Chapter Text
“‘Sup, The Ball?”
Riz jumps onto the back of the Hangman and locks his arms around Fabian.
“Oh, I’m just stuck in a time loop with no escape and I have no way of knowing how to keep my friends alive during the day, let alone how to solve the loop.”
Fabian cranes his head over his shoulder and regards Riz with amusement and a touch of concern. “Really?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Then let’s work the problem,” Fabian says.
Riz is floored. He answered Fabian’s question with the truth without thinking much about it. He didn’t actually think it would help fix things. He didn’t think Fabian would believe him, let alone offer to help him with his predicament. But he did. Instantly, and without a fuss.
Fabian kicks off and starts the drive but Riz notices he keeps the speed slower than usual so they can talk over the wind.
“Careful, up here,” Riz shouts. “You died in a wreck at this intersection a few days ago.”
Riz feels Fabian swallow thickly. He slows by another few miles per hour. “Right.”
“Otherwise, you don’t really have to worry until six tonight. You’ve survived every other day up until the dragon attack—”
“The dragon attack, right.”
“—unless you were the mystery death yesterday. I don’t know how I could tell. I just know one of you died at three in the afternoon. So maybe watch out for exposed wires, assassins, or wild animals around that time of day today.”
“Right.”
Now that Riz’s mouth is open, he doesn’t know how to close it. “Just in general, actually, if you could look out for yourself, that would be super helpful. It’s, uh, a little exhausting watching and waiting for one of your friends to die every single day.”
“How many loops have you been through so far?”
“Only eleven. Or an eternal eleven. Depends on how you frame it.”
Riz hears Fabian suck in air between his teeth.
“Fuck, The Ball.”
Riz rests his head on Fabian’s back. “Yeah,” he says quietly, voice lost on the wind.
Riz fills Fabian in on what he’s learned so far:
The loop ends ten minutes after a Bad Kid dies.
He keeps his memories of the loops but no one else seems to.
When the loop resets, he wakes up in bed in the morning at 7:25 a.m. with Fabian waiting in the parking lot.
A dragon attacks the school, every evening, at 6:00 p.m.
Riz hasn’t died yet, though he’s very curious to know what happens if he does. Almost curious enough to try it. Fabian smacks his arm so hard that it bruises when Riz tells him that. He gets it. He doesn’t like thinking about his friends dying either.
He and Fabian miss first period going over his notes and theorizing. Riz is full of gratitude for someone to bounce his ideas off of. He welcomes the hypotheses from Fabian as well, even if he doesn’t agree with them.
“What if it’s some sort of test?” Fabian offers.
“What if it’s endless torture with no point whatsoever?” Riz replies, tiredly.
“What if you have to pray to a god for help?”
“What if I have to die?” Riz knows that it’s coming and he makes sure to dodge Fabian’s hand reaching out to slap him.
Fabian scowls. “That wouldn’t be much of a time loop, then. Just a boring old death sentence.”
“Who knows, maybe someone is trying to kill me.”
“This would be an unnecessarily complex way of doing that, The Ball.”
Riz sighs and cushions his head on his hands. “Yeah. I guess.”
Silence holds in the air between them but, just before Riz prepares to stand up and head to second period, Fabian speaks.
“Will you tell me every time?”
“What?”
“Every morning that you reset. I’ll forget, right? But I don’t, uh—I don’t want to think about you going through this alone. So will you tell me again?”
Riz feels his eyes start burning and his vision blurs. He didn’t stop to think about how much it would hurt, now that he had opened up to someone about everything, when they forget it all the next morning.
“Sure,” Riz says, unsure if he’s telling the truth or simply appeasing the earnest look in Fabian’s eye. “I’ll tell you.”
Fabian blows out a breath and gives Riz a relieved smile. “Good. The others would do the same, you know. None of us would let one of the others knowingly go through this without support. Bad Kids for life, right?”
The school bell rings.
“Right,” Riz says and he manages a smile.
Riz lets Fig skip second period, not willing to watch her die to a giant wasp sting again. He doesn’t pay much attention to class himself though, instead, writing down everything he can remember, everything he knows, and everything he and Fabian discussed today.
He knows the notes will disappear tomorrow but he wants to practice getting it all down so, if he needs to in the future, he’ll be able to whip up a copy of the notes in no time at all.
His work bleeds into lunch period. He keeps his head down and his pencil on the pages. He writes down every conversation he’s had to the best of his ability. He does skip over his breakdowns with his mom and Jawbone. Those are a little too personal to put down on paper.
When the lunch bell rings, he looks up and realizes he didn’t talk to the other Bad Kids about the dragon attack.
“Oh, shit, guys, can we stay here for a bit?”
“Hmm? It’s time for class, Riz,” Adaine says, simply.
“Right, but I have to talk to you about something.”
Gorgug speaks quietly. “I heard there’s going to be a pop quiz in Self Care. We can’t miss that, man.”
“No, but this is important—”
“Gotta go! I’ve got classes to skip and cloves to smoke.” Fig skips out of the cafeteria without looking back. Riz raises his hand as if to stop her but knows it's a useless act.
“Fuck,” he mumbles. He knows what’s going to happen tonight.
It hurts the most when all five of them die together, Riz decides.
He stands over five corpses and looks at his watch. Nine minutes left.
He’s noticed that he cries about half the time and feels too numb to cry, the other half. This loop is a crying loop. He would think that he would be divorced from the sadness, from the grief, at this point but it hurts every time to see his friends’ bodies.
Riz looks over the roof of the school and tries to convince himself not to jump.
He doesn’t want to die. Not at all. He just wants to know what will happen. If the trigger for the reset is a Bad Kid dying, does he count? Would he reset ten minutes into his corpse cooling on the ground? Would he wake back up?
He hovers one foot over the air.
Would he never wake up again?
He thinks about the look in Fabian’s eye when Riz mentioned testing this theory. He thinks about the anger, the fear, and the abject sadness. He plants his foot back on the rooftop.
What if he never wakes up? He would leave his mother without a son. He would leave his friends with a hole in their party that could never be filled. He would leave a grief behind him, persistent and severe. He would leave the hearts of his loved ones aching and raw.
He couldn’t do that to them.
He turns around and crouches by Fabian’s body. Will you tell me again? Fabian had asked of him.
Riz takes a deep breath in and out and feels his ribcage shake with the effort. It would be painful and discouraging to wake up tomorrow and see a Fabian who didn’t remember Riz opening up to him. It would be hard but Riz had to make himself tell him again. He had to trust that his friend would help him again.
He lays down on the ground and looks up at the dark clouds. Just a few minutes left. Just a few more minutes to mourn before he has to switch gears.
He lets himself be consumed by his fears, his sadness, and his desperation. He lets himself wallow in hopelessness.
Riz closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he’s in his bed at home.
“Honey? I can hear your friend’s motorcycle downstairs.”
He prepares himself with a deep, calming breath. This is the one. This is the one where he wins.
“Fabes, listen, I’m in a time loop. I’ve told you before, you told me to tell you again. I’m gonna tell you everything; I’ve got notes. Wait, shit, I don’t have notes yet. I’ll write notes. There’s a dragon. You all die. You won’t, I mean. This time you won’t.”
“The Ball?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t understand half of what you just said but we’ve got this.”
Fabian must see something desperate in his eyes. He meets Riz’s anxious intensity with his own cool confidence. It’s everything Riz needs.
“Yeah. This time, you won’t die.” This time, I won’t have to mourn anyone, he thinks. This time, things will be different. This time, this time, this time.
Riz goes on. “Want to skip first period and work the problem?”
Fabian looks over his shoulder to smile at Riz. “Of course.”
Riz smiles back.
“Thank you,” he breathes. “Keep your eyes on the road, though. I don’t want to see you crushed under a truck again.”
Fabian’s smile drops and he whips around, slowing the Hangman considerably. He looked genuinely distraught, either at the idea of his death or the idea of Riz having to witness it. Riz can’t decide which.
“Thank you,” Riz says again, too quietly to hear. He has hope. For the first time in awhile, he has actual, genuine hope.
He sits in the library and writes as fast as he can. He’s grateful for his near-eidetic memory so that he can quickly replicate the version of his notes that he wrote yesterday.
“Fuck, The Ball.”
“Yup.”
“What loop are you on?”
“Only twelve.” Riz keeps writing, Fabian reading over his shoulder. Fabian inhales sharply through his teeth.
“Only…”
“Well, it’ll stop on twelve so I don’t have to dwell on it for too much longer. This’ll be the last one. Listen, you have to study up. I already stopped you dying on the road and Adaine dying to Aenid. Next up is Fig dying in class. All I have to do is let her skip.”
“Okay, what about me? What should I do?”
“At lunch, we have to prep for the dragon fight. We study bronze dragons and we make a battle strategy. You can help with that part. Here,” Riz says, sliding his monster manual over to Fabian. “Study up.”
“Wait, keep going. What other deaths do we have to prevent?”
“Oh, Gorgug goes down during bloodrush practice if I’m there to distract him so I’ll just go do something else. You keep an eye on him, though.”
“Next?”
“Someone dies at 3:00 p.m. if I don’t go to school that day. Don’t know who, don’t know how but hopefully me just being here is enough.”
“Okay. And Kristen? Has she died before?”
“Choked to death on ice cream.” Riz shoves his notes away from him, completed. He sighs. “That’s all the solo deaths. The most common ones are from the dragon fight, though. It’s, uh—it’s brutal. So that needs to be our priority.” Riz smiles. “But we got this. We so got this.”
“We got this,” Fabian repeats. “Easy.”
Riz stands on the rooftop and watches the horizon line. The sun is setting, casting pink-orange light across the cloudy sky. He counts seconds as the sun goes down.
He counts seconds until he gets to 600 and the navy mist, the golden magic, comes down and surrounds him.
He was overly confident. He let himself get swept up in hope. He leaned into Fabian’s support and let his own preparations fall short. He should’ve reviewed the monster manual himself, should’ve carried the conversation at lunch. Should’ve asked them to leave Basrar’s a few minutes earlier. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve.
He’s getting tired. He’s slipping. It’s been too many loops. He’s dropping balls that he should have firmly in his grasp. He’s burning out and, although Fabian’s support was an incredible foundational structure, it wasn’t enough.
The magic pours down Riz’s throat and chokes him. He decides in that moment that he needs more help.
He needs every Bad Kid.
“I’m stuck in a time loop,” Riz says, ignoring the five different scripts he had written up during second period on how to start this conversation. The words came out of his mouth without much thought.
“Sick,” Kristen says, instantly.
“No,” Riz replies. Fatigue overwhelms him.
“Are you okay?” Gorgug asks, voice soft.
“Also no. But I will be. As long as you all survive the day, I will be.”
“Why wouldn’t we survive?” Adaine’s brow is furrowed. “What happens to us?”
Riz pulls out his sheet of notes and passes it around. Fig’s eyebrows raise when she reads her section. “See, skipping class is a good thing.”
“Aw, man. I died to ice cream? That’s so lame. Why couldn’t I have had a cooler death?” Kristen pouts.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’ve died to a dragon five times. All of you have, except Fabian. He got a bonus dragon death.” Riz feels removed from what he’s saying, like he’s describing the plot of a movie. “Oh, and maybe you were the mystery 3:00 p.m. death. Who knows, that one might’ve been less lame.”
“I’m going to accept that as fact. I died to a sloppy-style makeout session at 3 o’clock. I’m manifesting it.”
Riz rubs his face in his hands. “Please don’t manifest your death, Kristen. The whole point is that I want you all to survive the day.”
Adaine reaches across the lunch table to squeeze his wrist. “And we will.”
“Is this the first time you’re telling us?” Fig asks. “Why wouldn’t you go to your party right away?”
Riz presses his eyes shut. “I—I don’t know. I didn’t know it was a time loop at first. Then I didn’t know why it was happening. I didn’t know a lot so I wasn’t sure what I should even be trying.” He scrubs at his eyes. “Fabian, you convinced me, actually. I told you a couple of times and you said that none of us would let the others go through this without their support. So I’m hoping that’s true.”
“Of course—”
“Duh.”
“Obviously, The Ball.”
Riz smiles at the intense affirmations from his party. He doesn’t know why he waited so long to confide in them. It felt oddly vulnerable to admit that he was trapped, that he was suffering. He was scared, if he really examines his feelings. Scared that they wouldn’t believe him or maybe that they wouldn’t be willing to work with him.
He thought he could handle things on his own. With twelve days of evidence that he can’t do it alone, he knows he has to change things up. Even if it’s scary. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it means showing weakness.
Riz feels his heart palpitate in his chest. He’s too afraid to get hopeful again. Hope leads to overconfidence leads to death. He’ll stay clear-headed and determined as the hells. He’ll fight and fight and not let another ball drop.
“So, what do you all think? Are you ready to kill a dragon?”
Once the dragon goes down in a blaze of fire, iron, and blood, someone suggests Seacaster Manor and they’re met with five tired nods. They each used up everything they had to survive the fight. Spell slots were spent, hit points almost ran dry, and weapons became dulled. Kristen ran out of heals before everyone could be brought back up to full, leaving each of them hurting at least a bit.
Adaine is more bruise than girl at this point. Fig has a deep slash across her chest—“Sick, I was going to turn this shirt into a crop top anyway!”—that sluggishly bleeds. Gorgug looks dazed, having slammed his head hard against an electrical unit.
Riz is mostly alright, save for the nervous energy pulsing through him, making his heart beat hard and his stomach churn. He made a few gutsy moves during the fight, stepping out from his hiding spot to give the dragon a new target, but they were worth it. If it saved one of his friends from a fatal blow, he would take a claw swipe any day.
He starts to worry, though, as they cross the threshold of Seacaster Manor, how would he know if he broke the loop? Does he have to make it to midnight? Does he need to fall asleep?
Is the loop set to go on forever? If a Bad Kid dies two, three years in the future, will Riz wake up back in bed to the sounds of an infernal motorcycle just outside?
He can’t get caught up in thoughts like that. He’ll fall into despair if he does.
“You okay, dude?” Gorgug asks, leaning down to him. Riz collapses onto a loveseat and Gorgug follows suit. “We can try, like, regular first aid if you need some. You’re looking pale.”
“No, I’m good. Well, I’m not good. I’m fucking terrified, Gorgug. What if everything we did so far wasn’t enough? What if I have to loop again? None of you will remember a single word of what we talked about today. I don’t know if I can get myself to start from zero again.”
“Riz, man, you know that, no matter what, we’ll listen to you and we’ll help you.”
“Yeah,” Riz drops his head into his hands. “I get that, I guess. In theory. But you have no idea how discouraging it’ll be to have to do it all over again.”
Gorgug puts his arm around Riz and squeezes. Gorgug doesn’t respond but Riz doesn’t mind. He doesn’t think a single word would get through to him right now. He’s consumed by fear and anticipatory grief.
Riz drops his head between his knees and Gorgug pats him once on the back. Riz feels the couch shift but he doesn't have the clarity of mind to understand why. Did someone stand up? Did someone sit down? He doesn’t know. There’s a fissure between his body and his mind.
He floats for a while in a strange limbo. He knows people are around him, that they’re talking. But he doesn’t register a word.
Some very small part of his brain attempts to scream at him that he needs to pay attention, needs to be hypervigilant. He’s close to something, he knows it. He just needs to run the final mile of the race.
The rest of him exists in limbo. Every bit of energy in him has drained. The last night of sleep he got was almost two weeks ago. The strain and stress on his body has finally caught up to him. He can’t move, can’t think, can’t speak.
Instead, he simply deflates.
Riz jerks back into his own body as dark blue magic swirls into the air above and around him.
He half-expected it, of course. He let his guard down. Even if he hadn’t, he had failed so many times in a row, why wouldn’t he fail again?
The navy mist changes, its tendrils forming the shape of a man. Riz jumps to his feet and draws his gun. He sees the others draw their weapons, as well.
“Woah, now, students. I wouldn’t rush to attack your own principal if I were you.”
In front of him, he sees a tall man in a purple suit.
“What?”
“Oh, that’s right.” The man snaps his fingers and Riz grips his head in his hands, pain piercing his skull. “A bit of a painful process, playing with your memories. My apologies, dear students, but I couldn’t have you remembering that you had a master of Chronomancy as a principal! I couldn’t have you cheating on the test by consulting me, of course.”
Memories swim into Riz’s mind and he suddenly remembers this man, this Principal Aguefort.
“What the fuck?” Riz asks.
“Please wait one more moment, Mr. Gukgak. I need to align a few more timelines before we get started.”
“What? The fuck?” Riz’s head is spinning. He tries to follow, he really does, but his brain is moving sluggishly. Why was Principal Aguefort here? Why had he been wiped from Riz’s memory?
“Please stand just here,” Aguefort says, moving Riz a few feet to his left.
“What about the rest of us?” Fig asks, speaking for the party.
“Oh, don’t you worry, Miss Faeth. You and the others are anomalies in the time stream and will be erased in three, two, and…”
Principal Aguefort snaps his fingers again and the room explodes into gold light.
“What the fuck!” Riz exclaims again, stuck on the words. He’s left standing in Seacaster Manor but the Bad Kids around him aren’t the ones he left behind. Most are covered in blood, but the moods vary wildly from person to person. Fig seems cheerful but Fabian looks utterly unresponsive.
“Principal Aguefort,” Adaine says, “could you please explain yourself, now? I’m sure we’re all curious as to what’s going on.” She glances around nervously at the others, clearly trying to keep her cool but her composure begins to slip.
Riz feels like he’s a few steps behind.
“Ah, yes. The ‘explanation.’ Hmm.” Principal Aguefort tuts his tongue. “Well… do I have to?”
Gorgug groans.
“Yes, sir. I think we deserve an explanation,” Adaine continues.
“Yes, yes, alright. Well, congratulations to all of you, first of all! You all just passed your spring semester finals. Great work, students. Well, some of you did great. Some, and I hate to say it, seemed to slack off a bit.” Aguefort’s eyes dart towards Fabian but he doesn’t raise his eye from the paisley rug to acknowledge Aguefort.
Riz’s brain catches up by a fraction. “This was a test.”
“Yes, of course, Mister Gukgak. Everything is, more or less.” Aguefort smiles widely with a bit of mania in his eyes. “And you passed! You were each to be trapped in your own time loop and would not be permitted escape until you consulted with every member of your adventuring party and made a plan to solve the loop as a group.”
“We were all going through it?” Gorgug asks quietly.
“In your own unique timelines, yes. Each of you was presented with the same problem: a dragon attacks the school at 6:00pm. If you open up to your adventuring party and you kill the dragon in the same loop, wham-bam, you’ve won! The loop closes and you’re freed.” Aguefort looks discerningly between the Bad Kids. “Some of you exceeded my expectations, you know! Miss Faeth, you set a new record. I mean, two loops? Only two loops? That’s incredible stuff.”
Fig smiles widely and stands a little taller.
“Others… well. Mister Seacaster. Thirty-one loops is a bit disappointing, I have to say.”
Riz’s face blanches. His jaw drops. With how broken Riz feels after just thirteen loops, he can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to go through thirty-one. He scooches closer to Fabian unconsciously, not wanting his friend to feel alone right now.
“But all in all, you succeeded. You each got around to telling your party members and, if anything, the dragon fight was the easy part for the lot of you. I’m quite impressed!”
“What about all the other deaths?” Riz asks, voice growing in strength.
“Hmm? Oh, what about them? Those were incidentals.”
Riz sputters. “Inci—incidentals?”
“Why, yes, Mister Gukgak. All I did was summon a dragon—or, more specifically, raise it personally from an infant—but I wasn’t involved in any other deaths. Those were just simple collateral damage.” Aguefort waves his hand through the air dismissively. “Not that I wanted deaths to stick, of course, hence the loop resetting if there was a death. I wouldn’t want this test to be traumatizing for you, my dear students.”
“It was deeply traumatizing regardless!” Adaine shouts, then catches herself and slams her mouth shut, fists clenching tightly at her sides. Riz agrees with her. No part of the loop wasn’t traumatizing to him.
“Miss Abernant, all I did was introduce a dragon to the ecosystem. Any other deaths were either unhappy accidents or…”
“Or?”
“Or something you each must’ve caused yourself.” Principal Aguefort’s voice is flippant and careless.
Riz swallows thickly, then falls to the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest.
He knew it. He knew he was the one causing the deaths of his loved ones. He knew it was his fault. The choices he made and the ones he didn’t make were costing his party members their lives. There wasn’t another factor, it was just him. He was the problem.
“Well,” Aguefort clears his throat awkwardly. “I suppose my work here is done. I hope you all enjoy a chance to wake up in different circumstances tomorrow.” He snaps his fingers again and disappears into a cloud of dark blue smoke, threaded with gold.
Riz collapses back and stares up at the shiplap boards on the ceiling.
“Fuck this,” Fabian says, the first words he’s spoken since they were brought back together.
Riz nods. “Fuck him.”
“Fuck Principal Aguefort,” Adaine says, voice steady.
Riz hears Kristen’s laugh. He almost wants to laugh, himself. It might be cathartic. He tries to but it sounds hollow and put-on.
“Did anyone else die in their own loops?” Gorgug asks, voice cautious.
“Almost every loop,” Kristen says with another laugh. “I think I can firmly take the award for Most Deaths.”
Riz lifts his head, amazed and how amusedly she seems to be taking the news that they were locked into time prisons by their principal.
“What happened when you did?” Riz is curious, intellectually speaking. He wants to sate his curiosity. What would’ve happened if he stepped off the roof?
“I just spent ten minutes in the afterlife when I died,” Gorgug responds. “A painful ten minutes,” he adds, tracing the scars from the razor-sharp leaves of Acheron.
Riz sighs.
He could’ve seen his dad.
“How many loops did everyone else take to solve it?”
Gorgug holds up five fingers.
“Nine,” says Adaine. “I really thought I could solve things on my own.” She frowns.
“A quick six for me. Took me half of them to realize I was in a time loop at all,” Kristen says with another laugh. Riz doesn’t understand her. He knows she uses humor to cope but he’s so far from feeling humorous that he can’t believe how she can still be joking around.
Fabian grabs two throw pillows from the nearest couch and settles in next to Riz on the floor, offering him one. Riz props his head up on it and nods his thanks.
“You were second-most, then?” Fabian guesses, voice low.
“Yeah.”
“I would’ve thought you would’ve been the first one out with brains like yours.” Fabian tilts his head over so Riz isn’t in his blind spot.
“You overestimate my ability to ask for help, then.” Riz says with a sigh.
Fabian matches his sigh with an even heavier one. “Preaching to the choir.”
Riz vaguely hears Adaine and Kristen bickering over something but he tries to filter it out. He can barely keep his head clear enough to have a conversation with one person, let alone five rowdy teens.
He keeps his focus on Fabian.
“Do you think…”
Riz hums, a quiet encouragement for Fabian to go on.
“Do you think this was a good thing? The test?”
Riz thinks about how much he struggled in the past thirteen loops. He thinks about how discouraged he felt, how scared he was, how much grief he met along the way.
“It was torture,” he says.
“Yeah, but—”
“But it taught us some things, I guess.” Riz tilts his head over to face Fabian as well. It reminds him of every time he laid next to the corpse of one of his friends and he has to quickly look away. “To trust our party members, or whatever,” he finishes, words coming out in a rush.
“Right.”
“Maybe next time our principal goes sick with power, we’ll ask for help a little sooner.”
Fabian scoffs, humorlessly.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“I mean, it goes without saying but, if something is going wrong with you, I’d hope you know you can tell me sooner than thirty-one days in,” Riz offers.
“Hmm.”
“I’ll make the same promise if you do. Next time something goes horribly wrong, we let the other person know before we let it destroy us.”
Fabian matches Riz’s posture, eye on the ceiling, star-gazing without the stars. He takes a deep breath in and out and Riz can see his chest shake. “Alright.”
Riz smiles and, out of the corner of his eye, he can see a smile tug at the corner of Fabian’s mouth, too.
“Deal.”