Throne of Time [Magical Academy, Time Loop, Mystery]

Right at the start of the cycle, before other variables could get involved, Suria decided to try her next plan. She walked to the northeast, where Eluauna was currently sitting with her books, and hoped this wasn’t a mistake. If it failed, she was going to be half-blind for a cycle.

No, she had to try it. Suria took a deep breath, removed her glasses, and whacked them against the wall.

To her surprise, the impact didn’t cause much damage. Her glasses were one of the most expensive things she owned, so she couldn’t bring herself to use her full strength. But an edge of the stone left a scratch, so they were partially ruined anyway. That was enough to motivate her to swing them against the wall a couple more times until they were thoroughly cracked.

Then she cradled the pieces and staggered past the work room, sniffling.

”Is everything alright?” Eluauna asked, peering out.

”It’s nothing.” Suria wiped her eyes and pretended like she was trying to hide her glasses in her robe. Maybe that would backfire, but the old woman was so suspicious, she wanted her first attempt to be more cautious.

”What do you have there?” Eluauna took a further step out, peering. ”You can tell me, girl.”

”It’s just...” Suria waved her glasses, hoping that she didn’t look half-blind and that they weren’t obviously normal glasses. ”I’m about to... to be tested and I... I just broke my runic glasses...”

She had expected to need to try this multiple times, tweaking her performance each time, but to Suria’s shock Eluauna immediately responded by humming sympathetically. The old woman stepped back into the room and returned soon after carrying her own glasses.

”Here, girl, you can borrow these.” Eluauna wagged a finger at her. ”You’d just better not break them too, alright? Now don’t cry, get off to your examination.”

”Really?” Suria wasn’t faking her disbelief as she stared down at the glasses. It felt like it had to be some sort of trick. ”How do... how do I give them back to you?”

”I’ll be right here until evening, so just bring them back once you’re done.”

”I... don’t suppose you have a mana potion, do you?”

”Now don’t get greedy.” Eluauna chuckled, but her eyes weren’t quite as friendly as before. ”Those aren’t any good at my age, anyway.”

Suria thanked Eluauna fervently, wrapped the glasses in a cloth, and rushed back toward the waiting room. Once there, of course, she cut through without stopping. She’d kept her expression emotional as long as she could, but those emotions were shifting to a grin.

For once something had gone her way! She wasn’t going to waste this chance or assume that she could repeat it, either: her performance might not be as authentic in the future, or she might not be able to replicate the details. Eluauna had a kind streak within her, but she could be extremely suspicious too, and Suria might end up stuck on the wrong side of that if she wasn’t careful.

Her plan was to ask Rije if necessary, but she hadn’t introduced herself to him this cycle and he was an additional variable, so she tried on her own for now. Suria discovered that there was no trick to the glasses, they were simply an enchanted object: when she wore them, glyphs lit up in the world around her, showing her the magic that her naked eyes couldn’t see.

The walls were covered with dizzying numbers of glyphs, so she first practiced on what she was carrying with her. Not much changed about her talismans, other than that her glyphs glowed slightly. Interestingly, her rune or inscription practice didn’t glow at all, not unless she finalized the spell. Once she felt comfortable using the glasses, Suria went to her real goal: the doors.

She tried the empty western hall first, since there was no statue to try to talk to her. The window was reinforced with wards, as she’d expected, and the door was even more heavily reinforced. So many of the symbols meant nothing to her... and then she saw it.

A locking inscription, exactly like the one she’d taken from Shuguja’s office. Suria instinctively reached out to touch it, as if she could unlock it that way, though of course her fingers only touched stone. She carefully used her hand to measure the glyph’s exact position so she could find it again even without the glasses.

Just in case Lirngelf had been lying or mistaken, she created a locking talisman with a single inversion augment. The glyph itself felt wrong, however, and when she tried to cast it at the lock, the wards seemed to get stronger, not weaker. She could actually see her meager strength flowing into the wards of the building as a very faint ripple.

That remained the worst obstacle. Even if she took Maut-mai’s potion, she was still one rune short of an unlocking glyph, and glyphic magic was a scientific art with no cheats or shortcuts.

Still, her success at finding the lock buoyed her to her next plans. Suria headed to the foyer entrance next to find the locking mechanism, just in case she ended up there instead. There were several locking glyphs on the larger door, so she memorized the location of each. Despite her worries, the statue didn’t seem to think anything was amiss about her behavior and simply asked if she wanted a guide around campus.

Ignoring it, she headed back through the building to confirm all the other doors and look for other solutions. The next major event she planned to intercept was the secretary leaving his office and she wasn’t quite ready for that. Suria found an abandoned hallway, recreated her shield glyph, and experimented with casting it.

As a defensive spell, the shield was clearly not equal to combat magic, but it did provide a slight bit of resistance. When Suria tried to push her hand against the shimmering blue sphere it pushed back, and the shield was substantial enough for her to lean objects against it. She experimented with casting the spell at different volumes, which was difficult but not so different from the subtle control she could exert over her healing spells.

When at last it was time, Suria waited in the hallway. The secretary swept out of his room, letting the door swing closed behind him without checking it. He was too close for her to run in, since he would obviously notice her, but she hoped...

Suria raised her hand and tried to cast a tiny shield just between the door and its frame. She saw a shimmer of blue, so small she was afraid that it would do nothing. Her greater fear was that the secretary would notice, turn on her, and summon the professors, but he went on his way down the hall. Seeing him from a different angle, he looked more than a little nervous. She had to wonder why he had been summoned to meet with the professors, but she couldn’t afford to think about that now.

Instead she crept to the doorway, desperately maintaining her little shield. Just as she’d hoped, the door had been stopped from swinging closed when it bumped into the sphere of her shield. Suria stuck her fingers into the crack and pulled it open before finally releasing the spell.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Inside, unfortunately, she found only another office. The secretary had a lot of papers and a few quills and styluses lying around, but there was no treasure trove. If he had a secret compartment, she wasn’t able to find it. Of course he had taken his runebook with him, and it didn’t seem like he did much magic in his office.

What was she supposed to do now? It would take her many cycles to read through all the papers, and most of them appeared to be administrative in any case. Suria settled for rooting through everything thoroughly, making sure that the secretary didn’t keep any mana potions in his office.

No such luck: based on what Eluauna said, potions seemed to diminish in efficacy as a mage grew, so they might be difficult to find. Suria was frustrated, but suppressed the emotion and stayed focused, since she had made so much progress this cycle.

The next event she had timed was a man walking past the northern window. Suria used a stylus to wedge open the office door and rushed north, waiting until she finally spotted him. She waved wildly, afraid she would be ignored... the man saw her, gave a sort of half-wave, then kept walking. On her side of the window, Suria groaned and sank against the glass.

Could she make a bigger fuss, or even write a message on the inside so that he would see it? If she got desperate enough, she might try, but she was afraid that even if it didn’t seem like a prank, people outside the wards would have even less hope of getting them open than everyone inside.

As the hour wound to its end, Suria’s rush of hope was fizzling out. She had tried to search the entire building with the runic glasses, just in case some secret would pop up, but didn’t discover any hidden solutions. Her attempt to get the second walker’s attention was even less successful: the woman was so far away she didn’t even notice Suria. Returning to the secretary’s office had taught her a lot about the university’s budget shortfalls and desire to enroll more students, but nothing about secret passages out of the building or anything so lucky.

What else could she do? No matter what she tried, Suria couldn’t think of a way to gain enough runic capacity to cast the unlocking spell that she needed to escape. The four she started with had taken months of work, so she didn’t have any hope of increasing it naturally in just one hour.

If she was really trapped, what could she try if she got desperate? Attempt to mug Eluauna and search through her things? Learn an explosion inscription and set off a disaster that got attention from outside? Would she eventually have no choice but to risk interacting with the professors?

Suria leaned back against the wall and sank down to the floor, burying her face in her arms. If she pulled up her hood, she could shut out the rest of the world and just forget about it all. Maybe she would just stay like that until the battle between professors killed her again.

She was completely alone and she couldn’t do this...

Abruptly Suria realized that the solution was obvious. So obvious that she felt like an idiot for not having seen it earlier. She had the key she needed, she was just thinking about the problem the wrong way. It might take a little experimentation, but she should be able to orchestrate the right scenario.

When the wave of death came, she raised her arms to embrace it.

~ ~ ~

Back in the waiting room for the tenth time, Suria calmly took out one of her spare talismans and inscribed a square locking glyph. She pretended to stretch, then wandered out of the room without taking Lirngelf’s potion. That had become the routine, but if she really escaped this time, she didn’t want the theft to potentially end up tied back to her. There was a difference between consequences during one hour and consequences in the long term.

She walked the hallways carefully, staying within earshot while passing the time. When she heard Maut-mai begin to talk to Rije, Suria slapped her own cheeks and tried to refocus. Summoning some of the misery that she’d felt last cycle, she rushed up to the two of them.

”The doors are locked!” Suria told them anxiously. ”I was trying to get out and it seems like they’re warded.”

”Probably not,” Rije said with a frown. ”There’s a tw-”

”Can you check, please? If I’m wrong I’ll apologize a hundred times.”

Her humility apparently convinced him she wasn’t another noble brat, so Rije shrugged and went to investigate. Maut-mai looked disturbed by the news and followed along, so soon enough the three of them were back in the foyer testing the door. As soon as Rije confirmed that the wards had indeed locked them in, the atmosphere became tense as it always did.

Suria stepped back, shuffling anxiously as she tried to decide how long she needed to wait before it would seem natural. Once they started talking to the statue uselessly, she moved closer and tapped Rije’s shoulder.

”Umm...” Suria held out her new talisman. ”I don’t know how to unlock doors, but I use this locking ward to keep my rooms secure. Could we... flip it somehow?”

”That’s not a bad idea,” Rije said. No surprise, since it was his idea.

”Do either of you have an inversion inscription?” Suria asked. Both shook their heads, which was unfortunate, but she’d planned as much. ”I think I know one, but... the truth is that I’m not strong enough to cast it.”

”It’s worth a shot. Show us what you know.”

Using her old village brush on one of Maut-mai’s stone slates, Suria showed them the exact strokes of the inversion inscription that she’d practiced so many times. Both of them seemed game to make the attempt, though their first efforts weren’t great. Maybe they’d had so many different things to learn they hadn’t spent as much time as she had repeating the basic strokes over and over again.

Neither of them knew the locking inscription, so Suria started making square runic structures and fusing them into talismans, letting the other two modify them with the inversion augments. Rije at least seemed familiar with modifying someone else’s glyph, while Maut-mai struggled with it and broke several talismans. She was actually getting worse as she got more nervous about being trapped inside. Next time Suria definitely wouldn’t bother to bring her along...

Suria frowned and pushed the thought aside. She didn’t want there to be a next time. Even if she couldn’t escape, she shouldn’t think that way or she would lose her nerve.

”Got it!” Rije cried out happily and raised his talisman.

”Oh!” Suria very nearly hugged him, checking herself when she remembered that in this loop they barely knew one another.

”But we need to apply it to the exact location of the locking glyph. We’ll need-”

”It’s right here.” Suria tapped the location she’d memorized, then when they looked at her, pointed to her glasses. ”These aren’t very strong, but they’re runic glasses. So if you match the glyphs, the door unlocks, right?”

”I’ve never done this before, but that’s the theory.” Rije pretended to be completely unfamiliar, but the way he moved the talisman, she was confident he knew what he was doing.

When he touched the point she indicated and began casting, Suria held her breath, certain that one more obstacle would appear in front of her. The professors would attack again, Maut-mai would suddenly stab someone, or the door would just explode for no reason. Surely after ten cycles of misery she wouldn’t actually be allowed to...

The door clicked and slid open an inch.

Rije immediately stepped in to hold it open, while Suria only breathed a sigh of relief. She could have crumpled to the ground right then.

”Wonderful!” Maut-mai hugged her from the side with surprising ferocity. ”That was so smart!”

”Let’s get outside first.” Suria wanted to run, but if there would be consequences this time, she couldn’t afford to draw even more suspicion, so she paused to look at Rije. ”Do you have any idea why this would have happened?”

”The wards are designed to protect us from an outside attack,” Rije told her. ”They were just upgraded, so probably something tripped them accidentally. I’ll look into it, so don’t worry, alright?”

”This is just a minor incident,” the statue said unhelpfully.

”Will you, uh, come with us?” Suria asked. ”After being locked in like this, I just feel...”

”No, sorry, but I have a duty to do here. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

Was leaving Rije here condemning him to die when the battle started? Suria considered her options, but it wasn’t as if she could overpower him and she had no good excuses to pull him out. As far as anyone knew, she was a mildly resourceful young student who didn’t know anything. And given how terrifying the professors could be, she intended to keep it that way.

When they headed out, Suria pushed ahead of Maut-mai. No final barrier stopped her: she finally left the hall and returned to the campus. She practically gasped as she felt sunlight on her skin for the first time since the loops had began, and in that moment she finally believed that she’d gotten out. All the emotions she had been suppressing burst forth at once.

She dropped to the ground, gripping the grass as tears escaped her eyes. The back of her mind told her that this was going to give her a very strange reputation, but Suria didn’t care.