Riloth the 19th the 202nd-295th

And so, the rhythm resumed. For three months we fought the golems, today after today. Our coordination and skills improved at a rate the golems could not match, but coordination can't bridge the gap in power if that gap is an ocean. When we first saw signs of the golems recovering from our damage, we changed tactics and focused all our attacks on one region. We got fewer hits in each reset, but slowly we managed to dig a deep wound into Timothy's chest.

In this time, I mastered all the spells the book had to offer below the third tier, and made improvements on my speed casting Shield. I even learned the poison protection spell, and found it did temporarily help with my hangover, but I elected to stick with my potions.

Lightning, Shield, Mage Armor, Protection from Poison, Light, Mind Spike and best of all Clean, I learned them all, but in doing so found a problem. I exhausted my capacity to store spells in my vault. Those, along with my own version of Light, Lightning, and Mend, put the total number of spells available to me at ten. Unfortunately, I'd found my limit to be seven.

I spent a few resets juggling spells around, trying to see if I could work out room for an eighth if I avoided the higher tier spells, but it seemed like seven was a hard limit—at least for the time being.

Seven spells stood out as the most useful to keep ready at all times, but unfortunately, one of my mother's spells did not make the cut. Dissolving the spell templates for the spells from the book was no matter, and rebuilding them only took an hour or two once I'd learned them. If I dissolved my mother's Lightning, it would be lost to me forever.

Lightning, Clean, Mend, Shield, Mage Armor, Mind Spike and Light were the spells I wanted ready at all times. I actually preferred my own version of Light to the wizard's, which made that choice easy. The light appearing above my head was more convenient than it being cast on an object that I had to hold. There were some corner cases where the wizard's was more useful, but they were not worth losing the spell.

Lightning was a different matter. With Dagmar's aid, I discovered that the wizard's Lightning was more lethal than my own. She let me test both versions on her, and the wizard's spell caused her to convulse significantly more violently. It even cost less Will, the only downside being the need to perform a hand gesture to cast it. I reasoned that wasn't really a significant hurdle when I still had to aim my hand for my old spell. The cantrip of the new version even worked through a sword if I touched it as the target with the casting hand.

After weeks of dithering, I finally made the difficult decision to dissolve the version of Lighting my mother had taught me. I knew it was the correct choice from the start, it simply took that long to come to terms with the decision. It felt as if I was giving up a part of my mother. The spell template represented hundreds of hours spent learning with her.

I knew what she'd tell me to do. After finally accepting the fact that her spell was inferior—which would have taken her a while—she would tell me to not be sentimental and do the sensible thing. And so, after the aforementioned dithering and a scolding by Dagmar, I let go of the spell and replaced it with the better one.

During these three months, things began to change around the town. Buildings would randomly catch fire, crowds would run screaming, and horses broke free of their stalls. The pack rats had grown bold. Each reset found them trying new and increasingly destructive things. I know dying repeatedly has had a great effect on myself and Dagmar, so I can't imagine what it would do to a rodent incapable of comprehending the situation. We generally missed most of their chaos, but when they did encounter us, Vortex made quick work of them.

On the topic of Vortex, my practice of casting while concentrating on another spell began to bear fruit. I'd taken to casting Force Armor before practicing Conjuring throughout the day. Prior to meeting Dagmar, I couldn't cast any cantrips while maintaining a spell, but now I could do so as easily as if I wasn't. In fact, my speed of casting the spell improved marginally when casting it alone. My Conjuration proficiency grew to the point where I could summon items from up to a foot away if they bore sufficient amounts of my Will, and I could retrieve my sword from up to ten feet away. I attempted to Conjure you periodically in the Dahn, but it never worked.

The improvement wasn't specific to Conjure. I'd found I could now cast wizard cantrips and first tier sorcery spells while maintaining any other spell, regardless of its arcane tradition. This didn't help much in the battles against the golems, but I capitalized on the ability in the morning bouts with Fanos.

The wizard was now handily dealt with each morning. After finishing her survey of the Kituh, Dagmar used her newly found free time to improve her rune craft. She spent hours studying the runes inscribed in the Hardune outposts, and began to experiment herself. This experimentation bore fruit, and she learned to etch piercing runes into crossbow bolts. I took over driving the metal plate through the Kituh, with Dagmar providing directions from the back seat. She spent the trip preparing the bolt to pierce through the wizard's shield and slay him at the onset of the battle.

With him out of the picture, I began facing off against Fanos. With Force Armor and Mage Armor active, I gained real world experience casting spells while concentrating on another. I was no match for the Seeker in swordsmanship, but I'd improved greatly since my first lessons with Daulf nearly a year prior.

Where my skill with a sword was lacking, my foreknowledge and spellcraft made me more than a match. Through this time, my swordsmanship improved nearly as much as my magic, but my Bond with my sword remained stagnant. I'd yet to learn any of its abilities, and the only thing that separated it from a regular blade in my hands was its unnatural sharpness and my ability to Conjure it back to me when I became disarmed—a move that always took Fanos by surprise.

No new sorcerous spells were unlocked during this time, but my constant use of Conjure and Blink had pushed me close to something new. I was only waiting for some life or death situation to unlock it. The resets provided those in abundance, but like my mother's fabricated scenarios, I knew the stakes of each battle were low—even if I died.

My Air magic on the other hand grew even more fluid. So long as the desired effect was in the general bounds of the original spell, I found I could instinctively shape the magic however I wished. Gusts could be wide or narrow, strong or weak. Wind Jumps could maintain their initial powerful blast longer and stay active for nearly a half-hour so long as nothing disrupted my progress. I could not yet change the parameters of an active spell, but I no longer believed it to be outside the realm of possibilities.

But, despite all the progress, things were not going well. Unlike the first time I gave up on the golems or when Dagmar and I admitted defeat, it was not a sudden realization of our ineffectual efforts, instead it was slow and insidious. Each day we grew in coordination while I became more adept with my growing magical repertoire. The improvements were tangible, and slowly the number of blows we could deal increased.

With our increased prowess, the damage grew more evident on Timothy as we focused our attacks in one area whenever possible. The cavity we began to carve in his chest grew and grew until one day it didn't. We'd chip away, today after today, and the hole ceased growing. I became aware of it around the two hundred seventieth reset, and I'm sure Dagmar saw it too, but we never spoke of it and still we carried on, ignoring the several thousand pound golem in the room.

Then one day, I snapped.

We were "collecting our equipment," as had become our short-hand for ambushing and slaying two men. I hesitate to call them innocent after they repeatedly attacked me without provocation.

As we approached the pair and Dagmar began to load her crossbow, I looked at my own, now loaded with a runed bolt, and threw it aside in a mixture of anger and frustration.

The sound of the steel bow hitting the stones that littered this forest alerted the pair to our presence. Before they could react, I reached out to the Font of Air and summoned a blast of wind to knock them both from their feet and immediately moved to casting Mind Spike, creating a circle with my thumbs and index fingers with the wizard in the center. Before I could complete the spell, Fanos recovered his footing and slashed at the air with his dispelling blade. The wizard sensed my casting—through some mechanism I'd yet to learn—and cast Counter Spell from his undignified position, sprawled out on the forest floor.

The wizard recovered his feet, while casting what I now recognized as Lightning, as Fanos charged the sixty rock strewn feet between us. I Conjured my rapier to my left hand and caught it as it appeared in my palm with a whoosh of displaced air. As soon as I'd completed the cantrip, I began to form the construct for Mind Spike once again, but held it at the ready.

With a crack lightning erupted from the wizard's hand, but I was ready. I interposed my ensouled blade between the incoming magic and myself, and let the magic of the weapon absorb the attack. When the last of the lightning had disappeared into the soul stone set in the rapier's crossguard, I let the weapon fall to the ground and brought my hands up to form the somatic gesture for Mind Spike. As soon as my fingers completed the circuit, the spell took effect, and the wizard fell with a shriek of pain as he gripped his head. He'd not been prepared for such a sudden rebuttal to his spell, underestimating me for not the first time.

The magical duel lasted less than ten seconds, and Fanos had nearly covered the ground between us in that time. With my last sliver of time, I Conjured my blade back to my hand and cast Blink just as he began to extend his sword in a thrust at my chest. My spell brought me to the wizard's side as he was beginning to recover from my last attack, but a quick swipe of my sword put an end to that.

With the wizard dead, Fanos' Mage Armor was now gone and I could bombard him with magic until he succumbed, but I didn’t feel like playing it safe anymore. I was still no match for the warrior when it came to swordsmanship, but I had more than that at my disposal.

The Seeker charged me, and I ran to meet him. While a few strides still separated us, I reached to the Font of Force and pulled on his left foot just as it was about to land on the uneven ground. He fell with a grunt, but turned the tumble into a roll and jumped to his feet right in front of me, left sword already coming in for an attack. He led with his dispelling sword, but I knew that it was temporarily bereft of charges, and blocked his strike with a Buckler, casually swiping his attack aside as I brought my own blade in for the thrust.

His eyes grew wide as he must have recognized yet another of his charge's spells being used against him.

Could that be doubt? Second guessing the zeal he'd so often and repeatedly shown while slaying evil sorcerers?

Despite whatever was going on in his head, he parried my thrust, but opened himself up in the process, both swords now spread wide. I followed up my thrust with a kick to the chest, and followed that up with a Gust which toppled him where my kick had only disrupted his balance. He fell to his butt on the ground and I sent a Lightning into his chest, sending him into convulsions. Before he could recover, I ended him with my sword, just as I had the wizard.

I stood there, panting for some time before Dagmar approached.

"Feeling better?" she asked with a mix of concern and wry amusement.

"No," I said, and began casting Clean to remove the blood from my clothes.

"Want to tell me what that was all about?"

"Honestly? I don't know. Misplaced frustration?" I suggested, while processing my emotions aloud. "We can't defeat the golems. You have to see that. I don't know why I did this. But, that's what I was agonizing over before all this." I punctuated 'this' with a gesture towards the bodies.

"Aye, I get it. You feel powerless, and you wanted to prove that you weren't," she said and then said nothing as she waited for me to reply.

"We are never getting out of here," I said after a moment of silence. "This is hopeless."

"Hopeless?" Dagmar said, disbelieving the word. "Look what you just did to these men. It wasn't too long ago I bested you on the tail end of a month-long bender."

"So? These two don't matter. We can't defeat the golems."

"Aye, they don't, and maybe we can't, but you're losing sight of what does matter."

"What do you mean?" I asked, tilting my head as I did, as if doing so would help comprehend her words.

"I've never had more hope than I do right now. We know the Primordial of Time is near. We don't suspect so, or hope so, but know it. The Dahn is a great find, and I truly hope we can gain access to it someday, but that will not end all of this. And look at you, at what you just did—cold blooded murder aside. Look how far you've come in so short a time," she paused once more, and I examined myself in light of her words.

"You promised me that you'd help me find my boy when we were still strangers. Now we are more than that, and I'm promising you that we will find a way out of this. You're right that these two bone snatchers don't matter, but they were a source of power, and so is the Dahn. We just need to find another."

She then left me to my thoughts and rifled through the wizard's pockets for something to eat. I stood there for some time turning her words over in my head and came to the conclusion that she was right. The tunnel vision of purpose that had helped maintain my sanity had blinded me to the greater picture. The Dahn was just a means of furthering our goals, not the goal itself. We had hope that the source of these resets was within our power to correct and not buried in the ocean on the far side of Kaltis.

Upon reflection, I knew by then that you were not going to abandon our Bond if you hadn't already, and with that revelation the urgency that has been an all consuming fire left me, and I sat down to rest.

We have time. We have plenty of time.