Pretty fun chapter to read, although I'm not sure how Daimen managed to get the people of his group to accept Zorian and Zach without fuss and NOT have it take like... days of questioning, especially after it's revealed that he can cast Gate, and has apparently this free pass to the orb.

I am glad that Daimen appears to be a fairly decent person. Although, it is interesting to me that despite years in the loop Zorian still seems to have a preconceived notion that Daimen is a dick, even though it appears that they've spent a lot of time together. IIRC after Zorian spent just a couple restarts with Kirielle he warmed up to her, so Daimen must've really been terrible to him without realizing or something.

The black swords that Zach summoned during the chameleon drake fight is now making me once again revisit my thoughts that magic in the MoL world seems excessively "free", in the sense that there's this idea of "anything is possible" which I guess is a little jarring to read after all the specific rules regarding Harry Potter. Like, I'm pretty sure that Zach has basically used a different combat technique/style in every single fight he's been in onscreen, which really speaks to the depth that the author has gone to imagine combat and offensive magic in the story.

Noticeably there were actually a decent number of errors (spelling/grammar, syntax, etc.) that I noticed which usually don't pop up. Probably the author wanted to get it out earlier since the date was already pushed back.

 

Zach is great. His ending line is pretty funny. Good chapter, but I was hoping for Orissa to be more interesting. Damien's group is quite talented-- I like the eye puppet dude.

 

Daimen does put all his underlings through life & death situations. I'm pretty sure they HAVE to totally believe in what he's saying, at least to a certain extent. They have to follow their leader and put some stock in his word, or else they'll just get killed. Open resistance to what he's saying is something I'd not expect except in really outrageous circumstances. While they'll accept claims that Zack/Zorian are very skilled, probably none of them really believe what he says about two kid mages at face value...The full extent of their skill is probably still something they're skeptical about, though I'm sure seeing them perform gate magic clears some of it.

 

Damien's explanation about his empathy were what I suspected them to be. That said, if he was aware of his talent, kept it hidden from everyone, but suspected his younger brother may have it too then Zorian has some right to blame him for his troubles.

While it was amusing how Daimen decided to handle the situation, completely surprising people with unexpected level of skill is part of fun is time loop adventures.

If Zorian was less moral character or maybe he liked his brother more, he probably should check Orissa to discover her real intentions.

The next chapter, Zach the Dragonslayer versus the Ancient Hydra.

 

It's over half a million words I know, but I can't remember Zorian saying anything about his parents directly inhibiting his empathy or anything about a madhouse. And it's weird that Daimen gets nervous and tries to change the topic when that got brought up.

 

Huh, that line really stuck with me, and has been central to how I have perceived Zorian's parents.

While I don't condone the way they treated Zorian, I also am having a hard time condemning them. They were probably confused about why he fought so hard against social gatherings and they definitely had no idea how to deal with him fainting at them. I'm doubting that psychiatric care is an outpatient system in their world. So, if it ever became a serious problem, their only option would have been to throw him in the madhouse. While they never inhibited his empathy, they probably did everything they could to ignore the problem and hope he grew out of it.

 

Zach had the best line. Just casually dismisses the Chameleon Drakes everyone freaks out about, like he hunted down the strongest dragon in the world or something. The next chapter is gonna be awesome though, I wanna see Zach smack around a Hydra. I have a feeling the group is going to get in his way somehow though.

 

Chapter 017 "Sympathy for the Spider":

While talking to Imaya about the possibility of him being a psychic:

"Zorian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hated telling people about the pressure thing, since most people immediately assumed he was either delusional or making things up. His family, for instance, had never believed him when he tried to describe the phenomena to them as a child, believing instead that he was making things up so he wouldn't have to follow them to their various social events. Eventually they grew tired of his claims and threatened to send him to a madhouse if he didn't admit he was lying, so he never brought the issue up again."

 

Thanks, I didn't want to wade through it all to find that.

It does heavily imply that Daimen knew about Zorian's empathy and didn't speak up in support because it wasn't identical to his empathy. Whether that was because he thought Zorian was faking it to get attention, Daimen didn't want to share attention, or he just couldn't care less.

 

Or because Daimen found out when he was in school, and they spend most of the year there so he would only interact with Zorian on breaks. So it wasn't like it would have been constantly in his face, and given Zorian's own attitude where he didn't seem to care about his family when he went away that'd be a rather hypocritical attitude for Zorian to complain about. Zorian after all never once cared about what happened to his brother during the school attacks, which IMO is considerably worse.

 

@ Immet: no problem; I've reread this series a lot, sometimes to make a summary on Word about what has been accomplished so far, and what's left for them to do, so I've gotten better at finding these things.

nath1607: yeah, what did happen to Fortov during the invasion? other than him playing the violin during the party and being one of the first ones to be evacuated due to being a 4th year, he wasn't really mentioned during any of the invasion.

On another note, I think he might be the next Kazinski family member to get some characterization.

We've already gotten some hints that he might not be as irresponsible and thoughtless as he seems, and seems to pay a lot of attention to what other people think (if we go by what Kirielle said about him avoiding Zorian because he knows Zorian hates him, and the connotations that he was doing it for Zorian and not for himself). Zorian himself has said that he's not an idiot (he thinks he does badly in classes because he's just lazy).

I think Fortov might actually have it kind of bad in the Kazinski household.

Out of the siblings, he's kind of by himself. Damien is too far apart in age and must have been away from home several times due to his job. His too younger siblings are either too young (Kirielle) or too unapproachable (Zorian) and have also formed their own sort of clique (with Zorian always babysitting Kirielle.

He's parents always paid more attention to Damien and he was always the designated spare, like it or not. He couldn't hope for Zorian to take over (due to his character), Kirielle was too young and he had no way of telling how she could turn out. As for Damien, he had his job, although he might still take over the family business due to being the oldest.

Also, how much do you want to bet that he failed his exams AFTER somehow finding out about Damien getting engaged, automatically having his future set in stone as the heir and as someone who would probably be forced into a political marriage? Basically after graduating, he would be sort of screwed (unless he actually wants to be in charge of the business)

I feel he might be trying to have his friends substitute for his family at this point, whether he knows it or not, because he is certainly not getting much warmth from his family. He could still be a jerk, though.

Anyways, those are my predictions on Fortov.

Next on the block:

1) Zorian's mother (relationship with her mother, etc.)
2) Zorian's grandmother (BLOODLINE!, is she dead?, etc.)
3) Zorian's father (we know so little about this guy)

 

Crazy theory, Zorian's father is Red Robe. He hasn't really been seen in the story and we wouldn't notice if the mother never joined him on the journey. Unless she's in on too, and just going along with the cover.

 

It was mentioned that Zorian saw him after his coma when he fought that web below Korsa. He made some comment about Zorian being his 'weak fainting son.' This would be after RR presumably ditched and definitely a clear sign that Zorian was a time traveler.

 

I just read this fic this week. It's a really compelling read. I was 100% convinced Daimen was going to be the third time traveler since the moment he was reveled. Was this purposeful misdirect or was I just reading way too much into things?

 

What was it like reading it all at once? I've been following it since Ch. 38 so it's been a while.

It was a pretty common theory tbh (Daimen being RR). However, it seems less and less likely now, what with knowing what the Guardian of the Threshold revealed.

 

It was great, I love binging things. It really started to drag a bit in the 2nd arc before the story started picking up again. I felt things weren't progressing and the writing quality seemed to drop, though that might've just been my perspective since I became a bit less engaged in the story. A lot of things probably came as a surprise to me since I didn't have time to ever really stop and reflect, which is good for mysteries. I'm very excited for future updates.

 

Your link is broken Cheddar, here's a fixed one. Looks like you copied part of a fic about Fudge dosing someone with draught of the living dead instead of the URL. Upside is I got to see DLP's 404 page, which is very strange and something I hadn't seen before.

Thanks for the heads up though, definitely a good chapter. The fight with the Hydra was pretty awesome and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with them raiding the base, hopefully getting some answers on the invasion force.

 

The fight with hydra was quite good. The question I have is whether or not Zorian and Zach will need to gather all Keys in one loop or they can just get them once and give them to the Guardian who is outside of the loop.

The second option is already hard since they have yet to get four other Keys and the countdown is not slowing down. The first option is almost impossible with the amount of loops they have.