Hello to all!
Sorry for the late update, but things are hectic around here and I can't always make time for writing like I would like to.
So here's another chapter. Not much plot, but lots of explanation, which will help to set up how Justin "catches up" to his opponents.
With that, disclaimers: I don't own Magic the Gathering, nor do I own Wizards of Waverly Place. I do own the plot, and Sentir is an original character.
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Justin awoke to the sound of Sentir banging a spoon against an iron pot.
"What the…" Justin cringed and tried to cover his ears as the old man moved the source of the noise closer to his ear.
"Wake up, Justin! Today is a new day! Today, I teach you how to cast a spell!" Sentir shouted as he hobbled from the room. "Hurry, dress! We have much to do and very little time in which to do it!"
"Bleeeghh." Justin groaned, then sat up. He saw the clothes that Sentir had placed on the one chair in the room, clothes that were, strangely, an exact copy of the outfit he still wore. He shrugged and changed, then left his small room and stood in the massive spiral staircase and called out for the old man.
Sentir seemed to materialize right next to him, startling Justin and making him shout in surprise. "Calm down boy! I'm right here. And now, today, I'm going to teach you the spell that will make your training a thousand times more effective!"
"Wait…" Justin yawned, then rubbed his eyes. "A thousand times more effective?"
"Yes!" Sentir's excitement was evident on his wrinkled face as he turned and rushed up the stairs to another level. Justin followed, still wiping the sleep from his eyes.
"We have so much to do, and so little… time in which to do it! You must hurry, Justin!" The old man continued to another level of the library, leaving the staircase to seek out a scroll on a shelf only he knew of. Justin followed right behind.
When Justin arrived at the scene, the sage had already retrieved the scroll and opened it on a small desk. He peered over the old man's shoulder at the confusing writing. "What is it?"
"This, my dear boy, is a time-bending spell. It will allow you to rewind any amount of time, up to a full day! Of course, the longer you want to rewind, the more mana it will require, but…"
"Wait! Rewind time? Like McReary Timereary?" Justin quizzed.
"What? What is that?" Sentir looked just as confused as Justin.
"Um… on Earth, wizards can reverse a one-minute segment of time and perform a 'do-over'. By saying McReary Timereary." Justin realized the explanation must have sounded very strange to someone who had never experienced it.
"This spell is different, Justin. If I understand you correctly, the do-over spell allows you to alter time. This spell allows you to perform a segment of time over and over again, without changing anything. Every time you go back, you will see the previous versions of yourself doing everything you were doing during that iteration of the day. So it is conceivable that you may find hundreds of versions of yourself in a single day until you decide to move on to the next day."
"Move on? You mean…?" Justin trailed off, unsure of how to phrase his next question. Fortunately, Sentir seemed to read his mind.
"You will experience the same segment of time as you would normally, meaning you can age any amount of time in what, to the rest of us, seems as a day. In other words, you can fit any number of days in a single one. Only when you decide to not perform the spell again will you move along the time stream with the rest of us."
"Wow…" the possibilities opened themselves up in Justin's mind, and he realized that this was perhaps the greatest discovery he'd made in his eighteen years of existence.
"You must be careful to plan your days, however. You cannot do the same thing in the same place at the same time as one of your previous versions, since you'll be occupying that space. The laws of magic do not allow for objects to occupy the same space at the same time."
"How do you mean?"
The old man sighed, then produced a piece of parchment, which he began to fold, accordion-style. "Think of this piece of parchment as a year of your life. The more you fold in one area, that is, in one day, the shorter the rest of the year becomes relative to the rest of the universe. Likewise, each fold represents an iteration of the spell and thus the day. The more folds you make in one place, the more versions of yourself you will see at one time. They exist in the same time frame, but they still cannot occupy the same space; therefore, you cannot go to sleep in the same place you did in any of the previous versions, since past versions of yourself will be sleeping. This does, however, produce a beneficial side effect for physical training; you can spar against past versions of yourself, as long as they were sparring as well."
"This is… incredible…" Justin whispered in awe. "What do I have to do?"
"I will teach you the spell, and then you will use it. You will use it as many times as you feel you can, but you must be sure to rest or you will burn out and lose time. Take your repeated days to learn everything you can in this library, to practice your spellwork, your mana-gathering, and your physical training. In the space of a single day, you can fit a year's worth of training, and you will be exactly where you need to be in order to walk the Planes." Sentir beamed with pride and anticipation. "Now, here is exactly what you must do…"
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And that is all! Please review, those are nice. I realize this is kind of a slow chapter, but believe me it is critical, so let me know how I did. And for the time-reversing, I kind of expanded the idea of the time-warping spells from the Magic The Gathering game, which let you take another turn before your opponent, and extrapolated the idea out into a workable story device. Hope it worked!
