The wagon rocked steadily beneath me as I shifted my weight against the crates, trying to find a position that didn't press a wooden corner directly into my spine, which was a battle I had been losing for the past ten minutes.
"You really did enjoy that conversation, didn’t you?" Azure said. "You keep replaying it."
"I'm reviewing it for tactical information," I replied mentally.
"You've reviewed it five times."
"There were a lot of details."
"The detail you keep returning to is the part where she looked at you."
I pressed two fingers against my temple. "That's not what I'm doing."
“You replayed the exact moment her eyes moved from the road to your face at least three times.”
"I was checking her expression for signs of suspicion."
"Yeah, and that takes five replays."
"Well, the tactical review is over."
"Of course," Azure agreed, and I could hear the smile in it.
I didn’t respond, my focus shifted to my inner world.
All three of my suns had tucked themselves under the canopy of the Genesis Seed the moment I had entered this body, and the suppression was thorough enough that even a Skybound or a senior Lightweaver sweeping the road would think I was just an ordinary mortal.
"Master," Azure said. "We're being followed."
His warning didn’t surprise me.
This was something I remembered from a previous loop.
There were six of them, positioned in the tree line roughly two hundred yards back on the eastern side of the road, and they were pacing the caravan at a distance that maintained coverage without closing the gap.
Radiant-Touched.
I had learned about them from Lady Laelyn while sitting in this carriage in a different loop.
Radiant-touched were similar to Sun-touched, except where Sun-touched were individuals broken and remade by Red Sun energy, radiant-touched were people who had been affected by the Blue Sun’s light. Some of them would go on to become full fledged Lightweavers, but most would remain as low level guards and assassins at a rank not quite Rank 1 but close.
“If Kal was following his checklist, then three days ago, he would have had a formation seeded into the road,” I said to Azure. “It would be enough to disrupt their coordination by a few seconds, enough for Beric to kill them.”
“Except,” Azure said, “Beric took a different route because of you.”
He was right.
Beric’s paranoia wouldn’t sit well with allowing a stranger into their wagon and not changing routes. This meant that the road had no formation to save them, if I didn’t want Lady Laelyn to die here, then I would need to act, but unlike last time, I didn’t want this to drag out into a drawn-out battle.
So, I placed my right hand just above my knee at angle hidden by the crates so that none of the guards would be able to see it, and I began to paint on the air.
The being formed a few seconds later.
It was a small bird, compact and rounded, with wings that folded in close to a body no larger than my fist. Despite it being Rank 2, its aura was completely suppressed to avoid alerting anyone. It hopped to the edge of my finger, and then it was gone into the wind.
To the six Radiant-Touched waiting in that tree line, it would appear as a small bird investigating the hedgerow. Right up until it didn't appear as anything at all anymore, because at Rank 2, a single Lightweaver creation against six practitioners who were focused on maintaining a coordinated strike pattern and watching the road was a death sentence.
I had embedded enough blue sun energy into it to fulfil another task, and that task was to hunt the five Rank 1 Lightweavers that were probably close by making their way to the inn. Last time, I had fought them off whilst pretending to be a powerful Rank 2 Skybound. This time I didn’t even need to personally act.
With that done, I stared at the canvas wall and let my thoughts move ahead of the wagon, past the ambush site, past the Crossroads Inn that Beric would want to stop at before sundown, all the way to the Rimaris estate and the problem that was Lord Kaeven.
In the previous loops, Kal had killed him.
If Kal was alive and functional in this loop, Kaeven was already a solved problem, and I had nothing to worry about. But if Kal was incapacitated or not alive, then walking Lady Laelyn through those estate gates was walking her directly into a trap that would kill her.
After all, Lord Kaeven was a Rank 6 cultivator.
Even though I was capable of things that shouldn't be possible at my level, a straight fight against a Rank 6 in his own home was not something I could win. Perhaps I would be able to escape, but I definitely wouldn’t be able to protect the others. And even though I was stuck in a time loop, I couldn’t just leave Lady Laelyn to a violent fate like that.
“Master,” Azure called out. “The estate isn’t the only place you can confirm whether Kal is active in this loop.”
I nodded, already knowing what he was referring to.
The Blue Sun Academy sat at the end of this road regardless of whether we stopped at the estate. Kal would be there, attending to his standing list of obligations. If I arrived at the Academy and found a tall, white-haired Rank 8, then I would know the loop was intact and we had a chance to save the world this loop.
“Master, how will you keep Beric moving and avoid the two stops between here and those gates?”
"I know how men like Beric think," I replied. "He's good at his job. He's been doing it long enough that his instincts are reliable. And a man whose instincts are reliable will push through fatigue and ignore comfort if those instincts are telling him the road isn't safe yet."
What I painted next was smaller than the bird, and there were four of them, each no larger than a sparrow, with auras compressed down to the barest flicker that would register to Beric's experienced spiritual sense as something not quite right, something that justified continuing past the next inn and then the one after that.
I sent them off through the gap one after another and then settled back against the crates.
***
The first time it happened, we were approaching a crossroads with a large inn set back from the road on the eastern side, Beric had already begun to slow the formation toward it, then he stopped, his hand coming up in a closed fist which made everyone freeze.
"Something in the eastern field," he called back to the guards. "Spread out. Watch the windows."
As expected, the scouts found nothing, Beric eventually waved them back in.
From the look in his eyes, I could tell that he didn't trust the road well enough to stop yet.
Lady Laelyn appeared briefly at the wagon's rear canvas to ask what had happened, and Beric told her a possible scouting formation had been sighted and that they would press on to the next waypoint.
The second time was at dusk, when we were approaching a traveler's rest house built into the side of a long stone escarpment, and Beric was already scanning the roofline when one of the scouts called out something moving in the orchard to the west.
"Beric, the horses have been walking since morning,” Lady Laelyn said. “They need to rest.”
"Something's following us, my lady,” Beric replied. “We can’t afford to stop, we push on."
The third time was past full dark, when the road had narrowed and the tree coverage on both sides had thickened enough that stopping would have meant posting watches in directions that couldn't be properly covered, and a faint presence at the edge of spiritual range was enough to make Beric choose the open road over the covered camp.
He gave me a look as if this was somehow all my fault.
He didn’t know how right he was.
I did feel bad about what I was doing.
The whole caravan was on constant high alert because of me.
But I was certain that Beric would agree that a little stress is better than the death that waited for them in the Rimaris Estate.
***
Early next morning, the Academy gates came into view around a bend in the road, and just like last time, they were flanked by Lightweavers in ceremonial attire.
The sight gave me some relief, somehow, we had made it without encountering any trouble, but I’m sure my companions would disagree.
I climbed down from the back of the wagon and moved without hurrying to stand with the other servants and guards, finding a position near the rear of the group where I would be visible enough to avoid suspicion and unremarkable enough to be forgotten.
Lady Laelyn had stepped forward toward the gates, Beric flanking her with his hand off his sword for the first time all day, and I watched from behind the group as a figure emerged from between the open gates.
It was Elder Sorrin.
I had a complicated relationship with Elder Sorrin.
In a similar loop to this one, the man had looked at me, declared me unholy, and then watched with visible shock as the Cerulean Orb told him something entirely different, so he had forced me to compete for the Saint position.
I had no intention of letting that happen again so I let a whiff of the blue sun energy roll off my body. It was at the level one would expect from a servant, just enough to not be declared unholy and turned away from the academy, but not enough to draw any attention.
I did not want to be interesting, and I definitely did not want the Cerulean Orb anywhere near my hand. All I wanted to do was find Kal, confirm he was alive and alright, and begin the conversation I had been preparing since before I left the cultivation world.
Everything else could wait.
A/N
Have a nice weekend everyone!