The air around the magikinesis lab usually had an indescribable buzz to it, as the air hummed with barely-restrained magic. Just walking by, Vell could feel his skin tingle -at least most days. Right now everything seemed muted. He noted that as a red flag for a potential apocalypse, and continued.

To his surprise, one of the first things he saw when walking through the door was Alex, standing on a raised platform in the center of the lab. She had a book in one hand and was using the other to go through a series of short magical gestures. Every time she cast a simple spell, a few instruments beeped, and a few observers started taking notes. He ignored that and went looking for his target, a student named Renee. She was easy to find, and thankfully she was not one of the students observing Alex. Vell would like to get in and out of the room without interacting with Alex at all, if possible.

“Hey, Renee, I’m Vell.”

“Yes, the person everyone on campus is obsessed with,” Renee said. “And, more importantly, Lee’s friend. What’s up?”

“Well, speaking of Lee,” Vell said. “She was just curious about a project you’d been working on last year, something about new binding rituals?”

“Lee asked about me?”

“Yeah,” Vell said. “She’s trying to win an argument.”

“Oh. Well then, yeah, what’s she want to know?”

“Just if you ever figured out how to use squirrel bones as a successful reagent,” Vell said. Apparently certain rituals required the “essence of the swift made steady”, which usually took the form of the bones of a dead animal that was fast in life. The more Vell heard about high-level magic, the less sense it made to him.

“Yes, actually, I did,” Renee said. “Most people go for horses or cheetahs, but the real key is how fast the animal is proportional to their size. Skews your ratios a bit, though.”

“Noted, thank you very much,” Vell said. “That’s all I needed.”

“Oh, hey, before you go,” Renee said. She pointed up at Alex. “You hang out with her, right?”

“Not if I can avoid it,” Vell said.

“But you do,” Renee said. Vell nodded. “Do you know…what her deal is?”

Renee gestured towards her entire head. Vell shrugged and lowered his voice.

“After thorough scientific study, I think she’s just a bitch,” Vell said. Renee actually wrote that down. “Why are you guys studying with her, anyway?”

“We’re not studying with her, we’re studying her,” Renee said. “You ever seen her do magic before?”

“Repeatedly,” Vell said. He looked over and saw Alex cast another spell. The dull gray haze of her magic flickered briefly as she cast, and then vanished. “Is this about the color thing?”

“Partially,” Renee said. Vell pondered what else could possibly be going on with Alex. After a brief moment of thought, he came to an important revelation: he didn’t care.

“Well, good luck with the research,” Vell said. “If you ever want her to shut up, start talking about pop music. She hates that kind of stuff.”

“Noted,” Renee said, as she literally made a note. Getting Alex to shut up was one of the research team’s foremost concerns. She was silent for now, but that only ever lasted so long. Vell thanked Renee one more time and then walked out of the lab.

“Tell Lee I said hi!”

“Will do,” Vell said.

He grabbed his phone to text Lee the answer, and noticed a glare in his phone screen, from some bright light source behind his shoulder. He looked up, and saw the sun directly in front of him. He’d really been hoping that glare would just be the sun.

Vell turned to face the glare head on, and saw a fireball careening in an arc towards the island, trailing a rainbow spectrum of light behind it. It was still a few miles away, but closing the distance fast. He found his way to the center of the island for a slightly better vantage, and found Hawke on his way there.

“Big fireball,” Vell said. “With a rainbow trail. Thoughts?”

“Gay meteor?

“That’s what I was thinking,” Vell said. Samson came running up to join them.

“Hey, we know anything about the gay meteor?”

“Nothing yet,” Vell said. He pulled a telescope out of his bookbag and tried to get a closer look at the rainbow comet, but could not see through the blinding corona of light. He dropped the telescope and handed it over to a curious Samson. “Don’t think we’re going to get anything just looking at it. Maybe Kim can scan it.”

Right on cue, Kim appeared and joined the group.

“Oh good, you’re all here,” Kim said. “I just finished scanning the gay meteor.”

“Any clues?”

“It’s very, very magical,” Kim said. “Other than that, not a lot to go on.”

“Well, I might have something new to go on,” Samson said. He dropped the telescope and pointed up at the sky. “It’s turning right towards us!”

All eyes turned skyward, and saw that the falling beacon of light had in fact veered off course and was now careening right towards where they were standing.

“Uh oh,” Vell said. “Scatter!”

All four of the loopers ran in different directions, hoping at least one of them would be far enough from the impact site to survive the blast. Three of them stood a good chance of making it, the odd man out naturally being Vell. When he started to run, the falling ball of light started to follow. After a few seconds of running for his life, Vell figured he’d rather not die exhausted. He turned around stood, his ground, and stared right into the plummeting beacon as it soared directly at his face -and then stopped in midair.

“Hey.”

Vell sighed.

“Hi.”

“Nice to meet you, Vell Harlan,” the blinding ball of light said. “I could use your help.”

Try as he might, Vell could not bring himself to be surprised.

“Okay, fine.”

“Whew, thanks,” the lightball said, bouncing as it spoke. “The way you were running around, I figured you were a bit busy.”

“Yeah, sorry, that was a little more about you plummeting from the heavens as a cosmic fireball.”

“As- oh, shit,”the lightball said. It spun around as if examining itself. “Sorry, I totally forgot I was in this mode. My bad, man, sorry I scared you.”

“It’s fine,” Vell said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry for not introducing myself,” the lightball said. “If I remembered to put myself in human mode you’d totally recognize me, I’m kind of iconic. Across the cosmos I am known by many names, and even among humans my titles are myriad. But I am best known as-”

The ball of light shimmered and flickered, then the myriad spectrums of light coalesced into one solid form: a pot-bellied young boy in a cloth gown, with feathery white wings on his back and a bow in his hands.

“-Cupid,” the cherub said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Vell said. He shook the tiny hand of Cupid. “Cupid. God of Love, all that?”

“Well, sort of,” Cupid said. He flapped his tiny wings and hovered at eye level with Vell. “Cupid as you know it is just one of my manifestation’s. I don’t really do the go out and shoot people with arrows to make them fall in love thing, I’m more of a cosmic bookkeeper watching over the concept of Love. Kind of like that Butterfly Guy you met last year does for Time.”

“That sort of makes sense, yeah,” Vell said. “Does Love really need its own caretaker the way Time does?”

“If anything, my man, Love needs one more,” Cupid said. “All time ever does is go forward. Love causes all kinds of trouble. Love has built and destroyed empires, moved mountains and dug rivers, created life and ended it.”

“I get that,” Vell said. “Well then, Cupid, what do you need?”

“I need your help, hombre,” Cupid said. “Because right here, right now, on this weird, mixed up island of yours: Love is dying.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

----------------------------------------

Given the stakes, Vell had called in as much help as he could get. Enough of his friends had gathered that they’d needed to co-opt a classroom for the tactical meeting. Even Helena was making a rare effort at active apocalypse prevention, though Alex had refused, citing the “fact” that Love is just an over-romanticized word for the genetic imperative to breed. After hearing that, Vell had decided she was better off not being involved anyway.

“Alright, Cupid, give us the full situation,” Vell said, before taking his seat at the front of the class.

“Okay, thank you all for being here,” Cupid said. He hovered at the front of the classroom to address them all. “Always a pleasure to be among a group of trusting friends like this, I can really feel the love among you all.”

“Quick question,” Luke said, raising his hand as befit the classroom setting. “What are we defining as ‘love’ here, because not that I don’t like you all, I’m not really in ‘love’ with anyone in this room.”

“Wow,” Amy said. “I thought we had something special.”

“I’m gay.”

“And I’m joking, I met you five minutes ago,” Amy said. Even as a longtime acquaintance of Vell’s, she had never crossed paths with Luke. “Cool to meet you, though, I always thought people were lying about how handsome you were.”

“They were not,” Luke said. If anything, people undersold how good looking he was. “Now, back to my question.”

“Well, love is complicated to define, even for me,” Cupid said. “There’s no one size fits all answer, but the best way I can describe is this: love is anything or anyone you know of that your life would be worse without.”

“Anything,” Hawke said. “So that counts for objects as well?”

“Or movies, songs, food, yeah,” Cupid said. “Like you, Goldie, you love potatoes. If potatoes disappeared tomorrow your life would be worse, right?”

“Hell yeah,” Goldie said.

“It’s all different kinds of love, obviously, like the love Goldie feels for potatoes is different than the love Cane feels for his girlfriend or Hawke feels for his friends,” Cupid explained. He gestured to each person he named as he spoke. “It’s a big spectrum.”

“Cool, tangent question,” Cane said. “How do you know all of our names and the stuff we’re in love with?”

“I’m the love guy,” Cupid said. “I know love. All love. There’s aliens right now, in distant galaxies you’ve never heard of and never will, getting their freak on, and I know about it.”

“That’s incredibly weird.”

“I know,” Cupid said. “But it doesn’t have an off switch. If you want to not be in my big ol’ love database, you have to stop loving or being loved by anything.”

Cane shrugged and put an arm around Hanifa. That was not a sacrifice he was willing to make.

“Any more questions before we dive into the real meat of the issue here?”

The room was silent. Cupid flapped his wings happily and carried.

“Alright, I don’t have a lot of information,” Cupid said. “But it’s kind of like there’s a love black hole somewhere here on campus. It’s just absorbing every ounce of energy and passion that gets near it and never letting go.”

“Is it Helena?”

“No, Samson, it is not Helena,” Cupid said. “She loves lots of things, like-”

“Don’t,” Helena spat, injecting the word with enough venom to make Cupid’s blood run cold. And he didn’t even actually have blood.

“Noted. Getting back to it,” Cupid said. “I don’t know what it is or where it is, beyond that it’s somewhere here on this island.”

“Do you know how long it’s been active?”

“No way to tell,” Cupid said. “I just noticed it earlier today, but it could’ve been active much longer.”

“Okay, so we’re looking for something, we don’t know what it is, where it is, or how long it’s been around,” Cane said. “Not off to a great start.”

“Now that I’m here, it ought to be much easier,” Cupid said. “Love levels across campus seem to be pretty stable now, I’d wager there’s not many people nearby for this thing to feed on right now. What we need to do is split up in teams and scour the island. Whenever anybody gets too close to the anomaly, I’ll be able to sense the changes in your love levels.”

The gathered friends nodded along. That seemed like the most sensible solution to the nonsensical problem they were facing.

“Unless anybody has any more questions, we can get started,” Cupid said. He paused and waited for any last-minute questions, and got none. “No? I’m going to be partnering up with Vell, so if anyone comes up with anything later, just call him.”

The crowd dispersed, generally pairing off into couples or close friends, given the love-based nature of the errand. Skye made her way to Vell’s side for the same reason, though she glanced at Cupid as she did so. He acknowledged the odd look with a stiff nod.

“Cupid,” Skye said.

“You need something?”

“Just wondering a bit,” Skye said. “Why you took a particular interest in my boyfriend? I know he doesn’t question this kind of thing anymore-”

“Nope,” Vell said. It’d actually be weirder if he weren’t the focus, nowadays.

“-but I still kind of do,” Skye said. “You asked for him specifically, you’re tagging along with him, what’s your deal?”

“Oh, perfectly rational,” Cupid said. “Nothing weird, he’s just the most loving guy here. Makes him a good barometer for any love-related weirdness in the area.”

“Most loving?”

“Yeah! This dude loves everybody,” Cupid said, pointing at Vell. “You, Lee, Harley, his family, all the rest of his friends, his fellow students, fucking everybody. This guy loves people he’s barely talked to more than some people love their spouses.”

Skye crossed her arms with a satisfied sigh. That certainly did sound like Vell. On some level he cared about almost everyone he met. Vell just looked embarrassed by the notion.

“Followup question,” Skye said. “With all those people he loves...he does love me the most, right?”

“Oh, of course,” Cupid said. “You’re definitely up there, then you got Lee, Harley, Leanne, et cetera. It’s not like a big gap, definitely a close race, but you’re in the lead.”

“That’s all I needed to know,” Skye said. She turned around with her chin held high and headed for the door. “Ready when you are, lover.”

“Be just a second,” Vell said. As soon as Skye was out the door, he leaned towards cupid with a conspiratorial whisper. “Is there actually a ranking system?”

“Not really,” Cupid said. “You can love people the same amount in different ways, it gets kind of vague in the amounts of love you’re dealing with.”

“Oh. So you were just covering my ass there, then.”

“Yep.”

Vell held up his hand, and received a tiny fist bump from Cupid.

“Let’s go.”

----------------------------------------

After coordinating a wide search grid with all his friends, Vell, Cupid, and Skye headed towards their first destination: the magikinesis lab.

“So why are we starting here?”

“I just noticed there was a bit less of a tingle in the air when I was here earlier,” Vell said. “Less magic in the air. I figure maybe whatever can absorb love can also absorb magic.”

“Good theory,” Cupid said. Vell continued to lead the way.

The magic shiver in the air was still muted, though perhaps for unrelated reasons: most of the students had moved on to other classes. A few students, like Renee, were still poking at notes or experiments, but most had left, and the experiment they had been running with Alex earlier had stopped. Vell took a quick walk to the center of the lab and looked to Cupid.

“Anything?”

“Not so much as a wiggle downwards,” Cupid said. “If anything, there’s actually more love going on here.”

“I do love it when he has good theories,” Skye said. Vell tried not to blush.

“Hmm. Well, this doesn’t have to be a complete waste,” Vell said. “Hey, Renee.”

“Oh? Yes, what’s up,” Renee said. “Did Lee need something else?”

“Nah, local problem this time,” Vell said. “Your department keeps an eye on ambient magic on campus, right? Have there been any magical fluctuations, anomalies, just any general weirdness lately?”

“Not really,” Renee said. “Why do you ask? And who’s the little guy?”

“Long story, nothing you need to worry about,” Vell said. “And that’s Cupid.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Cupid said, with a tip of his wings.

“Cupid? As in the good of love?”

“Sort of. Like Vell said, long story,” Cupid said.

“We’re kind of in the middle of something, I’ll explain later,” Vell said. Secretly he hoped the time loop would spare him from any convoluted explanations. He said goodbye and moved on to the next target.

----------------------------------------

Samson tried to keep the grumbling to a minimum. Everyone else had been splitting off in groups or pairs, but since his twin brother no longer went to the same school, he no longer had his usual designated partner. That left him stuck with the only other odd one out.

“You didn’t have to pair off, you know,” Helena said. “Really, there’s no functional benefit to it.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to leave you unattended,” Samson said. It was a bald-faced lie. He’d gotten caught up in everyone else pairing off and forgotten there was no actual reason to do so.

“Why would you possibly be suspicious of me right now?”

“You exploded me,” Samson snapped.

“That was months ago,” Helena snapped right back. “And completely unrelated. I want to save Love as much as you do.”

“Yeah, I don’t buy it,” Samson said. “No matter what Cupid says, I don’t think you love anything.”

“Samson.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

Samson didn’t even blink, much to Helena’s chagrin. She stomped a crutch into the ground in frustration.

“Come on! Nothing?”

“I know a lie when I hear one, Helena,” Samson scoffed.

“Ah, that’s the thing, it’s not a lie,” Helena said. “If only by the very broad definition Cupid gave us earlier. My life would be worse without you in it.”

“Can’t say the same about you,” Samson said. He started to walk along his search path again, and Helena followed.

“And that’s why, right there,” Helena said. “Because you still react. At this point everyone else is just sighing and rolling their eyes, but you’re still there with a snarky comeback, some repartee. You’re the kind of person who makes it fun to be a bitch.”

“Glad to be of service,” Samson said.

“You need to diversify your material a bit, though,” Helena said. “I know you want to be politically correct and all, but come on, throw some darker material at me. I’m crippled, there’s a wealth of material there for you to work with, I’m okay with it.”

“Maybe you’re okay with it, but there are other people in your condition that aren’t,” Samson said. “If it was just about you, I’d call you every insult under the sun. I’m not dragging everyone else on crutches through the mud just because you’re a bitch.”

“What about my heart condition?”

“Again, lots of decent people with heart conditions,” Samson said.

“My colostomy bag?”

“A: don’t like toilet humor, B: still a sensitive medical condition,” Samson said.

“Then how about just the fact that I’m ugly?”

“You’re not ugly,” Samson said. “If not for the personality, you’d be very pretty.”

Helena wasn’t moving very fast to begin with, but she still stopped in her tracks.

“What?”

“There we go,” Samson said. “Who’s ‘reacting’ now?”

Samson spun around to enjoy his “gotcha” moment, but all he saw was Helena going red in the face.

“Uh oh. Are you having another stroke?”

“No,” Helena whimpered. “I’m about to cry, you asshole.”

“I- what?”

“Nobody’s ever called me pretty before,” Helena said. “And you just- you treat it like a joke!”

She leaned on one of her crutches and wiped some tears from her eyes.

“Uh, I, uh- fuck,” Samson stammered. “I’m sorry, that was-”

“There we go,” Helena said. She lifted her head again, and her sadistic smile returned in an instant as she mockingly imitated Samson’s voice. “Who’s ‘reacting’ now?”

“God damn it!”

Samson punched the air so hard he spun around. He’d fallen for the bait hook, line, and sinker.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Samson, I’m very good at fake crying,” Helena said. “I get called pretty all the time. Usually in a condescending way, by people just trying to make me feel better about my obviously misshapen body, but it’s been said.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Samson said. “I’m searching alone.”

He turned around and stormed off at a pace Helena could never hope to match, so she sat down and accepted his retreat as proof of victory.