Chapter 43: Hats and Runebooks
After meeting with the professors, Suria realized that, if anything, she hadn't been paranoid enough. As the days passed before the term began, she used only the runic capacity exercises that she had demonstrably learned, though that was easier because she checked out The Measure of a Mage from the library. Of course doing her hourglass experiment was completely out of the question, since most people could only increase their runic capacity to a given point once.
She would just have to see how far hers could increase before classes began. A slightly higher runic capacity wouldn't help her at all if she made a mistake, given the mood on campus.
With Maut-mai gone, and so many other people officially strangers to her in this timeline, Suria found herself more lonely than expected. The worst of it was that Rije was alive for once, but she could never spend time with him, because the professors were sending him off on other assignments. She realized that it was possible that he might even be hunting people like her and told herself that she would keep him alive in another loop, under better circumstances.
Over the coming several days, especially in all the events surrounding the opening feast and the introduction to campus, Suria realized that everything had been shifted. The speeches took place in the Taedric Building, the Sequential Library opened at a different time, and new professors were in charge.
At first she thought it was just the ripple effects of the altered start of the loop, but so many of them didn't make sense that she realized the truth: the professors were intentionally changing things to catch out loopers. Someone who had gone to the same place a dozen times might ignore the announcements about a change and follow the routine, revealing their knowledge.
So far it didn't seem to be having an effect, or so she thought. Suria once spotted Qanti on campus and the two of them pretended that they didn't know one another, so the information must have spread. Hopefully that would be enough to keep the others safe, because Suria increasingly felt like it would take all her wits to keep herself alive.
When she couldn't train any longer, Suria took walks around campus, searching for loopers both ostensibly and in reality, albeit for different reasons. After that early gathering, she didn't encounter any other loopers celebrating ostentatiously, even when she checked in on the Blue.
She ran into plenty of other gatherings, however. Apparently the early days before the start of the term were viewed as days of revelry by many students and she'd never realized because she was inside reading. For the most part Suria found these unpleasant, in any timeline, so she avoided them.
One day, however, she ran across a rather strange gathering. Suria had been walking around the edge of campus and heard raucous shouting past the coliseum, a short distance into the forest. She almost considered ignoring them, but when she got closer, she saw a gathering of students in a clearing.
Analyzing the group, she saw no loopers among them, and few students she recognized. There was a curvaceous woman who was a haughty member of the Water Society, who Suria had never actually met. The most notable participant, if that was the right term, was a living statue in the center of the group.
The statue emerged from a pedestal, just a muscular torso with the features of a beast: a large jaw, horns, and claws instead of fingers. Yet it had a floppy hat on its head and it appeared to be chanting along with the students who danced and laughed around it. When someone threw a bottle of wine at the statue, it snatched it out of the air and pretended to drink, though the wine simply poured down the jaws because it had no throat.
"What is this?" Suria had to ask. She thought she might be ignored entirely, but a young woman near the exterior of the gathering, who seemed less inebriated than the others, turned to her.
"You've never seen the beer statue?" the woman asked. "Oh, I guess you're new?"
"Beer statue?"
"That's just a nickname," someone else objected. "Because if you give it a beer hat it will talk about types of beer."
"Sure," the woman said, "but it's not like it has an official name."
"I still don't understand what's going on," Suria said as she watched the statue encouraging another student to guzzle a bottle of wine.
"It's just one of the stranger statues on campus. Here, we'll show you..."
After some arguing amongst the group, since some were far drunker than others, someone climbed up on the pedestal and pulled off the statue's hat. It immediately stopped chanting and went still, its limbs sliding to its sides and its features going slack. Someone else tossed what looked like a helmet to the climbing student, who set it atop the statue.
In an instant its demeanor changed. "Unhand me!" it barked, shoving the student away. "What is this unauthorized gathering? Are all of you of age to be drinking?"
Everyone in the gathering found this hilarious and they began shouting different objections and questions, which the statue answered with stiff formality. As far as Suria could tell, it seemed to think that it was some kind of town guard.
"Surely they can't all be like this," Suria murmured as she watched the antics.
"No, just this one," a sober student told her. "Obviously the guard statues wouldn't have security flaws like this. I'm not sure they're even the same sort of thing, other than being statues."
"You know," a much drunker woman slurred, "you think Rhamsolk is one of them?"
"He just transmuted himself into living stone, didn't he?"
"So he says, but did anybody see him before? Think he's got a stone... you know..."
The conversation swung wildly after that and Suria just tried to grasp what she could. Despite their revelry, these students were mostly older and had more experience at Darkmoon University, so they knew significantly more than she did. Apparently the statues were divided between modern automatons with strictly regulated roles and older entities that were legacies of past sorcerers. That included this strange statue that responded to hats as well as another statue that even taught some low level classes.
No one had information about Professor Rhamsolk or his allegedly stone penis. Suria was disappointed about the former and indifferent to the latter.
Eventually the curvaceous woman used a spell to pull off the guard's helmet and others replaced it with some sort of silk cap. Whatever it was, it made the statue speak in a purring tone and dance in a way that might have been considered seductive, if it wasn't a large stone ogre. Deciding that she had interacted with these people enough, Suria chalked the incident up to another mystery of Darkmoon and left.
On her way back, Suria was startled by a figure in pink bouncing up beside her. Xuhriha should have made her relax, but instead Suria found herself tensing up, wondering if this could be a problem. She didn't think the professors were tracking her at all times, but couldn't be sure about that.
"Hello!" Xuhriha greeted, the most cheerful person Suria had seen that day but only half as cheerful as usual. "Have we met before?"
Stolen novel; please report.
"I don't believe so," Suria said. "I'm Suria Northbrook."
"Oh... I'm Xuhriha Alhras, but I guess I mistook you for someone else." For a moment Xuhriha's face fell, but she recovered quickly. "Well, maybe I'll see you around campus and we'll get to know each other better!"
"Sure." Suria watched the other woman leave and swallowed her sigh of relief. They were both first year students from opposite sides of the world, so there was no believable excuse for why they would know one another in this timeline. At least Xuhriha was cognizant of the danger and not taking any unnecessary risks. Even her bouncing was more constrained than normal.
After that Suria headed straight back to her room, ignoring all the finely dressed noblemen and noblewomen. For the most part, the gatherings were simply annoying, especially those in the Cerulean Sanctum. It was a small comfort that the building wasn't entirely the domain of the Water Society, as she'd feared at first. The Cerulean Sanctum contained the Conjuring department as well as the most expensive accommodations, which meant they appealed to nobility and the sort of students who joined the Water Society.
On some future loop, would she need to join it and learn more about the sniping and simpering nobles there? She hoped not. Some things were worse than being hunted by the professors.
~ ~ ~
Suria had hoped that the remaining time would happen without any incidents or gatherings, but that was not to be. On the sixth day of the loop she was called by Professor Gwaslos, which made her anxious until she realized that it was just to help with healing the victims of the accident in the city. This time Suria had much deeper mana reserves, though she still felt like a novice compared to the real healers.
She had hoped that she would be able to get closer to Professor Gwaslos, but the older woman was entirely busy managing the crisis. Her first concern seemed to be the lives around her, other than at one point where she advised Suria to keep her eyes open, in case the accident had been caused by loopers. Since it had happened on every single cycle, Suria wasn't concerned about that and just did her best to heal everyone she could.
Afterward she lay back in her too-soft bed, utterly drained of mana. Her plan for that afternoon had been to do more runic exercises, but that would probably be impossible in her present state. At least her room here had a lovely bath, so she wasn't still sweaty and grimy.
It was frustrating not being able to check out the exact books she wanted, which meant she needed to take walks or do other things when she needed a break from runic training. Suria reflected that her ideal study program would need more tasks that worked different parts of her mind - something to optimize in future, less fraught cycles.
Perhaps it was finally time to leave the university and conduct some other business. She had spent so little time out there, she would look convincingly unfamiliar if there was anyone monitoring her, and she had money from her stipend to spend.
Without anyone with her, Suria's trip was more efficient but less pleasant. She visited the Darmkael Mage Emporium and everything was still shockingly expensive, but she forced herself to spend some of her money on fine talismans of runic stone. All the money was going to disappear anyway, so she might as well test out the difference in the strength of her spells, and a poor student like her would believably want better talismans.
Since she still had some money remaining, Suria wandered on to Bub's Bobs to see what they had. As she had on the first loop, she found the store charming, even if she didn't need most of what it sold. When she purchased the stone runebook she'd noted before, it made the proprietor much more positively inclined toward her.
"Watch your step on the way out," Bub advised her at the counter. "The flagstones are uneven."
"I noticed that," Suria said politely. "Your shop seems so tidy, I was surprised."
"Oh, I'm getting them fixed as soon as I can." Bub ground his jaw sourly as he looked toward the door. "Some thieves set off an explosive, trying to disrupt my wards. They stole at least one box, and I'm taking inventory to figure out what else they might have snatched."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Suria wanted to ask him about exactly when the incident had happened, but being suspiciously interested in timing could be a fatal error. Perhaps she could figure out in future cycles and, if the theft took place within the loop, stop it from happening.
On her way back, Suria wanted to pore over her new runebook, since she'd never owned one before. Her instincts told her that flaunting an expensive item like that in the city would be potentially dangerous, though then again, perhaps showing herself to be a mage would actually discourage thieves. Since she couldn't necessarily back up that threat, if there were muggers using magic, Suria restrained herself.
She was surprised to pass Jeilin and Dsjaho-an in the mercantile district and noted that they were carrying boxes, so they must be taking additional precautions. They didn't so much as glance at her, which was probably safer, and they passed without acknowledging one another.
Back on campus, Suria became increasingly eager to look at her new runebook and practice inscribing glyphs. She'd seen how the stone pages moved in the mana of accomplished mages and wondered if that was something that happened naturally, or a skill she would need to develop. When she got back to her room, however, she found another letter waiting for her.
This one was from Professor Huen, urging her to come to her office at once. Suria decided that she had no excuse, since it was in the same building, so she left her new runebook in her satchel and went down to find the designated location.
She had actually never been to the professor's office before and only vaguely knew that it was on one of the lower levels of the Cerulean Sanctum. It occurred to her that there must be a Conjuring vault somewhere in the building as well - Suria hadn't heard even a rumor of it. Maybe with a department throne present no one would dream of trying to break in, unlike Zaasif Drazen and the Perception vault.
On the lower levels, the water had filtered out most of the sunlight. One wall of the corridor was a glass window, yet the water looked more like ink. Suria forced herself to walk steadily and not stare into the shifting depths, because it was all too easy to imagine phantoms emerging from the darkness. All she needed to do was walk to the end, where an ornate door awaited her.
"Come in." The voice emerged before Suria even raised her hand to knock, so she hesitantly entered the professor's office.
Immediately she was overwhelmed by the walls of books, and she wished that she had longer to examine them all carefully. There was a shelf filled with thick legal texts as well as another case that was entirely locked away within fine glass. More books were piled on the desk in the center, though they formed neat stacks with all the edges aligned. For the most part the office was surprisingly spare, except for the plush chair behind the desk.
It was the woman in that chair who commanded Suria's attention and prevented her from looking over the office more carefully. Professor Huen looked as refined as usual, waiting with her legs crossed and her hands clasped over her knee.
"Thank you for coming so quickly, Suria." The professor gestured to a simple chair opposite her. "Nulphus mentioned that you were nervous, so I wanted to reassure you that we've already taken care of two of the loopers."
"What? How?" Suria managed to restrain her reaction to just that, but she couldn't stop her response. Professor Huen regarded her thoughtfully, which was enough to make her sweat.
"If you were in our position, what would you expect a looper to do?"
"I, uh..." This was a test, even if unintentionally, and as she sat down Suria desperately sought an answer that wouldn't be too suspicious in either direction. "Professor Abouric mentioned that loopers will take advantage of random events, so I was thinking about gambling. The results of some events aren't likely to change, right? So you could look for people who win a disproportionate percentage of the time."
"That's an obvious possibility, but it's important to consider the obvious." Professor Huen nodded in marginal approval. "We're also performing more complex versions of the same strategy. Reasonable business affairs are built based on uncertainty, but if you have knowledge of what is going to happen, you might rearrange your affairs based on apparent coincidences with little margin for error."
"And this let you find someone?"
"Indeed, there was a young Vedrazan woman who engaged in a series of dealings that I calculated had less than 1% probability of occurring by chance. We sent Rije - that's the guard you helped save - to observe and, through some admirable investigation, he overheard her speaking about future events with another looper. I believe Nulphus told you that we won't act without evidence, but that was more than sufficient."
"I see." Suria had been prepared for the worst and kept her face in an uncertain expression. The fallen looper could be either Xuhriha or Nastoora, since they were the only Vedrazan loopers. She had just seen Xuhriha so recently, she wanted to believe her friend was fine... yet Suria had to suppress all those fears. "Did you just want to tell me, or... do you need me to do something like that?"
"Yes, we have another potential looper. My analysis also revealed a student who, though he has a reputation for profligacy, began taking more reckless actions several days ago. It's a mere discontinuity, within the range of natural variation, but unusual enough that I want to send you to check."
"Of course." Suria resisted the urge to lick her lips, which were oh so dry. "Who is it?"
"His name is Gerial Negnan. He's hosting a gathering tonight and we'd like to send you to infiltrate it."