53. Phantoms

Chapter 053
Phantoms

The moment Zorian realized that there was a fist flying towards him, he instinctively tried to take a step back to avoid it. Unfortunately, his and Kirielle’s luggage was right behind him and he was never really a hand-to-hand fighter to begin with. Surprised and imbalanced as he was, Zach’s punch not only connected with his face but also sent him sprawling to the ground, the back of his head slamming painfully against the unyielding concrete.

He didn’t black out, but the force of the impact still left him in a confused daze for some time. It couldn’t have been very long, just a couple of seconds, but when he regained the ability to process what his senses were telling him, he found that his surroundings had absolutely exploded in the brief period of time he was incapacitated. Kirielle was screaming for help at the top of her voice (and she could scream really, really loudly when she wanted to) while simultaneously kicking and clawing at Zach like a cornered lynx. Zach, for his part, looked very confused and panicked, awkwardly trying to fend off Kirielle’s attacks without hurting her while trying to explain himself. Sadly for him, his words were largely unintelligible due to Kirielle’s shrill and incessant shouting. The boy seemed to be at a total loss as to how he should deal with the situation he found himself in.

In other, less public circumstances, Zorian would have probably stayed on the ground for a little while longer, amused at Zach’s predicament and feeling the boy deserved his fate. Served him right for punching him out of nowhere like that. As it was, he scrambled to his feet as quickly as possible while looking around. As he thought, they were attracting a lot of attention from people around them – everyone in the vicinity was watching the situation, talking and whispering amongst themselves and pointing fingers at them. It was likely that the only reason why nobody intervened into the situation yet was that Zach was visibly ‘losing’ against Kirielle, making the situation sufficiently comical to put them at ease. Still, that could change any moment now. He was pretty sure he saw a couple of policemen hurrying over in their direction, if nothing else. Best to stop this before it escalated.

He shouted for Kirielle to stop and calm down, and was a little surprised when she immediately stopped attacking and retreated behind him. Considering how fiercely she had defended him, he sort of expected her to be harder to restrain. But no, apparently now that he was back on his feet, it was his own responsibility to defend them both. Fair enough. Logically speaking, he was better qualified to stand up to Zach than a nine year old girl. Logic could be misleading, though – he doubted he could ever put Zach on the defensive as much as Kirielle had a few moments ago. It was a good thing that Zach didn’t look like he wanted to continue attacking him any time soon.

Kirielle poked her head from behind Zorian to give Zach one final glare, causing him to flinch slightly, before turning to Zorian and giving him a questioning look. No doubt she wanted to know why this total stranger just punched him in the face out of nowhere. It was a good question. Why did Zach just do that? Hell if Zorian knew. He had considered the possibility that Zach might be hostile to him when they finally met, yes, but this wasn’t really what he had in mind when he thought of a hostile Zach. Punching him in the face was hostile, yes, but physically attacking your target in a crowded train station was not a proper way to ambush a fellow time traveler. Even Zach should know this. So what was this about, really?

Sighing heavily, Zorian ran his hand through his hair in frustration and gave Zach a good hard look. Two things immediately jumped out to him. First of all, he couldn’t sense anything from Zach – as far as his empathy and mind sense were concerned, the boy in front of him did not exist. He had no thoughts or emotions at all. That meant that the Zach in front of him was either a very good illusion or under the effect of the mind blank spell. Considering his punch felt quite real, he was going to assume it was the latter. Evidently Zach had come to this meeting a lot better prepared than he had been in the past. Secondly, he should probably get Kirielle’s nails clipped after they got to Imaya’s place, because they were evidently long enough to draw blood if she used them to scratch people. Zach had received a pretty nasty-looking wound on his forearm during his brief ‘battle’ with her.

As he noted before, Zach didn’t seem interested in fighting with him anymore. The boy looked back at him with a strained smile and greeted him with a quick, awkward wave of his hand.

‘Ugh,’ Zorian thought to himself unhappily. ‘This guy…’

“This,” Zorian announced out loud, “is all one giant misunderstanding.”

“Yes!” Zach immediately agreed, nodding frantically. “Totally a misunderstanding.”

Of course, it couldn’t really be that simple. Zach and Zorian spent the next fifteen minutes explaining to Kirielle that they were classmates who knew each other from before and that this was just Zach making good on his promise to punch Zorian in the face the next time he saw him for being a big jerk. Or so Zach claimed, anyway.

Zorian could hardly believe what he was hearing. That was serious? He had to admit he did vaguely remember Zach promising something along those lines in that awful soulkill restart when they had last seen each other, but he hadn’t thought much of it. People make proclamations like that all the time. Zorian had totally forgotten about it until Zach reminded him about it.

In any case, after they were done explaining things to Kirielle, they had to explain things again to the policemen that had come to check up on the disturbance. Since Zorian had stood up in Zach’s defense, they decided not to arrest him… so instead they issued a monetary fine to both of them for fighting in public. Zorian personally thought that was totally bullshit, but since Zach immediately promised he would pay both of their fines out of his own pocket, he decided not to protest too much.

Then it was time for a third round of explanation. Since Zach’s attack on Zorian took place so soon after their arrival in Cyoria, Fortov was still around and decided to check up on this disturbance happening nearby. It was pretty bizarre seeing Fortov actually concerned for his and Kirielle’s wellbeing for once in his life, but the concern did not last very long. Once Fortov realized they were both fine and that Zorian’s attacker was his ‘friend’, he quickly left them alone to go back to his friends.

Not that Zorian was complaining, of course – the less time he had to spend around Fortov, the better. Still, this was the first time since forever that Fortov had sought him without intending to get a favor. He even managed to restrain himself from insulting Zorian in the course of talking to him. It was novel, and therefore interesting.

“Well then,” Zorian clapped his hands. “Now that that’s done, we should get going. Our new landlord is waiting for us, and I want to get somewhere where people aren’t staring at us and talking behind our backs.”

“Is he going to come with us?” Kirielle asked, giving Zach a suspicious look.

“Yes,” Zach confirmed. He had largely recovered from Kirielle’s attack by now, regaining most of his usual confidence. “I need to talk to your brother about some things.”

“What kind of things?” Kirielle demanded.

“Serious things,” Zach said.

She looked to Zorian for confirmation and harrumphed dismissively when he nodded in agreement to this.

“You’re both stupid,” she pouted. “Acting like that in public… and I was actually scared we were under attack and everything…”

“Don’t be like that,” Zorian told her, using one of his arms to draw her into a one-armed hug. “I was really touched by your defense of me, you know? I’m pretty sure this was the first time someone stood up for me like that since… well, ever.”

“She’s too much,” Zach said, studying the three bloody lines Kirielle had scratched into his forearm.

“So I’ll tell you what – if you show some patience with Zach today, I’ll answer any question you may have about the whole thing later in the evening before we go to sleep,” Zorian told her, ignoring Zach’s whining.

“Really?” Kirielle asked, peering at him suspiciously.

“Really,” Zorian confirmed. While Zorian didn’t usually tell Kirielle that he was a time traveler, he wasn’t violently opposed to the idea. Since it seemed he was going to interact with Zach pretty heavily in this restart, he didn’t see much harm in telling her what was really going on. He was pretty sure Red Robe would sooner track him down by monitoring Zach’s movements than by following a chain of distorted rumors back to Kirielle.

“Really?” Zach asked, looking at him curiously.

“Yes, really!” Zorian huffed. What’s with all this disbelief? It’s almost as if they didn’t expect him to tell the truth or something. “I already told her about the restarts before, and it wasn’t a problem.”

“You did?” Kirielle frowned. “But I don’t remember you telling me anything about any ‘restarts’.”

“Completely understandable,” Zorian said, patting her on the head. “Don’t worry, all will become clear later.”

He hoped. He glanced at Zach again, wondering why the boy tracked him down now, of all times, after spending so many restarts avoiding Cyoria.

He really did hope Zach’s arrival would make things clearer instead of just complicating things further.

– break –

Zorian had originally intended for this restart to be much like the previous ones, but with the sudden inclusion of Zach into his schedule, he decided that plan was untenable and would have to change. Accordingly, he did not bother meeting Nochka this time around, instead taking Kirielle and Zach straight to Imaya’s place. Kirielle had a tendency to blab just about anything to Nochka, who was not exactly very good at keeping secrets herself, and that didn’t mesh too well with his intention to tell Kirielle about the time loop in this restart.

The first half of the journey was uncomfortably subdued. Well, Zorian himself didn’t mind the peace and quiet all that much, but he knew that neither Kirielle nor Zach were predisposed to be that silent for long periods of time. The two did not know how they should act in the presence of the other and thus kept to themselves. That lasted up until it started raining. At that point Kirielle decided she wanted to play around with the rain barrier Zorian set up around them, just like she usually did at the start of the restart, Zach’s presence be damned. That turned out to have been the ice breaker, and they both got more talkative all of a sudden. Both towards Zorian and to each other.

Of course, he and Zach could not really discuss the time loop out in the open with Kirielle around, so their conversation mostly took place in the form of discussing their magical skills and occasionally demonstrating a spell or two to Kirielle and each other. Aside from being a useful conversational tool, it also allowed the two of them to compare their abilities against one another to see where they stood in regards to magical ability. Well, somewhat – obviously Zorian wasn’t laying bare his entire skillset to Zach’s scrutiny, and he doubted the other time traveler was being perfectly forthright either, but still. Just because the comparison wasn’t complete did not mean it was worthless.

What Zorian discovered was humbling. While Zach was very combat magic focused, just like the boy had admitted to him in the past, he had made good use of the time loop to turn himself into a well-rounded mage. He was the sort of archmage that made other archmages envious – he had expertise in just about every type of magic, including the notoriously difficult and specialized medical spells. He actually healed the scratch marks Kirielle gave him as a proof of that claim. Even in regards to crafting-oriented magics like alchemy and spell formula, which Zach admitted were his least favorite fields and which Zorian specialized in, the last Noveda still possessed sufficient expertise to debate Zorian in a non-vacuous manner.

Finally, the little demonstrations they did for Kirielle clearly showed that Zach’s shaping skills weren’t any worse than Zorian’s. Despite having huge mana reserves, Zach had excellent shaping skills.

Whatever Zorian could say about Zach’s choices in the time loop, he clearly hadn’t been standing idle this whole time – he had been steadily working on his skills for decades, and it showed. In retrospect, it was horribly arrogant of Zorian to even think he could have caught up to the guy in little more than 5 years.

“You know, I can’t help but notice that your older brother left pretty quickly and didn’t even try to talk to me,” Zach said. “Not that I’m complaining, since it works out better for me that way, but you’d think he’d be more interested in someone attacking his little brother in public.”

“He knows that neither of us can stand him, so he keeps away,” Kirielle said casually, doing her best to snatch the little animated water drakes flying around her out of the air. Zorian and Zach had competed earlier to see who can create more realistic-looking drakes out of the surrounding rainwater, so the entire shield bubble was still full of them. Zorian was pretty sure he won, but Kirielle was the judge and she claimed she couldn’t tell the difference. The little traitor.

“I don’t think he’s that considerate,” Zorian scowled. “He just didn’t feel like spending time on us. He had better things to do than waste time on his younger siblings.”

“No, I’m pretty sure he knows you hate him,” Kirielle said, shaking her head. “He even said so when we were alone once. It’s why he tries to avoid you if he can help it. He thinks he’s doing you a favor.”

Zorian frowned. He supposed he hadn’t been terribly subtle about his opinion about Fortov, so he wasn’t really surprised that Fortov knew. He did find it hard to accept that Fortov’s behavior was motivated by anything other than his selfishness, though. If he wanted to do Zorian a favor, why was it that he still came to Zorian from time to time to ask for favors? That was the worst reason possible for approaching him – the whole reason why he hated Fortov was because he always had to make up for Fortov’s failures to do his job in addition to his own duties.

“So you think I’m being too harsh with him?” Zorian asked curiously. Before he had gotten stuck in the time loop, the mere insinuation that this was the case would have been the equivalent of throwing a lit match in a bowl of lamp fuel. Now he found himself honestly curious about what Kirielle thought about the topic.

“No. Yes. Maybe,” Kirielle said. “I mean, he’s still a jerk and I don’t like him either. So I know how you feel. But maybe us being mean to him back isn’t the correct thing to do. Maybe he’d be better if we were more patient with him. I’m not. I try being nice to him sometimes, but he makes it very hard.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Zorian snorted derisively.

“You know, I’m getting the idea that your family is a little messed up,” Zach said.

“You have no idea,” Zorian said. “And that’s probably a good idea. Let’s end the subject here, okay?”

“Fine, fine,” Zach acquiesced. “So, is this the place?”

Zorian looked at the house Zach was pointing out and nodded.

“That’s Imaya’s house, yes. Let me just arrange for everything with the landlord and unpack a little and then we can talk. Do you have a place already lined up?”

“I… didn’t think that far,” Zach admitted.

Zorian sighed. Figures. “Then we’ll go to the ruins of the aranean colony in the tunnels below us. There is already a pretty good warding scheme protecting the place.”

“Oh, so you know where that is?” Zach said, perking up. “Did any of the spiders survive?”

“Spiders?” Kirielle mumbled, brows furrowed in thought. Zorian could tell she had been analyzing their every word during the entire walk, trying to figure out what they were hiding. It was both commendable and amusing.

“No, none,” Zorian shook his head. Zach immediately deflated.

“So it’s just the two of us, or…?” he asked hopefully.

Though his empathy could pick nothing from him, Zach wasn’t a terribly hard person to read. Zorian realized that Zach really wanted to talk to fellow time travelers. The more of them there were, the better. He must have been very lonely and bored all these years he spent in the time loop.

“Just… let me drop off Kirielle at the house and then we’ll talk,” Zorian said.

“You better not forget your promise,” Kirielle warned, jabbing him in the ribs with her bony little index finger. Yeah, she was definitely getting her nails clipped when he got back.

“Fine,” said Zach. “I’ll wait for you to-“

“Oh no,” Zorian said, cutting him of. “Do you know what Imaya would do to me if she heard I left a person out here in the rain instead of inviting them inside? And she’d definitely hear, because Kirielle is too much of a tattletale to keep her mouth shut.”

“Hey!” said tattletale protested.

“She won’t care that you’re a mage and can easily protect yourself against the rain. I’d be hearing lectures and snide comments for days,” Zorian said. “You’re coming inside and introducing yourself to Imaya.”

And so, with Kirielle and Zach in tow, Zorian walked up to Imaya’s door and knocked…

– break –

After an hour or so, once everything had been arranged, Zorian led Zach into the depths of Cyoria’s underworld. Along the way, Zorian explained the truth behind what happened to Zach. There had been no large number of time travelers – just him and the araneas piggy-backing on him using memory packets. And in the aftermath of their confrontation with Red Robe, the aranea were all dead – soulkilled, according to Red Robe. While Zorian had some doubts about that, it was undeniable that the aranea started every loop dead from that point on.

Once they had reached the dead aranean settlements and Zach had had the chance to study the place for a while, they sat down and began to talk.

“I tried to find this place immediately after that restart,” Zach noted, staring at the nearby aranean corpse. He was surprisingly shaken by the dead settlement, considering aranea were rather inhuman and he had known them for a very short time anyway. “All I found were some isolated aranean corpses like this one.”

“Those were basically guard posts,” explained Zorian.

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’d have tracked it down eventually, but then this… ‘Red Robe’ tried to ambush me.”

Zorian perked up. This was the first clue he had about Red Robe’s activities in the wake of Zorian’s confrontation with him.

“He attacked you?” Zorian asked, leaning forward with interest.

“Attacked me and lost,” Zach grinned proudly. “He’s not that hard to beat without Quatach-Ichl to support him.”

So Zach was good enough to defeat Red Robe in a straight one-on-one fight. That was good to know.

“I guess he was counting on the advantage of surprise, but I saw his ambush from a mile away,” Zach continued. “I knew he was probably stalking me so I was already on guard. Still. He managed to escape in the end, and I didn’t really feel safe wandering around these tunnels with someone like that hunting me. I basically left Cyoria and hid for the rest of the restart.”

“Did he ever come after you again?” Zorian asked.

“Yes. Once,” Zach said. “In the very next restart, he tried to attack me at its very beginning. He teleported straight through the wards on my home and tried to kill me while I was still in the bedroom, getting dressed.”

“And he once again fled when you defeated him?” Zorian asked.

“Well, I’m actually the one that fled there,” Zach said, coughing uncomfortably. “I was still half-asleep and in my underwear, okay? I didn’t expect him to come after me so early. Anyway, from that point on I have been leaving Cyoria at the start of every restart to prevent further surprises like that. Even if Red Robe never came after me again after that one surprise attack.”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed thoughtfully. He doubted that Red Robe spent all this time trying to track down Zach, so this still did not explain why he had been quiet all this time… but it was interesting information nonetheless. What did Red Robe want from Zach so badly?

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“So… why did you stop hiding now, of all times? And did you really have to punch me in the face like that?” Zorian asked sourly. “My teeth still hurt from that.”

“Do you even have to ask?” Zach scoffed. “You have been stuck in this time loop along with me for gods know how long, and you never came to me about it. No, worse than that – when I came to talk to you, you played dumb and did things on your own behind my back. You deserved a good punch in the face just for that.”

Zorian fiddled with his glasses awkwardly. Okay, it did sound kind of bad when he said it like that. But he had good reason for behaving like he did! He really did!

“But you know, I understand,” Zach continued. “I got played like a drum by that red robed fucker that’s looping along with us. He messed with my mind and was probably monitoring me somehow–”

“You’re sure he’s not doing it right now, right?” Zorian cut in with a question.

“I know how to shield myself from tracking magic, Zorian,” Zach said frostily. “Better than you, I imagine. It’s just that I usually didn’t bother with it, since I thought I was the only person aware of the time loop, so why bother? Ever since that night, though, I’ve been layering non-detection spells on myself constantly. The asshole hasn’t managed to track me down once in all this time. I doubt anyone can.”

“I can,” Zorian noted. “But then again, I seem to have an advantage that Red Robe does not seem to possess. I’ll trust that you know how to protect yourself.”

Zach gave him an unreadable look. Almost without thinking, he tried to focus his empathy on the boy to get a better feel for his emotions, only to suddenly remember that Zach was under the effect of mind blank when he felt nothing at all from the boy.

Yes, Zach could definitely protect himself if he wanted to.

“You’ll tell me about that later,” Zach said, shaking his head. “Anyway, sorry for snapping at you. I’m still kind of angry at myself for getting screwed over by Red Robe. I get a little testy about the subject. But anyway… I understand. It was dangerous to just talk to me directly with Red Robe lurking in the background. I still think you should have talked to me, but I can see why you’d think otherwise. I can even understand why you left that night without bothering to explain anything to me, considering what ended up happening.”

Zach gestured towards a nearby aranean corpse for emphasis.

“So I decided to leave you alone for a while. Even once it became obvious that Red Robe was no longer after me, and had essentially disappeared into thin air as far as I could tell, I stayed away so as to not attract attention to you. Just in case Red Robe was somehow watching, despite all my precautions. I figured you knew what you’re doing, and once you were ready, you’d come to me so we could tackle the time loop and this Red Robe guy together.”

How did he expect Zorian to track him down if he purposely made himself as untraceable as possible? Nevermind, he’d ask that question some other time. Best not to interrupt the boy now.

“And then you pull that crap in the last restart,” said Zach, anger leaking into his voice. “You’re finally making a move, and in a big way too, triggering the invasion several weeks early, but you made no attempt to involve me in any way. How can I not be angry? How can I not want to punch you in the face? Do you think so little of me? Just because you saw me brought down by two incredibly powerful opponents, one of which is a thousand-year-old lich, you think you can-“

“Zach, Zach, listen, that… that wasn’t intentional,”

Zorian said hurriedly, trying to stop Zach from getting too angry. He had a feeling he was going to get another punch in the face if he let the boy get going too much. “I never intended that restart to blow up like that. The whole thing was a mistake, it escalated way beyond what I was comfortable with, but I was curious and–”

“Did you even intend to contact me? Ever?” Zach asked him bluntly.

“Yes. Absolutely,” Zorian confirmed. “Probably after this very restart.”