Time Loops, Wheel of Time Part 10

Rand glanced between Moiraine, Nynaeve, Perrin, Egwene and Mist as he walked into the backroom of the Winespring inn. "How many people did we lose and did we lose anyone important?"

"Everyone is important to someone," Egwene reminded him, unhappy about their inability to keep everyone from dying.

"I know but we can't keep doing this," Rand admitted reluctantly, knowing the emotional toll trying to cleanse the source without getting killed by an army of corrupted channelers was taking on everyone.

"Technically, we can," Mist offered, ignoring the look of frustration Rand gave him. "If you need another twenty or thirty resets to get things right, we'll take the time."

Rand sat down across from Egwene. "At this point, it's basically down to luck and the fact that Balthamel keeps appearing in different locations. We managed a perfect run last time and we lost the inn because Balthamel appeared in a different location and obliterated it. Five times before that, Balthamel appeared in the middle of Caemlyn and wiped it off the map. Nine before that, he appeared in the Stone of Tear and collapsed the entire fortress on Callandor. So, who did we lose?"

"Cenn Buie, Eward, Bili and Wit Congar and Hari, Darl and Ewal Coplin," Perrin admitted.

"That's it?" Rand asked, feeling slightly bad that he was seriously considering asking Mist to update the loop.

"Balthamel appeared on a pile of dog shit when he appeared and obliterated the Congar farm before anyone could stop him," Egwene explained.

Rand glanced between Perrin, Mist and Egwene. "Was anyone else hurt?"

Perrin shook his head.

"No," Egwene admitted. "I managed to toss the house through a gateway before the fire spread and he was pissed enough about the dog shit that he wasn't focused on destroying the town, just the house."

"I checked every city and town that we could think of with my crystal ball to make sure they didn't hit somewhere else," Mist admitted, wondering if the luck potion that he'd drunk had something to do with the successful mission and the deaths of the worst troublemakers in the village.

Rand glanced at Nynaeve then focused on Moiraine. "Did Siuan manage to gut the black ajah without losing anyone?"

"There were several injured bystanders but they'll be healed in a couple of days and Verin is in the process of questioning the black sisters so we can dismantle their network of contacts," Moiraine offered.

Rand turned to look at Mist. "In that case, we should update the time loop."

"And let them stay dead?" Nynaeve asked, trying to ignore the part of her that was happy that there would be less troublemakers around. "You'd reset things if it was someone else."

"I know," Rand admitted, knowing he should feel worse but he'd lost track of how many weeks they'd spend reliving the same day over and over in an attempt to keep everyone alive and make sure that none of the corrupted channelers escaped with the knowledge of how to create gateways. "I wouldn't hesitate to reset the loop if it was just about anyone else but we captured a hundred and twenty seven female channelers and a hundred and fifty seven male channelers without losing anyone other than a group of villagers that love causing trouble. We also avoided melting the giant female sa'angreal this time, probably because Mist partially unburied it. We killed Aginor with balefire, he's not coming back. What happened to Balthamel?"

"Moria executed him with balefire after ripping his mind apart with compulsion and asking a bunch of questions," Egwene admitted, not particularly comfortable with anyone using compulsion even if it was for a 'good' cause. "Unfortunately, the questioning took long enough that the balefire didn't erase the destruction."

'Just as well that they won't be around to cause trouble and the destruction is a reminder that the town needs to work on their defenses,' Mist thought as he pulled the lighter out of his inventory and flicked it, updating the timeline. 'I should feel worse but they didn't see a problem with making friends with the whitecloaks in the books or drawing dragon fangs on people's houses while the whitecloaks were in the area.'

"What am I supposed to tell the channelers that ask why we didn't save the Congars and Coplins?" Nynaeve asked Rand and Mist, not sure how to feel since they could have prevented it.

"Just tell them the truth, I was tired of watching innocent people die," Mist suggested as he put the lighter back in his inventory.

"Just because they're troublemakers, doesn't mean they deserved to die," Nynaeve argued.

"They were more than happy to cozy up to the Whitecloaks the last time around and they were crazy or stupid enough to mistake tinkers for trollocs. Drawing the dragon fang on someone's house with whitecloaks around could have gotten someone killed so yeah, I'm willing to let them stay dead if it means I don't have to listen to more screaming and crying children."

"He's not wrong," Perrin pointed out, well aware of the shit they'd gotten up to the last time around.

"Just because they're fools in a future that hasn't happened, doesn't mean they deserved to die," Nynaeve argued.

"You're right, but we've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out how to fight an army of corrupted channelers without dying or causing them to scatter and destroy everything they can reach. Everytime Rand's group managed some type of win, something went wrong in the Tower or Balthamel went somewhere else or the illusion on the giant sa'angreal failed and one of the fools with maggots for brains kicked off a mass suicide."

"We could have tried again," Nynaeve argued, still feeling tired from helping Rand cleanse the source despite the five hours of sleep that she'd stolen once they finished.

Mist shook his head. "I'm tired of listening to children cry and scream because their parents died or because they realized they'd never see their friends again. Every time I reset the loop, people got a bit more scared or burned out when Balthamel appeared somewhere else. Maybe we could have saved everyone, another five loops, or ten or twenty or fifty? Eldrin damned near beat Hari Coplin to death with a stick because he spit on her niece because she called him on his bullshit. That only took seven loops. Faile stabbed Darl because he wouldn't stop making snide remarks because he didn't believe her about being married to Perrin."

"To be fair, that was after we'd decided to reset things," Perrin pointed out.

"I might have hit Wit with my stick," Nynaeve admitted, thinking about one of the previous time loops where she'd beat the annoying asshole unconscious after a particularly bad attempt and after they'd realized they were resetting it. "I'd been wanting to do that for years."

"I don't think anyone that has met him would fault you," Rand offered.

Mist covered his mouth with his arm and yawned. "If no one else needs me, I'm going to grab a couple of hours of sleep. We should have a couple of days before the army of shadowspawn hits Taren Ferry, unless we managed to change something."

"Elnore hit Slayer with balefire which might have changed things considering this is only the third time we managed to kill him," Rand warned him.

"Do you know why the forsaken kept changing tactics?" Moiraine asked Mist.

"I don't know," Mist admitted as the door opened and Logain walked in with Bode. "If I had to guess, I'd say the Dark One's nature as a god of chaos caused the changes considering the whitecloaks and sul'dam were always in exactly the same place for a given time."

"Please tell me that we're not keeping this attempt," Bode blurted out.

"I already updated it. What happened?" Mist asked warily, glad that they looked more annoyed than horrified.

"Shit," Bode cursed, annoyed that she'd messed up but not particularly upset that they'd killed a lot of whitecloaks. "I thought you were going to reset it because people died."

"We lost seven Congars and Coplins and had an otherwise perfect attempt, including killing Slayer so we decided to keep it," Mist explained. "What happened?"

"We figured you'd end up resetting the loop because people died so I collapsed the Dome of Truth on a couple of thousand whitecloaks while they were trying a group of darkfriends and looted most of their vaults," Logain explained.

"How many innocents did you kill?" Rand asked, rather annoyed that they hadn't checked and they'd have to live with the consequences.

"None," Bode assured them. "There weren't any civilians watching the trial."

"What about the trainees?" Nynaeve asked.

Bode shook her head. "Everyone in the doom were high ranking whitecloaks and questioners and the darkfriends were actually running a kidnapping ring to supply trollocs with food so none of them were remotely innocent. They have paintings and murals of the whitecloaks hanging women just because they could channel. If you willingly join that type of organization, I'm not going to cry over your death and they don't have the excuse of the world falling apart like the last time around."

"Just remember what happened to Aridhol, they turned themselves into monsters," Rand warned her.

"Mordeth found something nasty in a mirror world or picked it up from the Finn, killing a bunch of monsters isn't going to turn you into a monster and normal insanity shouldn't be able to cause corruption on that scale," Mist argued.

"What makes you think the Finn had something to do with it?" Moiraine asked.

"They're twisted and they find a certain amount of pleasure in twisting your desires and playing tricks on people, including giving you exactly what you ask for," Mist explained.

"Hard to argue considering they tried to kill my brother," Bode complained.

Logain glanced between Bode and Moiraine then focused on Rand. "They should blame everything on an earthquake and we traveled around a bit causing minor earthquakes in the area as practice so I doubt anyone is going to blame the Tower, it's too widespread and the timing should be close enough."

"How are you going to explain the looted vaults?" Rand asked.

"There was a lot of confusion when the dome collapsed and we opened the doors on the way out after changing our appearance with a weave so I have a feeling people will just assume that everyone took something when they realized the vaults were open," Logain replied, fairly sure they'd find someone to blame.

"On a completely unrelated topic, we should make a vault in the city," Bode suggested, rather happy that they'd managed to cripple the whitecloaks. 'Now we just need to finish the job and we'll have one less thing to worry about.'

"I'll put it on the list," Mist assured her. "You should probably talk to Vivi about her plans to kidnap sul'dam and damane from the Seanchan. Or you know, have some fun and do some dancing now that we don't have to worry about getting attacked."

"Probably a good idea," Bode admitted.

"I could use a break," Egwene admitted, having spent most of the loops trying to keep people from going crazy and trying to help people figure out how to explain the situation to their family and friends in a way that people would understand.

"I think we could all use a break," Moiraine agreed, having spent most of the loops helping Siuan deal with the black ajah.

0o0o0

Mist glanced between the version of Egwene that was partially sleeping in a chair with a fluffy blanket around her to help with the wind and the version he could see through the gateway that she'd just opened from the dream world. "This might actually work."

"We'll see," the version of Egwene in the dream world replied as Bode used threads of air to lift the two eight by fourteen feet sheets of glass through the gateway. "How do you want the edges fused together?"

"Just curl the edges and then fuse them together so there's a gap between the two panes of glass. Just make sure you have the glass in dream world water so that it vanishes when you send the panes of glass back into the real world."

"That part I remember," Egwene replied with a smile as she used her control of the dream to conjure a narrow rectangle of water over the glass panels. She focused on keeping the water floating as she manipulated the edges of the panels, turning it into a double-pane panel.

Mist scanned the glass panel, picking up a schematic for a vacuum sealed double-pane glass panel that should improve the greenhouses that he was planning on building. "That worked better than I was expecting."

"What were you expecting?" Bode asked.

"I was sort of expecting to get a crappy pattern because of the dream water or something that needed special tools to create," Mist admitted, rather happy with the power-wrought glass panel schematic that Bode had helped him create that just required a glass blower that could use magic and a workshop.

"Do you want me to turn it into heartstone?" Bode asked.

"We probably need a couple of sealed holes in the glass along the edges so that we can bolt the panels in place," Mist suggested.

"I figured you'd explain at some point but you didn't so what's the point of removing the air?" Bode asked.

"It helps trap the warmth in a greenhouse."

"How?" Bode asked.

"Picture a pot on a stove," Mist suggested. "Would you rather touch a metal pot or a wooden handle?"

"I'm grabbing a rag or a glove and grabbing the wooden handle or using threads of air," Bode replied with a grin.

"Exactly. Certain materials transmit heat better than others. Air isn't particularly good at transmitting heat but nothingness or vacuum is worse which means that it's harder for the 'warmth' or energy in a greenhouse to escape if the glass doesn't have air between them," Mist explained as Egwene manipulated the glass to have several 'sealed' holes near the top of the glass that would let you slip a bolt through them without breaking the vacuum between the panels.

"How many holes do you need?" Egwene asked, doing her best to stay focused on the floating rectangle of water so that she wouldn't lose it.

Mist scanned the glass, getting an unlock for a 'sealed' hole in the glass panel that he could add to his other schematic which meant that he could customize the panel. "That should do it, unless you want to put the holes around the entire outside."

"I can do that," Egwene replied as she changed the panel. "You might want to take it out of the dream world."

Bode hauled the panel through the gateway, causing the water to vanish when it exited the dream world. "Now what?"

Egwene let the gateway to the dream world vanish and 'woke' the rest of the way up. "You should probably turn it into heartstone to make sure it works." She embraced the source and took over holding the glass up so that Bode wouldn't have to split her attention.

"That would be fantastic," Mist agreed.

Bode wove the weave that she'd 'rediscovered' from studying the glass bridge at Whitebridge, turning the glass into heartstone.

Mist scanned the panel, getting several schematics for nearly indestructible glass. "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be mass producing these any time soon, not without help."

"Let me guess, it takes a lot of power?" Egwene asked.

"More than I have," Mist admitted. "That just means I'm going to need some help turning the panels into heartstone."

"The power-wrought glass should be durable enough, right?" Bode asked.

Mist shook his head, thinking about the forsaken and the creatures that would be coming for their city. "All things considered, I'd rather take the extra time to make the fortress nearly indestructible rather than merely difficult to destroy."

"You'd need to turn every bolt into heartstone separately," Egwene warned him.

"I'm aware," Mist replied with a smile as he pulled up his building interface. "Some of the girls probably need the practice and I'll be making more channelers now that we have a couple of days where we don't have to worry about the forsaken killing us."

"How are you going to make more channelers?" Egwene asked, curious how the magical school actually accomplished that part as he'd mentioned the ability when he showed them the model but hadn't explained.

"Basically, every time one of the students has sex with another student, anyone bound to the school can spend mana and create another magic user, the baby will show up in the school's nursery."

"So you're saying that Moria could flood the world with channelers?" Egwene asked.

"Yep," Mist replied with a grin. "Last I checked, there were six hundred and forty three potential children of decent magical strength, just add mana or in her case, power."

"Six hundred?" Bode asked in surprise.

"Yeah, they were fucking like rabbits and that's just the students that signed the waiver at the end of the year and have a decent amount of potential. One minute a day, three hundred and sixty five days in a year means each year would take just over six hours. That works out to be about sixty hours for everyone to reach ten years of age, seventy two for age twelve or about three days. Forteen would be three and a half days, so let's just call it four days and you'd get a decently trained sixteen year old channeler that could probably wipe the floor with most of the aes sedai in the Tower."

Egwene glanced at the tailoring shop that Mist had finished yesterday that was made out of a combination of stone, metal and glass that worked quite well as the large windows showed off the clothes on display. "We're going to have to build a lot of houses."

"That's the idea," Mist agreed as he pulled up some of the schematics for the apartment buildings that he'd designed. "We'll have to start keeping track of family lines but we should be able to create at least a couple of hundred channelers a week once we get rolling and have enough rooms."

"You realize that's crazy, right?" Egwene asked, trying to wrap her mind around the idea of having tens or even hundreds of thousands of channelers living in a city.

"I'm aware," Mist replied as he pushed the button on his interface to project his 'screen' so the girls could see the designs, fairly sure he could push the numbers up if he had a reliable way to generate mana, especially once the next generation grew up surrounded by the school's insanity. "I want to see a city filled with magic and wonder. Is that too much to ask?"

"Nope," Bode replied with a grin.

"Probably," Egwene admitted, knowing how much the Tower actually discouraged using the power, mostly because of the danger of burning out your ability to channel accidently when you were first learning. Something they never really bothered correcting or addressing.

"Buckle up and enjoy the ride," Mist teased as he pulled up the patterns he needed to get started on the apartment building that would let him recruit people to get everything off the ground.

"Buckle up?" Egwene asked in confusion.

"It's just an expression, it basically means put your safety gear on and have fun," Mist explained as he headed for the large basement area they'd cut out with gateways. He raised his hands and pushed mana into his power, causing fog to surround the construction site and several warning signs to appear around the fog, telling people that there was construction in progress.

Bode shook her head. "That's still strange."

"I'm aware," Mist replied with amusement, happy that his power did most of the work as long as he had mana and the supplies in his storage or inventory.