he doorway.

“We need to talk,” Kael said, a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Can you come into my room for a moment?”

“Is it about time travel?” Kirielle said excitedly.

Kael sighed. “Kirielle, I know you won’t like this, but can you stay in your room while I talk to your brother? It’s related to time travel, but it’s a bit.. private.”

For a moment it looked like Kirielle was going to complain, but then she shot him a speculative look and nodded in assent. As he watched her leave back to her room, grumbling all the way, Zorian had to admit he was a little jealous of Kael’s ability to control Kirielle. She never listened to him when he tried that sort of thing.

Shrugging, Zorian followed Kael into his room, where the morlock boy promptly dragged a chest from under his bed and retrieved a mysterious black book with no title out of it.

“I’ve been looking into your.. problem.. the last few days,” Kael said. “I may have found something.”

“You did?” Zorian asked excitedly.

Kael opened the book he was carrying and leafed through for a few seconds before he found what he was looking for. He handed the open book to him and pointed at the page.

“Based on the chant you memorized from the lich, and everything else you told me, I think this is the most likely spell he used,” Kael said.

“Soul Meld,” Zorian read aloud. “Requires at least two targets. Causes target souls to merge and blend into one. Typically used as a component in more complicated rituals, which heavily modify the effects. If the spell is used in isolation, the resulting entity is virtually always rendered insane or otherwise defective from the stress of the merger. Commonly used in.. creation of familiar bonds, and soul bonds in general..”

That definitely sounded like a likely candidate for the spell, but where on earth had Kael found this? Frowning, Zorian leafed through the rest of the book. It was full of soul magic spells, and much of it was written in several unknown scripts that Zorian couldn’t read. This.. wasn’t the sort of thing you could find in the Academy library, least of all with just a student clearance.

Which meant this was probably Kael’s personal book.

“Kael.. are you a necromancer?” asked Zorian carefully.

“A difficult question,” Kael answered after a short pause. “I do not enslave the dead, or curse people. There is more to soul magic than that, though.”

Well this was just great – he told his secret to one of the few people who could actually do something to put him down permanently. And he was scolding Kirielle about being reckless just a few minutes ago, too. He really was a giant idiot sometimes.

But hey, what’s done is done, and at least Kael didn’t seem very hostile at the moment. If anything, the other boy seemed to be more afraid of Zorian than the other way around.

“I won’t report you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Zorian said. Partially because he was deathly afraid of what the other boy would do to him if he tried. A necromancer, of all things.. “You agreed to keep quiet about my secret, so it would be hypocritical of me to betray yours without reason. Still, necromancy? Err, I mean, soul magic?”

Kael gave him a weak smile. “It’s an interesting discipline, if unfairly judged. My teacher had an interest in it and I wanted to continue the tradition.”

Tradition, right. Zorian thought about pressing the matter further, but decided against it. Mistake or not, he could at least get some benefit out of this – he’d just met a decent-seeming necromancer willing to answer his questions. How often does that happen?

“So if the lich performed a soul meld on me, why am I still.. well, me?” Zorian asked. “As I understand it, a spell like that would have fused my soul with Zach’s completely. We would both cease to exist as individual people.”

“Well, I must admit I am not an expert on soul magic by any means,” said Kael. “My primary strengths are alchemy and medicine, with soul magic being merely a side interest. That said, I assume the spell was simply stopped before it could complete the effect. It’s entirely possible Zach committed suicide when he realized his soul was being targeted.”

“It would have been a sensible course of action in his case,” Zorian agreed. “Though he didn’t exactly give me the impression that he was aware of the danger when I talked to him. I suppose it could have been the amnesia playing tricks on him.”

“Or he may have a contingency spell placed on him, set to kill him if it detects unauthorized tampering of his soul. You already said he may not be the originator of the time loop. Whoever placed the magic on him was doubtlessly aware of the danger, as the time loop you are trapped in is clearly a work of a skilled soul mage.”

“Right. So since the spell was only allowed to work its magic for a moment, we were spared from the worst effect,” Zorian mused. “And I ended up with some kind of a soul bond that drags me along for the ride. Possibly. There was obviously some soul melding involved, in any case. Can you find out what the spell actually did?”

“Maybe,” Kael said slowly. “Although this would involve spells. Soul magic spells, to be more precise. Are you sure you want to trust an evil, slimy necromancer with this?”

“Yes,” confirmed Zorian, rolling his eyes at Kael’s dramatics. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to agree to, but he was honestly desperate for some answers and he was getting an honest feeling from Kael. He was usually a good judge of character. “It is true that I am leery of soul magic, but that doesn’t mean I automatically hate you now. Go ahead and cast whatever spells you need.”

After 15 minutes of mysterious spellcasting (which had no visible effect on him, and didn’t even give him an uncomfortable feeling), Kael was forced to admit he didn’t get much. The only thing the other boy could tell him was that he definitively didn’t have a classical soul bond with Zach – if he was connected to the other time traveler, it was through something more exotic and subtle than that.

“I’m sorry,” Kael said. “I thought soul magic as grand as this would be blatantly obvious but I guess I was wrong. Maybe if I tried it on Zach..?”

“There is no way to perform an examination on him without telling him the truth,” Zorian said. “I’m not sure I want to do that yet.”

“Of course,” Kael said. “Although I’m not sure what else I can do. I’d have to be a vastly better soul mage to help you with this, and if you’re right I just don’t have the time to become one. Even if you convinced me of all this right at the start of the time loop – and I’m not sure you could do that so soon, before I have gotten to know you a little – one month is not enough to get anywhere in a field like soul magic.”

“Uh,” fumbled Zorian after a few seconds of silence. “Maybe you could teach me soul magic?”

“You would be willing to do that?” Kael asked in mild amusement.

“You said there is more to soul magic than cursing people and enslaving the dead,” Zorian said. “And I really do need answers that only soul magic can provide.”

Also, if he learned soul magic personally he would no longer have to trust strangers to mess around with his soul. If someone had to cast soul magic, he’d rather it was him.

“Though I’m flattered you are willing to set aside your prejudices, the truth is you would never be good enough for what you want to do with it,” Kael said. “Although most soul magic can be performed by normal mages like you, the really sophisticated spells require a certain amount of soul perception – a skill that can only be gained by drinking a special potion made from a properly harvested dirge moth chrysalis.”

“And is the potion rare?”

“Dirge moths spend most of their lives in the ground,” Kael said. “For 23 years they live their lives as larvae before emerging from the soil en masse as swarms of poisonous dirge moths. The moths live for exactly one day before laying their eggs and dying. In case you’re curious, the last emergence of the moth swarms was less than a decade ago.”

“There will be no dirge moth chrysalises for at least another decade,” realized Zorian.

Kael nodded. “And the potion requires a fresh chrysalis – they cannot be preserved.”

“And there is no other way to gain soul perception?”

“Maybe there is, but I only know of this one,” Kael said. “There are some rituals involving human sacrifice that claim to provide the same benefit to the mage, but I have never tried them and I suspect you would not want to either.”

“Definitely not,” Zorian agreed.

After a few more minutes of discussion Zorian left Kael’s room, lost in thoughts.

He wasn’t quite willing to give up on the idea of learning soul magic, but he had more than enough on his plate right now so he wouldn’t push it. There were plenty of other restarts in which to try that later.

The moment he had entered the room and closed the door behind him he felt a very familiar touch on his mind. It was not unlike the time he had ventured with Taiven into the sewers, yet a lot subtler and less alien, like cobwebs brushing against the edges of his thoughts.

He immediately panicked, his eyes swinging from one corner of the room to another in search of his assailant while he tried to mentally block the presence from his mind. Despite his practice with Kyron, he found himself unable to do so.

[SoyouareOpen?] a clear, confident voice resonated through his mind. Unlike the last time, there was no pain or confusing images involved.. but that was somehow even more terrifying. In his last encounter, his opponent was obviously unused to dealing with humans. This one knew exactly what it was doing. [Interesting.Youhavemetoneofusbefore?ThiswillbeeasierthanIthoughtthen.]

There! Did the shadows in that corner move? He was about to cast a magic missile at the spot when his whole body suddenly froze and refused to listen to him.

A dark shadow suddenly jumped from the patch of darkness in the corner of his room and landed on his bed – right in front of him. It was a spider, like he suspected, but it looked nothing like what he expected. The spider was relatively small for a giant spider breed, no bigger than Zorian’s chest, and a lot more compact than the spindly, long-legged varieties that people usually associated with spiders. Wracking his brain, Zorian identified it as a type of jumping spider.

As the creature turned around to face him, Zorian suddenly found himself staring at a pair of giant, solid black eyes that gave the spider a surprisingly human-like face. There was another pair of smaller eyes on its ‘forehead’, for the lack of a better word, but the two big ones kept drawing Zorian’s attention. The other thing he noticed, of course, was a pair of giant fangs that looked like they could pierce his skull with ease.

[Greetings,ZorianKazinski,] the spider spoke telepathically. [Ihavebeenwantingtomeetyouforawhilenow.YouandIneedtohavealong,looongtalk..]