45. Fine Structures

Chapter 045
Fine Structures

Zorian was starting to realize he didn’t understand Taiven nearly as well as he thought he did. And it wasn’t just the surprising amount of insecurity that lurked behind her seemingly endless optimism and confidence that made him think that – it was also the amount of thought and consideration she put into his time loop situation. When he told her about his situation, she actually listened to him without interruption, and even took notes, and then later came back with a list of questions and ideas. This was very atypical behavior for her. Taiven was pretty much a prime example of the ‘less thinking, more action’ philosophy, and she even admitted that she still wasn’t entirely convinced about the whole ‘time loop’ thing, so he was rather baffled about her motives and thought processes.

Still, while the list she had made with Kael’s help was kind of surprising, it contained nothing particularly revolutionary, and all of the points could be boiled down to four basic questions. Why didn’t he get help from more people around him than her and Kael? Why didn’t he tell the government or academy authorities what was going on and get their cooperation? Why was he pursuing so many magical fields instead of properly focusing on them, one at a time? And lastly, why didn’t he try harder to develop his combat magic!?

Zorian found the last one especially amusing. It was only a few days ago, after all, that Taiven was breaking down into tears over his ‘incredible combat skills’, yet now she was saying he should have put more effort into them.

You just couldn’t satisfy some people.

Alas, Taiven didn’t find her complete turnaround of opinion nearly as amusing as he did. Zorian’s logic for putting combat magic practice squarely in the ‘secondary goal’ pile – namely, that very few of his problems could be solved through direct violence and that he just wasn’t terribly suited for combat magic in the first place – had been summarily rejected by Taiven, who decreed that she would be helping to bring him up to snuff in that regard. Through sparring.

Constant, daily, dangerously serious sparring. He’d apparently had no idea what he was getting into when he’d decided to go along with her idea, because there was a huge difference between sparring with Taiven when she thought he was just a precocious amateur with a couple of tricks and sparring with her when she considered him a serious threat right from the start and wasn’t afraid of hurting him. She was vicious and merciless, and he was honestly afraid she would end up killing him if he didn’t give it his all, despite all the safety wards embedded into her family’s training hall. It was just a bit too intense for his liking.

Maybe she was still a little bitter about him improving so much in so short a time.

“Are you ready?” she asked him, twirling her combat staff playfully in her hands.

“No?” Zorian tried. He’d just finished another frustrating session with Xvim, and didn’t get to rest at all before coming over to Taiven’s place. The last thing he wanted to do right now was get smacked around in the name of training.

“Too bad,” Taiven snorted derisively. “We’re starting. Go!”

Yeah, he didn’t think that would actually get him anywhere. He immediately threw himself to the side, dodging her opening shot. Which wasn’t a magic missile or anything reasonable like that – no, she opened the battle with a powerful beam of force. ‘Force lance’, as the spell was called, was her new favorite when fighting him. He knew better than to try to shield against it this time – the beam was practically designed for cracking simple force barriers, focusing an immense amount of penetrating force on a tiny patch of the shielding surface. Some of the stronger, more advanced shields could withstand the beam, but nothing in Zorian’s arsenal could truly stand up to it. He had learned that lesson very painfully in the first few spars he’d had with Taiven during the past few days, and he still had bruises all over his chest and arms to prove it. Even at their highest setting, the safety wards couldn’t blunt the power of the spear-like beam completely.

No, the only realistic defense he had against that spell was moving out of its way. The good news was that beam spells like those couldn’t home in on targets, so dodging them was an option. The bad news was that a beam traveled blindingly fast and was really hard to evade at the distances he and Taiven fought at. Plus, he kind of sucked at dodging.

The last few days had forced him to learn quickly, though, and in this particular case he was fast enough to move out of the beam’s path.

He responded immediately with a gust of wind, trying to knock her off-balance and possibly blind her. Sadly, this was not the first time he’d tried that and she simply countered it with a weather shield before throwing a fully-powered fireball at him. Gods, she really wasn’t playing around, was she? He fired off a dispelling wave to negate it, since the alternative would be to tank it with a much more expensive aegis. Besides, cost concerns aside, the spherical shield would leave him immobile while in place, and Taiven would be sure to capitalize on that.

A force lance that quickly followed the fireball told him that this was indeed her likely plan – if he had stood still and tried to tank the fireball, the force lance would have caught him flat-footed.

He threw a small swarm of magic missiles at her, all of them on a very direct trajectory towards her. They were just bait, really, intended to take advantage of a certain predictable maneuver Taiven liked to do, where she countered such attacks by firing a massive battering ram of force that not only swept the attack aside, but also acted as a counter attack at the same time. That’s why he immediately followed up his barrage with a ray of electricity, which would be completely unaffected by her blast of force.

He guessed her response well this time. She had tried to respond with a force battering ram, but then caught onto his plan half-way through and dodged the beam he’d sent at her. As for himself, he used the disturbance in her attack rhythm to initiate a short-distance teleport, transporting himself behind her back. She noticed him, of course – she was probably using that mana-sensing trick she’d taught him so long ago – but she could do little else but raise a hasty aegis to shield herself against the blast of force he’d sent at her. He followed this up with a force lance, intending to give her a taste of her own medicine, but she expertly dodged that and sent an eight missile swarm at him, forcing him to fire another dispelling wave to deal with them. He kind of wondered why she still kept bunching up her projectile swarms together like that when she already knew that allowed him to take them all out with a single counter-spell. Maybe she couldn’t? He knew he had better shaping skills than her, so maybe that kind of fine control over one’s projectiles was beyond her.

He teleported again to evade another battering ram of force and then sent his own missile swarm at her, each missile following its own exotic trajectory to make them hard to track and take out.

The battle raged like that for another couple of minutes, before Zorian was forced to concede defeat due to running out of mana. It was a good fight in his opinion, if nothing else because he didn’t get any new bruises this time around. Taiven complained, of course, lecturing him about pacing himself better, but the simple truth was that she was driving him way too hard for him to be conservative with his mana use. He would rather be too frivolous with his mana use and lose due to exhausting himself than end up on the receiving end of an offensive spell again.

“You know, running out of mana like that in a real battle basically means you die,” Taiven said.

“And getting speared through the lung by a force lance doesn’t?” Zorian countered.

She stared at him. “Okay, yeah, you got me there.”

She walked over to a nearby bench and motioned him to sit beside her.

“Have you thought about that list Kael gave you?” she asked.

Of course he had. He even discussed with her some of the points she’d brought up over the past few days, although he suspected she didn’t like his answers all that much. Interpreting her question as a demand for a more long-winded, comprehensive explanation, he started telling her about the reasoning behind his decisions.

His reasons for not getting help from more people, and especially official authorities of any sort, were simple to explain. The more people he told about the time loop, the greater the chance that they would let something slip to the wrong person and lead Red Robe back to him. Unless they had something he really needed, and which he simply couldn’t get by any other way, it was best to keep them ignorant of the time loop. Truthfully, even telling Taiven was probably a pointless risk. He told her about the time loop for the same reason he kept taking Kirielle with him to Cyoria, despite his little sister being nothing but a huge liability and time sink – he wanted someone familiar to talk and confide to.

He kept his mouth shut about that last detail in his explanation to Taiven, though – he doubted she would appreciate hearing that. Instead he focused on the fact that virtually no one would be willing to believe him about being a time traveler, and that convincing them would probably take weeks and could easily cause quite a stir. This was especially true in regards to her ideas about contacting the city government or academy authorities. Zach had already tried to notify them about the time loop and had never been taken seriously – there was no reason to think Zorian would be any more successful at it than Zach was.

“Didn’t you say Zach is kind of an idiot?” Taiven asked curiously.

“Sort of,” said Zorian. “But in this case, I think he’s far more suited to the task than I am. There is no way I’d ever be as trustworthy to authority figures as Zach.”

“Ah, yes, the natural mind magic thing,” Taiven said.

“Well, that too, but I was actually thinking about how I’d probably never be as forthright and honest about things as Zach probably was,” he admitted. “I’d hide things and people would notice and be wary of me as a result.”

Taiven gave him a long, searching look. “You’re not even telling me everything, are you?”

“I’m telling you most things,” he said. “Everything I think is relevant.”

She stayed silent and gave him an annoyed look.

“Anyway,” he said quickly, looking to change the subject, “even ignoring that, contacting Cyoria’s authorities is a particularly bad idea because there is obviously someone high in the administration that is cooperating with the invaders. I’m almost certain by now that whoever is leading the Cult of the World Dragon also has a high position in the city government – it would explain why the members of the cult keep getting lucrative contracts from the city and exemptions from all sorts of normal regulations – and it would make sense for Ibasans to also have someone in their pocket.”

“I keep forgetting that part,” Taiven admitted. “Which is pretty bizarre, now that I think about it. Finding out that some crazy cult has thoroughly infiltrated our city government is honestly one of the scariest parts of your story, but the part where I’ll apparently get erased out of existence at the end of this month sort of drowns out everything else.”

Ouch. She was still fixated on that. He did his best to move the conversation along, tackling her concerns about spreading himself thin next.

Her complaints that it would be better for him if he picked one or two things to really focus on held merit. Unfortunately, there was a reason why he was not doing that – he kept encountering various emergencies during his time in the time loop, which forced him to often drop topics or push them into the background to accommodate the newest priority that just sprung up on him. The second issue basically amounted to personal weakness – he could only focus on something for so long before he got thoroughly sick of it and had to do something else. Since he aimed to be a generalist mage anyway, he didn’t think of this as some huge issue he had to work on, but he understood why a tightly-focused spellcaster like Taiven would be annoyed with him for that.

“As for not trying harder at combat magic, well… we already discussed that topic enough, I think. You already know my opinion on the matter,” he told her.

“Yet you keep coming to these spars anyway,” she noted. “I know I was kind of pushy about it, but it’s not like I can really make you come if you decided to put your foot down.”

“Well, I do want to get better at it,” he shrugged. “No reason to refuse free practice. I just wish you would tone it down a little.”

“Oh, come on. What are you afraid of?” Taiven scoffed. “Aren’t you a big, bad time traveler that can’t really die?”

“Treating death as a nuisance could easily become a habit that would kill me for real once I’m out of the time loop. Unless there is a pressing need for it, or some downright amazing opportunity, I’d like to avoid dying too much,” Zorian said. “Also, you do realize that the time loop only resets when Zach dies, not when I do? If you end up killing me, you’ll have to live with the consequences ‘till the end of the month.”

The look she gave him told him that no, she did not realize that.

Yup, that was more like the Taiven he knew.

She mumbled something about sensitive little flowers and then leaned back on the cold wall behind them. Rather unhealthy, that.

“You know, you don’t have to rely on me to help you with combat magic,” she said. “There are quite a few combat magic instructors in Cyoria. With the amount of money you have at your disposal and the ability to keep spending it over and over again, you could get instruction from all of them. Combat magic may not be a priority for you, but keep that in mind. This is a killer opportunity, and you will never get anything like it outside of your time loop.”

Zorian frowned. “What do you mean?”

“A lot of mages simply won’t teach you if they know you’ve been taught by their rival or competitor,” she told him. “As in, they’ll refuse out of principle. There is quite a bit of difference in teaching your personal tricks to some young mage who is just starting out and teaching them to this extremely talented guy who has absorbed the teachings of several veteran mages. Hell, some mages won’t want to have anything to do with you if you seem too competent, period. They don’t want to create a competitor that will overshadow them and steal lucrative opportunities from them in the future.”

“No offense Taiven, but Daimen never had any trouble securing powerful teachers,” Zorian said. “If anything, the number of people who wanted to mentor him increased as his talent became known to people.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she said. “But I guarantee that some doors also became closed to him at the same time. For you, that doesn’t have to be the case – not only will prospective teachers never know who else taught you in the past or how good you really are, you can also do things like sign apprenticeship contracts without them really binding you to anything. Hell, you could accept some really shitty deals if it meant getting some of the really deep secrets people have. Just… think about it, okay?”

“I am thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about that sort of thing since the start of the time loop. It’s just that more pressing issues keep cropping up and eating into my time,” he said. “I’m surprised you’re bringing that up, though. Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, we’re basically talking about weaseling out the secrets that these people have spent their life gathering without compensating them in any way.”

“Well, yes,” she said. “But realistically speaking, I’d do it in a heartbeat if I was in your place. And frankly, so would nine tenths of those same experts you’re feeling sorry for. Are you seriously telling me you haven’t been doing something like that all this time?”

“Sometimes,” Zorian said. Ilsa stood prominently in his mind, since he’d flat-out become her apprentice to get her to teach him some of her stuff. “But I have been keeping a mental list of people I ‘owe’ in this way, and I was thinking of doing something for them once I get out of the time loop. It’s already quite a long list, though, and I don’t know whether I can even do anything for some of them…”

“Ugh,” she grunted, looking away uncomfortably.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re a really weird guy, Zorian,” she complained. “You can be such a selfish jerk at times, and then you say stuff like that and I realize I don’t understand you at all.”

“The feeling is mutual, Taiven,” he told her with a smile.

“What, that you think I’m a selfish jerk or that you don’t understand me either?” she asked.

“Both,” he said. Man, she really walked into that one…

She made an outraged sound and gave him a light shove.

“You’re violent, too,” he added.

“Whatever,” she said, getting up from the bench. “I’ll bring Grunt and Mumble to our next spar so you can have some variety. I think I can also call in a few favors from my former classmates who also went for combat-related careers and have them fight you a few times as well. Your spellcasting is technically flawless but you need better combat reflexes.”

Zorian gave her a curious look.

“Why are you being so proactive about this?” he asked her. “I know you hate me bringing it up, but it was only a few days ago that you hated the idea of me surpassing you in your own field. Why did you change your attitude so drastically? You don’t even fully believe in the time loop story, according to your own admission.”

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“Because your life is on the line,” she told him seriously. “That’s the most important thing I got from your explanation. If it weren’t for that… well, I’d be hell of a lot more jealous and bitter about all this. But it’s not just an advantage, you have a heavy responsibility on your shoulders, and someone is trying to get you killed. In light of the chance that you might not make it out of this alive, all of my frustrations seem so… petty in comparison.”

Huh… was that why she was so insistent he needed to work more on his combat skills?

“Don’t die, okay?” she said when he didn’t say anything for a while. “You’re the best friend I have.”

Zorian fidgeted uncomfortably, unused to that kind of confession and mystified as to how he should respond to it. The snide, cynical part of him felt that was a pretty sad admission. He hadn’t exactly been a nice person in his pre-loop days, and he had nursed a grudge against her ever since she’d laughed at his love confession. If the invasion and the time loop had never happened, would he have gotten over that in time to salvage their friendship? Or would he have continued to push her away until she eventually gave up on him, completely unaware that she apparently considered him her best friend?

“I’ll try not to,” he eventually told her. He couldn’t promise anything. Telling her that he would definitely live and that she had no cause for concern would be a lie and they’d both know it. “Say, Taiven, did you put some thought into how we can make this time loop work to your benefit? You know, like Kael did for his alchemy?”

“Well, no,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “It’s useless, isn’t it? Practicing combat magic requires shaping skills and routines that cannot be transferred via written notes. What could either of us possibly do to help the other Taiven?”

“I could teach you various shaping exercises and note which ones work best for you, though,” Zorian said. “I could show you the different combat spells I found over the restarts and note which ones you handle the best and what the most effective way of training you in them is. Kirielle’s magic lessons are at least two times more effective now than they were when I first tried to teach her, so it should be utterly trivial to create a training program that would let you grow twice as fast as you would without it.”

“Just how much stuff do you think you can cram in one month?” Taiven asked skeptically.

“We won’t know ‘till we try it, will we?” Zorian countered. “And besides, there is no reason why the final training plan has to be limited to a month. Does every single new thing you learn necessarily build atop things you already mastered?”

“No?”

“There you go. That means we can break down a training plan into month-long chunks and optimize them separately. We can get at least a year that way, especially if you branch out in some necessary support skills that you’ve been ignoring. Your lack of divination skills is really felt in any restart where I decide not to join you, for instance.”

Taiven looked torn. She was clearly excited about the idea but at the same time she felt… guilty about it?

“I don’t know…” she said. “That sounds really time consuming, and you don’t really get anything out of it. You said yourself that you already have too many things vying for your attention.”

She was right, of course. Still, he owed her something for all the help she’d given him in the past, and this seemed like a perfect way to pay her back. He would find the time if he could. Maybe not a lot of time, but still.