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“Zorian! Hey Zorian,” a familiar voice echoed through the hallways of the underground research facility and Zorian winced.
The last time Zach had wandered around Zorian's private labs unsupervised had been near disastrous, as he had managed to accidentally ruin three separate experiments Zorian was working on. Unfortunately, Zorian was in the midst of writing a section of delicate spell formula calculations, and if he got up now, he would lose his place and probably hours of work. Fortunately, there was a ready solution to that, and Zorian mentally sent a command to the closest of his simulacra to find Zach and escort him down to the lab he was currently working in.
Zach seemed to be in a patient mood today, and a few minutes later, when Zorian finally finished his current work, and turned around, blinking his eyes to clear them, to see Zach reclining against the back of a table, bouncing a ball against the wall, using his magic to catch it whenever it rebounded too far away.
“Whatcha working on?” he asked, swiveling his head to face Zorian, genuine curiousity on his face. “That doesn't look like your nature of mana research. Or your spell formula crafting business. Or the book on mind magic you're writing. Or any of your other dozen projects I know about.”
He tilted his head to the side, a wry grin on his face, and Zorian stretched out his hand, catching the ball mid air and drawing it to his hand with telekinesis, before gesturing towards the door to the lab. Zach nodded his assent, and stood up, and the two teens started making their way back up to the surface, where Zorian's commercial business front stood over their heads.
“It's not any of those. It's more of a … long term project,” Zorian said, and at Zach's curious look, shrugged his shoulders. “It's not anything particularly secret – well, not from you anyway, but not something to discuss in front of others. I've been thinking about the loop. About the next time it happens.”
“Why would you be concerned about that?” Zach asked, a look of stunned shock on his face, as if Zorian had just suggested they murder their friends and eat them. “We won't be alive!”
“Speak for yourself,” Zorian said, turning to Zach, and at his raised eyebrow, launched into an explanation. It was times like this, where their shared personal history really shone through. They were able to communicate volumes with each other with just a gesture or eye movement, a tone of voice, that others would need far more words to express.
“Look, take Quatach-Ichl as an example,” Zorian said. “He was alive the last time the planetary alignment allowed for the loop to occur. The last several times, in fact. He's proof that someone who has achieved immortality, who is willing to take risks on occasion, when necessary, but is generally cautious, can live that long. And we're both at least in the same general league as him when it comes to power levels.”
“And no,” Zorian continued, as Zach's shoulders set and his mouth opened, clearly about to protest. “I'm not suggesting we follow his example and become liches. But – consider soul sight. There's at least four separate ways to achieve it. For those who are immoral and generally lacking in scruples, they can perform the necromantic sacrificial ritual. Fast, and easy to do, in terms of skill required. Then there's the more harrowing training that Alanic showed us – more personally dangerous, but faster. There's the dirge moth chrysalis potion, which requires very specific conditions. And then there's whatever potion Silverlake came up with for me. Which brings me back to my original point – Silverlake. She already had immortality, before we ever met her. She was just looking for the grey hunter eggs and the salamanders for a potion of eternal youth. So, liches, whatever Silverlake did to herself ...”
Zach hummed, and nodded his head. “I see what you're saying. If there's those two routes to immortality, there's gotta be more. We never found out how Silverlake got her immortality – it could be something we're okay with, but even if it's not, with time and research and money, there are bound to be other paths to achieve it. So we could be alive then, when it gets opened again … but do you really want to go back in there?”
“No,” Zorian answered quickly, his tone decisive, then shrugged his head slightly. “Well, I won't say never, because who knows what the world will look like when it's even available again, but I'm certainly not planning on it. And even if we did go back in … what would be the point? We've gotten most of what practical knowledge we can out of it. At this point in time, I don't think there's a lot it would have to offer us.”
Zach looked relieved at that, as he clearly wasn't eager to consider going back in the loop at all. Despite the incredible effect it had had on the both of them, in terms of their skills and abilities and knowledge of the world, it had had a proportional cost as well. While there was no doubting they were much more mature than when they went in, it made social and interpersonal relationships hard, especially when they came out, and though they had never really discussed it before, neither of them had really wanted to consider something similar again.
“No,” Zorian continued. “My concern is different. What if someone else gets access to the loop?”
Zach once more turned quizzical eyes towards him, and he shrugged again, pausing as they reached the bottom of the last staircase that would lead them up into the back storeroom of the shopfront.
“Think about it, Zach,” Zorian said. “The Ghost Serpent. What it told us about the time loop. Apparently, we're the anomalies. Everyone who used it before – and from how the Ghost Serpent was talking to us back then, it's been multiple times – every previous Controller kind of screwed that spirit over. And that's just the ones that interacted with it, to be fair, but – it certainly seemed like, from the sense I got from that conversation, that Red Robe was more in line with the attitudes of previous Controllers than we were. Use the loop for personal gain, don't care who you hurt, act callously towards people afterwards. Ruin lives.”
“That's not … conclusive evidence,” Zach said weakly, his eyes searching back and forth, and Zorian shook his head in negation.
“No, but think about the angels,” Zorian continued. “They were so desperate to keep you from abusing the time loop. Didn't want you telling anyone – they even told us, when we were summoned that tree with Kylae, that it would have been better that you never came out of the loop if you didn't figure out a way to stop the invasion, and still be moral while doing it. I think … there's a lot the angels know about the previous Controllers, that they didn't tell us. That there's a reason they were so worried about using the Gate at all, at what you might have become.”
Zach looked stunned at Zorian's revelations and slumped back against the tunnel wall as he processed things, and Zorian continued speaking, softly, as he laid out the rest of his thought process while Zach thought it all over.
“So, if the previous marked ones were that bad,” Zorian said, sitting down on the floor cross legged across from where Zach slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Then it stands to reason future ones might be as well. So, what I've been working on … not sure it's something that has a solution. At least, not a good one. You saw the solution the angels came up with – a massive contract that covered every loophole they could think of. I've been working on my own answers to the problem.”
“So, what did you come up with?” Zach asked, his voice still hollow, his eyes staring distantly over Zorian's shoulder.
“Well, a couple of options, but,” Zorian shrugged. “I'm … my current approach is twofold. Those who are using the loop for good intent, who are still moral, I would want to help out. That's why I started the project, actually – there were so few sources of information about the loop, inside of it, that I wanted to put together some sort of manual for the next controller, in a safe of some kind, in case they found themselves needing it, like we did. I'm partway through that design, for the container for it – a combination of a couple of things, attempting to connect with the spirit world, to verify it's not available, a lock with a rotating code that can only be opened by knowing the correct sequence … which can only be determined by destroying the lock and what it's guarding, in the first place. So that you would destroy it in one loop, find out the correct answer, and then use that to open it in the next loop. It was only in the last few days that I've started to think about whether the next Controller would be someone I would want to help and that I came to the conclusions I did. I'm still working on the whole “what to do if they're evil” problem. The best answer I could come up with for a while was ...”
Zorian trailed off, and Zach nodded. “Soulseizer chrysanthemum. Or some other kind of soul attack. Just like the angels said – better if no one comes out, than someone with ill intent.”
Zorian let them sit there for a few moments before he spoke again. “That's the part I was working on now – some sort of spellcraft golem, with my mind magic preprogrammed, that's actually intelligent. Or at least able to mimic intelligence, enough to pose some kind of basic morality test, and read the person's mind, to see if they're … worthy, I guess. But it's not all doom and gloom.”
“It's not?” Zach's eyes finally focused again, switching from staring over Zorian's shoulder to looking him right in the eyes.
“Mmm,” Zorian nodded his head. “That's more of a plan B, at the moment. My current line of thinking is that I was trying to figure out what made us different, and the best answer I could come up with is that, well, it's … us.”
Zorian gestured between the two boys sitting in the tunnel. “Think about how lonely it was in there. If all the previous Controllers felt the same way – that they were all alone, maybe that contributed to their behavior post loop. Feeling like no one else mattered, because they couldn't see all the iterations of things like they did. Maybe the fact that there were two of us, and we were able to help each other stay sane is what let us get out of the loop with our morals intact. So, I'm still working on the intelligent golem, but now … I'm trying to integrate it with the Orb's functionality.”
“The portable palace?” Zach said, frowning in confusion, before his eyes widened. “Oh! You mean the fact that it can store information in between restarts! So … make some sort of intelligent golem, tied to the orb, that can use that storage to retain awareness between restarts and … keep the next Controller company, so they don't go crazy?”
“Exactly!” Zorian nodded his head. “But it's been slow going, since Oganj still has the Orb, and I lost most of my notes on it when I left the loop the way I did.”
“Well, that's easy enough to fix,” Zach said, with a wide grin on his face, for the first time since they had started the conversation. He stood up, dusting his knees off, and reached a hand down to help Zorian up. “We still owe him back for siding with Red Robe the way he did. And he has the crown now, so you just now Quatach-Ichl is gonna be after him, too – so, I guess it's a race, to see who can track him down first. Let's go slay ourselves a dragon.”
Zorian groaned, realizing that the few short years without any massive, life endangering adventures the two had had after exiting the time loop, as they got the Noveda estate under Zach's control, got Zorian's business off the ground, paid back everyone they owed from the loop, were at an end. But, he reached up and took the other teen's hand, levering himself up. Knowing Zach, there would be no talking him out of this quest.
Besides, part of Zorian was looking forward to getting to fight the dragon mage again.