by nobody103
"Ah," said Zorian with some disappointment. "It's just that I also talked to Vani, the local scholar in Knyazov Dveri, and he recommended I try to contact the local wolf shifters for help. Do you think the idea has any merit?"
"In terms of whether their soul magic expertise could have helped you? Maybe, though I wouldn't bet on it," said Lukav. "But I really, really doubt they would agree to help you. The shifter tribe he speaks of, the Red Fang tribe, is fiercely protective of their special magic and suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in it. Hell, they don't even talk to other shifter tribes about it! Having nigh-exclusive access to shifter magic is very prestigious for them, and they don't want to share it with anyone."
"Then why did you offer to buy it off of them?" asked Zorian curiously.
"Well I didn't know that then, did I? How the hell was I supposed to know these things when they barely talk to anyone in the mage community?" groused Lukav. "Okay, yeah, I may have been a little too insistent, but they could have explained things to me politely instead of making such a big deal out of it."
"I see," said Zorian carefully. Lukav probably wasn't the best person to help him contact the shifters, it seemed. Just as well, since he had a much likelier lead right now in the form of Alanic.
He agreed he would drop by tomorrow in the evening to pick up Lukav, and that they would then go meet Alanic together. The two men were old friends according to Lukav, and Alanic would be easier to deal with if he was there to vouch for Zorian's character and honesty.
Zorian hoped that the priest would be as useful as Lukav claimed he would be.
✦ ✧ ✦
The next day Zorian spent an entire day morning practicing the severing disc to make sure he could actually control it properly the next time he used it, switching to various levitation exercises when he got bored or ran low on mana. As evening approached, Zorian teleported to Lukav's village and spent an hour or so in idle chitchat with the man. Zorian wasn't sure, but it seemed to him that the man had hinted on the possibility of teaching Zorian some of his secrets. Of course, there would probably be an apprenticeship contract involved if he wanted to take Lukav upon that offer, but with the time loop in place, such entanglements wouldn't be permanent in nature. Perhaps he should set aside a future restart or two to see what the man has to offer, but transformation magic simply wasn't a priority right now. He needed information and defenses against soul magic before anything else.
Eventually, they both got on their way. Lukav had wanted to walk to Alanic's residence, but Zorian had vetoed the idea arguing that would be a waste of time when he could just teleport them next to the man's house instead. Admittedly his only experience in teleporting others had been when he had retreated from Vazen's house with Gurey in tow, but he was confident he could replicate that success. And as it turned out, he was right about that.
"I'm surprised someone as young as you can teleport," Lukav said conversationally, looking at their new surroundings to determine where exactly they ended up at. They were not far from the temple that Alanic worked at and which also served as his home, but Zorian opted not to teleport too close, as Lukav indicated that the man could be somewhat trigger happy about such things. "You're, what, 16? I guess I finally met one of those kid geniuses people talk about. You're not that Kazinski, are you?"
"No, I just happen to have the same last name as Daimen," Zorian lied.
"Figures," the man said. "You must get that question a lot."
"You have no idea," Zorian sighed. Thankfully, Kazinski wasn't that rare of a last name and no one had accused him of lying when he denied any connections.
Whatever Lukav had been trying to say next was promptly drowned out by the unmistakable sounds of explosions coming from the house in front of them, immediately followed by angry shouting in an unknown language and sounds of gunshots.
Zorian quickly drew his spell rod and scowled. He had been afraid of this. Whoever was behind the disappearance of the soul mages had noticed their assassination of Lukav had failed and decided to throw subtlety out of the window and move fast to eliminate their remaining target. They no doubt knew that Lukav and Alanic were friends and that Alanic would soon know all about the assassination attempt.
He cautiously advanced forward, Lukav trailing after him.
There were no undead this time, probably because the target was a well-known undead-hunter and was thus bound to be good against them. Instead, the attackers consisted of 15 men armed with rifles – probably non-magical mercenaries – and 2 mages acting like spell support. They were hesitant to simply storm Alanic's hose for some reason, and instead waited outside for something to happen. Unwilling to charge into a group of riflemen like idiots, both Zorian and Lukav settled in behind some trees to observe the group.
"They're trying to bring down the wards before they move in," Zorian realized after a few seconds. "The mage on the right is trying to collapse the entire warding scheme, the one on the left is protecting him from all reprisals while he's busy and the riflemen are periodically shooting at the windows to keep Alanic from raining down offensive spells on them at will."
A ray of fire punctuated his whispered statement by erupting from one of the second story windows, aiming for the mage who was dismantling the wards. The other mage immediately shielded his companion from the attack, and the riflemen responded with a withering barrage of bullets at the offending opening.
"We have to help him," Lukav said firmly.
"The only option I see is waiting for a good opening," Zorian said. "I don't see a way to get involved right now that wouldn't immediately get us both killed."
"Can you deal with the two mages if I take care of the gun-toting idiots?" Lukav asked.
Zorian gave him a curious look. How did he intend to do that? Was he one of those idiots that still underestimated the effectiveness of guns even after the huge death toll they racked up against combat mages in the Splinter Wars?
"Well?" Lukav asked, a little more harshly.
Deciding to take some risk, Zorian skimmed the man's surface thoughts for a moment. He promptly realized that the man beside him cared deeply about Alanic and couldn't bear to see him killed if he could do something, anything about it. He was ready to move in with or without Zorian, but he honestly thought he could prevail against the riflemen. He was far less sure whether he could survive against them if he had to deal with the mage support as well, though.
"I can deal with them, yeah," said Zorian. "Wait for two minutes before you charge in."
He then promptly cast invisibility on himself and walked off in the direction of the two mages.
He wasn't walking for the sake of being dramatic – the invisibility spell he was using was a very delicate optical illusion that required his conscious attention to maintain. Any sort of distracting activity, such as fighting or casting spells, immediately unraveled it. He couldn't even run without turning into a shimmering humanoid outline that was far more attention grabbing than simply walking up to the mages with no cloaking attempts.
But a fast walk turned out to be sufficient. He was practically on top of the two mages when Lukav finally grew sick of waiting and charged into the fray with a battle cry.
At least he thought the creature that came charging in was Lukav. The huge bull covered in dark green, fishlike scales, its eyes glowing with malevolent red light, seemed like something a transformation expert would use and it sure as hell wasn't aligned with the attackers. The beast let loose a loud bellow that was laced with some kind of magical fear effect. Zorian ignored the mental attack easily enough, but three of the riflemen weren't as fearless and immediately fled screaming. The rest were shaken enough by the fear effect that they gave the bull a few crucial moments to close in before they started firing.
As Zorian expected, those scales weren't just for show, and the bullets didn't do much. The two hostile mages beside him seemed to realize their forces weren't going to fare well against this new threat because the defender suddenly s
tarted to cast a spell and the ward breaker sped up his work. Deciding that the defender was the bigger threat, Zorian decided to forgo any fancy spellwork and simply pulled out a knife from his belt and rammed it harshly into the man's neck, dropping his own invisibility in the process.
The other mage didn't react fast enough, too shocked at Zorian's sudden appearance, and received a swift kick in the groin a moment later. He immediately collapsed on the ground with a keening wail. After checking to see if any of the riflemen were gunning for him (they weren't, as they were too busy being trampled by the bull beast that Lukav had transformed into) Zorian reached into the mage's mind and blasted it with a crude telepathic assault. The man went unconscious like Zorian had been hoping he would, out of the fight.
Before Zorian could decide whether he should get involved into the fight against the riflemen (it seemed unnecessary, and he wasn't largely immune to gunfire like Lukav was), a trio of flaming projectiles rained down from the second floor and incinerated three of the riflemen that had been trying to rally the others. The bull-beast let loose another fear-laced bellow at this, and the survivors promptly fled.
Zorian watched them go, ready to erect a shield around himself if one of them decided to let loose a few parting shots. None of them did.
The bull beast let out a derisive snort and kicked the ground a few times before suddenly… folding upon itself, for the lack of a better word, and becoming a man. Specifically, Lukav.
Man, transformation was more useful that he had figured it was. He understood why Lukav had been reluctant to engage the attackers without someone to take out the mages though – without hands, the alchemist could not cast any defensive spells himself, and was very vulnerable to hostile magic.
Any conversation was postponed when a short, bald, muscular man literally dropped out of the sky in front of them. It took Zorian almost a second to realize that this was probably Alanic Zosk and that he had jumped down from the freaking two story window!
He looked unaffected by the fall, but still!
"Al, you idiot, I told you not to do that shit!" Lukav yelled. "I almost firebombed you before I realized it was you!"
"You boy," Alanic said to Zorian, completely ignoring Lukav's anger. "Why did you let those men go? You could have picked them off as they fled."
"I… didn't think it was okay to kill fleeing opponents?" Zorian said, surprised at being put on the spot like that. "I don't know, it just seemed too bloodthirsty to just shoot them in the back while they ran."
A short silence ensued as Alanic gave him a blank look. His mind, though unshielded, was incredibly disciplined and gave Zorian no insight to the man's personality and mood. He idly noted that one of the man's eyes was blue, while the other one was brown. There was a horrid vertical scar over his blue eye, which really looked like it should have destroyed it as well when it was made.
"I see," he said finally. "You're young."
"What has that got to do with anything?" Zorian protested, annoyed at the man's attitude. They just saved the man's life, for god's sake!
"You haven't been fighting for long," he simply said. "You're inexperienced."
'Yeah, well, you're an asshole,' thought Zorian. But outwardly he just frowned instead.
Yeah, Zorian could already see Alanic would be one of those people. He really had the damnedest luck.
✦ ✧ ✦
Alanic Zosk turned out to be pretty calm about the full blown assault on his temple by two dozen gun-wielding mercenaries, refusing Lukav's demand that they go and report the thing to the nearest Guild station right away with a dismissive statement that it was 'too soon to involve them'. He even had the unconscious mage that Zorian had disabled transferred to the dungeon in the temple's basement (why exactly did a temple have a dungeon, Zorian wondered but was afraid to ask), openly admitting he intended to have the man interrogated later.
In the meantime, he wanted to know what Zorian and Lukav came to him for. No, he didn't need time to calm down, why do you ask?
Zorian had to admit he admired the man's composure, even if he was a rude ass.
"Interesting," Alanic said after Zorian repeated the story he told Lukav. "Very well, I will see what has been done to you. Lukav, please leave the room while I examine mister Kazinski here."
Just like that? Apparently yes. Unlike Lukav, Alanic didn't use any fancy ritual rooms, and the examination took all of five minutes before the man had pronounced his verdict.
"You have a marker stamped into your soul," Alanic told him bluntly.
"A what?" Zorian asked.
"A marker is a combination of a beacon and an identification tag. It allows certain spells to find the marker very easily across great distances and unambiguously identifies whatever is tagged by the marker. They are often used by shopkeepers in fancier shops to track stolen wares, by high-security prisons and spies to track movements of marked individuals and in construction of certain wards that allow people to be 'keyed in' and therefore free of some or all of the restrictions that all other visitors labor under. Among other things. They are usually placed on items, as placing permanent markers on people is iffy and requires tattoos and such. Yours though, is stamped directly into your soul."
Zorian remained quiet, his thoughts churning. A marker. That was why he ended up caught in the time loop along with Zach, wasn't it? The spell wasn't keyed in to the originator's soul or some such, since those things were ambiguous and could fail – the original looper could end up with his soul damaged or slightly altered, much like what happened to him and Zach in the end, and then the spell could glitch and fail to loop them back like it's supposed to. No, the makers of the loop instead stamped Zach's soul with something unchangeable and unmistakable.
And then Red Robe and Zorian inherited it, because the makers of the loop were a little too smart for their own good…
"Removing the marker-" Alanic began, oblivious or uncaring about Zorian's obvious state of deep thought.
"I don't want it removed!" Zorian immediately protested, broken out of his thoughts.
Alanic gave him a considering look.
"I suppose you are fortunate then, because I do not think I could remove it even if I wanted to," Alanic said. "It is unlike anything I have ever seen. The marker is woven incredibly tightly into your soul, suffusing every corner of it. It is as if it a chunk of your soul was replaced with it and it then grew to fill every nook and cranny it could find to root itself in as firmly as possible."
Oh hell…
He rose from his seat in agitation, pacing around the room. Alanic watched him impassively, silent and expressionless, until Zorian calmed down a little and sat back down.
"I need more information," he said. "And I need a way to protect myself from things like this in the future. Can you help me?"
Alanic nodded.
"But tomorrow," he added. "For now I have a prisoner to interrogate."
Chapter 32
Alternatives
Despite Alanic's proclamation that he was going to interrogate the prisoner, he did not immediately descend into the temple dungeon. Instead he started rummaging through a nearby cabinet full of potion bottles while Zorian slowly absorbed today's newest revelations, opting to remain in the room for the moment. He was not in the mood for answering questions that Lukav would have for him once he got outside, and Alanic seemed like the sort of person who would warn him if he was being bothersome. Since Alanic said nothing about his continued presence, Zorian felt he had tacit permission to stay.
He had a piece of propagating, self-repairing magic lodged in his soul. Part of him marveled at the magical expertise of the person or thing that created the time loop system, but the greater part of him couldn't help but wonder what exactly was crammed into said wonder of magical spell design. Alanic's description, as well as Lukav's inability to identify the spell despite his advanced-looking ritual, painted a picture of something far too complex and lifelike to be a mere identification tag.
This was important, he could feel it – he needed to know how the marker functioned as soon as possible. For one thing, if there was some kind of hostile contingency woven inside it, ready to screw him over once he tripped over some esoteric activation condition, he wanted to know about it. Not to mention that this particular piece of magic could very well be a key clue to understanding the time loop. What kind of secrets were locked inside of it? Kael had speculated that whatever spell had been placed on Zach to initiate the time loop had all sorts of safeguards and contingencies woven into it, and while the marker clearly wasn't the source of the looping magic itself, it sounded like the perfect place to put those safeguards in. Maybe it had the time loop instructions manual encoded somewhere in its structure? Well, probably nothing so convenient, but still.
There was one thing that still bothered him greatly – if he had a marker in his soul that uniquely identified him as a time looper, why the hell hadn't Red Robe tracked him down by now? His enemy was a proficient soul mage, after all. Zorian found it difficult to believe he was ignorant of the marker mechanism. With that in mind, he should have had little trouble locating every single time looper, Zorian included. But he didn't. Why was that?
"Mister Zosk?" Zorian spoke up. "Could you spare a moment, please?"
"Call me Alanic," the priest said, stopping his inspection of the cabinet with an annoyed huff. Zorian got the impression the annoyance was directed more at the cabinet than at Zorian, though. "What is it?"
"I know you said we'd speak tomorrow, but I'd just like to know how difficult it is to locate a marker like mine. How hard would it be for you to track me down with the best magic at your disposal?"
"By tracking your marker? Almost impossible," Alanic immediately stated. "I'd need the original keystone from the maker of the spell to define the search criteria properly. That thing is far too complex for anything else."
Zorian frowned. "Wouldn't having my own copy of the marker sidestep that?" he asked.