Chapter XL (40)

  After hours upon hours of trial and error of reverting every bit of her cell with her Mend spell, Mitsuko finally had a breakthrough. She had discovered pretty early on that after letting some time pass, she could recast Mend on objects. There was what Sterling referred to as a ‘cooldown’ but it wasn’t nearly as long as what she reverted. Only an hour or so for most inanimate objects. And that particular effect was lessened considerably for her own body, letting her revert wounds after only about fifteen minutes after her last use of the spell on herself. And the cooldown was something that Sterling mentioned would lessen as she leveled.

  So, with that knowledge, she walked around, casting her spell on everything. Well, almost everything. She did eat the food the guards delivered to her. Reverting a sweet potato soup back into yam wouldn’t help her in any conceivable way.

  She managed to remove the enchantments from her cell bars. But that didn’t help her much since temporal spells were already immune to most antimagic. But then, finally, she cast her spell and the stone above one of the cell’s bars turned into paste and the bar dislocated itself from its position. Suspended by an invisible former carrier, the bar of metal floated down the hall where it clanged into the jail door. Thankfully, no one appeared to notice. At least, nobody that would arrest her.

  “Damn, you actually did it,” Xeri said as Mitsuko squeezed out through the gap where the missing bar used to be. “How about me next?”

  “Sorry,” Mitsuko said. “It took me hours to manage that. I think they’ll be back with dinner long before I finish a second time.”

  “Ah, oh well then. I suppose waiting out my sentence of another two weeks won’t be that bad.”

  “Any tips about The Terror?”

  “They’re supposed to be heading to Verdant tomorrow. Well, whatever ‘tomorrow’ means. You get it.”

  “Yeah. Semantics.” Mitsuko glanced at the rat that followed her from her cell. She expected Sterling to speak up about the importance of semantics or something similar, but his body just wheezed in a gulp of air as he collapsed at her feet. She took pity on him and lifted him to a pocket.

  “Thank…you…” he said between gasps of breath. Which was a bit weird, since he didn’t actually use the rat’s lungs to speak to her. But she was not going to waste her one available question on that of all things.

  “Good luck!” Xeri called after her. “And if you see my ex, stab him for me too, won’t ya?”

  The door leading out of the jail room was surprisingly unlocked. As Mitsuko passed through it, she snatched up her metal bar from her cell. Better to have at least some sort of weapon. And she could do worse than a solid steel rod.

  Ideally, Mitsuko would locate her things and reclaim her ring, but that was wishful thinking. The priority was simply ‘escape.’

  Now that she’d traveled in and out of the guard post a few different times, she had a pretty decent internal map of the halls. She navigated her way over to a window and was unsurprised to find it locked. While they probably didn’t suspect a prison break from the magicless girl they’d apprehended, it was still a prison. Keeping windows locked was the bare minimum.

  A few weeks earlier Mitsuko would have used her metal pipe to pry the window open. Now though, she waved a hand in its direction and cast Mend. The lock clicked and it popped open, having been opened just a few hours earlier.

  She slipped out the window and crossed the courtyard. After a quick search around, she approached the stone wall that surrounded the guard post. While the alarm enchantments on the wall had originally been placed many, many years ago. The wall wasn’t a true artifact and the enchantments required regular maintenance to keep them active. Mitsuko cast Mend and carefully turned back time on the portion of wall in front of her until she spotted it. The smallest sliver of time where the enchanters had been at work and they’d disabled the enchantments at this spot to reapply them. And just like that, the enchantment was gone. Mitsuko climbed over easily enough and dropped to the freedom of the city’s alleys.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It was a tall wall, and she rolled her ankle as she landed a tad incorrectly. But a quick cast of Mend and she was strolling away as if nothing had happened. In barely more than a minute after escaping her cell, she was walking through the crowds, once again completely anonymous. Magic truly made life so easy.

  “Do you have an objective?” Sterling asked from her pocket. “Will you pursue the guardian on this island, or go on to Verdant?”

  That was the question. She was on the fence. On one hand, leaving and letting the loop reset before investigation on Mauve sounded like a peaceful option. It would be nice to explore a new island. But then again, freeing this island’s sage before moving on would keep her from getting overwhelmed by options and allow her to start progressing another spell.

  “I don’t know,” Mitsuko answered honestly. “I think we first go to The Terror and see what we can do from there.”

  “You have connections from your first loop? The one I was not privy to.”

  “Of a sort. It’s how I got over to Ashen Island. But it might not be as easy this time.”

  “Because of your criminal record?”

  “Because Wan is catatonic in his room over at Fairy’s Grotto. I don’t have enough money to bribe them. I doubt they’ll care much that I got arrested and am on the run. If anything, they might sell me out if they find out.”

  “An interesting predicament. Acquiring funding hardly seems a simple objective at the moment. Unless of course you are considering thievery.”

  “I…never even thought of that.”

  “You are certainly odd. Willing to take advantage of the lack of consequences to murder your ex lover but not even stopping to consider taking a few coins. You realize everything here is temporary, correct?”

  “He deserved to die. I might even do it in reality after this is over. He deserves to slowly decay at the bottom of the sea. But other people are innocent. That’s stealing their livelihoods. Stealing their time.”

  “As far as you are aware. Everyone is evil in a certain fashion under the correct lighting. We all have skeletons we wish buried and regrets that linger to haunt forever in our minds.”

  “They’re innocent to me,” Mitsuko amended. “And that’s a downer philosophy. I think you’re projecting your own insecurities on everyone.”

  “While I admit it perhaps a tad macabre, I happen to be in a bit of a dour mood at the moment.”

  “You’re in a bad mood?” Mitsuko stopped in the street to glare down at the rat poking his head out of her pocket. “I got ambushed by my ex and murdered him. Which I admit felt a bit therapeutic. But then I had to clench my teeth as my murderous father performed a clown-show of trying to act innocent of killing my mother.”

  “I recall. I remind you that I died in that little therapy escapade of yours.”

  “Good. Your stupid loop has already killed me three times already. About time you reap what you sow.”

  “Those deaths would be permanent without my genius engineering. You should be grateful of my high intellect. Very, very few can boast returning to life after death. And the minority that can claim it threefold? Near nonexistent.”

  “I never would have died at all if not for you!”

  “Perhaps. But now you will live because of me. The power we sages grant is of far greater worth than the trade of a few deaths.”

  Some people gave Mitsuko weird looks as she argued with the rat in her pocket, but nobody stopped to ask her about it. Mitsuko would do the same in their position. She was wearing dirty clothes stained in her ex’s blood, walking around with a metal pole like it was a walking stick, and talking to a rat. Not someone most people were inclined to stop and make small talk with. And, unfortunately, she was also someone that needed to steer clear of any city guards. Which meant she needed to stop making a scene and continue on.

  Once down at the docks, Mitsuko had a decision to make. Try to appeal to Captain Alina, or turn back and go to the circus. It might be harder though this time to stay incognito among the circus members since she was absolutely guilty and the guards knew exactly what she looked like.

  She sat, legs dangling over the edge of the dock and considered. She debated ways she might use the information about Sett’s mutiny to gain Captain Alina’s favor. But she had no evidence of his plans. And the captain didn’t seem one to take her at her word. If Mitsuko didn’t need immediate assistance off the island, it might be possible with some coaxing and planning. But she saw no way forward at the moment.

  Then she noticed one of the sailors carrying a large wooden crate. He had to be using enhancement spells to hold the thing, and even still it looked like he struggled to maintain a grip on it.

  Then it clicked. She looked back at the other piles of crates. Cargo that would soon be on their way to Viridian Island.

  The loop currently showed no sign of improvement. Why not take another little risk?

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