"Okay, for my favor..."


    I felt freedom calling to me, that ticket to anywhere I wanted to go. I could teleport right to the guru if I still wanted to try talking to her, or to the far side of the world. I could demand he send Katrin and Errod with me, even. And Errod... would be pissed. I thought of him, of my... my brother, now, and what he would say when he found out I was bailing on my responsibility to save the world. Hugh had given me shit about it, too. And I wanted to be angry about it, but they were right. I was just trying to get out of it because I was scared, because I was traumatized, because of my stupid past that was chaining me to...


    Wait. I pinged my Dumines, and didn''t get a very clear answer. That was interesting. Was it just that I didn''t quite know what to ask for? Was there something strange about it? Or... was it more about technique than pure magic?


    "For my favor," I said before I could change my mind, "I want you to teach me how to package up thoughts and memories into templates."


    While the use that had made me think of it was probably redundant - I could maybe learn to separate out my torture trauma eventually just by use of Thought magic - the idea of being able to just bundle up bad memories and then put them back if I changed my mind made it feel way safer. On top of that, since he''d said it was possible to duplicate them I could even give other people memories of Earth to view. With my divination I could probably make templates of physical objects easily and then just... well, I wasn''t sure if they''d appear in person or if I''d have to export them somehow but I could figure that out. Hell, given the fact that I''d seen signs of Earth stuff in Nusos I should even be able to find a way to template things from there. I could make a vending machine of Earth shit with the right magic items. Hot chips. Elastic-band underwear. A working solar phone charger.


    I could also try and box up the fucked up memories to get them out of the way - which might make it easier to recover the originals - and I could try to use it to archive whatever the Granch were attached to... unless that just made them kill me. Uh. That would be an experiment for way later. Still, it seemed like a very cool ability and if I wasn''t going to be able to just query whatever was on the other end of the Dumines for how to do it this might be the only chance I got to learn how.


    Sentortzi didn''t move for almost a minute, and then I noticed the new thread was shivering, shaking almost like the one that went to Errod. Finally Sentotzi''s eyes flared with light, and he screamed wordlessly.


    "Uh. Is there a problem?"


    "This is... the wording of the contract is flawed. I demand we form a new bargain."


    "Okay, no. Are you saying you''re not going to hold up your end of the deal?"


    He twisted strangely, as if fighting against something. "I... this knowledge cannot come from me. No. No. I will not have my plans ruined this way. Ask another favor."


    "Why? Tell me what''s going on."


    "Yes. Yes. I will tell you, as part of the bargain. Put your hand on the sphere, I will word the binding properly this time."


    "Oh fuck off, you think I''m falling for that shit? No. You tell me what''s happening right now, and then - if I''m feeling generous - I''ll make another deal."


    "You were supposed to ask for your freedom!" he shouted. "You fear imprisonment. You hate being bound. You have an established history of fleeing from authority!"


    Ah. He hadn''t wanted to give me anything, not really. Hell, this whole delivery probably wouldn''t work if I was going to Hammersmith. "Well look, if you want to break the contract that''s keeping me in your city or work out something with Hammersmith be my guest - but I''m not paying for it. That will have to be all on your end."


    "I see. I see. Very clever. Fine. I will have guards brought down to release you from your contract. But I also have concerns about the favor you have requested, and its effect upon our bargain. It may render the agreement invalid, and so we must make a new one."


    "Keep up your end of the deal first, and then maybe you can convince me to make an additional agreement. Otherwise why would I trust you?"


    He shook slightly, and a strange grinding noise came from inside the spider part of his body. Finally one of the many hands punched the floor, and he seemed to slump. "Very well. The agreement does force this. We can fix the issues in the second agreement. This can be salvaged. I must know, in order to teach you - do you have any of the gifts of Thought, Comprehension, Fabrication, Binding, or Command?"


    I didn''t really want to tell him, but it made sense he would need to know. "If you spread this knowledge about me, I would consider that to violate the agreement."


    "Unfortunately, I agree. Your answer to this question is safe with me, unless I should learn about your gifts independently from another source at a future date."


    Huh. Yeah, that checked out. "I''ve got Thought, Comprehension, and Binding."


    He nodded. "I assumed you had Thought by now, but was uncertain of what complimentary gifts you had acquired. Fine. Stand by."


    After a moment, a spider came skittering up - human hands slapping their metal fingers against the stone. It handed Sentortzi one of the strange book-like rectangles and he held it out, nervously. "This has been modified, to allow the knowledge to be absorbed by you. I must move it into your domain in Ematse, which I have a device for. You can use the device yourself or I can, but either way you must allow my mind into your domain."


    I told him to do it - I was curious about the device but didn''t feel like trusting it. After a moment the rectangle vanished from his hands, and he reached out for me. Fuck it. I invited him into my mind palace, which I was interested to find I could access - he had clearly disabled some warding temporarily. I managed to drop us into the tiny wagon to give him as little of a view as possible, and realized belatedly that he might not fit. As it turned out, though, he appeared as human rather than a spider-centaur robot. He looked... unremarkable. He also looked pissed. He held out the rectangle, and it began to... unfold. I felt a pressure building, and then all at once it popped like when your ears clear after being stuffed up.


    And I knew. "Holy shit. Okay. Wow. Uh, that''ll do, I guess. Out of my head."


    I would need to unlock something in my Dumine to get the full use out of it, but I knew, deep in my head, exactly what and how. I even knew specifics about the technique, as if I''d learned from practicing it over time. I didn''t yet know if it would be successful at everything I wanted, and I wouldn''t be able to make them physically without a magic item since I didn''t have Fabrication. I could, maybe, invite someone with Fabrication into my head and pass templates to them? Eh, I was pretty wealthy - I''d just have the damn device made at some point. In the meantime I''d still be able to box up thoughts, ideas, and memories and just store them as inert objects in my memory palace.


    The elevator opened in the antechamber, and three guards came marching in. Oh, right. Very efficiently they reviewed a copy of my contract that Sentortzi pulled out of nowhere, and they released me from it verbally. Sure enough, I felt a subtle pressure lift off of me. I was free. He dismissed the guards before handing me the template I was supposed to deliver to him.


    "Now, let us discuss where you would like to be teleported to, and we can formulate the new agreement along with a small additional favor for your trouble."


    "Just a moment, please." I pulled up my Dumines, and felt a pattern snap into place as I pictured it. I spent a moment tweaking it some, customizing to take into account my unique set of abilities, and was thrilled to realize that it would actually take virtually no potential. My initial suspicions had been right, I could package up memories and concepts to some extent without using my Dumines at all - but they would have to be fully contained in my domain in Ematse.


    Instead, the far more useful bits required me to be able to do a sort of broad sweep of Comprehension and Thought to ''ping'' the Common Local Understanding, although as I communed with that force behind the Dumines it got more and more complicated. Some probability to incorporate variety in the item or concept being compiled, as usual a little Perception to help me process everything, but then some Fate that I felt was somehow in there to... extend further, pull meaning from times and places I otherwise wouldn''t reach. Huh.


    I felt the ability burn into my lutore, and immediately decided to try it out. I wanted... my experience of being tortured. But I didn''t want to forget it happened. Right away I felt something interesting, which was that it mostly wasn''t in my body - it was already stored in my mind palace. I''d heard references to this, the idea that people who made heavy use of Thought magic eventually weren''t even really storing memories in their physical brain anymore, but it was still a strange and slightly disturbing thought. Then again, it did mean I was going to be extremely resistant to brain damage.


    It was easier than expected, honestly, because the feelings I was looking for were so... raw. The very thing that made me want to excise them also made it easy to do. As I pulled at it and collected it, I had to make sure I didn''t trigger the more active magic and try to pull in the concept of torture in a broader sense, or experiences of torture from the collective consciousness. I wanted my personal trauma only. I could feel, for the first time, that connection to my soul in addition to the one that went to my mind. Could I possess that one, too? See my domain in Erima the way my mind palace was my domain in Ematse? The question would have to wait, but it was interesting to know some of my trauma was stored there.


    And then... everything felt calm and blank. I was holding what looked like Pogue''s roll of tools, but it was one solid piece of blood-stained wood. I opened a drawer in the desk and tucked it away, and tried thinking about my time in that chair. I could remember it, but it was like someone had described it to me - or like I''d watched it in a movie. I could also remember my hand shaking, but had a hard time really calling up the feeling that had gone with it. Fucking with my mind was maybe a slippery slope, but if I was careful and kept the stored stuff around so I could restore them it was... probably okay?


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    It felt too easy, like it was cheating somehow, but what was magic for if not cheating? And who said getting past trauma had to be long and difficult if there was an easier way? My other issues, of course, probably weren''t things I could just package up. They were from multiple events, and they were older - fully folded into who I was as a person. I suspected trying to separate out that kind of stuff would lobotomize me, if it worked at all. Still, it was pretty fucking cool and I was looking forward to figuring out what all I could do with it.


    I opened my eyes, back in Sentortzi''s lair. He was still waiting for me to tell him where I wanted to teleport, and even without the most recent trauma I felt my pulse increase at the thought of Hammersmith locking me up. Good - a lot of that fear was actually totally reasonable. Still, I had the clarity I needed to remember what was important and why I hadn''t asked for an escape when I''d picked a favor. Gods, that felt like an hour ago and it couldn''t have been more than ten minutes.


    I took a deep breath. "Actually, Sentortzi, I''m going to go with Hammersmith. It sucks, and I''m scared, but it needs to be done."


    "What? Unacceptable! You do not arrive in Brinkmar until the Grand Alignment!"


    He hadn''t said must not. He''d said I do not. Like it was foretold, or like... wait. I remembered what Connie had said, about feeling like she was supposed to go back in time. "Hang on, is this a time loop thing? I''ve got news for you, asshole. There''s no loop. Maybe there was supposed to be, but she didn''t do that. She remade the world, she didn''t go back in time. That was Ulren''s thing, and fuck that guy. I''m going to open the door to Brinkmar, Hammersmith''s guys are going to shut down the planar whatever before it''s even online, and that''s it. No destroying the world, no going back in time, nothing."


    Sentortzi climbed fully over the ledge into the chamber with me, shoving the chairs aside. I took a small step back before deciding to stand firm - the deal had specifically said he couldn''t harm me or imprison me. If he had still been made of meat, he would have been foaming at the mouth. "There will be a loop. There must be, for the world to survive."


    "But it wouldn''t survive. A loop would by definition include destroying everything again."


    "Only while time is repaired. Fate detests uncaused events, and already it becomes desperate. The Clockmaker, and other scholars of his time, did rigorous testing and had mathematically and experimentally proven that time travel was impossible. The flow of time could be increased or decreased, and could be brought to nearly a standstill - but past a certain point the mana cost increased exponentially, and going backwards in time would take infinite mana - literally. Over the years several scholars at the university I established studied this and did their own experiments, and when their results differed they sometimes insisted they had discovered something new, and sometimes decided they had made a mistake. And then Professor Ulren found something interesting."


    He leaned in until his face was almost touching mine, for dramatic effect. "The data was changing in a somewhat predictable curve. Time was becoming more fragile, more malleable, the closer we came to the Grand Alignment. Something had happened, or was continuing to happen, that was weakening time itself. It could have been something at the previous Grand Alignment, since that event always involves some strange and dangerous experiments. It could also, given the nature of time, be something at the upcoming Grand Alignment."


    "Professor Ulren? He worked at... oh. So you''re in on his plan."


    "Bah! I would never. He was counting on the planes collapsing to eliminate all previously existing influences. It is a work of utter disregard for the gods and humanity alike - the theory is sound, making yourself the sole influence on the Common Local Understanding while also thwarting the natural forces that guide reality... but at what cost? At what risk? No. Had I known his plans, I would have destroyed him."


    "Okay, great. So... you don''t want that shit to happen again. You want me to fix this. Also, with him dead I don''t think it can happen again regardless - which you should be happy about. That fucking thing the Clockmaker made for... I think he was using it to wipe out entire planes, like the one the Queen of Candles was on or the one that''s just used for storage now, needs to be destroyed. Why don''t you want me going there?"


    He backed off, slightly. "If you stop it now, the world ends regardless. Normally, we need only to reach the Grand Alignment for the problem to be fixed. It is a time of renewal, and a time where the gods archive the world that has passed, much like the trick you... just learned." He''d hesitated there. What had he been about to say? "While time travel was always thought to be impossible, the fundamental forces of the world can reach back and make small stabilizing changes to events. Resolve minor paradoxes. Even these cannot reach backwards beyond the barrier of the Grand Alignment, because time itself starts anew. My concern is with that process failing.


    "Thanks to the actions of your past self, the grand cycle is now too long by seven hundred and twenty days. What are the tolerances for reality? It is impossible for me to say. At best this will be nothing but a minor footnote for the gods, a slight inconsistency they muse over before moving on with their great experiment. But at worst... it will cause the Grand Alignment to fail, to throw the universe from its gears, to collapse all of reality and destroy everything we know. And so you must go back in time, truly back, and not extend the Grand Alignment again. This reality must not continue to exist. You can make the loop, make it stable and take as many tries as you''d like. I will assist you."


    Oh. Oh, I see. "That''s what you want me to deliver to you. It''s a backup of some of your most important memories. You want me to let the world end, enough to go back in time anyway, and then give you your memories of all this back. And then... no, you said you wanted it to be a loop. You could kill me, or something, and have the new me do the same thing. Is that it? Am I close? You want to make a loop where you''re the only one that remembers. And you don''t want me to be able to do the same thing."


    "Not quite, but close enough. I would have eventually let the loop close safely, once I had done everything in my power to ensure an ideal future. You are correct that I did not want an additional variable, but... if we work together, if you take my advice and are careful with your actions, you can remain on the loop as well. Merge your memories with your past self each time, replace their mind and soul with yours and abandon the older body to keep things consistent. In fact... this may already be conforming to a loop. You could take on the role of your duplicate. Call yourself Connie, as I believe she did."


    "And die killing Telen?"


    "You could change some things. Minor variances, incrementing each loop. With my assistance, careful adjustments could be made. There may be some... inconsistencies, self-caused or uncaused events, but if we minimize them we can still prevent further damage to time. We will leave it better than it is currently; there are some paradoxes we must clean up, repair, further back. Events that happened before your arrival. With careful use of Professor Ulren''s notes and my vast wealth of information, we can plan everything. Listen, child. You have no choice. Let the world end again, to save the world. You must do this, and if you must, then why not keep me as an ally?"


    "Why should I believe you? You weren''t going to tell me before, either because it''s bullshit or because you wanted to keep me as some sort of fucking pawn. You''re no better than Ulren. You say he was reckless, but you''re literally suggesting we do the same thing again. You don''t even know that the world is at risk. I heard... you can talk to the gods, right? I know I was told that. Have you asked them about this?"


    "The gods... speak to very few. And they have not made contact with any of my agents that I sent to the Observatory of Jenkutierra. But the damage to the world is certain, and the risk is extremely high. The Grand Alignment will mark the end of all reality. Your other self saved the world from one apocalypse, but left another in her wake. I do not approve of Ulren''s methods, but now that it has happened once there is no further risk to making it part of a stable loop. Not if done correctly, and if we continue to strengthen time in other ways."


    It was too much to process, and I still didn''t really believe him. It still seemed likely he''d been working with Ulren, that this was all some fucked up plan. "You''ve promised not to imprison me. I want to leave, now."


    He froze again for a moment, and then as the elevator doors opened once more - presumably due to some signal he''d given - he smiled. "My plan may have failed, but you will do what you must. Fate will force your hand. Our bargain is proof of that."


    Fate could go fuck itself. I got into the elevator and it began taking me back up. I got to the lobby and stormed past the receptionist, who tried to say something bland and pleasant to me. "Eat me, lady. That was a nice act in the elevator though. Pretty convincing, but it wasn''t enough to get me to do what your boss wanted."


    Her face twisted into a sneer. Yeah, that''s what I thought.


    I climbed onto the next elevator, which spit me out in a completely different hallway than I''d been in on the way down. A guard was there to lead me to an exit, and as we walked I thought about the last thing Sentortzi had said. I flicked on my view of the fate threads again, and the one that should have gone towards Sentortzi faded into nothingness a few inches away, with a green tint. Huh. Had he gone to another plane? Or...


    The door opened, and I was almost blinded by light streaming in. The guard led me along the streets towards the edge of the university grounds, as my mind raced. Once again, there were too many things happening. There were parts of that conversation that were bothering me, but the more immediate looming threat of Hammersmith drowned everything out and made it hard to think. The time loop shit or the threat of the world ending just from being out of synch was bad enough, but there were a million smaller comments that kept itching at my brain. And what did Professor Yanipliss know about... oh. Fuck.


    "Wait. Stop. We have to go back to the university. Professor Harmid Yanipliss is in danger, or maybe already dead."


    The guard sighed. "Nice try. Let''s go, they''re waiting."


    "I''m not fucking around. It''s urgent." I turned, not waiting for a reply, and like lightning he grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip.


    "Your sudden revelation isn''t fooling anyone," he said.


    I turned and managed to headbutt him, while simultaneously hooking his leg with mine and pulling him off balance. He fell as planned, but his grip didn''t falter and he took me with him. The headbutt had been sloppy and I''d hurt my head as much as his, plus for good measure he followed up with a punch to my kidney. He was stronger than me, armored, and armed. I was just deciding that I was fucked when I heard a tiny voice raise in fury.


    "Get your fucking hands off of her!" Roran yelled, and the guard''s eyes went glassy as he released me. "Now choke yourself," he continued, and sure enough the guard clamped his hands over his own throat and started squeezing.


    I stumbled up, and ran towards Roran. "Don''t kill him, okay? Knife!" Roran tossed me a knife - what a good kid - and I bolted as fast as I could towards the library. I decided I had to plan for the worst and tried something risky, switching to divination and trusting my practice at auto-pilot to keep me from tripping and slamming into the cobblestones. I pinged the wild mage, and then felt a spike of panic as I looked behind me and saw another guard running towards me at supernatural speeds. Just as he was about to reach me he flipped through the air - arms windmilling, a look of panic on his face - and then slammed back down with a terrible crunch. What an unfortunate time for gravity to fluctuate.


    "Thanks Tig!" I yelled behind me, and turned down a smaller alley between two buildings to hopefully slow down any other pursuit - although I wanted them to follow, ideally, since I might need the backup.


    After a few seconds the wild mage appeared, standing in place as the university grounds flew past us. "It is inconvenient to stop and meditate whenever you call me. Why are you running?"


    "If you''re still here, please. The library, that professor I pointed out. I think he''s about to be murdered."


    She blinked out, hopefully to come help but... for all I knew she was just annoyed I''d bothered her. Finally I reached the library again, and only a moment later I burst through Harmid''s door. He was there on the floor, skin tinted a horrifying greenish color and surrounded by a puddle of his own vomit. I flipped him onto his side and there was a faint, sputtering cough - well, he wasn''t quite dead yet, so that was something. I was still crouched there, panting, when I heard the sound of footsteps behind me along with a more subtle noise. A jingling, that I''d previously thought might be chain mail under the man''s robes. I knew better now. I remembered where I''d heard that sound before.


    "Hey Ulren," I said.