So, in this chapter one of my most desired things happens- we get to see Xvim finally get his just deserts, along with him use the special technique that Alanic said would make him quickly help him but which he never needed because he just did the whole temporary marker thing.

We never got a perfect Xvim teasing. Now, it finally arrives.

Much stolen from the originals, and from the online world building explanation of mana. All rights remain in nobody103's hands, enjoy.

Zorian's eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

"Good morning, brother!" an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. "Morning, morning, MORNING!"

He glared at her, and focused. Narrow lines of mana flowed from his hands, forming hexagonal strings around Kirelle. They were invisible to the naked eye, but he could feel his magic as he shaped it, as he willed his intent into it. In a moment he had the effect ready, and willed his intent into it.

He levitated his sister Kirielle up into the air. She tried to grab onto him, but he pushed her aside and up she went. His shaping skills were still working fine. Perhaps several years ago she could have escaped, back when he was just relying on the teaching of Xvim but he had seen through the eyes of dozens of monsters, practised with countless archmages and experts. He was very, very good at shaping now.

After a few moments of trying to escape she went limp and glared at him.

"That's not fair," she complained, looking down on him from her vantage point above him. "Since when can you even do that?"

Zorian ignored the question, focusing on his magic. He… could feel his empathy. He couldn't turn it off, or sense people properly. He couldn't touch people. It felt alien to not be able to control this sense, that he had on for years. He pushed his mana out, trying to recall that sensation of feeling other minds. He could remember a lot of spells, but not how to do them. He couldn't even remember the chants. Lopova had explained it to him. Something about the dragon below not wanting interlopers, divine checking mechanisms that would scrub spells from the mind. Jornak, his foe, didn't face the same issues. The primordials knew the access codes to bypass such checks. Lazy gods, not finding a way past that.

He idly started to set his sister to spinning around. She endured it in mute silence initially, then gave up and started telling him that this was very mean.

He had a bit over an hour. That's what Lopova had told him. There was a ritual of powerful soul magic that could allow a person to steal the divine mark that Zach had, which gave him access to the controls of the loop. With few spells, the tiny mana reserves of his preloop soul and his shaping skills he had to stop Jornak, an experienced and powerful mage with decades of experience, enhancements from a primordial from becoming the controller of this faux loop.

He felt a sudden burst of dread. He instantly went to his mental enhancements, seeking to block off that feeling, but found them not there.

He dropped Kirielle down. She immediately recovered, bombarding him with questions but he just couldn't focus. He walked dazed around his room. Everything was where it was meant to be. He organized his room in a distinctive way because his nosy mother had a habit of snooping. This felt real. But was it? Lopova had shown she could make things from his memory. Was any of this real? What was he doing? Where was he.

"Zorian! Zorian." Said Kirelle, shaking his arm. "What's wrong?" She looked worried. He looked from side to side. "Nightmare." He gasped out, putting his hand on the wall.

Zorian breathed deep, trying to ignore the pain in his chest. What had he gotten himself into?

Zorian was trying to focus on what Ilsa was saying, but he just couldn't pull himself together. He guessed he shouldn't be surprised that the gods were still around and watching, or that their reputation as perverts was as true as the legends, or that he wasn't good enough to defeat Jornak.

He was gaining a healthy respect for the ability of the universe to surprise him. He'd thought he basically understood how things worked pretty well. There were gods, who were strong, there were primordials, who were insane monsters that wanted to wreck things, there was an invasion by a lich he had to stop. How had he gotten to this point? He had escaped the time loop. He was out. Now he was back in. And he was facing someone much stronger than him, with powerful allies and friends, and he had a bit over an hour to save Zach or he would be trapped in a loop with a necromancer who had full control over it…

He snapped back into the real world when he realized Ilsa had stopped talking and was looking at him intently. He gave her a questioning look.

"Are you quite alright?" she asked, and Zorian noticed her glancing at his hands. Why would she-

Oh.

His hands were shaking. He was probably quite pale too, if the skin on his hands was of any indication. He rubbed his hands together a few times and then balled them up into fists to reassert control over them.

This felt familiar. A flash of memory came to him, from years ago. He had told Zenomir about the invasion, and then had been stabbed to death. It had been one of his more painful deaths, before he got used to dying horribly again and again.

He remembered what he was doing. He had planned this out. He had been spiralling, unused to this emotional turmoil without his mind magic to soften it, but he had to focus. He had a plan.

As though it was waiting for him to calm down, he felt his mind magic, empathy suddenly awaken. He felt Ilsa's mind blossom to him, like a golden sun, and he felt a bit better.

"Not quite," Zorian admitted. "But I will be. You don't have to worry about it."

She stared at him for a second longer and then nodded.

"Very well," she said. "Do you want me to teleport you to the Academy? I can't imagine riding the train in the state you're in is going to be very pleasant for you."

All as planned. It felt calming, falling into a familiar pattern. Following a routine as he had done so many times in a loop. It helped distract him. He had to stop Jornak. He didn't have the best tools. He was an idiot for agreeing to come back here like that. But, he was going to get the job done.

"I don't want to inconvenience you…" he repeated

"Don't worry, I was going there anyway," she said. "It's the least I could do for getting to you so late and taking the choice of your mentor away from you."

It had taken him a while, but he had warmed to Xvim. Xvim had become a close friend over the years. Xvim was key to his plan as well. He faked a look of annoyance, and she gave him a sympathetic smile.

Ready?" she asked, after they had gotten outside.

He nodded.

"Don't worry, the rumors about the dangers of teleporting are mostly exaggerated," Ilsa said. "You can't get stuck inside solid objects – the spell doesn't work that way – and if something goes wrong I'll immediately know it and collapse the spell before dimensional ripples tear us apart."

He had been- still was- a mage of the highest calibre. He turned on finely honed magical senses, extending invisible tendrils of magic around them, trying to taste the spell. He felt the dimensional ripples and how the spell was structured.

Unstructured magic works because souls can figure out how to perform feats of magic on their own. If given aid in directing mana outside the body and presented with a clear picture of the desired goal, the soul will slowly chip away at the problem in question, getting closer and closer to a solution with each attempt. Since this is a very blind and crude process, however, it can take quite a while before it converges on a viable solution. If the desired magical effect is complex or mana intensive, the training could take years, decades, or even so long that no person would live to see the results within their natural lifetime.

Dimensional magic was one of those magic types that would take decades to master through unstructured magic. He did not have decades, so he needed structured magic.

With no limiters in place, the soul loses itself in the vast space of different possibilities and takes an impractically long time to reach a viable solution for problems presented to it. What if there was a way for mages to direct the flow of mana in a more precise, forceful manner? What if one could tell the soul, not just what to do, but explain to it exactly how it should go about doing it?

That was structured magic, which she was casting now.

In order to cast a structured spell, the caster must communicate the structure of the spell in question to their soul. This is usually done by reciting a chant and performing a series of hand gestures. Specific words and gestures invoke specific spell elements, essentially explaining to the soul of the caster how it should go about constructing the spell boundary.

A spell boundary defines how the mana should be used to produce an effect but that doesn't mean that performing the spell will result in a successful magical effect the first time its cast, to Zorian's great regret. The spell boundary simply narrows down the possibility space to something small enough that the soul can figure it out relatively quickly.

Still, even if the learning process is not instant, it is blazingly fast when compared to alternatives. Spells that would take decades of training if done through unstructured magic can be learned in a week, and things that would require a week of tireless repetition can be mastered in five minutes of practice.

Teleportation was a complex kind of magic that would take a week, or weeks to master. He didn't have a week.

He could almost feel her mana writhing and turning around him. At the center he could see something. A snake chewing it's tail- he recognized that. He could see other proxies, see magic in twisting tubes and snakes and coils breaking the universe and rending space and time.

Suddenly they were both standing in a well lit circular room, a large magical circle carved into the marble floor they stood on. The teleport redirection room.

He used a pulse of unstructured magic on his throat, pressing at the back.

"I feel sick. Thanks Ilsa. I'll be in the toilet!"

He ran out, holding his stomach. After a few twists and turns he had escaped, and he began to prepare to teleport to Alanic. He had forged a letter of recommendation, now he just needed to reach the man. From what the goddess had told him, Alanic would be one of the first targets of the ritual that Jornak was doing to steal the time travel marker from Zach. He expected danger, and soon. He had to get there.

The teleportation spell was a complicated one. It had taken him months to master it initially, and even a skilled mage would take a week at least. He was no skilled mage. He had managed to transport himself through a primordial's insides from an artificial pocket dimension to the real world. He had killed and made potions of many magical creatures with unique skill with dimensionality. He could do this.

He remembered long ago, Ilsa had warned him not to do this in warded places, like Cyoria, where he was. This was probably a very bad idea. He started to cast teleport.

Five minutes later, he felt he had it. He went through the chants, the gestures, and tried to stabilize it. He felt the world ripple, and shake, as the dimensional ripples. He held his hand up to his face, and saw his hand swell up and shrink as the universe twisted. He forced his power out, trying to stabilize the spell, mana flooding the area around him. He gripped the universe, and forced it to stabilize, cleaned up incorrect boundaries, and made it work.

He felt the magics of the city rush for him, sensing some part of his divine magic. Ilsa might still be there, in the teleportation redirection room. That would be a real shock to her. He twisted the magic, darting one way then the other, the structured spell no match for his flexibility.

Then he teleported.

He emerged in a field near Alanic's temple. Ten mercenaries (he recognized their outfit) with rifles and grenades were firing at the temple, while four mages, one of them in a red robe (not Jornak, he could tell), were acting as support, sending massive balls of artillery magic at the temple to collapse the warding scheme. Alanic was sending back pulses of fire and whips and balls, but the group had some specialized anti fire spells designed to counter the priest. Zorian was perhaps thirty feet away from them.

It seemed to be working. With a glance, he could tell that the mana of the temple was almost depleted. They had less soldiers than before, likely because this attack had been organized so quickly but more mages. No doubt Jornak had enlisted some mages from his little cult to help him gather the ritual sacrifices before whatever interruptions (like him) arrived.

He reached out with his mind magic, picking one of the weakest of the soldiers, and lashed out with a pulse of empathy. It was crude, incredibly crude. Something a child Aranea could surpass. It was also perfectly efficient, and done with all the shaping control he had. One of the soldiers collapsed. This was something else he needed to do. He needed to regain his skill with mind magic. The easiest way to do that was with human experimentation.

They didn't seem to realize what was happening yet, distracted by the near success, so he levitated the collapsed man's gun, pointed it at one of the three mages without a red robe, and fired. They felt so safe behind their shields. As the man's skull exploded, he felt a grim sense of satisfaction.

The red robed cultist quickly sent a dispelling wave at the gun, collapsing his unstructured levitation and spoke. "They told me someone might interrupt us. Die, and die alone!" shouted the man.

Very overly dramatic, felt Zorian. The man pointed his finger, and a red lightning bolt shot out straight at Zorian, intending to slay him.

He grabbed the bolt of lightning, and held it, stabilizing it, forcing the man to keep it up. He could feel a sense of surprise from behind the robe, and the man tried to shake the bolt free. He failed. Xvim had taught him this trick, and had managed to use it on Quatach-Ichl. No normal mage was going to break free. He lashed out at another weak willed soldier and knocked him out with a pulse of mind magic. That one had gone better.

"Your death comes soon! You can't- Why won't this kill you!" Said the Red Robed mage.

He jerked the bolt, exploding another one of the mercenaries as the lightning fried him from the inside out as he knocked out another mercenary with a pulse of mind magic. Deciding that he was the larger threat, one of the mages turned towards him along with several of the soldiers, firing at his cover while the wardbreaker kept focusing on the temple wards. For their troubles, he knocked out another soldier with a pulse of mind magic. Four down.

A trio of flaming missiles came out, incinerating the three mercenaries that were firing at him. He took the chance.

Zorian exploded the whip at the source, sending a flood of heat and wind and sound out around the soldiers. They were distracted for a moment, and he used that to pick up a gun and fire and kill one more mercenary

The mage fired a beam of electricity at him. He knocked it aside with his hand, and, sensing a weakness in the man's aegis, poked a line of mana through and shoved him into red robe. The lesser red robe's wards flared, incinerating his companion mage.

"I will have my revenge!" The lesser red shouted, summoning up some new spell- one involving soul magic. He didn't get to finish it.

A short, bald, muscular man literally dropped out of the sky in front of them, landing next to red robe. Alanic Zork. He was surrounded by dozens of flaming suns, which quickly killed the remaining two mercenaries and harassed the ward breaking mage. He himself hit red robe in the chest, sending a pulse magic into him while he was distracted dealing with little old Zorian.

And that was that.

Zorian got up, and waved, picking up a rifle from a dropped soldier. "Hey there. I'm out of mana, but-." He wasn't quite, but he was pretty low. He had one magic missile's worth of mana out of eight. He was using it to root through a collapsed man's mind. Not very successfully, but it was a start. "I am from the The Mesalian Order." That was the order Alanic was a part of, that he would accept. He tossed Alanic the forged letter of recommendation that they had forged together in the time loop.

"We need to go save Lukav, now. They're attacking soul mages."

Alanic was never one to dilly dally when needed. He had been glancing at the letter, but at his words, looked angry.

Alanic reached for him, and teleported them.

There was a smaller group attacking Alanic. He had transformed into a giant lizard monster as he did before, but these mages had a special ward coded specially to stop such efforts.

They didn't have a special ward to stop fire magic.

There was a reason he had not chosen empathy magic for his one stored magic. Maybe he could control enough people, but the really skilled mages were pretty good at mind defence. Alanic, say, would be pretty hard to control, and he didn't have much mana to control people with. Shaping left him with alteration skills to make forged letters, master a few key spells, and fight. It meant after this fight (which Jornak would probably survive) he could ramp up faster.

And it meant he could recruit Xvim and Alanic. He couldn't tell them the truth. They took a few days to accept it, verifying that they were not trapped in some spell. That had always been the way it was with all his mentors. If he told them the truth then it took ages to get their help. He needed help now.

"You have an angelic contract?" Asked Alanic, sceptical.

Zorian nodded, carefully keeping his soul from revealing his lie with his shaping skills. The gods really had been fools to overlook shaping, it was so useful.

"Yes, I sense you have soul sight, do you not? I was approached by a figure in a dream. The angel was shaped like a black, floating, cross-shaped tree with four sets of branches and no roots. Or maybe it would be more accurate to imagine four trees that had their lower half cut off and were then glued together through their trunk into a cross-shaped pattern. The branches were leafless, and burning orange eyes grew on them instead. The eyes were animated, constantly moving and taking in everything around the angel. Translucent orange flames enveloped the branches, coiling around them like a multitude of snakes and releasing crackling sounds reminiscent of real branches burning in flames.

Floating behind the tree of eyes was a gently spinning ring of silvery metal. The ring was densely covered in tiny golden characters that Zorian didn't recognize, and which seemed entirely alien to his eyes, unlike anything he had ever seen. Behind it, several ghostly ribbons of multicolored light extended in all directions from the angel, straining Zorian's eyes and blurring the angel's form. If one squinted and tilted their head the right way, they kind of looked like six pairs of wings."

Alanic clearly recognized the description of the angel that Zorian had seen when they had summoned them, and nodded.

"Go on."

Zorian continued on. "He told me that Eldemar was in grave danger, and I was needed. I asked why me, and he mentioned something about constraints and boundaries and not wanting someone who would interfere with mortal authorities. In return for greatly enhanced magical skill and knowledge, I would fight for Eldemar to stop the threat- a threat that would led to the entirety of Cyoria being soul trapped, their souls used for necromancy, along with the eventual destruction of much of the world by release of a primordial. I like the world, so I accepted the contract. They linked me up with some members of your order, who have been training and preparing me, as the letter notes."

The actual members were too far away to contact at the moment, as he and Alanic had planned before the time loop.

"Another was granted great mana reserves, for both skill and power are needed to stop this threat, Zach. A terrible necromancer intends to steal that contract for himself with a foul ritual, sacrificing several individuals with soul sight to tear it apart. We don't have long. We need to act now."

Alanic nodded slowly, then faster.

"What do you need me to do?"

Zorian spoke. "There's a marker on my soul, linked to is. I need you to cast a soul tracking spell, to find out where he is. We don't have time for gathering the authorities, but any forces you can gather quickly would help a lot. We have fifty minutes to plan a raid."

Alanic looked at him closely. He could feel the touch of his soul sight on his soul.

"This is a lot to take on. Do you speak complete truth?"

Zorian waved his hands. "Cast the spell. Find him. The soul ritual, from what I have heard, is very distinctly necromantic. You should be able to tell." He steeled his soul. "And yes, I am." No he was not.

Alanic looked at him for several moments longer, and nodded.

It took a little time, but he cast the ritual. Zach was still at the mansion! Jornak hadn't even moved him. Lazy.

"I can teleport us there, to the outskirts." Zorian said. His mana had regenerated enough for that. "I've been there before."

Alanic put his hand on his shoulder, and Zorian teleported. This time, he managed to keep the dimensional ripples to a minimum.

Alanic spoke after they emerged.

"That was a surprisingly rough teleport."

Zorian shrugged. "Super shaping skills, minimal spell knowledge."

Alanic's eyes snapped to the mansion.

Zorian could feel it as well. The tug, the yanking on his soul. Some mighty spell was going down in there.

Alanic spoke. "I'm in." His voice filled with anger.

He raided some of the invader's caches, getting himself some money and weapons. He began altering the rifle, etching tracks of crystallized mana on it to help make it hit a lot harder. He prepared a spell rod for Taiven, and prepared to enact his plan to save Zach.

"You need me?" Taiven asked.

"I'll pay you, don't worry. And you'll get a lot of prestige from this. Your name will be spoken of far and wide. Taiven, the girl that saved Zach, noble lord." He knew she wanted to be famous, and he was tugging on that need.

Taiven leaned forward. "This seems like a lot for you, Roach."

Zorian shrugged. "I've been trained by the church's best. You can ask Alanic at the raid. Anyway, I need muscle, and I need you for a special job." He tossed her the spell rod. She caught it.

"Are you in?"

Then he went for the hardest part of his plan.

"So you're saying you have perfect shaping skills, and want to bet me that your skills are better than mine so I come along with some wild outing of yours immediately?"

Zorian nodded.

"Exactly as so, sir."

Xvim waved his hands forward, clearly frustrated.

"The arrogance of youth. You think simply because you can make a light glow you're a master."

Zorian shook his head. "I'm perfect, sir. Better than you in some ways at pure shaping. You don't believe me? If I prove myself will you come?"

Xvim scoffed. "If you are better than me at shaping, I will eat my hat. Yes, yes, I'll help you. Show me your basic three."

Zorian quickly lifted a book with his mind, lifting it, spinning it, making it glow, making a ring of fire dance around it and not burning a page.

"Sir, I must insist- my shaping skills are perfect. Go for something a little harder."

He dodged levitated marbles, sorted them by mana. He created a watch from raw metal, and broke it apart again. He created complex geometric shapes with marbles, fused them.

He was told to levitate water, to freeze it solid, to make a perfect cube out of ice and then quickly cut it in half without shattering it, to reshape a coin, to burn images into wooden panels, to make a coin spin, to shape candlewax, to hold his hand over a candle flame without getting burnt, to make dice fall on one specific side Xvim called out, to repair a damaged watch, to wilt a flower, to teleport a snail.

This time, he made sure to do each perfectly, slowly and carefully, hiding the tells Xvim had mentioned back in the time loop, avoiding anticipating Xvim, pushing him for harder and harder exercises.

As he made a complex set of geometric sigils float, burning fire in the air shaping it out, he asked a question.

"I know why we are doing this- flawless geometric shapes hold mana better, and this is good practise for complicated spells, where careful construction of shapes is key. But do you know why geometric shapes work better? From my experience, while the academy syllabus has excellent adequacy in promoting the growth of students with perfect shaping skills, it lacks such theoretical teachings."

He had read a lot of books and talked to a lot of experts, but this had never been covered. If he was going to spend however many minutes persuading Xvim to help, he might as well learn something new. Plus it was funny pissing off Xvim after so many restarts trying to prove himself.

Xvim was looking increasing worried, frowning with each new shaping exercise.

Xvim spoke, giving in. "Everything is mana. The world. Your life force. The soul. Even divine magic. One of the reasons the Gods could do feats we humans couldn't is because their mana is twisted in on itself. Twisted into complicated shapes at a finer level than we can control so that they can do effects beyond modern magic. Creating mana. Forging souls. Storing mana. Spells of such greatness and strength they can destroy cities. Theoretically, if one could master shaping to a great enough degree, all of those feats could be replicated. Even at a lower level though, forcing mana into distinct shapes can greatly enhance spells far beyond their normal levels."

Zorian did a particularly complex shaping exercise involving a rotating and glowing sequence of marbles.

"How are you… this good? Your skills are perfect. I can't see a single missed boundary, your control is incredible, this is impossible."

Zorian shrugged. "You know. I eat well at breakfast, try to get out a lot, exercise regularly. But really, I have to attribute most of my success to the Cyoria academy's excellent teaching."

Xvim glared at him, lips thin, annoyed. Xvim had spent a lot of restarts critiquing the quality of teaching at Cyoria in regards to shaping. Vengeance was sweet.

"Come with me." Promised Zorian. "And all will be explained. Although if you do know the answer to my question..." This was really his big pull. Xvim always needed time to verify things, if he told him too much. He had to feed him just enough information to intrigue him, but not enough to make him hole up for a day casting divination spells to check he wasn't in some magically induced trance.

"So, are you in?"

Reviews, favourites, and follows appreciated. Next chapter we shall be into deep secrets and mysteries again, as Zorian seeks to regain his abilities before Red Robe does horrible things to him.