Swamped

Your mind races, as you frantically try to think of what can help.

Maybe you aren't the reason for the rewind. Maybe somebody else has put you in this loop, and that's why you're not able to break it yourself. Maybe it's the stray ether, maybe it's another wizard with the power of time.

If that's the case, then trying to break the loop directly will pit your magic directly against theirs. You're not sure you can handle that - you don't even know how much ether you still have in you.

So you'll need to somehow put strain on the loop indirectly. How, though? You don't have the strength...

But maybe you can find an anchor. If you brought in another person, and connected them to you, the loop would have to carry them through time as well. That would take a lot more ether - maybe more than the loop can process.

And as it happens, you know somebody else displaced in time. And you have an object belonging to that person. There should be enough of a temporal signature on it...

You're now Corvus. You're back in the present, and you have a headache.

Captain Long is standing over you, gasping for breath. He's got his staff back, at least.

"Did you, ah, bring me back?" you ask, slowly getting to your feet. "Because I was trying to figure some stuff out, but I'm not sure it matters any more. It's all in the past, after all."

"So it is," Long says, nodding. "It seems someone was trying to keep you there. That said, I'm not the one who brought you back here. I just had to step in when it started getting complicated." He glances downwards.

You follow his gaze, and see Marshall unconscious on the floor. Oh.

"Sorry for the trouble," you say awkwardly. "I'm guessing I missed a lot."

"Indeed. I'm afraid there isn't time to fill you in on all the details, not least because I don't have them all myself. But there's one very important thing you should know about."