“This isn’t going to work.”

Zorian stopped staring at the pile of blueprints and notebooks in front of him and looked at the speaker. It was Xvim. He and Alanic had snuck up to him while his attention was absorbed into his task and were currently staring at him expectantly.

Zorian tapped his pen on the table a couple of times before throwing it aside and leaning back in his chair. Perhaps it would be a good idea to take a break. His work had stalled for a while now.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he told his old mentor.

“We can’t keep going like this,” Xvim clarified. “This path we’re on.. it’s not going to work. When we planned this out, we were counting on having Silverlake on our side. Now we don’t, and no amount of increased enthusiasm and minor adjustments is going to make up for it. I know you’re still under the impression of what Panaxeth told you, but something has to change. At this rate we’re simply blundering into an obvious failure.”

Zorian stared at Xvim for a second before glancing at Alanic. However, the scarred battle priest was silent, simply staring back at him without saying a word. Clearly he agreed with Xvim’s words, then. They had probably discussed things between each other before approaching him.

He looked around the room instead of immediately answering. It gave him a way to stall and gather his thoughts, but he was also curious about people’s reactions to the conversation. They were inside one of the Noveda estate’s rooms, and there were quite a few people gathered here. Most of them pretended to be absorbed into their own work, but Zorian could tell that all of them were paying close attention to what was happening.

Well, except for Zach. His fellow time traveler was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed, trying to sense the divine energies of his divine blessing and Controller marker. Zorian was not sure why he was doing that, to be honest. Both he and Zach had already succeeded at perceiving these divine energies, and it was unlikely he would develop the skill much in what little time they had left before the end of the restart. On top of that, they had basically given up on trying to modify the temporary markers. There was little point to that now.

He took a deep breath but resisted the urge to sigh. They had informed the whole group about their second encounter with Panaxeth and what it meant for Zorian. Strangely, the group took another bout of bad news in stride. In fact, the knowledge that Zorian now shared fates with them seemed to significantly improve the mood of the group. He was one of them now, and the fact that he didn’t panic and break down after finding out this was his last chance to live seemed to inspire them somewhat and calm their fears. They worked harder, grumbled less, and were less dubious about his motives and logic.

For a while, he thought that would be enough.. that with some renewed enthusiasm and some clever workaround they would be able to make up for Silverlake’s absence and proceed as planned. However, Xvim and Alanic were right. This wasn’t going to work.

They needed a new plan.

“What are you suggesting?” Zorian asked them.

“First of all, we should tell Krantin and his team that we’re time travelers,” Xvim said.

Zorian cocked his head to the side curiously. Not really what he was expecting to hear.

“Wouldn’t that be rather counterproductive?” Zorian asked. “Krantin and his team have been remarkably cooperative with us, all things considered. If they knew the truth, I imagine their enthusiasm for helping us could only plummet as a response.”

“I said we should tell them we’re time travelers, not the full and total truth,” Xvim said. “Truthfully, they already suspect this. The documents we are providing them with are too similar to their own existing work for that to escape their notice. They have been talking amongst themselves about our identity for a while now, and the most common theory is that we’re literally from the future. It isn’t that far from the truth, really.”

“They actually hit upon such a crazy theory as the most likely one?” Zorian asked, surprised.

“They’re working in a time magic research facility,” Xvim said. “Even though actual time travel is said to be impossible, the topic is likely to come up with some regularity among the staff. They are being paid to push the boundaries of time magic as much as they can, after all.”

Zorian stayed quiet for a few seconds, mulling things over. He supposed the idea was workable, all things considered, and it might eliminate some of the inefficiencies they’d encountered when working with Krantin and his team. However..

“Although this would be useful, I’m not really sure it would do that much,” Zorian said finally. “The facility staff is already working hard on the project of turning the imperial orb into a Black Room. Even with their limited information, they seem appreciative enough for the funding and opportunities we’ve given them. I doubt we could drive them to work harder with this.”

“No, probably not,” Xvim agreed, propping his elbows on the table and folding his fingers into a triangle shape in front of him. “This is merely an attempt to make them fine with the second step of the plan.”

“Which is?” Zorian prompted, feeling just a little bit apprehensive all of a sudden.

“Kidnapping everyone skilled and possibly useful and forcing them to work for us,” Xvim stated calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist..

Zorian rubbed his chin in a frustrated manner before focusing back on the two people in front of him. Alanic was still not saying anything. They were both staring at him and waiting for a response.

“And just how–” Zorian began.

“Through any means necessary,” Xvim said, cutting him off. “Blackmail. Threats of death and bodily harm. Rampant use of mind magic.”

“My mind magic is not that capable,” Zorian said, frowning. “The kind of work we need from them has never been done before. They would need to work with us to invent entirely new spells and rituals.”

“I know,” Xvim said.

“I can’t force someone to perform creative work for me with mind magic,” Zorian pointed out. “I don’t think anyone can. At best we’d get a bunch of dazed zombies.”

“They don’t know that, though,” Xvim said. “Mind magic is terrifying, even for mages, and few people are experienced enough to guess your limits. Ignoring that, what you can do is already terrifying enough for most people. If you demonstrated your memory manipulation abilities, most people would be very intimidated. Even I’m afraid of you sometimes, and I’m both familiar with your limitations and relatively certain you will not target me with your abilities. Finally, even if someone is not intimidated by your ability, you can always use your memory modification abilities as a limited retry button for convincing people. You’ve used your powers in that manner before, I am told.”

“But only on enemies,” stressed Zorian.

“And I’m very grateful you retain that sense of morality and restraint in regards to your powers,” Xvim said patiently. “But we’re running out of time and desperate times call for desperate measures. Don’t think we’re just selfishly asking you to discard your ideals. This is a burden we’re all willing to take upon our shoulders.”

Zorian gave him a surprised look.

“Somebody will need to keep this mass of resentful, forcibly recruited mages in line and focused on their duties instead of plotting our downfall,” Xvim said. “That’s going to be our job. Your job is simply to gather the people we need and intimidate them into cooperating with us, however reluctantly.”

Zorian stared at the man for a while, considering what he had been told. Xvim was essentially saying that all or most of the other temporary loopers already agreed that this was an acceptable course of action. That they were just going to.. kidnap random people and force them into working for them. And here Zorian was thinking he was being too carefree about reaching for the darker, unethical methods to tackle their problems.

“Well,” he said. “I see we’re turning into a proper villainous organization. All we need now is a mystical artifact that will allow us to remake the world in our image and we’re set to go.”

Xvim’s lips twitched slightly.

“If you really think about it,” he said, “a large group of people armed with knowledge of things to come and all the things we’ve gathered in the time loop would be more than enough to–”

“Please don’t,” Zorian implored him. “Just.. tell me once again how this is supposed to work.”

“Alright,” Xvim said, reaching into his bag and handing him a map with a bunch of locations marked on it. Colorful paper notes densely filled with text were pinned next to each of the indicated locations.

“Our main problem right now is that we don’t have enough time,” Xvim continued after Zorian had a chance to glance at the map. “The only way we’re going to get that is by pushing our Black Room modification project to its utter limit. Therefore, we should drop virtually everything and focus on that. However, the biggest problem the project has is the lack of qualified mages to work on it. Most of us are not really qualified to help with it. However, this facility is not the only one of its kind. There are other facilities in other countries, and though they have not gotten as far as the one in Eldemar, their staff is no less qualified than Krantin and his researchers – they just suffer from a lack of funding and opportunities.”

The places on the map marked with blue upturned triangles were locations of all known Black Room projects in Altazia, Zorian realized. He knew about these, of course. They had been making use of their facilities for quite some time now. Not just in the sense that they were using them to extend their time in the restarts, either. They had long ago raided these places for any information about time magic, as well as handed them collected research notes from other facilities to see if they would come up with something novel when presented with such information. Although these initiatives were moderately successful, they had stopped yielding results by now, and so they no longer bothered with them. They simply made use of the facilities in each restart and then left them alone.

Although these places were much smaller than the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria, there was a fair number of them. If they forcibly took all their staff, that would be a lot of people. Plus, there might be some useful equipment there, now that he was thinking about it.

If they were raiding these places for people, they might as well take everything that wasn’t nailed down as well.

“So we just raid those places, taking everything and everyone in sight,” Zorian said, clacking his tongue. “What about those who just won’t cooperate, no matter what carrot and stick we use? Kill them?”

“Push them through a portal to Blantyrre and strand them in the jungle for a while,” Xvim said. “I think most will reconsider after a few days, but if not, they can just spend the rest of the month there.”

And probably get eaten by a flying snake or something, Zorian thought, though he did not say it out loud.

“In any case, with this sudden influx of new people and with Krantin’s hopeful acceptance of our time traveler story, we can then move on to the next step,” said Xvim, handing him another map.

This one was a very detailed map of the underworld beneath Cyoria, centered around the time magic research facility. However, the facility in the map Xvim gave him was larger than the one that currently existed beneath their feet. Much, much larger. It was a huge, sprawling complex that circled the Hole like a giant torus and then extended into the surrounding land through a spider web of rooms and corridors.

Zorian gave Xvim a dubious look.

“There is no way this kind of development can be hidden from the city,” Zorian said dubiously. “Never mind Krantin and his reaction, this would bring the Eldemar military on our heads. Do we really have enough influence to make the city authorities overlook this sort of thing?”

“Yes, that.. that is certainly a problem,” Xvim tapped his fingers together and looked away uneasily for a second. “We think we have a solution for that, though.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Zorian asked rhetorically. “Can it really be worse than the whole ‘mass kidnapping’ thing?”

“We should work with the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon and its leaders,” Xvim told him.

Zorian scowled at the suggestion. He had nothing but disgust and contempt for the Cult of the Dragon Below. At least Ibasans had a relatively understandable goal of sabotaging their national enemies. The cultists were traitors and seemed to operate purely on a mixture of delusion and insatiable greed for power. Most of the lower-level members didn’t even know what exactly they were fighting for. Plus, he could never quite forget the sight of the shifter children they sacrificed in order to crack open Panaxeth’s prison.

He did not like the idea of cooperating with these people in the slightest.

“You can’t be serious,” Zorian told him, voice tinged with annoyance.

“I really am serious.. and not just because they can help us make the city authorities look the other way while we rearrange the local underworld in our favor. With the loss of Silverlake, we have lost our expert on the primordials and their cages. Aside from Silverlake, the cult’s leaders are probably the people most qualified to help us understand Panaxeth’s prison.. and how to exploit it to get out of the time loop,” Xvim explained.

“We already took everything they had,” Zorian pointed out.

In fact, they had been exceptionally thorough in raiding the cult for every secret they had. Zorian may have compunctions about delving into the minds of random people to steal their secrets, but he had no such compunctions about the cultists. He could not claim to have gotten every scrap of knowledge they had, since he could only look for things if he knew what to look for, but he was quite sure he got everything truly important out of them.

“What they already have, yes,” Xvim said. “But not what they could have, if we teach them all we know and give them a chance to look at the problem with increased skills and perspective.”

Zorian’s eyes widened in realization.

“You want to teach them!?” he asked, aghast at the idea.

“Everything, yes,” Xvim confirmed, nodding. “We would not inform them about the time loop, of course, but other than that? We will bring them into our improved Black Room and teach them everything we can about divination, about dimensionalism and about the structure of the primordial prison in the Hole. We will then let them analyze the structure and either ask them to answer our questions or you can just rip the answers straight out of their minds. It depends on how cooperative they are and what is more convenient.”

Zorian remained silent for a while. On one hand, he really didn’t like the idea of teaching these people anything, especially since that would involve them being close by for several months – plenty of time for things to go seriously wrong. On the other hand, he found the idea of the cultists unknowingly helping them get out of the time loop so they could sabotage their plans in the real world to be rather amusing. And Xvim was right that, other than Silverlake, these people were the ones most familiar with the primordial’s prison. They had been studying it for quite a while now in their attempt to open it, after all.

There was, of course, a small matter of why in the world would the cult leaders agree to work with them on this. However, they were already considering kidnapping people and using blackmail and intimidation to make them cooperate, so this was probably not as difficult of an issue as it appeared. They just had to point out that the invasion could not possibly succeed unless Zach and Zorian allowedit to happen, and then prove their words with a demonstration of their power.

He looked at Alanic, who had still not said anything up until now.

“I’m surprised you’re willing to entertain this idea,” Zorian told him.

“I was willing to work with Silverlake, wasn’t I?” Alanic said. “She may not have done anything particularly heinous in front of you, but I assure you she has done plenty of odious deeds in the past. I understand the necessity. It would be playing with fire, but it isn’t like this is the first time we’re doing that. Isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Zorian said quietly. He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

Alanic never really talked about his past with Silverlake, or of his time before he became a priest. Zorian had long figured out by now that the scarred battle-priest had been a very different man back then, and did a lot of things he later regretted, so he refrained from pushing the man on the topic. Alanic had been incredibly helpful towards him throughout all these restarts, and Zorian felt it would be ungrateful of him to dredge up painful memories and old grudges unless he really had to.

If Alanic had some information about Silverlake that he felt was important, he would have told them about it by now.

After a while, Zorian picked up a pen and threw it at Zach’s head. Though he had his eyes firmly closed, Zach immediately raised his hand and caught the pen out of the air before opening his eyes.

“How much did you hear?” Zorian asked him.

“Most of it,” Zach admitted.

“And?” Zorian prompted. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have any better idea,” Zach said with a shrug.

Neither did Zorian, in all honesty.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true..

“Alright,” said Zorian, rising from his seat. “I guess we’re doing this, then. However, I think a slight modification is in order.”

“Slight, huh?” Zach said with a grin.

“If we’re going to get the maximum amount of time out of the modified Black Room, the extra manpower is not enough,” said Zorian. “We need a dimensionalism mage of the highest caliber if we’re going to get truly spectacular results.”

“So? Those don’t exactly grow on trees,” Zach pointed out, throwing the pen back at him. “Where are we going to find one of those?”

Zorian caught the pen flying at him with practiced ease.

“How attached are you to that crown we took from Quatach-Ichl?” Zorian asked Zach with a knowing smile.

Zach’s expression immediately fell.

“Oh, you can’t be serious..” Zach complained.

Oh, but he was. He really was.

“Come on,” Zorian told him, motioning him to get up from the floor. “Let’s go talk to our favorite lich.”

* * *

Somewhere in Eldemar, a field was burning.

Two masked teenagers were engaged in a vicious fight against an ancient Ibasan lich, and the landscape around them was devastated in their passing. Once this had been a wheat field in full bloom, but it was now just an ashen land covered in craters. Broken remains of undead servants and golems littered the ground, and strange rock formations rose out of the ground in places where the two sides tried to entomb each other in solid stone.

Somewhere out there, Zorian mused, a farmer was going to be very devastated when he saw what had happened to his harvest.

This was the third time he and Zach had clashed with the lich like this in the last few days. However, this was fine as far as Zorian was concerned. He considered this to be simply a part of their negotiation with Quatach-Ichl, rather than as a waste of time. They were proving to the lich that they were legitimate threats and that he should take them seriously. Earlier, when they had taken the crown from him in this restart, they had done it through an ambush and by employing something that could be dismissed as a mere trick. Through these fights, they were showing Quatach-Ichl there was more to them than that.

Quatach-Ichl had never stopped looking for them all this time, of course. He had no idea it was Zach and Zorian who had stolen his crown, since they had worn disguises when they had ambushed him and covered their tracks extremely well, but he had somehow managed to find out about the existence of their group in general. He seemed to have identified Xvim, Alanic, Ilsa and Kyron as the leaders of the group, possibly because they interacted with the authorities relatively often. He had tried to target them by ransacking their homes and such, but this hadn’t been very effective. All temporary loopers had vacated their usual homes by now, and were not that easy to catch. Plus, he couldn’t be too brazen about wrecking things or he would put his own invasion plans into danger.

This sort of situation must have been rather frustrating for the ancient lich, because he had attacked them immediately when they had shown up in front of him again. He hadn’t even given them a chance to speak! Rude.

A giant, scintillating ball of red light screamed through the air towards Zorian. He thrust his hand at it, causing a conical wave of barely visible rainbow light to wash over it. It unraveled instantly, revealing a dimmer, but much more dangerous arrow of green energies hurtling at his chest.

The simulacrum standing beside him immediately thrust his arm into the path of the arrow, sacrificing it to shield Zorian from the blow. The arm exploded at the mere touch of the magical projectile, negating the attack but showering Zorian with a rain of metal shrapnel. Zorian didn’t try to defend himself against the flying metal pieces, opting to keep casting his counterattack instead. The shrapnel was stopped by his shield, a faint honeycomb pattern momentarily becoming visible around him as it absorbed the attack, and then Zorian finished his spell.

Nothing visibly happened, but this was because his projectiles were utterly invisible – a pair of circular discs of severing force made their way towards the lich, who was currently busy dodging massive boulders and fireballs that Zach was sending his way.

Beside them, Princess released a loud roar into the air with six of her many heads, the last two being busy chewing through the throat of a giant eagle she managed to snatch straight out of the air. The great bird hung limply from her jaws, its riders nowhere to be seen. The fight had been going on for long enough that an Eldemarian response group had reached them and tried to involve themselves into the fight. Unfortunately for them, neither group had appreciated their interference. Their eagle riders had lost at least half of their numbers – one could see the charred husks of their eagles and mages mixed among the wreckage of the battlefield if one looked closely enough. The remaining eagles now circled uneasily in the sky above, keeping their distance and simply observing things.

Several sites in the distance were also smoking. These were the places where Eldemarian forces had tried to set up artillery positions to pick them off from a distance. Quatach-Ichl hadn’t liked that idea, though, and after he had finished wiping them all out, they did not bother trying a second attempt at it.

Zach shouted an order at Princess, and she roughly threw the dead eagle aside and disappeared. Well, teleported to be more exact. She reappeared instantly at Quatach-Ichl’s side, where she instantly tried biting and trampling him. Even the ancient lich had trouble putting down such a large, regenerating beast.. especially when Zach and Zorian were there keeping him from being able to focus solely on dealing with her.

Distracted as he was by the hydra and Zach, Quatach-Ichl did not notice the severing discs until it was too late and ended up losing one of his arms. This, in turn, placed him on an even bigger disadvantage and forced him to burn through a lot of his mana reserves to fend them off and stabilize himself. Now that he had no imperial crown on him, his mana reserves were no longer quite as ridiculous as they once were. He could no longer just outlast them by default. Now Zach proudly wore the crown to battle, which meant it was Quatach-Ichl who had to worry about a war of attrition.

The battle continued on for another five minutes before eventually slowing down. Eventually, the two sides found themselves staring at each other over an expanse of barren land, waiting for the other to make a move. Zach and Zorian could press their advantage, of course, but that would only cause the lich to flee. There was no point to that, really.

The seconds slowly ticked by with nothing to show for it. The only sounds were occasional screeching of giant eagles circling overhead and Princess hissing at them and at Quatach-Ichl in response.

“Hey,” Zach finally said, his voice magically distorted and his face hidden behind a blank white mask. He pulled the imperial crown off his head and twirled it around his finger playfully. “Are you looking for this?”

Quatach-Ichl’s response was to fire one of his signature red disintegration beams at him. However, Zach did not move a finger to dodge or block it. The beam just curved unnaturally around him and missed.

“We might be willing to give it back,” Zorian pointed out, his voice also distorted.

Quatach-Ichl cocked his head to the side curiously, saying nothing.

“Or we can just continue this for another couple of days, I guess,” Zach added. “I don’t know about you, but I kind of enjoy these clashes between us. A bit of excitement to spice up the day, you know?”

“So. You want to talk, huh?” Quatach-Ichl observed. He looked up at the Eldemar eagle riders circling above. “This probably isn’t the best place to do it, though.”

“Pick a time and place, then,” Zach said. “Just don’t keep us waiting for too long. We’re on a bit of a time limit here. You drag your feet too much and we’ll just keep the crown and be done with it.”

Quatach-Ichl didn’t bother answering him. He simply picked up a rock from the ground and squeezed it in his skeletal hand. Bright orange lines burned themselves into the surface of the rock before fading away. The lich then threw the rock at their feet and then teleported away.

Zorian picked the rock up. It was still warm, and there was a time and address carved into it.

Plus a single sentence at the end.

‘Don’t be late.’

* * *

Zorian had no intention of telling Quatach-Ichl about the time loop or trying to talk him into helping them get out. That would obviously just blow up in their faces. The ancient lich had no motivation to sabotage the plans of his original self by helping them escape into the real world. The last time he’d realized he was just a copy in a duplicate world, he’d had no compunctions whatsoever about sacrificing himself to advance the cause of his original by crippling them. A person like that wouldn’t help them just to save his own hide, and they had nothing to really offer him.

But they did not have to tell him about the time loop. They did not have to ask him to help them to escape. What they needed at the moment was more time, and to get that they needed their Black Room project to succeed.

And with Quatach-Ichl’s help, it could very well succeed spectacularly.

At the moment, they were in a private room in one of Cyoria’s many restaurants, discussing this idea with the Ibasan leader. Quatach-Ichl was in his human disguise, and Zach and Zorian had agreed to come unmasked as a show of trust.

“So let me get this straight,” Quatach-Ichl said, playing around with his glass. “You want me to help you improve Eldemar’s time dilation room to a completely ridiculous rate of dilation–”

“Specifically, we need another five months,” Zach said, cutting into his speech.

“–and in exchange you are going to give me my own crown back?” finished Quatach-Ichl, pretending he didn’t hear him. “Doesn’t that strike you as incredibly brazen and a foolish thing to ask for? I mean, I will get that crown back. It’s just a matter of time.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Zach. “Zorian, do your thing.”

Zorian nodded and started casting the gate spell. Quatach-Ichl was instantly on guard, but he only tensed imperceptibly and did not attack them or voice any protest. He watched curiously as Zorian finished casting the spell and opened a miniature dimensional gate just above his palm.

If one looked closely, they could see a featureless patch of water by looking through the gate.

“Well.. done?” Quatach-Ichl said dubiously. “You can cast the gate spell. Not something many people can brag about but–”

“Scan it,” Zach told him. “See where it leads.”

Frowning, Quatach-Ichl did just that, casting a bunch of divinations to determine the location of the other side of the portal. After a full two minutes of tinkering, he leaned back in his chair and gave Zach a strange look.

“It’s just a random patch of the ocean, as far as I can see. Very far away from any land,” he said.

“Precisely,” Zach said, grinning from ear to ear. “Now.. what do you think would happen if we just chucked this crown through that porta-->>

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