The second curse killed her, but unlike previous deaths, it wasn’t just the memory of the pain that followed her—the agony lingered. As it slowly faded, she felt tired, like she did when she’d been directing the Battle of Torrviol and had gone two days without sleeping.

Lily was saying something to her, but it took her a moment to comprehend the words she was saying. Mirian’s mind felt sluggish.

“—talk to me, Mirian. What happened? Are you hurt? Mirian? Mirian!” Her roommate was standing right over her.

“—fine. Give me… a… moment,” she managed.

“Gods. Was it a nightmare? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Ugh, I sound like my mom. Are you okay?”

“Need… space. A moment. Please.”

Lily backed up, then sat on her bed looking distressed.

It felt nearly impossible to meditate. Twice, she slowed her breathing enough, and then a jolt of pain ran through her and broke her concentration. And that water was dripping from the ceiling—that damn water. She rolled onto the floor with a thunk just to get away from the incessant dripping. “That was… intentional,” she said. “Bit longer.”

“Can I get a cleric? I can get a cleric. You look terrible. But what do I tell them? What happened?”

Mirian focused again on her soul. She could just make out the outlines of it. There was something there; in her mind’s eye, it looked like dark tendrils covering the surface. She’d been cursed, that much was clear. And the curse had come with her, back into the past.

With great effort, she stood, even though it felt like weights were dragging her down. “Yeah. Cleric. Let’s… go.”

Lily grimaced. “In your night clothes?”

In a cycle, no one would remember. Mirian couldn’t bring herself to care, and dressing properly felt like too much effort. She just needed the curse gone as soon as possible. “Yeah. Cleric. Now. Can I… lean on you?” And why is it so damn hard to think?

They made their way towards the hospital, Mirian stumbling along as best she could. Periodically, she felt a stab of pain run through her whole body and she had to stop and wait for it to fade. By the time they’d made it to the hospital, Mirian felt like she’d walked for hours.

“Thanks,” she told her friend as she collapsed into a chair.

The attendant looked at her and didn’t ask what had happened. She stood and fetched a cleric immediately.

Mirian recognized the cleric from one of her previous loops. She remembered he preferred Cuelsin, and that he’d helped diagnose her when she’d been drinking too many mana elixirs. When he introduced himself again as Cleric Marovim, the name meant nothing to her. Despite her memory tricks, it had been one meeting several years ago by now.

“What happened?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Mirian said, and then kept repeating it to his other questions.

When Marovim finally analyzed her soul, his face turned white. She expected him to say, ‘Ah, you’ve been cursed. Don’t worry, as a member of the Luminate Order I can fix that, because that’s what we do’—but he didn’t. Instead he said, “I’m… very sorry. I’ll be right back.”

Well, maybe he needs someone with more skill, she thought. Her mind was still fuzzy, and the exhaustion was clawing at her. I’ll just close my eyes for a moment, she thought.

When she opened them, Priest Krier was in the room. “Ah. You’re awake. Your roommate tells us your name is Mirian, yes?”

“Yes. Can you… fix it? I don’t—”

In a low voice, Krier said to Marovim, “Do you really think she doesn’t know?”

“I… Holy One, I don’t… I’m not sure. She’s just a student.”

“She has the mark, though. How does she get the mark without…?”

“Mark? What… what are you talking about?” Mirian mumbled.

Priest Krier looked concerned. “We need to talk in private,” he told the cleric.

They closed the door and talked in hushed voices. Mirian strained to hear. Finally, as they reopened the door, she heard Marovim say, “—settles it. I’ll contact Adria.”

That sent a chill through Mirian’s bones. “Wait, why are you getting an Arcane Praetorian? I’m sick,” she said, but already her mind was racing. The Impostor had branded all the souls of her spy network so that her rune-magic traps could detect them. That first spell of hers must have been a brand. Whatever the brand signaled, the clerics could pick up on it, and the Impostor had chosen something that roused their suspicions. It was so hard to think, but she tried to make the connections. The Arcane Praetorians take on rogue arcanists. Like necromancers. But if they use soul magic…. And then Mirian knew. The Impostor had branded her as a necromancer. The clerics could see it, and to them, it probably looked official. In fact, given the Impostor’s status as a Deeps agent turned traitor, it probably was genuine. That brought another question: Why is the church allowing the Deeps and the Praetorians to use soul magic? Isn’t it the purview of the Order?

There was no way anyone would believe the time loop story. But she needed to get them to heal her. “Have I been cursed?” she said. “I don’t know what happened last night. We were celebrating the end of the quarter approaching, and then… it’s all black.” She started crying, and it wasn’t fully an act to garner sympathy, but she hoped it would help.

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“I’m sorry,” Priest Krier said. “We have to follow protocol here. It’s… I’m sure everything will be….”

It was insidious. The curse made it impossible for her to fight, and the brand made it so no one would remove it without the Praetorian’s approval—and the Impostor had killed the Praetorian and the Department of Public Security cell that could have checked her. The Impostor certainly understood how to gain power. But for what purpose? There had to be more to it than what she’d told Mirian, but she doubted she could find out anything useful this time. The woman was trained in interrogation. She wasn’t going to let anything slip.

No, this time, she had to do what she could to escape. The last time she’d tried that, she’d aimed for the wrong target. This time, she wouldn’t make the same mistake.

When the Impostor walked into the room, she first tried to get Mirian moved. Fortunately, the sympathetic Krier said, “She’s in no state to be moved. We can make sure no one eavesdrops, I assure you.”

“Very well,” the false Praetorian said. After she shut the door, she sat across from Mirian, eyes boring into her.

Mirian had gone through the act of pretending to be distraught dozens of times after she’d killed that first spy, and learned lessons of body language and tone from Professor Marva. She wasn’t an actress, but she was no stranger to acting. She played the helpless victim.

“What’s going on?” she moaned. “It hurts so bad. Can… can you help me?”

The Impostor’s gaze didn’t leave her. “Who are you?” she said.

There was no point hiding that. “Mirian. I’m a student here at the Academy. Please, it hurts.” She started crying again, though she doubted the Impostor had a single shred of sympathy in her entire body. The minutes ticked by. “What’s going on? Why won’t anyone help me?” Mirian said, acting as distraught as she could.

Finally, the Impostor spoke. “I don’t recognize you. How is this possible?”

Then the other time traveler wasn’t in contact with her yet. Until he was, she had time to escape. Mirian could also read between the lines. She clearly recognized her own necromantic handiwork, but had no memory of casting the spells.

“How did you come to be cursed?” the Impostor said.

“I don’t know. Do you think I haven’t tried? I wake up, and I can’t even remember the previous day. Then I come here, and the Temple won’t heal me. I’m faithful to the Ominian, I swear. Please.” Marva had taught her to keep the lie simple, and to redirect the conversation as needed.

“Girl, I need you to tell me the truth,” the Impostor said, voice full of daggers. “Tell me what happened. I can make the pain go away, but you have to tell me.”

There was a desperation in that tone, because, Mirian knew, things weren’t adding up. She also knew the promise of relief was a lie. Fool me once, she thought. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

The false praetorian ground her teeth, then abruptly stood and left the room. “—not let her out. I need to conduct a full investigation. Can you—” is all Mirian heard.

Mirian began looking around the room for anything she could use. They did surgery sometimes in the hospital, but the cabinets in her room were locked. She searched for a stray scalpel, or a glass bottle of herbs—but they’d left nothing.

Something about the curse was making it impossible for her to keep her eyes open. Mirian collapsed onto the chair and drifted off to sleep.

***

When she woke, the Impostor was staring at her again. She’d been moved somewhere. A cell of some sort, but not one she recognized, and by now, she recognized the cells in both the Magistrate’s Office and the prison quite well. She must have her own building, Mirian knew. It was well hidden, since she’d never found it in previous cycles, but the old construction of the walls was a dead giveaway: they were in the Underground, on the second sub-level.

The Impostor said, “You need to tell me what happened, or you’ll never leave this place.”

Mirian didn’t answer, she just started crying, which she thought is what she would have done before the cycles started.

The false Praetorian stared at her for a good five minutes, letting her weep, then abruptly left the room. Mirian continued the act for a few minutes after she left, just in case there were divination spells monitoring her or the Impostor came back suddenly. Then, she looked around. There were no windows, but there were a few tarnished bronze pipes near the ceiling that she could feel air coming from. There was a cot and a bucket and a stone basin with water in it. The stone basin was part of the wall. There was a place where shelves had once been anchored in the walls, but the shelves were gone now. Other than that, there was just the door, which was solid oak and had sound-proofing glyphs. If there were any divination spells, they were well hidden.

Mirian spent most of the time sleeping, but no amount of sleep seemed to be able to overcome the lethargy of the curse. Periodically, the Impostor would come in, demand answers, and then leave when Mirian stuck with her story of being an innocent student who didn’t know anything or remember anything. When she was awake, Mirian tried prying the bronze pipes loose, or even getting a piece of it out so that she could sharpen it on the stone basin. When that failed, she tried to dislodge the rusted shelf-anchors in the wall. It was nearly impossible to track how much time had passed, but after a few days, Mirian knew the other time traveler had made contact with the Impostor, because the interrogation changed.

The Impostor came in with the eldritch box, and Mirian knew she was out of time. She’d nearly gotten one of the rusted anchors out of the wall using nothing but her (now bloodied) fingers, but she needed to escape now.

“You can cry all you want,” the Impostor said. “I know the truth now. Sulvorath has told me everything.”

Mirian blinked at her. “Who is ‘Sulvorath’? What are you talking about? You know, I’m a citizen of Baracuel. I have rights. You can’t just keep me here forever!”

The false Praetorian stared at Mirian. “Your fellow time traveler. He’s told me who you are. What you are. What you’ll do if I let you loose.”

Mirian let out a hysterical laugh. “Oh Gods, you’re crazy. That explains it. You’re just crazy! Oh Gods, I’m going to die here.” She curled up by the cot and started sobbing again, but with one eye half-closed, she watched the Impostor. In dueling, a fast lunge required tensing the back leg, loading it like a spring. She tensed her leg.

Right now, the Impostor was hesitating. Good, Mirian thought. I hope you’re doubting everything. I hope you feel awful about yourself.

The Impostor turned her back to open the door again, and Mirian could hear the shrill cries of the caged moon flicker.

The key was that her back was turned.

Mirian uncoiled, lunging for the force blast wand at the Impostor’s belt. In a second, she’d snatched it up, then stumbled back.

The Impostor dropped the cage and whirled. There’d never been a chance of her beating the Impostor in a magical duel, even with the element of surprise. She had on the spell resistant jewelry, and with the curse, Mirian was finding it nearly impossible to channel anyways, like there was a shadow between herself and her aura.

Instead, she stuck the wand in her mouth and bit down hard, then used both of her hands to pull down with as much strength as she could.

“What are you—” the Impostor started, eyes going wide, but Mirian knew her glyphs too well. She’d long ago memorized what sequence a force blast spell needed, and also what sequence would cause a buildup of energy in the conduit. She could only manage a trickle of mana, but that was all she needed. Once the glyphs shattered, the energy in them would cause an explosive cascade.

“—doing. Shit he was—” The Impostor lunged for the wand, but she was too late.

The wand erupted in a fireball.