As much as Suria wanted to stay and see what would happen with Convocation Hall, she recognized that the only logical choice was to go with the other loopers. Anything she tried to change would be erased in under a month, whereas her first impression on everyone else trapped within the loop would be permanent. It was like her admission interview all over again, except this time she wouldn't get a second chance.
When they headed toward the west side of campus, Suria found herself irrationally nervous: she had spent so much time on the eastern side that the west was unfamiliar territory. The Earth Society Building was the furthest west she'd gone, and even Oculon Hall was unfamiliar to her. She really should have taken her time to familiarize herself with the entire campus.
Past the central region, Darkmoon's campus stretched further than she expected. She could see the ancient combat arena, which she'd avoided so far, near the forest, and far in the distance the Eaves Laboratory building curved along the side of the university. In between there was a large stretch of grass without much of anything except a few trees, which was a little unusual. She did see that the strange twisting stairway over campus touched down on one side, but they didn't seem to be heading toward it.
Then, without warning, the world disappeared and Suria was surrounded by the color blue. The grass itself had become blue and there were blue-leafed trees ahead, but the worrisome part was that Darkmoon campus seemed to have disappeared.
"Welcome to the Blue," Jeilin said with a grand wave. "You really haven't been?"
"I... mostly focused on my classes," Suria said breathlessly, as if this was normal to her. "This is part of campus?"
"I don't understand the details, but it's a sub-dimension connected to the campus, or something like that. It's an entirely open secret, so you must have heard of it. The important thing is that it's magically separated from the rest of the school, so it makes a nice place to meet."
"At least until the term starts," Qinq put in, "and couples come here to kiss. Come on, the others are waiting."
It seemed like, during the time of their conversation, the other loopers had gathered in the Blue. There was a group ahead, gathering around the base of the largest of the blue trees, and they already had a fire going. As Suria approached, the whole thing seemed much less like an interview: the other loopers were laughing, eating, and drinking.
When she arrived, at first no one seemed to pay much attention to her, so Suria took the opportunity to get a good look at the group. There were students from every nation in the world, it seemed like, though they were all within a few years of her age. Many were wearing Darkmoon robes, but she also saw a wide variety of other clothing, similar only in looking very expensive.
She recognized one of them: Wynchard Odinel looked as commanding as before, standing with his hand on the hilt of his sword. There was a lean woman beside him, tanned skin and slitted blue eyes marking her as from the Shantic States. She wore a body-fitting uniform and a sour expression, and she was the first to notice Suria with a piercing gaze.
Pretending not to notice, Suria looked on. There was a man who looked local, with the same grayish skin and hair as Rije, but he could hardly have looked more different otherwise: the man wore three different layers of elaborate gold robes and had carefully shaped his hair. It also seemed like he was drunk, which was impressive given how little time it had been since the loop began.
Once Suria got over her initial shock at the group, she realized that most of the others were standing or sitting in clusters. There was a group that, though their appearances were diverse, all wore the sashes of the Republic of Junn. Across from them, half a dozen clustered together and, based on their hats and other accessories, she guessed they were from the Akrashic Union. She also spotted a man who looked similar to Maut-mai, with the same eye makeup even though his wrap bared a far more muscular frame.
Not everyone was grouped in national factions: for example, there was a lean Shantic man on the opposite side of the group from the woman. An absolutely huge man with necklaces of beads towered over everyone on the far side. A woman with silver hair sat near the local man, laughing and apparently matching him drink for drink. And there was a thin man actually crouched in the trees watching everyone else suspiciously.
"Hey, there she is!" The local-looking man waved a bottle of alcohol at Suria. "I thought we'd found all of us, but the loop has surprises for us yet!"
That triggered a shift: anyone who wasn't looking at her before definitely was now. She hated the weight of their eyes, some of them predatory, others cheerful, and the worst filled with intense purpose. Maybe she should have analyzed them all then, or stared back, but Suria shrank back from the group.
"No need for that," the drunk man said. He slouched to his feet with surprising coordination and came over to pat her on the shoulder. "I'm Gerial Negnan, pleased to make your acquaintance."
"Sur..." Her introduction choked itself out, but she gathered herself and turned to face the group. "Suria Northbrook. I was trapped in Convocation Hall until last loop."
"Exactly what is going on in there?" the Shantic woman demanded.
"Easy now." Gerial waved her question away and entirely ignored her glare to focus on Suria. "Listen, half of these people are going to tell you that we're here for some great purpose, but we're definitely not. No matter what we do, the loop doesn't stop. So when you decide to relax and start having fun... I can arrange just about anything you want."
"Like what?" Suria asked, despite her better judgment.
"My estate has the finest wine collection in the city, and if you want something harder, I'm sure I can arrange a deal from the leyline docks. I've been getting to know the drug dealers there and I've only gotten stabbed once or twice! Anyway, I host the best gatherings in the city."
"Bullshit!" the woman with silver hair called. "Don't listen to him, Suria. Once I get set up this loop, mine will be much better. Just ask for Nastoora."
"She's sadly delusional." Gerial said as he slung an arm around Suria's shoulders. "The best part of being in a loop is when you can predict the ending time. You can drink yourself into oblivion and skip the hangover."
Suria frowned, immediately thinking about how her exhaustion had carried over between the early cycles. "Is that true?" she asked, directing her question toward Wynchard. "It seems to me that some of our state carries over."
"Gerial is trying to pull a prank," Wynchard told her solemnly, ignoring boos from Gerial, Nastoora, and a few others. "Physical conditions like death or injuries reset, but anything that affects your mind will persist. We haven't found the exact boundaries."
"You're no fun." Gerial sighed and pulled away from Suria, to her relief. "I have to say, however, that as an expert in hangovers I do think you get over them faster. But in all seriousness, don't be too reckless, because the loop sometimes extends itself for no reason. A few cycles back, I absolutely wrecked my reputation and then had to live with it for days."
"This is a waste of time," the Shantic woman snapped, and Wynchard put a hand on her shoulder.
"We should introduce you," he told Suria. "This is Adwyrma, and you've already met Gerial, so let's go around the circle..."
Wynchard threw a dizzying list of names at her and Suria scrabbled to memorize as many as possible. She confirmed, both from the names and the way the group came together, that there seemed to be several major factions. The group from the Akrashic Union seemed to be united, while the Republic of Junn loopers mostly stuck together, except Jeilin who stood at a distance. There were a few others who didn't seem to be part of a faction, like Qinq and the man who looked like he was from Febek-Rai. The huge man was named Moiunun and the one in the trees was called Tabimu, though he didn't introduce himself.
If the group had leaders, they were Wynchard, Adwyrma, and Gerial. Each of them behaved like they could stand alone, in any case, and Suria thought she saw how the currents of the factions flowed around them.
"There are also three loopers from Endelyth," Wynchard concluded. "They don't usually cooperate with us and they spend most of their time in the city."
"They're figuring out how to work the criminal groups," Adwyrma said with a sour expression. "We can't underestimate them."
"We shouldn't assume they're enemies, either. They just have their own objectives and beliefs about all of this. I was able to work with them when we made an attempt at the Sequential Library and they seemed nice enough."
"You think you're working with everyone."
All of this was more than Suria wanted to deal with, so she took a deep breath and tried to focus on the important things despite everyone looking at her. What mattered most was understanding why the loop existed, and even if the others seemed uncertain, they knew a lot more than she did.
"So what do you know?" Suria asked. "Does anyone understand why this is happening? Or at least have greater knowledge of time magic?"
"That's what we want to ask you," Adwyrma said sharply. "Just what's going on inside Convocation Hall that raises the wards?"
"It's the one area I haven't been able to explore," Wynchard said, turning to Suria and seeming to forget about his antagonism with Adwyrma. "Even if you haven't seen very much, the slightest detail could be more important than you know. Something is deeply wrong at Darkmoon."
"We'll start there, but if you can open the wards from within, you can let us inside. Next loop, you sh-"
Jeilin hadn't said much up to that point, but coughed to interrupt. "That would be a worth a favor, wouldn't it?" he asked. "Don't take advantage of her before we've introduced our system."
"Yes, let's talk about that!" Gerial said cheerfully. "Wealth is irrelevant now, but we have a lov-"
"Not yet." Wynchard raised a hand and actually made Gerial cut off before he glared over the group. "You're all free to keep your own counsel, but I believe we're here for a greater purpose. Before anything else, we should talk about the fundamentals. No favors or deals. You share what you know and we'll share what we've gathered... agreed?"
Most of the others nodded with varying degrees of grumbling. Suria instinctively nodded and agreed along with them, even as she decided that she was going to lie. Telling them about everything she'd seen would be a mistake... the problem was, they clearly wanted her to let them into the hall and refusing would look suspicious. She could hide her encounter with the professors in the basement, but Lirngelf left evidence of his existence and that was the detail she was most fearful of having consequences.
"I was supposed to be a new student," Suria began unsteadily, "so I needed to go to Convocation Hall early for an interview..."
She told them an abbreviated version of what had happened to her, focusing on her attempts to get out and not even mentioning other details. Overall, she thought she gave the impression that she was being honest without being thorough. With luck that would let her hide information until she understood who the other loopers were, then reveal more without suspicion.
"Thank you," Wynchard said once she was finished, and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You were placed in a terrible position, but I hope, with your help, we will be able to uncover the truth of all this."
"You said you would tell me what you've figured out?" Suria asked.
"Easy for him to say," Gerial said with a smirk. "See, the honest truth is that we know jack shit, so there's not much to tell."
"Flatly untrue." Wynchard glowered at Gerial before he stepped back and folded his arms. "None of us are experts in time magic, and as you were wise enough to discern, clumsily researching it would attract attention. But at the end of a previous cycle we attempted a journey deep into the Sequential Library to gain information without alerting the librarians."
"And ran back out with their tails between their legs."
"We might not have, if you'd joined us." Wynchard shook his head and then looked back to Suria. "We found a record of all previous time loops, which revealed something important: there has never been a naturally-occurring time loop. Every known example was created by mages, usually at great cost. So we can be sure that there is a purpose to all this, even if the purpose is not clear to us."
"So he says." This time the person interrupting was one of the Akrashic men, one Suria hadn't noted before then. She thought his name was Herriot but she wasn't confident. "But the book disappeared at the end of the cycle, so we have to take his word on it."
"I read it," Adwyrma said sharply. "He's not lying."
This seemed to be an old sore spot that triggered halfhearted arguments, so Suria shifted back and analyzed the dynamics. They might have repeated tries, and their resources would restore themselves at the start of a loop, but anything that was difficult to acquire would be lost. She got the sense that the different factions only sometimes worked together, despite Wynchard's best efforts.
"There's something else we've figured out." Jeilin came to stand beside her and spoke in a lower voice. "Everyone in the loop has been a student who was in Darmkael at the start. Many of us have gone home or traveled around and we haven't found one exception."
"So we can travel anywhere?" Suria asked. "Within the time limit of the loop, I mean."
"Oh, definitely. Gerial once bought a whole leyline ferry and just went across the world on a lark. I don't understand the magical mechanics of it, but the scope is the entire world. I think it's our minds being sent back in time, but information on the details is very scarce."
"Are there any patterns in the people in the loop?"
"That's a tougher question." Jeilin fidgeted with his glasses as he considered. "There are people from across the world, but it's not one from every nation, or proportional to the student population, or any obvious statistical correlation. Someone noticed that we were scattered widely across the city, and was trying to argue our starting positions formed a big glyph, but the pattern didn't really work."
"What about you?" Suria asked. Jeilin had seemed one of the most reasonable so far, so she smiled at him, hoping she was making a good impression.
"Me? I'm just trying to gather information before jumping to conclusions. I arrived on campus early and got everything sorted away, so I was looking forward to some quiet days before the term started. That hasn't exactly gone according to plan."
Before they could speak more, Wynchard cut off the arguments with a wave of his hand and turned back to Suria.
"Enough chatter," he said, "we still haven't told you everything. The question is why we were chosen for this spell."
"And why anyone would choose a bunch of random students," Gerial called out.
"I believe we were chosen for our potential, not our current strength," Wynchard insisted. "We've seen that the loop expands, giving us increasing amounts of time for study and training. So far, nothing critical has happened in the loop, but there are many ominous events approaching Darkmoon University. I believe that when they arrive, we need to be ready."
"He doesn't have proof of any of that," Gerial said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "If someone wanted us to accomplish something with the time loop, they should have told us. I think it's gotta be an accident. There's a professor or another full mage who was the actual target, and they're actually going to accomplish something. We just got swept up in it by random chance."
"He doesn't have proof of that either," Jeilin pointed out. "We don't know enough about time magic to say if that's possible."
"What do you think?" Suria asked him.
"Well... I can't help but notice that Professor Zaasif Drazen was on campus prior to the day this started, then he simply disappeared." Jeilin took off his glasses to clean them carefully. "The story about him departing is clearly false, and it's actually changed sometimes between loops. Maybe he was the one chosen by the loop, but there's also an argument that he was murdered. Something important clearly happened on the day the loop started, so the loop might exist to untangle that mystery."
This set off a chain of others giving their own theories, ranging from a magical attack from another nation to an act of the gods. Only Adwyrma didn't give an answer, simply folding her arms and scowling when Suria looked to her. A few tried to recruit Suria to their side, but she only shook her head, since she didn't have enough information to say for certain.
"Mark my words," Wynchard declared, "we'll see serious consequences once the loop extends far enough. Even the public schedule of conferences has key political events taking place here. And there are rumors of anti-mage sentiment across Taedria, even mages being torn apart by mobs. Something is coming and we need to be ready."
-
This is the first half of an extra long chapter. Given the choice between running through my backlog too fast or splitting double-length chapters, I went with the latter, because I think that will lead to the most reliable posting in the long term. I will never be as fast as some, but I hope to be highly reliable after you've all placed trust in me and invested in this story.
As thanks to all the new patrons who have joined for this story, you will be getting the second half of this chapter on Thursday (and then another on Friday). This will put patrons an additional chapter ahead of RoyalRoad.
Speaking of RR, Throne of Time has done remarkably well there:
That... almost just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like it can't continue. I want to give my thanks again to everyone who has left reviews or otherwise contributed to the algorithm - thank you all so much! I hope you continue to enjoy the story as it proceeds. ^-^