Loop 14


    Myra nearly had a heart attack when she woke up to see a folded sheet of paper on her desk where it should have been empty.


    What the fuck did you do?


    I’m not the only one you have to worry about, Myrabelle. Watch who you piss off.


    — Ben.


    That first part must have been a rhetorical question, since there was no return address.


    Myra got dressed and tried to calm down. The fact was, if a note from a pissed-off Benkoten was the worst thing that had come of that catastrophe, she could probably count herself lucky.


    But was it the worst thing?


    The death had been…


    Well, there had been no negotiating with Major Marchioness Sensa Ferara. Myra had put up a token attempt at telling the woman that she was friends with her daughter at school… but that hadn’t worked at all, possibly because it wasn’t actually true. Myra had barely spoken to Aurora Ferara before the loop had started, and she wasn’t sure if the other girl even knew her name. Certainly, there was no chance she had ever spoken of Myra to her parents.


    Anyway, the death was not the worst death she’d had. The hanging had been quick, which Myra was grateful for (no matter how much she had wanted to see the stupid locked room toilet string trick in action). It wasn’t as bad as burning up under the volcano.


    No, what terrified Myra about that whole clusterfuck was the idea that she’d made such a big splash. She’d drawn attention from the worst possible enemy…


    What was it that Iz had theorized about Emmett Massiel’s death?


    Someone, whoever has control of the loop, did something to him so that he’d always die at the beginning.


    Myra shivered.


    Her ‘suicide’ had probably been reported in the paper, not to mention the fucking imperial ‘test’. Any looper would have noticed it, whether it be Ben or… someone else. Someone who was now pissed off, maybe.


    And speaking of that ‘test’, incidentally…


    Myra could make a pretty good guess what the hell that thing was now. It had obviously been used to track her down, prompted by her decision to poke around about the beaver journal… That was what the police officers had been looking for, after all. And she could take a guess at just exactly what spell it had been, too.


    What did you expect, Myra? You kicked a hornet’s nest, and it’s a fucking miracle those hornets didn’t put a laser through your brain at 1:09 AM this morning.


    ◆


    The plan for this loop was to join the murk bogs again. This was too bad, since she had really been looking forward to two more weeks of not joining the murk bogs, and she was very annoyed at having that time cut short.


    But there was nothing for it. Joining the murk bogs was the best move right now; she needed more instruction on teleportation and infiltration, and she was pretty sure she could learn a lot now that she halfway knew what to expect.


    She had a somewhat packed checklist for the front of the loop. First, after getting Shera on board, she had to make the murk bogs aware she existed so they’d contact her in a few days just like the last time. She did that.


    Then, she had to go talk to Iz and position the time loop as a hypothetical mystery puzzle. This was extremely awkward this time around; it had worked a lot better when they’d needed something to do on the train. At least, she suspected (or hoped), that this part of the plan wasn’t very important compared to the beaver journal.


    After that, the plan was to go meet Lukai in Krinph, then go to Jewel City to get the journal, then go back to Ralkenon to give it to Iz, then wait.


    The anomalies began with that first step. Lukai never showed up.


    This put Myra completely out of sorts, and it had taken Shera to point out that Myra’s phone call to the murk bogs could have conceivably had some kind of butterfly effect that caused Lukai to not show up. It was an explanation that raised more questions than it answered, but it was the only explanation she had, short of Lukai being a looper.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Could he be a looper…? She wished she had a transcript of all the things he’d said to her.


    Assuming the answer was no, though… the result was that the trip to Krinph was completely pointless. Furthermore, they had to follow it up with a trip to Jewel City to get the journal, and Jewel City was completely in the opposite direction.


    Thus, she was in a cranky mood on the long train ride when the next anomaly showed up.


    “Have you ch-checked the paper yet?”


    “Oh no, I’ve been meaning to do it.”


    “There’s a trebuchet thing, like you were talking about.”


    “Oh, let me see.” She idly took the paper from Shera, preparing to skim it for the high points.


    The truth was, she didn’t think these could surprise her anymore.


    Break-in at Imperial Trebuchet Foiled


    At 6:51 A.M. this morning, alarms detected an intruder at the Raine Eastern Trebuchet (REaT) launch site in Kanre, Halnya. The intruder, a battlemage, escaped after a confrontation with the imperial army. The event saw four soldiers killed and a yet unknown number of wounded soldiers. The army has not been able to identify the intruder, and no description of the intruder has been reported. REaT reports that the intruder did not access the trebuchet at any time and that it took no significant damage. REaT did not comment on potential motives, but a spokesperson speculated that the intruder was after confidential documents or blueprints from a secure area. The launch site is expected to resume operations by Nov 9.


    “What the hell?” Myra hissed, and Shera flinched in surprise.


    “It looks normal to me. It’s like you d-described—”


    “Sorry, I realize it doesn’t look that weird on its own, but—well, this article is very much like the very first article I saw,” she explained. “The Raine Eastern Trebuchet was the very first one they attacked! And they successfully got what they were after from REaT on the third attempt! So why do they need to attack it again? And why did they fail again? They haven’t botched one of these intrusions in, I dunno, three or four loops.”


    The only difference between this article and the original one was that the new one didn’t quote Jay Thrustma.


    Myra ran a hand through her hair. “Why are they attacking the same one again? I don’t understand…”


    ◆


    Between all these oddities, she was filled with trepidation and unease when they prepared to break into Emmett Massiel’s house to steal the journal. It should have been pretty easy; after all, she knew exactly when it should be empty on the first few days of the loop thanks to the security log. She had managed the small heist several times already. That didn’t stop her from jittering and tapping her foot conspicuously.


    “You’ve d-done this before, right?” Shera asked, as they camped out near the house, waiting for the last investigator to leave.


    “Yeah, on the loop where I went to Tzurigad, I picked it up at around this time.”


    “You seem awf-awfully n-nervous about it.”


    “You can tell, huh?”


    The truth was, Myra had a terrible feeling that the book would be gone. If the shit from the last loop had made the looper aware of the book’s existence of significance, then it might cause them to go pick it up immediately. That was Myra’s logic.


    And shouldn’t the last investigator have left by now?


    She looked at her watch.


    No. He wasn’t supposed to leave for another minute and thirty seconds…


    Calm the hell down, Myra…


    She watched her watch for a while, then decided it probably wasn’t helping her nerves at all, so she put the watch away. A rebellious part of her brain immediately went to check the time according to the Common Library.


    “I’m just anxious about this journal,” she explained, half to herself and half to Shera. “I need it to convince Iz about the loop…”


    “D-does she not always believe you?”


    “No, she doesn’t,” Myra said. “Sorry, I guess I explained it badly earlier… you’re the only one who reliably believes me.”


    “M-me?”


    “Yeah.”


    “I’m reliable?” She looked down at her thumbs to hide her face, but Myra could see a faint smile even at this oblique angle.


    “Yeah, every time,” Myra confirmed. “Sometimes I screw it up and get off a bad foot, but you still believe me even then. And you’ve always been willing to follow me into dangerous stuff… I mean, even Iz said she’s not going to go mess with the murk bogs with me, but you hardly needed any convincing at all. Which is honestly incredibly brave of you.”


    Shera adjusted where she was sitting to be a bit closer to Myra, though in a kind of complicated way with extraneous movements that sort of disguised what she was doing. Myra checked the Common Library clock again.


    “Do you really think it won’t be there?”


    “I dunno. The empire flipped its shit about this book when I made one phone call about it, to the extent that they deployed some advanced new never-before-used empire-wide surveillance spell just to find me. They deployed their best assassin to fake my suicide, and—and who knows what happened after that.”


    “How do you know they never used it before?”


    “I kinda think we woulda noticed!”


    “Oh. R-right.” She tried to come up with something reassuring. “But you don’t know the looper culprit cares about this book.”


    “You’re right, I don’t.” She took a deep breath. “And even if they do care, they might not know where it is.”


    But still, the words from Ben’s note were etched in her mind.


    What had happened after she’d died? Who was pissed off about what?


    …


    Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise down by the house. The door was opening, and an imperial detective was exiting the scene. Myra breathed a sigh of relief.


    Not too big a sigh, admittedly; she didn’t let herself breathe easy until she got her hands on the journal, but despite all her worries, it was there where it always was.


    Now, I just have to hope Iz pulls through.