The opponent they had been fighting hadn’t been the third time traveler in person. It had been merely an ectoplasmic shell infused with some of his skill and magic. A simulacrum, meant to test the waters and distract them.
A cone of purple light washed over the room, instantly slaying all of the human mercenaries and scores of her loyal aranea. Damnation — their opponent had taken advantage of the distraction their simulacrum had provided and set up an ambush of his own. She turned to sound a retreat to-
Zorian jolted awake from his trance as his connection to the matriarch had been violently severed at the end. Watching the events unfold from her perspective had been strange and mildly unpleasant, and Zorian would have to talk to the matriarch later about doing stuff like that without asking for permission, but considering the sudden end of the transmission? The matriarch was probably dead. And the rest of the aranea would probably soon be as well.
They failed. All that preparation and they had still failed. Damn it.
«Zorian?» a raspy voice from the floor near him broke him out of his thoughts. It was Zach, who was apparently conscious again, a heavy bandage wrapped around his head. «You with us again? You kind of drifted off for a while.»
«Yeah,» Zorian breathed out. «I’m… fine.»
«They say you killed the lich,» Zach said, pointing weakly towards a pile of black bones some distance away from them. A couple of braver students were clustered around the fallen body of the lich, whispering and pointing. «How the hell did you manage to do that?»
«I severed the connection between his soul and his physical vessel, thereby causing it to snap back into his phylactery. He’s not really dead, just banished.»
«Oh,» Zach said. «Still, that’s… I never managed to do anything even close to that. How… how is it that you knew how to do that? You… are you…»
«I need to go,» said Zorian, rising to his feet.
«Hey wait!» Zach said, trying to rise up before wincing in pain and giving up on that idea. «You can’t just ignore me and go- Zorian! Zorian!»
Zorian ignored Zach, as well as Akoja’s questions about where he was going. He just continued towards the exit, mentally plotting the path to the nearest sewer entrance. Nobody moved to stop him.
«Zorian, you ass! I swear I’m going to punch you in the face the next time I see you!» Zach shouted behind him.
«Sorry, Zach,» Zorian whispered to himself. «But this takes precedence.»
By the time Zorian had arrived to the aranean settlement, the whole place was dead, and Red Robe had moved on somewhere. Probably to hunt down any fleeing aranea that had scattered into the city — Zorian knew that a number of aranea were above ground at the time the ambush had been taking place. Whatever the reason, Zorian thanked his good fortune and started examining the place for additional clues about what had happened and for any surviving male aranea.
The fight had been fierce, but Zorian couldn’t help but notice that most of the damage to the settlement had been inflicted by the aranea themselves, as they futilely tried to halt Red Robe’s advance through the use of the spell cubes he had gifted them and their own traps. Red Robe killed incredibly cleanly, leaving no mark of damage on the bodies of the fallen — it was those strange purple spells obviously, but why was he taking such pains to kill all the aranea so bloodlessly when he could just chuck a fireball and fry the lot of them?
He was thorough, though. Zorian didn’t know whether the man was unaware that the aranea males were not intelligent or simply didn’t care, but quite a lot of males ran afoul of his desire to kill as many aranea as possible. This thoroughness was another strange thing — the man hadn’t seemed hysterical or furious back in the dance hall, so why was he so insistent on getting every last aranea before the time loop was done? He even wiped out the children’s crèche, for gods’ sake! Yes, obviously killing them all would ensure that he got any time travelers amongst them for sure, but still — they would all be back in the next restart anyway.
Disturbing. Even though the emotional impact of seeing an entire settlement butchered down to the last child was blunted somewhat by their obvious non-human anatomy, Zorian was still sickened and disturbed by the cold-hearted brutality of the third time traveler.
Well. Maybe the matriarch’s message from beyond the grave would provide some answers. With the help of his divination compass and his mind sense, he slowly tracked down the surviving males one by one and extracted the pieces of the message they held.
There were two parts of the message, Zorian soon realized. The first was a simple narration — a voice message left to him by the matriarch explaining her actions. The second was a detailed map of Cyoria’s underworld, with several locations marked as important. Both messages were incomplete, due to the thoroughness with which Red Robes hunted down the aranea, and the matriarch seemed to prioritize the map as more important, since several males had redundant copies of some of the sections of the map.
As the time loop inexorably inched towards its end, Zorian took stock of what he had managed to piece together.
[Missing] …mean things went awry. I know you think I had it coming by rushing into this but… [Missing] …simple: the time loop is degrading. I can’t tell how long it will be before… [Missing] …can leave at any time. Thus, stopping him was… [Missing] …can only ever be one winner in this game. I am truly… [Missing] …hope it won’t be necessary, but just in case I put in a map to… [Missing] …whole other continent. I didn’t think it was possible, even with the help of… [Missing]
That was it. The map was also full of holes, although Zorian noted he still currently had what was an incredibly accurate map of Cyoria’s underworld by commercially-available standards.
Before he could really consider the message at length, the loop ended and everything went dark.
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-!» Kirielle began, only to get cut off as Zorian immediately shot upright into a sitting position, sweeping Kirielle into a crushing hug. The suddenness of the motion shocked Kirielle into a few seconds of silence as Zorian took several deep breaths to calm himself down.
«What’s wrong?» Kirielle asked, wriggling inside his grip but not really trying to break free of his hold. Zorian promptly let her go and tried to think of a good answer. He failed to think of any.
«N-Nothing,» he exhaled. «It’s just a nightmare. I’m sorry for worrying you.»
And it really was a nightmare. All their manipulation and preparations, all his combat practice, all the tricks he had thought of, and they still lost. They lost miserably. The aranea… they had been hunted down like stray dogs and massacred. Why? What could the third time traveler hope to accomplish with such pointless brutality? And the message the matriarch had left him didn’t explain much of anything, either.
«Like I was really worried,» she huffed, giving him a sharp poke and jumping away from him. «Mother wants to talk to you so you better hurry down.»
«Right,» Zorian said, getting up and making a motion towards the door. Predictably, Kirielle sped away to occupy the bathroom, and Zorian immediately locked the door to his room once she was gone and started pacing around like a caged tiger.
He needed to warn the aranea, and he needed to warn them as soon as possible. He wasn’t going to bring Kirielle with him this time and the moment the train disembarked in Cyoria he was… no, no, no. That was too slow. Far too slow. Considering Red Robe’s actions in the previous restart, and the fact that he ‘knew’ they were time travelers now, Zorian wouldn’t put it past him to butcher them all at the start of the restart this time.