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

As the time of her appointment drew nearer, Suria desperately practiced her runework, even buying another practice slate from the merchant to continue. But, she eventually realized, she wasn’t going to be able to attain a sixth rune. She considered asking Maut-mai for her potion, since she knew the other woman had it, but judged that harming the fledgling relationship wasn’t worth it.

Especially because there was no guarantee that she would even be tested. Suria had been given a specific time to present herself at the Grand Prince’s Medical Ward, but didn’t know much more than that.

Just in case, she headed out well before her appointment. The frenzy of the previous day had abated considerably, but she had never been to the building before. Actually, based on the map she’d obtained from the library, she had passed it multiple times: the medical ward was just to her left when she entered the university.

The Grand Prince’s Medical Ward proved to be a long building, practically serving as one of the main walls of the university separating it from the city. Strangely, the bottom floor had only narrow slits for windows while the upper two floors had numerous large windows. She knew that the medical ward contained areas for class instruction as well as actively practicing houses of healing, so perhaps that reflected the division.

Numerous entrances poked from along the building, but one was clearly the primary entrance: not only did it have a larger arched doorway, there was a small plaza with a statue in the center. It was a mark of how she was getting used to Darkmoon University that she was surprised that the statue didn’t move. She wondered if the mustachioed man was the ”grand prince” from the name but rushed past him.

As soon as she entered, she flinched from shouts and people rushing through the halls. No one seemed to be paying attention to her and she wasn’t sure why until she saw a group of healers levitating a bloody man on a stretcher. Was it like this every day?

”Suria Northbrook?” A harried-looking older man approached, wiping blood off his forehead. ”Here for an interview?”

”Umm, yes?” she answered weakly.

”It’s not going to be the way it was planned. You have some healing spells, right? Follow me.”

Suria hastened after him, swallowing her nervousness. They turned away from a large hall into a narrower corridor without any furnishings. She heard groaning and cursing from the first several doors before they abruptly turned to enter the next.

Inside, there was a woman lying on her back in a simple bed. Something had struck her across the shoulder, leaving a bloody gash, and it looked as though one of her feet had been crushed.

”Do what you can,” the healer ordered her.

”I can’t save her foot!” Suria protested. ”She’ll lose it unless you find a better healer!”

”This isn’t a trial for you - it’s triage.” The man gripped her shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. ”If you don’t heal her, she probably won’t be healed. Most of us will be exhausted by the time we deal with the worst cases. You’re all she has.”

With that, he used his grip on her shoulders to spin her around to face the woman, and he was gone a second later.

Being left alone with an agonized woman might have flustered another new student, but for the first time since she arrived, Suria was actually in her area of expertise. First she investigated the woman’s foot, which was a bloody mass. Something had crushed it, probably a stone judging from the abrasions. She had to accept the grim fact that there was no way to save the foot - the woman would be lucky to get out with her life based on the blood loss.

The ideal first step would have been to use a tourniquet spell, but that was the sort of advanced magic that Suria had never found anyone who could teach her - one of the reasons she’d wanted to come to Darkmoon. She instead gripped her healing talisman and began casting at a low level, cleaning the injury of disease and filth.

As she did so, she looked around for bandages, but couldn’t find any in the simple room. She tore off a somewhat clean strip of the sheet, cleansed it with the same spell, and then tied a basic tourniquet. Without a proper windlass, she used her spare stylus to tighten the bandage as much as possible, taking care to ease the pain with her spells. Once the bleeding had been staunched, Suria could turn her attention to the foot itself.

Using the same talisman but completely changing her focus, Suria began casting to heal over the crushed flesh. Again, it would have been good to cauterize the wound or cut away lost tissue, but she had to work with what she had. The best she could do was leave a stump that would easily take a prosthetic so the woman could figure out a new life for herself afterward.

Her work on the foot was successful, but the woman was tossing and turning. The pain might be getting through to her, or there might be disease settling within her. Suria wiped the sweat from her forehead with one hand while casting pain relief spells with the other, soothing the woman.

Once that was done, she cast the healing sleep spell as strongly as she could, hoping the woman would recover. There was a strange resistance that she didn’t understand, but it didn’t seem to be harmful, so she had to ignore it. Suria then turned her attention to the gash across the woman’s shoulder. That was easier to handle, so she made sure to do it right, healing over the flesh so it wouldn’t leave any painful or stiff scarring.

What else could she do? Suria had no analytical spells, so she had to check the body directly for fever, then investigated for injuries under the patient’s clothes. No fever, but she did find some ugly bruises around the opposite shoulder. Her flesh healing spell wasn’t very effective for bruises and could cause complications, so Suria only cast it lightly and then added a little more pain relief.

That was probably all she could do. Suria turned away to see if there was anyone else she could help and leapt in surprise when she saw that she was being watched.

Professor Frunah Gwaslos stood in the doorway, and for a moment Suria thought that she looked completely untouched by the medical emergency. She analyzed more carefully the next second: the professor had a hint of exhaustion in the corners of her eyes, she wasn’t wearing her healer’s stole, and her sleeves were rolled up and bloody.

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”You did a good job with the patient,” the professor told her quietly. ”Recognizing that you couldn’t save the foot was the correct decision; even a master healer might have done the same to save mana. The biggest omission is not casting anything against infection, but I’m guessing you lack the spell?”

”I’m afraid so,” Suria said. ”My primary inscription wards against disease a little.”

”There’s one other mistake, though this one isn’t really your fault.” Professor Gwaslos stepped into the room and pulled up the side of the sheet, revealing glyphs carved along the side of the bed. ”All our medical beds have a healing sleep glyph on them, for the exact reason you cast it to help recovery. But doubling up can send the patient into a coma, so it’s fortunate you weren’t strong enough to cause that.”

Suria went pale as she imagined how horribly things might have gone wrong. But, even though it was selfish, her mind was moving on from the patient to what this would mean for her. ”How many other patients are there? Can I help?”

”Can you cast that flesh knitting spell again?” Professor Gwaslos asked. When Suria nodded, she made a quick gesture to follow and swept back into the corridor so quickly that Suria had to scramble to follow.

They headed past several more doors and nearly collided with another group of healers. Suria wanted to shrink aside before they knocked her over, but they parted around Professor Gwaslos, who didn’t miss a step. The next room contained a man who had moderately shallow cuts all across his chest, obviously in need of immediate treatment.

Instead of giving any order verbally, Professor Gwaslos simply raised a finger in Suria’s direction, indicating she should wait. In the same moment the professor drew a thin white runebook from her robe and it automatically opened to the proper page. The result was clearly a first order healing spell and Suria couldn’t help but look over the healer’s shoulder.

She paled when she saw that the spell was four squares, each of which contained an inscription, and there were triangular formations along each side. That required no fewer than 28 runes and the professor was casting it like it was nothing. It didn’t even seem like she was using the full power of the spell, and after a moment she gestured for Suria.

That spell had no doubt cleansed the wound and strengthened the body, leaving Suria to close it over. She gripped her talisman so hard that her fingers hurt and did her best to cast the spell without being nervous about the Throne of Medicine watching her. Somehow she managed to pull it off and healed over the wounds, feeling clumsy all the while.

”Good,” Professor Gwaslos said. ”Again.”

On their way to another room, Suria caught her breath and managed to speak again. ”What happened?”

”There was an explosion in Darmkael,” the professor told her. ”Some kind of industrial accident and we’re lucky that it wasn’t worse. They have houses of healing in the city, of course, but when injuries or disease are severe enough, they come to us.”

”Is it... like this all the time?”

”No, this has been a bad stretch. First the Convocation disaster and now this.”

”Convocation disaster?” Suria’s breath caught, at both the revelation and the fact that she’d pursued it immediately. It could be a coincidence and she might draw attention to herself, but this version of the professor had never seen her before.

”There was a ward failure on campus earlier,” Professor Gwaslos told her. ”An experiment gone wrong. We lost a few staff members, and we would have lost more if a guard hadn’t stepped in. It might have been possible to save him if they had called me immediately, but they didn’t.”

”Oh... what was the guard’s name?”

”Rije Gadreel. He deserved better.”

Suria was completely silent as they healed the next patient, pondering what she had heard. She felt grief that Rije had been killed, but she spent more time thinking about what it meant. Frunah Gwaslos seemed sincerely sorry that she hadn’t been able to save Rije’s life, and Suria had seen her rejecting the conspiracy of the other professors in the basement. On the other hand, she was willing to lie to hide whatever had happened, supporting the story about an experiment gone wrong.

Asking a few questions was natural, but if Suria pressed too hard, people might start noticing the fact that she had been in the building at the same time. Also, it was getting difficult to talk. She had built up her stamina somewhat as a healer, but after several patients her mana had been stretched thin.

”That’s enough,” Professor Gwaslos told her. ”You clearly understand the basics of healing, but I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you. Too much of what we teach here requires a higher runic capacity, so you couldn’t fully benefit from our classes.”

”Are you sure?” Suria clenched her fist around her talisman. ”I’m training and increasing it...”

”This isn’t a way to put you off, girl.” The professor gave her a weary smile. ”I truly would welcome you later, as you’d be a relief compared to some of our students. The stories I could tell you about reckless combat healers, or the noblewomen who just take Medicine as a feminine art... ugh. But I suggest that you finish a full term at Darkmoon first, then join the Medicine program.”

That wasn’t a rejection, even though it felt like one. ”I... understand. I wish it wasn’t that way, but if I really can’t...”

”Here, let me show you something.”

Professor Gwaslos fished a talisman from her robe and then began creating a glyph with shocking speed, her stylus flashing like a needle. She formed a square with triangles on each side, a total of 12 runes, then flipped the stylus around her fingers and painted the inscriptions just as elegantly. A soft blue shape in the center, then four different augments around the sides.

”This is one of our most common healing spells,” the professor explained. ”Some might believe that it’s simple or weak, but that’s foolish: this is a highly refined glyph. Research this during your first term. If you can cast this, and more importantly understand why it’s constructed this way, we’ll welcome you directly into the Medicine program.”

”Oh, thank you.” Suria took it reverently and resolved to begin research as soon as possible. ”Then... I suppose I should leave you to your work.”

”We hope to see you again.” Professor Gwaslos gave her a brief smile, but it was clear that her mind was already moving on to other tasks. There was no need to dismiss her - Suria could tell that she was done.

As she left the medical ward, still a bit dizzy from all the healing spells, Suria reconsidered what this meant for her. It was encouraging that the medical program didn’t seem to have any bias against non-nobles, and in fact she had a direct promise that she’d be allowed to enter. Yet she was still locked out of the program for an entire term, which upset all of her plans.

When she got back to her room, Suria found it empty, which suited her fine. She picked up the course catalogue and just ran her fingers along the side as she considered.

Simply flipping through the book and choosing courses that sounded interesting to her was a formula for disaster. There could be an accident, her scholarship might be revoked, she might still be caught in the time loop. She needed to consider multiple layers of objectives and find a way to progress toward all of them.

Since paper was cheap for her now, Suria took out a sheet and began writing down what she wanted to learn, both in the short and long term. There was too much, so she had to sort priorities. Increasing her runic capacity and mastering a whole range of augmenting inscriptions would be helpful to all her other objectives, so those needed to be relatively high priority.

Simply focusing on long term development could leave her unprepared for any disasters in the meantime, however. She needed basic combat spells, at least one offensive choice and hopefully improvements to her defensive options. Learning an unlocking inscription was also a high priority, just in case.

But after what she’d seen in the medical ward, Suria knew that she couldn’t allow healing to slip too far down her list of priorities. Rije had given his life saving others, just like he’d tried to save her in another timeline. She hadn’t been able to save him, and depending on her situation she might not ever be able to save him... but in the future, there would be another Rije.

Whenever that happened, Suria had to be ready to rise to the challenge. If she couldn’t do that, there was no point crossing the world to become a mage.

Tomorrow she would pick her classes and get started.