by nobody103
Aside from paying attention at the arrests going around him and the reactions they were causing, Zorian also executed several attacks against various aranean webs to continue accumulating experience needed for interpreting the matriarch's memory packet. He was good enough at picking his targets at this point that he had little issues with actually subduing aranean patrols, but he found the experience very draining in an emotional sense. He was basically attacking random aranea for no reason whatsoever, all because he needed a victim to practice his memory reading on, and it was hard not to feel like a villain. Some of the aranea begged him to stop or repeatedly tried to talk to him instead of fighting back. He simply withdrew whenever he encountered such individuals, seeking out more aggressive individuals that actually fought back against his unprovoked aggression, even though that was infinitely more dangerous and definitely not the most efficient strategy.
A few days more passed before Alanic had finally contacted him, using a letter, of all things. The message was short, basically telling him that some people were asking about him, but that he was successfully dodging their questions for now. The letter warned Zorian not to draw further attention if he wished to remain anonymous, since people were already interested in him. Fair enough. He had already decided he would terminate the restart in a few more days – he just wanted to wait for a little while longer to see if something interesting would happen, since he didn't think the arrests had reached a critical point yet.
By this point Kael had moved into the house and Zorian had already told him about the time loop and given him his research notebooks, so he decided to tell him a little about Sudomir and the information he had learned from the man. He omitted any information about Kael's friends and acquaintances, since the morlock had told him to keep that secret from him, but that still left a lot of stuff to talk about.
"Oh? Shifters have the essence of a primordial inside of their bodies?" Kael said, surprised.
"That's what the man said, at least," Zorian nodded. "I can't help but wonder how this extraction thing works. Do the cultists really have to kill those kids to get this 'primordial essence'?"
"Almost certainly," Kael nodded. "It sounds like it's part of their life force. It would make sense for something that is inherited from parent to child. Regardless of method, removing someone's life force is never benign. Ritual sacrifice is simply the fastest way to perform blood magic on them, but even if the cultists used something fancier, the results would likely be the same."
"Blood magic?" asked Zorian curiously. "You know what that is?"
"Ah, right, you probably don't know. The mage guild does tend to suppress that information, doesn't it?" Kael mused. "Blood magic involves using people's life force, usually to fuel various spells. Life force is really potent, much more so than regular mana, so the temptation is always there. Of course, not only are blood magic rituals incredibly dangerous, using your life force also has terrible effects on the body. Thus, most mages who dabble in it prefer to use other people's life force instead of their own. You know all those stories about villains that ritually sacrifice people for power? They're basically doing blood magic."
"Oh. So that's blood magic? Kind of underwhelming," Zorian said. "I thought it would be something incredibly arcane and sinister, considering how obsessive the mage guild is about purging any mention of it from books."
"Blood magic is very easy to do, so long as you have a steady stream of sacrifices," Kael said. "And there is little variation in the amount of life force between different humans. Any random civilian will do as a sacrifice. It's a very quick if bloody road to power, and the mage guild is afraid that if the information about blood magic was freely available, you would see blood mages popping up all over the place. I've also heard that blood magic can be used to 'steal' other people's bloodlines and special abilities, and you can imagine how all those super-special Noble Houses would feel about that. The mage guild cracks down on it very viciously, and blood magic produces too many victims for a practitioner to hide for long."
Before Zorian could continue the conversation, a series of explosions started to erupt across the city, causing them both to run outside to see what was happening. They found the rest of the inhabitants of the house to be unhurt but confused and frightened by the detonations, though Zorian already had a pretty good idea what was happening.
His suspicions were confirmed when he climbed to the roof of the house and took a look at the city around them, only to see vast swathes of it burning and many of the streets overrun with war trolls and hostile mages.
The Ibasans and the Cult of Dragon Below had decided to launch their invasion early.
✦ ✧ ✦
The next several hours were a blur. Though the invaders didn't have the support of iron beaks and the undead normally provided by Sudomir, and though Cyoria's forces were far more prepared for foul play this time around, the invaders still had a lot of firepower and did their best to cause huge amounts of damage. Though he wanted to go out and explore this unusual invasion, Zorian couldn't bring himself to abandon the rest of the household alone and undefended to the invaders. Instead he stayed at home, eliminating small groups of invaders that had decided to target this area of the city and occasionally using divination to spy on other parts of the city when things were relatively quiet.
Interestingly, despite him eradicating at least six battlegroups, Quatach-Ichl never showed up to deal with him. Presumably he was a lot busier this time around, and couldn't afford to deal with a minor issue like him.
To be honest, he didn't understand what the Ibasans were trying to accomplish by launching this premature attack. At least their original plan to attack during the summer festival had a chance to really do some lasting harm to the city, while this one was doomed to fail right from the start. Then again, maybe they didn't have much choice. They surely knew by now that Eldemar's investigators were onto them, so waiting for the summer festival was clearly stupid… but with Iasku Mansion shut down, perhaps retreating to Ulquaan Ibasa in a timely manner was impossible.
After a while, his scrying attempts noticed that fighting was especially fierce around the Hole. This was where most of the invading forces were concentrated, and Quatach-Ichl never seemed to move far from the place. Were the invaders gambling everything on the successful summoning of the primordial? It certainly seemed so. A part of him wondered if that meant Nochka had been kidnapped and was being ritually sacrificed as he watched, but he pushed that thought aside. He couldn't do anything about it, even if she was, and she would be alive when the next restart begins.
It was interesting, though. If the cultists successfully released the primordial from its extra-dimensional prison, he would finally be able to see for himself how dangerous and destructive it was. The restart wasn't even close to ending, after all, so the primordial would have plenty of time to show its might.
Hours ticked by and Zorian suddenly realized this was it. The fighting around the Hole had reached a fevered pitch, with Eldemar's soldiers frantically trying to surge forward and overrun the invaders while Quatach-Ichl rained a dizzying variety of suppressive fire on the forces arrayed against him. At some point one of Cyoria's mages actually managed to melt half of his skull off with some kind of golden fire, which was the first time Zorian had ever seen something do actual damage to the ancient lich, but that didn't seem to hold him back much. Above the Hole, and presumably on the inside of it, space shuddered and writhed, distorting everything like hot summer air. Slowly, jagged black threads started rising into the air from the depths, zig-zagging through the air and occasionally forking offshoots.
They were cracks, Zorian realized. Reality was breaking.
Suddenly, a huge volume of space in the center of the cracks simply… caved in, creating a pitch black hole that hung in the air. Something huge and dark brown, like a hand studded with mouths and eyes, shot out of the rip in space, but Zorian didn't have time to study it much. Without any prompting from him, the marker on his
soul suddenly activated and everything went black.
He woke up in his bed in Cirin, with Kirielle wishing him a good morning.
✦ ✧ ✦
With a sigh, Zorian helped Kirielle unload her luggage from the train, his mind still on the events of the previous restart. Why did the time loop restart when it did? Was it because Zach just happened to die at that point, or was it – like Zorian suspected – because the primordial was successfully released into the world?
What kind of relationship did the primordial have with the time loop? Was the whole point of the time loop to prevent its release? He wondered whether the time loop ended when it usually did because a month was how long a default restart lasted or because that's when the primordial was usually released and he never bothered to stop the ritual until now. Hm.
"Welcome to Cyoria, Kiri," he told her. "Pretty impressive, isn't it?"
He was cheating, of course. He knew that Kirielle found Cyoria's central train station impressive. This time, though, something else seemed to have attracted her attention.
"Umm," she said, pointing behind him. "I think that guy wants to talk to you."
Zorian turned around, only to see a pissed-off looking Zach stomping towards him. Zorian was so shocked at the sight that he didn't move at all until the boy was practically in his face.
He opened his mouth to give him an awkward hello, but before he could say anything, Zach's fist shot forward in a blur and punched him in the face.
Chapter 53
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 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 get 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 or distorted rumors back to Kirielle.