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Over the next few hours, Zorian simply went through the motions, trying to hide the frustration, shame and panic he was feeling and to appear as normal as possible. He had failed to keep his inner turmoil strictly to himself, if mother’s worried questions were any indication, but in the end she accepted his explanation of being slightly shaken from a recent nightmare and stopped bothering him so he took that as a win.

And what a nightmare it was! Aside from losing the aranea, there was a non-negligible chance that Red Robe managed to figure out his identity and was going to assault the house at any moment now. True, he had managed to hide his face behind a scarf and had never spoken, but there were ways nonetheless…

He didn’t even think about trying to immediately leave the house in panic, though. The first and main reason for that was that if Red Robe had identified him and was coming to Cirin, then his family was in danger of being permanently killed, just like the aranea, and he wasn’t willing to let that happen. Kiri had grown on him over the course of the time loop and while he didn’t like his mother very much he wouldn’t let some psycho murder her. No, it was bad enough that the aranea had paid the ultimate price for his mistakes — he’d be damned if he’d leave his family to save his own hide.

The second reason was that, while it was certainly possible that his identity had been compromised, it was just that — a possibility, not a certainty. Yes, it would be easy to track him down by noting which students from Zach’s class were missing and then checking them out one by one, but it was entirely possible that Red Robe wouldn’t think of it. After all, as far as Red Robe was concerned, the mysterious human time traveler was associated with the aranea, not Zach. There was no reason to search for him among Zach’s classmates. And while Zach probably knew that Zorian was a time traveler by now, Zorian strongly suspected he would be out of Cyoria when Red Robe came knocking. If Zach had even a smidgen of common sense (not a certainty, admittedly), he would skip town first thing in the morning upon starting a new restart. Considering Red Robe thoroughly trounced Zach during the invasion by bringing the lich as his backup, and that Zach actually remembered it happening this time, Zorian felt that even Zach wouldn’t be crazy enough to stay where the clearly superior enemy could find him.

That was a lot of assumptions to rely on, but what else did he have left? He was backed into a corner. All he could do was wait and hope Red Robe wasn’t a master detective on top of being a scarily good necromancer and gods know what else.

In any case, his plan was quite simple at the moment — go board the train as normal, then promptly disembark upon leaving Cirin. He had no intention of going back to Cyoria in the near future. Red Robe was bound to pay attention to Cyoria for a while, trying to catch any time travelers the aranea may have brought in, so going there so soon would be just begging for trouble. Any minor misstep could blow his cover, and he didn’t trust himself to be able to lay low for multiple restarts at a time. No, best if he avoided the city for a while. He would have to return there at some point, of course, but he had to be a lot stronger and a lot better informed before he could show himself in the city again.

Aside from his determination to avoid Cyoria at all costs, his plans were virtually nonexistent. He was feeling rather lost at the moment. All emotional attachment aside, the aranea were also his best allies in this messed up event, and losing them effectively pulled the rug from under his feet. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

The conclusion he settled on was that he needed some time to calm down and come to terms with what happened. Think up a new way forward. He would probably end up just wandering around the country for a restart or two. Or maybe a dozen restarts. Yes, now that he thought about it some, the time loop was the perfect time for him to go on a country-wide, maybe even a continent-wide tour. Just… exploring and sight-seeing. Very relaxing. Admittedly, the matriarch’s last message mentioned something about the time loop gradually decaying, but she named no concrete deadlines in the fragments he had managed to piece together and he believed she would have put greater emphasis on that part if the timetable was particularly tight. No, that statement was there just to let him know he did not have an infinite amount of time to work with — he had some fairly large, but very much finite number to look forward to, and time was steadily ticking.

At least he hoped. He was quite doomed otherwise. ‘Large but finite’ he could work with, but if he had only a handful of restarts left? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Mister Kazinski?” Ilsa said, breaking him out of his thoughts. Just as well, his thoughts had taken a dark turn again, and he was tired of feeling depressed. “Are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” Zorian lied. He wasn’t really listening, of course, but that was because he’d had this conversation with Ilsa a million times by now.

“Right,” Ilsa said dubiously. “As I was saying, you can pick up your badge when you finish school since it’s so expensive and—”

“What if I want to pick it up now?” Zorian interrupted. His savings should be enough to fund a month of aimless wandering so he probably didn’t need the badge for work, but he didn’t like the idea of keeping his spellcasting abilities a secret lest some overzealous policeman report him to the guild and ultimately bring the academy in. Having a badge to prove his certification and membership would allow him to do as he pleased for the most part.

“You can pick one up at any of the mage guild offices scattered around Eldemar,” Ilsa said. “Most large cities and regional centers have one.”

Oh good. He had feared he could only pick one up at the Academy or something.

Eventually, Ilsa left, her parting words being that she looked forward to seeing him in class. Huh, that was new. Did she suspect he intended to blow off school to do his own thing? Well whatever, even if she did, it did not matter much — the academy always had a rather anemic response to students who didn’t show up for class. They would send a letter to his parents informing them that he wasn’t attending his classes, and that was it. And fortunately for Zorian, no one would be at home to read the mail by the time the letter arrived, since his parents were going to Koth to visit their precious Daimen.

Satisfied that his course had been set for the moment, he picked up his things and set off towards the train station.

As the train departed from Cirin and started its journey towards Cyoria, Zorian began to relax somewhat. Part of that was that train rides always made him kind of sleepy and therefore sapped the tension straight out of his body and mind, but a great deal of it came from the fact that Red Robe was nowhere to be seen. Hours had passed — enough time to prepare and mount an attack on the Kazinski household several times over for someone of Red Robe’s abilities — and no hostile force had struck against him or his family, so chances were that Red Robe wasn’t coming at all. That meant his identity was probably safe for now, which was a major relief. If he hadn’t discovered Zorian’s identity in the previous restart, he probably wouldn’t discover it at all — a month was ample time to track him down if Red Robe knew where to look. He wouldn’t really relax fully until several restarts passed as peacefully as this one, but this was an encouraging sign.

He just had to make sure he didn’t make any more stupid mistakes in the future.

The train stopped for a moment and then continued onward towards Cyoria. Zorian opted to stay on the train for now, despite his initial intention of getting off the train on the very first station after Cirin. The first stop after Cirin was an even smaller village that gravitated towards Cirin and had nothing notable to recommend it to anyone. Him disembarking there would be noted and remarked upon by the inhabitants and there was a chance that someone might recognize him and report him to his family before they could leave for Koth. And that was the kind of drama he really didn’t need at the moment. And besides, what the hell would he do in a tiny unfamiliar village like that? No, it was far better to wait until Nigelvar and then travel on foot to Teshingrad. Nigelvar was also a small town of little note, but it was an important enough transport junction that no one would find a traveler who disembarked there on the way particularly strange. Teshingrad was a regional capital. It couldn’t hold a candle to Eldemar, Korsa or Cyoria, but it was big and influential enough that newcomers were normal.