Chapter XX (20)

  It took an entire day before they were able to navigate out of the city. Holly used several extremely complex divinations to get them pointed in the right direction and when they reached the city’s outskirts, they decided to hunker down in a building, rather than start bushwacking through the forest. It took searching a dozen different homes before they found one without people frozen in stasis. Neither of them felt comfortable sleeping with people trapped in time in the room next door.

  As she lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling above her, Mitsuko wondered what had happened to the people of the abandoned house. It was in fine condition, so it hadn’t been abandoned before the disaster struck. Perhaps the residents were out of town on a vacation? Or maybe at their work. But then she wondered about the people who had been in the now empty streets? Had they decayed? Why were only the people seen inside buildings? Even in the dead of night, cities had people out and about. Nobody looked panicked. They showed no signs of being under martial law or anything similar. So many questions. And her ‘guide’ Sterling had been next to useless. Well, perhaps that wasn’t fair. He had granted her a wealth of context. But for every piece of the puzzle he helped uncover, he revealed half a dozen more places with missing pieces.

  Level up. Free another sage. Level up some more. Get free. That was their route to salvation.

  Then Mitsuko’s mind wandered to what her next question should be. A lot of options competed for that. She didn’t regret asking about Holly, but now that Mitsuko had more time to ponder, she thought she might be able to think of something that could help her accelerate along her path. Those thoughts all continued to dimly compete for attention as her body shut down and she nodded off to sleep.

  It felt like minutes when she jerked awake to Holly shaking her.

  “There’s a problem,” Holly said.

  Those words snapped Mitsuko awake. She flew out of her bed, tossing her sheets to the side and attempted to flick her wrist to create a sword, only to be harshly reminded of her mangled wrist. The swift movement tore through the scabbed over wound, sending spikes of pain down her arm. And she never even completed the movement, so she remained weaponless.

  “Where?” Mitsuko asked through gritted teeth.

  Holly smacked her shoulder. “Chill out, Mitsuko. A problem doesn’t always mean some enraged hydra threatening to turn us into delectable little snacks.”

  “We’ve fought hydras. They’re all over in Edgeland. That’s something I know we can handle. I doubt whatever problem you’ve found is as simple as a hydra in our path.”

  Holly sighed dramatically. “It’s more of a hiccup in our plans. We just need to talk about it.”

  Mitsuko rubbed her eyes with her good hand. She was awake now, but her body’s weariness pressed down on her.

  “You woke me up for a hiccup?”

  “You’ve been sleeping for over twelve hours,” Holly said defensively. “I also just got bored of waiting for you.”

  Mitsuko hesitated. If anyone would know the current time despite the dome, it would be Holly.

  “Really? Damn. I’m still so tired.”

  “Good news then. We might now have plenty of time to rest. Unless you know of a way to get through the barrier.”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “The one cutting us off from the rest of the world?” Mistuko asked.

  “The one cutting us off from the rest of the island.”

  Rather than explaining, Holly escorted Mitsuko out of the house and out of the town. Up to a wall of swirling gray ash that stretched as far as the eye could see. About twenty or so meters high the density of the wind and ash thinned, but neither of them was capable of flying.

  Mitsuko pressed a hand against the whirling ash. She penetrated it, but could feel resistance pushing against her. It rejected her and attempted to expel her backwards. And she knew the moment she entered it fully, she would lose her way. Perhaps she could navigate with her compass spell? But no, she might have the mass to fight it, but Holly would get chucked right back out.

  “This stretches around the entire city?” Mitsuko asked.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  This was the reason the city remained so undisturbed. Nothing could pierce through this barrier of wind and ash easily. And if the pyramid’s spatial teleportation only activated after the loops began, then it would be difficult for anyone to ever discover this hidden city.

  “Any ideas?” Holly asked.

  “Could you counter it with antimagic?”

  “You know I don’t specialize in spatial spells,” Holly replied. “I’m not Kizu. And I wonder if he would even be powerful enough to dismantle something like this with antimagic.”

  “Let’s head back to the house,” Mitsuko suggested. “We can bounce ideas off one another there.”

  Once back, they helped themselves to the perfectly preserved fruit. Mitsuko leaned back on the back two legs of her chair and wiped juice from her chin with a sleeve. She wondered if these unfamiliar fruits had been grown in the surrounding forests. Could this all be from before the ash destroyed the forests of the island? Or perhaps it had been imported from another island. This was an ancient fruit that might no longer exist anymore. She grabbed another from the basket on the table and passed it from hand to hand before biting into it. Regardless of its origins, it was tasty.

  Holly paced back and forth in the dining room, muttering to herself about contacting others with divination spells.

  Mitsuko debated telling Holly everything. Being trapped in the city was bad. But if Sterling was to be believed, they would be restored to the exact time and placement of their entry in the archipelago at the end of the week. Time would repeat itself another fifty times. So they were in no real danger. They could hunker down here, train, and discuss what Mitsuko’s next steps should be.

  Two things held her tongue. The first was her reluctance to believe Sterling. If he was lying, they’d waste the better part of a week sitting around when they could be using that time to try to free themselves. But, more than that, she was worried how Holly would react. Her friend could probably divine the truth to know that Mitsuko’s words were honest. Or, at least that she believed herself to be honest. Truth detection didn’t help much if you considered someone an unreliable source of information. That was the ultimate disadvantage of truth detections. A madman could still state that the moon would fall from the sky in three days and the divination would mark it as a truth.

  Then there was also a nagging insecurity holding her back from accepting Sterling’s words. Everything about the situation made logical sense. Except…Mitsuko wasn’t a mage. That simple fact had imprinted itself into her very being. Once, in a battle of spellcraft, a literal monkey had held his own and needed to step in on her behalf to save her from getting herself blown to pieces by a necromancer.

  Her grip tightened around a new fruit and it squished in her hand, her fingers piercing the skin and burrowing into the meat of the fruit. Juice leaked out like sticky blood. She stared at it. Then she loosened her grip and cast Mend on it. The pulp slipped out from under her fingernails and rejoined the rest as the fruit reassembled itself. Her fingers were once again clean.

  She did that. She could cast a spell. And that wasn’t all she could do either. She wasn’t the same idiotic girl that needed to be saved by a monkey. That fight had been her true wake up call. The next day, she picked up a sword for the first time.

  Swords. An outdated method of killing. But one that called to her. A talent. An archaic technique, just like her use of temporal magic. That small similarity brought a wave of comfort and a smile to her face.

  “What are you grinning about?” Holly whirled on her. “Did you come up with something?”

  Mitsuko set the unblemished fruit to the side and drummed her now clean fingertips on the table. Then suddenly something did occur to her. It was stupid and might get them killed. But she’d already experienced one death in this city, why not risk another?

  15 more chapters on my !! I'll be uploading daily!