35 loop 1, part 15

I was in two places at once, and then my perspective came loose from my body. It happened slowly, almost reluctantly. It was as if some part of me had grabbed the rest by the eyes and yanked until they came loose.

There was no pain, only a slack little release, like a knot working apart but inside my skull. Then, I was floating a few feet above myself, looking down at the body I had apparently been borrowing for eighteen years.

From up here, I could see the top of my own head. The part in my hair, the forward hunch I’d never known I had, my weight settled on one leg. I’d carried that body my whole life and never once looked at it.

My body stood in the middle of the Keeper’s study, with its wand raised and my eyes gone dark. Staring at nothing. And breathing regularly. An odd thought struck me as I took in everything. I had never once seen the back of my own head.

Until now, the back of my head had been someone else’s problem. There it was, though, real and unfortunate, the hair making decisions that had never once been cleared with me.

Below me, my body ignored every one of these discoveries. It stood with the wand raised and the eyes gone dark, breathing slow and even, as if none of this concerned it. That was what unsettled me. If the body could keep itself running without me, I wanted to know what else it had only been pretending to need me for.

My uncle lay a few feet away on the floor where I’d dropped him, his chest rising slowly. The golem stood at the center of the room with its chest cavity open. Its ridiculous gold boots somehow gleaming now, despite the thick layer of dust that had been on them before I left the room. The Keeper still drifted in a slow circle around it, her pages parting, closing. She had already started work on the golem.

I let myself drift upward, and my vision flooded the space. Everything arrived at once. The study, the golem workshop, the crystal chamber, the kitchens, the armory, the back corridors, the iron ladder and the drop past it. I wasn’t remembering them and I wasn’t guessing.

I simply knew where each one sat in relation to the others, the whole place laid out in my skull like a map I had never asked for. Oh, I could even see the grand staircase. I saw so much, it felt like it should have burned my eyes from visual overload. But the magic must have protected them.

I pushed myself higher. The study fell away, and then the restricted levels, and the Archives. And I found myself on the first floor, staring at the iron door while Grimm teleported around, replacing books. And then I broke through the top of the school, and MIRKS opened underneath me. All at once.

It was as if my eyes had become magnifying lenses, but instead of zooming in on one thing, I had zoomed in on everything. The Green stretched out below, threaded with running paths, benches, old oaks. The moving dots of people crossing around, playing Magiball. Or just relaxing. The Spire glowed its usual blue, and the dining hall steamed fresh from a well-cooked lunch.

The astronomy tower, the colonnades, the herb garden. Even the Crucible all fit within my vision. It was like [Ambient Eye] had taken everything [Wideview] could do and ballooned it out to swallow the entire campus. But as much as the spell was exceeding my exxpectations, I found it’s fatal flaw. I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

The problem with seeing everything is that everything is interesting. I knew in some distant part of my mind that I’d come up here for a reason. That I had cast this spell for a reason. But it was like I had lost all ability to focus my thoughts, because the school just kept being there, and I could see all of it. A kitchen worker dropped a crate, and oranges spilled out.

Two first-years near the herb garden were having an argument so intense that magic started flying. Someone was napping on my bench, which I respected, but it still felt like something was being stolen from me. I could even make out Malus playing a game of Magiball with his friends.

[Wideview] had only ever let me avoid turning my head. This spell let me avoid being anywhere at all. It was, on reflection, the single greatest spell ever cast. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see everything?

And then I noticed a shadow creeping up on my vision. It wasn’t much, but it covered the edges of my view. I caught the spell’s timer and realized what had happened. A full minute had passed, and I had spent the opening of it admiring a man’s nap. I mean, could you blame me?

There was only one boy I needed to track down, and the sun had already crossed mid-sky. Without a second thought, I drove my vision toward the Crucible.

When I arrived, I caught the end of Finn’s match. The first time around, Finn had won this one by being Finn. He’d shielded, took damage, healed himself, and repeated, until the other student ran dry on mana. After winning, he’d stand there looking modest. Practically endured the other man into losing. That was his style. And he made it look easy.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He was still doing most of that with the match. But there was something off about the way he moved—about the way his opponent moved. His opponent was pressing him hard, fire-edged force spells hammering his shields. Finn was rebuilding them, healing his burns. But his attention kept shifting away from the other fighter.

Every few seconds, his head would turn toward the stands, toward the section where I would have been sitting. It almost seemed like he was whispering the words, “Where are you, Laz?” under his breath.

I knew he probably hadn’t said it. I couldn’t hear a thing up here. For all I knew, he was muttering spellwork, or strategy, or some very reasonable complaint about a best friend who’d vanished for most of the day without explanation. But I knew Finn.

Worrying was just what he did, all the time, without being asked. He did it without much concern for how exhausting the rest of us found it—me most of all. He’d have noticed I was gone. He’d have panicked when I never came back to the dorm, or the stands, or anywhere a decent friend would have been.

Finn stood at the center of the platform with his shoulders down and his hair stuck to his forehead, one hand pressed to his side where the healing light had already faded. He looked up at the stands. He’d lost because I wasn’t there.

That was probably too dramatic. Finn was a grown mage. He could lose a match without my help, and it was a little arrogant of me to assume otherwise. But he kept searching the stands for me; I pulled my focus off him before the guilt could make me useless. I was on a mission. I had to find out where Kalin was, and if he was going to still summon Eirkedross.