–His fist slammed into my throat. I reeled back, choking, dropping the woewood staff, which hit the stone floor in a shower of black sparks. 

[i]Only five minutes,[/i] I’d been about to shout. My head was buzzing and I couldn’t recall the rest. Well, I was in it now; there was nothing to do but fight for it.

He dove for the staff and I grabbed it just in time, coughing blood. He seized it as well, shoving and wrenching, trying to wrest it from me. “Stand down,” I screeched through the pain. “You don’t understand–”

“What’s there to understand?” he shouted. “All I have to do is kill you and claim the staff, and I can escape from this abominable curse. [i]Only one may cast free of the temporal loop,[/i] said the Judge of the Tribunal.”

I recovered my strength and pushed him back from me with a twisting move, breaking his grip on the staff and sending him flying into the corner to land on his rump. I hoped that it broke his pelvis, for all the good it would do.

“You idiot. They don’t want [i]either[/i] of us to escape. We’ve caused them too many problems and they’re too ethically conflicted to simply kill us, so they did the worse thing and consigned us to this.” I gestured around us at the small stone chamber.

He got to his feet. “You’re lying to me. They’ve got to leave us a way out of here. Some small chance at redemption. It’s in the laws–”

“You are technically right, and they technically did. But for such as you and me, it’s a stalemate. The ritual of escape takes just under five minutes to cast. Do you think I’m going to just sit back and watch you cast that spell to leave without me, any more than you would?”

“How do you know this about the ritual?” He stopped sneering as he searched my expression.

“The staff imparts this knowledge to the last one who alone touched it. You’re not remembering this because the loop resets everything else. I suppose they wanted to be merciful.” I spat more blood on the floor. “Why is it that the merciful people always seem to devise the worst of hells?”

He smirked and shook his head. “Well, supposing what you say is true, I don’t see that it changes anything. It’s still you or me, and I obviously need the staff to cast the spell. Nothing personal…” He tensed, ready to spring.

I screeched through my bruised throat. “No! Will you just listen to me? It won’t help you now! The loop itself is–”

He lunged and struck out at me, and–