Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«So you are a time traveler, but you can only go one month into the past and only until one specific day,» said Kirielle carefully. Zorian nodded. She understood that a lot better than Zorian had thought she would. «And you don’t control any of it, except by deliberately killing yourself.»

«Yes,» Zorian confirmed.

«You are the lamest time traveler ever,» Kirielle opinionated.

And just like that the tension was broken.

It had been three days since he had told Kirielle and Kael about the time loop and he was honestly a little bit disappointed by their reactions. They both seemed to believe him, but neither was terribly affected. Both of them were still asking him questions about it whenever they could catch him alone, and he knew Kael was researching the topic in his free time, but they continued to go about their business as if nothing was wrong. They weren’t even giving him weird glances when they thought he wasn’t looking or anything!

«I told you already, I’ve only been in the time loop for little over a year,» Zorian told Kirielle. «I’m not even close to all-knowing and I can’t answer these questions you keep asking me.»

«I can’t believe you’ve been going to school all this time,» Kirielle grumbled. «I’d have quit after the second time.»

«You’d have ended up mind wiped or slaved to Zach in a heartbeat,» Zorian retorted. «There is a reason I’m doing this slowly and carefully.»

A gentle knock on his door stopped their argument short. Zorian was a bit paranoid about visitors ever since he had told Haslush about the invasion, and telling Kael and Kirielle about it only increased that. Even though he had told Kael and Kirielle not to spread the ‘festival invasion’ part of the revelation to other people, he could never be sure if they had listened to him. Especially not Kirielle. He kept expecting assassins to barge into the house any day now, but his paranoia had thankfully been groundless so far. Since only Kael knocked so lightly, Zorian had a pretty good idea who it was.

«Come in,» Zorian invited.

Instead of coming in, however, Kael remained standing in the doorway.

«We need to talk,» Kael said, a hint of nervousness in his voice. «Can you come into my room for a moment?»

«Is it about time travel?» Kirielle said excitedly.

Kael sighed. «Kirielle, I know you won’t like this, but can you stay in your room while I talk to your brother? It’s related to time travel, but it’s a bit… private.»

For a moment it looked like Kirielle was going to complain, but then she shot him a speculative look and nodded in assent. As he watched her leave back to her room, grumbling all the way, Zorian had to admit he was a little jealous of Kael’s ability to control Kirielle. She never listened to him when he tried that sort of thing.

Shrugging, Zorian followed Kael into his room, where the morlock boy promptly dragged a chest from under his bed and retrieved a mysterious black book with no title out of it.

«I’ve been looking into your… problem… the last few days,» Kael said. «I may have found something.»

«You did?» Zorian asked excitedly.

Kael opened the book he was carrying and leafed through for a few seconds before he found what he was looking for. He handed the open book to him and pointed at the page.

«Based on the chant you memorized from the lich, and everything else you told me, I think this is the most likely spell he used,» Kael said.

«Soul Meld,» Zorian read aloud. «Requires at least two targets. Causes target souls to merge and blend into one. Typically used as a component in more complicated rituals, which heavily modify the effects. If the spell is used in isolation, the resulting entity is virtually always rendered insane or otherwise defective from the stress of the merger. Commonly used in… creation of familiar bonds, and soul bonds in general…»

That definitely sounded like a likely candidate for the spell, but where on earth had Kael found this? Frowning, Zorian leafed through the rest of the book. It was full of soul magic spells, and much of it was written in several unknown scripts that Zorian couldn’t read. This… wasn’t the sort of thing you could find in the Academy library, least of all with just a student clearance.

Which meant this was probably Kael’s personal book.

«Kael… are you a necromancer?» asked Zorian carefully.

«A difficult question,» Kael answered after a short pause. «I do not enslave the dead, or curse people. There is more to soul magic than that, though.»

Well this was just great — he told his secret to one of the few people who could actually do something to put him down permanently. And he was scolding Kirielle about being reckless just a few minutes ago, too. He really was a giant idiot sometimes.

But hey, what’s done is done, and at least Kael didn’t seem very hostile at the moment. If anything, the other boy seemed to be more afraid of Zorian than the other way around.