“The spirit realm’s edges are rough, but end at around the halfway point between the 5th and 6th planet of our solar system.” Seraphine explained.
“Obviously, given that you’ve reset multiple times already, it would be unlikely that a border of the loop within the bounds of the spirit realm. If so, there would have been spirits that were not included in the loop, and things would have been much more chaotic.”
“Using this as a baseline, I decided that we should try to see if we can see further from that edge. So I teleported a few scrying charms and borrowed a really expensive mana-scope to observe further out from there.”
“The scrying charms barely last a few minutes, so we had to burn through quite a few of them…” She explained bitterly, seemingly pained about the loss of such expensive charms.
“And the commission mana-scope is horrendous at capturing detail. It’s basically taking a few light rays and using the spirit realm to process the data. It’s super inefficient and the image quality is horrendous.”
“I don’t understand why they even bother to keep such a pile of trash around. The Commission buys their stuff relating to astronomy to the magic families like the geeks at Caelestis anyway. And they outsource production of these tools to the East too. Why do they waste the space for it within the Tower?” Seraphine ranted.
“But I suppose it’s a good thing that they keep that kind of useless mana-scope around. After all, I did manage to capture the sight of something… weird.”
Seraphine then handed over an imaging crystal over to Aurelius, with a rough sketch of the observation alongside it.
“You’ve certainly spent quite a lot of money on this endeavour.” Aurelius replied with interest, pitting the orb against the light as he tried to glimpse at the captured image hidden inside it.
As he brought it closer to his eyes, and stared into it, he noticed nothing… particularly strange. He saw a blurry, and hazy dot the size of his pinkie wavering slightly. But other than that, nothing else noteworthy could be observed.
“Are you sure this is supposed to intrigue me? Look at the resolution on this thing. Did you get the aperture settings right? It seems like it’s been magnified far too much.” Aurelius asked curiously, staring back up at Seraphine questioningly.
“You’re right. I had to magnify it 5000 times. That was the maximum magnification that I could tune out on the imaging crystal and the mana-scope.” Seraphine replied, gesturing over at Aurelius to look at her sketch.
And in it, Aurelius was once again struck by the unremarkableness of it all.
Just a slightly shaded region and a single dot on its completely ordinary, indistinguishable blob in the center.
“Ok, I’m lost. What the hell am I supposed to be looking at?” Aurelius asked, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation.
“I wasn’t sure at first either.” Seraphine replied, shrugging at his question.
“...What?” Aurelius asked, setting down his pineapple mocktail in confusion.
“It was Sylven that helped to point out the irregularity. The unremarkable speck is actually a single, tiny asteroid.” Seraphine replied, shrugging her shoulders carelessly.
Aurelius had zero idea where the hell she was going with this. An asteroid? What kind of academic nonsense was she spewing now?
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You see, mana has a ‘shift’ in its properties between different types of matter, similar to how glass bends light differently from water.”
“And that’s what mana-scopes use to observe the planets in the vicinity of our solar system.” She lectured sternly, already making Aurelius’s eyes swim circles in confusion.
“Mana-scopes are really only useful within the solar system because of the inconsistent distribution of mana in our universe, but our solar system has enough mana to be able to be captured in mana-scopes with decent ease.”
“Another factor in capturing images in a mana-scope, as you can imagine, is the interaction of mana and matter is much more pronounced if a spell is cast.”
“The Commission actually uses this principle to detect magic using satellites. It’s difficult to differentiate its uses in cities for now, but it’s rather excellent for mapping out the topography and finding veins of natural ignivite, and old ruins.”
“Returning to the topic at hand, if you look at the imaging orb again, you’ll see that it’s been imprinted with 10 distinct images.” Seraphine explained.
…No it wasn’t. Aurelius grumbled internally, tilting the crystal to observe it extra carefully this time…
He made the orb shift gently and slowly in his hands… and finally found the edges of each image, each one blurrier than the last.
And once again, he found it to be incredibly ordinary. The image showed the asteroid moving back and forth in its spot, but he could not understand, at all, what this was supposed to represent.
“Well?” Seraphine asked back expectantly.
“Just spit it out! What’s with this horrendous lecture! You’re eating into my vacation time!” Aurelius grumbled in frustration.
Seraphine looked mildly annoyed at Aurelius’s complete indifference, and crossed her arms irritably.
“Can you think? The damn asteroid is moving back and forth in an arbitrary region in space!” Seraphine yelled out, snatching the paper in Aurelius’s hand to point at the vague outlines of each picture.
“AND?” Aurelius asked, matching Seraphine’s frustrated energy.
“You idiot, the damn asteroid is stuck in place because that’s the boundary of the magic! It’s oscillating back and forth between the two layers of the ‘loop’ and ‘non-loop’! Do you see how that’s significant!” Seraphine shot back, smacking Aurelius’s head with the piece of paper in exasperation.
Aurelius was about to angrily complain back to this opaque delinquent, except that he finally realised Seraphine’s point.
“Holy Dragon dung.” Aurelius cried out, reaching out for his mocktail in shock.
Slurping loudly at the dregs of his drink, Aurelius leaned back, absorbing the information together with the delightful Sun of Cessatio.
“You idiot. What’re you leaning back for!” Seraphine complained again, smacking Aurelius in the head once more.
“What do you want me to do! This information is basically useless! You’re saying that there is a POSSIBILITY of the loop having an edge like a million kilometers from where I am!” Aurelius complained, signalling at the attendant to bring him more Pina Coladas.
“More like a few billion.” Seraphine murmured before snapping up straight and smacking Aurelius in the head once again.
“Ow. Stop it.” Aurelius groaned, sinking back into his chair in protest.
“I need you to memorise the coordinates of the asteroid so we can investigate it in the future!” Seraphine shot back, shoving the paper in his face with absolute conviction.
“And I need you to promise me one more thing.” Seraphine said.
“You MUST learn portal travel.”
???
Aurelius’s deserved time of rest and relaxation flew past, assisted by Seraphine’s relentless spitting of coordinates.
“Something something [...] triangulation [...] something something.” The words flew into one side of his poor ears and exited the other…
And eventually, the world swirled as planned, Seraphine’s worried face stretching in his face.
Aurelius checked his wrist one last time, taking note of the time, and breathed in the salty beach air for the final time on this loop.
And he slipped back into the darkness…
???
Time flowed quickly in the void this time.
After all, he had much to consider and memorise. In fact, his reflection would probably be enough satisfy even the most devilish human resources office worker.
“...” Aurelius said, opening his eyes tiredly, feeling the burn in his chest once more.
The usual chorus of people shouted all around him, following the dramatic lines of Tiberius the thespian, yelled out into the sameness of the crowds and the indifferent atmosphere of Tlacualtzin…
“Akldjafh” Aurelius groaned, internally counting for the arrival of his… not-so-friendly mentor.
It seemed that he was getting used to this…
