Marcus blinked, finding himself at the entrance to a small mountain town. He started running the moment he did, but for the fourth time in a row, so did the shapeshifter. "Can you fucking stop!"
The shapeshifter, naturally, didn't stop, her look growing increasingly venomous as the loops progressed. It continued to adapt, Marcus knew, likely remembering more and more from previous loops as this went on.
Considering it was well over half a millennium old, he did not want to fight it at full power. At least Balthazar had implemented limitations for summoned creatures, not that those seemed to be doing their job properly.
"He's trying to kill me!" The woman shrieked, her face drawn into a mask of terror. The pair of guards shifted, moving to intercept him without question. "Please, please stop him!"
Marcus put his hand under his shirt, pulling out an illusory badge marking him as one of the governor's officers. Finding a fitting picture of that had been a pain, let alone tweaking the shape until the guards recognized it on sight.
Last time around the guards had hesitated, stopping until he was past. This time they actually turned on the woman, though Marcus wasn't sure why. The scenario hadn't changed, though maybe it was the way he was scowling at her.
The badge did mark him as a ranking officer in the governor's personal guard. It wasn't a rank he recognized, either, but at this point he didn't really care. The woman continued running, abandoning her attempt to turn the town against him.
Its current 'host' was known locally, yes, but not that well. A relative newcomer who hadn't fully integrated into the town. Thankfully it couldn't change shape until it consumed someone else. Marcus wasn't actually sure if that was a limitation of the scenario or their species.
Unfortunately, the shapeshifter could run a lot faster than he could. She disappeared again, Marcus cursing and slowing to a stop near the bewildered guards. "You two, rouse the rest of your unit. Door by door, room by room, I don't care. She is a fugitive by order of governor Andate. Find her."
They snapped to attention, warning people to stay inside as they ran. An off-duty guard almost stumbled out of his house, wielding a weapon but missing half his armor, and more still filed out of the tavern. Good enough.
As an officer in the governor's employ he outranked basically everyone in the village, though popular opinion could still turn them against him. It had done so the last time around. Now, though, they would be too busy hunting her.
Everyone would be on high-alert, more so than usual, which would make finding isolated prey harder. Risking two victims, or even more, wasn't really a risk at all, of course, but it did increase the carnage.
Carnage that Marcus' spell could find much more easily than a more discrete, silent kill.
Unfortunately, it knew that. Started dragging its victims underground and into cellars, which shrunk the range he could detect it to about a street. And after it had a new face, the dance started once again.
The fifth time around, it happened. At the start, just after the woman had run out of the house in the beginning, things had played out much the same. Marcus had tried to find the woman, though he got unlucky with a randomized patrol, then reset as the guards witnessed him perform magic.
It was only on the next reset, that he found out its plan. Which might have been the plan from the start, though Marcus couldn't be sure. Either way, it was trying to consume the town. Kill everyone inside and use the influx of biomass to replicate the houses, though there wasn't actually enough flesh for that.
Maybe it diluted flesh with wood? Wood was organic, though if it could use wood alone Marcus saw no reason for it to kill. Not with him around to stalk it and banish it back to the Hells.
The search began anew, just as it had last time, and half the town volunteered to help. Pickaxes were a common weapon, which was unsurprising given that it was a mining town, but pitchforks and clubs were used, too. It was almost disturbing how quickly the locals turned on the 'newcomer.'
Which the woman, who Marcus realised he'd never even learned the name of, wasn't. Not after a year of living here. The people seemed to care little. She was the newcomer, and now they had reason enough to hunt her down. Government permission, even.
It worked to his advantage here, but Marcus still promised himself to raise the educational levels in his own kingdom. The uneducated masses were far too easy to rile up.
Huh. Marcus slowed, absently watching a squad of six guards banging on doors one street over. He was staying, wasn't he? After he'd gotten out of the cube, anyway. Whenever that would be. But he wasn't planning to run away anymore, and this was the first time he'd acknowledged that fact.
His dream of running away to the Empire and studying magic there was childish. Irresponsible. Worse yet, it was stupid. How long would it really take his father to track him down? Before someone recognized his face, no matter how relatively small his kingdom was.
It only took one student with a fascination of royalty to recognize him. To compare his face with that of the, admittedly rare, portraits. And even if not, how was he supposed to enroll in the first place? The academy would undoubtedly ask questions like 'who are you?' and 'Do you have identification and an explanation as to where you found all the artefacts you plan to pay your tuition with?'.
Running away was a childish dream, though his love for magic was not. That didn't mean he had to abandon his duty, though. Hells, being King might even aid in his quest for knowledge. Absolute power and large amounts of wealth would be rather advantageous for any tomes, reagents and expertise he wished to acquire.
Marcus shook his head, focusing. Shapeshifter first, abusing Royal Authority for magical gain later.
Which actually posed something of a problem. Without access to the more obvious branches of magic, and without setting the entire town on fire, the shapeshifter had a massive advantage. It could hide and pick targets as Marcus had to carefully balance alerting the citizens without turning them against himself.
Something they did with little hesitation and great vigor, Marcus knew, if he gave them the slightest reason to.
He had a plan, of course. A horrible, stupid plan that he felt would work without any real evidence to support that notion. A plan that, had this been the real world, he would already have enacted.
The shapeshifter was going to take over the town. The shapeshifter, to do that, needed more biomass than it currently had. Which meant it likely had access to the Hells. And if the shapeshifter had access to the Hells, even if it was limited, that meant Marcus had access to the Hells as well.
Access that might mean escape. Escape from the artifact would be nice, if unlikely, but more realistically? Well, the shapeshifter would be significantly less mobile with another one of its kind around to distract it. One that answered to no one but Marcus himself.
It was the backup plan, because until most of the town was dead he didn't feel right about setting another monster on these people, but in reality it was the only plan he had any confidence in.
The first not-plan was to try and convince the illiterate, suspicious villagers to defend themselves against a centuries old devil and do so successfully. He wasn't going to hold out much hope.
Marcus slowed as he came to the tavern, stepping inside after his detection matrix told him it wasn't alive. One of the guards was inside, speaking in clipped tones to some of the people there, and saluted as Marcus looked at him.
It really was fascinating what a confident lie and some simple illusions could get you.
Jenny, unlike pretty much all other times he'd met her, didn't demand proof of money before offering him a drink. A drink that smelled positively fruity, Marcus taking a sip to find its flavor as improved as the smell.
"You must be the governor's man." Jenny said, leaning on the bar. She smiled openly, wistfully, and Marcus almost preferred the shapeshifter over the look she was giving him. "Hunting a fugitive, I hear? You sure have the guards all running around in a hurry."
"They seemed prepared enough. Perhaps not quite up to the standard of the army, but I'd imagine their budget is much more limited. It's impressive what they've managed to do with it."
Jenny straightened her shoulders, a flicker of pride passing over her face. "The boys train hard. There's not much day to day crime here, and some say two dozen guards is too many, but we have our own issues. Bandits thinking we have gold, outlaws much like yours trying to hide away, the occasional monster ranging here from the dungeon. The guards take care of us, we take care of them."
Well, the hostile looks and surprisingly vigilant guards made more sense with that in mind. A close-knit community where their job was respected and their friends' lives were on the line? No wonder they were enthusiastic.
Marcus took another sip, relaxing. He'd tried hunting the thing before, after all. To keep up the pressure and give it no second of respite. Now the guards did it for him, which allowed Marcus to think. To plan instead of react. And aside from that, he needed to tune his spell detection matrix to detect real wood again.
The shapeshifter kept altering its composition after its failed ambush in the very tavern he now sat in, which threw off the spell. Fortunately, the wood it used was mimicked via latent shapeshifting and not absorbed through a host.
There were mistakes, from slightly abnormal heat levels to twitching wood grains, and tuning his spell to it was how he avoided being ambushed again.
So Marcus drank, worked on his spell while pretending to study a journal, then had a nice meal. After that was a glass of wine almost worthy of nobility, in real glass no less, and Jenny waved away any notion of payment.
Apparently they subtracted that from their taxes. Good to know.
Life was good for a whole three hours. Three entire hours of pleasant silence, magical matrix crafting and good food. Then his other spell, which he fired off intermittently whenever he could spare the concentration, returned a positive.
The shapeshifter was beginning to take over the tavern. It was moving faster than before, too, though that was assuming it nested where it had last time. Which it probably hadn't. Marcus grunted, standing and moving towards the door.
"I'll keep a bed ready for you." Jenny called, taking his empty glass away. "I'll even stoke a fire and have it nice and warm by evening."
Marcus refused to look any deeper into that statement, opening the door after giving her a nod. The light was dimming when he fully stepped outside, and the street was deserted but for a lone guard running towards the distant sound of battle.
Right then. The townspeople were inside or distracted, the shapeshifter was busy with the guards and the lone curious soul peeking outside would have to be risked. Marcus entered the alley next to the tavern, pulling a piece of chalk out his pocket.
Jenny hadn't even blinked when he'd asked for it, either. Such a different treatment when he was thought to be an officer in the governor's employ. There was probably a lesson about social status in there somewhere, but Marcus had a devil to summon.
He drew the diagram on a house two streets down from the tavern, making sure it wasn't infested by a shapeshifter yet. The memory of it came easy, as anything related to magic always did, and even though his study of demonology was incomplete and his skills were rusty, he wasn't running rings around his father's mages for nothing.
Magic was in his blood.
"So, uuhm." Marcus turned, his concentration nearly broken as the voice interrupted his thoughts. "Not that I wish to question the governor's representative, but why are you drawing that on the wall?"
Brian. Of course it was Brian. Marcus grunted, turning back to his summoning seal and fixing one of the lines after making sure the man was human. "There's a shapeshifter in town. I'm summoning and binding a second one to keep the first busy."
There was a long moment of silence at that, Marcus using it to double check his obedience clause. Without it the devil was free to do as it pleased, which usually ended in the summoner's death and a free demonic entity roaming around.
Or so the book said. None of Marcus' seals had ever failed, though he would admit this was the first time he'd summoned one outside a carefully controlled ritual chamber.
"I see." Brian said finally. "I didn't know the governor had any mages capable of that, let alone one that also served as a soldier."
"You are intimately familiar with the governor's retainers, are you?"
"Well, no." Brian admitted lazily. One hand moved behind his back, Marcus ignoring the gesture. Brian wouldn't stab him. "But I am intimately familiar with people pretending to be someone they are not. And an officer would have brought his own soldiers."
They probably would have, yes. Marcus didn't answer, putting the final touches on the seal and activating it. He withheld a shudder as magic travelled from his chest and up through his arm—the one touching the seal—and endured the familiar sensation.
Feeling his magic get sucked down into the Hells wasn't particularly pleasant.
Brian took a step back, clearly surprised and drawing his knife, and Marcus frowned. The seal was glowing red, brightly so, and with far more intensity than usual. He followed the path his magic travelled, willpower straining as he went deeper, and finally encountered a barrier.
The Hells were locked away. Or, more accurately, he was locked away from the Hells, though either meant practically the same thing. No summoning. No escaping through a different plane of reality. Yet the shapeshifter had admitted to being able to pull biomass from there, even if there had apparently been restrictions.
Marcus pushed deeper still, feeling a headache bloom as he did. A bad one, though pain in the pursuit of magic had always been an easy sacrifice for him. And then, as his magic tried to push past the barrier and complete the seal, he found a crack.
And another. Then ten more, though none particularly wide. But the fact that there were any at all was worrying, and likely explained why the shapeshifter was remembering past loops. The School of Life was degrading. That and its inherent ability to adapt was letting it recall much more of its memory than the scenario should allow.
"That's rather worrying." Marcus mumbled, pulling back. Guiding the magic through the cracks wasn't too hard, though it slowed him down quite a bit, and he half turned to Brian as he worked. "The world is ending. Don't worry about it."
Brian was still gripping his knife, eyes flickering at the slowly widening portal. Marcus shrugged. It really wasn't that hard to funnel the magic through once he understood the problem. Acquiring that understanding admittedly gave him a headache, but magic often required dedication.
"I see." Brian replied, clearly not seeing. "And how, exactly, will that help you catch the shapeshifter?"
Marcus hummed, focusing briefly to push the portal wider. A figure stepped out, looking around with a somewhat bewildered expression. "Well, this one here is going to contest each and every expansion the first one makes. If it can't take control of the town, the first one I mean, then it can't overwhelm me. If it can't overwhelm me, I can hunt it down at my leisure."
The newly summoned shapeshifter sniffed, charcoal grey skin stretching as it grimaced. Marcus didn't mind. Shapeshifters looked much like genderless, featureless golems in their natural state, and he wasn't going to judge them for it.
"I will die." It rasped, a forked tongue visible behind its teeth. Marcus tilted his head, pretty sure that shouldn't be part of their natural state. "The one you wish for me to hunt is four times my age."
"Well, that's true if I require you to fight it directly. You don't. Try to kill it given the chance, of course, but it's not a requirement. No. I want you to distract it. Harass, occupy, delay. That's the goal. You'll die eventually, of course you will, but it'll be good experience for later on in life."
It didn't seem overly happy about it but nodded all the same. Pressed itself against the wood, slowly melting away as it took over the material. Marcus watched, seeing Brian watch the exchange with a conflicted expression on his face.
Once the shapeshifter had vanished, and round one of his plans complete, Marcus turned. Used his freed up concentration to check for the shapeshifter, a quick alteration to the spell filtering out his own summon.
Easy enough to do considering it was bound by his own magic.
Brian lunged, the attack abrupt, and shifted as Marcus flinched aside. The knife entered his shoulder, instinct kicking in as Marcus went for his own weapon. Unlike Brian's attack, Marcus went for the throat. Sliced it open and pushed away, pressing a hand to his own bleeding wound.
The shapeshifter grunted, folding away the injury as Brian straightened. "You're a hardened one, aren't you? Most mages I meet rarely leave their libraries, let alone possess the instinct to go for the kill."
"Why let me summon something just to ambush me after?" Marcus asked instead of answering. He didn't like what the answer implied, for one, and was genuinely curious besides. "You're quite inconsistent, in fact. Running away like a coward, expert mimicry that fools my spells then watching as I arrange for back up."
The shapeshifter shuddered, glancing at the wooden wall next to him. Marcus burned his shoulder wound shut as it did, acting before he could hesitate. The pain nearly brought him to his knees, though he somehow managed to keep quiet.
That was shock more than a particularly high pain tolerance, he suspected. The shapeshifter tilted its head. "Pardon?"
"In fact." Marcus continued, biting past the pain. "This whole thing has been inconsistent. Brian, or anyone for that matter, knowing there was even a shapeshifter in town. Your own ability to adapt, switching from centuries old devil stalking its prey to bumbling beginner. None of it makes sense."
It shook its head, pushing a hand through the wall. Marcus' pet shapeshifter was pulled out, gasping as it struggled to break the elders grasp. Then it died, literally absorbed into the first before Marcus could do more than blink in curiosity.
"Mages." It mocked, growing taller. Taller and stronger, though not so big its movement would be impeded. Big arms, thick legs, a fat covered torso and basically no neck. A highly optimized form for combat, if ugly. "Always needing to know why. You learn quickly that there is no reason in the Hells, not truly. Things just are, and everyone does their best to survive. The mortal plane isn't so different in that regard."
Marcus snapped his fingers, things finally coming together. "Oh. You've already killed everyone, haven't you? While I was busy eating and drinking you took the town. Stupid to assume you simply came for the tavern early. Is there anyone left at all?"
"No." It chuckled. "Just you and me now, mage. You and me and this whole town of biomass I control. It is so rare that I truly get to play like this, in truth, let alone in a realm without consequence. I'll have fun breaking you, Marcus."
Sighing, and taking a light step back, Marcus glanced around. "You've killed the town, yet we're still here. That tells me it isn't the people that I have to save. No. It's you, isn't it? It's always been you. I'll continue, or gods be good leave, when you die."
"Die?" It repeated, curious and exuberant. "I can't die, little mage. Even if by some divine miracle you kill me, I shall simply return to the Hells. Not all of me, but enough that my real self will know you. Know your name. Perhaps I'll find a way back to the mortal plane. Visit your hometown. Your loved ones. I can be better for them than you ever were, did you know? I've done that before. Until I grew bored, that is."
It really had no idea who he was, did it?
"My name is Marcus Sepsimus Lannoy." He said, reaching for that well of power in his chest. The power he could not truly use for fear of the villagers spotting him. But there were no more villagers, were there? "I am the Crown Prince of the Mirranian Kingdom, son of King Edward Solomis Lannoy. I have breathed magic from the moment of my birth, disregarding friends, family and duty in the pursuit of its glory."
Power flooded his frame, the almost electric feeling nearly uncomfortable in its intensity. Marcus washed arcane fire over the street as it lunged, two dozen telekinetic hands pulling him back and away.
"If you come to Redwater four thousand city guards will uproot the entire city to find you." Marcus continued, slashing his hand forward. The wind tore and ripped at the shapeshifter, its shape shifting to better withstand the gale. "Four dozen Court Mages, little though I think of the title, will join four hundred Royal Guards to banish you back to a Hell so deep a thousand years wouldn't be enough to crawl your way back to our plane."
Arcane flame turned the gale from wind to a firestorm, Marcus splitting off a thread of concentration. It was used to carve a rune of containment on the ground, Marcus letting the fire gutter out to infuse it with power.
The shapeshifter stumbled into it as Marcus pulled at the thing with telekinesis, its form badly burned but already 'healing'. It jerked forward, impacting a translucent dome of power and falling back.
"I am a middling soldier." Marcus said, looking down at it as the town burned around them. Arcane fire continued to spread, continued to grow, and what biomass the thing was trying to gather went up in flames before it could reach him. Arcane fire, even when it left his range of control, burned hot. "I'm a sad excuse for a prince, an average scholar and I despise the social functions necessary for my kingdom to prosper. For the nobles to feel appeased and the people to see us as larger than life."
The dome shrunk, more biomass flowing Marcus' way from the surrounding buildings, and it tried to tear him limb from limb as it did. But infected wood couldn't shift as quickly as its main body could, and arcane fire continued to spread even as it left his control. It would cool sooner rather than later, but for now? For now it gleefully burned shapeshifter and houses alike.
Marcus moved closer, supremely confident in his runic work as the thing continued to thrash.
"You're not the only one limited by the School of Life." Marcus said, putting his hand on the outside of the prison. The shapeshifter tore up the rune, of course it did, but it was already in effect. Keeping runic frameworks active after their destruction was something he'd mastered at age eight. "I would have liked to save the people, I really would have, but I don't care so much as to risk facing you again. Not after you've had time to plan and scheme and adapt."
A small square of the shield vanished, his mind straining to influence only a small part of the working, and more arcane fire washed inside. Then more, and more, until the heat rose so high he was forced to retract his hand.
Several thousand degrees, at the least. The shapeshifter burned, Marcus feeling its presence slip down and away. With the right preparation he could have stopped it from returning to the Hells at all, but he had neither the time nor resources for it.
The town continued to burn around them, shapeshifted wood sagging and breaking even before the flames reached it. Marcus turned his focus on that, reconnecting to the blaze and growing it until the entire town was engulfed.
Magical exhaustion hit him like a brick, the lack of oxygen would become a problem very soon and he was not immune to fire. Yet he could feel the change coming, briefly contemplating resisting it before letting go.
"Quills down. I will be collecting your exams in a moment, and until I am finished you are all are to remain seated."
Marcus blinked, finding himself seated in a classroom the likes of which he'd only seen in paintings. Nausea surged as his stomach rebelled. He looked down, finding a paper filled with questions about enchanting of all things, and found almost a quarter of them unanswered.
When the professor, and that could only be a professor, reached him the man shook his head with a disappointed sigh. "Such great talent, yet so poorly applied. Stay after class, mister Lannoy."
Marcus opened his mouth, found the entire class looking at him as whispers rose up in the background, and closed it again.
He'd been cursing far too much since entering the School of Life, but he hadn't expected to go to an actual school.
What the fuck?
Afterword
Discord [Check author profile or pinned comment on the chapter.] (two chapters ahead)