“It is my great pleasure to introduce you to the newest addition to the Embers, Oren Lasker.” Senior Alero clapped his liver-spotted hands together, eliciting a light whisper from his wrinkled skin.
I took my cue and bowed.
The dozen students scattered throughout the small auditorium responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. After a few seconds, the light applause lapsed into an awkward silence.
This was the third time that day I had been forced to suffer through this performance of introducing myself to the class. The Academia Velassa functioned much differently than the philosophers in Odena with their rather anarchic approach to pedagogy. Here, they were strict on the rules and regulations, including elaborate rituals of etiquette that demanded I display myself before my peers like a horse at market.
“Who’s that?” called out a young man with a shock of black hair. While some of the other students were more difficult to match with what little information I had gathered, this one was obvious: Cano, a renowned loudmouth with middling talents.
Senior Alero leaned on his cane. Legend had it the kindly-looking old man had taught this Basic Theology class since before my father was born. Despite his timid appearance and stooped posture, he radiated the sort of assured ease one would expect from a monk.
“Oren Lasker,” he repeated with finality.
I smiled and nodded at my false name. Silence fell over the auditorium as if they were expecting something from me. Not interested. I started forward, meaning to take a seat towards the back of the auditorium.
Senior Alero cleared his throat. “Would you mind telling us what inspired you to become an Ember, Oren?”
I settled back into my former position and cleared my throat. To my relief, the slight country accent I had been practicing slipped out as naturally as I could hope for. “After I heard about the Battle for Odena, I realized it was the duty of all capable citizens to defend the Civilized Lands. If something so terrible can happen in a place like that, what chance do people like my family have out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Well,” said Alero, “of course, I hope you understand the difference between a Magister and a guardsman. Hopefully, in this classroom, I will have the privilege of educating you regarding the divine duties and honors associated with becoming a full-fledged Magister. Go on, then.”
I nodded again, resisting the urge to reverse time and attempt another of the little speeches I had spent the past two weeks rehearsing. No further interruptions stopped me from taking a seat at the back of the class.
The room was set up almost like a small theater, with tiered rows of seats looking down on the stage. Each aisle consisted of several uncomfortable stools spaced out along the length of a dark wooden counter. I muttered an apology to a pair of students as I squeezed past them and settled into an isolated corner.
A moment later, Senior Alero launched into the beginning of the day’s lesson.
That could have gone worse, I told myself.
Even if it stung my pride a bit, coming across as a naive country boy suited my disguise just fine. Senior Alero and the other instructors had honored my wishes not to make my alleged connection with Leader Amadeus public, but several students would have had the means to investigate the newest addition to the Embers. Especially one that appeared in the middle of the first year, a couple weeks after the Calamity at Odena.
Eventually, everyone would come to learn the truth behind Oren Lasker: an idealistic kid admitted to the class as a favor to the reigning Head of the Magistrate. No one special.
For the next six months, I would attend my lessons and perform the minimum expected of me, until it was time for Amadeus to uphold his end of our oath. Once my mother was freed, this farce could finally come to an end.
During my time as a fledgling philosopher, I had invested so much energy in coming across as flawless, all for nothing. At best, it drew unwelcome attention my way--the haughty kid who narrowly avoided every opportunity to be humbled.
Not to mention how frivolous my use of magic had been prior to learning that various methods of detection existed. Archon Vasely had allowed an entire demonic invasion to manifest beneath his nose; in Velassa, the looming edifice of the Panopticon served as a reminder that Nony and his minions were always watching. I needed to be careful, and if I was forced to act, no traces of magic could lead back to me.
I listened to Senior Alero’s dull lesson until I was sure I already knew everything he was talking about. As expected, Basic Theology focused on the main religious text of the Velassan religion, known as the Empyreus.
Unlike some of the other volumes of the Words of Paradise, it was relatively straightforward, detailing the changes Archon Nony’s existence brought to the world and outlining his divine philosophies. While I was no scholar on the subject, I knew enough to comfortably let my mind drift away.
My breathing slipped into a familiar rhythm, muscles relaxing as I settled into a mental trance. Inside my mind’s eye, angles and bits of architecture fitted together into an intricate puzzle, reconstructing my memory palace. A moment later, I stood in one of the imaginary hallways of my old family manor. Not an exact replica, but close.
Back when I was in Odena, my father’s study had functioned as a portal into the land of Desolada. Brother Augur taught me how to open my mind’s eye, but that was only the first step. I still had no idea what Desolada itself really was--an abstraction, a metaphysical space, a scar in the higher dimensions--but it maintained a tenuous relationship with reality as I knew it. Both separate, and connected.
My first time entering Desolada required the use of mesfera tea, a hallucinogen that helped my mind pierce the veil between reality and the realm of the Goetia. After that, especially as Astaroth’s attempts to fuse the two progressed, bridging the gap had felt as natural as breathing.
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Fortunately, I could now explore my memory palace without any risk of stumbling into Desolada. Few places were as well-sealed against demonic influence as the city of Velassa. Even with a mind-altering substance to distort my thoughts, I doubted I would be able to form much of a connection.
Once I realized that Amadeus and his Magisters weren’t capable of detecting evidence of the mental exercise, I had spent much of the past two weeks in the city exploring my memory palace. It was a poor replacement for being able to directly train my time and void magic, but at least I could be productive during such a ridiculous class.
There was no real reason to walk through the memory palace. The distances were made up, the surroundings malleable to my will, but for some reason, walking felt better. The more I immersed myself in the environment, the more real it seemed. As if none of the insanity over the past year had ever happened, and I was just wandering through my home after an afternoon lesson.
I made my way to the atrium in the center of the manor, my mind blissfully free of doubt.
The open room bore the unmistakable marks of my mother’s influence, particularly the shallow central pool lined with a rainbow assortment of vibrant flowers. I had made the deliberate choice of altering the designs of the original murals painted on the walls; they were too intricate, and I had never paid enough attention to easily replicate the finer details. In their place were images from my memories--Brother Augur standing beside his little coursing river, the look on Champion Jokul’s face when he realized he was about to die, and a dozen other significant scenes.
I sat on one of the simple wooden chairs beside the pool and focused on the real reason I had come here. A pair of orbs, one white and one silver, hovered in the air just outside of my reach. They were identical in size, as large as a man’s head, and didn’t quite touch one another. The manifestation of my two forms of magic.
In the past, I had vaguely visualized the orbs as hovering in the dark recesses of my mind. Placing them as interactable objects within my memory palace made no real difference that I had been able to notice, but there was plenty of room to experiment.
Once I had traveled far enough from Odena, the orbs had stabilized enough to notice the obvious changes they had undergone. While they had only grown slightly in size, their density had improved tremendously; if they had seemed like shaped water before, they now seemed more like ice, brittle but solid.
A wild grin slipped across my face as I considered what that meant, exactly.
Over the past year, I had often trained my time magic like a muscle, depleting my energy stores and waiting for it to return incrementally larger than before. This improved what I referred to in my notes as the duration of the loop--how long I could spend within an isolated temporal instance. A second gained here, a second there, eventually adding up to a significant increase.
Yet it had done nothing for the overall length of the loop.
Before the Calamity at Odena, I had been able to reverse time for up to an hour, and could repeat that loop for a touch over four hours. Now, I could repeat the loop for five hours and three minutes, which was spectacular, but paled in comparison to the real benefit.
Somehow, I had bypassed the one-hour restriction on length. In fact, it had doubled, which was a tremendous improvement and a massive disappointment all in one.
My very being had nearly merged with Desolada. Brother Augur may well have been the most powerful user of temporal magic in existence, and I had witnessed him create and manipulate workings far beyond my own capabilities. All of that insight and unique experience allowed me to break through that bottleneck. And still, it wasn’t nearly enough.
My goal was to reverse time to be able to save my father. If I did that, who knew what else I could change. I could join up with Brother Augur. Receive some real answers, change the future timeline so that so much misery could be avoided. Every second that ticked by brought me further away from realizing that dream.
What would I have to do to reverse an entire year and counting? How could I even consciously improve the density of my magic, assuming that was the aspect that allowed me to go back further in time? Questions I kept asking myself, as if I expected an answer.
I reached out to touch the white orb of void magic, pausing just before I made contact. Another bundle of anomalies, though I had managed to reason my way through one particular mystery.
Its size and density had increased along with my time magic, which seemed like a curious phenomenon at first. Why had it matched the other orb’s growth so precisely?
Perhaps the insights I gained from my experience in Odena had been split between the two, but that didn’t seem quite right. It was possible, but I thought it was more likely that my void magic scaled with my time magic.
As one of the Goetia, Lord Paimon’s understanding of the void far exceeded anything I was capable of comprehending. What little knowledge I had regarding his domain had been directly siphoned away from his Mind. None of it was a result of my own cognitive abilities.
Sensi had explained to me that when an Echo is created, the knowledge imparted onto them would be stripped from the being conferring its magical insight. Even if that was the case, what I knew was only a sliver of the void’s potential. Perhaps I was simply greedy, but there seemed to be no real reason that Paimon could not have given me more. Either he was a miser, or he couldn’t force more information into my mind than I could handle.
The orbs were a convenient representation of my magic, but I had to be careful not to rely on simple heuristics. Obsessing over visual cues like size and density might narrow my way of thinking too much. I had decided to focus more on training my mind in general instead of beating my head against concepts beyond my current level.
The problem, after all, was not that I had not been exposed to enough monumental truths. The problem was that I was too stupid to grasp any of them. It was like trying to read a book in an unknown language; no matter the wisdom contained within, it meant nothing to me if I couldn’t comprehend it. Or, better yet, it was like trying to pour an ocean into a bottle--once it filled up to capacity, the rest would just overflow as waste. I needed a better container.
That led to the reason I included the orbs in this room. I turned my attention to the closest mural, which depicted Paimon the first time I had encountered him. The giant humanoid stood out against the white wall, and a black sun blazed between the racks of its antlers. The mural shifted under the weight of my focus, becoming more real, more true to my recollection of this particular event.
Time to---
“Are you paying attention, Mister Lasker?”
I blinked in confusion at the unexpected voice. My memory palace dissolved around me, and I opened my eyes back into the real world.
Ignoring the wave of disorientation from the sudden shift in my surroundings, I shouted back, “Yes, Senior Alero!”
The elderly instructor leaned against his cane. “Would you mind sharing your thoughts on the subject, then?”
I once more suppressed the urge to reverse time and save myself a bit of embarrassment. While I had not completely tuned out the lecture, it had been reduced to a bit of monotonous gibberish, in one ear and out the other. After I sat there for several seconds trying to recall anything that might clue me in to the topic, one of my fellow students came to my rescue.
“The Council of Uzara,” muttered a young woman, loud enough for me to hear. One of the students in my aisle.
Resisting the urge to glance her way, I cleared my throat. “The Council of Uzara is a heretical conspiracy, disproven centuries ago. Some disgraced historians claimed that there was an argument among the Archons when the eleven texts were combined to form the Words of Paradise. False prophets wanted their own lies recorded right along with the divine teachings. Nothing more than an attempt from the Goetia to corrupt the Words.”
“A fine enough answer,” said Senior Alero. “Do remember to thank your fellow student for her assistance. After the lecture, Mister Lasker.”