Juniper sat next to Varis, watching the young man as he worked on his twenty… fourth? attempt to fix her nausea troubles. She’d stopped counting the tries a while back, though she was almost certain they’d crossed twenty at some point. Perhaps they were closer to thirty, now–one of the more recent attempts had made her terribly dizzy, and though it was wearing off, she still found it hard to keep her thoughts in order.

After having served as lab rat for hours, Juniper had no trouble understanding why Varis had trouble finding victims–no, patients–to practice his magic on. Still, she grudgingly appreciated his efforts–judging by the beads of sweat that dotted his forehead, this was just as taxing for him as it was for her. She just wished he could find the solution sooner rather than later.

The most troubling part of the afternoon, however, was coming to terms with just how wrong Juniper had been about Varis.

From a distance, he’d seemed to be precisely the kind of person she despised the most–a noble brat, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who’d been handed everything on a platter and treated all those beneath him with disdain and contempt. And, well, Juniper was half right–he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and handed everything on a platter. He’d probably been something of a brat in his youth, too. But the rest?

The whole afternoon, he’d displayed nothing but patience, concern, and a jarring amount of compassion. His techniques may have been lacking, as was expected of a student, but his bedside manner was pristine. And more than that, he seemed genuinely kind.

He’d answered any question she fielded without judgment or derision, had helped her compose herself whenever an attempt went awry, and had taken on cleaning duties when things went terribly wrong.

It was wholly incompatible with Juniper’s preconceptions, and it raised one big, glaring question:

If she’d been so wrong about this, what else was she wrong about?

Unfortunately, the question required a level of introspection Juniper wouldn’t be able to achieve for at least a few more hours. Perhaps even days, if Varis’s experiments kept going… the way they were going. So instead, as she felt Varis’s newest spell do something warm to her head, she simply resolved to keep a more open mind in the future.

A feeling of wrongness overtook her, and Juniper braced herself for the hurt. The attempt provisionally numbered as twenty-four looked like it was going to be a bad one.

***

Varis didn’t find a cure for Juniper’s motion sickness on the first day, but he was more than happy to try again another day.

“Not tomorrow, though,” he said as they walked back to the dorm. He looked slightly apologetic. “Prior commitments, you know?”

“That’s fine,” Juniper said. “I don’t have anything scheduled for the foreseeable future.” Other than practice, anyway, but she could push that around as she wanted.

“The day after, then? We can start in the morning.”

“Fine by me,” Juniper agreed. “It’ll give me a chance to recover a bit, at least.”

Varis winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Juniper shrugged. “Hey, you’re the one helping me. A bit of suffering is worth it, if you can fix me.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Varis said, gazing into the distance. “I’m starting to wonder, at least. Is it worth it, if it might get better by itself, in time?”

“You don’t know that it will,” Juniper pointed out.

“No, but it makes sense that it would,” Varis said. “Bodies adapt, eventually–especially when a lot of magic is involved.”

“Maybe. I can try to practice more tomorrow, to see if there’s a difference.”

“I don’t think that you should.”

“Didn’t you just say it might go away on its own?” Juniper asked, raising an eyebrow.

Varis grimaced. “I don’t know. It’s something of a coin toss, really. It might get better, sure, but it could also make it worse–in a way that’s even harder to fix.”

“How so?”

“Belief and association,” Varis explained. “If you’re always nauseated while you’re flying, you’ll start associating the two. So then, even if the actual, physical cause gets fixed, your mind will make up the nausea on its own, just because it expects it to be there.”

“Huh,” Juniper said. “That doesn’t sound good.” She paused for a few moments, thinking. “Could that have happened already?”

“It’s possible,” Varis admitted. “I wouldn’t call it likely, though. You haven’t been at this for very long, have you?”

“Just about a week.”

“You’re probably fine, then. Still, I’d stay away from flying until you’re cured.”

“Healer’s orders?” Juniper said, giving Varis a wry smile.

To her surprise, Varis’s cheeks reddened. “If you want to put it that way, sure.”

Frustration welled in Juniper. She’d expected difficulty in mastering her Path–she relished the challenge. She knew from the start it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. But she thought whatever challenges she had to face, she could overcome with enough willpower and dedication. Instead, her body was failing her in a way she had no control over.

It was already embarrassing, bordering on humiliating. That she couldn’t even practice, for fear of worsening things–that was just the cherry on top.

Likely sensing her inner turmoil, Varis remained mercifully quiet for the rest of the way to the dorms. After they parted, Juniper locked the door to her room and lost herself in Skystrall’s legacy.

***

On Wednesday morning, Juniper was refreshed, ready, and determined to endure another grueling session of Varis’s experiments.

She came over-prepared.

“I gave it a good think yesterday,” Varis said as soon as they were done with the pleasantries, “and I believe I’ve been going at it all wrong.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Oh?” Juniper perked up. This sounded promising.

“I thought I was clever to try and tackle the problem at the nervous system level,” Varis confessed, “but I checked some of my notes, and I think the source of the problem is the inner ear.”

“You’re the expert,” Juniper said. Anatomy was a mandatory subject, so Juniper understood the basics, but that was the extent of her knowledge.

“Well, I’m hardly an expert,” he demurred. “But yes. I think this is the right path.”

Juniper grunted, a sign which Varis had learned by now to take as a mark of assent.

Varis’s first attempt didn’t come with any immediate side effects–though the same had been true for nearly half of the previous day’s tries. Juniper gave it a few slow loops around the room–it was the second easiest maneuver, aside from flying in a straight line–before landing next to Varis.

“I think there was a difference, but it was tiny. I can’t say for certain,” Juniper confessed.

“Better or worse?”

“Better.”

“Hmm. Let me try again.”

Attempt number was much worse. The less that could be said about it, the better. Juniper keeled over as she landed.

“No?” Varis asked.

“What do you think?” Juniper spat out as she struggled to catch her breath.

“Alright. Let’s try again, I have a good feeling about this one,” Varis said as he helped Juniper to her feet.

“I hope you’re right,” she grumbled and waited for Varis to cast his spell.

“Go.”

Juniper took to the air, and her eyes went wide. She twisted, turning to face Varis. “You did it!” She turned a few times, clapping excitedly as she let the momentum carry her–

And flew straight into one of the wall-poles. “Ow,” she said as she clutched at her side. But the pain was quickly ignored as she flew from pole to pole, using them to change directions as she zipped from one to another.

Back down on the ledge, a broad smile was plastered on Varis’s face. When Juniper looked at him, he pumped his fist in the air in celebration. Juniper changed directions, flying straight at him and catching him in a bear hug.

Perhaps a tad too forcefully, judging by the way he wheezed on impact. But he was all too happy to celebrate with her.

“Thank you so much,” Juniper said. “You can’t believe how much this means to me.”

“You’re very welcome,” Varis said, his voice tinged with amusement. It was that amusement that made Juniper realize exactly who she was hugging.

She jumped back, turning on her heels halfway to the side as she looked away. She felt her cheeks heat up. Juniper had lost herself in the excitement, and forgot her arrangement with Varis was simply that. They weren’t friends. They could barely be considered acquaintances. “Sorry, I–”

Varis wore an easy smile. “It’s not a problem,” he said, laughing. “I take it your symptoms are entirely gone?”

“Yes. Completely,” Juniper confirmed, and she couldn’t help but grin. “How did you do it?”

“I’m not sure I can explain entirely,” he said, scratching absent-mindedly at his cheek. “I made some alterations to your inner ear.” He lost the smile, face turning serious. “I don’t think it’ll affect anything else, but if it does, come see me.”

“Will do. You know, if you ever need a test subject for something else, you can come to me. I owe you one.”

Varis shook his head. “You don’t owe me. I gained from this as much as you did.”

“Eh,” Juniper said noncommittally. She doubted him on that, but decided it would be unwise to call him out on it. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” he said imperiously, then puffed out a laugh. “You know, this is quite unexpected.”

Juniper raised an eyebrow. “What is?”

He scratched at his cheek again. “Well… you, kind of. You’re not at all what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” Juniper asked, tilting her head. She hadn’t thought Varis ever thought of her, let alone enough to have expectations. But then again, he had repeatedly proven to be different than she was expecting, so this was just par for the course.

He hesitated a bit, as if thinking over his words. “Well,” he began, “you’ve always seemed… distant, to me, from the very first day. Cold. Unapproachable, really.” He smiled sheepishly. “I must admit, until now, I found you rather intimidating.”

Juniper stared at him for a few long moments, then realized her jaw was hanging rather low. “Me. Intimidating?”

“Well, yes. I’ve talked to most of our classmates at least once, you know, but from you I’ve always gotten the distinct feeling that you’d bite my head off if I did.”

“I–” Juniper choked. “I thought you were snubbing me.”

Varis looked taken aback. “Really?”

“Yes!” Juniper smacked herself in the face. “I thought you were looking down on me–you and your friends, I mean. I was avoiding you, if only because I was afraid. Ah, I feel so stupid now.”

“You’re telling me?” Varis said with an awkward laugh. “Well, at least I’m not alone in making a fool of myself.”

Juniper wiped away a mirthful tear. “Indeed. So, am I no longer intimidating?”

“Hmm… maybe just a bit,” Varis said in jest. “Well, this was fun. And good practice, too.”

“I wouldn’t call it fun,” Juniper said. The first day of being a lab rat had not been pleasant.

Varis grimaced. “I’m sorry it took me that long to figure it out. If I’d gone for a simpler approach from the start, you might have suffered less.”

“It is what it is,” Juniper said with a shrug, though inwardly she agreed with him. “Thank you, again.”

“And you,” he said with a nod. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

Juniper waved him goodbye and watched as Varis left. Soon, she was alone in the gym. She looked up at the bars covering the walls and felt the smile fall off her face.

With the unpleasantness out of the way, it was time for Juniper to train. Properly.

***

By the end of the iteration, Juniper thought she had a decent grip on her flying. She wasn’t going to win any aerial acrobatics competitions–abyss, she probably wouldn’t even make it past qualifying–but she was at least confident enough that she wouldn’t accidentally kill herself if she went flying outside of the gym.

She hadn’t slacked in other departments, either. Her control over projectiles had improved, and she could now alter trajectories well enough that she could almost reliably nail a moving target, as long as it wasn’t actively trying to evade.

With a single gravitational anchor at her disposal, however, she could either fly or attack, but not both at once–though through her Path, she felt the potential for more. A second anchor wasn’t too far off, so long as she maintained her current rate of advancement.

Juniper was also about two thirds done with Skystrall’s legacy, and she was pretty sure she could finish the rest in another iteration if she focused on it entirely, or another two or three if she split her focus. The final part of the book seemed more difficult than the first, and it increased by the page.

In all, Juniper considered the iteration to be a success. It was only after the end of the world came and went again that she recognized her folly.

She’d left the campus for one of her usual runs through the wilderness when she decided to fly for part of her run. The sickness returned with a vengeance, if slightly muted compared to the beginning, as if Varis had never cured her of her problem.

Because he hadn’t. At least, not in this iteration.

It was, in hindsight, perfectly obvious. Her death at the hands of Lord Graeme hadn’t stuck, so why would any other change? As far as she could tell, the only thing that came back with her was her soul and her memories. Or perhaps just her soul–there was a heated academic debate on whether memories were stored in the soul or the brain. Juniper had never cared for the debate, though from her experiences with the loop, she was now leaning towards the soul side.

But that was a can of worms to open some other time. Right now, the problem was that physical changes were not retained between iterations.

Juniper closed her eyes, dreading the inevitable decision in front of her.

She would have to be Varis’s lab rat all over again.