DER TEUFELSKREIS

German, "the vicious circle"

The universe was bad enough without people poking it. -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

The next lifetime got off to an auspicious start -- compared to the last two, anyway. Diarnlan woke up in her own bed, in her own house, in the body of her twenty-four-year-old self. Her first reaction was joy. It was quickly replaced with dread. If she was back at her normal age then the first skrýszel attack was about to happen. And Karandren was a teenager. He'd been bearable -- at times he'd even been decent company, bizarre though the thought was -- as a child. But as a teenager?

Someone knocked at the back door. Oh no. That was her sister come to torment her again. Diarnlan pulled the quilt over her head and pointedly ignored the knocking. It continued uninterrupted for several minutes.

"Diarnlan! Open this door right now!"

That wasn't her sister. Diarnlan shoved the quilt back and stormed downstairs, not bothering to change out of her pyjamas. She threw the door open.

Karandren had the audacity to look surprised to see she wasn't happy to see him. "Well? Change your clothes and let's go!"

"Go where?" Diarnlan asked in her most icy tone.

"To Miavain, of course!"

She slammed the door in his face. Unfortunately he simply opened it again.

"Come on, you said I could go to Miavain if I wanted."

"I distinctly remember also saying that I wouldn't go with you."

"But I won't kidnap you or hold you hostage this time!"

Diarnlan stalked out of the kitchen without answering. Karandren, damn him, trailed after her like a puppy begging for attention.

"Come oooooooooon," he whined.

Damn it, even his eyes looked like a puppy's now. To her own horror Diarnlan found herself wavering in the face of that pleading gaze.

"Do you seriously think I'm going to help you conquer Miavain?"

Karandren shrugged. "You can do whatever you want as soon as we get there. But it'd be faster if we work together to take over. And then we'll see how long we survive by avoiding the skrýszel altogether."

Diarnlan's grandmother was fond of an old saying: never speak of wolves or one will come to your door. Karandren might as well have laid down an "All Skrýszels Welcome" sign and thrown a greeting party for them. The house shook at a distant thud. Diarnlan groaned. Karandren had been about to speak again and stopped with his mouth still hanging open.

"What's that?" he asked, proving once again that he had fewer brains than a dormouse.

Diarnlan went back to her room and hunted for Saungrafn. She found it in the bathtub, of all places, and stormed downstairs to face the latest monster. Karandren was leaning against the kitchen window, staring out with a bug-eyed expression.

"It's a skrýszel!" he announced as if this was completely unexpected news.

She ignored him as she went outside. From her garden gate she got a good view of the creature. It was the frog-like one, the first one she'd ever killed.

This doesn't prove Karandren's theory, she told herself, partly because she hated the idea he might be right about anything and partly because the skrýszels going through their own time-loop was too strange and disturbing to think about.

The creature's starfish-shaped head emerged from under its shell. Its eyes were too small to see from this distance, but Diarnlan got the feeling it was staring right at her. Abruptly its eyes widened and became visible. There was one on the end of each starfish-arm-esque point of the skrýszel's head. And they were all focused on Diarnlan.

Years ago, before she ever met Karandren or got dragged into the time-loop, when she was still just a child living with her parents, Diarnlan had been sent to a neighbouring farm on an errand. She decided to take a short-cut through a field. Half-way across she discovered the field was home to a very unhappy bull.

Was it possible for animals to glare? She was sure the bull had managed it. And now the skrýszel was looking at her in exactly the same way the bull had. Diarnlan's instinctive reaction was to flee. Instead she forced herself to stand still and think.

Perhaps the skrýszel recognised her. Perhaps it didn't. Either way the best way to kill it was to attack its eyes-- Wait a minute. She distinctly remembered that the first skrýszel's eyes had been on the side of its head, not on the points of its face. Diarnlan stared suspiciously at those five eyes. Were they only eye-spots meant as a decoy?

The skrýszel chittered like a swarm of insects. It crouched down on its back legs. Diarnlan tightened her grip on Saungrafn. If it sprang at her she would have to attack its underbelly. Its armour might be thin enough for her to cut through. At any rate she could hurt it enough to distract it while--

It sprang. Diarnlan forgot everything she'd been planning. She threw herself out of the way. The skrýszel landed with a tremendous crash in the middle of her garden. It squashed her gate, fence, and vegetable patch. She gasped in outrage. How dare it destroy her garden?

Throwing caution to the wind she stabbed Saungrafn into its foreleg. The brute wailed and hopped back. Its five eyes fixed on Diarnlan and glared balefully. Strange. Now she could see that it didn't have eyes on the side of its head.

Is this a different monster? she asked Saungrafn. All she heard in reply was the telepathic equivalent of a baffled person scratching their head.

After so many lifetimes fighting with Karandren she had developed a sort of sixth sense for when he was around. While the skrýszel groaned and licked its wound she fell back to the side of the house. As she watched it she sensed him come up behind her.

"Why haven't you killed it yet?" he asked, as if killing monsters she wasn't familiar with was an easy task and the work of a few minutes.

She turned and gave him her most unimpressed glare. "I'm trying to figure out where its weak spots are."

"Attack its eyes, idiot!"

"Which eyes?"

"What do you mean, which ey--" Karandren broke off. He stared very hard at the skrýszel. "I don't remember it having that many eyes."

"My point exactly."

They stared at each other. Diarnlan could see Karandren's thoughts run along the same lines as hers had. Then she felt utter horror, because how had she gotten to know his expressions so well she could tell what he was thinking?

"You have to admit it now," Karandren said. "I'm right and they really do send a different monster every time."

Diarnlan could think of several things she could say to that. They included "We already know that and it doesn't prove anything" to "And what do you suggest we do about it?". But saying any of them would do nothing but start an argument. Meanwhile that damned monster was still squatting on the ruins of her garden and one of them had to kill it before it decided to attack the village.

"Remember the insect octopus monster?" Karandren asked.

She'd faced so many monsters that it took Diarnlan a minute to remember that one. "What about it?"

"Remember how I killed it?"

Yes, she did remember. She was never likely to forget seeing that thing cut in two. "Are you planning--"

"--To do the same thing again?"

Karandren gave her a terrifyingly cheerful grin. Diarnlan considered the methods of killing this monster. Cutting it in half, although brutal, would certainly be effective.

Five minutes later, when they were running for their lives and pursued by a very angry monster that was somehow still moving even though its head hung by a strip of sinew, it didn't seem effective at all.

"What did you do?" Diarnlan yelled.

"I don't know! It should be dead!"

As if to prove how decidedly not-dead it was, the monster let out a blood-curdling roar and brought its foot down where Diarnlan had been a minute ago. She leapt out of the way just in time.

"What do we --" Karandren ducked to avoid a swing of the skrýszel's tail "--do now?"

"Keep running and hope it dies of blood loss."

"What sort of plan is that?"

"Have you got any better ones?"

The skrýszel didn't die of blood loss. It chased Diarnlan and Karandren all the way to Boroeyrr Forest. Everyone they encountered along the way took one look at the skrýszel and fled for their lives. Diarnlan could just imagine the sort of stories being passed around the county's gossip chain.

Magicians could run much faster than ordinary humans. So could skrýszel, but this one had the disadvantage of its injured leg. Diarnlan outran it easily. Karandren, damn him, had taken to teleporting around the place to distract it.

When they reached the shelter of the trees it stopped outside and bellowed in rage. Its eyes scanned the forest, but it made no effort to continue chasing them. The two of them dived behind the tree trunks and paused to catch their breath.

"Why didn't it follow us?" Karandren asked in a whisper.

"Maybe it's afraid of trees. Quick, let's

kill it before it goes away."

When she suggested killing it Diarnlan had an idea of attacking it with Saungrafn. Karandren had other ideas. He conjured up a red ball of magic that writhed like a living creature. Painful experience of his magic made Diarnlan retreat to a safe distance.

"If you set the forest on fire I'll feed you to the next skrýszel that comes along," she warned.

He ignored her and threw the ball at the skrýszel. It turned into wisps of smoke that disappeared beneath the creature's shell. For a minute nothing happened. Then the skrýszel exploded. Blood and body parts rained everywhere.

Diarnlan got soaked by a spurt of blood. She yelled, partly from the shock and partly from horror as she realised what this meant. "You idiot! Where's the nearest river?"

Karandren blinked owlishly at her. "River?"

From his tone anyone would have assumed he'd never heard the word before. Diarnlan took a deep breath and explained through gritted teeth.

"Skrýszel blood turns into acid after death. Now where's the nearest river?"

If she had been less preoccupied she would have noticed Karandren conjuring up yet more magic. But she didn't notice anything until a wave of icy cold water crashed over her head.

"I hate you."

"The feeling's mutual. Now are we going to Miavain?"

"Why the hell do you like Miavain so much? It's a nightmare!"

"But it's home."

"Not to me it isn't. I've had enough of priests and bones and dark magic to last me a hundred lifetimes!"

"There's a library of spell-books buried under the High Priest's palace."

"...There's a what?"

"It has spells that haven't been used for over five hundred years."

"..."

"I even saw a spell that turns a person's brain to molten lead."

"Why would anyone want--"

"Just think of using it on the skrýszels that killed us!"

"..."

"..."

"All right. But I'll leave as soon as I see those spell-books."

Miavain didn't improve the second time around. Karandren insisted on dragging her around all of the places he had visited in his lifetimes like some sort of demented tour guide, but all Diarnlan could think was, This place should be razed to the ground.

It wasn't just the Bone-Worshippers' temples decorated with carvings of bone until they looked like a mass grave. It wasn't just the priests' houses, ridiculously large and without a single trace of good taste. It wasn't even Karandren himself and his absurd fondness for the place. The very atmosphere set Diarnlan's teeth on edge. Looking up at the High Priest's palace made her stomach twist. Walking out onto the platform where she had died once before made her feel as if she was being torn in two between past and present.

On the bright side, Karandren hadn't been lying about the spell-books. They'd been the contents of the Imperial Library before the country fell to the Bone-Worshippers. How they had survived when those lunatics hated magic of all sorts was probably a testament to the hypocrisy of the High Priests.

Diarnlan read all of them. She took note of the most useful spells. And when she was finished she packed her bags -- before agreeing to this trip to Miavain she'd gone back to her house and taken some of her belongings -- and prepared to leave.

Karandren had once again set up shop in the palace basement. When she went to tell him of her departure she found him surrounded by a heap of scrap metal.

"Are you rebuilding that ridiculous dragon?"

"Of course!" Karandren looked at her as if she was very silly. Then he saw the suitcase in her hand and his face fell. "You're leaving?"

Judging by his tone anyone would have thought he was about to lose an old and dear friend.

"I hate this place," Diarnlan said bluntly. "And I think I have a better chance of surviving alone."

Karandren snorted. "Let me know how well that goes."

Diarnlan had left Avallot with a suitcase, a sword, and her oldest enemy. She returned with the suitcase and the sword, and felt oddly as if she'd just said goodbye to an old friend. She went to the coast and got on a ship for Byuryan again. No skrýszel showed up to disrupt her plans. Nothing out of the ordinary happened on the voyage. Nothing went wrong when she arrived in Byuryan.

That was what bothered her.