IMO, I'd say Red Robes already has beaten Zach fairly easily.
Which fits well with the "smarter, not stronger" theme the story has going.

 

This is not true:

 

Yet, only one of the two is stuck in a pocket dimension with a sword hanging over their neck. And it isn't Red Robe.

 

I'm not saying Zorian is more powerful or that Zach isn't skilled, but look at time spent. Zach has spent at least a couple decades, where Zorian has only spent about 5 years. That doesn't tell me no hope of catching up or Zach being more talented, just that Zach has taken advantage of his time without being lazy.

Also, just because Zach can debate Zorian on his best subjects without sounding ignorant doesn't make them equal. At the very least Zorian is better at spell formula, divining, and mind magic. He also might be better at dimensionalism(I'm just going to call it space-time magic) with all he's studied it.

 

Zorian has access to Xvim's training, a force multiplier.

"Again!"

 

The point I was trying to make was this one:

Zach may be "stronger" than Red Robes, but he got hopelessly outplayed by him. Without Zorian, Zach wouldn't have ever stood a chance, as he'd still be completely oblivious about the true nature of the "time loop" or the fact that Red Robes even existed.

Zach was always outclassed, because in this story magical strength isn't everything. It's one of the things I really like about it.

 

Yeah I don't know if you can fault Zach for not having key information about something he previous did not believe exist, especially when compared to the guy who set the whole time loop thing up in the first place.

Zach and Zorian are two entirely different people with different strengths and weaknesses. One is not better than the other.

This debate is stupid.

 

I agree completely. Looking back to this thread now it seems that my posts might have been misconstrued. I never meant to contend that Zach is a superior wizard. I simply responded skeptically to the notion that Zach would sacrifice himself for Zorian in the belief that Zorian would do a better job in stopping the invasion on his own.

 

The situation now is a little weird. If time is barely moving, then the stakes aren't two fold. Yes, Zach/Zorian must escape before their time runs out inside the time cube, but outside the time loop barely anything has happened yet. So, as soon as they do escape, they should be able to get right onto Red Robes' heels and thwart him.

At first, I'd been thinking it was way worse than that. For each second they waste trying to escape the loop, Robes gets a ridiculous amount of time to ruin the world...or do whatever it is he plans to do. But the chapter contradicts that notion.

 

Maybe I missed it but is it confirmed one way or the other that they actually exit at the Gate itself?

 

If anything it seems obvious that they won't, no? The loop will just send their soul to replace the one currently in their bodies the same way it does at the every restart - just in the real world instead of the pocket dimension.

 

From the way they go on about how souls can't be destroyed, I don't think it can work that way, because that would essentially destroy the original Zorian's soul.

My expectation is that Zach, at some point, physically went inside of the Sovereign gate, and so in the current 'real world', he doesn't exist, and when he exits the gate he's physically leaving the pocket dimension and re-entering the real dimension. This would be kosher with the "no soul destruction" rules, and sets limits on the size of the dimensional boundary the gate maintains (the gate would act like a small tunnel between the two dimensions, as opposed to some sort of planet-wide thing were you could step out at any location)

The 'real' Zorian though, would still exist out there, and I think that if the clone Zorian managed to leave, he'd run into his old self.

I also think time is actually progressing in the real world (though slowly), so while the loop may always be being rebuilt to the same origin moment, in the real world some days may have actually passed. It's possible that when RR got out, he might find himself on day 15 rather than day 1.

I think that the point when the loop collapses will be when the 'real world' passes the planar alignment.

My other guess is that the time loop may not be actually rebuilt to the same origin moment each time- it might be very slowly shifting forwards, mirroring the 'current' time in the real world. Zorian wouldn't be able to tell, because he's always asleep at the start, but maybe a few years down the line he'll be snapping into his body a few hours later in the day, and he won't be getting that rude awakening anymore.

 

Soul creation is also off limits though, which is really making me think that the whole time loop has some Eldritch/running off a chained god roots.

 

I don't recall anything in the story that would suggest soul creation is impossible. If it were, how could people be born, and how could populations grow?

Soul creation via magic sounds super sketchy, but I don't think it'd be impossible. Necromancers can definitely affect souls in a lot of ways, like the lich did to Z&Z in the first loop we saw.

 

Why would it? Instead of just kicking out of his body and it moving on/dying, I mean.

 

Huh, I thought the whole process of how the time loop works was pretty well explained in the past two chapters? Basically:

-Sovereign Gate is an artifact made by the Gods (researcher in last chapter said it was from that time period, so not much of a stretch). This means that making copies of souls (which has been mentioned previously that the Gods could do) is a real possibility.
-Zorian said that he thinks that the world they are in a physical copy of the real world at the real world at a certain instant at the beginning of the month, enclosed in a pocket dimension, being constantly destroyed and recreated, where time goes much much faster than the real world, so almost no time has passed. Also kind of supported by what they’ve learned about the time loop up to now.

-As for the confusion about how they get back to the real world and the whole “souls can’t be destroyed” thing, I’m putting my money on a ‘safe’ version of the Soul Meld spell that got Zorian in this mess in the first place. Since what’s going to be merged is the original soul + copy of real soul (with Time Loop experience), there shouldn’t be any rejection or people going insane.
-Only the copy of the soul would be sent back (since that’s where the mark/Brand is attached).
-After they cross over to the real world, the bridge from the pocket dimension to the real world would probably be severed, and then:
1) The pocket dimension disintegrates, killing all the innocent copies of people (who are not aware they are copies) with it.
2) The pocket dimension stops repeating the same month, and continues on as if it were the real world, the people never finding out that they and the entire world are just a copy of another.
3) If on top of everything I mentioned in (2), the world slows down to normal time, and connects to the spiritual realm it might get even more interesting. It would then be a possibility that Zorian’s real world is the same (a copy of another world for the purpose of the time loop- that then ended), and the Gods are silent because the world Zorian comes from isn’t real and the Gods don’t care much for copies. And somewhere out there, the real ‘real’ world exists following a completely different timeline. Boom! Mindblown!

 

I gotta agree with 1 and 2. However the angels still do communicate as the priest (the green haired one) confirmed until before this time loop started, and demons as well. Could it be possible that a la Philip Pullman the Gods are just extra strong angels and they're getting weaker with time and so are more hands off?

---------- Post automerged 06-16-2016 at 11:27 AM ---------- Previous post was 06-15-2016 at 11:47 PM ----------

Oh and:

Why doesn't Zorian say this out loud? I thought he decided to share his suspicions with Zach..

 

Given Zorian's soul magic tinkering, I think we're building to a situation where they escape the time loop by having Zorian do something to his and Zach's souls - maybe so that they preserve all their knowledge when the loop ends, or that the loop "leaves them behind" in the next reset, or something quite like that.

I'm definitely looking forward to "the last loop" - but now that Zach and Zorian both know the consequences of everything, it'll be interesting to see how this changes their behavior in the loop.

 

Leave them behind? What do you mean by that? When the loop restarts, the fake reality is destroyed and then created anew; they don't actually travel in time. Altering their soul markers will not help them enter the real world as that function of the Sovereign Gate is currently offline.

From what I understand, they have only two options:

1.) They must find the five control artifacts and use them to open the gate. Acquiring them would probably also give Zorian and Zack the ability to include others into the loop.

2.) They could potentially exit the fake world physically by using a spell that allows dimensional travel (like the ninth circle spell Gate that has been mentioned in story). The Sovereign Gate of the fake world is clearly connected to the Sovereign Gate in the real world and tracing that connection should be theoretically possible.

EDIT: Speaking of the artifacts, I'm like 90% sure Daimen has found one of them. Even if that isn't the case, Zorian will probably contact him soon as he's the local version of Indiana Jones.