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

After the tense days trickling by in the previous loop, Suria could hardly believe how quickly she was flowing through the new term. Her days felt packed, since she was learning so much in her healing classes, yet somehow she would blink and five more were gone. If the loop wasn’t extended, she would be almost disappointed.

As she returned from class, Suria reflected that it was nice to feel like she had a secure base as well. She didn’t have to worry about what Maut-mai might choose to do or help manage Kiznua’s emotions. When she stepped inside, passing through the secure wards, she just found Xuhriha sitting on her bed, working at her own magical studies and humming to herself. Though she hummed some strange songs in minor keys, Suria had grown used to it and didn’t mind at all.

She sat down and pulled open one of her textbooks for Magical Analysis In Depth, then ran her eyes over the index. This was one she had read in the past, but she wanted to make sure she properly understood before she made any attempts.

Forcing herself to reread the old material was unpleasant, however, especially compared to all the practical and enjoyable reading in her healing courses. After turning back to the previous page and realizing that her eyes had just been sliding over the words, Suria realized that she was unfocused and needed a break. She looked up to Xuhriha, who was still humming along, and found herself smiling.

”You know,” Suria said, ”you’re a good roommate. I wasn’t sure this would work out.”

”What do you mean by that?” Xuhriha asked - curious, not offended.

”I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I was wondering if... well, let’s just say I had this vision of myself trying to sleep and you spinning around in circles banging on a tambourine.”

”Is it tambourine time?” Xuhriha’s eyes lit up with unholy glee, but then she just giggled. ”I understand what you mean, but I don’t set out to annoy people. At least, not people I like.”

”You seem more muted in here,” Suria pointed out. ”And during the last loop.”

”I was before, too. Aside from my self-evidently glorious style, I didn’t stand out so much at first. But as I realized that other loopers were watching, I started ramping up the level of zaniness I displayed, sort of just to see what I could get away with. Quite a lot, it turns out.”

”We should talk about classes more. I wanted you to teach me some about wards, but I’ve been so busy...”

”I know, everyone is busy, and right now there’s just not much overlap between our magical specialties.”

The conversation lapsed into silence, which was never uncomfortable. As she looked back to her book, not really reading, Suria reflected that even though her roommate was exuberant, she didn’t actually say much about herself personally. Other than her origins in the Court of Vedraz and a little about her family, she hadn’t revealed much.

”You know...” Xuhriha spoke up in a somewhat odd tone of voice. ”I should say that I’m glad about you too. It’s nice to have someone in the loop I can trust.”

”I don’t blame you for being cautious,” Suria said. ”Given how the other loopers have behaved, and the threat...”

”It isn’t just that. You can be very serious.” Xuhriha considered for a moment, then stuck out her tongue. ”Oh, I don’t know how to say it. Just that I wasn’t sure if we would get along, but I think this has been nice.”

”Agreed.” Suria smiled at the other woman. ”We might need to experiment with other things, but this would be nice for any loops where we want to study.”

”That works for me! I’ll make sure to warn you before I start setting off fireworks in the middle of the night.”

Suria smiled again and settled back into her reading. After the previous loop, she had been convinced that something had to go wrong, especially once she got comfortable, but this was shaping up to be a very pleasant term.

~ ~ ~

As usual, Professor Huen expressed her disappointment in the class and introduced a new wave of reading, somewhat but not entirely similar to the books she’d assigned in previous classes. Suria copied down the titles and looked them over very carefully, thinking about patterns and considering her theory.

She considered too long and missed her chance to speak to the professor before she disappeared, but thanks to the previous loop, Suria knew where the woman’s office was. As she gained increasing confidence in her theory, she headed down the stairs and steeled herself. This might end up being a confrontation, but hopefully it would be worth it. Based on the patterns of books and the history of the class, Suria was virtually certain it wasn’t a trap for loopers.

When she approached there was no voice like usual. Suria knocked and had to wait for a long time before the professor allowed her to enter.

Professor Huen sat behind her desk surrounded by a fortress of books. Her gaze was sharp, not hostile but certainly not welcoming. It might have been too intimidating if Suria had been the girl she’d been at the start of the loops, but now she made herself sit down in the chair.

”I wanted to talk about Magical Analysis In Depth.”

”I have too many students in that course to provide personal assistance to everyone,” Professor Huen said with a dismissive wave. ”The texts are the best explanation I can offer. If that’s all, kindly-”

”You don’t actually want to teach the class, do you?” Suria blurted it out at first, but when she saw the professor hesitate, she continued with increasing confidence. ”I think I wrote a good essay. Maybe not perfect, but I read everything you assigned and understood it. For a while I thought you were trying to teach us something obscure, but now I think you’re just trying to drive us out.”

Suria thought she was correct and had been hoping that her professor would open up to her a little more. But the two of them didn’t have any meaningful relationship in this timeline, so Professor Huen settled back in her chair and simply gave her a thin smile.

”I will neither confirm nor deny any of that,” she said, ”but I will admit that you will... not be served well by continuing in the class.”

That confirmation was actually a huge relief and Suria didn’t try to hide her reaction, given how bold she was being. She had been searching so hard for the connection between all the texts and desperate to figure out what she was lacking, but if this had all been a ruse, it made sense. The contradictory and confusing texts had never been designed to really teach them; they were just barriers with plausible deniability.

The question was what she did with this revelation. A part of her was almost angry and wanted to threaten her professor, but Suria remembered how ruthlessly methodical Professor Huen had been in the previous timeline. No, she thought would be better to take an entirely different approach.

”I can’t tell you how to teach your classes,” Suria said carefully, ”but this feels unfair to me. It’s too late for me to transfer to another class, so I’ve lost an entire part of the term.”

”I suppose you have a reasonable grievance.” Professor Huen sighed and her posture became just slightly less rigid. ”You want the truth? I’m required to teach a course like this, but the vast majority of students don’t have any interest in Conjuring as a discipline. They just want wealth, or connections to the department, or access to me. I... can understand why earnest students would be upset.”

”All I want is to learn something. If you instruct me, I-”

”And just what do you expect to learn?”

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”I want to understand soul talismans,” Suria said firmly. After so much work, she wasn’t going to let herself be put off with another lesson. In this timeline, the question should be safe, and she had a ready excuse. ”I heard that you were an expert.”

”Truly?” Professor Huen lifted cultured eyebrows and Suria forced herself not to wince. ”And just why are you aiming for such an ambitious technique.”

”You might not understand what it’s like to be weak, but I’m... afraid of being disarmed. Separated from my talismans...”

”I understand.” Professor Huen regarded her for a time, but she seemed to accept the explanation, since it was a very plausible fear for a young woman. ”Based on the competence of your essay, you could grasp the theory, but I think the actual execution would be beyond you. Soul talismans are not a simple art. In some nations they aren’t taught to anyone who hasn’t received the rank of battlemage.”

”But I would like to try.”

For several long seconds Professor Huen examined her, then abruptly she shook her head. ”No. I admire your audacity, but you’re asking me to commit to private tutoring for a term or more. Do you know how much other mages would pay for such a thing?”

The flat denial hurt, but Suria didn’t let herself be cowed. If nothing else, Professor Huen was logical and reasonable, so it must be possible to get through to her, and it might not take another cycle. Suria couldn’t mention anything about the loop, but she thought that she could get away with more aggressive tactics now that she’d established herself. It wouldn’t be a real threat, just a kitten growling at a tiger.

”If you refuse,” Suria told her professor, ”I will stay in Magical Analysis. I will start a study group and urge everyone to keep trying. We’ll come to your office after hours to ask you to explain the hard texts. I’ll keep as many people in the class as possible and fill up your entire term... or you can spend a little time teaching me.”

Surprisingly, Professor Huen chuckled. It was a low and dry sound, yet the way the corners of her eyes shifted, she seemed truly amused. The professor sat forward and raised her hands together so that her perfect nails formed a bridge, then examined Suria for some time.

”I do admire the audacity,” Professor Huen finally said. ”Frankly, I still don’t think a first year student can master even the basics of a soul talisman. If you prove unable to grasp the material, our deal will be at an end. Will you accept those terms, or do you want me to begin actually negotiating?”

”Agreed,” Suria said without hesitation. ”When do we start?”

~ ~ ~

After the first saintsday break, Suria grew increasingly tense as the normal end of the loop approached. She had no actual evidence that the loop would change, just her hypothesis, which was based on facts gathered from disparate sources and held together by conjecture. It was possible that she was entirely wrong and soon she’d have to start all over.

But the final day passed without looping - the timeline had extended to unfamiliar territory.

When she walked to Foundations, for the first time in any loop she found that the classroom had been restructured: the long desks had been removed, leaving everyone milling around across the tiers. None of them seemed to have much idea what was going on, based on what Suria could overhear, other than guessing that this class would be more practical than usual.

”Settle down!” The professor walked in waving his glyphed wand to silence the class, which he hadn’t used as much once the term got underway. ”Today we have something a little more fun, though you’ll have to listen to me babble some first. But then, after that, you all get to test yourselves. These evaluations won’t enter your grades in any way, they’re just for you to evaluate yourself.”

Everyone calmed and oriented themselves to the front of the room like normal. Some had to awkwardly hold their books or just set them on the ground, but with her satchel Suria was fine. No matter how shabby it might look compared to the wealthier students, it was useful.

”Do you know the real advantage of glyphs over ancient runes or inscriptions?” the professor asked - rhetorically, as he proved by silencing attempts to answer. ”It’s less about power than efficiency. Today we’re going to learn a simple inscription that generates light, which might seem trivial to most of you, but we’re going to measure it precisely.

”Now, it can be tricky to quantify magic, outside of the self-evident things like runic capacity, but there are a number of systems. One widespread unit is called ’thaums’, which roughly measures how much mana is spent on a spell. There are some complications we’ll discuss in later lectures, but for today just accept it so we can do evaluations.”

The professor set down his wand and instead raised his stylus along with several slabs of stone. He drew a naked inscription on the first slab, which immediately began glowing with a soft light. It seemed wasteful to have an inscription without any runes, and indeed the light was already fading.

”This is the way mages needed to generate light before modern glyphs,” the professor explained. ”Absurdly wasteful, isn’t it? Without runes, the mana just bleeds away. You can all see that with your bare eyes, but now we can quantify it.”

He tapped the table with his stylus and a drawer popped open, revealing a number of strange devices. They appeared to be glass tubes with some sort of blue liquid inside them and markings along the side. Their professor set one of the tubes down in front of the stone slab, on its triangular base, then recreated the naked inscription.

Immediately everyone saw the result: the blue liquid responded to the magic, rising within the glass tube to produce a measurement. From a distance Suria couldn’t see what it said, then she remembered she had a perception spell to improve her sight. While she fumbled around with her talismans, however, the professor had already moved on.

”You might not be able to see, but the thaumeter says that I spent 100 thaums of my mana casting this inscription. Now, you might be thinking: isn’t it strange that the number is exactly 100 thaums? Well, as it happens, the whole scale is actually calibrated based on the simplest light spells.”

”Why does it start at one hundred?” someone asked.

”I’m getting there.” The professor frowned and reached for his silencing wand, but someone else was already speaking up.

”How did mages on the northern continents cast light before inscriptions?”

That was actually a good question in Suria’s opinion, and one she hadn’t thought about before. She hadn’t really understood how different things were before the Glyphic Imperium, not until she took Professor Rhamsolk’s politics class. It was hard to imagine how magic would have operated in that ancient world.

Unfortunately the professor waved aside the question and cast his silencing spell again. ”Let me get through the demonstration, please. The reason we start at a larger number should be obvious to all of you in just a moment.”

He moved the thaumeter next to the second stone slab, then began making exactly the same inscription except within a proper runic square this time. Even though the man was regarded as a mediocre professor, Suria had to admit that he was surprisingly fast and precise making the glyph. She was more competent than average, but she still had more to learn.

More importantly, when the inscription lit up, the device reacted and the professor announced the results:

”A mere 10 thaums! That’s right, runic structures improve the efficiency of spells by a factor of ten. Now, that’s assuming you do it properly, and as you’ll soon learn, many don’t. The thaumeter also doesn’t record the efficiency of your spellcasting, so you’re losing a few more thaums in the process. But we’ll cover all that later - it’s time for you to begin testing yourselves!”

There weren’t enough slabs and thaumeters for everyone to go at once, so they needed to walk up to the front of class. That made the exercise both public and social, thus turning it into a competition... Suria could endure this, even if she didn’t like it. At the moment she was just intrigued by this new lesson and eager to learn what she could.

The stone slabs proved able to reshape themselves to remove glyphs, so students were able to try repeatedly. She quickly saw that while the supposed standard for a glyph was 10 thaums, most mages weren’t as precise. Students who put together sloppy glyphs, with poorly-aligned and weakly-drawn runes, sometimes spent 25 thaums or even more. They were spending 150% more mana casting exactly the same spell and no one needed a lecture to see why that mattered.

Students who did that poorly often got laughter, while better performances got whistles of appreciation. Based on Suria’s rough evaluations, the students who seemed uncertain usually spent in the range of 15 thaums, while the more experienced students rated between 10 and 12. She nervously ran her hands over her tools, wondering what would happen when it was her turn.

”Ink matters here,” the professor explained while the testing continued, ”but this is where your tools really shine. The difference between an average stylus and an excellent one can be three or four thaums, and there’s practically no upper limit for how bad a tool can be.”

Suria still had her old wooden wedge in her satchel and she wondered how it would perform, but she was confident in her use of the Darkmoon marble stylus. When it was her turn, she stepped up to the stone slab and formed her glyph, struggling not to let her nerves undermine her work. She had been creating glyphs across many loops, but was that enough?

When she finished, the inscription lit up and she nervously watched the measuring device. The blue liquid rose until the 10 thaum mark and then stayed there.

”10 thaums!” the professor announced cheerfully. ”Good work, very solid runes.”

A person or two clapped, but Suria found herself frowning at the tiny marks along the edge of the device. Even though the professor said 10, it looked more like 10.5 to her. She was certain that she could improve, and there was no reason to believe that she couldn’t do even better. This was the standard, but if she improved her core skills, why couldn’t she cast the same spell with 9.5 thaums?

When she returned to her place, Suria’s mind was buzzing with ideas. If she could get her hands on these thaumeters, she could run all kinds of experiments. Testing different tools, different inks, even different spells. A runic pentagon felt more mana-intensive to her than a square, but how much more? The results could inform so many decisions in the future.

Once those ideas passed, however, Suria realized something much more surreal. She had been attending Darkmoon University across multiple loops, in fact closer to half a year than a beginning student, and yet she had never experienced this lecture before now. A concept as basic as thaums, which she’d encountered indirectly and was normally taught to students within their first month, had been a complete unknown until now.

It was a reminder that, for all her experience in the loop, her time as a student had been abnormal. Suria couldn’t take this as too much of a warning, though... she was just excited to see what she’d learn next.