«And you were absolutely right,» Zorian agreed, still in a little shock. Akoja didn’t want to be the class representative? But the girl lived for that stuff! And anyway, if she didn’t want to do it then why did she perform it with such dedication? If Zorian was stuck in a job he hated, he would do as little as possible, or even mess up deliberately so Ilsa would feel pressured to replace him as soon as possible. Why couldn’t Akoja do the same? «The only reason I’m accepting this now is because your offer is so good.»
«So we have a deal, then?» Ilsa asked for confirmation.
«Yes, but I have a question and a demand,» said Zorian. «First, why do you want to teach me those particular subjects? And second, I want to learn the teleport spell before the summer festival.»
«I somehow doubt you’ll manage to master the prerequisites for the teleportation spell in little less than a month,» Ilsa said. «But in the highly theoretical case you actually do so, I have no problem fulfilling your demand. Why are you so dead-set about that spell?»
«It’s a bit of a dream of mine to be able to do that,» Zorian shrugged. «In my mind, teleportation has always been one of the ur-examples of what a proper mage can do, should be capable of.»
«Interesting. Out of curiosity, what are the rest of the things a proper mage can do?» asked Ilsa.
«Make a force field, create a magic item, produce a fireball, repair broken objects and turn invisible,» Zorian said. «I can already do the first four, and the fifth one is illegal without special permits.»
He was already working on acquiring an invisibility spell anyway, but she didn’t have to know that.
Ilsa gave him a knowing look and Zorian would have been afraid she was reading his thoughts if he weren’t sure he could detect any casual intrusion into his own mind.
«To answer your first question, I chose those disciplines because they’re my own specialty,» Ilsa said. «It’s is only proper for an apprentice to learn his master’s specialty, is it not?»
«Sure,» Zorian agreed. «I’m not sure what all of those things have in common though. Aren’t specialties supposed to be more focused?»
«Well, when I was a young mage, I too had a bit of a dream,» Ilsa said. «Specifically, I wanted to master true conjuration.»
Zorian blinked. «As in, creation of real matter out of thin air? Isn’t that a myth?»
«That’s the current Academy stance, yes,» Ilsa agreed. «Pre-Cataclysm sources claimed that powerful mages could manage the feat, but all the spells to do so have been lost and no one has been able to recreate them in modern times. Many mages think they never existed and the old records are making things up or describing something other than actual matter creation. Anyway, as a young mage, it had been my dream to recreate those spells, so I studied anything I thought could be a path towards that goal. Modern conjuration basically involves making solid illusions, so it was somewhat natural to start with illusionism and then progress to conjuration. And then, since true conjuration involves working with real matter, I moved onto alteration spells dealing with fabrication of items.»
«And… did you have any success?» asked Zorian curiously.
«Depends on your definition of success,» Ilsa shrugged. «My ultimate goal was to design a spell that would summon material from somewhere else, without the caster having to know exactly where the materials are coming from. That was how I imagined ancient Ikosians could ‘fake’ matter creation. I sort of succeeded, but the spell I made only works in a specially prepared room and the mana cost of the spell varies wildly from casting to casting, depending on what I’m trying to conjure. And there was that embarrassing incident with the gold creation part of the experiment swiping these ancient coins from a nearby museum…»
She shook her head. «A story for another time. I have to get to class soon, anyway. I’ll prepare an apprentice contract for you to sign tomorrow so be sure to drop by when you get the time.»
The next five restarts were both hectic and boring. Hectic in that there was always something that needed to be done, and boring in the sense that little of it was truly novel. He steadily improved his various skills, the aranea were getting highly adept at countering the invaders in various ways, and Zach seemed to have finally accepted that something highly unusual was going on in the background, and it wasn’t caused by him.
There was little chance of Zach identifying Zorian as the cause of the changes, since the sheer magnitude of them tended to drown out everything Zorian personally did. The aranea always started each restart very aggressively, giving anonymous tips to Cyoria’s police department, assassinating a few people, and even spreading a few rumors around. The result was that by the time Zorian entered his first class, the changes had already propagated throughout the whole city, academy teachers and students included. Zach didn’t appear to suspect Zorian as the ultimate cause, or any other classmate for that matter.
Zorian was starting to agree with Zach in that regard — whoever the third time traveler was, he certainly wasn’t in their class. Zorian had, through various excuses, talked to all of them — it helped that he spent the past five restarts as the new class representative, so he had plenty of excuses for such — using his slowly improving empathy to see whether they reacted with shock or surprise when he dropped some of the more suggestive sentences that would only make sense to a time-looping person. He found nothing to implicate any of them.
All in all, things were going pretty well in Zorian’s opinion. The last restart was especially good as far as Zorian was concerned — he had finally managed to learn the teleport spell from Ilsa, Zach was actually starting to get smart about countering the invaders instead of simply trying to take them all on through his combat skills, and the last invasion attempt failed to conquer the main academy building or the student shelters because the aranea somehow managed to influence academy leadership into adjusting their warding scheme.
But the matriarch was getting impatient. Something was making her more and more nervous with each passing restart, and she refused to tell him what, giving flimsy excuses every time he asked. She seemed to be focusing most of her energies on some kind of personal project, which she described as ‘information gathering’ and ‘following a hunch’, and whatever results she was getting were clearly disturbing her. Zorian strongly suspected she had discovered some kind of vital information about the nature of the time loop, and she refused to share it with him for whatever reason. He was honestly kind of bitter about that. What could possibly be more disturbing than what they already knew about the phenomenon?
Regardless, the matriarch was insistent that the third time traveler had to be found, and the sooner the better. Once Zorian confirmed that they weren’t in his class, she became convinced they, like Zach, weren’t even present in the city most of the time. In all likelihood they simply gave critical information to the invaders at the start of the restart and then went to do their own thing. If they wanted to get their attention, the invasion would probably have to be a spectacular flop.
Accordingly, the matriarch laid out her plan for the next restart, one that would definitely be impossible to ignore…
Chapter 24
Smoke and Mirrors
Zorian would be the first to admit he wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. He was unsociable, irritable, and tended to assume the worst of people. He had always known that, even before he had died and gotten stuck in a mysterious time loop, but he had also always felt he was justified in his behavior. Indeed, if anyone had been foolish enough to criticize him about it before the time loop, he would have reacted with all the subtlety and grace of a disturbed rattlesnake.