Chapter 69-2: Catching Up With Loopers

"Will you?" Suria asked with unfeigned relief. "I know I didn't do enough for his eye..."

"It may be too late to save the eye, but he will live, and that's thanks to you."

"Thank you for helping. I need... I need some time. I'll be in the Taedric Building if, uh..."

"Don't worry," Professor Gwaslos told her with a gentle smile. "This was a heroic act today and no one should demand anything else from you. Relax for now, and if you have trouble getting enrolled, come speak to someone at the Grand Prince's Medical Ward."

That offer would have been highly useful in some previous cycles, but Suria wasn't certain what combination of events had led to it. Professor Gwaslos had arrived late enough that she probably wouldn't have been able to save Rije's life, so this might be a variation on what happened in previous cycles while Suria was gone.

While the professor worked, Maut-mai continued to fret. "At least someone is here to take care of things," she said. "Do we have to just continue our business? Where, with the building like this?"

"I'm afraid I don't know Darkmoon very well," Suria said, "but aren't there other places we can go to begin enrolling?"

"Oh yes, there certainly are. I'm a first year student too, but I've had relatives here."

"Then you can get us started, can't you?" Suria pretended to smile in relief. "We both need paperwork for all kinds of things, like housing and textbook requests, and we need identification pins, and we probably need to make an appointment to be fitted for school robes... I want to get started on it all, but I need to stay with him to make sure he lives."

"I can handle the business," Maut-mai said, seizing hold of something she could handle. "Don't worry, I'll be back."

While Maut-mai conducted business to settle herself, Suria forced herself to complete some tasks of her own. She made a brief stop by the supply store and picked up an hourglass along with her usual stone slates and other supplies. She didn't want to deal with any vast conspiracies, just a simple experiment.

Once in her usual nook, she turned over the hourglass and began to work. She had altered a great many variables in this timeline, but she no longer really thought that the difference in results was due to those - she just wanted to see how fast she could be this time.

Slightly over twenty minutes into her exercises, Suria had unlocked her fifth rune, though with her soul talisman her runic capacity was actually eight. The first time she had done the experiment, it had taken her two hours, so the difference was completely undeniable. All the other exercises were definitely speeding up as well, and though it was harder to run an experiment with further increases in runic capacity, she was confident that they were improving as well.

"Hello, stranger."

Suria jumped in surprise, shocked that Xuhriha had somehow sneaked up on her. A second later she rushed forward, grabbing the other woman in a fierce hug, and felt her hugging back.

"I didn't see you there," Suria breathed. "You could have said something."

"I just wanted to watch you," Xuhriha answered. "To make sure you weren't gone."

"Tell me everything. How bad was it last loop?"

"Well, the shockwave was outside the wards, so it took out multiple people right away. And of those who remained, quite a few others killed themselves as soon as they realized..."

Xuhriha didn't explain every detail, but it sounded as though the previous cycle had been another paranoid one. Only a few loopers had been consistently active, including Xuhriha and Qanti, and none of them had spoken to one another. Everyone had been paranoid about Suria and the others potentially being soul-killed, so while Xuhriha had been dealing with other problems, the others had been meeting to agree to another neutral loop.

Apparently Wynchard and Adwyrma had made it out, this time, but there was no sign of them.

These lines came from a NovelPhoenix publication without the author's consent; the published page is where readers support their writing.

"You obviously need to rest," Xuhriha told Suria. "Do you want to room together again, or are you sticking with your plan?"

"I sent Maut-mai off to do things," Suria said with a sigh. "I shouldn't just abandon her this cycle."

"But you look like you need a break. I have one positive piece of news for you: don't worry about Kiznua, because I helped her before she got in trouble with the weevils. Otherwise... do you want to go into Darmkael and try to intercept that thief over at Bub's Bobs?"

"Yes, absolutely."

Compared to other loopers ruining her day or the professors being absolute nightmares, just dealing with a known problem stuck in the loop sounded amazing. Suria and Xuhriha discussed strategies on their way, both for finding the thief beforehand and for stopping him. They couldn't locate the illusory cloak, but when the thief tried to strike, they sent him running surprisingly fast.

Even though she still wasn't focused on the events around her, Suria felt a bit of warmth as Bub thanked them for saving his package and offered them his discount, just like before. Since she was there, she made sure to buy her runebook - familiar now, even if it was missing all her usual spells.

"You're distracted, aren't you?" Xuhriha said on the way back.

"Was it bad?" Suria asked. "I was trying not to be rude."

"I think you came off more as shy, but... I could tell. It can be hard to focus on people when they'll forget everything, can't it?"

"I'm so tired of the same conversations and the same emotions..."

"Well, at least we got the timing down this time. I'm still not sure about the cloak of illusion, but maybe if we take a few more Perception classes, we can spot it the next time."

Though there should have been nothing stopping them from simply strolling back to Darkmoon, it seemed like it wasn't to be. Before they got back to the gates, Suria spotted Qanti heading toward them with a somber expression. Xuhriha pretended to be distracted by some fancy piece of crystal in a shop and wandered off, allowing Qanti to talk to her directly.

"I heard about what happened," Qanti told her. Once they were together the other woman smiled, though nowhere near as effusively as Xuhriha. "I'm just glad you're still with us."

"You made it through the last loop?" Suria asked.

"Not only that, I mastered the soul talisman. Soul armor is still beyond reach, but I think this will actually help."

"You just... mastered it? Already?"

"I couldn't have without you leading the way." Qanti nodded to her somberly. "You completed adjusting your soul before, right? I'll help you master it this cycle. Once you grasp all the soul techniques, it's just a matter of forming a glyph in your mind."

"I respect that, I really do," Suria said, but her smile was fading. "Right now, though, I'm just exhausted. We'll have to meet later."

"Of course. Come talk to me when you have time."

Once Qanti left, Suria expected Xuhriha to return, but there was no sign of her. Since there was no reason not to stick to the plan, Suria headed back to Darkmoon University. She understood why Xuhriha might not have showed herself soon, because she only walked a few blocks before she was intercepted again.

This time by Wynchard and Adwyrma.

"We got out early," Wynchard said, as if it wasn't obvious. "No one saw us."

"Dodging that guard is obnoxious," Adwyrma said. "It would be easier to kill him."

"Thank you for avoiding it," Suria said. She thought she should emote a little more and try to persuade them, but her voice sounded lifeless even to her own ears. "Did you find out anything this time?"

Wynchard folded his arms and stared back toward campus. "The professors are definitely in the basement. With enough research, we might be able to overcome the trap and walk down there. Calmly, I mean, before the battle starts. That's our best bet at a real answer."

"I don't agree," Adwyrma said, "but we'll split the difference and try my strategy the loop after that."

"Wait." Tired as she was, Suria couldn't let them push over her. "You made an agreement with me and I've worked with you twice now. You s-"

"I will. Get the library figured out and I'll be there." Adwyrma turned and stalked away, deeper into Darmkael.

"That's right." Wynchard smiled encouragingly and put a hand on her shoulder. "If you want to search the Sequential Library for books on time magic, we'll support you. But there are a lot of things that can be done to make a library run easier, and we don't want to take the risk at the very beginning. I suggest you spend the term preparing t-"

"We can talk about that later," Suria told him. "Give me a list, for all I care. Right now I just want to get back to campus."

"Right. Of course, I understand." It didn't seem like he did, but Wynchard gave her another smile and then headed away, leaving her finally alone.

For a while Suria just trudged back, still without Xuhriha, until the gates and their statue guardians were in sight. She stared at them and almost considered turning around herself, after the exhaustion of dealing with everything, but she forced herself to continue forward. This was the path she'd committed to, after all, and she'd already wasted an entire cycle being dead, so she needed to catch up.

As she stepped through the gates, Suria saw that there was one more person waiting for her: Maut-mai was moving around the fields searching anxiously. Suria very nearly turned and walked away.

It was the anxiety in the other woman's face that stopped her, because this wasn't the snobbish Maut-mai from the Water Society, the depressed Maut-mai from the artisan program, or even the amalgamation of all the previous loops. For this woman, this was her only life to live and she was in an unfamiliar environment surrounded by troubling events.

Maut-mai deserved more than someone going through the motions. Suria slapped her face, resolved to do this right, and got started.