“You’ve failed.” Nay Ahll Mersine stood in her calm, regal way, regarding Sekir the way one would regard a starving wild creature you weren''t sure would attack or slink away. Wary, disdainful, vaguely pitying. “It is time we set aside our differences.”


    "I told you when last we met," Sekir said as he strode casually into the room. "I will kill you."


    "I know you plan to try. But events have changed. There is no longer time for us to play our games. We can try to murder one another a different time. You have seen the Eye?"


    Sekir nodded. He threw himself onto the nearest divan, then waved a hand in invitation for Mersine to join him. "If we''re going to have a truce, may as well enjoy it, eh?"


    "No. This is serious, Ve K''yeniar."


    "Sekir Lifekeeper."


    She gave a soft irritable huff. "What you are calling yourself doesn''t matter. That sword should never have been. It has not been made, and yet now it is here and it isn''t going anywhere. Every future is broken. Every future is changed. Do you understand that? Everything you''ve been working toward, everything I''ve been planning, it is all swept away. Irrelevant before this new danger. Do you not see it?"


    "I see you like your riddles as much as always. If you don''t want to play and you don''t want to fight, why are you here? I''m not going to recant.” Sekir raised one hand to point at her, the spell imprint across the back of his hand faintly glowing. “You''re a dead woman walking."


    "And you''re a dead man speaking. I cannot see what you''ve been doing, whatever methods you have successfully obscured my observation, but I know that its outcome will not be sufficient. That sword must be removed from the board."


    "Liar," Sekir said casually. "I have done nothing. Your attempts to play at ignorance only make me want to disregard everything you say."


    If only he did still have Ve K''yeniar. That form could have dealt with her in moments. Not forced to sit by and listen to her prattling on. But this was the price of knowledge, so he would pay it. However reluctantly, he could put up with one hour of Nay Ahll Mersine''s arrogance.


    Even if he wanted to wipe the smug condescension off her face with violent prejudice.


    "The man in the future, he was going to be your downfall."


    Sekir raised an eyebrow. "Oh, was he?" Yet it had been almost a full year since that ridiculous moment that kept repeating itself, and not once had time flickered again. Orard’s wild depths had taken the upstart with them. She, the great seer, being so far behind, it amused him to no end.


    "Yes. I have watched his progression across a hundred futures, and he is the one I needed to finally destroy you."


    Sekir laughed aloud. "Oh, poor Nay''Ahll! Your own weapon turned against you? That''s what you get for trusting others. You should have been training to face me yourself. Sending a proxy after me? Afraid to face me directly?"


    "Says the proxy."


    Sekir snorted. "I am as much me as I''ll ever be."


    "True. With how eagerly you throw yourself away, in a few years there''ll be nothing left of you."


    "I swear to Aelir, if you''ve only called me here to make snide comments, I will tear your soul out myself."


    "My soul is beyond your grasp, Sekir Lifekeeper." She said his name with the kind of dismissive amusement of one playing along with a child''s insistent demands. "As yours is beyond mine. We must fight with proxies for neither of us is truly able to reach the other."


    "I could reach you."


    "Not now you can''t." She raised two fingers. "There''s a reason I called you here today."


    "Other than mocking me?"


    "How could I resist the opportunity?" She shifted to point at him with the two fingers. "Whatever that man has become, it is beyond my sight. I know only that he will shatter the world if left unchecked.”


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    “Yeah, I figured that part out for myself. Remind me why I shouldn’t kill you right now?”


    “You will never find him on your own.”


    “You underestimate my ability to obtain information.” But, find him… that implied she did know something he didn’t. If he still existed in the future even now?


    She shook her head. “This is information no one would know but themselves. They are cautious and the Oriad is vast. You could search for years and never find them.” The way her eyes stared into the distance, their pale glow not quite ominous…


    Sekir shrugged and refused to acknowledge the shiver trying to creep down his back. “So you say. But we’ve been trying to kill one another for centuries. Why would I trust your word? Every single other time it’s been a trap.”


    “No other time has the fate of the planet been shattered.” A faint edge of impatience tinted Nay Ahll Mersine’s voice. “The only enemy we have is the one who would destroy us both, until such time as the abomination is removed from the world. Agreed?”


    “I don’t trust you.”


    She knelt in front of him, and the glow faded from her eyes. “Then look for yourself.”


    Sekir sat up to stare at her. She never offered any gesture of even remote subservience to anyone. Not to kings, not to empresses. An acknowledging nod was the closest to a bow she ever came.


    And she knelt before him, dress crumpled around her on the floor, eyes their natural hue for the first time in their long enmity.


    “You have my attention.”


    “I will have your promise.”


    Sekir looked. And then he gave his promise.


    In the end, though he may disagree with her in almost every other instance, once in a while she was right.


    Some things could not be left to fate.


    <hr>


    “I have to show you something.”


    Jair smiled over at Raina, but her expression was anything but happy. “What’s wrong?”


    She didn’t meet his eyes, staring up at the ceiling with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t want to bother you yesterday when you were just recovering, but… you do need to know.”


    “You can tell me, I’m fully stable. Nothing to worry about.” He held up a hand, slotted in the imprint for Light with a thought and activated the warm glow. “Better than ever.”


    She laughed uneasily. “Well, with the way you were burning through mana, the only place we could think to stabilize you was Nuprima, so…”


    Jair considered the atmosphere, and concluded that it was indeed Nuprima’s. Strange. He wouldn’t have noticed it until she brought it up. It felt so natural. “I don’t mind. It worked. So, thank you.”


    She stood and crossed to the wardrobe to start putting on her heavy protective gear. “You won’t be saying that for long.”


    “Just tell me.”


    She nodded sideways to the door. “Come on. Upstairs.”


    He pulled on a heavy robe and followed her.


    They were in a Xeromian hive, which meant they’d traveled a long way north, but he couldn’t deny they had the best facilities for magical recovery. Their hive construction filtered and softened the mana to take off the harsh edge of Nuprima’s atmosphere while maintaining the full density. Best of both worlds. Insanely expensive. She must have gotten Ajriol involved.


    He’d have to pay the man back at some point. House Serin had to be getting close to bankrupting itself on his behalf.


    Jair exchanged brief pleasantries with a few Xeroma they passed in the halls, a combination of wet clicks and hisses that came as naturally to him as every other language of Nuprima.


    Raina laughed at her own attempts to repeat a very simple greeting—which was half an insult, the version they traditionally taught to outsiders. “Of course you’re fluent.”


    “I can teach you if you like.”


    She nodded, but even the brief levity wasn’t enough to remove the tension in her posture, and they continued their climb in silence.


    They reached the peak of the hive and she briefly spoke with the observer on duty, waving her hands as she tried to convey that she wanted him to reposition the scanner toward Neptus.


    Jair jumped in to clarify once he understood what she was asking, though the purpose escaped him. “They don’t believe in planetary travel, why are you having him look for platforms?”


    “I’m not,” she said softly. She didn’t meet his eyes as she nodded toward the scanner viewing platform. “Go look.”


    Jair did so. It took him a long moment to recognize what he was looking at, and then he couldn’t stop looking.


    Veor was fine, Almas in the same configuration it had always been. But Orard?


    Where the Oriad should have been, a vast green blur through the center of the continent, a sea rested instead. A gulf bigger than all of Aacvar. Almost big enough to fit the whole of Celsin into.


    Instead of the usual square-ish mass of continents with their countless twisty rivers, Orard had been reduced to a slender triangle of detached continents around the edges, the continent’s entire heart missing.


    “What happened?” Jair asked when he could finally tear his eyes away. “Where’s Eythron? How long has it been?” Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We can prevent this. Let’s get the others. Time to go back.”


    “How do you expect to stop something this big?” There was a catch in Raina’s voice, and Jair suddenly remembered that just before their little venture to the hydra’s nest, her whole family had been relocated to this continent. He looked back through the scanner, and saw the whole peninsula where they’d been located was among the missing pieces.


    “We will find a way. And that starts with going back to the beginning.”


    <hr>