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Chapter 6 - Chapter 6

Micheal groaned and felt nauseous. His head felt like it had been split open and sewn back together with frayed yarn. He gingerly opened his eyes and looked into the darkness of his dorm room. He shut his eyes and tried to will the pain away. It subsided a small amount. Grunting with effort Micheal sat up and crawled up to lean against his mattress. He noticed blood on the floor where he had been laying around where his face would have been and gingerly touched his face feeling dried blood trailing from his nose and one of his eyes. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the mattress as the pain in his head grew again pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He laid his arm over his eyes just to make sure he couldn't see what little light came through the window.

"If this is what a hangover feels like I am never drinking…." He muttered to himself as he took his arm off his face and grabbed the mattress to stand up. As he did so he saw the back of his hand and froze, "....So it wasn't a dream."

Micheal stared at what had to be a set of three command seals on the back of his hand. They were arranged in a way to make it look like two flames on either side of a larger thinner one. He stared at it for a few seconds remembering his dream and the promise he made. Shaking his head a bit, he braced his arm against his mattress and hauled himself up on top of it. He squinted at his bedside alarm and saw that it was just after 3am. Swearing under his breath he pulled himself fully onto the bed and was already asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Several hours later Micheal cracked his eyes open and glared daggers at his alarm clock as it beeped incessantly at him. He had half a mind to zap it with some electricity but decided not to do so given how sore he was. He turned over a bit, reaching for the snooze button only to just miss it. He leaned further off his bed lifting himself with an arm and smacked the snooze button before letting his bracing arm slide out from under him. He glanced at the clock as it ticked over to 7:05am and gingerly pushed himself into an upright position. As he did so he saw his right hand more clearly in the morning light. He stared at the command seals for a few seconds before smiling a bit and getting up off the bed.

He staggered into the kitchen and reached into his medicine cabinet for some heavy duty painkillers. He popped four of them into his mouth, filled up a glass of water from his sink, and took the meds. He set the glass down in the sink and closed his eyes willing the meds to kick in quickly. He knew he could speed them up with mana but that would also make him incredibly nauseous so he stood there taking deep breaths for a minute or so before he stopped leaning against the sink and began making breakfast. One chicken and diced pepper omelet alongside some bacon later he was putting on his shoes with plans to get to the library. As he slipped on his shoes he saw his right hand again. He frowned and quickly cast an obfuscation spell on his right hand to make it look somewhat normal. It would do for now. He grabbed his keys and his backpack, stepped out of his dorm room, and caught sight of his blood on the floor. Sighing he stepped back in and spent a few minutes cleaning up the blood before again leaving his room. He closed the door, locked it, and decided to throw some bounded fields around the door.

"Can't be too careful now that I'm a master candidate…" Micheal muttered as he shifted his backpack higher onto his shoulder and began the walk to the library. When he got there the front desk wasn't staffed but there was a magic circle inscribed on the counter for just this occasion. Micheal infused his finger with mana and tapped the circle three times causing a small blue orb of light to float out of it.

"I need to find books on…..Historical familiars and dreams. I am fine with translating myself."

The orb pulsed a few times before emitting a soft dinging sound and floating away. Micheal followed the orb, making sure to drop his stuff off at a desk which caused the orb to stop in the air. Situating his bag, he put a hand in the pocket of his jeans and walked to the orb gesturing with his free hand. The orb bobbed twice in the air and continued moving. About half an hour and five books later Micheal was sitting at his desk writing down notes onto some scrap paper as he read a book on summoning familiars. He finished writing his notes and frowned as he reread them again. He leaned back in his chair lifting it onto its back legs as he stared at the ceiling remembering the dream

"No matter how I think about it, that woman didn't…make me think of Jeanne D'Arc…. Which reminds me." Micheal leaned forward causing the chair to land on all four legs and reached for one of the books he had gotten on dreams. He read it quickly only to find nothing on dreams where you can outright affect things inside of it to the degree he had done so. He thought back to the dream itself tapping a finger on the current page of the book he was on when he suddenly felt as though he was being watched. He did his best to not stiffen or look around instead he tapped a rhythm on his desk summoning a small semi invisible familiar on the underside of the desk. He put one hand up to an eye and linked his sight to the familiars briefly feeling a sense of vertigo in the process as his vision both went 3rd person while also being upside down. He quickly moved the familiar out from under his desk and spent the next few minutes pretending to read a book as he navigated the library. Several minutes later he dispelled the familiar and frowned as his binocular vision returned.

The feeling of being watched had vanished but he didn't see anything with the familiar. He shook his head and loaded a few spells to be quick cast as he stood up and turned around stretching. He looked around the library and had walked a few steps still thinking about the dream when he felt his origin pull on him. He stopped and tried to sense what it was guiding him to. When his family had found out what his origin was they had, of course, done research. While there was no outright list of origins they eventually found themselves reading about Christian saints instead. What his family had theorized was that his origin would 'guide' him in the same way saints had been 'guided' by God. As he had grown up he slowly learned that that wasn't too far from the truth. His origin would never outright tell him what to do. Instead it would gently nudge him in particular directions based on what he was trying to do at the time in a game of hot-and-cold. When he felt his origin ping in the dream for example where that man and the pink haired girl had left felt "cold" while the woman in the crater had felt "warm". Of course it wasn't always active and seemed to ping him on its own whims. Right now his origin was leading him to a section in the library that he had never had a reason to go to before. He paused and looked up at the sign hanging in front of the section and read it

"Dimensional theory…. Okay sure. Might as well look around."

Fortunately it was filled with only a few dozen books. Unfortunately each book was easily 16 centimeters thick. He sighed and let his origin lead him to a book in particular that looked to be bound in pale white leather. He reached up for it as he felt his origin get hotter and hotter until he had pulled the book off the shelf at which point his origin went cold and quiet. He stared at the cover blankly and turned the book over a few times, even opening it to a random page.

He couldn't read it. He sighed and went back to the front desk seeing that it was still not staffed. He briefly looked around, shrugged, held the book under one arm, and summoned the library familiar again. He held out the book,

"I need to translate this book from whatever language and code it's in into English."

The orb floated up to the book and Micheal held it out. Briefly the book was enveloped in a similar light to the orb. It bounced in the air three times and floated over to a hand basket before 'turning' to face Micheal who just raised an eyebrow. He rolled his shoulders, grabbed a basket, and gestured for the orb to lead him. It had taken three full trips to and from his desk as the stack of books went higher and higher. Finally the orb hovered in front of a book, Micheal took it off the shelf, the orb bobbed in place once, and dissolved. Micheal sighed and looked at the title of the book reading that it was a Polish to English dictionary. He raised an eyebrow and went back to his desk. He stared at the 15 books of varying thicknesses stacked on the desktop and then sat down to start translating. Two hours and several books later Micheals stomach growled for the fifth time and he stopped what he was doing rubbing his eyes with a hand. He glanced at his watch seeing that it was after twelve. He stood up, put a 'still working' sign and a bounded field around the desk he had been using and walked to the cafeteria.

About five minutes later Micheal was situated at a table chewing down on some teriyaki chicken alongside some rice and grilled green beans. He was starting to get an idea of what had happened in the 'not' dream as he thought of it by now but he didn't want to jump to conclusions until he could read the fully translated notes. He stabbed a piece of chicken with a fork and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts he was briefly distracted by some other students coming into the cafeteria. He noticed that among them were a few of the people who loved to gang up on him in his self defense classes. Before he could try to cover or conceal his presence someone in the group noticed him and pointed laughing. Micheal quickly ate as much of what was left of his lunch, stood up, and walked away from the group trying to avoid a fight. He deposited his plate into the dirty dish bin, and tried to leave as quickly as possible. He took a few steps before someone stuck their leg out to try and trip him. Micheal easily hopped over their leg and kept walking hands in his pockets. He made his way to the exit door when he heard them call him a coward. He shook his head to clear the thoughts that sprung up at that and left the cafeteria going back to the library. He glanced behind him and felt relief as he saw that no one had followed him even still he sped up, taking a long twisting route back to the library to throw off any familiar that they might have had trailing him.

Not long after he was back at his desk and working his way through the 10th book he had gotten down. He frowned at the piece of paper he was writing on trying to figure out the code. Whatever the white leather book had written in it it was locked behind at least 7 different coding sets and 5 different languages from all over the planet despite the fact that the book was clearly from 13th century Poland. Some of the codesets and languages were even from the modern day or near enough to it. He briefly looked at a book that he had had to use to translate his notes from 200bc Qing Chinese to the 1940s navajo codes that the US had used in World War 2 and then from that to 5th century Anglo Saxon skalls. He felt his frustration rise as the thought that this might be one massive prank occurred to him again. Then he remembered the woman, her smile, and their promise to each other which gave him the patience and strength to keep pushing through.

After taking another break to get dinner Micheal finally sat back with a fully translated version of the book which he now knew was called "Inter-dimensional Spacetime and the consequences of pursuing it." He reread his notes for what had to be the hundredth time making sure that he wasn't hallucinating. He thought back to his 'dream' that he now knew wasn't a dream at all but another timeline.

A timeline that was somehow similar and different from his on top of being centered in both the past and the future simultaneously.

He leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes as he felt a headache coming on. After a few seconds he sat the chair back down and stood up. He took his fully translated notes, disposed of the interim translations, and began the process of putting every book back which took him half an hour. Walking out of the library he glanced at his watch seeing that it was after 7:30pm. As he left the library he pulsed the area with mana to make sure no one was lying in wait and began to walk to his dorm room.

He needed to get packed to go home for the holidays.

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