I’m sitting in a chair at a large, polished desk.

“What are your commands?” a voice asks from my left. I turn and take in his appearance, noting a military uniform and stringently formal bearing.

A soldier, and one under my command? Interesting.

I smile icily. No need to keep up pretenses, then: I’d never attain an officer position in any nation’s armed forces without being a practitioner. I must be here because of, rather than in spite of, my decemancy.

“Hand me the situation report,” I say calmly.

“There is no situation report...remember, Corona?”

Corona? I smile and nod my head. “You misunderstand,” I reply. “How long has it been since I last asked for the situation report?”

I see him hesitate.

“It’s been thirty minutes,” he admits.

“Isn’t that enough time for one to have been written?” I murmur, standing up from my chair. The man recoils slightly, and I notice a bead of sweat on his temple.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, something terrible must be happening. And I’m expected to deal with it.

I sigh. “Nevermind.”

“Sir!” The man salutes, then about faces and leaves the room.

The office is airy, with a vaulted ceiling and a large window looking out onto the ocean. The space is painted a tasteful cream that reveals the underlying material of the building, a kind of stone-stucco mixture. Two portraits depicting former officers hang on the walls in gilded, golden frames, and a knee-high table sits under the window, flanked by sitting cushions. A tea table?

The office, window view, and humidity indicate I’m in Ho’ostar. Kester would be my second choice if I had to guess, but the language the officer used–Luxish–isn’t commonly spoken there. Sere would be a third guess, but it’s famous for its dry heat. The air here is far too muggy.

I make my way out of the office, inspecting the people and analyzing the characteristics of the military base. It doesn’t match my expectations of stark, militaristic utility, its gilded halls seemingly better suited for a government building.

“Sir!” a young brunette calls out from behind me, rushing as though trying to catch up. “While I don’t have a full situation report, I have some new information!”

Oh, does she? I turn around and smile. “Excellent.” I look at the name on her breastplate. Sec. Schaeff.

“It's already sent to your glossY, sir.”

I check my pockets and retrieve the device, grateful that it’s locked by my retinas rather than a random password. Sure enough, the first thing in my inbox is a short, encrypted document. I open an obviously-placed decryption module on the glossY’s applications pane and decode the message.

Soon, I have a much better sense of what’s going on.

“Thank you, Secretary,” I say, returning her salute. As luck would have it, a proper salute is one of those behaviorisms Mother thought important to learn.

The report confirms that I’m in Godora. I peruse it as I continue through the hallway, arriving at a door leading outside. As I step beyond the threshold, I’m immediately confronted by a wave of intense heat that’s at least five degrees hotter than Menocht. At least it’s not that humid...

I adjust the cuffs on my military jacket as I step into the building’s courtyard, blinking into the sunlight and adjusting the brightness of the report’s display. The missive describes the situation as thus: A fleet of armed combatants arrived from the West under the concealment of Dark and Cloud practitioners. Their numbers are unknown, but they’ve been sweeping through and setting fire to coastal villages, suggesting that the invaders count fire elementalists among their numbers.

The missive suggests that I take a unit of fifteen water elementalists aboard a hovergloss to investigate and, if possible, capture (or kill) the perpetrators.

I snort and launch myself into the air. I don’t need to work with others to get this kind of task done. Something begins to dawn on me as I fly through the air, leaving the building behind as I orient myself toward the shore. After the first two layers of the loop, everything has seemed...too easy.

Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to spend so much time and grow so strong in Menocht. I likely wasn’t supposed to spend years there on an admittedly simple puzzle.

I narrow my eyes both in contemplation and to escape the sun’s glare. It’s almost as though the past loop layers–this one included–haven’t been specifically created to test a decemancer, I reason. The dark room with the undead, for one, wasn’t a challenge at all. And while the stadium fight had been fun, the greatest challenge it posed was one in restraint as I took care to finish opponents off slowly for the spectacle. While the buried alive layer had been painful and unsettling, it still hadn’t been difficult.

Just what are my little watchers doing? Someone, or something, must be monitoring the loop...but if time is sped up from my perspective, I wonder how closely they can track my progress if they’re operating in real time.

I follow the curve of the beach, scooping up sunken bones as I do. Soon enough, I’ve managed to create a wyrm on the water’s surface. While genuine flying bone constructs are forbidden, as long as I hold off from completing the wyrm with a flight focus and soul gems, there should be no problem. I focus my attention on manually propelling it across the water, its form undulating like a dolphin.

After a few minutes of flying, a small city with a burning high rise building appears within my field of vision. I put on speed, spurring the wyrm toward the shore. As water melts into sand, the wyrm continues its spiraling squirm forward over solid ground. So long as it maintains contact with water or earth, the control strain it places on me is minimal. Trying to use it to fly without properly turning it into a flying construct and giving it a flight focus, however, would be significantly more taxing.

As I cruise over the ground, I carefully track fluctuations in vitality nearby, trying to detect anything that might resemble a unit of mobile hostiles. To my chagrin, it takes me a full hour to track the invaders down. The only reason I’m able to succeed is that they’re staying close to the shore to bombard more coastal cities. Had they gone further inland, the area to cover would be exponentially greater.

It’s over as soon as I sense them, though: My bone wyrm is faster than their transport vessel and I quickly run them down. After that I wave my hand and they all fall dead, their necks broken.

Easy.

I smile and chuckle. Whoever is watching, don’t you see that this is just too easy? I snort and run a hand through my hair.

“How long are you going to keep me here?” I ask. I blink expectantly...only to find I’m still on the wyrm. Why isn’t the loop proceeding? I finished the challenge and closed my eyes!

I twitch as the sound of a massive explosion sounds out in front of me. Grim horror tears through my stomach, followed by disbelief. The world turns white and I can’t move and–

—

I’m on the dinghy.

Isn’t that already saying enough? I laugh and bang my head on the boat’s side, hysterical. “This is the worst kind of torture,” I seethe. My countenance grows dark. As I step off the dinghy and begin to form a proper flying construct out of old sunken bones, I begin to contemplate how to speed up the next iteration of the loop.

What do I know so far?

I know that this is all the biggest fucking bullshit–

No. Patience, patience, patience. What do I know?

The next loop layer seems to test whether or not I can blend in. But honestly, I never really verified that that was the purpose of the loop. Two run-throughs isn’t enough to verify something like that.

I resolve myself to try something else in the next loop. I wonder...what would happen if I just left Academia Hector and went home? Sure, it’d be right before finals and everything, which would be suspicious, but I can think of some excuse. A mental breakdown, perhaps?

A few other possibilities come to mind, but I’m fairly decided on the “return home” plan of attack.

—

Finishing up the Menocht loop layer only takes a mechanical six hours after I forge an enormous bone wyrm out of human and fish skeletons and race to the city. I almost can’t believe how fast I’m able to defeat it...what was I doing the past few years? Muddling around like a fool? Lost in my own despair?

I blink and find myself back in the room with Xander.

I immediately set my plan into motion. I sit up in bed, breathing heavily. Xander, ever the light sleeper, wakes.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, voice dry.

“No,” I murmur. “Xander, I think I'm going crazy.”

“Ian, don’t say that,” he mutters. “You just had a dream or something.”

I look him in the eyes and give him my widest, most manic smile. Then I grab a pair of scissors from the drawer of my bedside table and proceed to rake the blade in a vertical stripe down my forearm.

I laugh as the blood drips down and wets both me and the sheets. Xander watches in mute horror, his mouth agape. He snaps out of his stupor and fumbles with his glossY.

I feign fascination with my bleeding forearm, outwardly paying him no mind. All the while I listen intently as he speaks with an Emergency Services operator and explains the situation in rushed, anxious phrases.

I’d feel bad if Xander would remember this for the rest of his life. But of course, he won’t.

Soon enough, two campus Guardians come through the door. I ignore them until they address me directly, their voices surprisingly gentle.

“Ignatius,” one of them says. “Can you come with us?”

—

They first bring me to the nurse to stop the bleeding. She doesn’t detect anything suspicious about me, which is good, considering her questions last time I visited her office. She heals me up and sends me on my way to one of the school’s on-hand psychiatrists. I recognize the doctor’s name from the list of counselors I’d been offered in the last iteration.

I tell him that I’m surprised I haven’t already been brought to a hospital or other institution. Didn’t slitting my wrist vertically imply I was trying to kill myself, or had that been too subtle?

He gives me a warm smile. “Ignatius,” he begins, “you weren’t trying to kill yourself, were you?” His question sounds more like a suggestion.

I shake my head. “I was definitely trying to kill myself,” I reply. “I’m still feeling quite suicidal, to be honest.”

His face remains frozen in a calm smile. “You have no history of mental illness,” he remarks. “And your roommate claims you were acting fine up until this morning.” He crosses his arms. “Did something happen?”

I shake my head. “Nothing at all.”

The psychologist sighs and shakes his head, letting part of the facade drop. “If you’re serious, then we’re going to have to send you home to recuperate. Campus policy. So close to finals period, this might seriously impact your ability to graduate on time.”

I nod. “I couldn't care less about finals right now.”

Of all the things I’ve said, that seems to concern him the most.

“I believe you,” he says, giving me a level look. I can practically hear his unspoken thoughts: only someone actually ill would go home willingly just before finals his senior year.

Or, I think to myself, someone with nothing to lose.

They transport me back to my house through the campus’ transport array. It’s typically only used by the wealthier practitioner students, so I’m flattered that the school chooses to send me through one. I’ve never taken a transport array before, so I approach the experience with curiosity, inspecting the glowing transport array inscriptions. Two Guardians lead me up to the inscribed platform, a hexagon of slate gray.

“Remain still. Do not exit the transport platform.”

A scarce five seconds later, the world flashes before my eyes and my stomach flips. I’m overwhelmingly disoriented and nearly fall off the transport platform. When I look up, I realize that I’m in a different room than before, a cavernous structure filled with people and a series of equally-spaced transport arrays.

This...it should be Jupiter’s Center of Commerce.

I nearly drop to my knees when I see the form of a woman off in the room’s corner. She’s waiting to receive me, her brown, ringleting hair hiding her face from my eyes.

“Mother,” I whisper. It feels like it’s been an eternity, but she looks the same. Of course she would, I think, berating myself. Time stands still in the loop. She’s even wearing the same shawl that I last saw her in.

When she finally turns her head toward the transport platform, her hair parts and reveals her face. I see a small, gleaming drop of water at the corner of her left eye, but she’s smiling as though excited to see me.

I take deep breaths to calm myself.

Mother has always been the focus I use to keep myself going. The pale image of her face in my mind is suddenly renewed by the live woman in front of me.

Why am I like this? I wonder in exasperation. After everything I’ve been through, why is it that I can’t move on? Am I that empty, that pathetic?

“Ignatius,” she calls out, walking toward the platform. The pair of Guardians arranged to receive me escort me to her side, obviously watching for any sudden movements on my part.

“I’ve missed you,” I murmur.

“Come along,” she mutters, gesturing to the guards. “Let’s get you out of this place.” She sounds every bit the concerned parent.

She strides to the family’s petite hovergloss, a basic variant with a clear, domed top and a heavy plastic underbelly. The Guardians resist, arguing that Mother was supposed to be accompanied by a doctor to take me into custody.

“The doctor couldn’t come,” she replies, voice decisive enough to cut metal. “I’ll be taking him home. I’ve already collected his medication, so all he needs is rest and his family.”

With that, she practically yanks me from the Guardians’ hands, pulling me by my shirt and into the hovergloss. When the glass lid goes down and seals us in from the outside, she shoots me a serious look.

“Whatever you’re pulling, it’s going to land you in trouble,” she observes, blue eyes severe. “You’ve never been good at playing games.”