

“Can you shoot?”

“You took me hunting,” she said quietly, “and said I was a fair hand with a rifle.”

“And how was I?”

“You did did not brad or brandy about, but you never missed. Not once.”

What resources did I have to fight back? I’d seen magic. Henry could shoot an arrow from his bow and it would seemed to turn into a cloud of fog and then condense into several arrows at once.

The ambushers used fireballs that exploded with some force and heat so strong it could burn you yards away.

Were any of the other wagon drivers fighters of any sort? I asked Mrs. Kine, who was more than happy to tell me what she had learned while she and the other women cooked dinner each night.

Families looking to claim free land at surface depths, craftsmen, and a merchant. That had been the draw surface land, for free.

“That’s- do people live underground?” I asked confused about the term surface depths

“In outposts do you mean?”

“What is an outpost?”

“A protected village underground. Mostly they mine ores, or fight monsters from the depths.”

“Monsters? Like?”

“Mr. Kine? Are you teasing me? Testing me?”

“I was just talking. I’m not teasing you.”

She let the silence stretch for a while before speaking.

“I’ve not seen too many monsters myself. Everyone’s seen the slimes of course. And I was inside the wagon during the two day run through the wagon’s took. Then of course the narrows. But we are far from the depths now, at least along this route. I have a depth gauge if you wish to check?”

I nodded, curious to see what it was.

Her bag rested off to the other side and she lifted it to set upon her lap.

I saw several objects I recognized. A silver backed hand mirror, a scarf, two hairbrushes, at least three sets of the elbow length gloves she wore and other various things.

The depth gauge looked like an old school wind-up alarm clock with the round glass face and two bells on the top.

The face wasn’t linear. From the twelve o’clock position to about four o’clock was white. Where the four would be was a one. Then the rest of the numbers followed, each getting less and less space on the face of the clock. Each section having slightly darker shading.

“If I keep it wound, which I do, it will alarm here at the red line.”

The red line was painted horizontally, what I figured was about eighty or ninety percent of the way to the number one.

There were two hands. One sticking straight up that was black and the other just slightly to the right, that was red.

“And the hands?”

She glanced at me and then back.

“The black shows the current depth, the red the maximum depth since it was last reset.

The small knob on the front moved the red arm around. Turning the device I saw the red arm was folded like an L. When the black arm moved clockwise it would push the red arm, but when the black arm moved back counter-clockwise the red arm would stay where it was.

“And why have it? What’s the point of it?”

“To warn us of course. These depths are likely stable, there are after all large game animals through most of the new world, but the depths can change. The red hand is to show a bubble spike.”

“Bubble spike?”

“Now you are teasing me.”

“I am not,” I said, then risked it, “I can’t remember anything of my life before today. Not a single thing. I’m not sure how we met or where we are going-” Except I knew that one. The voice had said once I arrived at Nightfyre my groundhog’s day experience would end.

“This is not funny,” she said.

“I agree. I’m trying to learn. Please. Just tell me.”

And she told me. Then at dinner she told everyone else. By noon the next day everyone was convinced I must had had some sort of white mind fog in my alchemy supplies that somehow escaped. Or I was lying. There were clearly a lot that thought the second was more likely.

I didn’t warn them about the ambush trying to keep everything the same so that I could see where the ambushers attacked from and make a plan for next time.

I did my best but I died again. This time I saw the arrow stab into my leg. I got behind a tree and was then throw away from it. I survived long enough to see the explosion had ripped the leg away and turned my pelvic area into mush.

Bench.

Question and answer session until an hour before sun down.

Camp, cook, sleep, leave.

Travel half the day.

Cross the river.

Arrived at downed trees.

Make camp while the guards clear the trees from the road.

Guards are killed in ambush.

Dinner bell is rung at the camp.

Men on watch expect the guards, so ambushers posing at them can walk much closer before attacking.

Camp is attacked.

I die, if I’m lucky.

Back on bench.