5. Start Over

Chapter 005
Start Over

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as 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 stared at Kirielle in shock, trying to understand what happened. The last thing he remembered was the lich casting that spell at him and Zach, and then blackness. His eyes darted left and right, taking in his surroundings and confirming his suspicions – he was in his room, back in Cirin. That didn’t make any sense, though. He was pleased that he survived the whole experience, but at the very least he expected to wake up in the hospital or something. And Kirielle shouldn’t be this casual with him after he went through so harrowing an experience – not even she was this inconsiderate. Besides, this entire scene was… eerily familiar.

“Kiri?”

“Um, yes?”

“What day is it?” Zorian asked, already dreading the answer.

“Thursday.”

He scowled. “I meant date, Kiri.”

“First of Chariot. You’re going to the academy today. Don’t tell me you forgot,” Kirielle prodded. Literally – she accompanied her words with a well-placed jab at his flank, sticking her bony little index finger in between his ribs. Zorian slapped her hand away, hissing in pain.

“I did not forget!” Zorian snapped. “I just…”

He stopped there. What was he supposed to tell her? Frankly, he had no idea what was going on himself!

“You know what?” he said after a moment of silence. “Never mind that, I think it’s high time you got off of me.”

Before Kirielle could answer, Zorian unceremoniously flipped her over the edge of the bed before jumping up himself.

He snatched his glasses from the set of drawers next to his bed and his eyes swept through his room with more attention to detail this time, seeking anything out of place, anything that might unmask this as a giant (if rather tasteless) prank. While his memory wasn’t flawless, he had a habit of arranging his belongings in very specific ways to detect nosy family members rummaging through his belongings. He found nothing massively out of place, so unless his mysterious re-enactor knew his system inside and out (unlikely) or Kiri finally decided she’d respect the sanctity of his room while he was away (hell would sooner freeze over), this really was his room like he left it when he went to Cyoria.

Was it all a dream, then? It seemed altogether too real for a dream. His dreams had always been vague, nonsensical, and prone to evaporate out of his memory soon after he woke up. These felt exactly like his normal memories – no talking birds, floating pyramids, three-eyed wolves and other surreal scenes his dreams usually contained. And there was so much of it, too – surely a whole month worth of experiences is too much for a mere dream?

“Mom wants to talk to you,” Kirielle told him from the floor, apparently not in any great hurry to get up. “But hey, can you show me some magic before you get down? Please? Pretty please?”

Zorian frowned. Magic, huh? Come to think of it, he learned quite a bit of magic. Surely if this was all a particularly elaborate dream all the magic he learned there would be completely bogus, right?

He made a couple of sweeping gestures and words before cupping his hands in front of him. A floating orb of light promptly materialized above his palms.

Huh. Not just an elaborate dream, then.

“That’s amazing!” Kirielle gushed, poking the orb with her finger only to have it pass straight through it. Not surprising, really, since it was just light. She withdrew her finger and curiously stared at it, as if expecting to find it changed somehow. Zorian mentally directed the orb to fly around the room and circle Kirielle a few times. Yep, he definitely knew the spell – he retained not just the memory of the casting procedure, but also the fine control he developed with repeated practice with it. You don’t get things like that from a mere vision, even a prophetic one.

“More! More!” demanded Kirielle.

“Oh come on, Kiri,” sighed Zorian. He really wasn’t in the mood for her antics at the moment. “I indulged you, didn’t I? Go find something else to amuse yourself now.”

She pouted at him, but he was thoroughly immune to such things by now. Then she frowned for a moment and suddenly straightened as if remembering something.

Wait…

“No!” Zorian shouted, but he was already too late. Kiri already ran into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. “Damn it, Kiri, why now? Why not before I woke up?”

“Sucks to be you,” she answered.

Zorian leaned forward until his forehead collided with the door. “I had forewarning and I still fell for it.”

He frowned. Forewarning, indeed. Whatever his ‘future memories’ were, they seemed to be fairly reliable. Was Cyoria really going to get invaded during the summer festival, then? What should he do about that? What could he do about that? He shook his head and marched back to his room. He would not even contemplate that sort of question until he found out more about what had happened to him. He locked the door so he would have some privacy and sat on his bed. He needed to think.

Okay. So he lived through a whole month of school before… something happened… and then he woke up in his room back in Cirin, as if the entire month never happened. Even with magic factored in, that was preposterous. Time travel was impossible. He didn’t have any books in his room that discussed the topic at any appreciable length, but all of the passages that dealt with time travel agreed that it couldn’t be done. Even dimensional magic could only warp time, speeding it up or slowing it. It was one of the few things mages agreed was beyond the ability of magic to accomplish.

So how, then, was he living through it?

He was just in the process of consulting the books in his room for any type of magic that could ‘fake’ time travel in some way when a knock on his door interrupted his thoughts, and he suddenly realized he was still in his pajamas and that mother wanted to talk to him quite a while ago. He quickly changed and opened the door, only to find himself under the scrutiny of two women, only one of which was his mother.

He almost greeted Ilsa by name, but he caught himself in time.

“A teacher from the academy has come to talk to you,” his mother said, her disapproving stare telling him she was going to give him an earful once Ilsa left.

“Greetings,” Ilsa said. “I am Ilsa Zileti, from Cyoria’s Royal Academy of Magical Arts. I was hoping to speak to you about some matters before you leave. It won’t take long.”

“Of course,” said Zorian. “Um, where do you…”

“Your room shall suffice,” Ilsa said.

“I’ll bring you something to drink,” his mother said, excusing herself.

Zorian watched Ilsa as she unpacked various papers and placed them on his desk (what was she doing with those, anyway?), trying to decide how to proceed with this. If his future memories were valid, she should be handing him the scroll right about…

Yeah, there it is. Knowing what’s going to happen in advance is weird.

For the sake of appearances Zorian gave the scroll a cursory examination before channeling mana into it. It was exactly how he remembered it – the calligraphy, the flowery official-sounding phrases, the elaborate crest at the bottom of the document – and Zorian felt a wave of dread wash over him. What the hell had he gotten himself involved in? He had no idea what was happening to him, but it was big. Very big.

He had the urge to tell Ilsa about his predicament and seek her advice, but he restrained himself. It sounded like the most sensible thing to do – surely a fully trained mage like her was far more qualified for tackling this than he was – but what could he possibly tell her? That he was remembering things that hadn’t happened yet? Yeah, that would go over well. Besides, considering the nature of his future memories, he could easily see himself arrested if a conspiracy to invade Cyoria was really discovered thanks to his warnings. After all, it’s far more likely his shocking knowledge comes from being a defector of the conspiracy than him being some kind of weird time traveler. An image of a couple of government agents torturing him for information briefly flittered through his mind and he shuddered.

No, best to keep all this to himself for now.

So for the next 10 minutes, Zorian basically reenacted his memories of his initial interaction with Ilsa, not seeing the point in choosing differently this time – all of his choices were made for reasons that were currently every bit as valid as they were in his future memories. He didn’t argue with Ilsa about Xvim this time around, though, since he already knew arguing over that topic was pointless, and he didn’t request a bathroom break, since he already knew what electives he wished to take. Ilsa seemed completely indifferent to his strange decisiveness, apparently just as eager as he was to get this whole thing out of the way. Then again, why would she be surprised at his decisiveness? She had no future memories to compare this entire encounter to, unlike him. Hell, she didn’t even know him up until now.

Zorian sighed and shook his head. They really did feel just like normal memories, and it was hard to ignore them. This is going to be one long month.

“Are you alright, Mr. Kazinski?”

Zorian glanced at Ilsa curiously, trying to divine why she asked him that. She glanced towards his hands – only for a moment, but Zorian caught it. His hands were shaking. He balled them into fists and took a deep breath.

“I’m fine,” he said. A second or so of uncomfortable silence ensued, Ilsa apparently unwilling to continue with her closing speech while she continued to study him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Ilsa said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What do you think about time travel?”

She was clearly taken aback by the question – it was probably the last thing she expected him to ask, or at least close to the bottom of the list. She composed herself very quickly though.

“Time travel is impossible,” Ilsa said firmly. “Time can only be dilated or compressed. Never skipped or reversed.”

“Why?” asked Zorian, honestly curious. He had never actually seen an explanation for the impossibility of time travel, though that might be because he wasn’t terribly interested in the topic up until now.

Ilsa sighed. “I admit I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the details, but our best theories indicate that going against temporal currents is utterly impossible. As in ‘draw a square circle’ impossible, not ‘leap over the ocean’ impossible. The river of time flows only in one direction. Beyond that, innumerable attempts have been made in recorded past, all ending in failure.” She gave him a sharp look. “I sincerely hope you won’t waste your talents on such a fool’s quest.”

“I was just curious,” Zorian said defensively. “I was just reading a chapter discussing limitations of magic and wondered why the author was so certain time travel is impossible.”

“Well now you know,” Ilsa said, getting up. “Now if that’s all, I really should be going. I’ll be happy to answer any further questions on Monday after class. Have a nice day.”

Zorian watched her leave and shut the door behind her before collapsing back on his bed. Definitely a long month.

– break –

For once the train ride didn’t put Zorian to sleep. He had subtly prodded mother with some sensitive topics when she tried to scold him and he was pretty sure this wasn’t some kind of elaborate illusion, unless the illusionist was aware of some very closely kept family secrets. And he seemed far too lucid for this to be some kind of induced hallucination. As far as he could tell at the moment, he really did travel back in time. He had spent most of the train ride writing down everything of importance he could think of in one of his notebooks. He didn’t really think the memories were going to fade any time soon, but it helped him organize his thoughts and notice details he might have otherwise missed. He noted that he forgot to retrieve his books from under Kiri’s bed in all the confusion, but decided it didn’t matter. If the classes were anything like they were the last time around, he wouldn’t need them for the duration of the first month.

It was that last spell the lich performed on him and Zach, Zorian was sure of it. The trouble was, Zorian had no idea what the spell was. Even the words were unfamiliar. Standard incantations used Ikosian words as their base, and Zorian knew enough of Ikosian to get a general feel of a spell just by listening to what the caster’s chanting, but the lich used a different language for his incantation. Fortunately, Zorian had a really good memory and remembered most of the chant, so he wrote it down in his trusty notebook in phonetic form. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t find the spell itself anywhere within his clearance level, as the spell was probably highly restricted and kept out of reach of first circle mages like him, but he would see about identifying the language and finding a proper dictionary in the academy library.

The other clue to this whole thing was Zach himself. The boy was capable of fighting a lich – a freaking lich! – for several minutes before succumbing to it. Even though the lich had been toying with him, it was still pretty impressive. Zorian would put Zach on par with a 3^rd circle mage, and probably more. What the hell was that guy doing with academy students then? Something was definitely strange about Zach, though Zorian had no intention of confronting the guy directly until he found out more about what’s going on. For all he knew, it could be one of those ‘you know about us, so now we have to kill you’ sort of things. He would have to tread carefully around the Noveda heir.

Zorian slammed the notebook shut and ran his hand through his hair. No matter how he looked at it, this whole situation seemed utterly crazy. Did he really have memories from the future or was he simply going insane? Both possibilities were terrifying. He was in no way qualified to tackle something like this on his own, but he didn’t know how to get other people to help him without being carted off either to a madhouse or an interrogation chamber.

He resolved to think about it later. As in, tomorrow later. This whole thing was simply too weird, and he needed to sleep on it before he decides anything.

“Excuse me, is this seat free?”

Zorian glanced at the speaker, recognizing her after a second of recollection. The nameless green turtleneck girl that joined him in his compartment when they took a stop at Korsa. Of course, the last time she didn’t bother to ask for permission before taking a seat. What changed? Ah, it didn’t matter – what did matter is that last time she was soon followed by four other girls. Very loud, very obnoxious girls. No way he’d be spending the rest of the train ride listening to their banter… again.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “In fact, I was just leaving. We’re stopping at Korsa, right? Good day, miss.”

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And then he quickly grabbed his luggage and went to search for another compartment, abandoning the girl to her fate.

Maybe these future memories are good for something, after all.

– break –

Bam!

“Roach!”

Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Roach, open the thrice damned door! I know you’re in here!”

Zorian rolled over in his bed and groaned. What the hell was Taiven doing here this early? No wait… He snatched the clock from his dresser and brought it in front of his face… she wasn’t early, he just slept past noon. Huh. He distinctly remembered going straight to the academy from the train station and falling asleep minutes after reaching his room, yet he still overslept like this. Apparently dying and then awakening in the past is tiresome business.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” shouted Zorian. “Stop banging on my door, already!”

Naturally, she just kept banging on it with more enthusiasm. Zorian rushed to make himself presentable and stomped towards the door. Wrenching the door open, he gave Taiven a withering look…

…which she promptly ignored.

“Finally!” she said. “What the hell took you so long!?”

“I was sleeping,” Zorian ground out.

“Really?”

“Yes,” ground out.

“But-“