By the end of the club's time, we managed to transcribe each other's books, but I kept hers to study the two together and make any corrections to the rushed transcription I did over the week that followed.
That evening I took [Best girl] over to my house via the pendant and we had dinner together and stayed up late waiting for the assassin that killed my father in my timeline… well, my mom, dad, and my, now, not quite girlfriend stayed up, I drank myself to sleep and stayed that way until morning. Or at least that was the plan, I was awoken in the middle of the night and told that they heard a scream suddenly get cut off and asked me what happened.
I opened book and read it aloud, "the assassin wanders the halls of the labyrinth looking for an exit and instead finds an intricate maze that defies gravity and has doors in places you wouldn't think accessible and stairs on walls leading to sideways and upside-down doors. The assassin is confused by the situation they find themselves in and screams into the uncaring void. The assassin begins picking at the hem of their scarf and intends to use it to make sure they don't repeat their path on their way. The assassin is heading in the opposite direction of the only door leading out and doesn't know it yet."
After giving my slightly upset and visibly groggy retelling of the events currently transpiring, I went back to sleep on the couch and left the others to do as they like. The morning after when I checked book it seemed the assassin was still trapped and still wandering. It seems as though this assassin will wear themselves out before reaching the end. The others were restlessly sleeping on their feet as if sleeping while standing would give them an advantage to sleeping while lying down.
I, feeling lazy this morning used one of the space-time cantrips I've been meaning to try out and summoned an apple to my hand. This spell's intended purpose is to teleport small components into view but as that's unnecessary I'll just use it to bring me food. The loud crunch of the apple broke the silence of the morning and the three awoke. They assumed battle positions, one fell over, it was dad. I used the cantrip again and tossed them an apple each. They caught it and not knowing what it was for a second stared at their respective apples inquisitively through half-lidded eyes before realization set in and they took a bite.
"Looks like I'm making breakfast today"
"… Yeah… Breakfast… You do that…" I heard back from them. So, I got to work making breakfast for the tired trio, no doubt they stayed awake for as long as they could thinking they could defeat an intruder like this. As I read through book, I saw the assassin grow tired of wandering and lie down but through book I knew it was just a trap to get me to come down there and try something.
Then if I go down now, I'm going to get stabbed and that doesn't really help if I want to ask who sent them. If I wait an hour or two, I can rob them of all their stuff while they're asleep and come back to confront them then. Book doesn't seem to want to tell me what gender this assassin is, so I'll drop the subject for now.
At school, while ignoring the lessons as usual I kept an eye on book for any changes to the future. It seems if I leave this assassin alone for too long, they are going to kill themselves rather than starve to death… well that's ok I learned how to summon better undead now that I can see the spirits of the dead, but that suicide path isn't exactly a 100% guarantee, the way they approach the labyrinth is up to their discretion there's a chance they might loop around and actually head towards the exit or even find it. As tempted as I am to just let this assassin die and revive them after the fact, I'd rather just deal with them now.
After a couple of classes, I checked book and saw that the assassin had actually fallen asleep so between classes I teleported over to the labyrinth and followed books directions for where to find them. When I found them, I cast a mind magic sleep spell I occasionally use on myself when I can't sleep and stole everything they had and stuffed it into the same box the skeletons were in. rather than just abandon this poor defenceless and naked hermaphrodite to die cold and alone in my maze I left them a sandwich with a crudely drawn map to the exit drawn on it on the floor in front of their face before I went back to class.
While in my next class I laughed at the possible futures that began flooding into book and got kicked out of history class for laughing inappropriately during a lecture about some genocide that happened over 50 years ago because not only was I not paying attention, but I was laughing right as they described the brutal deaths of thousands of innocent people.
I didn't really care though this is funny. In one future this assassin doesn't trust the sandwich and goes the opposite direction only to realize they were going the wrong way the entire time and were now face to face with a homeless man who really wanted the sandwich they were holding. In another, they accidentally smeared the sandwich map I drew in condiments and lamented the loss of the map for a few minutes before realizing they no longer had any weapons with which to kill themselves.
In another the homeless man saw them naked from a distance and got naked himself to scare them off… it worked but… I could have gone without the mental image. Either way, the possible ways they could screw up were amusing to me. During lunch, I ate in the skeleton room and tested my new spell combination. I grabbed the box from its place and began searching for the strongest lingering spirit I could find. When I found it I asked which skeleton belonged to them and put it together like a puzzle on the floor as I ate my lunch.
Once the skeleton was set up and ready, I asked the spirit to lie down on top of the skeleton and began raising the dead with my focus in one hand. I actually chanted the spell this time to see if chanting when I can just choose not to will improve the spell results. Once the spell was completely finished something that didn't happen the first time occurred.
A small palm-sized item with the appearance of a ring, decorated in the most gaudy, unnecessarily expensive-looking jewels and metals I could imagine in a grotesque and complex mesh of art and vanity. Like it existed just to declare how expensive it was to the world. While I was staring at it I saw the spirit being drawn into it and the skeleton begin to reanimate itself.
Realizing what it was I was holding I placed it atop the heart as the flesh began closing in around it and the naked form of one of the assassins who tried to kill me was seen before me. "isn't this that girl who tried to kill me the first time?" I then silently cast a spell on her to halt the natural decomposition that comes with being a lich as that is what she is now and had the labyrinth change part of the floor into a bed so I could have a blanket to throw over her. I then activated a radiant spell that in all honesty should be a necromancy spell. Command Undead, it does exactly what it sounds like it does. When the body was done reforming itself and I could see the skin I noticed she had a magic circle drawn on her as well, but it was a crude one I didn't recognize.
I threw a blanket over her and she woke up. "Where am I?"
"Welcome back to the world of the living… although you aren't really among the living right now."
"Who?" realization swept over her face. "You! I was sent to kill you and you didn't die!"
"Yeah, I have a passive spell that kills people who try to kill me. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
"The money I was going to get from killing you could have fed my family for at least another 2 hours."
"Why would you throw your life away over pocket change?"
"I was going to rob the other bandits when they got paid for it."
"Well, you can't kill me now."
"I'd like to see you try to stop me." She reached for a dagger from the clothes on top of the bone box and thrust it in the direction of my face. It stopped short one millimetre away from my nose. And she began struggling to try to push the dagger further, but her arm refused. To mock her I leaned forward, and her arm pulled back, "why?"
"I told you before, didn't I? you can't kill me anymore, you can't even try."
"But…"
"You are now nothing more than an undead under my control. Any attempts at escape will be futile and anything you own will become my possession. Congratulations you're the first person I revive in this timeline, you should feel glad I didn't throw your corpse away making enchanted weapons as I did in the last timeline."
"You! …" she got really mad and stood up to try being threatening when she realized she was completely naked and hid herself under the blanket. "What happened to my clothes?!"
"They were burned with the rest of your body when we mass cremated all the bandits who tried to kill me in my sleep."
"I had a portrait of my grandmother in those clothes you jerk!"
"Is she still alive or do you want me to make her an undead too?"
"Don't you touch my grandma!"
"It's not like you can stop me. Or disobey me." I grabbed her by the face forced her to look into my eyes and said, "Who sent you to try and hurt my family."
"It was… a hit has been put out to kill your family, I don't know who ordered it but apparently a noble had soldiers posing as bandits to try and get even more money than legally possible to tax out of his citizens. Your family got in his way. I don't know who it is as there are several nobles in control of this area but at least one of them is very angry they can't afford to buy that new statue polish for all the statues they can't afford to have built of themselves anymore."
After I let go of her face, she dropped the blanket and looked at me dejectedly knowing I could force her to do whatever I wanted and resigned herself to her fate. Though I think she's misunderstanding something fundamental about my integrity as a person. "Put on those clothes, I won't order you to if you prefer to be an exhibitionist, just know I'm not into necrophilia."
"W-what's that supposed to mean?"
"You're just not my type girl, plus you're probably like five years older than me."
After thoroughly offending her I left her to decide whether she'd wear clothes or not on her own as I returned to school in time for my next class. I'll ask her about the magic she knows later. Classes were a bit more fun now that I had two idiots to follow in book.