Hugo woke up slowly, a faint muzziness surrounding his thoughts. It took him some time, but eventually he realized where he was. He was in the stockades. Smooth stone walls surrounded him, no windows or anything. Instead of a fourth wall, metal bars ran from floor to ceiling. He was laying on a cloth cot in the tiny room.

Attempting to get up wasn’t a good idea. He groaned and lay back down, putting a pair of hands up to his throbbing head. The other two hands discovered a collar around his neck and around all four wrists. They were lead bands, suppressing his magic.

Someone was obviously taking him seriously. A quick check of his mana only showed twenty-three points. The lead collars must prevent him from regaining mana. It must also interfere with his soulmarked regeneration because he felt like shit.

This was less than ideal.

He had been so close to achieving all of his goals here, just an unlucky break that the Black Marshal had been so close. Otherwise, Hugo could have shot the head ritualist with a black bolt and just walked out of there.

Since he had gotten caught, Hugo had to assume they removed the bombs before they went off. He was back to square one. Well, worse than that since they knew he was the saboteur now. Best case scenario was for him to somehow remove the magic suppressing collars, pick the lock on the doorway, escape from the center of the prison, and let the city power department know that the military was messing with their shimmer vein.

That didn’t seem likely.

The pounding headache was a bit lesser now though, so Hugo got up. He might as well see what type of lock pick he would need to create. There wasn’t a lock on the door. In fact it didn’t look like there was a door at all. How did they get him in here?

He walked up to the bars and saw that they were set in a grove. Instead of a door, the whole wall slid aside in a track. The lock was outside of Hugo’s stockade cell. He tried to reach for the lock but it was just barely too far away.

“Back away from the bars,” a soldier said.

Hugo jerked his hand back. There was a soldier on the opposite side of the room, standing at attention. He was so quiet.

“Oh hello. I didn’t see you there. What am I doing here?” Hugo said. He knew exactly why he was here, but wanted to know how much this guard had been told.

The guard didn’t respond though, he just stared straight ahead at Hugo’s cell. Hugo glanced around. There were three other cells in the room, but they were all empty.

“How long was I asleep?” Hugo said, but he didn’t get an answer to that question either.

Getting out of here wasn’t going to be easy. Hugo sat down and ran through dozens of scenarios. He didn’t come up with many viable options. There were only a few possibilities that even had a small chance of success. He might just have to give up on this nox life and try again next year.

He didn’t give up hope just yet though. There was one interesting fact that kept popping up in his mind. He had tried to attack the Black Marshal, and a barrier had sprung up to protect him. That magic had to come from somewhere. Hugo was starting to think that the black marshal had two domains. It was possible that he had undergone the same ritual as Hugo, and that explained his sudden rise to power. The revelation was shocking, but it did him no good in here.

It was hard to tell the passage of time here since there were no windows. Roughly three hours after he woke up, two people entered the stockades. Marshal Botha walked in, followed by a major. It took Hugo a moment to remember where he had seen the major before. This was the light mage he had seen before when the alchemy marshal’s building went up in flames.

“Put your hands through the bars,” the marshal said as he walked forward.

Hugo guessed that they were going to take the magic inhibitors off for the interrogation. They couldn’t work magic on him with them still on him.

Shaking his head, Hugo said, “Not just yet. I fully intend on cooperating with you, Marshal Botha. But I have one quick question first. Were you soulmarked on the secondary ritual circle Alexandru set up on shimmer mountain?”

The marshal’s step hitched. He stopped in his tracks and said, “We aren’t here to talk about me. You will be answering our questions. We can do this the easy way or the broken bones way.”

“I will certainly choose the easy way. I am not a fan of pain, believe me. Please answer the question first though. After that, I promise to cooperate fully. You might want to send your people away first though,” Hugo said and gestured to the guard and major.

Marshal Botha stared at Hugo for a moment before glancing towards the major.

The major shrugged his shoulders and said. “I can’t see his soul right now, obviously, but I would guess that he is telling the truth. His pulse isn’t elevated, he isn’t sweating, nothing points to deception.”

The marshal didn’t say anything. He just nodded towards the door. The major took the hint and escorted the guard out the door. Now it was just Hugo and Botha in the stockades.

There was a brief moment of silence. Hugo realized the marshal was waiting on him so he said, “You are strangely competent for such a young marshal. I suspect you are someone special. I bet you got soulmarked two heartbeats ago. You were up on shimmer mountain and the main ritual didn’t work for you. Then this man named Alexandru offered you a different choice. You could still get soulmarked if you risked everything in his secondary ritual circle. A few kids nearby died, but you survived. You got soulmarked.”

Hugo paced around the jail cell as he talked, “And right after the ritual circle this crazy girl came up to you and asked you if you time traveled. You said no, of course. What a bizarre question. You lived your life, signed up for the military maybe, and then something weird happened. You were sent back in time, to the beginning of last year again. All of a sudden that crazy girl didn’t seem so crazy. How many times did you live last year over again?”

The marshal didn’t say anything, but Hugo was patient. He stared Botha down, confident in his conclusions. He didn’t want to tip his hand that he had high stats and multiple domains, but he figured broaching the subject of time travel was strange enough to derail his interrogation.

“Is that what happened to you?” Botha asked. He grabbed a chair and sat down in the middle of the room, facing Hugo. “Did you get sucked into Alexandru’s ritual too?”

“Mia’s the veteran time traveler, not me,” Hugo said, “Come on. You are a time traveler. Or at least you were one last year. Admit it.”

“Even if I did admit it, what would it matter?” Botha said.

It was frustrating, dealing with someone so cagy. Hugo would have much preferred dealing with an idiot that would just tell him everything. Despite being frustrated, Hugo smiled and said, “Oh you don’t have to play coy with me, Botha. I can tell from your answers that you are a time traveler. That’s all that really matters. I know now that you will believe me.”

Hugo walked up to the bars and grabbed four of them. He leaned forward and said, “We know the future. I am here trying to prevent it. If you go forward with your plans, you are going to hook up dozens of mana cores to the shimmer vein and create a cascade failure. It will send explosions through every single vein, destroying all the cities on the wheel, including this one. I was sent here by the sentinels to stop it.” All of that was true, of course. It just left out the detail that he was a time traveler too. He wanted to keep that to himself so he could use multiple domains to escape, or just survive until the next shimmer explosion.

“You have been trying to sabotage my efforts because you know I will succeed?” Botha said.

Hugo shook his head, “No, I have been trying to sabotage you because you will fail spectacularly. You are going to kill thousands and thousands of people, including the ones here. The cascade failure will take out Deva as well.” Hugo paused for a moment and then said, “We don’t have to be adversaries. You obviously seem loyal to Deva and her people. I am sure you don’t want to destroy this city too, right?”

When Botha didn’t respond Hugo said “Right?” again.

Marshal Botha stood up and put away the chair. As he walked away, he said, “The world does not begin and end with the breadbasket. It is larger than that, much more grand. The concerns of one little city pale in comparison.”

Without another word, the marshal left. Shortly thereafter, the guard came in and stationed himself facing the cell.

Hugo swore internally. What did he mean by that? What kind of insane babble was the marshal spouting? Hugo was seriously worried that the marshal wasn’t deterred by the idea that Deva would be destroyed as well. He was talking about thousands of lives like they didn’t even matter.

It was also telling that he used the term “breadbasket.” That was a term that only people from outside the wheel used. It was harder in other cities to grow grains since that took up a lot of land that would need to be defended from monsters. Many of the cities on the wheel got a large part of their income exporting wheat and other grains to the cities outside it.

If the marshal was thinking of the cities around shimmer mountain as simple resources, it meant that he didn’t care about them. There must be some outside politics at play. It seemed like Botha was fine with Deva exploding to further his other political goals.

Hugo wished that he had been taught more about outside politics in history class. It was something that the teacher covered, but only in second year classes, and Hugo had taken the first year twice. He did know that there were three major powers on the continent.

That was about it though. He didn’t know why any one of them would be attacking the wheel, but it answered the question of where the money was coming from to fuel this attack. One of the major powers was making a play and didn’t want another one to have the food and resources that the eight cities on the wheel provided.

The next two days were rough on Hugo. A mixture of boredom and stress meant that he didn’t have a single moment free of worries. The guards switched shifts every four hours, so he couldn’t count on a second of inattention from them.

He couldn’t use any of his domains because his hands were cuffed. He did figure out how to send a mana dart through his legs though. That was kind of fun. He even hid the moment by shooting out the soles of his feet under his bed. So he had one ace up his sleeve.

It might be useful today.

The older ritualist burst into the stockades today. He was looking haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. As soon as he walked in he started screaming at Hugo. The guard had to hold him back.

“You did this, didn’t you?! Didn’t you?!” the ritualist yelled, spittle flying, “What did you do to them? Why won’t they respond to healing or potions? How can I save them?” His voice broke as he said the last part.

It took Hugo a moment to catch up before he realized what he was talking about. The other soldiers working on the cascade failure attack. Hugo had hit them with a glancing shot of black bolt. The insidious attack must be taking effect now and killing them. Hugo’s heart fell. He still thought it was the right decision, but seeing the ritualist’s crying face brought home the consequences of his actions.

Hugo took a deep breath to steady himself and then said, “What is your name?”

“My name? You tried to kill us all and you don’t even know my name? It’s Otto Haun. Now will you tell me how to save my soldiers?”

“I am so sorry, Otto Haun, I can’t help you,” Hugo said and looked away. He had only asked so he could know who he needed to take out when he tried this again next life.

Otto lunged forward and yelled, “I’ll kill you! If you don’t tell me which poison you used, I will come in here and kill you! Orders or no orders, if they die you die!”

“I want to help you, but I literally can’t. There is no cure,” Hugo said without looking back.

Otto screamed incoherently and tried to get at Hugo.

At this point the guard pushed the ritualist back. Otto was forced out of the room and Hugo had to deal with the fact that he had killed a dozen people. They just didn’t know it yet.

Three hours later, the light mage major came to visit with a nox wearing black. She must be a life mage or a doctor.

“Hello Xhosa. We would like your assistance with saving these men and women. If you tell us how to counter the poison you used, I can promise you will be saved,” the nox said.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Hugo replied confidently.

This seemed to throw them, and the light mage said, “What? We wouldn’t kill you if you help us save people. We aren’t barbarians.”

“No, no. I doubt you can promise to save me. You can’t promise anything. I am sure you aren’t supposed to be here. You had orders not to visit me, right?” Hugo said. He could see by the winces on their faces that he was right. “There is a reason that Marshal Botha ordered you not to talk to me. I know some dangerous facts about him that he doesn’t want to get out.”