Chapter 6: A Fair Exchange

“Well!” Lirngelf gave an exaggerated yawn and stretched his arms over his head. “Seems like we’ll be waiting on the proctor a while. I’m going to take a break, anyone want to join?”

“No thank you,” Maut-mai said icily.

Suria swallowed and said, “I need more time to study.”

“Just don’t study too long,” Lirngelf told her. “You know, eventually you have to meet the proctor. If you know what I mean.”

That just sounded bizarre and only attracted more attention to her. Suria sank down and pulled up the hood of her peasant’s cloak as if ashamed, which wasn’t much of an exaggeration. On his way out, Lirngelf tossed his potion onto the table carelessly. Though Suria glanced at Maut-mai nervously, the other woman seemed focused on herself, so Suria was alone again soon enough.

There was one very obvious potential solution to her limited strength, one that just required a little courage. Well, courage and foolhardiness. Maut-mai’s potion was sitting in her bags, mostly defenseless as the other woman didn’t pay much attention. Taking both at once might do nothing, or might make her head explode, but either way, she had to try it just in case.

To make herself look less suspicious, Suria drank Lirngelf’s potion and returned to practicing with her increased strength. Maut-mai stopped looking at her often, but Suria couldn’t bring herself to reach over to try to snatch it. The chances of getting caught were just too high…

Eventually, however, Maut-mai left the room to complain to Rije, and she left her bag behind. Suria stared at it, willing herself to move. It wasn’t that she had a great respect for laws and rules, it was that she knew if she was caught in a crime, there would be no wealth or connections to bail her out. Little indiscretions that might be laughed off by the children of nobility could end her career permanently.

But not in the time loop. Suria drew up her courage and plunged her hand into the bag until she found the vial. She immediately retreated, drank the second potion, and hid the evidence in her satchel.

Far from making her head explode, the effect was underwhelming: just a little surge of mana and a bit of dizziness. Suria sat down and began marking new runes on one of her talismans. Fifth… sixth… seventh… and there she reached her limit.

Suria sagged as she accepted that the effects weren’t additive: one potion stretched her capacity to six runes and the other to seven. She supposed that was only logical: if potions could be combined infinitely, mages would just mass-produce the weakest quality versions instead of paying extremely high prices for more powerful formulations. It also might explain why potions had diminishing returns and Shuguja had rejected it, though everyone else was stronger than her and so there had to be more to it.

As time elapsed, Suria became increasingly confident in her new inscription, but she couldn’t think of a solution to the broader problem. It wasn’t as if she was going to stumble across a book that would hand her a legendary power that would instantly increase her rune capacity to a hundred, or an inscription so powerful it could do anything she wanted. She was going to have to be resourceful.

Since it could be awkward to make excuses when Shuguja invited her in, Suria eventually had to leave, and it wasn’t long before Lirngelf accosted her in the hallway.

“How many cycles am I going to need to convince you?” he demanded.

“I want to help, but…” Suria took a deep breath and adopted her usual defense. “I have to be honest: I don’t know if I’m strong enough to help you. You have an entire year of studying over me, and we’re trying to take down a three seal mage.”

“If you think you can trick me into giving you every inscription in exchange for nothing, I-“

“No, I have another idea.” One she didn’t like, since it held considerable risk, but she judged it was better than the alternatives. “You just want to get in to the basement where the professors are talking, right? You should take me hostage.”

Lirngelf stared at her for several seconds, then chuckled. “Well, you’re braver than I thought. You sure about this?”

“We can still try your plan. I’ll bump into the secretary and maybe you can take him down. But if not, then we go with the hostage plan. Is that enough for you to help me more?”

“Tell you what, we’ll give it a try this time. If I’m right, I can just explain the plan to the professors and you’ll get far greater benefits than a few inscriptions. If I’m wrong, I agree to teach you another inscription before we try again. Deal?”

“Agreed,” Suria said, then felt awkward for not saying “deal” instead.

They walked across the grand hall mostly in silence, getting into position in one of the narrow corridors near the stairs. Once they arrived, however, they were too early: though Suria hadn’t seen him at first, apparently the secretary always moved from a locked room to the stairs at a specific time.

“I guess I should show you what I plan to do.” Lirngelf pulled a stylus from his belt and then pressed a glyph on the wedge side. To Suria’s shock, a blade of fire leapt out of the other end, practically as long as she was tall.

“Will that… burn me?”

“It puts off less heat than you think.” Lirngelf chuckled and made the magical blade disappear. “First I was thinking I should surprise you, so you’d have a real reaction, but I figured you might panic without any warning. Just don’t struggle around and be a good hostage, okay?”

“Okay.” Suria nodded while wondering if she had gone completely mad. Even if she couldn’t die within the time loop, what had possessed her to suggest something this wild? Was it even crazier that Lirngelf was willing to treat her as a hostage so easily? He seemed entirely convinced that this was their ticket to greater power, and he did know nobility far better than she did, so perhaps he was right.

They waited in silence until at last they heard footsteps: the secretary was coming and the man walked rather fast. Suria was almost too late and ended up rushing out, quite realistically fumbling with her satchel because she was barely under control. She collided with the middle-aged man and they both tumbled to the ground.

“I’m so sorry!” Suria gasped. She wasn’t acting; she just reacted instinctively. This man was a three seal mage, he could ruin her career with a word…

But he didn’t get a chance to utter that word, because at that moment Lirngelf attacked. The ambush was almost too fast for Suria to follow even though she was expecting it: Lirngelf cast some sort of binding spell with a talisman in one hand, creating loops of mana around the secretary, and lunged with his sword at practically the same time.

It wasn’t fast enough – the secretary raised a hand and cast a bolt of mana that deflected the sword. In the same motion he burst through the mana loops and reached into his robes, ready to pull out a runebook. If he could do that much instinctively, the runebook would make the fight hopeless.

Before that could happen, Suria was wrenched to her feet and had a flaming blade at her throat.

“Don’t move or I cut off her head,” Lirngelf said. There was no trace of his grins or nonchalance – he gripped her like he fully intended to kill her. Given how he was treating the time loop, maybe he would. Suria tried to tell herself that this was the plan and she would exact a repayment from him in the next cycle, but the truth was she didn’t need to act to look terrified.

“What are you doing?” The secretary got to his feet slowly, keeping his hands away from runebook or stylus. “I have no idea who that is.”

“Are you going to let an innocent student die?” Lirngelf demanded. “All I want is to talk to the professors who are meeting now. Take us to the basement.”

“Are you mad?” It didn’t sound like a rhetorical question; the secretary was peering at them with an expression more puzzled than angry. “Just how do you know about the meeting, anyway?”

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“The same reason I know the professors will be glad to hear from me. Trust me, once this is over, you’ll be glad you let me in. Or you can be a fool and watch her blood boil.”

With a strange expression fixed on his face, the secretary kept his hands visible at his sides and began to move toward the basement. Lirngelf followed, keeping a grip on Suria’s arm but moving his sword to point at the secretary’s neck instead. She was relieved now that the burning edge was further from her face, though the air was still unpleasantly scorched around them.

“No trickery with the spatial barrier!” Lirngelf shouted as they reached the stairs.

“Huh.” For the first time the secretary actually looked a little impressed. “It hasn’t been triggered… you know more than you let on. You can let the girl go. I’m happy to let you in just to find out what’s going on.”

“Not a chance. Try something and you die right after her.”

Suria tried to follow the exact magic, but whatever the secretary did to disable the spatial barrier was too advanced for her: she saw a glyph glimmering in the air, then they passed down the stairs. This time, instead of being shunted into a corridor, they entered the basement.

It didn’t look much different from the ground floor, at least at first, but as they headed deeper, Suria noticed the differences. There were no tapestries or paintings here, just bare walls. Instead of comforting light, the mana lanterns on the walls shed cool spheres of illumination that left great gaps of shadow between them.