«No, that doesn’t work for me at all,» Zorian sighed. «I have nothing against healers but that’s not the career I’m aiming for.»
«Yeah, I kind of figured,» Taiven said. «It really would be kind of a shame to let all that work you sank into spell formulas go to waste. I guess the spiders are still your best bet, huh?»
«Yeah,» agreed Zorian. «Although… to tell the truth, they have been dragging their many feet in regard to teaching me. Maybe if they thought I actually had valid alternatives to their help they’d hurry up a little? What was the healer’s name, anyway?»
Taiven narrowed her eyes. «You’ve been down there alone again?»
Uh oh.
«Maaaaaybe…»
She reached out across the table and cuffed him in the shoulder. It hurt.
«Zorian, you moron,» she complained. «I told you not to do these things alone! Even if you trust the freaky giant spiders that much — and I don’t really think you should — there are other things down there! Not matter how capable you are, it’s always smart to have another set of hands and eyes with you. Unless you think I couldn’t keep up with you?»
«I don’t think that at all,» Zorian said. «I just didn’t want to be a bother and…»
«I already said I don’t mind helping,» Taiven cut him off. «You can’t use that as an excuse.»
«…and the Aranea are kind of prejudiced against non-psychic people,» finished Zorian.
«Non-what?» asked Taiven incredulously.
«Psychic. People who are like me and them. I don’t quite have a comprehensive explanation what being psychic entails, but it seems to be some kind of instinctive affinity for mind magic. That’s where my empathy apparently comes from — the aranea claim it’s a weak form of mind reading, and that I could actually do more once they actually deign to teach me.»
Taiven seemed at a loss for words for a moment.
«You’re reading my mind?» she finally said. «I didn’t give you permission to do that!»
«I’m only getting vague impressions of your emotions, and not even that consistently,» said Zorian with a long suffering sigh. «Besides, that’s why I’m meeting with the aranea — to learn how to not do that unless I want to. How did you think empathy works, anyway?»
«I guess I didn’t,» admitted Taiven. «But we’re getting off track — why does me not being psychic matter to your new spidery friends?»
«How should I know? Prejudices rarely make much sense.»
«Well go ahead and ask them the next time you see them!» Taiven said. «Because if you can’t give me a proper answer the next time I ask, I’m going down there to ask them myself, with or without your permission. It’s total bullshit!»
Aside from his visit to the temple, none of the other future forecasters were in any way helpful to Zorian. A fair number of them didn’t even want to talk to him, and those that did hadn’t made long-term predictions and hadn’t noticed anything strange. Well, one of them did claim to have done so and found nothing of note, but he was an obvious fraud and spent most of the talk trying to get Zorian to part with his money in exchange for a ‘more detailed reading of the future’.
So Zorian turned to the matter of his classmates and the possibility that one of them was the third time traveler. Zorian didn’t think there was much chance of that, but better safe than sorry. Besides, it was a good way to look for clues as far as he was concerned, and he had been thinking of getting to know his classmates better anyway.
Including him, there were exactly 20 people in Zorian’s class — 12 girls and 8 boys. Of those, there were three people he was almost certain weren’t the third time traveler — Akoja, Benisek and Kael. The first two because he actually knew what their normal behavior and personality were before the time loop and had interacted extensively enough with the both of them in various restarts to judge them unchanged, and Kael because of the events that took place in the previous restart. Trying to write down everything he knew about the rest, he quickly found two classmates that were very suspicious: Tinami Aope and Estin Grier.
Noble House Aope had a very shady reputation. The House began its existence during the Witch Wars, when one of the major witch clans agreed to defect to the Ikosians’ side if they were given the status of a formal House in return. The Ikosians, ever pragmatic, agreed. No doubt they thought they could milk the renegades for their magical secrets and then quietly sideline them until they could be officially removed, but that never happened. Instead, the Aope rose through the ranks of the Ikosian political system, leaving a trail of broken rivals in their wake, until they eventually stood on top as one of the more prestigious Noble Houses in all Altazia. This extreme success wasn’t a result of just being very competent politicians, though — Aope were rumored to practice all sorts of dark, forbidden magic stemming from their witchy roots. Necromancy. Demon summoning. Mind magic.
Of course, this was all just a rumor. Certainly no one who valued their life and career would ever suggest that Tinami Aope, the first-born daughter of the current head of Aope household, was practicing forbidden magics. Perish the thought. And in fact, the girl was painfully shy and withdrawn and in general looked like she wouldn’t hurt a fly.
That didn’t prove anything, though. Beware of the quiet ones and all that. If there was one person in the class who had easy access to magics that could screw Zach over and hijack the time loop for their own ends, it was probably Tinami. Even better, her withdrawn nature would ensure that very few people knew her enough to realize she was acting strangely unless she did something totally crazy.
Estin Grier, the second suspect, was primarily suspicious because of where he came from. He and his family had immigrated to Altazia from Ulquaan Ibasa — the infamous Island of the Exiles. Since the island was populated mostly by mages exiled there in the wake of the Necromancer’s War, that made Estin the second person who could plausibly have access to forbidden magics without too much trouble.
Also, Zorian was fairly certain that the mages leading the invasion force came primarily from Ulquaan Ibasa. The island was one of the few places where one could find enough necromancers and war trolls to explain the numbers of them present at the invasion. It was also the last recorded home of Quatach-Ichl — the lich general that fought the Old Alliance in the Necromancer’s War and whose physical description matched almost exactly with the lich that had so thoroughly trounced Zach in that fateful battle where Zorian was dragged into the time loop.
Of course, those two were only the obvious suspects, and the third time traveler, if indeed present among his classmates, was no doubt far more cunningly hidden. Realizing he didn’t know enough about people in his class to really make a judgment, Zorian decided to seek the aid of the one person who could no doubt tell him something about everyone.
«Hello Benisek,» Zorian said, sitting next to the chubby, talkative boy. «Can I ask you to do me a favor?»
«Sure,» Benisek said. «What do you need?»
«I need basic information about everyone in our class. What’s the latest gossip about them and so forth.»
[Well, that is certainly an interesting turn of events,] the matriarch remarked. [A confirmation of the cut-off point in the time line and another clue as to the true nature of this time loop is far more than I had hoped for. I must admit I hadn’t actually expected you to find anything useful among human diviners, but there you go. I don’t suppose you have anything on your classmates yet?]