Scourgeslayer armor and weaponry are as powerful as they are rare. To sufficiently defend a coast against incursion from the sea is much more common than to actually kill any of the dwellers of the deep. In all of documented history, eleven scourgeslayer items have existed. Of those, only four remain. The rest were carried to the depths with their owners’ arrogant desire to replicate the feat.


    <hr>


    “It won’t be hard to find,” Uqiar explained as they put on their new custom outfits. “It has a very large and very aggressive presence in the swamp where it lives, and Eythron has his detection plate to narrow it down perfectly.”


    “A detection plate, huh? And he just happens to be able to find star hydras specifically?”


    “No coincidence about it. He spent years figuring out how to create that thing.”


    Jair shook his head. Even if his first impulse was still to go into attack mode any time he caught an unexpected glimpse of the beastkin, at least Uqiar didn’t try to hide information.


    Well. Qahrvirna would share information at the drop of a query. Whether it was true or not required weeks of research to verify. She was equally likely to give you a thoroughly plausible lie she made up on the spot as the actual intel you were after, with zero differentiation in expression or mannerisms. Jair had studied her technique for months to replicate it.


    Eythron went around checking and double checking everyone’s new armor, then had them all run through various stretches and contortions to be sure they understood their movement limits.


    “Don’t want to be learning about those when trying to evade a hydra head,” he insisted, and Jair fully agreed with him.


    Jair glanced at the unused pile of armor pieces laid out on the worktable. “Someone else coming with us?”


    “Okaya Mitho.”


    Jair raised an eyebrow, but it was a very good choice. Okaya’s class, Sunfist, focused on close-range high-damage magic attacks.


    Okaya may not be very flexible, but the one thing he was good at was punching stuff very hard. With magic. Exactly what you’d want against something that could go intangible.


    Jair had trained with him, fought alongside him, fought against him, and watched him fight others countless times over the previous timelines. He couldn’t deny it was a good choice, but… “When did you plan on telling me you were bringing in someone new?”


    Eythron snorted. “You said you know me. I must have introduced you before.”


    “In the future, yeah. When did you send for him? He’s pretty far north. You sure he’ll get the message in time?”


    “He’ll be here.”


    To Jair’s annoyance, he appeared not even a half hour later. Along with Qahrvirna and Lilin.


    Jair glared at the vampiress, who grinned and waved, while Lilin tried to be invisible behind her. “Why are you here?”


    “You think I’d sit out on a chance to try star hydra blood?”


    “We don’t have armor for you.”


    Qahrvirna bared her fangs cheerfully. “I don’t need it.”


    Okoya Mitho was easily twice Eythron’s age, even if his relatively youthful affect wouldn’t have been out of place on someone around Jair’s age. Okaya’s straight silver hair framed a typically elven face distinguished by the glowing blue line of a mana-torn scar across his lower right jaw and down in a diagonal slash across his throat, disappearing along his breastbone beneath his shirt. It disrupted the flow of mana to his right arm, leaving him with only a single imprint on his shoulder. His left arm made up for it, with the full maximum of five—one on his hand, then paired spells on each of lower and upper arms.


    The two old men bowed respectfully to one another, then Eythron gestured toward Jair.


    Jair set aside the Qahrvirna issue for the moment and performed a traditional elven bow of greeting, hands pressed together over his stomach, and added the slight shift of a junior co-worker in a formal business arrangement. “I am Jair Welburne, ascendant mageblade.”


    Okoya returned the bow with the appropriate shift of an elder co-worker, but also included the upward-facing hand of deep respect. “Okoya Mitho, ignited sunfist. Pleasure to meet you, Ascendant.”


    Jair straightened. “We have known each other in many futures, Mitho of Sun. You are welcome to call me Jair, without expectation of—”


    Okaya shook his head. “Any student of Eythron’s may call me by name. No need for formality.”


    Jair gave the elf a skeptical look. Since when was he a supporter of casual informality? “I assume you’re aware that we’re here to hunt a star hydra?” He could never quite be sure with Eythron. The man was good at sharing necessary information, but could sometimes get it in his head that even basic descriptions of what they were up to was too much.


    “The star hydra,” Okaya corrected. “But sun is greater than star. I will be triumphant.”


    “How much do you know about my abilities?”


    “You will be able to get us out of danger if anything goes wrong.”


    Jair grimaced. “That’s a very simplified way of putting it. I can’t do anything about your soul if it gets eaten, but I can reposition you during combat if you’re within reach.”


    “We will not need repositioning,” Uqiar insisted, clapping Okaya on one shoulder. “Good to see you again, Mitho.”


    The elf, despite being taller than Eythron by a decent margin, still looked small beside the beastkin. He smiled up at Uqiar, familiarity in their stance though they remained formal in speech. “It will be a pleasure to fight beside you, Kelor.”


    “What are you in this for?” Jair asked. “Qahri wants its blood, I need its soul, Eythron just wants it dead.”


    “Fangs,” Okaya answered. “I have a collection.”


    “Hide,” Uqiar said. “It will be a powerful addition to my crafting repertoire. Not to mention the honor of having brought down one of the soul-eaters by my own hand.”


    Jair wondered if there was a title available for killing a star hydra. If so, he’d not heard any clear evidence of such a thing’s existence.


    Qahrvirna raised her hand. “And I want its eyes too, so try not to stab too many of them.”


    “No promises. Also, what is Lilin doing here?”


    “Staying behind safely out of the way,” Eythron grunted.


    “Coming to watch,” Qahrvirna asserted.


    Eythron was not having it. “No.”


    Lilin cringed under Eythron’s stern glare, but Qahrvirna nodded for her to continue. “I do want to watch.”


    “Lil, this is a soul-eating monster. You can’t just safely sit back and trust I can revert things if it goes wrong. If it manages to eat your soul, I might be able to revert you, but it also might be irreversible.”


    He still wasn’t sure the exact extents of the reversion these days. If Eythron was being looped back even without Jair intending to include him, it could be their souls were already too deeply connected to Maelstrom to even be reset to their previous versions.


    Bringing people in was quickly starting to look like a double-edged ability.


    She nibbled at her lip and looked away.


    Qahrvirna nudged her with an elbow.


    “I’d like to watch,” Lilin repeated, tremulously defiant. “I want to see it.”


    “Qahri, what are you trying to accomplish here?”


    “I’m supporting a young woman’s independent spirit! Surely you wouldn’t oppose that, especially for your dear twin sister?”


    Jair sighed. “Lilin, as much as I approve of you being willing to speak up for yourself, this is not the kind of fight you should be anywhere near.”


    "Give me a flying sword like yours so I can watch the fight from above?" Lilin suggested hopefully.


    "That won''t work. Bladewalk is a mageblade class weapon ability, not a property of the weapon itself." Jair could use Lift, but maintaining an ongoing spell the entire fight sounded like the last thing he wanted to commit to.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Especially since the only benefit would be that it put his sister in the middle of a violent combat against a soul-eating monster.


    “And we don’t have protective gear for you and there’s no way to spectate from a safe distance without also putting you—”


    Qahrvirna held up a hand to stop him, then nudged Lilin again. “Show him.”


    Lilin bit her lip more aggressively, hunched her shoulders, but drew up her sleeve to show off an angular imprint that covered her entire left arm.


    Jair glowered at Qahrvirna. “A blood imprint? What have you been doing?”


    This was a rather uncommon form of forced imprinting. Instead of using mana, you used someone else’s blood. Usually a highly magical creature. It was admittedly faster than standard imprinting, but had been banned in most civilized countries since the blood had to be used new each time and the resulting imprint was no stronger than standard. Vampires, of course, disregarded any restriction on what they could do with their or others’ blood.


    “I asked for her to,” Lilin interrupted before the vampire could answer. “Now I have a shield of my own.”


    “A basic shield? You took a permanent magical imprint of a basic shield?” Jair closed his eyes and breathed in sharply. “Do you even have a manabody?”


    “I have a mana core. Good enough.”


    “Technically.” Jair glared at Qahrvirna. “If you hadn’t been putting this nonsense into her head…”


    “Then she’d be a boring and defenceless creature. Come now, dear traveler, you don’t think I would do anything harmful to your precious sister? I did swear on my life to protect her.”


    “And this is your idea of fulfilling that requirement, is it?”


    Qahrvirna crossed her arms and shrugged. “The best way to protect someone is to teach them to protect themselves and then follow them around like a limpet. Wouldn’t you agree?”


    Jair glanced at Raina. He grimaced, then sighed. “Qahri, you’re an infuriating creature.”


    Qahrvirna beamed. “Thank you! I’m glad you noticed. I work so hard at it.” She blew him a kiss. “So can you do something so your sister can watch the show, or are we going to disappoint her?”


    “Disappointed is better than dead. If she wants to watch a fight, we can go drake hunting next lunar passage and she can watch all she wants then. Fighting a star hydra is not a spectator sport. Seriously, Qahri, this is a soul-eater. Anything else, anything else, and we could have a discussion about it, but this?”


    “I’d like to think I’m capable of giving even the most ludicrous of options a chance without prejudice. You wouldn’t be one of those boring immortals who’s too stuck in his ways to be considerate of others, would you? For someone who says so much about reason and perspective..."


    "I''ve given it a fair chance. The answer is absolutely no."


    Lilin held up her arm. "But I can—"


    "This thing attacks the soul, Lil, it would bite right through that like it wasn''t there. Something your vampire friend should know full well."


    "It''s an anti-vampire shield,” Qahrvirna explained indignantly. “If it’ll stop one soul attacker, why wouldn’t it stop another?"


    Jair pressed a hand to his forehead, dragged it down across one eye with a frustrated sigh. "That means it''ll block a vampire''s manabody from reaching your own to prevent their influence. Not that it can survive soul-level attacks."


    "I couldn''t get through it," Qahrvirna insisted, shamelessly.


    "Qahri, you''ve taught me that shield before. I know exactly how it works. And what it doesn''t do. It might be able to push the hydra''s body away, sure, if you were anywhere near strong enough to move a three-ton monster like that. As it is, it just means it''ll have to go around that one small section in order to eat your soul."


    Qahrvirna pouted. "If you want to exercise your immortal time traveler right to command everyone around you, who am I to stand in your way. Far be it from me to try to change your path. You''ll do whatever you want in the end anyway."


    Jair narrowed his eyes at her. "What''s this about?"


    "Your sister, clearly."


    "No, it''s not." Something had been off about her responses this whole time. A faint edge, undercurrent of... something. "There''s a lot that you''re not saying, Qahri. What is actually going on here?"


    "You think I need an ulterior motive to be nice to my sweet assistant here? That Lilin doesn''t deserve my going to attack on her behalf? You think the only reason the vampire could possibly have for going against you in anything is that I have an ulterior purpose?"


    "No, but I know you, Qahri. You''re not the sort to do this without a reason. The reason might be Lilin, you might be able to convince me of that under other circumstances, but the specific way you''re talking sounds more like you have something to hold a grudge over."


    "Why would I have a grudge? Who would I possibly have a grudge against? You? The mighty time traveler who can do no wrong? Why would I have anything but the greatest respect and awe for you?"


    Jair frowned. The more extravagant she got, the more worked up and tense, the less he believed her claims that this wasn''t serious.


    "What are you suppressing and why? Are you afraid of me?"


    "Why would I be afraid of you?" She was almost in tears. "There''s nothing to be afraid of. You''re just a child immortal playing with things he doesn''t understand."


    "I''m serious, Qahri. What''s wrong?"


    She looked up to meet his eyes, her own even redder than usual, and there was a wildness in them he hadn''t seen in years. "You are too powerful," she whispered. "And you don''t even know what you''re doing."


    "Then tell me. I can learn. I can improve. This whole thing is about improving myself, my power, my weapon. Isn''t that the only way to progress forward? It doesn''t do anyone any favors to hide your criticism away. If I''m doing something wrong, then please tell me."


    "Why would you care what I think?"


    "Qahri, you''re someone I consider a friend and ally. You''ve been a companion through countless timelines and will be for many more." Or so he''d assumed. "Tell me. What''s wrong?"


    "Do you have any idea what it''s like to have your day interrupted every twenty minutes and restarted without warning or consent? For years?"


    Jair blinked. "It wasn''t years."


    "It felt like it," Eythron grumbled.


    Qahrvirna''s eyes snapped over to him.


    Eythron crossed his arms. "You don''t get to tell me to shut up in my own home."


    "We''re not in your home, we''re in an overgrown field."


    "My overgrown field."


    "I apologize for causing you distress," Jair interrupted, addressing Qahrvirna. "I didn''t know that you would be included in every time I looped back, and I should have warned you. I’m sorry."


    She cocked her hip, resting her hand against it and tilting her head. "You owe me."


    "No."


    She didn’t relent. “You owe me.” The playful edge was gone, replaced with cold certainty.


    “For what?”


    Her eyes flicked to Lilin and she sauntered closer to Jair and lowered her voice. “You trapped me in close proximity to the one thing I’m not allowed to eat with no other food source for months. My only choice was to run as far and as fast as I could and hope that this time I’d catch something before the timeline reset again. You. Owe. Me.”


    Jair swallowed. It was one thing to imagine Eythron having to find his place in whatever book he was reading or restart his knitting, but to have trapped a soul-predator in the position of perpetual depletion without anything to recover with? “Alright. I owe you.”


    “Friends forever!” Qahrvirna’s smile showed her fangs very prominently. “And if you ever do that to me again, I will eat you.”


    Jair nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll bring you with us next time. You might be able to benefit from the techniques as well.”


    Qahrvirna grinned. “Secret techniques? Yes, that’ll do for an apology.”


    Jair grimaced and sighed. “I probably owe you a lot more than that. I should apologize for misjudging you, even if that version of you doesn’t exist any more. I should have trusted your honor. You might have been willing to hunt random people you’d never met, but you wouldn’t have turned on us.”


    “You thought I would go back on my word? And you pretend to know me.”


    “I do know you. I should have known better. But we’ve learned. Sekir won’t find it so easy to divide us next time.”


    “Yes, yes. Apology accepted. Now let’s go eat a hydra. I’m starving.”


    Lilin acquiesced with ill grace, but she did promise in the end to stay behind in Eythron’s hideout. Qahrvirna gave her a whole stack of Eythron’s books to read, which mollified her somewhat.


    Uqiar wasn''t a spellcaster, he was a crafting class, but he did have teeth and claws. He''d used the brobeg''s claws to craft little fingertip-claws which should cancel out the magical nature of the hydra. The club would only work while the hydra was corporeal which made him more of a retaliatory attacker than a primary striker, though the claws would let them irritate the thing.


    "Hopefully into attacking me," he said rather proudly, when he was showing them off to everyone. "Then it''ll get the chance to see the strength of my lineage."


    Eythron was high mobility and had Soulcutter. He and Jair were largely mirrors of each other. Apart from Maelstrom being magical and very glowy, they had similar setups. Eythron''s spells were weaker and less specialized than Jair''s, but that wasn''t his fault. He''d been forced to work with the standard set that everyone knew about. Jair had access to thousands of obscure pieces of arcana he''d dug up, recompiled, and mutated over the years into his very highly customized loadout.


    Eythron''s focus was more on striking speed while Jair''s was slightly more on general mobility, but apart from that they were two of a kind.


    Raina had chosen to go with a much more aggressively magical loadout. Stone-shaping and fire-imbuement weren''t common choices for mageblades, but the class didn''t have any debuffs against them either. Flamestrike channeled a massive burst of heat through Tempest and directly into whatever was in front of it, if at a range, or whatever was in contact if used as direct stabbing attack. There was a mageblade-specific version that they could have gone with, where the class synergy would have increased the strength substantially, but Raina wanted the range option more than the power.


    "We''ll save that for one of the future layers," she told him. "I can experiment with high strength spells when I have the mana strength to use them effectively. As it is, it''d drain me too quickly to be worth taking up a prime slot."


    Okaya''s close-range fire-based fighting style would pair quite well with Raina''s new spells. She was a little more about environment control, while he was all in on the punching things. Perhaps that meant Okaya was most similar to Uqiar. Which was a strange image, the dignified elven man and the oversized beastkin both being brawlers.


    Or perhaps Qahrvirna would be a better complement for Raina''s combination of close range and distant controlling spells, with her own divided set of combat spells. Four attack and three defence. Normally, Jair would have considered it borderline wasteful to only use seven of a possible ten spell slots, but Qahrvirna''s were personalized and sprawled across their respective spaces, leaving no room for anything but the weakest of paired spells if she''d tried to add more.


    Personal shields and kinetic blasts on the one side, and a mix of precision and area destruction on the other. Qahrvirna was a huntress used to roaming the Oriad alone, and her loadout showed the clean precision of someone who had exactly what she needed and could use it all with flawless understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.


    “Anything else you’re going to spring on me before we go?” Jair asked.


    “This is everyone.” Eythron pulled out his hydra detection tablet. Where or how he''d gotten a star-hydra detector was surely a whole story into itself, but Jair did recognize the slate as one of the things his mentor carried around with him at all times from long before Jair came along, so it wasn''t something new or unexpected. Just another of those items he''d never learned the necessity for or purpose of until this moment. “Follow me. We’ll have this critter in pieces by sundown.”


    <hr>