“There you are,” Terra said as she formed into my hands. I gave her a scritch as she disappeared.

“Are you okay?” Dom’s voice in my mind loosened me.

“Yeah, you?” I quipped, summoning Terra back to me.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Dom’s voice was like a balm to my nerves even though he was annoyed. He wasn’t really annoyed with me, just the circumstances. Hell, I was annoyed with the circumstances too, so could I blame him?

“Great,” Terra’s fur was poofy from the quick summoning, so I cast clean on her and myself. “Now I’m a cell phone.”

I started with the smallest of my spells and worked my way up. The lowest level of clean went off without a burp, barely pulling anything from the ambient energy; energy that could neither be created nor destroyed, just like physics back home. It could only be excited, calmed, and transformed. I kept my mind on that as I reassured Dom and Terra.

“I knew it was coming, but I didn’t expect it to come to us,” I told Dom, petting down Terra’s staticky fur. “This was unexpected.”

“I’m in a coach and maybe halfway to Siff,” Dom told me.

“I didn’t realize I was out that long,” I whispered more to myself than Dom and Terra. I was pulling stuff out of my inventory to get to the deeply nested blank spell book I’d hidden there. “I’m actually just thrilled that I still have access to my magic.”

“What?” Dom asked.

“They tried to strip me of my magic,” I explained a brief version of what had happened to me while at the college and I could feel his anger heat and then cool dangerously. I found my spell book and flipped mostly blank pages. Trunks surrounded me, but that was okay because I wanted some of the furniture in there anyway.

“I’ll kill them,” Dom growled, resummoning Terra as our link began to fade.

“That’s the plan,” I replied calmly, summoning Terra back to me. “But this time I have magic.” It could be interpreted that I hadn’t had magic at the college in our old world. Terra knew that I meant they hadn’t managed to strip me of my magic this time. I was so relieved that at least one of my ploys was turning my way.

“They said the coaches take three days, but I think I can get there faster.” I could picture him cracking his knuckles. “I see what you mean about the stupid rocking. Annoying, but I can sleep most of the way and take them back-to-back to the Capital.”

“I have a better idea,” I pulled a Vampire Lord’s vanity out of the trunk, along with its padded stool. “Remember what we had planned for Siff?”

“Not without you,” Dom replied, and I knew he meant that he didn’t want to do it without me. I couldn’t help but think Dom’s shortcut language would serve us well. He left so much open to interpretation but I knew him well enough to know where his mind would go.

“You don’t need me to do what we planned, and it’s still something that needs to be done,” I skirted around the truth, hoping he’d understand me. The room was too small for the Vampire Lord’s bed, so I settled for one of the harem’s single beds. It was just as nice in maroon velvet curtains and pink lace canopy that sparkled with gems. I cast the Mend spell at a tiny tear in the thick feather comforter. “I need you to do what I can’t do this time. I’ll need that support in the end.”

I could feel him resisting, but he grunted acknowledgement.

“I’ll keep Terra with me for now,” I continued, leaning back on the bed and trying a higher level Clean spell on it. “Summon her if you have any updates. She’ll have to hide out in my room most of the time, but I don’t think she’ll mind much.”

“I’ll find my way around,” Terra twitched her tail back and forth. “I will not need to hide away.” And with that, Terra turned a mottled black and brown color that allowed her to blend into the wood of the walls, especially as the light from a very meager window flickered with swaying trees outside. The college was built so much better than Mabel’s old tavern. The wood paneling was smooth and coated with stain and layers of wax.

“You’re really ok?” Dom asked one last time as the link faded again.

“I love you, and I’m in a good position,” I answered him, letting it go with an almost physical ache in my chest. The first time, this had taken three years just to get my magic back. I cast my spells from memory, allowing them to be written on the pages.

Remember how Sammi had told me that my spell book couldn’t be taken away from me? Fizzbarren had changed the rules. As the author of this tale, he was allowed to make godlike moves on this chessboard. It was called playing the god card. It’s when an author has painted a character into a corner and then uses some godlike savior to pluck them from a disaster that the character probably couldn’t have escaped on their own.

I’d played a god card when I’d initiated the time loop. The problem is that it costs you readers, as one can see from my analytics. I hadn’t used it to save myself, but rather to go back and save my daughter from death, a death that had carried over to the old world.

I’d scrubbed pots and pans for years on the hope that Kat’s death had just sent her back to our world, that she was still alive back there. I suppose there had also been the fact that I’d been trapped during that time with no real way to escape. After my first escape attempt, they’d magically grounded me to the campus area. I could leave, but if I stayed away for more than a day, my skin began to burn and itch. Worse, I was branded with a sigil that glowed when I’d stayed out past curfew. Even if I could withstand the itching burn, that sigil blazed across my forehead so brightly that it could and had lit my way through the sewers.

So, yeah, I’d played the god card of a time loop because aside from reversing time, one couldn’t take back a death that was over three years old. The staff at UNLV could be resurrected by the priests in the Capital. The priests had a set of runed stones that glowed as long as the staff member was alive. When one flickered out, they would use the spell inside to bring them back to life. The drawback? They were sick for a week in a fevered state that burned out most of what had happened to them the week before they’d died. You should have seen my face the first time one of those bastards came back to life after I’d managed to gut them in the dark.

Once my three years were up, and I’d proven my responsible devotion (and the phrase still makes me want to throw up) to the college, I’d spent my days a prime example of reform and loyalty. I’d spent my nights killing staff. I’d made a lot of mistakes, but I’d never been caught, even when the priests brought them back to life.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Only Terra and I remembered those times. Kat only remembered her life and death. Dom, Cliff, and the rest of everyone seemed oblivious. Even Fizzbarren, the author of this world, hadn’t reacted like he knew the loop existed, probably because I’d cast the spell from our old world and not from here. It had taken me almost four years to defeat the college. It had taken me another three days to defeat Fizzbarren and become the author.

Becoming the author had been crazy. I didn’t own any of Fizzbarren’s books or copywrites, so I’d had to write my own story. I’d tried. You saw it. I found Royal Road and started putting up chapters. I was so angry and bitter and it came through in my writing. But readers came. You came. So, I kept bleeding my life onto digital pages for print. Until I couldn’t.

I begged Sammi to let me write something else, but to do that I’d have to pull people into the world and use them as characters; characters like Lily and Chester, and Kat. Characters who could die. Beau sat up on a shelf in a nice little town of his own making, with his lovely hearth witch wife and their little boy. I could have used them, but it felt hypocritical to use other people to write stories, and this author class only got experience and increased power when I used the engine that Fizzbarren had made.

I made a promise long before I became the author to save people like Lily and Chester from their shelved lives if I ever had a chance. I promised I’d find a way to give them a choice. Lily and Chester are my dear friends. They were. They will be? Even Beau had chosen the shelf over the real world.

I almost hung it all up several times. I didn’t need this. I could retire. What was life without Kat? There is a special hell that is the life of a parent who has outlived their child. In Fizzbarren’s house, in the real world, I had everything I’d need for the rest of my family to simply live out our days. Everything but Kat.

Fizzbarren hadn’t hungered for wealth because he’d had it. A fifteen-hundred-year-old legend, once immortalized as the angry, baby-stealing dwarf with the odd name, Fizzbarren had had only one regret left. He’d wanted a legacy. Babies grew up and betrayed the wizened old dwarf, set in his ways, resenting him for his gruff impatience with budding life, and youthful naivety. Society had become a mass of brainless people to him. He’d been writing poetry and fables for centuries, but now all people wanted was pulp fiction, video games, and television. He was a get-off-my-lawn old man in a let’s-all-get-along-and-fight-from-behind-screens world.

So, Fizzbarren wanted the one thing denied to him. Respect. Why shouldn’t he have fame? He was certainly smarter and wiser than all the celebrities that were writing books that filled the shelves. He’d survived wars, discrimination that made today’s issues feel shallow to him, technology that put his children’s pictures on milk cartons, and critics, all of which he considered equal evils. I knew this because he gave a very long villain speech that will never be written on pages because he had, ironically, outlawed any villain speech past five paragraphs.

I’d taken a chance on the god card. A big one. I’d defeated him once, this creature who had witnessed the turn of two millennium markers for civilization. There was no guarantee that I’d beat him again. At least some of my first victory had been luck. I could only hope that my knowledge would help me balance that luck into another win.

And if it didn’t, I still had that reboot button. I’d do this as many times as I could to get Kat back. Why didn’t that reassure me? Because sooner or later, Fizzbarren was going to catch onto this reboot thing. If I ever stop writing, it’s because Fizzbarren has used another god card to counter this one. Just keep reading, okay? I think as long as we have enough readers here, I’ll have enough mana and power to block his knowledge of… all this.

Right now, thanks to you, even as new of a Royal Road author as I am, I have more page views and readers than Fizzbarren. It’s a close call, but as long as we can keep it up, I think there’s a chance of defeating him the second time. Just. There’s something about this one reader. I think it’s you. You fill the mana more. I don’t know if it’s my connection to you or your connection to the story, but it’s like you’re really one of us.

Skill Learned: Pontification

Pontification +10

Exp +120 (1,570/788,209)

Uh, oh. It’s not a villain speech but I am still bound by Fizzbarren’s rules of pontification and it looks like I really need to get back to the story, but hang in there. I’m hiding these ruminations in the main story so that you can see them. Fizzbarren is hiding some of my comments somehow. It’s the loop. It’s somehow giving him power over my present. Could he? No, I dare not even think it, much less write it.

Here… no one reads these. I’ll throw one of these in and it’ll hide our talk.

Name: Karma

Class: Mage-ish

Level: 20 (1,570/788,209)

Profession: Cook (Level 8: 3,330/6,075), Teacher (Level 7: 350/4,050), Alchemist (Level 6: 500/2,700), Blacksmith (Level 6: 350/2,700), Carpenter (Level 6: 220/2,700), Leatherworker (Level 6: 100/2,700), Mercenary (Level 6: 100/2,700), Merchant (Level 5: 800/1,800), Storyteller (Level 5: 200/1,800), Maid (Level 4: 450/1,200), Seamstress (Level 4: 300/1,200), Singer (Level 4: 240/1,200), Tanner (Level 4: 200/1,200), Bartender (Level 3: 350/800), Stablehand (Level 3: 200/800), Waitress (Level 3: 100/800), Woodsman (Level 3: 20/800), Butcher (Level 2: 20/500), Dancer (Level 1: 50/300)

Health: 18,762/18,762

Mana: 19,610/19,610

Intelligence: 90

Will: 95

Strength: 87

Constitution: 90

Charm: 89

Beauty: 14

Perception: 101

Dexterity: 99

Luck: 87

Skills: Identify (91), Dodge (83), Knife Fighting (83), Blacksmithing (70), Duel Wielding (66), Cooking (65), Grapple (62), Piercing (61), Disarm (50), Meditation (50), Multiple Foe Combat (50), Leatherworking (47), Flirting (45), Kick (43), Sneak (42), Bartering (40), Woodworking (40), Mana Manipulation (35), Barricade (32), Poison Resistance (32), Storytelling (32), Alcohol Tolerance (28), Backstab (26), Bashing (26), Intimidation (26), Hide (26), Slashing (26), Sewing (25), Singing (25), Teaching (25), Unarmed Combat (25), Comedy (21), Dancing (20), Duel Spell Wielding (20), Manic Charge (13), Pontification (11), Swordplay (11), Subtlety (8), Tanning (7), Skinning (6), Mana Infusion (5), Disarm Traps (3), Milking (3),

Spells: Super Heal (99), Fix It (97), Fireball (88), Poison Cloud (88), Bleach (86), Firestorm (85), Silence (74), Dark Vision (69), Mental Vision (63), Dust Devil (50), Rain (50), Preserve (49), Summon Familiar (49), Cure Poison (48), Fog (47), Buffer (43), Cement Shoes (43), Create Spellbook (43), Lesser Charm (41), Disguise (29), Dispel Ghost (25), Icestorm (25), Wall of Frost (25), Glamour (21), Ice (12), Soften Curse (11), Dispel Magic (10)

Did you see that? This worked out so much better than I’d expected. They took Spark, but I managed to cast the higher levels of it. The same is true for the buff and heal spells. I didn’t even lose them! There was a little tiny resistance when I first tried to cast the higher level of those spells, but the higher levels worked. I could not cast those first levels though. I could cast Sparkler, but not Spark. I could cast greater heal, but not lesser heal. It was as if they had blanked out a tiny piece of me. I raged, but more in memory of what they’d managed to take before.

If you’re wondering how I got Fireball back, well, let’s just say that I fried my eyebrows in an empty version of my room. Between heal and my Ice Storm, I kept it contained. I only had to repair a few crispy walls. See? That’s why I needed clean and repair so much more than Fireball. I now had walls stained with a deep cherrywood color and slick with lacquer. It was amazing what that leveled-up repair spell could do. All I had to do was damage something and then imagine what the repair would look like, and it would take that shape. I bet you’d love to redo your walls that way, right?

For the first time in a long time, I felt the insidious bud of hope in a deep portion of my heart. Hope that I’d really be able to do better this time. Dom was coming. He would get me those contacts outside the college that I had needed last time. If Fizzie had moved to block that with this teleport, Dom would make up for it. But how could Fizzbarren know? He couldn’t. This wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff was convoluted even in my overactive mind.

Intelligence +1