Chapter 50: Accounting from Absent Futures

It had been a long time since Suria met in the Blue with all of the others trapped within the time loop. She felt as thought it must have been years instead of a matter of months, yet she was still the same physical age she had been at the beginning. Just as before, the groups were arrayed across the sapphire grass, as if preparing for a gathering.

No one was drinking this time. Some of them looked as though they very much wanted to be drinking, but the haunted eyes would remain focused for a little longer.

Before anyone could speak, Suria checked to see who had survived. Dsjaho-an was nowhere to be seen and she looked to Jeilin, hoping despite all logic, until he shook his head slightly. So Xuhriha - the only known looper who wasn't present - had been correct about him being soul-killed. And he wasn't the only one missing.

More loopers were gone than she could track, so Suria tried to focus on those she could remember. Gerial had made it, but he looked forlorn sitting without Nastoora beside him. Surprisingly, there was no sign of Moiunun, and she would have guessed if anyone could survive, it would have been the huge warrior. The Shantic man seemed to be absent as well, plus one of the Akrashic loopers.

Some people had been eliminated without her even realizing. It was a small comfort to see Qanti and the majority of the other factions.

"We need to discuss what happened last time," Wynchard started, but he couldn't command the group for long.

"We?" Hirthi from the Junnite group stood up, looking absolutely furious. "You didn't endure the last loop at all! You sent the professors after us and then killed yourself."

"I left warnings that something might happen," Wynchard protested. "The professors have been searching for us before and w-"

"It's not the same," Qanti snapped to widespread agreement. "Whatever you tried wasn't enough - we don't want to hear anything from you. But Adwyrma... I think we're all due an explanation. Unless you want us to gang up and kill you every cycle."

"Try," Adwyrma said, a sword beginning to form from her palm.

"Enough!" Wynchard's flames began to light up, but he raised his palms for silence. "I'll abide by the wishes of the group after this, but I agree with them: you caused all this by charging into Convocation Hall. I count eight loopers gone... they deserve an explanation."

For several long heartbeats, Adwyrma didn't move, then her gray blade slid back into the cut on her hand. She stood back and the atmosphere in the group calmed slightly, though everyone remained on edge. Suria knew that attention would turn on her soon and braced herself for it.

"My explanation is simple," Adwyrma told the group flatly. "We all knew that Convocation Hall held secrets, perhaps to the entire time loop, but she-" A finger stabbed at Suria. "-was hiding them from us. I forced my way inside and, unfortunately, encountered the thrones. But I never would have attempted such a thing if she had been honest with us about their presence from the beginning."

A few frowned toward Suria, but the vast majority of loopers didn't seem appeased. Suria thought that she could probably have united them against Adwyrma just by emphasizing the costs of the previous loop, and realized a second later that the strategy would be a mistake. Most of them still didn't know her very well and she needed to maintain her position as the honest victim in all this.

Which would require some calculated dishonesty, but Suria didn't see an alternative.

"If you want to see Convocation Hall, I can let everyone enter next cycle," Suria promised. "But I didn't know about the professors. When I was trying to escape I found stairs to a basement, but they were blocked by some sort of spatial ward. The professors must have been down there and the fighting brought them up."

Her rebuttal received a lot of approval, even if it drew attention back to her. Thankfully she got a little more support soon after, when Wynchard spoke up.

"I've seen the spatial trap before," he admitted. "Not during the loop, but past years. Darkmoon uses it to keep students out of certain areas. Her story is plausible."

"Can anyone disable that sort of trap?" Jeilin asked. "We could go down as a group and confirm the truth, just put this entire matter to rest."

"Are you insane?" one of the Endelythan trio demanded. "That loop was hell, even out in the city. Anyone who incites that again makes themselves our enemy."

As the debate continued, Suria wondered if the accusation was actually true, in a sense. If she had been open about the threat, the loop might not have happened and Dsjaho-an might still be alive. But that didn't in any way justify what Adwyrma had done and thankfully it seemed like the group wasn't going to let her shift the discussion.

"I'm willing to guide people in," Suria repeated when she had an opening. "But... not soon, please? The professors might have been trying to use me, but they were suspicious of me too. I don't want to go through that again."

Remarkably, everyone listened to her. Suria realized that the balance of power had shifted: the group respected Wynchard, and they feared Adwyrma, but now many of them felt indebted to Suria. Still, in a group this factional, she didn't have everyone on her side.

"You're all assuming that she was actually working to protect us." Herriot from the Akrashic faction stood up to address the group. "But we lost Jennit - wiped out when she was trying to escape the city. And Dsjaho-an is gone too, despite being so well-prepared. How do we know she didn't save herself by pointing the professors toward her enemies?"

"Don't be absurd," Jeilin said, rising in opposition. "If anything, Dsjaho-an was one of the few friends Suria had in the group. Last I spoke to him, he was complaining about her warnings being unnecessary. She did her best to help all of us."

"And she saved my life." Gerial had been silent up to that point but now raised an untouched glass of wine. "Nastoora was soul killed and I would have been next if not for Suria. As far as I'm concerned, I owe her. They were already suspicious of me due to my... uh, being myself... and all she would have needed to do was stay silent, but she risked herself to warn me."

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Those voices seemed to completely undermine the attempt to blame Suria, to her relief. Everyone knew that Jeilin had been friends with Dsjaho-an, and Gerial had more influence than she had expected. Hopefully all the others had enough respect for her to believe that if she had been trying to eliminate others, she could have done a better job.

Since she had everyone's sympathy, Suria thought this was her best moment to get ahead of another major potential problem. Currently everyone was operating on the assumption they needed to cooperate with one another and she didn't want to see how vicious the conflicts could become if they were truly set against each other.

"There's something I need to tell everyone," Suria said, then endured all the attention that fell on her. "The thrones didn't explain their full plans to me, but they were trying to do something. Maybe even collapse the loop. I doubt they succeeded, but they might have caused a change. I wouldn't count on this cycle being the same."

The group was inclined to believe her, but her announcement garnered some skepticism, since it was outside the norm. And, admittedly, she was lying.

"How does that work?" Qanti asked, folding her arms and regarding Suria thoughtfully. "You don't hear about historical loops being manipulated from the outside. That should be impossible."

"Sorry," Suria said with a shrug, "I don't know any details. But the thrones have been suspicious in previous cycles, right? I heard that there were problems in the first and fifth cycles - I was dying in Convocation Hall for those, but did anything change then?"

This argument carried more weight and the group began to discuss the previous extensions to the loop. Suria went silent again, hoping that her ploy had worked. Because they didn't know about Lirngelf's death, this would push them further from the conclusion that the time loop was extended by the elimination of loopers. Of course, the deaths theory would still be viable, but by introducing the concept of the professors meddling, she hoped to muddy the waters.

It was also possible that she was wrong and nothing would change in this loop. In a way, Suria hoped that she was. But at the end of the usual cycle she was definitely going to be alert instead of committing suicide.

Some of the discussion centered around how loopers had been eliminated, and they didn't ask Suria as much as she'd expected. Some of the deaths were just understood implicitly, such as the Shantic man dying when he went to speak with Nastoora. Suria did learn a few things, such as how Moiunun had died: apparently the professors had tracked down his past records and noticed the discontinuity in his capabilities.

That method unsettled Suria, since it went against so many of her objectives. In a sense, the loopers who didn't take things seriously were much better defended against that threat than those who had been steadily training. Suria realized that, as frustrating as it was for her to have to redo her enrollment every cycle, she was lucky that the university knew almost nothing about her.

After much argument, which Suria mostly sat out, the group agreed on several conclusions. They sort of leveled sanctions against Adwyrma and to a lesser degree Wynchard for causing trouble, which wasn't really enforceable aside from the group's favors. It was also generally agreed that everyone owed Suria a favor, though some seemed more earnest about that than others and Suria didn't plan to try to collect. Having everyone in her debt could actually work against her, if it caused resentment.

"My original goal here was to enter the Medicine program," Suria said when the conversation lapsed. "But I haven't ever been able to because my runic capacity is too low. If anyone can help me get into the program this cycle, I'll consider us even. I'll take care of myself after that."

This seemed to go over well and the others offered various minor methods of assistance. The real prizes were a permanent runic potion from one of the Endelythans named Grynore and an exercise offered by Herriot, a method of training via a handicapped stylus. The others from the Akrashic Union chipped in, directly giving her the necessary stylus and supplies, though she considered the true value to be learning about a new method she could use in the future.

Or, perhaps, the most important thing was the fact that she had defanged potential hatred from the Akrashic faction over the loss of one of their own. There were four of them and they were still better mages than her, so she didn't want them as her enemies.

As things stood now, the other loopers mostly thought well of her as a basically harmless healer who had worked for the common good. The only people likely to target her were those who would target her anyway, and there was nothing Suria could do about them except prepare for the inevitable.

"Alright, this has probably gone on long enough," Wynchard said eventually. "Even though this cycle will likely be less tense, we shouldn't linger too long. Before we go, what are we doing this cycle?"

"Nothing." Gerial raised his glass again and looked to the group. "I, for one, am sick of tension and drama. I move that no one cause any trouble this cycle so we can all recover. Do I hear a 'nothing' from everyone?"

"Nothing!" plenty of the group chorused, and even Suria joined in a little late. Wynchard didn't seem to like the sound of that, but he accepted the agreement and they started to split up.

On her way out, Suria saw that Jeilin was maneuvering to walk beside her and let him. They walked in silence for a time and she wasn't sure what to say. She hadn't been able to say she was sorry about Dsjaho-an in the previous cycle and now it felt almost wrong.

"We should meet up later," Jeilin told her quietly. "There's something I need to do, and some things I need to think through. But I owe you twice over now, and Ds... I'll find you."

"Very well," Suria agreed, then gave him space to deal with his own feelings.

She had hoped to get away without any further entanglements, but it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to her. Even though she was walking as fast as she could back toward campus, Wynchard caught up to her with loping strides before matching pace.

"I hope you understand that I didn't mean to cause trouble," he said. "It's important to me that you know I just want to find the truth of why we're in this loop."

"I know," Suria said.

"But I respect that I still caused trouble for you, so I owe you a favor too. Is there anything you need that I can help you with? I'll keep an eye on Adwyrma - that doesn't cost anything."

"I want to learn the truth too." Suria took a deep breath as she considered her options. "I think the most important thing we can do is better understand the time loop, and it doesn't seem like we can accomplish that normally. Can we try to find something in the Sequential Library?"

"Venturing into the Library without a guide is dangerous," Wynchard said with a grimace. "I think we're not ready to try again, and we agreed we wouldn't be disruptive this loop. But in the future... yes, I'd help you. We all need deeper understanding of this."

After that, Suria finally pulled away from the other loopers. Part of her wanted to immediately begin everything necessary for the next loop, but she was also sick of it all: she saw that crowds had gathered around Convocation Hall, and this time, Rije had probably died inside. Maybe the best thing she could do was focus on getting into the healing program so that she could help more on the next loop.

As she walked through the dormitories, Suria abruptly saw a flash of pink: Xuhriha was trying to climb up one of the walls for no clear reason. When Suria came by, the other woman slipped back down a little sheepishly.

"Hello, stranger. I was, uh... just..."

"Do you want to share a room?" Suria asked. "I need a roommate."

"Oh!" Xuhriha beamed, then grabbed her elbow. "Yes, I would love to, strange student I have never met before. Did you have somewhere in mind?"

"The Taedric Building."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to spend all your money getting a room in the Cerulean Sanctum?"

"The Taedric Building," Suria insisted, but she was smiling this time.

Given how she felt, part of her wanted to do nothing but acquire a room and then sleep for days. Yet she realized that her headache had faded away, and she had dealt with all the potential problems with the other loopers. If they left her in peace and nothing went wrong, she would hopefully have a more restful term.

The hourglass had turned, the sands began to trickle, and she'd see what she could do with them.