“Then wake them and get them here!” The Marshall snapped at the man. Mrs. Kine had woken up. The Marshall had explained it quickly.

“The John Walsh Gang killed anyone who didn’t surrender in town. You’re in the mine. In the mine you will be safe from rape and beatings. If you run, or try to escape you will not be safe. There is a brothel in town where the women are chained to the beds.”

We were in a long room lit with never-dark torches and filled with simple tables and benches.

Women began stumbling into the room in various states of dress. Three clutched blankets around themselves.

The man he had yelled had followed them in, counted them, twice, and then nodded to the Marshall.

“Listen up. Which one of you ladies is the leader?”

A few of the women’s heads shifted before one older woman stepped forward.

“Nope,” he said staring at another, younger woman, “it’s you. They all looked at you. Let me make this clear. This one is protected,” he said pointing at Mrs. Kine.

“If, when I come to check in, this is not the case, I will take fingers and eyes until it is the case. You,” he pointed at Mrs. Kine, “go with her. Do as she says. Don’t try to escape.”

Mrs. Kine was still slightly drugged from whatever had been in the tea but the other woman stepped out of line to come up beside her and lead her away.

The other woman paused for only a moment before the Marshall gestured with his gun and the women left.

“Come on then.”

The hallway was a corridor carved from stone and short enough that in this tall body I had to duck a bit.

“You’ve probably got six days, maybe ten, but I wouldn’t push it past that. Trust me, when he finds out you not only killed his brother but all of the men he sent out to control that route he’s going to lose it. You’ll want to be dead by then. Good luck.”

That wasn’t the end of our walk but the end of our conversation.

I was eventually passed into someone else’s custody who led me into a dark room full of chains. Everyone slept on the floor and it was difficult to see transitioning from light to dark.

“Colder the further back you go, but eventually you’ll find space. Won’t be any blankets for you tonight, you can sort it out with this lot tomorrow.”

The chains were finger thick and hung from the ceiling in an equilateral triangle pattern. Monsters could only spawn if there was mana, darkness (below a depth of 10,) and room to spawn. Chains would keep monsters out even if a bubble popped and the mana spiked above level 10.

The bodies on the floor were bundled up in blankets. The ones closest to the hallway had the warmest air, but also multiple blankets. As I worked my way further from the light the blankets became fewer. Several of the men were sharing blankets, and then there were no blankets at all.

“Huddle in or you’ll be shaking by morning,” one of the men near the end said. He was the last spoon in a four spoon line.

It was cool, but not cold. I opted to lay down on the stone staring into the darkness beyond and wondering how far the room went. The hanging chains ate what little light there was and suggested the room went on forever. Three minutes later I spooned up behind the man the stone floor sucking the heat from my body.

I was expecting a prison movie theme of gangs and internal forces. Instead I got a prisoner of war feel. That us vs them, but we don’t expect to survive, feeling.

We woke early when someone came in with a small bell. We filed out in a long line and ended up in the mess hall. There was food in big pots, presumably cooked by the women.

Those women sat with their husbands and sons during the meal. There were no smaller children, and not that many women, perhaps a dozen. There were easily two hundred men, though my sleeping area didn’t have more than fifty last night.

Mining in a world with magic was vastly different. It was still sledge hammers on weird drill-bit looking hole punches, but it was also spells to freshen the air, or bubbles of water that floated in mid air you could stick you head and face in to wash, the dirt and debris actively being pulled to the bottom of the bubble and falling like dust.

I was in loop-mode during the waking hours. I gathered as much information as I could without care if a question was taboo or not. I had to keep reminding myself I couldn’t be rude to people. Asking who had the spell card for the floating water and what exactly it did was like asking someone to show you their genitals. I couldn’t just reset any more, and that, more than anything, led to the crying and depression in the darkness.

I wasn’t the only one to cry myself to sleep.

Day two had me pushing carts, as my lack of General Skills, Class Skills, and Attributes meant I was the least useful at any task. There were teenagers, except here with the longer years they were only six or seven, who had more strength and endurance than I did. They could work longer and with more power than I could in ways that weren’t even comparable.

This was a tall fit body, yet when a cart was knocked over because someone threw a big rock in too hard, I couldn’t pick it up.

People had questions and the first day I told them everything I knew that was relevant. They told me what had happened to the town.

The John Walsh Gang, and it was always John Walsh Gang, and never just Walsh Gang unless you wanted to be beaten. They crossed over the ravine at the narrows with sixteen wagons, a mess of horses, livestock, even some women and children.

The plains just outside town were a patch work of farms each laid out on a grid with lots of untouched land between. When settlers arrived they were able to buy land there, close to town, or claim and settle land further away.

It was a scam the mayor and old money in town used to keep unoccupied land close and valuable.

The gang had posed as settlers and when they began to claim the valuable land near ravine the town was in the sheriff and his men were sent out to explain to them how everything worked. They were likely killed though the bodies were not displayed.

The gang moved through town one building at a time. Men entered while no one was aware anything was wrong and then drew weapons. The wooden shackles were enchanted and could be used to immobilize someone completely, and once on, could not be removed or damaged.

They’d done their research and captured the powerhouses around town before the fighting started. Even got a few cart loads of people headed to the mines at the end of town before people thought to question what was happening.

The fighting continued for several days, but soon enough families from surrounding farms were brought into town.

The whole time the gang kept to the story that they were the viceroy’s men, that the town had revolted, and that once they had secured the town people would be released when they could confirm identities.

Most people surrendered.

Almost all of the damage in town was from the last double handful of holdouts who had a five day war as the gang swept through buildings clearing out anyone who hadn’t surrendered.

People were taken back out of the mines, and again the others were told they were being interviewed and released.

The gang had started with the most powerful people demanded their cards and in most cases killed them anyway. A few who survived the process and were returned to the mine carried the stories back with them.

The gang wanted the powerful cards. When someone claimed a spell or ability came from a Class Skill or a Class, they were killed their property searched, and their family threatened to produce the hidden card or face the same fate.

Others were taken, talked to, and returned. Some were told to bond to cards that would making their mining tasks easier though the gang kept control of the cards.

They were told that after three years of labor they would earn their freedom and their cards. Every eighth day was a day of rest where the families of the farmers could come into town to visit their fathers and brothers in the mines.

The families were told that if they cooperate and continue to provide food no one would be harmed.

“But it’s not true,” Jayne whispered, dropping his voice.

“Mr. Mercer’s wife and daughter were,” he paused and I nodded, “well before rumor caught up to us down here they came for Mr. Mercer, took him to his farm and killed the whole family. Not that anyone saw the bodies, but not a one of them has been seen since. There have been others taken the same way from the mines, their families never to be seen again.”

We were waiting for the carts we’d pushed up and turned over to the wardens. They had to push them up empty them and bring them all back down.

We were crouching near the wall. It happened by accident. I stood, not realizing my shifting while crouched had put the cuff’s chain under the toe of my boot.

My hand popped from of the wooden cuff.

Jayne looked at it. Looked up at me, and then looked away.

I put my hand back through the cuff.

He said nothing and at first I thought everything was fine. But he never started talking again, when normally he couldn’t shut up. I suspected it was why he was given the easiest job, so that he wasn’t working with anyone else.

In only a few minutes I’d convinced myself he must think I was a guard or a spy and that by dinner he’d spread the rumor and I’d be dead.

I considered it for while, just letting it happen.

“Don’t tell the guards,” I said.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said too quickly.

“I’m not awakened. But if you tell them, I’ll be killed. Better to work in here than that.”

He glanced at me then looked away.

“You a Purest?”

“What’s that?”

He looked my way again and then pulled his eyes away.

“One of the that won’t get awakened because they think it’s tied to the taint of monsters. Nutters the lot of them.”

“No.”

“Only purest I ever met was a man that looked like a boy. No facial hair, voice still high. You don’t look like a man lacking attributes.”

“I died,” I said, “but came back. When I came back, I wasn’t awakened. Happened on the trail out, so there were no priests.”

“Makes sense,” he said. But of course he said it in a way that meant he didn’t believe me.

He didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day and by dinner I was sitting at the end of a table by myself when Mrs. Kine sat down.

“What’s happening?” she asked indicating the mostly empty table when space was at a premium.

I didn’t both keeping my voice down.

“They found out I’m unawakened. They don’t believe me, so they think it’s a trick or trap. You can’t blame them.”

“I know you don’t remember him,” she said, “but Shawn is dead. Your apprentice. Happened during the fighting I guess.

I felt the urge to wring her for all the information so in the next loop I was better informed. But I said nothing, only reaching across the table where she took my hands.

“Remember when holding hands in public was taboo?” I said with a smile.

She smiled back and squeezed my hands.

“I love you,” I said looking up from our hands to her face.

“And I love you,” she said with a smile.

My heart exploded with warmth and pain and sorrow.

I said nothing for a while, soaking in the feeling and realizing it hadn’t been a bad run.

I escaped Earth’s destruction, got to use real magic, even if shooting fireballs at living beings was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever witnessed. I fell in love, and was loved back.

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I learned to ride a horse. One with horns. I saw a bunch of weird creatures and even a monster. Technically.

Yeah, fuck it, I was counting the slimes as monsters, everyone else did.

I grinned thinking about the planetary rings and the day I’d watched a bird flying and hadn’t got distracted by them. I couldn’t remember what loop that had been but I remembered the moment when I realized the rings were just normal. Like looking up on Earth and seeing the moon. It could still take your breath away, but it was just part of your reality.

“I’d have liked to learn magic I think,” I whispered.

She squeezed my hands and focusing on her face I could see she understood what I was planning.

“The gang leader’s brother was one of the men I killed,” I told her, “the Marshall has a healer. He warned me I’d be tortured for years.”

“You don’t have to-” she whispered. I squeezed her hands but she never continued.

“When?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Someone might do it for me if they think me a traitor or spy, else-”

I shrugged again.

Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Well. I have run of the kitchen,” she said with a smile, “so if you’re here for dinner tomorrow I’ll have made you something special.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

The man near the door lifted the hand bell and began to ring it.

I stood up, and being at the edge of the table, took a step forward. I kissed her and she kissed me back and I realized how lucky I truely was.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” I promised her.

The crowd flowed around us and eventually she drew back from the hug.

I followed the crowd. Where the tunnel split I followed the men headed left while many went to the right.

There was a hierarchy for blankets. I’d assumed it was some sort of prison system where the men getting multiple blankets and being by the door were the gang leaders. Instead they were the old men exhausted after a day’s labor. Those without blankets were without because they gave theirs up, or there weren’t enough to go around.

I made my way to the back of the room. Not the end of the crowd but the back of th room. We only took up half the space.

I crouched with my back against the wall and waited. The hallway was always lit with the never-dark torches. We weren’t that far down, a depth of two or three, but given enough space and darkness and a monster would pop into existence.

Hence the chains that hung in neat rows.

They waited twenty minutes perhaps. Then they stood, four of them, and began making their way towards me.

Four hours ago I was hoping I’d be killed painlessly, an hour ago I was resigned to dying by any means.

Now? Now I was going to make it to dinner tomorrow. They could have me after that.

I stood up in the corner. The chains were hung from eyelets driven into the ceiling. These were all wooden and looked like a lowercase letter g with a circle connected to an almost circle. Each rung was clipped into the next one but it had to be magic because the gap was more a thin cut, not a true gap, and it was smaller than the quarter inch rungs.

So they had to use magic of some sort to get them all to link together like that.

I took a hold of the bottom of the chain and planned to wrap it around something. A thrown punch, or kick, or someone’s head. Something to tie them up if only for a moment.

Subjectively it had been a long time since I had faced bandits who could kill me. I’d sorted out in the loops how to do most of it without risk, and while I still made mistakes the excitement I felt going into their camp was more akin to trying to be sneaky than amping up for a fight.

I knew what I had to do though. You couldn’t win against four people. Hell I couldn’t win against one if they were strong as they appeared to be.

The trick lay in hurting them badly so fast and without remorse that I only ever had to fight that first one.

I was going for eyes and nuts, specifically removing the first and crushing the second.

The man in front whispered something and the others spread out. They were still eight yards away.

Then he dropped into a crouch, as did the others.

I was panting quickly and shifting from one foot to the other and confused.

“We want to talk, not fight.”

“Then talk.”

“You’re unawakened and the cuffs don’t work? Show us and I’ll tell you how to escape with your wife. Just slide a cuff off.”

I did, it would cost me nothing.

“See,” Jayne said before he was shushed. I hadn’t realized he was one of the men.

“Right. You three go prep the others.”

Two left right away but Jayne lingered for a second before following them.

“Without one of the warden rods being close our muscles lock up and we can’t move. Leave the mine and the rods are deactivated. None of us can leave, but there are no bars nor gates. The women aren’t cuffed so that they can carry laundry into town and do other chores. If you agree to carry a message to my brother I will tell you how you and your wife can escape.”

“What’s the message and who’s your brother.”

“I’m Wilson Farrier, my brother is Ray Farrier the mayor of Splitrock. The message is-” he was over come with emotion for a moment.

“The message- Tell him my wife and son are dead. Tell him everything that happened in Lark and Nightfyre and that they should flee.”

“What happened in Lark?” I asked.

The man shifted.

“I’m from Lark, as are several of the others. We are the last. We weren’t the first town hit, but they came into town claiming to be the Viceroy’s men, killed the powerful people. Those who had been adventurers or those that could muster support. They took our women and killed most of the men.

“The rest of us were set to chopping down trees in these blasted shackles. They have three enchanters making the shackles. They can take a carved set and enchant it in three or four days. That’s all they do.

“The lumber went on wagons and was shipped off. I don’t know where. The town was burned and we were marched this way. Once they took the town we had to remove the dead. When they ran out of bodies or other tasks we were put down here with the others.

“There was a man in Lark. A fur trapper from the surface outpost of Menkle. They were in the depths even on the surface and many of them died from monsters during the march to Lark. Tell my brother he has to flee. That they’ll need an army to counter the gang now.”

“I don’t know how to get to, where did you say, Splitrock?”

“Splitrock. Yes. There are maps. I’ll get Tem, one moment.

The background of whispering I wasn’t sure I could hear cut off as the man moved back. A few moments later he returned with another man.

Tem was a small time trader, trapper, and hunter. He had a camp in the woods north of the ravine with maps and a small wagon he hauled under his own power from town to town.

“The most important part is the river. Don’t forget. No matter how calm it looks on the surface don’t cross it except at the wide shallows. It only looks calm and narrow but the river has undercut those rocks and anything going in won’t come up back up.”

“I’ll leave the coins and the locket,” I assured him.

He rubbed at the back of his neck. Then sighed.

“Take the coins,” he said, “and you can owe me if I see you again. Take the locket as well,” he said with a sigh, “and if I don’t see you hand it from a tree where she can see the snow covered meadows in winter.”

Leaving was surprisingly easy. They would tell Mrs. Kine, who would slip away with the laundry. The building they washed the laundry in was next to the blacksmith’s shop where they were smelting all the ore. The excess heat was used to heat the water.

The building stood four stories tall and like a few of the other buildings had a door at the top floor that people in the meadow could access.

She’d go in, climb up, then follow the ravine north until the land swallowed the ravine and remained level while the split of the ravine pushed under the arching rock.

There were six buildings there, under stone instead of sky, three on a side.

The mine entrance was at the end of the ravine where the walls narrowed.

Since the wardens didn’t have to fear people running away my escape was almost as easy. I stayed in the back of the barracks, slipped my cuffs off, and waited. I had to wait for breakfast to finish and for everyone to move deeper into the mine for the day’s work.

Then I walked out.

It wasn’t that easy though as I got lost four or five times. I didn’t run into anyone, even on the street.

The smelters and blacksmith’s were getting everything hot but no one was yet transporting carts of ore.

The building with the laundry hanging from clotheslines was easy to spot.

Some of the women saw me but no one said anything at all as I walked to the stair and took them up.

At the top I exited to find a few horse hitches and a steady thirty mile an hour wind.

I headed north.

Mrs. Kine had been more prepared than I was. She’s stolen two thick blankets from the wash house and several fancy pillow cases as sacks. Two were tied with a bit of rope and laid over her neck, while two more were willed to bursting and carried under her arms.

I took those and tried to keep the blanket up but couldn’t do it.

“Hold on,” she said kneeling. She dug around a bit until she found some stones. Blanket over my shoulders she pressed a stone into the edge.

“Hold this,” she said. She pulled a roll of cordage that looked like twin from one of the sacks and then produced a small knife to cut it. She tied a loop in it, then fed the tail through for a slip not.

With the rock pushed into the blanket she put the twine loop over it then pulled it tight keeping the rock trapped in that bit of blanket. She did something semi-complex with the twine as she knotted it. Then she used another stone and another piece of twine, longer this time.

Last of all she used the knife on one of the low bushes one of the more treelike ones with sticks and bark.

Rock tied in the blanket on each side with one side having a bit with twine ending in a small bit of branch.

She drew the sides of the blanket together across my chest, would the remaining bit of twine around them like a ship’s captain would tie off to a cleat.

She tucked the bit of wood down between the rock and behind the winding and said, “Ready. Where are we going?”

The blanket stayed on while I carried one sack in each arm.

“That was incredible,” I said.

She blushed.

“And packing,” I didn’t think of anything.

“Where to?” she asked, “we can’t stay here.”

Here being visible on a vast plain covered in off white blankets.

“North, there is a hunting cabin with maps and some supplies.”

Long before we crossed the plain she had both sacks under her arms.

I was exhausted and winded and she seemed capable of going without rest or complaint.

“It’s the attributes,” she said with a laugh when I apologized again for making her carry the heavy sacks. I still had the two hanging over my neck.

“It’s different for everyone. I think my lowest was forty-eight when I was awakened. Even the strongest young men rarely break a hundred before they are awakened. Not that it matters,” she said with a laugh, “I was over two hundred in all my stats faster than I can remember. Everyone goes through a phase of wanting to see the numbers climb. They aren’t directly related to physical qualities though.”

I’d heard this before in other loops, but she enjoyed teaching me and I didn’t really have the breath to tell her to stop. Which was ironic as she could talk and walk with no problems and I was trying to decide if it was more manly to bag for a rest break or to collapse from exhaustion.

“A farmer with three hundred strength with a Class Skill or class bonus to hauling is going to out haul someone with a thousand points in strength.”

“Why raise,” I sucked in breath but tried to do it quietly, “them at all then?”

“Well,” she said turning to me with bright eyes, “hidden requirements!”

She loved explaining this the first time around as well.

“Soldier is the most studied Class in the world. No one is offered the Soldier Class without at least 300 points in constitution and one hundred and twenty points of fatigue, but you can’t raise fatigue directly. No one can take a Seamstress class without at least two-hundred and thirty-one points of dexterity. No one’s spirit book explains anything at all about requirements, hidden or otherwise.

“Then of course there is the speed at which your body changes. There are many great academics who test all manner of things. One was named Philitormi. For three years he worked on general skills with the constitution and strength attributes, while at the same time eating six full meals a day and being carried everywhere by slaves. He was corpulent weighing forty-five stone.

“There are many arguments about which skill matters most when it comes to physical fitness, strength of constitution. He had both over eight hundred points after three years.

“After a month of dedicated conditioning and running he lost more than twenty stone. That’s two average sized people. By the end of the second month he lost another fourteen stone and weighed a healthy eleven stone. Forty five stone to eleven stone in two months because he had over eight hundred points in constitution and strength.”

“Wow!” I said, “That’s amazing. How long would it take someone at three hundred points to loose that much weight?”

She laughed, “Who knows, no one ever gets that fat!”

Which was a far better result than what I’d said the first time. I hadn’t meant anything by it, but when she finished her story about a giant fat guy losing weight, like the lady charmer I was, I asked how many points she had in constitution. It was an honest question with poor timing on my part that hurt her feelings for awhile.

At first I had moral introspection over things like that. Was it creepy to know how she’d react and pick the best thing to say? Thankfully I didn’t need Chidi from The Good Place for that one. Bill Murray had done a fine job in Groundhog’s Day. The whole movie was about being stuck in a time loop and getting the girl.

When he was trying to use everything about her to bang her it was creepy and ethically- rapey. When he used his knowledge about her to give her the perfect date, because he was a better person, everything was fine. No creepiness at all.

Still I found I was frowning as I concentrated on the gentle slop ahead of me.

Was it still super creepy if it was just less obvious? The goal wasn’t to manipulate her, but the end result was exactly that.

Or did this fall into that old SNL skit with the office workers and HR? The ugly worker asks a secretary out on a date and she turns him in for harassment but the handsome guest star asks her out while coping a feel of a breast and she’s super excited to go on a date with him. How’d that old internet advice go that was valid for everything? Step one, be attractive. Step two, don’t be unattractive.

Saying, “You make that outfit look good,” was creepy or flirting depending on the relationship between the two parties. Was it even flirting though if the reason she thought it was flirting was because she thought she liked you. But that only happened because you manipulated her, however minutely because you were stuck in a time loop? And knew everything about her?

How is any different from Adam Sandler in 50 first dates where he’s basically taking advantage of a mental disabled person?

I mean when you really think about it, isn’t it creepy as fuck that both of them set about to get the girl using the time loops or memory problems where he could learn things and she couldn’t. Then he gets the girl, using what he learned but she forgot, and we all clap and call it a love story.

That could have been the elevator pitch for an R-rated movie about a stalker. ‘Man with no chance to get the girl, gains infinite chances with time travel, and eventually gets the girl.’ Love story. Not creepy or rapey at all.

“Deeps!” I cursed.

Had I just ruined Groundhog’s Day for myself.

“What? Do you need to stop?” Mrs. Kine asked.

“No. I mean, yes I need to stop, but let’s get to the top first.” I had to stop to breathe a few times but I got it all out.

She slowed her pace a bit and kept glancing at me.

“I’m fine,” I said wasting air.

We took a break at the top. I discarded the sacks around my neck, and then the blanket even though the wind was worse up here.

I found a tree and hoped the wind wasn’t going to paint me with my own piss.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Get to the cabin. It should be- deeps. That hill there. He was right, it is obvious what he meant. I kept asking him over and over because I didn’t want to get lost.”

“His cabin is on the other side of that rock fall.”

“That’s a long way down and then back up,” she said looking at the steep terrain.

I grinned but knew she wasn’t teasing me just stating the obvious.

“He has a wagon or cart. A small one he pulls himself from town to town. He’s got a spare bow there. Good enough for smaller animals but not anything with a thick hide. He’s got maps and coins and a locket he wants me to take. If he doesn’t make it I’m supposed to hang it up where she can see the snow.”

“She was killed in the attack?”

“Some sort of fever a few years back he said.”

“That’s long enough,” I said. Yet as I tried to get up every muscle in my body complained.

I argued when she lifted the sack on a rope over her own neck.

“Husband,” she said flatly, “there is nothing to argue about here. I can carry the weight better, which means we flee faster, which means we live longer.”

“You’re right,” I said. Then added a, “thank you.”

“Of course,” she said turning. She had a sack under each arm, then the blanket-cape, then the two-sacks around her neck.

“In fact, I likely won’t bring this up at all, ever again. Nope. I can’t see any situation where you might need to be reminded that I do all the hard work while you just laze away your days.”

I was grinning when she glanced at me, which made me grin that much wider.

We made it to the hunting shed, found the supplies, and I was dumbfounded at the size of a small cart he pulled himself.

It was huge with a small gear wheel that could move the axle forwards or backwards.

“It’s for balance,” she said as she was strapping into the yoke. There was no way I could pull this and I felt emasculated that she had to.

It took a while to get down to the road, but once we were we balanced the cart. Balanced I could pull it once she helped get it started. We kept moving well pass sundown worried that a single fast horse could catch up to us without having to rest the horse once.

When we finally stopped she asked if I wanted dinner or to skip it.

“Of course I want it,” I said with a grin, “You said you were making me something special.”

I saw her pause as she raked the ground clean of debris.

She glanced back at me and I laughed. She joined me.

“Sleep though,” I said seriously, “I’m exhausted.”