"Fucking mirror magic," Banks groused as he appeared in the middle of that poor house at the start of the loop again. He really hated mirror magic, it was an absurdly irrational branch of magic and impossibly irritating to actually counter. The only two effective counters for the magic was luck magic, which he couldn't use, and sound magic, which he couldn't use without his trombone. He was getting a lot of what he used to call fuck-off-kills lately, namely kills that him so dramatically or where the situation was so hopeless that his memories get punted way back. Normally it would be a few days or weeks, but at this point it seemed to have him stuck at the start of the loop.

  "Mirror magic?" a familiar Nevadie asked. "That looked like teleportation, rather than mirror magic."

  "Mirror magic can teleport," Banks stated. "Through mirrors granted, but to the highest level practitioners everything is a mirror. Fuck I hate mirror magic."

  "Sounds like a story, stranger," the Nevadie stated. "Got any place to be."

  "Have to pick up a ring," Banks stated. "Also have to go to a specific inn." He sighed inwardly. He really didn't want to do any of this. The mirror magician advised him to stop poking around, obviously familiar with the situation in the time loop and he agreed. Whatever plans they had, he wanted no part of it. If it wasn't for the fact that he was literally trapped here he would be happily back in the future eating food from all around the world and reading and having the collective sum of human knowledge and entertainment at his fingertips, not dealing with this primitive shit.

  "Is this some marriage thing, are you getting married?" the Nevadie asked.

  "Huh, it does sound that way, but I can assure you I am not," Banks stated firmly as he left the building, the Nevadie following closely behind. "So what are you in this city for? I don't think I've ever asked?"

  "Well considering that we've only met about thirty seconds ago I don't see where you would have got the opportunity," the Nevadie stated jokingly. "Pragnosis is quite famous for it's garden's and I've been a gardener in a few lives before, so I just wanted to see it."

  "You sound a bit like this is your final voyage," Banks said lightheartedly, before his eyes widened as the shorter man didn't deny it. "No way. You're going to end it. Permanently I mean."

  "Huh, you're actually quite good at reading people aren't you," the Nevadie said.

  "But didn't you only have fifteen incarnations beforehand," Banks said, disregarding the fact that he had only heard that in a prior loop.

  "You seem quite well informed about me," Eislock the Nevadie said. "I stopped counting at fifteen and never started again. Never wanted to be seen as an elder," he scoffed. "I grew up a long time ago in the Moon Shrouded Nation. I doubt you've heard about it."

  "The Moon Shrouded Nation was one of the successor states of the Hundred Cities of Rhanim that used their expertise with formations to survive the Three Year Eclipse and the subsequent food shortages," Banks said cocking an eyebrow. "That must make you....what six or seven thousand years old."

  "Roughly seven thousand eight hundred since my first birthday," Eislock said. "I've done and seen just about everything at this point and a man sometimes gets tired. You probably wouldn't understand."

  "I do," Banks admitted, for once his voice completely sincere. While his experiences were not as linear as the Nevadie his actual age was definitely not lesser. Everybody likes to think that they would love immortality and for a while they do, but that love is ultimately ground down by the millstone that is Eternity. While it is true that both happiness and sadness are temporary, in his subjective opinion the bad experiences tend to be stickier in the mind. Happiness fades quickly while sadness seems to pile on. Also, being immortal and having depression was a shit time that he would not recommend to anybody. Couldn't even actively kill himself without sending his memories back to a Banks who would then be faced with the knowledge that it wouldn't work. In that way he envied the Nevadie.

  "Well then," Eislock said, awkwardly. "Time gets us all in the end. Barely any Nevadie first born before me nowadays. More and more I feel like a fossil from a different time. So I think it's about time to phone it in, while I'm ahead."

  "Well I wish you luck," Banks said, trying to dissuade him from accepting his last reincarnation would feel incredibly hypocritical coming from him. "What was your highest mana level."

  "Once got up into the high seven thousands," Eislock admitted causing Bank's eyes to widen.

  "Woah, that's incredible," he said whistling. That number would probably put him among the top levels of an empire and only a few steps, albeit massive steps, beneath a true monster of humanity.

  "No, you and I both know that above ten thousand is where the real powerhouses of history lie," the Nevadie stated. "And throughout history no Nevadie has ever reached that level."

  "No Nevadie that you know of," Banks stated. Actually to his own knowledge there was a member of the Nevadie that was above that level, but he was long, long before Eislock. In fact in the forty thousand years since the Nevadie were created by the Galade there was only one and that guy was destroyed beyond even the possibility of reincarnation. Even still there was a lot of oppression placed on the group in the years afterwards, just to be sure.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "No Nevadie that I've met in all my years," Eislock admitted before they came to a stop at the bank. "There's fewer of us now. Weaker. I guess in a thousand years we will start to fade from memory." He wasn't entirely wrong, the Nevadie bloodline was still existent in the forth millennium, but rare to the extent that some countries won't even have one or two.

  "Nice speaking to you," Banks said, and he meant it. The conversation got a bit personal there, especially for somebody that he had only met once, well in this timeline. Giving a wave goodbye he walked up the stairs plastering a smile on his face that had fallen off sometime during their conversation.

  xxx

  Banks stepped into a familiar building in the old part of town. That underground place of sin that he had found the self-proclaimed greatest world's greatest assassin was doing a bustling trade early in the morning. Dozens of people sat at tables, duos or even trios slipped away into rooms, and a thick mixed smell, like curdled bubblegum pervaded the room, and he reflexively took shallower breaths trying to avoid as little of that smoke as possible. The Salt Screamers were a known gang of smugglers that brought many an illicit substance into the city, or person into the city while the Five Skies Gang leaned more traditional with their racketeering and extortion. There was a third gang major gang in this city, but he hadn't run into them yet and from his knowledge they were more white collar.

  Despite the smoke, his eyes immediately locked onto his target and he walked over the assassin. He was still out of the line of sight when the assassin slammed down his cards, before leaning backwards over the chair, his eyes dyed blue due to some unknown substances trained on him. He would like to say that there was surprise in his eyes, a faint trace of shock that was immediately hidden, but that dopey drug-addled look never left his visage even as his blue saturated eyes gave him a lazy once over.

  "Banks my man, so good to see you," he said, smoke billowing. "Have a chip." He held up a bowl half full of what traditionally looked like chips made of probably the local type of corn.

  "Ascrew old friend," Banks said as he grabbed a chip. "I've heard you've been busy lately."

  "Who is this?" a rather rotund man with a walrus moustache said to the assassin. "Care to introduce us?"

  "This is Landall... the Banker," Ascrew stated to him. "This is Banks the archaeologist," he said to the fat man.

  "Charmed," the man said. "Want to join us at our game."

  "Maybe another time," Banks said dismissively. "I believe you have a ring for me," he said to Ascrew.

  "Did I tell you that?" he asked. "I just lost the ring to that gentleman over there." He pointed at the fat man, who downed a fizzy looking drink.

  "If you want we can play for it," the man said generously. "Starting bid is 50."

  "Fifty," Banks repeated. Did he mean silver or copper. Either way he didn't want to do it. He scowled at the man, letting the frustration bleed onto his face, before he collapsed onto a nearby chair. "Ascrew win it back for me."

  "I feel like it goes against the spirit of the game," the assassin said. "Wait why is your eye twitching."

  "I'm just contemplating if I would be able to kill everybody in this little club," Banks said grabbing a nearby drink and downing it. "Let me just..." he paused before deciding against murdering everybody and rewinding time. He rubbed his eyes as he was handed some sort of cigar thing.

  "Have a puff," Ascrew said patting his shoulder. "Sorry Landall, deal the cards. I'm going to win back that ring, no matter what it takes." That was quite a serious thing for an assassin to declare, but to his credit the fat man didn't react.

  "You can tell a lot about people from the way they play," Landall said chewing on his own cigar thing.

  "And what about people who choose not to play at all," Banks said.

  "They see themselves as apart from the game," Landall stated. "There's a certain level of contempt and arrogance about entering a gambling parlor and refusing to play."

  "Maybe they're tired," Banks stated coolly. "Maybe they're sick of being dragged into every little thing. Maybe they just wish the world would fuck off and leave them alone. Maybe they need to get a ring because of some bullshit and they're being asked to play a game that they've never heard of. What did you say this game was again?"

  "Nine dark devils," Landall stated. "A game of statistics, pattern recognition and deceit. Ever met a devil Mr. Banks."

  "Devils are long extinct if they ever existed at all," Banks said, half lying. There were ruins of the now-extinct devils in the demon realm and stories of them tempting humans in ages long past, but as of the current age, they had long faded into history.

  "Don't play this game Landall," Ascrew said unusually firmly, fixing him with a look and after a moment's pause, the fat man smiled before placing a pitch black ring down on the table, and sliding it over to the time traveler.

  "If Mr. Ascrew is vouching for you then you must be a dangerous person to cross," Landall stated. "Let me introduce myself again. I'm Mr. Landall, I conduct trades, provide lending services and store safely what is most valuable to you."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Banks stated as he picked up the ring, breathing in the energy. Suspicions coalesced into certainty. The energy of the ring was definitely Death Mana, which meant that the Undying Emperor must have been an exceptionally powerful necromancer. No wonder his parts were able to create an army of ghosts, zombies and the like. It also made his suspicions rise as to what the ultimate objective of those parts may be. Perhaps the recent resurgence of the dead, was only the first step in a horrifying ritual. A brief thrum caught his attention and he nearly dropped the ring as he realized that the ring contained it's own mana pool, a clear sign that there was a soul attached.

  "Are you satisfied now?" Ascrew asked him, and there was a slight edge in his tone. Maybe it was annoyance or concern, but that light jokey manner he had before seemed to generate a few microscopic cracks.

  "Partially," he stated. Privately he hoped that he would be able to bring it back into the next loop, but the soul of the ring would likely render that impossible. At the start of the loop, the ring would once again be in the possession of Ascrew and he would no doubt throw it away. "Thank you for your help."

  "Don't be a stranger," Landall said, and Ascrew just nodded, picking up his pipe and smoking away as Banks left the room heading a specific inn.