Anastacia appeared in a forest road she didn’t recognize. With tall pine trees on both sides, the road didn’t get much light. From the small gaps between the treetops, she could see the sky and that it was still early in the day.

She looked around for the kids but couldn’t see them anywhere. Should she just go to the next one then? Or wait for a full loop to be sure?

“Anyone here?!” She yelled. Waiting was not one of Anastacia’s strong points. “Guess that’s a no…”

Just as she was about to poke the goat, she heard something. It sounded almost like giggling, maybe the children were hiding from her?

“Alright, brats. Come out, I can hear you.” Anastacia said and threw a rock at the bushes the sound was coming from.

The creatures that came out from the woods were not children. Five gray spindly-looking critters with transparent wings and huge grins. They let out a constant giggling noise and clacked their oversized teeth together.

Anastacia hadn’t seen this kind of fairies before but quickly decided that she didn’t want anything to do with them and touched the goat, which didn’t work because the creatures were staring at her.

“Look! A dragon!” She yelled and pointed upwards.

The fairies fell for it and the necromancer disappeared to the next loop.

“I can’t believe that worked… Wait, does that mean fairies can understand speech?” Anastacia thought out loud and looked around. “Now that I think about, the bear hadn’t moved to the next loop either. So maybe there’s some rule that prevents it?”

The area around her and the goat was all flat plains as far as the eye can see. A couple of scrawny trees and bushes here and there but nothing else. No kids, no creatures, no nothing. The sun was high up in the sky, and compared to the previous scene, everything felt too bright. Anastacia walked around a bit to check the nearest bushes just to be sure nothing was hiding in them.

“There’s nothing here, so then what touched the goat?” She wondered and walked back to the goat.

Suddenly something blotted out the sun.

“What the…” Anastacia said before getting slammed to the ground by a massive wing.

All she could do is watch as a gigantic eagle flew away with the time goat. That is, until she realized she only needed to blink once to make the eagle disappear, causing the goat to barrel towards the ground from at least 60 meters and land with a crunching sound. Anastacia blinked again and the goat was merrily eating the dry grass.

“This quest is such bullshit…” Anastacia spoke to herself and ran to the goat to touch it.

The location for the next loop was at the foot of a mountain, below a small cliff. The ground was rocky and hard to walk on, but the cool breeze was nice for a change. What was less nice were the three hill giants who looked quite surprised by the appearance of the necromancer next to the goat they had found.

Typically hill giants weren’t too eager to fight humans and the like, as long as you made your intentions clear while approaching them. Anastacia had done the opposite by suddenly just appearing at their feet and the fifteen-meter-high giants weren’t too happy about it. The terrain made escaping impossible, so Anastacia had to come up with something so she could use the goat again.

“Look! A dragon!” She yelled again, with far less success.

One of the giants let out an ear-shattering yell and started walking closer.

“I’m so sorry about this.” Anastacia said and touched the goat, which immediately died as its skull caved in.

As the giant was about to reach her, the necromancer flung the goat bones at its face, wounding it badly. As their friend toppled over, screaming and clawing at its face, the other two giants started running at Anastacia. Before they got close, Anastacia only had time to realize that her plan didn’t go this far and harden her bone-mail to brace for the impact.

One of the giants kicked her in the chest, throwing her high into the air. While the impact still hurt, the mail prevented any serious damage, at least until she’d hit the ground and break whatever limbs she’d land with. As a last resort, she flung her daggers at the giants, hitting them both in the face and forcing them to close their eyes. With all three giants blinded, Anastacia disappeared into the next loop.

“That was way too close.” Anastacia said and checked whether her daggers came with her or not. To her relief, both of them were firmly in their scabbards, behind her back.

She had appeared in front of a small shack. The area around it seemed peaceful, a small lake to the east, some fields to the west and south. The most noticeable thing nearby was, however, the goat pen. In it were three goats, one of which was black and eerily familiar, and two children, who seemed to be having a good time petting them.

As Anastacia was about to ask them whether they were the kids she was supposed to find, a man came out from the shack.

“So you have finally arrived. Sorry I wasn’t able to get you here straight away, I only managed to make your journey shorter. Getting those children here as fast and safely as possible took much of the power I have over this.” The man said and sat down on a bench next to the goat pen.

He was about as old as Gilbert but in a horrible shape, it was like he hadn’t slept in years.

“First and foremost, I must apologize for what I have done. All of this is my fault.” He continued.

“You did this? You don’t feel like a legendary wizard that could pull this off.” Anastacia noted.

“I’m not, I’m just an average farmer. I just made a bad deal.” The man explained. “Would you please hear out my story before we proceed?”

Anastacia nodded. She didn’t like how he said ‘proceed’, but letting the man tell his side of the story seemed like something she should do.

“Thank you, Anna, I believe? That was what your companions called you.” The man said and sighed. “It has been a few hundred years since this all started. My wife and son had fallen ill, deathly so. I used all my money to find a priestess, healer or whoever could have been able to help, but nothing worked. I was getting desperate and contacted a priest of a god that’s shunned by most of the world. He promised me that there was a way I could be with my family forever, and being the desperate idiot I was, I accepted.”

“Yeah, you definitely want the details on these kinds of things” Anastacia noted.

“I didn’t care, as long as I would be able to be with my family, how bad could it possibly be?” The man continued. “I was given a holy relic by the priest. He said that if we all touched it at the same time, we’d be allowed to be blessed by the god he served. But when we did, time began to loop. At first, I thought it was great, but my family had hidden their suffering from me. Every second was pure agony to them, as the disease gnawed on their bodies. And now that suffering has become eternal.”

Anastacia’s concept of a family was heavily influenced by the cult she grew up in, so she could only theorize how terrible the man felt.

“And it doesn’t end there.” The man said and clenched his fists. “When I tried to stop it by breaking the relic, I angered the god because I tried to refuse the gift I had already received. The god corrupted the bodies of my family to protect the relic, knowing I wouldn’t be able to do anything to them. So I began to look for other solutions and eventually found one. Being a part of the original pact, I have some influence over all this, and with couple of hundred years of trying, I was able to manifest my son’s pet goat in the real world. Or maybe the god has gotten tired of this and allowed it to happen?”

“That’s messed up…” Anastacia said. “Have you ever tried to… you know… off yourself?”

“More times than you’d believe, but every four minutes, I just wake up again.” The man answered.

Anastacia wasn’t quite sure if she should feel sorry for the man or if he was getting what he deserved for his actions.

“What’s your name then?” She asked. “And is this going where I think it is?”

“I’m Nathan. I need you to get the relic and destroy it.” The man answered.

Anastacia took a few minutes to prepare herself. She had no idea what ‘corrupted’ meant in this context, but technically she’d still be killing two innocent people, one of whom was a child. But that seemed to be the only way out.

“Alright, Nathan, take me inside.” She said and took a deep breath.

Nathan opened the shack door and both of them entered. The inside of the shack was dimly lit by a single lantern in the corner table, but that was more than enough to see the horror that was Nathan’s family. Their flesh had melted together, coating about half of the shack’s interior with a layer of twitching meat. Some remnants of their human appearances could be seen here and there. But, by far, the worst part was the two melted faces on the wall, constantly wailing and grasping for air.

“Are you sure you want to be here for this?” Anastacia asked.

“Yes… I have to.” Nathan answered, even though he was barely able to look at his family.

“Okay then, where is this relic?” The necromancer inquired and sat down.

Nathan pointed at the corner of the shack, where the flesh was at its thickest.

“Of course it is.” Anastacia sighed and began concentrating.

“What are you doing? I thought you were going to just hack into it?” Nathan asked and looked concerned.

“Not my style. If I were you, I’d sit down too, this might take a bit.” Anastacia revealed.

The mass of flesh was still very much alive and conscious, making it very hard to control. Abnormally hard even; could it be the god himself resisting Anastacia’s efforts? On top of that, every four minutes, any progress she had made was reset with the loop, but at least her body wasn’t moved back outside. After all, she was at the heart of the looping. Slowly but surely, Anastacia gained more ground on every loop. She had lost count on how many times she had tried, when finally, the mass was under her control. Anastacia began to suffocate it, there was no neck to break and she really didn’t want to rip it apart.

“Thank you… father…” The mass voiced with its last breath. Completely breaking down Nathan who had clearly had enough of this.

Anastacia opened up the flesh around the part where the relic was and dug out a sphere of engraved glass while trying her best not to throw up.

“So… I’m just going to break this and we’ll get back to where we first touched the goat?” Anastacia asked, but Nathan wasn’t in any state to answer. So Anastacia just lobbed the sphere at the wall. Instead of breaking, the relic just bounced off the wood and rolled under the table.

“Ignore that.” She noted and picked it back up. This time she chose to throw it at the stone frame of the fireplace, which worked far better and the sphere shattered.