13. Any Second Now

Chapter 013
Any Second Now

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning, morning, MORNING!!!”

Zorian growled as he roughly pushed Kirielle away from him. Fifth time! This was the fifth time the restart terminated after only a handful of days! How many times would Zach need to die before realizing he should back off for a while and try again later? Honestly, Zorian would have reconsidered his approach after the second attempt…

He snatched his glasses from his bed post and stomped off towards the bathroom before Kirielle could gather her wits. The short, irregular restarts were ruining every plan he cared to make, not to mention disrupting his concentration. He really couldn’t do anything substantial while this was going on, other than browsing the library for helpful texts and hoping Zach would quit killing himself on a regular basis. What the hell was the boy trying to do anyway?

He shouldn’t get so worked up over it, though – after all, how much longer could this possibly go on for? 10, 15 restarts?

Yeah. Yeah, that sounded about right…

– break –

“Hi, Roach!”

Zorian wordlessly gestured for Taiven to come inside before slowly closing the door and shuffling after her. He could feel her impatience at his sluggish pace, but he paid it no heed. He was deliberately stalling, trying to decide what to do.

He fully intended to have a chat with the weird telepathic spiders that inhabited the sewers, but it would be lunacy to go there at this point. There was no guarantee they would be as friendly as they were the last time, and their mind magic made them dangerous even within a time loop. He needed a way to protect his mind before venturing into Cyoria’s underworld, and so far he had only found one ward that protected the caster’s mind in the academy archives. Unfortunately, that particular ward blocked everything related to the mind, mind-based communication spells included. He needed something more selective than that.

But just because he was unwilling to descend into the Dungeon didn’t mean he was content to let Taiven get herself killed by going there either. He wasn’t sure why he cared, exactly – pragmatically speaking, he shouldn’t be bothered, since everything would be reset in a couple of days and she’d be fine again. Still, he was bothered, and since he was forced to have this conversation repeatedly every few days, he could as well find a way to talk her out of going.

He didn’t think for a moment it was going to be easy. Taiven was possibly even more stubborn than Zach.

“So, Taiven, how is life treating you?” he began.

“Eh, so so,” she sighed. “I am trying to secure an apprenticeship but it’s not going all that well. You know how it goes. I got Nirthak to take me as his class assistant this year, so there is that. You wouldn’t happen to have taken non-magical combat as one of your electives?”

“Nope,” Zorian answered cheerfully.

“Figures,” Taiven rolled her eyes. “You really should have, you know? Girls-“

“…love boys who exercise, yes, yes,” Nodded Zorian sagely. “Why are you here, Taiven? You tracked me down here even though I only moved in yesterday and never told anyone which room here is mine. I suppose you used a divination to find me?”

“Uh, yeah,” Taiven confirmed. “Pretty easy thing to do, really.”

“Aren’t these rooms supposed to have some sort of basic warding scheme placed on them?” Zorian inquired.

“I’m pretty sure it’s just rudimentary stuff like fire prevention and basic detection fields to warn the staff about fighting in the hallway and attempted demon summonings and what not,” Taiven shrugged. “Anyway, I’m here to ask you to join me and a couple of others on a job tomorrow.”

Zorian said nothing, patiently listening as she said her sales pitch. It was actually on Monday, not tomorrow – Taiven’s definition of ‘tomorrow’ differed greatly from the standard definition – but other than that, she was actually fairly honest in her explanation of the situation. She even mentioned that there was a small chance they might encounter something very nasty in there, but emphasized that she and her friends were totally capable of confronting anything they may find there. Right.

“Anything?” Asked Zorian suspiciously. “You know, I happen to have read up on magical spider breeds, and they can be pretty powerful. A single grey hunter has been known to wipe out entire hunting parties of mages, and they’re no larger than a human at their biggest. Phase spiders can literally jump on you out of nowhere and drag you off into their own private pocket dimension. Some of the breeds are even sentient and have mind magic at their disposal.”

The last one was a joke in more ways than one. Dungeon ecology was a giant mystery, even to mages that specialized in it, and information about monsters that made their home there was very scarce. As such, it was probably not surprising that he could find nothing on sentient telepathic spiders in the academy library, even after conscripting Ibery and Kirithishli on the effort.

Was it just him, or was the academy library a lot less useful than he had imagined it to be? Every time he tried to find something there he got disappointed. Then again, the things he was trying to find information on lately tended to be obscure, borderline illegal or both.

“Oh please,” Taiven snorted dismissively. “Don’t be so paranoid. As if something like that could be right below Cyoria. We won’t be delving into the Dungeon’s depths, for Gods’ sake.”

“I don’t think you should go at all,” Zorian insisted. “I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.”

Taiven rolled her eyes, an undercurrent of annoyance in her voice. “Funny. I never took you for a superstitious guy.”

“Time changes people,” Zorian said solemnly, smiling at his private joke before straightening his features into a serious expression. “But seriously: I’m getting a really bad feeling about this. Is this really worth getting yourself killed over?”

Apparently this was a wrong approach to take, as Taiven’s temper flared immediately. He supposed she perceived his comment as an insult towards her skills as a mage. Before he could apologize and rephrase his argument she was already shouting at him.

“I’m not going to die!” Taiven shouted irritably. “Gods, you sound just like my father! I’m not a little girl and I don’t need to be protected! If you didn’t want to come you should have just said so instead of lecturing me!” She stomped off angrily, muttering to herself about conceited brats and wasted time.

Zorian winced as Taiven slammed the door behind her. He wasn’t sure why she had reacted so strongly to his words, but apparently pointing out the potential danger of the job was ineffective and only pissed her off.

Oh well, he didn’t expect to succeed on the first try anyway.

– break –

“Hi Roach!”

“It is a good thing you came, Taiven,” Zorian said with a grave expression. “Come in, we have much to talk about.”

Taiven raised an eyebrow at his behavior before shrugging and sauntering inside. Zorian tried to project a serious, ominous presence about himself, but it seemed to amuse her more than anything.

“So… I gather you wanted to see me then?” she asked. “I guess you’re lucky I decided to drop by, then?”

“Not quite,” Zorian said. “I knew you would come today, just as I know you’re here to conscript me into joining you for a sewer run.”

“It’s not a-“ Taiven began, only to get interrupted by Zorian before she could gather steam.

“A sewer run,” Zorian repeated. “Retrieving a pocket watch guarded by some very dangerous spiders from the top layer of the Dungeon under the city.”

“Who told you that?” asked Taiven after several seconds of bewildered pause. “How could they possibly know? I told nobody where I’m going or why I’m visiting you.”

“Nobody told me,” Zorian said. “I had a vision about this meeting… and about what will happen should you descend into the tunnels.”

Well, it was true in a way…

“A vision?” Taiven said incredulously, disbelievingly.

Zorian nodded gravely. “I have never told you this before, but I have prophetic powers. I receive visions of the future from time to time, seeing glimpses of important events that will affect me personally in the days ahead.”

It wasn’t completely implausible – people like that did exist in the world, though their powers were quite a bit more limited than what he had at his disposal thanks to the time loop. From what he understood, their visions were less of a detailed recording of the future and more of a general outline of some upcoming event. The future was always changing, always uncertain, and trying to get a clear image of it was like trying to grasp a fistful of sand – the more you squeeze, the more things slip past your fingers.

Unfortunately, while being prophetic was not impossible, Taiven clearly wasn’t buying his claim.

“Oh really?” Taiven said challengingly, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And what did this ‘vision’ of yours tell you about the job?”

“That it will be the death of you,” said Zorian bluntly. “And me as well, should I choose to follow you down there. Please, Taiven, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m serious about this. The visions are rarely as clear as they were this time around. I won’t go down into the sewers and you shouldn’t either.”

As seconds ticked past in silence, Zorian began to think she would actually listen to him. This impression was destroyed when she suddenly started laughing.

“Oh, Roach, you almost had me there!” she wheezed, breaking into uncontrollable chuckles after every couple of words. “Visions from the future… Roach, you have the funniest jokes. You know, I missed that quirky sense of humor of yours. Remember… remember that one time you pretended you were asking me out?”

How Zorian stopped himself from physically recoiling at that he would never know. She just had to mention that, didn’t she? He forcefully pushed away the memories of that particular evening, determined not to dwell on it.

“Yeah,” said Zorian emotionlessly. “What a funny guy I am.”

Why was he trying to save her again?

“So…” she said, finally getting her giggles under control. “How did you know I was coming?”

– break –

“Hi R-” Taiven began, only to stop when she saw his vacant, hollow expression. “Whoa, Roach, what the hell happened to you?”

Zorian kept staring off into space for a few more moments before shaking his head, as if to clear his thoughts a little.

“Sorry,” he said in a subdued voice, motioning her to get inside. “I just had an extremely vivid nightmare tonight and I didn’t get much sleep.”

“Oh?” Taiven said, collapsing on his bed like usual. “What about?”

Zorian gave her a long look. “Actually, you were in it.”

Taiven stopped fooling around and gave him a shocked look. “Me!? Why the hell would I be in your nightmare? You’d think a beautiful girl like me would automatically make for a pleasant dream! Now I got to know what it was about.”

“I was walking through the sewers with you and some other two guys I never met,” began Zorian in a haunted tone, “when we were suddenly set upon by a swarm of giant spiders. There… there were so many of them… They just swarmed over us and started biting and…”

He took a couple of deep breaths, pretending to be on the verge of hyperventilating, before finally calming down.

“I’m sorry, it’s just… it was so real, you know?” he said, giving Taiven the most vacant stare he had. After a few moments he looked down on his trembling hands and balled them up into fists in a very visible motion. “The feeling of their fangs sinking into my skin, the poison coursing through my veins like liquid fire… they didn’t even kill us in the end, they just wrapped us in spider silk and dragged our paralyzed bodies off to their lairs to feed upon later. Such a horrid, vivid vision – I don’t think I’ll ever look at a spider in the same light again.”

Taiven shifted nervously where she sat, looking extremely uncomfortable and vaguely ill.

“But it was just a nightmare,” Zorian said in forced cheer. “To what do I owe this visit, anyway? Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

“N-No!” Taiven blurted out, a nervous laugh escaping her lips. “I just… I just stopped by to have a chat with one of my friends, that’s all! How has life been treating you anyway? Aside from the whole… nightmare… thingy…”

She found an excuse to leave in a matter of minutes. He would later find out she went into the sewers anyway and never came back.

– break –

“Spiders?” asked Zorian, doing his best to appear alarmed. “Taiven, don’t you listen to rumors from time to time?”

“Umm… I’ve been pretty busy lately,” Taiven chuckled awkwardly. “Why, what do the rumors say?”

“That there are some mind magic using spiders prowling the city sewers,” Zorian said. “Word is the city is trying to root them out, but the creatures are evading them thus far. They’ve been trying to suppress the information, since it would make them look incompetent and all that.”

“Wow, good thing I talked to you then,” Taiven said. “I never would have thought to put a mind ward on myself before going down otherwise.”

“You’re still going down there!?” Zorian asked incredulously. “What makes you think this mind ward of yours is enough?”

“Mind magic is a subtle thing,” Taiven said. “It uses tiny amounts of mana in very sophisticated ways, which makes it easy to counter with brute force. So long as you know in advance you’re going to face a mind mage, it’s easy to make yourself effectively immune. Trust me, now that I know what to expect from those crawlies, I won’t fall for their tricks.”

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Zorian opened his mouth to protest, but then reconsidered. Was Taiven right? Maybe he was looking at things from the wrong perspective. He was trying to get Taiven to survive, which didn’t necessarily mean stopping her from going into the sewers.

“I guess,” he finally conceded. “But I won’t be going with you.”

“Oh, come on!” Taiven protested. “I can totally keep you safe!”

“Nope,” Zorian insisted. “Not happening. Find someone else to go with you.”

“How about-“

“No fighting,” Zorian interrupted. “Look, there is no way to talk me into going along with this. Do tell me how the whole thing turns out afterwards, though. I don’t want to have to check to see if you survived.”

She actually did visit him a few days later, telling him the sewer run was a failure as far as finding the watch went, but that nothing attacked them either.

Huh. Maybe Benisek was onto something when he spoke so highly about the power of rumors and gossip.

– break –

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

“Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him.

“Good morning, Kiri!” yelled Zorian back, engulfing the shocked Kirielle into a hug. “Oh what a wonderful, wonderful day this is! Thank you for waking me up, Kiri, I really appreciate it! I don’t know what I would do without my wonderful little sister.”

Kiri wriggled uncomfortably in his grasp, not used to receiving such a gesture from him and unsure how to react.

“Who are you and what did you do to my brother!?” she finally demanded.

He just hugged her tighter.

– break –

“Something I can do for you, sonny?” asked Kyron. “The class has been dismissed, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Zorian confirmed. “I just wanted your advice about something, if you can spare the time.”

Kyron impatiently gestured him to get to the point.