When at last Kyra's disciples emerged from the backrooms of the nightclub, their faces told a full story. Lori was crying happy tears and Tristis beamed with relief.

  Lori wrapped her in the tightest hug, forgetting to control her own strength, as if Kyra was a dream that might float away.

  "How does it feel to be a free woman?" she asked.

  Lori mumbled into her shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you so much. Both of you."

  "You've been through a lot tonight," she said. "How about we take you home and celebrate?"

  Lori slowly let herself drop away and was looking down in embarrassment. "Actually I've been kind of living out of my locker."

  "What?"

  "Everything Mom and I had went into her treatment. And everything I make now, whatever's left after her hospital bills, I've been saving up to fly her home."

  After taking a moment to digest this, she said, "Go clear out your locker. Pack all your belongings into Tristis's car. We're taking you back to my place."

  Tristis followed after Lori to help while Kyra went to clear out space in the car. This turned out to be unnecessary as all of the girl's belongings fit into a single document box.

  Kyra had previously asked Benny about the missing address in Lori's profile. In fact she'd asked him many questions in order to fill in all the details left out of the dossiers. So much of it he couldn't remember and had admitted as much.

  This was also why she'd been blindsided about Lori's mother. Benny had recounted fondly his memories of the girl visiting her mother at the hospital every night after work. Never once had there been any suggestion of the mother having been roomed anywhere else.

  She didn't think he'd misled her on purpose. The way his powers worked, he couldn't take notes back with him in time. Everything in those dossiers had to come out of his own memory. And at the end of the day there's only so much space in the human brain. Particulars like where a hunter's mother had been—will be—at a specific time could be lost in a sea of more important details.

  It also made it easier to understand how the regressor could fail a million times. A million was an impressively large number, but once you'd failed a thousand times, the odds of going all the way up to a million weren't much worse.

  The girl herself was another problem. She seemed to have latched onto the hope that magic could be the cure for her mother's illness, and that's what she rambled excitedly on about during the car ride home.

  It hadn't been Kyra's intention to give her this hope. Because it was a false hope. According to Benny, there wasn't a single timeline where the girl's mother recovered from her coma. Just as healing magic worked better on hunters than civilians, it did poorly for illnesses compared to injuries, and anything neurological was the worst of them all. Even magic couldn't figure out brains.

  But Lori was an integral part of her plan, and she couldn't afford for her to get discouraged.

  "We never got very far into that sort of research," she said carefully, hoping to gently temper the girl's expectations. "There's no telling what will work and what won't."

  "That's because we all die before we can really get into it, isn't it?" Lori said. "The potential is there if only we get the chance to pursue it."

  "That may be," she said weakly, "but remember that other research will be taking priority."

  "I don't care if I have to wait. I understand what's at stake."

  Kyra wasn't convinced, as the girl didn't seem the sort who knew herself, but decided to say no more.

  Instead she asked Tristis to recount the events in Rastane's office. Her mood considerably darkened as the story came to a close.

  "You revealed your magic," she said in disbelief.

  "I can explain," he said defensively.

  "And you." She turned to Lori. "Did you want us to fail?"

  "I'm sorry," the girl squeaked.

  She took three deep breaths to settle herself before turning back to Tristis. "All right, big guy. You first."

  "I made a judgement call," he explained. "I don't think our secret will get out, and if it does, it only points back to me. A young man with an unusual ability to heal the sick. The tamest sort of magic that many already sort of believe in. Not such a bad story even if it does get out, and an easy one to control."

  "You'll control the story?"

  "How can you rely on me to survive a pit of schemers and manipulators if I can't do something simple like that?"

  He had a point. In the role that she had in mind for him, she had to trust him with full autonomy. There were going to be too many moving parts for her to play micromanager.

  "But the secret won't get out," he assured her. "Rastane has nothing to gain and too much to lose."

  Maybe she was being too hard on him. There had been no way to get Lori away from Rastane without taking some sort of risk, and the way it was now, everything was well under control.

  "You did a fine job," she said. "And here's a lesson for next time. When he stopped you from walking out of that room, you could have gone anyway. He wasn't going to refuse a second meeting. Not when you're his best chance at getting that casino."

  Next she turned her attention to Lori, who was quivering in the back. The moment their eyes met, the girl came out stammering.

  "I-I-I know what I did wrong! P-please give me another chance! I will make myself useful to you!"

  Kyra sighed and looked helplessly to Tristis, who pointedly kept his eyes on the road.

  "You know what?" she said. "I'm being too harsh on you guys. What you've accomplished tonight is worth celebrating. Let's pick up some wine and take-out."

  Later once they'd settled into her living room and had a couple of drinks in them, Kyra excused herself to give her disciples some time alone. They were getting along really well, and the alcohol seemed to have softened Lori's anxieties.

  In the kitchen she laid the mystic fox down on the table once again. This was the origin of tonight's events. The reason they went to the Shark Tank. The constancy of her failure.

  It hadn't escaped her notice that Lori had picked up a second ability while in Rastane's office. What kind of master was she when both her disciples effortlessly acquired the ability she'd been struggling to get for weeks? Whosever turn it was in the next timeline, they certainly wouldn't find her name on the list of prodigies.

  Half an hour she tried. Half an hour of fruitless effort before she accepted another day where it just wasn't meant to be. Food and wine was waiting for her just a room away. These frustrations can wait for tomorrow.

  Footsteps approached and her disciples appeared from the hallway.

  "We were wondering if you'd abandoned us," Tristis joked.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Is that a monster?" Lori stepped over to the table and leaned over the unconscious creature for a closer look.

  "I'm trying to acquire the gift of healing," she explained.

  Lori smoothed out some fur behind the fox's ear. "Is this how you do it when you don't have one of those pages?"

  How she wished she could just get a skill sheet from Benny. But he said he'd never been able to make one for this particular ability.

  "What if I try making one for you?" Lori suggested. "If you have a spare page I can study?"

  "I have some set aside for you," she replied. "But how do you propose to study them when they destroy themselves?"

  "It'll be safe if it's a skill I already have, won't it? So I just need a spare appraisal sheet. Or any with a duplicate."

  She did have one last appraisal sheet, meant for her third disciple. She retrieved it from her bedroom and handed it to Lori along with the other sheets designated for her second disciple.

  As Lori looked over them, the sheets disintegrated one by one until only appraisal remained. While the girl studied the arcane scribbles, Kyra was studying her.

  Kyra fetched a shoebox from her room and placed it on the kitchen table. "Here's some spare materials I've collected from the dungeons. Feel free to see what you make of them."

  Lori gave no sign she'd heard what she said, instead continuing to stare intently at the page.

  She gently took the girl by the arm. "You can look at that later. We're meant to be celebrating."

  Obediently Lori placed the page down on the shoebox and allowed herself to be led back into the living room. But her eyes retained that distant, unfocused look of a mathematician deep in thought.

  Those thoughts soon dissolved away at the bottom of the next drink they foisted into her hands. Her inhibitions followed after those thoughts, and it was halfway into her second drink that she began grilling Kyra on her plans.

  "It's called crowdsourcing," Lori said with a mild slur. "You workshop plans in a group because we all see things a bit differently. One person can't find all the flaws. We're all a bit blind, you see. Some of us see carpet, others vinyl. Anyway, three brains are better than one, you know?"

  "Maybe not drunk brains," Kyra replied.

  "I don't stop thinking just because I'm sober," Lori pointed out. "What if inspiration strikes in the bathroom? Like Archimedes."

  It was precisely this inspiration that she was worried about. Her disciples were altogether too intelligent in their own ways, and if she wasn't careful, something she shared could lead them to realize that she was a fake regressor.

  But she also knew that people like Lori had a burning drive to understand, well, everything. It was a character trait common in scientists and precisely what she wanted in the disciple who was going to be leading the field of magical research.

  And it was a drive that wasn't easily satisfied. It made for the sort of person who couldn't stand being in the dark. They'll fumble around to find a match. And when they light it, who knows if they'll be staring straight at your secret magazine collection.

  Lori pressed on. "All three of us want to see this mission through. We're just as committed to this as you."

  "If you prove yourself to be as good as Archimedes, maybe I'll clue you in," she replied.

  "I'm better than Archimedes," Lori declared confidently. It was definitely the alcohol talking.

  "How did I pick such an arrogant disciple?"

  "Not arrogant." Lori shook her head profusely to strengthen her point. "You know how I know? Because you chose me. If Archimedes were better, you'd have chosen him."

  "Have you considered that maybe I couldn't afford Archimedes?" Not to mention that the man had been dead thousands of years. "You were the best I could afford. All things considered, you came cheap."

  Lori made an exaggerated frown. "Then the entire world is cheap."

  Tristis, who had been listening quietly, now decided to pipe up. "You aren't cheap, Lori. You're a bargain."

  Lori leaned over and put a finger to his lips. "You be quiet, rich boy." Then she grinned to show that she was only being playful. "But you're right. Maybe I did come cheap. But I'm as good as Archimedes!"

  Tristis turned to Kyra for support. "She's a mean drunk, isn't she?"

  "I'm not mean!" Lori protested. "I'm being funny."

  "You're as funny as Archimedes," Kyra said.

  Next day Kyra slept through to noon and pleasantly found herself free from the expected hangover. She hadn't had occasion to drink so much since becoming a hunter.

  Tristis had already left, and Lori had taken over the kitchen table. There wasn't an inch of wood to be seen beneath all the pages of diagrams and handwritten notes.

  The girl continued to scribble furiousl on the paper when she entered, and probably didn't notice at all when she quietly reheated some leftovers and retreated to her room.

  After a quick breakfast-slash-lunch came meditation, and Kyra lost track of time until a loud clamor snapped her back out of focus. Cautiously she stuck her head out the door. "Lori? What happened?"

  Silence.

  She found her disciple slumped unconscious on the kitchen table. Loose pages had fallen to the floor. Appraisal reported her condition as mental exhaustion.

  The poor girl had pushed herself too hard. Kyra thought back to everything that was said last night. Had she been too mean?

  There was a reason no one in any other timeline missed her when she died. She dealt with other people well enough, but always kept them at arm's length.

  What she'd never been was a leader. Recruiting these disciples, it wasn't really a choice. She did it because it had to be done. A lone individual can't save the world.

  She didn't have a spare mattress, so the girl was going to have to use hers. She carried her carefully down the hall and laid her on top of the neatly made bed before returning to the kitchen to tidy up.

  There a gleaming sheet of paper caught her eye. It looked similar to Benny's skill sheets, only this one seemed to glow a little.

  She stared at it for a moment in disbelief. An A-rank item? From a girl who'd only awakened yesterday?

  She found the shoebox on the spare chair beside where Lori had been sitting. Several balls of spider silk were missing and some of the mystic orbs were looking dull like their batteries had been drained.

  Back to the page, its contents looked to her like the usual arcane script. If she squinted, there were bits that could be diagrams, though they always seemed to float just outside her point of focus. It was hard to believe that there could be some sort of structure beneath it all.

  After a lengthy study session in which the script remained as impenetrable as calculus, she was ready to go back to working on the fox.

  But then she caught sight of a familiar string of symbols. Scratching her head, she tried to remember where she'd seen it before. And then it came to her. It had been on the page of fire.

  Abruptly all the letters on the page appeared to flare up. For a very brief moment she felt an overwhelming sense of fluency, like it was a language buried deep in her memory. But when she went to actually read the words, the paper had already disintegrated away.

  She pushed the mystery of the script out of her mind. As long as her second disciple understood how it all worked, there was no need for her to spend time on this.

  The mystic fox was, as always, asleep in its bed. Kyra brought it up onto the table and watched for a moment. The only reason for keeping the monster was so that she could learn to heal. Now that she had the ability, it no longer served a purpose. Its labored breathing was coming in weaker than ever. She was doing it a mercy in getting rid of it.

  She took its head between her hands. The fur was soft and the skull so light, it felt like she didn't even need her fire. All she had to do was press her thumbs down like this . . .

  Another thought bubbled its way to the surface. It was a bit crazy, but that didn't mean it was any worse than what she was about to do.

  It felt like a crime to kill something so helpless. She had the power of healing now. What if she brought it back to health?

  It was a monster. It could hurt people.

  Yet . . .

  It must have been all the weeks she'd spent with it. Handling it like a kitten. Drip-feeding it healing potions. Watching it sleep. Somewhere along the way, it no longer registered in her mind as dangerous.

  Remembering something, she brought its status back up.

  Charm. It wasn't an ability but an innate quality of the creature. That could mean it continued to work even while asleep. Was she under its spell?

  The safest course of action was just to kill it.

  But that was also the most permanent.

  There was no harm in delaying the decision. Until she was sure it should die, the fox can remain like this. And maybe, if it was anything like her, it would be willing to suffer a little longer for a chance at life.

  Her hands grew warm, but instead of flames, a different sort of energy trickled down into the fox's head and spread through its body. Its breathing stabilized, no longer shallow and erratic.

  That was enough. She moved her hands back.

  Its health now reported as severely weakened. She couldn't go further without risking pulling it out of the coma. But it was better this way. There was no need for it to suffer so much while she decided.

  She wrapped the creature back up in the blanket and put it gently back to bed.