That night, he had another fight, and this time, it was against three boys. There was no attempt to challenge him publicly, as his rival had done before. The fight had occurred just after dinner, and it had been as surprising as it was brief. Simon won, though he paid the price of a bloody nose. It didn’t hurt much, but the uneasy feelings it caused still made it difficult to sleep. He wasn’t safe here.

It’s a good lesson, he reminded himself as he lay in bed that night. The children were just a reminder. It was the Magi that were the real danger. He could see them in the courtyard and occasionally at the edges of the dining hall or the back of their lonely stone classroom. Simon had no idea what they saw when they looked at him, but he was sure it was more than he wanted them to.

Still, he did his best to put on a convincing act. After that, everything just sort of became the same. He started living the same day over and over again. Every morning would begin with a race and a prayer, and every evening would end with a struggle for food and dominance.

There were little moments of normalcy with some of the boys and girls his own age. There was one afternoon when a few sticks and some spare time became a pitched sword fight at the base of the pyramid on the way to dinner and another time when they tossed an under-ripe melon around like a ball during lunch until they were punished for it.

Simon didn’t even mind being forced to stand the rest of the day. It had been worth it for a moment of normalcy. Those moments of joy were rare enough that even that one element made it clear that this was the worst imaginable way to raise children.

However, they weren’t being raised to become children or even good citizens. They were being raised to become fervent cultists and mages in the service of the God-King of the Murani. That was the only reason they would spend more time on prayer and song than on anything he’d consider practical magecraft preparation.

Still, he couldn’t deny it was effective. It was almost hypnotic to be living the same day over and over again, and even if the propaganda didn’t affect Simon, he couldn’t exactly blame the other kids for falling victim to it. Some days, they had new teachers, and other days, a new kid would arrive or depart from their group. These were never pointed out by anyone; he just noticed them because, in a world of seeing the same thing over and over again, anything new stood out.

Simon was tempted to try to be friendly to them, but that would have stood out even more than the new people, and he restrained himself. The most he was willing to do was to deflect the worst of the bullying, which wasn't too hard given his growing reputation as someone who knew how to fight.

Those became the rhythm of Simon's life. He’d fight when he had to, eat when he could, but mostly, he just tried to deal with how boring it was to pretend to learn and progress from illiterate street rat to biddable mage in the making. The curriculum seemed to reset every week or ten days. They’d go through the alphabet, learning to write each letter, and then after the students had been introduced to the whole collection, they'd get to simple words. After that, just when the class was starting to make headway, they’d go back to the letters again. Though it would take a few loops to be sure, he was all but certain he'd be learning the same things over and over until he graduated in a couple of months.

The teacher would make them repeat the same few sentences, which were mostly just praises and oaths of obedience to the God-King, at these points. They were so repetitive, though, that even as she pointed to the words, he was pretty sure that most of the kids were memorizing rather than reading or understanding them.

It wasn’t how Simon would have taught the class, but then, he was pretty sure that was on purpose. They weren’t trying to create a thinking, literate group of people here. They wanted people who were just literate enough to read the words of power and string them together in appropriate ways.

Suddenly, things about the way they’d fought him in past lives made a lot more sense to Simon. He'd always thought that they’d had a certain arrogance and a lack of creativity in their tactics, and this was the reason. They were learning obedience first, arrogance second, and everything else after that.

Is that the reason their generals were more creative? He wondered. Were they taken from the tribes outside the city or the nobles who had a more well-rounded education?

He wasn’t sure, but all of this became easier for him to bear once he started to grasp what and why. Boredom was insufferable, but resisting sinister programming at least gave his mind something to struggle against.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

In the meantime, he had Ajeem and a few other acquaintances. They weren’t quite friends. Simon wasn’t sure anyone had friends here. They were just the people that he didn’t expect to attack him over an extra serving of jam or the last skewer of roasted chicken.

"What does it matter if we go hungry or are beaten!” the boy proclaimed on more than one occasion when someone would whine. “We are to become Magi! Such a thing is worth any suffering!”

Simon had to agree, and truthfully, he could only admire the kid's optimism. He tried to act the same way, but in Simon's case, it was entirely fake. He hadn’t experienced a real thrill in this life since…

Well, since I made a tree that grew a fruit which transformed me into a child,

he realized. That had been months ago, though. By now, winter was almost over, and the chill in the air could only be felt at the windy heights of the pyramid.

Simon was saddened by the fact that he hadn’t really experienced wonder in this life since he’d become a child. That was the whole point of being a child, wasn’t it? He’d had fun playing with other children in the streets, and he’d enjoyed pulling the wool over the eyes of the Magi and figuring out their tests, but wonder? That would probably have to wait until he’d penetrated deeper into the organization.

Toward the end of his second week as a brown-robed initiate, he saw his first dead acolyte. They went down the pyramid the same as always, but halfway down, all of the muted joy and boisterous he’d grown used to was drained from the group as they noticed the body laid out on a stone plinth near the foot of the pyramid.

The black-robed child turned out to be a short-haired girl, not a boy as he’d thought from high above. She was laid out with her dark robes on two layers of wood, but no one seemed in any hurry to burn her. Not one of the gray-robbed Minders who stood there watching as the children regarded the corpse said anything, which was practically inviting superstitious rumors.

Simon looked around surreptitiously and wondered how many of these kids were going to have nightmares tonight. He’d seen hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of dead over his many lives. This one only stung because she was so young, but the only burden that would be on his heart about it would be the fact that he would never know how she’d died.

The girl was no more than fourteen or fifteen, and she was both pale and unmarked. If she’d had a bite on her throat, he would have said a vampire had done this, but as it was, his gut said that some magical mishap had drained her life force.

No one spoke about it at the time; they just observed the body for a moment of respectful silence before continuing on their way. In the dining hall, there was less pushing and shoving for food than normal, but that was the only thing that showed that anyone had been affected. No one talked about it, at least directly, and Simon made no effort to force the issue.

He hadn't planned to bring it up at all until he saw the girl's funeral pyre burning as they walked out into the night. That was both eye-catching and traumatizing, and he could see that the sight stopped a number of his fellow students in their tracks. Still, he respected that grim silence and didn't attempt to break it, even with Ajeem, until they'd reached their drafty dormitory.

“Does it scare you that you might die, I mean?” Simon asked the boy he almost thought of as a friend.

“If there was no risk of death, then how would we even know it was worth doing?” Ajeem asked, trying and failing to cover up his dark thoughts with a smile. “This is magic we’re talking about!”

“It is,” Simon agreed. He, more than anyone, knew how valuable magical knowledge was and how much he’d risk for more of it. He was currently infiltrating people who might do terrible things to his soul if they caught him, just for a few more words of power. “But… nothing seemed wrong with her. What if it’s just random?”

“I’m too strong and fast for such a fate,” the boy boasted, “and you are too. We have nothing to worry about!” Simon thought about that a lot, especially after he heard someone crying themselves to sleep later that night. He didn’t know who it was exactly, but it didn’t matter. They were being trained to be little monsters, but they were still just kids for now, and what they needed was an adult to tell them everything was going to be okay.

In the days that followed, he didn’t have any more heart-to-hearts with Ajeem or anyone else. That was more because of his growing bitterness, though, than because of anyone else.

The idea that the very heights of friendship in this place could be measured by who wasn’t liable to attack you over food was depressing, but not as depressing as when Ajeem was taken from the class in their third week. Until that moment, he didn’t realize he’d miss the boy; He’d provided moments of normalcy if nothing else, and in small ways, he’d made this whole charade more bearable.

When Simon saw the minder stop Ajeem partway up the pyramid one overcast morning and take him off to the entrance that had been reserved for those wearing black, he was surprised to find that he did. Simon kept running, but the boy looked back long enough to flash him a smile. Then he was gone.

“I guess I’ll never beat him to the top now,” Simon thought with some regret. He tried to tell himself that it was a stupid thing to feel bad about and that he’d see the other boy again in a couple of months, but even after he finished his breakfast and started practicing his first letter of the day, that feeling of disappointment lingered.