21 Loop 1, Part 1

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

Finn was placing something in front of me.

Finn, who had just died a few hours ago. What? I blinked a few times and then pinched myself. Had that been a dream? Was I dreaming now?

“Laz. Laz. Hey, Lazlo.”

I kept my eyes shut. Laziness was part of it, sure. It was always part of it. But this time, I had a better reason. I knew exactly what I’d see when I opened them, and I wasn’t ready to be wrong about it.

This can’t be real. I hadn’t been able to give myself the proper time to grieve, and now my dreams were torturing me. I pinched myself again.

“Laz, wake up, Lazlo.”

The voice drilled in with that staccato beat. The one I’d hated for almost two years. And would have given a limb to hear again just an hour ago.

The dining hall was exactly the same. Every sound landed in the same place, every shadow fell across the same pillar reaching up into nothing.

It smelled exactly like toasting bread and too much cheese, which is what it had smelled like yesterday morning. Every morning, there was a different scent that permeated the most, and Monday’s had been bread and too much cheese.

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

I opened my eyes.

Finn Merick was sitting across from me, still alive, with a plate of sausages and a faintly wounded expression. His hair was combed properly and his robes didn’t have a single wrinkle. There was a smear of egg on the table near his elbow.

I looked at him longer than I should have. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

“What?” Finn said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

There were a lot of ways to answer that question. Most of them would have gotten me a one-way trip to the infirmary for an evaluation. And the infirmary was a place I had pretty complicated feelings about now.

I wanted to say, because you were dead, and now you’re not, and I don’t know what’s going on.

“A weird dream,” I said instead.

“You always have weird dreams. You told me last week you dreamed you invented a spell that made stairs illegal.”

“Oh yeah, that was a good dream. Stairs should be illegal.” I sat up properly and rolled my neck, which cracked in three places, like an applause line. “No, this dream was longer.”

“Longer how?”

“Mm, longer like a textbook. Bit boring in the middle. I actually had to do things. Blah effort. Terrible ending.” I picked up my fork, mostly so my hands would stop wanting to reach across the table and confirm he was solid. “Forget it, what were you saying?”

He hadn’t said anything yet. Really. I knew that. I could have mouthed the words he was about to say a second before he said them.

“I was saying, you’ve barely touched your plate. Do you want a repeat of last May? You almost missed the final exam for Alteration.”

And there it was, word for word, confirming my suspicions.

I considered the question with the weight it was due, which was none, and which had been none the first time too, and waved my hand in the air. “I ate recently enough.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

I hadn’t finished my first bite of bacon and I was already sentimental. Horrifying. I wanted to hug him. Just reach across the table and hold on until the shaking in my chest stopped.

But Finn would ask why, and I’d have to answer, and the answer was you died on a marble floor and I couldn’t stop it, and that was going to go over about as well as lighting yourself on fire in Grimm’s library. I picked up my bacon instead.

I am not a fast study. I want that on the record. People assume that because I’m clever I’m also quick, and those are different things. Clever is what you do when you finally bother. Quick is doing it on time fast, and I have never done anything on time or fast in my life.

But even I could do this math. Things were repeating, which meant one of four options, magically speaking. One I was in a magical dream and a Maran was eating me, but all the details were right, which ruled that out. Two, I was having a normal dream. I pinched myself again. Three, I was dead. I didn’t feel dead. And four, as outlandish as it might sound, was time travel.

It had been rumored for years that Therumia’s overwhelming power was because of time travel. Alteration was the school everyone pointed to. Professor Mela had spent entire lectures selling temporal manipulation as the discipline’s theoretical ceiling. Change what exists. Time is a state that exists. Therefore, in principle, blah blah blah.

But Alteration couldn’t do this. The school’s best tricks topped out at frame adjustments and duration manipulation, maybe restoring a previous state under controlled conditions. Full rewind sat outside the theory entirely. I was waking up at the same breakfast table with the same smear of egg near Finn’s elbow. If this was real, it belonged to whatever fifth school the fringe scholars had been whispering about for decades while the faculty pretended not to hear.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Okay. So. I’ve traveled back in time. I pinched myself again, I still wasn’t dreaming. What. The. Fuck.

I was overjoyed. Fucking time travel is real. I wouldn’t have to make any decisions at all for the next 48 hours and everything would play out exactly like it had before holy s— I cut myself off. Shit. Everything would play out exactly like it had before.

The consequences of that were staring me in the face. My joy died immediately. I shot a quick glance at Finn as he took a quick bite, I put on a lazy smile, and continued my half of the conversation. Right on cue, I pulled out my wand.

The blue crystal flashed with a jolt of mana as I picked it up, and the HUD appeared in its usual blinding kaleidoscope before I shoved it to the corner and let it settle. I’d done this thousands of mornings.

[STATUS: LAZLO YARROW] Second Year, MIRKS

Mana: 278/370 (92 reserved)

Mana Regen: 25% per hour while sleeping (50% while Meditating)

Enchantment — Level 49

Alteration — Level 49

Soul Magic — Level 24

Manifestation — Level 24

Prestiges: 7

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

[Mana Pool 2] +70 mana

[Mana Flow] +5% mana regeneration during rest or meditation.