We started the year in a day as prescribed, my pet lich, since her body is a reanimated corpse, strength training was meaningless to her but as we were learning technique today, she stayed to observe. We had decided in advance to split the year so every other month we'd rest, and we'd train the rest of the year. This is mostly to try and lessen the pain caused by the aftermath of the spell once all the pain sets in.
The first month was spent with my parents teaching us how to recover quickly from being knocked down though I think the training might be a little inefficient as we're not learning how to overcome the shock of hitting the ground and springing back up, we're just jumping right back up after being knocked down because pain is nullified until the day is over.
Once we had the muscle memory built up and we were on our feet within moments of being knocked down we did a few practice matches where we tried knocking each other over and trying to maintain an advantageous position over the other but we mostly ended up on all fours in a dance of trying to sweep the other off their feet constantly.
After the first month ended, I sat and began lecturing the four on the magic I had written down and how the spells could or should be cast as well as interesting similarities and differences in different spell theories and cyphers and how they relate to one another. I spent the entire second month talking.
In the third month, we learned how to deflect attacks with as little effort as possible. The sparring match after that was more a circular dance where we kept trying to diffuse the other's attack while the other tried to manoeuvre around the defences and we essentially learned one new technique or fighting style and how to combat it every other month.
The next month my pet began lecturing us about what she knew so far about spell discovery and creation. How the cyphers and theories are correlated in the unique domains of magic and how if you can find the core of the cyphers and decipher them down to the basest most common parts you can learn to manipulate a spell's theory into changing certain aspects of the spell you got the theory from and subsequently change the chant and even until changing the outcome until you have a new spell in the same domain.
How all self-defence magic is based on other domains trying to steal from the radiant domain and how the anti-magic domain is the purest form of magic because it nullifies all others. It takes a particularly strong mage to be able to cast a spell powerful enough to overcome even the simplest of anti-magic spells. That is though if the anti-magic spell is what they are aiming for.
In inexperienced anti-magic spell users, their barriers are small and easy to miss unless explicitly targeted most put-up barriers around their hearts and heads but that holds no meaning if you're bleeding out.
She stared at me as though she were talking directly to me, I think she protected her heart. The fifth month we were just fighting my parents and my pet left to peruse her studies. We were asked to try and beat them with what we know already and though we lost several times they told us at the end of this month what they wanted to teach us was teamwork and they wanted us to learn by example.
The sixth month we spent in our respective soundproof rooms. I didn't feel up to doing anything too inappropriate for a training retreat nor did I feel like exerting myself much during a time I know that pain will be multiplied the next day. She felt the same.
We spent our time relaxing mostly. I slept on her chest for a few days at a time. We spent a good deal of time reading and eating. We'd be expending a great deal of energy by the day's end, so it'd be best to make sure we don't die of malnutrition. Though it would probably take the food a month or two to fully regenerate we had a lot made by the dungeon courtesy of me so it should do to fuel us while we're here.
During our seventh month, we learned how to deal with a group on our own by which I mean the two of us took turns standing in the middle of the other three and getting bombarded by attacks on all sides. By the end of the month, we could at least dodge most attacks from all angles.
We weren't so skilled yet that we could fight back but dodging to a more advantageous position is fine for now. I contemplated several times changing the material the floor was made out of to candy so it wouldn't taste so bad every time I had my face slammed into the floor. But then it would probably shatter from us walking the speed we're going now.
We never got faster while learning how to fight but we did get smarter with how to use our current speed to outmanoeuvre with as little movement as possible as we weren't going to get faster until the year was over and that wasn't for another few months.
The eighth month I spent flirting with my girlfriend we basically asked all our questions we could possibly want to know about the other in the first year we spent in a day and so now we were just reminding each other of all the things we adore about each other and just generally showing our love for each other.
I wanted for us to draw each other this leisure month but she said it would be too much exertion and also didn't want to model for me, thinking I'd draw her doing something weird like wearing a wedding dress and walking down the aisle or something.
No, wait that's how she wanted to draw me. Anyway, the ninth month we spent sparing with each other. My parents were sparing amongst themselves, so this was more of a test to see which of us was the better fighter. I lost a few bouts near the beginning but as I'm a quick study I soon learned her patterns and movements and began to steal some wins.
Towards the end of the month, we were pretty evenly matched, neither giving an inch to the other. We had perfectly learned each other's strategies and were inventing new ones to try and get an edge over the other. I once used one of her moves much to her surprise and won because she was expecting me to think of something original.
She was mad I stole the final win before our next month of rest began but I promised her a rematch in real-time once we got out of this paradoxical paradise of painlessness that's followed by a seemingly unending pain that makes the paradise not even worth it. Much to my surprise, my pet returned to me with a completed mind magic grimoire by the tenth month.
That month I spent studying mind magic, I even learned and tried to cast the mind magic version of the self-defence spell. When I did the spell did cast but I noticed something I should have noticed the first year. There's a half a millisecond lag between casting a spell and the spell's activation and with time slowed down the spell doesn't actually activate for days.
I received my mind magic marks by the end of this rest month, but we only have one month of exercise left before our final rest month and our freedom from this glass cage we trapped ourselves in that will soon shatter on top of us and run us through with a pain we don't want to experience again but are going to have to since entering this time-warping spell isn't exactly a thing we can undo. It's an active spell.
For our final month of physical exercise before we have to lock ourselves in our beds and await a screaming agony to which no accurate comparison can be thought of at the moment. My parents decided to tell us for a final exam we will stand back-to-back and protect each other while they attack us from either side.
It was a bit rough at first, I got knocked on the head from behind a couple of times I kept wanting to dodge but as she couldn't see the attack coming that would mean leaving her wide open. Eventually, we managed to nonverbally communicate when we were going to dodge or from where behind us an attack was coming, and we had to learn fairly quickly.
Even though we couldn't feel the pain we could feel the impacts and knew we'd be feeling it in less than two months if we didn't figure a way to minimize the damage. Eventually, we were able to dodge their every attack from all angles while maintaining our focus entirely on what's in front of us as well as the subtle cues from behind. By the end of it the very last day we even managed to fight back some and push our aggressors back a few steps.
The next rest month was spent in absolute terror, we spent the first few weeks drinking with my pet hoping that by the time the alcohol catches up the pain will be dulled even by just that small margin. The latter half of the month was spent in bed just awaiting the agony.
I'd say the waiting was worse than the actual pain. The fear of knowing any second now a pain you never wanted to return to would be brought back down upon your head at an intensity you didn't know would be better or worse considering physical damage might have been dealt this time and we wouldn't even know it until it came.
We could have several bones broken in multiple places and not even know. The absolute fear of the grim truth to come kept us awake constantly tormented us and had us wishing begging for the pain to just start so it would be over with that much more quickly.
But it didn't answer our pleas, once the stress of the waiting had finally caught up and we drifted into an uneasy sleep crying softly into each other's arms only when we were in the comfort and safety in the void of a dreamless sleep did the pain come rearing its ugly head to give us the rudest of rude awakenings.
The labyrinth resounded with the sounds of four ear-piercing shrieks reverberating past the soundproof walls and forcing their will to shake the foundations of the very dimension on which this labyrinth sat.
The pain this time was definitely worse. The pain in the muscles wasn't as bad considering we spent more time resting than exercising but the added pain of bruises, fractures, bones disintegrating and resetting themselves in the time it took, skin breaking open and healing itself shut again. That was so much worse.
Eyes blackening popping and regenerating endlessly in an instant and continuing on for hours. Not to mention the necrotic flames burning us for attacking each other, the radiant spell fought valiantly to keep us alive as we were all set ablaze in flames that were assaulting us all while trying to heal us all, it was constant unending pain from which there was no escape.
My pet was sitting in a chair beside my bed with a tub of peanuts on her lap and a glass of wine in her hand. If my ears weren't bleeding and constantly regenerating from the ear-popping screams, we were emitting I'd probably be hearing her stifled laughter at our misery. Having the extra insult to injury in my brief moments of conscious self-awareness between bouts of pain, blocking out all other thoughts.
If she wasn't taking after me, I'd have every reason to be upset with her, but even I never took pleasure in someone suffering as I am suffering… not yet anyway. I could feel my mind begin to slip and amid the screaming, I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it and though it hurt me to my very core I could not help the laugh that rivalled the screaming that escaped my lunged and filled the dungeon.
That haggard, pained, loud, laughter. The thought that I could lock someone else in a spell, like this, and leave them to suffer. The thought that I could impose this on an enemy. In as much pain as I was in, in as much suffering as those around me were in, I could not help but laugh, at my own suffering, at the pain I could cause those that wronged me, and at anyone who dared cross me once, I learn to trap people in a timeless prison. Once I ran out of breath from laughter I passed out and the pain began to change from that constant pain of the stream of damage we were taking to the constant soreness that comes with overexertion.
The pain you feel when you so much as think of moving. I passed out and the last thing I saw was a look of fear on my pet's face. Did I perhaps show a degree of insanity even I myself wasn't aware of? These thoughts flickered through my mind as everything faded to black…