Chapter 51: Taking A Breath

"Well, this has gone very well so far, but forgive me because there's a little tedium to get through." Houdon shuffled through some papers on his side of the table. "Sorry if I'm slow; this isn't my usual job. Let's see... you have your identification, basic supplies, and housing covered..."

"I heard the scholarship provided a stipend?" Suria asked, as if she hadn't done this multiple times.

"So it does. Ten oss per day, distributed monthly, so I'll just disburse the first month now and save you some trouble."

"Thank you."

"Now we need to get you signed up for classes - best to take care of that early. First term lasts until thawbreak, so students generally take between two and four courses. I trust you've looked into the available options?"

Last time Suria had upset him by not having decided all her classes, but she was far more familiar with the university now. "I'll be in Foundations of Modern Spellcraft," she said, "and I'd like to take Magical Analysis In Depth. But for my other two, I'd like to join the Medicine program, and I understand I need approval from the department throne."

"You do, but since you have everything else together, I'm sure we can arrange that." Houdon pulled out a different sheet of paper and pushed it across to her. "You can put in for an interview and I trust everything will be taken care of."

She briefly considered requesting her interview on a normal day, just to see what would happen, but decided to still request the sixth day when the accident would happen. Because she was spending favors to get into the Medicine program, she needed to take her best chance, and that was showing what she could do in the middle of a crisis.

"Very good, then." Houdon glanced over her papers and smiled at her. "Do you need a library request form? The Sequential Library hasn't opened for the term, but you can still make requests."

"No, I met a librarian and got that handled," Suria told him. "Thank you very much for your help."

"No, thank you. If every student had their paperwork this tidy, my job wouldn't be so stressful."

The interview had gone fantastically well and Suria almost considered pushing further. She didn't know who Houdon truly was, other than that he was a functionary in the university, but he was apparently important enough to serve a role during the critical faculty meeting. He might be willing to offer something... but Suria was tired of dealing with the conspiracy and wanted to focus on her studies for once.

She departed Convocation Hall in a better mood than she ever had: it was only the second day of the loop and she already had basically everything sorted. On the first day she'd intercepted Orinyan, getting the books she needed, and now the paperwork was all out of the way. She had the entire rest of the time to train and prepare for her interview.

Only one thing had gone wrong, and that was minor: she had tried to figure out when Kiznua was attempting to exterminate the weevils and been too late due to everything else she was attempting. But she'd gotten closer and introduced herself to Bumbledun, so now she knew exactly when and where Kiznua made her attempt, in case there was need to intercept it in future cycles.

When Suria returned to the Taedric Building, it took little time to reach their room, where she found Xuhriha hard at work on the wards. The other woman waved cheerfully before she returned to her work, imprinting more runes on the door frame.

For all that Suria felt she had mastered Darkmoon, there were still things she was learning, and the need for wards was one of them. According to Xuhriha, the basic protections on all rooms weren't sufficient, so they needed to add defensive, anti-scrying, and locking wards. The result would be a room that couldn't be entered with a simple unlocking spell and would keep them private, or at least let them know if their defenses had been breached.

"I'm impressed you're still working on those," Suria said as she sat down on her bed. "My fingers would be sore by now."

"There's actually a difference between runic capacity and something called runic stamina," Xuhriha explained as she worked. "I know, I hadn't ever heard about it either until I took a warding class, a few loops back. Wards require so many glyphs, you have to be able to do them continually, but otherwise..."

"I understand: usually you just make a few glyphs at a time. But I make repeated runes to train capacity, isn't that the same thing?"

"Not quite, I don't think. Most training exercises are something unusual, like crossed runes, so it uses different magical skills than mass-producing the real thing."

Suria sighed. "I need to take a warding class. I had no idea about any of this before now."

"Don't beat yourself up." Xuhriha whipped her head around, golden locks flying, to grin at her. "You can't learn everything, after all, at least not at once! Sometimes you have to rely on other specialists."

"Then I'll have to rely on you," Suria responded, smiling back involuntarily. "If you ever get injured, I'll do the best I can."

"It's a deal! Good thing we agreed, otherwise you would have just let me die."

While Xuhriha went back to work, Suria dropped back onto her bed and pulled out one of her stone slates to continue her exercises. Harvesting the low-hanging fruit from the crossed runes exercises had only taken under an hour, and she hadn't tried to time how long a second breakthrough took, so she switched to making pentagons to further stretch herself. Now that she thought about it, runic pentagons strengthened her magical skills in a different way, perhaps building this runic stamina.

As she worked, Suria reflected that each exercise probably had slightly different benefits, so it would be inaccurate to rank them too simply. Prior to this, she had been assuming that the clay spheres she'd learned about from Professor Eortrax were a mediocre exercise, but they likely had benefits she wasn't measuring. She'd need to learn it all more precisely, if she ever had cycles with limited preparation time.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

For this one, however, she could focus on nothing but increasing her runic capacity. Over the remainder of the day, Suria made remarkable progress: she'd increased her runic capacity via four different exercises, and though they felt like they had a little overlap, they were all still valuable. That gave her a total capacity of eight, which was much better than she usually had at this time.

Would it be enough to reach twelve before the day she was needed for healing? Because each improvement took exponentially more time, it would be easy to reach her limit, but she still had multiple days, plus she had the runic potion from the Endelythans.

That was another question she needed to consider... Suria realized that she wasn't alone and looked over to her roommate. Xuhriha had finally finished her work and gone to lie down on her own bed, toying with a golden orb that was some kind of magical training device.

"I read that some people believe runic potions slow down normal growth," Suria said. "Have you tested it? Do you think it's actually true?"

"I can't be sure." Xuhriha pursed her lips as she thought. "It's possible that no one has used forbidden anathema death-on-sight time magic to test it before."

"Well then, it's time someone did."

"Oh! By the way, when I went down to get us food, I saw Maut-mai walking around campus. So it looks like she still made it out."

"That's... good." Suria felt a strange mix of emotions about that, since she didn't want Maut-mai to die, but also wasn't sure what she would become in this cycle. "Do you think we should go talk to her?"

"I wasn't saying we should." Xuhriha set down her sphere to look at Suria. "Are you saying that you want to?"

"I'm not sure. She was a friend to me in one loop, but it took time, and it wasn't always pleasant getting there. I don't think I can endure that again, not every time... maybe this is fine. It's a good experiment to see what she does with minimal involvement from me."

Xuhriha flipped onto her stomach and propped her hands beneath her chin so she could examine Suria. "You have an interesting way of looking at people. Lots of the other loopers are trying different things, but not quite like that."

"Really?" With anyone else, Suria might have taken offense, but Xuhriha didn't seem like she would get upset even if Suria claimed to be a cannibal. "You don't experiment to see what effect your actions have on other people?"

"This is probably going to reflect poorly on me, but there was this one professor who was ungodly boring and I spent several cycles finding the optimal way to make him think he was going crazy."

Though such questions came naturally to Suria, she reflected that she was probably the result of the same random forces, regardless of the fact that she experienced multiple loops. If she hadn't seen Maut-mai grow in completely different directions, Suria might not have begun thinking about how much people could change. She saw multiple branches of the tree of time, but she herself was locked on one of them.

"I think it's interesting, though." Xuhriha smiled at her. "You have a special interest in Kiznua, don't you? What are you trying to do with her?"

"I'm not sure. I don't understand her well enough yet." Suria paused as she considered everything she had seen so far. "Do you know more about her? Is she taking any classes available to us?"

"I haven't been stalking her, but I think she was going to try the Medicine program for the first time this year. So if you're looking to optimize loops, you might be running into her this time."

"I don't know, I feel like I'm already taking on enough. There was also... have you met a woman named Murtiel Hosmar? She was in-"

"Oh, with little Albree!" Xuhriha clapped her hands cheerfully. "She's such a dear, if you can get through her shell. If you're wanting to talk to them, you'd probably best do that on a loop where you study Alchemy. That's where she usually is, when we aren't screwing up the timeline."

"That's useful to know. Thanks, Xuhriha."

So Suria had a rough plan for not one but two loops. This time she would give her all to the Medicine program, hopefully learning some of the spells that were the original reason she'd come to Darkmoon. Along the way she could check in with Maut-mai and Kiznua, as well as hopefully make meaningful progress on Magical Analysis In Depth.

Unless something went wrong again, that would give her another focused cycle afterward. She could finally learn some Alchemy and get to know Murtiel, though the longer term value might be in meeting Slagterwese. The old Shantic woman was the last professor in the basement who Suria knew very little about so far, especially since she made very few appearances during the school year.

Of course, that was all predicated on the idea that things would continue predictably, and she couldn't guarantee that, even without interference from another looper. If she was right about how the time loop worked, this one would be an indeterminate amount of time longer.

Because everything had already been arranged, Suria could stay inside, ignore the chaotic crowds at the beginning of the term, and talk with Xuhriha about the different things they'd discovered throughout the loops. The other woman spent a fair amount of time reading as well as playing with many strange devices that Suria hadn't worked up the nerve to ask about yet.

The night before the sixth day, Suria knew that she should get a good sleep, but she was anxious about her progress. So far all of her work had increased her runic capacity to ten, which was still short of the requirement that Professor Gwaslos had required in a previous timeline. In theory she could use Lirngelf's potion to reach the target just long enough for the meeting, but Suria was afraid the professor would detect the difference somehow. It might not lead to death in this loop, it was just starting the relationship off on the wrong foot.

"Are you still holding off on the permanent potion?" Xuhriha asked her. "What else are you waiting for?"

"Someone to give me permission, I suppose." Suria pulled the bottle from out of her satchel and stared at it for some time, feeling the intense mana within.

"Drink! Drink as if it was alcohol!"

"Never let it be said I won't give in to peer pressure," Suria said with a smile, then she finally opened the bottle and drank.

From the instant the liquid touched her lips she felt it coursing through her, more intense than anything she'd tried before that point. The world around her seemed to grow brighter, as if every color blossomed into its true form, and when Suria gasped, the air flowing into her lungs tingled. When the sensations passed, she was still left drifting and a little stunned.

"Well?" Xuhriha had somehow moved onto the bed beside her, perched on the edge. "Aren't you going to test it?"

Suria nodded and began forming a new glyph. Everything went smoothly up to the tenth rune, then the one after that felt a little strange and tingly, as if her new capacity hadn't fully solidified. She was forming a square with four augments, so she eagerly finished the eleventh rune, then sighed in relief as she marked a twelfth...

Except she wasn't done. Blinking in surprise, Suria added one more rune off to the side - it made this glyph an unbalanced mess, but it confirmed that her runic capacity was a full thirteen. Higher than she had ever experienced before and the term had just begun.

"You botched that one," Xuhriha said mildly. "Couldn't contain yourself, huh?"

"I'm impressed," Suria said as she looked down at the runes. "I guess the Endelythans really know what they're doing."

"That, or they're so rich they have extra runic potions lying around." After patting her on the shoulder, Xuhriha hopped back to her own bed. "Congratulations, Suria! Now you can look forward to all the people getting blown up tomorrow."

It was strange to think about it that way, but Suria didn't feel any guilt over that. If this worked, for the first time she would become more than a village healer and she'd gain the ability to help countless people over so many future loops.

Provided that it worked. She settled into bed and did her best to sleep.