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

Chair, lurch, tapestry. Everything was back to the start and she’d been pulled out of the disaster.

Suria’s heart was pounding as she remembered the tension, and she blushed when she realized that she had been shouting ”Sleep!” like a villain in a play. There was no need to speak aloud to cast, of course; she was just unused to using spells offensively and not thinking properly. It was much, much easier to be logical when she had time to sit and think instead of in the heat of the moment.

Now that she was back in the waiting room, she wanted to shrink away from everything and just let herself calm down. No, she shouldn’t. There was a very good chance that someone else would discover Lirngelf’s body and lead to chaos again, so she needed to stay active.

Speaking of... Suria got to her feet and walked past Lirngelf, taking his potion out of his pack when her body was blocking Maut-mai’s view. She had an excuse planned, but when she turned back, the other woman wasn’t even looking at her, lost in her own problems as usual.

Suria could try to steal the other potion as well, but one additional rune wouldn’t make any difference for her plans this cycle. Her primary goal was to get access to the office under less chaotic circumstances... until she could arrange that, she would try to advance some of her other objectives.

First, before Maut-mai could get bored and go bother Rije, Suria went out to talk to the guard first. When she met him in the corridor he smiled at her and she struggled to smile back - even though she had left behind those consequences, she had a hard time forgetting the emotions on his face when he’d thought she betrayed him. As much as she didn’t want to see those emotions again... she would need to learn to suppress such feelings.

”Are you alright?” he asked gently.

”Just nervous for my interview.” Suria wasn’t sure where the excuses were coming from, but she lied easier than she expected. ”Darkmoon University seems too big for me... on my way here, I saw several professors and they seemed so strong, I just...”

”Some of them can be intimidating,” Rije said with a chuckle. ”Don’t worry, though, most of them are very kind people. Darkmoon prides itself on actually caring about teaching, unlike some universities.”

”But what if I’m stuck with a bad one? There was a man who looked like he was made of a statue...”

”Professor Rhamsolk? He’s the Throne of Transmutation - that means head of the whole department. Don’t worry, he’s a bit stern, but he’s one of the fairest professors here.”

”Oh, thank you.” Since this was working so far, Suria decided to press further. ”There were some others, and I was just so curious. There was an old woman wh-”

”Ah, you shouldn’t ask me, I’m just a guard.” Rije shrugged awkwardly. ”If you’re curious about the professors, I have a suggestion for you: go to the Hall of Thrones - there’s a whole room of portraits there. And if you want to find someone understanding, just ask the library staff. They’ll give you an honest opinion.”

That was very helpful advice... for someone who wasn’t trapped inside the building. Since she didn’t want to make too large of waves, Suria thanked the guard and moved on, tucking away the information for some far-off future where she could walk outside. That sounded like a good avenue to investigate the professors without raising suspicion.

Was she trying to investigate them? The battle in the basement seemed far too large for her, and part of Suria still wanted to just escape. But it seemed there was a very good chance she couldn’t simply do so... no, she shouldn’t distract herself with questions about things she couldn’t affect at all. She needed to remain focused.

Whatever Shuguja was doing in her office, the proctor took a while before she came out. On the first cycle, Suria had been preempted by Lirngelf and Maut-mai, so she had ended up there very late. She might be able to do better this time, but rushing could still lead to trouble, so she had some time to kill first.

Instead, Suria headed north to check on Eluauna and try to find a way to steal her glasses. It seemed the old woman was there from the start, working on her books, and early in the cycle she actually had the glasses perched on her nose. When she noticed she was being watched, she grew even more suspicious, so Suria abandoned that idea for now.

Back in the waiting room, she was surprised that no one had noticed that Lirngelf was dead. He really did look asleep... Suria felt a surge of panic as she stopped acting to really think about what had happened and so forced herself to look away. It wasn’t as if he had died because of her. But if she had been good enough, perhaps there was something that she could have done...

While she waited, she inscribed a new and improved sleep spell on her talisman. She hadn’t noticed before, but when she began to work on her old glyph, there was immediate tension as the spell disengaged. That made sense, as otherwise people would simply create complex glyphs a rune or two at a time. Yet the fact that she could dismantle a glyph and change it suggested that there were some exceptions, so there might be more.

”Ahem!” Shuguja appeared in the doorway, examining them as if they were personally offending her by waiting in the waiting room.

”I’ll go next,” Suria said before Maut-mai could make a move. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

”I’m Proctor Shuguja,” the middle-aged woman said sternly. ”And you are?”

”Suria Northbrook.” She took her papers out of her satchel and handed them over.

”Oh, so you’re the scholarship. Listen, we-”

While Shuguja was looking down at the papers, Suria cast her enhanced sleep spell. The proctor slumped forward onto her desk immediately and Suria breathed a sigh of relief.

Given the fragility of her spell, Suria didn’t want to disrupt her too much, which meant that the proctor’s body was blocking easy access to her desk. Suria delicately fished out the woman’s necklace and found the key, just as she remembered. Up close, she could see that it was made of alchemical silver and had tiny glyphs inscribed on it.

Most likely a key like that was only for the hidden compartment. Suria found a ring of ordinary metal keys in the proctor’s pocket and tested them until she found the one for the main door, locking them both inside. Given that the first interview had been extensive, they probably wouldn’t be disrupted, which gave her more than enough time.

Suria returned to the hidden panel and held her breath as she turned the key... the compartment opened without a sound. She’d been afraid there was some hidden component, but Shuguja didn’t seem like a powerful enough mage to handle multiple levels of security.

Most of the supplies within weren’t particularly useful, but the proctor’s runebook was all she really needed. Suria hefted the stone book carefully, then hesitated. Now that she had time, she looked through the compartment more carefully.

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There was a certificate in Shuguja’s name, signifying her as a one seal mage with a runic capacity of twelve. Her seal had been earned in Naturalism, which was a more academic field that didn’t require much strength. The certificate was placed between protective slates of stone as if it was a prized possession and Suria hesitated, looking back to the slumped woman before continuing her search.

There were no mana potions in the compartment, unfortunately, and the only other notable thing she found was a sack of oss. It would have been enough to make her eyes bulge just yesterday, but money couldn’t save her life or get her out, so she ignored it. Best not to make herself look like a thief, anyway.

Then again, did it matter? Suria pondered her own thoughts as she sat down in one of the chairs by the desk. She could justify taking the runebook because she just needed to memorize the inscriptions and wasn’t really taking anything. But given that everything would be returned to normal at the end of the loop... was stealing money really any worse?

Pushing aside such justifications, Suria opened the runebook to begin. As she had suspected, most of the stone sheets were empty, making the thick runebook a bit of a charade. Yet it still made her realize how vast the gulf was... there were dozens of inscriptions within. Even a weak mage at Darkmoon University knew far more than she had learned so far.

As much as she wanted to take everything, Suria knew that her memory wasn’t perfect and she couldn’t master that many inscriptions in the time she had. Fortunately, the pages were clearly labeled in Shuguja’s cramped handwriting, so it was easy to find the one dedicated to locking.

Thankfully, there was just a single locking inscription within a square of runes, so it was within her capacity to cast. The inscription itself, however, was a formidable maze of lines. It seemed like Shuguja had trouble with it as well, because she’d made notes to herself off to the side. Following those, Suria could do her best to master it, and she had plenty of blank stone to practice on.

Half an hour later, Suria accepted that she wasn’t going to internalize this one as quickly as the others. The magical component was simply trickier, which made sense for a complex mechanism like locking. But she’d practiced enough that she thought she could keep repeating it, so she told herself that she would allow herself one more inscription while she was here.

She looked through the pages, considering the few offensive spells, but there wasn’t much. A minor levitation charm, probably only suited for making a small object hover. The most interesting one appeared to be a shielding inscription, if she understood the description.

This one was simple: a blunt stroke across the center of the square. It was a little harder to perfect than Suria had expected, but once she got the hang of it, she could make a shielding square in one flick of her wrist.

Would she repeat this cycle over and over, knocking Shuguja unconscious and learning two more inscriptions each cycle? In the loops that had passed so far, Suria had already grown as a mage, yet she doubted she could progress far trapped here. No one became an archmage in a single repeating hour. She was struck by a very silly image of herself training in the building until she was casting lightning bolts and throwing boulders with an improbably muscular body.

Since time was running out, Suria picked up a new blank slate of stone and began forming runes carefully. The differences in efficiency didn’t matter much for practice, but she planned to actually cast this one. She made a perfect square, then an augmentation triangle attached to it. After another swishing shield inscription, she took her time to do the most precise enhancement inscription she could.

When the spells began to rumble through the building, Suria clutched the stone in both hands and pushed her mana through the defensive glyph. A barely visible sphere of blue light flickered into being around her and the air seemed to still. It was strangely comforting.

When the wall of gray death swept through her, it snapped her shield like a soap bubble, but Suria smiled as she died.

~ ~ ~

Another runic square, the fifth in the row. Suria shifted down to the next row and began another set. She couldn’t get every lock inscription perfect, but they all took about the same amount of time, so she was using them as a more precise method of timing.

After so much stress, and forcing herself to break so many rules, Suria took one cycle to rest. She had excuses, of course: she needed time to practice the locking inscription until she could manage the tricky strokes consistently. While she repeated the process, she could gain something even more valuable: an exact outline of everything that happened in the building without interference.

If Lirngelf was gone and she didn’t take any action, the hour should follow a consistent pattern. Maut-mai complained to Rije and then went in to talk to Shuguja. When Suria avoided her interview, it seemed like Shuguja didn’t look very hard for her, just returned to her office. Most of the hour had passed and no one seemed to have noticed either Lirngelf or the warded doors.

Keeping at a distance, Suria had confirmed the timing of events like the secretary crossing the building to the basement - she hadn’t been able to get into the room he left, but she thought it might be possible. The one thing she couldn’t time was when Frunah Gwaslos departed, as the master healer must have left via pure magical transportation every cycle.

Suria had also monitored the windows and noticed two times where someone walked past the campus outside, though no one ever bothered to come to Convocation Hall. That might be useful or it might not; she simply recorded the timing for future reference.

What had especially occupied her time was trying to keep track of Eluauna to see if the old woman ever left her glasses behind. At one point during the first half of the hour, she left to get a drink of water, but she had her glasses in her pocket the entire time. In fact, though Suria hadn’t been able to watch her every moment, it seemed like Eluauna was alert at all times.

When Suria looked over all her inscription practice, she realized that she was probably running out of time. Sighing, she simply dropped the stone plates onto the floor and went to check on a few final details. She kept the new talismans she’d created with her just in case, but she’d be losing everything soon when the loop reset.

As she walked back, she reflected that this building had gone from a source of mystery and awe to a prison she knew in far too much detail. There might still be some secrets hidden around a corner, and she hadn’t returned to the basement, but she was disgustingly familiar with these halls.

Back in the waiting room, she found Lirngelf still slumped at the table... apparently no one would discover that he was dead if she didn’t. The office door hung open and Maut-mai was gone, so the locked wards must have been discovered since the last time that she’d checked, which had been no more than five minutes ago. Probably Rije doing his rounds, which were supposed to take him outside the building.

Up to that point Suria had held herself back from events, but with only minutes left to spare there was no point. She padded back to the entrance foyer and found things more or less as she expected, though Maut-mai was pleading with the bronze statue instead of with the others trying to open the door. As Suria watched, Shuguja made an attempt with her blue fire, but it had no more effect than before.

Without someone intervening, this was where they would always end up: trapped by the wards and soon killed as collateral damage. Suria sighed and slumped against the wall, too tired to interact with anyone.

Darkness spiked through the corridors, ruining some of the lamps and signaling the beginning of the battle. Suria tried to remember the exact sequence of the spells, now that they were consistent, so that she could just step in front of something that would kill her painlessly. She thought there was a burst of fire coming up...

”Look out!”

Without warning, Rije was pushing her to the side. The flaming bolt that would have killed her instead struck his shoulder, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Suria was unharmed except a little scorched hair, while Rije’s armor had reduced the impact to a massive burn. He clutched at it and writhed in agony...

His cries jarred Suria from her stupor and she realized that she couldn’t just stand there.

Instead she ducked underneath the next spells, bending beside the guard and preparing her healing talisman. Even with her new enhancement, her glyph for closing wounds was woefully inadequate and she wasn’t sure if it would save his life, if the timeline had continued. Yet the healing energy seemed to ease his pain, and perhaps that was all she could do.

As the wave of death swept over them, new purpose swelled within Suria.

She opened her eyes in her usual chair in the waiting room, but this time she leapt to her feet. Before the tapestry could clatter to the ground, she caught the fabric and instead put it back in place. It wasn’t like her to give up when people were dying around her. She would find her way out of this, no matter how many loops it took.