Mirian presented her clay cube to the class for the third time. By now, she’d condensed her speech considerably, and had a good answer to all of Professor Torres’s questions. She also wasn’t particularly worried about what her peers would think of her because they’d all be dead within the month. It was a morbid thought, but also, she still wasn’t sure what she could do to change that.
After the bored silence of the class and the “Good, you pass,” from Torres, Mirian moved closer to her professor so she could talk to her while the next student was setting up her project. “Professor, I know the clay cube is not my best work. However, I ran out of money, and only just got the letter of credit from my parents to get more. May I be excused to go make a serious project? I’m planning on taking your 426 class next quarter, and I’d like to start on that.”
Torres frowned. “I’d like you to see the critique of your peers’ projects. Let’s talk after class.”
Mirian relented and sat back down. What she really wanted was Torres to comment on her spellrod design. That would have happened eventually during the mid-quarter presentations that had been scheduled, but then Akana Praediar had decided everyone in Torrviol must die, ruining her homework assignment.
She had to find humor in it, Mirian realized, or the horror would overwhelm her.
So she completely ignored the presentation and started on her spellrod design. The class was nearly two hours, so it gave her plenty of time to recreate what she remembered from scratch. She’d spent whole days slaving away at the design, so it was burned into her mind. A few of the mana-flow transformations she’d forgotten, but she could do the math in her head so she just calculated the numbers right there, labeling the diagram. As always, she put her artistic flair on the design. When it came to the combat-mode, she hesitated. Before, she’d only had two spells, the force shield and the blades, but she needed more than that. Also, she now knew the spies had wands of lightning, so she needed a grounding spell. She frowned. Her rod was based around glyphs that produced and manipulated kinetic and arcane energy. If she wanted a bunch of spells using electromagnetism, she would need to change the design from the ground up. She ended up just copying the exact design she’d used last month (Gods, was it ever not going to be the month of Solem again?) and started sketching out concepts for a different rod on the next page.
By then, presentations were over. She patiently waited for two students to finish their conversation with Torres about their ‘protective talisman’ that couldn’t protect against an angry toddler and had more silver filigree than a jeweler’s shop.
“Ah, Mirian, right?”
She launched right into her planned speech: “Yes, professor. As I was saying, I’d heard from another student you were planning on having students do a spellrod project in Artifice Design 426, and was wondering if I could get early permission to use the Academy facilities. I was also looking to get feedback on my design.”
Professor Torres’s composure was always calm, but her eyes had narrowed slightly. “Interesting. May I see your design?”
Mirian showed her. Torres asked her several questions about the methodology, where she’d gotten the ideas from, and about the mechanics of the rotating cylinders.
“Are you combat certified?” she asked.
Mirian sighed. “No.”
“Then you know what I’m about to say,” she said, and pointed at the top portion of the scepter. Mirian hadn’t explained that part, but anyone who knew glyphs could easily figure out what that part did.
“Yeah,” Mirian said. “I can, uh, change that part. Well, I could also try to get combat certified in the next few weeks.”
“Either would suffice,” Torres said. “My next question is why you think I’m teaching Artifice Design 426 next quarter.”
Mirian frowned. “I, uh… heard…?”
“From who?”
“Another student. I don’t remember his name.”
“How convenient,” Torres said, and Mirian realized she’d screwed up somehow. “Professor Song Jei is scheduled to teach that class.”
“Professor Jei!” Mirian said, brightening. Then, “Wait. She is?” It was still the first day. There was no way stopping the spy had changed who was teaching the courses that fast. Unless… unless Professor Jei had always been originally intended to teach the course, but something happened that meant Torres took over the class prior to registration. What happened to Professor Jei, anyways? Mirian had assumed the Academy just let her focus everything on the big secret project she wouldn’t talk about. She thought back to the evacuation of Torrviol. Had Professor Jei been a part of the professor’s company that had protected the column? She didn’t recall seeing her.
“She is,” Torres confirmed. “I have another question. Where did you get the idea to create a spellrod?”
“I heard… uh… it was going to be one of the projects next quarter.”
“From a nameless student, perhaps? One with no identifiable features at all?”
Now Mirian knew she was caught. “Exactly,” she said, and decided to take a different approach. “Does anyone know about the 500 year-old Persaman spellrod you have?”
“Yes,” Torres said. “And none of them are within a hundred miles. Would you walk with me? I usually take my lunch at the King of the Grill diner. It’s just a block down. It looks out on the fish market and Torrviol Lake.”
Mirian belatedly realized she was being invited to lunch, sort of. “Uh, yeah. Sure.” As they walked out the classroom, Mirian said, “You’re taking this weird stuff I’m dishing out pretty well, it seems.”
“My mentor once said to me, ‘if something is strange, investigate.’”
“And who was that?”
“Professor Viridian,” she said.
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“He’s a good teacher,” Mirian said. “So, first, a demonstration. I’ve seen the spellrod you have. I can describe what it looks like and what it does, and I can diagram the glyphs as a functionality tree, like you taught me.” And she did. She’d seen it over the course of several classes in the two cycles before this one, and had studied it carefully both times. She glanced at Professor Torres as they walked, and to her credit, her face betrayed no emotion at all. Apparently, the total lack of emotions and tone shifts wasn’t just something she put on to teach, it was just how she operated.
Mirian kept talking as they walked from the Artificer’s Tower to the nearby King of the Grill. It was a little establishment that clearly had once been a house, but had since been transformed into a cozy restaurant. The exterior was nicely decorated with tasteful scrollwork along the wooden facade, while the inside had colorful cloth drapes that brought a sense of warmth to the place. The smell of the place wafted from several stove pipes protruding from the roof. Just approaching it, she could nearly taste the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meats and vegetables. Torres led them straight through the place and onto the back porch, where several tables were already set with gold-rimmed ceramic plates. Fresh, cold air from the lake wafted past them, but little magical heaters warmed the table. There was only one chair ready, but a waiter quickly brought a second without comment, all while Mirian talked.
When she was done, she asked, “So, what explanations do you have for my knowledge?”
“Several,” Torres said. “None of them are likely. Having graded several of your assignments, I know your expertise in magic is insufficient to break into my apartment. I find it equally unlikely you managed to talk to my distant acquaintances, and just as unlikely you were able to guess so many exact details of the scepter. It is interesting. I had just been thinking about how if I did end up teaching the next course in the series, that the spellrod would be a perfect demonstration of the concepts the course requires mastery of. However, I have not yet discussed it with anyone.”
“What are your thoughts on time travel?”
“The same as speculation as to the composition of the moons. Perhaps in the distant future, it will be possible to pursue that line of inquiry. There’s no point wasting time thinking about it now.”
“The sacred texts of the Luminate Order speak of prophets and the movement of time. Could the Gods do it?”
“As a rule, I do not discuss matters of faith,” she said.
The waiter interrupted them briefly. “The usual, Iliyia?”
“Yes,” Torres said.
“And you?”
“The daily meal,” Mirian said. That was usually the cheapest option, and given the spices she was smelling, whoever the chef was knew what he was doing. She’d trust their judgment.
The view from the porch was splendid. Given where it was on the edge of town and the position of the porch, they could see everything from the forest to the north and around to the fish market and Torrviol Lake. Hardly any part of Torrviol itself was visible, so Mirian could imagine they were nestled in a remote wilderness. Little brown birds flitted about the nearby bushes, while the occasional magpie swooped by, chattering loudly. Combined with the tactful decorations, the whole place felt peaceful and homely.
They sat there for some time before Iliyia Torres finally spoke. “You have implied you are time traveling.”
“Yeah,” Mirian said. “This is the third time I’ve woken up on the 1st of Solem with a hole in my roof. I don’t know why. No one else I’ve talked to remembers, just me. Some further proof: I just gave a statement to the guards about a spy who I helped catch trying to sneak into the Myrvite Studies building. You can check with Professor Viridian about that. I knew the spy would be there with a stolen glyphkey, which is also how I knew to stuff the lock full of brass filings. I also know the guards will probably let the guy escape, because Captain Mandez is probably working with the Akanan spies.”
“How do you know they’re Akanan spies?” Torres asked.
“Another piece of evidence,” she said, and brought out her bag, and then the satchel in it. She got out the scroll and handed it over. “It’s written in Eskavar, and I lost it last go around, so I don’t actually know what it says yet. I was going to get a, uh, friend, who I haven’t met yet, to translate it.”
Torres unrolled the scroll and frowned at it. “No need. It’s written in a cipher.” She handed the scroll back.
“Huh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” The spies in the novels she’d read did that sometimes. Then the protagonist would decode it using some clever trick, but Mirian had no clue how that actually worked.
“Why are you trusting me with this information?”
“Initially, I wasn’t going to, but one of my goals this go around is to figure out ways I can demonstrate foreknowledge. I had no idea you weren’t actually scheduled to teach 426 next quarter, because when I go to register, it’s your name on the list.” Mirian hesitated. Here was the part that lost even Lily. “Also, I know you're not working with the Akanan conspiracy here in town because when the Akanans attacked, you and a bunch of the professors helped defend the evacuation of the Torrviol. You died fighting.”
Torres raised an eyebrow. “I died?”
Mirian forced a grim smile. “Everyone died. That’s why I’m back at the beginning again.”
“It sounds… quite unbelievable.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. I couldn’t convince anyone until the day before the attack. Like, I kinda convinced my roommate, but she only sort of believed it and I think she was really just trying to be supportive for her friend so she went along with it.” The waiter brought by the meals. Both involved grilled fish and vegetables, as one might have expected from the name of the place, though Torres had a sauce glazed over hers that Mirian could feel the hot spices from on her side of the table.
As the food was set out and they ate, Mirian told Torres the details of the attack. How there was probably an early warning sign, but she never read about it in the newspapers. About how the Baracuel military arrived at the last minute to try and defend the town, about the failure of the wards along the road, and about the colossal airships that had overrun the defenses and slaughtered everyone mercilessly.
Professor Torres sat and listened without comment until she finished. Then she sat in stony silence.
Mirian made a face. “As I said, I know it’s all totally unbelievable.”
“I agree,” Torres said. “The real reason you want to skip the other presentations is you’ve seen them all.”
She laughed. “Yeah. I’m so sick of seeing Matthias sputter through why he decided to use a gold-wire node, but used no chimera-bone in his capacitors to compensate for the faster flow-rate. And Laurin probably uses more ‘ums’ than I did the first time, which was a lot.”
Torres considered this. “Those presentations are scheduled for tomorrow. Give me more details about what you say happens.” After Mirian did, she said, “I will excuse you from the rest of my classes this quarter and add your name to the list of students able to use the Academy craft facilities this evening. You may pursue your spellrod project, though I will not approve any combat designs until you are properly certified. You should know that my word is my bond. I do not share secrets.”
“Thank you, professor,” Mirian said. “I just ask you be careful with the guards and the spies. If you believe me about the invasion, I hope you’ll spread the word about it as much as you can. You have contacts in the Baracuel army, right?” Her special spell engine design was being used in basically every new vehicle the Baracuel military produced.
“Yes,” Torres said simply. “It costs me nothing to grant your first request. In the meantime, I can more thoroughly investigate your extraordinary claim, and consider the others. I should be clear that I do not believe it, but it will be interesting to see what I discover by exploring it.” The food was long since finished. She rose.
“Oh, uh… how much do I owe you… what part do I owe for the food?”
“I invited you, therefore I have covered it. Money is not something I have to worry about anymore.” Of course, Mirian realized. She’d probably made a small fortune off that spell engine design of hers.
“Thanks,” Mirian said, and they left. Torres went back to the Artificer’s building, and Mirian off to Arcane Mathematics. She felt good about it. Professor Torres had, at the very least, not called her a raving lunatic. And it might lead to the early evacuation of Torrviol. Maybe that’s what the Gods were looking for; if she saved enough lives, the cycle would end.
But now she had to figure out what happened to Professor Song Jei.