Some say that elven culture is built around making things as needlessly complicated as possible, but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what elves value. It is not complication for the sake of complication, but rather for the beauty of execution. Elven books unfold the way they do because it is pleasing to them, not in some effort to confuse others. They do not care what you think of their art.


    <hr>


    Before he did anything else in the Berris storehouse, Jair darkflamed in a quick circuit to check in on Lilin—who was continuing her rampage with impunity, the Phoenix Healer’s sister such a wildcard that no one knew how to handle her. He double checked that no one new or dangerous had shown up in the meantime, then told her he might be gone a while.


    Then back to the Serin courtyard. He didn''t see Sekir coming yet. It was further between the Serin section and the Berris section than what he could easily observe, with the mana haze making the distance deceptive.


    That gave him a few minutes to search the building.


    Come back? Meliarn pleaded each time he darkflamed, as though it thought that he would change his mind mid-transit. Jair huffed irritably and shut out his dungeon’s desires.


    He had a window of opportunity here, and he wasn’t going to lose the chance to search every inch of this place. Was it just a convenient out of the way location for Sekir to do his shapeshifting? Or was there a deeper purpose to this building in particular?


    Jair desperately wanted to know how it was that Sekir was accomplishing his whole shapeshifting-reincarnating. Despite knowing the man’s outward-facing behaviors in countless situations, he remained painfully ignorant about Sekir’s inner workings and exact capabilities.


    Shapeshifting was one of those tricky things that generally belonged in the realm of beastkin—they were able to adjust their own genetics to better match one or another of their ancestors, pushing themselves over the course of a few years into a more complete match to one or the other.


    But that was entirely different from this.


    Reshaping his own body to such a drastic extent was one of those things considered conventionally impossible. Jair had never found a way to reliably reshape himself even though it would have been very convenient. The closest he''d ever come was making different avatars for himself when he''d been bound to a dungeon, but those were fragile flimsy things that couldn''t exist outside of the dungeon''s reach.


    Thinking about it made Meliarn’s pull stronger. Maybe he could go back to the dungeon, try some things? Create some different versions of himself, see if he could—


    Jair firmly put aside the dungeon’s whining. Nothing Meliarn said or did right now mattered.


    The problem with guessing what was going on here was that the standard rules of magic didn’t mean anything when it came to the soul.


    Any soulspell was a wildcard. It could be a simple spell that any imprint or construct could imitate, or it could be something universe-shattering like reverse the entirety of reality.


    Speculation wouldn''t do anything for him. He had little time and more information now than he ever had in the past.


    Sekir went in as one person and, as far as Jair could guess, came out as someone else.


    He finished his search of the top floor records without finding anything incriminating. Next, he went on to search the downstairs curing chambers.


    Underground in the basement of the building, he found a whole lot of barrels. In fact, he recognized them now he was down here. He''d searched every building in the oasis at one time or another in the past, looking for anything he could use against Ryenzo back when she''d been the biggest threat to his existence. Pickles, he’d quickly learned, were not one of Ryenzo’s weaknesses.


    All the barrels were arranged in groups, several of the same style together, then several of a different type. Some were round, some were squared, others were spherical. All were sealed with magic as well as steel or iron or vines.


    Jair considered a moment, then took Maelstrom and started slashing them all open.


    They contained food. Sandfish in several instances. Various desert fruits. Some more exotic vegetables that had to have been imported. Veori mana oases were a fairly unique resource, on a global scale.


    Most mana wells or springs ended up being channeled in very focused ways. The diffuse nature of Veori oases provided a way to gradually inculcate an object with mana without risking the overt destruction that something like Mount Sanctum''s mana forge would cause if you stuck something delicate in there. For big powerful important creations, you still wanted a mana forge or well, but the slower gentler preservation of goods or reinforcement of fragile materials was best done here.


    Without that, Veor would never have been inhabited. It was a dry and unpleasant place, the native sandfish wanted to eat you, and the dragons wanted to enslave you.


    Jair finished slashing open all of House Berris''s goods and found nothing suspicious. With a sigh, he stood in the middle of a flood of pickling fluids adrift with all the various fishes and fruits floating freely and surveyed the mess. The barrels were innocuous, the walls were mundane, the crates perfectly ordinary...


    He frowned. There was a very faint current. The water on the floor moved minutely, almost imperceptibly, but not fully imperceptibly.


    Tiny ripples lapped at the stones and the pool gradually grew smaller, flowing toward a particular spot.


    He waded through the fish and floating fruits to the spot in question. The edges of one of the massive flat paving stones that made up the floor were darker in this spot. Not by much, not enough to be noticeable when dry, but the liquid reacted differently.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Jair stabbed Maelstrom downward through the stone. It hit resistance, then broke through into open air.


    "Ho. Now this is something new."  He sliced the floor into pieces, letting them fall to the ground below with a thumping crunch and various thuds of less stone-on-stone nature.


    Jair hopped down, Maelstrom''s silver and green glow providing enough illumination for him to make out the contents of the hidden room.


    Apart from the freshly-added puddle of pickled fish and chopped vegetables courtesy of Jair, there was a collection of stone slabs spread out on either side of an open path in the middle. Eight different slabs, five of which were occupied.


    Jair stepped closer, his heartbeat speeding up in anticipation.


    Sure enough, four of the five were people he recognized. All future versions of Sekir. One was the tall one who''d unlocked the windows, lying completely still as though dead.


    Or perhaps ''lifeless'' would be a better word for it.


    Jair frowned around at the collection of bodies. Two hours Sekir was in here, and there didn''t seem to be anything else for him to have been doing besides changing his form.


    But what were the mechanics here? Sekir could die and return in a different version of himself. Sekir had his future versions already set up here--and probably other places, given that Jair had sometimes killed him upwards of twenty or thirty times in previous timelines before finally pinning him down for good.


    But normally he didn''t come back as quickly as two hours. So dying rather than returning and purposefully switching presumably interrupted the process.


    And this was entirely too much work to be part of a soulspell. Soulspells were complete in themselves. Whatever they did, they did it without outside assistance.


    Jair stared around at the collection of potential Sekirs and considered his options.


    He could destroy them all, do his best to disrupt the next few incarnations. Or he could revert time to before he broke in, pretend he''d never been here, and see how it played out like Eythron had wanted.


    Jair smiled. As tempting as it was to burn the place, he could always do that another time. He reverted time instead, going back to just before he broke in, then darkflamed himself back to the Serin estate.


    Missing, absent, return…


    Even Meliarn’s persistent demands weren’t enough to dim his mood.


    Finally, he was the one with more information again. The new timeline had thrown everything into glorious chaos, but that also made it harder to predict his nemesis. Now, he was back to where he belonged, a position of clarity and understanding. Even if he didn''t understand enough, he was getting there.


    All he needed to do was watch it play out and he''d know everything he needed.


    Things didn''t go how he''d expected. Sekir in his older-shorter form disappeared into the building through one of the windows his previous version had unlocked.


    It took Jair a minute to think of a reason for setting it up with a different persona, and none of the ideas he came up with were satisfactory. If he was trying to evade a pastseer, wouldn''t he have had his second version come in through a door instead of crawling in the window?


    Well, nevermind, he was doing it so that was what he was doing. No point tying himself in knots trying to figure out every opaque thing that Sekir did. The man was inscrutable.


    Jair headed back up to the roof to observe, and found that there were a handful of staff coming in and out of the courtyard at this time. They were starting to set things up for the evening. He did recognize Molash as the young man came in and out a few times, going about his business with no sign of being targeted yet. Carn popped out to deliver instructions two different times, but hurried back inside almost immediately, clearly busy managing everything despite having done it once before.


    Then Sekir emerged. But he wasn’t alone.


    <hr>


    Sekir Lifekeeper finished his preparations and slipped into the party without arousing any notice. He wasn''t dressed for the part, but that didn''t matter. They would make their assumptions and he would play into them. The only thing that mattered was information.


    This was the second week that he''d been rushing through every possible location for locating the Phoenix Healer or his associates, and it looked like this might be the first time it actually played out as he''d hoped.


    Serin. The one name that always seemed to be paired with Welburne. Everyone who knew him, everyone who''d seen him, they all knew the one person he wasn''t without.


    So, here he was, at long last.


    Had it really been only two weeks? It felt like an eternity. But it was a good workout, he couldn''t deny that. Preparing trap after trap, rushing through form after form, stretching himself to his limits... it felt good.


    Even if this all ended up being a wild sandrat chase, even if Welburne ended up being far less dangerous than Sekir was giving him credit for, it was still a good exercise of his capabilities.


    He was frankly astonished he''d gotten away with as much as he had for so long. There should have been at least a few objections somewhere along the line. It didn’t bode well for his estimations of Welburne as a worthwhile rival.


    Perhaps the man was simply gone, uninterested, unconcerned by the amount of chaos Sekir was preparing?


    He located the Serin household members immediately. Lord Ajriol stood talking with one of the foreign visitors—the woman from northern Orard, if his vampire lore was correct. Lady Raina wandered the room making short conversation with everyone, giving several minutes of her attention but no true interest to each of her guests.


    Sekir blinked his soulspell on. Faint purple light overlaid everything, everyone''s eyes glinting in the overlay as though they were small lights turning off and on whenever they turned toward or away.


    He blinked through a basic scan of everyone, but none of them was really interesting enough to give his full attention to. Greedy and self-centered, they were all so tediously commonplace that he could barely resist the urge to start killing them right here and now. At least it would spare him needing to listen to one more subtle attempt at bragging without seeming to.


    Humans were so short-minded. But... there was one person here whose interest seemed as superficial as his own.


    The visitor finished her conversation with Lord Ajriol and the moment his eyes met hers, they both lit up in excited hope.


    Finally, someone different.


    Sekir suppressed his brief flash of hope and focused in on the woman as they walked toward one another, eyes locked on each other.


    "And who might you be?" she asked, a playful quirk to her lips. "Haven''t seen you here before."


    "Nor I you." He considered offering a hand human-style, but between immortals such greetings were banal and needless. Instead he stepped closer forward, until they were all but breathing the same air. She was a little taller than this form, so he had to tilt his head up to meet her gaze.


    She relaxed her posture immediately, accepting his offered challenge as she leaned over to whisper in his ear, "I think you''re the only interesting one here."


    "The feeling is mutual.” Sekir stared deep into her eyes, already convinced that this was someone he needed more than anyone he''d ever met. All of them paled in comparison to what this creature could offer him.


    He had no doubt she was playing the same game he was, he could tell the difference between curiosity and genuine desire. But when had Sekir ever backed down from a challenge? The information he could obtain from someone like this would be invaluable. Forget his other plans. He could set up traps any time.


    Sekir ran his hand across her shoulder, her back, and she arched into it with a soft purr of anticipation.


    Yes, this would be a much better use for the afternoon. Everything else could wait.


    <hr>