"I mean," Myra said. "There are ways to avoid leaving prints."

"And," she said. "It describes the cabinet handle as a safety feature. It goes out of its way to say it's not a security feature."

"This isn't airtight at all," she said.

"Myra…" Iz looked at her sadly.

That was all they had to say to each other. They covered their tracks as best as they could and then exited into the cool night air. They walked together in a direction where Myra knew they would likely find Shera at this particular time, though they diverged slightly, as Iz angled more in the direction of the barracks.

"God, I'm exhausted," she said, yawning. It was contagious, and Iz yawned, too.

After all that, the most important clue was just sitting around on the platform. She yawned again. Hopefully, it wouldn't alternate forever.

Shera's outline started to form in the midnight darkness, and Myra bounded over to her. "Sherraa!" She gave the girl a hug, who promptly gave her iconic first-hug-of-the-loop squeak. "Sherazynnn."

Have I not hugged her yet this loop? Myra thought. I need to be hugging her more. As Shera lifted herself away, Myra caught her in her arms and bounced her back.

"Shera, we might have learned something awful."

"W-what?"

"Myra, I'm gonna leave you to catch her up," Iz said, cutting in before Myra could really begin. "I'm going to sleep."

"You don't want to wash up first? We're all gross and sweaty." She felt Shera nodding into her shoulder.

"I can wash up after I sleep," Iz said.

"You can sleep after you wash! The best time to use the bathhouse is around 2 A.M."

Iz looked at her watch. "I think I'm not gonna wait two hours for the bathhouse to empty out. You all go ahead."

◆

To actually recount the entire journey took a while mostly because Shera got really enthusiastic about the parabolic telescope, the Quasar Worms, and other little details about the observatory. It was thus two hours and two hair washes later that Myra finally got around to some of the more important revelations.

"… So it looks like Iz is right after all," she finished. She had procrastinated on getting to this point, not wanting to admit it to herself. "Roc probably burnt down the village. If not him, then…" She didn't want to say it, because she knew Shera would find it even worse. "Lukai." In fact, it could have even been both of them, working together.

"Your f-friend is too paranoid," Shera said. "She's disbelieving beyond reason. Everything you laid out, Roc forgetting everything because of the curse, it all f-fits together."

"I know!" She was glad Shera understood. "I mean, I know there are a few things that don't add up yet. But at this point, she's being absurd… But you know, she just gets like that sometimes." Though usually, it's because she's right… "Anyway, as I was saying… it seems like she must be right about Roc. Regardless of the memory curse stuff, it's really the only explanation for the fingerprints."

"I-I don't care about the fingerprints," Shera said. "There's a different explanation. I'm just certain it wasn't them."

"How can you be so sure?"

Because Myra wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe Roc, and she wanted to believe Lukai. There really wasn't any reason to be here other than to try and figure out what was going on and try to save him. If it hadn't been for that, she might have fucked off somewhere else already, Iz's project be damned. She could be anywhere right now! She could be diving for treasure in a dungeon or relaxing on an Ilmanian Beach or learning how to use Professor Bandine's mega-golem.

"I c-can't explain it," Shera said, sinking deep into the pool, as if hiding herself in this way would absolve her of rhetorical obligation. "I can't argue like your friend can…"

◆

"1, 18, 5, 77, 93, 80, D, 111, halibut, 1928374824, 3, -2, strawberry, 65, 12, 11, 455, 2, 212, 1117, 340, 128, 336, 303, 46, 351, lower case e, why (the word, not the letter), 28, 2/3, 156, 391, 273, 85, 75, 367, 233, 399, 46, 454, 3200, 113, bat, cabbage," Iz recalled.

"Yup," Myra sighed. "Perfect again."

"Imagine that," Iz said, sounding just as unsurprised as she usually did when she aced a test.

Iz had, hesitantly, agreed to actually do an experiment. It was a pretty simple experiment: Myra would write down some random data, Iz would memorize it, then they would throw it over the edge. Iz would smoke the purple foglike, wait an hour, and then try to recall the data.

She was three for three, and she was very smug about it.

What the fuck? Myra had thought for sure that if they actually did a real experiment they could move past Iz's annoying denial. At worst, there would be some kind of comedy where the experiment worked perfectly and then Iz denied they'd ever done the experiment. Myra had prepared for the comedy. She had charted out the back-and-forth.

But no. The experiment just wasn't working at all! What the fuck gives?

Their options had been to either do this or to go interview Roc again, though Myra was a little worried that would cause her to be taken in by his sob story again and start denying what she could see clearly to be true. It was for that reason that Shera had volunteered instead while Iz and Myra ran the experiments. (Iz had simply said that Roc was a liar and thus talking to him would provide 'zero information.') It was around this time—after Myra had a few minutes to seethe after the conclusion of experiment #3—that Shera returned to give her report.

"F-first of all, Roc confirmed the date of the fire. It was in December of '11. And I asked a few others, t-too. They all said the same thing. I also asked about the fingerprints—"

"Hang on," Iz started. "You didn't tell him we found the file in his workshop, right?"

"No," she clarified. "I just asked if they ever did fingerprint work… and he t-told me pretty much what you found from your file. He wasn't evasive about it or anything, just said it was another th-thing he was confused about."

Iz frowned.

"So w-what did you all learn?"

Myra recounted the results of their experiments. Iz nodded along, but she objected to Myra's description of the experiments as 'inconclusive.' Before they could get into another argument, Shera interjected with her own concrete proposal.

"Okay, what about th-this," Shera asked. "I was actually thinking this morning—what if it only erases memories that are emotionally significant? Th-there's a lot of precedent for anomalies that are powered by emotions, isn't th-there?"

"Hey, yeahh," Myra said. "That would explain a lot, actually. Like, it explains why they all forgot Nesr Wald's freak death and the tragically destroyed village, but Iz can't even forget a string of random gibberish! It certainly wouldn't be the first curse to feed off emotions. Good idea, Shera."

The other girl beamed, and Myra pulled her into another hug.

Iz had to actually think about it for a moment. "It's not so absurd an idea," she said slowly. "Unfortunately, that makes it impossible to actually test. I mean, I'm not going to risk forgetting about something important to me just for the experiment."

Myra raised a finger. "But—"

"Time loop or no," Iz said, "I'm not risking my memory on a string of random gibberish just for an experiment. I mean, the curse isn't real, but it's the principle of the thing."

"But in the time loop, there are no consequences for anything!" Myra insisted.

"I already knew you were going to say that, Myra, that's why I preempted you. Also, there could definitely be consequences for you. Just so we're clear on that."

"I mean, I know that. But for you two, surely there's something you wouldn't mind forgetting. Maybe even something you'd rather forget? Some embarrassing memory?"

"N-not really."

"No."

◆

Shera's idea, though, had gotten her thinking, and that thinking amounted to something overnight. The next morning, Myra practically leaped out of bed, ready to lay everything out. "Iz, I've got it!"

But Iz wasn't there, only her handwriting.

Myra, I have gone back to Ralkenon. I am going to cash in every favor1 I have with the seniors who apprentice during the evening shift at the arcane centrifuge lab and analyze the gas vapor supercritical fluid? fog sample. I'm also going to hit up the library again and I will try to rope Cynthia in. In the meantime, I think you should go interview more Unkmireans and see if you can find out anything. Skip around to different villages and talk to people of all ages. I would have waited until you woke up, but an unusually loud owl woke me up, and once I was already awake, I figured I could catch the early train (and you were sleeping very peacefully so I didn't want to wake you).

P.S. Don't forget our plans to meet Violet Penrilla this weekend.

1 I'm getting into the time loop spirit.

Myra crumpled up the note. Iz, you idiot! I was sleeping peacefully 'cause I'd figured everything out!

That's right. All of Iz's nitpicks about the inconsistency of the mechanism could be resolved by Myra's 3 A.M. insight. If only Iz was here to hear it.

Fine, I'll impress Iz another day. I can still go impress Shera.

"Sherrraaa!" She found the girl and ambushed her with a hug. "Okayokayokay I figured it out."

"I found something t-too."

"Whazzat?"

"The murk bogs renovated the barracks a couple of months ago," Shera said as if the significance was self-explanatory. "Rebuilt th-the whole thing."

"Okay…?"

"Well, the floor was all scraped up from Lukai's bed. But you found several beds at the bottom, so I wondered why there wasn't any evidence of it up here. But it turns out they just replaced the floor recently."

Myra blinked. "Oh. You know, that hadn't occurred to me at all. Good job, Shera." Iz was probably saving that one, but now we'll be ready. "So that leaves us… right! I also figured out something. So we were talking about the possibility that the Unkmirean curse might be one of those curses that feed on emotions."

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"R-right."

"Well, I was thinking about some of those other curses. The stingrays in the Ilmanian Ocean, the happiness-sucking vampire bats of Beltraria, the depression mosquitoes… They all have something in common. They need to physically get into you. They need to get something into your bloodstream. They need to get something into your brain. Otherwise, the curse would be blocked by your domain protections."

"Of course," Shera said.

"Well, this is no different, right? You have to smoke the gas. I knew all of this at some level, but hadn't really put it together like 2 and 2."

Shera nodded.

"Okay, but then I thought—well, we know the curse needs the fog to bypass your domain. But what if that's the only purpose of the fog? Say there's two different effects. There's the fog that you smoke and it bypasses your domain. And then there's the erasure magic. They're two separate things. Normally, the erasure magic gets blocked by our domains, unless we inhale the gas. But the erasure magic—I like the name erasure magic, I'm gonna keep calling it that—still works on inanimate objects! Because inanimate objects don't have domains in the first place! That's why it was able to delete your magazine from existence. Even so far away from Unkmire, the curse was probably powered by the immense grief of the fire survivors!"

"Oh! Th-that makes a lot of sense."

Myra wrapped the girl in another long hug. "Finally, I'm glad someone thinks I'm talking sense."

"It… It st-still doesn't explain the lack of f-fingerprints." She spoke very hesitantly, seemingly uneasy to burst Myra's bubble. "Unless you still th-think Roc is the culprit."

"But what if… the curse erased the fingerprints, too?"

"… Huh." Shera seemed intrigued by the idea. "Did you tell your friend? What'd she think about it?"

"Oh, she's gone. She didn't tell you she was leaving?"

"No, I d-didn't realize she'd left."

"Oh. Well, she left because some owl woke her up—"

"Oh, y-yeah." Shera nodded, seeming to remember the same owl. "It was really loud."

"—and she said I oughta go and ask some Unkmireans… which I don't really need to do 'cause I figured it out… but I wanna get off this platform, and I bet you do too, let's go see some more of Unkmire."

"O-okay!" She seemed really excited about it. The excitement lasted until they were stopped in their tracks on the way out, caught off guard by the ringing of the bridge's chime. It was an intruder alert—someone was approaching via the bridge at that very moment.

She was stunned by the chime. It wasn't time for the generals to arrive yet to hire the murk bogs. Who could it even be? Is Iz back already? She squinted into the distance, and at the very limit of her vision, she could see a speck approaching. Actually, it was a pretty large speck. Was it more than one person?

Calm down… it could just be a group of murk bogs… People have to come and go all the time…

She peered through her binoculars. It didn't take long to zoom in on the incoming intruders.

Benkoten was early.

There were eight of them, plus Ben—the elder in the front, Ben somewhere in the middle, and the yeti with the large club taking up the rear.

"D-did you warn Geel about him already?"

"I did," Myra said. In fact, she was pretty proud of the scheme she'd come up with. Like last time, she had led Geel to deduce her identity, Myrabelle Prua-Kent, daughter of Yastmar Kent, world-famous financial fraudster. In the same conversation, she had described Benkoten as an 'old associate' of her father's, a criminal jewel counterfeiter who was now after her for reasons left implied but which were mostly in line with his aim to possess her.

And Iz said I wasn't making use of my father.

"If Ben tries to pay him off with a bucket of treasure again, Geel's already primed to think of it as a forgery. But that doesn't matter. We're not gonna give him the chance."

Did Ben even know what this bridge was? Had he warned his allies? There was no reason to think so. If he knew anything about it, then he was probably under the wrong impression that it was nonfunctional. He had no way of knowing that Myra had fixed it.

Myra lit the bridge on fire.

◆◆◆◆◆

Benkoten had died from the volcano more times than he could count. Being set on fire very suddenly wasn't a novel experience for him. Usually, though, he got to die immediately, to wake up in his dormitory bed. This, though, he was going to be feeling tomorrow, and at every point on his body.

The ice shields had gone up very quickly—Ben wasn't even sure who had cast it. It might have been automatic.

They were safe, at least—but then the arguments began.

Since Ben had wanted to make his move so early, he'd had to take a number of shortcuts, and as a result, his allies didn't trust him nearly as much as they had in the past. Master Quoil was an understanding man… The rest were not.

"He swore to us that this bridge was inactive," Brother Jatta was quick to argue. "All his intel belongs in the garbage bin."

"This shouldn't have mattered at all," Ben retorted. "I don't know why they attacked. We haven't showed any signs of aggression—"

"That it shouldn't have happened is of no consequence to us when it did happen. That we don't know why is yet another reason this is madness—"

"We move forward," Master Quoil said.

Master Quoil was the leader, so there was no sense in arguing after that.

The group set onward. Suddenly, the bridge (which was still on fire) started to swing. Not just swinging in the wind like it usually did, but swinging like a string in the claws of a hyperactive cat. It jerked and bucked, and so Ben and the rest clung tightly to the rails, a valiant attempt to keep their footing as they moved forward. They lasted an average of four seconds each before losing their grip and flying off.

◆◆◆◆◆

"W-what are they doing now?"

"I don't know, I'm trying to find them—" Myra scanned furiously with her binoculars. "It was hard to follow them after we enabled the super-shaker—Okay, there. They're congregating in the air—"

"They're j-just levitating?"

"Looks like it. I doubt they can levitate that long—oh, hold on, they're like… clumping up? Forming a giant wheel, the yeti's at the center, everybody is hanging off…"

"Let's just g-get—" She didn't finish her sentence; there was a small crunch sound, the snapping of a teleport stick. Shera didn't move anywhere, though. "F-fuck. They d-did something."

"They probably put a disruption field around the whole platform," Myra said quickly.

"Oh god. Oh f-fuck. Oh g-god, oh—"

"Shera, it's okay, we'll figure something out. I can always—I mean, we'll figure something out." Myra was able to be calm because she knew she could just kill herself, but that was unlikely to help Shera calm down. "We'll fight. We have the entire murk bogs to protect us. Look—"

Indeed, the murk bogs were taking notice, and Geel was swiftly approaching with Chrysji and Nesr Wald and several other of the core members, all armed and alarmed. Geel for once, was quick and to the point, his voice clipped and curt. "What's happening?"

"We're under attack! The—the guy I told you about, with a team from the Ptolkeran Mountains."

"Ptolkeran?" He snatched the binoculars out of Myra's hands, even though Myra thought he should have brought his own. "What in hell's good name are they doing this far south?"

"They're after me!" Myra reiterated.

"You told me about some nutjob, why is that bloody brain-warping sect after you?"

"The—The Sect Gazing Inward? You—you know who they are?"

Geel cursed again.

"I knew these hires were a mistake," Nesr Wald growled. They had mercifully avoided the man this loop, but he still seemed to have it out for them. "Look what they've brought on us."

"This is nothing we can't deal with," Geel snapped. "In fact, I already have a plan. Everybody, defensive position 6!" He clapped his hands. "Now!"

"Hang on," Myra asked, "what do you know about the—"

"You two, I want you in the back—Now! Chop, chop! Everybody, let's go!"

"You can't be serious," Chrysji retorted. "Position six? They're only nine of them—"

"This isn't tea time and debate. Defensive position 6!"

There was no time to grill the doctor for what he knew, and they ended up pushed back, back behind the main administrative buildings. The organization moved the opposite direction, as if preparing to meet an imperial army. They marched with their pistols. They marched with their cannons. They marched with their barrier breakers, glass bombs, and hoses full of acid. Roc held some kind of weapon that looked like a trumpet. Obyl wielded a large flail, and Chrysji was clipping her fingernails. Myra only barely noticed Geel giving Nesr Wald some kind of order before the latter disappeared.

From where they were in the back, it was difficult to see much of their position. She tried to follow with her extra-senses, but there was only so much she could do; that's why it was a shock when the clash actually began.

The murk bogs fired with everything they had, a deafening cacophony of every weapon going off at once. They had to cast a dampening spell just to protect their hearing. Shera was shaking uncontrollably. Myra held her while trying to think if there was anything they could do. Go off the edge, maybe? If only they had figured out a way to get her down…

When the barrage wound down, Myra thought it was over, but it was not so. Someone was shouting, had been shouting, trying to shout over the incredible noise…

"We are not here to fight! We are not here to fight!" Myra recognized it as the voice of the elder, and it was accompanied by an affirmative roar of the yeti. "We only wished to negotiate with you! We were attacked unprovoked on the bridge here."

"I see… Geel said. You want to negotiate, then?" His tone was mocking, and there was something else odd about his voice. It was unusually crisp. "Or perhaps… you want to negotiate?" Myra couldn't see who he was addressing, but she had a guess. "That's right, isn't it? You're here on his behalf?"

"You seem to know a lot about our purpose here," the elder said.

"We'll negotiate with him," Geel said. It hit Myra suddenly that he was speaking in imperial, the first time she'd ever heard him speak so.

"Fine," came Benkoten's voice. He sounded really tired. "I'll negotiate."

"Come on inside, then. I like to meet my clients in my office."

There were a lot of murmurs, and there was a loud roar. The sect didn't seem to like that.

"No, no, I'll go," Ben said firmly. He was unafraid. So far ahead of Myra in the development of time loop courage.

The elder looked concerned. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

The elder nodded. "All right. I always knew you were a man of courage." He looked at Geel. "We need to take down our barriers so our representative can step out. Please provide a show of good faith and lower your weapons."

Geel acquiesced to the order. "Disarm!"

There was a significant shuffling around.

This was getting bad. If Ben got a chance to make his offer…

Myra crept forward—Shera held onto her sleeve, ineffectually trying to hold her back. She moved just enough that she could actually get a good peek. The elder had mentioned barriers, but Myra wasn't prepared for just how many there were. It was hard to even make out the group in the midst of so many shields, but they looked completely, entirely unharmed.

"Now, let your negotiator out," Geel ordered.

The barrier released only for a split-second while Ben stepped out—or maybe was pushed out?—they did something to move him very fast. And then the barrier was back again. The group wasn't taking any chances they didn't have to.

"All right," Geel said. "As another gesture of good faith, I'll take down our anti-teleport fields, if you take down yours. Since you're not attacking us, there's no reason for you to have yours up."

That might have been a barb—the sect had probably put their fields up from the very beginning, even before the 'unprovoked' attack. But it wasn't entirely clear if Geel knew that. Regardless, the sect readily agreed.

"Now, you all can wait a distance—at least 200 meters, wherever you want is fine. You don't even have to tell us where you're going to be. We'll close our eyes while you 'port." He put his hands over his eyes. He looked ridiculous.

The elder considered this offer carefully. It may have seemed too good to be true. Eventually, though, he agreed. "Very well. 200 meters, but no more. And you'll leave the disruption field down."

Geel put his hand on his heart. "I swear it."

"Very well," the elder said. He nodded to his team, and everybody but Ben vanished.

"Can we talk now?" Ben said, sounding impatient.

"Just a moment," Geel snapped, his voice turning much, much colder. "I need to check something. Nesr Wald?"

Nesr Wald appeared beside Geel, in what Myra would soon understand as a display of self-confidence. "It worked, sir. They all went to the saw room."

"Th-they what?" Ben asked, aghast.

"We set up a teleportation rod," Geel explained, and Myra winced as he bragged his secret out loud to the time looper. "Now, shall we negotiate?"

"I—I—" It took him a moment to compose himself. He was a time looper, he'd get over it. "I'm here for the woman named Myrabelle Prua-Kent," he finally said. "She might be using a pseudonym—"

"We know who you're talking about," Geel barked. "What makes you think you can waltz into our home with an army and take one of our members?"

"I can pay. I brought—"

"Pennies. You brought pennies."

"What—this—this should be enough."

"Girls!" he shouted. "Get out here!"

Shera looked desperately like she wanted to do anything other than that.

Myra took her hand. "Just stay behind me," she said. "It's not you he's after, anyway."

Despite his initial shock, Benkoten didn't seem particularly distraught about the loss of his allies. He just looked pissed off. Well, Myra knew she would probably look the same if the murk bogs had died. She had no strong feelings for them, it would just be an inconvenience. On the ground, he also had a trunk of jewels, the same trunk he'd had last time. Behind him, the bridge remained on fire, cutting off his exit together with the murk bogs' teleportation disruption field (which had, in fact, been reenabled).

"Myrabelle Prua-Kent," Geel said, drawing out her name unnecessarily. "What do you think we should do with your friend here? He's trying to pay us to hand you over."

"The jewels might be… counterfeit," Myra reminded him.

"Is that so? Ha ha!" She couldn't tell if Geel believed her. He had called the trunk 'pennies' earlier, though in the last loop, it had been enough to win him over. "So, what do you think we should do with him? I think it should be up to you, Myrabelle." He pointed to his prisoner with an outstretched arm, an impish grin plastered on his face.

"Can we just… get rid of him?" Suddenly, a beautiful path was laid out before her. The rest of the loop—solidly more than a half of it—without Benkoten. Half a loop truly consequence-free.

"As I said, it's up to you," Geel said, his eyes gleaming. He pulled the pistol from his belt and twirled it around his fingers, then held it out to Myra. He was in a mood, and (for obvious reasons) Myra wasn't taken in by Geel's sudden loyalty for his subordinates. Yet, she glowed with anticipation as she took the pistol from Geel's hand.

She took aim, right for Ben's heart.

"Myrabelle, you can't be serious," Benkoten said.

She tried to come up with a funny retort, failed, and finally, just pulled the trigger. Her aim was still not good; it missed his heart by a few centimeters, but it probably punctured his lung—that didn't matter. The impact knocked him back, and he toppled over the edge.

Tentatively, she walked to the edge and looked down into the abyss. She could just barely see his outline right before it disappeared into the inky darkness. Shera stood beside her. She was shook, and Myra reached out a hand, but she was cut off. Dr. Geel Hattuck inserted himself between them, putting his arms around their shoulders. "That man," he asked. "Who was he to you again?"

"I told you—he worked with my father." God, what had she said, exactly? It had been a ridiculous lie, and now she had to run with it. "He handled the dirty work of counterfeiting…"

"And why was he after you?"

"He… I don't entirely know. The truth is, I'd rather just forget about him."

Geel grinned, pulling the two girls inward and maybe slightly forward, towards the abyss. God, she couldn't wait for the creep to get his arms off of them.

"Why don't you two join us in the center of the platform? We're going to have a bit of a celebration."

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