Chương 57: Chapter 54: Abjurate Should Be a Word

"Come on, Beta! Don't ignore me!" Nolotl knocked on the sidereal infinity where the door to her room was located. It was an odd feeling hearing the empty thunks on wood when his hand was impacting empty space.

"I don't appreciate being made fun of," Beta said from the other side of the door but without any animosity. Not that meant much as that was her default state.

"I'm not making fun of you and I'm not jesting!" the diviner explained.

"Do you realize how moronic the words that came out of your mouth are?"

"Do you realize that chronomancy is a thing?" he countered.

"A good argument if it weren't for the fact you're the Empyrean of Information and if you were to cast any chronomancy I doubt you would have the ability to go back in time more than seconds."

"Okay, that was a very valid point," Nolotl clicked his tongue. Even then, Beta was overestimating him because he knew no chronomancies and the closest thing that he knew was the Healing Word restoration because that was Time's generic school of magic.

"But I can assure you I come from the future! Far-ish future! For example, I know that you intend to perform a ritual during the total celestial alignment."

"Everyone will be doing that, Xocoyotzin." It bothered him a bit being referred to by his surname.

"You need to do better than blind guessing."

"Ah, but is it a blind guess to know that ritual will be of the ninth tier and you will perform it at the Tower Master's libration point observation room?" Beta suddenly fell silent, even more silent than before. Starguided did provide Nolotl with some minimal information about the room in front of him, but because the stars themselves couldn't shine inside, it was negligible. But the fact that he no longer felt the akyromancer was worrying.

Though the gnosiamancer wasn't given enough time to foster his worry as the "Daughter of Nihilism" opened the door. Most of her face was occluded by her hood, but the parts that were visible were emotionless as always.

"Keep talking," she said impassively. It wasn't a question, but an order.

"As I've stated, I come from the future, around 60 days… okay, no. Actually like 50-something in the future, pulsars, why is time travel so weird?"

"So around the day of the total celestial alignment?" The Empyrean of Void questioned him with a tone that heavily implied 'I'm just following your game'.

"Yes," the Empyrean of Information nodded.

"The very same day. I helped you with your ritual, but you severely failed at it and… well, the Void consumed half your body. You only managed to live a handful of seconds past that."

"…so I survived it," Beta brought a finger to her mouth whilst pondering.

"I don't think that should be the main take away from that…" Nolotl smacked his lips in discomfort.

"Let's say I trust you a bit on your claims," she added.

"This is no place to talk, so come into my room." Beta fully opened her door instead of just talking through a small opening. The terian smiled at that gesture and strutted inside of the celestial's bedchambers. They were exactly just like he remembered them, no Perfect Recollection needed to tell that. But Beta didn't stay still and instead guided him to her workshop. She closed the door behind him once they made it there and she cast something.

As a wave of translucent darkness of nihility physicalized spread throughout the workshop, Nolotl could only guess that it was an akyromancy abjuration.

"So," the claire-obscure woman picked up a stool and sat down, "how does this time regression work?" For a moment Nolotl pondered if to tell her about Enantyum, and whilst the man did comment that he didn't care, at the same time the chronomancer had sent the terian to deal with Beta as he wanted to avoid dealing with the Void. Better not to mention him just yet. For brownie points with him if anything.

"I performed a ritual that allows me to slingshot my Cognition to the past. One part of the ritual happened a few days ago and the other one at the total celestial alignment." He told his lie with some half-truths. In the case Beta decided to investigate him, she would find that Nolotl had indeed performed a ritual at the Observatorium's roof at the start of the month of Space. And his method was also how he expected Enantyum's time loop to work.

For such an impossible spell to happen it was bound to have some heavy restrictions and requirements and having a prior ritual that set up the start of the loop just made sense.

"Is it only your mind that goes back in time?" Beta inquired inquisitively. Nolotl nodded.

"Think of it as a very powerful divination, but instead of a reading or an approximation of the future, it's just fact."

"Do you have any other way to corroborate your claim beyond the fact that you knew about my ritual?"

"Hmm, that's a hard question," the akyromancer frowned at his response.

"No, don't get me wrong, I do have several things I could tell you to convince you, but in situations like these a more personal question would bring better results and you were a bit private with your… Huh, I do think I actually have something." Perfect Recollection meant perfect memory, but one needed to remember that memory existed in the first place. Minds were stupid things.

"You did tell me that you didn't like gazes because they always carried expectations, especially towards you, and you found that repugnant."

"That… is a somewhat validating claim," Beta answered, now unsure of herself.

"But with that information, if anything, I will need to be privier about myself if you can just learn whatever you want about me and I will have no way to stop you."

"…that is a valid concern," Nolotl responded weakly. Beta was already secretive and hard to get out of her shell, and I think I've just made it worse… Pulsars.

"Considering you aren't dismantling that statement, you're the only one that can go back in time?"

"…yes," he sighed. The Interlooper knew for a fact that the Regressor wouldn't accommodate more people on the time loop. At least for the time being.

"Though I'm trying, or at least starting to plan, to get people's information across the loops. I have the Thought Projection Boon which I might be able to project my memories of you into your mind but that… well, it requires me being inside your mind." Technically speaking, he could project such memories into a wall with illusions, but that would be sluggish. Minds processed pure thoughts and memories fast, but images and sounds would take way longer.

Perhaps a whole loop could be retransmitted in a handful of minutes, but a recording of a loop… well, it would take a whole loop.

"Yes, we will leave that for later," the akyromancer stated plainly, her lack of trust evident.

"So why are you here, for me to help you transmit memories with more ease?"

"Not at all," the gnosiamancer swayed his head, his long mane lagging behind.

"But if you can help with it, I won't say no. There are two reasons why I'm here. First, I want to avoid you dying during the coming cosmological event."

"I'm not innocent enough to believe that you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart," her words were dry and deprived of emotion. Nolotl softly bit his lower lip at that. You cannot even begin to comprehend how much your death hurt me, Beta. He left those thoughts unspoken as it was clear to him that the current Beta wouldn't believe her. Apathy came to her more naturally than empathy, so he doubted altruism could be understood by her.

"Your survival ties with my second reason," he said after taking a breath.

"I have a Boon that needs to learn and assimilate other Alignments, and my current objective is Void. Or rather, the school of abjuration. I believe you're the best teacher available for the subject." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I doubt that more than your time traveling claim." Even though Nolotl swore that was a jest, he couldn't perceive any amusement in Beta's pale visage.

"Anyhow, that would be the summary," Nolotl clasped his hands together.

"So, what do you think?"

"You helped me in this previous iteration of time?" Beta tapped on her palm. It wasn't a stick of chalk this time, but she did show some tendency to do so. A tick.

"Yes," he nodded.

"That's why I want to help you. It wasn't… nice to help you for a full month and then see you die a gruesome death."

"And you have no idea what the ritual is about?"

"None at all, you didn't say anything about it," the terian pressed his bottom against a workbench, mostly supporting his body rather than sitting.

"I had to 'read' several—or more like a myriad—books, treatise, papers, and whatnot of whatever you wanted, but due to my lack of understanding on the subject, I couldn't make much of it."

"And why did you read them?"

"Any book I read or skim I can summon as a lasting illusion. I had a Simulacrum sent to the Archives to read through anything you wanted, and I then materialized them for you."

"…that sounds useful," her voice sounded less neutral, if only because it betrayed an infinitesimal kernel of interest.

"So I taught you and you brought me books?"

"Basically," he nodded, his hands pressed again the workbench.

"Because you made me live here, I also cooked." Beta had done the cleaning back then, but it was trivial for her when she could just vanish dirtiness out of existence.

"You lived here?" The akyromancer inquired accusingly, not believing his words. Nolotl could imagine already the formation of a thought in her mind, one where she doubted every claim out of his mouth as he could simply justify it by 'it happened in the future'. It was an absurd thought, but if he had thought of it, then Beta definitely had too. But that was maybe mostly his innate paranoia speaking. Thought his acquired paranoia didn't help either with that.

He was thankful for being the time traveler instead of the companion that had to learn that revelation from said traveler, because he would have been even more suspicious than her.

"No, no," Nolotl raised his hands defensively.

"I lived at the next door because it's empty. But I mostly slept and showered there; otherwise, it was just us here in this room cooking, eating, studying, and learning." Beta nodded at that, the explanation making sense to her.

"What exactly did I teach you?"

"Not much, only the basics as it was my first time learning about Void. We didn't even get into abjuration and you simply had me learn a spell. And oh Celestials, it did take me its time." An additional loop at that.

"What spell did I make you learn?"" Ode to Silence," the diviner answered.

"You considered that having a divination with xenoglossia requirements would make an akyromancy easier to learn."

"Can you show me the spell? I want to see how well I taught you." Nolotl frowned at that, mostly because Beta didn't have had much time to teach him on it. Either way, he cleared his throat. For a moment, he subconsciously went for Ode to Healing Silence but then remembered that it might be unpleasant for the akyromancer and corrected course before a word came out of his mouth.

Like the first loop, he opted for a traditional Tezlan song, and that was refracted on the sounds of the ethereal instruments that the song conjured. The only reason why the spell was a divination instead of a conjuration was because the instruments didn't really exist and they were more like auditive information. Once the song got going, sounds except his own voice and that of inexistent instruments got prohibited in the workshop. Is it me or are the void motes bigger now?

When the ode was properly established, the motes always became plentiful, but they were ethereal as the instruments. This time around, however, they almost seemed tangible. As paradoxical as that might be. Beta raised a hand with two lone fingers and Nolotl got the signal, bringing his sorrowful song to a halt.

"It takes you a handful of seconds before any effect appears, but otherwise, it is quite the solid execution. You've trained a lot."

"You can't even begin to imagine," he chuckled, his mind going back to that lapse of two weeks brought forward by the odious Ehecatl.

"Are you satisfied with my progress?"

"I cannot respond that question, Nolotl. I don't know what was your baseline," she responded impassively.

"Right…" The terian smacked his lips, now finding himself a bit demoralized.

"I can show you a bit of my memories to judge that a bit better."

"Perhaps on the future," Beta replied in a tone that mostly said 'never'. But Nolotl knew better than to extrapolate such uncertain knowledge, especially when he couldn't use Lesser Read Thoughts on the woman. Not only the Boon was mostly useless to people that weren't connected to the Cognition on a deep way, but akyromancers like Beta were truly black boxes.

"As for your doubts," Nolotl continued, "my baseline was nonexistent. I guess I could cast Vacuous Filtration which is technically an akyromancy but that's the limit. Well, was. Now there's Ode to Silence too."

"Hmm," the akyromancer lowered her head deep in thought, her visage now mostly occluded between hood and obscure mane.

"And that is all?"

"What do you mean that is all?" The brawny gnosiamancer countered with a frown.

"You only learned a single spell in that time?"

"I mean, I only have 3% Alignment with Void and we are talking about akyromancies here, so of course I had a hard time," Nolotl explained himself.

"But I did also go over the basics of akyromancy and Void. You were insistent on first getting the basics: understanding the essence of the Void."

"Then I did a poor job because with just a glance I can see that you've failed to understand what the Void truly entails…" Beta added softly with a sigh that Nolotl couldn't classify. Was it exhaustion? Disappointment? Or perhaps only plain tedium?

"I mean, I can't be that bad if I have cast a second-tier spell with a decent mastery," the terian reasoned.

"And that's the issue," the pale celestial replied.

"A half-decent mastery on a second-tier spell is what you would expect from a 14-year-old kid at level 4."

"A level 4 akyromancer," Nolotl responded softly as he finally understood the nature of her claims.

"What?" Beta squinted at him.

"Akyromancer," he reiterated.

"You're talking about a 14-year-old akyromancer, but I'm a gnosiamancer. One that has a 3% affinity with that element and doesn't even have a proficiency with magic related to Void."

"Hmm," she hummed in thought again, this time tapping her palms.

"…then I guess your half-decent attempt is respectable."

"Thank you," Nolotl replied with honesty and little to no sarcasm. Sometimes it didn't make sense getting angry because most of the time people weren't even on the same speaking level. What one had to do in such situations was just equal the speaking fields so the conversation made sense to every speaker.

"This does change things," Beta lethargically strutted around the workshop, her head down and in a state of ponderation. Nolotl didn't know what it was about Beta's walk, but it had an ethereal sense to it. The Empyrean of Void already merged with shadows by default, yet that only became exaggerated now with her long robe almost vanishing from existence in thin whisps of dark mist. The akyromancer was truly a representation of her Alignment; a representation that Nolotl constantly failed at. She was Void.

Tramma Dol's claim on her power might not be that exaggerated, the diviner failed to understand how a casual march could carry such much power and raw representation. He was directly looking at her, and he feared that the pale woman might disappear from his conscience if he looked away, even if he chose to wield Vacuous Filtration. Both the Tower Master and the Empyrean represented the Alignment correctly in the Void Tower, their essence vanishing if you didn't pay explicit attention.

"Abjuration," Beta suddenly said, coming to a halt.

"What about it?" Nolotl inquired, his gaze now focused on her eyes. He had once dared to call them devoid of life in his mind, yet that comment only tormented him now as they seemed infinitely more lifeful to that corpse he had seen a loop ago. It was a wound in his psyche that it would never disappear.

The reason why he had never blamed Roxina on her outburst last loop was because life was truly sacred and it should never be extinguished, and he couldn't blame her for understanding that diplomacy wasn't an option when such diplomacy had technically never happened.

"If I consider all your claims to be correct, then my previous self was incorrect," the akyromancer said.

"Yes, there's virtue in teaching you Void magic, but your focus—from what you've told me—is abjuration. Going directly to a second-tier akyromancy was only a stunt in your growth. It was only a miracle that you managed to push through in such little time."

"Yeah, a miracle," the gnosiamancer awkwardly laughed and scratched the back of his head. And totally not because it took me almost another whole loop to get the spell to cast. Beta, however, failed to notice the awkwardness of the laughter. Whether it was because she had actively chosen to ignore it or such emotional subtleties were beyond her, she didn't address it.

"This means," she continued speaking, "that the current me should focus on the actual task at hand that is teaching you to abjurate."

"Beta, abjurate isn't a word," he corrected her.

"Of course it is," the Empyrean of Void scoffed. Perhaps it was derision, but it was one of the few instances she had shown emotion.

"Nope," the Empyrean of Information swayed his head.

"I've read the common tongue dictionary and it's not a word. If you meant to say the manner Originals say and conjugate the verb for abjuration, then it's abjure."

"You've read the whole dictionary?" She replied in an accusatory tone.

"It's the easiest way for a gnosiamancer to learn a new language, specially if they have Perfect Recollection," he calmly explained with a smile on his face. Nolotl didn't know what it was about Beta, but she always managed to get genuine smiles out of him instead of those fake ones one was forced to use on the martial discipline called conversation.

"What about phonetics?" Beta inquired in all honesty.

"Wouldn't learning like that make you speak awkwardly."

"Fortunately for my folk, good dictionaries have the pronunciations next to the words nowadays. And if it weren't for that, I'd in a pretty rough spot because common, Tezlan, and Tamorean do not share phonetic syllables. Or rather, share little as they all have very peculiar inflections for the same syllable."

"Right," she now added in apparent disinterest.

"That doesn't negate the fact that abjurate should be a word." Nolotl smiled at her new teacher, not wanting to lose her now over a minor lexical squabble. He could fix her grammatical problems over the coming weeks with ease. For now, he simply smiled, this new Void loop already looking brighter than the previous ones.