58. Questions and Answers

Chapter 058
Questions and Answers

Xvim’s office was fairly typical as far as teacher offices went – a small room dominated by a large table and several bookcases, with much of the free space taken up by mysterious stacks of paper that every teacher piled up in their offices for some reason. It was relatively cramped even in normal circumstances; with four people inside, it crossed solidly into uncomfortable territory. There weren’t even enough chairs for everyone! Though that was admittedly something easily solved with basic conjuration spells.

Of course, much of Zorian’s current discomfort stemmed from the nature of the meeting he and Zach had stumbled upon, rather than the lack of elbow room. Interaction between Xvim and Alanic could make the rest of this restart very uncomfortable, or even force a premature end to it. Still, the suddenness of this development, as well as the cramped nature of their current environment, greatly amplified the threatening undertones of the meeting and Zorian couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was deliberate. Did Xvim and Alanic purposely arrange for this meeting to happen here and now in order to exert additional psychological pressure on them? Bit of a risky move, if they did. Some people reacted really badly to being cornered. Zorian would not have pulled such a stunt, were he in their place.

But no matter. It could be that he was reading too much into it and they just didn’t consider things that way. Besides, it wasn’t like they were really cornered. Zorian could start a new iteration at any time, after all.

After exchanging an uncertain look between themselves, Zach and Zorian greeted their two teachers back, moved into the room and made themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

As they settled into the room, Zorian found himself wondering what kind of information the two men had exchanged. Alanic had probably told Xvim everything he knew about them, but that honestly wasn’t much and mostly just proved that Zach and Zorian were keeping some things secret from Xvim. Xvim, on the other hand, had a far more complete picture of what was going on than Alanic… but would he really tell the warrior priest about the time loop? And would the other man believe Xvim, even if he would?

Considering the way the two teachers were watching him, he reckoned he would find out the answers to those questions in very short order.

“Surprised to see me here?” Alanic asked them challengingly.

“Yes,” Zorian freely admitted. “It’s very… interesting to see you here. I didn’t think you and Xvim knew each other.”

“We don’t,” Alanic shrugged. “I grew concerned about some things about you two and knew you would never tell me the truth. So I tracked him down to see if he knew something that could help me.”

“And you just happened to visit him at the time we have a session scheduled with him?” Zorian asked, raising his eyebrow at the man. “That’s some curiously lucky timing.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. This is actually my third meeting with your mentor, mister Kazinski,” Alanic admitted readily. “I came here today specifically to meet with you two.”

“Ah,” Zorian nodded.

“Alright, let’s stop dancing around each other and get to the point,” Zach said, apparently not in the mood for verbal sparring. He turned towards Xvim. “How much did you tell him?”

“Given the nature of the situation, we felt it would be foolish to try and trick one another,” Xvim said. “I told mister Zosk everything I know about the time loop… a courtesy I wish the two of you had extended to me as well. It is quite obvious at this point that you know far more about it than you’ve chosen to tell me. A rather poor way of repaying my cooperation and generosity, if I may say.”

Ouch. Zorian supposed he could add ‘delivering guilt trips’ to the list of Xvim’s many talents.

“People react very badly if you try to tell them everything,” Zach said, completely unapologetic. Unlike Zorian, his experience with Xvim and Alanic was both recent and relatively short. He didn’t care much for Xvim’s appeal to emotions. “I know because I tried it. Give too many details and people either freak out on you or dismiss you as a lunatic. And this was back when I didn’t know half the stuff I do today. It’s hard enough to convince people the time loop is real.”

“I feel I have been fairly open-minded about this,” Xvim noted.

“It took Zorian several years of mind-numbing shaping exercises for you to take him seriously,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “And even then, you tend to stall for weeks if he mucks up his timing or says the wrong thing. And that’s Zorian – when I tried to convince you, you didn’t entertain my story for a second.”

Xvim frowned deeply, but said nothing.

“Okay, this is getting a little too heated,” Zorian said, trying to stave off an argument. “First things first. Mister Chao, mister Zosk… I apologize for keeping you in the dark. Keeping some of the story secret from you made perfect sense from our perspective, but I can understand why you would feel a little betrayed by our behavior.”

Alanic snorted derisively. Zorian suddenly remembered something.

“Actually, do you mind if I ask you something?” Zorian said, looking at Alanic. “What did Xvim say that convinced you the time loop is real?”

“So you know how to convince me yourselves in the future?” Alanic guessed. Zach and Zorian immediately confirmed his supposition. “To be honest, I’m still not convinced this is not nonsense.”

“Oh,” said Zorian, visibly deflating. Damn.

“So why the hell are you giving us grief over this if you don’t even believe what we’re saying?” Zach demanded, folding his arms over his chest defensively.

“Because I can tell you believe what you’re saying,” Alanic said. “So at worst you’re delusional, rather than just a bunch of liars. I am somewhat hurt that Xvim here got to hear this tale from you, but you apparently don’t think I’m worth convincing. It’s not like I would have cut all ties with you if I didn’t believe you, you know? I would have just thought you were a little crazy.”

Zorian gave Alanic an unamused look.

“You say that, but if I came to you with soul defenses that you yourself had taught me and used time travel as my explanation when you confronted me about it, it would matter a lot whether you believed my story or not,” Zorian told him.

“Ah, so they are my techniques,” Alanic said, nodding to himself. “I admit that had been bothering me for a while now. It’s one of the things that caused me to seek out Xvim. It was just so unlikely that a shifter knew how to teach you some of those things…”

“I did learn some of my soul awareness from a shifter,” Zorian said. “But the majority of it comes from you.”

“Right. I can see how that could be a bit of a problem,” Alanic mused. “While a time loop would explain things, there are simpler explanations than time travel for something like that. You could be a powerful mind mage, for example…”

“I am,” Zorian admitted.

Three surprised looks were immediately directed his way. Even Zach was caught off guard, probably because he expected him to keep this little factoid a secret at all costs.

“Hey, they wanted the whole truth. Let them have a taste of it,” Zorian shrugged. “Yes, I am a powerful mind mage. It’s one of the things I had focused on over the restarts.”

“An excellent choice for someone in your situation,” Xvim nodded approvingly. “Endlessly useful and it would be quite dangerous to train outside the time loop.”

Alanic gave Xvim a mildly scandalized look.

“So, anyway… I come to your place and demonstrate the soul defenses you taught me,” Zorian told Alanic, looking him straight in the eye. “You ask me how this is possible and I say time travel. You don’t believe me and check me for mind magic. As it turns out, I am a mind mage. What now?”

“Things get complicated,” Alanic admitted.

There was a short pause as everyone considered things in the privacy of their own minds.

“Well, this didn’t go as planned,” said Xvim, giving Alanic an annoyed glance. The scarred battle priest shrugged at him unrepentantly. “Let us put hypotheticals aside for the moment. I will concede that simply telling us everything may not be as simple as it first appears. Nonetheless. I will have to insist that you try just this once. If you don’t… then both of us will withhold our lessons from you for the duration of this restart.”

“Additionally,” Alanic quickly added. “If you honestly tell us everything, I will tell you what you need to do to stop me from getting suspicious at you in future restarts.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. The carrot and the stick. Truthfully, the threat didn’t worry Zorian much – losing their lessons for the two weeks or so left in the restart would be kind of annoying, nothing more.

He shared a look with Zach, who shrugged uncaringly.

“I’m fine with this,” Zach said. “We already planned on doing something like this in the future, didn’t we? Worst case, we get an example of what not to do when we try for real.”

Thinking about it some more, Zorian had to agree with this. This wasn’t nearly as planned and controlled as he wanted the eventual reveal to be, but what else was new? Few things went entirely according to plan, even in the time loop. He may as well tell them everything and see how they react. He opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by Xvim.

“We would prefer if Zach were to tell the story, if you will,” Xvim said.

“Me?” Zach asked in a surprised tone, pointing a finger at his own chest. “Why? Zorian would explain it way better than I could. Not only did he figure most of this stuff out before me, he knows you two far better than I do.”

“Perhaps,” Alanic conceded. “But it is far easier for me to gauge your honesty than it would be to judge Zorian’s.”

Zach shot him an uncertain look.

“They’re not using mind magic on you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I’d be able to tell. But between this and some of Alanic’s past comments, it seems likely that he has some supernatural way of checking people’s honesty.”

He then frowned. Something was bothering him. A memory that danced at the edge of his awareness, trying to make itself known. Suddenly, he realized what this reminded him of – Kylae, the priestess that predicted the future, had also claimed she had some way of telling if he was being honest with her.

“You know, you are not the first priest that claimed he could tell if people are lying to them,” Zorian told Alanic. “Is this some kind of ability priests possess that I’m not aware of?”

“It’s an ability connected to soul magic,” Alanic said. “But higher ranking priests are quite often trained in soul magic, so you’re not far from the truth. The outer portion of the soul – the aura – reacts to its host’s thoughts and emotions to some extent, and those with soul sight can learn how to read and interpret its movements. Since most people have no awareness of their own soul, and thus no control over it, a soul mage can often get far stronger and reliable tells about people than you would get by relying on body language and intonation alone.”

“But I can sense my own soul, so it’s not a reliable indicator where I’m concerned,” Zorian surmised.

Alanic nodded.

“But I can’t actually detect and manipulate my aura to such an extent,” Zorian noted. “All you’ve taught me is how to harden it to resist spiritual attacks.”

“And I only have your word for it,” Alanic shrugged.

“Alright, alright, I’ll do the explanation,” Zach said, interrupting their exchange. He waved his hands in front of him, conjuring an illusion of the planet above Xvim’s table.

“This is the world,” Zach said, pointing at the gently spinning green-and-blue sphere. He then shifted his hand to point at green blob that looked vaguely like Altazia. “And this place here is roughly where Cyoria is. Beneath the city there is a time magic research facility studying a powerful ancient artifact, likely of divine origin. The researchers think it’s an advanced time dilation chamber, and in a way they are right. When activated, it takes a detailed record of everything in existence… and copies it.”

Zach waved his hands again, and the ghostly planet forked into two identical spheres – one floating to the left of the original, and the other to the right. The difference was that the left copy was no longer spinning, standing still as if frozen in time, while the right one was rotating madly like a spinning top.

“The copy of the world exists in its own pocket dimension that is under tremendous time dilation. From the point of the copy-people living in this copy-world, the original world is frozen between moments. A hundred years passes in a fraction of a second. Not that they know this. The only tell that the world is a copy bound to its own pocket dimension is that the spiritual planes have been cut off from the material world.”

From the corner of his eye, Zorian saw Alanic suddenly stiffen.

“Time does not flow normally within the copy world,” Zach continued. He adjusted the illusion again, altering the right planet slightly. It still spun, but there was a subtle, stuttering quality to it now, since every couple of rotations it reverted to its initial position before fully completing the spin. “Instead of always going forward in time, the world is periodically reverted to its original state. Everything is utterly undone, the land and its people constantly recreated from that initial record of the real world that was used to make the copy-world in the first place. Time repeats itself over and over, month after month after month. From the perspective of someone living in such a world, it would be like they are trapped in a time loop.”

Zach leaned back in his conjured chair and gave Xvim and Alanic a dramatic stare. Zorian had a feeling Zach was kind of enjoying this, despite his earlier complaints.

“As a matter of fact, there is someone like that,” Zach announced. “Three of them, in fact.”

“Three?” Alanic asked, raising his eyebrow.

“Three,” Zach nodded. “There was supposed to be only one – a single person aware of the repetition, a mysterious marker stamped onto his soul to make sure he retains his memories through the restarts. Zorian thinks that is me. If so, I do not remember being this chosen one. A second person found a way to retain awareness across restarts and messed with my mind, deleting many of my memories. Much later on, I decided to take on an ancient lich head on in battle and he tried to blend my soul with Zorian’s as punishment.”

That got him a curious look from both Xvim and Alanic, but Zach didn’t try to elaborate on that, choosing to instead finish his story.

“We survived, but the experience granted Zorian a functional version of my marker, granting him awareness of the time loop,” Zach said. “Unfortunately, it also eventually motivated the second time traveler to leave the copy world. For reasons I won’t go into right now, this means nobody else can leave without cheating the system somehow. And the fake world is running out of power and will collapse in little more than four years.”

“And there you have it,” Zach finally concluded, erasing the two illusionary planets with a wave of his hand and directing a bright smile at the two teachers. “We are all copies of the real thing, living in a looping, hyper-accelerated copy of the real world. A copy that will soon disappear, taking us all with it. Nothing you do really matters, and unless we can figure out a way to break the system, nothing we do will matter in the end, either. Zorian, did I miss anything?”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Zorian suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Just a million details, that’s all. And did he really have to phrase things so provocatively? It would have already been hard to convince them, there was no need to make the job harder. But fine, he would play Zach’s game.

“An Ibasan invasion force is going to invade Cyoria at the day of the summer festival. The Cult of the World Dragon intends to release a primordial in the center of the city while the defenders are distracted. The mayor of Knyazov Dveri is a necromancer and intends to harvest all of the souls killed in the conflict in some mad scheme to resurrect his dead wife as a lich and legalize necromancy,” Zorian enumerated blandly.

“Eh, that isn’t strictly time loop related, so I was going to bring it up afterwards,” Zach said dismissively.

A long, uncomfortable silence descended upon the room. Both Xvim and Alanic seemed at loss for words, simply staring at the two of them in indecision and occasionally sharing strange looks between each other.

Zorian imagined that was how he and Zach had looked when they first stumbled into their meeting, so this was kind of poetic punishment in his eyes.

“So,” Zach said, clapping his hands. “Any questions?”

– break –

Several hours and many, many questions later, Xvim and Alanic decided they had had enough and stopped the meeting. They didn’t get everything in the end, not even close, but at the very least they knew the major details surrounding the time loop mechanism and invasion of Cyoria.

“Damn, that was exhausting,” Zach told him afterwards as they wandered the city. “So much for your nice, relaxing restart to calm down and plan, huh? Between this and the Veyers thing, this is turning into a pretty exhausting month.”

“I’ve had worse ones,” Zorian said. “But yes, this was not quite what I had in mind when I told you I wanted a restart or two to unwind a bit.”

“Do you think it will be worth it in the end, at least?” Zach asked. “They looked rather incredulous towards the end there.”