It was around the time that Victor resettled in Lacris-Cheree that Lori's mental exhaustion lifted at last. All at once Kyra had under her a full team of healthy disciples.

  And what a team they made. Together they cleared dungeons so fast that some nights they spent more time in the car than on the business side of the portals. Their growth was rapid too, though she wasn't sure if that came from teamwork or if it was the influence of having Victor on the team.

  There had also been no further trouble from Lorelei.

  Victor had rented a small house in a quiet outlying suburb, and it was there that they retired one evening to celebrate his rise to C-rank. He'd arranged the catering, and they were greeted on arrival with enough food to feed an entire village and its pets.

  After a couple of drinks, their tongues loosened up.

  "I can't believe he's already caught up with me," Tristis said. "Wasn't I supposed to be a prodigy? What does that make him—the Einstein of hunters?"

  "The Archimedes of hunters," Kyra said.

  "It's a quirk of the evaluation function," Lori said. "Appraisal puts more focus on combat prower . . . prower . . . powess. Defensive and utility abilities are undervalued. Like your healing, Tris."

  "The ranks get wider the higher we go," Victor said. He seemed to be the only one unaffected by the liquor. "Your C-rank is far above my C-rank. You must be bordering on B-rank."

  "And don't forget that we've been picking dungeons for the benefit of your fellow disciples," Kyra added. "Your development has been hampered as a result, but now that they're catching up, you should start seeing your own growth accelerate."

  Lori poked Tristis. "What she means is that I'm the one holding you back, since I'm the straggling D-ranker."

  While the comment appeared to have been intended as a self-deprecating joke, Kyra kept a closer eye on Lori. She wasn't convinced that the girl had completely gotten past the hang-ups she'd developed during her long stint of mental exhaustion.

  "You know who I miss seeing?" Tristis said. "Fenne."

  "Who's Fenne?" Victor asked.

  "Our master's pet," Lori replied. "He's got three tails now, did you know?"

  "Three?" Tristis did some mental calculations. "That means he's at C-rank now? Not only am I at risk of being overtaken by a junior disciple, but also someone who never leaves the house?"

  It was odd seeing the young man call Victor his junior, considering that the soldier had ten years on him.

  "His appetite keeps getting worse," Kyra said. "I have to keep all the mystic orbs in dimensional storage now because someone kept letting him into the containers where he gobbled them all up."

  "He gets hungry!" Lori protested. "I don't understand how you can just ignore his begging like that."

  "He gets plenty of regular food," she replied. "The orbs are just a treat."

  "They make his coat smooth and silky," Lori said.

  There was no use arguing with Lori when it came to Fenne. The girl spoiled him like a puppy.

  "I'd like to meet Fenne someday," Victor said.

  "Nice try," Kyra said. "I know what you're doing."

  "How is it any worse than letting Lori live with you?" he pointed out.

  She gave this some consideration. "You're right. It won't be long now before the world will know all your faces, and the less they can connect me to you, the better." She looked out to the hallway. "How many bedrooms have you got here, Victor?"

  "Thanks a lot, Victor," Lori grumbled. "Now I'll no longer get to see Fenne."

  "Wait a minute," Tristis interjected. "If we want maximum secrecy, wouldn't it be better if Lori moved in with me? There are already people out there who can connect me and her, but not so much her and Victor."

  "How will you explain it to your parents?" Kyra asked.

  "I won't have to." Tristis grinned. "I've got my own place now."

  "You make a compelling case," Kyra said.

  "Don't I get a say in this?" Lori demanded.

  They all looked at her.

  Under the weight of their stares, Lori mumbled, "I want to stay with Fenne."

  Later in the evening, Kyra made an excuse to shuffle over to the TV, leaving her disciples drinking among themselves. She put on a film about memory alteration and something about turning the atmosphere of some other planet blue. But she wasn't really paying attention as she drifted in and out of meditative practice, using the background noise to train her ability to focus against distractions.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  When she next pulled out of her trance, her disciples were arguing over the nature of time travel.

  "You don't understand," Lori said, heavily slurred. "There are only three ways—three ways!—time travel can work in reality."

  Lori held up a shaky finger. "Number one! There's the . . . there's the multiverse, right? Every time our master jumps back in time, she's actually traveling to another identical multi . . . identical universe. The future in that one will change. But that leaves us behind in the doomed multi . . . multi . . . doomed one."

  "I don't like number one," Victor said.

  "We don't get to choose!" Lori cried.

  "What's number two?"

  "The stat . . . stat . . . static timeline. This one's popular in movies. Your actions after traveling back in time are already baked . . . baked into the timeline. Nothing changes, and in fact . . . in fact . . . your efforts to change it are what makes it fall into place."

  "But Kyra is changing the future every time she regresses," Victor said.

  "Right. Number two sucks. Throw it out!" Lori swung her arms dramatically, knocking some empty bottles to the floor.

  "I hope you saved the best for last," Victor said while picking up the fallen bottles.

  Lori grinned. "Number three. Time travel rewrites the entire universe! But only in the present. You aren't traveling to the past but, like . . . like . . . like copying and pasting from the past onto today."

  "That can't be right," Tristis said. "All three options are terrible."

  Victor nodded in agreement. "What about the one where she just travels by herself into the past?"

  Lori shook her head vigorously. "Guys, guys, guys. It has to be one of those three possi . . . posse . . . options."

  "Number three can't be right," Tristis said. "Imagine someone traveling into the future. How do they know what to copy and paste onto the present?"

  "It doesn't matter." Lori sounded annoyed. "We aren't talking about traveling to the future. That works differently. Like, we can do it now. Without magic. You just hop into a spaceship and zoom really fast and when you get back, it's a thousand years in the future or whatever."

  "But that isn't instantaneous," Tristis said. "You'd still age on the spaceship, wouldn't you?"

  Lori shrugged. "I guess you can get cryo . . . cry . . . frogurt."

  "But time still passes. You just aren't aging," Tristis said.

  "Enough with the science," Victor said. "What's important is, you're telling us that every time Kyra regresses, she's rewriting the entire universe?"

  "Or jumping into another one," Lori said.

  "That one seems more plausible," Tristis said.

  "That one's terrible," Victor said firmly. "It means she'd basically be abandoning us."

  "If we fail, we fail," Lori said. "At least some other multi . . . multi . . . one gets a chance."

  "Then we can't afford to fail," Victor said.

  "What about small jumps?" Tristis asked. "Like if she hops back three days to alert us to a major catastrophe?"

  "Every jump," Lori said. "Length doesn't matter."

  While Tristis blushed, Kyra decided to interject. "You can rule out the first option."

  Lori turned to her with a look of genuine curiosity. "How are you so sure?"

  She'd given the matter a lot of thought because Benny's regression powers had always made her uneasy. In theory it was a tool at her disposal. But did it ever make sense for her to make use of it?

  The static timeline was easy to rule out. The simple fact that she was alive now disproved it, as in every other timeline she'd died at the foot of that mountain. With the exception of the previous Kyra of course.

  As for the multiverse theory, it was just a matter of probability. A theory like that can never be ruled out completely, but Kyra considered herself a pragmatic person. If Benny was taken to a new universe every time he regressed, then in all the multiverse, there were millions of Kyras who died at the foot of that mountain and only two who were saved. What were the odds she'd be one of the lucky ones?

  And it didn't end at the mountain. Every single time jump that he made since would leave a Kyra behind in an abandoned timeline.

  If she believed in this possibility, then it never made sense for her to ask Benny to use his powers. Because being the one to ask automatically meant that she would be the one left behind. Taking it to its logical conclusion, it meant that she had to get everything right the first time. There were no second chances. Not for her.

  But she couldn't tell her disciples any of this.

  "You all remember the rule about not talking about time travel with anyone outside of this room, don't you?" she said. "Not even a whisper of the possibility. Not now, and especially not in the future when the entire world knows about magic."

  Once they'd all reaffirmed their promises, she continued with the alternative explanation she'd prepared.

  "Imagine if I used my ability and regressed a day into the past. Your timeline would continue without me. But where do I end up? A universe that's identical to this one all the way up to yesterday, down to having an exact copy of myself."

  Lori was already furrowing her brows trying to figure out where she was going with this, while the other two just waited patiently for her to continue.

  Lori jumped in. "That other universe must be offset from ours by a day . . . Oh! I get it now. It means you must drop in and take over from the other Kyra. And . . . and replace her mind with yours."

  The girl frowned as it began filtering into her drunk brain that she was discussing the complete erasure and replacement of someone's mind.

  "That's disgusting," Victor said.

  "That's philosophy," Lori replied.

  But Lori wasn't done. "Probabilitywise, the more Kyra time travels, the more likely we are to find ourselves in the abandoned timeline. So the more she sticks around, the more we can rule this one out."

  "That's enough, Lori," Tristis cut in. "Think of the position you're putting our master in. We can't have her worried about how she might be abandoning us in a doomed universe whenever she uses her powers."

  "I'm sure she's thought about this all before," Lori said. "None of it should be new to her."

  "Can we even be sure those are the only three possibilities?" Tristis said. "What about the simple one where she just moves back to an earlier point in the timeline in the same universe?"

  "Can't happen," Lori said. "That leads to para . . . para . . . paradoxes. If you don't like option one, then only option three remains. She rewrites the entire universe in the present."

  This was the same conclusion Kyra had settled on. It seemed fantastical, but really, wasn't that what magic was? Time travel of any kind had to be the most incredible power in all of creation.

  Yet it had never been enough to save the human race. As long as she could keep the timeline going and keep Benny from overwriting it, she would eventually get to see what the insurmountable obstacle was. She had some thoughts on it, but if she was honest with herself, she didn't like her odds of overcoming it—even with a regressor by her side.

  Then what were her odds without a regressor?

  Because as much as this mode of time travel suited her better than all the others, it wasn't enough to put her at ease about making use of Benny's powers. Letting him rewrite the world meant that her mind and memories would be overwritten with a copy from the past. Was that new person still really her?

  While she was lost in thought, her disciples had been talking, and now Tristis turned to her. "I want you to know that however your power actually works, I have no objection to you using it as you see fit. I'm ready to carry the burden, whatever the consequences may be."

  Victor said, "Me too."

  Lori shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  Without taking her eyes off her second disciple, Kyra said, "I'm glad. But don't worry. I'm going to try not to use it at all."