The natural occurrence of soulspells within creatures of sufficient magical substance is the single largest resource for obtaining new magic. Yet attempts to control or force that power inevitably fail or backfire. As though souls themselves revolt at being treated as mere resources.


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    Sekir rolled his shoulders and checked over his arms and legs. Everything seemed in the right places, though the amount of jumping around he''d been doing meant his manabody was perpetually out of sync with his lifebody.


    He groaned as he stood, joints protesting at their sudden use after weeks of inaction, and spent some time stretching before he crossed to the wardrobe.


    Time to put on a show.


    He walked through the city, collecting the instruments for his introductory ceremony. Solaria was a time to celebrate the past and plan the future, often with ritual or traditions symbolic of one''s desires for the coming year.


    He made it a point to cause a minor scene at each store he stopped, spilling his coins or falling against a giggling shop girl. Nothing noteworthy enough to be discussed, but enough that his face would stick in their minds that tiny bit extra he needed.


    Today was a performance, everything about it planned to the minute. Welburne would appreciate the artistry when he came looking afterward, but too late to do anything about it.


    Sekir walked openly, his soulspell perpetually active as he glanced through those around him by simple habit.


    What he didn''t expect was for a woman in the plaza to suddenly stagger and grab him with a gasp. Emotions flicked across her face, but mostly it was a resigned this again feeling, a flash of irritation at herself for forgetting. Curious, Sekir searched deeper.


    "You alright?"


    She looked up at his words, then seemed to notice him for the first time. "Oh, apologies. I''ve been..." irritation, resentment, bitterness, "having clumsy episodes lately."


    "I''m something of a healer, if you need assistance..."


    "Nothing you can do would help." She rubbed a hand against her forehead. "It''s that accursed Phoenix Healer. He offered me a special test, and ever since then I have these... hallucinations." Shame, concern that she''d be dismissed, called crazy. Again.


    Sekir glanced at the sun, mentally recalculating the timeline for today. If he went for a slightly less dramatic opening move, he could still fit everything in even with a few hours'' delay. "I think I might be able to counteract his power, actually. Tell me more."


    <hr>


    With only a few days left before Solaria, Raina and Lilin wanted to go shopping in the city. Ryenzo’s mountain may have a lot of space and high security, but for food and other necessities they’d need to look elsewhere. Also, preparing for the holiday required several items Lilin didn’t possess. The kind of Solaria celebrated among the nobility didn’t much resemble the quiet gatherings back in Marisbog.


    Jair darkflamed them over, but elected to stay behind. Though he was rapidly recovering proper control of his body, he’d been making a few minute adjustments that would require longer to adapt to. If his theory was right, this would drastically speed up his adaptation to changes in environment when reverting, but at the moment it was unstable and incredibly distracting to maintain.


    He offered to come bring them back when they were done, but Raina said she’d hire a sandskimmer for their return. Given how many trips the king and Larenok had been sponsoring back and forth lately, it wouldn’t even be hard.


    Jair warned them to look out for sandsharks, Lilin looked at him like he was an idiot, and Raina thanked him. Jair grinned, the girls grabbed Maelstrom’s blade, and they were off.


    The afterflickers of green and black fire disappeared, leaving Jair alone.


    He lay back in his pile of vaguely bed-shaped cushions pilfered from Ryenzo’s various oversized furnitures and resumed his internal contemplations, but kept one eye on the hall.


    In addition to stabilizing his insights from the whole Mercurios debacle, there was one other reason for him to stay behind.


    Several hours passed in silence, then the moment he’d been waiting for.


    Just like last time, Eythron tried to run by his room toward the volcano’s central shaft. Jair was ready and waiting.


    He jumped out and did his best to fight the man to a draw. He couldn’t quite hope to pull a complete victory. Their skill levels were both extremely high, but Jair did still have the disadvantage of being in his younger and still less well-trained body.


    His greatest hope was that he could somehow jolt Eythron out of this self-destructive trance.


    Eythron had other ideas. He pressed relentlessly, doing his best to force his way past Jair. Jair was barely able to keep up. He kept needing to retreat, a half step at a time, but that would add up over time.


    "Stop fighting me, old man."


    Eythron jumped away and brandished his soulsword at Jair''s face.  "Let me go. I have work to do."


    "Is that work ‘go jump in a volcano’? Because if so, I don''t intend on letting you do so."


    "Then you’re an enemy." Eythron lunged, and Jair barely managed to evade.


    Eythron’s skill was undimmed for all his obsession. If anything it lent an additional power to his blows that Jair, at least in his current form, could barely match.


    Jair was a trained mageblade, but at this point in the timeline he was trained to Veori nobility standards, not by survival in the wild forests of the Oriad. Not yet. Eythron’s standard of basic survival – a standard that Jair himself tended to agree with – was a much higher level than that required for initiation at the Astralla Mageblade Institute.


    "Let me past," Eythron growled. “My life is mine to live.”


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "I cannot. You will use it wrongly, and I will not let you die."


    "I''m not going to die."


    “You will. I''ve seen it happen multiple times. You jump in that lava, and you’re dead. I even sent Skyclaw in after you to see if she could pull you out of the dungeon, and you weren''t there. So no. You''re not immune to Mount Ryenzo''s fires, and I will not let you throw your life away so pointlessly."


    "You cannot stop me." Eythron struck again, in a rapid flurry the likes of which Jair had rarely witnessed.


    He was forced back one full step, then another.


    Experience alone was not enough and his body simply couldn''t withstand the same amount of sheer aggression that Eythron had at his disposal. When it was a test or play fight, and Eythron only tried to kill him to see if he was worthy of walking on the same ground, that was one thing.


    But this Eythron wasn’t the man who’d come to respect and protect him, who taught him everything. This Eythron cared nothing for Jair and would destroy him without a second thought.


    It was not a feeling Jair enjoyed.


    Jair began to slow as his younger and softer body ran out of stamina, while Eythron only continued to speed up and grow more and more aggressive as the fight ran on.


    It was inevitable that Jair would slip up eventually. His mental reaction time may be flawless, his manabody control exceptional, but he was still only human.


    Finally Eythron forced the fight to where he could circle around and get past, which he proceeded to do immediately sprinting for the shaft to the magma core beneath which Mercurios lurked.


    "Well.” Jair ran after him. “I''ve tried all the reasonable ways, time to be unreasonable. If this ends up scrambling your soul, I apologize in advance."


    Eythron didn''t seem unduly bothered by the threat of soul dissolution, so Jair went ahead and hurled Maelstrom into the man’s back. It struck dead center.


    Eythron staggered but otherwise ignored the sword through his body and sprinted for the volcano.


    Jair rushed after him, making sure to keep him in sight. Once Eythron dropped into the lava, Jair activated Temporal Reversion.


    Eythron’s soul fought him.


    Jair had taken people back in time with them a few times, mainly the handful of test people in the market and Raina. Most souls were practically effortless to bring back, apart from the strain on his manabody in paying the energy cost of performing the action.


    This was like the magical equivalent of trying to shove wet sand through a tiny funnel, when the funnel was his soul and the sand insisted on crawling out of its own accord.


    Reverting Eythron cost him more than anything but darkflaming himself directly from the moon. More than that, there was a spiritual weight to him that Jair had never experienced before.


    At first touch of his power against his mentor’s soul, Jair would have been tempted to say he felt like someone who’d eaten a dungeon core, but dismissed it almost immediately. Eythron roamed the Oriad freely, an area far vaster than any dungeon’s reach.


    Perhaps it was only because of his recent exposure to Mercurios, but after being around the dragon-dungeon he had a strong feeling of unalikeness. Whatever Eythron was, whatever hidden power he held, it felt… broken.


    As someone who’d been stabbing and darkflaming people for weeks now, Jair had… not exactly studied them all, but begun to intuit a sort of ranking for how various types of souls reacted. It wasn''t anything he could''ve described, nor something that could be seen from the outside, but he''d started to recognize in advance which people would be able to be helped by Darkflame and which ones would resist it. He wasn’t sure if it was different with Temporal Reversion, but he didn’t see why it would be.


    Eythron very much resisted it. He would not be moved, he would not be healed, and he would not be changed.


    Larenok was very soft, very open to Maelstrom''s offerings, as was King Farshen.


    Eythron was the exact opposite. He resisted to a level that even Jair would struggle to match.


    But it finally worked, Jair felt the snap as Maelstrom''s power returned to his soul.


    Reverting people without him coming along was something he’d yet to test extensively.


    Hopefully, it would be enough to shock Eythron out of his stupor without being enough to overwhelm him fully. No point standing around here. He turned to search the place for any sign of changes now that he’d reverted Eythron.


    Qahrvirna was sitting and chatting with her dragon in draconic—she''d reclaimed her dragoncube. Eythron’s cave was quiet, free of the customary grunting and clanking as Eythron tried to free himself from Uqiar''s care. Whether because he’d killed his mentor for good, something had gone wrong with the timeline, or his plan had worked, he couldn’t guess.


    Unsure what he’d find, Jair headed inside Eythron’s prison cave.


    The man lay slumped against the wall, staring vacantly, not even trying to move from his chains.


    Jair gave a questioning glance Uqiar, and the massive beastkin give shrugged. "A few minutes ago, he suddenly stopped fighting and sat down. He hasn''t moved since."


    Jair crossed to Eythron and crouched down in front of him. "Hey, old man. You in there?"


    Eythron stared at him emptily, not even focusing on his face, an expression of devastating loss frozen on his face.


    "So, I see you''ve decided against throwing yourself into the lava pointlessly. Care to talk about it?"


    "You have nothing to say to me." Even his voice was vacant, almost dreamlike.


    "Yeah, I actually have a lot. I know you, Eythron, even if you don''t know me. I know that you wouldn''t do something like this without a reason, so I''d like to know what that reason is."


    "Death calls and I must answer." His voice a mere whisper, pained.


    "I can''t help but think that that is the most uselessly vague answer you could think of."


    "I must answer. Yet I cannot." His eyes half closed, Eythron tensed and half strained against the chains behind him, but didn''t withdraw his sword or try to genuinely break free. "I cannot. I am too weak."


    Of all the things Jair would describe his mentor as, weak was not one of them. "You''ve been taken away from your territory and brought into the reach of Mercurios. Whatever you''re trying to find, it isn''t here."


    Eythron''s eyes were drifting across the room, flicking occasionally to Jair or Uqiar, but mainly just roaming listlessly. "I''m not looking for anything. I made my choice."


    "What choice? Does this have to do with Zoress? With the sinking of Zoraam?"


    Eythron''s gaze sharpened, intent. "Who told you about Zoress?"


    Jair waved a hand at Eythron''s chest. "Your sword lists your name as Eythron Zoress. Heir of Death. Zoraam, Death Lake. Not too much of a stretch to put it together."


    "I''ve never shown you my sword."


    "In the future, you were my mentor. You taught me more about being a mageblade than anyone else I''ve ever met."


    Eythron snorted in disbelief. "Of course. The future. Convenient. Something you can never possibly prove."


    Jair manifested Maelstrom and stabbed it into the stone directly in front of where Eythron sat. "This is your design. Your masterpiece. We built it together, across dozens of timelines, perfecting the ingredients and form, but at its core it''s a pattern you''ve had in your mind for years. Isn''t it? One you didn''t think would ever work, but that you were dying to try if you ever got the chance. And here it is. Perfected."


    Eythron couldn''t tear his eyes away. One hand reached out, then flinched back before touching it. Maelstrom flickered soft silvery light, encouraging, welcoming. "It hungers," he whispered. "I dare not."


    Jair blinked. "You examined it?"


    Eythron shook his head. "I feel it." He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath. "If you have this, then you must know why. Will you return with me?"


    "Return to the Oriad?"


    "Yes."


    "The star hydra?" It was a bit of an intuitive leap, but given how obsessively insistent the man had been on hunting it whenever he got the hint of a chance that Jair might be able to help with it...


    Eythron nodded. "If you will help me to kill the star hydra, I will fight with you here."


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