Chapter 60: Familiar New Ally

After her chaotic first day, Suria was relieved to get her room and mostly ignore everyone else, and she intended to do so until the start of the term. She didn't particularly care about any of the gatherings of the early days and just wanted to do some experiments to prepare.

Thanks to Houdon's help she had already enrolled in her classes. Because she intended to pursue Alchemy in this loop, she had taken Basic Alchemical Principles and Practical Alchemy - unusually, Professor Slagterwese taught the larger introductory course. That left one slot, which she filled with a course called Beginner Augment Exploration that she hoped would round out the options available to her.

Since everything was settled, she was free to stay inside with Xuhriha, who had finished recreating their wards, which left Suria feeling even more secure. Timing her runic training revealed that she was getting faster every loop, and with so many different exercises to choose from, she leapt up to a runic capacity of eight without much trouble. If she kept that up, soon she wouldn't need to rely on other loopers in order to get into the Medicine program.

Her primary obstacle to that goal was actually herself: repeating the exercises was becoming terribly boring. At first she had been able to view it as training, and she'd enjoyed watching herself get faster and faster, but across so many loops it was still repetitive. She could force herself now, doing other things while she worked, but if she was stuck like this for a hundred loops, could she still force herself to do it?

That actually led to a lot of uncomfortable unknowns, because they still knew so little. Would the loop simply keep extending? She didn't think that was how it worked for past tyrants like Hrakik the Irredeemable, because he had been in power for a long time. Then again, Hrakik had seemed to be in control of his time loop in a way that none of them were.

Just when Suria began to hope that she could get through the entire early period without distraction, there was a knock on the door.

"Sorry, I don't know how to make wards that check," Xuhriha said. "But it is probably not a murderer."

"I can go." Suria pushed herself up and went to open the door, where she was surprised to find Rije standing with his helmet in his hands.

"I... wanted to thank you," he said stiffly. His gaze wandered away from her to Xuhriha, who was cocking her head curiously.

"You can trust Xuhriha," Suria told him, "but if you want to talk privately, we can step outside."

"Yes, if possible. It doesn't seem right to just thank you for saving my life."

They walked out of the Taedric Building in awkward silence as Suria tried to decide how she would play this conversation. Based on the previous loop where Rije had survived, she had assumed that he would be assigned elsewhere by faculty. It was still entirely possible that he had been sent to test her, though she didn't think he was enough of an actor to deceive her... and she hoped that he wouldn't do that.

When they got outside the air was cooler, and on the east side of the building they weren't much interrupted. Campus always looked different at night: every building was lit up, yet the campus was still filled with pools of shadow. Most students outside went west toward the Hall of Thrones, so Suria and Rije began walking east slowly.

"You did save my life," he repeated. "It's supposed to be the other way around. If I can't protect the students, what's the point in having guards?"

"Does that make me a bad student?" Suria asked jestingly, but she couldn't budge his grim mood.

"The worst part is that it wasn't... no, this is a mistake. I'm sorry, this isn't any of your business, I-"

"Wait." Suria took hold of his arm before he could go and looked him in the eye. "I know you weren't injured by the wards exploding. Everyone there saw that it was the backlash of a spell."

"Don't say that too loudly." Rije looking over his shoulder nervously, but when he shifted back, his gaze met hers steadily. "There was a battle inside Convocation Hall and we caught the edge of it. That was what raised the wards, by the way. I really shouldn't be pushing this on you, but Houdon insists it doesn't matter and there's no one else I can talk to..."

Technically he was probably right, in that it wasn't professional of him to talk to a student about this, but Suria didn't want him to be professional. She hadn't anticipated them having a conversation anything like this, so she needed a moment to find a new strategy.

"I saw something inside," Suria told him. A calculated lie felt wrong, but if she denied what she knew she would end up telling so many more implicit lies. "Some of the thrones were arguing with one another. When the powerful spells started flying, I assumed it was them fighting."

"Then you know." Rije let out a long breath. "And you still want to attend Darkmoon?"

"I don't understand what the fight was about, to be honest."

"Neither do I, but I can't let it go. This seems worse than anything I've seen before. The thrones are always arguing, but usually it's about budgets and prestige, that sort of thing. This is... no, forget that. Which of them did you see?"

"I'm afraid I don't know the faculty perfectly yet," Suria hedged. "I remember the faces I saw, but..."

"Got an idea." Rije snapped his fingers and a bit of his old smile returned. "Let's go to the feast tonight - all of them will be there. You can point out the ones you recognize."

That hadn't been what Suria had been anticipating at all, but she was willing to go back to the opening feast for a reason like this. There was just one problem: "Will it be safe to talk about there?" she asked.

"I think it should. With the spatial distortions, the feast is hard for anyone to keep track of... oh, you haven't seen, right? It's pretty impressive..."

He told her about the expanded chamber as they walked to the Hall of Thrones and she was reminded of the old Rije, the one who had been buried under all her thoughts about trying to save him. Even though he had training as a guard, Darkmoon University had plenty of security, so he was also more of a guide. And it seemed like, despite having failed out himself, he enjoyed the school.

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The entrance hall was just as crowded as she remembered, but having Rije there in his official armor prevented anyone from pushing her. He shouldered his way through as they turned from the main corridor to the expanded feasting chamber, glancing back at her as he did.

"Students are always trying to get into the other parts of the building," he told her. "It's such a pain, because the hallways are distorted by the expanding feasting hall."

"Is it hard to... oh." Suria pretended to be impressed as they entered the endless chamber. Even though she had seen it before, she had to admit that the spatial magic that made the feasting hall seem to extend for leagues was impressive.

"Looks impressive, but it's such a pain to tidy up afterwards. Anyway, let's get seats over there."

"Why is it a pain to clean?" Suria asked as they found a place to sit away from the central stream of students. "Surely if the space is all magical, you can... magically sweep everything up somehow."

"Oh, they definitely do. The tables and dishes are all Conjured." Rije gestured around the room with a sigh. "The problem is that students inevitably forget things, then they want them back. So everything left behind gets dumped and we have to sort it, just in case some noble was too drunk to remember their precious heirloom."

The conversation flowed easily between them as the feast got closer to the official beginning and Suria was more relieved than she had expected. Based on her interactions with Rije in the first hour of the loop, she had thought she liked him. But after seeing different angles to people across different cycles, she had been worried that her impression of him had been an illusion.

Fortunately, even at greater length, Rije was still fun to speak with. His frustration with so many of the noble students was just barely contained beneath the surface of professionalism, but he let a little of it show from time to time, and Suria made sure not to discourage it.

They were forcefully reminded of their ultimate purpose, however, when the hall turned blue and the thrones of Darkmoon University arrived. So much had changed since Suria had been an overwhelmed student in the hall for the first time - now she knew all the professors by name and had taken courses with most of them. That didn't mean she was capable of unraveling the knotty conflict between them and she could only hope that tonight would get her closer.

"I recognize five of them," she said after pretending to think. "Two of the professors I see up there weren't in Convocation Hall: the little old man and the huge one without a shirt."

"That doesn't surprise me," Rije said with a nod. "The old man is Anstell Milirent and he's... well, he might be one of the purest mages I've ever seen. Most people learn magic for a reason, but he just loves it for its own sake. I'm not sure he even knows there are any politics going on in the university."

"And the other one?"

"Eortrax Nullsah. They say he's incredibly dangerous, but I've never actually seen him fight anyone except students. He has some kind of ancestral magic that makes him immune to most spells, and rumor is that he relies on it. I think it would be hard to bring him into any kind of plan."

"How does he manage his department?"

"Well, he has other professors under him." Rije scratched the back of his head in consideration. "It's basically faculty gossip, but I hear he dumps a lot of the work on them. Seems like he pretty much doesn't care about anything except combat."

"We can set those two aside," Suria said, instead nodding to the main stretch of the table. "Those are the people I remember. Well, not the old woman - I assume she's the Archthrone. But all the rest were there, I'm sure of it."

"I'm surprised they got Frunah there," Rije said, rubbing his chin. He realized he was becoming self-absorbed and glanced back at her. "Right, sorry. Frunah Gwaslos is throne of the Medicine department, and she's usually a moderating influence. They say she's run the department and the clinic excellently, and it funds a meaningful part of the school's budget, so she has real sway. But usually she focuses on her own domain."

"I actually knew her, because I was interested in the Medicine program. What about him, the one in the hat?"

"This is hearsay, but I'm told Nulphus Abouric is often the swing vote. He sits in the middle of so many issues, people have to negotiate with him to get things done. I understand it annoys the hell out of a lot of faculty."

"Annoys them enough to attack him?"

"I doubt it." Rije shook his head. "Somehow he pulls off being on moderately good terms with just about everyone. No one's close ally, but not anyone's mortal enemy, either. It makes sense they'd invite him if they were trying to do something serious, though, because he could probably be persuaded to join."

So they had slipped from simply speaking about the professors to implicitly acknowledging that there was some sort of conspiracy going on. From other loops Suria knew what was being said about Professor Drazen and she had to assume that Rije knew more, though she intended to keep quiet about that until it came up.

"I'm surprised both Tollvard and Lia Huen Rei were there," Rije offered on his own. "Those two, I mean. As far as I know, they hate each other."

"Really?" Suria tried to think back to all of the battles she'd seen and whether they'd targeted one another. On the loop where the professors were all suspicious, they had seemed to work together smoothly. "Why?"

"I may not be highly ranked enough to actually know, honestly. But they seem to end up on opposite sides of things. Professor Huen wrote some sort of legal contract for the Republic of Junn and it really pissed Tollvard off, but apparently the thing was ironclad. Rumor was that she had done it just to get at him, though that could be gossip. There's a bit of rivalry between Transmutation and Conjuring over resources and classes, because there's some overlap."

"Then it does seem strange that they were together."

"On the other hand, you don't become a throne by being unwilling to compromise. Well, maybe you do if you're Eortrax. But I think most of the professors would be willing to sit and negotiate even with people they hated."

"That just leaves the oldest woman," Suria said, peering at Slagterwese. Her curiosity was completely unfeigned here, because she'd still learned very little about the Throne of Alchemy.

"Right, Slagterwese. Hmm, what to say about her? Are you familiar with the Shantic States?"

"They're directly east of my home."

"You might know more than me, then. But what I understand is that magical institutions there are more involved with politics than here." Rije rubbed his chin as he considered. "So Slagterwese doesn't like Darkmoon's usual policy of neutrality. The problem - at least according to complaints - is that you can't tell whether she'll be for or against something, so she could be your greatest ally or worst enemy."

While the information didn't transform her knowledge of the thrones, it did fill in Suria's understanding of why they might have been meeting. The two wild cards had been excluded, leaving six powerful archmages with varying motives who might, if the stakes were high enough, work together. Except whatever had happened, that alliance had clearly been sundered, and the most likely reason...

"There was one more man there," Suria said in a low voice. "He was a bit younger and he had silver hair."

"Zaasif Drazen," Rije said, lowering his voice further. "You know that he hasn't been seen?"

"I heard about it."

"Probably best not to talk about that, even in here. I know that he's ambitious, and he's also a bit of a swing vote in departmental arguments."

"Would you say he has a lot of enemies?" Suria asked.

"Not particularly more than anyone else. But we'd really better not discuss that here." Rije shook his head slowly. "Well, I hope that helped you, because I've just made myself more confused. There are all kinds of reasons those six might get together to talk, but usually it's just school business. They wouldn't fight over that."

"We don't have all the answers, but I found that helpful." Suria made sure to give him an honest smile before getting lost in her own thoughts.

"Oh, hey, you should enjoy the feast once it starts. Not that the cafeteria food is bad, but this only comes around once a year..."

They relaxed for the remainder of the feast and Suria enjoyed herself, even if her eyes kept returning to the archmages dining at the head of the room. All so civil despite having fought one another, all carrying their own secrets, all obscuring some deeper conspiracy.

She wasn't going to unravel it tonight, but she was glad to have Rije with her. Saving him had been worth it for its own sake, but she was curious to see where it would lead.