1. Loop 0, Part 1

I woke up. Damnit. I could hear my roommate, Finn, placing something in front of me.

Finn Merick had many fine qualities one looked for in a roommate. He was kind, hardworking, dependable. Acted like a golden retriever whenever anything halfway positive occurred. But his worst quality, the one I always hated the most, was his incessant inability to let me sleep.

“Laz. Laz. Hey, Lazlo.”

I kept my eyes shut, but his voice drilled in with a staccato beat.

“Lazzzzz. Wake up… Lazlo!”

The MIRKS dining hall was basically a grand cathedral that had been repurposed for eating. Vaulted stone pillars held aloft a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadow, and the pale stone walls carried every sound upward until the whole room hummed with the low roar of a thousand conversations. It smelled like toasting bread and too much cheese.

Not that I could appreciate any of it with my face pressed into a worn copy of 101 Basic Schoolyard Spells.

The ancient stone walls held the autumn cold in with fervor, but the residual warmth of my arms folded beneath my head had achieved that oh-so-perfect morning feeling. I knew I needed to get up, but I just couldn’t drag myself away. I knew as soon as I moved, that sweet sheen of sleep would be gone, and the exhausting work of the day would begin.

“I know you’re awake, dumbass. Your breathing’s changed.”

Why did my roommate have to be a healer? His [Mana Sense] spell caught everything, and if I cared to learn it, I could be just as annoying with it.

“My breathing changed because I’m having a nightmare,” I said into my arms. “About a roommate that doesn’t understand boundaries.”

“You fell asleep at the breakfast table. There are no boundaries here.” He paused, and then I could practically feel him staring at me through my closed eyes. “And you’ve barely touched your plate. Do you want a repeat of last May? You almost missed the final exam for Alteration.”

I considered the question with the weight it was due (none) and waved my hand in the air dismissively. “I ate recently enough.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

With a sigh, he went back to his own breakfast. Took him long enough. Not even my uncle kept as close a watch on my dietary needs.

I finally opened my eyes and lifted my head off of my book.

The dining hall was already full. My stomach growled, reminding me I had missed a meal or two… or three, but the effort of actually eating the food in front of me felt monumental.

This was why I missed meals. I wasn’t really too lazy to eat. Most of the time, I was too lazy to make my way here, wait ten minutes in line, sit down, and then eat. But that wasn’t to say I hated food. Not at all. While I hadn’t cracked the spell yet, I was still waiting for the day when I could just wave my wand and have a full meal ready in seconds. Infinite variety. Instantly. That wasn’t lazy, that was miraculous. Back in Kratos, everyone worked so hard, but even they used basic food creation magic. It baffled and then saddened me when I first got here and saw an actual chef preparing actual food. What a waste of time.

What was the point of magic when you didn’t use it to fulfill your every desire? And people called me lazy. Hah.

As I settled into consciousness, I pulled out my wand and took a glance at my HUD. The blue crystal flashed with a jolt of mana as I picked it up, and the display appeared in a blinding kaleidoscope of lights. I pushed it to the corner and let it settle.

[STATUS: LAZLO YARROW] Second Year, MIRKS

Status: [Rested] Mana regen bonus, doubled for 4 hours

Mana: 306/320

Mana Regen: 20% per hour (while sleeping/meditating)

Enchantment — Level 49

Alteration — Level 49

Soul Magic — Level 24

Manifestation — Level 24

Prestiges: 2

[Efficiency I] -5% mana cost on spells and enchantments.

[Mana Pool I] +20 mana

Family trait: [Soul Sense] Subconscious Soul awareness; allows user to interact with and detect Souls.

I was doing okay for a second year at the Magical Institute of Restralian Knowledge and Skills, otherwise known as MIRKS. My uncle was headmaster, and as such had made it his general goal in life to make things as miserable as possible for me.

Last year, my uncle had forced me to undergo two bouts of tier 1 meditation in order to receive my first two prestige passives, [Efficiency I] and [Mana Pool I]. It had been the worst day of my life. Four hours of mind-numbing, absolute-waste-of-time boredom. I couldn’t read or sleep. I couldn’t move. Four hours of sitting cross-legged on a stone floor while Professor Thane hummed at me like a lunatic.

The results were… okay? The [Efficiency I] passive was fine, I suppose, but given the cost of the spells I liked to use, it almost always meant 1 mana saved, if anything. Truly the stuff of legends worth the effort. No doubt, no doubt.

The second passive, [Mana Pool I], gave me an extra 20 mana. 20. Out of 320. That was a six percent increase for four hours of meditation. I could have spent those four hours sleeping and gotten more value out of the rested bonus.

And then there was [Soul Sense], the Yarrow family trait. It let me detect souls, which was about as useless as the sky lights in the enchanted ceilings all over the school. Magic was easy to detect if the mage was stupid. If the mage wasn’t stupid, they usually had better things to do than worry about what kind of spell they were using. Sure, there were certain builds where it was useful to know, but that would never be my style. Too much work, too little reward. That was true of most things, honestly.

My parents had worked themselves into early graves. I had learned from that, just not the lessons everyone expected me to.

I dismissed the screen with a wave. “Exceptional” required effort. Adequate, however, meant acceptable, and that was more than enough for me.

“Hey.” Finn said, nudging my elbow. “I heard from Voss on my run that Headmaster Yarrow and her mother had some clandestine meeting or something last night. Probably explains why he looked so worried at dinner.”

“Uncle always looks worried. It’s just the Yarrow jawline at work.”

“This seemed different.”

“It always seems different. Pass the salt.”

With nothing better to do than be awake, I begrudgingly picked up my fork and stabbed at a piece of bacon. Finn watched this development with visible relief, which annoyed me.

“Why do we always sit here?” Finn asked, eyeing a spot down the hall farther away from the drafty entrance door.

“Because it’s closest to the door,” I said, giving him a questioning look. “Food goes in. I go out. Elegant, efficient, and the best way to get me back to my room for a nap.”

The doors behind us opened again, letting in a stripe of cold air that slid across the stone floor. Honestly, we were lucky the line had only been fifteen minutes this morning. Or unlucky, since I could have napped longer.

Finn wouldn’t take his gaze off of a pretty post graduate student way out of his league. I closed my eyes, briefly. I thought he was smarter than that.

“You ever notice how nobody mixes?”

“That’s not true,” I said. “We mix with people all the time. Sara, Kalin, Everett, Thane, Malus, Polina. In fact, I resemble that remark.”

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“I think you mean resent that remark.”

“I said what I said.”

He waved me off. “No, I meant other people. Look—” He gestured at the post-grad, and then again around the hall. “Overachievers by the faculty table, scholarship kids near the kitchen. dungeon track by the yard exit. Researchers by the library hall.”

“Mmm.” I said, trying hard to feign interest, but not understanding the point. “People sitting near the places they use the most, or near those they want to talk to. Shocking development.”

Near the raised faculty table, students were hard at work studying while eating. Everything I aimed never to be. Kill me now if I got like that one day. But as my vision drifted to the muscle-bound mages near the yard, I felt a crick in my neck and stopped. Why was I doing this to myself?

With practiced ease, I pulled out my wand and muttered, “[Wideview].”

[Wideview – Soul]

Cost: 54 mana.

Change a caster’s visual perception to a 360-degree field of view.

Duration: 8 hours or until dispelled.

It was one of the most costly spells in my repertoire, but it was always worth the cast. For the foreseeable future, I could see everything without turning my head. Plus, it freaked people out, which was always a bonus.

“I don’t know…” Finn finally responded. “It feels deliberate here.”

“Everything feels deliberate if you stare at it long enough,” I said. “That’s how conspiracy theories form.”

He ignored me. “Look at them.”

“I am.”

[Wideview] settled into place almost instantly. It had taken a while to get used to at first, but man oh man did I love the spell.

My forward vision stayed fixed in place, but everything just sort of expanded into a single, continuous field.