“What’s the number I told you?”

“Forty-six,” Mrs. Kine said after taking a moment to show me she could remain quiet if she wished.

“Oh-” my brain got hung up on the word hell.

We didn’t speak English here, but a language she called Kurtish. As far as I could figure, I spoke Kurtish fluently. Certain words didn’t have a Kurtish equivalent and I no longer knew the English pronunciations or sounds.

I knew who Jesus, Santa Clause, and the Easter Bunny were, but the Kurtish language didn’t have the same mythology as Earth and therefore didn’t have the words.

I could say buffet, but not microchip, automation, but not automobile. In one of the loops I went through physics, math, and chemistry words trying to see how advanced they were. There were no complex numbers here. Or if reality allowed it the language didn’t have a word for the concept.

Electricity had a word but electromagnet didn’t, yet magnetic flux did.

There was no concept of relativity or gravity.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Kine had asked, “Nothing holds you down. You can jump can’t you?”

The planetary rings, weren’t called rings at all but Vel’s Belt. Which made sense, as they encircled Vel’s equator.

Mr. Kine had been a Master Alchemist who dabbled in enchanting, and a silver ranked adventurer. He survived when an outpost he’d been working in had been overrun by monsters in the depths. He wanted a safer life and paid for passage to the new world.

She was born here to a once wealthy family with an old name. Her father had come to the new world to invest and grow their wealth. His conservatives investments had paid off so he took more risks for more rewards. Those had paid off as well, at first. Then they soured and he chased bad money with good.

A decade later the wealth was gone and all she had left was her name, education, and breeding. She was actually sold, though she resented that language! As if she was chattel, a word that apparently I knew or had once heard in English, that meant slaves. Of which we apparently owned.

I was a slave owner. So there was that.

The slaves were sent ahead with the furniture and my apprentice to set up our home and shop in the frontier town of Nightfyre, a place free from corporate reach.

“How can he run for so long?” I mumbled.

Jackson was running in the dust of Henry’s horse as Henry rode past the slower wagons. Jackson was the youngest of the guards. He dug the latrine pit when we arrived at a camp, then maintained the fire. He didn’t cook, he’d been yelled at for cooking.

He was always running behind some horse or another.

“A young man like that?” she said glancing at him, “he hasn’t yet filled out. Likely he’s working on raising his running skill.”

I nodded, then paused.

She’d said something else like that before. What had she-

“You said your skill at reading was high?”

“Did I?” she asked. Maybe it was in a different loop.

“What did you mean by that?”

“I don’t remember saying it,” she said in that way that was technically answering without answering. I must be at the beginning of the loop where she was still mad at me. I looked up at the sky.

“What number did I tell you to remind me about?”

“Fifty-three.”

Fuck. It was all blurring together and I still wasn’t surviving past the second attack.

Four or five times we succeeded in surviving all the ambushers. Not that I had found any method that worked consistently. Those four or five successes were scattered among many losses.

Even if we did succede the second wave hit us in the middle of the night, kept us pinned until morning, and then killed us with big magic.

“What did you mean,” I said slowly, “when you said your skill at reading was high. It’s an odd turn of phrase, skill at reading. Why not say, you read well?”

“Because I was likely speaking about the skill, and not my ability.”

“Your reading skill?”

She started telling me about skills. This was my body now. It hadn’t been when these loops started but now it was. The world felt real. I thought of the horses as horses instead of giant alien horse-equivalents with two tiny horns.

They were just horses now.

Then something would happen and the world would feel alien and so different I couldn’t relate to it. The more she spoke about skills the more I felt lost and out of place.

Bench.

I took a moment. Closed my eyes and let the screaming and death pass. It was over. I was at the start again. New start, clean of all my sins because none of them had happened yet.

Sometimes I could convince myself that was true.

“I’d like to apologize for what I said to you. I see now you were trying to be a helpful wife and I overreacted. I hope you can forgive me. This is new to me as well and I’m trying to get better every single day.”

“Of course,” she said, “consider it forgotten. I have.”

“Wonderful.”

I waited until Jackson ran past the wagon on foot carrying some message to the guards in the read.

“Could you remember a number for me, in case I forget. I might ask you for it. It’s Sixty-three.”

“Of course. Why?”

“It’s nothing really. I did have a question about the General Skills and attributes and was wondering if you could help me.”

We’d just crossed the river. How many loops had I spent just talking about skills, both General Skills that improved attributes when they were leveled, and Class Skills that could not be leveled but that could be bundled to make a Class.

Classes could give attribute points, spells, or augmentations like a tail or the ability to see the dark.

Most classes made things related to the Class Skills bundled in the Class easier to do. Archers might shoot faster or do more damage. They might need less time to air or have their projectiles curve in the air to follow a target.

A man bundling five farm class skills without the class skill Fieldwalk, might gain the skill as a class bonus, thus allowing him to walk across muddy fields without sinking in, or avoid stepping on good plants while rushing, or whatever the skill actually did.

Or the farmer might get a body augment that allows him to eat rotten food without any penalties, or an augment that allows him to digest harmful weeds. More often than not he will get bonuses to things like identifying what the soil is lacking, hoeing faster, or lifting heavy livestock.

“So how does one become awakened without a priest?”

She was long past being confused or repeating, “But you had to have been awakened to earn your skills,” or anything like that.

“You cannot,” she said slowly.

“Which is why the slaves are slaves and not equals?” I asked again.

“The gods do not seem them as worthy,” she said, “it has been tried. They are simply lessor beings.”

“How does one become awakened?” I asked putting us back on subject. She might not remember it, but I’d found no way yet to change her mind about slaves.

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It was like trying to convince someone who raised fish that the fish were sentient and equal to humans. It wasn’t malice or hate, she honestly believed the natives were less than. And though I didn’t wish to be swayed by her confidence, without seeing it myself, I was beginning to. What if they were less? What if they were intelligent apes or something along those lines?

Not that it would justify slavery, but how intelligent did a cow have to get before people would stop eating it? Hell didn’t some cultures skill kill and eat dolphins and whales back on Earth?

“It has been tried,” she said with a sigh, “none of the natives have been able to-”

“How were you awakened?” I cut her off, which annoyed her, but she answered.

“I suppose it is different here in the new world compared to your awakening in the old world. When we come of age-”

“How do they test for that? The cards?”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“The cards feel like they reach out to you?”

“Like they are ready to bond, yes,” she said. She was waiting for me to interrupt again.

“And I’m transporting my cards?”

“Yours and the ones you allowed your apprentice to bond, yes.”

“But not yours.”

“Not until our first child is five,” she said stiffly, “it is in the marriage contract.”

Her cards were at her family’s estate and from what I could gather, might already be in the hands of bankers as collateral for loans, which meant child or not, we weren’t likely getting the cards.

“And my cards are where?”

She glanced around then whispered, “you have a card safe,” she said, “though you haven’t yet trusted me with it’s location.” There was a question in that statement. She was reaching, wanting me to share where the cards were a bridge to show I trusted her perhaps?

“Have you seen it?”

“Only when you added some cards to it.”

“How big is it?”

Apparently it was a metal box about the size of Pringle’s can, but rectangular and metal with a wooden sleeve that could be pulled out the end. Cards were slotted into the wooden container, then slid into the metal sleeve.

“So you don’t know where the cards are?”

She turned her head away, “Not until you tell me.”

I went with the guards to clear the road of the fallen trees. I told Henry about the ambush coming, traded him a purse with eleven gold coins for the wand he had and a bet that the men were coming. If I won I got to use the wand, if there was no ambush he kept the coins and the wand.

Coins had made things easier. Most people were both very private and large gossips. They didn’t want to share anything and asking questions that even children should know would shut the conversation down.

Explain that I was an academic though and offer to pay them for their time and suddenly everyone was willing to talk. Since I was in the loops I paid in gold and didn’t care.

The ambush was always different, which it shouldn’t be. Nothing else in the loops was different unless it branched from the choices I made in that particular loop. But the ambush was different each time, even if I hid on top of the wagon with a claimed headache for two days and didn’t interact with anyone.

Four loops later I figured out why.

I tried sneaking into the ambusher’s camp twice, but had failed both times.

This loop I’d rented a horse the day before we crossed the river. I was practicing with everything including horse riding and plant identification.

I crossed the river with the guards before any of the wagons.

Herb collection was a great excuse to rent a horse and ride off to do whatever I wanted.

In two of the loops I took the rifle, a small net I borrowed, a magical fire starter that was more BIC lighter than anything spectacular, and the books in my wagon.

My intent was to read through all of them. And I did, to one degree or another. I didn’t understand the concepts. The words were there, but it was like learning about the a Turbo Encabulator. The topics in the books were too advanced, to narrow of a field for me to understand even what they were focusing on.

The were all cutting edge books printed in the old world just before I left. I’d explained to Mrs. Kine that one of the ways I expected to make money was in copying the books for sale.

The idea of copyright did exist on Vel but it was less about stopping unlawful copying and more about justifying the beating or killings afterward.

Publishing was literally a cut-throat business on Vel.

The book published in the new world was, ‘A visual guide to alchemical plants of the newly discovered continent.’

Most of the book was sketches though there were written bits explaining what part of the plant to harvest, or how long it could be stored in different solutions. There were also notes on where you might find the plants, such as in shade, or near rotting lumber, or at a meadow’s edge.

I spent forty or fifty days in the two loops. Most of that time was reading the book about gathering, fishing with the net, or actually looking for and gathering the plants. Not that I did anything with them afterward, but the point was to practice.

The other bit was taking a break from the killing and death.

I got half a day, a night, and another half a day on the wagon’s bench before we reached the river each loop. Then it was kill or die, and often times both.

Physically healthy didn’t mean anything when my hands shook and I couldn’t speak to people because I knew what their insides looked like.

I needed time, and so I took it.

The first loop ended after fifteen or sixteen days, and it ended violently. They had bears on Vel, though it might have been closer to a massive saber tooth tiger than a bear. It didn’t matter, the thing was the size of a car, fast enough I only got one shot off with my pistol and strong enough I died from a single swipe of it’s paw.

The second loop I rode Wesley the rented horse in a completely different direction. I looked for the plants in the places the book suggested and was delighted to find them.

I saw huge buffalo, and giant eagles, like pick-up-Frodo-sized eagles.

There were ferrets or whatever the equivalent was though they were larger.

I ended up next to another river and when I was done reading all the words in all the books I took five days to do nothing. I’d gotten a stock pile of dried fish and smaller animals by that point.

Five days of nothing.

There were only three plants in the book that were listed as poisonous, and one, called a jumping vine, that was venomous. I’m sure there were other poisons here but not in that particular book. All four had notes concerning pain relief. Three for elixir and one that could only be a topical cream as ingestion would kill you.

Overdosing on pain killers seemed like the way to go. Drift off into sleep and wake up on the bench.

A tree is not a two-by-four and a plant that makes a painkilling potion is not a pain killer.

I was in agony for almost twenty minutes, and it only ended then because that was how long it took me to crawl to the river and roll in and drown.

This loop I was going to take the horse and beat the ambushers to their camp, even though they were still picking random camps. I’d climb a tree, spot them, then sneak as close as I could to learn what I could. They shouldn’t be on alert.

I got lucky.

They camped damn near directly under the tree I’d climbed.

The bearded man was cruel and quick with his gun, but the man with the long hair and the bandanna was the greatest threat with his bow and magical arrows.

Ghost Hatchet-man was next on the list.

Those three weren’t the leader though. The short older man with close cut gray hair, and the only man who didn’t wear a hat on this planet was.

I was close enough to hear bits and pieces of the conversation.

The Hatless planned the attack with the aid of a set of bone dice.

He didn’t say why he was rolling, but he’d roll, and then speak. If someone asked a question, he’d roll the dice and then answer.

The answer seemed obvious now. I wasn’t affecting how they ambushed at all. Hatless and his dice where. Why was a question I couldn’t answer, but this closed the door on the most confusing aspect of the loops. How everything else was the same, except the ambush.

I wish I could remember more of the TV show The Good Place, as I’ve never been as morally confused as I was when it came to a good ‘ol fashioned Groundhog day scenario.

Was it immoral to let these men go kill and rape tonight when I might be able to learn enough to kill them in the following loops? Was allowing evil, or worse, committing evil allowed? Wasn’t that literally the ends justifying the means?

And yet, no one but me in the whole of this universe would remember anything that happened in any previous loop where I didn’t to Nightfyre.

It was all practice, like making moves in your head before you moved the piece on the chessboard and made it real. You couldn’t be judged for what you thought about, only what you did.

Except-

Wasn’t that the whole deal with Catholics, and maybe all Christians. Didn’t coveting your neighbor’s wife count the same as raping her? Not that I put any stock in religion, even before we were all told it was bunk by the thing running the simulation of our universe.

Which left me in the position of deciding for myself. For a moment my thoughts began to wander off the path and towards the massive amount of caution tape that encircled the idea that the loops where I died continued.

I’d dealt with that during my river vacations. That wasn’t something I was able to consider. I’d declared both axiomatically and verbally to the night sky, that they did not. I was not equipped to carry that amount of responsibility and therefore would not. I would do what I could and that was to improve and learn and get better one loop at a time.

What I’d come to accept about the loops was something I heard from an ER doctor I briefly dated. When I asked how she could handle people dying she said, “There is a vast difference between not being able to save someone, and killing someone, and most of the time I have to remind myself that they would have died without me anyway. But in truth, I just don’t have time for self-pity or mourning. If I take a day off to cry, someone else could die.”

I’d tortured Beard the time he’d been shot in the back and couldn’t use his legs. I took a knife to him, made it slow. Sure I asked questions but I didn’t really care about the answers.

The next loop there he was killing and raping again if I didn’t kill him first.

He was down in that camp, planning the attack untouched by memory or scar. Where as I was burdened with the knowledge I’d done those things to another human being.

I waited, hating myself for it as they left for the ambush.

I clung to the tree and sobbed silently when the women and two of the surviving men were brought back to the camp.

I looked away while they raped and tortured, but I couldn’t stop from hearing.

They didn’t leave in the morning, nor by noon. The screaming had mostly stopped. Not the rape, but the screams.

The screams came in waves. It started with the rape, but when that broke the women down Beard used belts and fists and whips to hear their voices. When they grew detached enough to remain silent, he’d bring out the heated metal rod or glowing orange knives.

It wasn’t hard to guess that the scars that covered his own back were from brands of some sort or another. It didn’t excuse or justify anything, but seemed to fit the very Earth psychology of the abused becoming the abuser.

I was beginning to get weak with thirst when I reached the ground the next morning.

There were bodies on the ground. Some clearly tortured and burned.

I started toward them, my intention to check for survivors, but I stopped.

What was the point. If some of them lived what was I going to do, help them? I had a plan, that plan cost these people their lives and dignity, I better make it count. I left the bodies behind and followed the tracks.

My feet slowed and I looked back the way I’d come.

It might not matter once the loop was over, but it mattered now. I could afford a small delay to end their suffering.

Hand on the hilt of my knife and hating myself for deciding to go through with it I moved back toward the tied and staked women.

Then it was back to following the tracks and learning as much as I could. I needed to get information to be better during the next loop.