It wasn’t too long before some of the cleaning staff shooed them out of the stadium. Most of the party broke up then. Some people wanted to keep partying and led the way to the tower. It was weird walking up to their usual party spot with strangers and faculty too. This was supposed to be the student’s secret party spot, but Sage Hanna didn’t seem surprised as she walked up with everyone.

It was clear that Hugo would have to wait a while to talk to Mia alone. She was the hero of the day, and it didn’t hurt that she was attractive too. She was tall and slim, with short brown hair. Her school uniform was obviously tailored, showing off her curves. Hugo didn’t have a chance right now with friends and young men mobbing her.

An hour later, the party was starting to wind down. Hugo found Mia sitting on a couch at the edge of the room. As soon as the seat next to her was empty, Hugo plopped himself down near her. She sighed deeply. He could tell she was done with this party, but he was a man on a mission.

“It’s amazing how you beat them today,” Hugo started with, “It’s almost like you knew what they were going to do before they did.”

Mia smiled and glanced back to the party. “Yeah, I guess. I have been practicing forever. It’s good to see that all my hard work paid off.”

“Yeah, for sure. You are skilled, no doubt about it,” Hugo said, “I am just wondering how you knew what runes to prepare. It’s like you predicted the future.”

She shrugged and said, “I just got lucky I guess. I did a lot of research into my opponents, and planned for that, but in the end it came down to luck.” She wasn’t even looking at him toward the end there.

Hugo could tell she was just giving him the same answers everyone got. He decided to take a different tact. “Do you mind if I ask you about how you first got soulmarked?”

Her eyes narrowed and she focused on him again. “What does that have to do with anything?” she said.

He put his hands up defensively, “I am just wondering. I had a unique experience with getting soulmarked myself. The initial ritual circle didn’t work for me, and so I had to get soulmarked in a secondary circle.”

“Did someone tell you that’s how I got soulmarked?” Mia accused.

“No, no, it’s how I got soulmarked. I had a weird ritual experience getting soulmarked. Based on what happened afterwards, I have been looking at things differently. After your performance today, I was starting to wonder if you knew what it was like.” Hugo was getting tired dancing around the truth, but he still didn’t know if she knew what he was talking about.

Mia stood up and grabbed his wrist and said, “Come with me.” She led him to a different room with just the two of them. She didn’t close the door, but no one could listen in over the noise of the party.

“Damn that Alexandru,” Mia said, more to herself than anything.

“So you do know him!” Hugo said triumphantly, “I knew it.”

“He said the ritual was different now. He said it wouldn’t do that anymore. I should have destroyed the ritual when I had the chance last year,” Mia said and clenched her fists. She looked back at him and said, “How long?”

“This is my second time living this year. How about you?” Hugo said.

Mia shook her head, “I have only lived this year once. But three years ago I was the first to survive Alexandru’s new ritual. At first, I was happy to survive. But five months later there was an explosion at the shimmer processing plant.

“It sent me back, to the day of the ritual. I thought I was going crazy at first. That first loop almost got me committed to the insane asylum. But then I thought I could use this to my advantage. I spent a few loops learning, getting better at runecrafting. I got to know my classmates pretty well too, living so many loops with them. It’s why I won the azad tournament, I know these guys well. Eventually, I got sick of the same five months, over and over again. I snuck into the shimmer processing plant and stopped it from exploding.

“I thought I stopped everything. I even made Alexandru change the ritual. He told me that would never happen again, he had it fixed for good. I even went up the mountain last year to double check. The survivor said they weren’t time traveling. I thought we had it fixed,” Mia said and sighed.

“I think he did change it,” Hugo said, “My experience has been different than yours. First off, this isn’t my body.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t born with this body, after I died I was brought back in time a year. The ritual stuffed me into someone else’s body. Not that I am complaining too much, I guess I am handsome now.”

“You died?”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I didn’t. I time traveled after the refinery blew, I wasn’t in there at the time. The shimmer cloud is what brought me back. I never died. I never would have thought that the ritual could even save you from dying. What happened?”

“Yeah, I should probably mention that. It’s pretty important. So, end of the year, when the heart beats, there is some sort of explosion. The shimmer vein leading into town explodes. A line of explosions came down the mountain last time around, and it took out half the city with it.”

“That’s not good,” Mia said as she paced around the room. “I wouldn’t recommend dying by the way. It sounds like the shimmer in the air triggered Alexandru’s recall ritual. That’s the part that started this whole mess. Alexandru is a crazy but brilliant ritualist. He built a ritual to take himself back down the mountain after his soulmarking ritual. It was supposed to just be a long range teleport. But obviously he messed up somehow. It recalls him to the base of the mountain, but the soulmarked back to the ritual. I am just trying to figure out how his ritual could have caused the shimmer vein to explode.”

Hugo hadn’t thought of that possibility before. Eventually he shook his head, “I don’t think that’s related. The explosion happened right after the heartbeat. His ritual wasn’t until a few minutes later. He needed time to gather suckers to pay him for his deadly ritual, remember?”

“Oh yeah. Still, it seems weird that it wouldn’t be related somehow. What else could have caused the shimmer vein to explode?”

“I think it was Deva. I think they have covert army agents in town. They have already attacked the walls, and there were a few other weird things that I suspect were their sabotages as well.”

“The walls? When did they sabotage the walls?”

“A few months ago. Don’t you keep up with the news?”

“No, I have been focusing on my schooling and azad. It takes a lot of time to become champion.”

Hugo gave her a quick rundown of the sabotage and the extent of the attacks. He told her about the capture of the two saboteurs, leaving out the fox gang’s involvement. He also mentioned the various thefts of mana cores, and how it was probably all related.

Mia sat down and put her hand behind her head, “So this thing is big. Real big.”

“Yeah. And we have to stop it somehow,” Hugo said.

“We? What’s this we?”

“I don’t know you well, but I am pretty sure you care enough about the city to save it from getting destroyed.”

She sat forward and said, “Yeah, I guess. I am in, I suppose. Why would Deva explode the whole city? I know they hate us and all, but I thought they were trying to take over the eight cities of the wheel, not kill us all. Why would they do this?"

Hugo shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things. I am not even completely sure that Deva is behind all of this. That’s why I have been trying to get ahold of the hedge mages, to see if they know anything. I think they can see the future for real. If we can get all of the hedge mages to work with us, we will have a much better chance of stopping this attack."

“Hedge mages? Why would you contact those losers? Why didn’t you start with the sentinels?”

“I didn’t think they would believe me. Plus, I don’t want the extra attention. I am in a really weird situation with this new body, you know?” Hugo said. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t mention that he had two domains. He trusted Mia, but he felt like he should get to know her better before he told her everything.

Mia got up and started pacing again, “You have been going about this all wrong. We need to get a contact in the sentinel command, let them know what is going on. We know when they are going to attack the city, and we know how. That’s actionable information. They don’t have to believe us at first to check things out.”

“Yeah, I guess. I still don’t think it will be easy to get them to believe us,” Hugo said, reluctantly. She was right, this really was a job for the sentinels. Maybe if he had gone to them in the first place, it would be easier now. If he had told them about the saboteurs, they would trust him about the later attacks.

She waved her hand, “Don’t worry about that. My uncle is a sentinel in training. He already thought it was suspicious that I all of a sudden became a runic master. When I tell him about the time travel he will believe me and put me in touch with the higher ups.”

“We should probably bring in Alexandru too. Having an adult on our side should help convince them.”

Mia looked guilty and said, “That might be difficult. I never actually found out where he lived. I just ambushed him climbing shimmer mountain last winter. He made the changes to the ritual that same night and disappeared. I didn’t try to track him down after that because it seemed like he fixed it.”

“Well, alright. We will have to track him down. We need to check and see if this explosion is his fault after all. If I am right and this is Deva, we need to talk to the sentinels. And I still want to talk to the hedge mages. It seemed like they knew that this was coming, I want to find out what they know.”

“I will take the sentinels, and you take the hedge mages,” Mia said. “I don’t know how to get ahold of Alexandru, but we do need to figure that out.”

“We need to go out into the city and get that done. Do you have a way out of the academy? I can leave anytime I want, but I don’t think I could take you with me,” Hugo said.

She brushed his concern aside and said, “Yeah, just about everyone has a way out. It’s almost a right of passage. Congrats on finding your way out before your second year.”

Hugo nodded and said, “Alright, I’ll keep in touch. What dorm room do you live in? Or should I just find you at the next party?”

She looked him up and down and said, “No offense, but even though you are handsome, I can’t be seen hanging out with first years. Why don’t you just send me a letter through the office? I get lots of those and yours won’t stand out.”

“Don’t you think that this is a little more important than your social standing?” Hugo said. When he saw that the question was actually difficult for her to answer he continued. “I am fine keeping in touch with letters. I would only go to you in person if it’s really important.”

“No, no, you are right. This is more important than my social life. I am sure that I have plenty of social credit right now after winning the tournament anyway. My room number is 213 in the girls dorm, and if you can’t find me there, I hang out in the azad stadium after dinner a lot,” Mia said.

He could tell that the admission was difficult for her, so Hugo didn’t plan on bothering her much. But this was really important, and he was ecstatic to finally have someone on his side. They exchanged more details before they left the party. Hugo suggested they pretend to be related to make things easier on her. She didn’t want anyone to think they were together.

...

The next night, Hugo was at the academy wall right after the sun had set. He was excited to get working on saving the city. He planned on tracking down someone who could get him in touch with the hedge mages. Or someone that knew Alexandru. He had plenty that he could be doing.

First, he needed to get over this wall. Before he did his usual trick of walking on air, he looked around the wall. He wanted to see if there were other hidden ways through the wall like Mia had mentioned. Nothing looked out of place on this section of the wall, so he switched to mana sight.

The wall bloomed in color, several overlapping wards and runic constructs showing up as different colors in his mana sight. It was beautiful in a way. He looked over the wall, looking for breaks in the defense. There were several. Some were just natural gaps where two different wards didn’t quite match up. Some were obviously doors.

Without his skill, the wall looked completely unbroken. But with his mana sight activated, he could easily see a doorway fifty feet away. Once he walked up to it, he pressed on the wall. Nothing happened.

A careful examination revealed a rune set in the wall where a door handle would be. It wasn’t active at the moment, Hugo figured it would require a magical key to open. Still, it led credence to the idea that the staff didn’t really care if the students snuck out. This doorway was obvious enough that he had found it within minutes. There is no way the sages hadn’t noticed it when they were reapplying wards.

All that work and it was only there to keep inexperienced students within the grounds. Seemed silly to him. Then again, he knew that there were sound dampening runes on the walls too. That magic was quite nice and helped study and focus. Maybe the wards and rest of the defenses were just a challenge for the older students to overcome.

Regardless, he looked around before he took a running jump and climbed over the wall using his barriers. He was getting better at that. He had taken to using a combination of platforms and rungs so he could get his whole body in the act and get over the wall faster.

Walking through the city after dark, Hugo wondered how to start. If there was a bar or something that hedge mages hung out at, how would he find it? He had no contacts, no one he could ask. He didn’t have a lead, since the last time he was wandering the merchant quarter hadn’t panned out.

He did kind of have a lead on Alexandru though. He knew the mountain guide brothers lived in Tallinn. They would probably have a way to contact Alexandru since they worked with him. Even though he was just a kid, they probably would want to help him out. He warned them about the train jackers after all.

He glanced up to the glowing mana clock in the city square. It was ten minutes before the eighth bell. There probably weren’t many trains running this late. He would have to check the schedule.

A thought stopped him in his tracks. He had a date with Daniela in ten minutes.