Dawn’s early morning light broke over the horizon, the sky brightening from gray smears into blooming colors and warm breezes. Ethan woke to the sounds of bird calls and the smell of soot filling his small room, and briefly debated the merits of simply staying in bed. “On the one hand, I’d fail on my training regimen and need to start a five year process from day one. On the other, I wouldn’t need to deal with that idiot.” His ceiling took on new shades of ruddy brown as his tiny square windows high on the wall let in the daylight. Heaving a sigh at the prospect of being awake again, he bent in half and rolled out of bed to face the day.

As the Warlock entered their shared commons, he found Zahn bent in half over his map and whatever stone slab he was working on. They’d split company after he spent hours trying to copy the shapes, and had agreed that their morning training would continue regardless of progress. The lowbie heard his steps as he neared, and turned dry eyes at his guest.

“What, was I making too much noise?” Zahn sounded as tired as he looked, and the scribbles he’d won after a long night didn’t look like they matched the pattern at all.

“No no, don’t mind me,” Came the blond’s cheerful reply. Forcing a happy mood around the noob was becoming another point of stress, but the longer he kept up the facade the easier it would be to actually befriend the insane Custom. “Just thought I’d whip up something for a snack before we get started. How’s your little project coming?”

Zahn blinked owlishly back at him before turning back to the panel in his lap. “It goes. Your drawing, its.” He stopped speaking, leaning closer to the rock with each second as he seemed to fall asleep. “Not done!” He jerked back upright, unsteady as a wobbling calf. “There’s, ah. Shit’s missing.”

“Good to know.” Dismissing the ramblings as yet more inanity from his roommate, the Warlock bent to his stretches and waved for the other’s attention. “Come along, put that down. Time for some real work.”

The lowbie shook his head, nearly tipping over from the exertion. “No! No. No, I need to. I need to finish just this part, then I can sleep.” Bending back over his project like a child, he pulled Ethan’s map closer as he touched his nose to it as he drew on the rock with Shape.

Glancing at the fetal position worker between bends, Ethan finally relented. “You know that thing zooms in, right? Just gotta pinch your fingers and then widen them?” He didn’t get an answer, and after his legs felt loose and limber he strode over to the prone Player.

Zahn’s eyes snapped open when he knelt before him, their red veins standing out starkly against his whites. “Almost done.” The stare was creepy even without the ever-present threat of mental magic, but at least while exhausted the man wasn’t able to stare into his eyes like when he was stable. The lowbie had already patented his own variant of the thousand kilometer gaze that demanded to be looked away from, but unfocused his hawk-like stare seemed far less dangerous. His eyes slowly tracked away from Ethan’s, following a line down the man’s cheek as his vision unfocused again. As he was about to stand again he nearly jumped when Zahn’s eyes suddenly lit up with power and refocused like a bulldog smelling an intruder. His voice cracked as he lashed out, raspy and confused, “I said almost done!”

Rising to his feet and quickly stepping away, the Warlock crossed the room and perched on the top of a couch, crouching over the furniture as he stared at the Custom’s back. I wish killing him did anything. Trying to focus on progress and options, the caster settled into a half-mediation position and sent his thoughts towards his center.

The cool breeze of welcoming mana filled his mind, the stress of the last few weeks leaving with his body to reside in the drudgy mortal realm. In the world of thought he hung free unfettered by the burdens of life and without the concerns of the flesh. For a time he simply enjoyed the freedom, basking on the breeze he hadn’t felt for years now. With the crazy Custom nearby, his meditation sessions had shifted from trying to circulate his own mana towards enjoying the rush of power that came off the absurd lowbie’s Core like waves.

You have entered Stage Two Meditation.

Reality rejoined the mental plane as his body and mind resynchronized, and Ethan opened his third eye to the world. Sending mana up into his head sounded suicidal when Zahn mentioned it, but once the paths were safely marked his own body could maintain them almost indefinitely, even if he needed to jump-start the ability. He’d been able to drop all the way down to Stage Four in the past, before he’d opted to leave the third tier for easy levels. Other classes of mage had claimed they gained new abilities with each Stage they advanced, though all he’d gained as a Warlock was greater regeneration rates and a more potent connection to his lost minion.

Until the insane Custom carved channels into his skull, and opened a new world of sight for the careful Warlock. With mana able to freely flow past his brain and reach his eyes, the ability to see magic finally nestled into his already potent range of Abilities and felt like the final limb he never knew he was missing.

You have activated the Ability: Mana Sight.

The drain of ten mana per second was enormous compared to every other Class Ability he’d been granted, and the typeless attribute tag made the simple trick vastly overpowered. If any class could see the flows of magic, then half the power of enchantments would be completely negated as Hexes became visible. Once the Warlock paid the absurd one thousand point cost of energy to trigger his Sight, he relaxed his meditation enough to process what he was seeing through it.

Stage Two allowed him to exert a level of control over his own body, just as Stage Three allowed him to move while maintaining his meditative state. Most who broke into Stage Four never left it, as Mages gained the benefits of rest and Priests gained an ongoing connection to their God even as all classes gained casting during the meditation itself. With his limited influence from Stage Two, Ethan had never tried to do any more than solve a persistent itch or play the phallus game with another meditator. Now, spending the mana to activate Mana Sight in the morning was enough reason to justify slipping to meditation and keeping up the Ability was worth dropping into the helpless state again during lunch.

Walking around the edge of the arena with his new Sight had allowed Ethan to get a good look at the different fighters and casters and how their individual spells behaved before and after leaving their bodies. He was surprised to see the Mana Core shining happily even in the torsos of Gladiators who would never learn a spell, and more than interested to watch how Mana and Stamina behaved differently in a warrior’s body. The blue roots arcing around would be pushed aside and flattened by clouds of green, a shade of darkness he could barely see but gathered thickly in fighters’ bodies. His observations of the stamina versus mana engagement had taught him how the mana lines needed to be pliable and soft, able to move aside and allow the ever-present stamina to surge through the body and power its muscles.

Looking across the circular room he found the Custom’s magic behaving normally, as much as that crazy Player’s magic could. Instead of the glimmering blot of blue light each person carried around, this nutjob hosted a hexahedron standing on its point, with the spiky shape pointing a tip in each direction up, right, left, forwards, and back. The shape barely had tips of its own, with the points disappearing into thick cables of lines that shot out along their axis. The cables split before traveling even an inch, fragmenting into smaller strands that then wove around one another like a spherical basket before merging and branching randomly to send fingers and wires and hairs of blue lines all through the man’s body like a child given crayons without rules.

The intricate and complex network of lights and shades of blue filled his mortal form, the fat weak body riddled with knots and intersections of various thicknesses of lines that worked their way all down each limb before turning back on themselves and working a path back up to the Core. As he watched his insane companion, the Player cast another spell silently and he saw the process. Mana blinked out of the center, climbing the twisted wire path up his fucking spine into his brain and turning random bits of blue to purple. Now carrying his intent, the magic dripped down a different set of paths like a suicidal burnout to carry energy through his arm and out, all to change the pattern on a fucking rock.

Slowly opening his eyes, Ethan found control of his body return as real light overrode the eternal neon light show given off by Zahn’s absurd magic network and revealed the powerhouse to be a simple fat slob. “Come on, we have things to do.” His own voice sounded distant and felt rough, prompting him to cough before trying again. “Hey, wake up!”

Zahn’s head turned to glare at him, his shoulder hiding the full stare like some wretched horizon. He blinked far too slowly as the ‘lock could see the colors change and dance, sending far too much mana into his mind. “I’m awake,” rasped the weak lowbie.

“Yeah, no. We’re not doing that.” Ethan crossed the couches again, stooping to grab the Custom around his waist and bodily haul the unkempt man to his feet. “Come along, that’ll wait. In fact,” pausing during his personal adjustment he turned and tapped the fallen map with his foot, banishing the image to its home within his HUD. “Problem solved, you can’t copy it now. Let’s go.”

Zahn sagged against the grip, using his great weight to pull the offender off-balance. “No, it. It isn’t.” He struggled to explain his thoughts, more and more Psychic-type mana pulsing into his skull as the Custom tried to stay coherent. Ethan eyed the lights warily as he heaved the other Player to the doors, finally dropping the dead weight against them and letting his body flop onto the sands. “Igznot,” insisted Zahn with a face full of dirt.

Ethan sighed again as he looked over the lowbie’s mana-charged body and determined the Custom wasn’t about to pop spells every which way. Eyeing his daily quest requirements, the Warlock finally chose the path of least resistance. “Alright, hear me?” He tapped Zahn cheek, watching the colors pulse in ripples at his touch. “I’m gonna go start my run. You stay here, wake up, and we’ll get going when I’m done. Right?” No response came, but the mana shifted away from his head to swirl around random interconnecting paths. “Right.”

* * * * *

Zahn became aware of sunlight as the external warmth gently stroked his sore head. Pressure radiated in from his skull, the pleasant touch of life-giving light revealing the amount of pain that blessed unconsciousness had hidden away. With each annoying beat the pain would ripple around again, tracing laps in rings around his dome that constantly reminded him, you’re awake, you’re awake. He groaned, trying to turn his head and feeling the coarse fabric of his pillow shift and crumble against his face.

Confusion finally outweighing his desire to stop existing, Zahn moaned out another complaint as he gathered the courage to lift his head, feeling sand shift and fall as his mouth filled with the vile stuff. Weakly spitting and blowing away the intruders, the lowbie creaked his aching eyes open and found a far too-bright world waiting for him, complete with moving figures and too many colors.

Dropping his head back down with a grunt, the Player tried to remember what happened last. The night of working with Ethan blurred away towards the end, turning into a haze of trying something over and over again. He levered himself up to his elbows, dragging his legs up behind him in an effort to stand. After their quick dinner when the devious Warlock revealed his spell was nothing like what they needed, the lowbie had managed to beg the map off his partner before trying to scribe something workable out of the sheer mess he’d been handed. The logic of Magi as he’d read the language so far seemed to imply the spellform they were looking for ought to be simple, and even straightforward in its effects. The spell he’d been able to parse from the crude drawing, by comparison, looked more like a child had been armed with chalk and told to only use certain shapes repeated forever.

Squares held their corners or sagged into bizarre slopes, triangles that connected even lines one way then split off at angles to begin a path on the other. The only shape he’d been able to decipher from the long experiment was a single compound one, hiding among the rest. While trying to parse the designs he found what looked like a square with a line bisecting it into rectangles, and later two overlapping triangles with lines merging their points. In trying to decipher the shapes into something workable he’d realized they were the same; three squares and two triangles all merged together to create a new third-dimensional design, one being translated into the second dimension for the drawing.

His discovery had energized the Player, showing him a slew of possibilities redefining the entire pattern as it looped back onto itself. Trying to create the carvings with Shape had quickly proven useless, as much as he could move around the lines to change between triangle and square he hadn’t yet cracked making the complete new shape on a flat surface. I need to see the page, he thought again as the rogue idea made another lap through his mind. If I can see the page, I can rotate the fucking thing and get a better angle.

Finally rising to his hands and knees, Zahn squinted down at the bright sands and tried to blink his eyes into working order. Sleeping in the sand hadn’t helped his functioning mind, and trying to tilt upright quickly proved impossible this early. He wobbled onto one hand to rub the grit away from his face and finally got a look at his HUD while cleaning his scruff. A new box sat perched on his bottom left, next to the lazily blinking alert indicator he’d set up days before. The new box was layered, looking like two stacked images holding an image of a stick figure man crawling on the ground.

Debuff: Exhaustion 2.

The description didn’t give him much, but at least the pounding in his head could be explained and the world’s brightness didn’t seem out to personally kill him. Settling back on his heels, the Custom tried to straighten up past the complaints of his knees and found his mouth drier than state promises and reached for his waterskin. The empty sack dangled uselessly as he pulled it from his bag, and shaking the offending leather did nothing to replenish its blessed former contents. I need a water enchantment. Squinting past the immediate environment, the lowbie looked out over the burning ground to find a number of Gladiators training to their hearts’ content.

Scanning the crowd as the various partners swung deadly weapons and lifted massive weight stones, he finally found a familiar blond head as it bobbed and ducked around in a duel with death herself. At very least, the Warlock was giving One something of a challenge as he dove to the ground to avoid the silver scythe and then rolled to dodge its trailing magic. The yellow spell struck the ground rapidly, chasing the prone Gladiator as he made like a log and rotated to the edge of their ring. Leaping to his feet he sprinted past the effect’s edge, timing his next jump to clear over the blade and striking out with a long blade Zahn hadn’t seen before.

One leaned back, her dress’s frilly layers lifting to separate weapon from target as she shifted her weight and brought the massive polearm around again. Her many dark layers seemed to dance on their own, frills waving like snowflakes in a storm before the garment abruptly fell flat and sagged, giving its owner room to swing her scythe back at the blond ‘lock. Ethan ducked, rolling into a somersault as he guessed the incoming spell wrong and had to avoid a rapidly spreading circle of ice on the ground. He leapt up and spun, cleaning the area of effect and landing lightly on his feet to the cheers of their audience. His bright blue and white mana circulation pumped through his form, giving clear definition to who was who even across the field thanks to Mana Sight.

The smaller fighter dove in, feinting with a left before diving to the right and nearly losing a leg on the return swing. He rolled again, clearing the magic left behind by her retaliation attack before rising and plunging his long dagger towards her. Just as she wrenched her shoulders to attack back, the Warlock’s core sputtered and failed. The bright glowing light clearly defining Ethan’s outline dimmed, rapidly fading to darkness as his steps faltered and his smile fell. Even from halfway across the arena Zahn could see the ‘lock lose his confidence and dodge the wrong away, taking a cut from the scythe blade across his shoulder before eating the green spell bound to the blade across his chin.

Ethan fell hard, his head bouncing off the ground as One held her ground. The dressed caster straightened up, planting her weapon on the ground as she stared down her prey. The powerful woman’s magic surged through her body, yellow and gold swirling around in her arms while green and blue danced through her core. Trying to see her shape under the dress was nearly impossible, with the large bell covering her legs so completely, but seeing the paths her mana took through her body made the woman look small, thin and almost wasted away.

Zahn couldn’t hear the match from his spot, but he could see the two talking about something as their crowd returned to their various tasks and Ethan lived to stand and shake One’s hand. Finding his own legs refusing to copy him, the lowbie chose to remain sitting as he observed the post-battle and saw One wanted something, catching the Warlock’s arm as he tried to leave and moving jerkily as both parties became angry.

The frightening woman waved her scythe at Ethan again before releasing him and turned towards the metal doors. The Warlock in question spun to see Zahn sitting and seemed to sag before blooming upright and marching over towards him.

“Well good morning precious! Did someone get enough sleep today?” The blond’s tone was more aggravating than usual, as if he’d put more effort in being annoying. He stopped several steps away and looked down at Zahn, his hands on his hips. “Come along now doggie, up up. Shit to do.”

The lowbie grimaced up at him, trying to glare and failing to muster any temper. “Fuck. You.” Leaning forwards he started to fall before trying to jump, the awkward flop lurching him mostly upright to catch himself against the double doors. His legs, so happily acting as a seat mere moments ago, screamed in protest at his cruel actions and vibrated a million tiny ants with each step. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”

Ethan chuckled, relaxing as he watched the show. “Good job. Don’t sit on your feet, stupid.”

Zahn scowled at him, finally able to look down from his superior height. “What happened? Not One, she won. With you, and. Ah.” His mind trailed off, leaving his mouth hanging in the distance. Despite knowing what he wanted, the words refused to connect meaning to sound. “Magic. Spells.”

The other Player moved in, his arms rising to catch Zahn’s shoulders. “Woah, easy. If you fall I’m not picking you back up.” When the usual remedy didn’t agitate his apprentice into motion, he slapped the other man’s cheek a few times. “Wake up, come on. We can play with magic later, we have training now. Remember training?”

Whether it was the encouragement or condescending tone it was delivered with, the prompting worked at bringing the Custom back to reality. A dark eye locked onto his own before focusing, and blue lights sparked somewhere behind its iris. Ethan swallowed back the jolt of adrenaline, trying to keep his body from its instinctive attack. “That’s right, let’s go. We can do half weight today, because you ran double yesterday?”

Zahn growled back as he tried to form words, the clear memory of his yesterday’s pain bubbling back to the surface. “Your fault,” he tried to explain without his mouth behaving. He leaned upright again, staggering with each step as he tried to force his complaining body into motion. Ethan followed close, keeping pace easily as he spoke coherently and moved with grace. Like an asshole.

Finally reaching his designated training spot, the Custom halted between two dueling circles and turned to face his partner, who smirked like a jerk as he retrieved mock swords for the pair. “Not? Runs?” The words were coming out clearer, but life still felt like someone stuffed a sock between his brain and mouth.

“No, I had my jog already. I made a point to jump over you, if you remember?” The blond got a head shake back, and continued with a shrug. “No matter. You won’t qualify for a daily training quest without rising in status first anyways, so it’s not like you’re penalized for skipping. I even had time to duel before you got up!”

“I saw.” Zahn felt adrenaline finally wake up, his pulse rising as he struggled to communicate his thoughts. “You need to. To ration it. You gotta,” he growled at the sky, trying to form the words. “Lower eye power during, then up for reaction. You just, ah.” Ethan looked on with raised eyebrows, as if taunting the words out of him. “You put at full power, sucked you dry. Gotta vary that shit.” His own eyes were still powering his Mana Sight, showing the lowbie the magic world around him clearly and even crisp despite the blurriness of his mortal vision.

“Alright, sure. Why the fuck are you still half-asleep? I let you sleep in, man, it’s almost ten.”

“Not sleep.” The answer was both simple and obvious, so of course it became nearly impossible to communicate. “Izs debuffs. ‘Zaustion.”

Ethan stared a moment before his smile widened into a full grin as he swung two equally weighted wooden poles around. “You have Exhaustion? Like, the debuff Exhaustion?” Zahn nodded, “Gods your Constitution score must be shit. Ooh, ooh!” Bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement, the Warlock tossed the training weapons and caught them. “What level? Come on, how bad is it? Can you even move? Well, if you were normal.”

Zahn growled against his rebellious lips, the single word harder to spit out than his complete sentence from before. “Two.”

His partner laughed, spinning the poles between catching them. “So you’re fucked, and you’re fucked. That’s head and body, by the way, in case nobody explained that one to you.” An actual growl escaped his student, and the ‘lock shook his head before continuing. “So your physical stats are temporarily half what they were, and your mental are about a third. If you’d reached third-level Exhaustion your secondary stats would drop to a quarter, and fourth-level just leaves you straight up bedridden. Fifth kills you, so. Y’know.”

The Custom wavered, his legs feeling like supports on a dock that never made room for the tide. “So, we. Ah?” He looked up, seeing Ethan’s magic clearly as the Warlock’s arm moved and tossed something without any mana at him. He lurched to catch the object, finding a long wooden handle.

“That’s right!” Came the awfully happy reply. “We get to train while you’re all kinds of fucked up. Your body is weaker than it was yesterday, and your brain is demanding resources you just don’t have. But hey, I’m not completely Evil.” Saying so, the caster closed his eyes and focused to bring his own Mana Sight back up. “We can both train, I’ll work on varying the power in my Sight and you’ll work on. Well, you.”

Zahn tried to take his combat stance, finding the stick comfortable held close and his empty hand leading. Presenting his open side felt like he was forgetting to hold something important in his right, as if there was some kind of control he was supposed to be wielding and he’d forgotten his important tool.

Ethan didn’t have the same issues, shifting his body to face diagonally and presenting his own weapon as a target. “You’re not doing it right, your tool is there to protect you, not the other way around. Ready?”