“Psst…” and my hackles rose because I recognized the nudge. I’d been basking in what should have been a glorious moment, but I had a lot on my mind. This was the first time for this loop. It was really the first time any of this had happened. There was a newness in the air that made me feel tingly inside, but the calm was in that the reset button had been reset. If I pressed it now, it would only go back to earlier today instead of taking away all the progress we’d made.

The longer we’d gone on this path, the more worried I’d become. Having to redo all the leveling and profession grinding hung over us and while it might have beat death hanging over us, it was still a weight to me. Now I risked almost nothing by hitting that button. I could get stinking drunk, burn down half the Capital, and run stark naked through the streets and one little push of the button would make it so that not even Dom would know I’d done it.

“Hello, Sammi.” I took a goblet with me as I left the celebration for an empty corridor, letting the wine take my nerves with in.

“I thought you might like to share all this celebrating with your choice of loved one.” Sammi grinned at me, but I didn’t have it in me to smile back.

Let me take a minute to put things in perspective so that we can just sit back and enjoy the rest of the celebration without false pretenses. I haven’t defeated Fizzbarren at this point. Sure, I could get Kat back and that’s what I’m going to do right here in the story, and I was happy about that. I knew that even if I could see my daughter that night and spend a few days with her and her dad just kicking back at our mansion in the Capital, it was only a brief interlude. Before I got investing in that type of thing, I had to take a peek into the challenge we were going into.

I just didn’t want you to think that I didn’t appreciate the celebration. It’s just that I know how you know me. You’re going to see through any fake smile I put on. You’re going to take note of the bitterness behind my eyes. I wanted you to know that it isn’t because I’m not grateful or happy with the success. It’s just the fact that this celebration exists in a place where happiness is a little fleeting, is all. I made a decision based on that reset button, knowing it had to be done.

“Cut to the chase, Sammi.” I drank the rest of the wine in my cup in a single gulp.

“What do you mean?” Sammi asked, their face creased.

“Initiate my next nemesis quest.” I set the wooden cup down next to an expensive-looking vase.

“Don’t you want Kat?” Sammi eyed me skeptically.

“I’ll take Kat and Cliff after the next quest.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Well, okay,” and for a moment Sammi was practically giddy with joy. Then they looked at their clipboard and found the frown I knew was coming. “Uh, I’m sure we can…”

“I am officially initiating my next nemesis quest, Sammi,” I insisted, as the blood rushed from their countenance. The Quill fluttered to the clipboard and then wilted.

“But, uh,” Sammi flipped pages that I knew looked the same. There was only one entity in all the worlds that could even exist on those pages.

“You’d better hurry, before he reads this page,” I pressed.

Nemesis Quest Initiated… Nemesis Found… transporting…

The world shuddered at the influx of power. All the power of Fizzbarren was sucked into the world engine and the ambient mana nearly buzzed with the sheer energy that was absorbed. Thousands of NPCs were infused with new processing power, their minds sharpening and their stories becoming more diverse and complex. How long Fizzbarren starved this poor engine with only the barest dribble of his mana? It was like rain had fallen in the desert. Every object in the capital became just a tad more clearly defined, as if we had upgraded our environment from a Commodore 64 to Intel Inside. I’d gone from the first Zelda game to the most recent, complete with surround sound in vivid clarity.

Perception +2

“What have you done?” Sammi whispered and then disappeared.

I strolled into the main chamber where all the revelers were partying like it was 1999. I grabbed another cup of wine that tasted deeper, wondering that I hadn’t noticed how flat it was before. I cast my Sleep spell, just to have a timer, and a maid slipped into slumber. I kept my back to the wall, watching and waiting with my finger on the button. It didn’t take long. This was going to be ugly, but I had to know. I only had one god card going for me and I was going to use it.

“You dare!” came a booming voice and I timed it at about an hour. I figured that he’d used at least half that time on a sweet little temper tantrum.

Fizzbarren stood at the entrance of the throne room, floating above the crowd. I couldn’t blame him since we’d have hardly been able to see his short form if he hadn’t elevated himself. I watched the timer. He wore the robes of the high priest and when I identified him, I was appropriately vexed. I had known he would bring god cards with him. He’d done it the first time and this time was no different. Warrior priests filed in behind Fizzbarren, armor shining like the paladins they were and polearms glistening with their religious furor.

Fizzbarren Level 42 (Health 16,800/16,800) (Mana 16,600/16,800) – Nearly Invincible.

“I am now the ruler of this land, and you shall all kneel at my feet!” Fizzbarren’s command shivered over the crowd of confused NPCs. I found it interesting that he hadn’t sucked all the power back out of the game with his wishes.

“Guards!” the king called out, but I could see that the guards were no longer his to command. Dom, however, did something I’d never expected my husband to do. In an act of bravery that took my breath away, Dom pushed the king out of the way and took the full power of Fizzbarren’s Smite spell. This Smite spell was an overpowered piece of magic that could, once a day, take a person from full health to one health point. I didn’t have access to it as it was a secret guarded by the priests of the church who only granted the spell to their highest priest.

“I will tolerate neither kings, nor thieves in my kingdom,” Fizzbarren declared. Even as Dom tried to stand, he was struck down by a rushing paladin and I was brought out of my shock and straight to my knees. My happy little world had taken a sudden Game-of-Thrones kind of turn that didn’t sit well with my stomach or any other part of me that was gasping for breath. I’d been planning just to watch how it would play out, not doing anything to change things until I had a feel for events. Now that I had the button… I remembered the button… I pressed it as Fizzbarrren turned to me.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I hit my knees again to the thunder of cheers as the world reset. That had not been a part of the plan. My eyes slid across the room to Dom’s eyes, even as the king’s guards rushed to help me to my feet. He was there. He was alive. His eyes were as wide as mine. I felt like my heart could beat again. Dom put his hands to his chest, looking down to where the paladin’s spear had pierced his heart. I’d gone from blasé watcher to horrified to relieved so quickly that I still couldn’t find my breath. Words happened around me as the ceremony came to a close quicker than the first time.

“We are all okay,” Terra spoke into my mind as I stumbled through the motions of a speech I only half remembered. “Breathe.”

“Did that really happen?” Dom spoke in my mind, using the newer telepathy spell rather than summoning Terra. It only worked a short distance for now, but it spared Terra the summoning.

“You remember?” I sputtered out mentally even as the king made excuses for my being overwrought. I didn’t care. I’d restart and do it right, but that was too much to do right now.

“I remember dying,” Dom rushed to my side down the side corridor we’d just left a few moments before in this loop. Time and events slipped and slid around me until we were alone together, and I could feel that this Dom was okay, and that the dead Dom was just a bad memory.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” I cried out and punched him in the chest with far more force than I’d intended.

Strength +1

“Yeah,” Dom took the hit stoically and let me bury myself in his arms. “No dying for the king. Got it.”

We stood long enough for me to breath normally again before Dom used the telepathy to speak to me. “So, how do we fight that?”

Blood rushed back into my mind, and it spun with ideas that refused to coalesce into anything worth anything. My body shook with quivering nerves, but I was breathing and so was Dom. I had to grab onto that and hold tight. My time loop had saved me and my family again.

Will +1

“This celebration would be so much better with Kat, right?” Sammi popped in, and I ineffectually cast a fireball at them, singing a nearby tapestry but doing no damage to Sammi. Thankfully the castle hallways were wide enough that I hadn’t flamed us all. I burned off some extra mana casting repairs and heals on us and our clothes, but my mana came back so quickly from the soaked atmosphere that it was like I hadn’t used any at all.

“Get away from me,” I yelled at Sammi, who popped away just as fast as they’d shown up.

“Woah, woah, babe,” Dom rubbed my shoulders. “Let’s just breathe.”

“We can’t even talk about it!” I screeched, fury my only friend. “It was just supposed to be a test.”

“What do you mean?” Dom asked, patting my back and scanning the now empty corridor.

“If Fizzie finds out, he’ll use a god card to counter it somehow,” I ranted, out of my mind. “I have to restart before he can read the page.” I hit restart.

This time I didn’t hit my knees in front of a cheering crowd. That was progress. Dom and Terra helped me stumble through my speech, but we were back in the hallway before we could talk again. Dom could think about it all he wanted, but if I even thought about it, my thoughts would appear on a page that Fizzbarren could read. We had a very brief powwow in the hallway, and I restarted better this time, my speech flawless, if a little stale. The longer the time between the restart and the button, the more mana it cost, so this wasn’t costing me much in the way of mana and we had the bonus of Fizzbarren’s juice hitting the world.

That was something too. Fizzbarren’s juice hadn’t fully drained from the world when I’d restarted, so the world was more powerful each time? Was the engine getting stronger with each reboot where I summoned Fizzbarren as my nemesis? Did I dare to do it again? Did I dare not do it more?

Perception +1

Intelegence +1

“Sammi!” I called out to the empty corridor, Dom behind me and warned.

“Ready for your loved one?” Sammi bubbled in with happiness but came up short at the look of slightly crazed anger on my face. “Or not?”

“I’m initiating my next nemesis quest, now,” I demanded, cutting them off when they babbled out objections.

Dom and I stood and watched the world for this reboot. We talked to the same maid who was just a tad more animated. We let it run through Fizzbarren bursting into the throne room and reset again. We could talk the whole time that Fizzbarren was in the world because it was the only time he couldn’t read the pages. Once my mind settled into the routine of the reboots, we started to get ahead of the catastrophe. We didn’t have a route out of the castle, with Fizzbarren storming in as fast as he did, but we had a way down into the dungeons that stalled for the most time before being dragged back to the throne room for execution. I drew the line at us being caught, rebooting the moment the dungeon doors blew open.

“I can’t beat that smite spell,” I complained to Dom as we waited for Fizzbarren to show up again.

“Can we get rid of it somehow?” he asked, and I shook my head in response.

“It’s taught to their first priest at the time that they ascend to the throne,” I explained, having learned that from my first time through this so long ago. “Fizzbarren has three god cards. He uses the first to become the ruler of the theocracy of this kingdom, and the highest-ranking member of the priesthood. Those two things immediately make him level forty-two with enough stat and skill points to outrank the current high priest. He’s then handed the scepter of power which bestows the spell upon him that allows him to smite a person once a day. He can then use the second god card to banish me, and I think he’s saving the last god card to be able to transport out once he completes his quest of destroying me.”

“How did you defeat him the last time?” Dom asked.

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “He used a god card to make Sammi banish me. Sammi was so freaked out at the thought of what Fizzbarren would do once he’d vanquished me, that Sammi banished me all the way back to our world, right into Fizzbarren’s workshop to be precise.”

“You got back to our world?” Dom demanded, his tone getting dark.

“Yes, but Kat was dead, and I was a mess and it had been years since you’d seen me,” I explained, trying to get him to not be mad that I hadn’t come to find him. I had. He’d been dead. He didn’t need to know that, did he? Three and a half years in this world had been almost two decades in our world. Almost everyone I’d known was dead by the time I’d come head-to-head with Fizzbarren. “I became the author of my own story while Fizzbarren played out some fantasies in the game world. He could have returned at any time, but he was having fun being the ruler of his little world. He goofed. He hadn’t realized I was back in his workshop, and I had access to all his stuff. Between that and the fact that I had much more time than he had, I figured stuff out. With Fizzbarren gone, there was a hole in the fabric of things, a hole I stepped into as an author myself. Eventually, we realized that I could reset time, and honestly, I was half crazy by then. Half-mad with grief, I reset myself to the place where it all started.”

“So, if we can’t steal the god cards, we steal the scepter,” Dom suggested, just as we heard Fizzbarren’s booming voice.

“It won’t be enough,” I shook my head, slipping into a nearby passage that would lead us into the bowels of the castle. “He’ll still be level forty-two and ruler of this place and even if he can’t kill us outright, how long will it really take for him to root us out of hiding and have us put to death. We’d have to decimate the priesthood and steal the scepter before Fizzbarren can use his god cards.”

“We take out everyone over the level of twenty, steal the scepter, and save the king,” Dom proclaimed as if we were planning breakfast instead of world domination.

“Search the castle!” Fizzbarren was shouting as the dungeon doors closed behind us, and that meant that the king was dead. Fizzbarren had used up his smite for today on the king, but he still had a ton of priest spells at such a high level that we didn’t stand a chance even with our bolstered levels and stats. That and the fact that Fizzbarren also had an army of clerics and another of the king’s guards and we were far outmatched. My attention hovered over that reset button.

“We’d have to do it before we start the next quest,” I worried, burying half the dungeon door in dislodged earth. My elemental spells were awesome. “How would we get enough time? Sammi will be barking at my heels to start another nemesis quest within hours of restarting a loop.”

“We need a stalling tactic,” Dom reasoned, even as the very walls of the dungeon shook with Fizzbarren’s rage. “We should save the king on the next reboot.”

“Save the king?” I wondered at his priorities.

“That’s what heroes of the kingdom do,” Dom insisted, both of us using our barricading abilities to bar the door to the last cell in the dungeon. It wouldn’t buy much time, but it was almost fun. It was just enough time for a snuggle before I hit the button.