Time Loops, Wheel of Time Part 13

Selena twitched and almost knocked her laptop off the table when something crashed into the pool, causing a splash that almost hit her feet. "What the fuck?" she sputtered when she realized that there was a body in her pool that was quickly floating to the surface. She glanced up at the wards over the keep that were supposed to prevent anyone from just dropping in or objects from being dropped on her.

Selena frowned when she realized the person had a knife sticking out of its back that was glowing with some nasty and powerful magic. She jumped when the body grabbed the side of her swimming pool. 'Shit, I can fix this!' She quickly cast her mage hand spell, causing a glowing purple hand to appear next to the cursed dagger. She used the hand to pull the cursed dagger out, not wanting to touch the cursed blade.

"Fuck!" Mist cursed, doing his best not to pass out from the pain as his new werewolf ring quickly patched him back up now that the curse wasn't suppressing his healing.

Selena glanced up when something hit the wards and they crackled with purple lightning, trying to kill the demon trying to break into her home. "Yeah Mom, have fun at your convention, I'll be fine. Famous last words," she muttered as she stood up and hustled over to the bar where her mother kept the shotgun.

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" Phil screamed as he found himself unable to escape the crackling lightning in a way that would let him finish Mist off before he filed a report.

Selena grabbed the rune covered shotgun from behind the bar, brought it up and aimed at the humanoid creature caught in her mother's wards. "Fuck you!" she shouted as she pulled the trigger, the blast sounding like thunder. She scowled when the creature merely screamed in pain and annoyance rather than splattering like everything else she'd ever shot with her boomstick. 'Shit!' she thought as she continued pulling the trigger, hoping that she could drive him off with enough slugs. She sighed in relief and stopped firing when the lunatic teleported away, leaving everything quiet.

"Parley?" Mist asked hopefully as he studied the busty and quite naked teenage girl with crimson hair that came down to her butt. 'Damn, if she's not the most attractive girl I've ever seen, she's close.' His gaze jumped to the necklace that spelled out 'Jailbait' using silver beads.

"I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request," the girl replied with amusement then sighed as she realized that she shouldn't be quoting movies since he probably wouldn't understand them. "Sorry, yeah, I'll parley. What are you doing here?"

"No clue…" Mist trailed off when he managed to pull his attention away from the naked girl with the magic shotgun long enough to realize that she had a laptop sitting on her table. "Is that a laptop?"

"Yep!" Selena replied cheerfully. "Wait, you know what a laptop is?"

"Portable computer," Mist offered as he glanced around the courtyard of what looked like a rather nice stone and glass mansion. 'Someone went to a lot of trouble making this place look nice and they have a hell of a gardener.'

"Neat!" Selena squealed, looking forward to talking to someone face to face that wasn't a demon or a drooling idiot from the dark ages. "How did you end up in the Abyss?"

"Someone stabbed me in the back, opened a portal and shoved me through," Mist admitted as he worked on scanning the girl, curious how she'd ended up in the Abyss since she seemed reasonable.

"Why?" Selena asked, wondering if she was going to have to shoot the dark haired man.

"I just finished killing a dark god, I'm pretty sure he wanted the loot," Mist grumbled, less than happy about the fact that he'd probably failed his mission or at least failed the part of the mission that would make the company a nice profit.

Selena stared at the man in her pool that didn't look particularly impressive. "You expect me to believe that you killed a god?" 

"It was basically hiding in a pocket dimension outside of the world where nothing could hurt it because it wasn't particularly durable and the locals didn't have the ability to summon it," Mist explained. "It was also only six inches tall, which made it really easy to squish when we summoned it."

"In other words, there were extenuating circumstances," Selena mused as she floated the knife over to the bar so that she could drop her mage hand spell, willing to believe him for the moment or at least believe that he thought he was telling the truth since there were more believable lies.

"Yeah," Mist agreed as he finished scanning the girl. 'Huh, half succubus, half nymph, daughter of Zeus, how the hell does that work?' he mused, wondering if Zeus had pretended to be the demon or the nymph or if the girl's mother was the half nymph. "So, I don't suppose you know how to get back to the world I came from?"

"Nope," Selena replied as she shook her head. "My mother might be able to send you back but she's currently at a furry convention."

"That…" Mist trailed off, not sure what to say.

"Yeah, I don't get it either," Selena admitted. "If you're looking for furry fun, just date a werewolf or a werecat."

"Is your mother going to kill me for getting dropped into her pool?" Mist asked, wondering if he needed to make a hasty retreat.

"That depends, are you a catholic priest, door to door salesman, politician or a televangelist?" Selena asked, knowing that her mother liked seducing and killing priests that broke their vows and corrupt politicians, which according to her mother was most of them.

"I'm not a priest or a con man," Mist assured her as he pulled himself out of the water and sat on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water.

"In that case, you should be fine," Selena replied as she walked back over to the bar. "Can I get you something to drink? Mom locked the liquor cabinet but we've got orange juice, lemonade and soda."

"Orange juice or lemonade is fine. You're taking this surprisingly well," Mist said as the girl grabbed an empty glass off the shelf and filled it with ice from the ice machine.

"Look, the only time I actually get out of the Abyss is when my mother drags me to a convention or to some event and then I have to put up with her being a geek. The only friends I have are online friends and I'm fairly sure at least one of them is a chat bot," Selena complained.

"My name is Mist," Mist offered.

"Selena, nice to meet you," Selena replied with a smile, happy to have a new friend.

"If you can get out of the Abyss, why stay here?" Mist asked.

"One, I don't exactly have a legal ID and two, there's plenty of mana here," Selena replied as she filled the glass with lemonade from the minifridge.

"Let me guess, Earth has low mana?"

"It's certainly lower than here," Selena replied as she cast her mage hand spell and floated the glass of lemonade over to Mist. "Mostly, I just think Mom likes bouncing between worlds and going to parties every week."

"That's fair," Mist replied as he started scanning the drink, wanting to make sure there wasn't something wrong with it.

"So, why were you trying to kill a dark god?" Selena asked, trying to figure out what type of person she was dealing with.

"He wanted to destroy the world and a decent chunk of the multiverse so that he could recreate it as an unending nightmare," Mist complained then took a sip when the scan told him that it was just lemonade.

"Good call," Selena agreed. "So, what type of loot did you get?"

"Basically a magical core or close enough," Mist admitted, not seeing a problem with telling her about the core since it was probably already gone.

"Neat, I've seen a bunch of stories with that concept!" Selena replied cheerfully then blushed when she realized that she was being overenthusiastic again. "Sorry, I'm not used to having people that I can talk to in person."

"No worries," Mist assured her.

Selena gestured and cast Purify Food and Drink on the swimming pool, causing the blood in the water to vanish. "What do you normally do when you're not killing dark gods?"

Mist finished another sip. "I'm a Builder, I basically build magical structures or devices for fun and or profit…" he trailed off as an attractive redhead that bore a striking resemblance to Selena appeared out of thin air wearing a blue fur bikini and a headband with cat ears.

"Don't…" the woman trailed off as she realized that the intruder was sitting on the edge of the pool and drinking lemonade and that her daughter seemed perfectly fine. "What's going on?"

"My new friend fell out of a portal and dropped into the pool a couple of minutes ago with a dagger in his back, he builds magical trinkets and structures and knows about computers," Selena told her.

Mal studied Mist, finding it a bit suspicious that the wards hadn't killed him as he looked a bit shifty. "You look pretty spry for someone that had a dagger in their back a couple of minutes ago."

"One of my magic items gives me regeneration and Selena was nice enough to pull the cursed dagger out so that I'd start regenerating," Mist explained as he started scanning the woman wearing cat ears.

"How did you end up here?" Mal asked, trying to figure out if he was there to kidnap her daughter.

"No clue," Mist admitted. "I'd just finished a job when I got stabbed in the back and shoved through a portal. I didn't have a chance to study the portal so I'm not sure if it was supposed to open here or if it was just random chance."

"I don't think the other guy would have let himself hit the wards if he'd meant to open the portal here," Selena argued.

Mal turned and focused on her daughter. "Someone else ended up here?"

"Yeah, the wards zapped him and he started cursing and ranting about how he was going to kill us so I shot him," Selena explained. "When that didn't kill him, I shot him a couple more times until he teleported away."

"That's my girl," Mal replied with a grin, glad that she'd raised her daughter right.

Mist read the details for his new minion pattern when his scan finished. 'Demon: Succubus: This type of demon enjoys corrupting people and loves having sex. Some succubi go after innocents and some go after people that are already corrupt, pushing them to the point of destruction. While they don't have to eat, they can and they certainly enjoy it. Spell casting, wings, minor shape changing that allows her to hide any or all demonic features and an innate ability to drain stamina and mana from anyone she touches which she can use to avoid fatigue and refill her mana pool. Drain ability is more effective while having sex. In either case, their drain ability can't do any permanent harm.'

"Can you help him get back to where he's supposed to be?" Selena asked.

"Give me a minute." Mal cast Trace Teleport and looked at the area over the pool. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

"Bad," Selena replied, figuring they might as well get it out of the way first.

Mal glanced at her daughter then looked at Mist. "His teleport used a ton of mana, probably because he was trying to break the wards, which washed out any useful traces from the portal, except the fact that there was a portal so your story checks out."

"Is that last part the good news?" Mist asked, wishing that he'd set up a better way to communicate with Egwene and the rest of the girls on the off chance that he got tossed into another dimension.

"It's good news but no, the good news I was talking about is that the wards tossed him to the underworld like they're supposed to which means I doubt he'll be back," Mal replied smugly, fairly sure Cerberus used him for a chew toy.

"That's better than I was expecting," Mist admitted, making a mental note to scan her wards since they'd been more effective than he'd realized.

"Do you want me to stick around or can I get back to seducing a bunch of nerds with more money than brains?" Mal asked hopefully, willing to stick around if her daughter needed her but wanting to get back and have some fun since her daughter seemed to be doing fine and she had someone to talk to that she was obviously interested in.

Selena shook her head. "Have fun, I don't want to hear the details."

"You love my stories," Mal complained with a pout.

"Yeah, when you're seducing girl scouts or poor innocent high school boys, not when you're talking about people that dress up with donkey heads and use strap-ons the size of my arm, who the hell does that?" Selena complained.

"If you think that's bad, you should have seen some of the shit the ancient Greeks used to do," Mal replied with a smirk.

"Just go," Selena said as she made shoo-ing motions toward her mother.

"I'm going," Mal replied with amusement then turned to look at Mist. "If you make her cry, I'll beat you to deal with a slinky!"

"Mom," Selena complained.

"Just saying," Mal replied cheerfully and plane shifted back to the convention.

Selena sighed in frustration. "Are all mothers this embarrassing?"

"No, just the good ones," Mist replied with amusement.

"Have you figured out how you're going to get home…" Selena trailed off as something in Mist's pocket started playing the Imperial March ringtone. "Nice reception, are you going to answer that?"

"Yeah and sorry, I need to take this," Mist admitted as he pulled the generic flip phone that had appeared in his pocket out of his pocket and answered it. "Hey Boss."

"Do you have the core?" Sabrina Morningstar asked, sounding a bit stressed and grumpy. "Why are you in the Abyss and do you know why Phill from accounting showed up in your world and then died less than two minutes later?"

"I don't have the core, no clue and probably," Mist admitted. "Some jackass stabbed me in the back with a cursed dagger that suppressed my natural regeneration and shoved me through a portal right after I killed the Dark One. He fell through the portal and pissed off one of the locals who shot him a couple of times with an enchanted shotgun. He tripped the wards when he tried to teleport out and ended up in a version of the underworld."

"If he doesn't turn up, I'll make sure you get the bonus for killing a traitor," she assured him. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just pissed about the job," Mist admitted.

"Can you get back and grab the core or do I need to send a team?" she asked.

"Just send a team," Mist suggested, knowing it shouldn't be a big deal now that the Dark One was dead. "I'm going to need at least twenty minutes to build a portal and I don't want someone showing up and grabbing it."

"I'll send Charlie," Sabrina suggested. "Is there anything she needs to know?"

"Not really," Mist assured her. "The core should be right outside of my workshop, unless one of the locals grabbed it."

"I'll let her know. Stay safe," Sabrina replied then ended the call, causing the phone to vanish.

"How screwed are you?" Selena asked.

"Worst case, someone in the office leaked the information about the core or they already had a buyer set up in which case, the buyer will probably try to murder me in my sleep," Mist admitted, fairly sure the company hadn't lined up a buyer yet, as they usually wanted to make sure things were in the vault first.

"That sucks," Selena complained.

Mist shrugged. "Realistically? The dark god is dead so I doubt my boss is going to kill me over getting stabbed in the back and losing the core. Do you have somewhere I can temporarily set up a six by eight foot tall portal device?"

"That depends, can I visit your world?" Selena asked hopefully.

"Only if your mother agrees, she's scary," Mist admitted.

"That's fair," Selena replied as she gestured at the part of the courtyard that didn't get all that much sunlight. "Over there, by the wall."

"Thanks, I appreciate it," Mist told her as he stood up and headed over to the section of the courtyard so he could start building the portal he needed to get back to the city.

"What's your world like?" Selena asked.

"The world is basically high middle ages in tech with some strange bits and pieces here and there and the magic is sort of split based on gender." Mist opened his interface and pulled up the various schematics he had for portals, looking for a basic portal that he could build with the material he had in his storage. "I'm working on making a city filled with magic users. It's been an interesting project while a friend of mine got all of the pieces together to kill the dark god."

"I've never actually been to a city of just magic users, it sounds fun," Selena mused as she headed over to her laptop to send a message to her mother about the portal, figuring she'd check her phone when she took a break. "What's your favorite part?"

"Probably the magic school," Mist replied and then launched into an explanation of the city and what he was working on.

0o0o0

"Are you sure this is safe?" Hermione asked as she studied the amethyst model of a tower that was sitting on the edge of the fountain.

Sirius waved his wand at the model and used one of the spells he'd picked up working as an auror that checked for portkeys. He frowned as his spell revealed that the model was related to a portkey but not actually a portkey, reminding him of a particularly nasty trap that his fellow auror had run into during the war that had teleported his body to different locations. It didn't have the same incomplete feel but it didn't feel like a standard portkey either. "No, I'll go first."

"It should be fine, we've had thousands of people graduate and we've never lost anyone," Moria assured them. "The school has an excellent healer on staff and a fantastic collection of magical wards that should keep everyone safe."

"I'll do it," Harry said as he reached out and touched the model. "I doubt the prophecy would let me die."

"That's not how that works," Hermione argued.

"Close enough," Harry replied, knowing he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he got someone else killed like Cedric. "Library of Learning," he stated before someone could talk him out of it. He blinked a couple of times when he found himself in the hallway of what looked like a rather expensive boarding school without his clothes. He glanced down at the wand he was holding then glanced around for a clue on where he was supposed to go.

"Need a hand?" a half naked woman with shoulder length green hair asked as she walked over.

Harry glanced at the busty woman in her early to mid teens that was wearing a black skirt and nothing else. "Where can I get some clothes?"

"Sorry, we don't worry about clothes most of the time, you'll get used to it," the woman assured him.

"Why not?" Harry asked, fairly sure he wouldn't get used to it.

"The owner of the tower is a pervert and it helps get everyone used to people walking around in whatever they want," the woman explained. "Look on the bright side, that also applies to all of the girls. That said, don't be an ass or else," she told him as her eyes glowed with crimson fire, sending shivers down Harry's spine. "Got it?"

"Got it," Harry assured her, glad that someone was looking out for the girls.

"What type of magic classes did you want?" the woman asked as she conjured a clipboard with a possible class list on it and a pen.

"What are my options?" Harry asked, fairly sure the options wouldn't be all that great until Sirius entered the school if what Moria had said about the learning enchantment was accurate.

"Alchemy, Arithmancy, Charms, Dark Arts, Defensive Against the Dark Arts, Flight, Herbology, Mind Arts, Potions, Runes, Transfiguration and Wandless Magic are the main subjects and we have a nice collection of electives including curse breaking and cursing, magical and mundane."

"That's better than I was expecting," Harry admitted, wondering where all of the knowledge had come from. "What type of flight do you teach?"

"With a broom and without, we have basic classes and classes for tricks and Quidditch," the teacher replied with a grin.

"You can teach us how to fly without a broom?" Harry asked in surprise.

"Of course, magic has very few limits, you just have to find the keys that unlock your dreams," she replied as she handed him the clipboard. "Take anything you want, we'll figure out a schedule once we know what your friends want to take."

Harry stared at the rather extensive list of classes, fairly sure Hermione would want to take everything or just about everything since he wasn't sure she'd want Divination, though she might since it wouldn't be taught by Trelawney. "This could take a while."

"You've got time," the teacher pointed out with a smile.

0o0o0