hanged since then – rare was a restart that lasted more than 3 days, and none of them went on for more than 5. Whatever Zach was doing, it was lethally hard and Zach was too much of a stubborn ass to give up any time soon.

“Zorian? Are you alright? Come on, I didn’t hit you that hard. Up, up.”

Zorian ignored Kirielle who was currently pinching his side with ever increasing vigor, staring at the ceiling while suppressing so much as a twitch. The pain was negligible compared to a couple of particularly nasty pain spells Kyron used on him during one of their ‘resistance training’ sessions. Thankfully, Kyron never used any of them more than once per restart. Kirielle slapped him a few times and then pretended she was going to punch him in the face. When he didn’t react to that, her fist stopped just before it would impact with his face.

“Umm.. Zorian?” Kirielle said, actually sounding somewhat concerned. “Seriously, are you okay?”

Slowly, mechanically, Zorian turned his head to meet Kirielle’s eyes, keeping his expression as blank as possible. After a few seconds of silent staring he slowly opened his mouth.. and screamed at her. She recoiled at the sudden outburst and let out a girlish scream of her own as her retreat caused her to tumble off the bed.

He watched for a few moments as Kirielle began to turn red from rage, and then he could no longer restrain himself. He started laughing.

He kept laughing even as Kirielle’s little fists started to rain down blows on him.

* * *

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good m-“

With an inarticulate yell, Zorian flipped Kirielle on her back and mercilessly started tickling her. Her shrieks reverberated through the entire house until mother came up to his room and made him stop.

* * *

“Good morning, brother! Morning, morning, MORNING!!!”

A short silence ensued, broken only by the rustling of Zorian’s blankets as Kirielle shifted impatiently on top of them.

“Kiri,” he finally said. “I think I’m starting to hate you.”

He was exaggerating, of course, but gods was this becoming annoying as hell. Amusingly, Kirielle actually appeared concerned by his proclamation.

“I’m sorry!” she said, hurriedly wriggling herself off the bed. “I was just-“

“Woah, woah, woah,” interrupted Zorian, fixing Kirielle with a mock glare. “My little sister apologizing? That doesn’t happen. Who are you and what did you do to Kirielle?”

Kirielle’s appeared dumbfounded for a moment, but her expression quickly grew stormy as she realized what he was implying.

“Jerk!” She huffed, childishly stomping her foot for emphasis. “I do too apologize! When I’m wrong!”

“When you’re backed into a corner,” corrected Zorian. “You must want some pretty big favor out of me if you’re this desperate to remain in my good graces. What’s the story?”

He really did want to know, too. She gave no indication she wanted something from him all those times he had been through this, yet it must be pretty important to her if she was willing to apologize to get it. That didn’t make much sense – Kirielle wasn’t really a shy girl, and had no problems with making her wishes known in the past. For a moment he was tempted to conclude he misinterpreted the situation but then Kirielle looked away and started mumbling something intelligibly.

“What was that?” he prodded.

“Mother wants to talk to you,” Kirielle said, still avoiding his eyes.

“Yeah, well, mother can wait,” said Zorian. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you want from me.”

She pouted at him for a moment before taking a big breath in preparation.

“Please take me with you to Cyoria!” She said, folding her hands in front of her in a pleading gesture. “I’ve always wanted to go there and I don’t want to go to Koth with mother and..”

Zorian tuned her out, shocked at the revelation. How could he have been so blind? He knew there was something strange about the ease with which he could convince mother not to make him take Kirielle with him, but he didn’t want to question a favorable outcome and so ignored it. Of course it was easy.. she didn’t want him to take her either! It was Kirielle who wanted to go. Mother was just making a token attempt so she could tell Kirielle she tried and failed. No wonder Kirielle always seemed so sullen on the way to the train station.

“Zorian? Please?”

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and smiled at Kirielle, who was looking at him with bated breath and hope in her eyes. Now how could he say no to that? That it would ruin mother’s schemes was simply a bonus.

“Of course I’ll take you with me,” he said.

“Really!?”

“So long as you behave y-“

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Kirielle yelled happily, jumping around in excitement. He could never understand this boundless energy she had. He was never that exuberant, even as a child. “I knew you’d say yes! Mother said you’d refuse for sure.”

Zorian looked away in embarrassment.

“Right,” he said lamely. “Shows what she knows. Shall I assume then that you already have mother’s permission for this plan?”

“Yeah,” Kirielle confirmed. “She said she was fine with it so long as you agree.”

Oh that diabolical woman.. saying no but making him take the blame for it. Looking back at it, the plan was almost magnificent in execution – she even gave him a lecture on proper attire and family honor to put him into foul a mood before springing the question.

With a sigh he put on his glasses and got out of bed. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

A second later his brain caught up with what he said and he froze. Looking back at Kirielle, he was surprised to see she wasn’t trying to race him to his destination and was instead looking at him in confusion.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Zorian said, before walking out of the room. He supposed the only reason she did that in your average restart was to make him confront mother as soon as possible. A poor move, since it only made him more annoyed at her, but she was only a kid and probably didn’t think things through all that well.

It was going to be an interesting restart.