Chương 33: 33 loop 1, part 13

I woke up to the HUD pulsing at the edge of my vision. It blinked there, steady and obnoxious, waiting for me to admit I was awake. The magical equivalent of Finn tugging at my sleeve. I was still floating a few feet off the floor. My neck hurt. So did my spine, my hip, my shoulders, my ass. Practically every part of my body ached, like I had just spent the entire night running. My wand had clattered to the floor at some point, and I swam through the air to grab it. I was wrecked, but I had slept.

I felt like I had managed to get a full night's sleep for once. The blue crystal pulsed when I picked up my wand. The HUD appeared in full. Three notifications were waiting for me, stacked on top of each other. All of the levels were from the spells I had cast yesterday. Normally, it took a long while, dozens or even hundreds of casts to level up. But I had been nearing a threshold for all of my skills since the end of last school year.

And I had cast more spells in the last twelve hours than I usually cast in a single semester. The first one resolved itself with a small chime. [LEVEL UP] Enchantment: Level 50. I'd cast almost thirty enchantments, so it was no surprise that was the first level up I got. The second chime arrived before the first had faded away. [LEVEL UP] Manifestation: Level 25. Apparently, food magic was an easy way to level up. It had certainly been a fun one. Who knew cheese-based crowd control counted as magical growth?

There was nothing I liked more than effortless progress. And then, finally, the third level up. [LEVEL UP] Soul Magic: Level 25. I stared at this notification. This didn't make sense to me. I'd only cast, like, five soul spells, and that surely wasn't enough spells to cross the threshold, right? Maybe the fact that [Soul Tether] had been running constantly also gave me a boost. But ultimately, I didn't care that much.

It wasn't like I was planning on meditating again for a long time, especially since I'd just woken up with full mana. I dismissed the notifications. I double-checked my mana to make sure, but I was indeed on a full 278 out of 370. My mana pool felt solid, like a deep breath held comfortably in my chest. The Keeper was where I'd last seen her—hovering near the desk, just like me. Whatever else I thought about the ancient soulbound person-book thing, she understood the value of letting someone sleep.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

"Around seven hours, give or take." Not bad. Seven hours. If my internal clock was right—and it was always right—that meant the dragon attack would be in less than two hours. And Corwen and I were here. Fuck. Except nothing had stayed on script so far. Vex hadn't been killed, Creed hadn't been injured, and Kalin hadn't summoned a shadow monster at breakfast like he had last time. Hell, as far as I knew, he hadn't even picked up the orb.

I had no idea whether the attack was still coming, only that I couldn't afford to assume it wasn't. One thought led me to another.

"My uncle," I said.

"What's his condition?"

"Unchanged. He sustained serious soul damage, and his mana remains deeply depleted." My chest went tight before the thought finished forming. The feeling spread down my arms until my fingers were numb. I wasn't sure if Prime Minister Creed was still coming, or if Kalin was going to have his breakdown, but images of Finn and my uncle dying flashed before my eyes. So I closed them, grateful [Wideview] was inactive, which meant I had actual peace for once.

"There's something else," I said. My voice came out flatter than I intended.

"There may be a dragon attack on the school today." The Keeper did not immediately respond. She drifted around the room in an orbit.

"I know nothing of a dragon," she said.

"It's a shadow dragon named Eirkedross or something." I watched for a reaction, but she didn't move.

"A student named Kalin Tuffet is connected to it. He has some sort of black orb that he's been carrying around, and I heard him whispering the name. While my uncle's unconscious on the floor here, there's nobody who can stop it. I need to go." But before I could leave, the Keeper said something that stopped me.

"I have not heard that name in a very long time." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"You know it?" I asked.

"I know nothing of the attack you describe, but I know what Eirkedross is." She drifted closer to the desk, and her pages fell open and began to flutter. Ink crawled across the paper and gathered into the shape of a dragon.

"Eirkedross is not a shadow manifestation," she said.

"It is something far worse. It is dark magic, given form through the consumption of human souls." The dragon thinned and broke apart. The page redrew itself into a dark sphere held in an open hand.

"The item you mentioned is likely a Lich's Orb. These are formed when souls are taken through brutal magic."

"What? You mean like a Phylactery?"

"No, those bind the lich to the mortal plane. A Lich's Orb binds demons." The sphere sank toward a row of figures along the bottom margin. One by one, they slumped, the ink draining out of them until only outlines were left.

"The souls are ripped from their bodies, and lifeless husks are left behind. A lich devours what was taken. The essence and the mana are shaped into the orb." The husks faded. The dragon returned to the page—vast now, its surface crowded with faint human shapes.

"What remains is not a summoned beast. It is an abomination built from the people it consumed." My stomach turned. I thought about the mana batteries and the souls needed to make them. And Theron's research. Theron had been branded a monster for trying to solve the mana crisis. Was this in any way, like his work? He had to use souls as anchors to stabilize liquid mana, right?

"That's different from a mana battery," I said.

"Right? The soul in a battery is an anchor that stabilizes the mana. It's not destroyed or consumed." The Keeper went still. Her pages ceased fluttering.

"How do you know about mana batteries?"

"I read. And I saw a room containing them." She let the silence stretch long enough to make clear she didn't believe me.

"In a proper soul-stabilized battery, yes, the soul is a structural element. It holds the mana in a stable state. But it is not fuel. In the creation of a creature like Eirkedross, the soul is fuel. It is burned like mana, and its power becomes the creature itself. If what you say is true," the Keeper kept going, "and someone is using lich orbs, then a group is harvesting souls. This is not a spell cast on impulse. It requires preparation and a source of easy victims. Is anybody missing from campus?"

"Not that I know of." I tried to think back to the last forty-eight hours, but everyone was where they were supposed to be. Other than Vex. And I couldn't see my uncle killing him and stealing his soul.

"You sound like you know more than I do about what's going on. Do you know anything else about how this attack could have happened?"

"I know nothing about why Eirkedross is being called." Her tone was precise.

"But I know why your uncle was here. He came to me months ago with intelligence about an extremist faction out of Hessalonia. One you may be familiar with. The Cult of the Frozen Flame." I didn't usually pay much attention in school, but I knew exactly what the Cult of the Frozen Flame was. Everyone did. We'd had to memorize them growing up, even in the Kratosian factory schools. You couldn't say the name in polite company. They hadn't just been terrorists.

They were why every schoolchild in Kratos, Restralia, and Hessalonia grew up practicing evacuation drills. They were why everybody despised Hessalonians, why we'd had a civil war at all. Everyone in Restralia knew they were behind the heir's murder, Therumia's disappearance, the whole bloody war that fractured our nation. Just like Theron, they were a name you only ever whispered.

"You think they're behind this?"

"It is what your uncle feared. He believed they were planning an attack on the school. But despite his best efforts, Minister Creed refused to cancel the Exhibition. All plans went on as scheduled." Scheduled. Like that made it better. Creed just wanted the free political points an event like this brought. And if he was on campus today, then Kalin might've already been standing somewhere with that black orb in his hand. Whether or not he'd grabbed it yesterday morning.

I needed a way to keep an eye on him and try to save my uncle. There was no other way we could solve the dragon crisis.

"Do you know of any spells that could let us see what's going on outside the library? I need a way to check if the minister is here. If the attack is going as planned."

"No." I stared at her. It was a very unhelpful syllable. Her pages turned.

"I cannot see beyond my domain. But there are spells that create something of a sympathetic link between oneself and an orb, that you could thenuse to see beyond."

"Why did you say no? That sounds exactly like what I need."

"It's close to what you need, but not exact." Ink crawled across her open page, sketching an eye inside a circle, and then a small detached point floating above a crude map.

"This is an Alteration spell. It separates the outer perspective layer of the battle spell [Wideview], which I know you are familiar with, and then reshapes it into an invisible observational sphere. For ten minutes, you see through that sphere and nothing else. Your own eyes stay dark until the link ends, and the sphere goes wherever you will it." Holy shit, that sounded amazing.

As much as I hated Professor Mela, Alteration was my second-favorite branch of magic, and this was the best argument for it I'd ever heard. The whole point was that I wouldn't have to go anywhere to be everywhere. I could lie in my own bed and send the sphere off to do the looking for me. With it, I'd be watching tournament matches without leaving my blanket. I'd be sitting through one of my uncle's dinners without actually sitting through it.

Humanity had spent thousands of years advancing civilization toward a single goal: avoiding unnecessary effort. This spell was the pinnacle of that achievement. And there was the part I'd skated past. While the marble did the looking, I wouldn't see the room I was standing in. My body would sit blind beside my unconscious uncle, next to a door I couldn't watch. That was one catch, and there was always more than one.

"What does it cost?"

"150 mana." I stared at her blankly. Why was it that every good spell cost more than I'd like to use in a day?

"This spell is from Queen Therumia's own vaults. She crafted it with her royal mana reserve in mind." She flapped pointedly at me. I looked back at Corwen. He hadn't moved. Of course he hadn't moved. That would have been helpful, and the universe had strong opinions about giving me help without charging for it first. 78 left after the spell. That was not nothing. I could do a lot with 78 mana. I had built most of my academic career on doing a lot with less than people expected.

But 78 also wasn't enough to feel safe. Not here. Not with a potential dragon attack incoming. Still, if I left blind, there was a chance I would walk straight into the disaster. If I stayed blind, Finn could die again. And I was so tired of learning things after they killed people.

"Fine. Teach me the expensive spying marble spell."