Throne of Time [Magical Academy, Time Loop, Mystery]

Once again, Suria found herself in front of the locked and warded entrance. Shuguja had demanded that the guard - apparently the only other staff member in the building - join them, and Maut-mai was hovering nearby as well, her elegance eroding into near-panic. The statue was there as well, if it was person enough to count.

”Nothing.” Shuguja stepped back from the door, scowling even more deeply than before. ”The locks are completely inert. You, blow it out.”

”The doors will be warded against gauntlets,” the guard protested.

”That’s an order!”

Grumbling under his breath, the guard raised his gauntlet directly to the door handle. Mana coursed through the glyph inscribed there and a burst of light impacted the lock, but it faded without effect. Suria thought that he’d made a reasonable point: anyone with the slightest trace of mana could purchase a gauntlet, so of course doors had to be protected against them.

”Then we need a bigger spell.” Shuguja frowned down at her runebook and began flipping the stone plates. ”My job isn’t brute force. Do you have a destructive inscription?”

”Shouldn’t you use an unlocking glyph?” the guard asked.

”The standard key phrases didn’t work. I have locking spells for security, but breaking wards is for thieves and criminals. Now show me what you have! They wouldn’t let you work here if you didn’t have at least some competence, right?”

After a long pause, the guard reached into a belt pouch to reveal a small stone talisman. Suria instinctively moved forward, curious to see what it contained. She couldn’t fully grasp the looping inscription, but the rune marks weren’t that much more complex than those she understood, just a square with a triangular extension on each side. Each triangle contained its own inscription, smaller squiggles that looked identical.

That formation would require twelve rune-marks, so it was completely impossible for Suria to create or cast. Still, Shuguja seemed to be taking a long time staring at it, so Suria crept closer and tried to memorize the exact configuration of the inscriptions. She probably couldn’t internalize them immediately, but it would be better than nothing.

”Adequate.” Shuguja opened to a blank page of her runebook and began pressing her stylus into it, intending to copy the spell. She seemed to be doing it rather slowly, but perhaps professionals took more care than amateurs. A mage could only cast a glyph they had created personally, so the creation was an essential moment.

Suria watched the process, determined to learn whatever she could. She knew from her instructors that a basic spell glyph could be improved with attached formations, but because her strength could only create four runes, she had no personal experience with it. The central inscription looked like fire and the four triangles each had an identical inscription, so they were probably enhancements of some kind. That might be the most powerful form the spell could take, at least before a more complex structure that required even more runes.

It seemed to be taking Shuguja a long time to finish making the marks. Suria had no ground to judge, with her feeble skills, but the runes didn’t seem to be aligned very carefully. By the time Shuguja formed the twelfth and final rune, her stylus was shaking so much that the last triangle was slanted to the side. As far as Suria knew, that wouldn’t ruin the spell, but it would be terribly inefficient.

Unless this was some secret advanced technique... but Suria was beginning to doubt it. Shuguja spun her stylus around her fingers in a practiced gesture in order to use the brush to paint the inscriptions. And yet her actual painting was clumsy, spilling ink into the grooves of the runes. If Suria had tried to form a glyph like that, it would have exploded on her.

As she watched, Suria realized the truth: Shuguja was no archmage. She had a ranked seal, yes, but likely only one. Based on how clumsy her skills were, she wasn’t regularly inscribing spells... Shuguja was just a proctor, not a practicing mage.

That revelation made Suria’s mind spin. The first time, she had been so certain that Shuguja was far above her, scorning her for her inadequate skills. But now, seeing the other woman fumble with the inscriptions, Suria realized that she might have been angry. Embarrassed by a provincial healer.

Of course, Suria wasn’t about to get a big head and overestimate herself: she realized how little she knew. Shuguja had at least three times her runic capacity and plenty of knowledge besides. The proctor copied two of the original triangular inscriptions, but replaced the top and bottom ones with a different symbol Suria had never seen before. Those were inscribed much faster, so Suria barely got a chance to look at them before it was done.

”Alright, stand back.” Shuguja gestured irritably at them, then raised her runebook. She extended her other hand to the door and took a sharp breath.

The burst of fire that exploded against the door was shockingly blue, and even from a distance Suria felt the wave of heat rush over her. It was far more powerful than anything she could cast, even if she learned the fire inscription... and it left the door completely untouched. A few glyphs glowed in the wake of the flames, then faded out like dying embers.

Shuguja stared furiously. The guard uttered a low curse. Maut-mai let out a wail of distress. The statue told them all not to worry about the minor incident.

”I don’t think we can break through with brute force,” the guard said. ”Wards are easier to trick than to break down, right? Isn’t that basic wardcraft?”

”Shut up,” Shuguja snapped. ”You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And yet, in the silence, Suria suspected that wasn’t true: Shuguja was as out of her depth as any of them. Suria let out a long breath as she accepted that she wasn’t going to be saved by a higher authority. If she didn’t find a way out on her own, the attack would probably happen again, and whatever random chance had saved her before, this time she might die for real.

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”Could we make it even stronger?” Maut-mai asked. She had been crying, but dried her eyes and now held out a glass vial that contained a blue liquid. ”I have this runic potion, it should enhance your capacity by at l-”

”You think anyone on staff hasn’t already taken those potions?” Shuguja sneered at her, desperately clinging to authority. ”No, all of you shut up and let me think.”

Suria was fascinated by the potion, because she’d only seen a handful of them in larger cities, so the idea of a noblewoman carrying one in her bags was astonishing. As far as she knew, there were various methods of strengthening a person’s abilities, though she didn’t understand on a technical level, she just knew that most were temporary. Shuguja had implied there were permanent methods, somehow overlapping with temporary means, which was just another subject Suria had wanted to learn one day.

The group drifted into uncomfortable silence. As it stretched on, Suria realized that she hadn’t seen or heard from Lirngelf since the beginning... had he found a way out, or had something happened to him? Part of her wanted to go look, but she doubted she would find anything new: all her opportunities to figure out anything were in the room with her.

Since it didn’t seem likely that Shuguja was going to come up with a solution, Suria shifted closer to the guard. As rude as he had been, he also seemed the most level-headed.

”Could you teach me the fire inscription?” Suria asked quietly.

The guard turned to frown at her, but Shuguja responded first. ”Absolutely not. Handing a pure fire inscription to an untrained mage is like handing a baby a sword.”

”I want to do something,” Suria insisted. ”What about the enhancement inscription? I could try to help.”

”Any fool knows two people can’t work on the same glyph,” Shuguja said with a snort, but she didn’t object and stalked off with her runebook.

”I don’t see what good it will do, but it’s better than nothing,” the guard said. He pulled out his talisman again and let her examine the glyph. ”This is one of the most basic enhancement inscriptions, so it shouldn’t be too hard to master. It’s just a matter of getting the strokes in the right order...”

Suria only had enough supplies to make a few talismans, but surprisingly Maut-mai handed them a stone slate from her bags. So Suria set about making runic triangles, then tried to get the enhancement inscription perfect inside them. It didn’t seem so difficult, but even the simplest inscription took practice to match the physical movements and the magical processes.

”Why are you just making triangles?” Maut-mai asked. ”That won’t do anything.”

Of course it didn’t: an enhancement inscription was meant to attach to something else, so alone it was entirely useless. Suria didn’t want them to think she was a provincial idiot, but decided that she needed to lean into her ignorance.

”I’m just practicing.” Suria paused her work to show one of her talismans, a square containing the healing sleep inscription. ”This helps someone sleep more deeply and strengthens their body. If I could attach an enhancement inscription, it should be able to heal them faster, but I’m not strong enough for that yet.”

”Your runic capacity is less than six?” Maut-mai asked. Not even scornful, just shocked.

”I haven’t had much time to develop it,” Suria said, hanging her head. ”But maybe I could try with your potion? If we can find an inscription t-”

”No, I think not.” Maut-mai said stiffly. ”If I’m going to give it to anyone, it should be someone who can help us get out of this disaster.”

Though she sighed, Suria hadn’t really expected a long shot like that to work. It was true that she didn’t have much hope of getting them through the door, and mastering a simple inscription didn’t seem like it could lead to a solution. But Suria didn’t have any clear path to the exit, so at least she could work on something that might be part of a solution later.

Half an hour later, Shuguja hadn’t made much progress. Based on how she turned the pages of her runebook aimlessly, Suria suspected that most of them were empty.

In the same time, Suria was finally beginning to get the hang of the enhancement inscription. Every time she finished and felt the mana slide into place, it filled her with a satisfaction she couldn’t put into words. She had covered both sides of the slate with enhancement triangles, creating a piece of stone that was loaded with runic energy even if it was completely useless. If she could survive this, somehow, this inscription alone would make her a much better healer.

”You should try attaching that to a glyph,” the guard told her gruffly. ”It’s harder than doing it alone.”

Did he have to puncture her joy like that? Suria had to admit that he had a point, however, and could only shrug. ”I can only manage four runes. I know that’s not very useful to anyone, but I thought I might be able to help if we all try to bombard the door together.”

”Probably not, but you’re pretty good with those inscriptions.” The guard frowned and glanced off to the side. ”If we had one for unlocking or breaking wards, we might be able to get through. I don’t think it would take much power, I just don’t have the technique for it.”

”Would this help?” Maut-mai appeared beside them, holding out her potion again. ”If you think you could figure out something...”

”Maybe.” The guard took it from her, then handed the potion to Suria.

Maut-mai let out an aggrieved squawk and Suria was surprised too, but she didn’t hesitate: she tore the cork out of the glass vial and poured the liquid down her throat.

Instantly she felt a surge of mana through her body, stronger than any single change she’d ever felt before. It made her so dizzy that she almost fell, but Suria clutched her slate and her wedge. When she could stabilize her hands, she found a blank space and began forming runes.

She made four of them in a square, far more easily than before, and then kept going. Trying to mimic what she had seen, she began to form a triangle on the side. There was a strange resistance within her, different than her limits, and she knew that she was missing something, but it wasn’t enough to stop her.

A fifth and sixth rune made a triangle, then she went for more. The seventh was a struggle, and the tension snapped when Suria attempted an eighth rune. Without a closed formation, the seventh rune spluttered out, becoming just a dead mark in the stone.

What remained still made her stare in satisfaction. With a single potion, it felt like she’d almost doubled her power... or, in the clinical language they used here, increased her runic capacity. A jump from four to seven might not impress professional mages, but it was everything to her. If she’d had this ability earlier, could she have saved old man Knudon when he fell ill? He had been so close to pulling through...

”You managed that quickly.” Maut-mai didn’t look angry anymore, just puzzled. ”How many potions did it take you to get to a base of four? Do they have different types out where you come from?”

Suria wasn’t sure what to make of that question, and before she could figure out an answer, the room trembled. She had been so focused on her work that she hadn’t realized how much time had been passing, but it must have been about as long as before. If that was true, then there would be an attack soon...

Except, instead of the wall erupting in a spiraling spell, darkness spiked through the room, quenching over half of the mana lamps. Dread fell upon Suria as she realized that the attack wasn’t going to be the same as last time.