"Those dolls above are corpse dolls. Mystical items that are a part of the Unspeakables department as much as the department building itself. They are also your safety lives since under any distressing or emergency situation they will do their best to kill themselves. Making it convenient for you to discard them so that you can leave alive yourself."

"Ar- are they- gulp alive?" Ron asked stammering.

Dominic looked at him and embodied a true Cheshire grin.

"We don't really know what they are…but, the leading theory is that they are all souls of Unspeakables that betray the ministry in hopes of selling an invaluable item and making it rich in the outer world. So make sure you don't 'accidentally' take something from here."

gulp

Ron paled and nodded quickly.

Dominic turned towards Hermione.

"Make sure all of your teammates stay in line alright.", Dominic warned, and Hermione nodded stiffly. To Loki, it seemed like she was almost about to salute Dominic if his 'heroic' gaze stayed on her any longer.

Dominic then pointed at a door beside them, "Go through here. Walk straight ahead until you come across the next door. Stop there. That's where you have to wait for the next four hours. Your replacements will arrive there too."

Hermione nodded and quickly parted with her team, Astoria gave Loki a reluctant glance but he simply smiled in her direction as she gave up sighed and followed Hermione.

To her credit, Hermione didn't directly follow Dominic's orders. Instead, she repeated them while holding the coin in her hand and flicked it into a toss.

The coin landed flat on her palm and she revealed its outcome after checking it herself.

It was heads.

With her confirmation done, Hermione left with her team by moving behind the shiny door that Dominic had pointed at.

Loki then followed Dominic along with Luna, Susan, and Ginny until they reached another door.

He tried to remember the pathway back out but his memory seemed to be faulting him in some way since he could feel that everything he remembered was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't quite formulate it.

It was as if someone was tampering with his mind's connection to the specific memories he would need to get out of this place.

As such, Loki wondered how Dominic was able to remember where to go and so he activated his spirit vision.

And what he saw did surprise him.

Dominic, despite his fantastic performance, didn't know the direction either. He was simply following the guidance of what appeared to be an arrowhead hidden away in his palm.

Loki could watch the arrow forcefully tilt in a particular direction which Dominic took each time.

Eventually, they reached a similar door to the one they had seen before when they stopped to drop off Hermione.

"Behind this door Loki.", Dominic said with a smile causing Loki to smile too.

"Are you going to be the one that comes to inform us about the shift changing again?"

"I should be if nothing goes wrong. But since I work closely with 'Her' I don't exactly have a fixed schedule and much of what I do depends on what emergencies 'She' is called to fix."

"Hm~m." Loki nodded in understanding and not wanting to keep his juniors waiting for any longer he quickly flicked his coin into the air much like Hermione did.

And just like with her, the result was heads.

"Good luck out there. Don't get too curious and don't let anyone else get curious too." Dominic said without elaborating much before Loki slipped behind the door.

Almost as soon as Loki stepped behind the door he realised why Dominic hadn't followed them through.

…it was a trippy experience, to say the least.

Loki almost immediately felt something infiltrate his mind.

He knew he could keep it away very easily by simply stealing its probes, but he also understood that keeping it away would immediately result in being targeted by much larger 'guns' that he was sure were currently just hidden yet pointed meticulously at anyone who did so.

The probe entered deeper into his mind, not scanning his memories or even looking at them in a passing glance. It felt more like a surgical robotic arm directed towards a single target and in this case, the target was two things.

Either Loki could allow the probe to stick to his knowledge about everything on this side of the door Dominic had left them at so that he could keep his sense of time, or lose his sense of time so that he could retain his knowledge about what was on this side of the door.

…it was a trippy experience, to say the least.

Loki's eyes moved towards his three teammates and he spoke calmly-

"You can choose as you wish. Since we weren't informed about it, it is likely left to personal preference. All you need to remember is that you need to stay here for as long as I don't tell you that you can move around after tossing the coin to check if my orders are right."

The three girls nodded quickly and made their choices.

"Would you like to inform me about your choice?" Loki asked.

Ginny went first, "I…should I still answer? Why have you been silent for so long? Well never mind, I'm answering alright? I chose time, but by the way, your robes smell so nice, did you ask the house elves to do something special to them? They look so fluffy too? Is it a spell? I would like to learn it if possible…"

Ginny spoke a lot and continued to speak to Loki until Susan suddenly interrupted-

"Your red hair's pretty. I've heard so much about it from my Aunt. She says that everyone in the Ministry secretly admires your father's hair colour. She even said that the Weasley family was made noble because of the colour of their hair! Oh also, are you alright? Are we alright? Loki looks concerned about us…oh! Stop it! No, I'm not against him being so concerned about us but you know…"

-and now the two of them were busy chattering about something Loki wanted to keep out of his head.

"They talk a lot, don't they…I guess they've chosen time I guess?" Loki asked Luna and when he looked at her, she looked clueless, even more than usual if that was possible.

"Do you know what we are doing here? I remember Mr. Shacklelightning telling us that we would be following your orders…what are your orders? Do you want me to stop them from speaking?" Luna asked, her hand already on her wand.

Loki deadpanned.

'Seriously…Shacklelightning? Does that have anything to do with her memory being tampered? Why does it feel like she's just using this as a chance to abuse him?'

'What did Dominic do to her for her to want to annoy him!?'

'This…is Dominic secretly a villain!?'

Loki shook his head and made his choice too.

He chose time.

It wasn't because he was afraid of something or someone tampering with his memories, but because he wanted to try and experience what it might seem like to him in the future if he manipulated time or lost his sense of time.

Since his pathway had an affinity for it, he just wanted to experience it given the chance.

Also, maybe because he hoped the boring four hours that they would have to sit in front of a gate would pass because he lacked any sense of time to keep track of it.

As soon as he made his choice, Loki immediately understood why having your sense of time stolen while keeping your memories intact was even an option.

It was because human bodies were naturally wired to keep track of time. From his heart beat, to his breathing, everything was hard wired for it.

And from the moment he had chosen that option, Loki's mind slipped into a buzz.

There were several thoughts floating about in the same moment, if a moment was even a thing anymore. These thoughts weren't logical or illogical. Loki was simply feeling every conscious or unconscious thought in his body at once.

From things like his own subconscious thoughts about the two girl's confusing conversation where neither side was speaking in tandem with the other yet it all making perfect sense, to things like his lungs constantly demanding his body to take in deep relaxed breaths to keep his brain fed with oxygen.

Loki stopped being able to differentiate between the past, present and the future.

To him it was all happening at once. If he had to describe it, according to him an apt description would be that his thoughts and actions were happening at the same time, almost to the extent that he could swear that if he stopped thinking he would die.

With great difficulty, Loki turned to Luna and asked her a question, "How long have we been standing here Luna?"

Loki felt like Luna answered him before his question even ended.

It wasn't that Loki had perceived the future, no, it was just that he couldn't perceive time and so to him, Luna's answer felt like it had come from the future.

"It hasn't even been a second."

'Great…is it too late to change my choice now?' was just one of Loki's many thoughts.

---

A/N: Added a public chatroom for all members (including free) on patreon.

Who let Loki in here?

"Patreioneion? What's that? Oh? I can see the future for roughly 20 chapters if I pay them $3 on that? I see...but why is time divided into chapters? This place is making me feel weird..."