The Magic That Suits You Best

By now, Roze had been at it for more than half the day. The afternoon passed in silence as everyone searched and searched for anything of use. By evening, they took turns reporting their findings over dinner.

Roze crammed magic theory into her head from Raffy and Milipitas. Ferdinand molded the Time spells that Roze learned into test pieces, hoping to trigger some favorable effect on the mark in her hand. She ran through every discovery, testing and tweaking its capabilities before moving on to the next. She could turn back the clock in different ways, but the results were nearly always the same – she had insufficient training to maintain the focus for more than a negligible reversal.

Simply shifting time around her was a gigantic feat with the mana required to accomplish it. She learned that thinking smaller and minimizing the effect was the only route to go. She stared at Gideon’s mark, which was still warm to the touch. Her instincts told her that letting go for a single moment would be the end of it. She gripped it against her chest to keep it safe.

If reversing time didn’t work, then what about the object’s condition? Could they restart the countdown somehow? Replenish its glow? Perhaps, it ran on borrowed time? Maybe, they could forcefully recreate the spell itself, making a duplicate?

Questions upon questions danced in her head, finding new approaches to every purpose. It seemed like she could imagine all but the solution to restoring the magic of the mark.

No matter how much they combed the archives, any instance of someone being bestowed a power similar to Gideon remained elusive. Otherworlders, while rare, had made some appearances in key parts of history, but none were recorded wielding the power of Time.

Still, they couldn’t give up.

Gideon may have stubbornly clung to his plan to make Roze independent, but she was just as stubborn when it came to it. At least, she was far more unwilling to treat this cycle as some passing encounter for amusement.

“You will see. I’m a fighter, too. You left me the ability to fight on my own terms, so I’ll do it my own way!”

He had cultivated her ability to think through the journey’s problems. He had planted the seed that linked her innate abilities to the current situation. Given her profession of being an apothecary, it would be like spitting in the wounds of her patients if she stopped, purely because the answer wasn’t known.

She trailblazed forward, unwilling to stop and sleep, despite it being late into the night. Sleep meant the possibility of letting go of the mark, her only window to skimming through the previous cycles for any further clues.

The moon rose high. The long hours had worn everyone down, but a stray comment suddenly caused Roze to stop.

“It’s unfortunate that the spells you already know by heart won’t help you any,” Milipitas said with a yawn.

Whether it was the fog of exhaustion or a genuine sense of clarity, Roze wasn’t sure. However, that statement bothered her.

“And what if it did?” she spat out.

Raffy, the resident expert in magic, echoed a reply across the archives.

“Why, you’d be able to do much more with it than any of these new spells. After all, familiarity ingrains a sense of intent. It eliminates the excess of mana and concentration wasted in the casting.”

Ferdinand’s next statement was the final connection she needed.

“If it’s a type of medium that your magic passes through all the time, the rate of success increases severalfold.”

It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, but Roze’s jaw suddenly went slack. Her eyes jittered from a sudden possibility, one that she hadn’t even considered given that it was her original talents to begin with.

“It, it couldn’t be… is it really that simple after all?”

v

“Please, please let this work…”

At some point in the night, the rest of the party had succumbed to exhaustion. All except Roze. The spark of curiosity that she received before had fueled her into a delirium of tests where she touched objects, felt its history, and then, mouth a spell so familiar that she needed not say it. But for this crucial conclusion, she felt the need to do so.

“Progressio.”

Roze used this spell to advance the maturity of herbs to forage and plants to cultivate. It had been the secret to her livelihood which she used continuously to set up cheap supplies. Without needing to utter the spell name, her intentions could easily form the exact outcome that she called upon Time magic for.

But this time, the target was the mark that was still in her hand. It started to glow, recognizing the will of its caster.

Her companions started to stir, sensing a continuous stream of mana emitted. They could feel that it wasn’t one of Roze’s tests, but something that she was now pouring her everything into.

The mark remained unchanged still, but Roze didn’t give up. She had a very clear picture of what she wanted to do. It would simply require considerable effort to do so.

All of a sudden, a countdown flickered before her. And then, the numbers scrolled up, reversing the object’s time before her eyes. Roze couldn’t get too excited yet, not until she was finished.

However, that sense of validation gave her every reason to release the floodgates of her magic. The timer increased faster and faster – days turned into weeks and months.

Roze cut the spell right at the one year mark, the amount of time Gideon had originally. Setting the mark down on the floor, she clasped her hands together and prayed with her eyes shut. She begged whatever god that gifted this world the power of Time to bring him back.

When she opened her eyes, Gideon was on the floor, looking up at her. He blinked several times before stammering any words of surprise. Shock numbed his lips. Expectation and hope shone in his eyes.

He looked down at the restored countdown on his arm, before pointing at Roze to bellow out his surprise, finally finding his voice. He paused for a moment to slap himself in the face. When it was clear that it hurt, he pointed and yelled again, even louder as if imitating an alarm. Roze hammered a fist into his stomach.

“Stop that! You’re not going to wake up from this because you’re not dreaming!”

Gideon looked around, carefully this time. His eyes widened as the sight of the archives registered before him.

“You, you…”

“Thankless, are you now? Can’t even muster one for how amazing of a job I did? So I guess all those times you harped about how great a mage I would become was just lip service. I’ll have you know that I spent all day-”

Roze froze as Gideon wrapped her up in a bear hug. She felt tears flood her eyes at his touch, feeling for sure that he was back. But then, he lifted her up, swinging her body round and round. Her head spinning dried her tears. The vertigo made her dizzy. Sick of it, she yelled out a spell.

“Recedo!”

Roze fell to the ground with a thud, having suddenly lost the person that was holding her. She looked over to see Gideon lying on his back again, popping his head up curiously at her.

Recedo, was a simple spell that she picked up recently. It allowed her to move something to a previous location in an instant. However, the most that she could manage was tapping tens of seconds back. Yet, it was enough for Gideon to realize her growth.

He sat up and pretended to wipe tears from his eyes.

“I raised that girl.”

Ferdinand laughed and ran up to him, smacking him over the head lightly with his shield. Milipitas blew a gust of wind that bowled him back to the floor.

Gideon looked up to see Raffy extending a hand to him, helping him back up, before he realized that his hand had been frozen in a block of thick ice. It seemed like everyone wanted to take a shot at him for daring to leave them all behind.

“You’re stuck here with us now. No more escaping back to the beginning to do it all over again. That means owning up to all your promises that you set up and tried to conveniently duck out on.”

Gideon laughed nervously at Raffy. He turned to see similar smirks on Milipitas and Ferdinand. But then, Roze sealed his fate.

“Effectus Termino.”

Gideon had no idea what she had just done. He didn’t want to find out, so he activated his Time Stop… or rather, he found out that nothing happened.

“Aw shit, I’m so screwed now, aren’t I?”

“Yup, I placed a stop on your powers temporarily so you can’t run away. Come and receive the consequences of your actions!”

Gideon flinched as Roze charged toward him. But then, he simply nodded and spread out his arms. He was finally free from the cycle. His time had finally thawed from this endless struggle. He had sworn that he would accept it with open arms when the day came.

The future was never a certain thing. Only the past was. He had fought so hard with himself for holding that certainty on a pedestal before. But now, he found companions that knocked him off it. They were willing to walk the same path. They gave him reason to move forward again.

Roze crashed into his chest, her face wet with tears again. She had him back, and that was all that mattered.

Of course, Gideon being Gideon, he had to ask right at that moment.

“By the way, how did you even bring me back? None of the other Rozes figured it out.”

She looked up at him, a pout on her lips, annoyed that he had to ruin the moment. His lack of faith in her deserved another punishment. She made sure to log it in the back of her mind for later.

“If you really want to know that badly, I simply locked on to your mark in the past using Historia Revelata, and then, proceeded to push the starting point of when you would appear to the present.”

“You can do that? Messing with the past like that? I thought you could only move things forward?”

“It didn’t occur to me until now, but I had been extending the freshness of my supplies using the same method. I would recall how it was in the past and ‘progress’ its state to the present, rather than progressing time on the object itself. Same magic, different application.”

Time magic was a very vague art. Now, Roze understood why she needed to train her mental cognition when it came to executing its spells. And why it required time to develop them.

But she could worry about such things another time.

She smacked her head hard on Gideon’s chest to stop any more questions. A sigh of relief escaped her lips.

“Let’s head back. Back home. I miss it.”

Gideon smiled. “Very well. It looks like we’ll have plenty to do. Our journey isn’t quite over yet.”

“You bet!”

“Of course!”

“Naturally.”

The others came by to slap him on the shoulder. The party didn’t end until everyone came full circle, not just for Gideon. It was the least he could do for bringing them all together.