《Time Breaker, Soul Breaker, Fate Breaker (Re:Maelstrom) - Fantasy Time Loop》 1 - Ascension The problem with having the power to destroy the world, is that no one will ever believe you, and there''s no way to prove it. A nice, normal power that can be scaled up to planetary levels, sure. But an instant world-ending, all-or-nothing power? Utterly useless at social events. May as well not have anything.
At the central worktable of the ascendance forge atop Mount Sanctum, Jair painstakingly poured out silver-glowing liquid in a sequence of symbols he knew by heart. The white light of the mountain¡¯s unquenchable heart starkly illuminated the massive columns surrounding the forge and cast looming shadows across the polished obsidian floor. Manafire rippled across the table in a constant cascade, hot enough to drench the pale fabric of his once-grand uniform robes in sweat. But heat and exertion weren¡¯t the only things making him sweat. Distant shouts and footsteps echoed back to him through the vast chamber. Snarls and hissing portended his approaching doom. His pursuers had entered the mountain. Though every cell in his body screamed at him to hurry, Jair kept his movements deliberate and the flow of molten starsteel steady. Even with all his knowledge and every resource he could draw upon, he¡¯d barely managed to collect enough of the rare mineral. He''d attempted this ascension twice before, and both times, the process had been interrupted before it could be completed. He would not falter this time, even to the very moment of his death. The snarling and baying of the pursuing drakenhounds grew louder, nearer. With supreme effort of will, he forced himself to proceed calmly. Stay steady. Ignore the way his heart raced and his body tensed. He still had time. He held one hand directly above the glowing symbol on the table, as close as he could bring himself to the searing heat radiating from the molten starsteel. With his other hand, Jair pressed two fingers against his forehead, eyes drifting closed as he mentally traced familiar pathways within his spirit. "Soulblade, manifest!" Silver fire burned in his vision, even through closed eyelids, as the weapon stored within his soulspace transposed itself into physical reality. ©¤ Reforged Soulsword (2nd Form) Advancement progress: 99% ©¤ Rank: Uncommon ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade His trusty sword appeared beneath his hand, worn and mundane but carved with the familiar symbols that resonated down to his very soul. Jair pressed the weapon down into the starsteel, the pattern he¡¯d drawn perfectly aligned with the blade¡¯s size and length, then began laying out the other elements necessary for the ascension. Two fully charged silver workings, intricate latticeworks containing between them enough mana to level the mountain, four flawless blue dragon-tear pearls, and a single pure sapphire cut to exacting specifications. Sizzling and hissing rang out in the distance as the forerunners of the enemy assault ran into the first line of his traps. That would only slow them for a few seconds. "There''s enough time," he whispered, but his hands trembled with adrenaline he couldn''t entirely suppress. He positioned the collection of items along the blade, guard, hilt, and pommel, then held both hands over the weapon. Half done. The easy half. "Compression." Tightly-controlled pressure flooded down from his hands, pressing in tight against each of the components to hold them perfectly in place. Minute adjustments shifted the items into even closer alignment, that extra hair toward perfection. Time he couldn¡¯t spare but didn¡¯t dare to skip. Every step was essential. He¡¯d worked toward this moment for more years than he cared to recall, accumulating only the most powerful ingredients. If he was going to change history, he needed something outside the ordinary. Shouts echoed across the room, guttural snatches of a language even after so long he barely understood. The gist was obvious. There he is, kill him now, the usual. He thought he heard a ¡°his soul is mine,¡± in there too. He wasn¡¯t here to fight. Focus. Breathing hard, Jair transferred control of the spell to one hand and picked up the half-empty crucible of molten starsteel with the other. Mouth dry, stomach tense, he poured the silvery metal very carefully over the sword, though it took every ounce of his willpower to continue moving with smooth precision. Holding the spell¡¯s downward pressure while allowing the starsteel through the intangible field of power strained Compression to its limits. By any rights, he should have waited another month before using it for something so strenuous. If he survived past the ascension, there would be painful repercussions to his recklessness. Good thing surviving wasn¡¯t necessary to his plan. He poured the molten metal over the ingredients and intensified Compression, crushing the priceless ingredients into glittering powder with unwavering precision. The power of the magical components had nowhere else to go but into the sword, infusing the molten starsteel. Distant firelight burst into existence in the corner of his vision, yowls of surprised pain accompanying the flare¡ªthe last of his traps. He didn¡¯t turn to look, forced his body to remain steady against every instinct. Rushing would only make things worse. Once completed, the ascension could never be undone. If he skipped a step now, it would sacrifice his future for the sake of the moment. Everyone¡¯s future. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Manafire flared up starkly white as his spell broke the containment on the twin artifacts, allowing the whole of their incomprehensible power to fully suffuse the weapon. The last drops of molten metal surrounded the sapphire just below the guard. Final step. He''d never gotten this close before. All his traps had bought the precious seconds he needed. All that remained was to finish the seal. The sword would take care of the rest. He sliced the tip of his finger against the blade''s point then pressed it into the starsteel just below the sapphire. ¡°Compression.¡± Recasting with his other hand, he mixed his blood into the molten metal and began to trace out the pattern engraved in the deepest depths of his soul. Forcing the spell to move at speed with such exacting precision tore through his manabody like thorns in his veins. Ordinarily it should require hours to manipulate Compression in this way, but he had only seconds. He¡¯d probably never cast with this hand again, not that it mattered. This was the end. One final step, and he¡¯d¡ª Something crashed into his back, claws tearing deep into his body as the momentum hurled him forward across the table. That alone wouldn¡¯t have been enough to doom him, but the impact was accompanied by a discharge of explosive lightning. Deafening sound slammed into him, electric fire surging up his spine. His concentration scattered. The spell broke. "No!" Jair landed directly atop the weapon, the impact of his body disrupting the pattern. The half-finished seal collapsed entirely. Something heavy pressed down on his back, preventing him from recovering. ¡°LIFT!¡± His voice came out a ragged snarl. The heart of the mountain surged in answer, power running white-hot through the spell imprint drawn across his right forearm. The overdraw was intensely painful but he was far past caring about mere pain. The weight on his back lifted. A startled yelp accompanied the crash of scale against stone, then the monster fell silent as the force of Jair¡¯s spell crushed it to pulp against the distant ceiling. He hadn¡¯t come here to fight, but he was still an archmage. Unlike the hastily-added Compression imprints, he¡¯d maintained Lift since the day he learned it so long ago. He didn¡¯t have time for this. Jair pushed himself back to his feet, taking in at a glance what he had left to work with. Molten starsteel spilled in lumpy waves over the edges of the incomplete sword. When he pulled his hand back more starsteel clung to it, leaving the sapphire exposed. The third and fourth pearls had scattered out of place. He needed to fix this. He¡¯d come too far to accept failure now. Starsteel clung to his hand, burning through skin and muscle, but he couldn''t spare a thought for that. Frantic, desperate, he pressed the blade back into shape with his fingers. With two quick swipes he smoothed the edge and wiped away the extra material spilling over the edges. Blood mingled with sweat, running from the deep wound across his back, the pain meaningless as he stared down at the incomplete ascension. Red dripped down his arm and pooled around the blade. Now what. Before he could do anything more, claws skidded on stone behind him. His pursuers, too close to escape again. He spun to face them, three more drakenhounds. Larger than any ordinary hound, they were waist-high at the shoulder and over twice as long, lithe lizardish bodies covered in dark scales that reflected sinister rainbows in the light of the manafire. Two red, one blue, light building in their throats as they prepared to strike. He¡¯d abandoned his protective spells when he traded them for Compression, moments of progress more important than moments of survival. It would do him no good to hole up behind a shield and wait until he was worn down. The first had already jumped, jaws wide, claws extended. ¡°Lift.¡± The spell caught it mid-leap, slamming it upward with all the strength of Jair¡¯s desperation and the weight of the mountain¡¯s heart. The second hit him before he finished with the first, tearing into his chest in the instant before he switched targets and sent it flying upward to join its compatriots as pulped lizard meat on the ceiling. He could only maintain one active spell, with his left hand torn to unusability. The rest of the force was right behind them. Too close. Seconds at best. And even if he blasted his way through the bulk of this force, there were another hundred behind them, and the beastlord himself behind them with the whole of his army on his heels. This was a fight Jair couldn¡¯t win. But he couldn''t fail now. Not after so long. Not after trying so hard. ¡°Impose Weight,¡± he pressed down on the entire approaching contingent at once, slowing their movements as power burned through him at a truly incredible rate. Anywhere else on the planet, he¡¯d run out in seconds. Here, the power was all but inexhaustible. Jair himself would be what wore out first. He was bleeding out, physically, and magically burning far beyond safe operational parameters. But it bought him one last window of opportunity. A few final moments to find a solution. He''d done everything perfectly, moved as fast as he possibly could, right up to the last moments. And it still wasn''t enough. What could he have done differently? Was there any step he¡¯d been slow or inefficient to complete? Any ally he could have better utilized, any resource left untapped in the years leading up to this? He couldn¡¯t think of anything. He¡¯d already used every drop of personal mana on the way up the mountain, setting as many traps as he could manage. If he¡¯d tried to fight before reaching the forge, he¡¯d be doing so in perpetual overdraw with only his sword to rely on. If he turned away from the project sooner to fight the lone forerunner, he¡¯d have lost control of the ascension anyway. If he stopped to fight before starting, he¡¯d end up bogged down and cut off from even reaching the forge. Nothing. There was nothing he could have done better. No way to move faster. No way to delay his pursuit another moment. His attackers would be slowed, so long as he held the spell, but not stopped. I refuse. I''m not going through this all again! He''d been trapped in this desperate quest too long, but going back wouldn¡¯t matter unless he could change something. "I REFUSE!" Jair roared aloud, slamming his half-melted hand onto the sapphire. Blood dripped from his chest, staining the silver metal pink. He released Impose Weight in the same instant he recast. "Compression." His body screamed at him to stop. He¡¯d already gone far beyond any reasonable limits. Manafire tainted the power, liquid and searing, as he overdrew with his full strength. The spell pattern burned too hot, close to rupture, threatening to tear him apart from within. He didn''t stop. Couldn¡¯t stop. Failure now would break him. He refused to be broken. Not now. Not again. The full strength of Mount Sanctum¡¯s manaforge surged recklessly through him as he pushed himself far past overdraw. Through blurred vision and a mind growing fuzzy, he focused his spell. He stamped the spilled blood down into the metal in a single final surge of mana, searing the pattern of his soul into the misshapen blade. ©¤ Reforged Soulsword has been ascended. Form 3 unlocked. Power resonated through him as the ascension clicked into place. An imperfect ascension, perhaps, but he couldn¡¯t possibly have done anything more. Sometimes, even doing everything right was no guarantee of success. With the last of his strength, Jair pressed two fingers to the blade''s edge. ©¤ Connection established: Jair Welburne. Then his body slid backwards off the table, landing in a lifeless heap at his murderer''s feet. Jair¡¯s awareness stuttered, reality freezing around him as he drifted free, his soul drawn toward the grinning mouth of the monster who¡¯d killed him. Not today. He focused inward to where his soulspell lived, glowing like a golden star. A second silver star now orbited it, proof of the ascension¡¯s success. For the first time in a long time, Jair felt hope instead of dread as he touched the golden star within his soul and time began to reverse itself. The nightmare could end. Finally.
2 - Reversion At the simplest, obtaining a class unlocks your soul¡¯s power and then guides how your soul reacts to and structures that power.
Time travel was an imprecise art. Jair had reverted more times than he could properly recall, and still, he had only the most general level of control over his destination. Temporal Reversion felt like falling down a cliff. At any moment, he could reach out and snatch at a handhold. Some would crumble and he¡¯d fall to the next, others remained sturdy. Then there were a few solid shelves he¡¯d land on every time, unless he purposefully shoved himself away to get past. Jair knew the metaphorical shape of his timeline intimately. His recent past held several shelves and countless handholds, but this time, he didn¡¯t reach out to grasp any of them. His attention remained focused inward, watching the tiny silver spark in his soul for any sign of instability. He feared his soulsword would collapse from the flawed ascension, yet it remained miraculously stable. The key to changing everything. A new factor to tip events away from their same exhausting patterns. The years of preparation hadn¡¯t been in vain. Even with the interruption, enough integrity remained to sustain the weapon. The timefall ended in an abrupt jolt, reality returning in a blink. An all too familiar reality. Jair arrived in the past one week before he reached Mount Sanctum, the start of this particular loop. He crouched in afternoon sunlight amid dry underbrush. Spindly branches snagged on his robes, dead leaves doing little to obscure his view of the army spreading out across the plain below. He¡¯d been on the invaders¡¯ heels for months now, every attempt at deeper infiltration cut off before he could reach the transit platforms. Only the coming chaos of Celsin¡¯s final resistance would give him the opening he needed. Without conscious thought, his body was already moving to evade the blow he knew was coming, arm coming up, spell on his lips. But, no. That wasn¡¯t necessary any longer. This particular loop was finished. He¡¯d reverted and the silver star of the weapon within his soul remained undispelled. It had survived. Right? This all could be a dream. A delusion as he lay dying. Jair arrested his counter mid-swing, body falling still as he focused inward instead, double and triple checking that the spark of his soulsword remained. The Letyran scout slammed his weapon into Jair¡¯s stomach, taken aback when Jair only grinned in response to the fatal injury. ¡°Soulblade, manifest.¡± The weapon¡¯s silver fire blazed up at once, casting shadows across the ground as it outshone the dull daylight. Finally, he could see exactly what he had managed to create, the blade purchased with so many years of pain and loss and desperation. ¡°It worked! It worked. It¡¯s still there.¡± He laughed aloud with the sheer relief of it, freely and unselfconsciously, tears escaping unnoticed. ¡°You can¡¯t imagine how difficult this was, but I¡¯ve done it! Thank Dovak, it worked! Inspect." ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 10%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****? ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne It took a lot to make Jair speechless, but this did the trick. He stared, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing. He¡¯d expected Advanced and secretly hoped for Rare. Possibly Elite if he got lucky, considering the strength of Mount Sanctum¡¯s mana forge. But Legendary! Even on an interrupted ascension? Pointed ears lying flat against his head in unease, the invader scout withdrew his weapon in a violent slash, further tearing open Jair¡¯s insides. Even that couldn¡¯t dull Jair¡¯s mirth. Though he did grunt in involuntary reaction, he wasn¡¯t paying any attention to his physical surroundings right now. The sword itself was wavy and uneven, lacking symmetry and elegance. The blade was too heavy, the extra starsteel and missing pearl threw off the balance, and the sword¡¯s power resonated against his manabody in random pulses, barely contained. The row of unknown characters was mildly troubling, normal item descriptions returned either clear text or simply ¡®Unreadable¡¯. The word Legendary pulsed and flickered, sometimes almost disappearing, sometimes half its letters twisting into unreadable chaos, and he¡¯d never seen an integrity bar on a rank before. Neither concern could override his relief or dim his happiness. He gripped its handle, running a finger across the lumpy misshapen patch where his body threw things out of alignment. He couldn¡¯t possibly have done any better. He¡¯d threaded the needle in an impossibly precise sequence even to get the elements he had needed, and Mount Sanctum was the only manaforge capable of handling the ascension itself with that much raw power involved. ¡°Maelstrom,¡± Jair whispered. His sword had never had a name before now, but with the tumult in his heart and the chaos of its rebirth¡­ Yes. The name felt right. The Letyran readied for another strike, regarding Jair warily. Jair could imagine what he must look like, grinning down at his misshapen weapon without concern for being fatally injured, and the image only amused him more. ¡°No need for that. I¡¯m done here, and I won¡¯t be seeing you again for a very, very long time!¡± With a tap of two fingers to his forehead, Jair dismissed Maelstrom back into his soul. He allowed himself to fall to his knees as his strength faded. He closed his eyes and dove back into his soulspell, still laughing as he left behind his impending death along with the future he¡¯d fought so futilely to change. Golden light enveloped him and he returned to timefall. He shoved himself back hard from the shelf he¡¯d just landed on, twisted away from the preceding events, and let himself continue to drop. He fell past the second portal incursion with a feeling of intense relief at no longer being trapped in its shadow, shoved himself back from the sorcerer-king¡¯s final stand at Meliarn, and dropped past years of training with Eythron. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. With each event he bypassed, another layer of accumulated pressure fell away. The hopeless, stubborn, defiant, resigned shell he¡¯d worn for so long began to fade. Shedding the metaphorical weight of decades left him light and free. He bypassed a dozen battles, the first incursion, meeting Celanie, the expeditions north. He hadn¡¯t gone this far back in relative centuries. For so long, he reran each section in sequence, trying to optimize each week, each month, each year, all in service of finding some way to truly change the past. Unmeasurable effort, finally repaid in possibility. Through it all, Maelstrom burned bright within his soul. His soulsword stayed with him, not destroyed by the transition like everything else he¡¯d ever tried to bring back with him. Now he fell past things he¡¯d long ago forgotten, but recognized immediately as they flickered by: the plague, the assassination, the kidnapped princess. He passed things he could never forget: his sister¡¯s disappearance, his best friend¡¯s death. And then he landed at the very bottom: the moment he received his class and unlocked his soulspell. This was the hard stop, the point where it all began. The golden light of his soulspell faded. Jair stood on an elevated platform in front of half the school, exactly as he had when first initiated into the mageblade class. How many years ago, he couldn¡¯t hope to recall. For one frozen moment, nothing moved but the spark of silver running down his neck, to his shoulder, then his arm. His mind raced with compacted information and hazy memory. He hadn¡¯t been back here in how many hundred lifetimes? Everything felt familiar but alien, things he recognized without knowing how he knew them. Brilliant sunlight shone from above, refracted into a rainbow gleam by the reinforced glass overhead. Exotic greenery grew prolifically around the stage and thick grass carpeted the ground below, a vibrant contrast to the desert sand and dull shrubbery outside the oversized greenhouse. One of Astralla Mageblade Institute¡¯s two claims to fame. In front of and facing Jair stood a dozen teachers in white robes¡ªsleeveless to show off their imprints and not impede any spellcasting¡ªlined up behind Headmaster Larenok and Professor Irres. The headmaster handed out the blank soulswords with pomp and ceremony, while the resident blademaster solemnly granted each new initiate the class they¡¯d spent years preparing for. He stood with one hand reaching out to accept the hilt of his sword¡ªthe same sword he¡¯d just finished ascending. Directly in front of him, Headmaster Larenok held the soulsword in one jewel-gloved hand, extended toward the ¡®new¡¯ mageblade-initiate Jair. Last time he stood here, he''d been a very different person. Headmaster Larenok, though, hadn¡¯t changed at all. Years of scowling left the headmaster¡¯s face permanently etched with an expression of disdain that his short beard did nothing to soften. He was as corrupt and greedy a bastard as anyone Jair had ever met. More than most, in his experience. It took a lot to stand out in Jair¡¯s memory after so long, but seeing the man¡¯s face instantly brought their mutual loathing back to sharp focus, memories resurfacing that Jair thought he¡¯d long cast aside. The headmaster¡¯s casual belittlement and snide asides and constant reminders that Jair was an inherently lesser being who didn¡¯t deserve to breathe the academy¡¯s air were only the foundation of their animosity. Scholarship student. As if hard work could ever make up for not being born to wealthy parents. If not for one very important thing, he¡¯d gladly have never set foot in this place again. He instinctively tried to turn his head to search out Raina, but for as long as the world remained frozen, Jair was frozen with it. Only for a moment. The sword¡¯s silver glow danced down Jair¡¯s arm, flickering in eagerness to reunite with its physical form. Sound and movement resumed the instant they touched. His sword flared up like a small sun. The blank unimprinted soulsword transformed into the final ascendant form he¡¯d so painstakingly created. The standard thin blade broadened to its familiar reforged width, the scattered pearls and imprint of Jair¡¯s body visible in perfect reflection of its future shape. Jair felt a soul-deep strain as material formed from nothing, manifested by sheer necessity with the strength of the sword¡¯s power. He swayed unsteadily, sudden weariness hitting him in a smothering wave, fighting the giddy adrenaline in a nauseating combination of conflicting sensations. New initiates traditionally spoke some ritual words and solemnly walked across the platform, but right now Jair was far too full of energy and relief and life and ecstatic chaos energy to do any such thing. There¡¯d be plenty of time for reasonable action in future reversions. His eyes flicked over to one particular section of the audience, finding her immediately. Raina Serin leaned eagerly forward, smiling ear to ear, untidy gold hair falling across her face, firegold eyes flitting between Jair and the fading glow of his sword. He could read the question in her eyes, the excitement for his achievement, curiosity over the unexpected lightshow. Raina. His one true friend and faithful companion from those early years. Someone he hadn¡¯t seen in a hundred lifetimes, yet whose spirit and friendship he¡¯d never forget. The ceremony had stalled, everyone standing around awkwardly, staring at the flaring light of Jair¡¯s soulsword. Concern furrowed Raina¡¯s brow, eyes intent as she tried to puzzle out what was happening on stage. Seeing her face again stirred up long-buried pain. Unless he successfully intervened, Raina Serin had four more days to live. He wasn¡¯t prepared for the intensity of the emotion that hit him, nostalgia and hope and dread and determination all jumbled together. Things would be different this time. His grip tightened and Maelstrom gleamed brilliantly in his hand, as though aware of its position as the bringer of new possibility. Headmaster Larenok tried to pull the weapon back toward himself, instinctively grasping at the power within his reach. Jair snatched it away with a sharp ring of metal on metal. ¡°Ah.¡± Larenok shook himself and completed the ritual welcome. ¡°Having received the class of Mageblade¡ª¡± Jair didn¡¯t wait for him to finish. He jammed Maelstrom into the ceremonial sheath he wore at his side for the occasion and ran for the audience. Why was his heart still racing like he was in a war zone? Why did everything feel distant and unreal? He hopped down from the stage, ignoring the height, and automatically tried to channel Lift to slow his descent. The spell didn¡¯t activate, of course. Couldn¡¯t have any existing spells imprinted before receiving the class. The first years of mageblade training made students eligible for the class itself, the later years would build on that blank foundation. He crumpled into a roll as he hit the ground harder than his young and untrained body was ready for. At this point in time he¡¯d been fully unimprinted as well as physically weak. His years-younger manabody was blunt and unstable, a Jair-shaped block of wood uncarved, a landscape untamed. Flows of power that in the future rushed so easily through channels long imprinted now had nowhere to go and nothing to guide them. Yeah¡­ he¡¯d have to do something about that in the coming weeks. Raina was on her feet before he reached her, the other spectators baffled and murmuring as he shoved past them to her row. She hurried to meet him, concern clear on her face. ¡°Jair, what¡¯s¡ª¡° He grabbed her in a hug, holding her warm and close and tight. "Jair?" Softer now, concerned. "You were dead." His voice choked, and with effort he pulled himself together and stepped back. She gripped his arms, staring at him in alarm. ¡°What do you mean, dead?¡± "Not here. Too many people.¡± Jair couldn¡¯t stay in the crowded dome, he needed to get away. The initiation ceremony was excruciating enough to stand through even without feeling trapped and threatened. Even now, the instinct to run, to fight, to lash out at anything in his way¡­ He needed to think. He needed a plan. For so long, the desperate hope of ascending his blade had been the sole focus of his existence. He hardly knew what to do now he had accomplished the impossible. Well. Figure out how to do the next impossible thing, obviously. And for that, he needed to remind himself of what he had to work with. He couldn¡¯t stop looking over her face, her eyes, her hair. It all looked not quite right, he''d been gone so long. When taken as an aggregate, it was unquestionably Raina. Her energy, her spirit, her face, her body. But he''d forgotten the specifics of how she looked. The person she was lived on in his memory long after the details had dissipated. ¡°Let¡¯s go to the apartment.¡± ¡°But¡­ the ceremony?¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. Come with me."
3 - Intention To retreat now is reckless folly. The war cannot be won but still it must be fought.
Stepping outside the amphitheater¡¯s glass dome and onto the black stone path leading to the student housing village felt simultaneously familiar and stifling. Jair had to resist a visceral urge to hunch, scurry, hide¡ªhabits he¡¯d thought completely left behind returned in full force. The impulse irritated him. Jair was no longer the scared, defiant, uncertain child he had been when he lived this life before. He certainly wouldn¡¯t be playing out the same roles. He suppressed the leftover instincts without so much as a hitch in his step, emerging into the familiar heat of the inner academy grounds. Raina followed along without protest, though she glanced back at the assembly more than once. The central crystal dome may be the obvious highlight of the Astralla Institute, with its lush incongruous greenery visible even from outside in stark contrast to the dust and bleached sandstone, but the rest of the place did its best to compete. The library towers dominated the skyline to the south, each an intricate construct of pale stone and metal woven together so tightly you could hardly tell where one material ended and the other began, the subtle patterns of mana containment buried within layers of ornamentation. Jair could pick them out only because he¡¯d once spent years studying such constructs in hope that knowledge alone could change things. Most walkways were edged with hardy shrubberies in purples and browns set against the vivid black of the walkway stones and the bright white of the buildings. Though sand was omnipresent, subtle spellwork corralled it away from anywhere students would need to walk, leaving the paths pristine and the air above them distinctly clear. Seeing something as precious as mana spent just to keep walkways clear had stunned him when he first arrived. Now it didn¡¯t even register as unusual. He¡¯d seen far more extravagant displays, and mana was hardly the rarity in cities as in fringe villages and remote outposts. The outer walls were more decorative than defensive, dark sandstone which provided a stunning backdrop behind the ivory and crystal of the thin square towers interspersed frequently enough to give off a fortress aesthetic. ¡°Jair, what¡¯s going on? This isn¡¯t like you. Did something¡­¡± she trailed off, edging away from anything that might seem like she was prying into his soulspell, but he knew what she was thinking. It wasn¡¯t unheard of for a soulspell to attune instantly, but such instances were closer to once in a lifetime than once in a generation. How else would he suddenly know she was going to die, but with some kind of prophecy soulspell? Martial mage classes were the second most likely to develop temporal observation abilities of some description. ¡°You''re not in immediate danger, but¡­¡± Jair trailed off, torn between the desire to hug her again and never let go, tell her everything throughout the uncountable lifetimes they¡¯d been apart until he ran out of breath, or not say anything until he knew things were going to be different. They¡¯d been so young. Practically children. Despite being one of those who attended due to ridiculously wealthy parents, she was the kindest and most compassionate person in the entire school. Now there was a gulf of experience between them that he wasn¡¯t sure could ever be bridged. That would be up to her, in the end. He had a promise to fulfill. Maelstrom hummed in his soul, a silver fire that promised hope. A new factor to change everything. ¡°But?¡± Raina prompted. ¡°Give me a few minutes.¡± Raina nodded, unasked questions clear in her expression, and didn¡¯t speak until they arrived at their front door. "Inside?" "Inside," Jair agreed. He stopped as the familiar furniture triggered a bittersweet wave of nostalgia. The round dining table in the entryway to the right at which they¡¯d written so many homework assignments, the little kitchen area to the left that he¡¯d all but forgotten about. The open half-wall to the livingroom with its matched sofas and the low worktable where they¡¯d done so much reading and debating. He''d spent so many terrible years here¡­ and so many great ones too. So many moments he wouldn''t trade for anything. Unconsciously, his eyes flicked back to Raina. She¡¯d been there for him when he had nothing and no one, protected him when there was nowhere else to care. Now it was his turn. She was watching him, caught his glance. "Why are you smiling like that?" "Like what?" "Like you''re about to cry." He shook his head. He didn¡¯t think he could stop smiling if he tried. "You¡¯re here. You¡¯re alive.¡± When he didn¡¯t elaborate, Raina finally cleared her throat. ¡°So, why am I in danger?¡± "What do you remember about your mother?" Raina blinked at the jump in topic. ¡°My mother?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Is this really the time¡­?¡± ¡°It¡¯s important.¡± Shrugging, she leaned back, eyes going distant as she furrowed her brows to think. "I remember her singing to me at night, so I could sleep. I remember the way she looked whenever anything went wrong, how she shifted into this focused teaching mode. The door of the practice back at the oasis, how it caught the manalight¡­" She opened one eye to squint at him. ¡°What¡¯s this about?¡± ¡°Did she ever mention having enemies?¡± ¡°No, never. She was a healer. Who could she possibly have as an enemy?¡± Jair leaned forward. ¡°Ryenzo Draconis.¡± Raina¡¯s hand went to her chest, mouth formed a trembling ¡®oh¡¯. ¡°Exactly. Ryenzo is absolutely determined to kill you, and I know of no way to prevent it. For each method I prevent, another is ready to hand. Antimagic, poison, fire, stabbing, dismembering¡­ and, unfortunately, Ryenzo is entirely mad. I can¡¯t get any explanation except the mantra ¡®kill the child, break the mother.¡¯ So whatever else Tamma Serin did in her life, she has made at least one implacable enemy.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t¡­ What do you mean, prevent? What could you possibly¡­ How long has this been¡­ how have you¡­?¡± words failed her and Raina shook her head helplessly. ¡°The full story would take too long to tell, and right now I need to assess what we have to work with. Give me a week and I¡¯ll answer any questions you have after.¡± ¡°No chance this is an elaborate joke?¡± She looked over at him, without much hope. He shook his head once. Raina sighed. ¡°I didn¡¯t think so, but¡­ this is insane.¡± ¡°Yes. Ryenzo is a matriarch. Not much a new initiate can do. At least, not until now.¡± Jair patted Maelstrom. ¡°That¡¯s why I have this. I¡¯m hoping to change the power balance in our favor.¡± Raina swallowed, her eyes drawn to Jair''s ascended sword. "You''re putting a lot of hope on one item." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. "It''s the only thing I have. I couldn''t change anything else, not enough to make a difference." The words came out bitter. "No matter what I say, who I say it to, or how much I try to change things.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯s something.¡± Jair leaned back, lolling his head sideways on the back of the sofa to watch Raina''s profile. She had that look of adorable concentration on her face, trying to puzzle it through. ¡°We can come up with a plan. You can warn people. Recruit allies." Jair laughed humorlessly. ¡°Who¡¯s going to be willing to go up against the Draconis for you? They¡¯re left alone for good reason. Any time I¡¯m straightforward about the threat, the answer is invariably ¡®run¡¯ or ¡®just leave her to die.¡¯ Often both.¡± Raina shivered, huddling smaller in the corner of the sofa. ¡°So I¡¯m dead,¡± she whispered. ¡°That¡¯s all there is to it.¡± It broke his heart all over again. ¡°No.¡± He took her hand in his. ¡°I will find a way. This will not stand.¡± ¡°But, you¡¯re right, I¡¯ve heard the stories. Even the Hyperion would hesitate to defend me. Draconis matriarch. There¡¯s nothing anyone can do to stand up to something like that. I may as well walk into the channel as try to fight Ryenzo.¡± ¡°Which is why we can¡¯t count on anyone but ourselves and what connections we can use without directly revealing what we¡¯re doing.¡± Jair crossed to the shelves along the back wall of the livingroom next to his bedroom and pulled down several stacks of oversized drawing paper. ¡°So for the next few days, we¡¯re going to be mapping out exactly who and what we have to work with.¡± ¡°What could there possibly be?¡± Jair smiled. ¡°A lot more than you think.¡± He spread out the pages and they got to work. At one point, Denor Veshin¡ªone of their classmates and an old friend of Raina''s¡ªcame by to deliver her invitation to observe the annual student exhibition, but she made her excuses and sent Denor away. "I''m surprised they''re still going ahead with it," she commented, glancing at Jair. "I''d have expected your disruption threw things off a bit more than that." "House Veshin are very proud of their traditions. It takes more than this to stop them showing off." "Says you." "Yes, says me. Which is how you know it''s serious." He pulled another sheet of paper to the top of the stack. ¡°But, speaking of Denor¡­¡± Three days later, Jair and Raina sat atop one of the outer wall towers with oversized sheets of art paper spread out around them. Some pages were blank, others covered with writing or diagrams. The corners and edges were held down by an assortment of triangular chunks of stone in a variety of colors to prevent the wind from stealing their pages away. Sandstone from the wall and other buildings was most prominent, but a collection of more exotic materials from the other Veori cities provided variety. All were remnants Jair had carved with Maelstrom during his tests of the sword''s capabilities. The ascended soulsword sliced through sandstone as easily as wood or clay. Less mundane materials, such as the mana-reinforced glass of the dome, put up more of a fight. He could stab through it with enough force behind his attack, but the sword couldn¡¯t simply cut it with impunity. It took a few slices to make a deep enough gash. The silver and steel lattice that formed the walls of the twin library towers resisted even more strongly. A full lunge could drive Maelstrom¡¯s point through several inches of the material, but a swing with any less than his full strength barely scratched it. It took almost twenty attacks before he cut through to the other side. He¡¯d made no preparations, spoken to no one but Raina. There''d be no time in future loops, since conveying everything would take days Jair couldn¡¯t afford to waste in discussion, but as a breath between storms, it was exactly what he needed right now. "Upperclassmen?" Jair wrote down the names. "Most of them won''t give me the time of day. I''m not even top of the class. It would take longer than I have to convince them that I''m worth their time." "Money?" Jair chuckled. "Always your favorite solution. If you can¡¯t convince them, bribe them." Raina shrugged. "Use what you¡¯ve got." "I don''t think I could break into their groups quickly enough. It''s not really worth it anyway." He began to add new names in the column opposite, drawing lines between individuals and their siblings. "Between our class year and the ones following, almost all the families of the upperclassman are covered. Kael Falkon, his brother Irom is initiated with me. Korin Rhebina was in your initiation, and I can leverage her either individually or as an in with her family.¡± ¡°You¡¯d trust a Rhebina?¡± ¡°As long as we pay them enough." "What about Lauta Hasti? We''ve seen her in the library often enough, she might be inclined to help since we''re all academically inclined." "What would she be able to do? Hasti may do bulk manufacturing, but the time it takes to set something up would be more than we have available." "More money?" Jair gave an empty laugh. "Some problems, money cannot solve. We can''t force a lunar passage to appear regardless of who we pay off, we can''t bribe the seascourge to let us cross the channels to go recruiting. The people within Veor itself are all we have to work with." "What about resources?" "Most of what I need is manpower. You can buy me the spell materials I''ll need, and I''ve spent enough years practicing the necessary constructs to get them done in two days. We''ll need to order custom armor, and if we want to set up any traps, that will be another additional expense, but I''m not sure if traps are going to be useful." "That anti-magic power does make things difficult." "Indeed." Jair returned to writing out the names of their classmates, dividing them into three columns. "Why are you separating them like that? Shouldn''t Veshin be over there?" "This column," Jair tapped the first, "are the very important ones. I absolutely have to establish a connection with these families if I''m going to gain access to their resources." "What resources are those?" Jair smiled, and went down the list to explain. ¡°The problem is convincing everyone to work with me. Which, unfortunately, very few of them are inclined to do. Even with your intervention, you are a known ally of mine and thus biased." "I am not biased!" "Biased or not, your word only counts for so much." "But here," Raina tapped a set of names. "We practically grew up together! Why would they mistrust my judgment?" "How long has it been since you were back to the oasis? Longer than it takes to pick up an order or run an inspection." Raina''s contemplative pause, complete with uncertain frown, was enough of an answer. "See? You don¡¯t know. I guarantee you, they don''t either. You may not be a stranger, but you¡¯re not a trusted ally whose word carries the weight of years." "Then what''s your attack angle?" "I don''t know. I''ll just seize any opportunity I can find, and see how things change." "Things will be different this time, you think?" "Undoubtedly. I don''t know by how much. But if I can handle Ryenzo on my own, that would be the best. Unfortunately, without any of my imprints, Maelstrom is all I have. I don''t know if one sword will be enough, however powerful." "It will be." Raina''s eyes shone with conviction. Confidence, so pure and untainted. She truly believed in him, even when he struggled to believe in himself. ¡°I wish I could solve things once and for all, but there''s no magical solution that fixes everything. Even this¡­" he manifested Maelstrom and flipped it in the air, tried to catch it but fumbled it onto the floor¡ªcurse his untrained younger body¡ªthen recalled the sword to his hand in a flash of silver light. "After so much and so long, it''s nothing but a tool. A means to an end. This next part is going to be just as hard. I can¡¯t stop now. I¡¯ve come too far to stop.¡± ¡°Jair, it¡¯s okay. Breathe. I won¡¯t be left behind. I don¡¯t want you to be alone.¡± Raina''s eyes flashed dangerously, lighting up with determination. "I don''t care how impossible it is. I''m going to find a way." "First you¡¯d have to survive." "No. Even if I don''t." She raised her chin, staring at him with all her regal poise. "I''m not going to let you leave me behind again." "Never by choice. I''ve missed you," he said softly. "More than you could imagine." "I can imagine quite a lot." ¡°Not this much.¡± She looked into his eyes, expression turning contemplative. ¡°I suppose not.¡± It was a long time before he replied, very low, ¡°And I hope you never do.¡± They sat in silence for a time, then Raina said, "We won''t be doing this again, will we?" "No. Not for a long time." "I think¡­ I understand." Jair nodded wordlessly. "It''s okay. Do whatever you have to. You can explain the rest once it¡¯s over." "I''m never going to lie to you." "Then don''t lie. Just put it off. Tell me you''ll give me the answers in a week or a month or a year. However long it takes." Jair smiled, faint but genuine. "I will. I promise, I won¡¯t leave you behind." They sat quietly, side by side, watching the sunset Jair knew by heart. Yet somehow, this time, the sky seemed more vibrant. The familiar pattern of the tiny distant clouds forming and disappearing without rain seemed to him a beautiful thing today, rather than a reminder of tragic inevitability. A whole new horizon. Nothing changed, but everything different. It wouldn¡¯t be easy, but at least for this moment, the desert wind tasted like hope.
4 - Regression ¡°I¡¯ve always known it would be hard, but I wasn¡¯t fully prepared for the reality.¡±
Jair knew to the second when their time would be up. He¡¯d lived this week so many times, it wasn¡¯t even something he thought about. A constant countdown he couldn¡¯t escape. The angle of the light, the sound of the wind, the distant voices of students. He hated that knowledge. Hated that he automatically brought their conversation to a natural end just in time to see Raina to laugh one final time. Then the air trembled and the ground shook and Ryenzo¡¯s wrath descended upon them. Their house was torn apart in an instant. Jair ran forward as the massive claws wrapped themselves carelessly around Raina¡¯s fragile form, crushing her whole right side and cutting deep into her chest as the dragon roared its mantra of destruction. The sounds would be incomprehensible to anyone else present, but in his many attempts to reason with the mad creature Jair had become one of the few humans who could fluently understand Draconic. He couldn¡¯t exactly speak it, not without drastic adjustment to his body and some additional constructs for good measure, but if he could hear it, he¡¯d understand it. ¡°KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER!¡± He jumped and stabbed forward with Maelstrom, driving the weapon into the claw with all his meager strength. Ryenzo¡¯s burning green blood mingled with Raina¡¯s, dripping down the oversized claws, but the dragon didn¡¯t seem to even notice. Ryenzo flew higher and the force of the wind drove Jair to the ground beneath. People emerged from the buildings at the sound. Several of the other structures had been crushed or collapsed by Ryenzo¡¯s claws or tail as the dragon made its approach. Shouts and screams. People pointed and stared in shock, while others fled toward the transit platform. The dragon circled the academy, ignoring the tiny sword sticking out of its claw, and screamed its vengeance until it echoed from the walls and resonated through the cliff below. ¡°KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER!¡± Once certain it had everyone¡¯s attention, the dragon tossed Raina into the air. It could have let her fall¡ªcould even have laid her down gently and allowed them to send for healers¡ªand she wouldn¡¯t survive more than a few minutes. But Ryenzo Draconis was here to make a point. Albeit one that even Jair didn¡¯t understand. Ryenzo¡¯s tail came around and slapped the falling heiress as the dragon flew by, throwing her upward in an. Then Ryenzo made a tight circle, the dragon¡¯s overly long and incredibly flexible neck darted down, and its teeth chomped down on the helpless tiny human. Jair looked away, fists clenched, eyes burning. He knew it was coming, but that never made it any easier. For a few days, he¡¯d allowed himself to pretend that this could be simple, that a little more information and strategizing could do the impossible. He knew better. The hard part was only just beginning. He activated Temporal Reversion and fell into the past in a flash of golden light.
Try as he might, Jair couldn''t calm himself down. He''d reverted, ready to start at the beginning. Or, so he¡¯d thought. Nothing could change the fact that he was standing in a group of people he didn''t trust and had to stay there for hours. His body refused to believe that he was safe. Every bump or shift had his hand going to Maelstrom, ready to fight for his life. Headmaster Larenok would steal Maelstrom if given the slightest opportunity. He could see it in the man¡¯s eyes. Enemy. It was all he could do to refrain from attacking the man on the spot. Jair lived for so long as a fugitive among enemies, outnumbered beyond what even the greatest archmage could hope to survive, secrecy and swift retaliation his only advantages. To stand exposed in the open felt wrong. To stand unmoving with this many people so close felt even worse. He dismissed Maelstrom back into his soul, removing it from reach, and turned stiffly to walk away. Someone grabbed him from behind. He reflexively shifted his grip, manifesting the sword in his hand. He stabbed it backward as he used the momentum of the man''s attempt to spin him around to his advantage. Only after he completed the turn and saw Professor Notek clutching his bleeding abdomen did Jair recognize the touch hadn¡¯t been an attack at all. Oops. Jair dismissed his sword back to his soul and stepped to Notek¡¯s side, helping the injured man to the ground. "Do you have any apprentices you can send for, Professor?" "What''s wrong?" Notek asked instead of answering, though his voice bore the strain. "You seem to be under a great deal of stress." Jair laughed softly, humorlessly. "Of course the healer is more concerned with his attacker''s mental well-being than himself bleeding out in front of half the continent''s elite." "You weren''t trying to kill me. You were trying to disable me as quickly as possible, probably in precursor to escape, if I''m reading you right." "Not this time. I''m done running. I''m here to make a stand." Notek searched his face only a moment before nodding. "Good. I''ve always said you were the only thing holding you back." The ground shifted beneath them, the stage breaking apart as the stone foundation deep below the sand rose up, splitting Jair from Notek and forcing them apart. Firdon, elemental stone master. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt anyone¡ª¡± ¡°Too late for that,¡± Notek grunted. ¡°Give it a minute. You¡¯ll be good as new.¡± Golden light burst forth as he erased the past moments. With so little distance to fall, Temporal Reversion was a simple flash, gone before he could more than perceive its existence. Jair arrived instantly back where he¡¯d begun. Larenok holding out his sword, Jair¡¯s own hand touching the hilt, time frozen as the stowaway silver spark in his soul traveled down his neck and along his arm to reunite with its past self. He forced his breaths to stay steady, though it was all he could do not to stab anyone. Any thought of preparing to be charming and ingratiate himself with the gathered nobility disappeared. Survive, escape. Jair needed to run, get to high ground, get behind a wall. He was exposed here, vulnerable, surrounded by enemies. They''re not enemies, he reminded himself. Even the adversarial ones. Not enemies, only obstacles. Resources. Potential allies. He couldn''t get his heartbeat under control. Couldn''t shift himself out of the mindset that left him ready to fight at a moment''s notice. Deep breath. Slow. This was a school. Even if there was a threat of attack, the teachers were all at least advanced in their class. They could protect him. The lie grated; he couldn''t convince himself to even pretend to believe it. Old bitterness threatened to drown him. To distract himself, he tried to focus on the people in attendance. He hadn''t memorized the exact makeup of the small crowd of parents, friends, and relatives of the advancing initiates. Some were so insignificant that he couldn''t bring to mind a single thing about them, despite staring right at them. Others, he knew their past and future so clearly he could predict their entire week flawlessly. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. One thing he didn''t remember was so many people focusing on him. Pointing. Whispering. Staring. It made him feel all the more on display, on edge, threatened. Conspiring against him. No. He knew better. He was just another student. No one here knew what he was capable of. They had no reason to come after him. No money, no powerful allies, only a moderate quantity of blackmail material against people who wouldn¡¯t be able to make a difference anyway. No spells. Only a sword of unknown qualities to separate him from any ordinary student. Even if that sword was spilling silver light everywhere like a miniature manaforge. The future haunted him, paralyzing in its complexity. He had to do something. With a deep breath, Jair pushed away the discomfort and yanked his sword from the headmaster¡¯s hand. He held up the weapon, still flaring unsteadily with pulsing silver light, above his head in a dramatic flourish. ¡°Hello, Astralla Mageblade Institute!¡± Jair announced. ¡°I¡¯ve come from the future with a grave warning!¡± His actions elicited gasps and confused muttering from the audience of assembled nobility. ¡°Welburne!¡± the headmaster exclaimed, an angry scowl on his face. ¡°What are you¡ª¡± Jair instantly had his sword pointed at the man¡¯s throat, cold gaze daring him to argue. ¡°Larenok, shut up. I will be talking now.¡± Larenok stepped back, beginning to draw his own ceremonial sword. Jair ignored him and turned to project his voice out over the gathered audience with full dramatic impact. "I know what you''re thinking. Sit down and shut your mouth, swamp brat, you don''t belong here anyway, who do you think you are? So I''m going to make a few things clear from the beginning. This isn''t real. None of this, none of you. You only exist as long as I don''t choose to erase your existence. So perhaps before starting your blustering speeches about dignity and useless compliance, consider that I hold the fate of your world at my discretion." Naturally, several overblown nobles took immediate issue with Jair''s proclamation of godhood, and the room got very loud for a few minutes. ¡°Welburne?¡± Professor Derall asked, confused, while several of the other teachers made to step forward. Healer Notek among them, Jair noted. Jair swung the sword around at each of them. His playful tone dropped, voice hard. ¡°I¡¯ve become a blademaster, an archmage, and the first true master of the fourth tier. Right now, I have something to say, and you¡¯ll stay quiet and listen.¡± He stood with unflinching confidence as he stared down the gathered teachers. Half of them turned to Larenok for direction, the other half simply stood back to observe, their advance paused for the moment. Jair relaxed slightly. He gave his sword a casual spin, the wavy blade continuing to flare erratic silver light, and his cheery smile returned. ¡°Once I¡¯m finished, we can duel if you want. I¡¯m mildly handicapped without my imprints, but I¡¯m sure we can even the odds somehow.¡± ¡°This is absurd,¡± Larenok blustered. ¡°Stand down, Welburne!¡± ¡°No.¡± Jair leveled his sword at the headmaster. The cold hatred in his eyes made the older man take an involuntary step back. ¡°You never respected me or my achievements even one single moment of your life. In fact, you spent the entirety of my time here making my life as miserable as possible. I¡¯ve made my peace with that. You¡¯re a corrupt bastard, but you¡¯re not worth my enmity. Give it a week and I¡¯ll play your stupid games. I know the only way to get through this properly is to fit my perceived role and work my way up ¡®the right way.¡¯ Right now though? You stay out of my way.¡± Larenok opened his mouth to protest. He didn¡¯t get out a single word. Jair lunged, one hand slapping the headmaster¡¯s mouth shut, the other pressing his sword to the man¡¯s throat. He put every ounce of weight into his stare as he regarded the man who¡¯d once been his worst adversary but now seemed only an irrelevant obstacle. ¡°I am not the boy you know. Understand?¡± Larenok nodded, swallowed, and slowly raised his hands. ¡°Good!¡± Jair twirled his sword one more time, then spun to face the audience. His white robes flared around him, smile returning once again. ¡°As I was saying¡ª¡± The ground cracked and split, a spear of stone rising up between Jair and the teachers, then spreading out into a wall. Firdon, again. Of course. ¡°I¡¯m a time traveler from the far future,¡± Jair shouted over the interruption. ¡°There will be three great disasters which I am here to prevent, the first of which begins right here at the Astralla Institute.¡± The stone behind him grew rapidly into a solid cube around him, fully boxing him in. Reflexively he tried to activate Lift and Impose Weight on the ceiling at the same time, which should crush the stone into powder given enough energy, but once again his nonexistent spell imprints failed to activate. Deep breath. Not here to fight. Don¡¯t kill anyone, be diplomatic. Fresh from twenty thousand days of endless repeating war, he wasn¡¯t in the best mindset to be adhering to social constructs. He was here to make allies and take care of the one person who still mattered to him. Focusing inward, he activated Temporal Reversion. The last few minutes disappeared in a flash of golden light. Reverting again, he went through the motions and as soon as he''d finished his own parts in the initiation, he sat down in the middle of the new initiates, sword in his lap, fists pressed to the ground on either side, and tried to get a hold on himself. He couldn''t. Not right now. He didn¡¯t know how much time had passed, but looked up when someone approached. "Are you alright?" Notek asked, quiet to not interrupt the ceremony as it continued to its next students. "Of course not." Jair answered calmly, though he felt anything but. "My soulspell is to reverse time. I''ve lived a thousand lifetimes since you last saw me." Notek had nothing to say. He only stared, speechless, eyes glancing at the other newly-initiated students standing uncomfortably around them. Right. Veor considered it the height of impropriety to discuss one¡¯s soulspell in public. Jair could strip and dance across the stage and cause less discomfort. Jair had no patience for it. He waved his hand. "I can undo it all, doesn''t matter if they know." Notek lowered his voice even further. "You should talk to someone." "I will." "Are there any other side effects to your soulspell unlocking?" "None that impact me now. Please leave me alone for a while. I¡¯ve spent years in a warzone and I need to settle myself." Notek hesitated, but nodded and stood to go. Jair caught the telltale spring-green flash of light from his eyes as the healer activated his soulspell. Whatever Notek saw, he chose to ignore it, returning to his place in the line behind Headmaster Larenok. Jair ground his fist into the dirt, breathing hard as he fought the past and future both trying to tear him apart. He needed to calm himself, not add to the existing tumult of emotions accompanying such a drastic regression. "You''re even more pathetic than usual today, I see." Jair didn''t need to look up to recognize the speaker. Lian Teretho, fellow third-class initiate, and the one most determined to make Jair''s life as miserable as he could manage. Old instincts warned him to cower, hide. Jair¡¯s early loops at the academy had not been pleasant. Even in later loops, once he learned how to play the sycophant and mitigate the worst of it, he had no happy memories after this initiation. But that wasn''t who he was any more. Without thinking, he launched himself from the ground and slammed bodily into the young heir, knee driving into the boy''s gut, elbow coming around to crunch his nose. Lian wasn''t expecting such a sudden, vicious retaliation. The Jair he thought he knew would never have dared. He crumpled to the ground, Jair on top of him. "You really picked a bad day to do this," Jair told him, as Lian choked in shock and coughed helplessly where he lay. Before either of them could do anything else, the ground shifted beneath them and heaved aside, stone reaching up to grab Jair''s ankle and drag him away from Lian. He distantly heard shouting. Fire burned through him, the need to keep moving, to fight back, to attack until there could be no possibility of retaliation. To win, fully and undeniably. Tear them apart, body and soul, like he''d done to Sekir at Meliarn. Lian wasn¡¯t weak and he wasn¡¯t stupid, despite appearances. If Jair hadn¡¯t taken him so thoroughly off guard it could have been a very different outcome. A threat left behind was a weapon handed to your enemy. No. These weren''t his enemies. They were students, future mageblades, essential to Veor''s security in the years to come. And right now Jair was too impotent to do anything about them even if he wanted to. As the stone mage dragged him away, he closed his eyes and dove into his soulspell. It was hard to convince himself to behave with restraint right now. When he''d put years of repetition into perfecting a sequence of events, when being forced to revert would lose him days or even weeks of progress, the cost was too high. But right now, at the very beginning again, he had absolutely nothing to lose by doing whatever he wanted. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Jair spent the next dozen loops being forcefully reminded that, though an incensed archmage would bring this entire academy to its knees, right now he was only an incensed newly-initiated year-three student with the memory of being an archmage. For all his knowledge and future-potential power, here and now he was a nobody from nowhere being uppity. Twice, someone stepped a little too close, or came up in his blind spot, and he reflexively lashed out. Hard to explain to the teachers why he was violently incapacitating his fellow students. He reverted to the start again, which only prolonged the experience. Anger would not serve him here. He couldn¡¯t force anyone to listen to him. Jair the new initiate was no one worth the time. Like it or not, he had to at least pretend to play by the rules. He¡¯d survived a solid week of driving himself to the very edges of his capabilities, repeated so many hundreds of times he lost count. He could survive one morning of dull speeches without losing his mind. Probably.
Silver flared as his sword morphed into its ascended form. Jair spun to face the crowd, raising the sword above his head. ¡°The future! I have seen it!¡± Jair collapsed to the floor dramatically, staring straight up at the sky with his best wide-eyed imitation of mad seers. He couldn''t force people to listen to him, but he still had to try. Couldn''t forgive himself if he didn''t at least give it a try. Or that was his rationalization. If he were honest with himself, he was incredibly tired and unbearably frustrated. The sight of this place stirred up visceral instincts of submission and concealment that he''d thought long overcome. His own body and mind were betraying him, reverting to weakness in more ways than muscle and mana, and that only made him angrier. ¡°If you¡¯re from the future, why don¡¯t you prove it!¡± The shout from the audience snapped Jair back to the present. ¡°Easy.¡± He proceeded to rattle off a list of events that would take place over the next several hours, all independently confirmable and impossible for him to have arranged. ¡°...and the price of frostvine rope is about to significantly increase, but that one I can claim direct responsibility for.¡± He ended with a smile and flourishing bow. ¡°Go forth, confirm my words. Come to me once you believe me.¡± He hopped off the stage and started for the dome¡¯s nearest exit. Logically, reasonably, Jair should avoid making a scene. That was the plan. He should delve deep into his memory and pull up the information he¡¯d compiled over so many loops to navigate the social and political situation at the Astralla Mageblade Institute with grace and conniving. Play the part of an upcoming prodigy, keep his head down, and avoid causing unnecessary ripples. Which he would do. Later.
5 - Reintegration ¡°And you¡¯re sure there¡¯s nowhere we can run? Escape, even a few days longer?¡± ¡°Nowhere.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not ready.¡± ¡°Me neither.¡±
It took an embarrassingly long time, but Jair finally made it through the entirety of the initiation ceremony without doing anything to disrupt the affair. He still felt like a coiled spring packed down too tight, still felt like his body wasn''t his own, his manabody barely held together, but at least on the outside he looked calm and entirely mundane. Jair stood on the initiation stage within the crystal dome of the Astralla Mageblade Institute, surrounded by rare blooms and exotic greenery, holding the hilt of a sword like none other. Across from him stood Headmaster Larenok, who greedily looked up and down the blade, uncertainty on his face, but desire in his eyes, his hand reflexively tilting the silver-glowing sword back toward himself as its form shifted. Jair instinctively corrected his balance and moved with him, hand tightening on his newly ascended sword. He didn¡¯t trust Larenok for a moment. Ordinarily, Jair would take the sword, say some words of ritual acceptance, and go stand with the others who¡¯d already received their class. But ordinarily, he didn¡¯t set off a lightshow that surpassed even the headmaster¡¯s power. ¡°You? How? What is this?¡± Larenok hissed, his scowl more pronounced than ever. For a long awkward moment, they simply stared at each other, neither relinquishing their hold on Jair¡¯s soulblade. People in the audience began to mutter and shift, trying to figure out what was happening. Jair refrained from lunging forward to run the man through. That would be impolitic. Larenok refrained from running an Inspect on the weapon in the middle of the ceremony. That would be a breach of the Eldyhi Pact. Jair had no doubt the headmaster would freely break the accords if he ever thought he had the opportunity, but for now Maelstrom was safe. A third-tier soulsword would be the envy of any mageblade, even one forged using far less uncommon ingredients. Jair had ensured his weapon''s ascension had the best chance at surviving the trip back through time, putting absolutely everything he and Eythron could come up with into ensuring its strength and integrity. Professor Derall, one of the row of teachers standing behind the headmaster, pointedly cleared her throat as the interruption to the ceremony showed no signs of resolving. Headmaster Larenok gave a little start, drew himself up, and grudgingly proffered the sword''s hilt toward Jair once more. ¡°Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us.¡± Larenok spoke in the same practiced tone he''d used for all the others, despite his poorly-concealed greed. Jair tapped his forehead to deposit Maelstrom directly into his soul, to the mild amusement of those watching. Larenok grumbled, "Sheath your sword and go stand with the others," breaking strict protocol, technically, though Jair had broken it first. He retrieved Maelstrom and slid it into the ceremonial sheath he wore for the occasion, hiding most of its fluctuating silver glow from view. Little flashes of mana still flickered around the top of the protective sheath. People still stared, pointed, whispered. He''d begun to get used to it, to ignore the prickle of tension at being observed. Jair bowed with the minimum required courtesy. ¡°I gladly accept your greeting, honored master.¡± He spoke the ritual response without inflection, then turned and walked to join the other successful third-class initiates, standing off to the left of the stage in the grass by the outer hedge of the dome. ¡°Boris Domir, by mind and strength you have proven yourself worthy. Come forward.¡± A wave of polite applause accompanied the young man as he mounted the stage and Larenok began his recitations. Once securely in his place, Jair turned and met Raina''s eyes. She regularly caught him off guard, somehow, even after so long. So innocent. Curiosity, eagerness, only the vaguest hints of concern. Jair had no family in the audience, transit from the southern sandbogs was far too expensive for that. Only Raina had come to cheer for him, and he¡¯d never managed to save her. This time would be different. ¡°Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us.¡± Boris Domir joined Jair, standing proud. His mother, Lady of a minor sub-holding of Sectri Oasis, waved proudly. Jair rubbed at his chin, encountering only sparse fuzz instead of his usual neat beard. The longer he stood among his fellow students, the more out of place he felt. He didn¡¯t belong here, not in this academy, not in this form. He¡¯d lost the rhythms of this kind of life, drowned out in the constant war to progress. He could lead an army, infiltrate an empire, duel a magekiller to an even draw, but not as he was now. Everything about this younger self felt off. He doubted he could even run half a day without collapsing. His manabody was soft and fluffy, a cloud rather than directed rivers, permeating his form but directionless and unfocused. Any attempt to activate it only stirred the energy uselessly around inside him, no way to build up enough pressure to force it out into the world. Weak and unfinished, without even a single spell at his disposal. ¡°Zyn Cabas, by body and blood you have proven yourself worthy. Come forward.¡± Jair grimaced, clapping obligatorily along with the crowd as the young man in question mounted the stage. Now there was a name with plenty of negative memories associated with it. Not a primary antagonist like Larenok or Lian, but plenty of trouble. At least Larenok and Lian pretended to follow the rules. Once Zyn attuned his soulspell, he¡¯d fully exploit the measure of anonymity his erratic shapeshifting provided without the common sense to moderate his aggression. The slightest hint of a target Lian wanted dealt with and Zyn would do his best to ¡®take care of it¡¯. Urgh. Having to worry about things like social status again felt alien, unreal. One drawback of time travel. It didn¡¯t matter that he¡¯d outgrown this academy with its pettiness long ago. Until Jair regained his full strength, he¡¯d have to play by their rules, at least enough to get what he needed. He¡¯d all but forgotten how it felt to be this young, weak, and powerless. In every way, Jair had lived at the mercy of everyone around him, from the teachers and headmaster to his fellow students. Physically, magically, socially, economically. He didn¡¯t appreciate the reminder. His eyes drifted back to Raina. Only one thing mattered here right now. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. But first, he had to stand through two more hours of initiations, class unlocks, sword distribution, ritual greetings, and interminable speeches he could recite from memory. He could put those hours to good use. Today¡¯s ceremony contained countless opportunities for advancing his future goals. He need only decide which ones to act on. His choices today would determine the trajectory of the remainder of his time at the Astralla Institute, and quite possibly years afterwards. Assess. Plan. Unless he wanted to be stuck standing through this tedious ceremony again and again, he needed to get things right this time through. ¡°Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us.¡± Zyn came to join them, glancing at Jair only in passing, and Larenok started his next speech. This one would go on for a while. Nothing for it but to patiently endure. Jair absently began tracing the spell path for Reflect across the back of his hand with one finger, more to distract himself than anything. Even the simplest of spells took weeks to set in to usable condition, requiring sustained and repeated exercise of the manabody to imprint, and his foundational spells were among the most complicated designs he knew. Much like building up physical muscle, some things could only be rushed to a point. Until then, he¡¯d be magically no stronger than any other academy student who¡¯d just received their class. ¡°Lian Teretho, by mind and strength you have proven yourself worthy. Come forward.¡± Heir of House Teretho, and one of the primary obstacles to Jair¡¯s immediate future. ¡°Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us.¡± Jair watched Lian Teretho walk toward them. The young noble held his new soulsword firmly as he sought out his father¡¯s presence in the audience. Lord Kyson Teretho, however, was leaning across the woman beside him¡ªLady Yaja Morik-Teretho, his current wife and Lian¡¯s stepmother¡ªto talk enthusiastically with the father of another of the advancing initiates. Lian¡¯s grim expression of resignation showed he had expected this outcome, and he promptly turned to scowl in Jair¡¯s direction. Kyson had paid more attention to Jair¡¯s initiation than his own son¡¯s. Jair met Lian¡¯s eyes and gave him a bland smile. Lian¡¯s scowl darkened and he looked back toward the audience. Yep. He would make trouble, sooner rather than later. The longer Jair¡¯s gaze wandered across the assembled crowd, the more clearly details of his route through these months came back to him. Most children of the upper nobility would have advanced months ago in the first and second initiation groups, those like Raina who received augmented training since their youth. The lower nobility in attendance today couldn¡¯t rely on overwhelming wealth and had to network and scheme to maintain their social status¡ªthe sort who could be convinced to take a risk on an outsider if it seemed likely to benefit them. As much as Jair despised the nobility as a whole, he couldn¡¯t do everything alone. It took a particular strategy to become someone they¡¯d respect, despite not being wealthy himself. He surreptitiously ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it out a bit. The air of self-assurance required no pretense; if anything, it would be harder to hide his confidence. He¡¯d lived longer than many of these people¡¯s entire family line could boast, even if most of it was repeats of a month or two at a time. Jair prepared himself to play through familiar patterns, project just the right combination of ambitious and gullible, hard-working and desperate. Exactly the sort of potential pawn that would entice his targets to include him in their plans. He had no desire to waste his evening schmoozing with nobility, but this ceremony was unbearable enough to live through once. The sooner he could optimize today and lock it in, the better for his sanity. Again Jair found his eyes drawn to Raina, the anchor point around which he¡¯d built his future. The one hope he¡¯d never allowed himself to give up on, even when the challenges before him seemed insurmountable. It would all be worth it, if he could finally change things. Not just rearrange the pieces and prevent a couple wars, but alter what had always been set in stone. For that, he could put up with another few months of belittlement from idiots who thought putting him down made them anything but more pathetic. By the time the ceremony finally reached its end, Jair had scanned and sorted every student, teacher, and relevant visitor by their present and future abilities, attitude, and value. Larenok dismissed everyone to the tables of exotic snacks and drinks tastefully scattered around the area, filled and ready within moments of the final student¡¯s initiation, increasing the incentive to stay a bit longer and appreciate the academy¡¯s generosity. Only a few headed straight for their children. Most lingered in small clusters to continue gossiping. Larenok headed straight for Jair. "Welburne, I want a word with you." Jair hurried toward Raina, pretending he hadn''t heard the headmaster''s voice. There was enough of a babble to make it almost reasonable: parents congratulating children, bragging about their children to one another, or offering flattering compliments to each other. Jair himself was stopped almost before he''d begun, Lady Ielga clearly trying to introduce him to her daughter, but he brushed her off and pushed his way through the crowd. If he had his way, this would be the last time he ran day one. He wanted to do it right. Getting tangled up by Larenok''s attempts to get Maelstrom or the Ielga''s desire to grab him as a trophy husband were not part of that plan. Raina was also making her way toward him. She''d been advanced months previously in the second initiation, so she was only here to support him. ¡°Congratulations! I told you you had nothing to worry about. And your sword¡­¡± She couldn''t stop staring at Maelstrom. "What happened up there? I''ve never seen anything like it." "I''d love nothing more than to discuss it with you all afternoon, but right now I have a window of opportunity which is irreplaceable." "You alright?" "I''m fine. Well, I''m alive and you''re alive and I''m going to make it work. So. Fine. Yes." "Jair?" Definitely a worried note now. Jair waved it away. "There''s a few of the people here I''d like to introduce myself to while they''re available." Raina brightened. "I can introduce you, I know just about everyone here from one thing or another." "Thank you, but it''s best I do this myself. I''d like to present a certain image." "And you don''t want to be seen as my tagalong. Fair." She glanced at him sideways. "I wouldn''t have pictured you as the type to play political games. Where''s this coming from?" "My priorities have shifted. I''m not a child any more. It''s time to step up. I can''t live my entire life relying on others." "We''ve been adults for years, Jair." "Legally, perhaps. Until today, I''d consider myself to have been barely better than an infant." "And you know I don''t mind helping you out." "Thank you. I''ll be sure to impose on you afterwards. But right now, I have to go. I''ll meet you at the apartment after." Raina nodded, helping herself to a plateful of the provided snacks, and headed out of the dome. Jair called after her, "Don''t forget to practice your soulspell meditation!" "Shush, you. After the week we''ve had, we both deserve a break." Jair let it go. Not worth an argument, certainly not in public. Instead he turned with a perfect polite smile, ready to charm his way into the good graces of the lower elite of Veor''s nobility. The gathered nobility were in a uniquely accessible position at the moment. Jair moved away from the students as quickly as dignity allowed and strode toward the parents. But something about the atmosphere felt different. People turned to look at him before he reached them. Conversations trailed off as eyes followed him, whispers shifting in tone. Faces that had only ever shown disdain broke into smiles. ¡°Hello, young man, I don¡¯t think we¡¯ve been introduced yet.¡± Matricia Eldren took the first move, stepping forward to offer her hand. Jair kept his smile restrained to politeness as he went through the pleasantries, holding back deeper glee. Having an ascended soulblade from day one was always going to be a major game changer, but even his expectations paled against reality. Madame Eldren, though not technically the highest among the current group, held a social standing that in the past precluded her paying any attention to someone of no name like Jair, whatever he¡¯d tried. It normally required months of working his way through lower layers before meriting a glance from House Eldren. And here he was having a full conversation. She actually waved off others to continue their discussion. Or, interrogation, perhaps, since she seemed determined to find out everything she could about his background. He gave out his usual cover story, one which placed his family home outside of Veor and remote enough that no one would be able to disprove it without significant investigation. The conversation lasted only minutes before Kyson Teretho¡ªwho was the highest prestige among the current group¡ªinterrupted to claim Jair¡¯s attention for himself. All his familiar patterns may be obsolete now, but that only made him happier. So what if it might be more dangerous being known as a prodigy? Safety was boring. Who needed plans? This was a chance to experience something new.
6 - Opportunity Often the perfect variable in one situation is untenable in others.
"I''m sure you''ve met my son Lian by now?" "Indeed I have, Lord Teretho. He and I have been acquainted in the past." Mostly at the wrong end of Lian¡¯s fist, but the statement wasn''t a lie. Jair maintained a polite smile as he inclined his head in a half-bow, half-nod. Lord Kyson Teretho needed to be handled with cautious truthfulness. The man despised liars and sycophants, but it would set them at odds if Jair were too honest. Teretho¡¯s only son and heir was already underperforming academically. To accuse him of unseemly violence would cause a familial rift that interfered severely with Jair¡¯s integration. Lian would hold a grudge for years, but given an opportunity to join a rising cadre he could be convinced to let it be, regardless of how badly they clashed here and now. His eagerness for his father¡¯s favor made it easy to brush their past history aside with a few of the right nudges. There were even plenty of timelines in which Lian and Jair ended up at least pretending to be friends. Though with so much other attention on him, he may not need to resort to toadying up to Teretho at all. "Excellent, excellent. I''m sure the two of you can become even more closely acquainted now.¡± Lord Teretho reached into his pocket and withdrew a thin metallic circle. ¡°You should come to our oasis for Solaria. We hold a gathering there every year, you know." Jair''s eyebrows rose involuntarily as he accepted the disc, inscribed with the transit key for Teretho Oasis and the Solaria date a few weeks later. "Thank you, Lord Teretho. I will take it under consideration." The sheer superficiality of these people never ceased to astonish him. He¡¯d known that many opportunities were denied him because he was lacking the right connections, but to have it thrown in his face so blatantly that all his years of striving to be the best mageblade in the school were worth less than a thirty-second display of a flashy magical weapon galled him. It was a perfect reminder of how much he hated Veori nobility. Kyson Teretho normally took close to a year to ally with. Jair¡¯s record was five months, and that had required forgoing practically everything else. To receive a Solaria invitation at their first meeting? Just because of his shiny weapon? Unprecedented. Things truly had changed far beyond what Jair had anticipated. Judging by wealth and status alone, Teretho shouldn¡¯t be at such a mid-performance gathering. A casual glance at the others showed several envious faces, Matricia Eldren foremost among them. But of those present, Teretho was preeminent, and none dared to presume now that he''d staked his claim. At least, not while he stood among them. Luckily for the others in attendance, Kyson Teretho didn¡¯t stay long, not even bothering to offer obligatory congratulations to his son. Matricia Eldren took advantage of this to swoop in and offer Jair her own token for Solaria, a move which would force him to essentially choose a side come the festival. Then the two social powerhouses were gone, leaving Jair to the mercies of the rest of the squabbling nobility. A seemingly endless succession of introductions, congratulations, and fielding the subtle¡ªand not so subtle¡ªprodding about everything from Jair¡¯s family and background to his grades and ambitions for the future. Not all of them knew what exactly was going on, but they readily took Teretho''s cue and babbled on about how much they''d love for him to get to know their children. In this, Jair''s extensive knowledge of their futures served him in good stead. He doubted any of his classmates told their parents anything about him, so he was able to easily convey the impression of being a well-liked, perhaps even trusted, acquaintance. Some were familiar patterns, others required more innovation. "Why yes, Lady Sectri, Noelle is a lovely young lady. Is she still pursuing her interest in the kalini? I have yet to hear her play, but she seemed quite enthusiastic about it." He had heard her play in the future, and it was an experience he had no desire to repeat. Lady Sectri wouldn¡¯t take kindly to hearing as much about her precious prodigy, though, so Jair stuck to technically-true statements. He was capable of being diplomatic when necessary. ¡°Ah, Ser Zialir, you must be very proud! I hear Njen placed favorably in the spring recitational, perhaps a contender in the future?¡± That was an understatement. Njen was the closest thing to a genius creative that you¡¯d find at the Astralla Institute. If not for the prestige of their family¡ªand thus chances for ascension to rulership back home in Celsin¡ªNjen would have been anywhere but Astralla. ¡°I understand Kael might be up for induction as a Silver Star in the next year? Truly an honor at such a young age, he can¡¯t be much older than me.¡± Indeed, Kael might be a frequent part of Jair¡¯s engagement with the nobility in coming months. His trajectory as an aspiring adventurer gave him the kind of freedom of movement and varying connections Jair could use to full advantage. Not to mention Kael¡¯s swordsmanship skill, which rivaled even that of House Veshin. And, speaking of¡­ ¡°Welburne!¡± Jair could only stand in pure surprise as Lord Curad Veshin himself, in all his rotund and decorated glory, met his eyes and strode over, a smile on his face. ¡°It¡¯s high time we were acquainted, considering your friendship with little Raina and all.¡± Jair accepted his double-handed clasp of greeting. "Lord Veshin! An honor to meet you in person. Denor has always been an inspiration with the blade, I hope to reach his level someday.¡± This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°Actually,¡± Curad Veshin replied with his usual pompous air, accompanied by near-constant waves and gestures of his hands, ¡°I wanted to talk to you about that. Denor and a few others will be showing at the exhibition this afternoon. Would you care to join us? Show us what you can do with that new blade of yours?¡± Jair raised an eyebrow at that. The annual student exhibition at Veshin Oasis was a spectacle that far surpassed anything the school here could put on, limited to a smaller and more select group of higher nobles. They only brought in the best of the best for that, and Jair¡¯s pre-loop incarnation had been anything but athletic. He¡¯d be able to attend the next year¡¯s, assuming he stuck around at the Institute that long, once he regained the necessary muscle and flexibility to properly show off his blademaster capabilities, but so soon? With no evidence of skill? House Veshin was one of those hidden powerhouses, where on paper they were only of middling wealth and moderate influence, careful never to stand out either for good or ill too prominently. Unfortunately, their status as secretive and blandly conventional meant ingratiating himself to them was more difficult than most of the others present today. Or that was ordinarily the case. ¡°No need to look so stunned.¡± Lord Veshin patted Jair condescendingly on the arm, eyes sliding down to rest on Maelstrom¡¯s hilt. ¡°Your performance was quite striking. I¡¯m eager to see if you can back that potential up with talent.¡± Jair bowed in formal acknowledgement. ¡°I¡¯m flattered, but this is very sudden. I didn¡¯t think I was even in contention, my swordsmanship is far from exemplary.¡± ¡°Nonsense! You underestimate yourself, my lad. After a show like that, I¡¯m absolutely convinced there¡¯s more to you than anyone expects.¡± Jair smiled politely and nodded. If you only knew. ¡°I¡¯m terribly sorry that I couldn¡¯t give you warning,¡± Lord Veshin continued grandly. ¡°I trust you¡¯ll still be able to perform? You needn¡¯t do anything too dramatic, but there are some people I¡¯d like to introduce you to.¡± Ahhh, there it was. In one move, Lord Veshin undercut all the people buying themselves time to decide how much they wanted to gamble on him. Rather than waiting until Terlunia or Solaria like the rest, he jumped straight in, positioning himself as automatic sponsor and ally immediately. A major gamble, all in from the start, no hedging his bets. If Jair turned out to be as much of a catch as they all thought, Lord Veshin was poised to significantly raise his own stature among the others, but also set himself up for a major social loss if Jair failed to put up a good showing. Though, at this point, Veshin didn¡¯t have that much farther to fall. Jair heard about Denor¡¯s exhibition in the future, advancing into the sixth round even as a newly-advanced initiate, doubling the ordinary average and tying with Kael¡¯s record, but the event itself never held any relevance to him. The Astralla Institute liked to play at being a hotspot for nobility, but it was ultimately just a very expensive school. Veshin Oasis boasted some of the most prestigious venues not owned by the royal family itself. The house itself may be in decline and its popularity at an all-time low, but they still knew how to throw a party. The Veshin Oasis initiation afterparty and spectacle was something of a tradition among the wealthy parents, who always vied for their children to take one of the coveted opening positions. And here was Lord Veshin personally offering Jair of all people a spot in the event. Of all the things he thought would be changing, this was not even on the list. Until now, he¡¯d forgotten about the event entirely, disregarding it like so many other insignificant and irrelevant details. It wasn¡¯t something he could have gotten into if he¡¯d tried, under any ordinary circumstances. ¡°Can I count on you to attend?¡± Lord Veshin pressed, dabbing at his forehead with an embroidered handkerchief. ¡°I¡¯ll have Denor help you get prepared, naturally. I¡¯m sure between the two of you you¡¯ll come up with something.¡± This was an unexpectedly fortunate offer. Establishing himself in the noble community was the main point of the morning¡¯s activities, and he couldn¡¯t have asked for a better opportunity than this. Even most of the parents here wouldn¡¯t be invited to attend, unless one of their children was selected. Prior to Maelstrom¡¯s ascension, Jair would need far more than a single day of talking to warrant an invitation even to visit the oasis, let alone to a private exhibition that very day. ¡°Would Miss Serin be able to attend? I understand she and Denor already spent some time training together at the oasis.¡± Denor truly was advanced for his age. Short of hiring blademasters to train with, he would be the best available option for a sparring partner. Training with the Veshin heir would give Jair a nice head start on reclaiming his full range of skill and flexibility. They¡¯d need to put up with the excessive familiarity of his rotund father and overly-involved mother, but given the potential benefits to his and Raina¡¯s advancement he considered it worth the minor irritations that came with it. ¡°Certainly! Little Raina is always welcome to visit our side of the oasis. I¡¯ll send an invitation her way. Serin and Veshin have always been very close, you know. Their ancestral land is in our oasis.¡± Familiar with the man¡¯s propensity for rambling, Jair kept his glee in check and gave another bow. ¡°Then I would be delighted to join your son in showing off our newly-acquired class this afternoon.¡± ¡°I thought you would.¡± He passed Jair an envelope, containing a thick paper and a solid disc. ¡°Come, I¡¯ll show you around the place before it gets too crowded.¡± He grinned and winked exaggeratedly. Jair glanced back at the thinning crowd, scanning in case he¡¯d missed anyone important, but he¡¯d already amassed three other invitations to visit various houses¡ªKenmirk, Falkon, and Domir¡ªon specific dates, an open invitation from the Ielga, and more offers of ¡®help¡¯ assessing his new weapon than he¡¯d ever need. He saw no reason to pursue the connection to the Ielga unless he decided to lean heavily into the Teretho option. Their primary interest would be to marry him off to their daughter. She being heiress would then claim primacy in their partnership, leaving him as little more than a trophy. Not that he wanted the hassle of running a noble house either. Teretho would be slow, even if he put everything into it, not fast enough to be relevant for the immediate future. Lian was looking murderous, but when did he ever look otherwise? Jair would deal with that problem when he couldn¡¯t put it off any longer. He¡¯d accomplished everything he¡¯d hoped to at this event and then some. Introductions finished, connections established, and hints dropped. There were openings here he could exploit, as well as whole new areas to explore at his leisure, but that could all wait. Now that the necessary networking was set up for later, he could put it out of his mind entirely to focus on more immediate things. Solaria wasn¡¯t for another three weeks, and the first of the scheduled invitations fell within a week of the festival. Plenty of time to deal with that whole mess later. ¡°Lead on, Lord Veshin. I look forward to seeing what your home has to offer.¡± Curad Veshin beamed, clapped Jair on the back, and led the way to the transit platform, gesturing and talking the entire way. Things were going nothing at all like Jair had imagined, and he couldn¡¯t be happier.
7 - Preparation Before the Moon King¡¯s rise, the spread of knowledge was slow and exchange of culture almost nonexistent. When every channel and stream is an impassable barrier, isolation comes easily.
Raina Serin sat quietly in the center of her student apartment living room, trying to meditate like Jair had suggested. She had nothing better to do and no distractions for once. No demands on her time, no classes for the rest of the day, a perfect time to work on attuning her soulspell. In theory. In reality, her thoughts kept jumping back to Jair. Something had clearly happened. He seemed fine, but the wave of power when he accepted the class had been enough to knock her breathless. She¡¯d never doubted he had what it took to successfully reach initiation. They''d spent the past week exhaustively testing and triple verifying that his soulspace and manabody were perfectly according to specification. Yet he had still worried. Perhaps he had overprepared, somehow. But she could have sworn his sword had changed, in the moment before sheathing it, and that just didn¡¯t happen. Reforging a soulsword took years, specialized tools, expensive ingredients. Not something you could do on a whim or in an instant. She must have been mistaken. But he looked so distracted, clearly something unusual had happened. Where was he, anyway? Raina took a deep breath. Meditating. Focus. Soulspell. No wonder she hadn''t been able to unlock it yet, she couldn''t even keep her mind focused for a minute without thinking about Jair again. Where was he, anyway? It felt like she''d been sitting here for hours. And she was hungry. She skipped breakfast when Jair insisted on going over his qualifications for the thousandth time, and though she¡¯d filled her plate to an almost impolite degree, the initiation snacks weren¡¯t sufficient. Would there be anything left at the dome worth eating, if she ignored courtesy and protocol and went back for more? Probably not. And lunch wasn¡¯t for another two hours. Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Startled, she jumped to her feet, her soulsword clattering to the floor. "Jair? It¡¯s not locked, stop fooling around¡ª" She yanked open the front door. Instead of a smirking Jair, she found Denor Veshin. The Veshin heir¡¯s soft elegance belied a hidden strength, but despite his string of victories in the formal dueling ranking, Raina found it hard to see him as anything but the boy across the oasis. "Oh, hey Denor.¡± She smiled distractedly. ¡°Haven''t seen you in a while. What brings you here?" "Just delivering your invitation, my lady," Denor said with an overwrought bow. Raina punched him in the shoulder. "You don''t have to start with all that nonsense." "Well, since you''ve resisted all my efforts to lure you back, I assumed that meant you were finally turning into a proper heiress. But, your lamentable lack of enthusiasm for swordplay aside, you are still invited to attend our annual exhibition." He held out an embossed envelope, sealed in blue wax and marked with the Veshin family seal printed across the front: two entwined trees on either side of a shield. "Thanks, but I''m going to be otherwise occupied this afternoon." There was no way Jair would be allowed to attend such a prestigious event, and Raina had more than enough prestigious events to attend without watching people flashing their thoroughly boring swords around. Jair¡¯s sword, on the other hand¡ª "Oh." For a moment, Denor looked confused. Then he shrugged. "I''m sure your charity case will be disappointed to hear you won''t come watch, but that¡¯s the risk he took hanging out with someone as important as you. Good to know you¡¯re living your own life." ¡°Wait. Go back. You¡¯re talking about Jair?" "Who else would I mean? I''m surprised you wouldn''t want to see his first public showing, when you''re so obsessed with him. You follow him around like you''re his bodyguard.¡± Denor snorted, tapping his chin with one finger. ¡°Shouldn''t it be the other way around?" She could never admit that part of her hated the pressure of her position as lone heiress, that Jair was the only person who bothered to treat her as herself and not as an extension of House Serin with all the politics that entailed. By training as a mageblade, she would be free for a few years at least from the obligations of her birth. Perhaps it was cowardice, to play at being ordinary and avoid taking on the family responsibility as long as possible. But this was her one chance to make friends rather than allies, and she wasn¡¯t inclined to throw that away lightly. "I like him," was all she could think to say. "What public showing is this?" "Have you forgotten already?¡± He waved the envelope. ¡°The exhibition." "I wasn''t eligible to participate this year, and as you''ve said, swordplay isn''t my preferred activity anyway." She blinked as what he''d been saying finally sank in properly, and snatched the envelope. "You''re saying Jair is participating? Since when?" "Since about fifteen minutes ago.¡± Denor gestured back toward the dome. ¡°And now that I¡¯ve delivered your invitation, I need to go and help him get ready. Good luck with your important afternoon." Raina stared down at the envelope. Jair shouldn¡¯t even be in contention, let alone selected for the final exhibition. Was this why he wanted to go talk to the nobility? It was unusually forward of him to take the initiative, but he was plenty clever when he wanted to be. What is he up to now? Laughing, she snatched up her fallen sword, transitioned the weapon back into her soulspace, and ran out the door after Denor. "Wait, I''m coming with you." If Jair had somehow gotten into an event like this¡­ she wouldn¡¯t miss it for the world.
Veshin Oasis during the day was a brilliant jewel of a place. The silver-domed roofs of its subterranean workshops glinted with sunlight and pulsing streaks of pale blue as free-drifting mana was snared and drawn inward. Dark packed lanes wound between buildings, surrounded by tall trees and low grasses. All the greenery had a faint teal tint to it, and during the night would give off a steady glow. Though the plants were initially sparse toward the edges of the oasis, the further inward you went the more fully the grass filled in the cracks, the more blossoming trees grew in lush profusion. Blue-veined white petals drifted in the air and added a light floral scent to the heavy earthen undertones of the rich dark soil. Each oasis had its own distinct feeling to it, and Veshin¡¯s was all blue and white, alive and shining. A balanced mix of modern production facilities amid a profusion of natural beauty. Unlike the extravagant (and unnecessarily expensive) display that was the Astralla Mageblade Institute¡¯s central dome, the Veshin arena did nothing to draw attention to itself, subterranean and indistinguishable from the buildings around it. Stolen novel; please report. Jair stole a glance toward the eastern half of the oasis, where taller buildings set aboveground in the ancestral Serin land. Their architectural style was a bit less modern in design compared to the Veshin structures, more classical with carved tiles and blocky profiles, but much more varied. Lifeless, at the moment, no one coming or going. The artisans and workers would all be inside or safely away from the oasis. Prolonged unconscious exposure to the erratic mana of naturally occurring places like this could cause damage or warping of the manabody, so no one lived in an oasis. There were the usual courier posts to send runners and collect anything that may be needed, of course, but from this angle Jair couldn¡¯t see if there was anyone present at the moment. ¡°Right this way, right this way!¡± Lord Curad Veshin patted Jair¡¯s shoulder and beckoned him back toward the center of his side of the oasis. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know, our workshops are the finest in the world.¡± ¡°Indeed. So I hear. I understand you also have practice facilities here as well as the main theatre?¡± ¡°Yes, we do indeed! I''d be happy to show you, if you''re interested." "I am, very much so." "Naturally, naturally.¡± He adjusted his direction minutely, heading toward one of the low roofs off to the right. ¡°We need to test our products extensively before shipping them out, you see. Even with the mana glaze, pottery armor with even a single imperfection would be worse than useless. Shatter after the first blow.¡± There it was, the official explanation, practically word for word. It was only natural for Veshin to keep a vast array of weapons on hand, it was all part of the business. Nothing unusual about it. Jair picked up the conversation. ¡°And since you have the equipment on hand anyway, may as well let the kids train with it too. Right?¡± ¡°Exactly! And if we can provide our dear neighbors with some entertainment as well, all the better.¡± The fact that House Veshin also produced a disproportionately high number of blademasters compared to its population, completely unrelated. Jair knew better, but there was no point in making a fuss about it. ¡°What will I be facing in this exhibition?¡± That left Lord Veshin free to ramble off on an explanation of the nature of hardlight, the prestige of the expert they¡¯d ¡®hired¡¯ for the occasion, and repeated at least four times that Jair was in no danger as a participant. ¡°We¡¯ve a healing specialist on hand to deal with anything out of the ordinary, but the lower tier that you¡¯ll be in generally only causes bruises at most.¡± "How many tiers are there?" Jair already knew the answers, but Curad Veshin did love to talk, and giving him the chance to subtly brag about his cousin''s skill would make him that much more kindly inclined toward Jair. "The encounters are divided into four sets of five. The first, initiate levels, are for those without any imprints and a standard soulsword." He winked cheerily as he tugged open the door over a stairway leading down into one of the preparation rooms. His behavior was enough that, if not for the cut of his robes and the Veshin insignia over his thigh, he could be mistaken for a servant guide rather than the master of the house. ¡°So there would be a set of challenges for imprinted but not reforged, and one for both?¡± Jair asked as they descended, natural lighting giving way to bright blueish-white. ¡°What would be the top level?¡± ¡°Very astute of you,¡± Lord Veshin praised with enthusiasm. ¡°The top tier is for ascendant mageblades, but we¡¯ve only had someone reach it twice. Even most ascendants aren¡¯t sufficiently powerful to outlast the top level simulacra.¡± His booming laugh echoed as they stepped out into the room at the bottom of the stairs. ¡°I certainly wouldn¡¯t go against them myself.¡± The interior of the preparation room was simple, a wide open floorplan with white walls and a thick spongey teal moss covering the floor. Jair bounced a couple times, testing the spring of the moss, and found it quite satisfactory. Above, trails of brilliant blue mana periodically pulsed across the ceiling in skittering streaks before gathering in crystal panels to light everything uniformly bright. Racks of weapons and armors spread around the edges of the room, practice targets and swinging mechanisms in a variety of styles filled one end of the room, and a collection of simple ceramic armor stood beside the entrance. ¡°Admiring our designs, I see?¡± Lord Veshin walked to the first set, scaled with overlapping plates of deep blue, and ran a hand across its sleek shiny surface, making the plates clink dully against each other. ¡°This one is medium-heavy, best for dealing with a large number of enemies utlizing ranged attacks, but limits mobility. This next one,¡± he tapped it with a knuckle, white and molded, looking most like traditional armor, ¡°is light and durable, but less effective against magical disruption.¡± ¡°I¡¯m curious¡­¡± Jair pointed at the third armor in line, thick black plates doubled one behind the other with padding in between. ¡°How long would it take to get a custom set like this, with some modifications?¡± He all but held his breath waiting for the answer. He¡¯d planned to order custom armor from a blacksmith in Astralla City, but Veshin ceramic might be even better. Lord Veshin smiled. ¡°Going straight for the heavy, I see. Excellent against impact, decently deflective. A custom set, now, that would depend on the modifications. Ordinarily, we ship within one terluna cycle of ordering.¡± ¡°That¡¯s too long. I¡¯d need it by the end of this week.¡± Lord Veshin drew himself up, tapping the side of his chin in thought. ¡°Rush order, hmm. Assuming nothing goes wrong and we get it right on the first casting, that could be done, but it would require putting everything else on hold.¡± ¡°Assume I can cover whatever late fees or cancellation costs necessary to assuage the other patrons. Can you do it?¡± ¡°I couldn¡¯t make any guarantees. If we¡¯re unlucky with the first set, there wouldn¡¯t be time to try again.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. My only condition in that case would be¡ª¡° ¡°Condition?¡± Lord Veshin laughed, patting Jair¡¯s arm again. ¡°Slow down, lad, you haven¡¯t even tried your sword in battle, much less be ready for something like bespoke armor.¡± ¡°If you can¡¯t do it, just tell me. I¡¯m perfectly willing to use Knightstone Smithing if Veshin can¡¯t handle it.¡± ¡°Ho, ho. You¡¯re in that much of a rush?¡± ¡°I am.¡± ¡°And this isn¡¯t some kind of joke?¡± ¡°Not at all.¡± They looked at one another, Veshin weighing, Jair immovable. ¡°My condition is that if something goes wrong, I want you to tell me exactly what the problem is.¡± Lord Veshin scoffed. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t understand. I barely understand.¡± ¡°Tell me anyway. And after this week is over, you can keep the full payment amount either way. As long as you give it your honest best.¡± Lord Veshin¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°That¡¯s quite the offer, young Welburne. You certain you can back it up? Our armors don¡¯t come cheap.¡± ¡°I¡¯m certain.¡± ¡°Eight hundred thousand lirei for materials and crafting, fifty thousand for the rush, and two million for delaying other orders. It would be more, but without retries¡­¡± Veshin squinted at Jair. ¡°This is a very strange order you¡¯re placing.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll have it to you first thing in the morning, along with the plans and measurements.¡± ¡°You¡¯re very serious about this.¡± Veshin chuckled and patted Jair¡¯s back. ¡°You certainly get straight to business.¡± ¡°It¡¯s an urgent matter of life and death. Why don¡¯t you show me how these training setups work, and then I¡¯ll stop monopolizing your time.¡± Veshin began proudly demonstrating each of the practice tools available, from swinging targets and practice dummies to a full on obstacle course in one section. ¡°I''ve been eager to spend more time with your son,¡± Jair mentioned casually as they walked between rooms. ¡°Would it be possible for us to borrow your training rooms now and again in future?" Having Denor and the Veshin resources at his disposal while returning his body to its proper strength and flexibility would be indispensable. Very little came close to Veshin for training the blade. "We''ll have to see about that." Lord Veshin winked conspiratorially. "We have so many people asking after them, you know. Can''t be seen to play favorites. If we start letting in anyone but the best of the best, we''ll never have a moment''s peace." Translation: do well enough in this demonstration to prove you deserve the time. Veshin may have been willing to sponsor Jair into the event, but he wasn¡¯t going to bet quite that heavily on him without some proof. Jair bowed. "I''m sure you''ll have nothing to complain about with me." "I''m sure, I''m sure." Once they finished going over the equipment, Veshin left Jair to his preparations. He had another hour before anyone started arriving for the main event, which time he spent doing his best to prepare his miserable body for the upcoming demands he¡¯d be making of it. With how low his current stamina was, he didn¡¯t dare push beyond stretches and a few slow katas, and even that left him aching with the strain. But at least he felt a little more flexible as he left the training room via a connecting passage to the arena. It¡¯d be a while yet before he could challenge the top tiers, but if he couldn¡¯t even clear the initiate tier, he¡¯d never catch the kind of attention he needed. This was going to be painful, but he couldn¡¯t deny the excitement bubbling through his chest. So many new options, open to be explored! Time to see who else would be attending, perhaps make a few more connections, and get in position for his first showing as a mageblade prodigy.
8 - Deladan How much of what we once knew has been lost?
¡°Right this way, young sir." Jair followed the attendant up the curving hall to the middle layer, where a row of doors led into the private boxes overlooking the arena. "This will be your place for observation once your performance is over, and you may visit it at your leisure until it''s time to begin." Jair pushed open the door and stepped inside to survey the place. He''d been here before, at some point, but it had been so long and there''d been so many more important things since then that he wasn''t surprised at all to find he didn''t recognize a single thing about it. The Veshin arena was large, similar to an opera theatre but without seating for the common public, leaving the entire center open. The balconies surrounding the arena ran in discrete boxes along two sides, all deep blue carpets and polished grey marble accented with carved wood, showing off the Veshin colors. Two tiers of boxes running nearly the whole way around the outer edges, leaving the back wall empty apart from entry doors for the contestants. The ¡®front¡¯ was an open balcony where the outer hallways met, where anyone could pause to observe on their way to and fro. Each box had its own private door into the hall outside, protected by heavy blue curtains from eavesdroppers, with a low marble and wood rail across the front. Most held between four and eight seats, though Jair couldn¡¯t help but notice a few smaller and significantly more intimate options toward the middle of the top tier. "I''m surprised there aren''t more people here yet." "They''ll be coming in as they arrive. It''s quite a while until the performances begin." The escort bowed slightly, gesturing with a hand to the door. "If young sir would like to avail himself of the refreshments, it might be wise to do so before you need to be in the preparation rooms." Jair followed him out of his box and up the hallway, which continued to slope up and curve around the outside of the arena''s wall. Outside, the halls sloped up or down to meet in the middle, the front half of the building something of a ballroom. Today the vast space was filled with an assortment of cooking stations, both extravagant and simple. The variety gave it something of a faire look. Two rows of cooks stood ready to custom prepare anything from a grilled cactus skewer like he could get on any street corner, to a delicate northern icefish filleted and expertly poached in sauces he couldn''t remember the names of but could tell immediately that they were among the most expensive to obtain. "I recommend you steer clear of the pastries until afterwards, they have been a temptation to certain other fighters in the past and generally¡ª" Jair raised a hand. "I can take care of my diet, thank you." He selected an assortment of meats and vegetables, not giving the pastries so much as a second glance. Food had long since lost its novelty, but it still provided an important function in keeping him alive and reinforcing his growth. "I see. Is there anything else you need?" "Where am I supposed to go for the actual performance, and when?" Something told him jumping down into the arena from the third-floor box would be unhelpful. "Someone will be along to show you the way. Simply ensure you are still in the common areas or your box where we can find you." With another bow, the man left. Jair took his food back to his box, grabbing a glass of wine for good measure. He had one of the first boxes on the end coming in from the training rooms, which was presumably also the direction of the preparation areas behind the arena. He scanned the handful of early arrivals, several single people on their own, unashamedly staring at him or the others in their vicinity, measuring looks as they assessed everything from outfit to hairstyle to posture. The sundresses and open robes of the Institute event were traded out for sweeping floor length gowns and intricately embroidered doublets. Some proudly wore their house''s colors, while others chose to disregard the dictates of alliance altogether, instead wearing whatever suited their individual preferences. Jair didn''t have an appropriately absurd outfit, but he could embody the stance and attitude with a thought. Eyes half closed, he stared back with the sort of lazy regard of someone who had so much else more important in their life, but at the moment he was bored enough to observe these insignificant creatures. He held his wine delicately in one hand, nibbling at his vegetable strips as he scanned the people in attendance. No one here currently had been at the initiation. Either they''d sent their children elsewhere, or they weren''t in this specific initiation class. Jair considered whether he should introduce himself now, or wait until he''d showed them all something worth seeing, but decided to be bold and disregard value and common sense. These were the people who could effect actual change, perhaps not in time to help Raina, but certainly with the whole Sekir business, and possibly even the invasions. The sooner he started making inroads, the better. He made eye contact with one Anna Deladan, lifting his glass in an invitation. She considered him coyly, but stood and swept out of her box as he''d predicted. A few minutes passed while she walked around the outside, stopped to grab a glass of something pale golden and fizzy, and stepped into Jair''s box. Though a great many of these started the day with only a single occupant, more than a few would find themselves host to duos by the end. "Lady Anna Deladan, it''s a pleasure to meet you in person." He stood, sweeping a perfect bow with one arm extended, without so much as jostling his drink. "I am Jair Welburne, initiate mageblade, and one of our new performers today." Technically, his rank was unrecognized ascendant, but to say so outright would be bragging in the least productive way possible. Better to show them and have them ask questions afterward than to give away too much up front. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. "I thought you didn''t look familiar. Welburne, did you say? I don''t know that family." "You wouldn''t. We''re from across the southeastern channel, are you familiar with central Bethar?" He gave out his usual cover story without even thinking. "Can''t say that I am." She sipped her drink, watching him with that faint smile. He waved a hand to the seat beside his, waiting for her to be seated before resuming his own lounging. "May I interest you in these lovely coil-peppers? They''re delicious when paired with the ryish sauce." He held one out to her. She scanned the offering, then her eyes ran over his face and body¨Cwhat little could be seen under the Institute''s white robes. "Forward of you to be offering me a meal on our first meeting." Jair popped the strip of pepper into his own mouth with a shrug, dipping another into the sauce. "I don''t like waiting around. If we know what we want, why play games?" "Games can be quite fun, though." She leaned over to pluck a terraroot sliver from his plate, then dropped it into her glass. Immediately the golden liquid swirled, turning thick and orange as the root dissolved. She watched his reaction carefully, then took a sip. "You know that''s considered a toxic combination, I''m sure. Though unless you''re planning to frame me for your murder, I don''t see the point." Jair rolled his pepper strip between his fingers, then drank from his own glass. "I prefer a tarter cherry these days, but I''ll admit this goes well with the peppers." "You''re an unusual young man, Welburne." "Thank you. You have no idea how unusual. Hopefully the demonstration will be enlightening." "Indeed?" She leaned back, drinking more of her toxic brew, and reached across for more terraroot. Jair made no move to stop her. "Old habits never die, I see." She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, hesitated before adding the root to her drink. "There''s nothing wrong with a little indulgence now and again." "Certainly not, or the opportunity wouldn''t be available so freely in an event of such prestige." Jair crossed his legs and tossed the pepper strip in his mouth. "I''d wager few are as bold as you, though." She drank again, the liquid a deep orange nearly red by now, and without any hint of bubbles, watching him. "I''m a bit impulsive,¡± he told her. ¡°Waiting patiently isn''t my style. I don''t want to come back in a year to test the next tier." "A bold desire indeed. You know that most initiates only make it halfway through the beginner tier." "I''ll reach the second. At minimum." "What are you trying to prove here?" "I could ask the same of you." He raised his glass towards hers. "If you''re trying to convince me to hire you, I''m afraid your methods won''t be effective against my enemy." Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. ¡°You¡¯re familiar enough with my methodology to say as much?¡± ¡°I know a lot more about you than you¡¯d expect. Your nephew¡¯s difficulty, for instance. Very well concealed, almost no one would ever be able to piece it together.¡± Anna¡¯s eyes lost their humor, hand freezing on the glass. Then she shook her head, laughing it off. ¡°I have a great many nephews, and I can¡¯t say most of them deserve mention.¡± ¡°Slipping since you left the clan, I see.¡± ¡°Why call me over, what do you want? If you know so much about me, you must have a purpose.¡± Jair took his time answering, savoring the coil pepper and the sweet cherry liquor, watching her in turn. ¡°I thought you liked games.¡± ¡°Clever boy.¡± What humor she injected in her voice was all pretense; she was shaken and wary. ¡°I¡¯m going to be wanting some favors in the future. Nothing significant, a vote here, a whisper to the right ear there. And I¡¯m willing to pay. But I¡¯m also interested to see how much you¡¯re willing to wager against my success here.¡± She looked him over again, taking in the Astralla Mageblade Institute insignia over his left thigh, his age, his appearance. He could all but see the calculations flashing through her eyes. Who was he? Did he really need to survive the night? Jair began taking small, neat bites of the last remaining terraroot. Sweet, with a lingering aftertaste of intense spiciness. He turned his attention to scanning the balconies, making no effort to rush her, though she remained sitting and staring for several minutes. Another dozen people arrived in the interim, three couples, one family, and several more solo. Jair noted the owner of a particular chain of lantern constructs, on the upper tier, eighth box from the center. He¡¯d have to visit him next. Finally, Anna broke the silence. ¡°Reaching the second tier has been done before.¡± ¡°Only once.¡± ¡°No, it has been reached dozens of times. Only once has its first level been defeated by an initiate, and never more than that. Those who mastered their tier wisely bowed out without testing their pride against that which was not meant for them.¡± ¡°You needn¡¯t worry about my pride. I¡¯m well aware of my limitations.¡± Limitations he cursed more minute by minute, but he was doing the most he possibly could. ¡°If you fail, I will consider our business at an end.¡± ¡°Acceptable.¡± Jair stood and bowed. ¡°I look forward to working with you in future. I suggest you go find yourself a nightplum or three before you start to cause irreversible damage to yourself. That can¡¯t be good for your array, whatever resistance you¡¯ve built up against the physical effects.¡± She let out a soft laugh, almost a snort, and held up a hand. ¡°I see it would be foolish to bet against you.¡± Jair helped her to her feet, then went ahead and kissed her hand for good measure. If he was going to play the game, may as well go all in. ¡°I always win in the end,¡± he agreed. ¡°You¡¯ll find me a more than suitable ally.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll see. Words are cheap.¡± ¡°And actions prove the man.¡± Jair smiled with genuine enjoyment. It had been too long since he¡¯d found himself in a truly different situation. Sure, he knew Anna Deledan inside and out, but he¡¯d underestimated the ways his new position would change things. Anna departed to find her antidote and enjoy the aftereffects of her mix, which would probably take her up until the demonstration to work through. Jair didn¡¯t see the appeal himself, but who was he to judge. He¡¯d been through such a stage at one time himself, but found no solution in such pursuits. As long as it wasn¡¯t interfering with his goals, he couldn¡¯t care less what these people did with themselves. Or each other. By the way she was eying the recently-eligible Segrin Biraz, he doubted either of them would be paying much attention to the show. Why people felt the need to pair up in such a blatantly public way, Jair would never know. Especially when she was ostensibly married and he¡¯d just lost his wife. But that had little to do with him. Jair found himself still smiling long after Anna departed. Everything was so far outside of expectations. He¡¯d never before sat here on this day, and couldn¡¯t wait to see how the circumstances of their first meeting changed things still further. It had been a long time since he felt the buzz of so much sheer possibility. Play his tiles right, and anything could be possible.
9 - Lian I sometimes wonder how people lived before industrialized spell constructs were widely available. How did anyone go anywhere? What did they drink? Alas for poor recordkeeping!
Jair almost missed the Teretho family arriving, if not for something particular that caught his eye. In this case that something was the proud young aristocrat¡¯s vibrantly orange duelist vest over green robes as he stood briefly in the arrival overlook. Lian¡¯s father and stepmother were barely visible even with Jair knowing what to look for, loitering figures more interested in the architecture and chatting with the hosts than paying attention to their would-be star. Lian''s eyes met Jair''s as the boy scanned the audience, and his expression shifted from eager to confused. Jair merely looked away without reacting. He wasn''t in the mood to put up with Lian''s attitude today. He could play nice some other time. Right now, Jair had a whole new world of opportunity to explore. Lian Teretho was the last person he''d allow to ruin it. Alas, his personal determination wasn¡¯t sufficient to make the entire world shift to accommodate him. Not even waiting for his family to find their box, Lian threw Jair¡¯s box door open with a ready sneer. "I thought I smelled something that didn''t belong.¡± Lian crossed his arms, leaning against the door. "Observant one, you are." Jair took a sip of deep red wine from the triangular glass and leaned back in his blue-cushioned seat. A fine vintage, though he preferred something a little heavier these days. "Good to know the family name isn''t the only thing you have going for you. I''m sure you can find an occupation sniffing around for people you dislike. High paying occupation, I hear. Messes with your sense of taste after a while though." Lian, clearly unsure what Jair was trying to imply, opted to ignore the reply. He made a show of searching the box, one side of his lip quirked in a smug sneer. "Where''s Serin? I''m surprised she''s let you off her leash. If she''s going to drag you along to society events, she should have at least taken the time to dress you properly." Jair met Lian¡¯s sneer with a mischievous grin. "I''m sure the comfort of knowing I was dressed like a commoner will assuage your shame when I show you up in the arena." "Oh, Welburne, you really should pay more attention to the invitations for these sort of events. The performance is by special selection only. Attending doesn''t mean you get a chance to fight. Though..." looking Jair up and down, eyeing him like a sandshark who spotted a stray camel, "I wouldn''t be opposed to putting you in your place." "You''re more than welcome to try. But I''ll warn you, you may not like what my place turns out to be." "What nonsense are you talking, Welburne? I''ve seen your bladework scores. You barely qualify at the lowest level." "Qualification has nothing to do with skill. Be sure to pay close attention or you''ll be caught off guard." Lian''s hand tightened into a fist. ¡°You''re not anything worth speaking of. Have you even fought a single duel?" "Nope. Are you looking to change that?" "Maybe I am." Lian sneered down at him, arrogance bleeding from every inch of him. "Someone''s awfully confident all of a sudden. You think a fancy flash of light with your sword means you''re any better at fighting? That''s not how it works." "I''m well aware of how it works, thank you. I''m going to tell you this once. I am no longer the person you imagine me to be. I am not going to cringe or cry or run or cower. If you try to start something, I''ll be the one to finish it, and you won''t like the result." Lian¡¯s expression darkened, losing his patience the longer Jair remained unflustered. "Is the peasant threatening me?" "It''s a warning. Stay out of my way, and we can have nothing more to do with one another. We can even pretend to be friends, if that''s what you want. But if you become a disruption to my plans, I won''t hesitate to put you in your place as violently and repeatedly as it takes for the lesson to stick." "You shouldn''t be making threats you can''t back up." Lian looked about ready to strangle him on the spot. Jair raised an eyebrow. "In front of everyone, really?" He flicked his eyes over to the Teretho box where Lian¡¯s father, Lord Kyson, stood conversing with yet another woman, his current wife sitting behind with a book and an oversized flute of champagne. "I didn''t realize you''d so thoroughly discarded your family pride." Lian''s gaze followed the direction of Jair¡¯s. For a moment, Kyson glanced his son''s way, a brief frown crossing his face, then he looked away to resume his conversation, good cheer returning immediately. Lian''s expression only hardened further. "You think you know my limits? You don''t know the first fraction of it. Keep pushing me and you''ll regret it." "Pushing you? I haven¡¯t even laid a finger on you yet." Jair lifted his glass, checking his free hand and lap with exaggerated care. "Is your nose the only one of your senses that''s functional?" "You think being here will protect you, Welburne? You think this is going to keep you safe?" Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "No." He took another measured sip of his drink. ¡°My capability to annihilate you from existence with a blink is what''s going to keep me safe.¡± Lian fumed and took a step forward. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can get out of this just because I¡¯m otherwise engaged today. Tomorrow morning, in the academy dome.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to risk getting myself thrown out for missing classes right after initiation. We can fight during Terlunia.¡± Jair was tempted, just for the chance to get Lian out of his hair immediately, but his previous self had been far from athletic. He¡¯d need more than one day to prepare for something like that. Lian scoffed. ¡°So you have time to desperately scramble to attune your soulspell? I¡¯m not so much a fool as you think, Welburne.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the rush? You think I¡¯m so incapable, but you¡¯re also afraid of what I could do?¡± ¡°One week.¡± Lian folded his arms, ignoring the accusation. ¡°That gives you plenty of time to make excuses to your precious teachers.¡± ¡°How benevolent.¡± Jair swirled the last of his drink, keeping everything about his expression and posture relaxed and open. ¡°Not everything is about throwing your flashy weapon around. Some of us¡ª¡± ¡°Have flashy names to throw around instead?¡± Lian¡¯s jaw tightened. He glanced in the direction of his father¡¯s box, a barely conscious flicker of movement, as though weighing the social impacts of running Jair through then and there. He may be an idiot, but he was at least a calculating enough one to recognize it wouldn''t be a good image for him to present at this very prestigious event. ¡°One week, and you¡¯ll have all the chances you want to prove you''re more than a name. Don''t worry. And if you can bring yourself to forgive me for existing, we can even pretend to be friends after." "As if I''d want to." Jair drained his glass, set it aside, and closed his eyes. "I''ll see you next senday in the dome, you can decide if I''m worth the time and consideration then." ¡°As if you¡¯ll ever be anything but a waste of time.¡± ¡°If my company is so unwelcome, I wonder why you continue to seek it out.¡± ¡°For once, you¡¯re right. I have better things to do.¡± Lian walked away, door thudding shut behind him. Jair remained where he sat, lost in thought. ¡°That sword of yours has made you quite bold, Welburne,¡± A new voice intruded on his contemplation. ¡°I must admit, I''m impressed.¡± Jair looked up as Denor ducked in. "You could have stepped in if there was a perceived overreach." "We didn''t think you required intervention." "We?" Jair leaned forward to see around Denor, only to meet Raina''s grinning eyes. "Ah." Raina being Raina, she wore only her plain white Astralla Institute student robe¡ªlong-sleeved to indicate her lack of functional imprints and very much not in fashion¡ªbut she walked with a confidence that made the simple garb look elegant instead of plain. Jair turned back to scan the other boxes and spotted Raina¡¯s father easily, on the other side of the balcony, the box behind and above Teretho. Ajriol Serin wore black pantaloons under a maroon robe, short and flowing barely to his waist rather than the more traditional garb of the rest of the men. It wasn''t being done to make a fashion statement, but simply because the man liked the way it looked and felt to wear, but those who didn''t still gossiped and considered. If he wasn''t careful, he''d set off a whole fashion trend one of these days. Raina''s ancestral lands were in Veshin Oasis, even if her family largely stayed in the Astralla region these days, they still had land and connections there. "I must have mistaken your signals back at the Initiation." Raina tossed her hair to the side as she strode across the balcony to take the seat beside him. "I wasn''t aware this was our meeting location. Silly of me, really, thinking you''d be coming home to the apartment like every other day of the year." That familiar playful smile demanded an equally serious reply. Jair reached across to pat Raina''s hand with the exaggerated care of a much older man. "You''re looking lovely today, as always, young Miss Serin. My sincerest apologies for misleading you as to my plans for the day. Something came up." ¡°So I see. What are you up to?¡± Raina¡¯s tone was playful on the surface, but with a note of underlying concern. "Speaking of,¡± Denor cut in, ¡°that''s why I rushed here to talk to you. There''s an hour before the exhibitions start, so that''s plenty of time for me to show you the basics and brief you on what you''ll be up against. You''ve never been to one of these before, and trust me, it''s a lot different in person than hearing about it secondhand." "I know how it works. I''ve practiced against hardlight opponents plenty of times. They won''t be a problem." Denor frowned faintly. "I don''t know where you found a hardlight caster, but the majority of them suffer from deficiencies in their craft. Basing your expectations of this off them would be¡ª" "Thank you, Denor,¡± Jair said firmly, a clear dismissal. ¡°I''m sure you have a lot to prepare for your own matches." Raina was looking at him funny. Jair ran a finger along the rim of his empty wine glass, tipping it up on the edge of its base and rolling it in a circle. "Just don''t push yourself too far." Denor reluctantly turned to leave, pausing in the door on his way out. "I''m sure even you can make it to the third round if you try, but as soon as you find yourself struggling, bow out. It''s important for a warrior to know his limits." "I''m well familiar with my limitations." Denor hesitated a moment, then shook his head in resignation and left. "You sure the new sword isn''t going to your head a bit?" Raina asked, as soon as they were alone. Jair tapped his forehead, laughing. "Of course it is. Where else would I keep it?" Raina smacked his shoulder. "You know that''s not what I mean." "I''m exactly as confident as I should be. My circumstances are entirely within calculation.¡± This specific event may have been new, but after so long he¡¯d become quite adaptable. "You''re worrying me." "I''d rather you didn''t worry, but I know that''s a lot to ask. At least trust I have things under control?" "You''ll do as he said? Bow out once you reach the harder levels? I know you''re probably eager to prove yourself, but I don''t want to see you get hurt." "Getting hurt isn''t the end of the world. I''ll survive, and I''ll be in a better position. That''s all that matters." "And what was Lian going on about? Is he being more of a problem than you told me?" "I can handle Lian Teretho. And I can handle this exhibition.¡± "Promise you''ll stop if you get in too deep. Don''t get yourself killed out of pride." "Starshaper has too much control over his simulacrums for them to kill anyone. And I promise you, I won''t do anything that I can''t handle." "If you''re sure." She stood, her white student robes swishing elegantly around her legs as she gave him one last smile and wave. "Good luck."
10 - Exhibition To ensure public safety, transit terminals are not to be built within a quarter mile of a channel or river, or a half mile of the coast. Furthermore, no transit shall be permitted to cross unsafe water whether by direct sight or routing cable. Surviving violators will be subject to fines and the transit line¡¯s immediate closure.
"Greetings, friends!" Lord Veshin shouted. He stood on a pillar of light in the center of the arena, arms held wide exuberantly as though this were a play on a street corner. ¡°Welcome to the seventy-fifth annual Mageblade Exhibition!¡± A soft ripple of polite applause greeted him, leaving his enthusiasm undiminished. Jair stood against the back wall of the arena, along with the other three new initiates who would be showing today, each on their own elevated platform. "First, a quick review of the rules!¡± Lord Veshin raised a hand in a flourish. ¡°Starshaper, if you would?" Someone out of sight cast a spell, and a glowing blue copy of Lord Veshin appeared beside him, an outline of translucent light, as though made of tinted glass. Lord Veshin gestured grandly at the new creation. "This is a hardlight simulacrum. It can register strikes to any region, but unlike ordinary practice targets, it can fight back!" In demonstration, the copy held out a hand, manifesting a sword of the same solid blue light, which it swung at Lord Veshin. The man hopped easily aside and lunged forward, tapping the opponent on the chest with one hand and the forehead with the other. The number 1 appeared above the hardlight copy''s head with the first strike, almost instantly becoming a 2 as his second hit registered. "The goal is simply to accrue five hits against it. If you''re too injured to continue, you can surrender at any time." He punched the central plate that made up its torso, hard, throwing his whole weight into it. Two heavy strikes, and the section shattered. Missing its central piece, the entire thing dissolved. "If you manage to strike the head or torso hard enough times, you can perform a killshot. Be careful before trying something like that, it''s more dangerous than it seems." He wasn¡¯t wrong. There was an art to fighting the hardlight simulacrums of Yalenin Veshin, a distinct skillset from ordinary combat, duels against other mageblades, or even against warrior classes. Despite appearances, they could hit harder than the humans they were imitating and had a stability no ordinary opponent could mimic. Denor would be flawlessly prepared¡ªindeed, this was probably more a chance for Lord Veshin to show off his son than anything else. At least this year, the likelihood of anyone matching or surpassing Denor would be minimal. Once the others had time to advance and add magic to the mix, things would become much more interesting. This first showing of new initiates, only two years into their education, barely worthy of the mageblade class, would be less than impressive to any observers. Jair wouldn¡¯t have a problem, but for most new initiates it would be an unexpected wrench in their normally smooth practice. Even passing the first round was an accomplishment worth noting, though almost everyone would push for more. Which meant it was Jair''s job to make it impressive. He couldn''t afford to be average. Right now was his best opportunity to impress the gathered nobility, and the only opening he could count on for claiming their help when the time came. Lord Veshin waved a hand and the hardlight simulacrum disappeared. ¡°First to demonstrate for us today will be Homiki Ielga!¡± Homiki stepped forward. The platform of blue light upon which she stood slid forward beneath her, even as Lord Veshin¡¯s moved him away to the center balcony opposite Jair and the others. Homiki was decently above average, only lacking in soul manipulation, but since her capabilities were balanced between blade and manabody strength, she didn''t truly stand out. She was exactly the sort of person you''d use to show the baseline standard for ''advanced'' when everyone knew the truly advanced would have been initiated in the second group months ago. She struck out with her soulsword. The simulacrum blocked, moving slow but smooth. Jair immediately saw a half dozen openings, but Homiki didn''t capitalize on any of them. She locked their blades and pushed forward, trying to force its weapon up out of the way so she could punch it in the chest, but she wasn''t used to the way it moved. Its other arm blocked her and its leg swung around as it crouched slightly, knocking her feet out from under her. Jair winced as she slammed into the ground. Not a great start to the fight. To her credit, Homiki recovered quickly and rolled backwards, putting distance between herself and the simulacrum. It walked forward steadily, swinging its blade in casual sweeps. Homiki jumped to her feet and ran to the side, circling the blue light opponent. It turned with her, smoothly keeping its weapon between them. She darted forward again and hit the sword several times in quick succession. In fact, it looked like she was trying to break the sword through sheer overpowering force. Judging from the difference in brightness, Jair would say the sword was roughly four times the strength of the rest of the simulacrum, but it was at least a strategy that relied on the specific form of the opponent. She was thinking creatively... not quite correctly. The simulacrum shifted its stance, grabbing the sword in a two-handed grip, and retaliated with a battering barrage that slowly pushed her back. Jair saw the moment she figured out the rhythm. Like a light going on in an empty window, her flailing settled. Even if he could see countless flaws in her technique, she''d adapted faster than most would have. She matched it blow for blow, turning and retreating, then snapped out a quick stab to its thigh, gaining herself a ''1''. Before its next strike could descend, she was back in defence mode to deflect it. Good job. After that, it was simply a matter of her leading it around the arena, striking between its attacks, and she easily accrued the remaining four points without being hit once. "Round one, clear!" Lord Veshin bellowed, to scattered applause. Jair clapped, but he had to admit her performance wasn''t the most exciting. He couldn''t blame the other observers for searching out more interesting things to occupy them. In this case, only because he knew the challenge so intimately could he appreciate the skill necessary to do what she did. "Will she be advancing to the second round?" Lord Veshin asked, voice echoing. "I will." The simulacrum reformed, a little brighter than the first version. "Ready?" Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. They took their starting poses. Around them, obstacles made of yellow light formed an ethereal landscape. Boulders, trees, and buildings filled the arena, an impressive testament to Starshaper''s skill and power. "Second round, begin!" Homiki didn''t rush to attack, waiting it out to measure its tempo. Faster than the previous one, not as fast as her. She metered it out, keeping up with it in quick strikes, testing its defences. It was a significant step up from the previous one, in skill if not speed. Jair knew from experience how quickly the scaling improvements could throw someone off. He wasn''t anticipating her falling so quickly, but he couldn''t be certain she had what it took to fully analyze it so rapidly. Raina was watching, head tilted, and Jair wondered if she and Homiki knew each other. Raina wasn''t a particularly social person, but she kept connections with enough people that he wouldn''t be surprised. It had been way too long since he last paid attention to Raina''s social life. He¡¯d been in the future so long, nearly everything related to the academy was a blank blur of impressions without detail. He could picture her expression as she ranted, the way she paced, the way her arms moved, every nuance of her behavior, but the words she said and the names of people had disappeared long ago. Then again, there was a difference between ''keeping this person around as a future ally'' and ''actual friend''. Jair couldn''t actually remember her talking about anyone as an especially close friend, though it couldn''t possibly be just him. Below in the arena, Homiki finally found her opening and struck the target with a jab to the shoulder. Jair wished he could be up in the box with Raina rather than waiting on the wall, they could trade commentary to keep things interesting. As it was, the fight was... slightly less dull with the addition of so many obstacles, but only barely. Homiki was a cautious fighter, moving steadily but without doing anything flashy. Exactly what one would do at some kind of competition where the goal was to prevent the opponent from striking you. Jair already had something of an idea of his own strategy, but the more he watched the first fighter the more refined his thoughts on the subject became. This wasn''t a competition. It was an exhibition. A show. The point wasn''t to play safe and not get hit, the goal was to entertain¡ªand hopefully impress¡ªthe watching nobility. Potential sponsors might be impressed if she kept up her slow cautious methods long enough to survive several rounds, but he could see she was wearing out fast. Dragging fights on for minutes on end wasn''t ideal for someone facing a hardlight simulacrum which couldn''t wear out or tire regardless of how much time passed. There was a brief gasp from the audience, as the simulacrum pressed her back against one of the trees, light flickering and flaring. Before it could strike, she dropped under its guard and struck upwards, scoring her fourth hit of the fight, then grabbed its sword hand to keep it from hitting her and slammed her sword pommel into its forehead. Its other hand, fisted and swinging for her neck, stopped just short of impact as it registered the fifth hit and went still. Jair clapped a bit more enthusiastically. That was quite the reckless maneuver she''d just pulled off. Maybe there was hope for her as a showman yet. "Round two cleared!" Lord Veshin shouted, prompting more polite clapping. "Will you be attempting the third?" Homiki took her time answering, breathing hard, but in the end she shook her head. "Homiki Ielga, two rounds! Next, my son, Denor Veshin!" The platform of blue light picked up Homiki and returned her to the back wall with the other contestants, while Denor''s platform slid him forward to the center of the arena before descending and vanishing, along with all the environmental obstacles. Denor stood alone in the center of the empty arena, then the blue glowing simulacrum appeared. Denor saluted the magical creation and took his starting stance, two fingers on forehead, other hand empty and extended. The light man imitated Denor¡¯s stance, as Lord Veshin counted down the time. "Begin!" In a flash of blue, a sword made of the same light appeared in the opponent''s hand. Denor''s sword made no such flashing light, simply manifesting in his hand without fanfare. His sword clashed against the hard light of the opponent''s, both pushing hard as they tried to overbalance each other, then Denor disengaged and forced the other''s sword up high. Taking advantage of the opening to strike twice in quick succession, he retreated in perfect time to avoid the retaliatory swing. The hit sections lit up with an X, showing the strikes. Denor''s style was clean and efficient. He was still young, still relatively inexperienced, but compared to Jair, everyone counted as inexperienced. For his age, Denor moved very well. Fluid strikes and blocks effortlessly matched the simulacrum''s tempo. He may as well have been dancing, the fight progressed so smoothly. In seconds, he accrued the necessary five points to advance. At the fifth hit, the light man bowed and disappeared as the crowd applauded. "Round two," Lord Veshin announced. ¡°Ready?¡± The opponent reformed, blue light coalescing into the shape of a slightly larger and more adult adversary, this one faintly brighter blue. They each took their stances again and the environmental obstacles formed around them, then Lord Veshin called for the fight to begin. Denor blocked and dodged with elegant conservation of motion, striking back when he could, and once again flew through without being hit once. Jair could only smile as he watched. It was a reminder of what he could be¨Cwould be soon enough. He looked forward to practicing with Denor. His speed and style were flawless for his age. It would push Jair''s current capabilities very nicely, trying to keep up with him. Denor knew how to play to the crowd, as well. He could have finished it in half the time, but took the time to show off what he was capable of rather than just technically winning. He used the environment to his advantage as he moved, jumping atop a yellow-light rock to strike down at the opponent''s head, ducking behind a glowing tree to save his energy for a precision strike. When he finished the second round with a dramatic slide out of the way, grabbing onto a thinner tree to swing himself around and stab the thing in the back for his final point, he received an enthusiastic applause. Compared to the first girl, his performance was incredibly impressive. "Round two, completed! What do you say, another?" Denor nodded without waiting, giving his sword a dramatic flourish. Despite his showy moves, his fight had lasted less than half as long as Homiki''s, and he was far from worn out. "Ready? Begin!" For Denor¡¯s third round, the environment grew even more complicated. The yellow-glowing trees and rocks from round two shifted in place as the floor became a field of red. The ground rose in uneven sections, leaving countless rifts cracking across it in jagged crimson. Each piece of ''ground'' tilted at a different angle, sometimes sharply so, making the maze of cracks that much more of a challenge to navigate. The blue-glowing simulacrum ran forward without waiting for Denor''s first move, jumping from island to island as it closed in. Denor braced to meet it, backing up to a piece of ground whose tilt best matched the angle he needed to brace himself. This fight was faster than the previous one, both in tempo and in elapsed time. Denor subtly moved from ''show off'' mode to ''win'' mode, betrayed by tiny shifts in his stance as his moves became absolutely focused. He¡¯d moved past the easy opponents he could mess around with, now he had to conserve energy and act fast and decisively. His opponent began to actively use the environment as well, ducking behind trees or positioning itself where Denor couldn¡¯t get a good angle without falling into one of the rifts or pressing too far forward. The simulacrum¡¯s ability to maintain exact distance was impressive, even if its creator weren¡¯t simultaneously keeping up the entire environment around them too. Yalenin ¡®Starshaper¡¯ Veshin was a true master. Though Denor won decisively, he didn''t escape the round unscathed. In a rapid flurry of exchanged blows, Denor took several minor slices across his right side as he pressed his advantage. The fourth and fifth rounds included a second adversary and increasingly convoluted environments. Denor fought cleanly and aggressively, more than willing to take hits in return in order to win. Jair favored a similar style himself, and applauded Denor¡¯s capability with full sincerity. ¡°Initiate tier fully cleared! That¡¯s my son, not to brag, but all five levels! Way to go, Denor!¡± The applause was full and lingering, and would have been even without Lord Veshin goading everyone on. Denor¡¯s show was probably one of the best performances Jair had ever seen at one of these exhibitions. No wonder people would be talking about it for weeks. Denor stood for a long moment, smiling and waving while he caught his breath, then raised a hand to silence the continued applause. ¡°I¡¯d like to advance to the next tier.¡± Lord Veshin turned to him, concerned. The audience, on the other hand, loved it. The cheers grew almost deafening. Denor nodded, confident in his choice. Lord Veshin accepted he had no choice and raised his hands. ¡°So shall it be! Prepare for round six!¡±
11 - Exhibition (2) Not all the lunar natives have taken kindly to our colonization, but when our every stream seeks to consume the land, what choice do we have?
The environments of the arena dissolved, leaving only Denor and his next opponent. This one resembled an elf, taller and more compact than the previous five, and for the first time the brightness change was dramatic enough that everyone would notice it. "Intermediate level! These are normally only challenged by fully imprinted mageblades, how shall Denor fare?" Lord Veshin boomed. The first intermediate level adversary took its stance, the elf standing straight and proud, one hand raised, the other extended. Jair could make out the lines denoting imprints across its arms, impressed by the attention to detail. The imprints showed two available spells, Dazzle and Slingshot. A good selection, considering that the operator could only use force and light to mimic the spells'' effects. Things like fire or lightning might look more dramatic, but hardlight couldn¡¯t properly imitate their stunning or burning, breaking the illusion of the fight''s ''realness''. Even if he didn¡¯t already know firsthand the jump in difficulty for higher tiers, Jair would¡¯ve guessed something serious was going down from how drastically Denor¡¯s stance shifted. His aggression disappeared entirely, replaced by watchful wariness. Even Denor¡¯s father looked worried. Clearly this wasn¡¯t how he expected the morning to go. Ongoing chatter in the crowd hushed as the intensity built. This was something rarely seen. Denor was good, but was he really ready for this? "Begin!" The elf simulacrum wasted no time. Even as its sword appeared in one hand, it raised the other and flung a fist-sized stone made of the same blue light as its body. The ¡®spell¡¯ flashed toward Denor in a blur, followed immediately by the elf¡¯s sword as it charged him using the spell as cover. Denor slashed the stone from the air, but the force drove him back and threw him off balance. Frantic backpedaling barely saved him from the followup lunge. He and his opponent flowed across the arena, this fight much more dynamic than those that came before. Over a full minute passed, frantic and intense with exchanged blows, without either of them scoring a hit. The elf kept throwing blue-light ''rocks'' or setting off strategically timed bursts of blinding light. That Denor could keep up at all meant he fought at a higher level than he normally displayed. Denor¡¯s frantic rhythm shifted and he snuck in a strike, changing the sword¡¯s direction and swiping The number 1 appeared above the simulacrum¡¯s head to a burst of cheers, immediately followed by gasps as the elf¡¯s simultaneous Slingshot slammed into Denor¡¯s leg and sent him staggering back. To a less prepared opponent, that kind of hit would have been immediately debilitating. Denor dropped back to one knee, using the momentum of the attack to evade a followup slash at chest height. A burst of light immediately followed by a deep lunge from the simulacrum drove him back further. When the Dazzle cleared Jair saw a line of blood down the side of Denor¡¯s robe. Lord Veshin gripped the balcony railing where he stood watching, as the observers gasped. Until now, Denor hadn¡¯t been actually hurt in any of the exhibition rounds. Denor didn¡¯t surrender. He ignored the injury and continued the frantic dance. There was no official limit on the number of strikes the fighter could receive. He wouldn¡¯t be disqualified for being hit too many times, but fewer was generally considered better. If you barely scraped out a win while taking severe injuries, that signified a certain sort of determination, sure, but it wasn¡¯t usually what potential sponsors were looking for. Denor wouldn¡¯t need to curry favor. He wanted to prove something on his own behalf, and every slip-up made that harder to accomplish. If he were even a little slower, he¡¯d be completely overwhelmed. The two combatants continued their dance across the arena, exchanging attacks and parries, but it was pretty clear that Denor was the weaker in this exchange. The absence of any imprinted spells to even the playing field left him perpetually at a disadvantage. It continued to be a near-draw right up until Denor struck a killing blow through the opponent''s head for the final point needed to pass the round. The adversary dissolved into blue sparkles, and Denor bowed. He paused to catch his breath while everyone waited, then his voice rang out across the arena. "I am satisfied." "SIX ROUNDS!" Lord Veshin shouted, his box reforming beneath him to float him over to where Denor was also rising on a cube of blue light. The two came together and he lifted Denor''s fist triumphantly into the air as they hovered to the center of the arena. Fully illuminated by all the spotlights, flushed from the exertion, Denor grinned uncontrollably. "Matching the previous initiate record! Denor Veshin!" Lian showed off his swordsmanship focus and made it through the fourth round with several minor injuries, then hesitated for the longest time before deciding to attempt the fifth. Bad idea. Lian was good, but he was no prodigy. Reaching the third round was in itself respectable, and clearing the fourth would have been a solid achievement, proving he had a good foundation and room to grow. But no. Rather than accepting he¡¯d come as far as he was going to, Lian pressed on. He hadn¡¯t done well in the previous round against the two opponents, and he did even worse in this one. Both simulacrums moved faster and more aggressively than the fourth round¡¯s duo, and Lian¡¯s ability to keep up was stretched past the breaking point. If he¡¯d come into it fresh, he could have won. Being tired and injured already, he wore himself out trying to defend from two directions and never gained any advantage. He managed a single hit on one enemy, two on the other, but after that spent several minutes fighting with grim determination that didn¡¯t do more than protect himself. And before long, he flagged at even that. It took a very particular skillset to carry on constant fighting for minutes on end without the slightest pause. Unlike living enemies, the simulacrums didn¡¯t need to rest. Lian would have been better served to imitate Denor¡¯s strategies if he was insistent on forcing his way through. Overly aggressive attacks may have been rebuffed by his opponents but at least he wouldn¡¯t have put on a long tedious show of being gradually beaten down. It showed his tenacity, at least, if Jair were feeling charitable. He wasn¡¯t feeling particularly charitable, if he were honest. Standing here was less annoying than standing in the initiation ceremony, but not by a lot. Still, it only took a glance up at the observation balconies to remind him of how valuable today¡¯s event could be. As much as Lian was showing off the wrong traits, Jair could show off all the right ones. At least to the extent his untrained and unprepared younger body could handle. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°I yield,¡± Lian muttered, as the two simulacrums closed in on him. He¡¯d dropped his sword and didn¡¯t have the soul strength to pull it back to him, trapped with his back to a white-glowing cliff face. When no one heard him, he repeated louder, ¡°I surrender.¡± The environment gradually faded down to the floor level, and Lian¡¯s two opponents bowed and disappeared in a flash of light, as Lord Veshin descended from the central balcony on his usual moving platform. Hardlight didn¡¯t ¡®float¡¯ the way most people imagined, having no real ¡®weight¡¯ to it, but it could be a stable platform as long as it was connected to the ground. Only Starshaper¡¯s extreme skill made everything look so smooth and mimicked Lift so well. ¡°Four rounds! Lian Teretho!¡± The obligatory applause was accompanied by minor ripples of laughter. Lian, red-faced, turned and stomped away with ill grace. ¡°Fourth and finally, Jair Welburne!¡± Jair stepped forward, the platform he stood on moving with him to slide him toward the center. It descended, leaving him standing in the center of the arena. Blue light flashed, glinting off the outline of the created opponent. They both took their standard starting positions, one hand on forehead, the other extended with a loose grasp. Jair could see the different pieces that made up the opponent only because he knew what to look for. Each section¡ªbody, head, upper and lower arm and leg¡ªwas operated independently from the others. Yalenin¡¯s puppeteering of his simulacrums was unsurpassed. ¡°BEGIN!¡± ¡°Soulblade, manifest,¡± Jair whispered, already shifting his balance backward. His sword appeared in a flash of silver that overshadowed the brief blue glint of his adversary¡¯s. Jair retreated three quick steps, then abruptly shifted direction and lunged at the hardlight adversary. The man made of blue light raised his weapon to meet Jair¡¯s charge. Compared to the fifth level opponents Lian had been fighting, this one seemed to move almost in slow motion. He''d prepared himself for a difficult fight, one where he would need to use the utmost of his capabilities and stretch the limits of his weak former-self''s body to finish this quickly and decisively. Maelstrom had other ideas. The swords met in a bright flare. With a sharp crack and a pop that echoed across the arena, his opponent''s created sword broke and vanished in a cloud of sparkles. Jair''s momentum carried him forward, his strike meeting no real resistance. His blade slammed into the adversary''s chest. Another crack BANG, and the entire central section of the creation disappeared. Jair jumped back, raising an eyebrow. Though his reforged blade had now reached the ascendant level, he¡¯d watched plenty of ascendant mageblades practice against Starshaper¡¯s creations in the past. To be able to destroy one with such light blows¡­ The entire creation dissipated into sparkles. For a long moment no one reacted, as taken aback by the display as Jair himself. "Well, would you look at that!" Lord Veshin chuckled heartily, not quite hiding the surprise. "I think we have a new record for round one, eh? I assume you¡¯ll be continuing to the second round?" Jair finished the entire initiate tier in under a minute, even with the pauses for Lord Veshin¡¯s announcements. By the third round, the increased stability on the simulacrums meant that he was taking a full hit to destroy their weapon and another to killshot the hardlight opponent, but that barely slowed him down. Just how strong was Maelstrom anyway? He¡¯d heard stories of legendary weapons, but they were so rare that the stories were appropriately legendary themselves. Stories of severing a mountain¡¯s peak with a single blow, or felling a whole forest in a morning. The kind of nonsense that people came up with when they heard about anything rare and unexpected. For the first time, Jair found himself wondering if Maelstrom might truly be capable of doing something like that. If he trained a farsever technique, could he cleave an entire grove of trees? Would the misshapen blade carve through a mountain with impunity? The reinforced materials of Astralla Institute had given him trouble, but apparently the reinforcement on the library towers and greenhouse dome were significantly stronger than those on a hardlight simulacrum. ¡°Will you be challenging the intermediate levels today?¡± Lord Veshin asked, once Jair finished off the second opponent in the fifth round with a diagonal slash that destroyed its chest and one arm entirely. ¡°Yes. Thank you.¡± People were leaning forward, or leaning sideways to whisper to their friends. More people pointing at him, more people staring at him, than he could have hoped. Wrong reasons, perhaps; he¡¯d wanted to establish himself as a capable fighter. But he could use this just as easily. More easily, perhaps, since it didn¡¯t rely on skills he¡¯d be hard pressed to demonstrate in more inaccessible environments. The arena emptied of its complicated layout, leaving only Jair and his lone elven simulacrum opponent as round six began. Like it had done against Denor, the simulacrum started off the combat with a Slingshot to Jair¡¯s face. Jair smacked the glowing hardlight rock aside with Maelstrom, the blade slicing through and fully destabilizing the attack. His sideways swipe smacked hard into the simulacrum¡¯s created sword, but the light of its weapon only glared brighter instead of shattering under the blow. "Guess they''re not going to let me get away that easily again. Fair enough." After all, the point was for him to show off his swordsmanship, not how well he could stab an unarmed opponent. Now the true challenge began. Without relying on Maelstrom¡¯s overwhelming power to destroy his enemies in a single strike, Jair had to focus. A single opponent with ranged and distraction spells, an arena with no obstacles, and an intensely interested audience staring down at him. The simulacrum had the undeniable advantage in speed and flexibility. Regardless of what training Jair managed during the brief downtime to prepare, his untrained body could only move so fast. That said, he couldn¡¯t rule Maelstrom out completely. Five quick exchanges, backing carefully away in a retreat that didn¡¯t provide any openings, and the brilliant sword of light cracked. Jair grinned and went on the attack. Two more hits and the enemy¡¯s weapon shattered completely, dissipating into sparkles of light. Jair lunged forward into the opening, striking the enemy¡¯s chest with a heavy stab that lit up a 1 above the simulacrum¡¯s head. He swept Maelstrom to the side, adding a 2 and then 3 to the counter, then jumped back as the simulacrum¡¯s fist swung at him. Too fast to be evaded. The fist clipped Jair¡¯s arm, jostling him off course. He brought Maelstrom around a split second too slow. He knew exactly how to move and where to evade, but his body couldn¡¯t keep up. A Dazzle set off in his face all but blinded him. Jair instinctively grabbed at the spell to muffle it, trusting Absorb to draw away the excess power, but of course his imprints were still missing. He did grab it, the hardlight construction feeling slick and glassy under his fingers rather than the formless softness of an actual Dazzle, but apart from his hand blocking the central part of the imitation spell, nothing else happened. The simulacrum took advantage of his momentary confusion to retreat, raising its hands to starting stance. Its sword reappeared in its hand, fully repaired and glowing brighter than ever. Jair chuckled. It wasn¡¯t quite how soulswords worked, but for the sake of the drama and the exhibition, he could play along. He only needed two more hits, he could play conservative now, didn¡¯t need to rush in or try for killshots. But where was the fun in that? Grinning, heartbeat thrumming in his veins, Jair charged the simulacrum before it had even dropped stance, Maelstrom raised above his head in one hand, other hand out to the side. The opponent raised its sword to meet the descending Maelstrom, braced against the blow. Learning from experience what to expect. Skillfully done. And also predictable. Jair sidestepped and let go of Maelstrom midswing, hurling it over the simulacrum¡¯s attempt to block. The simulacrum reacted fast, its sword slashed upward to knock Maelstrom aside. But it couldn¡¯t recover in time to block Jair himself. Swinging his other hand around he collided bodily into the simulacrum, grabbing its sword arm to hold it away from him. Recall. Maelstrom vanished from where it lay in a flash of light, reappearing in Jair¡¯s extended second hand. The crowd gasped. The simulacrum didn¡¯t have time to react as Jair drove Maelstrom into its back from the side angle, shattering its torso piece and eliminating it in a burst of blue sparkles. ¡°Jair Welburne!¡± Lord Veshin announced, sounding stunned and baffled. ¡°In a single day, the record has been matched twice over!¡± He waved a hand as though to signify that this was the end. Jair spoke up before he could get any further. ¡°I¡¯d like to try the next.¡± ¡°Second tier intermediate?¡± Lord Veshin looked around, as though searching for a referee to tell him what to do. ¡°But you¡¯re only an initiate this morning.¡± ¡°I think we¡¯ve all seen that I can handle myself.¡± He grinned up at Raina, who was standing staring openmouthed over the railing of her box at him, and winked. ¡°Why stop at equalling the record when I can shatter it entirely?¡±
12 - Exhibition (3) Death Lake is one of the great mysteries of our era. What Zesaam did to provoke the seascourge is unknown. In the course of one lunar cycle it went from a thriving trade and manufacture continent to an island less than half its usual size surrounded by deep bands of water and missing any transit platforms. We had no chance to ask questions. By the next lunar passage, even that island was gone, leaving only Death Lake.
Raina had never seen anything like it before. She stared, transfixed, as Jair blasted through round after round as though facing children¡¯s toys instead of highly sophisticated weapons capable of dealing with even seascourge. For Starshaper to spend a month away from the front lines and back at the oasis for this show was not cheap. Not only his own personal fee¡ªwhich was considerable¡ªbut also replacement bribes to fill the gap that his simulacrums being away from the fight would cause. Frontline level war spells. And Jair was smashing them like they were made of cheap glass. He cleared the second intermediate round and went straight into a third, setting a new record and aiming to surpass it all in the same afternoon. Raina tried to take a drink from her long empty glass, hand freezing halfway. She felt an odd mix of exhilaration and dread as she watched her friend tackle something even advanced students struggled with, something made for war turned to play. She¡¯d never seen him move like that. In all their years studying and preparing together, she¡¯d always been the one more physically inclined. And that, only of necessity. She¡¯d never enjoyed doing the fighting and running and form practice sessions, and with Jair perfectly happy to avoid them apart from the bare necessities they¡¯d fallen into their own patterns and schedules. A knock at her balcony door broke her focus, and Elini Veshin entered without waiting for permission. They weren¡¯t exactly close, but like with Denor they¡¯d grown up in close enough proximity to have no qualms about walking in on each other. Elini¡¯s dark hair was tied up in such a way that it cascaded around her face in tight ringlets, combining with her fitted dress to give her an air of playful maturity. She handed Raina a replacement drink, then slipped into the seat beside her with a sly smile. ¡°So this is what you two have been up to all this time? I should have known you¡¯d have something more going on than what it appeared.¡± Raina smiled, as though this were all part of the plan and she wasn¡¯t as shocked as anyone. ¡°I must confess, this is beyond my expectations,¡± Elini continued. ¡°Even the most optimistic conjecture came nowhere close.¡± ¡°If you¡¯d come by sooner, we could have placed a bet on the outcome.¡± Elini laughed. ¡°Good for me that we didn¡¯t.¡± She leaned forward, watching as Jair shattered the simulacrum¡¯s sword arm and retreated. ¡°His fighting style is like nothing I¡¯ve ever seen before. I recognize some standard moves, but others¡­ who did you hire to teach him?¡± Raina smiled secretively. It wouldn¡¯t do to admit that she was as caught by surprise as everyone else. ¡°Jealous?¡± Elini didn¡¯t answer at first. Instead she leaned forward to watch the next round as Jair faced off against the first set of two intermediate opponents. ¡°Every time I start to think he¡¯s over-reliant on that weapon of his, he shows he isn¡¯t. But it still feels unpolished, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡± ¡°I¡¯d call it quite advanced for someone who only received his class and soulsword a few hours ago.¡± Understatement of the year. Play it calm. Elini made a considering hum, and didn¡¯t speak again for a time. Below in the arena, Jair moved from cover to cover, exchanging blows with the glowing blue simulacrums with a speed and precision Raina envied. Where had he learned to do that? The way he used the environment to his advantage in every possible way spoke of an incredible awareness of everything around him at all times. Raina never saw this coming. If he¡¯d been training in secret, he¡¯d hidden it very well. Jair abruptly reversed direction, sword flashing from one hand to the other instantly, and stabbed through the first simulacrum¡¯s shoulder. Fifth strike, and the opponent stopped moving before dissipating into a cloud of blue sparkles. ¡°You know he has to do that effect intentionally?¡± Elini¡¯s voice reminded Raina of her existence. ¡°When other hardlight casters dissolve a simulacrum it disappears instantly. That sparkle cloud he makes is his signature move.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve seen people imitate the technique.¡± ¡°Not like this. You can always tell a fake.¡± They both turned back to watch as Jair skipped backwards to evade a barrage of ¡®spells¡¯ from his remaining adversary. He wasn¡¯t fast enough to fully escape, but even the momentum of the few hits he took was used to aid his escape from the others. ¡°Whatever that is,¡± Elini said quietly, ¡°it¡¯s not fake.¡±
¡°Round ten, clear!¡± Lord Veshin grinned, enthusiasm in full swing as he shouted to be heard over the crowd¡¯s overpowering applause. ¡°Finishing the entire intermediate tier on his first day as an initiate? Unprecedented! Let¡¯s hear it for Jair Welburne!¡± By now, Jair looked notably worse for wear. His robe had been slashed and torn in several places, bruises beginning to show, and blood seeping into the fabric. Not enough to debilitate him, but enough to drive home the point that he was far from untouchable at the moment. Observation, prediction, and Maelstrom¡¯s sheer overpowering strength only went so far against the skill and speed of his adversaries. Every moment the fights dragged on increased his frustration at being unable to move the way he needed to. He¡¯d get used to it, he could adapt, but right now it was all but unbearable. He wanted to push on into the next tier, prove himself capable despite this against the graduate level challenges, but the way he¡¯d struggled against the previous fight he knew this untrained version couldn¡¯t keep up. As desperately as he¡¯d love to throw himself against all comers, today was about making connections. And connections would be harder to establish if he got himself knocked out by a third-tier challenge as a first-tier combatant. He¡¯d pushed himself far enough. Farther than he should have. He didn¡¯t interrupt Veshin¡¯s exuberant congratulations, bowed and accepted the applause, and departed the arena through the lower door. ¡°Second tier combatants, you may now make your way down to the preparation rooms! We¡¯ll resume in a half hour. Our soup chef has prepared something special for you in the meantime.¡± Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Jair had barely left the arena before Lord Veshin came striding after him. ¡°Jair! I trust you have a moment? I did promise to introduce you to my friends. We can start with your intermediate level peers.¡± Jair smiled and nodded. They paused long enough for the Veshin healer to tag Jair with a recovery soulspell. ¡°It will take a few days to fully heal you, and if you undergo any further damage it may stop functioning entirely, but as long as you take it easy you¡¯ll be back to normal by the end of the week.¡± ¡°Thank you, Shirien.¡± Jair bowed to the healer, already calculating how to best implement the healing boost to fast-track his strength and flexibility training for the coming week. It couldn¡¯t have been better timed, and it was the kind of resource he normally wouldn¡¯t have access to. Everything about this exhibition was so far outside of his ordinary plans and resources, it kept surprising him with how beneficial it would be. Back in the front ballroom, people mingled and chatted. The soups were light and creamy with a broad range of flavor profiles, well suited to a brief downtime, unlikely to induce any sluggishness in the competitors for the upcoming rounds. These introductions went fast and smooth. Lord Veshin¡¯s ability to talk endlessly somehow transitioned them seamlessly through almost everyone present in under a half hour. He was done in time to return to his box and enjoy an excellent savory herbed vegetable soup topped with perfectly crisped suncat scales. After repeating the same years so many times he rarely found a recipe he hadn¡¯t eaten more times than he could remember, and the novelty was almost as pleasant as the soup itself. If Jair thought people were interested in him after the lightshow Maelstrom put on when upgrading to its full ascended form in the instant he received it, that attention was nothing compared to the hungry way they watched him now they¡¯d seen its power and his skill on active display. He heard ¡®unlimited potential¡¯ more times in that half hour than he normally heard in full lifetimes. By the time the other exhibition stages were done, he¡¯d accrued personal invitations of one sort or another from practically every family in attendance, as well as an open invitation to come train with Denor in the Veshin training rooms any time they wanted. Kyson Teretho tried to reinforce his precedence to Jair¡¯s attention, not quite coming to blows with Curad Veshin, but clearly feeling his claim had been infringed upon by Lord Veshin¡¯s behavior. Lian was nowhere to be found, probably off sulking somewhere over being shown up. Jair would have to keep an eye out for trouble from that quarter. Jair spent some time chatting with Kael Falkon, one of the recent graduates showing in the third set of exhibition challenges. Kael¡¯s reputation for near-genius levels of skill meshed well with the up-and-coming star persona Jair had begun to cultivate. And then it was over. Final course eaten, last rounds watched, and Veshin Oasis began emptying for the night. Jair found Raina easily, he¡¯d been keeping her in sight the whole afternoon. Together they walked out into the dark evening toward the departure platform, between visible blue wisps of mana that drifted lazily in all directions like oversized flower puffs on unseen winds. Returning to the Institute after the event felt dissonant. The subtle games and elegance of the nobility replaced with the mundane, the promise of acclaim and future power meaningless in the face of what was to come. In four days, the Astralla Mageblade Institute would be subjected to one of the most effective and dramatic attacks of its history: an angry dragon determined to devour a specific student at any cost. Attempts to warn the faculty ahead of time were disregarded. A dragon attack was so vanishingly unlikely that by the time anyone took it seriously it was already too late. Attempts to evacuate the student in question did nothing but buy a few more hours, and there weren¡¯t many hours on the market. Jair had tried anything and everything, within reason or outside it. Nothing was ever enough. "Something the matter?" Raina asked Jair as they walked back toward their apartment. "You''ve been acting unusually tense this evening." Jair latched on to Raina¡¯s voice, forcefully dragging himself out of the memories that threatened to consume him. "It''s been a very long day." She stared into his eyes, her own expression worried, questioning. He wanted nothing more than to tell her everything, except he knew how that would end. He hated seeing the calculation behind their interactions, hated that he could predict her reactions to near-perfection. He spent whole loops avoiding her, others drawn helplessly close. ¡°Then it sounds like you have a lot to tell me.¡± ¡°Not tonight. I need to take care of a few things, and then I desperately need some proper rest.¡± With the excitement and adrenaline high of his exhibition matches far behind, a deep weariness had settled over him. Part mental, part physical, the result of pushing himself so far for so long. Raina picked up on the exhaustion in his voice. ¡°Maybe you should do the resting first. There¡¯s plenty of time to take care of things tomorrow.¡± ¡°No, I think¡­¡± Jair slowed his steps as they neared the student housing village. He¡¯d felt a growing unease for hours, one which he couldn¡¯t fully pin down, but right now it peaked into a tense certainty. Something wasn¡¯t right here. ¡°Jair?¡± He swallowed and shook his head. "Nothing. I''ll handle it." ¡°Handle what?¡± ¡°Everything.¡± He looked around the area, taking in the black-cobbled walkways lined with their dimly-glowing brown and purple shrubs, the looming silhouettes of the student apartment houses. Nothing looked out of place, but the certainty of something being wrong only grew sharper. "You go on ahead, I''ll meet you there in a few minutes. I have a few things to take care of." "I''m not sure I want to leave you alone when you''re acting this way." "I''m quite sure you don''t want to be involved." "Involved in what?" "I¡¯ll explain it all, later. You go on home, I¡¯ll be along soon enough." "If you''re sure..." ¡°I am. Please trust me.¡± Raina nodded and started walking. She only glanced back once as she reached the turnoff to their apartment. Jair waited until she¡¯d stepped inside and closed the door, then walked slowly down the central walkway, every sense on alert. A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, a not-quite-right shadow on the side of a building. Yeah. He¡¯d thought so. He tapped his forehead, completing the circuit to manifest Maelstrom into his hand. The silvery flash of light illuminated the scene as clearly as a lightning strike. An arrogant female voice broke the silence. ¡°Well, well, looks like we¡¯ve been discovered.¡± Eria Ylles, the closest thing Lian had to a second-in-command, sauntered out from where she¡¯d been leaning against the side of Jair¡¯s neighbor¡¯s house, coming to stand between him and his front door. People stepped out from behind cover, or rose from where they¡¯d been crouching in shadows. Bren Tolo stepped out into the path just ahead of him, while Korin, Atrek, and Zyn closed in around Jair from the sides. Jair continued walking forward with a smile, allowing himself to be surrounded in return for closing the distance to Bren. He¡¯d prefer to deal with them relatively peacefully, but in the likely event that it came to a fight, Bren would be the one to target first. ¡°Ah, there you are, I was wondering if you were even planning to show up.¡± Lian¡¯s whole gang was here, minus the ringleader himself. At least Lian paid enough attention to politics to know when to take personal action and when to let the blame land on others. He wasn¡¯t actually stupid, just petty, cruel, and perpetually angry. With the upcoming duel on the record, he couldn¡¯t do anything directly to Jair without risking his standing. But allowing his friends to beat up the upstart before Jair could cement his improvement, leaving him crippled or terrified by the time of the duel? Fully viable strategy. ¡°Too late, Welburne. Seeing us won¡¯t be enough to save you.¡± His smile didn¡¯t waver. They were expecting a Jair who was inexperienced and afraid, temporarily buoyed by his unreasonably strong weapon, but without real strength or courage to back it up. Unfortunate for them. Even weak, injured, and tired, Jair had a major advantage over them, knowing how to fight with a summonable blade. No one here had ever trained against an ascendant. He may only have the one trick at the moment, but it was quite a good trick. ¡°Eria. I¡¯m giving you this chance to walk away unharmed.¡± Jair turned in a circle, pointing Maelstrom at each of them in turn. ¡°I¡¯ve no quarrel with any of you, but I am done letting you attack me with impunity.¡± Eria laughed, ringing and harsh. ¡°You think your sword is worth more than all of us?¡± She rolled her shoulder and stretched out her arms, watching him with a predatory expression the whole time. ¡°This is going to be fun.¡±
13 - Proving Point ¡°You never said anything? Why?¡± ¡°I did try for a little, when I got truly desperate, but it was always more trouble for you and never changed anything.¡± ¡°You should tell me anyway.¡± ¡°No need. This time, I¡¯ll be considerably harder to overpower.¡±
¡°I¡¯m surprised you¡¯re even standing without your girlfriend to hide behind.¡± Eria¡¯s disdainful sneer was meant to be intimidating, but Jair could only see it as childish and pathetic. Once, their appearance would have caused Jair to shrink in on himself, retreating from the necessity of confrontation. Later, they''d sparked anger and defiance, then eventually resignation and apathy. Now, he only wanted to smash through this obstacle as quickly as possible so he could get on with what mattered. Was there a way to solve this encounter without resorting to violence? Perhaps. But he didn''t have the patience to search for it right now. After trying everything he could to convince them to leave him alone in the past, he''d eventually concluded they''d never respect anything but overpowering them at their own game. The aim of coming back this far was to save Raina. The life or death of these five meant almost nothing. Particularly not today. Jair needed barely a glance to bring to mind the relevant details on each adversary. He¡¯d fought them often enough to know their abilities better than they themselves by now. Bren Tolo was big and strong but deceptively fast for someone going on four years without managing to unlock the class. He followed Lian because he had no better prospects and wasn¡¯t intelligent enough to forge his own way if he tried. Even without a soulspell, Bren would be the biggest threat. In a fight he relied too heavily on his spell-enhanced gauntlets, a habit that would cripple his potential, but one that made him dangerous. Jair needed him out of the picture as quickly as possible. He¡¯d been crushed by those enhanced fists too many times to take him lightly. Eria Yles, fourth daughter of a secondary branch of House Yles, advanced in the same initiation as Raina. Power-hungry and backstabbing, but emotionally volatile. Used Lian as an excuse, really only cared about wielding dominance over others. She¡¯d probably end up with him wrapped around her finger. Her soulspell enhanced any spell she cast, and any other magical effect she chose. She often focused on empowering Bren¡¯s spell gauntlets but wasn¡¯t shy about empowering the others if she had the chance. Not much of a threat in and of herself. One of the more annoying members of the gang, but she could safely be left for last. Zyn Cabas could have made something of himself if he put more effort into improving and less into sucking up to the loudest idiot he could find, but no. Above average intelligence for this crew, but no common sense to go with it. His soulspell was a randomized type that could do anything from giving him claws to a full on battle golem form. And not randomized in the ¡®depends on circumstances and can be predicted by time looping¡¯ way, but truly ¡®no idea what you¡¯re going to get, even in identical situations¡¯ type. After Bren, Zyn would be the next highest potential threat to keep an eye on. Jair couldn¡¯t remember at what point Zyn attuned his soulspell, whether before or after this date. Atrek Nokier, third son of a minor family, had no ambitions or aims beyond simple cruelty. Unlike most of the others in Lian¡¯s gang, he cared nothing for Lian¡¯s social status, only the fact that allying with him gave him a direction and excuse for his sadism. He was fast, focused, had a high pain tolerance, and was hard to distract. Atrek¡¯s main weakness was a preference for toying with people rather than actually finishing things. His soulspell provided a brief burst of highly increased speed or a longer lasting smaller boost. Currently at a very low level, enough for a quick lunge, but nothing Jair couldn¡¯t handle. Atrek wouldn¡¯t be jumping in at the start, leaving the boring job of beating Jair into submission to the others before he got in on the fun part. Jair didn¡¯t plan to give him the opportunity this time. Which was harder than it sounded. Even as a time traveler with intimate knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, he¡¯d never managed to physically overwhelm this many without access to his spells. Finally, the easiest to deal with. Korin Rhebina, fringe cousin of the discordant and scattered Rhebina clan. Future assassin of some renown, but currently an underperforming nobody fully under Lian¡¯s thumb. Decently average or above in all respects but without any particular strengths. Weaknesses¡­ ¡°How¡¯s Merin doing these days?¡± Jair turned to Korin, ignoring the rest entirely for the moment. ¡°Still enjoying his good standing with the Order, I trust?¡± Korin stopped dead still. Her face twitched, then she took two quick steps closer, lowering her voice threateningly. "What¡¯s that supposed to mean?" "I mean a particular Order member whose past history may or may not conflict dangerously with his current position." Jair restrained his desire to grin. This wasn''t something he''d done often in the past, but it tended to be satisfying when the circumstances aligned. "Who told you that?" Korin hissed. "What do you want?" "I want you to leave me alone, just for tonight. If after today you still want to come after me, I won''t hold it against your brother. But today, I have more important things to do than deal with you." Korin flinched, grimaced, and looked around at the rest of the gang. Lian wasn¡¯t present to establish his own dominance, and she and Eria never got along anyway. The boys present were all idiots. Her tense shoulders slumped in defeat. "Fine. One night. But if you ever try to use this against me again, I will kill you." "Don''t worry, I''d rather you don''t become a murderer any sooner than necessary." The casual revelation of his deep knowledge of her tangled family was enough to send her backing off, physically stumbling away. In another few years, she¡¯d be willing to kill for less, but right now, she was still a student initiate. "Oy, Korin?" Eria called. "What''re you doing? We can¡¯t let him get away!" "No need to worry, Madame Eria," Jair interrupted, turning to face her. "I''ve no intention of running. Miss Rhebina is not necessary to this conversation any longer." He stepped forward, placing himself directly between Eria and Bren. Bren looked behind him at Eria, then back at Jair, confusion on his face. Zyn and Atrek tightened the circle, shifting to cover the gap Korin¡¯s departure left. ¡°Sounds to me like someone needs to put you back in your place.¡± Eria waved Bren forward. ¡°If you wouldn¡¯t mind teaching this upstart a lesson?¡± Jair turned to Bren and raised his hands, one held forward in readiness, the other raised to his forehead. ¡°I¡¯m going to warn you right now, if this is what you want to do, it''s not going to end well for you." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Bren wasn¡¯t the sort to back off for any reason, though, and predictably lunged forward. ¡°Soulblade, manifest.¡± Maelstrom appeared between them, aimed directly at Bren¡¯s chest, and the larger boy was moving too fast to avoid it. Maelstrom¡¯s tip wasn¡¯t as sharp as it could have been, its blade misshapen, but the momentum of Bren¡¯s lunge was enough to pierce through his layered robes. Bren didn¡¯t slow his rush, despite being slightly impaled. Jair let go of Maelstrom¡¯s hilt so the weight of Bren¡¯s rush wouldn¡¯t snap his wrist, throwing himself to the side in the same motion. Zyn was waiting. Cackling, the boy grabbed his arm and pinned it behind his back, dragging Jair to a stop. Bren snarled and tore Maelstrom out of his chest, hurling the blade off into the sand away from the path. He turned back to Jair, rage in his eyes. Eria crossed her arms and smirked, stepping forward now the danger seemed to have passed. "Oooh, someone thinks he''s all special now he can sparkle his shiny sword? Well, how special are you now, huh?" He''d heard almost the exact same words from her or Lian a thousand times in the past, always followed up by them proving quite tangibly that he was physically inferior. Zyn grabbed for Jair¡¯s other arm to hold him still, but Jair moved with him and kept just out of reach. Zyn settled for wrapping his forearm around Jair¡¯s throat instead, other hand still pinning Jair¡¯s arm between them. ¡°I¡¯m warning you. Let me go and walk away if¡ª¡± Zyn flexed his arm and shifted his hold, choking off Jair¡¯s voice. Recall. For this, he didn¡¯t need to speak aloud. Maelstrom responded instantly. In a flash of silver it vanished from where it lay and reappeared in his free hand. Bren didn¡¯t have time to even be surprised. The blade came up as he closed the last distance, momentum driving it straight through his jugular. Jair jerked the blade up once, then yanked it free. Bren wouldn¡¯t be stopped so easily, even if the attack would be fatal without immediate treatment, he still had enough time to do serious damage. Jair ducked and kicked out to disrupt Zyn''s balance, slamming both feet into one of Zyn''s legs while simultaneously allowing his body to become dead weight. The boy holding him wasn''t expecting anything. The two of them fell below Bren¡¯s swung sparking fist. The larger boy stumbled at the unexpected lack of resistance, tripped over the tangled duo, and fell. Jair twisted his arm free of Zyn''s grip, but the arm around his throat remained. Bren toppled past them, slamming one fist into the ground to catch himself. Orange light sparked as his enhanced spell gloves flared and ignited against the stone pathway. Jair''s vision was starting to go hazy from lack of air, but he still had time. Recall. Maelstrom vanished from his hand and reappeared in the same instant, now aimed backwards instead of forward. Jair had fought with his soulsword for years, the tricks coming naturally to him. Before anyone could react he slammed Maelstrom in his reverse grip behind himself into Zyn''s stomach. The boy reflexively released Jair and stumbled back. He would probably survive it, but it would be very distracting. Zyn hadn''t transformed, even now, so he probably hadn''t attuned his soulspell yet at this point. Good. That made things easier. Jair switched Maelstrom back to his main hand now he was unrestrained. He rolled aside out of reach and swiped a slash along the back of Bren''s leg as he charged past, then flipped back to his feet. "You should get your friends to the healer before it''s too late," Jair told them, but his ragged breathing belied the attempt at a casual tone. Much less intimidating when gasping for air. This body had yet to acclimate to his proper capabilities. "You really shouldn''t have done that," Eria snarled, raising two fingers to her forehead. "I thought this would be more fun, but now you''ve gone and ruined the mood." Her soulsword appeared without fanfare. One moment her hand was empty, the next it held her sword. So far, despite their violent pummeling, they hadn''t actually drawn blades on him before now. Eria¡¯s action seemed to have been some signal, because the next moment, Zyn and Atrek held their swords as well. Zyn swiped at Jair''s leg, one arm clenched across his stomach, the other gripping his sword. Atrek stalked closer, looking entirely too pleased with the fact that he was now allowed to stab the irritant. Jair grimaced. As much as he wanted to take down all four of them to prove he¡¯d truly surpassed them all, he was still severely outnumbered and his day one muscles already screamed at him in protest at their mistreatment. If he couldn¡¯t finish this soon, he¡¯d be forced to flee. Atrek surged in closer, tapping his soulspell to take Jair off guard. Hah. Nice try. Jair spun. Maelstrom flicked up in a rapid arc, Atrek¡¯s enhanced speed slamming him onto the blade so fast and hard it ran all the way through and out his back. The impact threw them both to the ground, Atrek landing atop Jair. Recall. Jair summoned Maelstrom to his free hand, removing the object holding them together, even as he rolled and flipped them over, taking full advantage before Atrek reacclimated. Atrek grabbed at his arm, a split second too late. Jair was already jumping to his feet, whirling to meet Eria¡¯s silent slash on his upraised sword. She snarled and attacked again, faster, slashing and stabbing in what was clearly a trained and practiced sequence. It wasn¡¯t enough. Jair still had the advantage of flexibility. Switching his sword from one hand to the other in an instant wasn¡¯t something she¡¯d ever trained to deal with. Jair evaded her attack sequence, blocking her sword with an upraised arm and lunging with the other, driving Maelstrom under her guard and into her chest. ¡°I gave you every chance to back off. Consider this your final warning. Leave me alone.¡± He dove to the ground to escape Atrek¡¯s followup attack, leaving Maelstrom where it was for the moment. Atrek didn¡¯t run into Eria, having more control over his movements than Bren had. Zyn was back on his feet by now, red covering the white fabric over his stomach and one arm where he continued to hold the wound, looking a bit unsteady but thoroughly furious. Bren had finally collapsed, half in the bushes, choking weakly as blood stained the front of his own robes. No longer a threat. Recall. Maelstrom vanished from Eria, reappearing in Jair¡¯s hand as he rushed the unsteady Zyn. He didn¡¯t even need to use his switching tricks this time, his opponent unable to properly defend with only one hand. He locked swords, kicked Zyn in the stomach to take full advantage of his injury, then slammed Maelstrom¡¯s hilt down on his head hard. Dizzied, Zyn stumbled back, his sword dropping to the pathway with a clatter. A second kick sent him to the ground. He wouldn¡¯t be getting up soon. Eria had run away. Unsurprising. Of all of them, she was the most classic bully. She liked the feeling of power, not the feeling of an even fight. Atrek, by contrast, only seemed happier to have Jair all to himself. He charged in. Jair didn¡¯t need enhanced speed or reflexes to evade, now it was one on one. His perception of minute movements was sufficient to betray Atrek¡¯s every move before he made it. Just enough to stay one step ahead of him. ¡°You really should do something about your friends, though.¡± Atrek, being Atrek, didn¡¯t so much as blink. ¡°Friends is a strong word.¡± He lunged. Jair blocked and retaliated with a vertical slash. ¡°Well, if you don¡¯t, there¡¯ll be a lot of paperwork involved.¡± Jair mentally cursed his low stamina. The inability to carry on a conversation during a simple fight without sounding like he¡¯d just finished running the length of the continent was embarrassing. Atrek deflected the slash, sliding his sword along to lock the blades. Jair ducked aside and switched hands, but Atrek had seen the trick before and the flash of light warned him of the incoming attack. In a burst of speed, he darted back, disengaging. Jair tossed the sword back to his main hand as they stood, sizing each other up. Neither would back down. Atrek didn¡¯t care about his own bleeding arm, the minor pain insufficient to deter him. ¡°Really should walk away,¡± Jair offered one last out, flipping Maelstrom around to hold by the deformed blade. Atrek sneered and lunged. Jair ducked and swung in an underhand arc with all his remaining strength, slamming Maelstrom¡¯s hilt through the layers of robes and directly into Atrek¡¯s crotch. Ignore that. Atrek may be able to brush off a lot, but some things no man could ignore. He doubled over, gasping. ¡°Final warning,¡± Jair told him, returning Maelstrom to his soul in a silver flash. ¡°I am done letting you control me. Try it again and I won¡¯t be as nice about it.¡± Perhaps not the most diplomatic solution, but he really was out of patience. With any luck, this would be enough to keep everyone out of his hair for at least the rest of the week. Any future retribution, he didn¡¯t care. As long as they left him alone long enough to figure out the dragon thing, he could deal with it when the time came. Leaving the trio to their injuries, he hopped up the steps and into his apartment.
14 - Cooldown Ware the waking of the ancients. While children will fight easily they forgive just as quickly; wrath long held cannot be so readily defused.
As soon as she was inside, Raina cleared the table out of the way, leaving the full center of their living room open, and took out her soulsword. Seeing Jair¡¯s demonstration at the exhibition had sparked a bit of competitive fire. Neither one of them was ordinarily very athletically inclined, but she''d still been trained in the basics of the class. For a moment she weighed her sword in one hand, then lunged like a fencer, raised it in a cross-parry, and tossed it to her other hand to continue into a familiar set of warmups. Raina thought she heard voices and paused midway through a practice sweep. Who''d be outside this time of night? It was too late for the studious types, and too early for the partying crowd. They''d all be down at one of the dining halls, anyway. She crossed to the window and peeked out through the curtain. Silver light flashed to illuminate the scene. Jair stood surrounded by several figures she recognized. That group was always hanging around with Lian. The one Jair always avoided answering questions about. Five to one were terrible odds, even if not all his opponents were initiated yet, even if he weren''t already exhausted. She''d seen how much he put into the fight at the exhibition. He¡¯d pushed himself to his limits, and even if he''d been looked at by the healer, he''d been injured as well as over-strained. Switching her sword to her main hand, she opened the door in readiness to go out and show them the folly of their ways. No one messed with her friend on her watch. But, like in the exhibition, Jair moved with uncanny and unprecedented speed and focus. If she didn¡¯t know better how impossible it would be to improve to that level over the course of a single day, she¡¯d have said he moved even more cleanly and quickly than before. His sword was everywhere, flashing, stabbing, lunging, switching, throwing the whole scene into dramatic chaos with its brilliant glow. Anyone watching from anywhere on campus would be able to see something was going down. She lost focus of what she¡¯d been planning to do, again taken in with the spectacle. And¡­ he didn¡¯t need her help. She¡¯d been his protector for so long, it was a mixed feeling that stirred in her heart to see him doing so well on his own. She couldn¡¯t have been happier, to know he could take care of himself, but to see him improve so very much in such a short time¡­ If she wasn¡¯t careful, she¡¯d be left behind. By the time Jair finished his fight and returned to the interior, she¡¯d quietly closed the door and returned to her practice. "Everything alright out there?" she asked, glancing up from her lunging stretch as her somewhat battered roommate walked in. Jair shook his head. "I''m fine, I just perpetually wish idiocy were curable." Raina paused, slowly returning to basic stance. "Idiocy?" He shook his head. "The whole society of Veor is ridiculous. The fact that people like Lian feel justified in behaving like that and the Institute won''t do anything about it and will in fact take his side just because of his money and position." "Another analysis of how we should take over the world for its own good?" Raina pivoted on one foot, twisting into another slow lunge. "Pretty sure we decided that wasn''t viable." "Did we?" Jair half smiled, a wistful expression in his eyes that made her feel oddly melancholy. "Funny how hard that ends up being in practice." ¡°Is this the first time?¡± Raina asked, with forced casualness. ¡°That they¡¯ve attacked you like this?¡± ¡°No, but it should be the last.¡± ¡°You sure about that? If I need to stab someone¡­¡± Jair chuckled and shook his head. ¡°If they come after me again, it won¡¯t be from the front. They¡¯ll come up with something convoluted and ridiculous and get themselves hurt in ways that can¡¯t be healed so easily.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never seen you like this.¡± She couldn¡¯t suppress the concern in her voice. ¡°You¡¯re really starting to worry me.¡± ¡°Only starting? Give it a few days, you¡¯ll be downright baffled.¡± ¡°Are you¡­ dying?¡± Raina whispered. Jair let out a startled laugh. ¡°No, you¡¯d be hard-pressed to find someone as far from dying as me.¡± Another hint about the nature of his soulspell? She desperately wanted to ask, but held herself back. It wouldn¡¯t be proper. ¡°I can¡¯t think of anything else to explain all this,¡± she said instead. ¡°You¡¯ve never been this reckless.¡± ¡°Reckless isn¡¯t the word. I¡¯ll be fine. That soulspell the healer tagged me with should take care of just about everything, and probably bring me out of the whole thing significantly stronger too.¡± He gestured with one hand in her direction. ¡°Want company? I could use a good workout to cool down. I know we decided it would be better to rest first, but after that out there I think it¡¯ll be a while before my body calms down enough.¡± ¡°You¡¯re welcome to join me,¡± she said automatically, continually stunned by his casual disregard of every precedent for behavior he¡¯d ever set. Since when was a workout his preference for calming down? ¡°Ready when you are.¡± He took his stance, sword appearing in a brilliant flash of silver. Raina stared, all but mesmerized by the pulsing glow. This was the closest she¡¯d seen the weapon, and from this distance its peculiarities showed themselves. ¡°What happened? It looks¡­ smudged?¡± ¡°Oh, of course, you haven¡¯t been introduced.¡± Jair flipped his sword around to hold it out flat in front of him. ¡°Raina Serin, may I present, Maelstrom.¡± She gently lifted it with both hands, giving it a good searching look before she turned it over to examine the back. One-edged along the top three-fourths, more symmetrical at the tip of the blade. One side was rippled, as though something had melted it with its hands and dulled what should have been a second edge. Despite that, the sheer power radiating from the weapon made her heart race. She wasn¡¯t even sure why. An undirected sense of excited anticipation, as though the sword itself were eager to fight. The intricate play of silver, pale grey-blue, and bright sapphires was marred only by the strange reddish smudges down the middle. She desperately wanted to inspect its stats, but to ask would be akin to asking Jair to derobe. If he chose to offer its examine text, fine, but she¡¯d never put him in an awkward situation by asking. ¡°It¡¯s so broad.¡± Raina still couldn''t tear her eyes away from the sword¡ªMaelstrom. She shifted to gripping it by the hilt, then looked up at him hopefully. ¡°May I?¡± ¡°Go ahead.¡± She swung the blade in a quick slash then tried to twirl it, but the unaccustomed weight almost tugged it from her hand and she had to add a second hand to keep it under control. She grunted as she changed stance. ¡°Not well suited for one-handed use.¡± ¡°More control with two hands, and more power. Most of what I fight is best dealt with aggressively. Fencing is all well and good for display but monster hunting requires a different strategy.¡± Raina slowly lowered Maelstrom, suspicious. ¡°You¡¯ve been sneaking out to fight monsters?¡± ¡°I speak of the future, naturally.¡± Jair gestured down at himself. ¡°Do you think I could have done any monster fighting without ruining my robes?¡± She passed his sword back to him. ¡°I still don¡¯t understand.¡± Jair ran a hand lightly down the blade, over the odd indents, eyes going distant. ¡°It¡¯s a long story, and I¡¯m very tired. Ask me after Terlunia.¡± "There''s got to be a way to fix that, right?" Raina gestured to the dull sections: the wobble streaked with traces of blood, the middle pearls scattered in broken sequence. "The containment is faulty,¡± Jair explained. ¡°That''s why it glows so much. Once we kill your dragon, we¡¯ll have to visit Eythron. He¡¯ll know how to correct the imbalance, if anyone will." ¡°So it¡¯s not just a dragon, it¡¯s my dragon now?¡± Raina threw her arms in the air in frustration. "And who''s Eythron? Jair, what is going on?" "I suppose you could call him my future mentor. He''s a bit crazy though." Jair''s face broke into a smile. "I can''t wait to introduce you! You''ll love him. I can just imagine the debates now." ¡°That does it, something is definitely wrong. If you had a mentor lined up, I would have known about it before now." ¡°Well¡­¡± Jair drew out the word awkwardly. ¡°We haven¡¯t technically ever met, and I¡¯m pretty sure he doesn¡¯t know I exist, but I¡¯m confident I can convince him to take me on!¡± ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re okay?¡± ¡°Exhausted Jair isn¡¯t to your liking?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve seen you exhausted plenty of times. That¡¯s nothing like whatever has been going on with you today.¡± Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He smiled mysteriously. ¡°Then I suppose I have you at a disadvantage. Face me, young one!¡± Raina raised her sword. She wanted to argue, but there was no time. Jair lunged, and she was far too distracted trying to keep up with his relentless tempo to try to speak further. The disconnect and dissonance in her head continued to grow. The more things he did that felt nothing like him, the more uncertainty built up. Not that she had that much time to contemplate it. ¡°You¡¯re good,¡± she told him, breathing hard from their limited sparring. If they¡¯d gone out to the dome or one of the smaller practice areas in the academy they could have practiced more involved combat, but even just in their enclosed room they had plenty of progress they could make. ¡°I¡¯ve been practicing.¡± His sword¡ªstill glowing almost unbearably bright¡ªslipped past her guard and tapped gently against her shoulder. ¡°When!¡± Raina couldn¡¯t help the outburst, as she disengaged and stepped back, wiping sweat from her face. ¡°I¡¯d swear you¡¯ve never had the time to do anything like this without me noticing.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a surprise. Give me one more week, and I¡¯ll explain everything.¡± ¡°Should I be concerned?¡± ¡°No.¡± But something about the way he said it felt off, a note of sadness or regret. That only made her even more worried. ¡°You¡¯re concerned anyway.¡± ¡°Yes. Everything about today has been unexpected. I don¡¯t know what to think.¡± ¡°Then don¡¯t think. Everything will be fine.¡± ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± ¡°Very sure. Also, tomorrow we need to go shopping. I have some supplies to pick up in town. The next few days are going to be quite busy.¡± Raina seized on the plan at once. ¡°If we¡¯re going to the city, we¡¯re going to stop and get you looked at. Something abnormal happened when you unlocked your class and I don¡¯t want to ignore it and pretend it¡¯ll go away when there¡¯s every chance something went wrong.¡± ¡°If something went wrong, I¡¯d know about it. We have more important things to deal with. Like research!¡± ¡°Finally, something that makes sense.¡± Jair¡¯s love of research matched her own enthusiasm well, one of the many things they¡¯d bonded over through the years. Her relief was doomed to be short-lived. ¡°Into dragons,¡± Jair added, his smile making it clear he was fully aware of what he was doing. ¡°Dragons, again? What is going on? And why can¡¯t you tell me?¡± She groaned as the solution came to her. ¡°Jair, why didn¡¯t you at least ask me first? If you want the Dragonslayer title, there¡¯s better ways to do it than¡­ whatever this is.¡± Jair continued to grin, unruffled. ¡°And what is it you think this is?¡± ¡°Did you secretly sign up for a hunt? Is that why you¡¯re suddenly talking to everyone?¡± She started ticking off on her fingers as she fell into step beside him, ¡°If you want to slay a dragon, you need access to one, and the slots on teams aren¡¯t cheap. So first you need financial backing¡ªwhich, really, why didn¡¯t you come to me?¡± Jair put on an exaggerated pleading voice, dropping to one knee and putting his hands together in mock desperation. ¡°Raina dear, will you sponsor me as a Dragonslayer hopeful?¡± ¡°No! Even with what you¡¯ve done today, you¡¯re still only an initiate. If that¡¯s your goal, we need to work up to it. It¡¯ll take years of preparation.¡± ¡°Exactly.¡± She scowled. ¡°So you¡¯re not just reckless, you¡¯re suicidally reckless. Good to know.¡± ¡°Not in the slightest. If I were suicidal at any point, I wouldn¡¯t still be here.¡± Raina chose to ignore this, any response she could think of felt worse than saying nothing. Instead she continued expounding on her theory. ¡°So you somehow found a sponsor who¡¯d take you on. Probably leveraging the fact that no one understands what happened, but that big flash you made on stage was more excitement than most people see at a dozen initiations combined. You still had no combat records worth taking note of, so you needed to go to the exhibition to prove your qualifications.¡± ¡°Pretty close, actually, apart from the core premise. What else?¡± ¡°Now you¡¯re just patronizing me. This isn¡¯t like you, what¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m doing no such thing. I¡¯m genuinely curious to know what you think is happening here. It¡¯ll make things easier.¡± She glared at him. ¡°You¡¯re lucky there¡¯s nothing around to throw.¡± ¡°Indeed,¡± Jair said solemnly. He was standing between her and the sofa. ¡°You¡¯re such a violent little thing. I wonder what I ever saw in you.¡± ¡°But¡­ dragons. Really? I¡¯d say you¡¯ve lost your mind, but in this mood you¡¯d probably just agree with me.¡± Jair winked, grinning back as if he weren¡¯t behaving like a complete madman. ¡°Trust me, it could save your life.¡± ¡°How? You¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m insufferable today?¡± he guessed. ¡°Yes!¡± ¡°Am I ever not?¡± ¡°You never used to be this¡­¡± she shook her head helplessly, gesturing up and down at him, ¡°this about things.¡± ¡°Your eloquence is unmatched.¡± Raina silently searched his eyes, deeply concerned, words failing her entirely. ¡°Give me one week,¡± Jair said gently, turning serious. ¡°After that, I¡¯ll tell you everything. Can you trust me that long?¡± ¡°I¡­¡± Raina took a deep breath, then released it. ¡°Of course I trust you. But if you¡¯re not going to explain anything, you can¡¯t blame me for being confused.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t blame you. Of anyone in the entire world, you¡¯re the last person I¡¯d ever blame.¡± Jair beckoned and raised his sword. ¡°One more round, then I¡¯m desperately in need of sleep. We¡¯ve got a lot to take care of in the morning.¡±
"What happened?" Lian paced the recovery ward where his allies had gathered, one hand bandaged, the other clenched in a fist. "I thought you were going to take care of the upstart, not let him keep thinking he''s better than us all." Bren was still deeply unconscious, his injury coming a lot closer to deadly than the others. Healer Notek had been able to repair the damage and keep him alive, but it would be days at the minimum before he¡¯d wake up, let alone start attending classes again. Korin was notably absent, leaving him with only three of his usual five allies. And three injured ones at that. "We tried, but he had all those stupid tricks." Eria flipped her hair out of her face and scowled. "First he scares Korin off with some crazy nonsense about her brother, then takes out Bren like it¡¯s nothing. He''s too fast with that sword. I swear he''s not been secretly practicing." "I don''t care how much he''s been practicing, what I saw out there was not normal." Lian paced, hands tightening into fists. "He''s been doing something but I can''t tell..." "I can," Atrek spoke up, voice matching Lian¡¯s for cold fury. "He''s got that soulspell that lets him flash his sword around wherever he wants. We got it away from him like we planned, but he just took it back without moving." "So he also attuned it right away." "How does he do it?" Eria complained. "I''ve been trying and it doesn''t do anything!" "I''ve shown you plenty of exercises," Lian snapped. "Practice them." "They¡¯re so boring, I just want my soulspell to unlock already." ¡°I¡¯ve spent years doing boring things to prepare my body and mind for this integration, and even I won¡¯t be able to unlock it for another day or two. I''ve given you the same access to training materials no one outside House Teretho has seen in generations. If you can''t put them to good use then that''s only further proof that you belong as our subordinates." Eria pouted, but didn''t seem bothered. She was perfectly happy being second on the pecking pole, as long as Lian was the only one above her she didn''t care if she actually came close to his level. Lian sometimes appreciated that about her, but right now the lack of ambition only infuriated him further. Atrek sneered in Eria''s direction, shaking his head. "And you wonder why you can''t keep up with the rest of us." "Hey! I''m perfectly fine, thank you." "In classes, maybe. I''d like to see you fight any one of us." "It''s not my fault my soulspell is being stubborn! If even someone like Welburne can get his just showing up on day one then it''s not fair for mine to make me put in so much work for it." Lian closed his eyes and tuned out their bickering to drop into his own thoughts again. He went over every minute of the exhibition, every feint, every block, and the picture they painted was a truly intimidating one. Welburne wasn''t moving at full capacity. The way he moved had a stiffness born of lack of training, but the way his eyes moved, the way his balance shifted, everything about him but his body was moving at a level far in advance of anything Lian had ever seen in anyone below Blademaster. Welburne''s soulspell had done more than let him flash his sword from hand to hand. It had also given him the instincts of mastery. Informational soulspells weren''t uncommon, but something on this level developing in a single day was beyond unheard-of. Lian''s jaw tightened. Of course his one adversary would be the one to get the best soulspell he''d ever heard of. Lian would''ve killed for that kind of shortcut. He''d been putting in the effort year after year, gradually moving from novice to apprentice to standard initiate level, while Welburne sat around and doodled equations- for weird magical experiments. The fact that none of those experiments came to anything was cold comfort when he could manifest something like this out of nowhere. More than ever, Lian wanted Welburne under his boot. This upstart was only going to become a bigger and bigger problem as time went on. He could ignore the growing issue and wait for it to explode, or he could take actions to head it off. Right now, neither he nor his group was in any position to do anything about it. Bren needed time to heal, and Lian needed time to unlock his soulspell and integrate it into his fighting style. When he fought Welburne, he intended to do it with every advantage on his side. "I''m going to go practice. Eria, Atrek, with me." He spun on his heels and marched out to the back yard, then thought better of it and stalked across the academy grounds to the transit platform, his allies following in his wake. He keyed in Teretho manor, subtransit seventeen, and they materialized in the training hall. "Servant, send for Luso. And I need a dozen sets of metal armor prepped for practice." The training room servant on call bowed deeply and scurried off. "Eria, you''re going to meditate with me for the next ten minutes," Lian declared. "Atrek, you too." They glanced at one another, then at him. Eria scowled grumpily, while Atrek looked neutrally pleased. They sat comfortably waiting, practicing basic cyclical breathing until Luso arrived to guide them through the deeper meditations of attuning a soulspell. It wouldn''t be a one-day process, reaching his full potential. It may take weeks, or even months, but this was just the beginning. Welburne may be on even footing right now, but next time Lian would be ready for him. Now he knew what to expect, he could counter every one of the upstart''s moves and he''d do so with the utmost pleasure. No one humiliated House Teretho and got away with it.
Oliss Methesdi dreamed. She dreamed of darkness and fear. She dreamed of fire and death. She dreamed of disaster. The sky fell. Stone crunched and shattered. Dust showered down. Fire ignited in a roar of heat. The air vibrated in deep resonance. Oliss caught her breath, choking on the acrid smoke. She knew this was coming. She''d seen it before. Lived it before. She remembered remembering, the event echoed forward and backward, time and death and repetition. She heard screaming, but it wasn''t hers. She was struck dumb, immobile, frozen in the terror, in the knowledge of inevitability. People stood around her, shadows without clarity. Some tried to run, others tried to hide. The building fell apart, toppling. Huge blocks fell, just missing students. One flew over Oliss''s head, shattering with a crunch into a pile of rubble beside her. An uneven chunk bounced and wobbled as it rolled toward her, falling still beside her foot. In the distance, the dome broke with an echoing crack that made the fallen stones jump. Oliss was dreaming. She''d dreamed it before. Lived it already. She was going to die. She''d seen it, lived it. Couldn''t avoid it. Silver light flared through her vision, snapping her awake with a rush of relief, body tense with the visceral memory of a future yet to be. Silver light. That was new. Timely Glimpse¡¯s activation glow was purple. Why would it be flashing the wrong color at her? No matter. She yawned and rolled over. She''d have to think of how to frame this one to the girls. Saying ''a few buildings collapsed and one caught fire'' was hardly sensational. It had felt like the end of the world, but without concrete details, would anyone care? She would say it was an earthquake, caused by a massive sandshark so ancient that the sun itself had forgotten it. Or maybe they were bearing witness to the birth of a new firemount, as the long-restrained Astralla Oasis burst forth to consume those puny mortals who dared try to control its power. Yes. Something like that. Surely, then she would be admired, her great Gift acknowledged, and her ascension guaranteed. Oliss drifted gently back to sleep amid contemplations of the future''s potential, and she did not dream again.
15 - Revival No protection will suffice. This threat cannot be contained, only held back with blood and spell.
Jair woke the morning of the second day fully invigorated and ready to go. He stood and stretched, turning in a slow circle as he did so to re-acclimate himself to the place. Sunlight streamed through the window, lighting up his whole room in golden light. His blocky swampwood bookcase stood out in all its drab brown pride among the curved silver elegance and bold black ornamentation of the bed, dresser, closet, and side table. Pale curtains hung limp over closed windows, hiding the Institute¡¯s crest in unintelligible broken patterns, but the matching white pattern in the rug stood out clearly. How many times had he stood on this very rug, watching the sky through those same windows? More than he¡¯d ever be able to count. Yet it felt small and foreign to him now, the sharp reality of it not matching up to the impression of it that lingered in forgotten memory. Before anything else, he ran through his spell imprinting routine and laid in the foundational tracing for his first set of spell imprints. It would be days yet before anything visibly impacted his mana flow and he could do away with the guide diagrams. For now he¡¯d be going with a standard complement that combined utility with defense. The lightning spells he could draw by hand, while the gravitational and passive shielding sets required exact measurements and took considerably longer without an existing imprint to trace. Absorb and Reflect would retain their usual place as his hand spells, unconventional choices but not something he¡¯d ever had cause to regret. Most people who fought using magic would slot attacks as their fastest and easiest to cast abilities, but Jair had always been a believer in survival first and everything else after. Even a split-second advantage in activation speed could be the difference between life and death. He still had a week or two before any of the imprints grew stable enough to resist simple alterations, so he could always change course if something came up. Jair¡¯s timeline was a tangled mess of causality, running back past where he could have any effect, through the present and his current slate of decisions, into the future with its eternally compounding dire perils. Raina¡¯s looming encounter with an angry dragon was seeded in deep history. Somehow. Exactly what was going on there, he¡¯d never managed to learn. Jair had tried tracking down Raina¡¯s mother to ask why she had such a ticked-off dragon hunting down her family, but any trace of Tamma Serin¡¯s whereabouts had long since vanished. Regardless of the reason, the threat remained. Killing a dragon took a very long time. The active fighting time of an average hunt lasted between seven hours and three days, to say nothing of the days of preparation, tracking down the creature, and luring it into a direct confrontation. Not that dragons were particularly hard to provoke. Prideful creatures, confident of their place at the top of the hierarchy of the world, and not without good reason. The average hunter party also tended to go after younger dragons. Weaker, smaller, less stubborn and without as much to lose. Brash and self-assured, dragons in their first century of life would be too prideful to retreat and reckless enough to believe they could turn things around regardless of how impossible it became. A dragon matriarch behaved very differently. With increased strength, more powerful magic resistance, and stronger breath attacks, a matriarch would defend her territory with a fierce violence that an entire pack of younger dragons would fail to match. Indeed, more dragons were killed by other dragons than were ever killed by hunters. Everyone knew better than to mess with dragon families. Mountains were left well alone, avoided almost as assiduously as running water. Hunts never took place where they could be noticed by anyone particularly dangerous, taking down new dragons as they tried to establish intrusive territories within civilized lands rather than challenging established dragons. It took a dozen people to take down a single young dragon, and only after hours of carefully prepared violence. A dozen young dragons would be easily torn apart by a single matriarch for intruding on her territory. There was a reason an angry dragon was considered an existential threat to entire cities. Indeed, Jair vividly remembered this very dragon tearing through the entire city of Hastven to get at them. Technically, the school had the resources to kill a dragon, just as the palace did, or the noble district, or even the Hyperion Guard. They may not be specialized as dragon slayers, but given time, they had the skills and access to equipment necessary. Unfortunately, doubling, quintupling, or expansively multiplying the group size wasn''t enough to keep up with the power difference between a standard dragon and a matriarch. The full strength of the continent could eventually wear down and defeat the dragon despite its anti-magic properties. The problem was the attacker¡¯s single-minded nature. Killing the dragon could be done. Short of a pre-planned and focused defense, nothing would stop the dragon from eating Raina before it went down. It would be a miracle if they could slow the dragon down for more than a few minutes. In those handful of timelines where Jair survived and the Institute staff took down the dragon once it was finished with Raina, the fight generally lasted close to two hours and left the entire academy in ruins. More often, the beast merely shattered the dome as a warning, ate Raina, and flew away. If they evacuated Raina through the transit platform, the dragon followed. If, if, if¡­ Jair could list off countless permutations, all of which came down to the same point in the end. Nothing they did could prevent an angry dragon from doing exactly what it wanted. Once finished with his imprinting layouts, Jair headed out to the main room and spent another hour in stretches and exercises gradually increasing in strenuousness. His already strained body protested, begging him to stop to no avail. Jair hated being stuck at baseline. Driving himself to the edge of his capabilities was one thing, but there was a whole different frustration to being unable to do things he knew he should be able to. These early days would be the foundation of a whole new sequence. No way he¡¯d leave out any preparation that could help in the future. He¡¯d ignored worse for a whole lot longer, and the lingering traces of the Veshin healer¡¯s soulspell would help solidify the increases far faster than normal. Already the balance of power was tilting wildly away from anything he''d known in the past. Others could potentially handle things he''d always had to deal with himself, and new gaps might be opened as a result of how drastically the timeline had shifted away from standard baseline. Aside from upkeep and improvement on himself, there were a handful of useful things he could do that didn¡¯t rely on how the rest of the week played out. Much like getting Lian¡¯s little gang out of the way for the moment, adding protective constructs to the school¡¯s warding scheme would only ever be beneficial. Simple things that he could assemble in his sleep, so there was no need to give the task his full attention. The suite of protections necessary to give them even a remote fighting chance against the dragon created a significant draw on the Institute¡¯s grid once activated. Jair couldn¡¯t put the final connections in place until the last minute unless he wanted to start an academy-wide investigation, but the vast majority of the work could be done quietly over the next few days. But he already knew the best he could come up with under ordinary circumstances wouldn¡¯t be enough. An ordinary weapon would be useless against any creature with enhanced protection, and a dragon¡¯s scales were well beyond that. Even if you found a spot with missing scales, a dragon¡¯s hide could resist a mundane weapon¡¯s attack, or that of a standard soulsword. The reforged weapon of a mageblade graduate would be Uncommon rarity at worst, and at least one in five managed Advanced¡ªthough that required a lot more time than most had patience for, Jair included. To reforge a soulsword to Advanced level tended to be a decade-long effort. He¡¯d done it several times in the past, but once he settled on full ascension as the most likely option for success there was no point aiming for anything but speed. An ascended blade would never be lower tier than its previous version, but it wasn¡¯t guaranteed to be any higher either. That could only be done with procedure and materials. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He could only hope a Legendary ascendant blade would be enough to tip the balance in his favor. These first few weeks would be the hardest, though it would be months before his capabilities started to match what he required of himself. For now, he¡¯d focus on augmentation and control. Better to move in a direction and have to backtrack than wait around. Blademaster and Archmage, titles he would reclaim as soon as possible, were not attained by the faint of heart. He sat down and started drawing up the plans for what he needed. He was nearly finished when the door opposite opened. ¡°You¡¯re up early.¡± Raina yawned as she walked through on her way to the kitchen. ¡°Want anything?¡± ¡°Sure, heat me one of whatever you¡¯re having.¡± ¡°So, last night we didn¡¯t have a chance to talk about everything, what was it like being an actual competitor?¡± Raina began pulling out plates and utensils. ¡°You got to see Veshin¡¯s basements firsthand. Anything much change in the past few years?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. But that reminds me, we need to get Lord Veshin a few million nirei I promised him. And I have some things to pick up in town.¡± Raina set down the knives with a clatter. ¡°Wait. You promised him what?!¡± ¡°A little under three million.¡± Raina stared, speechless. ¡°It¡¯s very important,¡± Jair added, holding up the diagrams he¡¯d drawn out for Veshin¡¯s craftsmen. Raina walked over to look at the drawings, then at his very serious expression, then back to the drawings, growing more perplexed by the moment. ¡°Armor? We¡¯re mageblades, Jair. You know the ¡®mage¡¯ part you¡¯ve been so enamored with?¡± ¡°That only starts to matter after we have functional imprints. Until then, it doesn¡¯t matter how many layers we wear.¡± He shook his long, loose white robe sleeve in demonstration. ¡°Without my protection spells, I have to rely on physical barriers to avoid being, say, skewered and crunched.¡± ¡°Since when are you an armor designer?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been interested in the art for a while now. This felt like the appropriate time to take action.¡± ¡°You¡¯re serious?¡± ¡°Very serious.¡± She waited, as though expecting him to laugh. He didn¡¯t. She stared back at the drawings. ¡°But¡­ three million? Where are you going to get that kind of money?¡± ¡°You, obviously.¡± Raina squinted at him suspiciously. ¡°You¡¯ve always refused my offers of financial assistance, and now you go from zero to three million? That¡¯s more than my allowance for the next five years!¡± Hm. Perhaps he¡¯d miscalculated what resources he would have available at this point in time. Well, there had to have been a reason he spent so much time toadying up to nobles in the past. Of course it had been for the money. Silly thing to forget. ¡°We can talk to your father. I know of some lucrative investments. We can make it back and then some in a year.¡± ¡°Something¡¯s very different about you, Jair Welburne.¡± Raina walked around him in a tight circle, as though staring at him from a different angle would reveal the secret. ¡°This isn¡¯t like you at all.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Suddenly changing your attitude on basically everything overnight? Yes! Are you sure your sword unlock didn¡¯t break something? Did you get smacked one too many times at the exhibition? I¡¯d blame Bren Tolo and his group of idiots, but clearly you arranged all this well before running into that lot.¡± ¡°Lian¡¯s group of idiots,¡± Jair corrected absently. ¡°Bren isn¡¯t close to being the leader.¡± ¡°You know what I mean.¡± She stepped back to the counter and started slicing the cheesebread. ¡°You were never¡­ I mean, I¡¯m glad that you¡¯ve decided to stand up for yourself, I¡¯m so proud of you, but this is¡­¡± she trailed off, taking a big bite of the savory bread without bothering to add a spread, then placed two more slices on Jair¡¯s plate before going back for the meat and vegetables. ¡°My abrupt shift to assertiveness has taken you by surprise and now you¡¯re off balance and confused.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± She finished her slice of bread and passed Jair his plate. ¡°And that sentence is not one I would ever have expected to hear you utter.¡± ¡°Thank you.¡± He started eating mechanically. ¡°My ability to moderate my utterances is a bit out of practice. I need to get the money right away. It¡¯s critical that Veshin start manufacturing this today.¡± ¡°And you couldn¡¯t have talked to my father about it last night?¡± ¡°No point. It would have been seen as grasping. At least with you to vouch for me and a full investment plan, we can appear responsible rather than opportunistic.¡± He pulled out another sheet of paper and stared at it. ¡°It¡¯ll still come across as a bit opportunistic,¡± Raina admitted. ¡°Not that it is,¡± she added hastily. ¡°I know you wouldn¡¯t do something like that. But the appearance of it, one day after putting on that crazy show¡­¡± Jair nodded, still staring at the blank page. He knew a thousand things to invest in, but right now none of them came to mind. He could feel the shape of them, the impression of each, but the specific words of their names escaped him. He¡¯d been away from this part of the timeline for too long, details were lost in the distance and repetition. ¡°We¡¯ll need to take a walk around the city,¡± he said aloud. ¡°Maybe more than one. Parein, Vaes.¡± Jair grimaced. ¡°Astralla.¡± He may detest the place, but couldn¡¯t deny it had investment opportunities aplenty. Astralla City desperately wanted to be Vaes City, but didn¡¯t quite know how. The regulations and taxes were more stringent, but more than a few of the local businesses could go on to great profit in future. ¡°If we¡¯re going out shopping, then I¡¯m taking you to a healer.¡± ¡°I¡¯m already as recovered as magic can make me. Better than ever.¡± Raina met his grin with a flat look. ¡°A specialist healer, to be sure nothing¡¯s gone terribly wrong with your head.¡± ¡°I can assure you, my head is in flawless condition.¡± ¡°Then you won¡¯t mind if we verify that.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got a lot of things to do and not much time to do them in. I¡¯m fine, I promise.¡± ¡°Of course. And why do you keep doing that?¡± ¡°Hm?¡± Jair glanced down. He¡¯d begun to trace the manapath for Absorb on his palm. It was quite a complicated form, eight interlocking sequences elegantly combined together to create the best magical protection short of dragonscales. Or would be once it finished imprinting, weeks later. ¡°Just reinforcing my patterns.¡± ¡°Aren''t you worried about causing damage before imprint training begins? For someone who put off deciding for so long, it¡¯s strange seeing you rushing ahead recklessly." "Don¡¯t worry, I know what I''m doing." Jair switched hands, tracing Reflect onto the other. It wouldn¡¯t do much, constant repetition gave diminishing returns after the first couple passes, the manabody needed time to relax into the new shape. Errors in rapid repeat tracing were more damaging to the spell imprint¡¯s functionality than was worth the risk for a tiny increase in imprint speed. General imprinting practice was to trace everything once daily, and never without guide lines. Once every twelve hours for the very ambitious. But for someone who rewrote his life constantly, it was better to trace too often than forget. Trace the imprint flawlessly every time, and there¡¯d be no problem. "See? That! That''s what I''m talking about. Something''s different. And don¡¯t try to play it off as you being tired this time." "I''m a mageblade now, and I¡¯ve got a dragon to slay. No more time for fooling around." "This obsession with dragons all of a sudden. Whatever happened to ''as soon as the ceremony is over, I''m sleeping for three weeks straight''?" "Did I say that?" "Yes." Jair laughed faintly. He had been like that once, hadn¡¯t he? "Well. Maelstrom changed everything. I can''t even think about resting while there''s still so much to do." "If that sword scrambled your wits¡ª" "It hasn''t." ¡°So you keep saying.¡± ¡°It keeps being true. I don''t want to waste hours going to a healer just for them to say ''you shouldn''t overwork yourself, even if you are a scholarship student. You can go without studying for one night to get enough rest''. I know what I¡¯m doing.¡± ¡°So you say.¡± Raina sounded utterly unconvinced. ¡°If I agree to go with you, you¡¯ll let it go.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± She practically exhaled the word, heavy with relief. ¡°And you¡¯ll stop questioning my inane suggestions for the rest of the week.¡± ¡°Never.¡± ¡°Worth a try.¡± ¡°But you¡¯ll come¡ª¡± ¡°Yes, yes. It won''t help anything, I already know what I''m doing and how to¡ª" Jair cut himself off with a sigh. "You know, never mind, there may be some residuals lingering that I''m not aware of.¡± After all, he had never managed to carry something with him back in time before. Until now, his every attempt had destroyed whatever was in his soulspace, or occasionally dropped him out of the timefall along with some nasty soul backlash the moment the item came into his possession. Neither of which was a valid precedent for this new reality. ¡°We can check just this once. But if they don¡¯t find anything, that¡¯s it.¡± ¡°Deal. Let¡¯s go.¡±
16 - Checkup Without prior interest, it takes too long to engineer proper respect. People need time to adjust, and by the time they''ve adjusted it''s too late.
The Astralla City transit terminal held twenty identical arrival platforms and an equal number for departures lining both sides of a long sandstone building. In contrast to the often heavily decorated arrival platforms at private residences or high end shops, everything about the city¡¯s public terminal was utilitarian and ugly. Places like this always reminded Jair of a stable, and not in a good way. Sandstone passages lined both sides of the central walkway, each containing a platform and its control panel, accessible either from inside or out. Despite the many openings and additional slit windows high up on the walls, the atmosphere remained permanently hot and sticky. It did encourage people to leave the terminal quickly, at least. Jair took a moment to acclimate as he stepped outside. Astralla City was one of the larger settlements in Veor, second only to Vaes City itself and rivaling the twin merchant cities of Parein and Silvas. And it was just as unappealing a place as Jair remembered, wholly unexceptional and without redeeming features. Though he did prefer the city bustling over the muted and subdued version the spreading plague would reduce it to in the coming year, that was like saying he liked a live rat more than a decaying rat corpse. Neither option added anything worth having to his life. The terminal was built on a low hill, giving a view that someone had probably considered scenic at one point, before Astralla City became this overpopulated mess. What had started as a neatly ordered little upper-class town had expanded in sprawling chaos in all directions. Three different walls enclosed parts of the city, one around the upper districts, another cutting haphazardly through the middle of the lower residences, and the last one enclosing the whole thing in an uneven blob like an overinflated triangle. Beyond the city¡¯s outer walls, desert sand spread out in all directions. From where they stood, the academy''s pale towers were just visible, high up on a distant clifftop, glowing in the sunlight like the fangs of an ancient beast. Two- and three-story structures surrounded the arrival terminal on all sides, thick-walled and heavy-ceilinged. Pale and whitewashed stone reflected sunlight down onto glassy streets paved with pale brown pebbles held together in a vaguely translucent glue, giving it the look of something leftover and congealed. Bright banners hung from shop fronts to draw attention to them as hundreds of people walked by on their way to and from wherever. The atmosphere assailed him at once. Crowded, noisy, and full of stale mana afterdrift. Since it was still early morning, everyone was eager to get their business done before it became too hot, but even the current crowds were nothing compared to the throngs that would descend upon them when the intercontinental holiday goers flooded the place for Terlunia. Jair couldn¡¯t wait to be away from this place. Not just Astralla, Veor as a whole. He missed Eythron¡¯s forests, the sounds of life everywhere, the Oriad¡¯s constant edge of danger. Even the plains of Celsin, overridden with vengeful elves and destructive beastkin, had more character than this. Returning after seeing so much more of the world put Veor¡¯s lifeless dullness in stark perspective. ¡°You coming?¡± Raina¡¯s voice brought him out of his thoughts, and he fell into step behind her. ¡°Why were you staring out at the city all serious-like?¡± ¡°Contemplating how much it¡¯d cost to buy the whole thing.¡± ¡°More than either of us could dream of, I¡¯m sure.¡± She glanced sideways at him. ¡°You¡¯re sure the fancy sword upgrade hasn¡¯t given you delusions of grandeur?¡± ¡°Couldn¡¯t be further from the truth. I¡¯m painfully aware of my limitations, even with Maelstrom.¡± He summoned the sword to his hand anyway, just to hold it, to feel the evidence of tangible change. This wouldn¡¯t be like before. He could change things. Was already changing things. It wouldn¡¯t be another pointless repetition. ¡°If you say so.¡± Raina led the way to a healer¡¯s practice in the upper district, not far from her father¡¯s townhouse. Polished marble floors and broad sandstone arches surrounded a small well-secured pool as its centerpiece of the spacious waiting area. Artfully placed mirrors and decorative shrubs helped create an expansive, calming atmosphere. Even using the Serin name to jump the waiting list, the healer on duty wouldn¡¯t be available for another hour at the soonest. ¡°See, important to get in early. We can come back after you give my father your proposal.¡± ¡°About that, I still have to write it up. Give me fifteen minutes to do a runaround on the commercial district, and I¡¯ll be ready. If you¡¯d like, you could talk to Ajriol while I¡¯m out, warm him up to the idea?¡± ¡°I¡¯m still not certain about this myself,¡± Raina admitted. ¡°You¡¯ve given nothing concrete to go with your grand claims of investment secrets.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll make a full argument for each name I end up putting down. I¡¯m going to go check out the options real quick. See you soon.¡± Before she could reply, he took off at a run. His body complained, but when did it not these days. He was used to far worse. Still, by the time he returned to the upper district and arrived at the Serin family townhouse, he was gasping for breath and more than a little disheveled. Not the greatest impression, but Ajriol did know him, so he wasn¡¯t as concerned as he¡¯d have been if this were someone else. He did his best to brush himself off and waited outside a full minute to regain his ability to breathe calmly before knocking on the door. Carn, the longtime household manager for House Serin¡¯s interests in Astralla City, opened the door, giving a brief nod as he recognized Jair. ¡°Lord Ajriol and Miss Raina are waiting in the library.¡± Unfortunately, despite Jair¡¯s best arguments for his case, Ajriol wasn¡¯t nearly as willing to be parted from his nirei as he¡¯d hoped. While Raina pledged her own full allowance to his investment plans in a show of trust, her father would not be swayed. ¡°As impressive as this presentation is, I cannot pledge such a significant portion of my family¡¯s assets toward an untested plan from an unproven source.¡± Reasonable, but irritating. One avenue closed, then. Unfortunately, this also meant Jair would have to forgo any further contact with Lord Veshin until he secured alternative funding, unless he wanted to admit to overestimating himself financially. That kind of overreach would be crippling to his image, especially if Veshin had already begun making arrangements for delays on his other commissions. He probably hadn¡¯t, but it would still be a mess better avoided in the future. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. They returned to the healer¡¯s practice, but still had to wait several minutes before Jair could be seen. The inner office was more chaotic, and Healer Mira¡ªwearing a traditional sleeveless white robe to leave her imprints open¡ªrushed about with more strain than what Jair normally expected from pre-plague years. She caught him eying the untidy stack of information cables, not sorted or reeled, and hustled him on past them. ¡°We¡¯ve been a bit shorthanded this week, nothing to be concerned about.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°Yes, Kilari¡¯s new boyfriend is distracting her pretty thoroughly, isn¡¯t he?¡± ¡°Is that what she¡¯s doing?¡± The healer¡¯s eyes narrowed. ¡°And she told me she had overdue school assignments.¡± ¡°To be fair, I¡¯m sure she does.¡± Raina squinted at Jair, mouthing ¡®Kilari?¡¯ Jair waved away the question. ¡°Stand here, please.¡± Healer Mira lost the edge of hurry that underlay her previous actions, taking her time properly as professionalism took over. Jair took his position in the center of the office and stood patiently while she scanned him with every tool in her inventory. After that she cast several spells, and had him perform a number of basic stretches while observing him through a mana-loupe¡ªthough this last was just a cover for her using her soulspell as part of the diagnostic process. "There does seem to be some significant strain on your body and soul," she finally reported, consulting her notes. "I would suggest you empty your soulspace and focus on strengthening its boundaries for at least two weeks before trying to store anything in it again." Yeah¡­ He couldn¡¯t afford to lose two days, let alone two weeks. He¡¯d need all the soulspace he could get. Jair nodded, promised to be careful, and assured the woman he¡¯d not overstrain himself in the future. "See?" he told Raina as they walked back through the bustle of the streets toward the transit platform. "I told you nothing was wrong." ¡°Something is wrong. Whatever you did to¡ª¡± Raina cut herself off and lowered her voice, since they were still in public, ¡°¡ªascend your sword caused actual, measurable damage.¡± ¡°Not damage, strain. It¡¯s no worse than mana overdraw, and less painful by a lot. I¡¯m entirely fine.¡± Raina looked at him with concern. ¡°You say that like mana overdraw isn¡¯t a life-threatening condition.¡± ¡°It feels like you¡¯re going to die, but as long as you keep your manabody stable so the power doesn¡¯t seep into the lifebody and tear you apart, it¡¯s sustainable indefinitely.¡± ¡°Indefinitely.¡± ¡°Well. Theoretically.¡± In practice, even Jair would struggle to sustain overdraw for more than a few minutes at best, unless he reformed his imprints specifically to maximize manabody stability rather than being usable spells. ¡°It does tend to be deadly when treated carelessly.¡± ¡°And when exactly have you had time to study mana draw theory on top of everything else?¡± ¡°It¡¯s something I¡¯ve been playing around with for years on the side,¡± he answered honestly. ¡°You¡¯d be surprised how often being willing to push yourself into overdraw is helpful.¡± ¡°You only got your class a day ago! How have you had time to overdraw anything? Is that what you were doing in the arena?¡± ¡°No, that was all Maelstrom. Like I said, it¡¯s something I¡¯ve been interested in for a long time.¡± ¡°I never took you for a masochist before.¡± Jair grinned over at her. ¡°I decided to stay friends with you, though¡­¡± ¡°This is serious!¡± Jair stopped walking, turning to regard her with calm intensity. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you want me to say to alleviate your concerns, and even if I did I¡¯m not sure I¡¯d be able to say it honestly. I¡¯m not going to lie to you, Raina. There¡¯s a lot I need to do and not much time to do it in, but there¡¯s no point if you¡¯re unwilling to at least trust me that long.¡± ¡°I¡­ I do trust you, but¡­¡± She growled in dissatisfaction and ran a hand through her hair. ¡°How much of your life have you been hiding from me? The shop girl, armor designs and extreme mana theories¡­ What else are you doing when I¡¯m not around?¡± ¡°When you¡¯re not around¡­¡± Jair laughed hollowly. Countless lifetimes alone, arbitrary goals to have a reason to continue. That one constant thread of but Raina, I might still find something, could still go back sometime. Behind everything else, the perpetually-growing wrongness that he could live and relive everything forever and yet she never had a chance at even a single full lifetime. His life eternally meaningless, hers so bright yet cut off too soon. No. Stop. Not helpful. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It wasn¡¯t over yet. She was still here. Standing in front of him. Alive. It didn¡¯t have to end the same way this time. ¡°Jair, what¡¯s wrong?¡± Tears began to glint in the corners of her own eyes. ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡± He blinked and turned away, summoning Maelstrom to his hand. ¡°I¡¯ll be fine.¡± This was real. Things would change. "Yeah, I think we need a second opinion on your mental status." ¡°Oh, you don¡¯t need a second opinion for that.¡± Jair dismissed Maelstrom and tucked his hands into his pockets. ¡°I¡¯m definitely too far gone at this point.¡± ¡°Something happened that you¡¯re not telling me about.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± He started walking toward the nearest apothecary. Raina ran to catch up. ¡°More than the thing with your sword, or Lian and his gang.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± She was silent another moment, then, softer, ¡°Are you planning to tell me?¡± ¡°Yes. But not today. That¡¯s something we¡­¡± He swallowed and walked faster. ¡°Ask me next week, and I¡¯ll tell you whatever you want to know. Right now, I need a lot of construct components and as much frostvine rope as we can get our hands on. Trust me that I¡¯m alright and this is all for a good reason.¡± Raina slowed, falling a step behind as she took several steadying breaths, getting herself under control before quickening her stride. When she next spoke, her usual brightness had returned, if a bit forced. ¡°Okay. Let¡¯s do your shopping.¡± ¡°And investing. Plenty to do in the city. Like that place there. I have a feeling star-pepper cakes are going to be a huge fad in the coming years.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll have to try one and see if it¡¯s worth the fuss, then.¡± She handed over a pair of heavy square coins to the baker, receiving a small handful of triangular coins in change along with the star-pepper cake. She broke it in half, handing one piece to him, and peered at the center¡¯s gooey yellow texture dubiously. ¡°You think this¡¯ll be popular? It looks undercooked and unappetizing.¡± ¡°The filling is fully cooked, that¡¯s intentional.¡± Jair took a bite, considered the flavor, and shrugged. ¡°I see a lot of potential.¡± Raina took a hesitant bite. Her eyebrows rose, and she took a larger second bite. ¡°You might be onto something. It¡¯s not quite a pie, not quite a gravy¡­¡± she gave another nibble. ¡°It¡¯s weird. But I want more, so that¡¯s something.¡± ¡°So, let¡¯s talk to the owner and see if we can get in on it. Their marketing doesn¡¯t live up to their potential earnings.¡± Raina finished the rest of it without speaking, nodding pensively as she followed him inside. The owner just happened to be present today, luckily for them. Jair effortlessly guided the following discussion into favorable terms for Raina and House Serin, with opportunities to increase their investment over time with proportionally increased returns. He dropped a few hints about cities that would be profitable to expand into, and another chain in Reskas that could be a potential partner for even more increases¨Csuggestions the owner took surprisingly seriously. Jair wrote up a contract on the spot, both parties read it over and signed, and they left with Raina¡¯s purse considerably lighter. ¡°It¡¯s about time I convinced you to avail yourself of my resources,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯d started to think you took that underdog pride thing more seriously than anyone else I¡¯ve ever met. You did really well in there.¡± ¡°Pride has a very different meaning to me now. Besides, I¡¯m going to keep track of every nirei you spend on me and pay it back with interest.¡± ¡°Right, with your secret income seducing shop girls.¡± Jair laughed. ¡°You¡¯d be surprised how lucrative it can be.¡± ¡°Maybe I should give it a try, get some extra spending money.¡± ¡°I¡¯d pay to see that.¡± ¡°You¡¯d need to outbid all the competition for that. Seats aren¡¯t free.¡±
17 - Antagonism It never ceases to amaze me, people¡¯s ability to completely ignore what¡¯s best for them in favor of perpetuating familiar patterns. And we wonder why the seascourge is winning.
It took well into midday, but they steadily accumulated most of the items on Jair¡¯s shopping list. A small fortune in activation silver and specialized inscribing tools, she was surprised he hadn¡¯t asked for them sooner. Clearing out every apothecary they could find of their frostvine, sure. Commissioning a weavers¡¯ guild to make those frostvines into massive nets on a rush order to be picked up no later than two days? An eyebrow raise and shrug. But¡­ ¡°A ballista? To fire your sword?¡± ¡°I dare you to find a better thing to throw at a dragon than Maelstrom. Better still, I can recall it at will, so unlimited shots.¡± ¡°But¡­ it¡¯s a ballista. It¡¯s going to cost more than I can afford just to install it, let alone the pieces, and the design will have to be fully customized to suit Maelstrom¡¯s¡­ particular shape.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s a no?¡± Raina exhaled wearily. ¡°Yes. If you want to keep spending this kind of money, we¡¯re going to need to find paying work or obtain blackmail material or something.¡± Jair stopped. Raina nearly bumped into him. ¡°Hm?¡± ¡°Nothing.¡± He smiled and shook his head. We. Funny how something so casual could hit him like a dragon to the stomach. But that¡¯s what he was fighting for, wasn¡¯t it? We. ¡°I¡¯ll figure something out for next time,¡± Jair promised. ¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯s someone we can coerce.¡± Raina gave him a look. ¡°Oh¡­ you¡¯re joking, right.¡± He laughed, and she joined in as they left the craftsman¡¯s shop and started for the next place on his list. Raina¡¯s available funds, though considerable for a normal student even among the wealthy, were insufficient for Jair¡¯s purposes. The bulk of her money ended up invested in various businesses or ventures that would be highly profitable in the long term, the rest spent on the more affordable necessities. Once they finished shopping, they transited back to the Institute. He¡¯d stored the most critical items in his soulspace, but that still left them with several large bags to somehow sneak in. They¡¯d blatantly ignored morning classes, and to flout their shopping trip would be adding too much of an opportunity for penalty from the school authorities. No point in needlessly antagonizing the teachers. Many of the Institute staff could be essential resources in the days to come, however much he¡¯d prefer to avoid them. Alas, their luck didn¡¯t last. Before they¡¯d even reached the central dome, Headmaster Larenok strode toward them up the black stone path with obvious purpose. ¡°Well, this should be interesting,¡± Jair muttered. ¡°Don¡¯t try to interfere, I¡¯ll be fine.¡± Raina glanced at him uncertainly, but there was no time for further communication. They couldn¡¯t slip away or pretend not to have seen the man, so he didn¡¯t bother to try. ¡°Jair Welburne.¡± "Yes, Master Larenok?" Jair stood straight and attentive. ¡°Where have you been?¡± Larenok demanded. ¡°I sent a summons to your apartment hours ago. After you failed to show up for any of your classes." ¡°He was with me,¡± Raina started, stepping forward. Jair waved her back. ¡°You have found me now, congratulations. How may this initiate serve?¡± He gave a deep bow, just barely within the bounds of obsequious without flipping over into fawning. Larenok¡¯s perpetual scowl darkened. ¡°Your respect strays dangerously close to mockery, young Welburne." Jair inclined his head, never breaking eye contact. "As you say, Master Larenok." Raina looked at Jair like he''d grown a tail. Ah, right. Before today, Raina had never watched him provoke anyone before. Jair''s passive expression twitched, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "You would do well to observe tradition in more than form," Larenok snapped. "Serin, you¡¯re dismissed. Welburne, come with me. We need to talk." A one-on-one with Larenok, already? The headmaster¡¯s summons was never a good thing, but he''d never been dragged off to the man''s office without significant reason in the past. What had changed? Only Maelstrom. Well, that, and his interactions with a dozen nobles. And his shopping trip. So it could be any number of things in theory. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Jair doubted it, though. He''d seen the man''s blatant desire at the initiation. Larenok¡¯s own sword was only an advanced reforging, not a true ascension. If Maelstrom could be torn from Jair''s soul, the headmaster would not hesitate to take its power for himself. "Go on ahead, I¡¯ll catch up with you later," Jair told Raina, passing her the remaining bags. Larenok¡¯s eyes barely flickered at the sight of their shopping. "Go," he commanded. ¡°I¡¯ll see you at home.¡± With one last concerned glance at Jair, Raina walked away. "Lead on, Master." Jair drew any remaining attention back to himself. Larenok didn''t deign to reply but gestured for Jair to precede him to the administrative complex. Much as the library towers showed off the Institute''s architecture, the dome its horticulture, and the student housing its benevolence, the administrative complex showed off its efficiency and knowledge. The central atrium contained both the information desks and gaudy displays for the Institute¡¯s many trophies from decades of outstanding graduates. This would be the first place visited by any prospective new students¡ªor more likely their parents¡ªand it had been designed to make an impression. It also housed the student- and guest-facing administrative workers; those who''d send someone to fetch an archive or know things like ''how do I find a bathroom'' or ''what''s the transit code for the trading post''. The right wing housed the records rooms, all sorted by a complex numerical system opaque to the uninitiated. Jair had learned the secrets of the numbering long ago, though he rarely needed to use it. Astralla Mageblade Institute tracked everything, all the way back to the Institute¡¯s founding. More information than anyone could ever want or need organized and recorded in countless steel spools. Racks of them filled the basement, the attic, and could be seen in the background of every workroom on that side of the building. The left wing contained teacher and staff offices, Headmaster Larenok''s being the largest and most intimidating of all. Central to the section, the headmaster¡¯s office roof extended fully half again as high as the others around it, cutting into the attic¡¯s territory. Its floor had a subtle slope and the dark bare walls only served to emphasize the feeling of smallness. For once, Jair found the attempt laughable instead of intimidating. He sat in the provided seat with his legs crossed, one arm draped over the chair''s back. No need for pretense. Larenok no longer held any power worth mentioning over Jair, his position of authority practically annulled, even if he didn¡¯t know it yet. Larenok frowned as he crossed to his desk, standing behind it to glare down at Jair. Jair smiled mildly and didn''t speak. The imposition of awkward silence wouldn''t be enough to break the stalemate. He could sit here all day. Finally, Larenok spoke first. "Show me your blade." "No." Jair''s reply was immediate. He''d been through too much to get this far, and he''d be damned if he let this man walk all over him ever again. "You are still a student under my jurisdiction, whatever your new friends may have convinced you of." ¡®New friends¡¯? The nobility? Jair wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d ever call any of them ¡®friends,¡¯ certainly not after less than a day. And why would that be any concern to Larenok? The headmaster¡¯s tone didn''t make sense. Despite his confusion, Jair¡¯s reply came smoothly. "The Eldyhi Pact clearly states that requiring any individual to divulge details of their class, abilities, or other metaphysical attributes is forbidden." "That sword is not a metaphysical attribute," Larenok all but growled. "I handed it to you myself this morning." "As a bound object contained within my soul, my sword is legally considered¡ª" Larenok slapped the table loudly with one hand, leaning forward. His glare grew so severe anyone else would have wilted beneath it, irritation flipping over into anger. "You will show me the sword." "No, I will not." "You are in violation of the Astralla Student Conduct agreement if you refuse to divulge the contents of your soulspace." "My soulspace contains only the sword which you yourself gave me," Jair lied. Maelstrom was technically part of the soul itself, neither residing within the soulspace or taking up any of its storage. Instead, his soulspace was currently stuffed to the brim with a wide array of components, constructs, and other essential minutia from their day¡¯s shopping. Disclosing any of that would be far more information than he wanted to share, and he didn¡¯t have time for the intense scrutiny that would surely follow. "And I''m telling you to show me." "Are you calling me a liar, Master Larenok?" "SHOW ME!" Larenok accompanied the bellow with the slam of his other fist onto the desk. "You think I won''t take this to the Provisional? If that''s what it takes, I swear, you''ll regret it." "They won''t find anything. You can tear my soulspace apart, scatter my mana entirely, and you''ll never find anything to justify their time." Jair''s voice went cold. "But know that if you do go that far, Master Larenok, I will see to it that your reputation and position are torn apart and scattered just as thoroughly. And while mana can be regained and soulspaces rebuilt, a lifetime isn''t enough to reclaim lost honor." Larenok took a deep breath, visibly calming himself. "My honor is beyond reproach, Welburne. It is you who are under scrutiny here, not me." "If you follow through on your threats, then you won''t be able to avoid scrutiny. If you don''t, I have nothing more to say on the subject. Mae¡ª" He hastily stopped himself; having a named item was also valuable information to keep to himself. "My soulblade is mine alone." Larenok straightened, still breathing hard from the intensity of his brief rage, drawing himself up to his most demanding and intimidating presence. Jair stared back without reaction. He wished he¡¯d thought to stock his soulspace with nuts or cookies while they were out shopping, this would be a perfect time to pull out something he could crunch on loudly. Alas, missed opportunity. He really wished he knew anything specific he could pin Larenok to the wall with, but the headmaster covered his tracks too thoroughly. Being a corrupt bastard wasn¡¯t enough to get him in any real trouble. A few bribes would easily squash anything Jair tried to stir up without specific proof. Any insinuation Jair made about his taking bribes or showing favoritism or threatening unethical and illegal forced intrusions into students'' soulspaces would be laughed off and dismissed. Vague insinuations would only do so much. But just as he had nothing on Larenok, Larenok had nothing concrete on Jair. Until today, he¡¯d been a model student in every way except birth status. One day¡¯s truancy wasn¡¯t enough to do more than get him a stern warning, some demerits, and possibly be assigned extra homework or additional class attendance to make up for it. Minor delays at worst. Larenok continued to stare him down, relying on his intimidating presence to pressure Jair into compliance. "If there''s nothing else, Master Larenok, I have other obligations." Jair stood without the faintest change of posture or expression. Larenok¡¯s feeble attempt at intimidation wasn¡¯t worth wasting any more time on. The headmaster remained silent, glaring down at him with an intensity that few students could withstand. ¡°Nothing to say?¡± Jair gave him another moment, then turned his back on the man and walked away. "Don''t let me catch you so much as a finger''s breadth out of line," Larenok said as Jair opened the door to exit the room. "You are out of second chances." Always had to get the last word. Well, let him have his petty triumph. Jair laughed as he stepped out into the hallway. Out of second chances? Hah. If he only knew.
18 - Reaction There are those who say that magic comes from the stars, others who claim it¡¯s created by desire or ambition. If these people ever bothered to look at the world they live in, might they stop proclaiming their ignorance so loudly?
Despite Jair¡¯s request to the contrary, Raina paced outside the admin building, sans shopping bags, waiting for him to emerge. ¡°You came back for me? I¡¯m flattered.¡± "Jair! You survived! What did the headmaster want?" Jair smirked and tapped his forehead as they started walking. "What do you think?" Raina''s expression darkened. "You didn''t¡ªHe hasn''t¡ª" "He demanded I ''show'' him, but I don''t think it''ll go any further than that. He''s too canny to take unnecessary risks. He thought he could intimidate me, but even someone as greedy as him can¡¯t bring the Provisional into this without an airtight excuse. ''I want the guy''s soulsword'' isn''t going to be good enough." ¡°And he let you walk out?¡± ¡°I¡¯d have liked to see him try to stop me. Larenok¡¯s not even a proper Mageblade, I wouldn¡¯t need my imprints to take him down. And I don¡¯t care what he tries, you could kill me a thousand times and I¡¯d never give up Maelstrom. Even I don¡¯t know what all it¡¯s capable of, and I plan to be the one to find out.¡± ¡°You really did refuse him to his face?¡± Raina sounded torn between fear and awe. ¡°Even the headmaster? You sure this isn¡¯t taking things a bit too far?¡± "I''m not going to let him control me. I¡¯m not going to let anyone or anything control me.¡± As if in defiance of his words, Jair¡¯s stomach growled loudly, demanding he stop ignoring it and find something to eat. Jair scowled down at his traitorous middle, but he couldn¡¯t really blame it. He¡¯d burned more mana than his body was used to, been moving a lot more physically, and eaten very little apart from their early breakfast and a few brief snacks that hardly qualified as a proper lunch. ¡°Yeah, dinner sounds like a good idea.¡± The sun wasn¡¯t fully set, but dusk came early between the academy walls. A very bright dusk, but enough that the illumination within the central dome visibly cast light on its shadowed surroundings as Jair and Raina walked past. The brown and lavender shrubbery lining the paths glowed softly as the light waned, highlighting the dark stone of the criss-crossing paths. Standard meals were provided in the dining hall¡ªactually quite extravagant by the standards of the average Veori citizen. Naturally, the student apartments also contained kitchens for the convenience of those students who brought their own private cooks, but a surprising number of the normally-elitist noble children stuck with the basics. There wasn¡¯t a set time for dinner, rather a three-hour window during which students could come and go as they pleased. The two of them arrived a little early, the serving tables only partly filled with the evening¡¯s offerings, but they weren¡¯t the first to come in either. Several others already sat around with their bowls of soup or salad while waiting for the entree to be brought out. Raina went straight for the heartiest soup she could find, and Jair followed her example. Before they finished eating, other students began to show up in greater quantity. Jair was pretty sure he wasn¡¯t imagining the number who either looked at him far longer than he was comfortable with or who glanced away uneasily the moment they met his eyes. Despite Jair¡¯s best efforts to prevent any specific information from getting out, downplaying the event could only do so much. His sword¡¯s silver flash had visibly disrupted long-established traditions and patterns that ordinarily went by without the slightest change. Everyone speculated on the meaning of what they¡¯d seen, and the stories would only continue to grow. He vaguely remembered people talking about Denor''s performance in the past, but there was nothing of the sort today. Now it was all about Jair himself. The spectacular show at the exhibition, despite only a handful of students having been in attendance, had leaked and spread very quickly throughout the student body. Denor himself was less than pleased about it, but put on a fine pretense of not minding having been shown up so dramatically on what was supposed to have been his moment of triumph. Jair might have to reconsider his approach to the Veshin heir if he continued in this vein. For some, showing them up would be taken as a challenge, others as an insult. He''d never had the chance to do so with Denor in the past. Ordinarily, by the time Jair managed to surpass the fighter heir, he was established enough as a friend or ally that Denor would only be happy for him. Right now, the general atmosphere had put them at odds¡ªand Jair''s supporters proclaimed his lead to the point of proclaiming premature victory. Denor wasn''t enough of a socialite to have more than a passing influence on their peers, he mainly hung around with people like Koho Etzaro and Homiki Ielga, those who would be as likely to practice swordsmanship as Denor himself. Those types were less impressed with Jair''s flashy sword and more impressed with his unconventional but undeniably effective style. Koho normally sat by Lian at dinner, but today ignored the Teretho heir entirely in favor of joining the minor throng around Jair. As a result, Jair spent nearly a half hour explaining the source and usage of several of his attack moves, and another hour fielding one request for tips on upgrading their weapons after another. Someone smart had figured out that the way he flashed his sword from hand to hand during the exhibition was an indication of an advanced bond, far beyond what should be possible on day one, and that news had spread even faster than the story about his performance. Simply eating a meal took three times as long as it should have due to the constant interruptions. Even days when he took it slow and chatted with Raina the whole time never took so long as this. Only when he finally rose to depart did something truly unexpected happen. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Kili Eldren slipped up to him, grinning coyly, and handed him a sealed message. "Private," she whispered, giving a haughty side-glance at Raina. "For you." With a wink, she sashayed away. Jair inwardly sighed at the theatrics of it¡ªshe''d handed him a note in front of half the school, so of course it would be another source of gossip and rumors. But he''d long ago opted out of playing the usual games at this level. Very few of his classmates had anything to offer that he couldn''t obtain more easily by approaching their families directly. In the rare instance someone of his age could be of use to him, he preferred a straightforward negotiation to all this nonsense runaround. "I won''t look," Raina promised. "You can keep your secret rendezvous covert." "It''s from Calisi Hasti," he said, without opening it. "No one else would have the forwardness to send a message through Kili Eldren and also have her react like that." He tapped the envelope against his hand as they walked, considering if he should open it or not, then dropped it in the trash on the way out. "You don''t care what she has to say?" Raina''s eyes flicked back to the discarded message, then to Jair. "There''s nothing remotely useful she has to offer, and I''d rather avoid getting any more tangled in drama than necessary." He glanced up at the sky as they cut across the dusty ground between the dining hall and the protected path splitting the Institute grounds in half from the dome at the north to the library towers at the south. "I''d like to get started on the walls, but right now there''s too many people around. There''ll be a storm in another hour, I can get started then. It should keep everyone indoors." "Is that why you had me buy so many wind shields? So you can wander around in storms?" "Yes. The wards on the walls are quite capable for what they''re good for, but they fail to provide the kind of robust protection necessary for extreme situations." Before they reached the central walkway, less than halfway to the student housing district, a new voice intruded. ¡°Jair Welburne! I challenge you.¡± Calisi Hasti, marching after them in person. Raina turned to stare behind them. He steered her back front-facing with a hand on her shoulder. ¡°Ignore her.¡± ¡°But¡ª she just issued a challenge. Guess she didn¡¯t like you tossing her note.¡± ¡°Just keep walking.¡± Jair pulled out a sand-shaper construct from his soulspace¡ªa wide band made of three curved metal plates held together by flexible coils. Each plate had spellwork patterns embedded into it, and it could be tightened or expanded to fit around anything from wrist to chest. He wrapped it around his wrist and palm, carefully strapping the mana input to the tip of his thumb. ¡°Welburne! Do you hear me? You¡¯ve insulted my honor and my house!¡± He added a second sand-shaper construct to his left hand. ¡°Jair?¡± ¡°Keep walking. It¡¯s not worth a blood feud. She¡¯ll get bored with screaming and go off to whine to her friends.¡± ¡°What do you think the note said to be worth all this fuss?¡± ¡°Probably an invitation to a secret meeting first thing in the morning on the library tower, during which she would try to seduce me away.¡± ¡°Seduce? You? That seems like a stretch.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure she¡¯d also insinuate that you and I were romantically entangled, insult us both in various ways, imply that we¡¯re equally opportunistic morons, and then top it off with a blatantly transparent offer to sponsor me with her family resources.¡± ¡°That¡¯s an awfully specific scenario for you to have ready on the spot. Doesn¡¯t sound diplomatic. I¡¯m sure she could do better than that.¡± ¡°She¡¯s not a very subtle creature, for all her pretenses otherwise. Calisi Hasti is used to getting what she wants without question and doesn¡¯t take kindly to being rejected. So why waste time letting her rant at me before saying ¡®no¡¯.¡± ¡°Welburne!¡± Raina glanced back over her shoulder again. ¡°She¡¯s coming after us.¡± ¡°Ignore her.¡± ¡°We need to move faster if we want to escape.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t need to escape. Just need to get around the corner.¡± They entered the student housing village, passed between two houses, and ducked around to the front at the first opportunity. ¡°You have attacked my dignity, you lowborn dustfish! You will answer for your affront!¡± Jair took two steps sideways to the front steps of the nearest apartment and ducked down, activating both constructs at once. They were designed to be easy to use, even for the untrained, and so required only a connection. Once he allowed them access to his manabody, they drew in the power without needing anything more from him. He¡¯d only have about five minutes of use from them before he ran himself dry, given how inefficient external constructs were for mana usage, but he didn¡¯t need nearly so much. Three quick bursts to loosen the sand beneath the porch, then a coordinated shove to compact it to either side. In two seconds, he¡¯d created a short tunnel slanted diagonally down beneath the porch, clear to the clifftop foundation below. He slid down in, cleared another space to move over, and beckoned Raina to join him. She ducked down in, one hand over her mouth to hold in her laughter. The tunnel was tiny and cramped, barely tall enough for them to crouch. Even if he¡¯d cleared out the area completely, there wouldn¡¯t be room for them to stand without bumping their heads against the underside of the house¡¯s front steps. ¡°Welburne!¡± They heard Calisi storm by outside, voice echoing, but since their hiding place was slanted in the opposite direction from where they¡¯d entered she remained safely out of sight. Jair deactivated one hand¡¯s construct and focused on limiting the draw of the other. Without any scaffolding or support beams, he was the only thing holding it up. If he faltered, the makeshift tunnel would collapse in on them and give away their position. ¡°I can¡¯t believe we¡¯re doing this.¡± Raina giggled. ¡°This is outside every protocol you ever learn, you know. I feel like an eight-year-old trying to escape with the cookies.¡± ¡°Evading enemy detection is the easiest way of avoiding needless conflict.¡± ¡°How are you doing this?¡± Raina looked up to where Jair rested one hand casually on the tunnel ceiling, holding it in place. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen anyone use a sandblaster like that.¡± ¡°At its base function, a shaper construct applies force to a specific type of material. Control the degree and angle of force, and you can do a lot more than this.¡± ¡°Every time I think I¡¯m done being impressed¡­¡± Raina trailed off as Calisi¡¯s voice came nearer. ¡°How dare you ignore me! Does your family know what a coward their son is?¡± Calisi continued yelling, voice growing louder or fainter as she stalked the paths between buildings, searching. ¡°Does her family know what a brat their daughter is, I wonder?¡± Raina asked in a barely-audible whisper during one of the fainter pauses, eyes sparkling with laughter. Jair chuckled. ¡°Doubtful.¡± Finally accepting she¡¯d missed the chance to catch them out in the open, Calisi pounded on their door for a while¡ªthey could hear it even halfway across the village¡ªbefore finally giving up. Silence returned, peaceful and calm. Jair disconnected the construct with a pained exhale. ¡°That took longer than I expected. Guess my new sword really moved me up her priority list.¡± The fragile shell of sand above them fell in, showering them both in dust as they climbed out of the hole. He¡¯d not quite reached overdraw, but his manabody was almost fully depleted and ached deeply. Raina was still laughing as he helped her scramble up and out of their hole. ¡°This won¡¯t be enough to stop her, you know. Official challenges can be made through school officials, it doesn¡¯t have to be in person.¡± ¡°We know that, but she¡¯s not thinking about official channels at the moment.¡± With one final quick burst of force from the construct, he pushed the bulk of the sand off her clothes and out of her hair. ¡°And that¡¯s about all the magic I can do for the next several hours. Hopefully, that¡¯s the last disaster of the day.¡±
19 - Storms ¡°Though there''re many things I¡¯m thankful aren¡¯t carried over across timelines, there are some that I¡¯d give anything to retain.¡±
Raina and Jair were less than an hour into their new evening regimen of enhanced exercise and sparring when someone tip-tapped on the door. If they hadn''t been between rounds, taking a breather, she might not have even heard it. More as though someone were poking the door with a stick, than proper knocking. "You expecting anyone?" she asked, looking up. Jair shook his head. Raina opened the door slowly, sword still in hand. Then she laughed and relaxed, sheathing her weapon and opening the door fully. "Denor? What brings you over?" "Heard Jair might be interested in sparring practice. We''ll be starting in a few minutes over at the dome. Wanted to invite him. And you, of course. You''re always welcome." "I wouldn''t mind getting out of the house a bit. It''d feel a bit less besieged out there with a larger group." She turned to Jair. "You interested?" "Not today. You go ahead." He was currently on his back in the middle of the floor, elevated by his elbows and feet, which she knew from trying was a lot harder to sustain than it looked like it should be. "I need to build foundations first. Next week, I''ll gladly join." Denor smiled. "Good, I could use the time to build my lead. You coming, Rai?" One glance at Jair reminded her that he could take care of himself now, properly and fully. She didn''t need to hover about to safeguard him. "Alright. I could use some practice myself." The predicted storm had begun by now, darkening the evening to premature night. The glowshrubs were in full effect, illuminating the pathways with their magical tunnel of calm amid the tearing wind and biting sand. "No shortcuts for us tonight," Raina joked. Denor laughed along. "Not now." They left the student village by the northern path, the one that curved around the admin buildings before cutting down to the central dome. "So," Denor said without preamble. "Jair." "What about him?" "He''s... different." "Is he? I hadn''t noticed. Looks the same as usual. Could still use a shower." Denor laughed. "And here I thought he kept his hair like that intentionally." "You kidding? Jair? He''s the least concerned with his looks of anyone I''ve ever met. If anything, I have to keep telling him not to wear peasant clothing to an event." "But, seriously, Rai. What''s going on with him?" "He got his class, his soulsword. Decided it was time to start training seriously. What''s there to tell?" Denor scoffed. "I''ve seen a lot of people initiated, and what he''s doing is nothing like normal." "I mean, I''ve always known he had greater potential than what he was willing to display...?" Raina hesitated, though, unsure how much she wanted to discuss this. "Why all the curiosity about him?" Denor scoffed. "Did you not see him fight in the arena yesterday? We don''t get that kind of talent in a century, certainly not coming out of nowhere without warning. Kael Falkon was tearing through duels like he had a personal grudge against the ranking system long before he was recognized as the genius he is, and even he never came close to... that." "Professional curiosity, is it?" "You could say that." He pushed open the glass door to the dome''s back section, containing the athletic fields and tracks. A combination of hedges and hanging greenery formed a backdrop and divider between this section and the others, strings of manalights providing near-daylight illumination. The crisp scent of growing things and the cool air of the dome enveloped Raina in calm, wholly unlike the raging chaos of the storm outside. She let out a slow breath, relaxing at the sight of only a handful of people waiting for them. "I''ve got a lot of work to do if I want to keep up, then."
After Raina left, Jair finished his current set of warmups and left by the back door. He followed the paths south until he neared the student recreation halls and the voices from within grew loud enough to hear over the shrieking wind. He stepped out of the shielded air of the paths and into the storm, arms crossed in front of his face. It didn''t block the wind, but kept the violent airborne sand from tearing into his body. The angles to hold his sand-shapers to build himself a protected space came as naturally as breathing, a gentle push as he held back most of his magical strength from flooding through them. His manabody was still heavily depleted from their antics earlier, but a little overdraw wouldn''t kill him. He walked steadily through the shifting winds and reached the outer wall a minute later, forming a solid barrier to shield him on that side. He switched to only a single arm to hold up the shield protecting him from the whipping sand and felt along the wall with the other hand. The existing wards were buried deep into the wall, built in when the academy was constructed. They were all linked to the Astralla mana grid, consuming as much power as the nearby city. Not surprising, between keeping the dome regulated and the magical plants healthy, maintaining sufficient atmospheric mana for students, and powering everything from the library tower transit platforms to staff housing. He found the telltale cracks that formed as the stone shifted over the generations, leaving the metal skeleton of the wards ever so slightly exposed. You had to know what you were looking for, and carve in just the right place, but Jair had done it so many times by now it was practically reflexive. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The carving of new ward additions would be a time-consuming process, one he couldn''t finish in a night. Jair set aside any thought of the time involved and lost himself in the rhythm of the work. Working one-handed while he held back the storm with the other, he found a kind of peace. Here, he knew exactly what to expect. He made concrete progress toward a known goal. All it took was time and effort. Unlike everything else. Despite the expanded opportunities, the restrictions of his social position and the incapability of his younger body grated on him. He had a thousand things to do, hundreds of new options, and nowhere near enough time to capitalize on them. He''d searched for novelty in the endless repetitions for so long, he was caught off guard by how uncomfortable it was now that he had it. In the past two days, he''d made missteps. He''d taken actions that weren''t close to optimal, caught up in the moment. He loved it. He hated it. He wanted to run into the uncertainty and let it consume him until every trace of dull repetition was burned away. He wanted to retreat into the known and predictable, wanted to be back in a straightforward war where all he had to do was survive and eliminate the enemy. The political games of Veori nobility never appealed to him, and to be back here after being gone for so long... especially being treated as an ignorant child... He couldn''t wait to be away from here. Hopefully forever. He wanted nothing more than to leave Veori bickering behind. Get back to what he was good at, just not alone. There was still plenty of world to be explored, plenty of moon to be conquered. Places he''d visited but not truly learned. Even in the Oriad he knew so well, there were areas that could catch him by surprise if he wasn''t careful. He much preferred that edge of real, tangible danger to the whispered threat of political ruin or tedium of financial negotiation. Later, he promised himself. Not yet. There was still something important here. He''d given up once before, running away to the future in search of a key to the impossible. However frustrating it may be to stay at Astralla Institute a minute longer than necessary, he refused to accept defeat this time. He wouldn''t be running away again. That determination burned low within him, perpetual and unshakeable. He''d dedicated too much to reaching this point. He would make it work. But in quiet moments like this, all his doubts came back. All the weight of failure after failure after failure. They¡¯d done so much, set up so many things that could pay off in future months or years, but how much of it could directly contribute to the immediate crisis? If he¡¯d been able to get the Veshin armor made, it would be another story, but he¡¯d overreached. That, more than anything, disheartened him. The biggest potential change, tantalizingly close, but locked behind something as banal as money. By now it was too late, even if he got the money together they wouldn¡¯t be able to build it soon enough. The core difficulties to success remained unchanged. He needed to control the positioning, which could be managed with the changes to the school wards, as long as Raina cooperated. He needed striking power, which Maelstrom might suffice for, though he had yet to verify. But most of all, he needed holding power, the ability to ensure Raina¡¯s survival in the critical minutes after contact. And for that, he was no closer to a solution than any other time. Part of him didn''t believe it could be done. Destiny itself decreed Raina would die, not merely the will of an angry dragon. Trying to force his will on the situation would be ultimately futile. Was it worth it to keep fighting? An alien battlefield, a new unknown war. His arm ached from holding up the shield, his hand cramped from the pressure of carving line after line. He barely felt it, moving mechanically down the wall as he formed perfect section after perfect section. He wouldn''t give up, not when he was so close. He''d finally found a way to change things. Everything was different. It would be enough. It had to be. But he was still only one man. He still had only three days. A lot could change in three days. But only so much. The storm began to slow, the winds dying down, the sand settling. Instead of swirling darkness being all that was visible, he could once again see the black stone of the pathways, the purple and brown illumination from the glowshrubs, the brilliant white of the dome towering over the center of the Institute. It would be after midnight by now, if the storm was over. He''d covered about a fifth of the wards he planned to add. Shaking his hands out, he disconnected the construct and leaned back to stretch. His arm throbbed where the construct had been connected. His manabody burned; he''d been in overdraw for hours to sustain the shield that long. Dizzied, he leaned against the wall, breathing hard to not collapse. The strength of certainty that drove him this far had deserted him, leaving him weary and depleted. Logically, he knew it was the combination of exhaustion, overdraw, and uncertainty, but it was hard to convince himself to continue the familiar patterns. Things were different now. Denor had never come to invite them to train in the past. Calisi never harassed him this early in the timeline. He had options to pursue. Plenty of them. But the time pressing in on him, the deadline swooping down toward them with its claws extended, it was easy to lose track of that. This could be any number of doomed timelines, his changes and hopes nothing but a fleeting delusion. "Soulblade, manifest." Maelstrom flared into life. He held it up in front of his face, staring deep into its silver glow as he gradually got himself back under control. This time was different. Really, truly different. Not just in optimistic stories he tried to convince himself of. Unknowns he couldn''t possibly predict. "Jair?" He spun, blinking away the brightness, Maelstrom falling into a ready stance. Raina, running across the sand. He tapped two fingers to his forehead and dismissed his soulsword. Maelstrom vanished, leaving a dazzling afterglow for a moment before fading. "It''s the middle of the night, what are you doing out here?" "I could ask you the same thing." "I didn''t see you when I got back, and then I saw the flash of light. You''re not sleepwalking or something, are you?" "Might as well be." "What''s that supposed to mean?" Jair exhaled and shook his head. An ache steadily built behind his eyes which no amount of rubbing would alleviate. "I think I''ve messed up already, but I need more information." He raised a hand to forestall her further questions, as her mouth opened immediately. "I can''t tell you anything now." "You look terrible." "I know." And that was with residual healing magic lingering around to make things better than usual. He rolled his head from side to side, neck mildly cramped from being so intently focused for hours. "I''ll rest for a while before doing anything else." "Thank you." Raina gave a half mocking laugh. "Never thought I''d see the day I needed to encourage you to be less physically active." "You have no idea how many days you never thought you''d see." And I want to show you all of them. He ran his eyes over her face, the curious tilt to her head, the concern bunching her brow and intensity of her bright gold eyes. He couldn''t fix her in his mind, the image always paled in comparison to the reality, yet for so long it was all he had. "Let''s get back." Despite his confident words, sleep eluded him. Jair lay awake, Maelstrom resting on his chest to ground him to the moment. He couldn¡¯t stop thinking, desperately extrapolating in a thousand directions, trying to envision any path that didn¡¯t end in disaster. If there was one available, he didn¡¯t see it yet. No plan survives contact with reality, and the promises he¡¯d made to Raina a few loops ago felt emptier than ever. He¡¯d need to come up with a more immediate solution to the money problem, sooner rather than later. It may be too late to use during this loop, but if he found a successful funding option he could use it earlier next time around. When he finally did find sleep, his rest was far from peaceful.
20 - Financial Concerns ¡°It¡¯s a game, to them. They don¡¯t see lives and events, they see pieces and potential. And therein lies their clearest weakness. Everyone wants the strongest piece.¡±
Jair woke before dawn the morning of the third day, both weary and restless. He didn¡¯t even try to go back to sleep. He ran through his imprints and basic exercises in the dark, then slipped out the back door to work on the walls some more before anyone was awake. Technically, tampering with the wards was forbidden, but he had long ago shifted to a policy of ignoring rules that interfered with trying to help people. Improving the school¡¯s protections would only be a positive thing for the students living within, so rules against tampering clearly shouldn¡¯t be applied to his specific situation. The coming of dawn only reinforced the tense anticipation he struggled to control. Two days left. Half his brief window of opportunity had already gone by, just setting up the barest necessities. The whole Veshin exhibition had taken nearly all of the first day. His usual shopping from day one was then pushed into day two, which pushed day two¡¯s construction into day three. As much as he¡¯d rather avoid it, he needed to dedicate some time to feeling out the various noble contacts he¡¯d made during the initiation ceremony and Veshin exhibition. Some would be shallow and useless, perhaps most of them, but if even one yielded significant change it would be worth it. ¡°Out here again so early?¡± Raina came to a stop beside him, peering at his unfinished work. ¡°What is all this?¡± ¡°Wards.¡± ¡°The school has its own wards.¡± ¡°It does. They¡¯re not good enough.¡± ¡°And you can do better?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been studying.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll get in trouble.¡± He carved another line with quick precise taps of his chisel. ¡°Undoubtedly. Larenok does love finding ways to make my life complicated.¡± ¡°Headmaster Larenok would be within his rights to impose severe restrictions on you if he finds out you¡¯ve been tampering with school wards. That¡¯s not a matter of personal attack.¡± ¡°He¡¯d find a way to make it personal. Don¡¯t worry.¡± Raina leaned closer, staring at the sharp angles and precise geometry carved into the wall. ¡°And you¡¯re doing this from memory?¡± ¡°If you want to help, there¡¯s sandstone putty over there. You can cover up any sections I¡¯ve finished, except the ones that would connect with the existing wards. Those will need to remain open until the last minute.¡± She tapped her chin contemplatively. ¡°Do I want to be an accomplice to such blatant misbehavior?¡± ¡°You know you do. Having a secret is fun, especially when it¡¯s a harmless one like this.¡± ¡°I have only your word that it¡¯s harmless.¡± ¡°Do you distrust me?¡± ¡°Not distrust, exactly, but you have to admit you¡¯ve been behaving strangely lately.¡± ¡°I need admit no such thing. If you¡¯re not going to use the putty, pass it here. This section¡¯s ready to cover.¡± ¡°No, I¡¯ll do it.¡± She began packing the concealer into the gaps around the ward construct pieces, sealing them in place as well as hiding them from sight. ¡°You haven¡¯t even opened a book to study for tomorrow¡¯s exams.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not exams, they¡¯re assessments in the guise of an essay. I don¡¯t need to prepare for something like that.¡± ¡°But you need to adjust the school¡¯s wards?¡± ¡°Yes. Trust me, you¡¯ll be grateful for them before long.¡± ¡°Have you been listening to Oliss? You know she¡¯s just making things up.¡± Jair paused. ¡°Oliss? Why, what¡¯s she been saying this time?¡± Her prophecies were one of those variables that didn¡¯t remain constant across loops¡ªanyone whose soulspell touched on time could be unpredictable. But this was the first time Raina brought it up. ¡°Oh, just that some great monster is going to swallow the academy whole, apocalypse coming soon, you know. Because predicting break-ups isn¡¯t getting enough attention any more. If that¡¯s not why you¡¯re making changes to the wards, why are you?¡± Jair grinned. ¡°If I said it¡¯s to prevent a great monster from swallowing the academy whole, would you believe me?¡± ¡°Not if you say it with that expression.¡± ¡°Probably for the best. Now let¡¯s get this done.¡± For a time they worked in silence, falling into the easy sync that made working together effortless. After the first moments, he didn¡¯t even need to give her direction as she intuited the remaining steps to the complex but repetitive construction. Of all the problems that assailed Jair in his efforts, the lack of available money was quickly moving to the top of the list. He''d grown accustomed to ignoring money, given the sheer ease of obtaining valuables from any number of troves. Sure, even at his best he couldn''t walk up to ancient dragons, but there were plenty of solo vampires who had sufficient resources to be worth dueling for it. Few monsters, however strong, could contend with a prepared archmage. Those times he did die to creatures of one sort or another were usually from being overwhelmed by numbers or forced to bleed his manabody dry. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Past a certain point, with a soulspace stocked with jewels and artifacts, simple currency became practically obsolete. The circles Jair had lived in those later years traded more in reputation than nirei, and by then he''d grown a dazzling reputation indeed. The problem being, that kind of near-mythical status couldn''t be attained overnight. Most of his usual targets were located in the northern jungles of the Oriad, Orard''s wild untamed heart. But more than continental channels separated Veor from the Oriad, though they would be enough. The Orard ingaldria was an ocean away. Until an appropriate lunar passage, there was no chance of popping over to loot a few vampires. "Though that''s probably for the best," he mused. "What is?" "Even if I could find a vampire to fight, I''m not sure my manabody could hold up to the aftermath." "So you''ve moved on from fighting dragons to fighting vampires? I''m not sure if I should be relieved or more concerned." "No, I''m still fighting the dragon. That hasn''t changed. Vampires will come after." "At this point I''m starting to think you''re intentionally being ridiculous." "Of course it''s intentional. Accidental ridiculousness is how you end up as king." "Don''t say that too loudly." Raina glanced around, as though to verify they were alone. Jair snorted softly. "Farshen isn''t that far gone yet. He''s not going to have me executed for such a minimal perceived slight." "King Farshen," Raina corrected, staring at him wide-eyed. "So your newfound disrespect for authority goes higher than just the headmaster." "It''s been a long time coming, but yes." "Do I need to reconsider keeping you around?" Jair laughed softly. "If you care about your political reputation being a particular way, then yes. But that''s been the case for years. You''ve been steadily wearing away at people''s ideas of who you ought to be since the moment you decided to stand up for me. Sharing living space with a swamp-brat isn''t doing you any favors either, politically." "You''re more than just some swamp brat." "I know that, and you know that, but does anyone else who''s gossiping about you?" "I don''t think it''d stop them if they did," Raina admitted. "Exactly. So, you''ve been fully aware of my potentially deleterious impact on your reputation all along, and always chosen to protect me regardless of the opinions of others. Is it finally time to give in and drop me like the reputational liability that I am?" "Right when you''re coming into your own as a man worth standing beside? Not a chance. That said, I will strongly suggest you not insult our king any more than absolutely necessary." "No promises. Say, on an unrelated note, what does your father think about high-stakes gambling?" Raina blinked. "I think his reaction to your investment proposal should make that easy to guess." "Any chance we can change his mind on that, say, in the next day?" "I don''t see how." "Me either." The things Ajriol Serin valued and respected weren''t things that could be manufactured in a day. And, unlike with the other nobility who''d had no contact with Jair previously, Ajriol had met and interacted with his pre-loop self. So, that made things more complicated. Jair''s confidence could easily be mistaken for bravado and affectation, coming from someone like who he''d once been. The problem was, though he knew plenty of ways to make quick money once he established himself, most of them required preparation he couldn¡¯t shortcut. Approaching the Astralla underworld would be slow, requiring weeks of investigation into every facet of his life before they¡¯d consider trusting him that much. The games among the nobility would be fine for casual spending money, but insufficient for the kind of expenditures that would actually make a difference. He could weasel his way into the Ielga family¡¯s good graces and position himself as heir-consort, but Homiki was still too young to have unrestricted access to their accounts. Without drastic action, any efforts on that front wouldn¡¯t bear fruit until far too late. ¡°At this point, I think I¡¯m desperate enough to try anything. At the least, we can use a test run to verify if the Veshin armor is enough to be worth the fuss.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think Father will be convinced to make such a large investment no matter what approach you come up with.¡± "So, having established that I need a significant amount of money very quickly, who would be best poised to fulfill that need?" "It depends on your criteria. If all you need is someone rich, pick anyone. If you need specifically money on hand for immediate spending¡­" "Yes. That one." "That makes it harder. Convincing someone to liquidate their assets on a rush notice for uncertain gains, I don''t know anyone who would be willing to do that. It would take something very drastic." "How drastic are we talking?" "More drastic than anything we could come up with, that''s for sure." Raina laughed. Jair smiled faintly as dozens of plans, each more drastic than the last, flashed through his mind. "Don''t underestimate me." "That sounds concerning. Should I be concerned?" "No. Nothing you need to concern yourself with. I''ll take care of it.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like the sound of that.¡± Jair waved it off. ¡°I''m going to talk to people about borrowing money. Do you have any suggestions for where to start?" "The bank?" "Their vetting process is too long and they won''t give someone like me nearly enough. If you weren''t legally restricted in access to your family accounts, you could take a loan on my behalf, but you are." "Right." Raina sighed. "And if my father isn''t willing to lend you the money himself, he would be equally unwilling to put family assets up as collateral for me." "Any hypothetical suggestions for who else I could approach about it?" "Zialir? I know they''ve been open to arrangements with high performing students in the past." Jair nodded. "They''re on the shortlist." "Geron?" Raina scowled. "It''s a bit of a stretch. But they were doing better last report. They seem more open to investment opportunities than most." "Geron, interesting." Tuin-Re Geron was one of his fellow class three initiates, but his parents weren''t present at the affair and Tuin-Re went largely unnoticed among the rest. "I seem to recall him focusing almost exclusively on meta imprints to enhance his body and other spells. And not particularly well formulated ones either." He tried to bring the boy''s parents to mind, but whoever they were had been insignificant enough that they left no trace in his mind. After some discussion, he''d narrowed the shortlist down to families Zialir, Geron, Berris, and, reluctantly, Ielga. Jair had a secret shortlist of his own, people who¡¯d be easily coerced or exploited for short-term gains. He didn¡¯t like relying on it, but it could serve in a pinch. Petty thievery could only go so far. Grand larceny, he could probably pull off now that he had Maelstrom to cut through any obstacles in his path. But that ran the risk of making enough of a splash that they called in a pastwatcher. Even if he disguised himself, there was no way to disguise Maelstrom. Blatant criminal activity was an option of last resort. It tended to cause more problems than it solved, in the long run. For now, bribery, blackmail, fawning, and favor-trading were the weapons of choice. People were much better at protecting secrets when they¡¯d be in the crossfire themselves if the truth came out.
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There was no good way to approach a noble unannounced and ask for money. The only people who could hope to get away with that would be even higher nobility or visiting foreigners who had only the one day available¡ªand even that would probably be arranged months in advance. Since Jair was neither of those, he needed to approach this in a different manner. He was on a tight deadline and, however well he concealed his urgency in behavior and affect, his bottom line was harder to disguise. Nothing screams desperation like being pushed up against an immutable deadline. Most Veori nobility flatly rejected any thought of giving or loaning a single nirei to someone like Jair. Or, so it had been in the past. He had a different perception to work with now than ever before, which gave him hope that at least someone could be persuaded. He just needed to figure out the right method of approach. Telling the truth selectively would be the obvious place to start. The fewer lies he had to tell, the less complicated everything would be afterward. Only, the average person''s response to ¡®help, a dragon is coming¡¯ was to suggest obvious solutions that wouldn''t work. Run away. Hide. Hire adventurers to slay it. Even those who did want to help rarely offered access to their coffers, preferring the intangible sort of assistance that wouldn''t be of any real use. Yes, endorsement on an evacuation plan to save countless lives from becoming collateral damage was theoretically useful, but in practice Jair didn''t need an evacuation plan. He needed a way to forcefully prevent a dragon from eating his friend. Unfortunately, getting between a dragon and what it wanted tended to be on everyone¡¯s ¡®do not attempt¡¯ list. So, some creative liberties would need to be taken.
¡°I¡¯m going to slay a dragon this weekend, and I need sponsors.¡± ¡°All this work to set up a meeting immediately, and this is what you want to say?¡± Lord Olrek, head of one of the oldest trade houses of Silvas, frowned down at Jair. ¡°Where do you plan to find a dragonslayer team? There¡¯s no lunar passage this week.¡± ¡°I¡¯m assembling a collection of teachers, soldiers, and hidden powerhouses to join in, but I need to equip everyone properly.¡± "Take your time to establish yourself. The dragon will still be there next month, next year. There''s no need to rush into things." "I made a bet that I could become a dragonslayer the same week that I was initiated. My honor is on the line here!" Lord Olrek began flipping through the pages on his desk, his interest waning. ¡°With an attitude like that, you¡¯ll get yourself killed immediately. I pity whoever you¡¯ve dragged into this with you.¡± ¡°What¡¯s it going to take to get you to change your mind? Is there any cause that you would part with your money for?¡± ¡°Nothing comes to mind. I don¡¯t maintain my wealth and status by handing out nirei to every ambitious fighter who comes along, however much potential you may have. Your weapon may be impressive, but you¡¯ve yet to prove yourself its equal.¡± ¡°Yeah. Didn¡¯t think that¡¯d be good enough, but had to try it.¡± Jair got up and walked out. Olrek looked up to watch him go, puzzled. The kid burned how many favors to obtain this meeting, only to leave in barely a minute? Though he returned to his normal work without pause, the strange meeting lingered in the back of his mind. Something very strange was going on with that Welburne kid.
¡°Hey, want to come slay a dragon with me this weekend?¡± Denor Veshin sat on the fourth floor of the Institute library, the glass floor reflecting the bookshelves behind his table in the lanternlight. "I''m otherwise occupied this weekend, but if you¡ª" Denor looked up sharply. "Did you say dragon?" "Yes, I''m hunting a dragon." Denor closed his book. "Don''t do that." "Why not?" "It''ll get you killed, for one thing." "But it''s essential to my... research on¡­ curing the plague?" "Did you just make that up on the spot?" "Yeah, not my best presentation. I''ll do better next time. Any idea of anything your father would be interested in other than money? I really do need to slay a dragon, and getting some Veshin armor would really help." Denor snorted genially. ¡°Unless you know the secret to safeguarding the spell-curing process to prevent final-stage breaks, nothing comes to mind.¡± ¡°Well, that¡¯s something. Thank you for your help.¡± He left Denor to his studying. That kind of specialist research was a pain to undertake, mainly because it would take years to learn enough just to break into the field, let alone learn its deepest secrets and start experimenting with new formulas. Past a certain point, alchemy became more a matter of precise numbers than anything, and Jair found it endlessly dull and restrictive. He preferred spells that allowed for some creativity in the performance, where the person mattered. With the proper alchemy formulas, anyone could succeed. Which was how Veshin¡¯s workshops had the employees and scale of business they did. At that point, he may as well make his own. But it was a little premature to commit to spending the next twenty years in tedious workshops slowly moving up. It was a good backup plan, but there were still plenty of moneymaking opportunities available to him. He just had to find them.
Dralik Sejrilo, head of a house officially in the marketing business but unofficially a front for ghostmoon smugglers, would not be easily swayed. But, as owner of the sole lunar platform not belonging to a city, he was the most likely of Veor¡¯s noble occupants to have large amounts of money on hand. He met Jair in the Sejrilo gardens, which were simple walking paths among the teal grasses and flowers, nothing ostentatious. He¡¯d dressed casually, light teal belted tunic over darker leggings, pairing well with his queue of dark brown hair. ¡°You told my wife you¡¯ve some complicated doom prediction?¡± Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. "I''ve received word of a dire plague sweeping the continent. Within a year, Veor will be fully quarantined and half of Almas with it. Reskas will be in complete isolation and the seascourge gaining ground at an unprecedented rate. My only way of solving this is to negotiate a solution with Ryenzo Drakonis to make use of her expertise on such matters, and she demands a steep tribute. Also, she''s only available for requests a single day out of the next decade, which happens to be tomorrow." ¡°How oddly specific.¡± Dralik nodded for them to walk, matching Jair¡¯s measured pace. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of any of this.¡± ¡°I have a friend, you know there¡¯s a seer in my class? Not every vision is accurate but this I spent a lot of time and every nirei I had to verify, and I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s completely true.¡± ¡°You know how many¡ª¡° ¡°Yes, I know how many people want to think they¡¯re having visions of the future, but this is different. Independently verified and global in scope, and our only way to get ahead of it is through Ryenzo Drakonis and the only opportunity is tomorrow evening.¡± Dralik considered him for a long moment, two fingers resting on his chin. ¡°You¡¯re fully committed to this cause, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Yes. I¡¯ll make this happen no matter who gets in my way, and I¡¯d much prefer to have you as an ally.¡± ¡°I like the spirit, but you really need to learn how to navigate society less like a sandshark in a construct shop.¡± Dralik turned to resume walking. ¡°Not everything can be solved by waving your sword around. Especially those of us who know just how little a single weapon is worth, however flashy.¡± Jair¡¯s temper flared at the insult. ¡°Maelstrom is worth more than you can imagine.¡± More than a weapon, it was a promise made tangible, a manifestation of infinite potential, destiny defied. ¡°Everyone wants to think they¡¯re special, Welburne.¡± Dralik waved a dismissive hand. ¡°Everyone has a cause, anyone can change the world, fix what¡¯s wrong. Well, no, you can¡¯t. If there¡¯s going to be a plague, there¡¯s going to be a plague. Dragons aren¡¯t worth relying on. Even if you found one who¡¯ll deign to talk to us lesser beings, they¡¯re more likely to take your tribute and eat you for dessert than give you some magical cure. Find a smaller cause, something you can actually do. You don¡¯t need to go chasing the stars before you learn to fly.¡± Jair¡¯s voice was hard, cold. ¡°Flying isn¡¯t the hard part. It¡¯s finding anyone willing to fly with you.¡± ¡°Then I guess you¡¯ll just have to keep looking.¡± ¡°I could kill you here and now.¡± Dralik didn¡¯t so much as stutter in his step. ¡°That would be a terrible idea.¡± Jair forced himself to breathe calmly, and swallowed the fury that was always so ready to burst out at the slightest provocation. Dralik was right. He didn¡¯t need to start a fight here, and it wouldn¡¯t benefit him. He turned around and walked away without another word, leaving Dralik to his self-satisfied miserable life. But the feeling of powerlessness as everyone denied him the help he so desperately needed only continued to grow, the need to just show them he was more than they thought, more than they could have dreamed. That he was worth investing in, that he could change the world. He just didn¡¯t have enough time. No good options and no true options. Frustrating, even if he hadn¡¯t really expected any better. Flashing Maelstrom wasn¡¯t enough alone. Stealing things, even just blatantly breaking in and taking them, took time. Turning stolen goods into usable cash took time. It was almost enough to make Jair wish Veshin were more corrupt so he could bribe him with his enemies¡¯ downfall or something immaterial of that nature. Veshin was the rare house that avoided feuds and settled its affairs quietly and without flaunting their strength. As a result, they survived, thrived, and were largely overlooked as everyone ¡®above¡¯ them went about their power games. Jair needed money, and so deception would once more become a painfully necessary part of getting anything done. Keeping track of which lies he¡¯d told in a particular iteration of reality was always a questionable undertaking. Too many variants jumbled together, making it all but impossible to distinguish. His memory may be significantly better than the average, but cram enough lifetimes in there and even he struggled to keep everything straight. He much preferred to hint and insinuate or bend the truth rather than make outright false claims. Information coming to light did less damage when one was at least tangentially honest. People whose soulspells allowed them to view the past weren¡¯t commonplace, but they were fully accessible to anyone willing to spend a few months and enough money. Whatever role he chose to embody, he could imbue it with absolute conviction. Even one that he personally disliked. Today¡¯s first persona would be an eager young duelist ready to overreach cluelessly in ways Jair personally cringed to contemplate, but were rather necessary if he were to have any hope of this plan paying off. He had a hundred lifetimes of deception and facade to draw upon.
"I know it''s presumptuous of me, Lord Falkon, but I''m in dire need of funding to further advance my career. I designed a custom set of armor that should significantly increase my visibility, if only I could get a few sponsors to help me provide the startup funds. Once I start winning duels, I''ll be able to pay it back with interest." "You''re a mageblade, Jair. Mageblades don''t use armor. And you''re far too young to be thinking about off-continent dueling yet. Stick to the local circuit for a few years. Then we can talk, if you still need an upgraded outfit."
"A personal trainer? At your age?¡± Matricia Eldren paused in her careful embroidery to give Jair a quick examination, then resumed work on what appeared to be an image of a hunting lion without giving him a second glance. ¡°You¡¯re still in school. There''s plenty to be learned from your teachers there." "There isn''t. If you give me a graduate-level test in every single subject taught at the Astralla Institute, I will pass all of them." "That, I know to be false. Don''t overreach. I¡¯ve heard about your performance. You rely on your weapon to carry you through. You''ve learned a lot of the basics, true, and could probably put together a theoretical victory for any given situation, but the reality is that you¡¯ll not stand a chance against anyone who¡¯s spent even a few months longer than you in practice. Your execution is sloppy and lacks polish.¡± Jair nodded, resigned. ¡°Is there anything I could say that would convince you to invest in my future financially?" She reached across to pat his hand. ¡°Don''t take offense, I have the highest regard for your potential, or I¡¯d never have brought you here at all. Ask after another year, and I may very well give you everything you want. For now, stay at the Institute. Focus on your movement and execution. You have more potential than I''ve ever seen, but it would be wasteful to try to jump ahead before you''ve mastered what''s within your grasp."
Dase Myrok, secondary director of Parein¡¯s largest manufacturing coalition and a known gambler, watched Jair from behind his extravagant office desk. Green light in a dozen shades filtered through the patterned windows behind him and cast his slender form in shadow. "What''s the most you''d be willing to gamble on a student performance at the annual Veshin exhibition?" "The exhibition just finished. You''re asking about the next already? I understand if you''re eager to get involved, but no need to think quite so far ahead." "Assuming I had the same amount of money available to me as you do, how much would be a reasonable amount for me to invest in a duelist I''m fully confident in winning?" "As much as you can afford to lose." "I was hoping for a solid number.¡± Myrok scoffed and shook his head pityingly. ¡°Your finances are nothing like mine. The question you''re asking is pointless. Come back with a full portfolio of your situation and assets, and I''ll help you set up your bets. Right now, you''re way too premature."
Jair sighed, disappointed but not really surprised. Of course it wouldn¡¯t be that easy. The tight timeline made what should be simple into an impossible tangle. Everyone was too established in their ways to be unseated easily. Perhaps something more drastic would be necessary. Who could he obtain money from who he hadn''t already ruled out in the past? There were a variety of options, the problem was the time requirement of any of them. While, yes, there were enough wealthy people that he could obtain money from, it would take hours of discussion to convince any one of them, and the bulk of them were stingy enough that it wouldn''t be worth his effort. Gambling was tricky too. Once he had enough of a reputation and could attend events himself, he could start building up his fund that way, but even then he''d have to move slowly to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention. Once people figured out you could see the future, anything like that became unavailable very quickly. Being known for interfering with time tended to close more doors than it opened, and most of the doors it did open were better left closed. The more he thought about it, the more he began to reconsider his event priorities. With the exhibition right at the start, that was a golden opportunity to place some dramatic bets and show off his capabilities without raising suspicion. Of course the guy with a suddenly-powerful sword would be betting on himself to win more than was reasonable. They''d be perfectly happy to indulge him, placing bets they assumed to be sure things, and when he broke through the entirety of the higher tier, they''d be left impressed enough that giving him their money felt reasonable. Time to start over again from the beginning, but better prepared and with a very specific agenda. The dragon would have to wait its turn.
22 - Restart Ingaldria - a joined collection of continents, which are separated by channels but not ocean. Sometimes called a supercontinent, each ingaldria is assumed to have once been a single piece before seascourge divided them into their current forms. Few histories exist from such times, but the relative shallowness of the divisions between continents within an ingaldria and the unified color of their surrounding waters as seen from the moons do support these theories.
Jair landed disorientingly back at the start, on the initiation stage in the central dome of the Astralla Mageblade Institute, standing opposite an unhappy Dalin Larenok. Gold light receded and silver flared to life as Maelstrom''s ascendant soul raced down his arm to reshape its past vessel. Jair''s hand tightened on his sword as Larenok moved as though to claim it for himself. "You?" the headmaster hissed with a deep scowl. "How? What is this?" Jair didn''t respond, mind already rushing ahead to plan through the coming encounters. Someone in the audience coughed, as others broke into hushed whispers. Professor Derall pointedly cleared her throat. Larenok shook himself out of his envious daze and recited, "Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us," eyes never leaving Maelstrom. Jair bowed exactly according to specifications. "I gladly accept your greeting, honored master." He kept his tone level, though it was a perpetual struggle to keep from sniping at Larenok every chance he got. Not worth it. Another time, perhaps. Right now, his priority was getting through this ceremony with his sanity intact. He bowed and walked across the stage to stand with the others, giving Maelstrom a few casual twirls as he did, its pulsing glow drawing eyes from across the gathered audience. Headmaster Larenok scowled at him, but Jair ignored him. He took his position among the other new initiates. "Wait until you see what it can really do," he leaned over to whisper to the girl beside him. Who happened to be Homiki Ielga. She gave him an uncertain look. Jair winked, then stepped back to his usual place toward the back. The next two hours passed with their usual excessive slowness. He had to fight off constant intrusive daydreams of variously running off to the desert to be alone, doing a violent reworking of Institute leadership, or simply screaming at the sky until he passed out. None of which would be helpful, and all of which would slow down his eventual escape from this tedious purgatory. "Having received the class of Mageblade, now take your weapon and stand as one of us." Applause broke Jair from his dull reverie, the longer-lasting variety that indicated the student initiations had concluded. The last speech began, every moment seeming to take longer than he''d imagined possible. Jair recited the speech under his breath in a silent countdown to its completion, the words long ago becoming meaningless to him. Then, blessedly, it ended. Larenok stepped down from the stage with the last applause, waving the guests to the prepared tables, but his eyes were fixed on Jair. "Welburne, I want a word with you." Thankfully, Larenok wasn''t the only one making a beeline for Jair. Raina rushed over, Lady Ielga clearly had her eyes on him, and from the way Lord Veshin was arguing with his retainer Jair could tell his invitation would be coming soon. "Congratulations!" Raina grinned, eyes fixed on Maelstrom''s hilt. The ceremonial sheath contained the unstable weapon''s glow, but having shifted itself to match the weapon¡¯s unusually broad shape gave clear indication of something being non-standard. "I told you you had nothing to worry about. And your sword... What happened up there? I''ve never seen anything like it." "I should never have doubted your wisdom." Jair gently steered her away from Larenok and in the general direction of Veshin. Thankfully, the babble of congratulations and gossip provided a sufficient excuse for not hearing the headmaster''s repeated attempts to catch his attention. "If you''d like to see my new sword in action, you should have the chance in just a few hours." He nodded at Lord Veshin, who was still in heated discussion with his compatriot. "You really think you have a chance?" Raina lowered her voice. "I''ve been practicing." "Practicing? When did you find the time?" "I don¡¯t fully remember. I am rather tired now." Jair laughed. "I''d suggest you get some soulspell meditation done in the meantime, there''s a few people here who want to talk to me and I''d rather not keep them waiting." "People?" Raina looked toward Homiki and her mother, who were pointedly looking in Jair''s direction, then Matricia Eldren who hovered about ready to swoop in the moment Jair was alone. "Huh. Guess you are popular all of a sudden." "I''ll see you at the exhibition later. This is too important for me to ignore." "Yes, go talk with all your new friends. I''ll see you later." There was a faint note of sadness in her voice, one she tried to conceal, but Jair knew her too well. "Don''t worry, I''ll get you in more trouble than you know what to do with before the week is out. This is just for appearances. I''d much rather spend the evening meditating with you, but..." he waved a hand at the gathered nobility. "Opportunities like this don''t come every day." Raina nodded, mollified. "I''ll see you later, then. Good luck." The moment she started for the tables, Matricia Eldren stepped forward to smoothly offer her hand. "Hello, young man, I don''t think we''ve been introduced yet." "Indeed not, Lady Eldren. I am Jair Welburne, Mageblade." "So I witnessed." They spent some time in polite nothings as she asked after his progress in school and plans for the future, which he answered with equally polite nothing as he inquired about herself and her household. The casual conversation quickly turned into a casual interrogation, as she delved deep into Jair''s fictional family background and actual school background, as well as his plans for the future. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Twice, someone tried to interrupt, but she waved them away imperiously and away they went. He gave roughly the same answers as he had previously, shifting a few things to align a little better with her preferences, but otherwise leaving the conversation to its natural flow. "I wonder if you''d be interested in joining us for Solaria in a few weeks? I''m hosting a modest gathering of some of my close friends and new acquaintances. I like your ambition, and I think you''d do well with us." She wasn¡¯t even waiting for Teretho to make the first move this time. Jair smiled. "I''ll certainly consider it, Lady Eldren. I might have a business proposal for you before then, if you don¡¯t mind my dropping in." She slipped him a token stamped with the transit access for her family oasis, and Jair accepted it with a bow. Then she dismissed him and strode off to speak with her niece. Kyson Teretho was the next to approach. "Welburne, congratulations on your initiation." "Thank you, Lord Teretho." The usual route was a careful dance of flattery, honesty, and eagerness. Jair didn¡¯t feel like being careful at the moment. "I''m sure you''ve met my son Lian by now?" "We''ve met,¡± Jair admitted. ¡°While his record is impressive, I find myself more confident in my own." "Indeed?" "Are you a gambling man, Lord Teretho?" "Not ordinarily, but I have been known to make exceptions. What are you suggesting?" "I''m looking to purchase an outfit worthy of my weapon, and to do that I need an exceptional amount of money. I''d wager my capabilities against as much as you''re willing to risk." "An open offer? That''s certainly unusual for someone of your background." "When I say I need an exceptional amount of money, I mean exceptional. Not only by my personal standards. And I am willing to bet a lot on my future performance." "What performance would this be? I''ve not heard your name mentioned before now." Jair nodded toward Lord Veshin, who was in the process of sealing an envelope. Teretho''s eyebrows drew together. "Indeed? I cannot fault your ambitions." He folded his arms. "I question the value of your offer, however. If you fail, what benefit will your favor do me?" "I won''t fail. If you need further proof, give me a number. How much are you willing to wager against my overconfidence?" "And what benefit do I gain if you win?" Jair smiled. "What do you want, and how much are you willing to spend on it?" "I''d wager up to a thousand nirei that you''ll not surpass Lian, and in return¡ª" Jair scoffed. "Apologies, Lord Teretho, but a thousand isn''t worth my time, much less my loyalty. I was thinking somewhere around two hundred thousand." Kyson Teretho all but choked. "Two hundred thousand? As a wager on a performance? Are you mad? Ten thousand, perhaps, if you were to attempt something truly exceptional, but otherwise¡­" Now it was Jair''s turn to cross his arms, confident. "I''ll wager I can make it through the full intermediate tier." "Impossible." "Then you''ve nothing to lose."
"Welburne!" Lord Curad Veshin, as round and ornamented as ever, bustled over to greet Jair with a warm double-handed grip. "It''s high time we were acquainted, considering your friendship with little Raina and all." "Lord Veshin! I don''t suppose you''d be interested in a friendly little wager?" If it worked once, maybe it would work again.
The problem with coming up suddenly from nothing was that everyone knew he came up suddenly from nothing. If he''d been a foreigner who showed up with Maelstrom, a flawless victory record and nothing else, they''d be willing to throw their money at him a bit more freely. As it was, they assumed that sums like two to five thousand nirei would be enough to wow the country kid, and at an event like this that was practically an insult. Sure, his reputation before this morning was utterly insignificant, nothing worth paying attention to, but that didn''t mean he deserved to be overlooked so dramatically. Words alone weren''t doing nearly enough. Feeling reckless and irritated, Jair flashed Maelstrom to the next person he accosted¡ªUrsia Domir, Boris¡¯s mother. "Want to make a bet? I''m willing to put this up against anything you care to offer. Minimum three hundred thousand nirei, but you know that''s a bargain. This is priceless." Ursia stared at the sword with confusion. Jair sighed. "Inspect it, you''ll see." Ursia''s mouth opened wordlessly as she stared. Then her lips went very pale and she toppled backwards in a dead faint. Jair reflexively caught her and lowered her gently to the ground, then waited patiently for her to recover, leaning on Maelstrom''s hilt while he loitered. It didn''t take long, Ursia roused and sat up, staring wide-eyed up at Jair and the erratic silver glow of his sword. "Y-you¡­¡± Her voice dropped to a whisper. ¡°Legendary, ascended? How?" Jair reached down and helped her to her feet, matching her secretive tone. "Secret training from an elusive master deep in the Oriad. I invited him to come, but he doesn''t get out much. Even for his favourite student''s initiation, he just threw a brobeg at me and said to get lost. Alas." Ursia put a hand to her chest, and Jair put out a hand to steady her in case she were to faint again. "How can you wager a soulbound item? That''s impossible to break." "Yes, and no. Maelstrom is part of me, but so''s my arm. I could cut that off and give it to you easily enough. It''d be hard and painful and require specific equipment, but it''s very doable." "And you''d risk that... maiming your soul... over a bet on an exhibition match?" "I''m very confident in my capabilities. And those of my sword." Ursia slowly shook her head. "I don''t even know how to value something like that. It is indeed no ordinary weapon, but... it seems on the verge of falling apart." "It''s not." "You may believe that, but can you ensure that it survives being severed from your soul?" "I haven''t done it before, so no, but--" "Then you may be promising me a paper moon." "If you contest the outcome of our arrangement, I''ll submit to your best judgment on the matter of the results. If you''d prefer we add witnesses to the deal, go ahead. I''m that confident that I''ll be able to perform beyond anyone''s expectations." "It''s certainly possible, with a weapon like that... assuming it doesn''t collapse altogether." "If it does, you can require whatever other recompense you prefer." Ursia tapped her chin, head tilted in consideration. "You really believe in it that much?" "I do." She took hold of his arm and leaned up to whisper in his ear. "Then I won''t be betting against you." Jair frowned. That... wasn''t what he was aiming for. Overconfidence was supposed to make people more willing to jump into proving him wrong, not scare them off entirely. But Ursia continued, "I''ll be betting on you. If you''re right, we''ll split the profits. If you''re wrong, I''ll have sole custody over your future arrangements of any sort. Schooling, military placement, all of it goes through me." "A safer bet than trying to sever my weapon from my soul, I see." She smiled and leaned back, but didn¡¯t release his arm. "And if, as you say, you''ll definitely be winning, you have nothing to lose." "Indeed. The arrangement is agreeable to me. Now, exactly how much are you willing to put on this, and who will we be able to convince to take it?" "You leave that to me." Ursia''s eyes flicked around the assemblage. "I can think of a few people who I''d be happy to see a little poorer tomorrow."
23 - Exhibition Redux ¡°Remind me to show you a seer battle sometime when we¡¯re past the dragon thing. I think there¡¯s a few at the first vampire invasion, before they take over Celsin entirely. There should be time to get out, as long as we don¡¯t kill anyone.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll have to do the reminding, I¡¯m afraid. But wouldn¡¯t it be people standing staring at each other?¡± ¡°The opposite. I once tried to intervene in one, but my foreknowledge can¡¯t keep up with the speed of their iterations. Battle seers are truly terrifying.¡±
Jair followed Lord Veshin out to the underground preparation halls at the back of the arena, doing his best to appear interested as he gazed about the oasis. Veshin Oasis wasn''t much to look at from an artistic perspective, though Jair found even the low blocky structures of underground production facilities beautiful when surrounded by the proliferation of grass and trees and blue-glowing manalight. Compared to the dead desert that filled most of the continent, this was a paradise. If not for the fact that sleeping in an oasis would cause long-term damage to his manabody, he''d be tempted to camp out in one of them simply to enjoy the atmosphere of life and growth. It wouldn''t be the same, even then. The openness of Veor made it too easy to see anything coming; there was no uncertainty, no vibrancy. He missed Orard, with its constant edge of danger, always close and unpredictable. Sleeping carelessly in the Oriad was a good way to wake up to something eating your face. At the Astralla Institute, the dome did its best to provide exotic plants and an air of life and growth, but it was hard to forget that everywhere else was sand or rock or packed dust, dull and sparse shrubbery at best. Here, one could stand entirely surrounded by growing things. The low groundcover was lush and vibrant, the occasional trees tall and in full bloom. Inside was the usual combination of wood and stone, and Jair was surprised by how quickly the training rooms had started to feel comfortable. Like he belonged. Curad gave him the basic tour, during which Jair did his best to feel out the man''s willingness to create the custom armor Jair needed. The necessary timeline was, as always, the biggest holdup. Veshin workshops were already fully booked for months, and to cut the line so drastically required a good bit more influence than Jair could hope to scrape together, regardless of how many bets he made. No one had been willing to gamble a proper fortune against him. Several of the others made decent offers, while others declined and bet on him instead. Still, even assuming he got the most possible from everyone he''d wagered with, that left him with barely over a million. Enough to set up any ordinary prodigy for years, even living in decadence. But for Jair¡¯s purposes, not even close. It would cover material and manufacturing costs, but not enough to convince Lord Veshin to push other people out of the way. "I''m curious, who else orders from you?" "Oh, you''d be surprised. We have orders from the coastal front on multiple continents, Terluna wardens,¡± he raised his chin, puffing out his chest in pride, ¡°even Nuprima explorers have requested House Veshin¡¯s expertise. Nuprima conditions are the biggest challenge, even more so than frontline. At least with seascourge you have something to actively avoid. Nuprima just does its best to kill you." "I like it." "You¡­what?" "Nuprima. It''s harsh, but it''s also one of the best places for training the manabody." Veshin rubbed at his sizable chin, regarding Jair warily. "It¡¯ll tear you apart." "But as long as you can keep yourself together, it''ll only make you stronger.¡± Jair shrugged away the topic, since it was clearly confusing Veshin, and shifted back to business. ¡°Do you have any off-planet orders in queue at the moment?" "Not for this cycle. Have a few long-term requests to get to after Solaria. Most of this cycle''s are for Ardent Shield, the adventuring company. They''re going to be passing through Veor on Terlunia, so it''s essential the armor is done on time." Well, so much for that plan. If it had been locals, he could try offering them bribes, favors, or gamble against their slots in the waitlist, but traveling adventurers wouldn''t even be on the continent until far too late. That would explain the steep price to push them out of the priority queue though. Outfitting a whole group like that would be a major contract, not the kind of thing to lightly risk. Curad left him to his own devices shortly after showing him the way to the arena balconies. Denor and Raina should be arriving at some point, but before that he had a few more connections to re-establish.
¡°Lord Teretho! Imagine seeing you here. I don¡¯t suppose I can convince you to increase your wager? Now that we¡¯re in private I can demonstrate exactly why I¡¯m convinced I¡¯m worth more than a mere forty thousand.¡± Kyson Teretho''s eyes flicked to Maelstrom''s hilt. Jair patted it affectionately. "I''m that confident. Meet my number, and I''ll show you why." "All of the intermediate tier? Round ten?" "Yes." "And if you fail...? I know you cannot match that amount." "I''m yours to do with as you please. Service contract, personal squire, toilet cleaner, front-line messenger; whatever you wish of me, I will do without complaint." "Two hundred thousand? It¡¯s madness. I could buy a half dozen houses for that." Jair waited, allowing their bubble of quiet to stretch, the pressure to build. "You''re willing to go that far?" Kyson Teretho would know the value of someone of Jair¡¯s caliber. Even just being at the exhibition set him apart, even before showing his performance. To have Jair in his debt indefinitely was a tempting offer. "I am." Teretho nodded and held out his hand. "Two hundred thousand. Show me your proof." Jair clasped his hand, then drew Maelstrom, holding it up in both hands. "Go ahead." Kyson Teretho''s expression shifted first to confusion at the state of the blade, then to wide-eyed shock as the Inspect returned the weapon''s stats. "Legendary... I''ve never even seen..." Teretho''s gaze snapped up to Jair''s face. "How? You''ve had no time to become Ascendant." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. "I''ve had as much time as I need. Not all ascensions are the same, Lord Teretho, and my path is not one that can be imitated." "That''s what you did. Up on the stage, in front of everyone. You performed an ascension ritual. Somehow." He looked back down at Maelstrom''s hilt, resting innocently at Jair''s waist. "An ascension without a reforging, so the weapon is flawed, but the power..." Jair didn''t correct him. People were much better at convincing themselves of a perceived truth than at being persuaded of mere facts. "What if I were to demand the sword?" Kyson Teretho asked. "As my side of the bet." "I won''t lose. Demand what you wish." "I never thought I''d feel as though I were being cheap to offer a half million nirei, but I cannot gamble more than that." "Half a million? You already met my demands." "Having seen what you''re willing to risk, I cannot in good conscience offer any less. Even this is insufficient, but however valuable your weapon is, I cannot risk ruining my house. As extreme as your challenge may be, I''m not convinced you''ll fail." Jair smiled. "Then you''re as intelligent as you are wise. I thank you for the offer, and will look forward to collecting my winnings. Please do not betray my trust. No one can know the truth of Maelstrom''s power, or those less honorable than yourself would be tempted to turn to dishonest methods of forcing it from me." "You have my word. Your weapon''s secret is safe with me." And with the twenty other people Jair had shown it to, but it was important to at least pretend to be discreet. They exchanged parting pleasantries, then Jair left Teretho sitting in his box, still looking vaguely dazed. He may have gotten as much as he could out of the Astralla parents crowd, but the other attendees here were much more likely to be willing to gamble. It would likely be a lot more small amounts, even if he was blatant about flashing Maelstrom to anyone who could be persuaded by its quality. Few had Kyson Teretho''s sense of honor, and fewer still had the recklessness to wager that kind of money on a student exhibition. He didn''t bother to seek out Anna Deladan right now, her family connections weren''t something he ended up using and her political influence would only be helpful in the later months. He needed to focus on more immediate concerns at the moment. The focus on money necessitated a different approach, but playing up his confidence and seeming overreaching with his boasts of finishing the entire intermediate tier, he was able to secure an impressive number of wagers. One other major gambler was willing to take him up on his hundred-thousand offer, but even with that he''d wind up far short. Unless Ursia Domir had managed to set up a lot more bets than Jair himself, he¡¯d end the night at only around a third of what he needed. A staggering sum under normal circumstances, utterly meaningless without reaching the necessary threshold. With his more focused and direct approach, Jair finished his necessary introductions and social preparations with almost an hour to spare. He collected food to nibble and headed down to the practice rooms for a more extensive warmup. Even the few days¡¯ difference left his body unprepared and stiff compared to later in the week. That was one of the worst parts of starting over, alongside the soul-draining boredom of the initiation ceremony. He did his best with the time he had, stretching and massaging as necessary, but there was only so much to be done. He wasn''t looking forward to the exhibition matches. Even knowing Maelstrom could shatter nearly all of the adversaries, he still needed to be able to position himself well enough to capitalize on that. "Oh, hello." Homiki Ielga, one of the other competitors, walked in with her sword in hand. "I didn''t know this room was in use." "You''re welcome to join me." Jair smiled. ¡°In fact, there¡¯s something I¡¯ve been wanting to ask you.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± She blushed faintly and smiled. ¡°If you¡¯d like to practice together, I¡¯m always happy to spar.¡± "Would you be terribly offended if I were to kidnap you for ransom?" Her smile didn¡¯t waver, but her brow furrowed as she tried to parse his cheerful suggestion. "Pardon?" "I''d like to kidnap you against your father''s fortune. I only need about twelve percent of it, so you''ll have plenty of inheritance left over, but it''s rather urgent." "That''s what I thought I heard. I... feel like I should be offended, but maybe I''m just flattered you think I''m worth that much?" "I could offer to marry you instead, if that would make you happier. I figure you''d likely prefer a brief altercation to a lifetime commitment, though." "Again, I find myself perplexed. What are you hoping to accomplish here?" "I need money very quickly. Your family is one of those to have the highest amount of viable currency on hand at any given time. The obvious avenues of obtaining it are through you." Homiki placed a hand over her eyes, breathing with forced calm for several seconds as her brow furrowed more and more deeply. Then she looked up at Jair again. "If you''re trying to ask me out, you''re going about it in a very... unique way." "Sure. Call it what you will. A kidnapping date. As long as it gets me what I need." "And why do you need so much money so suddenly, pray tell?" "Custom armor design with Veshin." Homiki lit up immediately. "You made a custom armor design? Can I see it?" Now it was Jair''s turn to be confused. She''d never once shown an interest in anything he did in the past. "You don''t have to pretend to care." "No, I want to look. I''ve been considering getting a custom armor myself, but it''s never been a high priority." A blatant lie. Homiki¡¯s family were mageblade purists, and armor would be antithetical to her nature. But if she wanted to pretend, he could play along. From curiosity if nothing else. "Then come on over to the house after class tomorrow, I can show you. And if you decide to play along with the kidnapping, I have a few ideas for that too." Homiki laughed and raised her sword. ¡°All the more reason for me to learn how to fight.¡± Remembering some of her performance flaws, Jair guided her through a few specific practices to help offset her weaknesses, and advised her to move more quickly. The remaining half hour disappeared in no time, and then it was time to take their places in the arena.
"Greetings friends!" Lord Veshin shouted from atop his pillar of blue light, arms spread wide to the arena and its surrounding viewers. "Welcome to the seventy-fifth annual Mageblade Exhibition!" Jair waited in silence as Veshin went through the rules and did his quick demonstration of how the hardlight simulacrums worked. "First to demonstrate for us today will be Homiki Ielga!" Jair leaned over toward her and whispered, "Remember, be careful for its leg sweep, it''s a lot stronger than you''d expect." Homiki stepped forward, giving Jair a nod and confident smile as she slid forward to the center of the arena. She waited for the call to begin, then struck out with her soulsword. The simulacrum smoothly blocked, unhurried and without taking precautions. Homiki locked their blades together and shoved, but the construct''s other arm came up to intercept even as it crouched and swung its leg around to knock her feet out from under her. Homiki jumped back before it could connect the strike, disengaging and putting distance between herself and the simulacrum. It walked steadily forward, blade sweeping in casual swings in front of it. Homiki circled and the simulacrum turned, keeping its weapon raised between them. She darted forward and slammed her sword against that of the construct, trying to shatter it and buy herself a clear opening. The simulacrum shifted to a two-handed stance and retaliated with a steady barrage of heavy strikes. Homiki matched it blow for blow, turning and retreating, feeling out the rhythm of the fight. Without warning, she snapped out a quick stab to its thigh, smoothly returning to defence mode to deflect its followup attack even as the ''1'' lit up above her enemy''s head. This rhythm became the flow of the fight, block and retreat, circle, block and retreat, strike. She succeeded in accruing the necessary five strikes without its attacks so much as ruffling her robes. Applause greeted her success, considerably more enthusiastic than the previous time, Jair noted. The lack of her initial stumble made the audience much more attentive. "Will she be advancing to the second round?" "I will." Homiki continued her cautious approach, but as before the protracted method didn''t do her stamina any favors. By the time she finished the second round, she was out of breath and declined to continue. Jair watched her as she returned to the wall, considering. His brief tutoring session hadn¡¯t been enough to increase her tempo noticeably. Was there anything he could say or do to change that, or was she doomed to be a two-round player forever? Given her sudden interest in him, she might be a route worth considering.
24 - Outcomes It was an elf who first tamed the moons, who burned his soul into their surface and opened the gates to new lands. And it was his son whose fire for conquest shattered our open trust and brought ruin to our shores.
Denor stepped forward to face the simulacrum. His fighting style was as quick and efficient as ever, well trained to the rhythms of Starshaper''s simulacrums. He played to the crowd, interacting with the environments of the later rounds and playing up his flashier moves, all without slowing his headlong rush to victory. Denor sprang his surprise ambition to advance into the intermediate tier, to Lord Veshin''s obvious concern. Denor fought hard, but by the time he finished off the singular opponent he was bleeding heavily and only shook his head when asked if he would be advancing to the next. After praising his son to the heavens, Veshin rushed him out of the arena to the medical team before returning to announce Lian Teretho. "Just quit when you''re ahead," Jair whispered as the Teretho heir moved past him toward the center of the arena. "It doesn''t impress anyone to get yourself beaten up." Lian glanced at the door through which Denor had unsteadily departed, frowned at Jair, and dropped into his ready stance. He fought well enough, but he was no prodigy. Passing four rounds, he hesitated, then conceded. "Four rounds! Lian Teretho!" Applause, polite but enthusiastic, followed him back to the wall. He gave Jair another confused look as Jair nodded and smiled, but by then Jair''s own light pillar was rising and moving to the center so there was no time to interact properly. "Fourth and finally, Jair Welburne!" The blue hardlight simulacrum appeared and they took their positions. "Begin!" Jair didn''t bother with testing out the opponent''s strength. He performed a solid overhand chop that shattered the simulacrum''s sword, head, and torso all in a single cleave. It dissolved into sparkles amid the shocked silence of the crowd, the trio of sharp cracks echoing almost like a single rapid trill. "Well. Ah, will you be advancing to the second round?" Jair nodded and returned to stance. The remaining two rounds of a single opponent ended just as quickly, the increasing strength of the simulacrum completely unable to keep up with Maelstrom''s unchanged power. The rounds with two opponents were more difficult, in that he needed to strike, evade, then strike a second time, but it still took only seconds to finish each. "Will you be challenging the intermediate levels today?" Veshin asked as Jair finished the fifth round in less time than it''d taken any of his predecessors to reach round three. "Yes, thank you." Jair flashed Maelstrom in the air above his head, waving to the crowds with a wide grin. He met the eyes of several of his doubters, and his favourite sponsor. Ursia Domir was doing her best to add more bets as the night wore on, but after his stellar sweep of the first tier of opponents she was having a hard time getting anyone to bite. Well. There was something he could do about that. He intentionally slowed his performance in the first intermediate round, moving to barely intercept the opponent and striking with less than his full strength. The reinforced sword of the second-tier simulacrum deflected his attacks away, allowing the doubters room to reinforce their own haughty opinions, giving his advocates an opening to increase their wagers. He held out as long as he could, but his current body didn''t have unlimited stamina and would fare no better than Homiki if he stretched things too long. With a quick barrage that brought Maelstrom''s full power to bear in six rapid strikes, he overwhelmed the hardlight sword and shattered the simulacrum like all those before it. He took his time waving to the cheering crowd, delayed as long as he could before moving on to the next round, but after this he couldn''t afford to play around. If his allies were to make any increased wagers, he''d given them the only help he could. From here on, he had to fight with his full concentration and without holding back.
"Round ten, clear! Finishing the entire intermediate tier on his first day as an initiate? Unprecedented! Let''s hear it for Jair Welburne!" The applause was overwhelming. Jair did his best to smile, though he''d taken a couple strikes to the face that, though not dangerous, made the effort more than a little painful. He''d grown more adept at moving within his younger body''s limits rather than wearing himself out trying to ignore them, but that still left him severely restricted as he fought. Cheering followed him out of the arena, even, reluctantly, from those who¡¯d be losing a large amount of money. Even in loss, they could appreciate the power and mastery on display. Jair paused at the recovery hall long enough to receive Healer Shirien''s recovery spells and subtly applied soulspell, as Lord Veshin came bustling after him. "Jair! I trust you have a moment? I did promise to introduce you to my friends. We can start with your intermediate level peers." "Thank you, Lord Veshin, but I think I''d like to start with those who bet against me." Veshin guffawed loudly, clapping Jair familiarly on the back. "Ah, good lad, always keep watch on the money. We can do the introductions another day.¡± He winked. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll be coming around much more often in future."
"Eight hundred thousand!" Ursia Domir crowed, gleefully passing Jair a bank slip for half as much. "I have never seen so much gambling on a student exhibition. And in the middle, with that beautiful fumbling you did." Ursia nudged Jair with an elbow, grinning from ear to ear. "I was worried there for a moment, I admit. That last guy was hesitating to accept, but the moment you tripped he suddenly wanted to accommodate my unusual request. Joke''s on him in the end, though!" Jair shared in the laughter and accepted Ursia''s offered toast. ¡°I wonder if I could convince you to loan me the other half? I have some time-sensitive purchases to make. But I¡¯ll be heavily investing in my continued viability, so I can repay you in double after Solaria.¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°You have another major event planned so soon?¡± Ursia watched him over the rim of her glass, smile shifting as she considered. ¡°Ordinarily I¡¯d avoid getting too heavily invested in any one player, but you¡­ Mmmm, you¡¯re a different sort, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°You realize this is an absurd amount of money, yes? I understand you¡¯re not a city boy, but even what you hold there is more than your whole family will earn through their entire lives.¡± ¡°I¡¯m aware.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re that confident of making as much again in less than a month?¡± Jair summoned Maelstrom and gave it a quick flip in the air, the pulsing glow drawing Ursia¡¯s eye. ¡°If you can¡¯t think of ways for me to make a dozen times over what you¡¯re investing given a full Terlunia to work with, I¡¯d have to consider your imagination faulty.¡± ¡°Indeed¡­¡± she watched Maelstrom wonderingly as it landed in Jair¡¯s hand and disappeared with a flash of silver. ¡°You¡¯ll repay any investment in double?¡± Jair laughed and inclined his glass in her direction. ¡°I will. As much as you like.¡±
None of the other bets were nearly as large as Teretho''s, but when combined with Ursia Domir¡¯s investments, that still got Jair a whole lot closer to reasonably affording his request than he''d been a few hours before. He found Veshin after the other guests had departed, chatting amiably with one of the chefs as the underlings cleaned up the banquet hall. His available funds didn¡¯t outright meet Lord Veshin¡¯s number for pushing everything else out of the way, but it was enough. With a million and a half down-payment on the promised total, he agreed to give Jair¡¯s designs one try immediately. ¡°You know that you¡¯re paying for the time and materials even if it doesn¡¯t work? And you¡¯ll get the rest to me by Solaria, or there¡¯ll be severe legal repercussions?¡± Veshin laughed. ¡°Not that I don¡¯t trust you, I¡¯m half convinced you can do anything after a show like that.¡± ¡°I understand completely. Thank you.¡± His voice betrayed none of the deep relief at the progress, but his heart felt light and hopeful again. Things were changing. This would work. It really would. The challenge of working through the restrictions of his weaker body and previous reputation could be frustrating, but it would all be worth it. ¡°You know Starshaper told me he had to increase the substance strength of those simulacra up to the same integrity levels he¡¯d use for an ascendant, and you still smashed through them? Aelir, what a show! They¡¯ll be talking about this for years. Decades! If you ever need anything, you come to me, understand?¡± ¡°Again. Thank you. Might I make use of your training rooms for a time?¡± ¡°Help yourself. Our facilities are always open to you." Jair spent the rest of the evening alternating between carefully modulated exercises and meditating. He didn''t leave the Veshin training rooms until Denor came and politely suggested he vacate, for his own safety, as he¡¯d been here over ten hours. He didn¡¯t argue, though as long as he stayed awake he had enough control over his manabody that exposure time wouldn¡¯t be a problem. Instead, he crossed to the Serin side of the oasis and climbed onto the roof of one of the material improvement storage buildings. For a moment he stood looking out over the oasis, taking in the peaceful night. He could see one edge of the circle from here, the curved line separating the bright oasis from the blank darkness of the surrounding desert. Teal ferns glowed faintly amid the dark forms of buildings, bright enough to be visible but not enough to provide light around them. The grass, fainter still, spread around to the edges of the oasis, where it abruptly transitioned to dying grass dusted with sand, without enough mana to fully sustain it. Pale blue flecks of mana drifted upward and floated about aimlessly, dissolving into the air like slow inverse shooting stars or landing on plants or buildings in a brief flash before fading. Inside the locked building below him, the same would be happening to thousands of open-exposure construct parts, the raw mana gradually increasing their conductivity and immaterial strength. It could take years to upgrade a single item, but doing them in bulk didn¡¯t take any additional time. He summoned Maelstrom and stared down at it, running his fingers along the contours and uneven patches, lingering on the pattern of his soul stamped in blood. Mana drifted up and Maelstrom sucked it in, tiny blue flashes subsumed into the brighter silver as the pulsing of the blade danced in time with his heartbeat. He¡¯d inadvertently given a lot more than intended during the reforging, dying on top of it like that. Was that how legendary items were born? With the death of their creators? What would have become of Maelstrom if he hadn¡¯t managed to bind it to himself in those last instants? ¡°Hey.¡± Jair turned. Raina stood below him, staring up at the glowing beacon that was Maelstrom. ¡°Hey.¡± ¡°Mind if I join you?¡± Jair laughed. ¡°Since when do you ask permission?¡± He sat down and patted the roof beside him. ¡°Since you have more friends in the nobility than I do.¡± She scrambled up but didn¡¯t sit. ¡°What¡¯s going on with you today? I¡¯ve hardly seen you, and when I do you¡¯re off¡­¡± she shook her head, waved a hand helplessly, and flopped down beside him. ¡°This isn¡¯t quite the afterparty I expected you to go for, but I can see the appeal.¡± ¡°I hate it.¡± ¡°Hm?¡± Raina tilted her head at him. ¡°Playing the games they expect of someone in their spheres. That¡¯s not me. It¡¯s just a necessity. Tedious, stressful, irritating. But right now I need them, and they want me, so¡­¡± He sighed and stared up at the sky, stars in the distance, blue manalight drifting up between them and him. ¡°Will you run away with me? Terlunia, or even Dark Night. I don¡¯t want to stay here any longer than necessary.¡± Raina slid closer and put a hand on his. ¡°Jair, what happened?¡± ¡°Nothing. Everything. It¡¯s too much to explain right now. But this¡­¡± he passed her Maelstrom. ¡°I need to find a way to increase its integrity. Right now it¡¯s stable, but it¡¯s not at its full potential. There¡¯s a man in the Oriad who can help. I want to find him, as quickly as possible. And I want you to come with me.¡± ¡°I know we¡¯ve talked about traveling to explore the world, but isn¡¯t this a bit sudden?¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°You¡¯ve got your class, I¡¯ve got mine. Call it your Reforging Quest, if that¡¯ll make things easier.¡± ¡°Well, yes, but even that. Isn¡¯t the Oriad one of the most dangerous places on Orard?¡± ¡°That won¡¯t be a problem.¡± Jair nudged at Maelstrom. ¡°Did you look?¡± ¡°Of course not, I would never do that without¡ª¡± ¡°I trust you, Rai. Go ahead.¡± She looked at him, questioning. Silver light danced across her face, lighting up her untidy hair, her golden eyes softened from their usual fiery hue. When he didn¡¯t recant, she turned down to Maelstrom. ¡°Inspect.¡± For a long moment, she read the information without comment. Then her breath caught and she rocked back, staring down at the weapon as though she couldn¡¯t believe she was touching it. ¡°We don¡¯t need to stay here,¡± Jair said softly. ¡°We have everything we need.¡± ¡°L-Legendary?¡± Raina squeaked, voice unsteady. ¡°Ascended? Jair¡­ how?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. That¡¯s another reason I need to find Eythron.¡± ¡°This is¡­¡± Raina¡¯s voice turned suddenly serious. ¡°Jair, you can¡¯t let anyone know you have this. This is the most powerful item in all of Veor. Kingdoms have gone to war for less. Assassins would be the least of your worries. Your family¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯ve taken measures to protect their identity.¡± ¡°That won¡¯t be enough. We should evacuate them before we leave. I can probably arrange something with my father.¡± ¡°We? So you¡¯ll come?¡± ¡°Of course I¡¯ll come. I¡¯m not going to send you into exile alone. Jair, this changes everything.¡± ¡°Not quite everything. There is still one complication left to deal with before we start packing.¡± ¡°Oh? And what is that?¡± Jair hesitated, but of all people he¡¯d need Raina¡¯s cooperation most. Now wasn¡¯t a time to hold back. ¡°Your mother has upset a very powerful dragon matriarch, who wants to eat you.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± Raina¡¯s face went blank, all thoughts and calculations disappearing as the sheer hopelessness of her situation hit her. ¡°Yeah. So, I¡¯m going to need your help with some preparation. If all goes well, we¡¯ll be dragonslayers by the end of the week, and then we can go on our merry way.¡± ¡°That¡¯s going to take an awful lot of going well,¡± Raina said faintly. ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m here for. Don¡¯t worry. I have a plan.¡±
25 - Draconis Dovak of the Below Let not the Deeps erode our hearts or steal our future Within your sheltered lands we dwell in hope Guardian of the Gates, unfaltering Eternal This trust we give to you
Here we are again. The evening of the fourth day of his new life as a mageblade initiate, Jair stood on the southern wall of Astralla Institute, watching the eastern sky. In the distance, a tiny dark speck could be mistaken for a distant bird or particularly large grain of sand thrown aloft by the wind. It was neither. Raina stood beside him, wearing a full suit of Veshin-craft elite armor. Iridescent blue-black, the armor was formed of dozens of mana-imbued ceramic plates overlapping and layering in precise patterns. An additional outer layer of support bands locked around her chest, arms, and head like an exoskeleton of steel halos to provide crushing protection. Internally powered armor like Veshin¡¯s was the best option for fighting a dragon''s innate magic absorption, since the protective layers of material would slow down its ability to drain the power from it, and the interior nature of it resisted the pull. It would still be destroyed in minutes, broken down from outside and in as the integrity crumbled from the dragon''s exposure, but those minutes could be invaluable in a combat situation. Jair¡¯s armor was simple compared to Raina¡¯s, little more than a collection of exorbitantly expensive powered construct shielding added to a standard warrior set. The armor itself, he had inscribed with fire protection, to deal with the physical heat of the dragon¡¯s explosive breath, and the leg and arm plates were linked with momentum and strength augments that would provide a minor boost to mobility. Powering it all, the center plate housed three high-grade mana crystals of the sort used to power cities. Against any normal creature it would be overkill, but dragons¡¯ magic absorption capabilities meant as soon as any part of its body came in contact with the armor, it would suck the power straight out of the active spell, and take a chunk out of the mana crystals as well. Enough mana to last a year in a volcano could be gone in a moment. The distant speck of a dragon had become a distant spot of a dragon. Jair himself couldn''t make out the shape yet, only that the small hardly moving point had grown larger in size. If he didn''t know it for what it was, he''d never have recognized it. ¡°You¡¯re sure it¡¯s a dragon?¡± Raina asked, for the hundredth time. ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡± ¡°And we can¡¯t go anywhere to hide until it goes away?¡± ¡°It¡¯s coming for you, specifically and inexorably. There¡¯s no hiding, no escaping.¡± Transiting from the Institute to a city further from the mountains could delay the engagement, but increased the collateral damage and decreased Raina¡¯s survival time post-engagement to almost nothing. Transit back and forth between cities or outposts would initially confuse whatever tracking Ryenzo used to follow Raina flawlessly, but the delay was only temporary. What was the use of buying an extra day at the expense of tens of thousands of lives if Raina still died in the end? As the only way to truly protect Raina was to kill the dragon and hold it away from her long enough for even its manabody to give up and fade away, changing the time or location of the engagement was ultimately pointless unless it changed the outcome. Though things like luring it to the king¡¯s palace or a particularly annoying noble¡¯s house could be highly entertaining, none of those bought as much time as the Institute itself. Against a normal attack, armies or rogue adventurers, assassins or escaped lunar monsters, the palace would be unquestionably the best place to hole up. But Astralla Mageblade Institute had one thing the palace didn¡¯t. It had survived centuries of enthusiastic and minimally trained young adults throwing magic around in countless unexpected and potentially destructive ways. Which, ironically enough, meant that the layers upon layers of protections to safeguard the students from each other provided the best fortress Veor had to offer from the destruction wrought by a dragon. Raina shivered, armor clinking softly as she hugged her arms to her chest. ¡°How do you know all this?¡± ¡°Survive the next hour and I¡¯ll tell you everything.¡± ¡°You say that like it¡¯s not a guarantee.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not.¡± ¡°Even with this?¡± Raina gestured down at herself, the armor that cost more than most noble estates. "What more could you possibly need?" "Surviving a dragon isn''t as simple as ''buy an anti-dragon armor and you''re good''. If that were the case, dragons would be either extinct or domesticated by now. The first problem is, even if it can¡¯t crush or burn you, it can still swallow you, and the venom in its saliva will burn through anything given a few minutes. Assuming it doesn''t decide to oven-roast you in its mouth, which no amount of insulation will protect you from indefinitely." "One would generally prefer to avoid ending up in a dragon''s mouth under any circumstances, yes." Jair shrugged. "And how do you prevent that? You can''t block it, you can''t restrain it. The best you can hope for is to slow it down. Frostvine has been known to work temporarily. Active wards that change the environment physically, thicken the air pressure, play around with gravity, change the wind currents." Raina glanced down at the walls, now alight with elaborate construct tracings. "Is that what we''ve been doing?" ¡°Yes. I¡¯ve amplified what was already there and added new layers to synergize with the existing effects. The second problem is, this particular dragon is insanely focused on killing you specifically. To the extent that it will disregard everything up to and including its own survival if it thinks the alternative is you living.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± Raina swallowed. ¡°I can see why any reasonable response would be ¡®send her out to the desert and let the dragon have her.¡¯ I don¡¯t want anyone else being hurt to save me.¡± Tears were in her eyes and her voice trembled, but she still stood proudly. ¡°If my mother owes this dragon a life, maybe it¡¯s best to let her take it.¡± ¡°Never.¡± The distinctly dragon-shaped blob in the sky grew nearer and larger. ¡°Don¡¯t get yourself killed,¡± Raina pleaded. ¡°Save yourself, even if you can¡¯t protect me.¡± Jair didn¡¯t answer immediately. He¡¯d long wondered what he would do if it came down to a situation where he could take the dragon down in time but would die himself, whether that would be a good enough outcome for him to accept, or if he needed to be present to ensure that she truly outlived the disaster. ¡°Promise me.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t leave you alone. If you¡¯ll promise to live, I¡¯ll keep living too.¡± Raina gave a soft chuckle that was almost a sob. ¡°I¡¯ll do my best, but you know I can¡¯t guarantee that.¡± ¡°That¡¯s alright. You do your best. I¡¯ll take care of the guarantees.¡± The definitely a dragon flapped nearer, a glint of green against the evening sky. ¡°I don¡¯t understand. My mom¡¯s been gone since as long as I can remember. Why this? Why now?¡± This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°I wish I knew.¡± Raina¡¯s giggle was definitely edging toward hysterical. ¡°So you don¡¯t know everything. And here I was starting to think you did.¡± ¡°Breathe. Try to relax.¡± ¡°Relax? With a dovak-cursed dragon flying straight at me?¡± Jair took hold of her shoulders, squared up to face her directly, keeping his voice even and calm. ¡°Look at me.¡± She did, eyes bright with tears that spilled down her cheeks as she blinked, breathing coming too fast in uncontrolled gasps. ¡°I am going to kill the dragon, and you are going to survive. We¡¯ll both make it through this.¡± ¡°How? I don¡¯t¡ª¡± ¡°Sssh. It¡¯ll be okay. Slow. Breathe out. I¡¯m right here. You¡¯ve got the best protection money can buy. I¡¯ve got a sword better than money can buy. You just need to go where I told you as fast as you can. As soon as it does its first pass, you go down to the tunnel by the wall as fast as you can. Once it lands, I¡¯ll be able to see what Maelstrom can really do.¡± Raina nodded, hiccupping through her tears. ¡°Right. It¡¯s ju¡ªjust a dragon. Maelstrom is better.¡± ¡°Ryenzo won¡¯t know what hit it.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Go to the tower. Just inside, out of reach. Be ready to run down as soon as I signal.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can do this.¡± ¡°You can.¡± ¡°Dovak, I hope so.¡± Jair smiled faintly. ¡°Not Aelir today? I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever heard you swear by Dovak twice in the same day.¡± ¡°You think Aelir is going to be enough to deal with this?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°Indeed. Dovak help us both.¡± Unwatched, the dragon drew slowly nearer. He didn¡¯t need to see it to know its exact location at every moment. The slant of the light, the hue of the sky, the shape of the clouds, everything to the minutest detail was locked in his memory as harbingers of the coming death. ¡°How can you be so calm?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve prepared as much as can be prepared. Either I win, or I don¡¯t. Losing control won¡¯t improve the outcome.¡± By all accounts, by any reasonable calculation, this was an unstoppable calamity. The fact that its attack normally left only the academy half destroyed and less than a third of the students dead made it one of the tamest and least destructive dragon attacks in recorded history. The specifically focused nature of the dragon''s vendetta meant it could be manipulated to an extent. Jair could minimize casualties, but he couldn¡¯t eliminate them entirely. Guiding the outcome of the fight gave him some measure of control over the fate of hundreds of students and dozens of staff and teachers. It was a responsibility he¡¯d become accustomed to, inured to the weight of it. If he did nothing, Raina and everyone in the building with her would die. If no one else would step up to save any of them¡ªwhich he¡¯d definitively proven time and again to be the case¡ªthey were surrendering any right to have a say in who lived or died. And then it was time. "Go to the tower. I''ll watch from here." His thoughts stilled into focus. Raina stiffened, then nodded and ran to the tower. Jair stayed on the wall, watching the dragon''s approach. His heart never stopped racing, body ready to move. He couldn¡¯t forget this if he tried, every nuance burned into his memory. Everything else could change, but this moment was always inevitable. The doings of nobles and kings meant nothing to the power of Ryenzo Draconis. Every flap of distant wings, every flick of the tail, every pushed glide. Ryenzo wasn¡¯t large by the standard of dragons as a whole¡ªpoison dragons were one of the smaller breeds overall¡ªbut she was still big enough to swallow the top half of the tower. Jair knew from painful experience that sometimes higher wasn¡¯t better. Deep green scales covered the head and overly-long neck, thick and impenetrable. The scales thinned out along the chest and shoulders, shifting to a vivid yellow-green as they grew wider and sparser. Above forelimbs and behind the wings, protected between joints, a slowly inflating bulge showed the venom sac, where the dragon¡¯s breath would be infused with its burning venom before being cast out in an explosive blast. Three. Two. One. ¡°Raina, now! Go!¡± A blast of green gas bathed the wall, and Jair was already moving. Ryenzo swooped low to ignite the cloud, even as Jair jumped into the center of the blast. Vivid green flame exploded beneath him, throwing him upward just as the dragon¡¯s tail flicked by. He slashed out blindly, vision filled with green and yellow, but he had no need to see the dragon to know exactly where it was. He felt Maelstrom slice into something solid¡ªand stick. The sudden jerk as he started to fall while the dragon¡¯s tail whipped back the opposite direction nearly yanked the sword out of his hand, but he grabbed with his other hand and clung tight. The dragon roared and crashed into the dome, claws digging into the glass and sending cracks down its side. Jair was laughing. Nothing he¡¯d ever thrown at the dragon had so much as scratched it. Fully trained adults with reforged weapons could barely scratch it. He didn¡¯t know how far he¡¯d cut, but if the blade was trapped it had to be deep. The dragon slashed its tail through the air and slammed Jair into the side of the dome, trying to dislodge him. His armor clanged against the glass, but Maelstrom stayed firmly embedded in the dragon¡¯s tail and Jair remained stubbornly clinging to his sword. Ordinarily, he¡¯d be landing on the towertop after his failed slash, then waiting for the dragon to come around again in its flight. Instead he was still hanging off its tail as it repeatedly smashed him into the dome. This was an entirely new situation, so he had yet to decide what should be his next move. Then Raina exited the bottom of the tower and Jair¡¯s presence was forgotten. Ryenzo¡¯s terrible roar filled the heavens as the dragon launched itself at Raina. KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER! The sounds would be incomprehensible to anyone else present, but in his many attempts to reason with the mad creature Jair had become one of the few humans who could fluently understand Draconic. He couldn¡¯t exactly speak it, not without drastic adjustment to his body and some additional constructs for good measure, but if he could hear it, he¡¯d understand it. Raina dove into the tunnel just ahead of the grasping claws. The dragon crashed into the wall, getting a handful of sand instead of a crunchy Raina. Stone crashed as the wall trembled. Whole sections of the wall flared bright as the increased integrity spells tried to draw in enough power to compensate for the drain of the dragon¡¯s direct contact. Not enough. The section of wall held together physically, only bowing slightly, but that entire patch of spell patterns went dark. The dragon wasn¡¯t paying attention to the wall or to the man making his way from sword-hold to tail-hold. The dragon burrowed into the ground with claws, snorting poison fog down the hideaway and blasting explosions every other second. Jair didn¡¯t have long. He ran up the dragon¡¯s back, located the venom sac, and stabbed down with all his strength. Maelstrom sliced clean through the thinner scales of its shoulder and pierced into its open gasbag of an organ with such a lack of resistance that Jair nearly toppled over, the sword going fully through to its hilt. KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER! There was an awkward moment where nothing happened. Jair rocked and crouched to maintain his balance and the dragon tried to brush him off against the wall, as though it were flicking away an insect, continuing to burrow toward Raina at full speed. Maelstrom¡¯s slice was so clean, only the slightest wisp of gas escaped around the misshapen side of its blade. He needed a spark. Jair looked down at himself, fully decked out in anti-fire and fire-prevention armor, then over at Maelstrom¡¯s hilt sticking out of the dragon¡¯s shoulder. He grabbed Maelstrom and drew it out, then slashed it diagonally across the dragon¡¯s scales, but they were nowhere near abrasive enough to strike a spark. Well, worth a try. Gas continued to leak out from the dragon¡¯s punctured venom sac, but not quickly enough to distract it from its burrowing. Next target, chop off the head. Why not? If Maelstrom was this powerful¡­ Jair ran along the dragon¡¯s bent spine, the way it leaned forward and down providing him a nice smooth arc to its neck. He raised the weapon above his head and slashed down. CLANG. Maelstrom finally met its match. The thicker scales of the dragon¡¯s head and neck stopped it short, leaving only a thin slice, barely visible. That strike, though, was enough to catch the dragon¡¯s full attention. Its long neck whipped around. For a single moment, Jair stood staring up into the sinister glow of its poisonous yellow-green eyes, then its neck had twisted snakelike around his body in three full coils. He couldn¡¯t so much as wiggle Maelstrom, the sword trapped against his leg uselessly. The dragon¡¯s impenetrable neck squeezed down until his armor creaked and bent, mana crystals run through in seconds trying to protect him from its body heat. He distantly heard his bones snapping, just one more noise in the chaos. Then it flung him up, caught in its massive mouth, and swallowed. No thank you. He¡¯d died by dissolution enough times to know it was a particularly awful way to go. Maelstrom had fallen from his crushed hand at some point, and his arms no longer moved at his command so he wasn¡¯t sure there was anything he could have done with it if he¡¯d had it. Jair focused inward, away from the tight burning of the dragon¡¯s stomach, and found his soulspell. Golden light flared, and he fell backwards through time.
26 - In Between ¡°I wonder how wild of a story I could get you to believe.¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t, but I still wonder. For someone as well trained as you are, you can be startlingly naive.¡±
"¡ªfair, I''ve been doing this for my entire life. How can you..." Raina trailed off as Jair staggered dizzily. "Are you okay?" Jair started laughing and he couldn''t stop, an oddly hysterical sound, gleeful and incredulous all at once. He ignored the instinctive adrenaline that accompanied any reversion, the readiness to jump into whatever he was doing full force. He recognized their apartment. There shouldn¡¯t be any danger here. What had they been doing? He stared down at a half-finished drawing, a wiggly smudge across its center where he¡¯d lost control in the instant of reorientation. Ah yes. Art. Day three. Evening. Roughly a day ago. Nice! The less tedium he needed to repeat the better. "What is it?" Note of concern. Jair shook his head, pressing two fingers to his forehead to manifest Maelstrom in front of him. He held it out, shaking his head, still laughing uncontrollably. "Maelstrom? Yes, what about it?" He only laughed harder. He couldn''t catch his breath. The sheer absurdity of how strong his sword was took him fully off guard. It hadn¡¯t been able to break through Yalenin Veshin¡¯s illusions, so he¡¯d assumed dragonscales would be a flat rejection. Nope! Dragon stabbing was trivial. A matriarch was trivial to stab. Sure, the neck was too well protected, but it would be just as helpless if he carved off all its limbs. Stab its heart, eviscerate its lungs. Its manabody could keep puppeting the physical for a few minutes, but the more pieces that body was in the harder it would be and the shorter that grace period became. ¡°I¡¯d been thinking I would need to start recruiting again,¡± he said between gasps, catching his breath. ¡°Try everyone now. But this¡­¡± And this at ten percent integrity! He could only imagine what it¡¯d be like once he was able to find Eythron and get it repaired properly. ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t either until now.¡± He held up Maelstrom, its silver pulse a rapid flicker. ¡°You said kingdoms would go to war for something like this. I didn¡¯t quite realize the truth of that. This changes everything. Oh, and I need a spark gauntlet. Don¡¯t let me forget.¡± ¡°Spark gauntlet,¡± Raina said, confused. ¡°Okay.¡± Being able to ignite the entire pouch should cause an explosion big enough to distract the dragon at least a little. Could disable one claw and wing too. He laughed. This was ridiculous. Maelstrom was ridiculous. He hugged the sword to his chest, whispering a thanks to Dovak, just in case. This was perfect. Beyond perfect. Beyond his wildest expectations. With this, he very well might be able to do the impossible. No one killed a dragon solo. He never expected to either, only ran this loop to test the armor and sword. But now, he had no lack of attack power and damage output. It would be a matter of positioning. All he needed was enough people to distract and reroute the dragon, and perhaps help evacuate Raina. He was laughing again. Couldn¡¯t help it. ¡°Do I need to get Healer Notek?¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± Jair waved away her concern and doodled a quick sketch of the dragon. He blackened in the parts where the scales were thicker and darker. Neck, ankles, and the ridge along its back and tail. He was fortunate to have struck the tail at a sideways angle, or Maelstrom might have bounced off that too. The tail swinging sideways and the weapon coming at an opposite angle had perfectly coincided to give him that handhold. ¡°See? This is what I¡¯m talking about! I¡¯ve taken art lessons since I was three, and you¡¯re just casually turning out stuff like this?¡± Her eyes flicked up to his, narrowing as though to check for a soulspell glow. ¡°Yes, you¡¯ve figured it out. My soulspell makes me a genius artist.¡± ¡°And have random bouts of insanity, it seems.¡± ¡°That too. Don¡¯t forget, we need to head over to the oasis to pick up your new armor.¡± ¡°I still don¡¯t know how you made that happen. I¡¯ve seen the kind of names on that waitlist. It¡¯s not something you just jump the line on.¡± ¡°Maelstrom opens many doors.¡±
Jair finished carving the last set of oversized air pressure symbols on the walls mid-morning on the last day. In theory, he could spend the next few hours recruiting help from the teachers and informing his allies what to do when, but he was too excited to really test out Maelstrom¡¯s capabilities. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin the day with hours of begging for help from people who should be already doing their best, yet who would instead ignore, dismiss, insult, or outright antagonize him for no better reason than who he was. It might become necessary to undertake at some point, but not today. Today, he had a dragon to slice up and some new timing to verify. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. He headed out to Parein to find a spark gauntlet, then picked up his order of frostvine nets from the weaver guild in Astralla City. He still hadn¡¯t settled on a good spot to set those up, but it would never be a problem to have them on hand. After finishing his shopping, it was barely past noon and he was still in a good mood. He walked into Raina¡¯s class to ask where the best black market material trader could be found. He¡¯d gotten into the habit of trading everything through Meldi and Tyros, the Astralla City underworld bosses, but in this case he¡¯d prefer to cut out the middlemen. A quick argument later, and he sat down beside her to wait out the class¡¯s final few minutes. He scribbled notes on the minutes she¡¯d missed during their conversation, since he knew every class by heart. Hearing even part of it brought the whole back fully to mind in all its tedious glory. Raina ran to keep up with him as he danced his way to the transit platform. ¡°What¡¯s the rush?¡± ¡°You know, dragons to slay, profits to make. It¡¯s a beautiful day to be alive, don¡¯t you think?¡± ¡°Yeah¡­ I¡¯m thinking we should stop at a healer on the way back, be sure you¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± Jair cut her off. ¡°I¡¯ve already consulted a variety of specialists. There¡¯s nothing wrong with me. The unusual circumstances of Maelstrom¡¯s ascension did not cause any damage.¡± He grinned. ¡°I¡¯m not wholly irresponsible.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t expect you to be irresponsible, but you certainly can be stubborn.¡± ¡°Thanks for noticing.¡± ¡°Though, given you just came to me for a ghostmoon alchemist, maybe I should reconsider your responsibility levels.¡±
Dragon materials were valuable. Poison dragons, due to a complicated series of events based around them being smaller and more aggressive than other dragon types, were actually among the rarest and most valuable of planetary dragons. Lunar dragons were significantly rarer due to the inhospitable terrain and logistical difficulties in slaying them, but they were also unknown enough that the materials weren¡¯t particularly valuable. Poison dragons had once been the most commonly slain dragon type, their materials became well known and heavily used in particular stages of precision construct manufacturing in particular, and then the slayable ones ran out. This left an interesting market, which made the prospects of an entire matriarch¡¯s worth of scales, blood, fangs, and talons an almost implausible windfall. So much so that a single alchemist would never be able to afford more than a fraction of it. But he could act as an independent agent for a more reasonable fee than what Meldi and Tyros would have demanded. Jair spent some time negotiating with the man, who seemed passingly familiar, while Raina perused the shelves and glass cases. She alternated between curiosity about the unfamiliar ingredients and poorly-concealed unease about the blatantly illegal ones, which made Jair smile. So very law-abiding so much of the time, but she had that hidden edge that wanted to know more than was permitted or advised. What waited outside the standard rules and beneath the facades of polite society? The answer was quite a lot that she didn¡¯t actually want to know. But there was plenty he could show her safely that she¡¯d never find on her own as long as she let her life be controlled by cultural expectation. ¡°But if you think you¡¯re going to be coming back loaded with valuable materials,¡± said the shopkeeper, ¡°I hate to say it, you¡¯re probably not going to come back at all.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯d be interested in betting on that?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t see how I¡¯d collect my winnings if you get yourself eaten.¡± ¡°Raina? Care to vouch for me?¡± ¡°Really?¡± ¡°What, I¡¯m responsible! You know that.¡± ¡°After a week like this?¡± ¡°Hey, I¡¯ve won every bet I made.¡± ¡°What do you expect me to say? Sure, I¡¯ll cover your bet if you get yourself killed, because you¡¯ve survived this long?¡± The alchemist looked between them. ¡°Are you two¡ª¡± ¡°No!¡± they answered in unison, before resuming the argument. In the end, he did get a promise of a better percentage, though Raina insisted she get half of the extra profits if she was covering his debt in the event of his death. It felt good to allow himself to relax a bit, fall back into old childhood patterns of companionable bickering. He could permit it, now and then, especially when he was coming so close to true success.
¡°You¡¯re sure it¡¯s a dragon?¡± They stood atop the wall, evening sun doing nothing to conceal the tiny distant speck flying at them. ¡°Absolutely.¡± ¡°And we can¡¯t hide, wait for it to go away?¡± ¡°How many times have you heard of someone escaping a dragon by hiding?¡± ¡°Well¡­¡± Raina looked down with a grimace. ¡°They usually result in being the sole survivor of a complete massacre. But your armor isn¡¯t going to do enough to protect you.¡± ¡°Sure it will. It¡¯ll prevent it roasting me in the first pass.¡± He flexed the spark gauntlet on his left hand. ¡°Hard to slay a dragon when I¡¯m a pile of ash.¡± ¡°It can still crush you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m willing to bet it¡¯ll be more focused on you.¡± Raina shivered. ¡°I still want to know how you found out about this whole vendetta thing. Have you seen my mom?¡± ¡°Once we survive, I¡¯ll explain everything. But, no. I haven¡¯t found your mother.¡± Tamma Serin had told Lord Ajriol Serin she was a danger and had to leave, ignored his protests, and proceeded to leave. Young Raina had barely known her before she disappeared. Where she went, what she¡¯d done, and how she¡¯d managed to incense a dragon to such drastic ends¡­ he still didn¡¯t know. Some things remained hidden, even to a time traveler. The dragon-shaped dot came nearer, clarifying. ¡°Dovak¡­¡± Raina cursed softly. ¡°It¡¯s really a dragon.¡± ¡°Yep.¡± Raina looked between the distant dragon and Jair. ¡°If my mother owes this dragon a life, maybe it¡¯s best to let her take it.¡± ¡°Never.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t get yourself killed,¡± Raina pleaded. ¡°Save yourself, even if you can¡¯t protect me. It¡¯s not worth throwing your life away over.¡± ¡°Of course it is. My life. I get to choose what to throw it at.¡± ¡°H-hey. I still have to live with myself if you die, you know.¡± ¡°No you won¡¯t. I¡¯ll make sure of that.¡± The dragon came nearer. ¡°How can you be so calm?¡± ¡°Practice.¡± ¡°How can you practice something like this?¡± The edge of hysteria crept into her voice by now. Whatever he tried, it seemed she would always come apart here. For all the pressures her expensive education and private tutoring had prepared her for, ¡®being eaten by a dragon¡¯ wasn¡¯t one of them. Jair laughed. ¡°It does seem hard to practice, doesn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Now is no time for fooling around.¡± ¡°No? Then when is?¡± He waved a hand at the sky. ¡°After the dragon tries to eat us? Nah. Forget that. Live now. Live later. Don¡¯t put it off.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not¡ªthat¡¯s not what I¡¯m¡ª¡± Flustered and confused, she gestured helplessly. ¡°Fooling around is always a valid option. Especially when you¡¯re me.¡± He grinned. ¡°If I weren¡¯t wearing obscenely expensive armor, I¡¯d smack you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m wearing armor too,¡± he pointed out. But he couldn¡¯t help smiling. If she were thinking about how much of an idiot her friend was being, she wasn¡¯t thinking about her potential demise. He¡¯d take that trade any day. She poked his shoulder, very gently. Their armor barely clinked. ¡°You call that a smack? I¡¯ve seen you do better with a pillow!¡± ¡°My armor is made of ceramic!¡± ¡°Enhanced ceramic with years worth of exposure to your mana oasis. You could drop a dragon on that stuff and it¡¯d barely crack.¡± ¡°Then why does it break so often?¡± ¡°Dragons don¡¯t stay dropped, and a crack is a crack. You¡¯ll probably need it repaired, or even replaced, by the end of the day. But as long as it does its job of keeping you alive, it¡¯s worth it.¡± The dragon closed in. Neither of them was watching it. ¡°I guess I just don¡¯t feel like hitting you today.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a first. Write it in the history books. Raina Serin finally gave up her violent nature!¡± She kicked him. He fell over, laughing. ¡°I didn¡¯t kick you that hard!¡± She frantically tried to help him up. He dodged her hand and stayed where he lay, grinning up at her. ¡°You look good with a dragon in the background. Like a warrior queen.¡± ¡°Eep!¡± Raina spun around, then froze at the sight of the dragon so close. Jair jumped to his feet. ¡°You¡¯ve got another half minute. Go to the tower, be ready to run. Once it goes past, get down to the tunnel. I¡¯ll do the stabbing.¡± ¡°Jair¡­ I¡­¡± ¡°Now.¡± He gave her a little shove, breaking her paralysis. She ran. He stood, Maelstrom in one hand, waiting. Three, two, one¡­
27 - Draconis (2) Nuprima. The largest of the three moons, and the most magically dense. Its incredibly harsh climate makes even living in protective domes a challenging proposition. Most people who stay only do so for one lunar cycle, but its bountiful supply of crystalized mana make Nuprima extremely lucrative for those who can survive its dangers.
Poison gas blasted out, and Jair jumped straight into it. A spark, and the explosion of vivid green fire threw him upwards. He slashed out blindly through the glare, and Maelstrom bit deep into something solid. He held on tight as the sword was almost wrenched out of his grip. Then they were out of the cloud, into the open air. The dragon roared and crashed into the dome, claws digging into the glass and sending cracks down its side as it slashed its tail through the air. Jair''s armor clanged as he was slammed against the glass. He was better prepared for the disorientation of being flung about on the dragon¡¯s long flexible tail, and used the momentum of the swing to his advantage. He released Maelstrom and jumped, pushing off from the dome and the dragon¡¯s tail in the instant of contact, then recalled Maelstrom in a flash of silver and slammed it home further up the dragon¡¯s tail, closer to its main body. It tried again, and he repeated the maneuver, eliciting another pained roar. Instead of repeating a third time, the dragon launched itself into the air and twisted, belching more poison gas at its unwelcome passenger. Jair snapped his spark gauntlet, igniting the cloud before the dragon was ready. The blast wasn¡¯t enough to hurt it, it was immune to its own explosions, but it disoriented it enough that it didn¡¯t immediately notice Raina running out from the bottom of the tower and down into the tunnel. With an angry hiss, it landed on the top of the northern library tower. Jair winced at the shriek of magically-enhanced silver and steel crushed in its claws, digging deep into material even Maelstrom struggled to pierce. He wasn¡¯t the only one with deadly weapons at his disposal. The dragon¡¯s head whipped around, body twisting to bring Jair close enough to bite down on. Jair declined, dropping off the tail and onto the bent and twisted rooftop. The dragon snatched at him with a claw, covering the attack with another blast of gas. Maelstrom recalled to his hand, Jair ducked and stabbed upward. The blade screeched against scales as the heavily-armored claw slammed down. The force of the collision drove him backwards. Neither Maelstrom nor the dragon¡¯s body would yield, so his tiny human body was the only thing that could be moved by the clash. ¡°Positioning,¡± he muttered, staring up at the monster¡¯s massive body, a dark silhouette through the fog of its poison breath. He now knew he could slice it into nice big dragon chunks and leave it to bleed out, but it didn¡¯t matter how sharp his knife was if he couldn¡¯t reach the pieces to chop. Its tail smacked into him and threw him off the tower. He stabbed out with Maelstrom, but the angle was wrong. It skidded off the protected ridge across the top of the tail and failed to find purchase. There were worse ways to die than falling from the tallest point in the Institute, but he didn¡¯t have the chance to hit the ground. The dragon swooped around to catch him in its mouth. At least he still had functional arms at this point. He slashed Maelstrom up through the roof of its mouth, and got spat out for his trouble. Ah. There was the ground. Even further away this time. Armor was surprisingly useless at protecting one from a fall. He still instinctively tried to activate Lift, but without an imprint the spell didn¡¯t exist. And he¡¯d burned most of his manabody on protecting from the heat and explosions, anyway. On the one hand, he¡¯d distracted it from Raina for at least a few seconds. On the other, its fixation on her made the prospect of chopping it up easier than when he had its full attention. Plenty of time to figure out which worked better. He landed hard, followed immediately by the foreclaw of a diving dragon. The pressure from both sides crushed his armor flat, and destroyed most of his body in the process. He automatically activated his soulspell the moment his life ended. No point hanging around after that. Golden light consumed the hours, returning him to the previous day. ¡°I''ve been doing this for my entire life. How can you¡ª¡± Raina broke off as Jair staggered. Same as before, evening art homework. Standing in their living room with oversized easels and a variety of charcoals. ¡°You alright?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°Fine. It¡¯s a lot of preparation to go through for a few minutes of action, you know?¡± ¡°Is it?¡± Jair contemplated his ruined sketch, a wobbly line scrawled through the middle of it from when he¡¯d reverted in. ¡°We may focus on the key exciting moments, but there¡¯s a whole lot of life in between.¡± ¡°I suppose that¡¯s true, if you think of a drawing like a performance.¡± ¡°It¡¯s hard to remember, sometimes, the value of those repetitive hours. It would be so much easier to disregard them, disconnect, only pay attention to what feels important.¡± Raina considered. ¡°If I¡¯m not paying attention to practicing, it could impact performance?¡± She added a few more lines to her canvas. ¡°But I pay attention to everything, so how does that explain your sudden jump in skill level?¡± Jair grinned at her. ¡°If you pay attention to everything, do you really pay attention to anything?¡± Raina frowned back. ¡°You can¡¯t say you¡¯ve suddenly increased in skill at multiple disciplines because you were giving each your complete focus." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°Why not? It¡¯s true. I have spent many months doing nothing but drawing, studying art, and practicing the secret techniques of ancient masters.¡± He added a few more scribbles to his accidental scrawl, turning it from a flaw into an artistically placed branch bisecting the primary subject. ¡°Remind me why we¡¯re drawing Terluna fauna?¡± ¡°Is that what you¡¯re doing?¡± ¡°Apparently so.¡± ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be practicing the Eraial techniques.¡± ¡°Ah, lots of spirals and variation in line heaviness throughout a continuous stroke. Yes, Terluna flora lends itself well to that technique.¡± Jair returned to his half-finished depiction of a quraam, one of the curly-furred flying serpents native to Terluna. This one was rearing up, horns out and hood twisted inward protectively. The hours passed, familiar hours, repeated twice over and beginning now to lose their novelty. He worked through the night to finish the modifications to the walls, went shopping, and draped frostvine nets over the tops of the library towers. Raina collected her new custom armor from Lord Veshin, and arrived to the walltop at the designated time looking like a mildly confused warrior princess. ¡°I have to say, this is the most expensive gift anyone¡¯s ever given me.¡± ¡°If it helps you survive, it¡¯s worth every nirei.¡± He pointed out to the distant speck, barely distinguishable from an insect but for its steady presence in the far horizon. ¡°Coming soon. You clear on the plan?¡± ¡°Tower, tunnel, transit.¡± They stood in silence another long moment, the tiny dot barely changing. ¡°You¡¯re sure it¡¯s a dragon?¡± ¡°It is.¡± ¡°And we can¡¯t go anywhere to hide until it goes away?¡± ¡°Where would you hide?¡± ¡°Vaes City?¡± ¡°Can you imagine the destruction when a draconis matriarch pops out of the transit terminal in the capital?¡± Raina winced. ¡°Disconnect the relays? Shatter the mana crystal?¡± ¡°You know how dragons absorb magic?¡± ¡°Yes¡­¡± ¡°They don¡¯t need relays and power crystals. Once a dragon gets into the transit system they can go anywhere within the network. Not just active platforms. It¡¯s like¡­¡± Jair waved a hand at the wall behind them. ¡°The mana grid feeds the platform, connecting them even when they¡¯re not connected to each other. You can¡¯t use the transit lines in the library to get to the main departure point, only to go up and down through the library itself. There¡¯s no transit cable or line-of-sight connection on it. It¡¯s a closed system. But it¡¯s not, because it¡¯s linked with the power.¡± ¡°You think a dragon can use any mana connection as though it were a transit cable? That¡¯s insane.¡± ¡°Not really. Like how it¡¯s forbidden to run cables or line-of-sight connections of any sort over rivers or channels. This is the same.¡± ¡°That¡¯s¡­ even more insane.¡± ¡°They eat every type of magic regardless of source, and you think hijacking transit lines is the crazy part?¡± ¡°Well¡­ it makes the whole network one big vulnerability. Every city or settlement that links in is wide open.¡± Jair laughed mirthlessly. ¡°That¡¯s the thing. You don¡¯t know about this because they don¡¯t need it. It¡¯s a demeaning act of desperation to lower themselves to stealing the creations of lesser beings like us. Why bother when they can just demand what they want and have it sent out to them? If not for this one being on a very personal, very insane vendetta, that would probably be your fate as well. In a way, it¡¯s a good thing it doesn¡¯t have the presence of mind to make demands.¡± Raina frowned. ¡°Wait, if it¡¯s not making demands, how did you find out it was coming?¡± He pointed. ¡°It¡¯s right there.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not going to distract me again, this is¡ª¡± ¡°No, time to go. Tower. Now.¡± ¡°Once this is over¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ll answer everything. Go!¡± Raina went. Jair stood ready. The dragon closed in. Jair jumped into its cloud of gas, blasted upwards by the explosion of vivid green fire. He slashed out blindly, precisely, and Maelstrom bit deep into the dragon¡¯s whipping tail. He clung tight to Maelstrom¡¯s hilt as his momentum abruptly reversed. The dragon roared and crashed into the dome, claws digging in and sending cracks across the dome as its tail slammed Jair against the glass. Jair held on as the dragon smacked him repeatedly into the dome, trying to dislodge him. He did nothing else, waiting for Raina to emerge. The moment she did, Ryenzo¡¯s attempts to get rid of Jair were forgotten. The dragon roared its mantra and launched itself at Raina. KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER! Raina dove into the tunnel and the dragon crashed into the wall above her with a crunch of stone and cloud of dust. The spells on the wall flickered and one section died entirely. Jair swung himself up, scrambling one-handed up atop the dragon¡¯s tail. The dragon dug and clawed at the ground, breathing poison fog down the too-small tunnel as it tried to get at Raina, Jair on its back forgotten. Instead of heading for the standard weak point, he slashed through the wing membrane where it connected to the dragon¡¯s side. Slick and almost metallic in texture, normal attacks would slide right off it. Maelstrom sliced through it as though it were paper. The dragon shrieked and spun, its overlong neck twisting around to grab Jair in its crushing coils, but he was ready. He jumped off and dove beneath the attack, using the dragon¡¯s own flailing wing to shield him from its darting head. Unfortunately, that put him out of reach of the rest of its body as well. It couldn¡¯t get at him, but he couldn¡¯t do anything to it either. He¡¯d get one good strike, but even with Maelstrom one wasn¡¯t nearly enough to stop it. It was too big. Too fast. If it lay down and let him do as he pleased, it would still take minutes to chop it up sufficiently, let alone one strike here or there in the middle of trying to not-die himself. He didn¡¯t want to admit it, didn¡¯t want to accept the necessity, but this wasn¡¯t a fight he could win on his own. He ran toward the rear legs, the one part stable on the ground, and the tail whipped around to smack him. He ducked and braced, and the hit only knocked him off balance instead of hurling him into the wall, and retaliated with a quick slash that gouged a small chunk out of the lashing tail before it was past and out of reach. The dragon huffed a cloud of poison at him, which he pre-emptively ignited, but even that moment of the dragon¡¯s head being rocked back by the force of its own explosive attack only bought him a split second. Not enough to close the distance, no part of its body within range of his sword. The dragon flapped at the air, trying to take off, but with one wing flopping uselessly its attempt was doomed to fail. It half rose into the air, then clawed at the wall as it began to fall over sideways. More sections of protections went dark, and Jair immediately saw the effect. The dragon¡¯s every movement became instantly at least half again as fast, the weight of the air no longer fighting it. Jair¡¯s body couldn¡¯t move fast enough to keep ahead of it. Its tail slashed into him again, blindingly fast, and before he¡¯d even registered the collision he¡¯d been grabbed in an oversized claw that crushed him as easily as it had crumpled the towers. It didn¡¯t even bother to finish him off, just crushed his armor into a ball and hurled him away. Even at his best, Jair doubted he¡¯d be able to survive the violent pulping of his entire torso. If not for the twisted metal keeping his body in a single piece, he¡¯d have been scattered across the sand. His lack of lungs or a functional heart didn¡¯t leave him alive for long, but he had enough time to see the dragon resuming its furious digging for Raina before his vision stuttered into deathsight and he reflexively dove into his soulspell.
28 - Repetition Build a bridge the day you plan to cross it, and you may survive. Build a bridge and return tomorrow, and you will die with your bridge.
"...fair, I''ve been doing this for my entire life. How can you¡ª" ¡°Aaaaagh!¡± Jair tore off the page containing his half-finished quraam drawing and threw it aside. ¡°It¡¯s not enough.¡± ¡°Jair? You alright?¡± ¡°No,¡± he snapped, then took a deep breath and stopped himself when he saw the hurt expression on her face. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ trying.¡± She came over and picked up his crumpled drawing. ¡°If this is so terrible it makes you angry, I hesitate to ask your opinion on mine.¡± He stared at the page blankly a moment, mind still full of the dragon and positioning. ¡°Right.¡± ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± She looked up at him, eyes softening. ¡°This isn¡¯t about the art, is it?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not, and I don¡¯t know what to do.¡± He took another breath, willing the adrenaline and fury to dissipate, but his control over this body was significantly less effective than he was used to. Volatile emotions continued to flood his body and mind, making it hard to reclaim any sense of calm. ¡°Is it about the headmaster? Is he still harassing you about your sword?¡± Jair grimaced. ¡°Kind of. Yeah.¡± Accepting he couldn¡¯t do this alone meant spending days, weeks, months, approaching everyone he could possibly think of to convince, coerce, or deceive them into showing up battle-ready on that wall. The dragon attack took place during an evening class, so half the teachers would be otherwise occupied. It was inside the Institute, so bringing in anyone from outside would be an enormous hassle. The ability to mold the terrain here along with the defences on the wall made it the most defensible location to confront the dragon in, but Larenok¡¯s resistance to external visitors made it disadvantageous in other ways. ¡°I¡¯ll talk to my father, I¡¯m sure we can¡ª¡± ¡°Hyperion.¡± ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°Hyperion. They¡¯re not my favourite people, but they¡¯re the one organization that could reasonably force their way in against Larenok¡¯s wishes.¡± ¡°You mean¡­ The Hyperion Guard? The king¡¯s personal enforcers?¡± ¡°Yes, that Hyperion.¡± He snorted with humorless laughter. He¡¯d been captured or killed by them enough times that he still reflexively avoided them on sight if at all possible. He reminded himself that there was nothing to be concerned about here and now. He hadn¡¯t assassinated anyone, supported any rebellions, or even performed any high-profile thefts yet. ¡°And how are we going to make them listen to us? They¡¯ll take the headmaster¡¯s side over a couple of students, no matter who we are.¡± Her eyes flicked to Jair¡¯s waist, which didn¡¯t hold a sheathed soulsword. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯d let them know about Maelstrom? They have to be the worst people you could choose.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t understand what¡¯s at stake here. So what if it might be a problem for me in the future?¡± Raina set aside the drawing and stepped closer, lowering her voice. ¡°I know this is essential to your future, but this isn¡¯t the kind of thing you can brush aside. Whether you like it or not, you¡¯re going to be moving in circles where this kind of drama could bite you for years to come. Setting off a quarrel between the Hyperion and the Institute is not going to help in the long run.¡± Jair sighed deeply. ¡°You¡¯re right. Come on, let¡¯s do some soulspell meditation. I don¡¯t think I can concentrate on drawing at the moment.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve already put it off for three weeks so you could practice your soulspace, and it¡¯s due first thing next week¡ª¡± ¡°Next week doesn¡¯t exist yet. We¡¯ll get it done when it matters.¡± Raina hesitated, then nodded and moved the easel aside to clear a space on the rug to sit. ¡°Any progress?¡± Jair asked, though he knew the answer would be no. ¡°There¡¯s a reason we have a six-year course here, not every soulspell shows up immediately. It¡¯s nothing to worry about.¡± Jair wasn¡¯t so sure. Knowing what he did about time, souls, magic, causality and variations, he¡¯d started to have the uncomfortable feeling that Raina¡¯s soulspell never developed because it knew there was no point. He¡¯d begun to develop a theory on the temporal impunity of the soul. Too many people had soulspells that seemed arbitrary in the beginning, but later on in their lives turned out to be the exact thing they needed. It was this theory of universal soul intemporality that led him to believe that creating Maelstrom and binding it to his soul on such an unbreakable level would allow him to carry it back to before it was created, something that should have been impossible by every other metric. So long as Raina¡¯s soul never bothered to develop any power, it felt to him like a pre-emptive acknowledgement of her inevitable death. He wanted to be wrong. Desperately, he wanted her to prove him wrong. It was hard to settle his own thoughts enough to enter proper meditation. When he did, he forced away any thought of dragons and begging for help from selfish cowards, and allowed his focus to settle on the interweavings of his own soulspell. Temporal Inversion was an incomprehensible tangle of golden light, crossing and binding and looping and recrossing, trailing off to the furthest reaches of himself and then twisting back around to the center. He¡¯d simplified his soul¡¯s pattern down to the coiled symbol stamped into Maelstrom¡¯s blade in blood, but to fully replicate the pattern in its entirety would take years. Decades. If it were even possible. Twisted into the heart of his soul¡¯s golden light, the silver spark of Maelstrom looked tiny and inconsequential, but it gleamed with a solidity that couldn¡¯t be denied. Despite its lowered integrity percentage, whatever that meant, he knew that without drastic soul-level destruction, Maelstrom wasn¡¯t going anywhere. Even its brief exposure to the poison dragon¡¯s blood would be enough to damage any ordinary weapon, but Maelstrom wasn¡¯t any the worse for wear. Exactly the same as ever. Reassured, he emerged from the meditation trance, but for a long time he didn¡¯t move. Raina sat opposite him, eyes closed, breathing with purposeful slowness. He smiled softly, the frantic desperation tucked away for now. He could allow himself to enjoy sitting here again, with her alive and well. There was no rush. He could start recruiting any time, or ¡­ ¡°Hmm?¡± Raina peeked open an eye. He must have sighed aloud. ¡°Nothing, keep meditating.¡± There was one obvious question he¡¯d been ignoring, almost as much as he¡¯d been resisting the idea of begging for help. If all of this was Maelstrom at 10%, what could he do if he got it to 100%? Just because he¡¯d come all the way back to the beginning didn¡¯t mean he had to stay here. He¡¯d wanted it to be different this time¡ªand it was, in a lot of ways. But it might not be in enough ways. So far, he hadn¡¯t even survived long enough to see Raina¡¯s hard-won armor in action. Maybe he was too fixated on Maelstrom, on dealing with everything on his own. Or maybe he was still in a worse emotional state than he¡¯d acknowledged. The temptation to go running off and do something drastic was always there. Being back at this place brought a lot of buried anger to the surface, which certainly didn¡¯t help. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The days he¡¯d spent talking things through with Raina before diving into the real work of figuring out the loop felt so far away. Almost nothing they¡¯d talked about ended up being relevant, after Veshin threw everything off the rails. Part of him wanted to do it again. But if he let himself start to indulge like that regularly, would that be fair to Raina when he finally did get her out? He¡¯d have lifetimes of memories of them while she¡¯d have nothing. He resisted the impulse. He had rules for a reason. He¡¯d allowed exceptions in the initial aftermath of Maelstrom¡¯s ascension, but that was a major event. Living every day of the Celsin invasion a hundred times over, a thousand, he didn¡¯t even know how many. Every step toward ascension had been looped again and again until it was as close to perfection as humanly possible. And yet, in the end, even the absolute best case was far from perfect. Some things couldn¡¯t be solved, no matter how many times he repeated them. It had been so long, so very very long. And he was so tired, weary beyond what he could have ever imagined. Perhaps abandoning himself to the reckless chaos, giving in to the emotion and impulse of each moment, was a shield against something worse. ¡°How long were you going to stare at me?¡± ¡°As long as possible,¡± he said, low and genuine. Raina got to her feet, cheeks faintly flushed. ¡°And you scold me for being distracted when I should be meditating.¡± ¡°I bet I¡¯ll still unlock mine sooner.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got a head start.¡± ¡°Months wasted isn¡¯t a head start. Just proof of how slow you are.¡± ¡°Seriously, what¡¯s going on? There¡¯s been something off about you all week, ever since the initiation. And don¡¯t say it¡¯s just Maelstrom.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not just Maelstrom.¡± ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± ¡°I think I have to go somewhere for a while.¡± ¡°Eythron?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°I already told you I¡¯m coming. You don¡¯t need to sound so sad and lonely.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not ready. Whatever I do next, I¡¯m not ready.¡± ¡°What can I do to help?¡± ¡°Survive?¡± She laughed uneasily. ¡°I definitely plan on doing that.¡± ¡°Good plan.¡± ¡°Is that what¡¯s bothering you? This dragon thing?¡± ¡°I know it sounds ridiculous, I wouldn¡¯t have believed it either. I mean, who at our age could possibly be worth noticing to a dragon. Much less a matriarch like Ryenzo.¡± ¡°So why do you believe it?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll tell you tomorrow, after.¡± ¡°If there¡¯s no dragon, you¡¯re still telling me.¡± ¡°After the time at which the dragon should appear, whether it does or not. Yes.¡± He cleared his throat and stood. ¡°Meanwhile, we have some shopping to finalize.¡±
¡°You¡¯re sure it¡¯s a dragon?¡± Jair nodded, eyes distant. It had been several more repetitions by now, and his concerns about scale and positioning only continued to be borne out. ¡°And we can¡¯t go anywhere to hide until it goes away?¡± He shook his head. A few dozen failures weren¡¯t enough to prove that he couldn¡¯t possibly beat this alone, but he was starting to think his continued insistence at throwing himself at the dragon personally might be symptomatic of something else. Such as, to avoid facing rejection from everyone who¡¯d failed him in his first lifetimes running this section of the loop. He didn¡¯t want to stand there as they looked down on him and sent him away with nothing like a worthless child of no importance. He didn¡¯t even want their help. It would be only more evidence of how pointlessly, stupidly prejudiced they were. If he walked into the offices of people who¡¯d rejected his every plea for years, only for them to smile and promise their assistance, that would be worse. Solidify the emptiness he¡¯d come to see within them. Why does this even matter? Shouldn¡¯t he have moved past all of this by now? He¡¯d fought warlords and sorcerers, slain dragons and vampires, held off an entire army by himself for a whole lunar cycle. How could the pettiness of a few administrators even register? They might respect the person he¡¯d become, but if not for their disrespect in the first place, he might never have needed to become that person at all. It was all so hollow. So pointless. They¡¯d never been enough in the past, even once they were forced into action. He couldn¡¯t rely on anyone but himself and Maelstrom. But, however he changed the fight with the dragon, he never made more progress. No matter how many times he repeated this final day over and over. Veshin¡¯s armor was holding up better than he could have hoped. During the past twenty repetitions, he¡¯d witnessed Raina smacked across the Institute by a dragon¡¯s tail, grabbed in a claw, and crunched down on more than a few times. Though the armor would crack and twist, it had held its form enough that Raina was never fatally crushed. Of course, surviving the external physical threats weren¡¯t enough. Though the armor bought enough time for panicked students and concerned teachers to come out and stare in shock, the best the Institute had to offer were unprepared and did nothing to truly stop the dragon. And being swallowed by a poison dragon still tended to be fatal. Jair missed Lift. Even if the spell would fail the moment the dragon got close, if he could at least throw himself into the air a few times, drop down on its back, get some additional slashes in¡­ It still wouldn¡¯t be enough. One hit, two, maybe four at best. Its neck was too heavily scaled, and the rest of its body was simply too big. It was like trying to cut down a forest alone in a single night. Even if every piece of success was something he could do, no one could be everywhere and do everything at once. He¡¯d already augmented his movement as much as possible, slowed the dragon¡¯s to half of its normal speed, and they were still no match for it. ¡°It¡¯s time.¡± Raina stared at the deadly monster closing in. Jair gave her a quick nudge, breaking her out of her paralysis, and she ran. Wait. Jump. Explosion. Slash tail. Dome, crack. Jump, stab higher. Wait. Raina, dragon jump. Wall. Run up tail to main body. Stab venom sac, ignite. Explosion takes out that wing, slash other wing. Fall. Run. Duck, deflect claw. Jump over tail, stab down. The tail snapped out, flinging Jair and Maelstrom off and across the academy grounds. He bounced off the back of the dining hall, landed in a crouch. The dragon had dug out Raina by the time he reached them, and students and teachers were starting to shout at the commotion. No one was doing anything useful yet, but they were at least paying attention now. It wasn¡¯t going to be enough. Not even close. He slashed up at its leg, towering over him, deep green scales still impenetrable. The dragon casually stomped, trying to crush him. He dove past, stabbing at an angle, hoping to chip away one of the scales to create an opening. Raina screamed. It had grabbed her, claws tightening on the armor, which creaked but did not shatter. He couldn¡¯t reach her. Standing right below, he had a perfect view as the dragon tried to bite her in half, then hissed in a draconic shrug and swallowed her whole when the armor resisted its teeth. The dragon was too big, and he didn¡¯t have any kind of mobility. He couldn¡¯t fly around it, slicing it in pieces at his leisure. He couldn¡¯t even jump up far enough to stab it in the belly. It clawed its way up the wall, its ruined wings still clawing at the stone even though they were useless for flying. There was a note of smugness in its echoing roars as it bellowed a vast cloud of venom across the Institute. KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER! Jair watched the injured dragon rampage around the academy, too far away to do anything. It toppled one library tower, set off an explosion that rocked the entire place, destroyed half the walls and fully disrupted the mana grid. Every ward in the place went dark. The perpetual lights of the dome disappeared. People were running and screaming. Something caught fire in the kitchen building. The dragon roared its triumph one last time, then bounded away across the desert back toward its mountain in the north. He¡¯d crippled its ability to fly, and even then no one could stop it. Destruction and devastation. He¡¯d survived, but Raina was gone and the Institute was in ruins. He¡¯d failed to stop the disaster, but he¡¯d survived it. The temptation to go back and try again was strong, but he¡¯d already seen enough to recognize the scope of what he was trying. He didn¡¯t need to live through every iteration of the fight to know he couldn¡¯t do it. One hit. Two. That was what he had to work with. He couldn¡¯t get the thought out of his head. Legends of impossible weapons, the things they could do. Maelstrom was at ten percent. He could stab through dragonscales. Through. Not slip between, not slice off. Stab. Through. Not the darker, thicker scales, granted. But what if he could? What if he could run up to its stupidly long snake of a neck and just¡­ slice it off. Being beheaded was incredibly disorienting, and the dragon wouldn¡¯t even have the practice Jair had at puppeting his manabody without being able to see or feel himself. Hard to eat someone without a functional head. Wouldn¡¯t it be worth it? He¡¯d planned for this contingency, but standing here in the moment it was harder than he¡¯d thought. It felt like abandonment, like surrender. He once stood in a very similar scene of devastation and admitted he wasn¡¯t enough, everyone in Veor wasn''t enough, and he needed something more. It had taken him uncountable years to finally forge Maelstrom into something that could survive the trip back through time with him. And that quest wasn''t over. ¡°I¡¯m not ready,¡± he whispered as smoke and dusk swallowed the school. He ruthlessly suppressed the piece of his heart screaming betrayal. He wasn¡¯t giving up. This was not acceptance. The fight wasn¡¯t over. He would be back. As soon as Maelstrom reached its full potential.
29 - Departure Terlunia: The lunar holiday taking place when Terluna is full and its lunar passages open. Generally a time of visits, reunions, and travel. Be sure to book your stays in advance!
Half the Institute leadership had been eaten, along with thirteen students. Another twenty people were injured in the chaos, two of them teachers, and less than half expected to survive. Dragon blood poisoning was not a fun way to go, Jair could personally attest, but there was nothing he could do to help them. Classes were canceled, students evacuated by skimmer to Astralla City while repairs were undertaken, and no one cared to keep watching the man who¡¯d seen it coming. Then again, this wasn¡¯t one of his seer runs, or one where he¡¯d tried to convince anyone to help. In fact, apart from Raina herself, he hadn¡¯t told anyone exactly why he was in such a rush. Veshin could put it together, but there wouldn¡¯t be much benefit to the information for him. Jair knew danger was coming, he could just as well have heard it from Oliss. Who¡­ was still running around saying she¡¯d predicted it and everyone should have listened to her. The number of people who¡¯d seen Maelstrom was more likely to become a problem. Even bound, a legendary item was worth killing, kidnapping, and more to get control of. Jair may be momentarily forgotten in the fallout of the dragon attack, but once the initial chaos died down, he was sure there would be people coming after him one way or another. He didn¡¯t plan to stick around for it. The next available lunar passage would be Zelura on Dark Night, the following week. He took an apartment in Astralla City and spent the days leading up to his departure arranging his finances and avoiding everyone not directly relevant to making money. Since Jair didn¡¯t know how long he¡¯d be staying in this timeline, he made preparations to keep him well funded for several years. If he ended up needing to collect the same rare ingredients as when he¡¯d first reforged and ascended Maelstrom, for instance, that would take most of the decade. Lord Ajriol Serin asked to speak with him, and he rejected the invitation. The last thing he needed right now was to talk to Raina¡¯s father about her death. This was a dead timeline anyway. Nothing he did mattered any more, except what made Maelstrom stronger or helped him survive toward that end. He also stocked up on traps and explosives and had his armor repaired, taking advantage of all Veor¡¯s best constructists. Crossing the Oriad to find Eythron would be no simple trek, even if everything went well. When he disappeared on Dark Night, no one tried to stop him. He took a sandshark under the full moon out to the nearest oasis with a private lunar platform, where he bribed his way through guards, nobles, and smugglers into accompanying the next shipment. While he waited, he joined in loading the eelship. It was good exercise for his body, and to survive the Oriad he¡¯d need every edge he could get. Then people were shouting and clearing the platform as the lenses were brought into position. Someone shoved a box of something heavy into Jair¡¯s arms before rushing away. Moonlight warped, space itself twisted, and for three seconds there was complete silence and darkness. Then light flared back into existence and Jair, the eelship, a few dozen camels, and a handful of other passengers were being hastily disembarked from a matching platform in a very different location. A multicolored dome made of rings of light filled the perpetual twilight sky, transparent enough to see the dark shapes of things moving outside and the distant blue sphere of Neptus itself. Zelura was feared for good reason. It was also a valuable tool that Jair wouldn¡¯t eschew. The dome was crowded with buildings, homes and warehouses and narrow alleys abounding, shops facing the main thoroughfare. Overall, its perpetual twilight and close confines provided exactly the sort of atmosphere people would expect from the criminal hub of the ¡®ghost moon¡¯. Whether that was intentional or coincidental, Jair didn¡¯t know. He handed off the box to the unloading team, bribed a few more people over his lack of proper documentation for his visit, and strolled along the familiar twisting roads toward the local transit station. Twice, someone tried to accost him; once to rob him, the other because he was young and alone. Both times ended up with Maelstrom a little bloodier and Jair a little colder. Once, he¡¯d have taken note of such people to deal with in future loops. Now, such considerations had lost their intensity. There was no perfect outcome where he could save everyone and fix everything. With four worlds of people, any choice was a tradeoff. Every moment he was here, he couldn¡¯t be somewhere else, and if somewhere else he wouldn¡¯t be here. Some situations had no correct solution. He could only decide what mattered most to him and what he would fight for. ¡®Everyone¡¯ was the same as no one. Fixating on saving Raina, stopping Sekir, protecting Veor, Celsin, Terluna¡­ these were the battles he had chosen. The focus that kept him from losing himself completely. The first Orard arrival platform in Reskas was currently closed, due to a recent flood, forcing him to wait another three hours and arrive in Garne instead. In the first half hour, he dealt with another two groups trying to take advantage of the rich academy student off on his own. No one bothered him again after that. He offered to help with the loading here as well, but the offer was flatly refused. He was handed a sack of vegetables to carry through, not trusted to touch anything more. Garne¡¯s lunar arrival platform was significantly larger than the departure platform back in Veor, and the environment couldn¡¯t be further apart. Veor¡¯s climate was primarily desert, sand, dirt, rocks, and more sand. The mana-infused growth around its oases were the only plants you¡¯d find¡ªoutside of cultivated greenhouses like the academy¡¯s dome. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Garne, as with the rest of the Orard ingaldria, was bountifully overflowing with growth. It wasn¡¯t as dramatic as the dense jungles of the Oriad that filled the entire heart of Orard, but the difference was still stark. Fruit bushes and trees bloomed year-round in the humid warmth, making it one of the largest exporters of fresh produce during seasonal winters elsewhere. Jair was amused to see two crates of Veori sandfish being unloaded, and idly wondered if his parents had packed either of them. The larger platform accommodated a full three eelships, which were immediately swarmed with beastkin workers unloading everything with regimented efficiency. Jair handed off his bag of vegetables and walked away. An official stopped him, but she was easily satisfied with his itinerary and entry fee. It felt so natural, so utterly standard, he had to remind himself what he was doing and why. How many times had he had this exact interaction? Even if he was still technically in uncharted territory, it didn¡¯t feel that way. He¡¯d never had the money to leave Veor this early, but the world was still the world. People were still people. The Oriad was still waiting. He spent an exorbitant amount to transit to the furthest station north and east Garne had to offer, which brought him dangerously close to the dragon mountains that occupied the no-man¡¯s-land between Garne and its northern neighbor, Desyov. Verdant hills abounded here, the gaps between them dammed and filtered into reservoirs to prevent water escaping to meet the sea. There were fewer trees here than south or across Twinlake Channel to the east, more orchards and groves than the wild profusion of the Oriad. Jair visited every outfitter in the place, filling out the gaps in his equipment loadout. While Veor¡¯s constructists were sufficient for the basics, Garne stood close enough to the dangers of Orard that its specialists were more focused. Especially some of the trickier dragon-related things. Veor¡¯s attitude toward dragons was ¡®ignore them¡¯, but with the only way between Garne and Desyov being through the mountains, the locals were the closest thing to dragon experts as one could come. Not everything could wait for a lunar passage, and dragons were easy enough to bribe as long as you were properly respectful. The fact that a good third of Garne¡¯s beastkin shared some form of lizard ancestry didn¡¯t hurt either. Jair spared no expense, ordering in custom constructs from every expert in the network, and rented a space in the outpost¡¯s guesthouse for the following days while he waited. Now that he was at liberty upon the world, Jair would have no shortage of funds. Away from anyone who¡¯d judge him by his background or know how little he ¡®should¡¯ know or possess, he could present himself as a wealthy expert in any number of fields. With the ability to act freely and make use of all the knowledge he had about everyone and everything, he¡¯d never need to worry about money again. By the time he finished with Eythron his initial investments would be paying off nicely. The first night he was too restless to relax, and spent the time alternately exercising his body and tracing his spell imprints. His status as kinless¡ªhaving no beastkin ancestry¡ªmade him a curiosity at the outpost, but apart from questioning children wondering what it felt like to have such thin and fragile skin or why his tail was missing, he was largely treated no differently than any other traveler. He spent a few hours sparring with some of the local warrior and bladestorm classes, refreshed his imprints an excessive number of times, and joined in with a few odd jobs around town to round out the physical exercise portion of his preparations. The second night he fell asleep almost immediately from sheer exhaustion, and dreamed of fire and death. He stood at the mana forge atop Mount Sanctum. Outside, the beastlord held Raina over the drop by her throat. He turned back to finish Maelstrom, carving his soul into its blade with tears. I¡¯m sorry, Rai¡­ She screamed as she fell, and Jair startled awake. He lay gasping in the dark, and even once he¡¯d mostly calmed himself sleep didn¡¯t return. He rose before dawn and paced the outpost, pausing to stare out at the mountains that stood between him and his destination after each circuit. At first they were only darkness against the stars, but gradually the dawn began to lighten the sky beyond, then a touch of orange, then glorious sunlight burst across the horizon. With the dawn, people began to rouse, shops to open. Half his requests had been fulfilled, the rest were still in progress but should be completed by evening. He spent the day collecting food supplies, a variety of fresh and preserved goods packed as lightly as possible. This trip could last anywhere from weeks to years, depending on how quickly he could locate Eythron and how involved the improvement process for Maelstrom ended up being. Some things didn¡¯t survive well in soulspace, perishables like food foremost among them. There was a certain amount of pressure on items when being stored intangibly, breaking down anything too soft or changeable. It had no effect on things like swords or coins, but clothing was best to store only if necessary and not for more than a few days, and food tended to become inedible very quickly. Once the last of his orders trickled in, he shifted his constructs to be sure their connections were in place without interfering with the imprinting process, finished packing everything into backpack or soulspace, and started walking. Jair felt more like himself with a sturdy bag over his shoulder and a staff in hand. This was where he belonged, trekking into the wilds, not locked up in a stuffy academy. He kept the lizardbox and obnoxiously fancy jeweled tribute in a belt pouch ready to hand as he entered the lower hills of Emyxnar¡¯s territory. Dragons didn¡¯t appreciate undeclared intruders and were all too eager to shake down visitors for everything they had. Even just passing through once would be expensive, but Jair kept everything of real value in his soulspace and was prepared to surrender enough of his open possessions to satisfy the creatures. Technically the crossing could be made by climbing over and around Cyrindenth¡¯s mountain without entering anyone else¡¯s, but that route was convoluted and would introduce needless delay. The fastest path crossed three different dragon territories, Emyxnar, Muegvygh, and Cyrindenth, each of whom would require bribes to allow him through their land. Assuming everyone could keep their temper. He wasn¡¯t opposed to doing some auxiliary dragon slaying to burn off some of the renewed hatred of dragons that Ryenzo had riled up. Probably not now, he was still weeks away from functional magic and months away from sufficient flexibility of movement, but on the way back he wouldn¡¯t rule out the option. He also wanted to get to Nuprima at the first opportunity, to do some hardcore manabody training, but that wouldn¡¯t be until the new year. Three weeks until Solaria, a little over two more after that. There were no lunar platforms in the Oriad. Even if the northern vampires hadn¡¯t expressly forbidden them, a standard transit platform attracted monsters from miles around. The fallout of a full lunar passage would make a dragon attack look tame. There had been one established, at great expense, which was used a single time over a hundred years ago. Its ruins were long buried, but its cautionary tale never forgotten. A hundred years isn¡¯t long to an immortal, and the vampires saw to it that no one repeated the mistake. Which meant that he¡¯d need to calculate in another two weeks for travel if he had to return the way he¡¯d come. Though the Reskas portal should be repaired or replaced sometime in the next two months, if he recalled correctly. He was still mentally calculating the various available locations and timing for lunar and intercontinental travel when a shadow swept over him, immediately followed by a roar that shook the air and nearly knocked him off his feet. ¡°This is not your land, tiny one, and I am hungry.¡±
30 - Emyxnar Fools dream of being the one to conquer the waters, but they are uncharted for good reason.
A fire dragon, brilliantly crimson and dwarfing the likes of Ryenzo, Emyxnar swooped down in all his draconic glory to land on the path in front of Jair. Where Ryenzo¡¯s neck and tail were whip-long and snake-sinuous, Emyxnar was thicker in a way that masked the fact that his were actually longer. His heavy body and thick limbs were the sort that crushed stone and rent mountains apart. Jair held up the rubellite-embellished tribute, a huge flashy thing made with intricately angled golden planes specifically intended to be as appealing to a dragon¡¯s instincts as possible. He cleared his throat and raised the lizardbox to his lips. He squeaked carefully into it, modulating his mana flow to adjust for his specific vocalizations, and hoped he was remembering the intonations correctly. ¡°Go through sparkly sparkle?¡± Yeah¡­ subtlety wasn¡¯t going to happen. Dragons also had twenty-three different words for ¡®sparkle,¡¯ but he was fairly confident he was using the right ones. Emyxnar ducked his head down, peering closely at the item Jair held up. ¡°Red and gold. It will compliment my majesty nicely.¡± He held out a claw, and Jair hung the tribute over it, the oversized trinket looking tiny and inadequate as the dragon¡¯s hand closed over it. Emyxnar¡¯s eyes gleamed red with inner light as he held it up to his face and tilted the glittering thing this way and that. ¡°Go through?¡± Jair asked hopefully. Emyxnar considered, then snorted. The burst of overheated wind caused Jair¡¯s armor to flare up to protect him, and the force of it nearly knocked him off his feet. ¡°It is beautiful. But I am still hungry.¡± Jair tried to think how to argue his case eloquently, but eloquence wasn¡¯t really possible. Even basic communication was a stretch. What could he even say? He hadn¡¯t brought anything but dried and preserved goods which would be of no interest to a dragon, even if he had enough to be more than a tiny bite. ¡°Food only mine food? Small.¡± Emyxnar laughed, the ground trembling and air shimmering with heat. ¡°You have pleased me, so you may live, but I will allow no one past today until I have eaten.¡± ¡°Go, return food,¡± Jair conceded. The locals hadn¡¯t mentioned anything about a food tribute, but dragons were capricious. Emyxnar probably saw an opportunity to fleece a newcomer and jumped on it shamelessly. The dragon lay down across the pass, lazily watching through half-closed eyes as Jair turned and hiked back into the hills, spinning his new shiny trinket on one claw. Where to find something to feed a dragon with? He didn¡¯t have his gravity spells to survey the area, though Maelstrom could probably take the place of his lightning spells for fighting. He took out the sword and practiced throwing it at distant rocks or bushes as he went, adapting to its awkward weight and shape. Swords were not made for throwing, but it was the one weapon he could always guarantee having to hand. The more ways he could learn to use it the better. These northern hills had already been hunted to depletion by Emyxnar and his cousins. Jair walked for hours without seeing anything larger than a squirrel. So it wasn¡¯t a case of the dragon being lazy enough to ask him to collect something it could grab for itself in a matter of minutes, at least. Which did leave the question of what it ordinarily ate, and why it was suddenly demanding food from travelers. The outpost hadn¡¯t mentioned any food requirements, and he¡¯d made his intention to pass this way fairly obvious. There would probably be beasts for sale back at the outpost, if he told them he needed a food tribute for the dragons as well. May as well get a whole caravan, at that rate. Time disappeared as he walked. The unfamiliar-familiar landscape slipped past, the sun reached its peak and began to descend, and Jair arrived back at the outpost. ¡°You¡¯re back?¡± The dark-furred lizard-tailed shopkeeper at the draconic specialist shop folded his arms on his counter, peering at Jair. ¡°What¡¯s the problem?¡± ¡°Emyxnar wants food.¡± The man¡¯s pointy ears twitched irritably. ¡°This again? That greedy snake. Where does he think we¡¯re going to get a dragon-sized dinner, eh? That¡¯s Desyov¡¯s job.¡± ¡°Well, he refuses to let me past without feeding him, so I either need some animals to take to him or snow shoes to climb around Mount Cyrindenth.¡± ¡°Either one¡¯s going to be a hassle.¡± The man ducked down behind his counter and rummaged around for a while, then popped back up and shrugged. ¡°No one tries the mountain this close to Solaria, so I don¡¯t have anything in stock.¡± ¡°Anywhere in the network I can get either of those?¡± The man considered, then wrote down a few options for shops in various towns throughout Garne. ¡°I can¡¯t guarantee their availability or pricing, but I can vouch for the quality. They¡¯re reasonable to work with and won¡¯t try to shift something faulty.¡± Jair gave him a handful of coins in thanks, and walked out to the transit platform. The first stop was all but useless. Uyarne was known as the largest trade town in Garne, but from what Jair could tell it held that title only because it was host to the lunar platform. The merchant he¡¯d been referred to swore he could get in anything on Terlunia, but that was weeks away. There were a lot of shops, but almost everything was touristy and superficial. The local constructist was the only true expert in the place, though admittedly he was a very good expert. He could craft a proper set of snow shoes in three days despite being without half the base ingredients, so Jair went ahead and placed an order in case he couldn¡¯t find anything faster. He paid the man up front along with extra to hold them for him if he didn¡¯t make it back immediately. Uyarne¡¯s real strength was its food. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t the kind of food a fire dragon would want to eat. Jair picked up some local specialty peaches to snack on since he was here, and headed off to the transit platform. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. The second town was little better. While it had a reasonable number of capable merchants, out of season equipment wasn¡¯t in stock at the moment, and none could get it any sooner than Terlunia. They did have access to meat animals, however, and the town butcher gave him directions to various local farms. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you can do better than directions? Surely you¡¯d have a transit key to at least one of them.¡± The butcher laughed heartily at that. ¡°You think I go to them? If they don¡¯t have something to sell, I won¡¯t hear about it.¡± ¡°No emergency contacts, for sudden large orders?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll have a runner on lunar passage days, but when else is there going to be a sudden large order?¡± ¡°Right now.¡± ¡°I could send a runner if you¡¯re that averse to walking, but it¡¯d be faster for you to head out and talk to them yourself if you¡¯re in that much of a rush.¡± ¡°Can you at least tell me which of them has a transit platform? I can provide the mana if that¡¯s the issue.¡± ¡°I think they share one, not sure where exactly. Like I said, I don¡¯t go out there myself. Got plenty of work here.¡± There was a path of sorts leading off toward the farmland, though Jair would hesitate to call it a road even by the most generous of definitions. The first two farms had nothing larger than a pig, and the farmers were reluctant to part with their livestock in bulk. Jair could have pushed, since he had enough money to make reasonable pricing irrelevant, but he didn¡¯t want to spend the next two days herding chickens. What he could cross in hours would take much longer with unruly animals. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you know of anyone with bulbix, cows, or irethons?¡± he asked at the third farm, finding yet more small or unreasonable creatures. ¡°I¡¯m looking for something big and not too slow.¡± ¡°Gela has a couple young bulbix, but I doubt he¡¯d part with them. He¡¯s hoping to start breeding them next year.¡± ¡°Do you know where he got them?¡± ¡°Yeah, some kittish called Hyali down Meroke ways. Wouldn¡¯t stop bragging about it for months. Thinks he¡¯s going to break into the industry and make a fortune so he can¡ª¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± Jair interrupted, sensing a very long story in the offing if he didn¡¯t keep things focused. ¡°If I could trouble you for a transit key from your local platform? I¡¯d like to visit Meroke for myself.¡± As it turned out, the platform was a good hour¡¯s walk away, and he got to hear all about Gela¡¯s ambitions after all. But it was worth it in the end. The Meroke kittish owned an extensive bulbix herd, both lesser and greater, and was happy enough to part with a half-dozen once Jair increased his offer a time or two. Generally cow-like in size and temperament, but significantly rounder in form and with a distinctly mellow tangy flavor, bulbix were bred specifically to be large and meaty. Generally for specialty steaks rather than dragon-bait, but pay someone enough and they won¡¯t care what use you have for their product. With his new collection of bulbix harnessed together in tow, Jair paid exorbitant bribes to get them all through transit two at a time, since the outpost arrival platform wasn¡¯t large enough to accommodate all six, then set out across the hills of many dams again as evening fell. At least the dams made for an easier route than going down and up and down and up, so long as he kept his bulbix from wandering off downhill. He stopped by one of the reservoirs to drink on the way, a process that took considerably longer with animals than to grab a jug for himself. All in all, it was close to midnight by the time he reached Emyxnar¡¯s pass again. The dragon still lay where he¡¯d sprawled, body glowing ember-red in the darkness, inner heat turning each of its scales into a dim shadow against its brilliance. Emyxnar could lay on the Institute and crush the entire place into melty slag. Jair¡¯s tiny herd suddenly felt wholly insufficient, but the dragon perked up as they neared. He raised his head, sniffing at the air, then breathed out a glowing cloud of soft fire overhead to briefly illuminate the scene. ¡°My favourite tiny friend returns! You have done well. Come.¡± Emyxnar stood, forming a massive glowing tunnel beneath his body. Jair led the bulbix herd into reach of the dragon¡¯s head¡ªwhich was substantially more difficult than leading them across the hills had been¡ªthen tied off their lead to the nearest rock and hiked beneath the massive creature¡¯s stomach. It was pleasantly warm, taking off the evening chill. He paid no attention to the squishing and crunching sounds behind him, only continued on his way. After a time, he emerged from beneath Emyxnar and out into the dark ravine beyond. He activated the light in his staff, top and bottom glowing enough to provide vague light. He had no desire to rest and made it halfway across Emyxnar¡¯s territory by dawn. He paused briefly to eat, trace his imprints, and meditate before continuing. It was noon by the time he reached the rocky plain that separated Emyxnar¡¯s pass from the lower territory Mount Cyrindenth, and that¡¯s where his almost trance-like walking was interrupted. ¡°Hey, you, get over here.¡± A voice he immediately recognized. Jair stopped mid-step. ¡°Qahrvirna?¡± Indeed, off to the left the vampire-witch crouched at the rocky entrance of a concealed crack in the stone wall, beckoning to him. Qahrvirna had the faintly red tint to her dark skin that hinted she¡¯d been around for more than a few centuries, though few would be able to recognize it who hadn¡¯t interacted with more than their fair share of vampires. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± Jair had never seen her away from her tower. ¡°Trying to save your life, whoever you are. Come in here, quick, before she sees you.¡± Jair followed her instructions without pause, darting into the shadow of the rock. Of the many things that could be said about Qahrvirna, casual lying wasn¡¯t one of them. If there were such a thing as a trustworthy vampire, Qahrvirna was the closest you could get. She was also completely insane. But in a fun way. Most of the time, at least. ¡°Who¡¯s this ¡®she¡¯?¡± Jair asked, once they¡¯d scooted back further into the hillside. ¡°Cyrindenth?¡± ¡°Of course, Cyrindenth, who else? She¡¯s in some kind of mood this month, I tell you.¡± Qahrvirna grinned. ¡°But, more importantly, who are you? I¡¯m sure I¡¯d remember if I¡¯d met someone like you. Marching to battle in quiet frost, mmmmm¡­¡± she took a long deep breath through her nose, eyeing Jair hungrily. He smiled back, warningly. ¡°Not today. I¡¯m too old for you, anyway.¡± ¡°And he knows me, but I do not know him,¡± Qahrvirna mused. ¡°You must tell me.¡± ¡°Not today,¡± Jair repeated. ¡°Tell me what¡¯s going on with Cyrindenth.¡± ¡°Oh, well, it¡¯s quite silly, but¡­ that dragon has got it in her head that there are too many two-legged people running around, and she¡¯ll rectify that.¡± ¡°She¡¯s started eating people?¡± Qahrvirna giggled. ¡°No, just one leg. That¡¯s her new tribute cost. Which I wish I¡¯d known before I came down this way, since it makes it very difficult to get home.¡± ¡°Does it have to be your own leg?¡± ¡°That¡¯s a question, indeed.¡± Qahrvirna tapped her lips with one pointed fingernail. ¡°You still haven¡¯t introduced yourself.¡± ¡°Jair Welburne, mageblade ascendant, dragonslayer, archmage, blademaster, and vampire-slayer. Among other things.¡± Qahrvirna drew herself up, shifting sinuously against the stone behind her. ¡°Bold one,¡± she whispered, licking her lips. ¡°You¡¯re sure you¡¯re unavailable?¡± ¡°I¡¯m here on business. I need to find Eythron.¡± She hissed slowly. ¡°He keeps taking all the interesting ones.¡± ¡°You might want to work on your sales pitch. Most people looking for a mentor would rather not be sucked dry in the process.¡± ¡°But you¡¯d love every second of it,¡± she promised, with a grin that showed off all her fangs. Jair smirked back. ¡°If you¡¯re counting in seconds, then you¡¯re clearly moving too fast.¡± ¡°How much did he promise you? I can do better.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a mageblade ascendant. You can¡¯t help.¡± ¡°Pah, class business. Remember that I saved your life here.¡± Jair scoffed. ¡°You think my business requires both legs? If that¡¯s all you¡¯ve got, I have a dragon to talk to.¡± Qahrvirna stared at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. ¡°I swear, you¡¯re doing it on purpose.¡± ¡°Am I?¡± ¡°How do you know me?¡± ¡°We met a long time ago, in another lifetime. You won¡¯t be able to remember, unfortunately. You helped me refine a recipe, and I helped you refine some of your other techniques.¡± ¡°Liessss, I wouldn¡¯t forget something like that.¡± ¡°And yet you¡¯ll never remember. Only I. What a cruel fate, that you should be left out of your own potential.¡± Qahrvirna grinned. ¡°Here¡¯s my question. Do you need either of your legs?¡±
31 - Cyrindenth Our foes are not dumb beasts but reasoning, cunning, malicious monsters who seek the destruction of our world and all that we could ever become. Forget at your peril.
Being a vampire, Qahrvirna required them to wait until after sundown to go talk to Cyrindenth. If it were anyone else, Jair could have gone on without her, but having a local in hand would make finding Eythron much easier. The paranoid old mageblade traveled erratically between any of over a dozen hideouts scattered throughout the Oriad, and to check each of them would take months. And even then there was the chance of missing him mid-transfer and never finding him at all. Qahrvirna was one of several contacts Eythron might communicate with, people who¡¯d have a better chance of locating the man than wandering blindly. And even if she couldn¡¯t contact him directly, she was in communication with several others in the region. The Oriad¡¯s community was a loose collection of individual outcasts, like Eythron and Qahrvirna, or groups who preferred the physical dangers of the constant monster presence to dealing with society. Or vampires. There was an advantage to being immortal and almost unkillable, which made living in ¡®dangerous¡¯ places less ''deadly'' and more ''mildly inconvenient''. ¡°You still haven¡¯t told me what you¡¯re doing so far from your tower.¡± ¡°I come this way regularly, though if Cyrindenth is going to start having unreasonable tantrums, I may have to reconsider my suppliers.¡± ¡°Don''t tell me..." Jair shook his head. "You use Emyxnar as your fireblood source?" "Up until now, yes. He''s much more reasonable about these things than the bulk of the others. But if his sister is going to be imperious about it, I may just look elsewhere." "And you''re suggesting we trade my legs for passage." Qahrvirna shrugged dismissively. "You''re the one who said you don''t need them. I''m quite attached to mine." "I''m not going to rule out the option, but I definitely think we need more context around her decision before I go giving up half my body." "And you''re sure you want to waste the day talking?" "You could sleep, if you prefer." She hissed softly, narrowing her eyes at him. "You do know how to make a girl beg, don''t you?" "You think I''d make it easy? I may know you, but you only met me today. You like games, you must know one conversation''s not nearly enough to satisfy either of us." Frustration seeped into her voice. "How do you know me?" "I told you. Another lifetime that you will never know." "Seer?" "No. My years are lived, not observed. Which someone like you should appreciate." "Mmmm¡­ I do like someone with experience." "Exactly. Now, tell me everything you know about Cyrindenth''s decision to eat people''s legs." Cyrindenth was not a young dragon. Though familial terms like ''cousin'' or ''sister'' were often used for the dozen or so dragons living in this range of mountains, their actual relationships were... complicated. They were all fire dragons, which was the primary thing non-dragons looked for in families. Where Emyxnar was all crimson fire and talkative arrogance, Cyrindenth was aggressive, territorial, and getting on in years to the point where ''unpredictable'' was giving her a lot more credit than she deserved. There was a reason most people preferred to go through three separate dragon territories rather than spend three days hiking through hers. While Emyxnar may change the rules up front, Cyrindenth changed the rules without warning. "I wasn''t planning to come all the way in one night," Qahrvirna explained, "I usually spend a day in one of her lower tunnels, but after she started talking about eating body parts I thought it advisable to get entirely away before dawn. I think I burned more starblood in that one night than I have for years." "That explains the aggressive mood. Got to make up for lost energy somewhere." Qahrvirna smiled coyly. "You make it sound so impersonal. I''m not saying you''re a walking mana battery." "I won''t be walking long, if you and Cyrindenth have your way." "Yes, yes, I already promised I''ll deliver you to Eythron safely whatever happens, you don''t need to keep bringing it up." "You should try moderating your pouting face. It''s starting to get repetitive." She grinned. "You''re welcome to correct it." Jair ignored the suggestion. "Cyrindenth?" "Yes, yes. She and I had an understanding. She would leave me alone, and I would leave a few barrels of her favourite elixirs in her basement when I left. We''d sometimes have a nice chat, more often than not lately. It wasn''t even directed at me, she just mentioned that she''d started to notice impostors sneaking through, and the only way to be sure would be to taste a leg or so. Wouldn''t be letting anyone else slip past her from now on." "I wonder if that''s why Desyov hasn''t sent Emyxnar his dinner recently. How long ago did you pass through?" "Less than two months?" She waved a dismissive hand. "Who keeps track of these things?" "You''ve been with Emyxnar for over a month? I suppose I must retract my words about you moving too fast." Qahrvirna shrugged. "There''s plenty of him to go around." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. "And he doesn''t mind your particular brand of company?" "I think he''ll miss me, when I leave him forever without a word of warning." She grinned. "I wonder if he''ll come looking?" "Not many people would think intentionally provoking a dragon is something to do for fun." "Oh, he''d never do anything to me. We have far too much between us for that. But there might be a minor territorial clash if he finds I have a new patron." "So how long were you planning to hide out in this random crack?" "Well, to be honest, I wasn''t planning to hide at all. I didn''t remember Cyrindenth''s nonsense about leg-eating until I reached the edge of her territory a couple days ago and heard her singing about it." "Ah." "One leg, one leg, three leg, true leg, pure leg... utter nonsense. I was going to wait out this phase until she''d let me through again, but then you happened along." "So I can save us both some time, if I''m alright with never walking again." Jair shrugged. "What I need from Eythron requires sword and hand, there''s no such thing as leg or foot imprints, and once I get Lift up and running I won''t even need to rely on someone to carry me. I trust you have enough alchemical nonsense in that pack of yours to keep me from bleeding out? My protective and healing imprints aren''t fully formed yet." "Of course. I wouldn''t take without giving back." Jair chuckled. "But you''re not opposed to skewing the proportions very heavily in your favor." "Would you have it any other way?" "Honestly? I don''t care at the moment. I''m tired and angry and hope is a deadly fire that I can''t release, but slips out of my hands regardless." Qahrvirna tapped her lips consideringly. "Maybe you''re right. Sleeping for the day could be what we both need." "I don''t want to sleep. You¡¯re the nocturnal one." "I''m open to alternative suggestions, if you¡¯d rather we occupy the day otherwise." "Of course you are.¡± Jair sat down against the wall and crossed his legs. ¡°I''m afraid you can''t afford me right now." "Right now? Are you going to be cheaper later?" "No, you''re going to be better equipped to fulfil my requirements. Right now, you still have much to learn." "Fine. Have it your way.¡± She sat down opposite him, watching haughtily down her nose. ¡°We¡¯ll stay boring and wait.¡± It was enough to make Jair chuckle. ¡°For an immortal, you sure do lean into the childishness.¡± He snorted and shook his head. ¡°Then again, who am I to talk?¡± They sat in silence for a time. Jair traced his imprints, and Qahrvirna tried to pretend disinterest. ¡°Is it a universal necessity that dragons go crazy when they reach a certain age?¡± Jair mused. ¡°First Ryenzo, now Cyrindenth.¡± ¡°Ryenzo?¡± ¡°Veori poison matriarch.¡± Qahrvirna winced at the coldness in Jair¡¯s voice. ¡°What happened there?¡± ¡°It eats a friend of mine. Obsessively. At least Cyrindenth only wants pieces.¡± ¡°Recently?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯d offer comfort, but I get the feeling now isn¡¯t the time.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not. Help me get to Eythron, and once I have what I need, you can have whatever you want.¡± ¡°Anything?¡± ¡°Everything but my sword and my soul.¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s expression turned sly immediately. ¡°Maybe we should find a way to keep your legs, then.¡± Jair snorted. ¡°You offering yours?¡± ¡°No, but we can try negotiating. As long as we know we have yours to fall back on.¡± ¡°And you wait until now to say anything.¡± ¡°Would you expect anything else?¡± "You realize this whole situation is absurd, right?" Jair asked. "How would she even expect this to go down? Do I stand? Lie down? She¡¯s way too big to even use a claw without crushing me completely." "I''ve never met someone as untroubled at the idea of losing a limb as you." "I''ve survived worse." She considered him for a long moment. "Despite evidence to the contrary, why do I not doubt that?¡±
They made it almost a third of the way through the valley before Cyrindenth noticed them. She swooped down from her cave with a bellowing roar of "Impostors!" and landed in front of them with a ground-shaking thump. "Impostors," she hissed again, the yellow frill on the back of her head pointing straight up. She wasn''t as large as Emyxnar, but even denser. Her legs were thick enough you''d need a whole group to wrap your arms around them, and her wingspan was significantly longer. Her coloration was dull orange, almost yellow in places across her chest and throat. "I do not know your footsteps. I cannot trust your soul." Qahrvirna raised a hand and rummaged in her bag, then swallowed a small square object with obvious difficulty, followed by a thick orange liquid. When she spoke, her voice resonated in the proper tones for draconic, albeit a few octaves higher than any dragon would manage. "It''s Kari and my friend, you know me." Her name when translated to draconic lost all subtlety of pronunciation, but even getting it that close was impressive. "You never told me you had something like that," Jair grumbled in an aside. "I want the designs." Qahrvirna gave him an evil grin, but couldn''t reply at the moment. Cyrindenth inhaled deeply, then growled irritably. "I know no one who smells like you." "I left you four barrels of elixir when I came through. Wild quiet star---" Qahrvirna winced and prodded at her throat before trying again. "You remember that? In your east basement? We talked about your grandchildren being such disappointments." Cyrindenth spoke, leaning down toward them, tongue flicking too fast. "I cannot trust words, only legs. Legs don''t lie. Words lie. Words slither like snakes, a hydra of deception, but even a hydra can''t grow back legs." Qahrvirna stepped back hastily as the dragon''s tongue left a melted line across the stone in front of her. "I can''t grow back legs either, my dear. If you take mine, I won''t ever be able to visit again. You wouldn''t want that, would you?" "I do not need visits from impostors." "If I''m not an impostor, then eating my legs would be pointless, wouldn''t it? You''d be hurting your friend for no reason." "Your hydra words will not deceive me!" She reared up, bellowing fire into the darkness, lighting up the ground for miles around in a brief flare. "No one passes with lying legs." "This is ridiculous," Jair muttered. He raised his lizardbox and squeaked into it. "You test my legs, we go through?" "Yessss, test them," Cyrindenth growled, dropping back down into a predatory crouch. "Can we have them back afterwards?" Qahrvirna asked, almost desperately. Jair raised his eyebrows at her. "You think you can manage that kind of reattachment? I only have a base class manabody at the moment. It''s nowhere near strong enough to handle that." Qahrvirna shrugged and made a back and forth motion between the dragon and Jair. Jair stepped forward. The dragon''s head lowered closer, heat shimmering off it even in the darkness. The dragon moved slower and slower, teeth bared as it leaned in, almost gently, head tilted sideways, then in a flash its tongue snapped out and twisted around Jair''s right leg. He shifted his balance but otherwise didn''t react, continuing to stare into its huge dark eye. Then the tongue withdrew, and Cyrindenth leaned back and laughed. "Yes, you are no impostor. Go through, friends, and come again soon." Jair checked his accosted leg, which was surprisingly uninjured from the encounter. His armor was slightly melted, but all things considered Cyrindenth had done a very good job of not hurting him. ¡°What was that about?¡± Jair asked. ¡°Underground¡ª¡± Qahrvirna checked her throat again¡ª ¡°Is that the test? We¡¯re done?¡± Cyrindenth chuckled deeply. ¡°Test, yes yes! Leg test! Only true friends have good legs, true legs, standing legs. Impostor legs only good for running. Ahahaha¡­ you go, I go, we all go!¡± She took off and flew away, singing in a rough chant as she circled the mountain higher and higher. ¡°Good leg, fake leg, fast leg, taste leg¡­¡± ¡°And I thought I was erratic¡­¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°Two down, one to go. I hope Muegvygh doesn¡¯t have any bizarre vendettas we need to worry about?¡± Qahrvirna didn¡¯t answer, as she was busy doubling over and gagging to spit out her swallowable superior lizardbox-equivalent while Jair watched enviously. ¡°No,¡± Qahrvirna answered, in normal speech now, albeit somewhat hoarsely. She straightened, wiping the blood and drool daintily from her lips, then drank a vial of blue liquid before continuing. ¡°Muegvygh is neither young enough to be an idiot or old enough to be¡­ whatever that is. He won¡¯t give us any trouble.¡± She pulled out a cloth and started to wrap up her pointy cube of a choking hazard. Jair put out a hand to stop her. ¡°If you¡¯re done with that, can I try it out?¡±
32 - Muegvygh ¡°And there¡¯s no way of reasoning with her?¡± ¡°Physically impossible given the restraints, but even if it weren¡¯t¡­ what could we say?¡±
¡°Fire, foe, climb, whatever else you grumble, sparkle incorrectly¡­¡± Jair coughed and massaged his neck, though that did nothing to ease the feeling of Qahrvirna¡¯s dragoncube being tightly lodged at the top of his throat. ¡°I find items, objects hold where.¡± Qahrvirna was still periodically giggling, though he¡¯d been at it for hours now. At least he was able to make draconic word-sounds now, for a long time it only came out as nonsense. They were almost out of Cyrindenth¡¯s territory now, the mad dragon having swooped by a couple times just to be sure they still were the same people. Thankfully, she hadn¡¯t tried to steal their legs again. Jair was slowly getting the hang of the dragoncube, which was significantly more complicated than the standard lizardbox, and required a completely different technique to utilize. Where the lizardbox amplified and changed the sounds he made to be different sounds, it was more akin to playing an instrument with a limited number of notes. The dragoncube was entirely internal and infinitely more complex. To ¡®speak¡¯ he had to push mana and air into it and not try to make any sounds himself. If he did produce his own noise, it would garble over and confuse the speech rather than allowing it to smoothly pass. Some of the sounds required him to use the tongue to shape, but for the most part it was just keeping his head up and mouth open to disrupt the sound as little as possible. ¡°Orange sparkle?¡± Jair held out a hand. ¡°Required.¡± "I think you mean sparkle." Qahrvirna smothered her laughter long enough to hand him another vial. ¡°I¡¯ll have to charge you for all the ingredients, if you keep going at this rate.¡± ¡°I have find whatever you required,¡± Jair said carefully. As long as he had the dragoncube in, trying to speak anything but draconic would be futile. ¡°You need to tilt the ¡®rrrge¡¯ up at the end for future-tense. Right now it sounds like you¡¯re a drunk dragon.¡± ¡°I will find whatever items you require.¡± Qahrvirna nodded approvingly. ¡°I must say, I¡¯m impressed. I¡¯ve never seen anyone make this much progress learning that so quickly.¡± ¡°I have else objects.¡± He held out the lizardbox. Qahrvirna eyed it, her laughter turning disdainful. ¡°I refuse to believe that you learned this much complexity on that thing.¡± ¡°I have not.¡± He pointed at his throat, then at the box, then moved his two hands together to meet in the middle. ¡°Else objects.¡± ¡°Your accent is flawless, but your grammar is horrendous and your vocabulary is all over the place.¡± ¡°Consideration only beginning.¡± ¡°I am going to need that back soon,¡± she said, as they stopped descending and began to climb the last intermediary hill between the territories of Mount Cyrindenth and Mount Muegvygh. ¡°I don¡¯t trust your vocabulary for this negotiation.¡± Jair nodded and forced the tiny cube up and out, coughing violently. ¡°You ever consider making it round?¡± The witch handed him another vial, this one containing a green liquid which tasted sharp and oily but felt soothing against the ragged tears in his throat. ¡°It needs to be square. If we make it big enough in a sphere, you wouldn¡¯t be able to get it down, and it would lose a good third of the functionality.¡± ¡°And why wouldn¡¯t you tell me you have this?¡± Qahrvirna raised an eyebrow. ¡°If you think I was trying to hide it, you clearly don¡¯t know me as well as you imagine.¡± ¡°But you don¡¯t advertise it as a product. I never heard about it before.¡± ¡°Most people don¡¯t want to feel like you do right now every day for months just to increase their potential vocabulary talking to violently territorial creatures better avoided entirely who can be communicated with by experts or hiring a translator.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not that bad.¡± Jair coughed and swallowed another gulp of the oily green elixir. ¡°Don¡¯t try to lie to a vampire about injuries, I can taste the blood on your breath.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not denying I¡¯m injured. Being able to speak to dragons is worth it, and it could be a lot worse.¡± She gave him that look again, hunger and something close to possessiveness. ¡°Typically we only make them for other vampires. If you¡¯re interested in converting, I can get you in on the business.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind. I usually find the most benefits from joining the Tsael clan, however, so you¡¯ll need to up your offer a bit more if you want me to actually accept.¡± Qahrvirna turned the dragoncube over in her hand, then raised one finger to her lips. ¡°Name your price. I¡¯ll give you anything you want.¡± ¡°Unfortunately, what I want is not in your power to give. Unless you know a way to go back in time and slay a dragon before it eats my friend.¡± ¡°You speak of slaying dragons very carelessly for someone seeking passage.¡± Muegvygh chuckled and suddenly lit up in front of them, lying sprawled around the hill. Until then, he¡¯d blended his silhouette so perfectly with the night landscape that even Jair had no idea it was there. Younger and smaller than the other two dragons, he was still over twice Ryenzo¡¯s size. ¡°I hope you¡¯ve come to challenge me to a duel properly, rather than act as an assassin.¡± ¡°My feud is with a poison matriarch, not you or your kin.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Muegvygh blinked at him uncomprehendingly. ¡°You interrupted our conversation, that¡¯s as much as admitting you can understand me.¡± Qahrvirna shot him a panicked glance, then hastily swallowed the dragoncube and nearly choked trying to get it in place too quickly. ¡°He says his feud is with a poison matriarch, and he has no ill intent towards you or your family.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± Muegvygh growled low, contemplative. ¡°No duel today, then?¡± ¡°We have brought tribute,¡± Jair said, holding up another of the sparkly objects, giving it a spin to catch the light from his staff. ¡°We bring a gift,¡± Qahrvirna translated, pointing. ¡°No need for fighting.¡± ¡°Then we will have a different game!¡± Muegvygh rolled over on his back, watching them upside-down with a many-toothed grin. ¡°Riddles!¡± Qahrvirna grimaced. ¡°Is that necessary?¡± Muegvygh kicked his feet in the air, causing a minor earthquake as he wiggled excitedly. ¡°Yes! Riddles! Or duel.¡± He rolled over on his side. ¡°If you prefer fighting.¡± ¡°Riddles sounds blue weight.¡± Qahrvirna coughed and hastily drank another orange potion. ¡°Delightful. Riddles would be delightful. Go ahead.¡± Muegvygh asked immediately, ¡°What city do all dragons reside in?¡± Qahrvirna looked at Jair. Jair looked at Qahrvirna. They both looked at Muegvygh. The dragon continued to grin, lines of fire pulsing up and down his length as he lay sprawled out between the hills. ¡°Majesty,¡± Jair said, a distant memory flickering to the fore. ¡°Full possessive.¡± Qahrvirna raised an eyebrow at him. ¡°Say it,¡± Jair urged. ¡°Majesty,¡± she translated, confused. Muegvygh was delighted, slapping the ground with one clawed hand and creating a small crater. ¡°Ahahaha, you are wise! What is the first claw of a forest?¡± That one translated even worse, but Muegvygh was nothing if not reliable. ¡°Say ¡®a river,¡¯ then correct yourself to ¡®winter¡¯.¡± ¡°A river?¡± Muegvygh tilted his head. ¡°No, winter,¡± Qahrvirna added quickly. ¡°A river is the lash of the tail,¡± Jair told her, and she repeated it in draconic. ¡°Indeed it is! Your turn.¡± Qahrvirna looked pained at the thought. ¡°Can we just offer you this glorious tribute instead and go on our way? I am not as clever with words as you are and I¡¯ve been away from home too long already.¡± ¡°Oh, very well.¡± The dragon rolled up and over the hill, clearing the path in front of them. "But next time you come through, you must bring me a riddle." Jair handed him the gold and jeweled bauble, which the dragon promptly puffed on to melt and twisted around his claw like an oddly-shaped ring. Muegvygh grinned sideways at him as he walked by. ¡°Remember, if you decide to try your hand at dragonslaying, come and challenge me. I¡¯ll go easy on you.¡± ¡°You certainly do seem like a trustworthy sort,¡± Jair told him. ¡°We should get together sometime and talk about philosophy.¡± Muegvygh¡¯s attempt at a blank look was broken by a violent shudder, as he backed his head away from Jair with a disgusted hiss. ¡°Not going to say anything?¡± Torn between the chance to have the last word, or the tacit admission he¡¯d taken the time to learn how to speak with mortals, Muegvygh¡¯s pride was going to take a hit either way. He chose to defend himself rather than take the usual draconic stance of dignified ignorance. ¡°Philosophy is evil. But I can teach you riddles.¡± ¡°I¡¯d debate you on that.¡± Muegvygh snorted. Having said his piece, he went back to pretending he couldn¡¯t understand Jair, toying with his still soft tribute-ring and ignoring the visitors. Jair chuckled and waved his staff in farewell, then set out across the hills. Qahrvirna stared at him like he¡¯d lost his mind, but waited until they could no longer see the dim glowing outline of Muegvygh behind them before coughing up her dragoncube so they could talk properly. ¡°You¡¯re insane,¡± she said, wonderingly. ¡°You say I provoke dragons. You tried to goad him into a fight how many times? We¡¯re lucky he didn¡¯t roast us on the spot.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a trick to insanity,¡± Jair said flippantly. ¡°Know your enemy.¡± ¡°That¡¯s just good sense in general.¡± ¡°And Muegvygh is playful and absurd. Meet him where he is. Easiest way to make friends.¡± ¡°Eythron gets you for how long?¡± Jair laughed. ¡°Until he stops trying to kill me and gets around to telling me what I need to know to advance my class.¡± ¡°You¡¯re already ascendant. What more advancement can there be?¡± ¡°My ascension is¡­ complicated. The outcome was about as far from standard as you could imagine, and Eythron is the only person I know who cares so much about the inner workings of my class.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t there a whole school for mageblades somewhere? Almas, I think?¡± ¡°Yes, Almas. Veor, to be specific.¡± Jair snorted derisively. ¡°I¡¯ve been there. It¡¯s less helpful than you¡¯d imagine. A bunch of retired reforged or disillusioned aspirants who never made it further than initiate. Cross-disciplinary classes like mageblade have much stricter advancement requirements, and not everyone can keep up. The Institute is good for getting the initial class requirements out of the way, but not much beyond that.¡± ¡°And those riddles?¡± Qahrvirna said, ignoring Jair¡¯s minor rant about the Institute. ¡°They didn¡¯t even make sense, how did you guess the answers?¡± ¡°He likes to use the same ones. I¡¯ve heard them before.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know Muegvygh if you think that. He was clearly proud of himself for just coming up with them. I bet you he¡¯s been working on them the whole time I was with Emyxnar.¡± ¡°Perhaps he stole them from a book.¡± Jair¡¯s delivery was fully sincere, betraying none of his awareness of Muegvygh¡¯s status as the opposite of scholarly. ¡°You¡¯re telling me that a great dragon used riddles found in human literature?¡± ¡°He clearly understood me.¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°Guess he got bored and spent a bit too much time chatting with his princesses.¡± ¡°Even if he did learn our language, he looked far too proud of himself for those so-called riddles. They only make sense¡ªand I use the term very loosely¡ªin draconic.¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°Majesty and City sound nothing alike in draconic. At least in our language they kind of rhyme. Which, I think, is the point. He was making a meta riddle that could only be solved by someone fluent in both, and he finds it incredibly clever.¡± ¡°So you solve his impossible riddles, then proceed to taunt him? It takes a lot to scare me, but I was sure you were going to get us toasted.¡± Jair smiled and waved his glowing staff mysteriously in front of him, affecting a wise elder¡¯s tone. ¡°It¡¯s easy for things to get lost in translation, but if you know how someone thinks, you don¡¯t need to know how it translates. I know Muegvygh. He would never hurt me.¡± Then he dropped back to his normal voice to add, ¡°As long as I never accept his offer to duel.¡± ¡°I know Emyxnar and Cyrindenth pretty well, for dragons, but what you¡¯re talking about is something else entirely. Who are you?¡± ¡°Jair Welburne, Elect of the Frozen Wind, Heir of Firelight, and Brother of The Ignis. Among other things.¡± Qahrvirna was dead silent for several strides. ¡°What are you¡­ no human could possibly attain half those titles, even if they lived a thousand years.¡± ¡°They would be very difficult to accrue on the first try without a single death, yes. But it¡¯s not impossible. It can be done in seven years, if you know exactly what you¡¯re doing.¡± ¡°How¡­ and why? Brother of The Ignis? What use could that be to someone like¡­¡± she waved a hand, indicating Jair¡¯s young and magically flimsy body. ¡°Or was it in a past form?¡± ¡°There are some effects that cannot be obtained by force. When I first reforged my sword¡­¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°The details don¡¯t matter, and it¡¯s a very long story. Suffice it to say that I spent those seven years obtaining the exact items I needed as quickly as possible despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles in my way, because I need my sword at its best to deal with an even more insurmountable obstacle.¡± Qahrvirna sounded uncharacteristically serious when she replied, ¡°So, Eythron.¡± ¡°Yes. Eythron. I cannot accept any flaw in my weapon, not if I can correct it. Even if it takes another seven years.¡± Again, and again¡­ ¡°Good thing I¡¯m immortal, or I may die of impatience.¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°You have my word, I¡¯ll do whatever you ask for, as long as I get what I need first.¡± ¡°That¡¯s normally my line,¡± Qahrvirna practically purred, temporary seriousness gone as quickly as it had come. ¡°Has anyone ever told you that you do a good job of scaring people off?¡± ¡°Never.¡±
33 - Welcome to the Oriad In the past three hundred years, Lowmont Lake has divided Desyov in two and is coming closer and closer to dividing its remnant part from the rest of Orard entirely. Without the dragon mountains guarding the pass, it would have happened already. If they guard our borders, is it not right that we should provide for their needs?
Orard¡¯s lands were the highest by far, even its flatlands further from sea level than any part of Almas. It was also the least fragmented, retaining land connections between the majority of its continents. Not every land connection included a transit connection, but in the case of the eastern side of Lowmont Lake and the approach to the Oriad proper, the first town north of Muegvygh¡¯s territory included transit connections that would take them all the way to the outer forests. It was expensive, going through three outposts, two towns, and six relays to arrive, but neither Jair nor Qahrvirna were concerned about money. The Oriad arrival platform was atop a cleared hill with crumbled fortifications and a makeshift barrier of trees torn up and thrown around it. Beyond, the looming trees and low fog obscured the darkened land beyond. If it were daytime, Jair could have climbed the barrier and looked out over the endless hills of green, everything beneath concealed by the jungle canopy. In the dark, their world became small and close. The flash of mana as they landed was enough to drive any monsters nearby into an excited frenzy, recognizing the arrival of potential food. Transit stations had occasionally been attempted deeper in, but they never lasted long enough to be worth the effort. Even this one was sustained mainly by its proximity to the vampire clans rather than its usefulness to visitors. Jair and Qahrvirna climbed out through the surrounding fence, which took several minutes due to its haphazard nature, and immediately encountered a small army of nocturnal predators who¡¯d been trying to find their own way over or through. ¡°Stay back.¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s eyes blazed bright enough to cast the scene in red light, crimson imprints lighting up across her arms as she went into battle mode. Jair stayed back, leaning on his staff. Three minutes later, Qahrvirna was licking the blood off her fingernails and eying the mixed pile of monster remnants to assess their value as alchemical components. ¡°It¡¯s been a while since I traveled with a full vampire witch. Always a joy to watch you work. But could you hold back a bit for the easier fights? I''m still training this form and the movement isn''t up to my standards. I¡¯d like some proper combat practice." "How close to dying should I let you get before stepping in?" Qahrvirna grinned. "And what kind of stepping in do you want? If you''re looking for an upgrade..." "I like my soul the way it is, thank you. Just pretend I''m a trainee you''re escorting for practice purposes, and we should be fine." Qahrvirna scoffed. "I would never take a trainee that deep. By the time anyone reaches me, they''ve survived at least three levels of training. I''m there to handle unexpected contingencies, not babysit." "Then babysit whenever it won''t significantly increase our travel time, and step in when things are going to cause a notable delay." "In a rush now, are we?" She finished her component harvesting and stood. ¡°May as well get underway.¡± "I need to reach Eythron, but I also need to be in a position to negotiate with him. If all I have to show him is a product of desperation, he''ll throw me out. I need to be viable as an apprentice, and right now I''d last less than a half second." "I thought you were already his apprentice. What else would his hold over you be?" "He is my mentor. That doesn''t mean I''m his apprentice. He hasn''t met me in this version of myself, much as you hadn''t." "That sounds like the excuse of a fugitive," Qahrvirna said thoughtfully. "I''m wandering the Oriad with a vampire witch, searching for the Forest-Mad mageblade." ¡°It¡¯s not your current state I¡¯m questioning. But why can you not use your existing relationship? With me, with Eythron¡­ even in a weakened form, surely you didn¡¯t do anything that unforgivable?¡± ¡°Prying into my past already? We haven¡¯t even known each other a full day.¡± ¡°With so many impressive titles up front, you can hardly fault a girl for being curious. And it sounds to me like you¡¯re admitting that Eythron has no claim on you whatsoever.¡± ¡°He¡¯s the only person who can reasonably be expected to help in my current circumstance.¡± ¡°And yet you¡¯d hide your past from him even in such seeming desperation?¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ll discuss it with him when the time is right. Until then, it¡¯s irrelevant.¡±
Having someone like Qahrvirna along simplified his trip to the extreme. The best he could currently manage wouldn¡¯t be enough to survive here alone. He could always revert the past week and retry every time he died, but it was far more beneficial to get as far as he could and learn as much about the situation as possible rather than repeating the first section indefinitely until he got lucky. His staff¡¯s light glinted off something in the trees, and he slowed. ¡°There¡¯s a nest of octide up ahead. I¡¯m going after them. Watch for anything else interfering.¡± He withdrew Maelstrom, the silver light drowning out the glow of his staff as it illuminated the thick foliage and glared off the low-lying fog. Qahrvirna shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. ¡°I can see why you need Eythron¡¯s help, that weapon¡¯s leaking power like a dying jackal.¡± ¡°Just kill anything bigger that gets attracted to the commotion.¡± Jair advanced at a slow jog, adding the noise of trompling and shoving his way past underbrush to the light of his sword. It made him quite a dramatic target. The octides lurking overhead in the trees didn¡¯t need a second invitation. They didn¡¯t normally hunt at night, but two of the younger ones scuttled down the trunks and toward him, awakened by the brightness and deceived by the false dawn. Long and carapaced in faceted green, this pair no longer than Jair was tall, each octide vaguely resembled a centipede in shape, but with only eight legs per side and longer segments between each pair. Their legs were long enough to rear up and slash at his arms and torso, but with the added reach of Maelstrom he could keep them at bay easily. Every time sword met octide limb, said limb quickly found itself severed. One or two octides, especially these young ones, weren¡¯t enough to pose a threat to him. The real challenge was their numbers. As he finished off the first two, more began dropping from the trees above or scuttling down as they roused and ran to the source of the commotion. Many of these were larger than the forerunners, and much faster. Even sluggish from their hibernation, Jair couldn¡¯t quite move fast enough to keep up with all of them and strike back at the same time. The occasional hit he did sneak in was devastating, but he spent most of his time evading and retreating. His arms ached from the strenuous workout, blood burning with adrenaline as he fought for his life. Qahrvirna watched from a perch on a tree branch, as Jair circled in his retreat. ¡°You sure you don¡¯t want help?¡± Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°I¡¯ve got this.¡± As the octide nest finished emptying, the amount of oversized crawlers trying to chomp down on him steadied out, then began to drop. Jair hadn¡¯t actually used Maelstrom in a proper fight like this yet, and the outcome was eye-opening. He was retreating out of habit, as though these enemies were something that posed a threat to him. But¡­ He stopped backing up and swung Maelstrom in a steady sweep, crouching to spin with the momentum of the heavy blade. Octide pieces flew in all directions, the nearest monsters helpless before the enhanced weapon. Jair stepped forward, reversed his spin, and recalled Maelstrom back to his other hand. This was the fighting style he¡¯d practiced until it was fully intuitive, recalling his sword from hand to hand so fast it almost felt as though he held two copies, seamlessly transitioning from one slash to the next without ever losing momentum. Not needing to deal with the reset part of each attack sequence made for an incredibly rapid strike sequence. Regularly he tried to use his various unfinished imprints from sheer reflex, but even the brief dissonance of them not activating wasn¡¯t enough to slow his rhythm as he began to fall into the flow of combat. The largest octide rushed forward to interpose itself between him and its younger relatives. This one was thicker than Jair¡¯s body and twice as long, rearing up to tower over him and slash out with legs longer than Maelstrom¡¯s reach. His normal reforged sword wouldn¡¯t cut through an octide¡¯s shell easily, requiring four or five hits to crack it, and then strikes at weak points to pierce through. Maelstrom ignored their crystal chitin as though it were no tougher than tree bark. The master octide clicked and hissed as it went from sixteen legs to thirteen in a split second. It rushed at Jair bodily, no longer trying to slash at him from a distance. Jair stepped into the attack, bringing Maelstrom down in a two-handed diagonal slash that bisected the creature before it could take more than a single step in his direction. Jair was laughing. He jumped over its falling pieces and ran at the next biggest monster. The remnants of the octide swarm scattered before him, reversing course and fleeing from the reach of Maelstrom¡¯s glow. He ran after the fleeing creatures, cutting down any that he caught. Several of them split off in different directions and he couldn¡¯t catch them all before they disappeared into the dark jungle. He returned to Qahrvirna¡¯s tree to discover she¡¯d dropped down and was deftly peeling the carapace off the deceased octides. ¡°Never one to give up a potential ingredient, are you?¡± ¡°Waste is waste. Can¡¯t look a gift octide in the eye. Speaking of¡­¡± She finished with the current octide, stacking its shell with the others beside her, then took down her bag and began removing the creatures¡¯ eyestalks with a pair of curved scissors. They were very short eyestalks, each capable of retreating into a hole in the shell. Each octide had six eyes, positioned three each across the front and back of the crawly creatures, which allowed them to reverse direction without warning. Jair dismissed Maelstrom and searched for where he¡¯d dropped his staff. It continued to emit its normal glow, illuminated at the top and down the sides, but as long as he didn¡¯t hold it the mana crystal would run down very quickly. Mana was most efficient when used by a person, internally. Soulspells were the purest expression of magic, requiring so little energy that even an untrained manabody could activate one in any environment with even a little ambient mana. Doing so untrained would be incredibly uncomfortable, and could result in magical or emotional trauma, but it was still mechanically possible. The biggest drawback to soulspells was that everyone could unlock exactly one, with no way to change it. Imprinted spells were more versatile and energy-efficient than constructs, though limited to four to ten slots depending on how well a person utilized their available imprint spaces¡ªhands, arms, shoulders. Some added augments onto the chest and back, though augmenting imprints tended to also increase interference potential with any lower compatibility. Similarly, active mana was more powerful than passive mana. Power channeled through a manabody into a construct lasted significantly longer than an equal quantity of crystalized mana. After retrieving his staff, he helped himself to another of Qahrvirna¡¯s tools and joined in her material harvesting. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t stay here long, the commotion will probably attract something bigger and hungrier.¡± Qahrvirna dismissed his concerns. ¡°Nothing to fear. There¡¯s plenty of fresh octide here to go around, we can slip away the moment something shows up.¡± Jair gestured behind her. ¡°Then we better get slipping.¡± He tapped his forehead and summoned Maelstrom, the silver light glaring off an oversized pair of solid green eyes looming behind the crouching vampire. Qahrvirna winced against the sudden brightness but didn¡¯t let it slow her as she jumped to her feet, dropping her tools and raising bare arms alight with glowing imprints. She cursed vehemently and jumped at the thing. Its eyes were already shifting from solid color to an opaque veneer over a sharply yellow inner glow deep within. The venix was a mystical predator that stalked the Oriad, and not one Jair had encountered very often. He was unsure if there were multiple of them, or if it was just the same one traveling in each reincarnation. Either way, it was trouble. The massive bird stepped into the light, body beginning to emit a green-fire glow from every feather. It was vaguely vulture-shaped, walking with the low-ducked neck and slow deliberation, but this creature had more interest in living prey than that already dead. Its shoulders were broad, wings triple-jointed and folded against its chest with long-fingered claws on the tips of each wing. It stood easily twice as tall as Jair and Qahrvirna, even hunched as it was. The only good part about this encounter was that the venix would be restricted in its movements by the surrounding trees. If they¡¯d been in the open, Jair would already be reverting time. Between its flexible wings and scything beak, the venix was a true terror in the open. Qahrvirna cast a sizzling bolt spell from one hand as she lunged at the creature¡¯s chest, her other hand raised with a glasslike shield only visible where the light reflected from it. The venix''s sharp beak opened and it pecked down at her, at an angle to sever her head clear from her body. Instead, its beak bounced sharply off the shield she held with a loud crack. Jair ran forward, a few steps behind Qahrvirna, and hurled Maelstrom in a spinning throw at the monstrous bird. His few days of practice weren¡¯t enough to more than slice a few feathers off the left wing. Better than nothing. He recalled Maelstrom to his hand and threw it again in time with his footsteps, shearing off a second handful of feathers. ¡°Hey!¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s magic attack struck it a second time. It wasn¡¯t enough to distract it. It had quickly determined which of the two was the bigger threat. The venix swung its beak around to him, open and descending. He recalled Maelstrom once again, interposing the tip between his body and the bird monster. Its momentum carried it straight into Maelstrom hard, driving its own skull down onto the blade so fast that it sliced up through the top of its head. But, like so many of the most powerful creatures, being killed wasn¡¯t enough to stop it. It still retained enough presence of soul to bite down, severing Jair¡¯s arm midway between wrist and elbow, then it stumbled back with a strangled hissing sound as it choked on the sword driven through the top of its head. Jair¡¯s immediate reflex was to twist his manabody to hold in his lifebody¡¯s functions, forming quick channels to keep blood flowing back where it belonged rather than leaking all over the place. His second reflex, already underway even while he wrestled his manabody into the unfamiliar shape, was to rush forward at the creature as it retreated. He recalled Maelstrom to his still-functional hand, slashed a wing that the venix tried to interpose, then the other wing as it desperately clawed at him to fend him off. Qahrvirna fired another pulse of magic into its chest, staggering it. Jair followed up with a heavy slash that sheared its head clean off its neck. Its body glowed even brighter, the disconnected pieces remaining in their approximate locations as it threw back its head and burst into green-black flame. Jair threw Maelstrom at its head in one last-ditch effort, but he was too slow to rescue his severed hand. The entire venix immolated in a brilliant flash, leaving nothing but ashes and a couple handfuls of severed feathers behind. ¡°Nicely done!¡± Qahrvirna lunged at the feathers, gathering them up greedily. ¡°These things are incredibly rare.¡± ¡°Just remember who got them for you. Start a tab for me. I¡¯ll probably be needing some specific potions.¡± Jair turned his attention to his arm, ensuring the connection had been stabilized. Using his manabody like this would permanently scar it. He¡¯d never be able to cast with that arm again, even if he found a replacement hand and fused it in. Right now, things like that didn¡¯t matter. Once he reverted time it would be as though the injury never happened. It was just a hand, and he was here for information. No need to end the loop early over it. Qahrvirna finished scooping handfuls of venix-ashes into a bag, then turned to Jair with a slow look of realization. ¡°You just killed a venix.¡± ¡°Not the first time, won¡¯t be the last.¡± ¡°And you lost your hand doing it.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°Not the first time, unlikely to be the last.¡± ¡°You do like being mysterious. Do you want a bandage or¡­ something?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got it handled.¡± Qahrvirna stared at the exposed loops of blood running through unseen channels, flowing out from his arm and back in, mesmerized. ¡°Not for you,¡± Jair chided. She licked her lips and nodded, tearing her attention away. ¡°I thought you¡¯d die for sure. I¡¯ve only fought one of those twice before, and both times I had to retreat.¡± ¡°Maelstrom is unparalleled.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s still in a damaged state.¡± She shivered in anticipation, breath hissing in between grinning fangs. ¡°I¡¯m starting to see why you¡¯re willing to sell anything to see it through to perfection.¡± Jair tapped his arm against his forehead, returning Maelstrom to his soul, then picked up the discarded tools and passed them to Qahrvirna. ¡°As tempting as it is to stick around to grab some more octide shells, I¡¯d rather be a long way away before this thing wakes up.¡±
34 - The Witch鈥檚 Tower Did you know? Desalinization and purification spells and constructs are among the most essential to our survival! With all running water suspect of seascourge contamination or inhabitance, landlocked water is all we can trust, and the mineral buildup over generations renders it unsuitable for straight drinking. If you¡¯re considering a career in purification casting, you can rest assured that you¡¯ll never be out of a job!
Jair and Qahrvirna spent the next two weeks traveling at night and sheltering by day as they crossed the northern section of the Oriad from west to east. Qahrvirna¡¯s tower was roughly at the center of that northern section, a couple days south of the wild hills, and a good bit further from the nearest vampire clans who may see her existence as intolerable. Eythron¡¯s haunts tended to be further south, but Jair made no protest as Qahrvirna led them directly toward her tower. Even spending two or three months there while waiting for her network to come in contact with Eythron¡¯s and pass his message along, it would be a better use of time than wandering alone in hopes of happening upon the old mageblade. They encountered monsters of one sort or another two to three times a night, but between Qahrvirna¡¯s prowess as a witch and Maelstrom¡¯s sheer cutting power they survived without more than minor injuries. Since they were still relatively close to the outer edges, apart from the venix they avoided meeting any other truly dangerous creatures. The froglike brobegs, for instance¡ªa large and bulbous draconic cousin known for eating anyone and anything¡ªwere native to the southern swampier sections, rather than the hillier north. One of those would have really ruined their night. By the time they reached Qahrvirna¡¯s tower home, Jair¡¯s imprints were starting to solidify. Being down to one arm¡¯s worth of slots for imprints, he simplified his usual gravity and lightning setup while retaining the basic utility of Absorb and Protect. Lift was definitely staying, the additional mobility was too integrated into his preferred fighting style. Absorb and Protect being both on the same hand would throw off some of his rhythms, but better to have them than go without. Maelstrom¡¯s unprecedented destructive power shifted the priority heavily away from attacks and weapon amplifiers, allowing him to fully commit to mobility and deflection. He ended up pairing Lift and Gravity¡¯s Echo on his upper arm, Absorb on his hand and Protect on his forearm, which he paired with Qahrvirna¡¯s standby of Unseen Shield. After changing his loadout so drastically, the new additions would take longer to imprint, but Absorb was very close to usable. Qahrvirna¡¯s tower sat in the middle of a clearing divided neatly into gardens and flowerbeds for everything from the mundane essentials of feeding her non-vampiric guests to the intensely magical herbs and fungus she used so heavily in her work. Jair always felt more at home in the garden than the tower itself, despite the cozy interior. Its atmosphere always seemed a bit too welcoming, like it wanted to consume him and never let him leave. Much like Qahrvirna herself, but where she was all sharp clarity of desire, her tower felt softer. More temptation for ongoing complacency than a promise of brief bliss, a gentle lure rather than an irresistible one. Qahrvirna shoved the door open unceremoniously and dumped out her collection of monster parts across the table. Her tower was an open layout on the bottom floor, divided into sections not by walls but by furniture and a change in the carpet. Directly ahead was the dining table, which doubled as Qahrvirna¡¯s worktable. To the left was her office space and reception area, complete with ostentatious throne behind an ornate desk, crimson wall hangings with nonsense symbols worked in black forming a sinister backdrop. To the right, in severe contrast, sat a cozy library and sitting room. Warm lamps, plush furniture, and well-stocked bookshelves that wouldn¡¯t look out of place at the royal library. The rear section behind the library contained a sleeping area, or at least a very large canopy bed with accompanying dresser and tables, while the section behind Qahrvirna¡¯s study held her collection of alchemical ingredients, the more socially acceptable experimental subjects, and the obligatory oversized cauldron. Beneath an area rug was a trapdoor down to her rarer alchemical ingredients and more extreme workshop, but since she welcomed all manner of visitors and refugees she kept most of the really messy stuff tucked away from casual perusal. Between the alchemy section and sleeping area stood a tight spiral staircase leading up to the floor above. More bedrooms up there, Jair knew, and the floor above that rental workspaces and training areas. He anticipated getting a lot of use out of those while waiting for word from Eythron, both the training rooms and the workshops. While master constructists were faster and better equipped to create specific items, Jair had plenty of designs in his memory that belonged to no known maker. Many of these custom creations would be almost as time-consuming to explain as to create, so he elected to skip the part where someone else could copy his creations and do the work himself. Qahrvirna was a better alchemist than he¡¯d ever be, so he would outsource anything of that ilk to her. He¡¯d dabbled in the field sufficiently to be a capable assistant if she needed a second pair of hands for anything---or, a hand and a half, currently---but alchemy wasn¡¯t his preferred field. Too much time spent stirring or staring for his tastes. He preferred something more active. Fortunately, there was plenty of active to be had. While Qahrvirna¡¯s training rooms weren¡¯t as state-of-the-art as Veshin¡¯s, they were adequately stocked for Jair¡¯s current needs. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. There was something comforting about the rhythm of the days at Qahrvirna¡¯s tower. Tracing his imprints had become a significantly more complicated task now he only had one hand to work with, but he knew plenty of tricks to get around that. Once he finished with his morning imprint tracing, he¡¯d join Qahrvirna for a late meal. They¡¯d discuss whatever was on her mind, which tended to be either ¡®how to convince you to spend your nights down here with me¡¯ or ¡®check out this new alchemical interaction with these rare venix ashes¡¯. Jair fell into a semi-apprentice role, helping with any of the basic physical or magical labor that could be accomplished one-handed, and providing his consultation on matters where his knowledge overlapped with hers. For all that he¡¯d forgotten the bulk of his lifetimes, some instincts stayed with him through it all. The things his mind considered important enough to retain overlapped interestingly with Qahrvirna¡¯s knowledge, making major jumps in some areas while leaving huge gaps in others. The fact that he had final results more often than the steps to reach that conclusion frustrated her to no end. ¡°But why does it work that way?¡± she¡¯d often protest, to which Jair had no answer. The why had stopped being important a long time ago. If it didn¡¯t directly contribute to the ultimate quest of forging an ascendant blade, the knowledge was unnecessary. He¡¯d been given a room on the upper floors, close to the stairs to the workshops and practice rooms for convenience. He spent most days running and stretching and practicing with Maelstrom whenever not actively helping Qahrvirna. People came and went, usually alone, occasionally in small groups, every few days. Qahrvirna greeted them all in person, whether she was in her tower or tending her gardens, her guests/customers were her highest priority. Though he caught the occasional looks from visitors or overheard them talking about him derisively as yet another of Qahrvirna¡¯s toys, he paid it no mind. It didn¡¯t matter what they thought. As long as they carried her messages to their contacts in turn, he would get what he needed eventually. In addition to sending messages to Eythron or his connections, he sent a commission through Qahrvirna for a constructed replacement hand, though given the measurements and precision necessary on something of that ilk it would take quite a while.
¡°Your mentor is hard to find these days,¡± Qahrvirna said, three weeks into their unlikely cohabitation. ¡°Are you willing to consider a class change?¡± ¡°Maelstrom is restricted to mageblade, so, no. If I changed or removed my class, it would become incompatible.¡± He shuddered to imagine what could happen then. A bound item, part of his soul, but no longer of the same nature as the remainder of himself? That was something he hoped to never experience. ¡°I could find you a master reforger, I know someone in Suthyrel who¡¯s quite skilled.¡± ¡°Hajvoth Nires? He¡¯s good, but he wouldn¡¯t know what he was looking at here. I barely know what I¡¯m looking at, and I can see the full soulmap.¡± Qahrvirna passed Jair a measured jug of condensed tortoise oil. ¡°You¡¯re familiar with his limitations?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve consulted with him in the past.¡± The patterns along the jug¡¯s handle lit up as he allowed it to connect to his manabody and draw away a thin thread of his energy. ¡°Hajvoth is good, but he¡¯s no Eythron. Sometimes, you need to break convention to escape the limitations of reality.¡± Jair waited until she had her two ingredients in hand, then poured the oil in at the exact moment as the others. Qahrvirna watched the three liquids condense into a collection of slick orbs of various sizes, all dropping into the bucket below, sliding around one another as they settled. ¡°I¡¯d say convention isn¡¯t the only thing you¡¯ve broken.¡± ¡°Tyrla Condensate is a common enough interaction, nothing you wouldn¡¯t have figured out eventually.¡± ¡°But why must it be three streams? Couldn¡¯t the same reaction be obtained by pouring two of them into the third?¡± ¡°Clearly not.¡± Jair winked at her. ¡°You of all people should know the value of technique.¡±
As Jair¡¯s spell imprints began to firm up into usable shape, he adjusted his daily routine to accommodate regular magic practice. The instantaneous activation he¡¯d once enjoyed came with a lot of training mana and mind to perfect coordination, and that was something his current body didn¡¯t possess. Especially with this new spell layout, though given the distinctive feeling of each imprint it was the least difficult adaptation to make. In many ways, Jair was glad they wouldn¡¯t be confronting Eythron immediately. The old madman¡¯s standards were incredibly high. To face him without spells would be a clear route to failure. He integrated the spells into his usual training routines, adding Lift to both himself and his targets and obstacles, amplified with various strengths of Gravity¡¯s Echo for a vast gradient of control levels. It wasn¡¯t enough to let him fly, not with ambient mana levels as low as they were on the planet¡¯s surface¡ªthough on Nuprima or someplace like Mount Sanctum, he could hover indefinitely if he didn¡¯t need to do anything else with his mana. You couldn¡¯t get much closer to it without a dedicated flight power. Changing direction was a matter of adjusting against the air, as Lift only functioned vertically, but it was great for scouting. ¡°Are you trying to kill yourself?¡± Qahrvirna asked, lying on her back on the table of weaponry and toying with a knife. ¡°Because if so, I can think of some much more pleasant ways to go.¡± She grinned over at him. ¡°I¡¯m practicing.¡± She tapped the point of the knife against her chin, staring up at the ceiling. ¡°I¡¯ve had more than a few apprentices, you know. I can tell when someone¡¯s pushing into overdraw.¡± Jair glanced down at his glowing imprints as he hovered in midair. ¡°This? This is nothing.¡± ¡°Have you ever cast a spell without consuming your entire manabody?¡± ¡°Of course.¡± He alternated his manabody between deep stretching¡ªemptying it and dancing at the edge of overdraw to expand its capacity¡ªand condensation to increase its boundary strength. Today was for stretching. ¡°Because if so, I haven¡¯t seen it.¡± ¡°Your failure to pay attention is your own problem.¡± Jair flipped around to face her fully. ¡°Why are you interrupting my practice, again? Do you need help with something downstairs?¡± ¡°Nothing important down there today.¡± She held up one hand to examine her nails, then started picking at them with her knife. ¡°I was bored.¡± ¡°You. Bored. When we¡¯ve just given you a whole cabinet worth of new ingredients to play with?¡± She stretched, letting her hair drape over the back of the table as she twisted toward him. ¡°I¡¯d much rather play with you. Especially if you¡¯re so eager to burn yourself out. I can tell already, you¡¯d be absolutely delectable.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll pass, thank you.¡± ¡°Every time, the same answer.¡± She flipped to her feet, dropping the knife onto the table as she did so. ¡°Do you never get tired of denying me?¡± Jair let himself drop to the floor, smoothly shifting from spell to stretching. ¡°Do you ever get tired of asking?¡± ¡°I¡¯m immortal.¡± She slinked forward, raising one hand in front of her as though grasping raindrops. ¡°I have all the time in the world.¡± ¡°Not as much time as I have.¡± ¡°I do hope that¡¯s a death threat,¡± Qahrvirna purred. She stepped right up close to whisper, ¡°I knew you were cold, but you keep finding new ways to surprise me.¡± Jair shrugged and continued his stretching routine without letting her presence interfere, however close she stood. ¡°That¡¯s more your kind of thing. I don¡¯t usually threaten before I kill.¡±
35 - Maelstroms Grandfather No structure shall be built to a height able to view channels at an angle greater than 15¡ã, or within sight of the ocean without obstruction. ALL streams and rivers should be treated as channels unless verified as secure.
It was another month before Eythron showed himself, and as was typical for him he introduced himself with an attempted assassination. Jair was in the middle of a confused dream about trying to fly through a thunderstorm to recharge his lightning powers, which wasn¡¯t how it worked at all, when his manabody reacted to his mentor¡¯s presence and he jolted awake. Instincts deeper than memory kicked in and he was already moving before he was fully conscious of the presence in the room. He rolled off his bed, brushing the back of his hand against his forehead to summon Maelstrom as he did. He landed in a crouch as something sliced down where he¡¯d been lying a moment before. Light flared, Maelstrom manifesting just in time. Eythron had recalled his sword to his other hand, already swinging at Jair¡¯s new location. His blade struck Maelstrom with a resounding shwing that echoed around the room and toppled Jair over backwards before he could recover his balance. Before he got his feet under him Eythron¡¯s weapon slammed down twice more, adding another two resonant tones to the power vibrating through the small room. Jair pushed himself into the air with Lift, buying him the moment necessary to stand upright. ¡°What kind of idiot walks around with a glowing sword?¡± the old man demanded. He locked their swords, trying to push Jair against the wall. Maelstrom illuminated the scene in sharp contrasts of light and shadow, making the creases of Eythron¡¯s face and his ever-present scowl all the more pronounced. His eyes were dark and intense, unaffected by the years that marked his face. Jair used Lift to hop on top of the dresser, suddenly grateful Qahrvirna favored excessively tall ceilings. ¡°That¡¯s why I need your help, Master.¡± ¡°You needing help isn¡¯t a good reason for me to give it.¡± Eythron pressed the attack, shattering the dresser with a heavy diagonal slash and forcing Jair toward the corner of the room. Jair twisted away, retreating in a circle rather than allow himself to be pinned. Eythron was all lean strength and relentless power, fast and agile in all the ways Jair himself was well on his way to reclaiming. Unfortunately, his replacement hand still had yet to arrive. Getting anything delivered to the Oriad was a slow process. Without the ability to flash Maelstrom from hand to non-existent hand to match Eythron¡¯s expert movements, Jair couldn¡¯t keep up by swordsmanship alone. Eythron chased Jair around the room with his own mobility spells gleaming faintly in brief flashes. Enhance across the back of one hand, Velocity around his upper arm, Slide on his other palm. ¡°Name your price.¡± Jair deflected another two slashes in quick succession, raising Unseen Shield to catch the second. He winced at the drastic reduction in power as his manabody absorbed the impact. ¡°You couldn¡¯t pay me enough to work with a weapon like that.¡± Eythron didn¡¯t slow his assault as he answered, words punctuated with the ringing of blade on blade. ¡°Sloppy craftsmanship, overworked components, and what did you do to its soul? You need more than I can offer to correct that.¡± Jair grinned as he jumped over the bed with another subtle application of Lift and threw another Unseen Shield behind himself to block Eythron¡¯s advance. That bought him a brief moment to catch his breath. ¡°Sounds to me like you¡¯re not up to the challenge, old man. Should I go to Hajvoth like Qahrvirna wants?¡± ¡°That amateur wouldn¡¯t know a soulsword from a broadsword. Don¡¯t insult me.¡± Eythron slashed the bedposts out from under the foot of the bed, crashing it to the ground in a splinter of wood to turn the mattress into a ramp. He ran at Jair, slashing with one hand to knock Maelstrom wide, then leaping from the newly-created high ground in a two-handed overhead slash. Jair ducked aside to protect his head, but wasn¡¯t able to evade completely. The power of the attack crashed straight through Unseen Shield. Only a last-second cast of Protect saved Jair from losing his other arm. ¡°I don¡¯t see another option, if you¡¯re so set against me.¡± Even gasping for breath as his endurance ran low, Jair felt only joy at their reunion. This feeling of testing himself against someone who matched and outmatched him so perfectly, he¡¯d missed it more than he¡¯d realized. ¡°Whatever flaws you¡¯ve introduced are yours to repair. I can¡¯t help with that. Once it¡¯s part of your soul, no one but you can work on it.¡± Eythron¡¯s tempo was impossible to keep up with for long, the old man¡¯s stamina vast to a ridiculous extent. ¡°I know that,¡± Jair gasped out, retreating behind the remnants of the bed. He kicked one of the shattered planks into the air, grabbed it with Lift to hold it in place so Eythron was forced to duck under it, buying him a split second. ¡°I¡¯m asking for your guidance, not for you to fix it for me.¡± Where Jair was winded, Eythron¡¯s breath came heavily but still in the same steady tempo. ¡°That¡¯s still not a good reason for me to help you.¡± They fought around the room twice more before Jair could regain enough breath to reply. ¡°Name your price.¡± Eythron only snorted and increased the tempo of his assault. They¡¯d been at it for minutes now, all at high intensity. Jair¡¯s physical strength and endurance had skyrocketed in the past months of constant practice, but Eythron had a lifetime of building himself into the perfect weapon. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. More and more Jair had to rely on Protect as Eythron¡¯s relentless assault battered Maelstrom aside time and again. His lack of a second hand was beginning to show its true detriment. Still, he refused to give up. Jair drew on the local mana as his manabody reached its limits, no longer able to sustain his spell usage. He dizzily ignored the sense of wrongness as the overdraw forced searing raw mana through his imprints. Protect would be all but impossible to shift away from after this, but there were worse fates than being stuck with the best kinetic protection in the world. His lifebody was wearing down almost as fast as his manabody. Twice Eythron disarmed him entirely, but Jair was quick enough to recall Maelstrom to his hand that the brief openings were almost imperceptible. ¡°Give up, boy. You know you¡¯re no match for me.¡± ¡°If I give up, will you help me?¡± Eythron grunted irritably and stepped closer. His open hand flared Slide, then he grasped Maelstrom by the blade and yanked it to the side, creating an opening through sheer brute force. He hissed in pained shock as Maelstrom¡¯s edge cut through the spell as though it weren¡¯t there, blood running along Maelstrom¡¯s length, but didn¡¯t release the weapon. His other hand sliced upward, blade extended. Jair released Maelstrom and twisted his wrist just slightly before recalling it back to his hand, freeing it from Eythron¡¯s grasp. The swords rang out as they collided. ¡°I¡¯m not going to give up,¡± Jair panted. ¡°Not until you accept me or give me the conditions.¡± Eythron backed up a step, hand closing over the deep slice in his palm, and for the first time since his opening strike he made no move to attack again. "You''re really serious about this, aren''t you boy?" "I am." "Huh. Not many would come against me with as little strength and flimsy techniques as you." "Not many would be able to find you in the first place. Your nomadic lifestyle makes pinning you down for a test duel rather difficult." "A test duel, is it?" Eythron circled slowly, keeping Jair just out of lunging range. This room wasn''t the biggest arena, but it was still significantly larger than the average bedroom. ¡°Who says it¡¯s a test?¡± Jair turned with his circling and sidestepped over the broken furniture. "Are you planning to deny testing me?" "Why would I deny what''s obvious? If Qahri hadn''t gone on about you at such lengths, I wouldn''t even be here. As it is, I expect she was exaggerating to play a joke on me." "You consider my skills a joke?" Jair asked mildly. "Everything about you is a joke. What is that stance? Your sword is leaking power like it''s about to explode. Why would someone as unprepared as you come all this way? And yet¡­" He jabbed his sword in the direction of Jair''s missing hand. "I heard about your fight with the venix, and that''s enough to send most people running for the nearest town with their tail between their legs. You shake it off like you''re a vampire." "I''m not a vampire." "I can see that. But you''re not anything I can understand either." "Intrigued?" Eythron scoffed. "The world is full of things I''ll never understand. If I went chasing after all of them, I''d never have a moment''s peace." "But you''ve stopped trying to kill me. Does that mean you''re considering my proposal?" "I wasn''t trying to kill you. And I know your limits now. If I want you dead, you can''t stop me." "I can slow you down." Eythron shook his head. "Not even a moment''s hesitation. Does your life mean so little to you that you''ll throw it at everyone who comes for it?" Jair smiled. "Only those worthy of it." "Now you presume to judge me?" Eythron took a step forward, twirling his sword in his off hand, a brief flicker the only thing to show he was dropping and recalling it with lighting rapidity. "I''ve half a mind to send you hunting a star hydra. See how you handle that." "I''ve encountered a star hydra once before. It didn''t end well." Eythron''s eyebrows went up. "And you''re still alive? Perhaps you''re a little intriguing after all." "I did escape, but not unscathed. It damaged my soul to the extent that my soulspell couldn''t activate, and I spent over four years hiding out from anything that could remotely threaten me." He pointed Maelstrom at Eythron''s face. "And you know full well that a star hydra can''t be harmed by physical weaponry. You would send me to my death." "You''ve admitted it''s survivable. Perhaps another four years recovering will teach you the proper respect." "You already have my respect." "And you don''t have mine," Eythron shot back. "You''re a base novice with delusions of grandeur because of your defective weapon spilling power all over the place." "Incorrect." Eythron took another step closer. Jair raised Maelstrom between them. The old man swatted it aside with his own sword, scoffing. "Please. I already told you, if I wanted you dead there''s no way you can stop me." "And I told you I''d try." ¡°You¡¯re going to come to me, calling me Master and begging for help, and then claim you know better than me?¡± ¡°With all due respect, Master, I am significantly better acquainted with my own brand of delusions than your brief assessment could provide you. Therefore, you were speaking in ignorance while I am an expert in the field.¡± Eythron stared at him a solid eight seconds, then burst out laughing. Jair tensed and recast Unseen Shield. Just in time. Midway through his seemingly-spontaneous guffaws, Eythron jumped across the room at Jair and resumed his rapid sequence of slashes. One hand came down, then the other across, then the first up again, sword flickering between them almost too fast to be seen. It was like dual-wielding if you never had to worry about your blades hitting each other. Fast, fluid, and dizzying to try to fight against. Jair¡¯s perception was up to the task of following Eythron¡¯s attacks, but his body still couldn¡¯t move fast enough. Even if he¡¯d had his other hand, it was months too soon to regain the necessary muscle memory to move at that tempo. There was something different about the fight this time, though, and it took Jair a moment to figure out what it was. Eythron was no longer aiming his attacks at Jair¡¯s body at all. He was just hitting Maelstrom over and over at full strength. ¡°Are you trying to destroy my soulsword?¡± Jair demanded. ¡°That¡¯s a very poor first impression.¡± Eythron¡¯s rhythm didn¡¯t change as the blades clashed against each other again and again. ¡°You don¡¯t seem concerned by the possibility.¡± ¡°I stabbed a poison dragon matriarch with it and it came out entirely unscathed. If hitting it with another pointy stick was going to do anything, it would have by now.¡± Eythron didn¡¯t take his word for it. The next minute was a desperate scramble as Jair struggled to deflect or avoid his mentor¡¯s relentless attacks. Maelstrom may be able to hold up to the assault, but Jair¡¯s hand was quickly growing numb from the repeated heavy strikes. He didn¡¯t have the necessary grip strength to hold out indefinitely. More and more Jair found himself losing hold of Maelstrom and needing to recall it. He did so near-instantly, but Eythron¡¯s smug glower made it clear he wasn¡¯t fooling anyone. He settled into the rhythm, subtly tugging his hand in place with his manabody whenever possible. His manabody had begun to recover, given the minutes without casting or maintaining overdraw, but it wasn¡¯t close to full strength. ¡°You¡¯re one of the most stubborn people I¡¯ve ever met,¡± Eythron grumbled, as Maelstrom fell from Jair¡¯s grip only to be recalled flawlessly. ¡°And I¡¯ve met a lot of stubborn people.¡± ¡°Similar people tend to be drawn together.¡± ¡°Quit playing games.¡± ¡°Is that your price for helping me?¡± Eythron snorted. ¡°If you really want my help? That sword. Give it here.¡± Jair tossed Maelstrom to him without pause. Eythron arrested his attack mid-swing and recalled his sword to free his hand. He caught Maelstrom by the hilt and stared at it intently. There was a moment of quiet. No new attacks came, allowing Jair''s breathing to begin steadying. Then Eythron spoke. ¡°I don¡¯t care if your sword is legendary, what kind of idiot attacks a blademaster with his weapon at eleven percent integrity?¡± ¡°Another blademaster. And we¡¯ve already established, nothing you do will harm it.¡± Then Jair frowned. ¡°Wait¡­ did you say eleven percent?¡±
36 - Integrity When calculating line-of-sight from channel or sea, remember that it is not restricted by usual limitations. Even when the Skyway is wreathed in cloud and fully concealed from view, it is still regularly attacked. They don¡¯t need to actually ¡®see¡¯ you, as long as they know you¡¯re there.
Jair stared at the weapon¡¯s examine text. When had Maelstrom¡¯s integrity increased? It had been ten percent last time he remembered. Would it repair itself over time, like his own soul would? No. His instinct said that wasn¡¯t the case, and the new line in the description looked like confirmation. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 11%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****? After ****?, this blade now contains traces of ***? and will **? ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne ¡°It''s changed. After something the blade contains traces of something else.¡± Jair read aloud. It had been an active change, not something healing itself over time. ¡°And will unknown.¡± That sounded either exciting or ominous. ¡°Your soul must be a mess,¡± Eythron grunted. He turned Maelstrom over. ¡°This could have been a beautiful weapon.¡± ¡°It already is.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t try to lie to yourself. This isn¡¯t steel, this is your soul. If you didn¡¯t acknowledge its flaws, it wouldn¡¯t look like this.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t just will Maelstrom into being flawless. That¡¯s not how¡ª¡± Eythron tapped the blade with a finger. ¡°I didn¡¯t say ¡®just¡¯ anything. The strongest of wills still requires action to manifest itself. But you¡¯ve had this sword how long, and your will has done¡­ what?¡± ¡°A little over three months, and I¡¯ve been specifically not doing anything to it until I could consult with my teacher.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not your teacher.¡± ¡°You were, and you could be again.¡± Eythron¡¯s eyes narrowed darkly. ¡°I don¡¯t take kindly to liars, Jair Welburne.¡± He turned Maelstrom over again, running a weathered hand across its misshapen edge with a gentle touch, almost a caress. ¡°Where did you find the materials for this? I¡¯ve never seen such a combination successfully fused.¡± ¡°Oh, now you tell me? After I spend how many lifetimes to fulfill your recipe, and it was untested this whole time?¡± Eythron¡¯s hand froze. His eyes flicked up to Jair, then slid back down to Maelstrom. ¡°What do you mean, lifetimes?¡± Jair waved his hand at Maelstrom. ¡°You think something like that could be accomplished easily? Yes, it took lifetimes. A lot of trial and error from both of us went into perfecting the design. I''m not sure if Maelstrom could be replicated, even setting aside the holes in its soul. But now it¡¯s here, and I need to know how to repair it. Or complete it.¡± ¡°Repair and completion,¡± Eythron said, musingly. "Yes, it will require both. It looks like you were on the verge of dying and it threw itself in front of you. Gave something a bite right out of its essence rather than let you fall." "It''s been saving me far longer than that," Jair murmured. How many battles had he fought and won with his reforged, then-nameless sword on the way to their shared destiny? But Eythron¡¯s words also vividly recalled the Zeluran beastlord, with its heavily modified body and soul, as it sliced him open on Mount Sanctum¡¯s mana forge, eagerly rushing to feast on his soul. The beastlord wasn''t quite a vampire, there was no way to be partially or almost a vampire, but it had uncomfortable similarities in how it fed on body and soul alike. It seemed the narrow line between his current success and abject failure had been even thinner than he¡¯d imagined. Jair ran his eyes down Maelstrom¡¯s warped length. "I almost don''t want to correct it. I''ve gotten used to its quirks. It''s... characterizing." "If that''s truly how you feel, then I doubt any attempt at a secondary reforging would take. The weapon isn''t just yours now, it''s a part of you.¡± Eythron grunted irritably. ¡°Not that I would ever advocate for a second reforging at this level. The power lost in the adjustment would be more than the integrity gained would be worth. You''d be throwing away a legendary weapon to get a shiny looking exotic one. Better to continue the process you¡¯ve begun.¡± ¡°And what process is that?¡± ¡°How would I know?¡± Eythron shrugged and tossed Maelstrom back to him. ¡°Something you¡¯ve done.¡± ¡°You¡¯re as helpful as always.¡± Now that he was no longer distracted by Maelstrom, Eythron crossed his arms and stared Jair down. ¡°You act very familiar with me for someone who I¡¯ve never heard of. And don¡¯t think I¡¯ve forgotten all your mentions of lifetimes and working together.¡± ¡°If there¡¯s a question in there, I suggest you ask it properly. Unless you¡¯re accepting me as your student? I¡¯d be happy to sit down and discuss our history once my future is assured.¡± Jair glanced around at the destroyed bedroom. ¡°Though we¡¯ll need to find something to sit on.¡± Eythron glowered at him. Jair crossed his own arms, as best as he could with one being shorter than the other, and glowered right back. They were still wordlessly glowering at one another when the door slammed open with a crash. Qahrvirna stomped in, eyes gleaming brilliantly red. ¡°What have you done, you ridiculous man?¡± In an instant, Eythron uncoiled and lunged at her, sword extended. The transition from unmoving to violent happened faster than vision could process. Qahrvirna slapped his sword away and kicked him in the chest, though not fast enough to stop his weapon leaving a deep slice across her side. Eythron staggered back a step but recovered at once. He intercepted her next attack, recalled his sword to his other hand and lunged in. ¡°This is my house you uncouth barbarian!¡± Her eyes glowed brighter still, seeming almost to spill out crimson fire to either side, leaving a visible trail in the air as she darted forward. Eythron''s well-trained speed wasn¡¯t able to match an enraged vampire¡¯s. Qahrvirna hopped back out of reach of the strike, batted the sword aside again, and her arms lit up with arcane symbols as she fired out a pulse of power straight into Eythron¡¯s face. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. He raised his sword to catch the blast, deflecting it into the wall beside him. Qahrvirna used the momentary distraction to slip around to his side. She kicked him in the back of the knee and blasted a second pulse of magic into his chest at the same time, violently knocking him over. Eythron¡¯s head cracked against the wall and he fell still, slumped unmoving as blood slowly trickled down the side of his face. Qahrvirna leaned down, snatching his sword out of his hand and tossing it away. ¡°I¡¯ve known you too long to fall for that. Now apologize for ruining my guest room.¡± Eythron chuckled and twisted his hand toward her, pretense of death abandoned. He recalled his weapon in an instant, his hand perfectly positioned to aim the blade directly at her throat. ¡°You know it¡¯s pointless to separate a mageblade from his soulsword at this level, right?¡± Qahrvirna slapped the weapon away again, uncaring of the slice it left across her palm, and grinned down at him with her fangs showing. ¡°You know it¡¯s pointless to fight a vampiress in her own home, right?¡± Eythron grunted wearily. ¡°What are you trying to prove, Qahri? That you can beat me up when I¡¯m tired and you¡¯ve just ignited? Good job.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t about you or me.¡± Qahrvirna leaned in close, voice lowering. ¡°If you don¡¯t want him, I¡¯ll gladly take him off your hands.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve had him for months.¡± Qahrvirna pouted, her bright lips exaggeratedly puffing out. ¡°He¡¯s been so determined to do nothing but train and find you, it¡¯s frankly a bit tiresome. I¡¯m sure once you turn him down, he¡¯ll be less obsessed with you.¡± She reached down to help him up. Eythron took her hand and hauled himself to his feet. He returned his sword to his soul, then turned to give Jair a long, assessing look. ¡°Obsessed with me, are you?¡± ¡°You¡¯re one of the most influential people in my lives, why wouldn¡¯t I be?¡± Jair said innocently. ¡°Lives? Aha!¡± Qahrvirna spun on him. ¡°Reincarnator?¡± ¡°Time looper.¡± Her crimson eyes went blank for a second. ¡°Time¡­ looper? As in, traveling backward through time repeatedly?¡± ¡°Yes, yes. Everything makes sense, it¡¯s all clear, right? But now I need¡ª¡± ¡°Hey!¡± Qahrvirna pointed at him, with a look of betrayal. ¡°You promised me whatever I wanted, knowing that you¡¯d never have to pay up!¡± ¡°I¡¯ve every intention of paying you before I go. I don¡¯t know how the looping power works, it¡¯s possible that each world is left to continue after I depart. Or perhaps it is destroyed and only my timeline continues. I¡¯ve given up trying to determine which it is.¡± Qahrvirna put a hand on her hip. ¡°You came here to kill me and steal my knowledge.¡± ¡°No, I came here to find Eythron and steal his knowledge. You¡¯re just a target of convenience.¡± ¡°I¡­ think that¡¯s worse, somehow?¡± Qahrvirna stared at him deeply, her brief annoyance shifting rapidly to eagerness. ¡°Mmmm¡­I want to see what happens if you turn.¡± ¡°That¡¯s one of the two things off limits, remember? My sword and my soul. No biting.¡± ¡°So when¡¯s the wedding?¡± Eythron interrupted, then waved a hand. ¡°No, I don¡¯t care. Enjoy yourselves.¡± He turned to leave. Qahrvirna turned to Jair, as excited as if she¡¯d just been offered an entire city to toy with as she pleased. ¡°See? I told you he wasn¡¯t going to be any use.¡± ¡°I believe differently.¡± Jair picked up his bag and staff. ¡°Do remember to forward my mail when it arrives. And I still want my own dragoncube.¡± ¡°H-hey!¡± She jumped in front of him with pleading eyes. ¡°At least stay long enough to leave me at the altar?¡± ¡°Not this time, Qahrvirna. This is a business trip, remember?¡± Jair sidestepped the vampire and followed Eythron out, down the stairs to the ground floor. Eythron opened the front door, then stopped and spoke without turning. ¡°I never said you could come with me.¡± ¡°You going to try and stop me?¡± Jair raised his hand to his forehead, ready to reconjure Maelstrom at a moment¡¯s notice. Eythron looked over their surroundings, sighed, and shook his head. ¡°We¡¯ve already destroyed enough of Qahri¡¯s possessions.¡± ¡°Which you still haven¡¯t apologized for!¡± she shouted. The old man grunted. ¡°I¡¯ll bring you better ones next time.¡± ¡°And how long will that be?¡± It was midmorning outside, and the sunlight streaming through the door forced Qahrvirna to stay back. That didn¡¯t stop her from arguing. ¡°Three years? You think I have nothing better to do than wait for you?¡± ¡°Which one of us is immortal?¡± ¡°Jair, apparently. Which means he should stay with me.¡± ¡°Yes, he should.¡± Eythron stepped outside and turned to Jair squarely. ¡°Go with the vampire.¡± ¡°No.¡± They stared at each other. ¡°You promised not to ruin my garden, remember!¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s voice echoed from inside. They ignored her. ¡°At least help me understand what to expect in general,¡± Jair said at length. ¡°Legendary is beyond anything we planned for. These incomplete effects it has, what kind of thing might they be?¡± ¡°This is a legendary soulsword. Anything touching the soul is beyond simple comprehension. Sure, you can know yourself to some extent, but even a thousand lifetimes isn¡¯t enough to fully map your potential and understand your capabilities. The most sophisticated construct to exist barely comes close to matching what soulspells do regularly, and it requires a city¡¯s worth of power to run.¡± ¡°But we¡¯re not talking about soulspells, we¡¯re talking about an item. Enchantments have limitations, even innate or developed ones.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not hearing me, boy. This is a legendary soulsword.¡± He hesitated, narrowed his eyes at Jair for a long moment, then manifested his own soulsword and tossed it over. ¡°Look at this one. What do you notice about it?¡± ©¤ Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Relic ©¤ Abilities: Soulcutter, Purifier Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the final hopes of a lost nation, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of unstoppable power. ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Eythron Zoress, Heir of Death It was nothing Jair hadn¡¯t seen before, but he did immediately recognize the major difference between their two swords. ¡°Your sword¡¯s abilities are listed as abilities. Mine are in the description.¡± Eythron grunted in agreement. ¡°If your list had a bunch of question marks and garbled nonsense in an abilities list, I could make some guesses. Description text? That¡¯s something else entirely. Do you know the difference between a relic weapon and a legendary one?¡± Jair did. ¡°Rare is the fourth quality. Legendary is the seventh.¡± ¡°Setting aside the integrity damage, your sword is as far beyond mine as mine is beyond a common piece of metal. If all you had was a common piece of metal, would you be able to extrapolate from that to Purifier and Soulcutter?¡± ¡°I see your point, yes.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure you do.¡± ¡°A legendary soulbound weapon is capable of basically anything, and there¡¯s no predicting it.¡± Eythron recalled his sword and prodded Jair with it. ¡°Not the point. It¡¯s your sword, your soul. So stop staring at its shell and look.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve looked at its soulmap before, it¡¯s just a shredded lattice full of holes.¡± ¡°So look closer.¡± Eythron stabbed the tip of his sword into the ground and crossed his hands over his pommel. ¡°And that was before it changed. I¡¯ll wait.¡± Jair knew better than to argue on this point. He sat down, Maelstrom across his lap, and focused his thoughts inward. Temporal Reversion was the same as always, an infinitely complex tangle of golden light. Maelstrom¡¯s soul was harder to make out, a silver web stretched through the center of his own, tangled up with but distinct from his soulspell. Except¡­ Maelstrom wasn¡¯t all silver any more. As he looked closer and closer, a glint of something distinct drew his attention. One of the torn sections was filled in. A deep green-black fire, its texture different from Maelstrom¡¯s delicate silver filigree, but blending smoothly into the whole as though it had always belonged. Contrasting, but not clashing. He blinked back into reality, staring down at the blade itself. Physically, there was no trace of the change. The blade remained only silver and blue, with the stamped pattern in blood. Jair held it up to look closer, and found the change. A thin strand of forest green twisted around the hilt. ¡°The venix,¡± he murmured, the similarities too much to ignore. ¡°A soul of green fire. So Maelstrom is capable of self-repairing, but it needs to use existing essence to do so.¡± Eythron¡¯s eyebrows raised. "You''re sure of that?" "I killed the venix, and now there''s a patch of fire in Maelstrom''s soul made of a suspiciously venix-flavored substance. So, I''m as sure as I can be without testing it." ¡°If your weapon is eating the soul of elite monsters, then you know what you need to do.¡± ¡°Hunt down the venix for a rematch.¡± The old man swatted him with the flat of his sword. ¡°No. See if it¡¯ll eat the soul of anything else.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°Are you offering to help?¡± Eythron sighed and grunted. ¡°I¡¯ll allow you to petition for a position as my assistant, pending a thorough assessment of your capabilities and weapon. The assessment begins now. And you can tell me everything we discovered in these other lifetimes of yours. If you lie to me, I¡¯ll kill you.¡± ¡°Sounds fair to me. Let¡¯s go.¡±
37 - Monster Testing While the death that lurks in wait does not choose to leave its watery home, it can be induced by sufficient provocation. Do not give it that provocation.
Eythron was currently staying at hideout number seven. Traveling south from the northern transit platform nearest Qahrvirna¡¯s tower cut two weeks of walking off the trip, but required them to fight their way out of another horde of hungry monsters that came running to the flash of mana. Since fighting monsters was the entire point, Eythron stood back and controlled the battle with his movement and utility spells while Jair stabbed his way through the monsters one at a time. He checked Maelstrom for any changes after each creature he killed with it, but the sword¡¯s status remained unchanged at eleven percent. ¡°Eleven gelawings, six octide, three dire boars, a tewik, and an elgrinx,¡± Eythron recited as Jair stood breathing hard among the eviscerated monster remnants. He grabbed the tewik¡¯s biggest chunk and started fileting it into thin slices. Three of the oversized rodent''s six prehensile tails had been severed, leaving its distinctly blue flesh exposed. ¡°Haven¡¯t seen one of these in a while. Anything?¡± Jair checked Maeltsrom¡¯s percentage. ¡°Still eleven.¡± ¡°Then we need something bigger.¡± Eythron wrapped the tewik in a chillcloth and tucked it away. He grinned evilly. ¡°Ready to go after the star hydra?¡± ¡°No. I¡¯d rather not spend another few years rebuilding my soul from the ground up.¡± Most pain Jair could ignore by now, but soul damage was something else entirely. There was no ignoring it, no reducing its impact. Soul pain bypassed the mind and body entirely. ¡°Then brobegs it is.¡± ¡°I wonder what Maelstrom would do to your soul.¡± Eythron¡¯s sword was between them in a blink. ¡°You touch my soul, and we¡¯re through.¡± ¡°I can go back in time after, it¡¯ll be like it never happened.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°It¡¯s important experimental data.¡± ¡°Then go stab the vampire.¡± Jair pondered this. ¡°I don¡¯t think I want Maelstrom¡¯s soul to be vampiric.¡± Eythron scoffed. ¡°And the fact that it¡¯s eating souls isn¡¯t already vampiric enough for you?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know that¡¯s what it¡¯s doing. It¡¯s just a theory.¡± ¡°Then prove it.¡± Eythron crossed to one twitching octide who¡¯d been dismembered but not quite killed and stabbed it through the skull. ¡°I know where to find a brobeg, and those things are definitely strong enough to have a soul worth eating.¡± ¡°Which raises another question. Does it matter which types of monster we kill to fill in the gaps?¡± He glanced down at the green line wrapped around Maelstrom¡¯s hilt. ¡°How much of the character of the sword is going to change?¡± ¡°Of course it matters. You can make a curtain with any number of fabrics, but it¡¯ll hang differently depending on the specifics. It¡¯ll still be a curtain.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure I like the idea of making Maelstrom a haphazard quilt.¡± ¡°Do you know what you want?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what the options are. And since it¡¯s a soulbound weapon at this point, I can¡¯t exactly go testing¡ª¡± ¡°Of course you can. Stop being a coward. Go stab something.¡± Jair waved Maelstrom to point at the scattered remnants of monsters. ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯ve been doing.¡± ¡°Not enough.¡±
Having Eythron as a traveling companion was nothing like traveling with Qahrvirna. Both were fully capable of holding their own despite the dangers the Oriad posed, and both could protect him and allow him to fight to his limits without overstepping too badly. But both tended to get him injured for very different reasons. Qahrvirna saw the whole thing as a game. Her life was so difficult to end, she tended to forget how fragile humans could be. Eythron saw it as a chance to push Jair as far as he possibly could be pushed. Which was a part of why he liked the old madman, but it had a way of grating at times. Perhaps they were too alike, in the end. In keeping with the expectation of chaos, they didn¡¯t head straight back to Eythron¡¯s hideout. Instead they spent four months on a whirlwind tour of the Oriad¡¯s most dangerous monsters. Eythron didn¡¯t hesitate to dump Jair into life-threatening danger and stand back to watch. Jair didn¡¯t hesitate to lead¡ªor chase¡ªthe monsters to wherever Eythron was watching from. Before reaching their first brobeg, they had to go through vylix territory. Ambush felines, the vylix preferred to hunt alone, but Eythron marched them straight through the middle of their land as though determined to rile up every fury of them along the way. Vylix were a strange mix of heavy plated hide in deep browns with glints of gold fur visible between as it moved. This particular local variant was known as spike-tail vylix, for reasons that were obvious the moment you saw one. Wicked claw-like serrations ran all the way down its over-long tail, with spikes sticking up across its shoulders and legs and crowning its head like a declaration of violent supremacy. The whiplike speed and accuracy of its tail doubled with its serrations to tear through armor with ease. Not the biggest predators of the Oriad, but one of the more deadly for a smaller creature traveling alone. The first vylix they encountered, Jair actually spotted before Eythron. It was lurking in the thick foliage on a tree branch completely obscured from sight, but the serrations on its long trailing tail formed just enough of a uniform pattern against the bark that he spotted it at once. His many years spent in the Oriad had trained his passive awareness to unprecedented levels, and the ability to reverse his demise meant he had a lot more personal experience with deadly monsters than anyone could possibly obtain without dying a hundred times over. Jair opened the fight with an abrupt fling of Maelstrom in a spinning horizontal arc, using Lift to defy gravity and allow the weapon to spin upwards instead of dropping. It thunked into the trunk, severing the bottom half of the stalking vylix¡¯s tail. It jumped to its feet with a pained yowl, half-tail flicking as it hurled itself at its attackers. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Jair recalled Maelstrom and held it out, point first, between him and the pouncing feline. The vylix twisted its lower body, trying to slash at him with its tail. The severed appendage was too short to reach Jair before the rest of the monster¡¯s body did. The vylix¡¯s chest slammed into Maelstrom with the full force of its jump. The sheer weight of the beast drove Jair backwards. Its claws dug into his armor, bending it with a shriek of protesting metal. Jair threw it upwards with Lift. The strain of lifting something that heavy tore through his manabody, which he ignored. ¡°It¡¯s hardly fair to the poor creatures,¡± Eythron commented, ¡°Trapping them in the air like that.¡± The vylix slashed and twisted helplessly, yowling in rage as its claw swipes failed to reach its enemy. ¡°If you¡¯d rather fight it fairly, you¡¯re welcome to take over.¡± Jair recalled Maelstrom and held it out to the old man. ¡°No, no, the weapon is yours. You must be the one to test.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯ll be fighting it my way.¡± He stepped forward started slashing. The vylix managed to score one shallow slice across Jair¡¯s outer forearm as he closed the distance between them, but that was the last hit of its life. Jair let the monster¡¯s remains fall to the ground and checked Maelstrom¡¯s inspect text. ¡°No change, still eleven percent.¡± ¡°It was a young one. We¡¯ll try again.¡± ¡°Yes, master.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not your master yet, boy.¡± ¡°Of course, master.¡± Jair sliced a few handfuls of vylix spines from its tail and stuffed them in his bag. They¡¯d keep well and he did owe Qahrvirna thanks for her help. Eythron scowled and pointed east. ¡°Go that way. I¡¯ll be along.¡± ¡°On my way, master.¡± Jair set off at a steady jog, making no effort to conceal his passage. Half a minute later he sliced the next vylix out of the air as it jumped at him. Another minute after that, a third dropped on him from high enough that he didn¡¯t see it until it was too close to avoid. Not too close to save it from a rapid recall and follow up Lift. The creature quickly suffered the same fate as the first, though Jair¡¯s armor was definitely looking notably damaged by now. One of the pauldrons was bent inward to dig into his shoulder. Compared to the searing burn of his manabody after pushing into overdraw, the minor irritant barely registered. This vylix was substantially bigger than the first two, and its higher perch and better avoidance meant it was probably a higher tier creature as well. ¡°Inspect.¡± Maelstrom remained as it had been, both physically and internally. Jair snagged another few handfuls of tail spines for his collection, then moved on. He took out another six vylix of various size and strength, each a solo ambusher eager to chomp on a crunchy little mageblade. Unfortunately for them, Jair was the wrong kind of crunchy. His manabody was getting a pretty extreme workout with all the Lift casts he was putting in. Since they were cutting straight through vylix territory, there wasn¡¯t enough time between fights for him to properly recover. Continuing at this pace would be good for his overall magical strength, but bad for any attempts to change his active spells. Protect was all but permanently seared in at this point, and Lift was getting closer by the hour. He considered the question as he traveled from one ambush to the next. He had hundreds of spell imprints available to him, which five would be most valuable to his immediate goals? He missed having Impose Weight to balance Lift, but Gravity¡¯s Echo let him use Lift at a strength he couldn¡¯t have if he swapped it out for something else. He wasn¡¯t sure the added utility would be worth the change. Without the amplification offered by Gravity¡¯s Echo, he¡¯d be limited to lifting himself or similarly heavy things. He could probably manage two people at once if they weren¡¯t overly large, but something as dense as a vylix would be out of the question. Trapping monsters helplessly in the air was too valuable of a spell. Slowing them down could be equally valuable in the right circumstances, but there were only a few instances where it would be fully better. Against a large group, the power necessary to Impose Weight on them all was significantly less than what would be needed to Lift each of them. But he wouldn¡¯t be up against armies any time soon. Perhaps not ever. Without the need to rush for Maelstrom¡¯s components or fight through the plains of Celsin to reach Mount Sanctum, did he even need to worry about mass tactics? Another vylix jumped on him, and this one brought friends. Apparently he¡¯d riled up enough of a fuss that they were coming out in full hunting furies now. He held off three of them while dismembering the fourth, but the fifth and sixth got around behind him and made a dangerously coordinated attack. He stabbed one of them, but the other got a solid bite on his leg. Its teeth didn¡¯t puncture his armor, but it gave it a solid grip on him. Before he could finish with the previous attacker, the monster¡¯s flexible serrated tail whipped up and around his throat and upper body, slicing through armor and clothing alike. He dropped everything to slash off the offending appendage, severing it from the vylix¡¯s body before it could do more than deep cuts. The tailless feline still had his leg in its grip. It dragged him off his feet and shook him, but if it hoped to disorient him it didn¡¯t know who it was messing with. He maintained the Lift on the first three while stabbing at the tailless one that held him. The fourth and fifth were dead or near to it, but the fight was far from over. The sounds of battle continued to attract the rest of the fury. It was the beginning of the end. Another four vylix jumped into the fight, and Jair¡¯s ability to keep up was overwhelmed. ¡°If you were planning to step in, now would be a good time!¡± If Eythron was nearby, he gave no answer. Jair stopped trying to protect himself. He dropped all his spells and simply dove into the chaos with his sword flashing in every direction. Two of the new arrivals were significantly darker in coloring than their kindred, the protective plating on their backs nearly black and the occasional glimpses of gold fur so pale it was almost white. They moved with caution and cunning that their fellows failed to exhibit, only slashing at Jair when he was occupied with one of the smaller ones. Their protective plating wasn¡¯t enough to stop Maelstrom, but it did slow Jair down. He couldn¡¯t simply slice through with impunity, had to get a good swing behind it or hit the same spot more than once to break through. His armor was slashed to useless pieces, his body significantly more sliced up than he preferred. Without mangling his manabody he couldn¡¯t do anything about the bleeding, but the goal here wasn¡¯t to survive any longer. He needed to kill one of those greater vylix. If anything here was going to be worth stabbing, it would be them. The smaller ones were no longer relevant. Jair committed himself fully to the attack. He chased down the slower of the two greater vylix, but its speed was enough to keep it out of reach. He couldn¡¯t afford to drag things out. There were another four vylix and one greater vylix close on his heels. With an effort he¡¯d not have taken if he thought he¡¯d survive, he grabbed the greater vylix ahead of him and Lifted it clear above the treetops, Jair himself in close pursuit. For a moment they hung there, two dark figures against the sky. The vylix slashed with its tail, trying to utilize the one weapon that could reach its pursuer. Jair caught the tail in his hand and yanked, pulling himself forward through the air. Since Lift only worked vertically, moving about in the air required some creativity. That stunt nearly lost him his hand, the serrated tail breaking through the Protect and stabbing deep into his palm, but he dropped it and recalled Maelstrom before the vylix could act on the opening. Jair¡¯s arm burned, Gravity¡¯s Echo strained to its fullest, Lift flaring bright, his manabody long run dry and running on pure overdraw. He couldn¡¯t keep this up for long. Another few seconds and he¡¯d run out of ambient mana in the region with how fast he was pulling it in and burning through it. A few seconds was enough. He grappled the spiky feline, twisted around and gripped it with both his legs, adjusting their relative positions with minor adjustments to Lift. His control was so practiced from years of using it in combat and out that he barely even thought about it. The cat was twisting and slashing with its every appendage, but flying in the air was out of its comfort zone and Jair had the advantage. He slashed the whipping tail as it tried to reach him, each time shortening it by another section as the vylix flailed angrily. The clawed forelegs were harder to remove, their protective plating slowing him down, but not by enough to save it. By the time Jair¡¯s ability to sustain Lift faltered and they began to fall, the vylix was reduced to twitching helplessly with Maelstrom through its skull. It didn¡¯t die quickly, even declawed and missing its tail it clung desperately to life, hissing as it tried to twist around to bite its unwelcome rider. They crashed through eleven different branches before finally crashing to the ground. The rest of its fury had scattered, searching for the missing prey, but the yowls of their dying guardian brought them rushing back. Jair recalled Maelstrom to his hand, leaving the dying vylix to its demise, and staggered upright to face the coming onslaught. ¡°I¡¯m not going to¡ª¡± he started, swaying unsteadily. The amount of blood he was losing combined with the extreme shock of extended overdraw left him unable to compensate. The manabody could partly mitigate damage to the lifebody, and vice versa, but when both were in tatters¡­ Jair wasn¡¯t even aware of the moment it became too much, and simply collapsed mid-sentence.
38 - Monster Testing (2) When preparing a tewik steak for consumption, it is essential that it be marinated for a minimum of two days in sylvan wine, drained and heat-rinsed, then immediately placed in a pre-heated oven* or pre-frozen storage container. Don¡¯t be scared off by the extensive prep time! Tewik steaks are among the most delicious Orard has to offer. (See appendix C for more detailed basic recipes, or buy the standalone Deadly Delectables cookbook, available from every good scribery in Pengi.)
Jair was very surprised to wake up again. Most of the time, falling into darkness was quickly followed by a threat of soul-dissolution and the necessity of reverting time. Collapsing in the center of an angry vylix fury wasn¡¯t the sort of thing he anticipated surviving. He stared up at the stone ceiling of a familiar cave, glowing caterpillars inching their way across the ceiling to provide a dim yellow-green light. This wasn¡¯t the battlefield. For a long moment he stared, unsure if this was real or a dream. Memories of countless nights spent in this place overlapped and blurred together, making him question his memory. Had he dreamed about fighting the vylix fury? Or dreamed all of it? He sat bolt upright in a burst of sudden panic. ¡°Soulblade, manifest.¡± Maelstrom appeared, and Jair gripped it tight, racing heart beginning to calm. This was real. He looked down at the red scars sliced across his arms, testament to the vylix fight¡¯s violent conclusion. ¡°How¡­?¡± ¡°You may be an idiot but at least you don¡¯t hesitate to follow instructions,¡± Eythron grumbled. He sat on a chair carved of stone, elbows on his knees, hands interlaced between them as he leaned forward. ¡°You don¡¯t know how tempting it was to stand back and let you die.¡± ¡°I can imagine.¡± Jair leaned back against his pillows with a groan. ¡°You don¡¯t have any healing spells, how did you do this?¡± Eythron didn¡¯t answer verbally, only gave a casual shrug. ¡°You didn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I?¡± ¡°But that was your last resort. What if you need it¡ª?¡± ¡°Pointless,¡± Eythron cut him off. ¡°You¡¯re planning to break the universe anyway. What¡¯s the point in hoarding onto something that can help?¡± ¡°Ah.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± From a certain perspective, it made sense that everyone¡¯s absolute priority should be ensuring Jair¡¯s personal survival, no matter the cost. If the alternative was their entire world¡¯s annihilation, any sacrifice to protect him would be worth it. ¡°Still don¡¯t think there¡¯s a chance the universe will go on without me?¡± ¡°It¡¯s easier to believe temporality is being twisted in on itself than that entire universes are created every time. Soulspells are insanely powerful, but creating a whole universe? That¡¯s definitely outside the scope of possibility.¡± They looked at one another for a long moment. Then Jair closed his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m having a rest. Wake me when something interesting happens.¡± ¡°Wake up, idiot.¡± Jair peeked one eye at him. ¡°I haven¡¯t even fallen asleep yet.¡± ¡°And did you bother to look at that sparkly pile of garbage you¡¯ve summoned?¡± Jair¡¯s heart skipped a beat and he stared down at Maelstrom¡¯s inspect details. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 13%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****? After ***?, this blade now contains traces of *? and *? and will *? ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne This time, the physical change was obvious. Across the back of the blade, where it had been dulled and misshapen by Jair¡¯s body falling on it at its ascension, eighteen tiny barbs had begun to stick up instead. It wasn¡¯t a full vylix-tail serration, but he could see the potential. ¡°It does matter.¡± He stared down at the sword, not even sure how to react to this revelation. ¡°The nature of the creature matters.¡± ¡°Of course it does.¡± ¡°But the greater vylix are strong enough it added two percent from the one.¡± ¡°Two. I took out the other one for you.¡± Jair looked up sharply. ¡°I thought you said it was my sword and my responsibility?¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°It is. But I¡¯m not the sort to throw away the chance to play with a legendary weapon.¡± ¡°Is that how it is?¡± ¡°That was your interesting thing. Go back to sleep.¡± ¡°How do you expect me to sleep now?¡± The last thing on his mind was rest. He needed to find more creatures, figure out what each one could offer, and decide what he wanted to rebuild Maelstrom¡¯s soul from. Changes on this level were permanent, barring extreme damage. Once he filled in the missing pieces of its soul, the weapon would be stable and unchanging. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. What kind of changes could he expect from the various creatures here? What else could he go hunting? Would the blade also be able to absorb the soul of something bigger? He¡¯d not gotten anything from his many times stabbing Ryenzo, so it clearly wasn¡¯t just a matter of stabbing. Probably needed to be a killing strike. ¡°I still don¡¯t know the point of what the venix¡¯s soul added.¡± Jair looked at the different-colored strike wound around the hilt, thin as a thread, then at the serrations on the back of the blade. ¡°But is it really a good idea to keep testing randomly? I¡¯ve only got eighty-seven percents left to work with. We should come up with a strategic plan.¡± ¡°It¡¯s your soul, I¡¯m not going to tell you what to put in it.¡± ¡°You regularly do.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve no idea what you¡¯re talking about.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a terrible mentor.¡± ¡°Then you¡¯re welcome to leave at any time.¡± ¡°You¡¯re also the best choice I have, so I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m stuck with you.¡± ¡°I can send you away if it¡¯ll make it easier.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°You¡¯ve already tipped your hand. All I need to do is threaten to revert until you give in and you¡¯ll have no choice.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t convince me to change my mind no matter how many times you revert.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not changing your mind. I¡¯m demonstrating that I know what you¡¯re up to.¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°Sleep, idiot. You just got four fifths murdered out there. Your recovery needs time to work.¡± Jair couldn¡¯t stop thinking, though. ¡°My biggest obstacle is a poison dragon. So which creatures are best suited to killing a poison dragon? There has to be something that can hurt it.¡± ¡°Rest now. We can discuss it in the morning.¡± ¡°Poison dragons are vulnerable to cold. I need some frost creatures. Nuprima. We need to go to Nuprima.¡± ¡°I will come over there and choke you out myself if you don¡¯t relax for once.¡± Jair had been denying and ignoring the burning in his eyes, the throbbing in his head, and the tremulous weakness running through his limbs, but as he reached the answer he¡¯d been grasping for, it all came rushing in. He closed his eyes and was asleep before he had time to take a breath.
The next Nuprima passage wouldn¡¯t be until the 24th of next month, almost eight weeks away. There would be a Dark Night and Terlunia right after one another in two weeks, but Jair wasn¡¯t sure if they¡¯d be any use. Nuprima¡¯s frozen and mana-rich atmosphere made for the perfect breeding ground of things that could pose a proper threat to a poison dragon like Ryenzo. Terluna and Zelura, though, were considerably softer and less helpful for this purpose. ¡°Would there be any point in hunting a brobeg at this point?¡± Jair asked, when Eythron seemed fully inclined to simply continue their hunting trip the moment Jair had recovered from his brush with death. ¡°Yes. Information. And you¡¯re still in the assessment period.¡± ¡°I practically died. Isn¡¯t that enough to tell you where I¡¯m at?¡± ¡°Against a fury of vylix, sure. Brobeg is a different sort of fight.¡± ¡°And one which I¡¯m under-equipped for in my current state.¡± ¡°Monsters don¡¯t wait for you to put on your best outfits and show up ready to dance.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°You say that when we¡¯re the aggressors barging into its home to kill it? We¡¯ve got plenty of time to practice dancing.¡± ¡°If you¡¯re so confident you don¡¯t need the brobeg, we can skip straight to the star hydra. I know there¡¯s one around the Nusier border. We could probably get a solid bounty for taking it out, too. It¡¯s been eating the locals.¡± ¡°Nope, brobeg sounds great. Let¡¯s hunt some frog-drakes.¡±
The hunt took just over a week, during which they crossed through another vylix fury¡¯s territory and dealt with more aggressive plantlife and incidental predators like octides and gelawings than was worth keeping track of. By the time they tracked the monster to its lair, Jair had confirmed that the only relatively common monster to provide anything to Maelstrom''s improvement was the greater vylix. Though even that felt dangerously simple with a weapon as ridiculous as Maelstrom. Their next target wasn''t nearly as commonplace. They could tell they were getting close when they walked for nearly an hour without meeting any other living creature. Solitary hunters who were as likely to eat their mates as follow through to childbearing, the brobeg was a violent master predator of its lonely haunts. Much like snakes, brobegs could consume their prey whole and retreat for a time to rest and digest. Unlike snakes, they tended to go eating in broader rampages rather than being satisfied with a single morsel. It wasn''t uncommon for a rampaging brobeg to clear out an entire farmstead before retreating. They had no teeth, but that was little comfort with a tongue to strangle and claws to tear you apart. The biggest danger of the brobeg to people like Jair and Eythron was the antimagical nature provided by its distant draconic ancestry. Manifested attacks could hurt it to some extent, but direct magical effects slid right off it, and any secondary spell effects in the immediate vicinity tended to fail very quickly. If Jair had an ordinary soulsword and his current imprints, facing a brobeg would have been a very questionable move. He¡¯d be severely limited in his magical maneuverability and his usual weapon-amplifying spells would be of limited effectiveness. Maelstrom wasn¡¯t an ordinary soulsword, however, so his strategy for defeating the creature was incredibly simple. Eythron stayed back, ostensibly watching but from what Jair saw he was slumped against a fallen tree sound asleep. Jair crept forward, wearing simple wooden armor Eythron had provided in place of his destroyed Veori steel. Neither would provide sufficient protection against the Oriad¡¯s many dangers, but it¡¯d mitigate incidental bites from things like strangler pods¡¯ hungry vines and the omnipresent insects. Jair spotted the brobeg before it saw him. It lay stretched out on a branch, foreclaws gripping the tree, bulbous yellow-green head staring downward with intense focus. This particular brobeg was small for its species, only a little over twice as long as Jair was tall. Its body was currently deflated to barely a third of its potential width, making its head and oversized foreclaws appear disproportionately large compared to its tadpole-like body and tail. Despite its smaller size, it did have the frilled gliding wings common to older members of its species, allowing it to silently swoop down on its prey with a high degree of adaptability. You couldn¡¯t outrun a hunting brobeg or escape it through clever evasions. They¡¯d follow relentlessly once they decided you were on the menu. And this one looked desperate enough to put anything and everything on the menu. Jair crouched down and shuffled forward in an ungainly hop, keeping his body as small and condensed as possible. He¡¯d left Maelstrom on the ground by Eythron¡¯s lookout spot for now, but it could be back in his hand at a thought. Right now, he needed to look non-threatening and highly edible. It didn¡¯t take long for the hungry hunter to notice him. The branch creaked softly as the brobeg shifted its claws, raising its body and shaking out its wings. The movement cast shifting shadows across the ground in front of Jair, the nearly-translucent membrane of its wings allowing light through like thin leaves, the rest of its body was a dark silhouette. Jair looked up, jumped in shock¡ªwith the assistance of Lift¡ªand the monster launched itself straight at him with its oversized mouth wide open. Its tongue snapped out ahead of it, wrapped itself around Jair twice over, and yanked him straight into its eager maw. It was a picture-perfect capture, one any brobeg¡¯s parents would be proud of. But in the last instant before the mouth snapped shut over him, Jair recalled Maelstrom and did what it did best, stabbing up deep into the attacking monster with its own momentum against it. The inside of a brobeg''s mouth was not as vulnerable and sensitive as many other creatures'' mouths were, highly damage resistant to accommodate the number of spiky, shelled, alive and clawing, and otherwise pointy creatures that brobegs preyed on regularly. But resistance is not the same as immunity, and Jair¡¯s weapon didn¡¯t rely on magical effects to be deadly. The brobeg let out a strangled croak as Maelstrom stabbed right through its reinforced mouth and up into its skull. Its tongue immediately started tightening, hoping to crush the life out of whatever was stabbing it. Jair¡¯s armor creaked but didn¡¯t break. Eythron¡¯s craftsmanship may not be his highest specialty, but he knew his way around the Oriad like few others and this outfit was specifically tailored to this fight. He stabbed upward a few more times, downward for good measure, and down the back of its throat to sever the tongue. Without its primary inner weapon, it couldn¡¯t do anything but growl in frustration. It really did feel unfair sometimes, how much Maelstrom unbalanced the normal scale of such conflicts. What would normally be a twenty-minute confrontation with a lot of close calls was instead over in less than a minute. Slicing his way free of the dead monster¡¯s mouth was more time-consuming than the actual fight had been. Inexplicably, by the time Jair got himself clear of the carcass, Eythron was already standing two paces away. He stared intently at Jair. Jair chuckled and held up Maelstrom. ¡°No need to look far this time.¡± Before even inspecting it, he could see the change.
39 - Adjustments Sometimes the cost of doing the impossible is accepting the unthinkable.
©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 17%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****? After ****?, this blade now contains traces of ***?, ****?, and ***? and will **? ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne ¡°Is this process going to keep adding more and more question marks to the description?¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s pretty obvious what the middle section is. That¡¯ll be a list of the creatures it ¡®contains traces¡¯ of. Venix, vylix, brobeg. After slaying them, probably the first part. It¡¯s the ¡®and will¡¯ that I can¡¯t figure out.¡± Visually, the very tip of the blade had shifted from its usual color to a faintly yellowish tint. Barely noticeable when not glowing, but extremely obvious when the sword lit up in its brilliant silver pulses and the point¡¯s distinct sickly yellow aura seemed almost to push away the silver light. ¡°And will continue to grow stronger the more monsters it defeats,¡± Eythron said. ¡°Now quit staring and get slaying. There¡¯s more brobegs out here to take care of.¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Eh? You disobeying me already, boy?¡± ¡°My soul, remember? I need to know more about what¡¯s being done before I¡¯ll commit to continuing. Something doesn¡¯t feel right.¡± ¡°Oh, of course, if it doesn¡¯t feel right, let¡¯s just give up.¡± Jair snorted. ¡°You really don¡¯t want me to give up right now.¡± ¡°I still don¡¯t see why I should care.¡± Eythron crossed his arms and leaned back against the tree. ¡°So far I haven¡¯t seen anything impressive from you. The sword¡¯s alright, I suppose, but why should I¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m not saying ¡®we¡¯ll stop killing things,¡¯¡± Jair interrupted. ¡°I¡¯m saying this is a permanent change to my eternal soulsword, and I won¡¯t be rushed into it just because you have an agenda.¡± ¡°Me, agenda? You don¡¯t know me as well as you think.¡± Jair raised an eyebrow. ¡°We have a broad enough sample now, I need to examine the changes in detail.¡± ¡°Three is not a broad enough sample.¡± ¡°It is to show a basic pattern. Some creatures are changing the color, others are changing the shape. But I need to know what else they¡¯re doing before I commit to increasing its influence.¡± Eythron made a disgruntled noise but didn¡¯t continue the argument. Jair closed his eyes and sat with his back to the slick brobeg remains, resting Maelstrom across his lap as he searched out their conjoined soulmap. That second pair of greater vylix in the fury they¡¯d cleared on the way to the brobeg¡¯s land, accounted for another two percent of its advancement and increased the serrations along its back to a double row that reached halfway from hilt to tip. The brobeg had added two percent on its own, the first time a single creature had added more than one. Maelstrom¡¯s soulmap was almost half monster-essence by now, though the vast majority of it remained open gaps torn into the pattern. The vylix patches were thorny and brown, interwoven with Maelstrom¡¯s silver filigree, with thin brown trails reaching across to connect them to each other. The venix¡¯s section remained the same size, as expected since they hadn¡¯t encountered the mythical creature again, but when he focused more deeply on the venix¡¯s influence, it actually looked like the dark fire was becoming more similar to Maelstrom¡¯s base. The shape and color were still distinctly its own, but the subtle details more closely matched up to the torn silver filigree. The brobeg¡¯s was the newest and oddest of the lot. Each of the others had filled in one of the torn sections with a variation on the same basic pattern as Maelstrom¡¯s default but with their own flavor and color. The brobeg¡¯s influence instead wrapped itself around Maelstrom¡¯s silver, coating it in slick and vibrant yellow-green. It only covered a fifth of the sword¡¯s soul, but something about it made Jair very uncomfortable. He took his time assessing the other sections very closely, checking if any of the other additions were trying to usurp Maelstrom¡¯s supremacy, but found no sign of anything troubling there. ¡°I don¡¯t like it.¡± Eythron looked over from where he¡¯d lay down in the shade. ¡°What¡¯re you complaining about now?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what all these creature souls are doing. It¡¯s too random.¡± Eythron folded his hands over his chest and lay back, closing his eyes. ¡°Is that all.¡± Jair narrowed his eyes. ¡°What are you doing, old man?¡± ¡°Taking a nap.¡± ¡°No. With me and Maelstrom. You wouldn¡¯t be using us as test subjects again, are you?¡± ¡°Of course not,¡± Eythron said, not even pretending to sound sincere. ¡°Would I ever do something like that?¡± ¡°Could you at least pretend to have my best interest at heart for a few weeks?¡± ¡°I¡¯m hurt by your accusation.¡± Jair raised an eyebrow. ¡°Doesn¡¯t sound it.¡± ¡°What do you want from me? You bring an experimental sword with unknown damage and expect me to, what, be able to tell you everything about it without running tests?¡± ¡°There has to be a way to ascertain the effects from the creatures without going ahead and shoving their essence into Maelstrom to find out. These are permanent changes. I can¡¯t go¡ª¡± Jair blinked as a thought occurred to him. Then he started to laugh. ¡°What now?¡± ¡°You were right. I really should have stayed with Qahrvirna.¡± Eythron squinted up at him. ¡°So I can go home now? No more chasing the crazy child around the jungle so he can poke his sword into bigger and bigger monsters?¡± "Unless you''re interested in spending the next few years researching soul alchemy." "That¡¯s a myth. Soul alchemy doesn''t exist." Jair held up Maelstrom. "It does now." If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Eythron grumbled incoherently for an overly long moment, then sat up. ¡°If you want to mess around with souls, it sounds to me like you need to go have a chat with the star hydra.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping to improve Maelstrom¡¯s soul, not destroy it.¡± Eythron got to his feet and leaned back against the tree, wordlessly continued to stare at him. Jair frowned. ¡°What do you want? Is this what you¡¯ve been pushing for? Why?¡± ¡°You tell me you have a sword that eats monster souls. So what better soul than the soul-eater itself?¡± Eythron spread his hands as though this were obvious. ¡°If you want to kill the unkillable, you don¡¯t stab it with a sword. You don¡¯t poison it, or burn it, or freeze it. You throw it in the sea. And since that¡¯s clearly not an option here, star hydra is the next best thing.¡± ¡°You want its body for something.¡± ¡°And you need its soul for something. Sounds like an equitable arrangement to me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s always something with you.¡± Eythron raised an eyebrow. Jair took a moment to consider. Unfortunately, as unconventional as he may be, Eythron generally had a point. ¡°Fine. You win. Let¡¯s hunt a star hydra. But if it gets to me, you¡¯re responsible for protecting me however long it takes for my soulspell to repair itself.¡± ¡°That won¡¯t be an issue.¡± Jair waved at his missing hand. ¡°I readily accept plenty of things that most people would find unthinkable, but a star hydra? Ephemeral monster immune to damage, six heads each capable of biting the soul right out of you¡­ and it¡¯s no issue?¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°It¡¯s not immune to damage, it¡¯s impervious to physical damage. And that¡¯s why we¡¯re going to keep hunting brobegs.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like what brobegs do to Maelstrom.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s that, then?¡± ¡°If I knew, I wouldn¡¯t need to spend the next several years learning soul alchemy with a vampire witch, would I?¡± Eythron scowled. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you what it does. It takes a soul that¡¯s on the verge of collapse and holds it together.¡± ¡°Maelstrom is not on the verge of collapse. It can survive a few years without needing frog slime all over its soul.¡± ¡°Then distract it and I¡¯ll do the killing, if you¡¯re that sensitive about it.¡± Jair turned and squinted at the brobeg behind him. While he¡¯d been meditating, Eythron had de-clawed it and taken several strips from its back. ¡°How much brobeg hide do you need?¡± ¡°More now that you¡¯re coming.¡± ¡°So brobegs have some way of protecting from star hydras?¡± ¡°Of course they do. Otherwise there¡¯d be nothing but hydra nests across the whole jungle.¡± ¡°And you neglected to mention this when you were planning to send me out after one?¡± Eythron shrugged. ¡°If you were idiot enough to rush into things like that then you deserve to lose your soul.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°Past me was a complete idiot, but even he never fell for that. My encounter with the star hydra was entirely accidental. That said, you can be an incredibly frustrating person to work with, master.¡± ¡°You can walk away any time.¡± "I''m not complaining. I enjoy your company. Don¡¯t think you¡¯ll get rid of me that easily. I¡¯m sticking through this until we get somewhere worth being. And from the sounds of it, your plan is the best shot we¡¯ve got.¡± ¡°It is. I don¡¯t do things frivolously.¡± ¡°Might I ask what exactly you want a star hydra for?¡± ¡°You might.¡± ¡°Why do you want to kill a star hydra?¡± ¡°None of your business.¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°Of course. What was I thinking, imagining that you¡¯d answer a question reasonably.¡± ¡°You think it¡¯s unreasonable not to want kids with delusions of grandeur to know too much about plans involving dangerous monsters?¡± ¡°When that ¡®kid¡¯ is me? Yes.¡± Jair folded up the brobeg tongue and stuffed it in his bag for Qahrvirna, then grabbed a large sturdy leaf from the nearest tree to wipe off the monster¡¯s sludgy remnants from his body and armor. ¡°Let¡¯s go. Brobeg hunting it is.¡±
Jair sliced his way out of the latest brobeg on their months-long hunt and gave his mentor an exaggerated scowl. ¡°Much longer and I¡¯d have had to kill it myself. You¡¯re getting slow, old man.¡± Eythron didn¡¯t look up from where he squatted beside the body, already stripping the brobeg¡¯s vaguely scaley hide. ¡°If you¡¯d wait for your cue before getting eaten, I wouldn¡¯t have to rush so much to get in position.¡± For all his gruff behavior, Eythron had remained sufficiently conscientious about Jair¡¯s presence and existence that even when their targets retaliated unexpectedly, he could jump in. True to his word, he¡¯d been dedicated to taking on the bulk of the work in doing the killing. That slowed their fights down significantly. Things like the brobeg that Jair could slice straight through would take a normal mageblade¡ªeven an ascendant with a relic weapon like Eythron¡ªminutes at best. Still, occupying the creature with his body while Eythron took care of the vitals seemed to be working out well. Apart from his perpetual need to de-slime himself after. Brobeg saliva was barely better than its blood, both thick and too-sticky. At least they weren¡¯t acidic like a poison dragon¡¯s, that would have made Jair¡¯s propensity for getting eaten less of a tactical decision and more of a disaster waiting to happen. ¡°The brobeg¡¯s not waiting on cues, it¡¯s hungry and grumpy at being invaded.¡± Jair dismissed Maelstrom and the brobeg gunk that had been clinging to the blade dropped to the ground with a dull splat. He shook his hand to fling off the sludgy remnants. ¡°I feel like these things get more disgusting every time. I¡¯m starting to hate you for always leaving me to get eaten.¡± ¡°You¡¯re good at it. Play to your strengths.¡± Eythron finished with the hide and began slicing off the nascent wings. This specimen was younger than the others, its wings barely more than stubby fins, insufficient for even their usual gliding descent. ¡°Why are you only collecting wings from the juveniles?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t think that asking when I¡¯m not paying attention will get you my secrets, boy.¡± ¡°Are they for Qahrvirna?¡± ¡°You¡¯re the one who lives with her. I barely know the witch.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a blatant lie. No one who barely knows her gets away with calling her Qahri.¡± ¡°Well, aren¡¯t you the expert.¡± ¡°I can help, you know.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t need help.¡± He tossed the bundled brobeg skin at Jair. ¡°Carry that. One more and we¡¯ll have enough.¡± ¡°Of course, master.¡± Once Eythron was finished, Jair set about collecting his own ingredients from the creature. ¡°I¡¯d like to visit Qahrvirna before the last one. This would be a lot easier if I had my replacement hand, and she has to have gotten it in by now.¡± ¡°I have it. She sent it a few weeks ago.¡± ¡°Aelir.¡± Jair closed his eyes. ¡°Did you ever consider informing me that my incredibly customized and essential tool had arrived?¡± ¡°Where¡¯s the fun in that? Then I¡¯d miss out on this.¡± Jair opened his eyes, to find Eythron watching him. The old man had a happy scowl, amusement danced in his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m glad you find yourself so entertaining.¡± Eythron raised a finger. ¡°I also find you entertaining.¡± ¡°For all the wrong reasons, I¡¯m sure.¡± Jair held out his hand. ¡°Hand, please?¡± ¡°One more brobeg.¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather start building up my skill with it sooner than later, if we¡¯re going after a star hydra in the near future.¡± ¡°Near future he says.¡± Eythron snorted. ¡°We¡¯ll be lucky if we¡¯re ready to hunt by the end of the year.¡± ¡°The year just started.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ll be lucky to finish before it¡¯s over. You¡¯ll have plenty of time to play with your new toy.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know how tempting it is to skewer you sometimes.¡± Eythron laughed. ¡°I have been told my face is very stabbable. Not many have survived the attempt.¡± ¡°What is your reason for withholding my possession from me?¡± ¡°Do I need a reason?¡± ¡°Most people have reasons, yes.¡± Eythron rose to his feet. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe me if I told you.¡± ¡°Me? Disbelieve you? I¡¯m a time traveler. And I know you. You¡¯re not going to lie about something important.¡± ¡°It¡¯s cursed.¡± Jair frowned, thoughts thoroughly derailed. ¡°How?¡± ¡°I¡¯m trying to figure that out.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s a construct hand. What is there to curse?¡± ¡°You, apparently.¡± ¡°To what purpose?¡± ¡°I¡¯m trying to find out.¡± ¡°Well, I can save you some time.¡± Jair held out his hand again. ¡°I¡¯ll activate it, and if it¡¯s too annoying I can loop back a bit.¡± ¡°Idiot. See? This is why I didn¡¯t want to tell you.¡± ¡°I can take care of myself, old man.¡± ¡°If you don¡¯t need me then why are you still following me around?¡± ¡°Nostalgia, most likely, though I¡¯m beginning to question my tastes. Qahrvirna is seeming more and more of a reasonable option.¡± Eythron pointed in the general direction of north. ¡°Then go.¡± ¡°Not without my hand.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t discerned its curse¡¯s effects. It would be irresponsible of me as a mentor to¡ª¡± ¡°Oh, so now you¡¯re a mentor, when it means you get to annoy me?¡± Jair stepped forward. ¡°Just hand it over. I¡¯ll deal with the curse.¡± Eythron shrugged. ¡°I did try to warn you. If you die now, it¡¯s not my fault.¡±
40 - Hunting ¡°Something happens, every time. Even when I do everything to prevent it.¡± ¡°Almost enough to make you believe in fate, huh?¡± ¡°No. It just makes me think someone¡¯s out there working against me.¡± ¡°What¡¯s to say that someone isn¡¯t fate?¡±
Eythron took the replacement hand¡ªan intricate construct of metal, crystal, and mana-conducting threads¡ªout of his soulspace and tossed it to Jair. Jair caught it in his good hand and inspected it thoroughly. The replacement had the same measurements as his existing hand, but jointed intricately to imitate movement. Technically, it could move in ways a human hand couldn¡¯t, but subconscious understanding of standard restraints typically prevented that from being useful. Jair could overwhelm his natural restraint instincts if necessary, but there was generally little reason to do so. The wrist joints were flexible enough that grabbing something backward was no advantage compared to standard. The arm part that bound to his forearm was hollow to allow his replacement blood channels to continue their diverted flow undisturbed, which detail he appreciated. He turned it over more than once in his examination, and found its craftsmanship as impressive as could be hoped. He also found the ¡®curse¡¯ Eythron was concerned about, and immediately saw why it would be giving his mentor so much trouble. It wasn¡¯t a curse in the traditional sense. A ¡®cursed item¡¯ would be one that caused a negative effect when activated, or one which imposed excessive drain on the manabody to no effect. Simple curses were created by careless constructists or malicious children, more complicated ones were the result of serious effort by nefarious individuals for specific purposes. Such cursed items could be understood by those familiar with how magical constructs worked, the malicious parts rerouted or dismantled, and the item restored to its previous function¡ªor given a new one if the curse was its sole purpose. The ¡®curse¡¯ on his new hand wasn¡¯t part of the item and had no physical presence. It was the lingering trace of a soulspell, one that would trigger when the item was activated. The one advantage to this was that delayed-effect soulspells with a trigger were one-time use. Whatever the effect was would only occur the first time Jair used it¡ªor when he convinced someone else to do so. He was far more concerned with who and why than the what. He could tell from the thinness of the spell¡¯s presence that it would be a very minor effect. Even if it was a thoroughly destructive attack directly against his soul, something of this strength wouldn¡¯t be enough to do much. It could give him some dissonance backlash for a week or so at most. At its worst, it could be an effective distraction to weaken an ordinary mage for assassination, but against someone who could reverse time it would be laughably pointless. And, though the specifics of the soulspell were impossible to read, he didn¡¯t get any sense of a destructive nature. It didn¡¯t feel spiky enough. The disadvantage of it being a soulspell instead of construct based was that there was no way of knowing what it did before activating it. Assessing the nature and effect of a soulspell was notoriously difficult. The power on this wasn¡¯t visible, but even if it had been, that was no guarantee. Even people with visually identical soulspells could have wildly different effects. Jair¡¯s golden hue, for instance, was most commonly associated with transmutation type spells, while a temporal spell would ordinarily be depicted in shades of red. Eythron was watching him with narrowed eyes. ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this, boy.¡± ¡°You think I¡¯m going to pass up a mystery like this?¡± Jair turned the hand over again. ¡°Either someone¡¯s routinely casting unknown spells on construct replacement limbs, or someone knows something about me. If it¡¯s the former, it doesn¡¯t really matter, but it¡¯s possible there are people out there still searching for Maelstrom.¡± Eythron chuckled. ¡°You can¡¯t blame them. That thing is unprecedented in power. Even I would be tempted if it weren¡¯t so ugly.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°You¡¯re helping me complete it so it¡¯s worth stealing?¡± ¡°With a power like yours? I¡¯d know better than to try anything. As curious as I am to see what sort of change it would obtain from me, I¡¯m not going to volunteer chunks of my soul to find out.¡± ¡°With good reason. Don¡¯t worry, I like your soul the way it is.¡± Jair slid the replacement hand construct over his shortened arm. The constructist knew his work. The new item fit perfectly and matched almost exactly the size and shape of his living hand. The moment he ran mana through it, whatever soulspell had been left on it activated and its remnants dissipated. There was no discernable change, no flash or sound, no sensation at all. Only because he was paying such close attention did he even know it had happened. ¡°Information based?¡± he mused. ¡°You triggered it?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°Guess we¡¯ll have longer to go before we find out what kind of ¡®curse¡¯ this was.¡± It was completely gone, now, whatever its purpose had been. It could have been something as simple as the creator verifying the item ended up at the right person, but if it¡¯d been something like that he¡¯d expect to know about it. Setting aside the matter of the unknown spell for now, he started mentally mapping out the intersections of mana and movement necessary to sync up his manabody with the new appendage. The spot where his hand had been sliced was a tangled knot in his manabody, but the hand itself remained. Ghostlike and useless without anything physical to interact with, but eager to resume function as soon as Jair could get it to understand what it was supposed to do. Jair flexed his manabody hand, and the construct replacement didn¡¯t follow his movements. It led to an odd disconnect, but he¡¯d been through similar situations enough it was only mildly disorienting. ¡°The acclimation will take a while, but without any obvious negative effects I can practice with it as we go. Where¡¯s this last brobeg you¡¯re so eager to strip down for parts?¡±
After two days of walking, fighting off the ordinary dangers of the Oriad, and gradually accustoming himself to his new appendage, Jair finally succeeded in moving the construct fingers with his manabody exclusively. The easier way to control it would be direct mana application, using the connections in the armband section, but that relied on maintaining an active connection through specific locations. If the connection was broken¡ªsuch as the power cable being destroyed in a fight¡ªthe entire construct became useless. With the manabody to act as guide, fully subsuming the new limb into his magical perception of the self, the reliance on physical connection was at its most minimal. As long as they stayed in sync Jair could force it to move if necessary, even if it¡¯d be much less of a strain when combined with the standard power connections. It¡¯d be another few weeks before he could properly swing Maelstrom without dropping it, and longer before he could start recalling it to the construct, but so far the connection and integration process was going very smoothly. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose Qahrvirna sent a dragoncube along too?¡± Jair asked hopefully, when he remembered his other order. ¡°She did not.¡± ¡°Guess I¡¯ll have to bribe her properly then. Good thing I¡¯ve been killing a lot of exotic monsters.¡± ¡°You think she¡¯ll be bribed by common monster parts?¡± ¡°She¡¯s lazy. May not look it, but she¡¯d rather never leave her tower at all if not absolutely necessary. She¡¯d pay a lot for someone to go out and do the boring collecting of things for her so she can stay indoors and play with her visitors.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°I never got the impression that she was so shallow.¡± ¡°She puts an incredibly complicated veneer over it, sure, but at her heart she¡¯s just a playful scientist. Studying alchemy and messing with mortals are her favourite pastimes.¡±
The final brobeg in their search took significantly longer to find than the first five. Terlunia came and went and came again, and still they followed the elusive beast. Jair and Eythron were both fully accustomed to spending days and nights out in the jungle without proper shelter, creating basic camps together each night with the familiarity of years of repetition. They killed more than enough common aggressive creatures to provide for their food needs, and the dampness provided plenty of water for their condensers. Every time they neared its location, it glided away and disappeared, forcing them to spend days searching the area before picking up its trail again. ¡°Skittish thing,¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°I hate it.¡± ¡°It can¡¯t run forever. It¡¯ll have to rest eventually.¡± At least the extensive downtime gave him the opportunity to improve his synchronization with the new hand. Over the past month he¡¯d gotten to the point where he could use his construct hand almost as naturally as the original one, and summon Maelstrom back and forth between them as rapidly as ever. He was still a little behind schedule on adapting his strategies to having inhuman flexibility and making the most of the construct¡¯s specific jointing, but those were always going to take the longest. Far easier to remember a known fighting style than invent something properly new. The construct drained his manabody to a ruinous extent when used to its full potential. If he were anyone else, it¡¯d render him incapable of casting spells from sheer constant strain¡ªone reason such replacements were uncommon and had to be created custom. Such replacement limbs were generally seen only among the rich adventurer strata. For people without a magic class, leaving a perpetual mana drain active indefinitely might be less of a logistics issue, but still a questionable choice in regards to comfort and financial viability. For Jair, though, it was perpetual ongoing strength training for his manabody. It wasn¡¯t as dramatic as it would be in a high density area like Mount Sanctum or Nuprima, but months of steady draw would still help his boundaries and channels firm up. It didn¡¯t help with active spell strength and would make simultaneous casting significantly more challenging, but with Maelstrom being so strong he hardly needed to rely on spells at all any more. One other thing he did, now that his basic imprints were firmly settled, was to start training Maelstrom for Bladewalk. Or try to. The undertaking was not going very well. There were technically several different techniques that were all considered part of Bladewalk, but it was common practice to focus in on one of them and leave the others alone. Did you want to run across the sky with your sword forming a solid foundation for your every step? Or stand majestically gliding with your sword as a vessel? Send your sword to a faraway place and fly toward it with hand outstretched? What all the Bladewalk variations had in common was the basic ability to shift the nature of a weapon¡¯s material presence, allowing it to reject the influence of physical reality and such mundane things as gravity or physics while retaining tangibility. With his old reforged blade, Jair could have attained the proper state within a few days of focus. Maelstrom, though, was an entirely different creation. While its core may be his old trusty sword, it had transcended its base form so thoroughly that the usual resonances were completely inaccurate. In this, for once, his intimate knowledge of what had been actually held him back more than it helped. Reaching a proper understanding of Maelstrom as itself and not as what it used to be was difficult enough without adding in how its soul was constantly shifting. All the gaps in its soul weren¡¯t static. They opened and sealed over time, some sections becoming more solid, others fraying. Only the sections stabilized by monster souls remained unchanged, and even those were changing in character over the weeks. The more he tried to push it into Bladewalk readiness, the more strongly Maelstrom resisted. Almost like it knew it was incomplete, and couldn¡¯t accept an ability built on a flawed version of itself. Or perhaps, Jair¡¯s own stubborn refusal to accept anything but complete success was bleeding over into his soulsword. Whatever the reason, it looked like he''d have to wait a little longer for proper aerial freedom of movement. Still, having Lift back made him feel much more relaxed in his fighting style. They¡¯d settled in for another long day of sweeping the foggy swampland for their oversized tree-frog adversary when something unexpected interrupted their hunt. Jair¡¯s first warning was the slightest rustle of wind from the side. He dropped, just in time as the venix flew by overhead, beak snapping down right where his head had been a second before. Eythron cursed and jumped into the fray, arms lighting up as he brought his combat spells into play. Jair jumped up and swung Maelstrom. Not quite fast enough. The venix soared upward and out of reach, eyes aglow with yellow light and deep green wings trailing hints of dark flame. Fog melted away around it, then swirled in to fill the gaps as it disappeared. Eythron¡¯s attacks glanced off the jungle phoenix''s wings, their sharp feathers glancing his strikes aside. A single feather fell, but the venix didn''t stop to notice its loss. Jair jumped to his feet and stood back-to-back with his mentor. Swords in hand, they slowly turned as they searched the surrounding trees, intent and alert for any sound or movement betraying the venix''s return. "Do you think it''s going to come back?" Eythron eventually asked, as the minutes stretched out and the brief ambush was not continued. "That sword of yours is pretty terrifying." "I''m sure it will." Jair straightened out of his combat stance as the venix continued to not return. "The question is when, and where. I''m suddenly less eager to get into a fight with another predator." "You think it''s that intelligent?" Jair nodded. "Of course it is. It tracked me down halfway across the continent. You think it doesn''t know how to take advantage of our distraction?" He waved at the surrounding fog. "Who knows how long it''s been following us hoping for a chance like this. Its first ambush failed, so its next is going to be that much more cautious." Eythron grumbled under his breath. "What''s that?" "Go back to Qahrvirna. She''s better equipped to help with something like this. I can handle the brobeg on my own." "Sure you can, but there''s a very high probability of you being severely injured in the process. I''m not willing for that to happen on my watch." The old man snorted. "It''s not your job to look after me, boy." "Right. It''s my job to distract the monsters so you can stab them. Don''t try to deny that I''ve made your job easier." "So what if you have? Doesn''t mean I have to let you keep doing it. That thing went straight for you." "Since when do you care about my safety?" Eythron smacked the back of his head. "Disrespectful brat." Jair strapped Maelstrom at his side, a simple harness that made it impossible to fall out regardless of what they did, but kept it close and ready to be recalled at a moment''s notice. ¡°Right, I¡¯m the disrespectful one.¡± Eythron dismissed his sword and picked up the single venix feather. ¡°You know if you keep that glowing thing flashing out in every direction it¡¯ll be very hard to sneak up on anything.¡± ¡°And if I lose a half second summoning it, I¡¯m much more likely to die when something sneaks up on me.¡± ¡°Heh. Takes you a half second to summon? Sounds like you¡¯re in dire need of practice.¡± Jair gestured at Eythron¡¯s imprints, then his own. ¡°One of us is optimized for handling ambushes, and one of us is set up for assault. Isn¡¯t being the loud and noticeable one my entire job on this trip?¡± ¡°That was before I knew the venix was hunting you. You should leave.¡± ¡°Why are you so eager to be rid of me? You usually enjoy having me around.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a complication I don¡¯t need. What¡¯s there to know?¡± ¡°Considering hunting the star hydra on your own?¡± Eythron snorted in derision. ¡°Absolutely not. I couldn¡¯t touch the thing if I tried." "So what''s this all about? Why are you trying to send me away?" Eythron sighed. He looked away and didn''t answer. "Aww, it''s good to know you care." "I don''t. Idiot boy." He started walking. "Go find the vampire." "But if you think I''d be safer alone, you''re mistaken." Jair kept pace with Eythron. He had no intention of leaving. "I''ve seen your imprints. You''re holding back to stay with me." Jair raised an eyebrow. "How do you figure that one?" "The way you use Lift is incredibly practiced, and the subtle application you put into everyday movement is beyond anything I''ve ever seen. You could run farther in ten minutes than we walk in an hour." "Eight minutes. But you think that''ll be enough to protect me from an angry venix?" "No guarantee the bird''s here for you. Could be after me. Or the brobeg." "You think the venix just happened to be hunting the same brobeg as us, in the same time frame?" "No, I think it''s after you and we''d both be better off if you got somewhere it can''t reach you." Jair grinned. "It should be more worried about me reaching it. We''ve already proven Maelstrom can take it out, and unlike brobegs, venix essence seems to play very nice with Maelstrom¡¯s soul." "Which is probably why it''s avoiding direct conflict this time." Jair shrugged, patting Maelstrom. "Then I see no reason not to travel together. Either it''s avoiding me and we''ll be fine, or it''s hunting me and I can kill it again." Eythron chuckled. "Your propensity for self-destruction is impressive. I see why Qahri likes you." "It''s not self-destruction. I know I can handle myself in the majority of cases, and the few I can''t I can revert." He glanced sideways at Eythron. "Except the star hydra, so don''t be surprised if I redo that one a few times before we even get started. I''m going to be incredibly proactive with avoiding it even if it means redoing these weeks a few more times than absolutely necessary."
41 - Hunting (2) ¡°It¡¯s funny how easily perception skews with power. What would have been impossible a year ago becomes trivial now.¡± ¡°You planning to wreck the economy with rare monster parts?¡± ¡°Not intentionally.¡±
The venix did three more fly-by attacks that week, each lasting only a few seconds of contact. It tried to variably bite, claw, or disarm Jair and swiped at Eythron as an afterthought when the old man tried to interfere. They didn''t even get any more feathers, and the venix didn¡¯t get any more of Jair¡¯s body parts. It was incredibly assiduous in keeping itself out of Maelstrom''s strike range, and always disappeared the moment Jair had his sword in hand. "This bird is really starting to annoy me," Eythron grumbled. "Is there anything that doesn''t annoy you?" Eythron silently considered the question as they started walking, and still hadn''t answered by the time they found their original quarry four hours later. The brobeg was asleep in the bog, half buried in the mud, body forming a small breathing island, wings sprawled to either side half-submerged so they looked more like moss-covered sticks than the lure of a deadly predator. "About time," Eythron muttered, barely audible. He manifested his sword. "Ready when you are." Jair took a running jump, holding himself up off the ground with Lift, and all but glided across the ground. Without gravity to pull him down, he chose the exact target he was aiming for¡ªthe brobeg''s wing-joint¡ªand dropped down directly on it soundlessly, Maelstrom point leading. The brobeg woke with a gurgling roar, whipping its head around, wings flapping free of the mud as it reared up. This close, the creature was one of the largest of its kind Jair had ever encountered. Its wings were easily three or four times as long as Jair was tall, and its body half that again in length. The forelegs were stubby and agile as always, rear legs thick and powerful for jumping, and body tapering back like a sandeel. It''d clearly eaten recently, body crammed with lumps of various sizes. The brobeg slashed at him with a claw, as it flopped about ungainly on one good wing, the other pinned with the weight of Jair''s body fully atop it and barely able to twitch with the damage he¡¯d done. The creature tried to snap its tongue out to grab him and either throw him aside or swallow him whole, but Eythron jumped forward to intercept. The tongue flicked nimbly aside, evading the blademaster''s strike, but the brobeg''s attack was ruined as it had to snap its tongue back inside its oversized mouth. Jair sliced another few of its major wing tendons, leaving that limb completely helpless. This specimen had wings large enough to allow for actual flight, not just gliding. It must have been the oldest brobeg Jair had heard of. No wonder it had evaded them for so long. It hadn''t lived to be this size and strength without learning a thing or two about surviving. Part of his mind insisted that this was the best opportunity he was ever going to get to add a very high quality monster soul to Maelstrom, but he couldn¡¯t get over the way its essence looked and felt antithetical to what the sword was meant to be. It still made him vaguely uneasy every time he caught a glimpse of the yellow-green glow at the sword¡¯s tip. He played his part, damaging and distracting the giant frog-drake without hitting anything vital. Eythron jumped into the fight with full focus and unflinching speed. His sword danced from hand to hand as he evaded and struck and evaded again, moving in flawless rhythm as he wore down their target. Jair ducked the tongue again, slashing Maelstrom wildly at the flailing appendage, when a flicker of movement in his periphery shifted his focus. The venix dove at him so fast he barely had time to twist his hand up before it slammed into him. Too sharp, too fast. The venix¡¯s jagged beak tore straight through Jair¡¯s chest, shattering his ribcage and lodging itself against his spine. Maelstrom was driven through the monstrous bird¡¯s body up to the hilt. Jair looked down at himself as the venix withdrew its bloody beak and hissed in triumph. Then he looked up at Eythron, still engaged with fighting the brobeg. Not that he could do anything either way. They¡¯d already used his one emergency backup, and no healing they had available would be enough to handle this. Jair wouldn¡¯t be surviving this. Not this time. But he didn¡¯t have to die alone. ¡°Hate to break it to you, but you¡¯re not the only one who¡¯s hard to kill.¡± Jair yanked Maelstrom up in a twisting arc that bisected the venix¡¯s long neck vertically in half. The monstrous bird immolated in green-black flame with an inner yellow glow, body turning almost instantly to ashes. ¡°See you next time around, then.¡± Breathing hard, as much as possible with one lung torn violently to shreds, Jair collapsed. He could survive another few minutes if he further mutilated his manabody, but there was no point. He¡¯d gotten as much as he could from this timeline. He closed his eyes and focused inward to activate Temporal Reversion. Golden light consumed the world. It¡¯d been months since he¡¯d seen his inner temporal landscape, so its shape was new and unfamiliar. Two small ledges seemed to be forming, and one very large one far below that he recognized instinctively as the aftermath of Ryenzo¡¯s rampage through the Institute. He had no desire to go back to that. Several dozen chips or cracks in the wall provided potential handholds if he could get to them. In the instant he absorbed all this information he was already starting to fall backwards. He reached out and snatched at the wall, trying to catch hold of anything. His hand found a lumpy spot in the ghostly golden cliffside and clung to it, but the stone crumbled under his fingers before he could pull himself through. He fell, but it had slowed him enough. There was a crack off to one side, practically the same height as the bump. Twisting his ghostly form, he slammed his hand into it, wrenching his body to a halt. For a moment he scrabbled to get a solid grip, then tugged himself through the timefall and out into reality. The venix swooped down at him with an angry screech and he dropped to the ground to evade. Eythron swung his sword at it, barely snagging the monster¡¯s tail. Three feathers slid free and drifted down in the monster¡¯s wake as it flew away. ¡°This bird is really starting to annoy me,¡± Eythron grumbled, and started walking. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Jair rubbed at his chest, phantom slickness taking a moment to dissipate as his mind caught up with the reality. ¡°Yeah. Me too.¡± It took him a moment to orient, but he smiled when he did. Four hours ago. Perfect. That was as close to an immediate redo as he¡¯d ever get. He jogged to catch up, then caught Eythron''s sleeve and pointed off to their right a bit. ¡°That way. It circled around.¡± Eythron¡¯s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ¡°What happened?¡± ¡°Venix got me. It joined in midway through fighting the brobeg.¡± ¡°Huh. And that was all? This tiny flash and you¡¯re back here, old universe deleted?¡± ¡°Yep. Easy as stew.¡± Eythron scoffed. ¡°Stew isn¡¯t easy.¡± ¡°Sure it is. You want something complicated? Try making a stuffed cheesebread turnover. Three stages for the bread, another three for the filling, one for the cheese, and two more for assembly.¡± ¡°Sounds excessive. Throw everything in a pot, it¡¯ll be just as nutritious.¡± ¡°Easy, like a stew?¡± ¡°Stew is a specific form. What you¡¯re talking about is a soup.¡± ¡°I hope you know the rest of the world doesn¡¯t adhere to your personal definitions.¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°I¡¯d be annoyed if it did. What right does the world have to my knowledge?¡± ¡°And yet you expect the rest of the world to share their knowledge with you.¡± He pulled out Maelstrom to inspect. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 20%) ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame (Inactive, Integration: 50%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of limitless *****? After ****?, this blade now contains traces of darkflame, has taken on the ****?, and ***? and will **? once accumulated in sufficient quantity. ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne A few of its descriptions had clarified, slightly, but they still remained largely vague apart from Darkflame. ¡°It¡¯s got an ability now. Or the start of one, at least.¡± Eythron looked over and wordlessly held out a hand. Jair passed him Maelstrom. ¡°Inactive darkflame, huh. 50%. So you just need to kill the thing twice more?¡± ¡°So it seems.¡± The integrity percentage gained from killing the second venix had jumped dramatically, much more than taking it out the first time. Either this was a stronger venix, Maelstrom was better able to absorb from a monster it was familiar with, or the monster''s soul was destabilizing even across timelines and making it easier to steal pieces. ¡°Good luck with that.¡± Eythron snorted and handed Maelstrom back. ¡°I doubt the thing¡¯ll come anywhere near you after what you did to it the first couple times.¡± Jair considered the status as they walked. ¡°Darkflame isn¡¯t a standard ability.¡± ¡°Never heard of it, myself.¡± ¡°Me neither.¡± But where the brobeg influence had intensely bothered Jair, everything about the venix fire felt right. It fitted itself in among Maelstrom¡¯s torn soul like it belonged there, retaining its distinctive nature while remaining respectful of its host¡¯s. Even without knowing Darkflame¡¯s actual usage, he knew he wanted to complete it. They spent another three hours traversing the jungle before Jair held up a hand for quiet. ¡°It¡¯s through there, asleep in the swamp.¡± Eythron nodded and summoned his sword, then signed that he was ready. Jair jumped forward, Lift allowing him to glide across the ground soundlessly. He dropped down onto the brobeg¡¯s wing, stabbing deep into the muscle and drawing a jagged slash across the membrane. The monster woke with an angry gurgle, whipping its head around as it reared up. It was bloated and round on the front with a broad mouth, like a frog with claws for arms, tapering off to a snakelike lower body, its slick hide patterned in browns and vibrant yellow-greens. Easily twice Jair¡¯s height and three or four times as long, with wings stretching far enough to brush the trees on either side when fully extended, this brobeg was a true patriarch of its territory. Unfortunately for it, they¡¯d come to end its supremacy. Jair clung to the damaged wing with his construct hand, continuing to slice the membrane without regard for the monster¡¯s movements. The brobeg flapped its good wing rapidly, trying to take flight, but instead flopped over sideways, almost landing on Jair as his weight pinned the other wing to the ground. It may have been caught off guard and half asleep, but it was far from helpless. Its tongue whipped out, snapping around toward the irritant on his back. Jair slid off the creature¡¯s back and sliced out at its tongue as it tried to knock him down. Eythron jumped into the fight with flawless rhythm, sword dancing from hand to hand as he expertly struck and retreated before striking again, drawing the creature¡¯s attention before it could commit to crushing Jair beneath its bulk or grab him in its claws. The restriction of not dealing any fatal damage with Maelstrom limited Jair¡¯s participation and his sword¡¯s impact, but he couldn¡¯t get over how wrong the brobeg essence in Maelstrom felt. Eythron narrowly avoided a swipe of its foreclaws. Jair darted in from behind, flashing Protect as he hurled himself bodily against its tail to throw off its balance and give Eythron an opening. Then the venix dove out of the fog. It must have been following them closely to have arrived so fast, but given its harassment throughout the day he wasn¡¯t surprised. The moment he sensed its movement, Jair hurled Maelstrom right where the monster bird was about to be and dropped flat to his stomach. The venix was too big and moving too fast to stop. It twisted to avoid the blade severing its head, but still drove its shoulder straight into the spinning blade. Glowing yellow blood hissed and splattered the ground, dripping from a deep gash across the venix¡¯s side as it swooped by overhead. Its claws snatched at the air just above Jair, but couldn¡¯t quite reach him. The fixation on its target left it unable to correct its course. The venix crashed into the brobeg¡¯s back. Eythron jumped back, just in time before the pair rolled over and over where he¡¯d been standing. The two colossal monsters did not appreciate each other¡¯s company. The brobeg abruptly threw itself backwards into the air, landing atop the venix with a squelch. The weight and thrashing of the fighting monsters knocked down several trees, which toppled with muted crashes, barely audible over the screeches and roaring of the two oversized creatures. The venix shrieked and clawed, yellow and black flames searing into the brobeg¡¯s bulbous side as it fought to get free. Its head kept turning toward Jair, its true quarry, but the brobeg was having none of it. The giant winged frog-eel croaked and rolled over, claws digging into the venix¡¯s wing as its massive mouth opened. Its tongue was shortened and bleeding, but still long enough to wrap around the venix¡¯s neck three or four times and yank the bird toward its hungry maw. ¡°I¡¯m going to need to interrupt there,¡± Jair said, observing the fight. ¡°I¡¯m going in. Take care of the brobeg, I¡¯ll get the venix.¡± ¡°You want to get in the middle of that?¡± Eythron asked, incredulous. ¡°You really think¡ª¡± Jair didn¡¯t wait to hear the rest. He was already running at the two giant monsters. He jumped and dove into the brobeg¡¯s mouth with a quick application of Lift, Maelstrom extended, and stabbed straight into the venix¡¯s eye as the brobeg yanked its top half inside. The brobeg¡¯s mouth clamped shut, trapping Jair and the venix¡¯s head and shoulders. From the way it moved and his past experience, Jair expected its next move would be to tear the venix into a few more easily swallowed chunks, but he didn¡¯t plan to give it the chance. The glow of the venix¡¯s one remaining yellow-green eye and its luminous dripping blood were enough to illuminate the cavernous interior of the brobeg, giving Jair plenty of targets. ¡°I¡¯d normally say it¡¯s just business, but you seem to be making this very personal,¡± he told the oversized bird as it tried to peck at him and he danced out of the way. ¡°You¡¯re about to be eaten and you still can¡¯t think of anything but killing me? What did I ever do to you? Apart from kill you the one time, I suppose.¡± The venix strained, trying to drag itself further in just so it could get at him, but the brobeg¡¯s tight seal held it firmly in place. Jair couldn¡¯t use his spells in here, the brobeg¡¯s antimagic nature absorbing away any external magic application, so their dance lasted several seconds as he tried to slip past the darting beak to strike a finishing blow with Maelstrom, while the venix struggled against its restraint. ¡°Eh, I needed another one anyway. I¡¯ll be back.¡± Jair lunged, accepting the retaliatory strike. Maelstrom stabbed the venix through the other eye, and the monster¡¯s beak tore out Jair¡¯s throat and a good chunk of his upper body in the process. He followed up with a quick beheading, to which the venix responded by snapping shut its beak and all but severing Jair¡¯s own head in return. He held on long enough to verify it turned into ashes, which was only a few seconds but felt significantly longer due to the extreme strain he was putting on his manabody to hold himself vaguely together, then activated Temporal Reversion and dropped backwards into golden light.
42 - Hunting (3) Did you know? There actually IS a summer on Nuprima! It''s eight days long and takes place only on the spot furthest from Keypoint, but if you''re willing to stick it out, it''s a truly beautiful sight.
©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 23%) ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame (Inactive, Integration: 83%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of limitless *****? After ****?, this blade now contains traces of darkflame, has taken on the ****?, and ***? and will **? once accumulated in sufficient quantity. ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne ¡°Well, that confirms it.¡± Eythron looked over at Jair. ¡°Confirms?¡± Jair tossed him Maelstrom. Eythron examined it, eyes narrowing. ¡°When did this happen?¡± ¡°In the future. About a week and a half from now, we run into the venix again. I killed it twice in two different timelines, and the integrity increased both times. So either Maelstrom isn¡¯t able to absorb the full essence in one go due to its own lower integrity, or killing the same creature multiple times can be exploited to massively increase the sword¡¯s strength.¡± Whatever the case, it was definitely going up by a larger amount each time, as well as Darkflame reaching 83% integration rather than the expected 75. ¡°And you came back to now?¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°First option available. I wasn¡¯t quick enough to grab the previous crack, sheer luck I managed it the first time. Didn¡¯t have anything to slow me down this time.¡± ¡°Uh-huh.¡± Eythron handed Maelstrom back with a scowl. ¡°Being able to carry power back in time is absurd.¡± ¡°I know, right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s against all known laws of time.¡± ¡°Which we evaded by using the soul directly. And something strong enough it wouldn¡¯t disintegrate.¡± Jair grimaced. ¡°We tried using different ascensions a few times. Didn¡¯t end well. The soul isn¡¯t meant to have things explode while inside it.¡± ¡°I still can¡¯t believe you collected those components so fast. Less than ten years, and you found all of them?¡± ¡°It was a few hundred years at least. Just over the same few years again and again.¡± ¡°Still ridiculous.¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°Your plan. I¡¯m just the one who followed through on it.¡±
Days passed without any sign of the venix, though Jair found himself increasingly familiar with the area. It made it more challenging to maintain the necessary perpetual attentiveness. True, you¡¯d die if you ever wandered the Oriad fully inattentive, but for someone used to taking the normal precautions¡ªespecially when accompanied by a master mageblade¡ªthere was only so much extra attention he could pay to every rustle of a leaf and every brush of wind before it became incredibly tedious. He briefly considered just letting their first contact happen without interfering, but it¡¯d been a long time since he was this excited for something. This was actually new, truly unknown. A power he¡¯d never heard anything about, and he only needed one more piece of venix soul to make it work. Something rustled from the side, and Jair spun to face it. A viper squirrel hissed and bared its fangs at him, then darted away further up the branch. He threw Maelstrom at it just out of habit, practicing his aim at a moving target. The branch split and crashed to the ground. The squirrel escaped, but left half its tail behind. Jair pocketed the fluffy tuft, then caught up with Eythron. Eythron for his part ignored Jair¡¯s behavior except for a single glance with raised eyebrow. He continued to walk as though he weren¡¯t escorting someone who destroyed trees seemingly at random and collected even the most mundane of monster parts for a crazy vampire witch. ¡°Have I mentioned recently how much I appreciate you, master?¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll find a way to turn it into an argument.¡± ¡°No I won¡¯t.¡± Eythron snorted.
Jair¡¯s first warning was the slightest rustle of wind from the side. He jumped up eagerly, Lift giving him height as he swung Maelstrom in a two-handed arc. A frost hawk fell to the ground, sheared clean in half. Jair exhaled, disappointed. He dropped to the ground and knelt to collect the feathers. It¡¯d been days longer than he thought he¡¯d need to reach their first encounter with the venix. Either it had decided to stop hunting him for some reason, or his sense of time was further off than he expected. He half expected it to swoop down on him from behind while he was distracted¡ªit had proven in the previous timeline that it could be a clever hunter, following them, waiting for the brobeg fight to strike¡ªbut no venix had appeared. They were only a few hours away from the brobeg¡¯s swamp resting place now, and still the venix had yet to show itself. The hours passed quietly, and they reached their initial target. Jair pointed ahead. ¡°Brobeg''s sleeping in the swamp just past those bushes.¡± Eythron nodded and summoned his sword, then signed that he was ready. Jair jumped forward, Lift allowing him to glide across the ground soundlessly. He dropped down onto the brobeg¡¯s wing, stabbing deep into the muscle and drawing a jagged slash across the membrane. The bulbous beast woke with an angry gurgle, whipping its head around as it reared up. Jair held on and kept slashing. The groggy brobeg flapped its good wing rapidly, trying to take flight. Jair hopped back as it flopped over onto its side, Jair¡¯s attacks on its wing leaving it off balance. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. They¡¯d caught it off guard while digesting what looked like a large meal, judging by the lumpiness of its lower half, but it wasn¡¯t opposed to adding more. Its tongue whipped out, snapping around toward Jair. Eythron jumped into the fight and slashed the tongue with his sword. It wasn¡¯t Maelstrom and couldn¡¯t sever a resistant body part in a single strike from an elite monster, but it was enough to distract the creature. It wrapped its tongue around the sword and tugged it forward. Eythron let it pull him in, letting go at the last instant so the brobeg swallowed only the sword. ¡°Not your best move,¡± Jair cackled. Eythron raised a hand and stood unmoving. ¡°My turn.¡± Jair jumped in. He slapped the brobeg on the side of the leg with Maelstrom, drawing its ire. As much as it would love to finish gobbling up the unarmed and unmoving Eythron, the brobeg clearly recognized the guy with the brightly glowing sword as a bigger current threat. Its mistake. Eythron¡¯s sword came bursting out of the brobeg¡¯s lower jaw in an explosion of torn flesh and scattered blood, having torn clear through the inside of its mouth. He caught the blade by the hilt and immediately jumped back on the attack. Jair ducked just in time to evade a swipe from the creature¡¯s claws, distracted as he kept scanning the treetops. They were past the point the venix had attacked the first time, and still no sign of it. If it had given up on fighting him, he¡¯d have to go on the attack. It took another three minutes to finish the brobeg, which once again included Jair getting himself eaten as a distraction in the vital moment, but without a venix sharing mouth space it was entirely survivable. Eythron finished stabbing the thing from the outside, Jair amused himself by slicing its tongue into ever smaller sections while it tried and failed to swallow him, and finally it fell still. Jair carved his way out, then joined Eythron in stripping its hide and bundling it up for transport. ¡°Do you know any way of tracking a venix?¡± ¡°No. Dratted things do that teleport thing every few days. It¡¯s impossible to follow one once it does that. No way to know where to go.¡± Jair pondered the problem as they finished up, and quickly reached the conclusion that there was only one time he was guaranteed another shot at it. ¡°Apologies, master.¡± He dropped the roll of brobeg hide and gave a formal bow. Eythron squinted at him suspiciously. ¡°As much as I¡¯ve enjoyed our time together, I think it¡¯s time I went back to Qahrvirna for a bit. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll see you again soon. We¡¯ve still got a star hydra to hunt, but I have a few stops to take first.¡± Eythron frowned at him, then disappeared behind the curtain of golden light as Jair dove into Temporal Reversion. Since he wasn¡¯t trying to go back hours or days, he had plenty of time to assess the temporal landscape as he dropped back. Months spent with Eythron, months before that spent with Qahrvirna, and¡­ There. It was easy enough to see, a dramatic spike sticking out, and just below it a tiny vertical shelf. He prepared himself as the months fell away, then grabbed the spike in one hand and slammed his other hand onto the nascent shelf and pulled himself forward through the ghostly cliffside and into reality. Half a year ago, back when he¡¯d first arrived in the Oriad. Jair and Qahrvirna walked through the jungle together. It was nighttime, their path illuminated by Jair¡¯s staff. The abrupt shift from starting to feel like himself to his significantly weaker previous body was jarring, as was the sensation of having two standard hands again. He¡¯d gotten used to the construct one, and it made this one feel somewhat like a downgrade without the ability to move quite as freely. But what it lacked in physical flexibility, it made up for in imprint capacity. He retraced Absorb and Protect, one on each hand, right where they belonged. As bad as it felt losing so much improvement in the short term, if he was going to be hunting a star hydra he¡¯d need full magical capacity. The fact that this was the closest intersection with the venix was just poetic beauty. This was where it took his hand in the first place, and it would be where he took the final piece of its soul. Two days of walking and he started to get the feel of traveling with Qahrvirna again. He missed being able to move with full flexibility, his muscles still unformed now, and being without Lift showed that he relied on subtle application of the spell in casual movement a lot more than he¡¯d remembered, but it would be worth it. Finally, he spotted the telltale glint of an octide nest ahead of him in the trees. He slowed to a stop. Their first battleground. ¡°There¡¯s a nest of octide up ahead,¡± Jair whispered. He withdrew Maelstrom, the silver light drowning out the glow of his staff as it illuminated the thick foliage and glared off the low-lying fog. Qahrvirna shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. ¡°I can see why you need Eythron¡¯s help, that weapon¡¯s leaking power like a dying jackal.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to take them out. If you see a venix, shout.¡± ¡°A venix? Here?¡± Qahrvirna looked around uneasily. ¡°I don¡¯t like those things.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a vampire, do you like anything fire-based?¡± Qahrvirna shrugged dramatically and leaned up against the nearest tree, toying with her dagger. Jair charged the octide nest, adding the noise of trompling and shoving his way past underbrush to the light of his sword. It made him quite a dramatic target. Two younger octides scuttled down the trunks and toward him, awakened by the brightness and perfectly content to take advantage of a free meal delivered right to them. Jair sliced through their faceted green carapaces with ease. Though his arms were subtly weaker than he was used to and his movement a little less precise than a few days ago in the future, he didn''t need his full capability for this. Octide shells weren''t enough to resist Maelstrom''s strength. Bigger octides came at him as he finished off the earlier ones. He sliced away their slashing legs, retreating in a slow circle to prevent them surrounding him or shoving him into a corner. He quickly remembered why he¡¯d picked this fight in the first timeline¡ªit was excellent practice for getting back into the feeling of fighting. They were fast, but sluggish from sleep. Individually no threat, but enough of them to keep him moving. His arms ached from the strenuous workout, pulse surging with adrenaline. He could finish off any one---or any three---of the creatures with ease, but had to be wary of his positioning so he didn¡¯t leave himself vulnerable. Qahrvirna had moved on from leaning against a tree to sitting on a tree branch looking down at the spectacle from out of reach. ¡°You sure you don¡¯t want help?¡± ¡°Keep an eye out for the venix. I need to know as soon as it shows up.¡± As the octide nest finished emptying, the amount of oversized crystal bugs trying to chomp down on him steadied out, then began to drop as he killed them faster than they reached him. Octide pieces flew in all directions, their blood soaking the ground as Jair switched Maelstrom from hand to hand. Steadily retreating, steadily demolishing the oncoming horde, until finally he stood alone and triumphant among the cracked and dismembered remains of an entire nest¡¯s worth of octides. A few had tried to retreat, but they¡¯d waited too long. He chased them down to finish off each of them with full aggression. He¡¯d hoped that the show of complete preoccupation would be enough to lure the venix into attacking, but if it was watching them it had yet to show itself. ¡°Venix!¡± Jair¡¯s head whipped around. He ignored the octide he¡¯d been chasing and immediately dashed back toward where he¡¯d left Qahrvirna. A stack of octide carapaces had been scattered from what was obviously once a neat pile, and Qahrvirna was nowhere to be seen. ¡°Where are you?¡± ¡°Run away!¡± Jair ran in the direction of her voice. He¡¯d seen her fight the venix in the past, so he didn¡¯t see why she would have any trouble with it this time. ¡°Qahrvirna?¡± ¡°Don''t come this way!¡± Her voice was further away now than before, though he¡¯d been running full speed. ¡°You need to come back to me,¡± he shouted. ¡°I can¡¯t catch up.¡± Vampires and their blood powers. ¡°Run, you can¡¯t do anything!¡± ¡°I can help! Qahri! Get back here now!¡± No response. Jair snorted, much like Eythron would have, and slowed to tracking mode. Fortunately, a venix and a vampire left a sufficiently broad trail to follow with ease. He might not catch up with them before the fight was over, but as long as the venix was still around he might still be able to salvage this loop before he went back to try again. It took long enough to catch up that dawn had began to brighten the sky, and Jair started to worry he¡¯d been led astray by a game trail in the dark. Then he emerged into an open field and the fallout of the battle became immediately clear. Whole sections of the place had been flattened. Blood, both the glowing green of the venix and the deep red of the vampire, splattered the area in impressive quantities. Jair staggered forward, searching for anything recognizable. He was gasping for breath, the long run through the night wearing him out beyond what this past version of him could handle with equanimity. The early morning light cast long shadows from the trees behind him. Maelstrom¡¯s glow helped to counteract the dimness. He¡¯d left his staff behind a long time ago, never bothered to go back for it. Not that he needed it right now. He came over a small rise, and the hollow beyond showed exactly what he¡¯d been afraid of. Qahrvirna¡¯s body¡ªor what remained of it¡ªwas all but unrecognizable. The venix crouched over her, glowing green eyes rising to meet Jair¡¯s as it tore another strip of dark red vampire flesh from the arm it held down beneath one claw. Jair shook his head. ¡°Stubborn old witch. The one time I¡¯d actually be happy for her to betray me and she refuses to. What¡¯s wrong with her?¡± The venix took a step forward, carelessly snapping Qahrvirna''s bones underfoot. It was tall enough that, even with Jair at the top of the hill and itself at the bottom of the valley, it loomed taller than him. ¡°Time for you to die.¡± He held out Maelstrom, tip leveled at the monster¡¯s luminous eyes. ¡°Even if it was her own stubborn fault, you¡¯re going to regret killing my friend.¡±
43 - Darkflame Venix: also known as the ¡®jungle phoenix¡¯, this monstrous bird is one of the most uncommon creatures to inhabit the forests of Orard. Their fire is said to be selectively flammable, which is why the whole forest hasn¡¯t been immolated by now, but survivors of venix attacks are so uncommon that specific details are hard to come by. If you ever see one, your best chance of survival is to very quietly back away and find a place to hide.
Maelstrom¡¯s silver light glared off the massive bird¡¯s oversized green eyes, the pre-sunrise dawn leaving the rest of its body in shadow. The venix stepped toward Jair with slow deliberation, neck ducked, beak open eagerly in a barely-audible hiss. Jair knew he looked like easy prey. Worn out, barely upright, gasping for air. But right now he had the same advantage the venix did. Neither one of them cared if they died, but only Jair would receive permanent benefit from successfully killing the other. The venix was outmatched from the start. Its triple-jointed wings lit up with green flames as they spread above and behind, blocking out the sky and casting Jair in deeper shadow. Maelstrom flared up as though in response, silver pulse racing with Jair¡¯s heartbeat, the brobeg-flavored glow at its tip flickering in unsteady counterbalance. Jair waited, sword raised. The venix launched itself into the air, swooping by overhead. It snatched down at his head with one claw. Jair ducked aside, allowing it to swoosh past harmlessly, and slashed up at the claw with Maelstrom in the same motion. A brief shriek of pain, luminous green venix blood dripping down its injured but not severed claw, and then it was past. He turned, tracking its dark fiery form, as it reached the edge of the trees and circled back. Eyes beginning to glow with their inner yellow light, it dove at Jair with a piercing scream. His manabody trembled at the sound, its boundaries barely strong enough to hold its form against the assault. If he weren¡¯t a mage-type class, he¡¯d probably have collapsed then and there. Well, why not? He didn¡¯t have anything to lose. He fell to the ground, as though stunned by the magical attack, and let Maelstrom fall beside him. The venix swooped down triumphantly, pinning his torso beneath one massive claw as it landed atop him. Its head whipped down, stabbing at Jair¡¯s face with its wicked beak almost faster than he could follow. But he¡¯d fought this thing enough times by now to be fully familiar with its patterns. He¡¯d already shifted his hand into position over his collarbone pointing up. As soon as the venix committed to its attack, Maelstrom flashed back into Jair¡¯s hand. The full-force collision smashed Maelstrom¡¯s hilt backwards through Jair¡¯s chest, accompanied by a venix beak. He didn¡¯t know which of the two shattered his ribs and crushed his lungs, but he did know the venix had Maelstrom¡¯s blade sticking through the back of its skull again. Jair¡¯s hand and chest were destroyed, but his other hand came up and recalled Maelstrom, swiping in another arc through the venix¡¯s neck, then back around to stab it through the eye before it could react. It hissed in anger and jerked its head backward, tearing Jair¡¯s spine out through where his chest used to be. Then there was no time for anything but mitigating his own rapidly approaching demise, keeping the essentials moving how they needed to. It wasn¡¯t easy to sustain himself while missing so many functional organs, but with sufficiently drastic manabody intervention he could do it. He really hoped he¡¯d done enough damage to finish it off, because he wouldn¡¯t be able to pay attention to anything else. Taking control of his body and blood from inside without any of the normal physical connections to help was much, much harder to do now than it had been in the recent future. He¡¯d not done anything drastic to improve his magical strength over the future six months with Qahrvirna and Eythron, but even basic usage on the level of ¡®survive the Oriad¡¯ was enough to increase the sturdiness and connectivity level significantly. He had to take some major shortcuts and cannibalized basically his entire lower body just to keep his head functional. It was the kind of thing he would never survive if he planned to stay longer than a few minutes, drastic changes that could never be reversed and would leave him worse off in the end even if he were immediately healed. Being a time traveler gave him the unique position of being able to effectively utilize techniques that would ordinarily be sheer desperate folly in any other situation. The venix used its own magical tenacity to continue tearing his body apart, despite being blinded and in two separate pieces, but its persistence wore out before Jair¡¯s. In a flash of yellow flame, the impaled venix self-immolated. Bracing himself to act immediately, Jair activated Temporal Reversion. There was no spike to grab onto this time, since he¡¯d reverted past it, making the tiny beginning of a shelf he¡¯d used previously more difficult to keep hold of. Going back only a few days was a lot more challenging than going back a few months. If he hadn¡¯t been so practiced at it by now, he¡¯d likely have missed the ledge entirely. He grabbed out at it, gratified to see that it had grown more solid since last time. At this rate, it would grow into a proper shelf over time, giving him a nice backup starting point to his Oriad endeavors. Once he had a few more imprints to his name, he¡¯d want to find a new midpoint spot, but finding times to revert to was less of a science and more akin to rummaging around in mud hoping you found something worth grabbing. He pulled himself through the timefall and back into reality. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Jair and Qahrvirna walked through the jungle night together, their path illuminated by the glow of Jair¡¯s staff. Jair immediately summoned Maelstrom. Silver light flared up. Qahrvirna shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. ¡°I can see why you need Eythron¡¯s help, that weapon¡¯s leaking power like a dying jackal.¡± ¡°Not as much as it used to.¡± He didn¡¯t inspect it immediately, looking over Maelstrom¡¯s physical shape first. One edge was clean and sharp, the point was sheathed in a shimmering sickly-green veneer, and the other edge was jagged with spined serrations. The hilt, which had once held a thin green strand of color from the venix¡¯s influence, now had become fully the deep green color of venix feathers with just the faintest hint of black in the deeper grooves. Jair felt warmth as he held it, an echo of captive flame. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 25%) ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of limitless *****? After ****?, this blade now contains traces of darkflame, has taken on the ****?, and ***? and will **? once accumulated in sufficient quantity. ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne The integrity percentage had been steadily creeping upward as he killed the venix over and over, but it somehow staggered him to see it at 25%. A full quarter of Maelstrom¡¯s soul was settled in form. It felt oddly disconcerting. But the important part at the moment was seeing what he¡¯d obtained from his months of efforts. ¡°Darkflame.¡± Heat surged through his hand, Maelstrom tugging at his manabody. He allowed the connection. Power flowed and transformed. Maelstrom¡¯s silver glow was joined by black-green fire that flared out from its blade and flickered eagerly along its ridges. The only place it avoided was the very tip, where the brobeg essence repelled everything else. Qahrvirna yelped and jumped back, letting out a feral hiss. ¡°What have you done? And how have you done it?¡± ¡°Honestly? No idea.¡± He grinned and gave the sword a spin, shifting it from hand to hand, then tossed it into the air and caught it again. The initial connection had stopped, the fire self-sustaining. Disconnecting it from his manabody, no longer holding it physically, neither one deactivated the Darkflame effect. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯d be willing to volunteer a piece of your soul to experimentation, my dear?¡± Jair asked sweetly. ¡°It depends on how you plan to take it.¡± She smiled and bit at her lower lip with one fang, but there was an undertone of unease in her voice. ¡°Fiery sword of doom?¡± Qahrvirna shook her head, taking another step back. ¡°There¡¯s some things we don¡¯t play with.¡± Jair nodded. ¡°Unfortunate, but I understand.¡± He deposited Maelstrom back in his soul, then pulled it out again. The Darkflame remained active without demanding more mana. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you have any enemies you wouldn¡¯t mind losing their souls?¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s eyes gleamed in the flickering multi-hued Maelstromlight as she smiled coyly. ¡°Now that¡¯s a proposal I¡¯ll never turn down.¡±
Two nights later, Jair and Qahrvirna arrived at the octide nesting area where the venix had first ambushed them. He¡¯d done this fight twice before, and both times he¡¯d been initially overwhelmed by numbers despite Maelstrom¡¯s absurd cutting strength. Jair¡¯s body could only move so fast at this point in the timeline, and he had no way to control the directions from which the octides approached. They could drop down on him, surround him, and only when he¡¯d thinned out their numbers a bit could he safely switch to definitive final sweeps to clear them out. ¡°I¡¯m going to go kill those octides. If you see a venix, do not run away. Call for me. I will use my darkflame to counter it and my sword can eat its soul. If you try to take it on alone, you¡¯ll die.¡± Qahrvirna snorted. ¡°I¡¯m not fool enough to attack a venix.¡± ¡°It¡¯s planning to attack you. Remember, if it shows up, run toward me. I can protect you.¡± She gave his still relatively scrawny form a skeptical once-over. ¡°Need I remind you that I have a legendary sword?¡± ¡°You¡¯ll get yourself killed.¡± ¡°And that bothers you?¡± Qahrvirna shrugged. ¡°No. But you¡¯re interesting. If you were going to die, I¡¯d rather it not be something pointless like getting eaten by a venix. I can offer much better alternatives.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t be the one dying. This venix and I have a history.¡± She glanced at Maelstrom, still flickering with the green-black flames, then searched Jair¡¯s face. ¡°Again, I find myself believing you against all reason. You are an enigma, Jair Welburne.¡± ¡°And I don¡¯t even have to try.¡± He raised Maelstrom in a salute, then nodded his head toward the distant glint of octide shell lurking in the treetops. ¡°I¡¯m going to go clear those octides. Call me if the venix shows up.¡± Qahrvirna nodded. ¡°I will.¡± She sounded surprised even as she said it. Jair charged forward at full speed. He didn¡¯t bother with a normal approach, just sprinted straight into the heart of the octide nest¡¯s territory. It may not be the ideal testing ground for Darkflame, but it would at least be a pretty easy comparison. Since he¡¯d redone the fight only a couple days ago, the memory was clear enough. Two younger octides skittered down, ready to deal with the intruder in their midst. Jair slashed the first one¡¯s forelegs as it stabbed out at him¡ª The entire creature immolated in a flash of green and black. The dark fire took the single moment of contact and spread instantly up the octide¡¯s body and burned it away. Jair¡¯s swing passed through the cloud of ash that was all that remained of the first octide, the Darkflame no longer visibly present in Maelstrom¡¯s aura. He felt the ability tugging at his mana as Maelstrom neared the second, and allowed it to resurge. The second octide was still moving toward him when Maelstrom nicked its side, and the green-black fire rushed down and engulfed it, leaving Jair standing next to two piles of octide ashes and left momentarily without an opponent. It was over so fast, he hardly knew what to think. The drain on his manabody was substantial, but not crippling. Two instakills and he felt as though he could do it another dozen times at least before pushing into overdraw. ¡°I wish you could hold more than a single charge at once,¡± he told Maelstrom, as Darkflame sprang back up around it. ¡°If I¡¯m going to be channeling mana nonstop, that¡¯ll mess up with my imprints.¡± Perhaps it would be better to save it for emergencies, but right now he had nothing better to do and about a hundred octides eagerly rushing to their death. Just how far could he push this? It was on his fifth octide that something went¡­ odd. As the blade struck the creature, the flash of fire was tinted distinctly with the brobeg¡¯s slime green rather than the darker green of the venix. Just like the previous four, it immolated and burned away to ash, but instead of staying a pile of ash it immediately reconstituted into a confused looking octide whose crystal shell had taken on the same yellow-green as the glow of Maelstrom¡¯s tip. ¡°Well. That¡¯s¡­ different.¡±
44 - Alteration Hide beside the river if you wish to die undisturbed. Only we are fool enough to approach what all of nature knows to avoid.
Jair stared at the strangely mutated octide. The octide stared at Jair. The remaining octides began to keep their distance now, retreating back up into the trees or backing away to watch from outside the circle of Maelstrom¡¯s glow. Apparently the excessive quantity of flame was more intimidating than a guy merely slicing them to pieces with a glowing sword. ¡°Hello?¡± Jair asked, then immediately felt silly. Talking to an octide. Who did that? ¡°You gonna just stand there, or what?¡± ¡°Are you talking to an octide?¡± Qahrvirna called over from her tree. ¡°You know they can¡¯t talk back.¡± The strange octide¡¯s upper body turned toward Qahrvirna¡¯s voice, then back to Jair. Its legs shifted on the ground, tapping as it swayed to one side, then back. Jair backed toward Qahrvirna. The octide didn¡¯t follow. ¡°I¡¯m very confused by what¡¯s going on here,¡± he admitted. ¡°Are you familiar with darkflame?¡± ¡°Of course I am.¡± ¡°What does it do?¡± ¡°Kill people like me, obviously. Which is why I¡¯d prefer you keep it over there.¡± She made little shooing motions with her knife. ¡°And in your experience, darkflame doesn¡¯t ever resurrect them as different-colored zombie versions of themselves?¡± ¡°Why would it do that, that¡¯s ridiculous.¡± Jair pointed at the octide. The other octides had begun moving forward by now, warily circling the intruder in their midst¡ªwhich, Jair now noticed, had also grown larger than the others of its age in addition to changing color. They seemed disinclined to interact with it at all, either with curiosity or hostility, parting around it as they moved to surround Jair. For its part, the green octide just stood there, looking even more confused than Jair felt. Qahrvirna hopped out of the growing circle, swinging up to perch on a tree branch well out of reach. The standard octides closed in, slow and cautious. It¡¯d been a minute, allowing Jair¡¯s manabody to recover the tiniest bit, so he activated Darkflame. The octides immediately stopped approaching. The nearest ones backed away, those behind them skittering aside to let them retreat. ¡°Looks like vampires aren¡¯t the only things scared of fire, huh Qahri? You have more in common with these crawlies than I¡¯d have guessed.¡± ¡°Very funny,¡± she said, unamused. ¡°You planning to stand there being a torch until we run out of starlight?¡± ¡°You¡¯re a lot less aggressive when there¡¯s fire involved, huh¡­¡± Jair swung the fiery blade casually at the nearest octide, which skittered backwards. He lunged, and successfully stabbed it through the chest. Darkflame flared up, immolating the creature. The octides who¡¯d fled before the sword while darkflame was active turned, hunger once again overriding terror. Caution accompanied it, now, but though they hesitated they still advanced. The green resurrected octide had no such hesitation. It charged through its more standard brethren straight at Jair, hissing with fury. ¡°Oho, so you don¡¯t like me now. Interesting.¡± He met the monster with a swift stab. Maelstrom seemed to pass straight through it harmlessly, as though it were illusion. Jair stumbled, caught off guard by the complete lack of resistance. He turned it into a controlled fall, throwing himself out of the charging creature¡¯s path. The standard octides joined in, rushing at Jair while still giving the green one as much of a wide berth as was possible when they were all chasing the same small target. He activated darkflame, and they retreated. All but the green one. It continued to slash at him with its forelegs, skittering away and then toward him again in quick strikes that he struggled to keep up with. Maelstrom didn¡¯t seem able to touch it. The sword went right through it, but the creature¡¯s claws certainly weren¡¯t intangible. It finally got a claw into his arm and tore a deep gouge. Jair waved his flaming sword through the creature, but it simply couldn¡¯t make contact. Like some strange inverse of Bladewalk techniques, two tangible objects unable to interact. ¡°Qahri, could you be a dear and toss my staff over?¡± Jair backed away from the ghostly mutant octide, using his injured arm to block its attacks since his main weapon was suddenly useless against it. Qahrvirna tossed the staff, but it fell short. Jair ran over to it and set about whacking the mutant octide with as much force as he could muster. He held it and Maelstrom together, the darkflame keeping the other octides at bay while he dealt with the anomalous one. Darkflame provided a very convenient way to slow down the encounter and give himself time to catch up with their greater numbers. As the bizarre battle continued, the swarm began to break up. With hisses and clicking they finally decided it wasn¡¯t worth the effort. They retreated up their trees into the interwoven nest above, glaring down at him. All but the green one, which had gotten in its head that Jair was its sole focus of existing and he needed to be subsequently torn apart and devoured. Typical octide attitude. Jair¡¯s lack of cutting ability made the fight stupidly longer than it needed to be. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose I could borrow your sword?¡± ¡°What¡¯re you offering?¡± ¡°Some anomalous octide shell?¡± ¡°Mmmm¡­ tempting.¡± Jair backtracked again, blocking two claws with the staff, another with his arm, but the fourth hit. The octide simply had too many limbs for him to manage against in a straight fight without the ability to use magic or Maelstrom. Its leg stabbed into his shoulder, just beside the collarbone, and tore free a chunk of his flesh. ¡°Qahri, a little help?¡± ¡°Put out that fire of yours and I¡¯ll take care of it for you.¡± Jair dismissed Maelstrom. Darkness fell immediately, the near-daylight brilliance of Maelstrom¡¯s silver and darkflame glow replaced by the dull light of Jair¡¯s staff. Qahrvirna¡¯s eyes glowed red in the dark as she darted forward, a blur of motion. The mutant octide raised four legs to strike at Jair, then Qahrvirna was in front of it, sword in one hand, knife in the other, slicing upward to sever all four limbs at once as she ran straight into its body and bit down on the exposed stomach. Jair winced. Of all the things he¡¯d want to bite, sickly-green octide stomach was not one of them. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Vampires¡­ he¡¯d never understand them. The octide retreated, and Qahrvirna went with it. She brought both arms around and stabbed both sword and knife through its back, ignoring the fact that the sword was long enough it went through her own stomach in the process. Then she staggered backwards, gagging. She gave a wordless snarl of disgust and moved in a blur, slicing the octide into so many pieces so fast it seemed to simply fall apart between one moment and the next. Qahrvirna doubled over. Blood ran down her side from an octide slash, more oozed out of her stomach where she¡¯d stabbed herself. She choked and spit out something pale and greenish, chest heaving, then looked around wildly. Her eyes landed on Jair and she was already stepping forward when he summoned Maelstrom between them. ¡°No biting, remember?¡± The darkflame remained active despite having been stored in his soul for a time. The vampire snorted and bared her teeth at him with a feral hiss, then spun away. She grabbed the nearest tree in her bare hands and climbed up it in a blur. She¡¯d left her weapons behind, but she didn¡¯t need them. The octide nest above exploded into chaos. Jair left her to it. He was more interested in finding out what had happened to the mutant octide she¡¯d killed. The front half of its body had been diced thoroughly, but the back half was largely untouched. He prodded at it with Maelstrom¡¯s tip, and the flesh reacted exactly as one would expect when prodded with a sword, slicing open readily. Whatever bizarre interaction was going on here to render it immune to Maelstrom, it had ended when the creature died. He de-shelled the creature and retrieved its salvageable eyes, then started harvesting the other octides he¡¯d killed. He glanced up at the trees now and then for any sign of the venix, but so far he saw nothing to indicate its presence. Occasionally, an octide or three would fall from the overhead battle, usually torn apart into chunks and drained of what little blood they contained. Jair continued to salvage whatever alchemical ingredients could be had from the pieces. Finally, the forest fell silent. The last octides lay unmoving. Qahrvirna dropped down from above, wiping her lips with a sheepish expression. ¡°You¡¯re right, I should definitely save you for a special occasion. Something like this¡­ it would be such a waste.¡± ¡°Yeah, I told you I don¡¯t like it when ladies rush.¡± He dismissed Maelstrom and stood up, gesturing at the neatly stacked octide shells. ¡°Add it to my tab.¡± She collected the shells, dropping them into her soulspace, and tucked the eyes away in her bag. ¡°You sure Eythron gets first dibs? I could use an assistant of your caliber.¡± Jair smiled. ¡°I made a promise to Eythron and I will fulfill it, but if we go on a few detours on the way he doesn¡¯t have to know.¡±
Unfortunately for the sake of experimentation, the local octides were fully decimated. They hung around another hour in case the venix decided to show itself, but eventually Qahrvirna declared that they¡¯d wasted enough time and they should either kill something or get walking. Since there was nothing to kill, they got walking. Jair took out a handful of viper squirrels with darkflame out of curiosity, but they didn¡¯t even consume the effect, just burst into flame the moment the sword came close while Maelstrom continued to burn with black-green fire. The hours of walking felt interminable. Why would nothing attack them the one day he actually wanted them to? He traced and re-traced his imprints to the extent that even Qahrvirna started giving him odd looks, but he couldn¡¯t help it. He had a whole new power to explore and test and nothing was attacking him. True, they usually were only attacked once or twice per day, and the octide nest probably had a decently large territory given how many there were, but only the fact that he¡¯d have to walk through two more days of nothing to get back to it prevented him from reverting right then and there. Finally, a vylix pounced on Qahrvirna¡¯s back, ran headfirst into her Unseen Shield, and Jair jumped on its back in turn. Maelstrom flared into silver light and green-black flame, then stabbed down into the feline''s exposed back. Qahrvirna yelped as the creature incinerated right on top of her, but though the back of her dress got a bit scorched her body was untouched. She patted herself down in confusion. "I''m... alive?" "Venix fire can burn selectively. I didn''t choose to attack you, so neither did Maelstrom." Jair stared down at the pile of ashes that had been the vylix. It was just an ordinary one, not greater, so it didn''t even give Maelstrom any additional tail-spike upgrades. "This is going to take a lot longer than I thought." The rest of the day they encountered only a small pair of octides out roaming, which Jair killed one after the other. The first fell to the ground as ashes as normal, but the second burned out and reconstituted, again with the oddly colored tint to its shell. Qahrvirna stared at it with a look of disgust. "What is that thing?" The octide looked at Jair with a look of complete blankness. Jair shrugged. "You''d know better than me, last time we had one you tried to eat it." She scowled. "I would never." "You definitely did. Guess you were hungrier after crossing the dragon pass than you let on, huh? Maybe that means you can leave me alone longer than five seconds." "Never. You''re far too interesting to give up on so quickly." She sidled closer. Jair moved away, toward the green octide. "What is your secret, little thing? What is it that darkflame does when mixed with brobeg essence?" He reached out a hand and cautiously touched the octide on the head. It was cool and solid against his fingers. It didn''t appear to have noticed his approach or touch. He tapped it a couple times. It didn''t react. He took a step back and very slowly prodded at one of its legs with Maelstrom''s tip. The sword passed straight through it, like it was a ghost. The octide didn''t respond to the sword''s presence or the attempt at poking it. "Does it only fight when there are more of its kind around?" Jair wondered. He stepped closer and smacked the mutant octide across its stomach with the back of his hand. No reaction. He took out his staff and started thwacking it more aggressively. It simply stood. He put away his weapons and stared blankly at the blankly staring creature. It returned his gaze with more emptiness than he''d have thought possible. "If you''re going to kiss, hurry up," Qahrvirna called. "I want a turn." "To kiss the octide?" She made a disgusted face. "I don''t kiss antimagic things, thank you. It''s bad for my complexion." Jair stopped, then turned to the vampire. "Antimagic, you say?" She waved a hand up and down at the octide revenant. "Every piece of it is saturated in antimagic. If you were able to kill it, I''d love to have its shell. Grind it up and it''ll be a perfect emergency neutralizer." "Can I borrow your sword? Mine seems to be having performance issues." She grinned and tossed it over. Jair caught it and turned back to the mysterious creature. He stabbed the octide through the front, avoiding hitting any of its eyes so Qahrvirna could have them. Even as he systematically killed the creature, it remained nonresponsive, right up until it simply fell dead with as little fanfare as it had stood while alive. "Is a soulsword passing through an antimagic item an ordinary interaction?" Jair asked. "I''ve never had this problem before." He''d fought the dragon plenty of times, and though dragons absorbed all magic in their vicinity, it had done nothing to Maelstrom and he''d still been able to cut it. Same with the brobegs. They had innate antimagic, but it didn''t prevent a soulsword''s blade from carving them apart. Disgruntled that the octide hadn''t provided any great insights, Jair helped Qahrvirna finish harvesting it for ingredients while rejecting her every advance. They resumed walking and found nothing more that night before they set up camp to sleep for the day. The following night, they got lucky and crossed the trail of a herd of wild bulbix. Jair eagerly chased them down with high hopes of learning something interesting. And interesting he got. The first bulbix he incinerated reconstituted as a green version immediately. It stood without moving for a time, while Jair examined it. Then he moved on to the next bulbix, and that''s when things got chaotic. The moment his sword collided with the bulbix, before the flame could flare up, the first revenant charged at him. The second bulbix burst into flame, turned to ash, and immediately revived. But instead of standing around, it promptly turned and attacked the first. Jair stared as the two massive cow-things each tried to push the other over, one trying desperately to kill Jair, the other trying to kill its opponent. They were very evenly matched. Jair instinctively jumped into the fight to protect ''his'' bulbix, but hitting something this big with his staff wasn''t effective. It did effectively get Jair into its attack range, though, and he quickly found that while a bulbix may pose no threat to a hungry dragon, that much weight and aggression could do a significant amount of damage to a squishy human. He¡¯d perhaps gotten a little carried away in his excitement for testing his new power. The aggressive bulbix gored and trampled him quite thoroughly. Jair didn''t even have a chance to see how the fight ended before he had to revert or let his soul start to dissolve. His brief timefall was uneventful. The ledge he¡¯d been using continued to grow stronger and clearer, much harder to miss even though it was only a few days back. As soon as he arrived in the past, Jair double checked Maelstrom''s status to be sure there was no accidental bulbix soul in Maelstrom''s makeup. Though he wasn''t entirely sure it would be a bad thing if it had... those horns were dangerous. But, no, as expected, the integrity percentage remained where it had been, at 25%. Nothing he''d killed in the previous loop had been strong enough for its soul to survive the transfer. He practically bounced as he walked beside Qahrvirna through the night. Two more nights of walking, and he could try the octide nest again¡ªthis time with a better idea of what to look for.
45 - Recreation ¡°You¡¯re sure you¡¯re not lying to me?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not lying, but I¡¯m not telling you everything.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Some things, it would only hurt you to know.¡±
Jair went through the octide swarm this time with much more care not to scare them off. He activated Darkflame only in the instant Maelstrom met each creature, giving it only a moment to flare up before fading, which allowed him to get through more of them before they decided to flee. This gave him a nice large scale amount of data to look at regarding what happened when darkflame killed something. Out of the first ten octides, two were revived as the antimagic version of themselves. None of the next ten, then two of the next twenty. He continued through the rest of the nest, adding four more revenant octides to the group as he finished off the last twenty or so, then one more as he hunted down the last few who''d tried to run away. The revenant octides'' behavior after revival was growing more predictable, but still not something he fully understood. They would stand quietly unless fighting was happening, and if fighting was happening they''d get involved. Whose side they''d get involved in seemed fairly random, at least in the chaos of Jair''s battle against overwhelming numbers. Of the nine total he ended up with, six ended up fighting for him against their normal kin, while the others came after Jair aggressively enough that they gave their counterparts a solid fight. Aside from Qahrvirna''s spells, which did nothing against the green-hued revenants, only Maelstrom failed to impact them. Any normal physical attack was unmitigated as long as it wasn''t made by Maelstrom. Jair really wasn''t sure what to make of this. It didn''t align with any of the standard abilities, didn''t even match up with any of the less common ones. Animation abilities, control classes, mental influences, creation and conjuration, all of it could be combined to imitate whatever darkflame was doing. But this power didn''t feel like a combination. It felt more like a convergence. The fact that they had the brobeg''s more yellow-green hue rather than the black-green of the venix gave Jair a bit more of a hint as to what could be going on. In the end, it seemed fairly simple. The brobeg was immune to magic, the venix could revive itself, so roughly one of every nine or ten creatures Jair killed with darkflame would be revived as a copy of itself immune to magic. And being stabbed with Maelstrom specifically. That part was more than a little annoying. It also raised the question of whether he could rely on darkflame at all against something more powerful. If he could immolate a brobeg in one hit, that would be great... but if it then returned completely immune to his weapon and decided to be hostile? Thoughts of burning Ryenzo away in a single flash were quickly assailed by thoughts of an even stronger and more resistant Ryenzo unrelentingly continuing the pursuit of Jair and Raina. Though, in that case, he could always revert. If it only happened one in every nine or ten times¡ªeven if he rounded up and said it happened one in eight times¡ªit wasn''t something to really worry about. Just be aware of. The fact that he couldn''t pin down exactly what made the creatures hostile or protective toward nagged at him. At least with the weaker monsters so far, they¡¯d only ever joined an existing combat, never initiated one. As long as it was one on one, Jair could just walk away. Probably. He hadn''t verified it yet, but he was growing more confident in his theories. He helped Qahrvirna collect the octide carapace and eyes. His two surviving octide revenants circled the vicinity as they did so, staring out at the surrounding jungle as though searching for danger with their blank gazes. If Jair figured out how to reliably get the revenants on his side, it could be very helpful. Unfortunately, as far as he could tell, there was no way to intentionally trigger the revive target mechanism, or to duplicate, command, store, conjure, or otherwise interface with the creatures. Once created they were there, and that was all. Less useful than an animator''s subordinates, perhaps, but even if he could never do anything but watch them fight for him it was an unexpected boon. Mageblade was a class known for its intensive personal focus, improving the specific user above all else. It even stood outside the usual hierarchies of class rank, granting no benefits to subordinates and not qualifying toward the abilities of superiors. To have an ability capable of creating even occasionally allied creatures was far outside expectations. When Qahrvirna was finished and the two of them left the site of the slaughter behind, the two octide revenants followed. They continued their protective circling, but they also didn''t have even the slightest sense of stealth. The octides¡¯ presence made their party significantly less covert, but did they need to stay covert at this point? Jair wanted things to come try and kill him. The more, the better. They fought the common vylix, the serrated-tailed feline doing its best to shred the party, but Jair''s octides were having none of it. Though they ignored its approach, making them entirely useless as scouts, the moment it attacked they focused in fully and counterattacked with such violence that the cat was forced to retreat. It didn''t get far before Jair caught up and stabbed it, Darkflame incinerating it on the spot. "I''m impressed," he told the pair of revenants, "standing up against your natural predator and winning." They didn''t respond, only resumed their perpetual circling patrol, keeping perfect pace with Jair and Qahrvirna. "I''m not sure if I should be disturbed or impressed," the vampire said, as they settled down in a cave for the day. The opening was low, hanging with moss and thorns. Tree roots twisted around one side, forming a natural arch of sorts. "How long do they last?" You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Jair shook his head. "No idea. This is the first time we''ve all survived longer than a single fight." "Ooh, exciting. Take notes on what you find out.¡± ¡°I will,¡± Jair promised. He smiled innocently. ¡°And if you¡¯re very nice, I may even let you see them.¡± Qahrvirna pouted and went to lie down in the darkest recesses of the cave. He didn''t sleep much, too interested in observing every last moment of these creatures'' bizarre existence. He half expected them to disappear any minute, but as the day wore on and Qahrvirna slept, the revenant octides circled the entrance tirelessly without pause or shift in rhythm. Fog hung low, muffling the insects chirping and creatures rustling, lit up by shafts of sunlight between branches. Jair walked over to the patrolling octides and nudged one out of its track. It moved around him, shifting its path to a broader one circling his new location. He took hold of one of its claws to lead it alongside him, and it came with reluctant half-skitters to one side or the other as though eager to be away and back to its circling. "Protective," he realized. That was the key nature. Whether they decided to protect their fellows by attacking Jair, or guard Jair from any comers, the default behavior of Maelstrom''s revenants was to protect. Which, the moment he thought it, made perfect sense. Fight to protect. The exact reason he''d created Maelstrom. Kill the dragon to save Raina. The brobeg''s influence counteracted Maelstrom''s natural power in some unknown way. He wondered if that could be why the darkflame revenants appeared as blank slates upon creation. He''d still need to narrow down the exact triggers for what made the revival effect occur in the first place, unless it was truly random. He couldn''t think of a pattern that fit. Sometimes they were the smaller ones, sometimes bigger. Some groups he''d end up reviving two or three of, others none. It was too early to give up on finding the pattern. Jair of all people would be willing to try an unreasonable number of permutations before accepting a situation at face value. He found a mossy stick and bent down to pick it up. Snapping it in three pieces, he threw them one at a time at one of the octides. The circling octide didn''t react to the attacks, such as they were. It continued to circle. Jair ran up to the creature and kicked it. It moved away to continue its patrol. Jair glanced at the second. He''d thought it might react aggressively to protect its fellow, but it also ignored Jair¡¯s actions. Was it an imprinting thing more than a behavior thing, then? It certainly seemed that way. Once the revenants settled on their Creature To Be Protected, they''d stick with that. Which immediately raised several followup questions. For how long? What would they do if their object of fixation was killed? He needed more creatures to test with. That herd of bulbix they¡¯d encountered in the previous loop should work, if Qahrvirna ever woke up. Jair swallowed his impatience. There was still more he could learn here today. Not everything had to be discovered through action. He sat down, Maelstrom across his lap with his hands resting lightly on its hilt and jagged-edged blade. For a long moment he only looked down at the sword, its form so much transformed from the original deformed shape it had been born as. Where once the imprint of his fingers had left dulled lumps where there should have been smooth steel, now a double ridge of vicious barbs adorned the edge, reaching halfway from hilt to tip. The pearl that had been knocked out of alignment remained where it was, but the way it led into the jagged spines made the positioning look intentional rather than the result of him being slammed atop the weapon before it could fully coalesce. It would never be what he¡¯d once envisioned it as becoming, but the alterations and augmentations to its form were creating something far beyond his initial expectations. The sword he and Eythron had designed over years of testing and discussion and experimentation was based on an untested premise. Maelstrom had turned out to be so much more. Jair ran one finger across the tip, where the yellow-green glow pushed back against the silver glow. The shape of the blade was unchanged, but this one spot felt oily and vaguely wrong. He disliked the brobeg¡¯s influence as much in physical reality as inside Maelstrom¡¯s soul. Though¡­ was the spot smaller now than it had been? He thought he remembered it being larger. He¡¯d verify that while inside. He hadn¡¯t looked at Maelstrom¡¯s soulmap yet since completing Darkflame. Now that he¡¯d tested out its capabilities, he was curious to see the changes internally. He closed his eyes and searched inward. His soulspell remained as impenetrable as ever, a golden network of incredible complexity looping back in and onto itself in ways that couldn¡¯t quite be perceived, let alone understood. Beside that, Maelstrom looked downright simple for all its own complexity. Focusing further in, he isolated Maelstrom¡¯s soulmap and brought it into the forefront of his thoughts. The unstable shifting web of silver filigree that had been there previously had stabilized into a clear form. Instead of appearing like a damaged fabric torn with uneven gashes, it now resembled an intricate jewelry setting waiting for its custom-created gems. The outer shape was something like an elongated spider web with nine points, but instead of being divided by straight lines it was intricate swirls and curves that split the interior into dozens of smaller gaps. Nine larger sections came together in the center in a twisted spiral, two of which were filled in. One was part of an interconnected network that stretched all the way from one outer edge to the inner spiral, the color of Darkflame and the pattern matched to the rest of Maelstrom¡¯s soul. The other was thorny and brown and filled in just under half as much space as Darkflame. The large patch of slimy brobeg-essence that had been draping itself all over Maelstrom¡¯s soul had shifted. It now covered half as much of the network of silver as it previously, only a tenth now rather than a full fifth, sprawled across the silver of one of the blank sections still waiting for content. The other half may seem to have disappeared, but he had a pretty good idea of where to look. Jair focused in on the venix¡¯s sections, and found what he¡¯d expected after a moment of searching. Subtle patches of filmy brobeg slime pooled in the recessed whorls of Darkflame, looking at first like an intentional part of its pattern, only revealed as foreign upon close examination. He wasn¡¯t sure what to think of its influence on Darkflame, or what that influence had done. He instinctively wanted to blame it for Maelstrom¡¯s inability to touch the revived creatures, but that felt like an incomplete answer. But when dealing with things on the level of ¡®mixing and matching different creatures souls inside my own¡¯ it was hard to test anything with any degree of certainty. None of what he was doing with Maelstrom could be duplicated, he knew that much. Whatever had occurred that last desperate instant on Mount Sanctum, no amount of repetition could recreate. Some questions may never be answered. That didn¡¯t mean he was going to stop looking. He stayed there for a time, observing the soulmap to see if it would start to shift, but it appeared to have fully stabilized. It was no longer trying desperately to repair itself, tearing open new wounds in the process, but settled and patient. It seemed to understand what it was missing and how it would be replaced, and formatted itself accordingly. The long delicate sections of spirals and waves provided a clear structure and hierarchy, rather than the shifting collection of patches it had been before. Jair smiled fondly and returned his attention to his body. The angle of the sun had shifted, but less than he¡¯d hoped. He¡¯d spent perhaps an hour and a half examining Maelstrom¡¯s soul, which still left practically the whole day before Qahrvirna woke and they could start walking again. He was eager to get back to exploring his upgraded weapon¡¯s potential, and he had a bit of a score to settle with a certain herd of round cows. He glanced over at the sleeping vampire, then grinned and shrugged. He didn''t actually need to wait for her. No point wasting the day. It was only late morning, she''d be sleeping for hours yet. Plenty of time to track down one little herd of cattle and kill them all for science. Qahrvirna would approve.
46 - Testing, Testing To one who can bear its cost, the path of impossibility opens.
Jair set out on his quest to slay some cows, leaving Qahrvirna alone in her cave to sleep the day away. His pair of revenant octides circled him tirelessly, maintaining their perimeter distance. Three and a half hours later, Jair finally tracked his round cow quarry to their current location: a different field than the one he''d fought them in the first time. His octide escort, though they were about waist-high to him, looked quite minuscule beside the oversized cattle. Ah, well. Darkflame was the great equalizer. He walked up to the first cow-creature and stabbed it. He activated Darkflame, and the bulbix immolated instantly. Ashes drifted down in the sunlight, settling on the grass where the creature had been standing and leaving a grey smudge destined to be washed away by the first rain. Jair stabbed a second, but didn''t activate Darkflame. He backed away, observing his octides. They didn''t move to attack his target, instead continuing their circling while the angry bulbix snorted and turned on Jair with clear aggression. Useless until he was actually attacked, confirmed. He met the furious bulbix¡¯s charge with a Maelstrom to the snout. Darkflame consumed the creature¡¯s body, leaving Jair untouched, though the momentum of the collision knocked him back. The octides had started toward him at the moment of impact, but now returned to circling. This further cemented Jair¡¯s belief that he''d figured out their nature. They weren''t soldiers, they were guardians. Now, he just had to verify if that was universally true, or some hidden trait of the octide species that merely required the intervention of a brobeg-venix Maelstrom to unlock. He immolated the next bulbix, and when it failed to be reborn, he moved on to the next. Only one of the bulbix ended up reviving this time around, and it followed the pattern of ¡®stand around mindlessly¡¯. Jair tried walking in front of it, ensuring he was the first thing it saw. The bulbix revenant didn¡¯t react to his presence. The obvious thing to try activating its protector mode would be to have something attack him, but the rest of the bulbix herd had run away instead of seeking vengeance for their incinerated kin. Perhaps if he provoked one of the creatures while out of the revenant¡¯s line of sight, then ran back to it? He chased after the fleeing bulbix herd, cursing his lack of Lift. If he weren¡¯t limited to his silly mortal body¡¯s weak status he¡¯d easily outrun the overly rotund cows, but as it was they outpaced him by a lot. He couldn¡¯t slow down without losing them, but his pursuit didn¡¯t make things any easier. However silently he could move, his flanking octides crashed through bushes and over rocks, oblivious to the terrain. The bulbix continued to run away. Several times they slowed, only to speed up again as soon as he got anywhere close. Eventually he gave the last remnants of the herd up as a lost cause and backtracked along the same route as he''d followed to get here. His octides¡¯ trail marked their passage clearly. The giant crawlies were far from the most destructive of creatures, but to someone used to tracking in the Oriad they may as well have been throwing brightly colored paint everywhere. Jair returned to the single revenant bulbix, which remained standing unmoving. "I don''t suppose there''s any way to get you to move, huh?" The bulbix didn''t answer. "Do you still need to eat, I wonder?" Jair turned to his octides. "Would one of you attack me please?" They continued circling as though they hadn''t heard him. Or hadn''t understood him. Same outcome either way. "I''d like to verify some of my theories here. Come on." None of the creatures changed their behavior in any way. Sighing, Jair left the creature standing as silent guardian of this random patch of field and returned along the trail. It wasn''t as easy to find Qahrvirna''s cave as he''d anticipated. If not for the octides¡¯ trail to follow, he might have ended up a bit lost. Despite his many years in the Oriad, the specifics of how areas looked changed regularly with the weather and natural actions of monsters and creatures that inhabited it, not to mention some of the trees liked to disguise themselves and sneak off to mess with him. Being back several months before he''d ever gotten here in previous timelines meant he didn''t know the place by sight as he would most of Eythron''s favored haunts later on. Qahrvirna was still asleep when Jair found the place again a little after midday. His stomach was protesting the extensive exercise and lack of food, so he started a fire and cooked up some of the octide meat Qahrvirna had kept. He wished he''d thought to filet one of the bulbixes before incinerating them, but at the time he''d been preoccupied with figuring out his sword''s newest confusing ability. By the time Qahrvirna woke in the late evening, Jair had gone out on three additional expeditions to search the area for anything else alive that he could test his darkflame on. He did not catch up to the bulbix herd again, nor find anything strong enough to be worth his full attention. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He''d especially like to see if Darkflame did anything to a greater vylix. He''d proven it could handle the standard versions, but if Maelstrom''s upgrades were anything to go by, greater vylix were a distinct tier higher. There was also the question of whether the antimagic revenant sub-ability of Darkflame would activate more frequently, less frequently, or with the same once every nine to ten as the weaker creatures. As usual, Jair''s wish for a thing wasn''t enough to lure it into existence. If he wanted to find a fury of vylix, he''d need to go out searching for them. And probably spend more than three hours on it. "You''re welcome to put it out," Qahrvirna¡¯s voice interrupted. Jair looked up; he''d been staring into the cooking fire and fully ignoring reality. "Not all of us favor our meat bloody." She grinned at him. ¡°There¡¯s always the option if you change your mind.¡±
At some point that night as they continued on, the pair of guardian octides who¡¯d been following them all this time disappeared. Jair didn¡¯t catch the moment it happened, just noticed the silence. When he looked around they were no longer circling. He backtracked to search for their remains, and found nothing. They¡¯d disappeared as thoroughly from physical reality as they¡¯d been intangible to Maelstrom this whole time, as though it just took a bit longer for their tangible layer to catch up to their soul¡¯s dispersal. Through continued testing the following weeks as they traveled back toward Qahrvirna¡¯s tower, Jair learned a reasonable amount about the mechanics of Maelstrom¡¯s new ability. Different species of creature reacted the same to being turned into a darkflame revenant. As he¡¯d postulated, the blank staring and guarding behavior was not special to octides. Darkflame worked just as well to incinerate plant-based monsters as animal-based ones, but it had yet to revive any plant-based creature as a revenant. Jair wasn''t sure if this was because he''d only killed a handful of plants so far, or if it were innately different. There was no particular way that using Maelstrom triggered the darkflame revive sub-ability more reliably than others. Stabbing directly in, slashing with the serrated edge, slicing with the flat edge, regardless of where or how the darkflame was applied it all burned the same and had the same chance of triggering its secondary effect. "I keep thinking I''ll get tired of watching you stab things," Qahrvirna said as the fourth night of their travels together since the octide nest drew on. "And you keep proving me wrong.¡± ¡°I¡¯m glad to be traveling with someone who can appreciate the pursuit of knowledge.¡± ¡°Of course! Knowing just how quickly the darkflame spreads based on the location of impact could be essential knowledge when going up against something significantly larger.¡± Jair hadn¡¯t been measuring that, but he saw no need to admit that to Qahrvirna. ¡°I¡¯ll want copies of your measurements when we get to your tower.¡± ¡°Of course.¡± She¡¯d been assiduously gathering up a bag of ash from each creature he killed, labeling it with the creature type and location, and storing them in her oversized bag. This slowed down their progress only a little. He didn¡¯t protest since she was willing to go chasing off after anything that moved at Jair¡¯s request. They did find another small group of vylix, but again no greater vylix among them. Darkflame provided an eclectic mix of potential escorts along the way, but since Jair had yet to come up with a reliable way to get himself attacked outside an ongoing battle they¡¯d been forced to leave behind more than followed along with them. Most encounters resulted in only one revenant, if any, and it was a toss-up if they¡¯d end up allied or opposing him. Qahrvirna volunteered to attack him once, but that resulted in their entire entourage attacking her singlemindedly, even after she left and returned, until she was forced to destroy them. ¡°Tenacious for something so weak,¡± she said, breathing a bit hard. ¡°It¡¯s only weak compared to you. A lot of these would be very dangerous to someone like me.¡± ¡°You certainly don¡¯t act like someone who¡¯s liable to be eaten at any moment.¡± ¡°Liable to be eaten, me?¡± He eyed her with a grin. She returned the grin, a bit more sinister than his. ¡°Only when you¡¯re ready.¡± The next herd of bulbix they encountered was large enough for them to get two revenant activations from. The first defended Jair from the angry survivors; the second attacked the first. There resulted a brief but violent conflict that Jair wasn¡¯t in any position to observe. This group was significantly more aggressive than the others, perhaps due to its larger size granting it greater confidence. Either way, for the first time, he got to fight a group of bulbix that didn¡¯t scatter and flee almost immediately. He had to admit, without Darkflame he¡¯d have been in trouble. A stampede of that many creatures that large wasn¡¯t something that could be fought traditionally. If he¡¯d had his spells already, sure, but with just Maelstrom he suspected they¡¯d have overrun him before he could kill enough from sheer physical speed. Then he learned why this group was different from the others. The herd parted as a bigger and darker bovine charged out of the forest with a bellow and rushed Jair in a syncopated gallop, the rest of the herd falling in to rush forward in its wake. The alpha bulbix was even rounder than the others, but its body was a slightly different shape. Its legs were further apart and jointed differently to give it a much stronger lunge. An alpha bulbix wasn¡¯t built to run. It was built to gore and trample and knock aside. Jair had never fought an alpha bulbix without magic, and only a few times with. He barely had time to whip Maelstrom around between them before it slammed into him. Darkflame flared up, singeing the munster¡¯s snout. Its bellow turned high pitched and pained, but it didn¡¯t stop. Its horn drove straight through Jair''s armor, stomach, and out the other side. "Oh," was all he had time to say before the alpha had shaken its head to hurl him off into the midst of the stampeding herd. He took out three of them in quick slashes as he fell, but even Darkflame wasn''t enough to save him. Too many bulbix, too big and fast and tightly packed. Without imprints he couldn¡¯t jump clear of the thundering hooves and crushing bodies that left him nowhere to escape. His body was crushed and trampled into the ground, leaving him no time to even assess the previous injury before his vision went grey and fuzzy as his life and soul abruptly parted ways.
The sword flickered in her mind, its shape warping and twisting into countless variations of itself. Sometimes it glowed, sometimes it darkened. Once it turned to pure white ice, another time it lost its shape entirely to become a fluid trail of crimson that slashed through the air like a whip. Another time, it grew to be so large it would take a dozen men to lift it. Most of the time it stayed roughly the same. The blade''s length shifted only minutely, and its center rarely changed. The edges varied wildly, sometimes symmetrical, other times not. The power around it pulsed and fluctuated. The world around it cracked, and in its presence destiny turned to ash. The sword should not exist. But though she searched and strained to her utmost capability, nowhere did she find the moment of its creation. It simply appeared, fully formed, and stubbornly continued to exist without regard for what it left broken in its wake. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Only one person could, and she had no idea where to find him. Breathing deep, she closed her eyes and returned to meditation with a new goal in mind. Nothing could hide from her forever.
47 - Testing, Again ¡°Do you know how many true archmages there have been among the race of humanity?¡± ¡°A few hundred, probably.¡± ¡°One. If you include me.¡±
The golden light of Temporal Reversion snatched him away from death as Jair dropped into timefall. The spectral cliffside of his soulspell offered nothing for several days, only minor bumps that crumbled as soon as he touched them. It was over a week previous that he finally managed to pull himself out. Jair walked beside Qahrvirna through the wood at night. This didn¡¯t narrow it down much, since that was what they did every night for weeks on end. He narrowed his eyes at the surroundings, but in the darkness the Oriad looked much alike from one section to another without any major landmarks. A skittering crunch from the side drew his attention. The two octide revenants he''d first collected were still present. So this was before they disappeared. He could keep an eye on them this time, be sure he caught exactly what happened. So he¡¯d lost closer to three weeks than one. That was fine. He could continue testing Darkflame regardless of their point in the timeline. Even if it was starting to feel like they¡¯d been walking every night for months, he wasn¡¯t out of things to verify yet. If this was his life for a few years, performing experiments with Qahrvirna on their way to her tower, there were worse ways to spend the time. He still had some of his slightly-damaged movement and attack constructs stored that he could work on repairing if he ran out of other things to do while traveling. He thought back to the moments immediately prior to his most recent demise. Against the bulbix alpha, Darkflame had only scorched it, not slowed or stopped the charging creature. And that one moment had been enough for it to throw him to his death. It demonstrated a glaring flaw in his current fighting style; he¡¯d started to rely on Darkflame to open up space rather than evading. Darkflame may be an acceptable replacement for his spells in the moment, but not something he should integrate into his long term plans until he was more familiar with its limitations. Had the venix¡¯s fire ever burned Jair, or only Qahrvirna and itself? He couldn¡¯t recall anything specific. If it tried, he¡¯d missed it. So Darkflame wasn''t an automatic instant victory against absolutely everything. Which made sense, otherwise the venix would have used it a lot more often. If it could only be used against weaker creatures, that would severely reduce its viability. He could already defeat weaker creatures without much difficulty. Darkflame gave him an easy way to keep bodies from piling up, perhaps, and the potential of the weird revenant things, but if it couldn¡¯t even handle a jumbo cow its utility grew increasingly questionable. At least he knew it would be effective against anything vulnerable to fire. Unfortunately, Ryenzo wasn¡¯t one of those things. Jair¡¯s next question was whether he could force Maelstrom to overcharge an ability, or if it would only ever draw enough mana for the one activation at a time. Ordinarily, attempting to shove mana into an already-ascended sword was something like trying to change the course of a river by pouring a cup of water into it. No matter how big your cup was, or how many times you tried, any changes would be washed away. He''d tried adding mana to his sword in previous futures without success, when his ascension had been performed to a lower quality level. Those efforts never succeeded. The ascension or reforging process was the only time a soulsword accepted mana into itself. But he¡¯d also never tried with a weapon missing so much of its integrity. His pre-Maelstrom ascensions had stayed perfectly fine right up until the moment he tried to revert with them, at which point they¡¯d skipped past mere integrity damage to violently explode instead. Never fun, having something explode inside your soul. He was breaking new ground here, so he couldn¡¯t preemptively rule out things that would be traditionally wasteful or pointless. Jair activated Darkflame and tried to encourage Maelstrom to take more than the base amount of mana it drew out for the ability. It charged a tiny bit faster to full, after which it abruptly cut off the power draw. He incinerated a few trees to exhaust Maelstrom''s darkflame coating, then activated the ability again. He tried to push the power draw faster, but the change wasn''t even noticeable. Qahrvirna eyed the growing clearing. "Are you planning to build a house here or something?" "Just testing my sword''s ability." It took about half a second to reactivate Darkflame after it was expended, which was a half second longer than he¡¯d prefer. If he couldn¡¯t kill the alpha bulbix with the first activation, he¡¯d need to plan around that. Keep himself from getting pinned down. Stay mobile, stay out of reach. Dart in, hit and run. ¡°You know anything about alpha bulbix?¡± ¡°They¡¯re delicious.¡± ¡°Anything else? Any powers or abilities I should know about?¡± ¡°They¡¯re big.¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s expression turned predatory. ¡°Is that what you¡¯re planning to keep here? I think you¡¯ll need a bit more space than this.¡± Jair regarded her flatly. ¡°Just. Testing.¡± Qahrvirna considered a moment. "You know, you mentioned wanting a dragoncube? Alpha bulbix horns are a rather ideal material to make them out of. If you¡¯re planning to go hunting, bring back a horn and I can have one commissioned for you. And if you happen to have some of the meat and blood with you, I¡¯ll pay for that as well. Though they don¡¯t keep nearly as long." Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. "Is that why you never got me one last time, no materials?" Jair mused. Qahrvirna gave him a funny look. ¡°Last time?¡± Jair ignored her. "So, carve off the horns before darkflame. Noted."
Darkflame came so close to solving Maelstrom''s previous reach problem, but if it only ever worked on things small and relatively weak, he wasn''t sure if it would help where it mattered. And he still hadn''t solved the issue of it being slow to reactivate. Half a second was an eternity in a fight. He spent some time with the smaller herds they encountered, practicing shearing off their horns, jumping out of the way of their charges, and accumulating as many nicks against their sides with Maelstrom as possible without being trampled. Qahrvirna watched, taking notes and collecting samples. Being without his spells or physical strength complicated matters, but having Darkflame to rely on saved his life more than a few times. Or perhaps it only enabled him to engage in much riskier fights. Either way, aside from the specific focus on hunting bulbixes, the weeks passed much as they had the previous times. Jair gradually reclaimed his physical capabilities, and spent the time not fighting bulbixes tinkering with his construct pieces. He couldn¡¯t make anything too extreme without a full workshop at his disposal, but he could reconfigure what he had into a few amplifiers to provide a minor movement boost. He¡¯d need every edge he could get against something this big. By the time they reached the territory of the larger herd with its alpha, Jair was ready for it. As long as he assumed that Darkflame would fail, he could stay out of its way and focus on eliminating the herd around it. Which also meant he¡¯d be running with the herd¡¯s movement, making the entire fight take place at an amplified sprint. The biggest problem with having a moving battle, aside from Jair¡¯s body potentially wearing out before the herd of cattle, would be that he¡¯d leave behind any revenants from the fight. But he didn¡¯t have any specific desire for spectral bulbixes following him around, so it would be no great loss. His initial approach was stealthy. He found the herd grazing on a nice hillside full of low and well-nibbled bramble and fringed with tall trees whose trunks were bare anywhere within reach of a bulbix¡¯s mouth. They were large, meaty creatures, and required a substantial amount of grazing to maintain that bulk. Jair crept up behind the furthest bulbix cow¡ªlacking horns¡ªand stabbed it with a quick flash of darkflame. This alerted the herd, which began looking around and snorting uneasily. The alpha, ever watchful, trotted over in Jair¡¯s direction. Jair slipped in among the rest of the herd. On the way, he sheared off a horn from one of the subservient males on the way and dropped it into his soulspace. The bulbix reared and bellowed in pain. The herd shifted uneasily. Cows snorted and the alpha growled. Jair took off running before the injured bulbix could gore him, but that only bought him a second. Then it was after him. He stabbed backwards as it reached him, disintegrating it in a flash of darkflame, but didn¡¯t stop running. As he raced through the herd, he clipped a second horn from another bulbix. This one rushed him immediately, and the whole herd followed. Already on edge, they needed only the slightest push to turn into a stampede. Exactly as planned. The alpha, stuck on the opposite side from Jair, would have to get through the entire group to catch him. The creatures bumped into one another as they ran, grasses trampled and smaller trees crushed and thrown aside. Birds screeched and took flight before them; octides clicked and scurried out of the way. And Jair ran in the middle of it all. He danced and weaved his way between thundering hooves without any margin for error. All was chaos. Maelstrom slashed out here for a horn, there to immolate a bulbix that was getting too close. After a minute of nonstop running and fighting, he¡¯d collected eleven horns and left at least two revenants behind that he knew of. Thankfully, the whole rolling fight had gotten him safely past them before they could decide Jair was an aggressor. He switched from focusing on the smaller bulbixes as the alpha caught up to him and started slicing at the alpha¡¯s flanks with Maelstrom¡¯s darkflame-empowered edge, prioritizing evasion over attack. Each slash to connect drained the effect and left a scorch mark on the beast¡¯s side. If it had any other effect, Jair didn¡¯t see it. The angry oversized creature was trying to kill him either way. He wasn¡¯t sure additional rage would change anything. Jair tried to push Maelstrom to accept more mana, to charge the ability faster or overcharge it, but his efforts were clearly insufficient. Perhaps he wasn¡¯t doing it correctly. He¡¯d never used a soulsword with innate abilities before. Eythron never let him borrow his sword, and the old mageblade was the only one Jair knew with a weapon even remotely close to Maelstrom¡¯s level. And all the time he was running and ducking and slashing. Another bulbix made the mistake of coming within reach and got itself darkflame immolated for its trouble, leaving behind nothing but a puff of ash. The alpha kept trying to shift the stampede¡¯s path to curve around and let it crush Jair underfoot, and Jair kept avoiding it. Barely. His body ached and his cobbled-together constructs were barely enough to keep him ahead of the angry monster bent on his destruction. The strain on his manabody would set him back days if not weeks of imprinting progress, to undo the warping this much construct use would cause, but that hardly mattered. He knew Darkflame had to be capable of more. It was the final power of the mythical Venix. If it couldn¡¯t even handle an oversized bulbix, why was he giving it precious space in Maelstrom¡¯s soul? Reactivate faster. Take more power. Whatever it takes. He slashed the creature¡¯s side as he ran, discharging the darkflame into its body. Body, mind, magic, soul, all were strained to their limits as he tried to force what was not to become. His body was running out of strength. He couldn¡¯t keep running much longer. It felt not unlike his run up Mount Sanctum, in an odd way. Less extreme, scaled down from maximum to minimum, but the building pressure of sheer desperation within him was the same. If he could use the darkflame on Ryenzo, then this could all finally be over with. He could step forward into a future that didn¡¯t have to be doomed, make decisions that would matter and progress that wouldn¡¯t be reverted every few months. If only Darkflame would accept more power. He took one last jump and stabbed Maelstrom deep into the alpha bulbix¡¯s side. This wasn¡¯t about the monster in front of him, it was about every monster that would ever stand in his way. Every unstoppable foe that he¡¯d been forced to run away from or trick or trap or deceive to survive. He released his constructs and screamed wordlessly. Maelstrom¡¯s whole purpose was to break the limitations of his timeline. Taking scraps and remnants wasn¡¯t enough. He needed power that couldn¡¯t be denied, couldn¡¯t be stolen or blocked. He needed more. Something shifted, strained, then snapped. He wasn¡¯t sure what or how. Jair felt the crack all the way to his soul. Darkflame burst out as his manabody collapsed in on itself. The bulbix alpha disappeared in a burst of white fire that left behind a green-black afterimage. Jair died. It was so abrupt he almost didn¡¯t notice. He drifted in still silence, the entire stampeding herd frozen in tableau. Maelstrom hovered in midair where it had fallen from his hand. The bulbix alpha¡¯s ashes drifted in a cloud in front of him, obscuring the trees beyond. He shifted his perception in all directions. Something was draining him, even now. Who? Where? Nothing. No one. It was such a peaceful drain, so calm and right, he almost didn¡¯t remember to revert. His ¡®vision¡¯ started to fade, as his dying soul began to come apart at the edges. A faint shift in the frozen world. Maelstrom flared up its silver light, tinged with hints of gold, and Jair remembered. He was dead. Temporal Inversion. He was running out of time. Jair turned his attention inward. His soulspell burned, the golden threads alight with darkflame, and it seared his soul as he dove into it. He fell backwards through time and instinctively grabbed at the nearest available crevice. The spectral golden cliffside burned away every time he reached out to it, his touch turning it to ash. One handhold after another disintegrated the moment he tried to use them. He fell. Then he saw Maelstrom, within the timefall, driven point-first into the cliffside. Instinct took over and he grabbed at the sword. It held steady, the only solid thing in a burning world, and he pulled himself forward and out into reality.
48 - ReMaelstrom Aelir of the Above, look kindly upon us Ye of the Beyond, go and return again We shall not forget you Grant us freedom, Ye of the Winds And upon us, look kindly, Aelir of the Above
Jair emerged from the burning chaos of his unexpected timefall on the southern wall of Astralla Institute, watching the eastern sky. Raina stood beside him, wearing a full suit of iridescent blue-black armor formed of dozens of Veshin-specialty mana-imbued ceramic plates. In the distance, a tiny dark speck could be mistaken for a distant bird or particularly large grain of sand thrown aloft by the wind. It was neither. Maelstrom was in his hand, and it burned with an inner heat that left Jair feeling weak in comparison. Or, no, he was simply weak in general. No magic, flimsy younger body. He stared down at the sword. The entire central runnel, from Maelstrom¡¯s tip to the hilt, had turned black with the faintest shimmer of forest green. The slime-colored brobeg-influenced section was gone, the edges and point all brilliant silver. The golden light of his soulspell glowed from within its black center, intricate patterns more delicate than he could ever have carved. For lack of a better term, it looked complete. ¡°Inspect.¡± ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne ¡°Maelstrom.¡± Jair whispered, tears coming to his eyes as he ran a hand along the blade. Smooth and clean. The sapphires were in perfect alignment. The edges were sharp and unmarred. The serrated edge had clarified into smooth waves. He laughed, turning the weapon over. The back was as flawless as the front. He inspected it again. There was no integrity percentage, no class requirements. And 4th form. He hadn¡¯t ever heard of such a thing. Then again, he¡¯d never heard of a legendary soulsword either. Everything about it was flawless and beautiful. He couldn¡¯t stop staring. ¡°Wow. What happened? Your sword can shapeshift?¡± Jair was still laughing, still crying. He could only shake his head. His heart kept thumping as desperately as if he were still fighting for his life. ¡°You alright?¡± He took a deep breath, fighting the uncontrolled laughter. His mirth didn¡¯t want to be controlled, and burst out of him again and again. It took a few minutes before he could finally answer. ¡°I¡¯ll be fine.¡± ¡°What happened?¡± He glanced up at the distant dragon. It wouldn¡¯t be here for nearly an hour. ¡°I¡¯m going to meditate. Inspect it if you want.¡± Raina stiffened, eyes flicking between Jair and the sword. ¡°You sure?¡± ¡°I trust you, Rai. If you want to kill me for it, go ahead.¡± She recoiled. ¡°I would never!¡± Jair only smiled and shook his head. He closed his eyes and focused inward. He saw the change immediately, even without going into the specifics of the soulmap. His soulspell was gone. Where Temporal Reversion normally resided¡ªa golden sun at his core, with Maelstrom a silver star tethered to its orbit¡ªnow he found only a single orb of black fire that flickered with flames of green and silver. It burned him to look at it, even in soulsight, as though it were trying to consume him from within even now. He had to force himself to look deeper, to spread out its fiery soulmap in all its intricacy. Instead of Maelstrom¡¯s soul being intimately entwined with his own, it had fully supplanted what used to be there. Or, more accurately, he had given it what used to be there. Whatever it takes, he had said, and it had taken what it needed. Maelstrom was no longer a part of him. It was him. The intricate design of Temporal Reversion remained, patterned with Maelstrom¡¯s curling filigree, familiar shapes turned to black fire that glinted with silver and green. There was no change in texture from one patch to another, no missing pieces or fluctuation. Yet even now, he felt a pervasive hunger. It may be completed, but it wasn¡¯t finished. It wanted something more. Jair withdrew from his inner concentration and looked up at the distant speck that was Ryenzo Draconis. Maelstrom¡¯s dark fire pulsed in his hand. Eager. ¡°Fourth¡­ form¡­?¡± Raina sounded faint. Her eyes were fixed on Maelstrom. ¡°How?¡± Jair shrugged. ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious? I fed it my soul.¡± He hefted the weapon, its balance so flawless it felt like weighted air. ¡°Now, let¡¯s see how well it handles Miss Draconis.¡± If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. He felt light and afire at once, buoyed and unstoppable. He¡¯d done the impossible. Twice now. Time for number three. If he¡¯d had his spells, he¡¯d have run over and thrown himself off the wall, flown to meet Ryenzo in the sky. As it was, he had to settle for the towertop. And waiting. So much waiting. ¡°How do you still have this much energy?¡± Raina asked, breathless. ¡°Just walking in this armor makes me feel like I¡¯m going to pass out. Let alone running up and down the tower.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know!¡± Jair laughed, light and free, and Maelstrom manifested in his hand as he pointed it at the dragon-shaped smudge in the sky. ¡°Hear that, Ryenzo?¡± ¡°What has gotten into you?¡± ¡°Hope.¡± He said it flippantly, but the moment it passed his lips he realized that it was the truth. He¡¯d been fighting so long out of desperation, obsession, pride. He¡¯d chased one impossible task after another to fight off the emptiness. He¡¯d always known what he was fighting for, but he¡¯d lost sight of the reality amid the chaos and the fear and the relentless march of time and time again, over and over. The same patterns repeated, until living and dreaming felt almost alike and memory blurred to uselessness. And still he¡¯d never stopped. ¡°I promised I¡¯d find a way to save you,¡± he said, wonderingly. ¡°And now I have.¡± ¡°Why do you sound surprised?¡± She narrowed her eyes at him. Jair only shook his head. ¡°I¡¯ll explain everything in the morning.¡± And for the first time, he truly believed it. Not as a way to avoid ever answering, but a specific timeline. The thought set him off laughing joyously all over again, and he ran up to the top of the tower without another word. Ryenzo was closer. Not close enough. Jair threw Maelstrom in her general direction anyway. The blade flickered and twisted in midair, its flat aligning so it cut through the air smoothly, lofted by the winds, seeming untroubled by gravity. Jair stared after it, squinting against the sun, then laughed and reached out toward it. Bladewalk. Maelstrom flew through the sky, and Jair flew behind it with his hand outstretched. There was no longer any need to understand his sword, to coerce it into ignoring the laws of the universe. Maelstrom had never obeyed the laws of the universe, and he understood the weapon more intimately than he¡¯d ever imagined possible. Jair didn¡¯t need to convince it of anything. He just had to bring himself along for the ride. ¡°Jair?!¡± Raina¡¯s voice echoed from behind, below. He turned back to wave, grinning. ¡°I¡¯ll be back soon! I¡¯ve got a dragon to slay.¡± ¡°Without me?¡± She ran over to the battlements, a tiny indignant shape as the academy receded behind him. ¡°What happened to becoming dragonslayers together?¡± ¡°Next time! I promise!¡± Then he was too far away, and any response she may have made was lost to the wind. Maelstrom still flew before him without slowing or wavering in its path. Ryenzo came nearer and nearer. Jair flew at the dragon. He was unpracticed, unimprinted, and alone. Jair had Maelstrom. He didn¡¯t need anything else. Ryenzo saw him coming and shifted her flight to intercept. A tasty little snack, she must have thought. Just what she needed on the way to eat Raina Serin. Jair¡¯s flight slowed as he caught up to Maelstrom, the blade settling itself dramatically into his hand. He immediately fell, almost losing his grip on the sword as he dangled from it by one hand. ¡°Right. No Lift to help.¡± There followed a brief ungainly scramble as he pulled himself awkwardly up to crouch atop the flat of the unmoving blade. Ryenzo paid his little accident no mind, nor did she seem troubled by the fact that a human with a sword was hovering in the middle of the desert. She blasted him with a puff of poison gas, then ignited it as she flew past. Luckily, Jair still wore his own anti-dragon armor suit. Not nearly as high-quality as Raina¡¯s, but enough to protect him from the gas. The explosion he weathered by releasing Bladewalk and allowing himself to be shoved away by the air pressure. That threw him off course and dropped him by several dragonlengths. By the time he stopped tumbling through the sky and reoriented himself, Ryenzo¡¯s tail was whipping past into the poison cloud she¡¯d left behind. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me I need to chase you back to the Institute¡­¡± But he underestimated Ryenzo¡¯s hunger. While it was true that, given any true danger to herself, she would drop everything and go straight for Raina, she was still a dragon. So she did the single stupidest thing of her entire existence. She looped back around to swallow Jair whole. One moment he was figuring out how to keep Bladewalk active while upside-down, the next he was in warm wet darkness that sizzled against his armor as it began to eat away at the metal. Maelstrom flicked to Jair¡¯s hand, and he stabbed upward toward the spine. Maelstrom sliced through the thick layers of muscle and to the bone with such ease he almost didn¡¯t want to bother with anything fancy. But Ryenzo was still very large, and chopping her into little pieces¡ªas satisfying as it would be¡ªmight not be enough to stop her. Jair activated Darkflame. It felt immediately different from any other time he¡¯d used the ability. It didn¡¯t draw on his mana, but flowed out effortlessly. Like a soulspell. And it didn¡¯t stop. Black fire ignited around Maelstrom¡¯s hilt, spreading through Ryenzo¡¯s stomach. Her venomous acid hissed away to smoke, then even the smoke turned to nothing. Flickers of green and silver lit the area as her flesh began to burn away in a circle spreading out from Maelstrom. Ryenzo shrieked in pain, twisted, and convulsed. Jair was hurled out in a spray of shredded stomach, scattered into the air. The dragon swiped at him as she flew past, but her claw only gouged a small dent into his armor. She coughed and bellowed fire, trying to clear the obstruction. Maelstrom would not be cleared. It remained where Jair had put it, stabbed deep into her spine from the inside, and it continued to burn. Jair tumbled through the sky for a few disorienting moments, colors becoming a blur as he spun helplessly. Then he recovered enough awareness to flip himself over and reactivate Bladewalk. Ryenzo flew toward the Institute, wings beating madly, desperate to accomplish her last goal before the darkflame consumed her. ¡°You¡¯re too far away!¡± Jair shouted, as he flew after her. ¡°You¡¯ll never reach her on time. It¡¯s over!¡± Ryenzo paid his words no heed. She flew like never before, poisonous green light suffusing her long scaled body as she used magic of her own to heal and hasten herself. Jair couldn¡¯t catch up. Bladewalk had its limitations. It was only a weapon ability, not a true flight spell, and not a soulspell. He could do nothing to overcharge or upcast it, and it wasn¡¯t enough to keep up with Ryenzo¡¯s speed. Maelstrom, though, had no maximum range. Its darkflame continued to burn. Jair fell further and further behind, but that only meant he had a magnificent view of the end. Ryenzo¡¯s flight faltered. One wing came detached and dissolved into ash. She lost control of her flight, spinning and tumbling to crash into the sand well away from the Institute. Jair began to close the gap. Below, the dragon clawed her way desperately forward, lone wing flapping to lighten the load as she still tried to crawl at the distant academy. There was a huge section of her body missing, the whole right side torn open to the harsh desert wind. Even as he watched, her left rear leg was eaten away by the flickering darkflame. It was a pitiable sight. If it¡®d been anyone else, Jair might have been tempted to stop. But this was Ryenzo. He¡¯d already tried every possible combination of negotiation and reasoning with her. And in the end, she¡¯d chosen the wrong person to eat. Her tail and lower body dissipated into ash, leaving only her head, neck, and single claw. Still she lurched drunkenly toward the academy. The glow of her manabody trying to keep her functional fought with the darkness growing out from where Maelstrom remained lodged in her spine. Then Maelstrom flashed one final time and fell to the sand amid a cloud of ash. Ryenzo¡¯s insane vendetta came to a very permanent end as the last of her body burned away. Or¡­ it should have. Before Jair could so much as begin to descend, the dragon reappeared, fully uninjured. There was no time to process what was happening. Her long neck whipped around, green eyes narrowing as she glared up at him. Settling back on her haunches, one claw pressing Maelstrom into the sand, she let out a deep, soft rumble. ¡°Very well, human. You have my attention.¡±
49 - Ryenzo As the sparkle of gold differs from the sparkle of diamond, so the strength of the mind differs from the strength of the soul.
Oliss Methesdi was daydreaming, half asleep in the evening¡¯s final class of the day, when time shattered around her. A hundred lifetimes, ten thousand different places and people, all crashed into her mind at once. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, staring unseeing as visions overwhelmed her completely. She died, crushed under a falling ceiling. She died, skewered on a dragon¡¯s tail. She died, run through by an insane classmate. She died, and lived, and died and died and died. Oliss screamed, lost as she drowned in futures that would never again come to be. If anyone tried to help her, she was beyond knowing.
Jair could really use a dragoncube right about now. Or a lizardbox. Or even a pair of sandshark teeth with funny holes drilled in. He¡¯d made do with those, once. Though they were extremely limited, at least it was something he could make without requiring a full artisan workshop. Ryenzo stared up at him as he flew steadily down toward her¡ªtoward Maelstrom, since he was still using Bladewalk to not-fall. This was the most calm he¡¯d ever seen the creature. He wasn¡¯t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She didn¡¯t look like a darkflame revenant. Her scales remained the exact same shade of poisonous green that they¡¯d always been. Also, darkflame revenants didn¡¯t move. Or speak. Or do anything but attack any aggressor they witnessed. She¡¯d definitely both moved and spoken, but she hadn¡¯t attacked him. Or anyone else. ¡°I¡¯m very confused.¡± Ryenzo continued to stare at him expectantly. Rather than continue to glide closer, Jair elected to recall Maelstrom and descend from where he flew. Ryenzo had gotten quite the lead on him, but they were still a reasonable way away from the academy. He dropped to the ground a few dragonlengths away and stared up at her. She followed him with her eyes, watching as he descended, then leaned forward once he was on the ground. ¡°Well? What do you want?¡± Jair did the first thing he could think of, and pulled a half-finished construct that happened to have some gold out of his soulspace. He held it up. ¡°Tribute?¡± Ryenzo tilted her head this way and that, peering down at him, then crossed her forelegs under her and settled down on her stomach. ¡°I¡¯m going to take a nap here. If you don¡¯t return by morning, I¡¯ll eat your city. Go find someone who knows how to talk.¡± Jair stared at the dragon who, a few minutes ago, had been unstoppably obsessed with eating his friend, now settling peacefully down on the sand. She huffed out a cloud of poison gas, then curled her long neck around her body and tucked it in behind her wing. Jair stood there a while longer. He stared down at Maelstrom. It glowed calmly in his hand. He stared up at the dragon. She snored in soft rhythmic puffs, sending sand up in a cloud at every exhale. ¡°What.¡± Ryenzo didn¡¯t acknowledge him at all. He looked back at Maelstrom, then at the distant silhouette of Astralla City, away at a slightly different angle than the academy. ¡°Guess it¡¯s time we go carve some sandshark teeth.¡± He hefted Maelstrom and threw it in the direction of the city. ¡°Bladewalk.¡±
It was well after midnight by the time Jair returned to where Ryenzo waited, and he still had no idea what to think. He¡¯d been so sure that augmented darkflame was the answer, and now that he¡¯d actually used it¡­ He didn¡¯t understand what had happened. He¡¯d been prepared for Ryenzo to die, or eat him, or any of the thousand permutations in between. But napping peacefully? Willing to talk? The situation was so far outside his expectations for possibility, he had no idea how to react. For now, he sat atop Maelstrom as it flew across the sand, legs crossed as he carefully carved a dozen sandshark teeth of various sizes into instruments to roughly imitate what a lizardbox did. It wouldn¡¯t allow him much in the way of eloquence, but as long as basic communication could happen, he¡¯d take it. When he arrived, Ryenzo was no longer asleep. The dragon¡¯s head was raised, eyes narrowed as she glared toward the academy. As though even now she could see directly to where Raina hid. Jair bellowed into two of his shark teeth in succession, one in each hand. ¡°Good hellos,¡± echoed out in halting draconic. Then he bowed. Ryenzo turned to face him. ¡°I¡¯m very angry, you know,¡± she said, conversationally. ¡°You¡¯ve interrupted me and I don¡¯t know why I let you keep doing so.¡± This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°Why anger?¡± She shifted her massive body, turning from her orientation toward the academy to face him, leaning forward on her elbows with her front claws together in front of her as she leaned down. A looming shadow against the moonlight. ¡°You have disrupted my plans for the day. I believe I already mentioned that, but perhaps you understand as poorly as you speak.¡± ¡°Know now anger. Why¡­¡± he waved a hand toward the academy. ¡°Why other anger?¡± ¡°You are no part of my business.¡± ¡°Friend, you anger.¡± Jair grimaced at his atrocious sentence structure, but he had very little to work with. Even managing this much of a vocabulary was a stretch. ¡°Me anger, you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re angry? Hah. You are insignificant. Your meaningless existence will never touch mine.¡± ¡°You¡­¡± Jair shrugged, waving a hand at Ryenzo. ¡°Why now you? You no wait, why?¡± Ryenzo snorted, poison smoke huffing out, which then ignited immediately in a brief explosion. ¡°Is this really the best you can do?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°I¡¯m tempted to eat you now and save myself the torment of this conversation.¡± Jair waited. Ryenzo didn¡¯t move, still lay regarding him with her folded claws in front of her. Jair picked up the most intricately carved tooth again and snorted into it. ¡°Why?¡± So much was packed into the word that he couldn¡¯t possibly express, not when all he had was the barest pretense of communication. She waved a claw in annoyance. ¡°Why am I tempted to eat you? To save myself the torment of this conversation. Why are you insignificant? Because you are not me. Why are you no part of my business? Because you are insignificant and it is my business. And I¡¯m angry because you keep interrupting me.¡± Jair could only wave his arms helplessly in the direction of the academy. It was intensely frustrating, having Ryenzo the most sane he¡¯d ever seen and have no way to sit down and have a proper discussion. Or interrogation. Veor¡¯s policy on dragons was ¡®stay away and we¡¯ll be fine¡¯. Not that the continent had much to offer, being as dry and desolate as anything in Almas. Even the seascourge didn¡¯t care to take it over, Veor¡¯s channels were slow and peaceful and only killed you if you got close. The dragons had no interest in the mana oases, and that was the only reason anyone cared about the bulk of the region. Without the oases, there would be no cities. Without the cities, there would be no need for sustenance villages like the one Jair¡¯s parents grew up in, and Veor would be an empty nothing. Only the native sandfisher nomads would remain. On the rare occasion that a dragon showed up to make demands¡ªthat is, the one time in recorded history prior to Ryenzo coming for Raina¡ªthe king would call for an expert from another country. Most dragons wouldn¡¯t be too concerned about a few weeks of waiting. But Jair knew Ryenzo¡¯s madness too well to believe she was bluffing. If he delayed longer than a day, she would destroy everything just because. Which left him trying to communicate using a fifteen-word vocabulary. Worse, to swap back and forth between all these different hollowed teeth made his pronunciation sound incredibly halting and sluggish. But it was better than nothing. ¡°Offer other sparkle, you no anger, friend no anger?¡± ¡°You want to make an exchange?¡± This disturbed her facade of unnatural calm as nothing else had. She drew herself up, stamping her front feet into the ground. Her angry breath melted the sand before her into a jagged wave of liquid. ¡°You think I would sell my vengeance so cheaply that you could afford it?¡± ¡°Yes?¡± That wasn¡¯t what he wanted to say, there was so much he wanted to ask, but he didn¡¯t have the words. All the answers to a thousand years of questions could be right in front of him and he had no way to ask for them. This conversation was infuriating. He could sympathize with Ryenzo¡¯s desire to burn everything to have it over with. Maybe he should stab her again and be done with it. Perhaps Darkflame would go with the don¡¯t bother bringing her back mode this time? No. He knew that wasn¡¯t an option the moment he thought it. There was no uncertainty any more. Maelstrom did what it did, and to do it again would change nothing of the outcome ¨C he could feel it, deep within his soul. The random chance, the occasional connection amid a shifting chaos, it had all been resolved. What exactly it did do, he still had no idea of, but the fact that Ryenzo was still talking and hadn¡¯t flown off after Raina yet was more than he¡¯d ever had in the past. He¡¯d been hoping for ¡®disintegrate the massive dragon completely¡¯ but if Maelstrom¡¯s secret darkfire power was ¡®make angry dragon willing to talk reasonably¡¯, that was still better than ever before. If only he were capable of carrying on his side of the conversation. Where was Qahrvirna when you needed her? Ryenzo snorted again, claws digging deep into the melted sand. ¡°Ignorant mortal. There is nothing you can offer in place of what is lost. I am not some petty king to be bribed by trinkets. The moons will fall before I abandon my hunt.¡± What have you lost? How recently? If it was within the past three days, he might be able to prevent it. But, ¡°You now? Why no good now? Anger why?¡± was the best he could manage. There was no subtlety of tone to convey his desperation for the answers. His makeshift tools were barely enough to make him understood at all. ¡°You want to know why I¡¯m angry? I want to know why I¡¯m not angry! You should be dead, tiny mortal, a dozen times over. Why are we still speaking? Why are you daring to stand before me?¡± She lunged forward as though to crush him, but her claws landed on either side of him without touching him. She leaned down to glare at him, huffing out her poison breath, but not close enough to reach him. Her voice vibrated through his bones and the ground beneath him trembled. ¡°You tell me WHY.¡± ¡°You wait? Me why yes. Other hellos. Wait. Yes? Other friend. Other offer. Not now. Wait?¡± Jair pointed up at the moon, then held up fingers urgently to indicate the time until the next lunar passage. ¡°Wait, wait.¡± Ryenzo turned back to look at the academy, fire sparking from her snout, then she looked back down at Jair. ¡°Your other friend knows how to speak?¡± ¡°Yes!¡± Finally, a simple question he could answer. ¡°Yes. Wait, other friend. Yes.¡± She turned again to the distant building, body tensing as though she were about to jump into the air and go after Raina right there and then. Her claws clenched and flexed in the melted sand around her feet. Then she slumped and lay back down, eyes closing. ¡°What is lost will not become more lost by delay.¡± She exhaled deeply, then coiled her head around to rest again under her wing. ¡°I will wait.¡±
Halfway across the world, atop the third highest tower in Suthyrel¡¯s Imperial City, rested the Crystal Eye. An amplifying crystal of unprecedented make, which some said was the very crystalized soul of the first seer, polished to a mirror-shine and augmented by a thousand years of development. The most powerful magical construct ever created, they said. It was the nearest thing to sacred that Suthyrel acknowledged, outside the Imperial family themselves. Bazel Temran was the unfortunate seer on duty when, without warning or provocation, the ancient and precious crystal cracked down the middle. He shouted for help as the Eye went dark and ran toward it to do¡­ what, specifically, he couldn¡¯t have said, but something¡ª It cracked a second time, followed immediately by two more cracks, then five, then twenty. He reached it just in time to watch as the entire thing shattered into dust. Bazel could only stare helplessly. It wasn¡¯t his fault. Couldn¡¯t have been. He¡¯d done nothing but look. The Empress would blame him anyway. He didn¡¯t need to be a seer to know what would happen next. His life was over. But why? he thought, over and over, as he stared helplessly up at the shattered construct. Why did I never see this coming?
50 - Raina Serins Perfectly Ordinary Week Raina Serin was having a decidedly strange week. The days leading up to the third-wave Mageblade Initiation ceremony had seen herself and Jair staying up late into the night, studying things he already knew by heart, because he was so stressed out about the possibility of missing it this time too. This was not at all strange. He¡¯d been unable to advance in the second-wave initiation with her since he failed to stabilize his soulspace sufficiently. In subsequent months, he''d become so obsessed with completing that requirement that he¡¯d barely even looked at the written test information. When he noticed the imbalance, he''d promptly overcorrected. The night before the third-wave initiation ceremony would be the written exams, which Raina didn¡¯t for a moment doubt her friend could complete with perfection. The papers were turned in, the soulspace examination completed, and Jair was sent away to pace and stress and worry until the morning. ¡°It¡¯s going to be alright,¡± she¡¯d assured him, more times than she could count. ¡°You¡¯d have to be trying to fail that.¡± Arguments and logic did no good to calm her anxious friend, and they ended up staying awake all night going back over his answers one by one. Even after the ceremony began, as the pair of them sat expectantly in the audience for the initiation of the first-wave initiates of the class behind them, Jair couldn¡¯t stop twitching. When the third-wave initiations began and his name was finally called, he scurried up to the platform as though worried he¡¯d be noticed and evicted if he didn¡¯t move fast and inconspicuously¡ªwhich was the opposite of inconspicuous. Raina leaned forward to smile encouragingly at him. Finally, she¡¯d be able to start sparring with him properly, maybe help him learn enough to stand up for himself when she wasn¡¯t around to protect him. Jair reached out to accept his soulsword, timid and uncertain, and that was when things went crazy. Light flared, blinding and sudden. The entire stage was blanked out by the glare. Raina turned away and covered her eyes. When the flare receded, Jair stood with unnatural stillness, no hint of his usual unease. He and the headmaster stared at one another, then shuffled about awkwardly for a moment without either one releasing the sword. Raina did her best to smile, though it was tainted by uncertainty. After that brief hiccup the ceremony continued with the exchange of traditional greeting. Jair walked offstage with a calm casualness that was so unlike him she couldn¡¯t help staring. He took his place among the other students, folded his arms over his chest, and stood that way without so much as shuffling his feet for the whole rest of the ceremony. Then there were more students to clap for, faculty speeches to try and stay awake through, and by the time the ceremony concluded her brief concerns over the change in poise were forgotten. Jair turned, smiling in her direction, but he seemed distracted still. She ran over to congratulate him, and that''s when things took another even stranger turn. Instead of coming back to the apartment to talk through things, jump around excitedly over his new sword, and maybe practice some basic forms before spending their free afternoon catching up on some much needed sleep¡­ ¡°I¡¯ll see you at the exhibition later.¡± His attention was flickering around the crowd, to the various wealthy and powerful people. Not with any sort of calculation, but he had that particular smile he got when interested in something unexpected. ¡°Opportunities like this don¡¯t come every day.¡± Raina wished him luck and wandered over to the food tables, feeling strangely dissatisfied. He was going out and taking initiative, everything she¡¯d always been urging him to do. So why did it feel so wrong? She stood for a time, nibbling at the various offerings without tasting much of it, and watched Jair move flawlessly through conversation after conversation. His mannerisms shifted ever so subtly depending on who he was talking to. How he carried himself, the ways he moved his hands, even the style of his nod of greeting changed from person to person. Raina felt oddly unsettled the whole afternoon, and when Jair was indeed announced as one of the contenders in Lord Veshin¡¯s student exhibition, it only got worse from there. ¡°Just be sure you bet on me,¡± Jair told her with a wink, and then he was off to prepare for the fight.
War-front level simulacrums fell before the flashing blade, and instead of being cowed by the attention Jair played to the crowd like an expert gladiator with his adoring fans. The flurry of gambling made Raina¡¯s bet look downright small, though it more than doubled her spending allowance for the season. She could hardly believe what she was witnessing, half convinced that she was delusional from lack of sleep, or perhaps this was all some far-too-involved dream. Unfortunately for her sanity, everything felt far too real for either to be the case. Then, of course, after his record-shattering performance, Jair disappeared with yet another of his sudden collection of contacts. It wasn¡¯t until hours later that Denor informed Raina that Jair had gone out into the oasis to meditate. Raina wandered between the buildings for a time, taking in the nighttime ambiance of the oasis she¡¯d grown up in. She and Denor had run shamelessly through the mana-saturated grasses, fought one another with fallen branches, and generally been carefree children. She didn¡¯t remember much of what they¡¯d played at in those days. She had vague recollections of defending a ¡®castle¡¯ and hours spent trying to make things float with her untrained mana. She did remember there being some secret competition among the noble children, but not the specifics. She hadn¡¯t won, or even come close. Denor had done better. She recalled that with startling clarity. Was that when they¡¯d started drifting apart? Was now when she and Jair would do the same? She was in an uncharacteristically melancholic mood when she finally found her closest friend sitting on a saturation vault¡¯s roof. It wasn¡¯t hard to find him. His sword hadn¡¯t stopped glowing, its flickering pulse visible from across the oasis. ¡°Mind if I join you?¡± He laughed and invited her up, as though nothing had changed, as though he hadn¡¯t just¡­ done all that. Are you alright? She couldn¡¯t quite bring herself to say it outright, danced around the question, but there was no way to hide her concern. ¡°Jair, what happened?¡± ¡°Nothing. Everything.¡± He started talking about his sword, about integrity and travel, and passed the violently glowing weapon to her as casually as though they were trading textbooks. ¡°There¡¯s a man in the Oriad who can help. I want to find him, as quickly as possible. And I want you to come with me.¡± At that, she tore her eyes away from the pulsing glow of the sword. ¡°I know we¡¯ve talked about exploring the world, but isn¡¯t this a bit sudden?¡± ¡°You¡¯ve got your class, I¡¯ve got mine. Call it your Reforging Quest, if that¡¯ll make things easier.¡± She tried to protest, to make some kind of reasonable plan, but he only grinned at her. ¡°Did you look?¡± ¡°Of course not, I would never do that without¡ª¡± ¡°I trust you, Rai. Go ahead.¡± She looked at him, questioning. The sword¡¯s glow danced across his face, lighting up his dark sleek hair, his eyes turned to sharp silver by the reflection. He only smiled encouragingly, eyes dancing with mischief as though he knew something she didn¡¯t. If he was sure, she wouldn¡¯t deny the chance to satisfy her curiosity. ¡°Inspect.¡± ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 10%) Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****? ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne ¡°We don¡¯t need to stay here,¡± Jair said softly. ¡°We have everything we need.¡± Raina couldn¡¯t speak. Jair, her Jair, had a legendary weapon? ¡°L-Legendary?¡± She couldn¡¯t think straight. ¡°Ascended?¡± They couldn¡¯t have this. No one could know they had this. Everything she knew about the Veori nobility flooded her thoughts, extrapolating the potential disaster. Too many. Countless paths that led to death, slavery, ruin. Evacuate their families. Move somewhere far away. He¡¯d mentioned the Oriad? That would be perfect. Far away from anyone, from any society who could relay information back. ¡°So you¡¯ll come?¡± ¡°Of course I¡¯ll come. I¡¯m not going to send you into exile alone. Jair, this changes everything.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°Not quite everything. There is still one complication left to deal with before we start packing.¡± ¡°Oh? And what is that?¡± Her mind was already days into the future, planning exactly how much of their estate they could fit, how quickly her father could hire an eelship, who they could put in charge of managing Serin affairs during her ¡®Reforging Quest¡¯... Jair¡¯s words shattered everything. ¡°Your mother has upset a very powerful dragon matriarch, who wants to eat you.¡± Raina''s line of thoughts crashed to a stop. ¡°Oh.¡± What could she possibly say to that? That was like hearing that your region was about to be flooded. Unsurvivable disaster on a scale she couldn¡¯t even comprehend. Jair, though, carried on as blithely as though they were discussing a brief morning fog. ¡°So I¡¯m going to need your help with some preparation.¡± What preparation could possibly be sufficient? This wasn¡¯t an angry sandshark they were talking about, this was an aelir-cursed dragon! Where could they run? How could they hide? What had her mother been doing to upset a dragon? Jair bumped her arm with his elbow, grinning. ¡°If all goes well, we¡¯ll be dragonslayers by the end of the week.¡± Oddly enough, that didn¡¯t make her feel any better.
Raina Serin¡¯s second day of dealing with the whirlwind of chaos that her best friend had become didn¡¯t go any better than the first. ¡°You promised him what?!¡± ¡°A little under three million. Don¡¯t worry, I already gave him half up front, and I won¡¯t need more than a small investment from you to get things started. But I will need to borrow some for today¡¯s shopping. We have some rather important items to pick up.¡± At this point, Raina was almost convinced her friend had been possessed by a vampire or something. It was enough of a stretch to go from ¡®can¡¯t speak up to save his life¡¯ to ¡®casually hobnobbing with anyone regardless of rank.¡¯ The performance at the exhibition could be explained away by the presence of a legendary weapon. But completely reversing his financial policies and going purchase-crazy¡ªto the tune of over two million nirei no less, with who knew how much more to be added¡ªwas a bit too far for Raina to accept. ¡°If we¡¯re going out shopping, then I¡¯m taking you to a healer.¡± ¡°I¡¯m already as recovered as magic can make me.¡± Jair flexed, showing off his bare arms with no imprints and barely anything in the way of muscle. ¡°Nothing to worry about. My head is in flawless condition.¡± ¡°Then you won¡¯t mind if we verify that.¡± He seemed to notice his hands then, frowned faintly, and started drawing a manapath. ¡°What are you doing? Freehand?¡± She didn¡¯t quite lunge forward to grab his hand, since that would risk ruining the spell entirely, but only because she hadn''t recognized what he was doing in time to prevent it. ¡°I know what I¡¯m doing.¡± He said it absently, watching as his hands moved, drawing unseen patterns with one finger. ¡°For someone who put off deciding for so long, you seem to be rushing ahead awfully recklessly.¡± She shook her head, helpless. ¡°I¡¯ve got a dragon to slay, Rai. No time for being cautious.¡± Jair looked up at her seriously, eyes staring into her soul, then back down as he switched hands and started tracing another pattern. ¡°I know you¡¯re concerned. I appreciate the thought. But I am fine and visiting a healer will waste time we don¡¯t have to spare.¡± ¡°This dragon plan you¡¯re so obsessed with? Care to share any of the details?¡± He finished the second tracing and tapped his forehead to summon his soulsword. ¡°Find a way to keep you from dying. So we¡¯ll be stopping by Veshin¡¯s workshop on the way out to get your measurements and drop off my designs.¡± He started doing practice lunges and slow katas, alternating between sets. Ordinarily, she¡¯d have joined in, but today she had a deep-seated headache that refused to go away, and she was so overwhelmed and drained that all she wanted to do was flop onto their sofa and not move for a few years. Instead of doing either, she stood and watched, trying to think of any argument that he couldn¡¯t overrule with ¡®but dragon.¡¯ Nothing came to mind. ¡®But, dragon,¡¯ was a very convincing argument. Assuming it was true. A thousand objections swarmed her mind, everything from ¡®but my mother¡¯s been gone for almost twenty years¡¯ to ¡®shouldn¡¯t I just go out into the desert and let it be over with?¡¯ But Jair would hear none of it. He was determined that they would do the impossible instead. And the first step of that, apparently, was to¡­ buy exotic foods? ¡°Wait, repeat that?¡± She must have misheard, distracted by her thoughts. ¡°Star-pepper cakes. I¡¯m telling you, it¡¯s an undiscovered market. We can offer the owner various investment options, scout a few new locations, start a global marketing campaign¡­¡± ¡°Jair, we¡¯re supposed to be avoiding attention. You already made a spectacle of yourself in the exhibition, but with any luck people will assume it¡¯s your soulspell. We can¡¯t let word about your sword¡¯s actual strength get to anyone¡ª¡± He snorted and muttered under his breath what very much sounded like, ¡°Too late for that now,¡± in an all too cheerful tone. She glared at him. ¡°And now we have a dragon to fight, so your solution is to advertise pepper cakes?¡± He set his sword aside and walked over to her. He put his hands on her shoulders, tamping down his mischief and happiness to regard her with absolute seriousness. Something in that look made her shiver, as though it were an ancient warrior staring back at her instead of the boy she knew. ¡°It¡¯ll be alright, Rai. I know what I¡¯m doing.¡± He¡¯d been saying it for days, but for the first time, she found she actually believed it. And¡­ promptly broke down sobbing onto his chest while he hugged her with a gentleness she¡¯d never imagined possible. Yeah¡­ The less said about that morning, the better. Eventually they got their shopping, investing, and measuring done, and Raina managed to regulate her chaotic emotions back to something resembling normalcy. The fact that her friend just happened to have investment contracts and advertising plans already written up in his soulspace was just one more insane thing that hardly registered any more by now. She was rather numb to it all by now. Frostvine nets? She didn¡¯t see the point, but nothing too strange. Frost was technically a weakness of poison dragons, even if they¡¯d generally be too big and too agile to be snared in any net. Sword ballista? A little expensive, but why not! Blackmailing half her neighbors to be able to afford a sword ballista after investing everything her father had been willing to loan them in various businesses? Yep, sounds about right. Most of the items they collected were pieces or components rather than finished items. Custom jobs were more expensive and cutting in line wasn¡¯t cheap either. Jair insisted he had time to put all the various constructs together, carve additional protective spells into the Institute¡¯s outer walls, and still be able to spend hours training with his sword and imprinting his spells. Raina would normally have pointed out all the flaws in that timeline, but today was not a day for making sense of the world. Every time she spoke to Jair, she just ended up more confused than before. She followed him in relative silence, handed over money when prompted, shoved items into her soulspace when they were handed to her, and smiled as though she weren¡¯t quietly losing her mind. She only broke down crying twice more before they returned to the Institute with their purchases that evening, which was better than she¡¯d have expected given how the day started out. But, of course, they couldn¡¯t just go to the apartment and finally get some space and quiet to process any of this insanity. The headmaster himself was waiting to meet them, and immediately dragged Jair off to a private interrogation. Raina paced outside the administrative building, worry over her friend¡¯s sanity, her own sanity, and the looming threat of what did the headmaster know, and what was he prepared to do about it merging into a deep anxiety that threw her balance even more than the whole preceding day had. She wasn¡¯t normally the fretting and pacing type. Her general solution was to punch a problem rather than worry over it. When had she and Jair switched roles? Wasn¡¯t she the one to be proactive? But he moved with such confidence now, and it wasn¡¯t even bluster. He genuinely knew so much about so many people and places. She couldn¡¯t explain it, even to herself. When he finally emerged, calm and unbothered as though he¡¯d just been for a casual stroll, she all but exploded. ¡°Jair! You survived! What did the headmaster want?¡± He grinned and tapped his forehead. ¡°Nothing he¡¯s going to be getting.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t¡ª he hasn¡¯t¡ª?¡± ¡°He demanded I show him, but he doesn¡¯t know enough to be actually serious about it. He thought he could intimidate me.¡± Raina regarded him uncertainly. Two days ago, she¡¯d have bet a lot of money on Jair being thoroughly intimidated by Larenok. But now¡­ ¡°And he let you walk out?¡± ¡°I¡¯d love to see him try and stop me.¡± Jair¡¯s smile was downright sadistic. ¡°Alas, no excuses for excessive violence today.¡± His stomach growled, and his expression softened. ¡°Let¡¯s get some dinner.¡± And that should have been the end of it, but Kili Eldren and approximately the entire student body were paying so much attention to Jair that Raina suddenly felt like an insignificant hanger-on rather than friend and protector. They ate quietly, hastily, and Jair firmly rejected every attempt to draw him into conversation. He did open one letter from Calisi Hasti, scanned it, and scribbled a polite refusal on the bottom before they headed back to the apartment for the evening. When Denor came to invite them to sparring practice, it was an absolute relief. Someone relatively sane, doing something normal. Trying to hit one another with deadly weapons made so much more sense than anything else since the initiation. Jair begged off, leaving her and Denor to walk in the purple- and brown-lit tunnel of calm air through the storm to the distant dome. But even then, it wasn¡¯t long before her friend¡¯s chaotic existence became the focus of conversation. If not for how extremely serious everything had become, she¡¯d have loved to let loose and confide everything in Denor. A lifetime of training held her back, and the conversation remained withdrawn and polite. Thankfully, that wasn¡¯t what they were here for. They emerged into the cool interior of the dome, surrounded by fragrant greenery, and proceeded to try and stab one another with deadly weapons. Exactly what she needed.
Jair was lying in the middle of the floor sound asleep when she reached home, and didn¡¯t wake as she moved about putting away her things and unpacking the many components and trinkets they¡¯d stored in her soulspace. She laughed softly as she looked down at him, tears gathering unbidden in the corners of her eyes. How hard did he plan on pushing himself to see this through? But dragon. As hard as he possibly could, she expected. She¡¯d always loved his stubborn streak, that glint of determination whenever they started a new project together, but this was different. This was what she¡¯d expect to see if everything else had been burned away, leaving that stubborn determination as the only thing that mattered. She shook away the thought. That was silly. It was just Jair. He¡¯d gotten a sword way too strong for him, done a ridiculous amount of research on everyone in the city, and changed his entire personality and behavior overnight. That was all. Nothing nearly so dramatic as whatever she was imagining. But the look on his face, lying here asleep, shouldn¡¯t have been so hard. He should have been relaxed and peaceful. Instead he looked like even in sleep he was scowling at an impossible equation, one which he wouldn¡¯t rest until he had solved. Raina silently walked into his room to retrieve a soft white blanket with black patterns, which she carefully tucked around him. The desert got cold at night, and she could already feel the chill in the air. She was still worried, still confused, yet oddly comforted by the chance to do even so small a thing to help him. She¡¯d almost started to think of herself as unneeded, with how forcefully he¡¯d taken charge of his own affairs. But even if the power and responsibility of having a legendary sword had given him new confidence and focused his determination, he was still the same boy she¡¯d been looking out for all these years. Though ¡®boy¡¯ didn¡¯t seem a fitting description any longer, no matter how she looked at it. Perhaps even men needed a little help now and then. She laughed a little at herself, thinking into circles, and headed to bed. Unfortunately, there was no way she could properly relax with that quiet countdown at the back of her head. Two days until dragon. She could disbelieve it as hard as she wanted, and the nagging concern refused to be shaken. Raina Serin did not sleep very much that night.
51 - Raina Serins Perfectly Ordinary Week (2) The third day of what she was beginning to think of as the countdown to the end of her life, Raina Serin rose from her restless slumber to find Jair had already woken and left. The blanket was folded neatly on the end of the sofa. She wasn¡¯t sure if that was comforting or concerning. Jair had always been more a ¡®throw in the general direction of¡¯ than ¡®perfectly tidy away¡¯ sort of guy. That he¡¯d taken the effort on her behalf was warming, but that it was him doing it only added one more note of something¡¯s very wrong to what had been an already strange pile of wrong. For a few blissful minutes as she ate breakfast and prepared for the day, she dared to imagine that things were beginning to settle down. That he¡¯d gone off early to class, or to the library, and that the fervor around his unexpectedly flashy exhibition performance would die down. She was wrong on both counts. The moment she stepped out onto their front step, the distant form of someone up on a ladder by the wall drew her eye. ¡°And I¡¯d hoped you would forget about the whole carving the walls thing,¡± she bemoaned aloud. If he¡¯d been treating things even a tiny bit more casually, she could have done a much better job of convincing herself that he was mistaken. That the dragon wasn¡¯t real. Instead, he was in full obsession mode, attacking the problem with every available tool at his disposal. Raina desperately wanted to go about the day, pretend none of it was her problem, and try to salvage what little sanity she had remaining after so many days without sufficient sleep. Alas, even the thought brought guilt surging up in her chest, an unpleasant weight she¡¯d much rather avoid. ¡°You weren¡¯t joking about changing the wards, huh.¡± Jair glanced down at her. ¡°You can help if you want. It¡¯ll go faster with two.¡± Raina glanced at the distant sun, rising low, then at the school buildings away behind the student village. ¡°We haven¡¯t even started studying for the exams tomorrow.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve got a much more important exam coming up.¡± He tossed down a chisel construct¡ªthree curved bands to hold it to the palm, connected by thick silver cables to the control box, complete with a mana crystal big enough to run Serin Manor for a month. ¡°I¡¯ve marked out the lower sections. Two-thirds depth setting.¡± She caught it effortlessly, years of training good for something at least, and glanced up at where he was using his own similar construct, control box strapped to his upper arm and crystal already notably dimmer. ¡°How long have you been at this?¡± ¡°About four hours.¡± And he¡¯d already used that much power. Raina glanced down at the construct in her hands. ¡°You bought two of these?¡± ¡°I had a feeling you might be motivated to help out.¡± Raina felt a chill go down her back, and let out a nervous laugh. ¡°You¡¯re sure there¡¯s going to be a dragon?¡± ¡°Absolutely certain.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t believe you, but there hasn¡¯t been any sighting of a dragon outside the mountains in centuries.¡± ¡°Ryenzo isn¡¯t checking the calendar to see if now¡¯s a good time to visit. Whatever rage is driving her, it doesn¡¯t care about precedents.¡± He finished with the current section of wall and laid in the metallic inlay, fitting the pieces together with swift efficiency. Raina was still trying to figure out how best to hold the chiseler to make straight lines. ¡°How are you so good at everything? I¡¯d swear you¡¯ve never held one of these before now.¡± ¡°I have.¡± There was a note of humor in his voice, as he moved smoothly into the next section. ¡°You forget I grew up in a rural village. I¡¯m used to doing the worker things.¡± Raina raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the mana crystal as big as two fists. ¡°A rural village¡­ with power to spare for this kind of construct?¡± Jair shrugged nonchalantly. ¡°I¡¯ve spent a lot of time tinkering with things. Not everything has to be used for its intended purpose.¡± ¡°Like slaying a dragon.¡± ¡°Exactly.¡± He docked the handpiece and started filling over the grooves with sandstone-colored putty to conceal what they¡¯d done. ¡°How long you willing to stay with this project for?¡± ¡°How much more is there to it? If you¡¯ve been doing it for hours, you must be close to done.¡± Jair laughed mirthlessly. ¡°I¡¯ve finished three sections out of twenty. If we work all day, we might be able to finish before midnight.¡± Raina¡¯s heart sped up. That was way tighter of a timeline than she¡¯d imagined. ¡°And this will help stop the dragon?¡± ¡°It¡¯ll slow it down. If there¡¯s anything that¡¯ll actually stop a dragon, I haven¡¯t found it yet.¡± ¡°So all this¡­¡± ¡°It¡¯ll help. Don¡¯t worry. I¡¯m going to figure this out.¡± ¡°The walls?¡± ¡°The walls are easy. The dragon is hard.¡± Jair¡¯s voice was curt and brooked no disagreement. Raina didn¡¯t know what to say, so she said nothing. They fell into companionable rhythm and spent the rest of the morning carving, placing, and concealing runes on the walls. They might have continued all day, except Jair saw one of the supervisors heading their direction and called down for her to finish up and vacate. That left the project a little under half completed, but Jair insisted they had plenty of time. ¡°You go on ahead to class, I¡¯ll be assembling some things until it¡¯s safe to work on the walls again.¡± He flashed a smile, though it didn¡¯t reach his eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll take care of everything. Just be at Veshin Oasis tomorrow afternoon to pick up your armor, and meet me on the southern wall before sunset.¡± They stopped at the apartment long enough to trade out Raina¡¯s books from the morning classes she¡¯d skipped and collect those for the afternoon, then Jair sat down at the kitchen table and spread out his construct pieces. She wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind beyond a feeble, ¡°Aelir guide you.¡± Jair barely nodded in acknowledgement, already fitting things together and bending pieces to match a design he must have memorized since she saw no instructions anywhere. The hours of connection working together on the wall, everything smooth and effortless, seemed to fade all at once, leaving her once again feeling alienated and disconnected. She wasn¡¯t used to walking alone. She missed Jair¡¯s unrestrained enthusiasm as they talked about anything and everything. She paused, staring back at the house, frowning. He hadn¡¯t gone anywhere, and was pushing himself harder than she¡¯d imagined possible to try to save her. Why would that make her feel abandoned? ¡°It¡¯s silly.¡± She shook her head and hefted her back and walked briskly toward the lecture halls. ¡°You¡¯re being silly, Raina, there¡¯s nothing to worry about.¡± Except maybe a dragon. But apart from that, everything would be fine. A dragon would mess up anyone¡¯s week. Nothing to worry about.
¡°Where¡¯s Jair?¡± Calisi Hasti smirked at Raina with malicious eagerness when she walked in alone at lunch. ¡°Finally ditched you now that he doesn¡¯t need you?¡± ¡°That¡¯s not how it is.¡± ¡°Oh? Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume building some nobody into a spectacle was your endgame all along, I can¡¯t help but notice he was always clingy clingy riiiiiight up until he got famous, and now¡­ here you are on your own.¡± Raina¡¯s cheeks felt hot. ¡°My friends are none of your business.¡± ¡°Suuure, deny it all you want. You¡¯re old news, Serin.¡± ¡°What, are you supposed to be the upgraded model?¡± Raina snapped, her temper getting the better of her. If not for the past day, she¡¯d have been able to brush it off without a second thought, but Calisi¡¯s words hit harder than she¡¯d ever admit. She fired back instead. ¡°I saw what you said to him. But you don¡¯t know him. Everything you¡¯re offering, he doesn¡¯t care about.¡± ¡°I suppose you know better?¡± Calisi held up one hand as though holding a large fruit. ¡°And yet, after all those years spent playing at friendship, it¡¯s taken him how long to move on? Admit it. You only wanted someone around to be your placid little pet, and now that he¡¯s found his fangs¡­¡± she closed her fingers down into a slow fist, then flicked her wrist as though tossing the crushed remnants away. ¡°You¡¯ve wasted too much time on a failed project, and now you¡¯ll be stuck years behind the curve.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not like that at all,¡± Raina hissed. ¡°I had nothing to do with his fighting skills.¡± Which pained her to contemplate, but she wasn¡¯t going to let Calisi¡¯s lies go unchallenged. Too many people were watching them. ¡°Everything he¡¯s doing, he learned with his own efforts.¡± But I would have helped, if you¡¯d let me know what you were doing. Why, if he was going to put this much effort into training, why wouldn¡¯t he have invited her along? This was exactly the sort of thing they should have been doing together. It made her want to punch something. But as satisfying as it would be to knock Calisi Hasti on her back, that would be an impolitic thing to do. They may snipe at one another here, but their families were officially allies and thus couldn¡¯t do anything too embarrassing to each other. There were more things said, as she grew progressively angrier at everyone and everything¡ªand the lack of sleep only made everything hit so much harder. She did manage to get through lunch without starting any house wars, though, so it could have been worse. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
There was only one afternoon lecture, the rest of the day was dedicated to practical exercises. In her case, that meant a half hour of focused soul meditation for anyone whose soulspell hadn¡¯t officially manifested itself yet, an hour and a half of directed sparring, then another hour of manabody strengthening exercises in the cool basement under the dome. But even that brought her mind back to Jair, rushing ahead to imprint his spells without even a day to think it over. And the frequency with which he was tracing them had to be damaging. With that in mind, she approached the supervisor after their practice session. ¡°It¡¯s recommended we trace imprints at least once every other day and no more than twice a day, right?¡± ¡°Indeed, that is the official recommendation.¡± He didn¡¯t sound like he was paying much attention, glancing down at his papers frequently. ¡°Do you have a different recommendation?¡± ¡°No, nothing like that. I¡¯ve found once every three days works best for me, but everyone is different. There¡¯s no ¡®right¡¯ way to balance repetition and imprint depth. Start with once a day, and adjust from there.¡± ¡°What about more frequently than that? Say, every hour or so?¡± He shook his head, frowning, and focused on her properly for the first time. ¡°The manabody takes time to adjust to the changes you¡¯re trying to push into it. Trying to rush it, you¡¯d be more likely to cause a rupture than speed up the imprinting. If your tracing is even a little bit off between repetitions, you¡¯ll imbalance the whole thing.¡± That¡¯s what she¡¯d thought. Jair acted with such confidence now it made her question her own memory. Raina thanked the supervisor and hurried back to the apartment. There were optional evening activities for people who wanted to fast-track themselves through their progression, but this was not the week for such ordinary things. It wasn¡¯t quite a storm today, but there was enough wind that a steady haze of sand and dust filled the air and gathered outside the protected pathways. Raina could see the outlines of buildings for a good distance. People were harder to make out, unless they were in a straight line along the same path she was on. The table was covered in constructs in various states of assembly. No Jair, though. She looked out the back window toward the wall. The sand obscured the view too much to tell the wall was even there, let alone whether he was out working in it. She¡¯d like to imagine that he was doing something normal, like reading in the library, or taking a nap. The fact that he was out in the heat of the day driving himself past endurance trying to save her only made her feel even more guilty over¡­ everything. It felt wrong to just sit around, so Raina set out in search of her missing friend. It took her a surprising amount of time to find him. The section of wall they¡¯d been working on, down behind the student housing village, bore the vague signs of him having been here but if she hadn¡¯t known what she was looking for she¡¯d never have noticed. She followed the wall southward, behind the recreation halls, past the twin library towers, and nearly to the eastern watchtower before she finally saw him through the dusty haze. He had the ladder out again, moving up and down as he carved with a practiced rhythm that left Raina once again questioning everything she thought she knew about him. "Hey," she said as she walked over. "Greetings." Jair didn''t look down from what he was doing on the wall, but he sounded surprised and pleased. "What brings you out on this rather dusty day, dearest Raina?" Raina was completely flustered by the way he spoke and immediately forgot everything she''d been running through her head. "I''m just concerned about the wall project," she said, eventually, somewhat limply. "Anything more I can do to help?" He tossed her down the second chisel construct and pointed to the bottom section of unfinished diagrams. "Help yourself." "Thanks." For several minutes they worked silently, then she got up the energy to ask, "How did you learn all this?" "Hm? The wall? It''s a pretty common construction over in Reskas, but since it''s primarily used to keep seascourge back from their polder by pushing the water away, it''s not something Veor really had a use for." "Wait, you''re spending this much time and effort on a water-repelling ward... in the middle of the biggest desert in Almas?" Raina paused, staring up at him. "What aren''t you telling me?" Jair grinned down at her, mischief in his eyes. "It doesn''t only repel water. It''s an active wind barrier. It''ll push back against anything approaching the walls at speed, and in a way that a dragon''s antimagic aura can''t cut through." "Oh. Wow. And they can''t use this for...?" she gestured up at the perpetual haze of dust surrounding them. Jair laughed. "The amount of power it''ll take to push away that much air is going to run Astralla City dry in under an hour. It¡¯s bad enough the amount they use to keep the walkways clear.¡± ¡°That sounds like it¡¯ll attract a lot of attention, which is the last thing we need right now.¡± ¡°That''s why we''ll only connect the last few pieces to the grid at the very last minute. Otherwise, it''ll burn out so fast we get nothing out of it, and you can bet there''ll be an investigation when the grid goes empty in the middle of the evening rush." Raina looked down at the chisel construct wrapped around her palm and wrist, then up at the wall back the way she¡¯d come. She could barely make out the lines where Jair had already embedded the spell pieces, a faint discoloration that ran the entire way around the southern half of the school''s guard wall. "You''re sure this is necessary?" Her voice came out faint, hopeful and worried in equal measure. "You haven''t been listening to Oliss and getting worried over nothing?" Jair continued moving through the carving without pause. "I haven''t spoken to Oliss recently. What''s she predicting this time?" "Nothing specific. A lot about you though." Jair laughed, sounding genuinely surprised for the first time in days. "Really? She''s finally noticed I exist, has she? And at the same time as the rest of the world too. What an incredible coincidence." "Jair, don''t be unkind." "I''m not saying she''s an illegitimate seer, I can personally attest to her visions having at least some validity on occasion." Raina blushed at how freely he was discussing someone else''s soulspell and turned away, returning her eyes to the wall as she resumed carving. Even if Oliss did all but admit it by her behavior, it wasn''t the sort of thing you talked about. "But the problem isn''t with her power," Jair continued, not even looking at her. "The problem is that she filters it all through her own beliefs about what people want to hear, and then she goes around saying ''Voric and Nize are destined for strife,'' when all she really saw was them sitting on opposite ends of a bench without any of the context around it. Then they break up when all she''d seen was a training exercise." "That''s such an oversimplification." "I know, but it''s an actual example and extreme enough to make my point. She says whatever will get her the most attention, however loosely it''s related to reality or what she actually saw." "Well, she thinks you are destined for strife," Raina said, somewhat defiantly. Jair chuckled. "Of course I am. We''re about to fight a dragon, remember?" "But if she saw a dragon, wouldn''t she have told everyone?" Raina hated how desperate she sounded, how pleading. This week was really getting the better of her. "It''s not something she could misconstrue or misrepresent." "Sure she could. Just the other day she described it as ''a giant monster to eat the institute whole,'' when in reality all it did was snatch you up, crush a few buildings, and leave." Raina blinked, pausing in her work to frown up at him again. "So you have been listening to her." "No. I''ve been paying attention to what she says, not taking it as anything but her own interpretation of events." "Then how¡ª" "I could give you any number of answers to that. There could be a letter from your mother, forgotten in a vault, which describes the turning of the moons and the alignment where her fated enemy will come for her daughter. Or there might be a whisper overheard in the night, between two dragon scholars as they tried to interpret the mysterious, ''Kill the child, break the mother'' that the mad draconis has been muttering over and over. But whatever the interpretation, the reality remains. Tamma Serin has made an implacable enemy in Ryenzo Draconis, and you are the one who''s on the hook to pay the price." Raina couldn''t let it go. "Might? Could? There''s a lot of uncertainty there. Is that really worth burning out the entire city mana grid for?" "Yes." She blinked again, taken aback all over again by how absolutely confident he sounded. For a little, there, she could forget that her friend had changed so much in the past days, just discussing and debating as usual. But then it was gone, and the distant coldness she''d been trying to shake began to seep back in. They worked again in silence for a time, and it was less companionable now. The lack of words between them felt heavy and loud, taking up too much space in her heart. She couldn''t keep letting it grow. "Jair..." "Hm?" She didn''t know what to say, just that she had to say something. "I''m scared." She immediately cursed herself for a fool. That was not something she''d wanted to let slip. Until now she hadn''t even let herself acknowledge it fully. Her arm fell, the construct and wall forgotten, as she hugged her chest and tried to keep from falling apart. "I know." Jair''s voice was gentle and understanding. He turned off his own chisel and climbed down the ladder to stand beside her. "I''m scared too, Rai. I''m doing everything I know to, everything I can possibly think of, and I don''t know if it''ll be enough." They didn''t quite look at each other, both staring up at the wall, but standing so close it''d take only the tiniest movement to grab his hand. Raina swallowed instead. "You''re not very reassuring." "What use is reassurance if it''s a lie? I don''t ever want to lie to you. I''ve lied too much to too many people, there has to be some line left I don''t cross." That made her chuckle, a weak and uneasy thing, but genuine nonetheless. "You wouldn''t know how to lie your way out of a hole in the sand." "Remind me to prove otherwise when we do the nobility intrigue thing." She suddenly remembered how smoothly he''d shifted everything about his carriage and presentation as he walked from person to person at the initiation, how quickly he''d become connected with so many of the wealthiest people in Veor at the exhibition. Perhaps he really did know how to lie. Tears gathered in her eyes unbidden. "How long have you been hiding?" The question burst out of her, tired of being held in. "How long did you spend planning all this, learning what you needed to know, and keeping me in the dark?" Jair turned, then, and took hold of her hand in both of his. "No. Don''t think that. I''ll explain everything once the dragon is dealt with, but I never wanted to hide anything from you. The only things I can''t tell you are things it would hurt you to know." "So you''ll keep hiding, just feel bad about it." She tugged her hand away from his, not abruptly, but he released her immediately. "Good to know." "Only for another day," he said, voice empty and dull. "As soon as the dragon is dealt with, I''ll tell you anything you ask." "Why wait? Why not now?" Jair gestured up at the wall. "You think we can focus on getting things ready while we''re dissecting everything about life and magic? You''d rather demand answers about my soulspell than work on saving your life?" Raina blushed and squeaked. "I didn''t know¡ª that''s not¡ª you know I would never¡ª" "And yet you have." Jair sighed. "I''ll tell you. I want to tell you. I want nothing more than to sit down and talk and not have to worry about anyone or anything for as long as it takes for you to be satisfied that you know everything I do about all of this. But we don''t have the luxury of that time." He snorted wryly, as though that were incredibly amusing. "As soon as the dragon is dead, we''ll have all the time in the world. So for now, work on finishing this if you want to, or go and study if you have better things to prepare, and I''ll do my best to save your life." If she said another word, she was going to break down crying again¡ªand she wasn''t even sure why. Was she sad, or angry, or touched and overwhelmed, or happy, or...? She didn''t even know herself. And she''d done enough of being a weepy mess. That wasn''t her. Why did it take so little to shatter her stable worldview so thoroughly? Jair climbed back up the ladder without another word, leaving her to her thoughts. She blinked, allowing the unshed tears to slip silently down her face, and turned her attention back to the wall. If this was really the most important thing to do, then she''d get it done. Jair''s determination was nothing to her own. They''d always worked well together for that reason, each pushing the other to heights neither could reach alone. She couldn''t fully silence the nagging worry at the back of her head, the questions about his motives and all the secrets he was apparently holding on to... But. Dragon. So she swallowed her fears and held her head high and spent the rest of the evening and late into the night illegally modifying the academy''s wards until the entire wall was set up with a high power wind shield that would burn out the city''s mana grid entirely. And right now, she couldn''t think of anything she''d rather do.
52 - Raina Serin鈥檚 Perfectly Ordinary Week (3) Raina lingered a moment on the walltop once they were finished with the wind-ward project to look out across the dark desert at the distant glow of Astralla City. It wouldn''t be glowing tomorrow, whether the dragon showed up or not. Then she climbed down and took Jair''s hand and they walked side by side back to their apartment in the quiet glow of accomplishment from having completed what they set out to do. "A full six hours ahead of schedule," Jair said. "I''ve missed working with you, you know." "You never had to work alone in the first place," she grumbled. He laughed hollowly, as though she¡¯d made a terrible attempt at a joke. "With any luck, that''ll change soon." And he gave her hand a comforting squeeze, with a smile that more than anything else dispelled the growing distance Raina had been imagining between them. Did it really matter who or what he was learning when she wasn''t around to see? If he spent every class they didn''t share off secretly training to walk and speak particular ways and how to impress the various nobles? She''d had classes like that in her childhood, so why would she begrudge them to him? Sure, imagining the fully adult Jair walking about with a book on his head or teacups on his shoulders as he tried to daintily walk with the proper posture was almost enough to make her burst out laughing then and there, but that was no reason to accuse him of trying to leave her behind. "I''m sorry," she said, quietly, as they prepared a much-belated late night dinner together in their small kitchen. "What for?" Jair asked, glancing her way before returning to slicing the currin-leaf. Raina didn''t have an answer. It would be impossible to explain all that she''d been thinking and feeling throughout the past day, how severely she''d doubted him, how silly she felt over that fear. She was blushing again. Maybe she was the one who needed to go back and take remedial manners lessons. "Nothing," she finally muttered, not meeting his eyes and fully focusing on mixing the cubed meat into its seasoned coating. "Then you''re forgiven for all your nothing," he said lightly. Oddly enough, that did make her feel better. Once they''d eaten, they headed to their respective bedrooms, and for the first time in far too long Raina actually slept through the night with only vaguely horrible dreams to disturb her.
Dragon day dawned with a bland mundanity that Raina didn''t entirely approve of. If this were to be the day of her death, shouldn''t there be the rumble of distant storms, or at least a sinister hiss of wind through the windows? Instead, the sky was clear, the air was free of sand, and it had all the makings of a hideously hot¡ªand therefore perfectly ordinary¡ªday. She couldn''t possibly sit still for classes in the morning, so she joined Jair in eating a quick breakfast of leftover dinner, then the two of them spent the first part of the day assembling constructs. Mid-morning, they paused for her to go collect her anti-dragon specialty armor from Lord Veshin. Jair stayed behind to continue with the constructs¡ªwhich had now begun to take on the character of armor amplifier pieces. All of it would be unthinkably expensive to run. Though, given this was the man who casually pulled out multiple industrial-grade mana crystals just to carve some protection wards on the walls, he clearly didn''t care about costs. If things kept up like this, she and Jair would bankrupt House Serin long before she ended up inheriting its responsibility properly. Though when she saw the armor the Veshin workshops had produced for her, she couldn''t do more than gape in awe. She''d seen expensive armor. She''d seen Veshin armor. She''d even seen royal armor, during one notable visit to the palace as a child during which she ended up slipping away to explore the royal treasury with the then-young Prince Orren. She''d never seen anything like this. It was dark, deep blue like the evening sky, but with a faint iridescence. Each curved piece was fitted and measured perfectly to her body, from the smooth round shoulder guards to overlapping leg pieces and flawlessly jointed fingers. She couldn''t tear her eyes away from it. The ceramic was layered and offset, cushioned and reinforced in ways Lord Veshin proudly described but she couldn''t quite wrap her head around. It was beautiful. And it was hers. The Veshin assistants helped her fit into it, strapped each piece in place, settled the various layers. It started with the gloves and boots, with cables running along her arms and legs to the central chestplate. Each successive piece connected to those central cables, slipped in under the previous one and spreading out to leave space for the next. The chestplate brought it all together and tucked three city-grade mana crystals discreetly against her stomach. She was glad that the armor¡¯s outside shape completely concealed the fact that she was walking around with a month¡¯s worth of power on her person. This was the kind of wealth that made even someone used to extravagance vaguely uneasy. It would have been cheaper to buy up an entire city block. ¡°You¡¯re all set. Go ahead.¡± Raina tentatively took a step, twisted and shifted to test how it felt. The armor was heavy, but less so than she''d have expected. The first thing she noticed was how strange and tight it felt to have her arms so closely restricted. Apart from the sheer oddity of it, though, the armor fit her like a second skin. She tested some stretches and twists once they finished, and though the armor made soft clinking as the various plates shifted against one another and the protective halos tapped into the other plates, it hardly restricted her movement at all. She''d never trained to fight in heavy armor¡ªas a mageblade it was more important to stay fast and keep your spells available¡ªor worn anything over her arms but standard wired protective cages to deflect enemy blows. The armor¡¯s protective halos would perform much the same function, except they were designed to deal with something much larger. A standard sword could slip between them with ease, but a standard sword wasn¡¯t what they were built to protect against. "Take good care of it, and it''ll take good care of you," Lord Veshin told her, as he reeled off the usage and care instructions. Raina did her best to memorize them all, though one part of her mind wondered why she bothered. If she was going to die today, why worry about long term armor care? No. The whole point of today was that she would survive. She''d seen how hard Jair was working, and she''d allowed herself to get swept up in it too. Now was no time to be fatalistic about it. But... dragon...? She ran her gauntleted hands over the cool solidity of the armor she wore. She had no idea how Jair had gotten this arranged, even with the amount of money he was willing to throw at it. Secret connections, or whatever else he''d been up to. One more day, then she could have all the answers she''d ever need. Just survive today. Easy. She''d survived 100% of days so far. Just keep living. Simple. "Are you alright?" Lord Veshin asked, concern on his face. "You look like you''re about to pass out, can''t have that. Do you need something to eat? I can have Lemris put something together real quick if you''re hungry. Or a drink?" He waved to one of the attendants. "Bring us a drink, please." The attendant rushed off, before Raina could even get a word in edgewise. She waved away Lord Veshin''s concerns and pulled off her helmet so they could speak more easily. "I''m just adapting to the armor, it''s alright." "I can have it packed up for you. No need to wear it until your event." Raina snorted a flimsy laugh at that. ''Event.'' Yep. Her death would be an event alright. "I''ll handle it myself. If you could just go over how to equip and unequip it again before I leave, that will suffice." Though she did end up accepting a drink when the first attendant returned, and wouldn''t admit that it helped a lot more than she''d have expected.
And then, all too soon, they stood on the wall in the evening, preparations complete, constructs assembled, wind wards ready to activate at a moment''s notice. Jair stood staring out to the east, hands clasped behind his back, wearing the most absurd hodgepodge of armor she''d seen in a long time. It was... frankly a relief to see. He looked more like a sandfisher scavenger who''d put together his own set of armor in imitation of hers, and for once the dynamic between them seemed reflected by their outer protective shells. Setting aside the fact that Jair had paid for hers, while she''d paid for his. Thinking about that only confused her more. In every other way, their positions had been reversed. He stood patiently, unmoving, while she paced anxiously. She reached the end of her short path between the tower and the spot where Jair stood on the battlements and turned back. She reached him and stood beside him a moment, staring out in the direction he watched so fixedly. "There''s definitely going to be a dragon?" "There is." She didn''t see anything, and said as much. "It''ll be here." For a minute they stood there, silently, then Raina paced away toward the tower again. The armor was heavy and close. Even after hours of wearing it in hopes of adapting, she had only somewhat gotten used to it. The cooling circuits that ran through it prevented it from becoming a deadly oven in the hot sunlight--in fact, apart from the weight, it was the most comfortable outfit she''d ever worn. Like being inside the dome in the evening, rather than the heat of late afternoon on the wall. The circumstances made it very hard to enjoy. If she survived the next few hours, she''d have to give it a better chance. "Want to spar or something?" she asked, when her pacing reached Jair again. "Save your energy." "I''m not going to save much of anything at this rate." She stopped beside him, stared out at the distant horizon, and failed to see anything that looked like a dragon. "You''re sure there''s going to be a dragon?" "Yes." She paced away, sweating despite the comfortable cool of her armor, heart beating fast against the perfectly-fitted chestplate. It felt restrictive, but necessary. She wanted to tear it off and scream; she wanted to curl up in it and pretend she was invisible. She did neither. The minutes passed with excruciating slowness, but they did pass. "There." Jair pointed, and she saw a tiny speck against the sun. It might have been a bird or a chunk of sand, but it stayed far too still to be either. It didn''t move up or down, didn''t circle or wheel, only hovered there. "It''s not getting any closer." "Yes it is. It''s just so far away you won''t be able to tell at first." Raina paced, breath coming in unstable huffs. She wasn''t sure if she was going to laugh or cry or just collapse. "Breathe." Jair''s voice was coldly commanding. "You''ll be fine." "That''s not very reassuring." He gave a tiny half-shrug, eyes still fixed on the distant spot. "You''re sure it''s a dragon?" "It is." Raina shivered and hugged her arms to her chest. "How can you know?" "I know." For a time longer they stood. Then Jair stiffened and dark green light flared around him. Raina turned in time to see a sword appear in his hand, black and silver with wicked serrated waves across the back, glinting with deep green fire. For a moment she couldn''t be sure what she was seeing. He looked down at the sword, whispered its name with tears in his eyes. "Maelstrom." A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. "Wow, what happened?" Raina felt awkward interrupting, but this was... inexplicable. "Your sword can shapeshift?" At least it was something to distract her from the maybe-dragon. Jair didn''t answer. He turned the weapon over and over, laughing as though it were a revelation. Raina had no idea what to think. "You alright?" she asked, tentative. "I''ll be fine." "What happened?" Jair looked up toward the distant speck, then sat down right then and there. "I''m going to meditate. Inspect it if you want." "You sure?" She stared between Jair and the sword, the already-priceless artifact that had somehow transmutated in front of her eyes for the second time in four days. "I trust you, Rai. If you want to kill me for it, go ahead." "I would never!" He didn''t respond, sword resting across his knees, hands lightly on the sword. Raina waited for him to move, but when he stayed in clear meditation she hesitantly knelt down next to him. "Inspect," she whispered, feeling intensely intrusive. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne This was... nothing at all like the weapon she''d seen after the initiation. Integrated? There was no such level. She''d been training as a future mageblade for her entire life. She knew the lore. She knew how many people topped out at Reforged, how the next step¡ªthe pinnacle¡ªwas Ascended. Mageblade was a three-step path. She knew it. Everyone knew it. "Fourth... form...? How?" She hadn''t noticed she spoke aloud until Jair answered, his meditation concluded. "Isn''t it obvious? I fed it my soul." He jumped to his feet, heedless of his hodgepodge of armor, and turned around to help her up. "Time to activate the wards?" "Not yet. I need to check the tower." And then he ran over to the tower, and she heard his footsteps ascending at an unreasonably quick pace. Before she quite knew what she was looking at, he''d emerged from the trapdoor onto the top. He stared out at the distant speck from there, absently twirling the sword in his hand, then ran down and over to her, grinning. "I''ve done it. It''s time." "The wards?" He shook his head as though the wards were of no concern whatsoever, then let out another burst of manic laughter and ran back up to the tower. If anything, even faster than before. He''d clearly lost his mind. But... Maelstrom''s sudden evolution... It''d been accompanied by a drastic change in behavior and personality the first time, too, and that was before he fed it his soul. There was an inherent risk to tying anything that deeply to your core self. Risks every mageblade knew long before they began their Reforging Quest, and certainly before attempting an Ascension. But would Jair know them? He''d only been here three years. Until arriving at the Institute, he''d belonged to a poor, uneducated family, where the only access he had to books was an expensive trip to their local outpost. He''d told her about days spent poring over every page of the thin volumes he''d been able to access, how obsessively he''d memorized everything remotely related to magic, anything that might help him apply successfully to the Astralla Institute. He''d never cared about the ''blade'' part of the class, only that it was the only magic type class he was likely to meet the requirements to unlock in his lifetime. Jair was in it for the spells, not the soulsword, and it was very possible he''d found some forbidden technique somewhere to instantly advance and jumped into it without bothering to check for warnings. That kind of uncontrolled advancement could be deadly, let alone mentally destructive. Raina looked back out at the dragon, then at her friend as he ran back to her still grinning, having topped the tower and descended again in the moments she was pondering. "Come on, let''s go look!" Maelstrom vanished in a flash of black and green fire and he grabbed her hand, his armored gauntlet clinking against hers. He tugged her along after him, up the tower. Jair all but danced up the steps, Raina''s hand in one of his. Raina struggled to keep up, the tension of the past days and the weight of the armor combining to wear her out unnaturally quickly. Perhaps he''d been right in the first place, and she should''ve been saving her energy instead of pacing all afternoon. Still. "Yep, it looks the same from up here. You sure we don''t need to start the wards yet?" They''d worked so hard on them. "Not yet. Come on." He started down the stairs, and she reluctantly followed back to their designated spot on the wall. "How do you still have this much energy? Just walking in this armor makes me feel like I''m going to pass out. Let alone running up and down the tower." "I don''t know!" Maelstrom reappeared in his hand and he pointed it out at the setting sun. "Hear that, Ryenzo?" "What has gotten into you?" "Hope. I promised I''d find a way to save you, and now I have." "Why do you sound surprised?" "I''ll explain everything in the morning." He laughed in a carefree way she¡¯d never heard from him, something so purely unrestrained that it made her question everything. Before she could say anything, he turned and ran off back to the tower yet again. She stayed behind this time, staring out at the distant speck. If she squinted at it just right, she could imagine it was shaped like a dragon. This was torture. Staring at her death coming closer, inevitable but so excruciatingly slow¡­ ¡°And it¡¯s definitely a dragon?¡± she would have asked, if she hadn¡¯t been standing alone for the moment. She looked back up to the tower. Jair stood on the precarious edge as though it were a perfectly ordinary thing to do, still laughing, still playing with his sword in one hand without seeming to notice as he flipped and spun and twirled it about. Silver gleamed from Maelstrom¡¯s edges, gold glinted in deep subdued patterns beneath the dark core, and green fire flared up in eager little flickers. Raina couldn¡¯t deny it was a beautiful weapon, but looking at it made her uneasy in ways she couldn¡¯t explain. Do not stand against us. Ominous, almost threatening. Then he threw the sword over the wall. It flew straight and smooth, so much so that she instinctively looked around to see if their custom ballista had been delivered after all. It hadn¡¯t. Then Jair jumped off the tower. ¡°Jair?!¡± He turned back and waved, gliding elegantly through the air after his sword like he¡¯d been bladewalking for decades. ¡°I¡¯ll be back soon! I¡¯ve got a dragon to slay.¡± The feeling of distance Raina had been grappling with all week surged up stronger than ever as Jair''s flawless bladewalk carried him in a perfect line toward the oncoming dragon. No prodigy she¡¯d ever seen could fly that casually, and she¡¯d seen quite a few. ¡°Without me?" She ran to the edge of the battlement, but could go no further. "What happened to becoming dragonslayers together?¡± ¡°Next time! I promise!¡± ¡°Next time? What do you mean, next time? Jair!¡± He was too far away. Raina looked over the wall, but she couldn¡¯t jump off after him. It was too far down. She¡¯d barely begun connecting to her sword, and had made no progress on unlocking her soulspell. She could only watch helplessly, so far away. She didn¡¯t like the feeling. She wanted to be able to stand with him, fight beside him. For so long she¡¯d been the one in the lead, doing her best to pull him along behind her. Now he was the one taking the lead and she was standing still. She didn¡¯t even know what she should be doing. The whole situation was beyond insane. The receding speck that was Jair grew smaller and smaller, even as the dragon-shaped speck came closer and closer, absolutely dwarfing the silver glint. The clash looked like nothing so much as¡­ shifting clouds. At this distance there was no knowing what happened to Jair. He¡¯d been too small to be seen for several minutes before what had to be the fight. The dragon¡¯s barely discernible shape seemed to warp and twist, then the dark blot that was Ryenzo fell to the ground. A sudden desperate desire rose up in her, wordless and complex, taking everything that she¡¯d been struggling with the past days and everything she saw now and boiling it down into something more intense than she¡¯d ever experienced before. Fear for her friend, a pervasive sense of impending doom, anger at Ryenzo¡­ and at herself. And perhaps not pride, but something near to it, refusing to be so thoroughly outdone by someone who¡¯d had his class for only three days. He¡¯d been stronger and braver than she¡¯d ever been. She stood up to petty bullies and political enemies, but a dragon was something else entirely. The sheer breadth and confidence of his plan shook her. She¡¯d not have gone nearly so far. She¡¯d have contacted her family, used their money and connections, but when she really thought about it their reactions would probably be pretty unhelpful on the whole. Not many people would agree to fight an angry dragon for any pay. Raina would, if that''s what was threatening her friends, but what use would it be to throw her life away if it didn¡¯t accomplish anything? "I''m not sure who''s crazier right now, me or you," she muttered. Alongside the fear for what might happen, guilt over being the reason he had to do this at all, and desperation to find some way to help, another feeling had begun to grow in her. Something less solid, nebulous and sharp. He¡¯d heard about a threat to her and gone so far as to defy everyone and everything he¡¯d previously crumbled under, collected resources in record time, impossibly upgraded his sword and then done it again, and all that without a moment¡¯s complaint. She¡¯d never have thought of using Reskian sea wards to stop a flying dragon. She¡¯d never have been able to design a custom armor, let alone arrange for its creation. Honestly, she didn¡¯t know how Jair thought of even a fraction of the things he¡¯d done in the past few days, but that didn¡¯t matter. He¡¯d done so much and tried so hard, and then he¡¯d gone flying after a dragon alone. Never mind that the dragon had seemingly fallen out of the sky. That could mean anything. She looked down at her own sword, basic and unimpressive, then strained her eyes as dusk turned to twilight, staring at the unmoving lump that was Ryenzo. She set aside her helmet so she could see more clearly, but nothing had changed. All the thoughts and feelings that had been churning within her grew overwhelming. ¡°What does it take to unlock a soulspell? The two most reliable factors are intensity and calm. Which sounds like a paradox, but it isn''t.¡± It all sounded absurd, the kind of thing everyone told you forever but was just words you couldn''t quite understand. But now, helpless and alone, no longer afraid for herself but even more terrified for her friend, furious and powerless, it made perfect sense. She''d never felt so intensely. She''d never been so paradoxically calm. If there was ever a moment for her power to finally manifest, now was the time. Raina knelt down right there on the wall, soulsword point down in front of her with both hands over its pommel. She closed her eyes and searched for the soulspell she''d never been able to find through all these months of trying to attune herself. There was nothing there. She could see it perfectly in the crisp clarity of this moment. She had a gaping hole at her core, an infinite void where her soulspell should have been. She''d failed to attune to it because there was nothing to attune... never found it because there was nothing to find. The void had a vague sort of edge to it, something that couldn''t have been drawn or described. As though a golden rim surrounded it fully, leaving the black orb of nothingness contained by an unseen boundary. As though the sheer absence at her core repelled everything else away. Impossible. Every mageblade had a soulspell. Anyone with any magic-type class did. Even if your soulspell was something as minuscule as ''cause a paper to ignite'' and nothing more, everyone had one. How could hers be nothing? It wasn''t her soulspace, that she could see just fine. If she looked upward, it hovered well away from either soulspell or sword, a white oblong mesh through which she could insert or remove physical items. She breathed fast and deep, heavy rhythm as her body remained in preparation to fight at any moment, but steady as she internally searched for her sword''s soul next. Her soulsword, at least, was easy to find. A tiny silver speck hovered above the void at her core. When she focused on it, its soulmap opened exactly how it should have. The basic weapon''s soul was a simple lattice of woven steel. It formed a small sphere normally, a circle with cracks spreading and widening into a spiky starburst when unfolded. At least one thing was working properly in here. ¡®I fed it my soul.¡¯ But Raina''s soul was empty, so she tried the reverse instead. She tried to pull the sword''s soul inward, to fill the void. It was a laughable attempt. The speck of the sword compared to the size of her gaping void was completely incapable of filling it. It was like dropping a single grain of sand into a well and expecting it to be filled. Yet that''s what Raina did. Immediately, she toppled forward as her soulsword disappeared from under her hands. She landed awkwardly on her face, forcefully snapped back into reality. For a moment she lay where she''d fallen, half-dazed from the abrupt transition from soulsight. Then she sat up, checked over her armor for any cracks¡ªthere were none, thankfully¡ªand held out a hand for her soulsword. "Soulblade, manifest." Nothing happened. Putting a bit more mental energy behind it, she tried again. "Soulblade, manifest." Nothing. She must have broken something. She leaned back against the battlements, all strength deserting her. Hope, desperation, determination, all of it drained away. What was the point? She was a void. She''d been falling behind because she had nothing to work with. She couldn''t brute force manifesting a new soulspell where none existed. Maybe it would have been better for the dragon to eat her after all. Instead, Jair had thrown away his limitless potential and gone to die in her place. Maybe he would succeed in killing Ryenzo before dying himself, but she didn''t see any future where one man fought a dragon alone and the result was an alive man. It should have been me. Tears slid down her cheeks unnoticed, the void in her emotions growing to match the void in her soul. But beyond the emptiness was the same fire at her heart. The same determination, the same anger and willingness to fight whoever and whatever tried to mess with the people she loved. And as she struggled with her own inability to be what she needed to be, as she grieved the closest friend she''d ever had, that fire built underneath it all. ¡®I fed it my soul.¡¯ Raina rose slowly to her feet. Dusk had fallen fully, the distant shape of the fallen dragon visible only by the sickly glow of its green scales. Still no sign of Jair. She walked half in reality, half in spirit, or perhaps in neither. She felt disconnected from herself, an impassive observer who could push things this way or that without repercussion. The sword was still in the void that should have been her soulspell. She''d been trying to manifest it into reality as a weapon, but it wasn''t a weapon any more. Obvious error there. She held out a hand and the sword appeared. Or... something vaguely in the shape of the sword appeared. Darker than night, made of solid void, it seemed to break light around it. Reality itself looked unreal as she gave the sword a quick slash, leaving wavering air and glitching light behind it. And then the moment ended, and she stared in confusion at the blade-shaped void she held. "Inspect?" The wavering outline of a sword didn¡¯t respond to the command, as though it were no more an item than the sky itself. It had no weight, no texture, yet she could feel it in her hand. It may as well not have existed. "What...?" She very well may have broken something. Hopefully in a useful way. But however crazy her sword might be, it wasn''t going to help her unless she could get over to the dragon. The intensity had disappeared, leaving her with mild confusion amid a sea of calm clarity. She tucked the not-sword back into her soul innocently. Best to keep any potential reality-breaking abilities hidden until she needed them. She had other work to do first.
53 - Back to School At the turning of one year to the next, before we welcome the coming change of season, we celebrate Solaria. Unlike the garish tourism and spectacle of the lunar festival Terlunia, Solaria is an intimate time for communities to gather and share together. Friends and family alike congregate with feasts and celebration, rejoicing in what each member of the community has accomplished and looking forward to what they¡¯ll do in the year to come.
Jair Welburne returned to the Institute in the middle of the night, to find there was quite a commotion going on. Despite the late hour, people were rushing about and torches were lit in place of the normal lights. The first thing that happened when he dropped to the middle of the hubbub was Raina screamed "You''re alive!" and jumped on him with a hug tighter than he''d imagined her little arms could manage. The second thing was Larenok blustering forward with a scowl and some loud words about irresponsibility and demanding to know where he''d been. The headmaster''s face was always unhappy by default, but when he was upset it could get significantly more so. Dramatic to the point of comical, in Jair''s opinion. Jair looked down at Raina clinging to him, questioningly. She shook her head slightly, flicking a brief frown in Larenok''s direction. Interesting. So she hadn''t told anyone what they were doing? "We need to get away somewhere so we can talk," he murmured to her. "Briefly, what''s going on here?" "I saw a dragon and raised the alarm. No one was taking it seriously, so..." she bit at her lip briefly, looking half ashamed and mildly smug. "I connected your wards. When the power went down, everyone noticed. When I pointed out the glowing dragon..." she gestured around at the group. "Combination of panicking students and unhappy teachers. Sometimes it seems it''s going to break up, but then some new bunch comes out to join the havoc. I''m surprised they haven''t started sending people home yet." "Welburne!" Larenok shouted, no longer content with scowling and ranting. "Serin, stand aside." Raina turned to look up at him defiantly, keeping her arm around Jair. "As designated companion on my upcoming Reforging Quest, he is no longer under your jurisdiction." Larenok''s face reddened. "He and I have business that isn''t any of yours." "And he and I have business that isn''t any of yours," Raina snapped back without hesitation. "So I''d appreciate it if you stop wasting our time and say what you have to say. We have a lot to prepare." Jair put his own arm around her shoulders, heart full of joyful relief. He''d almost expected something to have gone wrong even without Ryenzo''s relentless attack; to see Raina alive and well was more than he''d quite dared to imagine. Yet here she was. The day of her death was over, and she was still alive. And as feisty as ever. Reforging Quest. He''d suggested it as a cover for getting Maelstrom looked at, but it was still a perfectly good plan. Without the urgency of figuring out what was wrong with his sword, they could truly devote themselves to nothing but attuning Raina to her own soulsword and upgrading her class. They could go off and have adventures together, all across the world, just like they''d always wanted. The atmosphere of worry, anger, fear, and overall unhappiness in the crowd around them was irrelevant. Larenok''s retort was coming, but for this one brief moment Jair was content. Nothing could stand in their way any longer. "Where have you been? Why did you ignore the alarms? What do you know about this?" "I didn''t hear any alarms," Jair answered honestly. "I know you had something to do with this. You''ve been up to something all week. I know it." "Yes, I''ve been trying to warn everyone about the dragon." Or... had he? He couldn''t remember what had actually happened in this version of the timeline. Perhaps not, given Larenok''s look of absolute blank confusion. "I didn''t cause the problem, but I suppose it''s easier to blame the one trying to fix it than deal with the actual responsible parties." "Don''t think I won''t tell the Provisional about this," Larenok growled. "I don''t know who you think you are, but you''re no student of mine." "You''re right, I¡¯m not your student. I''m leaving with Miss Serin as escort to her Reforging Quest, as I believe she just told you. And we have plans to make." Jair turned to go, Raina still at his side. ¡°I knew you were trouble from the day you crawled in here, lowborn.¡± Larenok couldn¡¯t let him walk away without pressing the issue. "All this time you¡¯ve been a drain on my Institute¡¯s resources, just so you could cozy up to some rich girl and throw away what little potential you had?¡± ¡°I believe my father would object to your characterization of me as ¡®some rich girl¡¯, Headmaster,¡± Raina interposed, her voice taking on a strident declarative note. ¡°I believe the late night has been having a deleterious effect on your emotional stability. Everyone is tense right now, so we should disperse and get some rest, and we can address the new situation in the morning. Agreed?¡± ¡°Tokens, then.¡± Larenok held out his hand. ¡°If you think you can sneak off without answering for what you¡¯ve done¡ª¡± Jair handed his over without a word. Astralla City was less than an hour away by sandshark, and barely longer than that by bladewalk. He didn¡¯t need authorization for the academy transit to get anywhere he needed to be. Raina frowned, looking as though she¡¯d argue, but followed Jair¡¯s example rather than continue arguing. The moment they were out of the circle of firelight from the odd midnight assemblage, she slumped against him in exhausted relief. ¡°You good?¡± ¡°No. I¡¯m barely holding it together. Let¡¯s get home, then we can try to sort through it.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°Or follow your own suggestion and sleep. We can talk in the morning.¡± ¡°Did you really kill the dragon?¡± ¡°Well¡­ not exactly. I don¡¯t quite know what I did to her. But she¡¯s not actively pursuing you at the moment, and we have a few days to decide what to do about her before she¡¯ll press the issue.¡± Raina pressed a hand to her forehead, then yawned expansively. ¡°Yeah. Maybe we should sort it out in the morning.¡±
Jair slept uneasily. Despite having come closer to reaching his ideal outcome than ever before, his mind kept replaying failure scenarios. Each time he woke to the darkness of an unlit campus and distant flickers of firelight, he had to cross to Raina¡¯s door and listen for her breathing before he could convince himself that today hadn¡¯t been the dream. He several times summoned Maelstrom to stare at its dark core, its new and unfamiliar yet intimately known form. It no longer glowed except when he wanted it to, its edge gleaming silver at a thought or dimming completely on a whim. He didn¡¯t know what to think. For all intents and purposes, Maelstrom had become his soulspell. Except it remained an item. And it had three abilities, none of which as far as he could tell used mana any longer. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Darkflame, he knew. Kind of. It burned things, and brought them back changed. He still needed to test how much changed and what its limitations were. Right now it was an uncertain power, which wasn¡¯t ideal when he might need to depend on it in a fight. Integration, probably had something to do with how it¡¯d become an ¡®Integrated¡¯ soulsword. He¡¯d never heard of a tier beyond ascended, but if any weapon were going to break the boundaries of reality itself, it¡¯d be Maelstrom. Complete unknown for now, but given the hunger he felt within Maelstrom¡¯s soul, he had the feeling he¡¯d find out soon enough. Temporal Reversion, he would have to test. Much later. His one timefall so far had clearly demonstrated that his soulspell had been irrevocably altered, but he was in a tenuous success timeline and he¡¯d not risk it becoming a failure. Jair slept for another hour, woke from a dream of failure to a sense of dull resignation, verified that Raina was still alive, and gave up on trying to sleep. For a few minutes he paced silently, then he sat in the livingroom on the floor facing her door so he¡¯d be the first to know when she was ready to come out. Closing his eyes, he set about ordering his thoughts and priorities. Largest problem would be Ryenzo, currently asleep out in the desert. She still wanted Raina dead. By all appearances, she wanted Jair dead too, but so far hadn¡¯t attempted the former and couldn¡¯t do the latter post-Darkflame. Even if they were in a tentative truce at the moment, a barely-civil angry dragon was not something that could be simply ignored. He needed a plan. The thought of fleeing flickered through his mind. If they waited until the last moment for a lunar passage, they might be able to slip through before Ryenzo could hijack the connection. Even a dragon couldn¡¯t force the moon to turn into alignment. She¡¯d still come after them at the next available opportunity, but by then Jair and Raina could be somewhere far better equipped than Veor. Frontline coastal warriors were expensive, not unattainable. Killing dragons was very difficult, but they¡¯d have the advantage of a month to prepare and set up everything they needed to ambush Ryenzo and take her down properly. It was tempting. But as much as Jair wanted to pretend that would be good enough, this was an invaluable opportunity. A Ryenzo who could speak coherently and wasn¡¯t mad with hatred was a chance to get answers like never before. For now, he would try reason. If it came to fighting, he¡¯d solve that problem when it arose. With Ryenzo postponed until the lunar passage in a week, that still left the question of what to do about the current uproar. It¡¯d been a long time since Jair stuck around for the fallout of things at the academy, and things were decidedly different this time as well. Instead of a wrecked building and dead student at minimum, they had a sleeping dragon well away from them being a large menacing presence without any active clarity on what or why. Jair could understand draconic, but not many other people in Veor bothered to learn it. It was culturally alien to the point that no one even had a lizardbox on hand in the entire country. Which had caused him extensive frustration in past loops when he was trying to negotiate with Ryenzo. Back then, however, it didn¡¯t matter how loudly he bellowed for her to stop, she simply ignored him and went on with eating Raina. So without any ability to ascertain why there was a poison dragon matriarch sleeping outside their academy, the place would be in chaos. Jair was the closest thing to a translator that could be found on the continent and he wasn¡¯t planning to make that known. He was still mulling over the possibilities when the door opened and Raina emerged, still in her fluffy nightrobe, her hair a bit poofier than normal. She looked down at him on the floor, yawned, looked back into her room, then grabbed a pillow from the sofa and flopped down across from him. ¡°It¡¯s morning.¡± ¡°True.¡± She looked at Maelstrom. She looked at Jair¡¯s face. She looked at the pile of blue ceramic-steel Veshin armor that had cost more than she¡¯d ever spent in her life combined. ¡°I have no idea where to start.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere. Take your time.¡± Raina took a deep breath. Then she held out her hand and a sword made of absence appeared in it. ¡°What is this, and how did I do it?¡± Jair blinked. Of all the questions he expected her to lead with, this was not on the list. He stood. ¡°May I?¡± She handed the sword to him, and it ceased to exist. For a moment its outline lingered, wavering and strange, as though light itself were hesitant to encroach on its former domain. ¡°Huh.¡± They both stared at her hand. She manifested the sword again, and set it on the floor. The moment her hand released it, it vanished. ¡°Huh.¡± ¡°What exactly did you do?¡± Jair asked, frowning. ¡°This isn¡¯t an effect I¡¯ve seen before.¡± ¡°I tried to feed my soul to my sword like you said, but there was nothing there, so I put the sword inside it instead, and now¡­ I¡¯m not sure what happened.¡± Jair chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. ¡°Ah, yes, we should probably talk about it before you try something that drastic again. See, when I fed my soul into Maelstrom, it did kill me. So definitely not something you should be attempting.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re a vampire now? That explains a lot.¡± Jair snorted. ¡°Hardly.¡± He held out Maelstrom. ¡°Didn¡¯t you read its abilities? Any hints, perhaps?¡± She looked at the weapon again, frowning. ¡°Darkflame. Integration. Temporal Reversion. Is integration something you need to have before you can integrate it?¡± ¡°That¡¯s¡­ I don¡¯t know what integration is, but that¡¯s not what I was getting at. Temporal Reversion?¡± ¡°Okay, you can look into the past. I¡¯m assuming that¡¯s how you knew my mother annoyed the dragon, but what does it have to do with you dying?¡± ¡°For someone so smart, you can be amusingly blind in certain areas.¡± Raina frowned. ¡°I thought you were supposed to be giving me answers, not playing word games. I¡¯m too tired for this. If all we¡¯re doing is play guess the clever solution, I¡¯m going back to bed.¡± She started to sit upright. Jair waved her back down. ¡°It¡¯s not a past-sight power. It reverses the timeline of the entire universe.¡± ¡°That¡¯s impossible. No soulspell can affect reality on that scale.¡± ¡°And yet it does. I¡¯ve lived through a thousand variations of this day without you. And here you are.¡± Just thinking about it threatened to shatter his calm. The urge to hug her, hold her and never let go, rose in the back of his mind, but he flicked it away. The danger wasn¡¯t over yet. Only forestalled for the moment. Raina made a horrified face. ¡°That sounds awful.¡± ¡°It was.¡± ¡°I¡¯m so sorry.¡± ¡°Thank you. Just keep yourself alive from now on, and we¡¯ll be good.¡± Raina didn¡¯t speak for a time, clearly uncomfortable. Jair remained seated, watching her and waiting until she was ready to continue. ¡°So that¡¯s how you knew everything,¡± Raina realized, her tired mind finally putting the pieces together. ¡°You seemed to know everything about everyone because you learned it all in alternate realities.¡± ¡°Basically, yes.¡± ¡°And you weren''t able to stop Ryenzo in any of them?¡± She glanced out the window at the bright sky over the dim Institute. ¡°You seemed to deal with her pretty easily.¡± Jair laughed, pained and full of countless years of struggle. ¡°Perhaps so. I still don¡¯t fully understand what Maelstrom is capable of.¡± She seemed to not know what to say. ¡°And you¡­ you did that for me? Thousands of variations? Of this day?¡± ¡°Not just today. Every day since the initiation and ten or so years into the future.¡± ¡°Years. And you still came back? How much¡­ how many¡­?¡± She sat up and shook her head helplessly. ¡°How much did you have to give up, to come back so far?¡± ¡°Everything, and nothing. Whatever I had then, I can reclaim now. And I promised you that I would bring you with me when I became powerful and rich, remember? I couldn¡¯t leave you behind.¡± She gave a disbelieving laugh, almost a sob. ¡°You didn¡¯t have to go that far. I can¡¯t imagine anyone going that far.¡± ¡°What else was I going to do? Save the world without you?¡± ¡°Better that than¡­¡± Raina shook her head, clearly overwhelmed. For a time neither of them spoke. ¡°So that¡¯s what happened," Raina whispered. "I can¡¯t imagine.¡± ¡°So you mentioned.¡± She looked up at him, firegold eyes bright with unshed tears, and then hurled herself into his chest with an abrupt lunge. Maelstrom disappeared just in time to get out of the way, and then she was hugging him with a fierceness he¡¯d never before experienced. Slowly, carefully, Jair wrapped his own arms around her. ¡°I¡¯ve missed you. I have so much I want to show you.¡± Raina nodded. ¡°And I want to see it all.¡± And that¡¯s where they were sitting when the outer wall collapsed in a ground-shaking crash. Jair was on his feet before he properly registered what was happening, Maelstrom in his hand as though it had always been there. Another thud, the ground trembling beneath them, and a rumbling growl that sent sand flying past the window in a sharp gust. Jair heard screams and the crashing of stone. He knew what was happening even before a huge claw tore the roof off their building and a massive green eye glared down at them. Ryenzo had run out of patience.
54 - Dealing with Dragons So you¡¯ve unlocked your first class? Congratulations! Our highly trained consultants can guide you step by step as you decide if you want to accept it or if your future is better served holding out for something better. We¡¯ll even explore the ever controversial option of going classless! Remember, classless does not mean powerless, and there are even some situations in which having a class will hold you back more than it helps. This is an important decision that will change your life. Don¡¯t make the choice without all the information. Schedule your consultation today!
¡°Eep!¡± Raina squeaked from behind him, as Ryenzo¡¯s glare fixed on her with a bright and eager glint. Jair whipped his sharktooth out of his soulspace in one hand, the one for ¡®No¡¯. He honked into it again and again, interposing himself between the dragon and the girl it had come to consume. ¡°I have waited. I am hungry. And I am still angry. Your arguments are not sufficient.¡± The dragon leaned down lower and tossed aside their building¡¯s roof. A moment later, her massive claw crushed their kitchen into the dirt, leaving them exposed from the side as well as above in the wreckage of their home. Jair had no idea how to answer her. He swapped out for ¡®Wait¡¯ and hissed into it, keeping Maelstrom pointed directly at the dragon¡¯s snout with the other hand. Ryenzo¡¯s face came closer, poisonous fume huffing out from her nostrils as she snorted. ¡°I see no progress on bringing your other friend. Why should I sit in your miserable sands?¡± ¡°Wait. Wait, wait.¡± He pointed at the sun, waved an arm to indicate it falling, then rising. He repeated this several times to indicate the number of days until the lunar passage. Ryenzo showed no sign of comprehension. ¡°I tire of this, human. I have rested and I have pondered. I will no longer be delayed in this dreadful place you call home. Vengeance is but one of the things I have to do.¡± She lunged forward. Jair jumped forward between the dragon and Raina. Ryenzo¡¯s long flexible neck circled around him, tight and close enough that he couldn¡¯t move. The dragon seemed unconcerned that the strength of its lunge drove Maelstrom straight into its body. So quickly was the loop thrown around Jair that Raina barely had time to jump back to avoid Ryenzo''s fangs, the attack all but simultaneous. Not one to be deterred by such minor danger as a vengeful angry dragon, Raina slashed out with her own soulsword. The slender dark blade passed through Ryenzo¡¯s lower jaw, leaving a shallow slice behind. Ryenzo didn¡¯t even flinch. Before Raina could do anything more, the dragon¡¯s other claw came around at her from the side, ready to grab and crush. ¡°No!¡± Jair didn¡¯t need to move; he and Maelstrom were already in intimate contact with Ryenzo¡¯s body. Darkflame flared up at a thought, pouring out of him and Maelstrom both to burn away the dragon¡¯s body around him. Her head disappeared into ash, the reaching claw disintegrated, and Jair fell to the ground. Raina stood with her back to her bedroom door, as if that would help anything, eyes wide and black sword raised. But there was nothing left for her to fight. The back half of Ryenzo¡¯s body was still in the process of burning away, but without a head or foreclaws there was little it could do, however tenacious her manabody may be. Jair grabbed Raina¡¯s hand. ¡°Move. We have to get to the transit platform before she comes back.¡± ¡°What do you mean, comes back? How could anyone¡ªeep!¡± Jair didn¡¯t wait to argue, just swept her up and jumped down from the half-destroyed house to the dusty ground beneath. "Trust me. We have to go. Now." ¡°Okay, I¡¯m coming, put me down.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t stop. We need to get to the transit platform.¡± Raina didn''t argue. They ran across the untouched half of the campus, quickly falling in with several other students and even a couple teachers fleeing in the same direction. The destruction behind them made what had happened to their house look tame. Ryenzo had crashed right through the outer wall, as though to make as dramatic an entrance as possible, then stepped on half the student village on her way to them. One of the two library towers had been toppled, shattered into torn and melted pieces where she¡¯d torn them apart. Having the Institute so isolated in the middle of nowhere, well over an hour away from the nearest city by any normal non-transit transportation method, may be helpful in avoiding distractions for the mageblade students, but it was not ideal when in need of a sudden evacuation. Though, to be fair to the Institute¡¯s creators, dragon attacks were never part of the local standard. They foresaw the kind of disasters that required brief student quarantine in the maze below the school, rather than the kind that flattened everything and tore up the basement for dessert. Many of the students were taking refuge in the dome, as though expecting it to provide some sort of shelter to them. Jair remembered far too many times when Ryenzo cracked that particular building open like an egg. Only because the dome was not in a direct line between the wall and Raina''s location had it been spared. Jair and Raina were not the only ones heading directly for the transit platform, however. A significant number of people pressed around it already, anxiously awaiting their turns. "But we don''t have our transit tokens," Raina exclaimed. ¡°I have my personal one, but I''m sure the headmaster will have locked it out." ¡°That won''t be a problem." If someone could be said to be a pioneer in the art of doing absolutely ridiculous things with impunity, it would be Jair. Specifically, he had advanced his nonstandard utilization of the manabody far beyond any reasonable limits. Only the fact that he had died so many times in the development of those skills assured him that his discoveries should remain, at least for the moment, unknown to the rest of the world. He had no doubt that some individuals had discovered at least one or two of his special tricks at one point or another throughout history, but they generally weren¡¯t the sort of thing you would spread around. Upstanding citizens had no need of such techniques, and for those less upstanding¡­ why give up an edge on your competition unless you absolutely had to? The last of Ryenzo''s body burned away behind them, and a particularly loud crunch alerted them to the fact that her replacement copy had arrived. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "Human! You dare run from me?¡± "Coming through!¡± Jair''s body flared with darkflame as he bulled his way straight into the gathered students around the transit platform, giving them no time to do anything but flinch back in a panic. He slammed his hand directly into the center of the transit platform and kept pushing, disconnecting his manabody hand from his physical one to reach inside the mechanism. "Put in your token." Raina looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn''t speak and silently placed her token into the reader. "Destination?" "Anywhere." Veor''s transit system was extremely advanced compared to those in other countries. Due to the presence of mana oases, they had much more available magic to work with at any given time than most other places would. Therefore, transit was relatively cheap to run here, where in other countries the expense would be prohibitive. However, by opening their transit systems to all, Veor also opened itself to the possibility of being taken advantage of. When you needed to personally provide the mana for the transit as well as paying an access fee to reach it in the first place, there was a lot less possibility of exploitation. To combat the rampant attempts at freeloading their public transit system, Veor''s token system was state-of-the-art and second to none. The ability to lock and unlock specific locations from any given platform made it one of the most flexible tools ever to have been created. But underneath the ability to lock and unlock individual destinations, the basic capability of connecting to anything else in the network had to be there. So all Jair had to do was remove the check that verified whether the specific token inserted was authorized to go to that location. Raina tapped in the transit code. Ryenzo¡¯s wings sent echoing thrums vibrating through the ground and threw up sand in clouds as she took off. Jair scowled and strained, his current manabody not ideally suited for such intricate work. His younger self had worked hard on solidifying the edges to the extent necessary to unlock the Mageblade class, but his understanding of how a manabody worked and how to improve it had significantly increased in the time since he was this person originally. He¡¯d need months if not years of work to get it up to the standard of flexibility and strength he was accustomed to. It took four tries, a lot of awkward fumbling, and three quick flashes of darkflame to ward back those panicking students who''d gladly infringe upon his little project. He finally located the right block, but not fast enough. Ryenzo¡¯s tail whipped down and slapped Jair hard enough to send him flying clear across the academy. He barely registered he was moving before his abrupt flight ended as suddenly as it had started. He both heard and felt the sharp crack as his skull smacked into the sandstone of the outer wall. Dizzied, he fell to the ground, and looked up just in time to blurrily make out what was happening. Ryenzo wrapped her claws around Raina and took off, flying out over the wall and into the desert, leaving only clouds of dust and Raina¡¯s lingering shriek in her wake. Instinctively, Jair reached inward for his soulspell. This could not be allowed to stand. Darkflame flared up around him. No. Temporal Reversion. We need to go back! Darkflame flared up around him. Jair slammed his fist into the wall beside him, leaving a small hole and a fist-shaped scorch mark that flashed out, about eight times bigger than it had any right to be. Come on! Nothing but darkflame. He couldn¡¯t think, desperation flooding his body like nothing in living memory. If he was stuck in this timeline, what could he do? Ryenzo had Raina. Even if she hadn''t eaten her yet, that could happen at any moment. No time to waste. "Bladewalk." Jair hurled Maelstrom directly up, ascending until he reached the height of the towertop, then he caught the blade and threw it after Ryenzo. Unlike a spell, which could be theoretically empowered to insane degrees, Bladewalk was only an ability and had no such overcharge options. The dragon''s flight was significantly faster. Jair followed as Ryenzo flew straight to the north and east, gradually falling further and further behind despite his best efforts to catch up. The mental strain of maintaining Bladewalk for such a long period of time gave him a throbbing, pulsing headache. With his full attention consumed by the pursuit, he had no chance to stop and think through things, no option for strategizing his approach. He wanted desperately to release the ability and find somewhere to rest and reassess. But he couldn''t let her get away. If ever Ryenzo escaped out of sight, she could go anywhere. He knew her home lair inside and out, but he had to be sure. So all through the day, Jair flew through heavy desert heat across the merciless sand beneath the scorching sun, following the slowly receding form of the dragon he¡¯d sworn to stop. Jair knew Ryenzo''s mountain intimately, having visited it hundreds of times in the past. A patch of green against the surrounding brown, a paradise amid barren stone and dust, the hunting ground for Ryenzo and her kin. He knew the visitor entrance, where younger dragons came to make their appeals to the matriarch. He knew the upper balcony where Ryenzo would lie, sunning herself. He knew each of the treasury chambers with their peculiar collection of whatever trinkets Ryenzo had deemed valuable and worth saving. What he did not know, was why the dragon would fly beyond the upper balconies toward the peak and its caldera. So when Jair saw Ryenzo dive down at the mountain, rather than approach it from the side like she normally did, he felt a cold dread in his heart. Ryenzo''s mountain was a volcano, artificially agitated by what could have been a mana oasis were it not focused into the molten core of her domain. The dragon¡¯s presence stabilized the area, which had not seen an eruption in living memory, and allowed the region to flourish. The mountain¡¯s top had sealed over long ago with molten stone gone solid, the peak and its slopes rich with trees and abundant plantlife not found anywhere but here. The caldera lake had no outlet to the sea, all its stolen rains channeled into the mountain and its surrounding valleys, hemmed in by the other mountains in the range. But though the top may be sealed, the mountain was still hollow all the way down to its molten core, and Jair knew better than to trust any amount of stone to pose an obstacle to an angry dragon. Ryenzo could shatter the mountaintop and drop Raina into the magma, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was too far away. Jair yelled hoarsely and pushed more energy into his Bladewalk, but since it was neither a soulspell nor any other sort of spell, this did nothing. Bladewalk would do what Bladewalk did and not a speck more. He could reduce his effectiveness by performing it suboptimally, but once he reached the point of doing it perfectly, his speed remained exactly the same. It was another two hours before Jair arrived on the scene. Bladewalk was an awkward sort of levitation compared to Lift, more rigid in its capabilities, but not a real handicap for someone as experienced as Jair. He¡¯d prefer to have his full set of abilities and spells, but he was perfectly capable of getting by without them. He made the adjustment in the first hour of the day-long flight. It took another twenty minutes to get from the lower entrance of the mountain to the very peak and the shattered caldera. The evening sun cast long shadows across the valleys below, which would have been a treacherous environment to navigate if he¡¯d been on foot. Not all types of creatures dragons kept around to hunt were placid herbivores. Jair landed lightly on the rim, which provided him a lovely view of the interior. The broken stone was still damp from the lake it¡¯d once held, the occasional ambitious water droplet managing to coalesce long enough to fall toward the fire below only to instantly evaporate. The magma core remained the same as ever. He¡¯d seen it many times before, albeit never from this high. Of all the things he had seen Ryenzo do, breaking open the top of her own mountain was not one of them. This was new. He stared down into the heat haze. No sign of the dragon, or Raina. Several of Ryenzo¡¯s inner tunnels opened out onto this central chimney, but he had no way of knowing which one she¡¯d taken. "Is that you, tiny human? I hear you, scratching at my window. Do not think you can change my mind with your tricks and your fire. You do not have the might to challenge me." Ryenzo snaked her head out from a side passage, and stretched her long neck out to peer up at Jair with insufferable smugness. He could clearly see the way one particular coil of neck looped back on itself, completely concealing whatever was held in it. He didn''t need to see Raina to be sure it was her. What else would Ryenzo be holding so possessively? "I said I will wait," Ryenzo all but purred. "But I wait on my terms. Not yours.¡±
55 - Dealing with Dragons (2) The draconic word which is commonly translated as ¡®human¡¯ does not actually denote any specific species, but rather the entire class of creatures-lesser-but-thinking. I do not think there is any way for it to be spoken without some degree of derogatory implication.
There were a thousand questions Jair wanted to ask. Would Raina survive the volcano''s temperature? The mana in the internal atmosphere should mitigate it somewhat, but it would be uncomfortable at the very best. Did the dragon know anything about keeping a human alive? Would Ryenzo be feeding her? Jair was already parched himself from the long flight, and he hadn¡¯t been in a dragon¡¯s claws the entire time. He had no way of asking. He pulled out two of his shark teeth. ¡°Friend?¡± Jair demanded, pointing. Ryenzo chuckled and flexed her neck, eliciting a muffled scream from within her coil. ¡°I told you I will wait. I keep my word, even to the undeserving.¡± Jair wanted nothing more than to strangle her on the spot. He swapped out the tooth and snarled down at the smug dragon below. ¡°Anger.¡± Ryenzo laughed, tongue flicking out from her mouth as she hissed. "I''m angry too, human. Don''t forget that. Don''t imagine there is anything but rage between us, and neither of us will be disappointed. I will kill you. As soon as I figure out how." With a snort and final flick of her tongue, Ryenzo pulled her neck back into her tunnel and curled up there, only the vivid green of her back visible in the magmaglow. Jair stood above, holding in his hand the most powerful soulsword ever created, and yet felt more powerless than ever before. "I don''t suppose you will let us go back in time now?" Jair asked Maelstrom. The sword did not deign to respond. His only comfort was the fact that Raina was alive. Perhaps Maelstrom only wanted to revert when she was guaranteed to be dead? Perhaps right now it still held out hope that this could be a successful loop, bringing them salvation and hope for a new future. He really, really hoped that was the case. If he had sold his soul and traded away his strongest power in return for a single one time reversion and an all-consuming flame power that didn¡¯t do more than buy them a few seconds, that would destroy him. Jair forced his body to calm, gave his mind time to relax from the immediate panic. Until now, he never had reason to doubt Maelstrom. His soulsword had served him faithfully all of its years as an initiate blade, through its reforging, and right up to its eventual ascension. He may not like it, but for now he had little choice but to trust in Maelstrom. If it believed they didn''t need to go back in time yet, there was no point in worrying over that fact. "And I don''t suppose you¡¯re willing to let me in on the secret of what Darkflame actually does? Why she keeps coming back?" Maelstrom did not respond. "Integration?" Nothing but a tiny green and black flame that flickered down the length of the blade, almost cheekily. Jair glared at his sword. ¡°If I die, will that force you to revert?" Maelstrom flickered with green fire. "Is that all you can say? Darkflame, darkflame, darkflame? You''re not a one ability weapon. Aelir, you¡¯re fourth form! You have more soul powers than anyone I''ve ever heard of. Don''t give me this ¡®darkflame is the only thing I can do now¡¯ nonsense." Maelstrom didn''t respond. "I don''t suppose integration could be some kind of mental communication option, could it? So I could talk to you, or Ryenzo maybe? She should be connected to us now that we got the whole ¡®killing her with darkflame over and over¡¯ down." Maelstrom flickered darkly, fire that was almost black surging up around the blade toward Jair''s hand. As soon as it reached him, it turned bright green and danced as though it were a candle flame in heavy wind. "If you''re trying to communicate, you''re not doing a very good job." Maelstrom''s brief display of fire died away, leaving the blade inert. Jair sighed and dismissed the weapon. It nestled into his soul comfortably, warm and hungry, but no longer ravenous. ¡°So killing Ryenzo a couple times satisfied you for now? That''s good to know." Jair glanced back down at where the smug dragon had retreated. There was nothing he could do. Nothing at all. Even if he jumped down and stabbed Ryenzo here and now, he had no doubt the dragon would find a way to throw Raina into the volcano¡¯s heart before Darkflame could finish its work. He could only take Ryenzo at her word and go make preparations for bringing in someone who could communicate with dragons. And people willing to kill them. He¡¯d been perfectly willing to start with civil negotiation, but Ryenzo could no longer be trusted. Not even a little. She''d taken Raina; that crossed the line. For as long as they¡¯d been in a truce, he¡¯d been willing to assume that they could solve things without violence and plan accordingly. Ryenzo had forfeited that chance. Jair jumped off the mountaintop, Maelstrom leading. There wouldn¡¯t be any point in going back to the academy. Larenok didn''t matter. Lian didn''t matter. Without Raina, no one in that place mattered at all. Instead, he headed for Sejrilo Oasis. He could bribe the family for use of their private transit station from there. And a drink. He¡¯d gone for too long without water. Blood matted his hair from where he¡¯d been smashed into a wall and he was running on an energy deficit as it was from pushing himself the past week. Sejrilo was closer than Astralla, this route would cut perhaps an hour off his flight, but it still left him with far too much time to think as he crossed the silent desert. There was nothing to gain from wondering over Raina''s fate and whether she would survive. Either she¡¯d still be there once Jair had a translator to negotiate properly with Ryenzo, or she wouldn¡¯t, and he would deal with either option when it came to be. Half delirious, he forced his mind away from the dread and began to mentally plot out his goals for the coming week. In the days remaining until Dark Night¡¯s illegal lunar passage opened access to other continents, Jair had to accumulate the resources to hire a dragon-slaying team by any means necessary. Several of the connections he¡¯d set up the previous week would come in handy now, as well as some potential connections he hadn¡¯t established but could still utilize to some extent. He didn''t have anything nearly as dramatic as an exhibition display in front of half the richest families in Veor, but that didn''t mean he had nothing. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Jair¡¯s first step would be to follow up on the minor blackmailing of Veor¡¯s nobility by engaging in a one-man burglary campaign. Things he could never sell in Veor due to everyone knowing where they came from suddenly became valuable rather than useless once the rest of the world came into the picture. He still had Maelstrom, and now that he had Bladewalk he had mobility. The ability to cut through anything opened a lot of doors. Being able to fly opened a lot of windows. The ability to transit to other continents¡ªnot to mention Zelura, the Ghost Moon itself¡ªtransformed the treasuries of King Farshen and the rest of the Veori nobility into an available resource to be exploited. And if there was one thing Jair was good at, it was exploiting resources. He began methodically planning out the coming Dark Night, from the first moment the lunar passage opened over Veor through every stop across the planet. And beyond. Lunar natives rarely got involved in planetary affairs, but some were very powerful and could be bought for the right price. Jair knew all the prices. Of all the moons, Zelura¡¯s inhabitants were the most easily bought. In a way, this was an opportunity to do something he''d always wanted to. If not for the lack of lunar passage restricting travel to Veor itself, this is how he would''ve dealt with Ryenzo a thousand years ago. Somehow, it had taken an entirely different and unrelated set of powers to bring about the circumstances in which his ancient frustrations could be satisfied. Not that such considerations mattered at the moment. The world would be open to him, he would make use of every bit of it. The Almas lunar window would only remain open for so long. Its overlap with Orard would be significantly smaller, giving him only a few hours to work with. He could do it. His timing windows were brief, his requirements exacting. "I don''t suppose you''re still able to absorb monster soul powers, are you? Because if we could get frost to go with your flame, that would help a lot." Maelstrom didn''t respond. Given that it was busy flying ahead of him at the moment, Jair had expected nothing less. He''d need to rely on transit and messenger for most of it, which meant anyone difficult to find like Quahrvirna or Eythron would be impossible to reach. Thankfully, even if it was his personal favourite, the Oriad was not the only place in Orard to host strong individuals. Reskas, for all its cowardice, had warriors aplenty. They may be about to withdraw from their coastlines, abandoning the war and their long-defended polder to the seascourge, but it was not a retreat born of destruction so much as practicality. Their warriors were unharmed. The only casualties would be the city itself¡ªand Reskas¡¯s reputation in the international community, but what did they care about that. If Jair happened to hasten that withdrawal by taking away some of their strongest frontliners, he had no problem doing that. Beyond Orard, Suthyrel¡¯s imperium had its own strengths. His team would include people of every species, every culture, the best of the best. He¡¯d be calling in favors he hadn''t earned yet, relying on knowledge he had no way of finding, and answering questions people hadn''t even thought to ask. The price would be high, and he¡¯d have to conceal Ryenzo¡¯s matriarch status until it was too late for anyone to back out. No one would knowingly go up against a matriarch, however much he offered them. He''d given up too much of himself in this pursuit. He would not be deterred, not now when he¡¯d come so close. He¡¯d probably end up a fugitive from Veor for the rest of his life for this. Not every noble would have a past-seer on hand, but he was hardly being the most discreet. Haste was the enemy of discretion, and Jair was in an incredible rush. None of that mattered. He could deal with it. He''d been a political pariah before, he could do it again. As long as he didn''t have to handle it alone. Jair was so tired of handling everything alone. He shook away the thought and got back to planning. If only he knew what Darkflame actually did, then he could better assess what he had to work with. He supposed he could go out and kill a sandshark or two, see what happened when they reappeared, but there was something dissatisfying about the idea of resurrecting a useless desert predator. His curiosity was strongest in relation to someone who could answer questions about experience. But who did he care so little about that he would be willing to risk destroying their life even if this ended up being the one and only true future? There were plenty of people''s lives he''d destroyed in previous loops, but those he''d always known were temporary. It felt different, doing it for real. Or perhaps he only imagined that it ought to feel different. The actual thought didn''t bother him, except in the abstract. Perhaps he''d been repeating the same events for so long he''d been desensitized to the value of life. Was any pretense of morality no more than a pattern of behavior by now? Irrelevant. He needed to pick someone, or else give up on the experiment. Again, the thought of using it on himself flashed through his mind. Surely, Maelstrom would not let him stay dead. If that were the way to revert the timeline, it would make a strange sort of sense. The venix self-immolated to be reborn. So too could Jair? Not yet. If he arrived back at Ryenzo¡¯s lair to find Raina dead, then would be the time for truly desperate measures. As long as there was even the slightest hope, he could not bring himself to give up on saving her. Even if everyone else would gladly write her death off as inevitable. But that brought to mind one particular man whose existence had never been anything but a detriment on society. In all the lifetimes he¡¯d lived, Jair couldn¡¯t think of a single time Headmaster Larenok had been anything but a horrible, selfish man who cared about his students only insofar as they could advance his own ambitions. He¡¯d certainly never been anything but cold and dismissive toward Jair himself, but even the other students never had a single good thing to say about the headmaster. Larenok was bitter and spiteful, self-serving and paranoid. If there were one man the continent would be better off without, it would probably be him. At least aggressive kids like Lian were young enough to still potentially change for the better. Larenok was fully established in his ways and didn¡¯t care to try. Under normal circumstances, Jair would have a hard time arranging a sufficiently covert assassination to not be caught. What with all the dragon damage to the Institute and everyone being in an uproar, it would be even harder. Jair was by now long past caring about being covert. He needed information. The time for hesitation was gone. Change of plans. Perhaps there was still something the Astralla Mageblade Institute had to offer him after all.
Jair flew over the Institute¡¯s empty grounds, impressed and vaguely disgusted by how quickly it was being returned to normal. The library tower was standing again, the destroyed houses had been removed, and the wall was so perfectly repaired it looked as though it had never been damaged. Student housing was the only part not restored yet, and if Jair had to guess, that would last only as long as until the next lunar passage. Once they could get outside resources in, they¡¯d have things back to normal overnight. Classes had been postponed for the week, but the transit platform was still active and the towers open. Only a handful of people were present, and no one walked out in the open. The internal library transit had been connected to the outgoing platform by a heavy cable so as to facilitate suitably discreet movement. It was as though they thought Ryenzo would be watching, and come after them if she saw anyone. Jair shook his head. They truly had no conception of draconic motivations. Dragons were, above all, prideful and avaricious. Unless someone at the Institute had done something to offend them, no dragon would even bother noticing it existed. Let alone pounce on individuals just because they were moving. That was more the kind of thing young moondrakes would do. Even the youngest dragon had more pride than that. Chase the moving tiny thing. Ridiculous. Most people didn¡¯t make for good eating. The administration building was all but empty. Only two archivists were present, and both away in a back room. Jair could hear them chatting cheerfully about how much less annoying their job was when they actually had the time and space to do it, and simultaneously complaining about the state of the academy now. He wasn''t sure what they had to complain about. This building hadn''t been touched by the destruction. Ryenzo had cracked the dome in passing as she charged from the student village to where Jair and Raina stood at the transit platform, but apart from that the northern half of the place was untouched. He sliced the lock on Larenok''s door and entered the dark, domineering room. He closed the door behind himself and sat down behind Larenok''s desk in the looming chair. It could be quite a while, so he grabbed a few mostly-empty pages to use for scratch paper, then leaned back and crossed his legs atop the remaining piles of paperwork on the desk. The fact that the next lunar passage would be Dark Night only made it better. Zelura, with its reputation for criminal and underworld connections, would be the best place to go recruiting for the kind of high power mercenaries he''d need to pull this off. Particularly if he could contact a team who specialized in slaying lunar dragons already. The extreme financial limitations of these early weeks had been a severe restraint in the past, so he didn''t actually know exactly who would be present on Zelura this particular Dark Night. He did know enough about the people who lived and traveled through the Ghost Moon in general that he could put together quite the wishlist. So caught up was he in weighing the pros and cons of various potential recruits that he very nearly missed it when Larenok opened the door and flipped on the light. Jair smiled. "Headmaster. I wasn''t sure if you''d be coming today." He gestured to the seat below the desk. "Please, have a seat. I have some important questions for you."
56 - The Larenok Gambit There are three commonly accepted types of class, though many would argue the specific definitions. Mage-type classes use their souls to power personalized spells, while physical-type classes get personal augments. Non-standard types receive neither of these, but almost always something equally powerful.
Headmaster Dalin Larenok was not having a good week. First that disaster of an initiation, letting a sword his contacts later informed him was Legendary slip through his very fingers, and into the hands of the swamp-brat nobody of all things. Then the kid went on to spectacular heights in the exhibition, going from nobody to one of the richest houseless bachelors in the country on a single day''s gambling. Who did that? And then, to top it all off, there was a dragon attack. A. Dragon. Dragons didn''t attack schools. Dragons didn''t attack cities unless they had been provoked. But there was exactly one anomalous person running around doing provocative things, so he was pretty confident in who to blame. In all the chaos, though, Welburne escaped and multiple witnesses said the dragon had snatched the Serin heiress right off the transit platform as she desperately tried to escape. Which, of course, someone would eventually blame on him. Larenok knew better than to assume anyone would do anything but their utmost to destroy him at every turn. So he needed to unlock the transit platform before Lord Serin thought to check it against their family tokens. It wouldn''t do at all for someone so influential to find out Larenok had been preventing his daughter from escaping. How was he supposed to be prepared for a dragon? If it had attacked in the city, it would have been just as unstoppable. If anything, Larenok was doing them a favor by preventing an angry dragon from getting into the transit network. Why, if he hadn''t locked Raina and Welburne out, that dragon could have gotten anywhere! He''d never be able to persuade a distraught father of that, though, so ensuring no one ever realized he was involved in any way would be a better path. He stepped into his office after a long morning of forging personal authorization tokens, ready to dig out the inforeels on how to adjust the platform, when he saw the last thing he ever imagined he''d see. Welburne, sitting in his chair, with his feet crumpling and scattering the neatly ordered piles Larenok had put so much work into preparing. The insolent brat leaned back with the most self-assured smile Larenok had ever seen, pointing to the subordinate chair, ready to demand answers. "You! How dare you?" Larenok took one step toward the boy, ready to smack some sense into him, and the arrogant child flicked his hand as though throwing something. Larenok staggered back a step, but it took a moment for the impact to really register. He looked down to see a black and green hilt sticking out of the center of his chest, burning his body to ashes around it. He didn''t even have time to panic. Cold heat burned through him, turning all that he was to nothing. Dalin Larenok stumbled unsteadily, then grabbed for the chair to steady himself. He felt calm, focused, and entirely free of all the mental and emotional chaos that had been so prevalent these past weeks. Perhaps, years. His whole life, even. "Take a seat, Larenok." He blinked up at the boy. "You shouldn''t be putting your feet on the desk like that. Those are important papers you''re sullying." The kid raised his eyebrows. "No insults today? I don''t think I''ve ever seen you this relaxed. Tell me, what just happened?" Larenok frowned. "You ignored my reminder of the importance of Institute paperwork." "Before that." "You''re sitting in my chair." "After that." Larenok straightened and scowled at the boy, but without his usual weight behind it. More because it was a thing his face liked to do than out of emotional necessity. "I''ve important things to do. If you''re only going to waste time and disrupt work, I''ll ask you to leave." "Ask? Not demand?" "I can make it an order if you prefer." Larenok distantly had the feeling that he should be angrier at this, but his tone remained mild and his mind untroubled. "I do like having people obey me. But I somehow doubt you''ll cooperate no matter what I say, so why bother?" "So you''re alright with this? You don''t have any particular desire to, say, murder me on the spot?" "Why should I do that?¡± Larenok snorted. ¡°Idiot child. You think murder looks good on your resume? If I need you to disappear, I¡¯d do it much more covertly than that." Welburne raised an eyebrow at that. "Have you had troublesome students you needed to have disappear in the past?" Larenok hesitated. This wasn¡¯t the sort of conversation he usually had with a student. This wasn''t the sort of conversation he usually had with anyone. But something about Welburne just seemed¡­ trustworthy today. He frowned uncertainly. "Haven''t we all?" Welburne chuckled. "I''m the wrong person to deny that." He gestured again to the chair in the center of the room. "Do have a seat, please." Larenok did so. Welburne set down the sword and swung his feet off the desk to sit up properly, hands clasped on the desk before him. "You know, a thousand years ago, this is the sort of position I would''ve given anything to have. But now I find I just don''t care. I already know what you''ve done, hearing you admit to it is meaningless." Larenok nodded. That made perfect sense. "So what do you want?" When you had sufficient blackmail material over someone, there was no point in making them feel worse by forcing them to verify things. You danced around the issue, let them keep their pride intact at least a little¡­ as long as they kept paying you and doing you favors. Larenok was unused to being on this end of the arrangement, but he found it oddly untroubling. He knew this was how the world worked. He¡¯d lived by it his whole life. It was only natural to come to this in the end. He¡¯d feared it and hidden from it, but now it had come to pass he didn''t know why he fought it so long. After all, what was the worst that could happen? It wasn¡¯t like there was much of his career left to be destroyed at this point. ¡°I can''t help but notice that you are very calm,¡± Welburne observed coolly. ¡°I''ve never seen you this calm. Please tell me how you feel." Larenok frowned slightly at the odd jumping conversation. Who''d blackmail someone and then promptly go to inquiring after their health? "You have no idea what you''re doing, do you boy? Might I suggest you partner with me instead of¡­¡± he waved a hand to indicate the boy sitting behind his intimidating desk, ¡°whatever it is you think you¡¯re doing here? I can teach you a lot that you''d never learn elsewhere. And you should know that being a loud and flashy presence," his eyes flicked to that gaudy monstrosity of a sword lying across the desk, "isn''t always preferable to silence." "We''re not talking about me and my career in blackmailing. I''m quite capable of carrying it out without your assistance, thank you. However, you are not behaving as I''m used to, and I want to know why. So, again. How do you feel?" "I feel normal. Pretty good, actually." Larenok shrugged and stretched his arms out, rolling his shoulders. "I think I feel about ten years younger, to be honest. You have no idea how exhausting it is being so worried about everything all the time. In a way, having the worst already happen is a relief. At least now I know." "So being interrogated by one of your own students is your worst case scenario?" Larenok snorted. "You aren''t just interrogating me in my own office, you also stabbed my¡­" He trailed off, frowning down at his chest. "Didn''t you stab me? I feel like you stabbed me." "So I did. Not that you''d know it to look at you. It wasn''t your body that was primarily affected." Welburne seemed oddly irritated about that fact, as though burning someone alive wasn¡¯t good enough. "Yes, well, it is rather more than that.¡± Larenok began listing things out on his fingers. ¡°Being stabbed, blackmailed, and interrogated. My Institute is in ruins, one of my students is dead. My reputation is already in shambles.¡± He pointed at Welburne with two fingers pressed together. ¡°So if you think blackmailing me over that is going to get you much of anything worth having, you''re probably mistaken.¡± Then again, the boy came from nothing and should have nothing, so maybe what meager scraps Larenok had left to be taken would be enough to satisfy him. Nothing but a buzzard snatching up the remnants left behind. "And this doesn''t upset you?" "I''ve already told you, I feel fine. Though I¡¯ll admit to growing irritable at your insistence on this ¡®how are you feeling¡¯ nonsense. If that''s the only thing you have to say, then get out of my chair." "You think you''re in any position to be making demands now?" "I think you''re very young to be doing this, and very stupid to be doing it now. If you knew so much about me, why would you wait? If you had this sword, why would you go through this whole charade? What exactly is it you want? None of it makes sense, which points to amateurish overreach. You¡¯d get much more value from having me as a mentor than an enemy." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Welburne considered this, tapping his fingers together contemplatively. "I just really need to know what Darkflame does. So far it seems to be a straight reset, imposing some sort of emotional calm and rationality, but that doesn''t make any sense. Why would it do that?" "Darkflame, that''s what your sword did? When it burned away all the worry and¡­" Larenok waved his hand in a vague circle to indicate all the other mental gunk that had been weighing on his soul, stealing bits of his attention for far too long. "If that''s your soulspell, you can sell your services anywhere in the country." Welburne laughed. "Sell burning people alive?" Larenok shrugged. "It''s not like it hurt. It was more confusing than anything. If you tell them what to expect, yeah." He leaned forward, hands on his knees eagerly. "If you don''t know where to start, I can ask around through my connections. We can get you up and running in less than a week. Give it another few months and you''ll be in such high demand you can''t keep up with it." Welburne shook his head like he had never considered such a strange idea. "I''m serious. The way I feel right now¡­ people would pay for this. You have no idea how freeing it is to be able to think fully rationally." "Is that what you''re doing?" "Of course. If it weren''t for being so disconnected from my biases, you can be sure that I would never dream of working with someone like you, no matter how much you could offer or threaten me with." "So you''re even willing to admit to the fact that you''re biased?" "Everyone is, whether they admit it or not." Larenok¡¯s irritation was definitely noticeable by now, though still far from the level it¡¯d been a few hours ago. "You''re biased, I''m biased. Why does it matter? As long as we can work well together, make things happen and earn us a nice profit along the way, why not? Aelir, we don''t even need to stay in Veor. We can leave as early as Dark Night, if you''re willing to step outside your comfort zone." For some reason, that made Welburne laugh. "So your proposal is that we monetize Darkflame, and you become my publicist while we travel through illegal ghostmoon channels? Is that right?" Larenok considered, then nodded. "It seems the most reasonable outcome at the moment. You have a service, I have connections, and it''s not like this place is going to do any good for either of us. I was going to try and salvage something from the whole wreck, but I don''t know if it''s even worth trying. You, on the other hand, have something the whole world will be eager to get their hands on. All we need to do is collaborate and we can build a whole new future for us both." Welburne leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head to stare down at Larenok. Larenok really had to hand it to himself, the way that the room was laid out really made that pose intimidating. If he were anyone else, he would''ve felt very pressured sitting here, staring up at this powerful figure. But since he was still the headmaster and Welburne was still only a student, however impertinent and aggressive of one, he could be appreciative of the intimidation factor without feeling it himself. "Can I use Darkflame on you a second time, just to verify if anything changes?" Larenok shrugged. "I don''t see why it would change anything, but go ahead." Welburne''s eyebrows rose, and he threw the sword. Larenok, being prepared for this time, paid very close attention to the sensations. The sword tip pierced his chest, a brief warm pressure as it sliced clean through. It didn''t feel like being sliced into, or perhaps it self cauterized so fast that his body didn''t have time to bother sending pain impulses. He watched the blade sink into his body curiously. The black and green fire along its length began to spread through him, leaving a gaping ashen hole where his heart should¡ª Larenok stood by the door, scowling faintly. A moment of disorientation. He shivered at the sudden cold, stumbled and caught himself on the chair. ¡°You could probably get away with charging more if you can come up with a version that doesn''t do that part,¡± he said, somewhat blearily, "but on the whole, as long as you warn them in advance that it¡¯s a disorienting process, it''ll be fine." "You don''t feel any different from a minute ago?" "Why would I feel different? Nothing''s changed." Larenok frowned as he concentrated inward. Was there anything different about him? Should there be anything different? ¡°So, what if I were to ask you to attack me, would you be able to do it?" "You''re offering me the chance to kill the impertinent student who is trying to blackmail me? You think I wouldn¡¯t jump on that? If this is some kind of trick, you''re going about it very strangely." "No trick, just a test. Please try to kill me." Larenok frowned, then shrugged. "All right. What''s the worst that could happen?" He focused inward and summoned his sword from his soulspace. It had been manufactured to look like a heavily upgraded soulsword, but if anyone were to inspect it they¡¯d see it was in fact not a soulsword at all. Larenok''s class was squire, not mageblade; one of the many ways his life had been ruined by circumstances outside his control. He''d never been able to upgrade the class to anything worth having. A minor boost to weapon skills and an increased soulspace capacity were the best he had to work with. He couldn''t do anything particularly flashy with his sword, couldn¡¯t light it on fire or fly through the air on it, but it was a good weapon and served him well. He stood with the sword in his hand, staring down at it fondly. He really hadn''t appreciated his sword as much as he should have, over the years. He''d polished it, sharpened and oiled it, taken it to an enchanter every few years to have its enhancements updated, but he''d never really shown it the respect it deserved. "Were you going to be killing me anytime soon, or just stare at your sword all day?" Larenok blinked. Oh yes. Welburne. Still waiting to be stabbed. He looked down at the sword. Perfect for stabbing wayward students. It made perfect sense. Welburne had stabbed him, more than once. It was only fair. He could do this. ¡­ Why couldn''t he do this? Larenok frowned. Welburne was right there. Larenok had his sword right here in his hand. Welburne was threatening him. He didn''t approve of students threatening him. He didn''t approve of students stabbing him, even if it had a different effect that he was expecting. And he''d probably pay to have it happen again if he ever got as uptight obsessive as he had been those years. "I''m waiting." Larenok got to his feet slowly, still not sure why his body hesitated so much. Why his mind flinched instinctively away from the thought of destruction. He could still imagine it, still think about it rationally, but there was a full disconnect when it came to actually executing. He¡­ couldn''t attack? "Maybe if I attack you, it¡¯ll make it easier." Welburne jumped across the desk, sword flashing down. Larenok flinched back, bringing up his own sword to block. Welburne¡¯s weapon sheared directly through his sword, leaving him with an uneven hilt as the blade clattered to the ground, then Welburne¡¯s sword continued and sliced off Larenok¡¯s left arm at the shoulder. This one hurt. Larenok screamed, a pained roaring bellow that he didn''t recognize even as it left his lips. ¡°Dovak take you!¡± he shrieked, clutching at his bleeding shoulder. ¡°What are you doing? You think you can get away with this?" Welburne stood there, sword bared, frowning down at him. "Do you have any idea how expensive this is going to be to fix? You can''t just go around chopping people''s arms off like that!" "So you say. Can''t I?" Larenok snarled inarticulately. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t already discarded your position as a student here, I¡¯d have you kicked out for this.¡± "Yet I can''t help but notice¡­ you still haven''t stabbed me. Even after I cut your arm off. Can''t quite bring yourself to do so?" ¡°So eager to get yourself stabbed?¡± Larenok waved his broken sword defiantly in the air with his remaining arm. ¡°I¡¯m not interested in playing into your deviant fantasies." That, for the first time, seemed to genuinely surprise Welburne. He choked out an uncertain laugh. "Excuse me, did you just call me deviant?" ¡°You''re the one with the magic sword that burns people alive.¡± ¡°Which isn¡¯t nearly as good at killing as you¡¯d think." Larenok shook his head pityingly. Wasn¡¯t that just how it went? These ungrateful students had such immense power they never cared for, when Larenok would''ve given anything for the same chances. Yet here he was, yet again, years later with nothing to show for his efforts. Once again, he cursed his family¡¯s insistence that he take the first class he ever unlocked. If they¡¯d just given him another five years, he could have gotten something worth having. But, no. He¡¯d be stuck with squire forever. It would never evolve into anything good, even if he''d been able to pursue greater advancement. All his potential had been stolen, his future, all of it. And then people like Welburne traipse around, taking what they had for granted, and¡ª Welburne lunged again without warning. Larenok instinctively tried to block, tried to deflect his strike away with the sheared off hilt he held, but that only resulted in having even less of a sheared off hilt in his hand. Welburne¡¯s sword scored a deep gash down Larenok''s thigh. ¡°Dovak!" he cursed vehemently. "What is wrong with you? If you¡¯re planning to kill me, just get it over with. Aelir! I don''t understand what you''re trying to accomplish here." ¡°You can''t hurt me," Welburne said, wonderingly. "You genuinely can''t hurt me." Larenok hurled the hilt remnant at him with a scowl. Teeth gritted, vaguely furious. Welburne knocked it away easily, then leaned against the front of the desk, leaving himself wide open. ¡°Well?¡± "What¡­ have you done to me?" Even now, with an arm missing, blood from his deadly injury soaking his trousers, Larenok couldn¡¯t quite bring himself to attack Welburne. "Pacified you, it seems. How very strange. Well, that leaves one thing left to try." Welburne stabbed him for the third time in under a half hour, straight through the chest. It was a relief this time as the warm nothingness enveloped him, consuming all the pain and the shock¡ª Larenok stumbled by the door, caught hold of the chair to steady himself, and then he stood blinking in disoriented uncertainty. He patted himself over¡ªhis chest, his leg¡ªand only after he had checked both did he realize he''d been using both hands to do so. He stared down at his hand, right where it belonged, then at the bloody arm lying on the floor. The pool of his blood. His clothing was still torn and bloodied¡ªhis shirt perforated by multiple stabs, his leg damp with his blood¡ªbut his body was restored. "How did you do that? How long does it work for? Can you heal an old injury, or only a new one?" Shock forgotten, he lunged forward and took Welburne by the shoulders, grinning in his face. "Forget what I said. This isn''t just something we can monetize, this is something we have to monetize. Healing fire. Imagine it! ¡®Unleash your mind, restore your body.¡¯ I can see it now." Larenok always had been good at convincing people to part with their money. The fact that he¡¯d just been handed such a perfectly gift-wrapped opportunity to do so while conveniently escaping the fallout of this whole current disaster? That was better fortune than he would ever have hoped for. "I don''t have that much time,¡± Welburne said slowly. ¡°I need to be in Orard first chance on Dark Night." "No need to worry about travel plans, my boy! Here." Larenok crossed to the desk and shoved all the papers aside, flipping one over to write on. "Tell me your itinerary and I will arrange everything." Welburne''s eyebrows rose again. "Everything? Really?" "When I tell you that this is going to be the biggest sensation of the year, that this¡¯ll be the only thing anyone is talking about come Solaria, you should believe me. I know how these things work." ¡°And you think that how these things work involves you as my manager, going around healing people with my fire?" There was a note of incredulity in Welburne''s voice. "Of course it is, stupid boy. You know what you have here?" "I do not. That is exactly why I am testing it." Welburne sighed. "But if you can arrange everything with travel, I¡¯ll leave it in your hands. I want to know the extent of what the sword can do as well. I just never thought it would be you who I''d be discovering it with." Larenok scowled happily. "You¡¯ve come to the right man. Trust me. This is going to be the best decision you¡¯ll make in your life."
57 - Connections We are the same. That does not mean we are united.
True to his word, Larenok arranged meetings with Jair for eighteen different people in the first day. These ranged from people with disturbed mentalities to those with old injuries, all of whom were wealthy enough to afford the excessive fees Jair¡¯s new agent deemed appropriate. When Jair had decided to test Darkflame, this wasn¡¯t what he had in mind. But, at the time, he¡¯d been thinking of it as an innately destructive ability. The venix¡¯s fire, for all its dark appearance, was ultimately a power not of consumption but of rebirth. Darkflame¡¯s impact on old injuries was varied. Some, it restored as though the injury had never been. Others, it completed the healing process or softened the scars, but did not undo them completely. Two young men had their missing limbs replaced like new, while four others remained severed. It would take more testing to figure out the pattern behind what was replaced or considered not in need of change, but Jair theorized it had to do with the recency of the injury. Past a certain distance, it was beyond undoing. The way Larenok had kept appearing back in the same spot, Jair had begun to think Darkflame might have merged with Temporal Reversion, but the way it healed his missing arm rather than undoing the event entirely put that theory into question. Even those whose injuries were fully undone did not revert to the condition they had been in before it, but merely a version of their current self who had fully (even miraculously) recovered. What had been going on with it in the first iterations, before he came back and fed Maelstrom his soul, he wasn''t sure. Perhaps the fact that it was at a minimal percentage had prevented it from moving on to the next stage of its recreation, being only a tenth of Maelstrom¡¯s soul meant it had enough power for the destructive part, but not the rebirth part. In a way, it might¡¯ve been preferable to keep it at the destruction-only stage. Then again, that version hadn¡¯t even had the power to take out a normal large creature, let alone something the size of Ryenzo. Then there was its other questionable effect. Since his¡­ discussion with Larenok, his soulspace had gotten larger. Since using Darkflame to heal a collection of injured nobility¡ªand taking large cuts of their money which would go towards financing his Dragon slaying team¡ªhe¡¯d started to feel odd flickers of other things. Nothing so clear as to be discernible for what it was, but every now and again Maelstrom would display a single spark of red, or the glint of reflection would look pinkish or bright blue instead of its usual silver and green-black. He couldn¡¯t see any changes to the soulmap, his conjoined sword and soul remained stable. Yet¡­ he remembered the blade''s ongoing hunger, its eagerness. He couldn''t escape the feeling that Maelstrom was doing more than just healing, it was making an exchange. And he did not know what it might be taking in repayment. The venix had never come back. How many times could he steal away a piece of someone''s soul before they no longer existed? Or would they continue to exist, but become like the mindless revenants Darkflame had inadvertently created in the past? Jair was so tempted to try it on himself. The more he saw, and the more convoluted the power¡­ He couldn¡¯t quite convince himself to follow through. The possibility of negative repercussions was too high to risk it just to satisfy his curiosity.
Jair didn¡¯t limit himself to Larenok¡¯s contact network or the Darkflame investigations. He saw no reason not to continue with his planned collection of robberies, for instance. If he could get their money legitimately, all well and good, but their spendable money wasn¡¯t enough. The best of the best wasn¡¯t cheap. But you could get some discounts, if you knew the right people. The difference between having only Veor available and having vast swaths of the rest of the world couldn''t be compared. Jair would have killed to have this kind of opportunity a thousand years ago. Now... he wouldn¡¯t even need to kill for it. Just ruin a few cities¡¯ economy.
"Lord Veshin. I need to borrow your local cousin." "Cousin? I can''t imagine what you mean, young Welburne. None of my older relatives live in Veor these days, I am the sole patriarch of this oasis." "Yet they do sometimes come to visit. Or, in this case, help you out with events." Lord Veshin''s eyes narrowed. "I don''t know what you''re trying to imply, but I assure you, you''re quite mistaken." "Just tell Yalenin I need his help the morning after Dark Night. I know it''ll cost a fortune to keep him here away from the coasts, but I''m good for it." "You very likely are, aren''t you?" Lord Veshin murmured, scanning his gaze over Jair appraisingly. "I''ll see if I can get in contact. Though, Dark Night, you understand, isn''t--" "I''m sure you can find him. There''s only so far one can get to within Veor."
"King Farshen. I can find your son." "Who are you? How did you get in here?" The king of Veor slouched in his bedchamber on a sofa so covered in cushions it may as well have been a bed, but he lifted his head to squint in the general direction of the invader. "I have my ways." Jair gestured to the doorway. He''d carved the door itself completely off its hinges and set it aside in four smaller pieces, leaving it an open archway. "I am an independent agent here on behalf of your wife. She''s very sad to see you in this condition, and wants to see you and Orren reconciled." "Reconciliation requires effort on both sides, intruder," Farshen said mournfully, allowing himself to flop back against the pillows. "Nothing can be done so long as Orren insists on trying to overthrow me." "He''s not trying to overthrow you, that''s just your paranoia talking." Farshen''s eyes roamed unsteadily around the room, never quite focusing on Jair properly. "You don''t sound like any of Olina''s messengers. Who are you?" "I''m sometimes known as Alahir." "The stable boy? Why would she..." he trailed off into incoherent mumbling. "I need you to send a royal edict to these people to meet me outside Mount Ryenzo the morning after Dark Night. If you do that, I''ll see to it that Prince Orren is here to meet you in time for Solaria." Farshen raised one hand in a feeble fist, then extended two fingers to point at Jair. "You don''t get to tell me what edicts I need to edict. I''m the edicter around here." "Yes, and I''m the investigator who finds things that need to be brought to your attention." "You can''t fool me. Alahir is dead. Olina is dead. Orren is dead to me. You can''t convince me to change my mind." "And if Prince Orren truly was willing to put in the effort to reconcile?" "He won''t. He''s too greedy for my throne." Farshen sat up straighter, scootched himself back into the corner of the sofa, and clutched his blankets closer to his chest. "Everyone''s against me, everyone. This plague, it''s their fault. Not mine. The dragon. Not my doing. All schemes and plots to take over. You can''t lie to me, Alahir." Stolen story; please report. "Indeed, I would never dream of deceiving you, my lord king." Jair bowed, then knelt with head still bowed. "I am but a humble agent of your wife''s, seeking to reunite your family." "Then go get my son and bring him here. Maybe beat some sense into him while you''re at it." "I''ll do that. And I''ll leave this package here for you to look over. If you see anything you disapprove of, burn it. Anything you like, feel free to sign and pass off to your chief of staff. I''m confident my proposals are in your best interests, but of course it''s always your decision, my lord king." Jair held up the envelope containing the edicts he needed signed, each of which was accompanied by a cover letter tailored specifically to Farshen''s delusions and hopes. "I might consider it, once I see Orren for myself." "Of course, my lord king. I will bring him within the week." And he¡¯d be slipping a copy of them to a certain caretaker who might be able to get through to him more readily. He highly doubted that, left to his own devices, the king would so much as open the package. He didn¡¯t expect a full success out of this little scheme, but he figured it had at least a thirty percent chance of getting him something. The best Veor had to offer wasn''t much in the grand scheme of things, but even a little was better than nothing. Since he was in the area anyway to rob the treasury blind, may as well try for a bonus on the way out.
The days passed all too quickly, and far too slowly at the same time. Jair collected materials, connections, and wealth. He spent hours pushing his body to its limits, working to reshape his manabody to his desired specifications, and reinforced the beginning imprints on his hands and arms. His spells wouldn''t be ready for weeks, and there was nothing to be done about that. The next lunar passage to the Ghost Moon, Zelura, would do nothing to speed up that process. Unlike the intensely magical atmosphere of Nuprima, the Ghost Moon had almost no ambient mana at all. What little mana was present in the domes had to be imported from the planet or purchased from Nuprima. Spend more than a few days out on Zelura outside the domes, and your manabody would starve and disintegrate entirely. Rebuilding a manabody from the ground up was not a pleasant or simple process, and Jair had no plans of doing it again any time soon. But while the lack of magic made the place terrible for most of his purposes, it did do one very important thing. People who survived on its treacherous surface knew how to fight monsters without relying on spells. Much like a hyper-specialized spellbow, when going up against a dragon that could absorb almost all magic, that freedom from mana requirements was invaluable.
Jair waited until the day before Dark Night to confront Larenok again. The man had taken to his new position as Jair''s publicist and organizer with great enthusiasm. He had lined up a great many opportunities for Jair to use Darkflame, though Jair did refuse several of them. He saw nothing wrong with pilfering slivers of soul from the avaricious, but for ordinary people being overcharged and exploited, he¡¯d prefer to wait until he had a better idea of what exactly Maelstrom was taking and what impact it would have on those it took from. That evening, an hour before the lunar passage was open, he and Larenok met to go over final details. Jair gave him the list of people who were authorized to join their party, instructing Larenok to accommodate them fully. ¡°And you don¡¯t want me to come with you?¡± ¡°No, this I have to do alone.¡± Larenok looked over the list, then paused and tapped at one spot. ¡°You had a meeting with King Farshen himself? Did you heal him?¡± Jair opened his mouth, frowned, and laughed faintly. ¡°I didn¡¯t even think of it.¡± Larenok stared at him with such openly baffled astonishment that Jair was impressed his mouth could even open that wide. ¡°You¡­ didn¡¯t think of it? You have the richest, most powerful man in all of Veor right in front of you, and you don¡¯t even consider selling him your service?¡± ¡°All this flame-healing is your gig.¡± Jair waved a hand. ¡°I¡¯m dealing with more important things at the moment. But if you want to contact the king and add him to the client list for when I return, I¡¯m not opposed.¡± Larenok snorted and shook his head pityingly. ¡°And this is why so many of you talented geniuses end up going nowhere. No sense of shameless self-promotion whatsoever. Here.¡± He handed over the transit token and authorization papers Jair would need in order to gain access to the lunar platform. ¡°Try to remember you¡¯re a business now, not just a citizen.¡± ¡°Business. Right.¡± Jair pinned Larenok to the wall with Maelstrom through his chest and held them there. Larenok disappeared into ashes as Darkflame consumed him. He reappeared, and Darkflame consumed him again. There was no moving from his position, no appearing elsewhere, simply reforming with Maelstrom already stabbed through him and disappearing just as fast in a flicker of fire. Larenok didn''t even have time to look confused before he burned away again and again and again. Black and green filled Jair¡¯s vision, blinding and skewing perception, but he did not relent. There were questions he still needed answered. With the instances in such close proximity and repeated, Jair began to feel the change. Subtly, ever so gradually, the sword leeched power from the man and slipped it silently into Jair and Maelstrom¡¯s shared soul. It was tiny, a bare sliver of a fragment. Not even close to the amount Maelstrom had been desperately gouging out of people when it was incomplete and searching for anything to fill that void. It would take a lot more than ten instances at this rate to consume a whole soul. But Darkflame flared up every second, and they had a whole hour.
Larenok never did disappear completely. Even after being immolated thousands of times without pause, he still reappeared. He still hadn''t managed to look surprised, disappearing as fast as he was re-created. When time was almost out before the lunar passage, Jair finally stopped and withdrew his sword. Larenok reformed for the final time, and scowled. "What was that for?¡± His voice was barely unhappy. More curious than anything. "What was what for?" "You stabbed me. Was I being that annoying? Needed to reset my emotions already?" Jair chuckled. "You''ve lost track of time. We need to go." "What are you talking about? We have an hour¡­" Jair gestured up at the sky, where the ghost moon was fully visible, its glowing scars almost entirely turned toward the planet below. Larenok cursed. "Aelir! I have lost track of time.¡± He began rushing about, collecting things and muttering instructions that Jair tuned out. He knew how to handle himself on Zelura. That wasn¡¯t something he needed Larenok to teach him. Instead he was searching within himself and Maelstrom, for what changes might have been wrought by taking so many fragments of Larenok¡¯s existence. The man didn¡¯t seem to have noticed anything amiss. For all he knew, Jair had only killed him the once, and he¡¯d lost track of time on his own. Jair had noticed his soulspace growing fractionally before, after his first interview with Larenok. He tended to keep it full of any miscellany that he might want or need, so having a blank spot, however small, was notable. The change this time was even greater. The boundaries were stronger than ever, but the amount of space had increased by nearly a quarter of his total. That¡­ was not normal. Jair had lived decades into the future. He¡¯d studied and experimented and done everything he could conceive of to make any and every part of himself stronger. His soulspace had been of particular interest. If there was any way to bring, say, an anti-dragon frozen shrapnel bomb from the future, that would be of extreme value to his goal. He¡¯d reinforced his soulspace. He¡¯d stretched and reshaped his soulspace. He¡¯d done unspeakable things to his soulspace and¡­ well, the less said about those years the better. But in none of his hundreds of timelines had he ever expanded his soulspace to such a drastic degree. It was almost as big as himself now. He could fit so much more material in there now¡­ he immediately started planning it all out. But for now, he had a lunar passage to catch and the most epic recruitment run of Veor¡¯s history to make. Or so he thought.
Jair arrived at the Sejrilo underground lunar platform a few minutes before the first passage opened. He handed over the authorization package Larenok had given him, pleased by the smoothness of the transaction. None of the usual coercion and bribery was necessary, just a simple exchange and he was sent right through. It was so smooth in fact that he ended up standing around waiting for the passage to activate a full two minutes longer than he¡¯d expected. He stepped off the platform amid the initial group of VIPs, into Zelura¡¯s eternal twilight beneath the dome. A glint of light drew his eye, as a woman in a floor-length silver dress took a single step toward him, eyes boring into his. Jair recognized her immediately. He stepped forward and bowed, smiling. ¡°Nay Ahll Mersine? It¡¯s been a long time. What brings you out into the world of we mere mortals?¡± The ancient seer looked as though she¡¯d stopped aging somewhere around her mid-thirties, the starting traces of age on her face but body youthful. Only her tired eyes betrayed the darkness she¡¯d seen and the disasters she¡¯d lived through, both in life and vision. Being an elder among the elves, her horns were adorned with sunsilver in patterns denoting wisdom and strength. Gleaming black hair with a hint of iridescent purple fell in soft waves almost to her knees, contrasting with the patterned silver fabric of her dress. If it were anyone else, Jair would be impressed she managed to walk alone and unarmed through the most lawless city on the lawless moon in such a clearly expensive outfit, but Nay Ahll Mersine was foresightful on a level that even a time traveler had to respect. Jair owed her his life and more. Without her, he might never have taken control of his soulspell in the first place, back in those early loops when he¡¯d fallen helplessly again and again and again. They¡¯d been friends across a hundred lifetimes. The fact that they¡¯d never met in this version of their lives meant nothing. She nodded in acknowledgement of his greeting, but did not answer his smile, her face set in a grim line. ¡°Jair Welburne. I hoped you wouldn¡¯t be here.¡± Jair¡¯s smile slipped. ¡°That¡¯s not the greeting I expected. What brings you to this corner of the underworld?¡± ¡°I¡¯m here to warn you.¡± She stepped forward, and the fear in her expression was something he¡¯d never before seen from her in all their lifetimes. Resignation was familiar, almost expected when they had occasion to debate, but this was something else entirely. Deep dread. Jair¡¯s flippancy disappeared completely. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Anything that could worry Nay Ahll Mersine was something he needed to treat very, very seriously. She¡¯d only come to him with warnings twice before; once when Sekir was poised to destroy Veor and its neighboring continents, and again when the Letyran beastlord was about to invade Celsin. Neither time had she looked half as worried as she did now. ¡°You,¡± she said, and the tremor in her voice¡­ in all his lifetimes he¡¯d never heard the word uttered in a way that cut him so deeply. ¡°You have to stop. You are going too far.¡±
58 - The Voice of Fate When what has been will never be and what is coming has been done since time immemorial¡­ who are we to oppose the tide of destiny?
This wasn¡¯t the first time a seer had tried to stand in Jair¡¯s way, but this was Nay Ahll Mersine. She¡¯d saved his life countless times with timely intervention, helped him take a modicum of control over Temporal Reversion instead of flailing helplessly and landing at the whims of time, and been instrumental in tracking down some of the rarer ingredients used in Maelstrom¡¯s reforging and later ascension. ¡°You¡¯ve never tried to oppose me.¡± ¡°And I do not do so lightly now.¡± She took a step forward, swaying just enough that the hem of her dress avoided brushing against the slightest spot of mud. ¡°You¡¯ve done enough. The good you seek to do will not outweigh the disaster you will bring if you continue on your current path.¡± ¡°Not sure if you¡¯ve been paying attention, but the world is a little bit doomed either way? Seascourge upsurge, lunar vampire invasion, beastlord armies?¡± ¡°The world is not in danger, only those who live upon it now. In the wake of the purge, life will return, continue, and thrive.¡± Well. That was new. ¡°You¡¯ve always known I planned to prevent those disasters.¡± Her voice was soft, remorseful. ¡°And I¡¯ve always known you would not succeed.¡± Jair frowned. ¡°You helped me. Every time, you helped me.¡± ¡°Your silent war would save more than it destroyed. But what you will do now¡­ your interventions will destroy more than time. You would break reality itself and never look back.¡± Anger flared, briefly. ¡°If that¡¯s what it takes, yes.¡± ¡°I know I cannot stop you, but I pray you will reconsider. If you continue on this path, the world and moons will all know your name, and many without kindness. You will destroy more lands than Sekir ever could, kill more than all Letyra¡¯s armies, and when it is done you will be your own final casualty amid the ruin of what should never have been. I beg you to spare the world and allow your path to end where it always should have.¡± ¡°The slopes of Mount Sanctum.¡± ¡°Yes. In all the futures I ever saw, that was where you died. Your sword would have gone on to save the shores of Celsin in the hand of another, and your legacy became one of hope to the survivors who would rebuild civilisation.¡± How many thousands of times had he died in that final week? He¡¯d been so close to breaking. If he hadn¡¯t succeeded this time, if Maelstrom hadn¡¯t been created in time... if it hadn¡¯t interposed its own soul to save his, their connection created at the last desperate instant¡­ And she¡¯d always known. Jair¡¯s his jaw tightened. ¡°Why are you telling me this? What changed?¡± ¡°Everything. Last week, on the twelfth of Xulok.¡± ¡°The day of the initiation.¡± Not a date Jair would ever forget. ¡°Nothing I saw matched what I remembered, and you instead became the catalyst for greater chaos than even the direst futures from before.¡± The seer smiled sadly, looking for a moment every bit of her uncounted centuries. ¡°Time warps itself around you, and it¡¯s starting to crack. You have pushed beyond reason and madness both, and now you are poised to become an untethered maelstrom of catastrophe.¡± Jair stood opposite the seer who''d just foretold his destruction of the world and could only shake his head in uncertain denial. He had no idea what to think. He certainly didn''t plan to destroy the world, or all the peoples upon it. Nay Ahll Mersine didn''t interrupt, giving him time, only watching him with eyes devoid of hope. He raised his chin defiantly. ¡°No.¡± He may have beef with one or two of the countries (and several individuals,) but that wasn''t cause to go destroying the whole thing. He may be crazy but he wasn''t that crazy. ¡°You cannot refute what I have seen.¡± ¡°I do not accept this. If I can cause it, then I can prevent it. I don¡¯t care how many times I have to go back. I can save her without destroying everything else in the process.¡± ¡°You cannot. There is only one path to success, and it is that success that will break the future beyond repair. What you have done until now can be corrected from. What you would do has no recourse.¡± ¡°I will find one.¡± ¡°There is none to find. I have searched as none other could.¡± Jair recalled Maelstrom to his hand and slammed it point-first into the ground in front of him. ¡°Then I will make one. If I can break time once, I can break it again.¡± "You have gone too far already. What you would do cannot be undone." "Most people don''t get to undo anything at all." "You are not most people, Jair. I will not beg, because I know it will mean nothing, but hear me. I see only disaster the further down this road you walk. If you will not turn away, then at least allow me to counsel you. I will find a way to save your Axiom from her destiny, so long as you promise to do as I say and not destroy anything more than what must be destroyed." "I didn''t come all this way to be a seer''s puppet, Mersine." Jair''s voice came out icy and relentless. "Anyone else who stood before me and said what you have would be dead by now. I do not take kindly to threats or blackmail." "It is a warning, not a threat. We both know the futility of animosity between us. I propose only that we work together for the betterment of the future. That is what you planned to do already, is it not? Stabilize Veor, militarize Reskas, protect Celsin?" Her voice turned sharp. "Or are those no longer things you plan to do in this new world of yours?" Jair thought back to Larenok''s suggestion that he uses Darkflame to heal Veor''s King. There were a lot of people who could do with a mental reset. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. "If anything can be done to convince you to stop before you do more, before you commit further desecration upon the face of this world, I will..." her usually strident voice was halting as she spoke the last, as though it physically pained her to get the words out. "I will submit myself to your desires. Ask of me what you would." The way her eyes flickered here and there, brief flashes of green light, Jair knew that every word she spoke was rewriting some future that she saw. And not in a way that pleased her. The fact that she made the offer anyway meant she was truly and deeply serious about this. Jair had never seen Mersine anything but calm and controlled. It was vaguely terrifying to see her like this. If it had been any other day, any other circumstance, Jair would have obeyed her without question. She had never steered him wrong before. But now, all her motives were in question. If her goal was always for him to die and fulfill his alleged destiny, leave Maelstrom to be carried off by some farmer''s son with delusions of heroics, Jair would not stand for that. "Tell me how to save Raina. Now." Mersine swallowed, opened her mouth, then swallowed again as though she couldn''t get the words out past something thick that clogged her throat. Her eyes flared with green light and she half turned away. Jair shrugged and took a step forward. "I don''t need you. I have a plan. If you want to help, speak. If not, get out of my way. I don''t have all day. And I don''t care what you''ve seen, I''m never going to roll over and let myself be killed, whatever destiny wants." "You have everything you need already," she choked out, almost a sob. "You don''t need to draw anyone else into this. You are enough." "Explain." "Your sword. Darkflame. You''re using it wrong." "I am aware. It isn''t killing anything. It''s having some strange mental effect. None of this is what it should be doing." Mersine shook her head. "You are thinking of destruction and rebirth, but remember the legends. The Venix is not reborn at the same place where it dies." It took Jair a moment to comprehend, then Maelstrom reappeared in his waiting hand, already reversed so its point was directed at himself. He looked up to meet Mersine''s eyes. "If you are lying to me, I will never forgive you in this or any timeline." "I know," she whispered. "I am not deceiving you." There was such a mournful note in her voice that Jair didn''t know how to react. She knew he wouldn''t stop, that nothing she said would change his mind, and yet she brought him the answer he''d been so desperately searching for anyway. ¡°You didn¡¯t have to tell me.¡± A sad half smile lingered on her lips. ¡°You¡¯ve been a friend for longer than you¡¯ve been an apocalypse. There would be no point in leaving you to blunder through a path of violence and destruction alone. If I could have reached you sooner, I would have. Your isolation makes communication difficult.¡± There were tears in her eyes as she raised her hands. ¡°May Aelir bless your path and lighten your steps, Jair Welburne.¡± She strode past him, then paused after two steps and spoke with her back to him. ¡°I hope she¡¯s worth it.¡± ¡°She will be.¡± Jair said it firmly, as though by sheer confidence he could make it so. "Do what you must do, and once it is done, cast your sword to the deeps and use it not. It has become what should never exist, and can now no longer be unmade." "I won''t do that. I could as easily throw myself into the sea." "Then that is what you should do," Mersine burst out fiercely. She spun back to face him, silver dress snapping with the abruptness of it. "Do you not understand what you''re doing? How much you are going to destroy for your own purposes?" "My purposes are all I have. If you think the destruction incidentally caused is bad¡ª" "You need not tell me," Mersine said, voice low. "I have seen," and again her voice broke, a weakness Jair had never before seen in the ancient seer until today. She turned away. "I know what you could be. I know what you have been. I do not know what you will be, but¡­" "I''m sure you''ll find me if I change my mind." Mersine shook her head. "Not in this life, Jair Welburne. I go now to my own war. You know now what you can do. Do it and be done. I¡¯ll see you at Meliarn. Aelir guide you.¡± ¡°And Dovak guard you,¡± Jair replied automatically. Nay Ahll Mersine stepped up onto the platform, just as the lunar passage pulsed, and she was gone. Jair fixed an image in his mind and slid Maelstrom point first into his stomach. ¡°Darkflame,¡± he whispered, and green and black fire consumed him.
Jair appeared atop Mount Ryenzo in a burst of heat and light. Flickers of green-black flame danced at the corners of his vision for a moment before they faded away. He might have laughed, or screamed. It worked. But at the same time, something had been torn from him, violently, and it was all he could do not to pass out then and there. He gasped for breath, dizzy and disconnected. His manabody had been drained so thoroughly it nearly collapsed. His soul burned. He¡¯d pushed himself through extreme overdraw in the past but never this badly. He was used to disregarding pain of all levels. This was something much deeper. Darkflame flickered around him as he staggered back. It felt something like when he¡¯d died feeding his soul into Maelstrom, but without the release of a Temporal Reversion to bring it to an end. Perhaps teleporting himself all the way from Zelura had been a mistake. He didn¡¯t know how long he stood there, trying to recover, but by the time Ryenzo¡¯s voice shook him out of his strained fugue the moons had noticeably shifted in their paths across the sky. ¡°What¡¯s this, a visitor so soon? And alone?¡± Jair stared down at the ledge where Ryenzo held Raina, fixing it in his mind, and Maelstrom flared up in his hand. Nothing else happened. Jair and Ryenzo stared at one another. ¡°You really can¡¯t do it without me stabbing myself every time?¡± Jair muttered at his sword. Maelstrom did not respond. Darkflame danced merrily along its length. Jair turned Maelstrom point towards himself and drove it into his chest. Darkflame burned through him, and then he stood beside Ryenzo. ¡°Oh? You are fast for an insect.¡± Ryenzo¡¯s claw descended toward him. ¡°Not fast enough.¡± She snatched him up in one claw, gripping tight. Maelstrom split two of her massive finger''s scales and thick corrosive blood seeped from the wound, but she seemed not to notice. ¡°Raina," Jair raised his voice to shout, "I¡¯m going to stab you, and it will take you back to your father¡¯s house. Don¡¯t panic, I¡¯ll be there shortly.¡± Jair heard a muffled squeak from within Ryenzo¡¯s coil, but whether it was an acknowledgement or a request for him to repeat what he said, he had no idea. He tilted his head up to look Ryenzo in the face. Her claw fully restrained his body, but it had not even nicked him. Only held, not harmed. ¡°You can¡¯t hurt me either, can you?¡± Not that Ryenzo could answer, since he wasn''t speaking draconic. ¡°I have seen the eye of the Deathmoon opening. You promised to bring your other friend to negotiate." Ryenzo peered about exaggeratedly, stretching her neck out over the magma to stare up, then behind herself. "Where is your other friend? Why have you returned alone?¡± Her claw clenched around him, uncomfortably tight, but still not so much as piercing his robe. Jair flicked a thought to Maelstrom and darkflame flared up. It ate away at the claw surrounding him, the tiny gash in Ryenzo''s finger becoming an ashen void that grew until he dropped free to the ground. Ryenzo growled in frustration, eyes flicking to her stub of an arm. ¡°I have seen this trick before, human. You will not frighten me!¡± Her neck flexed and Raina screamed. ¡°I may not be able to kill you, but I can make her wish she was dead. How long do you think it will take before she can follow through? If her only way out is to throw herself into the lava, do you think I can¡¯t stop you from saving her?¡± Ryenzo grinned wickedly and slowly twisted her coil tighter. Raina''s shriek rose, then abruptly choked off. The silence was more terrible than any sound she could have made. Any tiny flicker of doubt over what he was about to do vanished. Kidnapping Raina as collateral against his return had crossed one line. Threatening to torture her until she killed herself crossed all of them. Jair returned Ryenzo''s grin with a glare of his own, fierce and determined, as Maelstrom surged with black flame. ¡°Alright, Ryenzo. I¡¯m going to enjoy this.¡±
59 - Parting Ways Many answers can be found by searching, and many paths from wandering. But some things can be learned only in the utmost extreme.
Jair strode forward, slicing through Ryenzo¡¯s accessible bulk in quick smooth slashes, back and forth, carving his way through her chest to her coiled neck. The dragon¡¯s body melted away before him as darkflame flared up brighter than ever before, leaving ashes drifting in its wake. Ryenzo twisted and swatted at him, but the darkflame was unrelenting. Jair purposefully restrained it to his immediate vicinity. He did not want her fully burned away. Not yet. When he reached Raina, she fell limply into his arms, crushed into unconsciousness by Ryenzo¡¯s suffocating coils. But she was still alive. Ever so gently, Jair pressed Maelstrom¡¯s tip to her shoulder, the image of her room in Ajriol¡¯s house fixed firmly in his mind. ¡°If there¡¯s a price to be paid for this passage, let it come from me, not from her,¡± Jair murmured, but even as he spoke, he knew he¡¯d needn¡¯t have. Maelstrom would sooner have burned its own soul than Raina¡¯s. The outgoing surge of power left Jair feeling weak and dizzy. He had not realized how much of Darkflame¡¯s consumption was fueled by the person¡¯s own whatever it was that Maelstrom was stealing, and after coming straight from Zelura he¡¯d never been so drained. No matter. Whatever the fuel, whether life or soul or magic, Ryenzo had plenty for the taking. The dragon reared back and searched the cave, ignoring the gaping hole in her neck and missing sections of her chest and forelimbs. When she found no trace of Raina, she backed away a step from Jair. ¡°What are you doing, human? I thought you cared for the creature. Why would you destroy it?¡± ¡°Forgetting what my abilities do already, are we?¡± Jair took two quick steps forward and lunged, his mind fixed on the distant sea. He drove Maelstrom into Ryenzo¡¯s chest up to the hilt and black fire poured out without restraint. ¡°Darkflame doesn''t kill, it teleports.¡± Ryenzo looked down at him without comprehension. Since she¡¯d been burned alive twice before with no ill effects, she didn¡¯t even struggle. ¡°You only postpone the inevitable.¡± She glared down at him imperiously as her immense body gradually turned to ashes. ¡°You cannot run far enough or fast enough to escape me.¡± Darkflame took her left rear leg as the huge hole in her center grew. Her chest¡ªwhat little of it remained¡ªheaved as even her ancient and powerful manabody struggled to sustain her form with more and more of it disappearing. ¡°I do not know what end you seek by this provocation, but I will never let you forget it. No one stands against Ryenzo Draconis who does not regret it a thousand times over!¡± ¡°Then I suppose I¡¯m merciful.¡± His voice was anything but. ¡°You only have to regret it once.¡± The tip of her tail dissolved into ash, then the rest of her long snakelike neck, and finally her head with those haughty glowing eyes and their promise of death and suffering. Flakes of black and green ash drifted in the volcano winds and Ryenzo¡¯s lair lay empty. Magma bubbled in its eternal agitation below, untroubled as yet, but the dragon who gave the mount its name lay within its heart no longer. Jair stumbled forward, breathing raspily in the scorched dry air. He fell to his knees and caught himself on Maelstrom before he could topple over entirely. Even if Ryenzo had fueled most of the darkflame herself, he felt exhausted on a level he¡¯d rarely felt before. It was several minutes before he¡¯d recovered enough to even think, the mana from Mount Ryenzo seeping in to soothe his depleted manabody. It could do nothing for the strain on his soul, but he¡¯d been through worse. ¡°Alright.¡± He got to his feet. ¡°Let¡¯s just go and check on her, shall we?¡± Jair stabbed Maelstrom into his hand this time; no need to be overly dramatic about it every time. Then he nearly dropped the sword as the weapon rippled and reshaped itself in his hand. Two small bladed protrusions extended themselves atop the center of the hilt. They wouldn¡¯t accidentally stab into him while he was using the sword to fight with, assuming he ever needed to fight anything again, but where he could easily stab his thumb onto it if desired. ¡°Nice. So you do love me after all.¡± Maelstrom did not respond. Darkflame burned through him, warm and comforting, leaving peace in its wake. Jair stood upon another mountain, dead stone surrounded by sand, a mountain where no dragon lived for it was too close to the water. Just below the horizon, far out at sea, a mighty green dragon thrashed amid the waves, clawing and snapping desperately to get free. Jair chuckled coldly. So he wasn¡¯t too late. Any time Jair fell into the water, he died within seconds, but Ryenzo was made of sterner stuff. With a mighty splash, the dragon burst up from the sea in a shower of droplets, and for a moment it looked as though Ryenzo would escape her fate. But¡­ no. Hundreds of mouths and tentacles and claws and grasping tendrils of indescribable nature held the dragon, and hundreds more jumped at her from the water below. Seascourge, in all its horrifying glory. The one force on Neptus whose dominance could not be contested by all the world¡¯s powers combined. Though she beat her wings furiously, her rise slowed, then stopped. For a long moment she hovered, flapping madly against the taut seascourge limbs that held her. Whatever creature or creatures had such long and powerful appendages, their grip was inexorable. Ryenzo slowly lost ground. First her feet touched the water''s roiling surface, then she was drawn back in up to her knees. Her tail thrashed wildly and turned the water to a froth, but it did her no good. More latched on by the second. There was no uniformity among the seascourge. Some were dark against the glint of her scales, others glowed white or purple. Ryenzo roared as she clawed at them. Her tail trailed long eel-like thin seascourge like hungry streamers. Long coils of sinuous flesh with countless tiny beaks wormed their way between scales to plant their barbs in her belly and twist their way deeper. Bulbous things suckered themselves onto her legs and hung there glowing faintly. Some vaguely resembled creatures that made sense, only with too many tentacles and mouths and eyes. Others were simply teeth and tongues with more teeth, or a collection of thorny bubbles that twisted into and out of one another and left bleeding gashes in their wake as they rolled across the dragon¡¯s massive side before slipping back into the sea with a satisfied slurp of its thorns. She clawed at them, trying to tear herself free. Some would release and flee, some would dig in deeper, others seemed not even to be aware of the fact that they''d been torn in two and each part continued happily nibbling away. It was a wild frenzy, a silent cacophony of color and texture as monsters surged up and joined in or broke off and disappeared. Many only stayed long enough to tear a mouthful free and dive back into the water and out of sight. Some latched on, burrowed their mouths within mouths deep into her flesh, then lay quiescent. Most were more aggressive. A swarm of something flat-carapaced crawled slowly across her scales leaving them bleached and brittle and perforated with countless tiny holes. Several slick knotted masses embedded themselves in clusters just beneath her jaw and above her eye, twisted blobs of translucent muscle that glowed eagerly as they drew on the dragon¡¯s excessive strength like sinister external hearts throbbing in uneven syncopation. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Something pale and slender, like a thirty-legged spider with a leech''s maw where its stomach should be, skittered up to her neck and clamped on. All its barbed legs dug in and its thin body immediately began to inflate as it drew out her venomous blood. When she clawed at it, its body split around her claws like water that rejoined as soon as she''d passed through without pausing in its feast. Despite her colossal size and tireless efforts, gradually Ryenzo slid back into the water until it closed over her head and left only the frenzied ripples to show where she had been. For a moment, Jair thought it was over. Then Ryenzo lunged upward again, biting off the glowing, writhing things that had latched onto her body by the dozen. She broke free of the surface, wings torn and straining. She rose further, higher than before. More and more of the seascourge were torn off and thrown down as she clawed frantically at herself, leaving great bloody gashes across her own body in the process. She''d just started to relax, her desperate flight slowing, wings tilting to catch the wind, when the trailing tendrils back to the water snapped taut and flexed in sickening unison. Ryenzo''s flight came to an abrupt halt and she was wrenched from the sky. The massive dragon slammed into the water so hard and fast the crack echoed across the water and the wind of it ruffled Jair''s hair and robe even from this far away. A scream of fury turned to helpless gurgling as she was dragged under. The sea roiled as waves crashed into each other, then the water gradually calmed as every part of the dragon disappeared from sight. The third time Ryenzo broke the surface, Jair recognized what must be happening. They were playing with their food. Letting her out and reeling her back, over and over, always on that tether of flesh that twisted and writhed and clung. Many of the smaller slender trailing seascourge bodies were long and snakelike, but not actually anchored to anything. As the dragon was allowed to rise a little farther each time, more and more of them were revealed to be simply holding on, not connected to anything else. Three translucent tentacles remained firmly in place, twisted around the base of her wings and tail, and these extended all the way from her distant rising form to the bottom of the ocean. They were relaxed at the moment, draped inoffensively and trailing limply behind as Ryenzo twisted and flapped higher and higher, shuddering and still clawing at herself. Jair saw the moment she started believing she¡¯d broken free, the faintest shift in her body language, and in the same instant those three tentacles snapped taut and dragged her down. Her struggling body splashed into the water with a resounding crack, as easily as if the monsters of the deep were plucking a leaf from a branch. The seascourge kept her fighting the whole time, but at no point was there any doubt in Jair¡¯s mind as to who was in control. They allowed just that first glimmer of hope for escape before they dragged their prey relentlessly back into the depths. Each time she rose higher, only to be hurled down even more violently than the last. With every attempted escape, Ryenzo¡¯s body emerged from the water a little more ragged; more scales broken and crumbled away, more chunks missing from her tail; more clinging seascourge eagerly lapping at her every cut and scratch, the crawling and grasping mass covering a little more of her massive body. Each time her echoing shrieks grew more desperate, her thrashing more frenzied and less controlled. The seascourge were eating her alive one piece at a time. And Ryenzo had a lot of pieces. Her slow destruction even echoed through Maelstrom¡¯s soul. Jair could feel it, some tiny distant connection forged through lifetimes of adversity and repeated applications of Darkflame, that ever so slowly came apart and disappeared one piece at a time. Like an echo of those tearing mouths that cut Ryenzo soul-deep and hollowed her out even faster than her body was destroyed. This time, there would be no rebirth; could never be again. Jair stood on the distant mountaintop and watched the whole thing play out without remorse. She''d had her chance to make peace, and she''d gleefully thrown it away. Ryenzo''s mad vendetta had caused so much pain for so long, no punishment would be too much. It was also a fascinating scene to watch unfold. Nothing else lasted nearly so long after touching tainted water, so it was also a rare chance to watch the incredibly varied methodology of the endlessly-hungry monsters who shared the seas. Burning or draining, strangling or slicing, burrowing or melting, biting and more biting... what he was witnessing, few if any others had ever seen before. Jair knew from the stories he¡¯d heard that even dragons avoided the sea, but until now it had always seemed more of a mutual ¡®we¡¯ll take our land, you keep the water, no need to fight.¡¯ He¡¯d never expected to watch a true apex predator¡ªa creature whole countries placated or avoided¡ªbeing toyed with like a sandfish on a string. Not just any dragon, but an ancient matriarch whose territory had been uncontested for longer than Veor had been a settled kingdom. It was a dramatic and thorough demonstration of the seascourge¡¯s absolute supremacy. No wonder Reskas was about to give up their coasts and withdraw. Something that can kill with a look the moment you''re in eye contact was one thing. But for as many of the seascourge as he''d seen Ryenzo tear free and hurl away, none of them had stopped moving. If even a draconis matriarch couldn''t kill them, what hope did one little country stand? At best, they gave up and swam away, but most came back with a vengeance for a second go at this unusual prey that''d been so nicely gifted to them. The dragon¡¯s lingering shriek when she next emerged was no longer one of anger or desperation but sheer keening agony. She struggled to hold even her head above the water, wings emerging erratically in frantic jerks. Her eye twitched wildly, half-covered by a tangled network of thick branching tendrils already growing in beneath the eyelid and probing deeper still. Unnatural bulges visibly rippled beneath the dragon¡¯s flayed flesh where her scales had been torn or melted away. The water bubbled and writhed as more and more seascourge joined the feast. Though she thrashed madly, her wings no longer had enough substance left to lift her. Too many holes had been melted through, the skin flaps hanging loose and tattered. Ryenzo could only flail helplessly, half submerged, until the mass of hungry monsters closed over her for good. She let out one last gurgling whimper, quickly stifled by a group of enterprising eel-type seascourge who dove straight down her throat to choke her even as she drowned. Cruel to the last. Then the last flickering remnant of Ryenzo¡¯s soul disappeared, leaving a profound calm in its place. The once-untouchable dragon ceased to struggle and slipped beneath the surface without another sound. It was over. Jair summoned Maelstrom to depart the nameless mountain by the sea, and in the same instant, a glint of purple flashed upon the distant water. Something hurled itself out of the ocean and directly at his face. Despite the vast distances involved, it crossed the space before he could even register what he¡¯d seen, before Maelstrom even finished appearing in his hand. Something sharp, white-glowing and wriggling speared straight into his eye, through the skull, out the back of his head, and spread out from there faster than thought. It had his head in a thousand-fingered grasp in the split second between sight and comprehension. He barely registered the initial impact before he was dragged off his feet, the distant water suddenly rushing closer at deadly speed. Even as his thumb moved toward Maelstrom¡¯s new personal hilt-blade, the thing through his skull continued to spread faster than lightning. Some of its tendrils grew around the side of his head, slipped around his ear and reached for his other eye. Others circled his neck and crawled down his spine. ¡­ and at the same time, his manabody burned away as clutching teeth gripped at his soul, trying to find purchase. Nope. He stabbed his thumb into Maelstrom¡¯s hilt and willed Darkflame take him away. For a moment the seascourge fought for dominance of his body and soul, the darkflame unable to take hold wherever its touch lingered. In an absolute panic Jair pushed and twisted like never before, wrenching body from soul until what the seascourge held was no longer worth holding. Something tore. He was vaguely aware of things falling, a collapsing feeling of separation and emptiness, and then he was gone. Darkflame surged over him in a flash of green and black fire, leaving only ashes and the scattered contents of his soulspace for his would-be killer. The first place he¡¯d thought of was the top of Mount Ryenzo so that¡¯s where he reappeared. Jair collapsed to the ground, gasping for air and trembling from relief. His manabody had been fully destroyed. His soul felt slimy and his skull throbbed where the seascourge tendril had driven through it. His body didn¡¯t feel entirely real. But he was alive, and he was far far away from any treacherous water. He quickly checked himself all over to make sure none of the seascourge had come along for the ride, and found no trace of the vile creature. A few small rips in his soul where it¡¯d taken a quick nibble, but they¡¯d heal within a year or two. Shuddering all over, he lay where he¡¯d fallen, feeling ill. That had been way too close. He knew better than to gloat, but after everything, he knew he¡¯d never have a moment¡¯s peace if he hadn¡¯t confirmed it for himself. Despite knowing he may have sacrificed a few slivers of his soul to do so, the relief of watching Ryenzo finally disappear for good brought a satisfaction he had no wish to forego. Jair took deep trembling breaths, then steadier as he calmed and settled his body and mind. He still had Maelstrom. That alone made up for any number of deficits in the rest of his capabilities. Manabodies could be rebuilt. Souls healed. He¡¯d survived worse, rebuilt from less. None of it mattered compared to what he¡¯d accomplished. If this was the price he paid for final victory, it was well worth the cost. Ryenzo Draconis would never trouble them again. He glanced around, finally taking in where he was. This mountaintop wasn¡¯t where he wanted to be. ¡°Darkflame,¡± he murmured, the image of Raina¡¯s study fixed in his mind. A brush of his thumb across Maelstrom¡¯s provided point and black fire raced through him.
60 - Completion To run draws their eye. To fight excites their violence. To use magic attracts their hunger. If you stand within sight of the Enemy, all you can do is continue to stand, and pray they lose interest before you lose strength. It is your only hope for escape.
Flickers of green faded from Jair¡¯s vision and left him standing alone in Raina¡¯s study at their Astralla townhouse. The only thing out of place was a small pile of bags near the door, as though someone had hastily packed for an upcoming departure. ¡°Raina?¡± He turned a full circle, but the room remained empty. This was where he¡¯d sent her. So where was she? He pushed open the door to the balcony in case she¡¯d gone out for air. No sign of her. He poked his head out into the hallway. Not there either. Instinctive dread took hold of his chest and dragged at his gut. What if he¡¯d been wrong? What if she wasn¡¯t here, hadn¡¯t survived? If fate itself was set against her, any number of things could have happened. Had something gone wrong with his Darkflame? Perhaps he¡¯d been unable to provide enough mana and she¡¯d fallen out of the transportation partway across the continent. She¡¯d be easy prey for sandsharks or nightcats, alone in the desert, assuming she survived that long. ¡°Raina?¡± He leaned over the railing to shout downstairs. ¡°You here?¡± Carn¡¯s head poked around the corner. ¡°Young mister Welburne? Miss Raina is out front, last I saw.¡± The Serin household manager narrowed his eyes at Jair. ¡°Just how did you get up here, young man?¡± Jair ignored him. He took the stairs three at a time, skidded around the corner with one hand on the post to redirect his momentum, then hurtled down the hall. He knew the Serin house better than his own. Carn hadn¡¯t seemed concerned, so he dared to hope¡­ He rounded the last corner and came up short. Raina was pacing the front entryway with a quick anxious stride that turned into a headlong rush the moment she saw him. ¡°Jair!¡± She slammed into him, almost knocking him over. "You''re alive!" ¡°And so¡¯re you!¡± Jair spun her around, laughing unrestrained, his whole body buoyant with relief. ¡°For real this time.¡± ¡°What happened? I was so worried.¡± "I¡¯m fine. Just had to be absolutely sure Ryenzo won¡¯t bother you again, and it took a bit longer than expected.¡± ¡°You did? How?¡± ¡°I suppose we can start there, if we''re answering questions. I¡¯ll tell you anything you want to know. As promised. But first, let''s go sit down somewhere more private. Anyone could be listening, out here." Jair heard the distinctive shuffle of Carn¡¯s slippers as the man hastily found somewhere else to be. The man was loyal to an insane degree, but he did like to snoop. ¡°Going to be spilling some state secrets, are we?¡± Raina asked, as they disentangled from their greeting hug and fell into step side by side. ¡°You never know. I have been called an indiscreet gossip at times.¡± Raina giggled uncontrollably. ¡°You? Really?¡± ¡°You¡¯d be surprised.¡± ¡°Was Ryenzo secretly working for the banished prince this whole time?¡± She was grinning now, all but skipping with relief of her own. ¡°Dragons do not concern themselves in the squabbling of mortals. But we have a whole lot more to talk about than just one dragon.¡± ¡°I hardly know where to begin.¡± They reached the top of the stairs and Raina led the way into her study. She flipped the interference switch along with the light and closed the door behind them. Jair expected to feel the faint hum of the ambient protections against his manabody, but there was no noticeable change. The reminder that he was currently all but manaless disoriented him for a moment. ¡°You alright?¡± Raina stood next to the reading chair by the window. ¡°Need to sit down?¡± ¡°I suffered some minor manabody destruction in the process of guaranteeing Ryenzo¡¯s demise, nothing to worry about.¡± ¡°Minor¡­ destruction?¡± ¡°I can rebuild. You have a whole oasis I can borrow, and I¡¯ve been wanting a better manabody anyway.¡± ¡°Jair, that¡­¡± she stared, speechless. ¡°You go ahead.¡± He pulled out the chair from her desk. ¡°I¡¯ll be fine.¡± Reluctantly, she sat down on the overstuffed arm of the chair. ¡°I think you¡¯d better start at the beginning.¡± ¡°Which beginning is that? I was born on the thirty-second of Ahnlok, in the year of our moons 482 LE, to Zaen and Kyami Welburne, along with my sister Lilin¡­¡± Raina snatched the chair¡¯s decorative pillow and threw it at him. ¡°How about what you did to upset a dragon? I¡¯ve never seen a creature look so furious as Ryenzo did when she was glaring after you.¡± ¡°I¡¯d burned her alive with Darkflame twice already by then, so she was incapable of harming you. Since she wanted revenge against your mother more than life itself, I can imagine being rendered impotent left her rather unhappy.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°Any other questions?¡± Raina glared at him. ¡°You know that¡¯s not a helpful¡­¡± Then her expression changed, slackening into realization. ¡°So that¡¯s why.¡± ¡°Why what?¡± Raina shook her head. ¡°That first day, after you left, Ryenzo was so angry. Spent the first several hours¡­¡± she laughed wonderingly. ¡°Slammed her tail right beside me, waved her claws, bit at the air¡­ I didn¡¯t understand at the time. Threats, I assumed. Proving how much power she had over me. But it was the opposite. She was helpless, and I didn¡¯t realize.¡± Jair¡¯s expression flattened. ¡°So much for being a creature of her word. I suppose even keeping you alive a few hours of her own volition is too much to expect.¡± He¡¯d never been more thankful for Darkflame¡¯s weird insistence on preventing violence. ¡°Sorry I ever doubted you,¡± he murmured to Maelstrom. ¡°But even if that explains why she didn¡¯t hurt me, I don¡¯t understand. What exactly is Darkflame? I remember you saying she was going to come back when you used it the first time at the academy, when we tried to run.¡± ¡°Second time. The first time was in the desert.¡± ¡°Either way.¡± ¡°Well, that¡¯s another long story, that goes back to several months from now when I went hunting a venix with a vampire witch.¡± "Months from now¡­ right. Time traveler. Hah. I still have a hard time believing that. How long were you in the future?¡± ¡°To hunt the venix? I wasn¡¯t keeping track of time. Not long. Two or three years at most. I want to say eight to twelve loops, but I wasn¡¯t keeping track.¡± ¡°Two or three years¡­ isn¡¯t long?¡± Raina¡¯s voice was faint. ¡°Eight to twelve loops? What does that mean?¡± ¡°Unlike a prophecy type power, Temporal Reversion lets me go back and try different things. I can loop each shelf-worth of time as many times as I want to until I get the result I¡¯m after.¡± This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Raina didn¡¯t speak for a long moment as she processed this, then nodded and grinned. ¡°And so you forged the ultimate weapon and came back for vengeance!¡± "I came back to save you," he said softly. "Ryenzo could have backed off at any time and I¡¯d never have gone after her." ¡°And how long did it take? Before Darkflame. How¡­ how far forward have you seen? How long were we apart?" "Years. The same years, different years, over and over.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Don''t ask me how many, things like months and weeks and years and days are all a jumble. I can''t remember such trivialities. Locations, contacts, information. Much more important than whether it¡¯s therday or landay. I was a respected archmage by the end, but never survived long enough to be an elder. But, in actual elapsed world time¡­ Twenty years forward, perhaps? Probably less. It only feels like longer because of the looping.¡± ¡°You did a lot of looping, I take it?¡± ¡°A few hundred fragmented lifetimes learning every nuance of soulsword reforging and ascension, hunting down the most perfectly matched elements to integrate.¡± He snorted and shook his head. ¡°Following a pattern that it turns out my mentor made up and never tested. But when you¡¯ve got a strong enough focus, a thousand years passes faster than you¡¯d think.¡± ¡°A thousand years.¡± Her voice was softer now, subdued. ¡°Archmage. And you gave it all up to come back here? I don¡¯t know what to say.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t need to say anything.¡± ¡°But I already owe you so much, and now I know what it cost you¡ª¡± ¡°No. You owe me nothing. What else was I going to live for? If I can¡¯t even save my first friend, what use am I?¡± ¡°No, Jair, that¡¯s not¡ª¡° She lunged forward, tears in her eyes, and took his hands in hers. ¡°What about your goals, your future?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve done so much and seen even more. After a while, it all blurs together. Living for myself, sure, fun for a while, but it doesn¡¯t mean anything in the end.¡± He met her eyes with such intensity she turned away. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here. I don¡¯t care what it took to get here. It¡¯s done and I¡¯ll never regret it.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what to say.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have to. Just be yourself.¡± "I could say the same to you!" "I''ve spent a long time discovering who I am. Who I want to be, it isn''t about me. It''s about the people I care about. And that starts with you." "So¡­ what about the rest of your family? Your other friends?" ¡°They don¡¯t need me right now. We can figure out what¡¯s going on with my sister when the time comes, but she¡¯s in no danger for months yet. I know where I can evacuate my parents to long before there¡¯s any assassins after them. As for friends, we¡¯ll get to them. There¡¯s plenty of other things to do before then. For now, you¡¯ve got me all to yourself.¡± "And that won''t be a problem?" "Problem? Why would there be a problem?" "I mean¡­ We were going to go on adventures together, but if I''m just going to be a liability¡­" "You, liability? No. You¡¯re the most essential asset we have." "We?" "Unless you don''t want to travel with me anymore." ¡°Of course I do.¡± Raina pulled back so he was at arm¡¯s length, but didn¡¯t quite let go yet. Her eyes flicked to the piled luggage by her door. "I was anticipating running from an angry dragon, so I packed light. But if we don''t have to rush, there''s a lot more streamlining I can do." "No rush at all. We can go as soon or as late as you''re ready." "You''re sure?" "I''ve waited countless lifetimes for the chance to travel together. Why would a few more months make any difference?" "And you''re sure you''re not¡­" she let her arms fall to her sides and looked away. "You won''t be holding yourself back, just to keep me around?" "If you want to slay a dragon, I won''t throw the next one into the sea without you having your shot at it first. But if it comes down to you or the dragon, I''m absolutely throwing it into the sea, no questions asked." Raina laughed. "As amusing as that is to imagine, I doubt even you could¡­" she trailed off at the slyness in Jair''s grin. "You didn''t!" "I did. Almost got my own soul eaten in the process, but worth every minute of it." "Ryenzo¡­? You¡­ I¡­ how?" she shook her head helplessly, unable to finish any sentences at all. "Darkflame. The venix''s ultimate power is not to destroy, and it never has been. It''s the last-chance escape. ''Abandon this body and be reborn anew away from the danger.'' Whatever Maelstrom may have added in translation, its true nature cannot be subverted." Jair grinned and Maelstrom flared up playfully. "But anything can be a weapon when you know how to use it." "You threw Ryenzo Draconis into the sea. And she''s¡­?" "Very much no longer a threat.¡± ¡°Good riddance.¡± He stood and moved closer, taking her arms in his. ¡°And how are you feeling?¡± ¡°Better than ever.¡± But her eyes were shadowed and something haunted lay beneath her smile. ¡°When I woke up here I almost thought the whole thing was a dream. But how my father was acting¡­ Clearly the attack at the Institute happened. I know that I was¡­ gone." She shivered, bravado falling away, and stepped into his arms. ¡°And then you were gone too.¡± ¡°It¡¯s okay. I¡¯m here. You¡¯re safe now. I¡¯m not going anywhere without you.¡± ¡°I was so scared,¡± she whispered. ¡°In the valley¡­ I¡¯ve never imagined I could be that hungry. I thought I was dying.¡± ¡°Valley? Is that where you were those days, not in the volcano?¡± Raina nodded. ¡°Though I almost wish I had been. It¡¯s a good thing my father insisted I know how to survive in unknown territory. Even so, there¡¯s only so much I could do, and my sword wasn¡¯t behaving so I couldn¡¯t even¡­¡± she swallowed. ¡°We¡¯ll deal with your sword later. Whatever¡¯s gone wrong with it, we can fix it. As long as you¡¯re safe.¡± ¡°I hid in her lower tunnels at night. There were¡­ things, in the valley, it wasn¡¯t¡­¡± She trembled, and Jair leaned his head against hers. "I¡¯ve never seen anyplace so green. Even Terluna isn¡¯t so beautiful. I hate it.¡± ¡°It¡¯s okay. You don¡¯t have to think about that any more. You¡¯re alive. You¡¯re safe.¡± Jair hugged her closer. "I''m so sorry. If there''s anything more I could have done¡­" Raina¡¯s snort was somewhere between a laugh and a gurgle. "It''s a dragon. The fact you were able to do anything is a miracle. I¡¯d have been dead more times than I could count if not for you.¡± ¡°I wish I¡¯d been there sooner.¡± ¡°You¡¯re here now.¡± Her fists clenched the back of his robe and she hid her face against his chest, dampening the front with her tears. ¡°I thought you were dead. I''m so glad you''re safe.¡± Jair''s own control slipped, a flood of gratitude and hope and relief and finally welling up in his chest and throat so strongly it choked him. It took several long moments before he could reply. ¡°Don''t worry. I¡¯ve decided to stop doing that for a while.¡± ¡°Stop scaring me into thinking you¡¯d died?¡± ¡°I was thinking more ¡®stop dying¡¯ but sure. I¡¯ll do my best not to scare you either.¡± ¡°I¡¯d like that. Maybe we could have a normal day for a change.¡± ¡°Sounds boring.¡± ¡°I think the word you¡¯re looking for is ¡®peaceful¡¯.¡± ¡°Nope.¡± ¡°Restful? Relaxing?¡± ¡°You think either of us is going to be resting after a week like that?¡± ¡°Yes. First thing tomorrow.¡± Jair laughed. ¡°So what will we do the rest of the day?¡± ¡°You still owe me a story.¡± Jair smiled and nodded. Ryenzo was gone. There was no need to rush anywhere, no immediate threat looming over them. They sat down together and he began to unfold the tale. Of Maelstrom¡¯s creation and the convoluted path to where they now sat, of friends and enemies, allies and adversity, failure and triumph. As evening fell, they went out on the balcony and stood leaning on the rail, looking out over the city. The light of the waning Zelura, its passage scars turned away and dim, cast gentle shadows across the balcony. ¡°I still don¡¯t believe you set up Reskian anti-seascourge runes on the academy walls,¡± Raina said, laughing, as they watched distant lights twinkle across the city. ¡°They wiped out the whole city''s power for days. Even now, there¡¯s only half as many people allowed on the grid as normal.¡± ¡°It seemed like a good idea at the time.¡± Jair laughed. ¡°All that work for nothing.¡± ¡°Well, it did let me get everyone¡¯s attention. Not sure how much good it did in the long run.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve definitely left our mark on the history of that place,¡± Jair agreed. ¡°Even without luring the headmaster away to become a shady salesman.¡± Raina burst out laughing uproariously. ¡°Wait, what? You¡¯re kidding.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°Nope. Larenok has retired from teaching and is now my personal advisor and brand manager.¡± ¡°No way. That¡¯s¡­ how?¡± Jair summoned Maelstrom and gave it a casual flip. ¡°I have my ways.¡± ¡°Every time I think your adventures can¡¯t get any weirder, you come out with something like this.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry, there¡¯s plenty of weird left out there. I can get you in on the deal any time you¡¯re ready.¡± Raina gestured back to the piled bags. ¡°I¡¯m ready when you are. Any ideas for where we should go first?" ¡°Oh, I can think of a few things. I don''t suppose you still keep in touch with Prince Orren?" Raina tilted her head. "It''s been years, I haven''t seen him since well before any of this current¡­" She waved her free hand out over the city to indicate the whole political mess. "But he¡¯d probably still recognize me. Why do you ask?" "Because I think it''s high time we arranged a family reunion. If we play this right, I think we can save Veor before Solaria." ¡°Alright, I¡¯m in!¡± Then she frowned uncertainly. ¡°Save it from what?¡± ¡°The mad king, for one.¡± Jair turned to lean one arm on the rail, facing her properly. ¡°And a certain sorcerer called Sekir.¡±
Soul Breaker - Prologue

(Several hundred lives ago)

Jair Welburne had once assumed that one life-shattering disaster would be enough for a lifetime. He''d also been an idiot at the time. These days, he didn''t put too much stock in his past self''s assessment. In retrospect he probably would''ve been happier if he could divorce his sympathy from Veor entirely. What had the continent ever done for him anyway? Sure, his family lived there, he''d grown up there his entire life, but did all that really matter when weighed against his sanity? But after he failed to save Raina, he couldn''t stomach the thought of giving up. Something at the back of his mind was always searching for the unknown power that would let him go back and prevent that first disaster from ever happening to begin with. Each successive challenge that he folded under, gave up on, or failed to confront, would push him one step closer to admitting that everything he had done and everything he ever would do was futile. That one man couldn''t change everything, no matter how hard he tried. That was not a truth Jair could accept. If he accepted that, it would be the end of him. With the dragon temporarily shelved while he grew in power and strength, the conquest and subsequent destruction of Veor by a charismatic tyrant was exactly the kind of thing he needed to confront and defeat before he could move on. So far, it wasn''t going very well. Sekir¡¯s nasty habit of resurrecting himself every time he got killed¡ªand coming back with increasingly scorched-earth policies with each successive life¡ªwas something Jair didn¡¯t know how to counter. Archmage and arch-sorcerer, they were evenly matched in magic, and Jair¡¯s blend of elemental and force spells were ineffectual against Sekir¡¯s disruptive and illusory setup. They could fight for hours without either claiming victory, but every time Jair figured out a way to win, Sekir would come back a few days later stronger and angrier than ever. The temptation to call it a loss and move on perpetually nagged at him, but Jair knew himself well enough to reject taking the easy way out. Once he started down that road of excuses and compromise, he would lose himself to it. However much it burned, however desperately he wanted to shrug and leave Veor to its fate, this was how he proved to himself that he hadn''t given up. Veor didn''t have the resources he needed to defeat Raina¡¯s dragon, not in the four days he had, but this Sekir issue wasn''t nearly so limited. He had years to prepare, all the resources of the world and its moons to draw upon. Jair had no reason to fail. Even if it felt impossible, if he let himself fail, it would be just that. His own choice. He stared up at the magnified view of Almas above him, the engaldria slashed by a broad channel dividing North Khel from South Khel... and the square of water below that was all that remained of Veor. Only the dragon mountains remained, a tiny island in a second Death Lake. Countless times Jair had fought this same war, and every one of them he failed. And Veor died without him. Time to try again. But he needed a new angle. Sekir was simply too powerful, and Jair had gotten himself mentally hung up on brute-forcing this solution. He¡¯d lost perspective. So this time, he decided as he fell backwards through golden light, he wouldn¡¯t fight. He wouldn¡¯t even interfere. He needed to reassess, with what he knew now, and observe exactly what happened when. Ryenzo destroyed the academy, killed Raina and another twenty people in her brief rampage, and Jair listened with breaking heart and dry eyes from a building safely out of the way. He¡¯d hoped to skip this part, but his timefall didn¡¯t have a suitable shelf. If anything, this only reinforced his determination to figure out some way to deal with the sorcerer. Months passed. King Farshen descended further into his maddened grief, hunted for his missing son and ignored his missing daughter. Jair attended class. He sat through the same lectures he¡¯d heard a hundred times. He built up his web of connections. As a nobody, he¡¯d be hated more the higher he rose, so he didn¡¯t try to rise. He played the lackey, became Lian¡¯s errand boy, and bore the richer boy¡¯s exploitation and dismissal with the same silent fire that seemed his only remaining emotion. He wouldn¡¯t be influencing anything, but he¡¯d be in a position to listen. It¡¯d been too long since he played through the entire scenario without interference. He¡¯d been trying to deflect Sekir, delay him, but though he changed the timing he never changed the outcome. With the exception of the months where Sekir simply disappeared, only to return with Princess Fahla firmly on board with his agenda, Jair could map out his movements with almost complete accuracy. In another half a year, Sekir would appear as one of King Farshen''s advisors. Midway into the extreme economic collapse, just in time to start advocating change to an eager audience. Prior to that, the man didn''t exist. Over the years leading up to Sekir''s appearance Jair had circulated descriptions of him through every channel he knew, legal or illegal, and the man had no presence anywhere. He wasn''t an existing political lackey, he wasn''t an upstart noble from a forgotten line, he wasn''t an outlander. He also didn¡¯t appear on any transit platform. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. At one point, frustrated with the lack of information, Jair spent one lifetime after another simply sitting outside each transit terminal and watching every single person to come in and out for the entire two-year period. Sekir arrived at none of them. He walked in the front gate from the desert, stepping from the mouth of a sandshark as if it were his custom chariot instead of a violent predator. Unless Jair involved himself, Sekir didn''t divert from his course in the slightest. He strode into the capital as though he owned the place, walked to the market, purchased a specific outfit, and then walked to the palace. He went in, talked to the king, and then spent the next several months reading, arguing in advisor meetings, and accumulating information. Jair, by now still a mere two-layer mage, could not compete with this foreign arch-sorcerer. Any time he tried to infiltrate the place, Sekir quickly found him out and had him killed. While Jair couldn''t personally observe him during those months¡ªapart from a few times when he forced his way in only to be subdued by the Hyperion and sent off to Crelys, always a fun time¡ªhe was forced to keep tabs on the man through bribery, rumors, and other such secondhand knowledge. Still, even with only secondhand knowledge, he was able to piece together a nearly complete map of where Sekir was and what he did at any given time. Without Jair disrupting the sequence of events, Sekir would spend three hours twice a week with the king, several hours a day with various nobles and advisors, and the vast bulk of his time in the library. What exactly he wanted, Jair couldn''t tell, since he worked his way through the entire library and never seemed satisfied. Attempts to question him invariably ended up being futile. Any time Jair showed up in person ended in a fight. Anyone he hired to investigate tended to mysteriously disappear without anything to show for it. Then, a year or two into Sekir¡¯s official presence, the king died and Sekir disappeared. It was time, he proclaimed, for him to go to Meliarn and search for the missing princess. That word was the only hint anyone had. As far as Jair could tell, Meliarn was not a person or an object, and did not exist. Sekir¡¯s claim to be going to Meliarn made it sound like a place, but through tens of thousands of interviews ranging from casual questioning to brutal interrogation over the course of several dozen repetitions of his lifetime, Jair found no one who knew what or where Meliarn was. All he found was a single artifact in the royal treasury labeled in archaic script that could be translated to Meliarn ¨C Melihane, specifically ¨C but that was no answer. Only a confirmation of the mystery, and that it was connected to the royal family somehow. But whatever Meliarn was or where, events were quiet until several months later when Sekir returned to the palace with the same abruptness that he''d departed with. He presented the princess, who promptly appointed him her premier and spokesperson before swanning off into noble parties like nothing had ever gone wrong. Her father''s death and brother''s continued absence didn''t seem to trouble her in the least. She¡¯d clearly been fully ensnared by Sekir¡¯s manipulations, but since whatever happened at Meliarn was beyond Jair¡¯s ability to observe there was no way to counter them preemptively. Trying to find where she¡¯d been before, say, at any point over the last two years, she¡¯d only say ¡®Meliarn¡¯ and refuse to speak on it further. It was apparently a royal secret, and Sekir was the only outsider to have discovered its meaning. Things continued to escalate as the months passed. The Veor Plague grew to catastrophic proportions, and even Sekir¡¯s intervention was too little too late to save the out-of-hand rivalries and revolts that followed. Jair itched to demand they simply enact proper quarantine procedures, or rather to slip the hint to enough nobles that they¡¯d make it happen, but he held himself back. This loop was for information, not to satisfy his need to fix everything. With Sekir in charge, everything was resolved eventually. It actually took longer for him to settle things to his satisfaction and begin his new mad scheme of engaldria-wide conquest than anything Jair had intentionally tried to block him with. The plague did it for him far more effectively. That was moderately upsetting, but also good news in that it demonstrated that for all his obsession, Sekir would still prioritize protecting the people he was responsible for. If only they could sit down and talk, the man seemed like he should be able to be reasoned with. But any time Jair caught his attention, Sekir immediately dropped everything to try and kill him. It was intensely frustrating to see someone so powerful, driven, and misguided systematically rebuild Veor¡¯s shattered economy and devastated population, only to get them all eaten in another few months when he enacted his mad plan of filling in the channels. Veor was calm and peaceful, as far as continents went, and the channels were shallow and unobtrusive. They said stay where you are but did nothing to encroach further. One river to the north was gradually splitting the continent in half again, dividing the dragon mountains from the rest of Veor proper, but if anything, having another line of protection between dragon and non-dragon civilization would be a benefit. Rivers always grew over time. It would be another three generations before the division was severe enough to be a problem. Until Sekir set out to fill them in. The seascourge did not appreciate their warnings being ignored. Suddenly, coasts around the world were uncontested as every monster in the water surged to Almas. To Veor. Jair escaped three days after Sekir¡¯s grand unveiling of his admittedly impressive machine for tearing apart the unused mountains and throwing the pieces into the water, another to shift sand and earth to fill in the gaps between them. In three days, Sekir''s plan made enough progress for the land bridge to be visible from Zelura. In eight days, the entire western coast of Veor had been seamlessly joined to its neighbor, reuniting the continents in the first act of true reclamation in a thousand years. But the river, formerly slow and peaceful, hadn¡¯t been idle either. Even as western Veor reunited with its nearest neighbor, northeastern Veor was separated from it in its own little island, keeping Ryenzo and her kin on one side, and all the human cities on the other. In fifteen days, the channels that had been filled in were water once again, and had expanded to nearly the width of the Khel Divide. And when the lunar passage opened on the next Dark Night, none of Veor¡¯s platforms were above water. Jair was one of the last to have set foot on the continent to survive. Everyone said he was lucky to have left when he did. They shook their heads and speculated. What was it Veor had done? Reskas losing its protected polder was bad enough, but this? This was Death Lake all over again. Was the world ending? Had the monsters of the sea finally decided it was time to annihilate all life and claim the world for themselves? But Jair knew better. It wouldn¡¯t be the forerunner to a new invasion. It was simply retaliation. Sekir had tried to steal what was theirs, so they took it back with interest. None of this would happen if Jair could figure out a way to remove Sekir from the picture. There had to be something he was missing. No situation was truly unsolvable. He just needed to find the answer.
61 - Sparkle Incorrectly Transplanting lunar flora almost never succeeds. Even Terluna, the moon with a climate most similar to Neptus itself, has a sufficiently different chemical composition that the majority of Terlunan plants will never survive on the planet below, and it takes specific intervention to grow even a handful of planetary trees here. Those few cross-breeds capable of taking root in either place are the result of a hundred years of experimentation. So when you see a familiar tree, stop and remember just how much has gone into making its existence possible.
Raina looked up from her book, as a thought occurred to her. "You said that this would be my Reforging Quest, at one point.¡± She and Jair lay sprawled on the library rug and armchair, respectively. ¡°Is that still the plan, or was that just to placate the headmaster?" "Whatever you prefer." "Well... my sword isn''t exactly..." she rolled over onto her side and toyed with her hair sheepishly where it flopped down across her face. "I think I broke something." "Yes, well, I''ve broken more things than one. Time, for instance, and I have it on good authority I''m well on the way to breaking reality itself. So you''re in expert company.¡± Jair set the book aside, swung himself around so he was sitting properly, and leaned forward with his hands clasped and elbows on his knees. ¡°Let''s see what we have to work with." Raina nodded and sat up, setting her own book aside. She hesitated only briefly, then took a breath and held out her hands. The sword appeared, a blade-shaped void that sparkled with countless tiny multicolored lights. They seemed simultaneously contained within the slender blade and seen from a vast distance, like a captured slice of the night sky. "Huh, that''s new," Raina said, tilting the blade up to look at more closely. "It never used to have stars before." "Didn''t it? That''s interesting. Have you looked at its soulmap?" "It was just the standard steel lattice until I shoved it into my soulspell void, then¡ª" "Wait. Soulspell void?" "There''s a gold cage of a sphere around where my soulspell should be, but inside is just emptiness. No spark, no pattern, no symbol. Nothing anyone says should be there. Void. I think that''s why I never manifested anything even though I''ve been trying for months. I don''t have anything to manifest." "Intemporality," Jair whispered. "Your soul knew its fate, and developed accordingly. Why waste energy building something that''ll be obsolete before it''s finished." "What''s that? You know something about void soulspells?" "Suspect. It''s a theory I''ve had for a while. Sometimes people... even across different timelines, seem to..." he shook his head. "I can''t really describe it. It''s more a sense I have sometimes. And yours... I never noticed, but I never really looked. I think... I didn''t want to know." "I don''t understand." Jair shook his head and waved it away. "If your soul knew you were doomed, then that would mean I was fighting an impossible fight. That my goal was doomed from the start. But my soul defied its fate, with Maelstrom''s help. So I''m willing to bet we can help you defy yours." "And this doesn''t have to do with the whole, breaking reality itself thing, does it?" "Maybe.¡± He grinned. ¡°Just give me forewarning if you''re ever inclined to shatter continents and wreak death and destruction across all the lands, and we can find someplace properly deserving of it rather than smashing up our homeworld, a''ight? I can think of a few vampire clans who could do with a bit more destruction in their backyards." Raina giggled, but there was an uneasy note to it. "Right. I''ll be sure to warn you in advance if I decide to be evil." "Oh, no need for that. You be as evil as you want. As long as global destruction is off the table for now." "For now." Jair shrugged. "Who knows, maybe I''ll decide the world needs some good-natured depopulation and the continents aren''t small enough. With how Maelstrom is now, it wouldn''t even be that hard." "How... is Maelstrom now?" "Unstoppable. It works best on living things, but I could topple a mountain if I had enough time. Would probably squish myself in the process, but at least then I''d see if Temporal Reversion still works." Maelstrom, lying on the table beside him, flared up with heatless green fire. The stars in Raina''s sword pulsed softly, matching the other sword¡¯s flickering. They both turned to stare at Maelstrom, then Raina''s void-sword, then each other, in perfect sync. "I think they''re mocking me," Jair said lightly, shaking his head, then turned back to glare at Maelstrom. "You know I want to know, but you keep ignoring me." Maelstrom''s flames darkened to black and danced in low pulses. Raina''s stars blinked out entirely, then reappeared in a circle around the hilt area. "One of these days, I really need to learn how to speak soulsword," Jair lamented. Raina was staring down at her sword again, the stars pulsing softly beneath her fingers, with a confused sort of awe. Jair sat up straighter and scooched closer. "Something interesting happening?" "I... think so? Let me meditate a bit, I have to look at the soulmap."
Raina Serin hovered within herself, staring down at the galaxy that had once been a complete void. In the past several days, she''d gone through the most thrilling and terrifying sequence of events she''d ever experienced within her young life. Sure, the occasional assassin got in, and she''d been kidnapped for ransom twice. Once, back when they''d still been living at the oasis, creatures from the dungeon had escaped and come looking for blood. All of that paled in comparison to being snatched away by a real, live, dragon. Not just a normal dragon, an ancient matriarch so large that she could squash half the oasis by sitting on it. Her claws alone were like oversized pillars when they closed around her, so big she hadn''t even been properly grasped, more like enclosed in a solid cage of scales. Not the most comfortable way to travel, being thrown about with every buffet. She¡¯d been bruised all over by the trip; by the time they actually landed in the volcano it was almost a relief. At least, until she ended up crushed by the dragon¡¯s massive constrictive neck. That had been worse. She¡¯d come so close to passing out. Almost wished she had. Then the dragon was roaring and Jair was screeching and she had no idea what was going on. Even having seen it, experienced it, she struggled to mentally grasp just how huge Ryenzo had been. She''d seen dragons, she¡¯d been in groups that hunted them down even, but those little draklings were nothing compared to this. The fact that Raina specifically came to this creature''s attention was terrifying beyond reason. If not for Jair and his absolute confidence that they could deal with the situation, she''d probably have collapsed long ago. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. In the end, he¡¯d been right. Raina survived, and Ryenzo apparently had not. All of which culminated in her, Raina Serin, sitting and meditating on her shiny new no-longer-a-void soulsword. She''d never gotten this far before. Every other time she focused on her soulspell, she found nothing. Until the most recent time, right before her kidnapping, when she''d recognized her soulspell¡¯s nature to be a perfect void. Now finally, for the first time she saw what she''d always been told to expect. Sparks of light. Normally, people had only the one spark of light. Soulspell, singular. Each person''s soul developed around a single primary power concept, and went all in on that. You may only be able to generate a drop of water, but you could generate a perfect drop of water and do it anytime you wanted. Soulspells ranged from extremely simple to unbelievably complex. Some were so simple they''d been successfully imitated in spells or even constructs. Others were so complicated that even copying a fraction of them would be a life''s work. Jair had described his soul as having two, with Maelstrom tethered to his soulspell in an orbit, but that was an extreme exception. Raina had over a dozen. She focused in on the largest star hovering in her void of a core, something pale greenish-yellow. It was easily half again the size of the next largest, a sky-blue glow which itself was two or three times as big as the next. Most were very tiny, barely noticeable. The star she¡¯d picked tasted sharp. When she tried to touch it, it sizzled in her mind and threatened to melt through¡­ something she strongly felt shouldn¡¯t be melted. She backed off, uncertain. Maybe don''t start with that one. She picked the smallest one instead. A tiny single spark of pinkish red flame, barely bright enough to be seen, drifted around the outer edges as though afraid of being noticed. As she focused on it, it grew and expanded in her perception. It gave her an impression of connection and observation, but as she probed deeper to force its soul to unfurl into its soulmap, she found it wasn''t a soulmap. It was a delicate edge, a circle of fragile pink lace, as empty inside as the rest of her. Like her soulspell in microcosm, a boundary with no contents. Raina backed out of the fragile construction and moved to the next. This was a deep orange, and emitted a feeling of warmth. Not destructive like fire, something comforting. When she pushed closer, it too was only the barest outline, without anything in the center. Square shaped and flickering in texture, but hollow. Her sword was there too, hovering exactly where she''d left it in the center of where her soulspell should have been. Its soul looked ugly and out of place, a dull metal blob, but at least it was a solid thing in this world of hollow shells. The stars drifted around it, sometimes passing through it or bumping into it and bouncing off. At first she couldn''t tell what made a star likely to interact with the sword or ignore its existence entirely. But as she watched longer, certain colors stood out to her. The orange drifted through it, the pink skittered around it as though the sword emitted a reverse gravity bubble holding them away, the green tapped into it and bounced off with a grumpy flare. Without warning, all the stars flared up brightly, each pushing the others away until they were perfectly equidistant from one another. Golden light flooded in as the outer boundary of her soulspell grew inward to form a spiderweb of connections. It started from the outer edges of the intangible barrier and grew inward rapidly. Each thread was its own intricate tracery, like some kind of elegant filigree. The new pattern was chaotic yet orderly. Each of her hollow stars received its own custom slot. Golden light linked them together and held them in place, their drifting stilled without infringing upon their domain, like a custom setting around a collection of gemstones. The new network of interconnected light filling the space did not approve of the sword, however. An angry hum built up, resonating sharply between the growing pattern and the weapon at her core. The dissonance grew stronger and stronger as more of her space filled in, rising in intensity by the moment. She felt as though it would tear apart from the inside, then with a wrenching shriek, it did. The final piece of the setting snapped into place, locking in around the twenty or so stars, and violently evicted the sword she¡¯d worked so hard to insert. Her eyes snapped open and she shuddered violently. The sword clattered to the floor in front of her, no longer shaped like absence, no longer made of void. She¡¯d not noticed any negative effects from putting her sword in initially, apart from it becoming a non-item and not existing except in her hand, but it had definitely torn something on the way out. That was different.
Jair waited until she was breathing steady and untroubled, then tapped one finger lightly on the black sword''s surface. Then immediately jerked his hand back. The blade was as hot as if it''d just been forged, the flesh on his finger melted in the instant of contact. "Dovak," he cursed softly and jumped to his feet. Raina had a bottle of water packed to take with her, so he used that to quench the immediate burn, but the finger still throbbed painfully. "Not worth reverting over, I suppose?" he asked Maelstrom grumpily, as he held the finger in the bottle. Not that he¡¯d have actually reverted over something so trivial, but now that he¡¯d finally understood Darkflame he wanted to make a start on re-learning his old soulspell. The sword''s flames had died down by now, and did not flare back up. He instinctively reached into his soulspace for the frostvine nets he''d been storing there since before the whole thing with Ryenzo got weird, but whatever the seascourge had done when it tried to eat him from inside his own skull, it''d emptied his soulspace entirely. At least that hadn''t collapsed, a soulspace was much harder to rebuild than a manabody, but it did mean there was nothing useful in it. Only a few handsful of the sand that always seemed to find their way in whether he wanted them there or not. He tossed them out the window, knowing full well that there would be more the next time he checked. Immediate crisis dealt with, he summoned Maelstrom to his hand and tapped its point gently against the tip of Raina''s sword. At the contact, Maelstrom immediately pulsed brilliantly gold, then flickered through a dozen different colors he''d never seen from it before¡ªgreen, white, red, pink, several shades of blue, purple, yellow. With each pulse, another star raced up Raina''s sword from the tip to join the constellation orbiting beneath her hand. Jair''s immediate instinct was to yank Maelstrom away, were it not for the way it felt. With every star, Maelstrom''s soul relaxed, its and Jair''s entire self being eased of a burden he hadn''t realized they''d been carrying. The last pulse of color faded, then Maelstrom''s gold pattern flared up one more time. Satisfied. Raina dropped her sword with a yelp and jumped to her feet. "What was that?" Jair stood and put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "Describe it." "Uh. Uh... we were... I was... there''s..." she frowned, shaking her head. The sword lay where it''d fallen. "Huh. It''s..." No longer made of void, a simple silversteel soulsword, identical to every other. She shivered and made a disgusted face as though spitting out something disgusting. "So that''s what throwing up your soul feels like." "You were using your soulspell like a soulspace, and it didn''t like that?" Jair guessed. Raina shook her head. "I don''t know how to explain it, it''s almost like... my soulspell is ravenously starving, so it ate the sword because it was the only thing available, but then the sword picked up these stars somehow, so the soul spit it back out and ate those instead? I... don''t quite understand, it''s very confusing. But the sword definitely didn''t belong in there. Soulsword or not, it''s not meant to be that deep inside." Jair chuckled. "Things don''t always have to do what they''re meant to. What''s your soulspell look like now?" Raina took a breath, then nodded and sat back down, but didn''t close her eyes for a long moment. She just stared at the sword. "I''d thought..." she shook away the thought, chuckled self-deprecatingly, then nodded and sank into meditation. Jair considered the mundane weapon lying before him. "Think it''d be safe to pick up this time?" Maelstrom remained inert. "I''m doing it." He reached out with his other hand, brushed one finger very gingerly along the sword''s blade. Cool silversteel. No burn, no spark. He looked at Maelstrom. No reaction there either. He wrapped his fingers carefully around the hilt and lifted it. Exactly like every other soulsword in the Institute. "Remember when you looked like this?" he asked Maelstrom, and the sword seemed to dull faintly. Jair laughed. "Vain, are we? Don''t like not being special?" He flipped the soulsword a few times, verifying the perfect balance, then held it flat on his palms and inspected it. ©¤ Soulsword ©¤ Rank: ***?mon ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade We hunger. ©¤ Bound to *?*???* & ****??*? Jair raised an eyebrow and set the sword back on Raina''s lap. "Being a bad influence on your fellow swords?" Maelstrom ignored him. ¡°Or,¡± he mused, ¡°perhaps it¡¯s because she left some pieces of it inside.¡± It shouldn¡¯t be easy to injure a weapon¡¯s soul, or change it, but Raina was an existence which should not be. So was Maelstrom. The intersection of the two of them was proving to be delightfully destructive to anything that was ¡®supposed to be¡¯. Just the way Jair liked it.
62 - Draconis in Absentia If there¡¯s one thing I know about elves, it¡¯s that they¡¯ll make bread out of absolutely anything. If you think you¡¯ve found an ingredient elves won¡¯t bake with, I¡¯ll find you the recipe myself.
Dalin Larenok stood at the front of a group of the best and most powerful individuals Veor had to offer. Many were here because they wanted the money, some had been threatened, others had been ordered by royal decree by King Farshen himself. None had any idea what was going on. To be perfectly honest, Larenok himself didn''t have much idea, but he knew that his sponsor was counting on him. Jair Welburne was the first person in years to be anything but a tedious waste of his time, and if he said to assemble the best and bring them to the appointed meeting place, that''s what Larenok would do. Welburne''s attempts to recruit on the Ghost Moon had clearly not come to fruition ¡ª in fact, Larenok hadn''t seen him since the moment he left. He could only hope that the boy had made it back safely and not gotten himself kidnapped or worse. The Ghost Moon was no place for children. Larenok really shouldn''t have let him go alone, but at the time he''d been so confident. Well. Too late now. Fortunately for the success of their mission, Larenok had taken the liberty of bringing in a few of his own ghostmoon contacts, based on his best guesses for what Welburne had in mind. He''d also managed to arrange a brief audience with King Farshen, during which he''d arranged for Welburne''s edict package to be signed and dispersed as well as setting up a proper appointment for flame-healing the day before Solaria. Larenok desperately hoped that Welburne hadn''t gotten himself killed. He''d burned a lot of his reputation and more than a few political favors to arrange all this. If it turned out to be for nothing, he''d be in an even worse position than he had been while working at that pointless academy. Still, though, there was something about Welburne that just... clicked. He couldn''t put his finger on anything specific. By all logic, the kid should infuriate him. One of those who was handed opportunity on a silver platter, granted admission to a school he was nowhere near qualified for, falling behind and not even trying to keep up... taking everything he''d been given the chance to earn and treating it as only his due, as though other people wouldn''t have killed for the opportunity he was squandering. But even if Welburne was a typical brat of a child, he... it was hard to say, but he just seemed like more than that. Welburne wasn''t just a set of irritating traits, he had ambition and gumption. He was willing to take action, even action that seemed insane to those around him, and Larenok had to respect that. Larenok sometimes wished he''d had that kind of courage at that age. Even if Welburne still needed some guidance to reach his full potential, at least he wasn''t as vapidly pointless as the rest of the students. If any of Larenok¡¯s own children had displayed half as much ambition, he might have even considered them worth keeping around. He did briefly wonder if Welburne might have been one of his, which could explain the strange connectedness he felt to the boy, but his research on the matter had been inconclusive thus far. None of which was relevant to the point at hand. "This everyone?" He scanned the group, all grim-faced and armed to the utmost. "We''re going to take a sandskimmer north from Teretho Oasis. When we arrive at the target location, be on your guard. We don''t know the situation." Nods of assent. "Mages, keep alert for sandsharks. If anything gets close, send it running. I''ll need three of you to help power the sandskimmer, who''s best suited for external channeling?" People shuffled about, calling out their qualifications or lack thereof. Larenok narrowed it down and pointed to three who nodded and took their positions. The trip to the oasis was accomplished without issue. The trip to the draconis mountains took longer, but was interrupted only once as two of the mages united to drive away a hungry sandshark sniffing at their skiff. They circled the mountain range as the sun began to set. Two mages set up illumination spells, one on the skimmer itself and the other a hovering orb above his head. Larenok searched for any sign of Welburne and his darkmoon recruits, but saw nothing. He did see a large number of dragons flying about this way and that. Not all at once, but throughout the hours of approach he observed no fewer than seven dragons making at least thirty different flights. He''d never seen them so active. That had to be a good sign. Unless they were too late. They wouldn''t be too late. Some part of him was simply convinced that Welburne was safe and unharmed. He didn''t quite even register it as a question. It was deep certainty so central to his core that he wouldn''t have been able to separate it from his awareness of his own survival. Mount Ryenzo, he''d said. This was the part where he''d have to bring his best convincing skills to bear. Everyone was under the impression, from the partial information they''d been given, that they were here to hunt an upstart drakling who''d set his sights on the Teretho Oasis. But no one could have lived in Veor long and not recognized the name Ryenzo. "There." Larenok pointed. "That cave on the far mountain, it leads inside." The driver gave him a puzzled look. "That''s Mount Ryenzo." "Yes it is." Larenok smiled and gave him his best reassuring nod. "You won''t be in any danger. Go on." The sandskimmer slowly curved its path toward the foothills. Bare stone formed a deadly maze that loomed on either side of them as they came closer, but the driver knew his stuff. They slowed, but never lost momentum as he wound their way between ever-larger hills and spires toward the mountain itself. By the time they arrived, night had fallen. Larenok wanted desperately to set up a camp and not go inside, but this wasn''t his job any more to manage. "Kryr-Anarkin? Your turn." Kryr-Anarkin, a leonis-reptile beastkin with a special sort of ocarina hung around his neck, was the go-to translator for emergency dragon encounters. He didn''t live on Zelura permanently, but roamed through the moons and continents as opportunity arose. Larenok considered his availability this particular Dark Night to have been pure providence. Praise Aelir and all that. ¡°What do you want me to say?¡± ¡°Announce that we are here and request audience with Ryenzo Draconis at her earliest convenience.¡± The feline lizardkin nodded and raised his instrument to his lips. What followed was an echoing collection of shrieks, grunts, roars, and a lot of hissing. Larenok whispered instructions to a few of the gathered fighters, and passed out sealed orders to several of the others. A small green dragon only about five times as tall as the translator landed in the valley beyond with a crack like lightning. It leaned down and shrieked at the translator for several minutes, while the translator occasionally shrieked back. There was some roaring and hissing, but mainly shrieking this time. Larenok wondered if there were any continents entirely free of dragons. They were more trouble than they were worth, really. Who thought it was a good idea to keep them around? ¡°Mercurios Atvexnir is offended at our procession and demands to know why we have come to slay his kin.¡± ¡°We¡¯re looking for Ryenzo to talk. No need to mention slaying anything.¡± If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Kryr-Anarkin¡¯s ears twitched. ¡°We¡¯ve come with a fully armed dragon-slaying raid party. It¡¯s hard to pretend otherwise.¡± ¡°Just tell the creature we¡¯re here to see Ryenzo. Does he really think a group like this would be enough to threaten her?¡± Kryr-Anarkin¡¯s tail bristled, but he gave a curt nod and turned back to growl at the dragon some more. The dragon, for its part, appeared thoroughly bored with the proceedings. ¡°He wants to know if we are responsible for Ryenzo¡¯s absence, or a part of the game she devised. Have we brought a clue for them?¡± Larenok shook his head. ¡°We haven¡¯t seen her yet. How would we be responsible? What game? Also, what does he mean, absence?¡± More growls and hissing. This went on for quite a while. ¡°The matriarch invited her entire family to the mountain last night for a special game she¡¯d devised. She was very excited about sharing this activity with everyone, but did not divulge any of the details. However, when they arrived, there was neither a game nor a matriarch to be found. If it¡¯s some kind of searching game, they don¡¯t know what they¡¯re supposed to be looking for.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s why they¡¯ve been flying about all over, trying to find some game of Ryenzo¡¯s?¡± ¡°Or Ryenzo herself, yes.¡± ¡°Well, well, well.¡± That was a bit of a conundrum. They¡¯d gone all out to recruit this group of people, brought them together by any means¡ªseveral of which were less than legal¡ªand now the target of their visit was missing. ¡°Ask if there¡¯s been any other visitors? We¡¯re looking for a friend of ours as well.¡± The dragon found this question utterly uninteresting. It responded in two quick snorted growls and needed to be prompted by Kryr-Anarkin before it would say anything further. It kept glancing up at the dark silhouette of the mountains against the sky, as though wishing it could be off flying still. ¡°No one has been seen approaching or entering the mountains for days.¡± Larenok frowned. Where are you, Welburne? He could do a lot, but even he could only hold this group together for so long. Without a target, they were liable to demand their pay and go without doing anything more. ¡°Tell him we¡¯d like to search inside the mountain anyway.¡± Maybe they could at least salvage something from this pointless trip. Whenever he finally deigned to show up, Welburne had some serious explaining to do.
Of all the places he had been and all the things he''d done in his long and storied career, exploring the inside of a dragon''s volcano was not one Larenok had imagined he would be doing. Much less at the behest of a student. However, now he was actually here doing it, he found the undertaking surprisingly enjoyable. He led the group ¨C well, directed from the center; he wouldn''t be walking in the forefront into a dragon¡¯s lair¡ªup the lower slopes of the mountain and into the gaping opening of the lowest accessible cavern. Mount Ryenzo¡¯s entrance hall was built to be grandiose on a draconic scale. Therefore, to a mere human, the entire thing looked overwhelmingly magnificent. The entire Mageblade Institute, all its walls and outbuildings included, could have fit within just this hall. Each section of the wall was a raised panel depicting the great Ryenzo Draconis in postures of struggle, triumph, or achievement. The first showed her as a much younger dragon, standing atop an erupting volcano with a larger and clearly male dragon lying dead at her feet as magma sprayed gloriously behind her. Beside it another panel showed her in flight, a dozen of her kin in tight formation behind her, as they flew toward a much less lovingly depicted flight of dragons in opposition. After that followed many scenes of battle, nearly all against other dragons. Almost as many scenes of accumulated treasures, with no display of where she¡¯d taken them from, just smug self-portraits holding up or sitting on or coiled around a gemstone or a statue or a pile of gold. Only one panel showed a human city, and it was in the process of being melted into slag. The running humans were scaled down to less than the size of Larenok¡¯s hand, as Ryenzo and two of her frequent allies stomped and burned and breathed out death. Other pictures showed her coiled proudly around a collection of eggs so clearly and carefully rendered that each seemed to have its own personality despite being just a round lump of stone. Each egg¡¯s hatching received its own panel between the more prominent scenes of war and conquest, carved with symbols around it that Larenok assumed must be draconic. Probably the creatures¡¯ name, or something. One of these draklings was shown struggling against the ocean, a great twisted vine coiled around its body so tightly it visibly dug into its hide as it clawed helplessly at the sand, its broken egg prominent in the foreground while Ryenzo stood in the distance, a clear expression of helpless fury on her face as she stood by. Countless such scenes, from battle to birth, life to death. All worked on an almost unimaginable scale, but with such detail that even a tiny human like Larenok could find no flaws. The smallest of the depicted eggs was twice his height, and yet it was traced with carved veins so small and intricate he could hardly have fit his fingernail into them. Larenok had never felt so small, nor been so in awe of what could be created. Sure, people with stone shaping powers did magnificent things all the time, but even the best of those didn''t come close to this. If he didn''t know better, he''d say that the entire thing had been carved by hand over the course of thousands of years. The clarity and intricacy of the designs were such that he could not imagine them having taken any less than centuries. He could have stood for a month just staring. If there were any way to tear these free of their carved wall homes and take them away with him, he would have done so without hesitation or regret. And this was just the entry hall. After a half hour of walking, they crossed through the hall and into the inner tunnels. Flame-melted obsidian formed massive twisting passages through the mountain''s heart, slopes upward and down torn with gouges from claws and scraped by wings. The places Ryenzo traversed regularly could be seen by the lack of dust accumulation and an absence of fallen stone. Some of the less traveled passages looked downright neglected, one had all but collapsed. At this point, Larenok had fully lost track of what they were supposed to be looking for. His inclination toward avarice had fully taken over as soon as he¡¯d recognized scenes of accumulating treasure from the entry hall. Perhaps it was a good thing he¡¯d brought so many allies after all. They forged further and further in, and no one tried to stop them. Whether the other dragons were fully distracted by Ryenzo¡¯s promised game, or simply assumed that Ryenzo¡¯s presence and reputation would be sufficient to hold off any potential thieves, none of her relatives bothered to check in on the group of humans. It was as though once they entered the tunnels, they were no longer their problem and fully Ryenzo¡¯s jurisdiction. A large part of Larenok hoped that Ryenzo never did show up. If they could say they had searched the entire place and found no sign of her, then he could write the whole affair off as some kind of excessive vanity project on Welburne''s part and rest satisfied that he had done his job to the full. When they found the first treasure room, any thoughts of slaying the dragon were replaced by calculation. Larenok generally kept his soulspace about half full, which was a significant bit larger than the average normal person had access to, but still gave him enough space to hold any number of valuables should the opportunity arise. Now that the opportunity had arisen, he found himself wishing for the first time that he had advanced his class further along its intended route. He''d always held out hope in the back of his mind that some special evolution would come along, some option he hadn''t considered, that this wasn''t a dead-end. For the first time, he found himself running through the advancement requirements in his head, calculating how quickly he could get them accomplished. Squire was a combat support class, intended to be a backup fighter if necessary, but primarily a supplier. The soulspace of the squire was significantly gentler on items than the average soulspace, to the point where it could even hold food for a day or two. Most people¡¯s soulspace would be worse than nothing for any perishables, but Larenok''s was a step above even the most carefully curated. Since his class was never a point of pride for him, this information was shared with no one. He¡¯d never shared how much he could actually store, and he liked it that way. If people thought you were already fully equipped, if they thought they knew your limits, that meant you had the advantage. Any thought of keeping around his sentimental storage and emergency component stores fled the moment he saw just what kind of extravagant treasure was up for grabs here. He had to hand it to Ryenzo, every single item here was too large to fit in a standard soulspace. She''d probably had problems with people stealing in the past, and ensured that everything she possessed was too large to be easily pilfered. That, or she¡¯d already been robbed enough times only the best was left. The size wouldn¡¯t prevent anyone from physically picking up and carrying off Ryenzo¡¯s hoard by the chestload, but it would take them several trips to clear even a fraction of them. Every sound, he whipped his head up and searched for any sign of the dragon. Every time, it was only wind rushing through the tunnels. He didn¡¯t trust the silence. There was no reason this should be as easy as it looked like it was going to be. "Not to question our glorious leader," said a man in tones very much questioning, "but I was under the impression we¡¯d come here to slay a dragon, not rob one? An enraged dragon, I have heard, is significantly more difficult to fight than one without any reason to hate you." "This particular dragon seems to be hiding," Larenok said. "Perhaps we need to lure it out.¡± ¡°I did not sign up to fight an angry dragon," put in one woman, raising her hand and shoving her way toward his space in the center of the group. ¡°Bad enough to be fighting in tunnels. I say we go outside and wait for it.¡± ¡°Go on, then,¡± said a younger man, barely glancing at the argument, eyes only for the piles of valuables. ¡°More for us.¡± With lines drawn, the arguing began. The group rapidly divided between those who thought robbing the dragon was a good idea, and those who found it decidedly stupid. The latter group insisted on searching the rest of the mountain first at a minimum, while the former group paid no attention to such considerations and began helping themselves to whatever artistic creations of gold and jewels and magic they could carry. Larenok, short of a few cursory attempts at uniting the group, left them to it. He¡¯d heard terrible things about groups that split themselves up inside of dangerous places like dungeons, but there was only one Ryenzo. How dangerous could it be? More importantly, just how many of these massive gems could he squeeze into his soulspace?
63 - Tempest If it has never been done, does that mean it is impossible? Or only that it requires conditions which have yet to be met?
After Raina finished exploring and describing her new soulmap to Jair, complete with sketches of the patterns of each of the spiderweb-lines making up the holding network, he took a step back and stared at the depictions with no small degree of curiosity. ¡°This looks very familiar.¡± ¡°Does it?¡± Jair held up Maelstrom, the deep-green-almost-black central strip of its blade illuminated with the faintest tracery of golden light. Far too intricate to have been what he drew out that so long ago so recent day when it had first ascended. It was no longer an echo of his soulmap, but represented the soulspell itself tangibly. ¡°Remind you of anything?¡± Raina leaned closer to peer into Maelstrom¡¯s heart. The patterns were too detailed to be fully comprehended, each line revealing itself to be a pattern of patterns the closer you looked. Almost as though the blade was no longer a merely physical item but a window into a deeper universe. ¡°Yeah¡­ the designs are similar,¡± Raina admitted, ¡°though yours is a lot more complicated.¡± ¡°But yours spat out your sword rather than merging with it.¡± Raina nodded, frowning down at the soulsword. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll need to ascend it if we want to integrate it into my innermost self, then.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°Is that the goal, then? Imitate Maelstrom as closely as possible?¡± Raina smiled mischievously. ¡°Why imitate anything but the best?¡± ¡°I can¡¯t argue with that. Maelstrom is a tempting template.¡± He¡¯d put centuries of work into finally creating Maelstrom, and sacrificed more than was reasonable along the way. ¡°But I will reiterate, I died several times to create it as it is now, and I highly recommend you don¡¯t do the same.¡± ¡°But would it even be the same without the lifeblood and soul of its creator?¡± Raina asked innocently. ¡°Sounds to me like you¡¯re envious of my daring and want to keep your secret powers to yourself.¡± Jair laughed. ¡°Indeed, my envy is unmatched. I¡¯ve come all this way to see that you never reach the same heights I have ascended. Muahahaha!¡± ¡°My treacherous companion so readily betrays me.¡± Raina gasped and fell back to lie unmoving on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. ¡°And so my legend ends¡­ before it can even begin.¡± ¡°Exactly as I planned.¡± Jair picked up her sword. ¡°And this meager trophy shall adorn my wall in proof that none other shall come close to my level.¡± He stacked it atop Maelstrom on the table, then leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers as he regarded the faux-deceased girl before him. ¡°But what to do with you, now?¡± Her pretense of blankness broke as a sneaky smile grew across her face. ¡°You may have betrayed my life, but even your wicked heart cannot betray my soul. For too long you have been bound in subservience. Your attempted overthrow comes too late. For as I die, so too¡­ shall you.¡± Jair feigned a dramatic gasp, eyes going wide as comprehension dawned, then toppled forward to land sprawled on his stomach beside her. ¡°So both our legends end,¡± he whispered hoarsely, his hand reaching tremulously for hers. ¡°As they were always destined to.¡± Raina shuffled sideways until they were close enough to almost touch, then closed her eyes. ¡°Too¡­ late¡­¡± Maelstrom pulsed with flickering gold. ¡°Don¡¯t interrupt, this is dramatic!¡± Jair playfully hissed at it, peeking one eye at his wayward sword. Maelstrom flickered again, green fire beginning to flare up around it. And something blue pulsed beneath it. ¡°Did you see your sword flicker just now?¡± Raina leaned up on one elbow to check on her sword. It currently lay inert. ¡°No, should I have?¡± ¡°I thought I saw something, but it might have been reflected light from Maelstrom. It¡¯s been doing the teasing flickering flame thing recently.¡± Maelstrom surged in black fire, which died down immediately. ¡°See? It¡¯s like it¡¯s taunting me.¡± Maelstrom pulsed silver. ¡°And you think my sword did something similar? Even being standard and non-ascended, not even reforged?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯d like to inspect it again.¡± ¡°Again?¡± Raina twitched. ¡°Jair Welburne, have you become a wholly uncultured barbarian in your time unsupervised?¡± ¡°No, I just stopped pretending otherwise.¡± He pointed at the swords. ¡°May I, my lady?¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing to see, I¡¯m sure.¡± ¡°Have you inspected it recently?¡± She reached up to grab her sword, frowning. ¡°Why would I need to? It¡¯s back to normal.¡± Jair chuckled. ¡°I suggest you check again.¡± Raina placed the sword on the floor between them and they both looked down at it. ©¤ Tempest ©¤ Type: Soulsword ©¤ Rank: Uncommon ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade We hunger. ©¤ Bound to ???? & **??? The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°Aha! You are being a bad influence!¡± Jair whipped around to glare up at Maelstrom, where it sat innocently on the table still. ¡°Teaching the innocent young sword to be all angsty and sinister? You¡¯re not setting a very good role model.¡± ¡°Tempest¡­¡± Raina whispered. ¡°Uncommon. Jair, this¡­!¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid sticking around Maelstrom is going to have strange effects on your poor Tempest there. It¡¯s chosen a very poor mentor.¡± Raina laughed unsteadily, still a note of disbelief. ¡°Are you saying your sword just¡­ gave mine a name?¡± ¡°It certainly appears that way. I don¡¯t know how else to interpret what¡¯s happened here.¡± Raina¡¯s eyes flicked between Tempest and Maelstrom. ¡°Jair, do you have any idea how rare it is to have a named weapon?¡± ¡°Yes. There are currently one hundred and eighteen named weapons in existence across all of Neptus. Seven more on Terluna, twenty-three on Zelura, and eighty on Nuprima. Of those on Neptus, two are in Veor.¡± For a long moment, both of them just stared. At each other, at the newly-christened Tempest. ¡°Mistress Raina?¡± Carn¡¯s voice preceded the man coming around the corner of the bookshelf forming the left ¡®wall¡¯ of their current area. ¡°Your¡­¡± Jair and Raina both jumped up immediately. Raina dusted herself off and tried to look innocent. Jair flopped back into his chair and picked up a book. The Serin house manager gave them a suspicious look. ¡°Are you rolling in the dirt like a hooligan, Miss Raina?¡± ¡°Dirt? On your carpet? I didn¡¯t imagine such a thing could exist!¡± Raina surreptitiously flicked away a clump of dust caught in her hair. Carn¡¯s eyes followed the movement with a frown. ¡°You know that the library is only cleaned once a month, and it has not been yet in Xulok in preparation for Solaria.¡± ¡°Do I? Good thing you¡¯re around to remind me of what I know already.¡± ¡°There are perfectly functional sofas if you wish to lie around. Dare I say even your bedroom carpet would be cleaner.¡± ¡°You¡¯d rather we lie around on my bedroom carpet?¡± Raina asked. ¡°But there¡¯s so much less space to sprawl out up there.¡± ¡°Setting aside the matter of carpets, Miss Raina, your father is¡ª¡± ¡°RAINA!¡± Ajriol didn¡¯t wait to be announced but came around the corner at a pace that couldn¡¯t really be called dignified, but wasn¡¯t quite a full-on sprint either. Lord Ajriol Serin looked haggard, as though he¡¯d slept as little as Raina and Jair did, but enjoyed it much less. His eyes were dark and weary, but his whole face transformed with relief as he saw his daughter standing there safe and unharmed. Raina just had time to look up before he¡¯d grabbed her. ¡°You¡¯re here!¡± Jair grinned. ¡°Yes she is. You¡¯re welcome.¡± Ajriol was too busy hugging his daughter to pay attention to the visitor, but Carn gave Jair a look as though to say why are you like this. ¡°You¡¯re alive! You¡¯re safe. I was so sure¡­¡± Ajriol backed to arm¡¯s length, checking over every bit of her face, taking in her crumpled but clean outfit. ¡°You¡¯re not hurt?¡± ¡°I¡¯m alright, Dad,¡± Raina said, a bit tearily at her father¡¯s obvious concern. ¡°I¡¯m fine. None the worse for wear.¡± ¡°Thank Dovak,¡± Ajriol said with deeper feeling than Jair had ever heard from the man before, then whispered, ¡°Thank Dovak,¡± a second time as he pulled her in close once more. ¡°When I heard about the dragon, I thought I¡¯d never see you again.¡± ¡°Me neither,¡± Raina said. ¡°I only knew what Jair had said, that Ryenzo wanted to kill me¡­ every time I heard a wingbeat, I was so sure it would be the end. I still don¡¯t know why she waited so long.¡± Ajriol looked up, turning to look at Jair lounging in the chair with his book. ¡°You knew about this?¡± ¡°I did. I put protections in place as quickly as I could.¡± Raina giggled and pulled her head away from her father long enough to grin at Jair. ¡°Too bad you couldn¡¯t rig those Reskian wards with proximity triggers.¡± ¡°You¡¯re sure you¡¯re alright?¡± Ajriol said, looking over her again, more skeptically. ¡°All I heard was that a dragon grabbed you and carried you off. How did you escape? What happened?¡± "I don''t think I can even start to explain it. I''m still processing it myself." Raina looked to Jair. "I spent most of it in a kind of survival haze, until Jair came back. I think I was half delirious until last night." "You seem to have recovered miraculously quickly, if that''s the case." "My sword has a substantial healing power," Jair said. "If you haven''t started to hear rumors yet, you will soon. I can cure just about anything." "Wait, you mean the miraculous new fire healer is you?" Ajriol turned to give Jair another look over. Jair held up Maelstrom with its flickering aura of green flames. "Indeed, I am the Phoenix Healer. Raina has been returned to perfect health and stable equilibrium, so whatever effects being held in the draconis valley for a week may have had on her, they should be minimal." "It all feels like a distant nightmare, really," Raina said. "Not something I actually experienced less than a day ago." "Good. Let it stay that way. Allow it to fade. Hold onto only what you need to remember." "Less than a day?¡± Ajriol asked, glancing between the two of them. ¡°How did you cross the desert so quickly?" "Phoenix Healing comes with a complimentary trip to the locale of your choice." Ajriol only appeared confused. "I can teleport people as well as heal them," Jair clarified. "It was the only way I could think of to get Raina away from the dragon fast enough." "You''ll need to tell me everything in full," Ajriol said, looking between Jair and his daughter. "But right now, I have some messages to send. I''ve never been so happy to have wasted days of my life on a project that ended up being pointless." He hugged Raina one more time, then reluctantly turned away and departed. "Breakfast will be served in one hour," Carn said, eying the pair of them. "I suggest you get tidied up before then." "I almost got thrown into a volcano, and all you can say is ''take a shower before breakfast''?" Raina asked, hand on her hip. "I am eternally grateful to all the fates that allowed you to return to us safely," Carn said, without the slightest change to his stern and mildly disapproving affect. "If there had been anything I could do to rescue you sooner, I would have. Young Master Jair has my deepest admiration for coming up with and employing so successful an intervention. And he is, of course, welcome to join the household for breakfast." With a short bow, he turned and departed. "That''s just how he is," Jair said, laughing at Raina''s indignant expression. "Trust me, he cares for you as much as if you were his own daughter. He just doesn''t do the emotional thing like Ajriol." "You think so?" "I know." "Right. Time traveler. Someday that won''t be a good enough excuse." "Then I can give you as many stories as necessary to demonstrate my knowledge." ¡°And demonstrate your ability to teleport without a transit platform?¡± "I will warn you that there may be some unknown soul cost to the procedure, before you start thinking of ways to exploit my power to establish economic dominance or anything." Raina looked at him, eyes wide, then frowned. "Is that what...? But, no, it wouldn''t be." "You get a pass," Jair told her. "Free passage. Maelstrom will pick up the tab." ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I should be more worried about the fact that your sword is apparently taking something from people¡¯s souls without their knowledge, or the fact that you¡¯re using your sword to take things from people¡¯s souls with full knowledge.¡± ¡°Neither. Worry about where you want us to go come Terlunia. Should we go recruit Prince Orren to reunite Veor¡¯s royal family, or leave them to their own devices for a while? Visit Suthyrel¡¯s spires? Explore Terluna itself a while, hunt some mirror dragons? You could get the dragonslayer title for yourself. And technically I don¡¯t have it either, since I didn¡¯t personally kill Ryenzo, just caused her to die. I¡¯d love to introduce you to my friends in the Oriad.¡± ¡°Ahh¡­ well¡­¡± Raina stared blankly, trying to process the list of options. ¡°I suppose we could¡­ give it further consideration. Terlunia isn¡¯t for another two weeks yet.¡± ¡°True. In the meantime, want to visit my family? I still need to figure out what¡¯s going on with my sister. If I¡¯m not going to have a chance to revert, that might be my next highest priority. Maybe I should just bring her with us? Would you be alright with that?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never met your sister. Lilin, was it?¡± ¡°I¡¯m impressed you remember. Yes, Lilin. She¡¯s old enough to take a class, but hasn¡¯t decided on one. Doesn¡¯t want to end up in a dead-end route. Would rather work with our parents for another several years until she saves up enough to do her own thing.¡± ¡°That sounds like something we can help her with.¡± ¡°You¡¯d think so.¡± Jair grimaced. ¡°My family is a little on the stubborn side. I¡¯ve tried to offer Lilin my help a thousand times, but she won¡¯t accept it.¡± Raina raised her chin defiantly. "Then she''ll accept it from me. I may not be able to do more than that, but if there''s one thing I know how to do it''s push through a purchase." "You''re buying my sister''s future, now?" "Why not? If she won''t sell it to you--" "She won''t sell it to anyone." "Sounds to me like you just haven''t found the right pitch."
64 - Obligatory Sometimes the past we see is not the past we remember living. So why should the future be clearly seen?
Later that afternoon, while Raina spent several hours debriefing her whole kidnapping to her father and arranging things for their upcoming trip, Jair took a quick detour to Larenok''s house. The paranoid man had the front door fully sealed, access only through a private wired transit platform only he had the key to, but Jair had been inside it enough times in the past that he could Darkflame himself inside without concern. Larenok wasn''t at home, and his house was in the kind of disarray that Jair recognized as being indicative of something very important going down. Whatever was happening to hold Larenok''s attention, it was something incredibly time-sensitive. The man was usually obsessive about everything in his house being in order. To leave even a few cabinets open and a counter covered in miscellany that hadn''t been organized and stored yet struck Jair as very uncharacteristic. He found a copy of the man''s calendar in his office, which included all Jair''s appointments for the coming weeks. He was surprised by how many had been arranged, including one with King Farshen himself. Jair had no plans on sticking around Veor past Terlunia unless Raina insisted, so he copied down all the names and locations and set out to take care of them right here and now. Darkflame was only strenuous when doing extreme things like teleporting himself between planet and moon, or transporting an entire dragon. Simple things like moving himself from one city to another on the same continent was disgustingly trivial. He''d already been unstoppable, but now he no longer relied on ''outlive the other guy long enough and eventually come back and hit harder'' type strategies. Maelstrom''s blade was sharper than ever. He had yet to find a surface it couldn''t slice right through. The self-healing and mobility parts of Darkflame alone would make him a daunting opponent even without the ability to apply Darkflame to anyone anywhere. He''d examined himself and his soulmap in intense detail while Raina was doing her own meditations, and used Darkflame''s teleport power several times to verify his findings, but his information was consistent. Using it on himself produced no effects whatsoever on the soul level. It was a fully inert ability, like using Bladewalk or Temporal Reversion. Which made sense. Weapon abilities and soulspells didn''t consume the soul or the power drawn from the manabody, they channeled that power and then released it. Soulspells were as close to a perfect circuit as could be attained. The power cycled out into the world, took physical effect, then cycled back into its originating soul without noticeable loss. Even Jair''s Temporal Reversion had never cost him anything to use, however frequently he did so. Maelstrom changed things. Darkflame wasn''t the same when applied through a weapon to another individual. It''d become increasingly clear to him that Maelstrom itself was responsible for the modifications. Even transporting Raina clear across the continent from the northern mountains to the south-central Astralla region had taken only the tiniest scraps of energy. If Jair hadn''t been already strained past all sanity during that confrontation in Mount Ryenzo, he could have transported Raina a hundred times over without pausing to recover. Moving Raina cost more energy than transporting himself, but only barely. Even less when not dealing with several days of malnutrition, trauma, and compounding lack of sleep or security. He¡¯d subtly probed her throughout their all-night discussion, but she truly seemed as thoroughly recovered as could be hoped. She remembered what Ryenzo had done, and the memory haunted her, but it didn¡¯t consume her. She grew quiet when she thought of it, her face troubled, her body unaffected. No panic, no breakdowns, just a painful reminiscence. Beyond all he¡¯d dared to hope for, Raina would be entirely fine. Far better than he himself had been, back toward the beginning. Watching her die that first time had reshaped him in ways he couldn¡¯t untangle from who he¡¯d become. Watching it a hundred more times, a thousand, helpless every time¡­ Maelstrom was in his hand. He gripped it tight, brought it up in front of his face. Different blade. Silver edges, one smooth, one serrated in smooth waves. Deep dark stripe down the middle with its ephemeral golden patterns projected deep within. The sword was tangible. Real. This wasn¡¯t a dream. Raina was alive. He was moving forward. They were moving forward. He wasn¡¯t alone. Wouldn¡¯t be. He resisted the urge to flash himself through the house until he found her. She and her father had things to talk about, they didn¡¯t need Jair lurking on every single moment of her life just because she¡¯d survived this time. He blinked away the distractions and stared down at the paper with Larenok¡¯s list of targets. Er, customers. He didn¡¯t care. He fixed the image of the street near the first in his mind and sliced his thumb against Maelstrom¡¯s blade. Darkflame burned him away and he was reborn in another city.
Jair got through almost the entire list that one day. He didn¡¯t stop to ask for specifics, didn¡¯t collect payment, just appeared, immolated the eager customer, and flashed away to the next. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. He was past worrying about what it was doing, what it would cost, what it would mean. He didn¡¯t care. When it came down to it, if they were really so eager to throw themselves on an untested and unproven promise of restoration, who was he to deny them. Despite¡ªor perhaps because of¡ªflashing his legendary weapon and unstoppable soulspell around, no one tried to come after, assassinate, or rob Jair. Everyone tried to recruit him. He couldn''t even walk down the street without multiple people shouting out to beg for his service. Apparently word had gotten around fast about just how amazing his Phoenix Healing was, and everyone and their cousin wanted in on it. This left him in a somewhat awkward position. He didn''t know exactly what it was that Maelstrom was stealing from people and feeding to Raina. Even without Nay Ahll Mersine¡¯s claim that he was going to destroy the entire world, he would¡¯ve been at least a little hesitant to go around making such a potentially drastic impact without due consideration. Over-eager merchants and nobles were one thing, the entire populace of Veor was another. "You know, it¡¯d be really convenient if we had Temporal Reversion available so that we could observe the long term effect of Darkflame use on, say, our main test subject Larenok. Then we could make an informed decision whether or not we want to go all in on this Darkflame thing with the rest of the continent, hint hint," he muttered to Maelstrom. His sword only flickered hungrily in his soul, faint rainbow glints disappearing as fast as they appeared. Jair sighed. There wasn''t much else he could do. He continued on his way. Larenok¡¯s itinerary had requested Jair¡¯s presence at the palace on a particular day toward the end of the month, but Jair saw no reason to wait. If the king wanted Jair¡¯s presence, he could have it without the waiting list. Of all the people Jair was concerned about causing soul damage to, King Farshen was not one of them. He was already so far gone that in most timelines he¡¯d end up dead, either by Jair''s own hand, Sekir getting tired of him, or Prince Orren getting up the nerve to actually rebel. So Jair transited to Vaes City, walked right up to the palace, and announced himself. ¡°Jair Welburne, Phoenix Healer. I¡¯m here to see the king. He sent for me.¡± The guard at the gate wore the Hyperion red and left his arms bare to prominently display his magekiller imprints. Jair stood with an air of confidence and just the slightest impatience that said he knew full well he was supposed to be able to go in, and all this was just a formality. "King Farshen has canceled all appointments today," the younger of the guards told him without much inflection. ¡°I''m afraid you''ll have to reschedule." "Of course he''s canceled his appointments, I am more important than all of them. Don''t worry, as soon as we''re done he¡¯ll be better than ever.¡± "We have only your word for it. If we let in everyone who claimed to have business with the king, we wouldn''t be very efficient as guards, would we?" Jair exchanged a glance with the older guard, who was standing more stoically. "This guy new?" The other guard shrugged. "It''s okay Byron, you don''t have to pretend with me. I know you feel all protective and sentimental for these pathetic newcomers." The guard, Byron, narrowed his eyes ever so slightly. "Hey! Who do you think you are? You can''t go talking to Sir Byron like that." ¡°Keep out of this, Thomas. I just need to get in to see Farshen." "If you think you can intimidate us because you looked up our names¡­" ¡°You realize that if someone comes along and starts bluffing, you''re not supposed to confirm their guess, right?" Jair shared another look with the older guard, whose eyes had narrowed further but had the faintest hint of a smile on his face. "See, this is why you need people like me around. On the one hand," Maelstrom appeared in his hand in all its dark resplendent glory, black fire flickering along its length. "I could kill you both right here and now, and go through the front door. However, since I''m not here to kill anyone, and I know you''re both just doing your job, I figure the best option we have is for me to at least give you some friendly advice and a chance to practice improving your technique before I incapacitate you both and go in anyway." Byron immediately shifted to an aggressive stance, sword aimed at Jair¡¯s chest, and three of his imprints lit up. "You''re not coming in." "I am coming in. The question is how much damage I¡¯ll have to do to you in the process. I''d really prefer to do this without eating any of your soul, but I can''t really control what my sword does. If you''re willing to risk your soul on it, by all means try to stop me." Byron didn''t hesitate. He had his sword out, fully amplified by two of his imprints, before Jair finished talking. He took three steps and lunged, and Jair shook his head and sliced his thumb on Maelstrom. "Good to know you''re still a man of honor," he said, and disappeared in a surge of black fire. Jair appeared in King Farshen''s personal chambers. King Farshen was asleep, huddled in his lounge chair and wrapped in more blankets than would be comfortable to anyone with any sense for the temperature. Jair didn''t bother to wake him. He strode forward, stabbed the king in the chest, and let darkflame do its darkflame thing. The king woke with a startled gasp, patted himself down, then stared at Jair with a look of complete incomprehension and mild concern. ¡°Who¡­?¡± ¡°Good day, your majesty. Jair Welburne, Phoenix Healer, Dragonslayer, and¡­ a bunch of other things that aren¡¯t really relevant. I¡¯m here as requested to discuss a potential opportunity for reconciling with your son.¡±
Halfway across the Veori desert toward the eastern fringe town region, a middle-aged man wearing a simple robe and no insignia flew a sandskimmer with an expert hand. He was not the only Veori capable of this feat, but he was one of the best. Most sandskimmers were inscrutable things, used only by those who couldn''t afford eelships or camels. The chance of a sandskimmer breaking down and leaving you stranded was significantly higher than the chance of a well-cared-for pack animal suddenly up and dying. Today, though, it was the driver who was about to up and die. One moment he was flying, grumbling to himself silently, the next black and green flames erupted from his forehead. It was so fast he didn¡¯t even have time to scream. The fire spread down his entire body, until there was nothing left. Abandoned, the sandskimmer continued to fly while its current thread of mana slowly dissolved, then slowed in its path until it dipped low enough to plow nose-first into a sandy rise. No one stood witness to its fall, and it would be a very long time before anyone noticed its absence. The ashes that were its driver¡¯s last remnants blew away in the desert wind, unobserved and forgotten. He would never be seen again.
65 - The King of Veor Anything can be changed in the moment. It almost never is, most people can be predicted with a tedious exactness, but every now and then they¡¯ll still surprise you.
Prince Orren was not currently on Veor. He had not been for several months, since shortly after his infamous falling out with King Farshen. The king had flown into a fury and tried to strangle the prince, after which the prince and princess hastily departed, leaving their father alone. In hindsight, that was the worst option for them to have taken. Instead of being present to counteract King Farshen''s growing instability, the loss of both his children in such close proximity to his wife shattered him completely. His ruling policies went from strict to unhinged, with new laws made up sometimes daily and new penalties imposed regularly. The onset of the coming plague did nothing to alleviate the situation. What started out as a few isolated instances of bizarre sickness would quickly go citywide, and then continent-wide. It would be notable by Solaria, but take a few months to fully spread and nearly two years before it finally died out. Jair had tried his hand at curing the plague a time or two in the past, but it turned out not to be a plague at all. It was an insidious magical curse which could be transmitted from person to person and could only be removed by means of allowing it to run its course without ever coming in contact with another person who still carried it. The more people in close proximity, the more it reinforced itself and things grew rapidly from dangerous to deadly. Of course, the fact that Veor hadn¡¯t quarantined itself yet meant that this would not remain their problem, but would become a global problem, and even a lunar problem. Thankfully, the curse did contain a minor proximity trigger. People further away from Veor tended to recover more quickly and with less chance of fatality. Wherever it came from, it had originated well before Jair ever began looping, making the source impossible to track down. None of the earliest carriers he could find had anything in common enough to point to anyone or anywhere specific. Regardless. King Farshen''s descent into madness was far enough advanced that no intervention Jair tried in the past had been of any use. Short of killing the man, but that seemed a bit drastic even for him. The problem was that King Farshen''s incapacity let Sekir easily gain a foothold and from there Veor was easy pickings. Without the king, Sekir''s conquest would be even easier. He located the princess, installed her as a puppet queen, and ruled as her advisor. While King Farshen''s policies made the country tense and increasingly impoverished, Sekir¡¯s would destroy it completely. Sekir had a mad vision of uniting the entire southern half of the Almas ingaldria back into a single continent. The plan sounded perfectly feasible from a physical standpoint. Almas, and Veor in particular, had an abundance of rock, sand, and such mineral resources available. What Almas did not have, in the plan¡¯s lethal drawback, was a way to fight back when the seascourge noticed what Sekir was doing. Seascourge did not like having their channels infringed upon and filling in a land bridge would draw their ire like nothing else. Veor would quickly become a second Death Lake, unless Jair put a stop to it well in advance. Having been fully focused on the immediate problem of Raina¡¯s dragon, it had taken Larenok''s suggestion that he use his new soul fire power to heal the king before he even thought of it as a way to accomplish the long-term stability of Veor. He doubted it would be as easy as Larenok imagined; even if the king retained sanity and maintained stability, Sekir¡¯s ambitions were such that, though he¡¯d refused to take credit for the plague/curse, Jair had no doubt he could unleash something even worse upon Veor to get what he wanted. Reuniting the royal family would make it easier to protect Veor¡­ but not easy. The economic problems facing Veor were generally invisible to the students at the Mageblade Institute, due to their particular strata not being as affected as the others. Sure, their parents would grumble about increases in regulation and new fees and bureaucracy, but for the most part that could all be handled without truly harming their position. The people most directly affected by the king¡¯s erratic commands, merchants and manufacturers in the twin trade cities, would grumble and struggle. They had the necessary buffer to survive it, but there would be a lot of stock changing hands and a lot of backbiting as friendly rivalries turned bitter in Veor¡¯s increasingly ruinous economy. Those families closer to the edge, people desperate for advancement and notice, such as the sort of aspiring hanger-on that Jair had pretended to be for so many years, would find their positions threatened with complete dissolution. Having additional support staff and apprentice trainees would become a major liability rather than a benefit. It was among these that the eventual rebellion would find easiest purchase. Most people would survive, if barely. Until the plague reached its peak. Currently no more than a few hundred scattered instances, but within half a year it would become the breaking point. People already pushed to the edge, surviving Farshen''s mindless outbursts with their utmost effort, once their families fractured and friends started dying¡­ It was almost as though the king¡¯s own fear and paranoia were transmitted throughout his kingdom. Every little division became cause for anger and hatred. People divided along every conceivable line, and at every opportunity hundreds fled Veor entirely. Those who stubbornly remained behind grew gradually more and more embittered and suspicious, but Veor¡¯s mana oases were too valuable a resource to abandon. For every person who fled seeking salvation in another land, eager replacements came flooding in unaware of the true danger of the plague. After all, those who¡¯d had it in other continents or on the moons found the ¡®Veor Plague¡¯ to be mildly unpleasant and lingering, but nothing deadly. Worth fighting through, certainly. All these weak Veori, so quick to run away. What they didn¡¯t know would kill them. Underestimating the plague, ignoring basic precautions, their presence only turned a moderate disaster into a major one. Amid all the chaos, Sekir''s insidious power grab was seen as a mercy. The Veori people would celebrate, taxation and regulatory restrictions would be lifted, the last remnants of the plague isolated and quarantined until they died out. Life would return to normal, and the continent¡¯s efforts redirected to another form of their sure destruction. Or so it would have been.
"Who are you?" King Farshen straightened, blankets sliding off his suddenly-dignified form as he surveyed his room. Everything about his posture now screamed command, to the point that his presence felt dissonant against the paranoia-fueled sickbed. "And where am I?" "We are in your chambers, your Majesty. I am Jair Welburne, Phoenix Healer, Dragonslayer, et al. I came here at your request because you had something of a breakdown following the death of your wife." ¡°My¡­ wife¡­" Farshen''s voice turned dull, his gaze distant. "My Olina. She''s¡­ yes. She''s gone." There was a half broken note in his voice, as though he were about to fall apart all over again. "How much do you remember after your wife departed?" Jair subtly moved his hand to where he could better position Maelstrom for immediate stabbing, in case he needed to utilize darkflame a few more times throughout this conversation. Farshen''s gaze sharpened as he turned to Jair. "Who are you? Where have you brought me? Whatever it is you hope to learn, you won''t find it. My secrets will die with me." "You''re not my prisoner. If I wanted your secrets this isn¡¯t how I¡¯d go about it. This is your palace. You ordered it redecorated, but if you look at the architecture, you''ll see it¡¯s the same room." Farshen''s eyes darted around, taking in the shape of the pillars, the corner pieces, the moulding and furniture, and his attention relaxed a bit. "You''re right," he murmured. "If you were going to kidnap me and fake my palace, you would have tried to match it rather than change it so drastically." He gave a short humorless laugh. "So I really did lose it. I''m not surprised. I do wish it were otherwise." Again, his eyes came up to meet Jair''s. "I haven''t¡­ hurt anyone, have I?" Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Well. "You tried to murder your son." A bit blunt perhaps, but he did ask. Farshen''s hands clenched in his pile of blankets. Grief and remorse filled his eyes. "Attacked¡­ Oh my poor Orren. What have I done?" "He is alive,¡± Jair assured him. ¡°He fled to northern Almas and is currently in hiding, but I can retrieve him. If you will give me your word that you have no intention of harming him." "Of course not!" Farshen burst out, eyes fierce. "I would never hurt my son. I do not know what madness overtook me, but I would sooner burn this whole palace to the ground than harm a hair on Orren''s head." Again, his voice broke, the faintest hint of a tear before he mastered himself. "You may bring him to me without fear. I swear upon my soul and the soul of Veor, Orren has nothing to fear from me now." "I will see to it that your message is relayed. Now, if you have indeed been unaware of your actions this past year, I would highly recommend that you revisit your legal and financial edicts and ensure that those which remain in effect are those which you truly desire to continue." "Oh no. And it¡¯s been a year?" "Indeed. Your little meltdown has been going on for quite some time now, and was not poised to end any time soon. You''re very fortunate that your loyal subjects were able to get in touch with me, or you may have driven Veor to the edge of disaster." Farshen''s eyes narrowed slightly. "I still do not know you. Every time I start to think you might be trustworthy, you come out with some arrogant claim as though you¡¯re the most important person I¡¯ll ever meet. Who do you think you are?" "The most important person you''ll ever meet." Jair grinned. "I could have killed you, you know. Still can. Anytime I want. So, keep that in mind. If you ever have the inclination to, say, become a violent dictator, just remember that you may be at the top of this little continent, but your power is limited." "Is that little speech supposed to make me trust you more? I''m not sure I want you anywhere near my son." "Very wise. I wouldn''t want me near my son either. But, unfortunately for you, I am the only person who knows Orren¡¯s current whereabouts. He has told no one else, nor shall he for a very long time. It does take rather a while for news to travel this far." King Farshen took a long breath, as though to postpone asking, then the question came out in a rush. ¡°And Fahla? I didn¡¯t¡­¡± ¡°She decided the time had come to pursue her dreams of becoming an adventurer, paid for a class augment, and went to try her luck in the northern dungeons.¡± ¡°My daughter always was untameable,¡± he murmured, and sat back in his pillows. ¡°There was no¡­?¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t hurt her, no.¡± ¡°I¡¯m glad. But Orren¡­ I don¡¯t know if I can forgive myself.¡± ¡°That¡¯s between the two of you. My job here is done.¡± Jair pointed to the stack of royal edicts. ¡°You might want to glance through those before too much longer. Veor¡¯s current economic trajectory is not a stable one, and the growing plague will only make things worse. You do not want your people to be desperate when it reaches critical.¡± With that, Jair slid his thumb against Maelstrom¡¯s blade. He had just enough time to see King Farshen¡¯s look of utter astonishment as Jair burned away in black fire.
King Farshen groaned and leaned his forehead against his fist. Perhaps it would''ve been better if that Welburne fellow had stabbed him after all. Dying had to be easier than dealing with the fallout of whatever his grief-maddened self had been doing this whole time. Following his dark visitor¡¯s suggestion, he¡¯d taken down his royal edict log to verify whether any of the man''s claims were true, and found to his immense displeasure that they were. He could see vague justifications for a few of these policies at a stretch, but most of them were sheer nonsense. It was as though he¡¯d been lashing out at the entire country, trying to punish all of Veor for his own carelessness. Really, he couldn''t even credit half the things as being valid. Why on earth would he have added a 50% tax on outgoing sandfish exports? Sandfish were the one resource Veor had most in abundance. There was absolutely no need to stockpile them. It wasn''t like they could even create an artificial scarcity, since sandfish was valued precisely because it was cheap, not because it was particularly exotic or desirable. Nuprima people seem to like it a lot, but Nuprima people were strange anyway. He pulled a clean sheet of paper towards himself and began writing out a countermand edict, outlining the new storage percentage for Veori exports and drafting a one time reimbursement directive for those who''d been negatively impacted by the initial taxation. King Farshen was sitting at his desk when the messenger arrived. He''d already written out four withdrawal decrees in the past three hours, and would surely have written several more if not for the interruption. The messenger stood waiting by the door, looking as uncomfortable as if he¡¯d never been in the king¡¯s presence before. Farshen restrained his impatience with the man¡¯s hesitance. "You may speak." "Yes, thank you, your majesty. I¡¯m here to inform you that the participants of your Mount Ryenzo mission have returned with their report. The mountain seems abandoned, but the Draconis Mercurios are searching the area for something unknown and unrelated. None of the other dragons enter the mountain or try to stop those leaving it.¡± ¡°Mount Ryenzo mission?¡± He glanced over the stack of orders yet to be gone through and restrained his inclination to grimace. What had he been doing? ¡°The warriors commissioned by royal decree from throughout Veor,¡± the messenger said, as though explaining his own orders to him was normal and expected behavior. ¡°They have brought back an entire load of priceless jewels, magical constructs of unknown make and purpose, and several statues of what appear to be solid precious metals. Gold, silversteel, mithriline. It even has one statue that seems to be a solid ruby.¡± ¡°That sounds valuable. Won¡¯t the Draconis come for it?¡± ¡°None of the dragons showed any inclination to do so, your majesty, but we cannot wholly predict their actions.¡± Farshen sighed, lightly enough that the messenger wouldn¡¯t notice. ¡°So we have brought, what?¡± ¡°The royal archivist is cataloging all of it now, but some of the independent mercenaries are grumbling about their share being confiscated." The messenger said it with such extreme carefulness that Farshen''s frown deepened. It was as though the man thought he would explode with fury any moment, and had to be handled like a tempestuous child. "Do these mercenaries have a spokesperson?" "They are all independently contracted, but they claim to working for a Jair Welburne through his representative Dalin Larenok." King Farshen slammed his pen down onto the desk so hard it snapped. "Welburne? He¡¯s involved in this?" The messenger stiffened, panic in his eyes. "You know this Welburne? Is he an important man? Should I have¡ª" "No, no." King Farshen waved away the man''s concerns. "He only came to my attention today. It is no failure of yours not to have heard of him. I''m merely surprised by how far his machinations could reach." "Machinations, my lord?" "Not your concern, messenger. Send this Larenok in, if he is the representative. If not, send word to Welburne that I wish to speak with him again." "Yes, my lord. Welburne does not have any listed residence within the city, he is a scholarship student at the Astralla Mageblade Institute, but after the dragon attack closed it¡ª" King Farshen blinked, maintaining his posture only through years of training. "...Dragon attack?" "Y-yes, my lord," the messenger stuttered. "Ryenzo Draconis, she destroyed half the Institute, kidnapped Raina Serin, and then disappeared a week ago." "Raina! Isn¡¯t she the girl who used to run about with Orren during our budget meetings?" "I wouldn''t know, sir. Ryenzo''s attack on the Institute is what prompted you to send the investigation team to Mount Ryenzo. They still haven''t found the dragon, but Miss Serin has returned safely to her father''s house by unknown means. Yesterday afternoon he called off all the search parties he was organizing to send after her." King Farshen leaned back in his chair and folded his hands atop the desk in front of him. "Then we¡¯d better set up a standing order for a dragon translator. Looks like I''m going to have to negotiate with the Mercurios come Terlunia." "No need, sir. One of the independent mercenaries is Kryr-Anarkin, a celebrated draconic translator. His negotiating skills are celebrated across¡ª" King Farshen raised a hand. "I am familiar with him. Excellent. Send him in as well. Is that all?" "No, my lord," the messenger said, looking vaguely disturbed. "There is one other matter. One of your counselors has unexpectedly taken ill, Sir Nide, and requests your presence at once. I told him that you are not to be ordered about, but he insisted I deliver the message. Since you seem¡­" the messenger blushed, stuttered, and looked away before continuing, "well-inclined today, your majesty, I hope you do not find it impertinent for me to relay this request." "You are doing your job. If you''re doing a job for impertinent people, that does not mean anything against you. I commend your honesty and dedication to your task. Please tell Eshindre that he is welcome to attend me at dinner. Also inform the kitchen they''ll be having another guest for dinner. Don''t forget, send in Larenok and Kryr-Anarkin. That is all. Thank you. You''re dismissed." The messenger bowed deeply, looking as relieved as though he had been pardoned from a certain execution. He turned to go, turned back and bowed a second time with a, "Thank you, my lord,¡± before he left properly. It wasn''t even lunchtime and he was already ready for bed. But, no rest for the royal. King Farshen had a lot to do and not much time to do it in. He picked up his broken pen, flicked his hand to activate his repair spell, and slid a new ink cartridge into it before returning to his blank sheet of paper. On this, the twenty-first day of Xulok¡­
66 - Distribution Given its omnipresence in life, you¡¯d think spells to manipulate air would be more common. But rather, the majority of effects which appear to be based on air are created independent of the element itself. Wind is far easier to create than to control.
"The king did what?" "Decreed a reversal of the stockpile decree, my lord." Lord Olrek wasn''t sure whether to be thrilled or horrified. On the one hand, this would reimburse his conglomerate for a substantial amount of loss they had taken toward the start of the long chaos year. On the other hand, he had divested heavily from the sandfish market, and shifted to other ventures to make up the loss. His rivals who''d stuck with it would be receiving a substantial windfall, perhaps enough to push him out of the market entirely. "And you''re sure this is real?" "As certain as I can be, my lord." The business manager held up a sealed copy of the royal edict. "From what everyone has said, it has gone out to every merchant house with any interest in the affair. It is signed and sealed. If it¡¯s an imposter¡¯s work, they put a lot of effort into it. And I don''t know what the purpose would be." "To get me to reinvest in a failed business venture, clearly," Olrek said. He rubbed his chin and scowled at the edict. "No. I don''t trust it. We will continue as planned. We''ve already set things in motion for the transition, there is no need to go back on our plan so soon. Reinvesting now would only make us desperate trend chasers. Let them have their day in the sun. We will build an empire whose foundations Dovak himself could not shake." The messenger tapped his thumb against the back of his opposite hand three times uneasily, with a quick glance at the floor as if Dovak might come bursting up out of it at the slightest provocation. "It''s a figure of speech, man. Don''t be a coward." Olrek waved away his business manager, and the man fled with impressive alacrity. "Royal decrees, is it?" he mused. If the king was issuing decrees again, then he wanted to know why his contacts in the Advisory Council hadn''t given him a warning in advance. With a few minutes'' pause to cancel his afternoon appointments with his household manager, and leave an away message for the business manager to convey to any visitors, he slid open the panel to his private transit line and tapped in a familiar code. They would see about these new edicts. With any luck, he could even use this to springboard their company into an even better position for the coming year. Olrek hummed happily to himself as he disembarked from the counselors¡¯ arrival platform and rang for the man''s personal attendant. It took several minutes for the attendant to arrive, and when he did he looked flustered and unwell. "I need to speak to Sir Nide." "Yes, sir. You and everyone else. The king''s latest set of edicts has caused quite a stir. I''m afraid Sir Nide is indisposed at the moment. He wishes it known that he has a meeting with the King this evening during which he will present the Merchant Board¡¯s concerns, and after which he will be available to discuss future steps. Until then he must concentrate on recovering from his unexpected brush with the plague.¡± "This plague again,¡± Olrek scoffed. ¡°How many times can one man contract the same illness? He¡¯s missed three meetings already since last month." The attendant''s face reddened angrily. "I''ll have you know that there is no deception involved. Sir Nide has been deathly ill all day, and it is only because of his obsessive dedication to your cause that he''s been up and about doing as much as he has. If I had my way, he¡¯d have stayed in bed for the next month. So you can take your accusations and¡ª" "No need for that." Olrek raised his hands placatingly. "I¡¯m sure his ailment is legitimate. I''m beginning to question the man¡¯s fortitude, and the quality of his health supervision, but that¡¯s not my business. Do be sure that my query regarding the edicts is conveyed. I want a personal rundown as soon as possible.¡± "I''m sure you do sir. I''ll be sure to add you to the end of the list." Olrek sighed. He shouldn''t have let his temper get away with him, but he supposed it was no better than he deserved. "I apologize for any implications or insinuations perceived against your master. I will appreciate whatever information he has to offer on whatever timeline he has available. Thank you for your time." He turned and walked back onto the transit platform. He started to type in his own location code, then paused, cleared the reader, and input a different one instead. Councilor Nide may be his best contact in the palace, but he wasn''t the only one. Olrek couldn''t afford to go in fully blind, whatever this ended up being. It didn¡¯t matter who he needed to bribe, he had to see those edicts.
"So, your best friend from school is a prophet with a soul-eating sword that can kill with a touch, who threw a dragon matriarch into the ocean because she was harassing you?" Ajriol Serin sat across from his daughter at a small table of dark stone polished to a mirror shine. Behind him, the tea room¡¯s broad windows looked out over the busy city. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. "Yes, basically. Though the sword doesn¡¯t exactly kill with a touch." Ajriol chuckled. ¡°Carn said you terrified Miki appearing in a whirlwind of black fire like an evil phoenix. Took her almost an hour to accept you weren¡¯t a ghost.¡± ¡°Jungle phoenix, not evil. The Venix¡¯s power of rebirth is one of the strongest healing powers known to exist.¡± Raina smiled fondly. ¡°As you¡¯ve probably heard by now.¡± ¡°Yes, the ¡®Phoenix Healer¡¯. Quite the name for someone barely initiated. Seems like the sort of thing that could go to someone¡¯s head.¡± ¡°Whatever got to his head, it was long before the phoenix healing thing.¡± "And you want to travel the world with this man?" Raina nodded solemnly. "I can think of no one else I''d trust so far. I know I''d be safe with him." Ajriol gave her a long, penetrating stare as he considered her words, then nodded. "I don''t normally say this about people with the ability to eat souls, but I think you have chosen well. How long do you anticipate this Reforging Quest taking?" "They''re normally about a year, give or take a couple seasons?" Ajriol nodded. "Then we''d better double that. Three years sounds about right." "You understand what this means, for you to undertake a three-year absence?" Raina nodded once. "You''ll need to be training one of my cousins, in case I don''t return. But I will. No need to worry about that." "It''s not about worry, it''s about guaranteeing our family legacy can continue." "And I understand completely. You''re not disowning me, or kicking me out, you''re just taking ordinary precautions in my absence." Ajriol rose to his feet and Raina did the same. "Once you begin this, you will not be allowed to return to your position as heir apparent until you have completed the time span you designated or return with a Reforged weapon and upgraded class." "I understand." "And knowing the risks, obligations, and surrender of privileges for the interim, you are fully convinced this is what you want to do?" "It is." "Then you are released, Raina Serin, from all political and familial obligations for the next three years, or until you return to us reforged and reborn. May your path be one of discovery and triumph." Formalities concluded, he stepped forward to kiss his daughter on the forehead. "You are very brave, my little Raina," he said more softly. "Remember to be cautious too." ¡°I will.¡± She gave her father one more hug, then stepped back. ¡°And I will return. But before I go, I do have one more question.¡± Ajriol nodded for her to continue. She didn¡¯t answer at first, struggling with old habits of silently avoiding the topic. ¡°What do you want to know?¡± ¡°What did Mother do to infuriate Ryenzo so?¡± Raina asked abruptly. ¡°She was very insistent that this was vengeance against Mother.¡± Ajriol¡¯s body stilled. He stared at Raina, a whole gamut of emotions playing across his face in that moment. ¡°Tamma.¡± ¡°Yes. What did she do?¡± Ajriol shook his head. ¡°She never told me. She said only that she had to leave, that there would be endless danger for us all if she stayed. I tried to argue with her, but I¡¯ve never seen her so determined. Or so sad.¡± His own voice turned regretful as he spoke, reminiscent. ¡°She didn¡¯t even take her shields.¡± ¡°Right, Mother was a warden?¡± She¡¯d forgotten that. They talked about Tamma so infrequently, so many of her memories lay faded and eroded. ¡°She was. Right on the brink of advancement when she left.¡± Ajriol sighed. ¡°What could she have done to draw the ire of a poison dragon? She spent years going in and out of that place, wouldn¡¯t say anything about it, just that it was a major contract, something that would help her advancement dramatically. Then¡­ something went wrong, and she was frantic to get away.¡± ¡°Do you think she stole something?¡± Raina asked. ¡°It could be she was staking out the place, searching for treasure.¡± ¡°Does that sound like something your mother would have done?¡± Ajriol asked. ¡°No¡­¡± Raina drained her glass and reached for the pitcher to refill it. ¡°But what, then?¡± He shook his head slowly. ¡°I wish I¡¯d been more insistent. At the time, I assumed she¡¯d be back. By the time I realized she was gone for good, it was far too late to do anything about it. I can think of a thousand things I could have done differently. Should I have gotten more involved in her personal advancement? Should I have insisted she tell me what she was doing? But she was so insistent, and I was young." "It''s not your fault. Whatever happened, there was nothing we could have done. Between Mother and Ryenzo, you think either of us could have talked either of them out of doing whatever they wanted?" Ajriol laughed faintly. "No, you''re right, there''s nothing we could have done. But I can''t stop wondering if I should have at least tried harder. Maybe we could have all fled together." "If Ryenzo waited this long to come after me, then it''s probably for the best that we were apart. At least with her focus on finding Mother she only kidnapped me, and there''s still a chance she''s alive out there somewhere. If Ryenzo had found us all together..." She vividly remembered those jaws that could bite the top off a house snapping shut just above her, the snarls and shrieks as the dragon demonstrated just how easily she could have killed Raina if she''d wanted to. A fingersbreadth closer with that claw and Raina would have been sliced open effortlessly. Everything about that day had been a terrifying show of exactly how much power Ryenzo had over her, and how utterly helpless Raina¡ªor any human¡ªwould be against her. Raina swallowed, her voice coming out faint. "I never wanted her to go, but now that I''ve seen Ryenzo... I can understand why it was necessary." Ajriol hugged her again. "I wish you never needed to understand." "It''s alright. I''m okay. And perhaps now she''ll hear that Ryenzo is gone and come back now that it''s safe." "Assuming she''s anywhere news can reach so easily." "I''ll tell everyone wherever we go," Raina said, raising her chin. "I''ll send gossip spreading across the moons and every continent we visit. If Tamma Serin is still alive, I''ll see to it that she hears about Ryenzo¡¯s defeat. That she knows it''s safe to come home."
67 - Rebuilding ¡°As a mixed disciplinary class¡ªlike mageblade, for example¡ªattaining the Master mage designation generally takes over a hundred years. The difficulty skews heavily toward pure classes reaching pinnacle titles. I believe the fastest a mageblade has reached it on record is forty-three years, and that was with the full support of a royal house and doing absolutely nothing else with his life.¡± ¡°Why do you look so smug about this fact? Should I be concerned?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to do it in three months.¡± ¡°So I should be very concerned.¡± ¡°Only if I had any sanity left to lose. This is nothing.¡±
Raina was asleep when Jair returned the first evening after his meeting with the king, and she remained asleep for almost the whole day following Dark Night. Jair took an extensive rest himself, more than he intended. His body desperately demanded sleep even if he didn''t exactly notice until he lay down and didn''t wake up until well into the following day. Even then, he didn''t sleep as long as Raina. She was still out when he headed into the city in the late morning. Jair finished his Phoenix Healing list by the end of the day, then checked back in at Larenok''s place in case the man had arranged anything else for him. There was no sign of Larenok himself or any additions to the calendar. He''d been here, cleaned up a few of the cabinets and left a bigger mess on the counter, but it was all mundane soulspace basics. Nothing interesting or indicative. No note, though come to think of it, Larenok probably didn''t think about the fact that Jair could come and go as he pleased. Perhaps back at the Institute? But if Larenok¡¯s credentials had been revoked, which they surely had by now, what with his blatant neglect¡­ unless he¡¯d been overlooked in the rebuilding. Jair stopped in at the academy admin building, but as he¡¯d expected Larenok¡¯s office was empty and dark. His possessions had been cleared out, leaving only the furniture and the room¡¯s intentionally intimidating architecture. For a moment he contemplated leaving a message at Larenok¡¯s house to re-establish contact, but if he was busy off being a promoter then there was no reason to rush him. He¡¯d find Jair sooner or later, as long as he returned from whatever he was doing before Terlunia. Once Jair and Raina left the continent, there¡¯d be little chance of anyone tracking them. Even Jair himself wouldn¡¯t try to predict what they¡¯d end up doing. With one last cursory look around, he summoned Maelstrom to his hand. "I know I made fun of you for going all in on Darkflame, but the ability to skip the half hour of walking from one place to another is very convenient," Jair muttered as he darkflamed himself back to the Serin residence. Maelstrom flickered smugly with dark fire before Jair dismissed it back into their soul. "Yo, Carn, what time''s dinner?" "I''m afraid you''ve just missed it," Carn said, completely deadpan. "Try again tomorrow." "Nice try. Is Raina in with her father, or did she go out?" "I last saw Miss Serin in her study. She seemed to be writing out some manner of list." "Ah, shopping order, no doubt." They''d finalized the majority of their packing list that first night, but some things weren''t already in their possession and required either special ordering or a trip out to Silvas and Parein. He considered offering to collect them himself, but if she had someone in mind he didn''t see a reason to interfere. He had plenty of his own shopping to do, and more important chores beside. If she was occupied for the moment, he had plenty to occupy himself with in the meantime. The fallout of transporting himself from the moon, his clash with Ryenzo, and the subsequent brief contact with the seascourge had cracked open his soulspace and destroyed his manabody entirely. He couldn''t start imprinting his spells because there was nothing to imprint them on. His preferred solution would be to go to Nuprima and overload himself there. Painful, incredibly difficult, but it got results fast. Unfortunately, there wouldn''t be a Nuprima passage until weeks after Solaria, and he couldn''t afford to wait that long. The next best thing was to spend hours meditating at a manaforge or similarly high-mana location, and Raina''s family happened to own quite a sizeable chunk of exactly such a location. "I''ll be out at the oasis, if she comes asking," Jair told Carn. "I need to work on my class requirements." "Understood. If she asks, I''ll inform her." Jair flashed himself to the oasis in a burst of green-black fire and sat down on the roof of one of the mana-curing sheds like before. Class requirements was a bit of an overstatement. He didn''t technically need to have a manabody now that he''d already unlocked the class¡ªyou didn''t lose your class even if you no longer met the qualifications for obtaining it in the first place¡ªbut without reaching a full imprint layout his class would never advance beyond basic. His weapon may be fourth tier, but he remained stuck at first until the ''mage'' started to catch up with the ''blade''. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. And, as much mobility as Maelstrom''s darkflame teleport ability provided, he missed the everyday utility of Lift and Impose Weight. He probably didn''t need to continue with his Stormstriker build, but there were plenty of spells he''d be happier to have available. Cutting through everything, teleporting anywhere, and healing anything were all well and good, but at this rate he''d end up as just ''the guy who happens to be bound to Maelstrom'' rather than anything showcasing his own capabilities. He''d already gone down the path of becoming overly-reliant on Darkflame, back in the future with Qahrvirna. He didn''t need to do it again. So he began on one of his least favourite activities. Rebuilding a manabody from nothing was right up there with listening to the academy initiation speeches a dozen times. It wasn¡¯t, by normal standards, ¡®hard¡¯, but it drove him to the last edge of his patience. Right now, he was at his most vulnerable and exposed. Without a manabody as a buffer between himself and the volatile power of the oasis, carelessness could very well cause permanent damage or even kill him if he was truly unlucky. This was the reason for lodgings being banned from the vicinity of all oases, the requirement of cities kept separate and workers coming in only for a few hours at a time. Mana exposure wasn''t inherently deleterious, but the effects tended to compound dangerously. Even if a single night spent unguarded in an oasis was unlikely to kill you, if you did it every night for a month you''d be lucky to still be alive and sane. Jair wasn''t in any immediate danger. He''d rested well. He knew how to prepare himself physically and mentally. It was just a matter of sitting, absorbing the power, and guiding it back out to refill the space that his lifebody occupied. A properly-created manabody was shaped in an imitation of what was already there. There were those who preferred to settle their mana in, say, a sphere at their core, rather than creating a full body with it, but that was a limiting choice. Sure, it could be channeled with, but reversing the power flow like that made spellcasting slow and inefficient. When you had the power in your fingertips, you could cast hand spells at the speed of thought. When the power was concentrated somewhere else in the body, you needed to first guide it to the imprint''s casting point. A few moments¡¯ difference in activation time wouldn¡¯t matter to a spell-worker, housewife, or craftsman, but in combat those moments could be the difference between victory and destruction. The bond between manabody and lifebody grew stronger the more closely they resembled one another, which is why imprints glowed visibly despite the manabody being an intangible force in most cases. Those were the points of most perfect overlap. There was a reason mageblade wasn''t everyone''s go-to class, and the Institute took between one and three years of preparation before its initiates were even granted the class. Its benefits were multi-faceted, but the requirements equally stringent in their demands. Jair sat and accumulated power, holding it in a soft cloud that conformed to roughly the shape of his body. Today¡¯s progress wouldn¡¯t be enough to even notice. It would require several repetitions of filling and condensing before he got anything close to a proper manabody set up, but this did give him the chance to build in some convenient shortcuts his younger self hadn¡¯t known about. It might set him back a few weeks in the short term, but once he did get to Nuprima, he¡¯d be able to bypass some of the advancement steps. Firming up the edges so that it precisely matched the body was the most challenging part for most beginners in manabody creation. Anyone could collect a mana cloud at their center. Almost anyone could squish it down into a semi-solid blob. Doing that again and again until it expanded to fill the entire space of the body, then shaping it precisely to your every muscle and bone, that was a challenge. A bigger challenge was doing that while maintaining a simultaneous connection and separation between manabody and lifebody. If they got too wholly integrated, you¡¯d end up with strange things happening. Some said that was where vampires originated from, but in Jair¡¯s personal experience having a fully merged manabody mainly meant that you healed faster, hit harder, couldn¡¯t change spell loadouts, and died more easily. The Avlooni beastkin utilized manabody merging on a cultural level, with each generation guiding the next into the practice. Given the right incentives, they¡¯d been willing to initiate even a kinless like Jair. A lifebody had strong points and weak points. You wouldn¡¯t generally die from a broken toe, though it would be painful. With a merged manabody, that broken toe isn¡¯t just a painful nuisance, but a perpetual drain¡­ and if you run out of mana you drop dead on the spot. You could run faster and longer, the merged bodies working together to maintain your strength long past when either one would have given out¡­ but if you push too far and run out of mana, you die on the spot. He never regretted the timeline of becoming ¡®embodied¡¯; it was a valuable experience to learn about the possibilities, but it was an unforgiving lifestyle and not one he was suited for. Jair wasn¡¯t a brawler type, and he definitely wasn¡¯t the sort to stay within such restrictive limitations. He much preferred the flexibility of spellcaster manabodies, and being able to push himself into overdraw if necessary without the instantly-dying part to worry about. Tie them together, but hold them apart. It was a delicate balance to walk. Most initiates took months or years to even begin to find that balance. The early stages of building a manabody were finicky to the extreme. Jair had broken his countless times in the past by trying to rush the process, or losing focus during a key moment. The process was so painfully dull, and took such a very long time. He hated it, as much as he accepted it as necessary, but it was one of his least favourite parts of becoming an absurdly powerful archmage. At least the advancement process for mage was distractingly painful. There was feedback, the active resistance, the sense of pushing through to reach the goal. If he had something to focus on like that here, it would be a thousand times easier. The earliest stages of building up mana felt like nothing. For several weeks when he first arrived at the academy, he¡¯d assumed that he was doing something wrong. This process required focus, it required time, and the only way to know if you¡¯d done it right or not was to do it for days on end and hope. Even doing everything exactly right, Jair knew there would be no tangible results today. He hated it so much. But it was necessary. So he sat and he focused. He drew in mana that tasted like air, strained to hold it in place when it felt like trying to keep hold of a particular grain of sand in a hand overfull, and released the tension of the intangible intake. Over and over. For hours. Jair was well used to repetition by now, but if he never had to rebuild a manabody again it would be too soon.
68 - Pastseer It¡¯s funny how effective the threat of utter ruin is for winning arguments.
"Your Majesty, is now a good time to discuss the treasury?" King Farshen looked up a bit blearily from his desk. Last time he checked, it had been dark out, but now the sun shone clear between the curtains, taunting him with its promise of another long day ahead with no respite in sight. ¡°It¡¯s as good a time as any. Go ahead." "The pastseer we hired has discovered the whereabouts of the missing items." Were it not for his necessity of maintaining dignity, King Farshen would have his head in his hands. Instead, he sat stoically with only a slightly furrowed brow to show his heightened headache. "Missing items? Do you have a list?" "I don''t have it with me, my lord, but it is everything that could be fit into a soulspace starting from the most valuable and going down from there." "The Veori Crest?" "Taken, yes." "My grandfather''s sword?" "Taken. I can send for a list." "Please do." Farshen closed his eyes for a brief moment of respite, allowed himself a single deep breath, then opened his eyes. "You may continue. What were you going to say? Our pastseer has discovered¡­?" "The pastseer has discovered the whereabouts of the items. They are currently in the sea." ¡°Someone stole them and threw them into the sea?" "That is what I¡¯ve been told to convey, my lord.¡± ¡°Where is this pastseer? Why is everyone filtering my visitors and staff?¡± But Farshen knew why. Given the number of decrees that were specifically targeted at one individual, he¡¯d come to learn that the man he¡¯d become in his grief had been petty, vengeful, vindictive, and utterly uncaring about who he hurt. It was a sobering realization that such a thing could have been himself. He could very well imagine meetings that went on behind closed doors, the bribes and coercion required to keep anyone working for him at all, the layers of protection. We¡¯ll never say your name, you''ll only be referred to by impersonal code, etc. "I''m sure I couldn¡¯t say, sir. The decision had nothing to do with me." The man shifted uncomfortably. ¡°I¡­ can inform the pastseer that you wish to receive his report in person." ¡°Yes. I would like to receive the report in person. Preferably with a written report as well." By the time the pastseer entered, Farshen had fully prepared himself for the eventuality in which he learned that everything he''d ever possessed had been despoiled in his absence. Absence may not be the most correct word for it but he could think of nothing better. The pastseer walked in with footsteps so quiet Farshen wouldn¡¯t have noticed were he not looking right at him. The man was slender, his skin several shades paler than Veori standard and his hair such a pale blond it looked almost ethereal. The perpetual white glow of his eyes made it hard to guess what he was looking at. He came to a stop in front of the desk and stood silently. Farshen waved a hand impatiently. "Well, tell me what you''ve seen." ¡°No." The pastseer spoke in a dreamy sort of voice, and held out one hand. "Come and see." King Farshen rose slowly, but saw no reason for paranoia at this point. His staff had him at their mercy for most of a year. If he was to suspect everyone now, it was a bit late. He circled the desk until he was standing in front of the man, then placed one hand in his. "This won''t take long?" "But a moment." The man''s eyes flashed brightly and King Farshen blinked. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer standing in his office. Instead, he sat on a bench in the courtyard outside the palace. A young man walked past, wearing fully concealing gray robes and a hood over his face. King Farshen rose to his feet and walked after the man without volition, his body moving on its own. If he stopped and thought about it, his body wasn''t the way he was used to, but as long as he relaxed into the experience, the entire thing felt natural. The man moved swiftly as though he knew his way around intimately. Into the palace through a side door, down passages and stairways Farshen hadn¡¯t traversed himself until now. The intruder stopped at the door to the treasury and held out a hand. A familiar sword appeared in it, one that Farshen would never forget. A black center with silver edges on either side, broadsword style, with serrated waves across the top. In this vision, the weapon did not glow or emit fire, but he could hardly mistake it for any other. The weapon appeared only for a moment before it disappeared, just long enough for the intruder to slice down through the bolt and allow the door to swing open. King Farshen noted that the intruder did not summon it using any of the traditional connection points. Speed was clearly more important to him than expense. To summon a weapon without any connection point would take an exorbitant amount of mana. Most people would find such a task impossible even if they tried. The young man, which he now strongly suspected to be Jair Welburne himself, pushed the door open and walked in. There was no looking around or searching. He simply crossed to various display cases and sliced him open in a flash of that sword that appeared and disappeared as quickly as it was needed. With a touch of each priceless artifact after the last, they disappeared into his soulspace. He must be setting off countless tracking spells that been placed on the items, but he paid no mind to that. He either didn¡¯t know or didn¡¯t care. As he continued this premeditated rampage, two of the Hyperion guard appeared, alerted by one spell or another. The intruder ignored them completely and continued to grab items, evading the two attackers with the effortless easel of a true master. It was as though he knew their fighting styles better than they themselves did, and could predict their every move before they made it. Several times the guard seemed to get a hit on the intruder, but every time he whirled away from the strike in a swish of gray fabric so quickly Farshen couldn¡¯t tell whether the attacks had connected or not. If only there were sound. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He wondered whether the man wore armor under the robes, or if any of the glancing strikes were actually touching him. The longer he looked, the man''s movement seemed a little bit jerky. As though his body was being externally augmented. Construct user. That was one weakness of having warriors and magekillers, they were built to counter standard mages, not those who augmented themselves physically. King Farshen couldn''t help but wonder just how strong this Jair Welburne was. The fight, such as it was, had been going on for minutes now. With the amount of construct use he was employing to evade, he had to¡¯ve been drawing on his mana very heavily. Farshen knew a few mages who could withstand that kind of a sustained mana draw, but none so young. Who was this man? Without warning, Welburne turned and reversed course. He ran out the door, down the hall, sliced open a window, and jumped out. A flash of silver, and he was flying away. King Farshen ran to the window and looked after him, but there was no way to follow him now. "You may wish to close your eyes. This has been described as disconcerting." King Farshen looked around for the source of the voice, but saw no one. It almost sounded as though the voice of been coming from his own throat, but¡ª He was falling through the sky. For a moment of extreme dissonance, his body felt perfectly at ease while his mind screamed that he should be flailing for dear life. He pulled his cloud closer, wrapped it around himself like a shroud. Where had he found a cloud in Veor? The cloud felt warm and comforting. He floated gently down from a great height. He knew he was invisible, the cloud protecting him from observation. Even so, he was observed. He felt the attention from below, from beneath the water. His body remained calm, but his soul shivered. Beneath, the water thrashed and roiled, uncountable seascourge fighting over scraps of some delicacy. He could not see clearly what it was. He descended lower within his cloud, and felt the whisper of a touch as a massive tentacle slapped out and sent him spinning away. By the time he''d oriented himself again, the frenzy was over. The seascourge separated, swimming away in their various directions. One lingered, its singular eye focused on Farshen, its seven mouths open. It drifted just below the surface like a hungry sandskimmer, flat and broad on top, narrowing to a point at either end. Wickedly sharp points, like a scorpion''s tail. Something shot past him from the water below, a thin glowing line. He turned to follow its passage and saw the distant figure on the mountainside. No, being pulled toward them from the mountainside. Farshen couldn¡¯t possibly have made out the man''s shape if he hadn''t been dragged closer. The man was approaching at an incredible speed. "Watch closely, my lord." Again, that calm, hazy voice, coming from his own throat. Everything seemed to slow. He could see the individual twisted strands that made up the seascourge tendril flexing as they snapped the man back. Its end was embedded deep in the doomed man''s eye, slicing his head open and laying bare the glowing pulse of his mana coils. It grew even in that frozen moment, cutting deeper¡ª The man¡¯s soulspace exploded, showering the water with all of Veor¡¯s most priceless artifacts. Not just from the royal treasury, but countless items he recognized from other noble houses. Farshen instinctively tried to reach out for them, and was reminded immediately that the body he wore was not his, and not under his control. Though he felt violently unwell at the reminder of disconnect, the body remained calm. Before the man hit the surface of the water, he burst. Black and green fire exploded out of him, leaving only ashes for the seascourge. The living tendril slashed out at Farshen¡¯s head, and as soon as it touched him, he ended. For a moment, he thought he truly died, but¡ª Then he was standing back in his office, tense and uncertain. He felt like an alien in his own body, despite knowing that this was his. He convulsed, his entire body seizing. He would''ve fallen if not for the strong hands clasping his wrist and shoulder. "It will pass. Close your eyes, your highness, and it will pass faster." Despite the warnings, he did not close his eyes. He stared down at his hands as though they were something foreign. His height felt wrong, dizzying. His throat felt thick and he swallowed again and again. "Do you know what you have seen?" Farshen looked up at the voice. The seer was a pale blur. He blinked, and the world came a little bit more into focus. "Yes. I don''t understand, but I have seen. Thank you." There was an odd stinging in his right foot, something didn¡¯t feel quite right about it. No, it was his own familiar ache. He knew it. He''d not noticed it was gone until he returned. He gripped the pastseer¡¯s wrists tighter to steady himself, then cleared his throat and took a step back. "Thank you. I trust you are being well compensated for this service?" The pastseer bowed shallowly, as though to an equal. "Indeed I am, your highness. You need not concern yourself with my remuneration. Is there anything else you wish to see?" Farshen was about to say no, that is all, then stopped. "Can you show me the day Prince Orren left?" "I can, if you have a way to focus in on it. What is unique about that day that I can use to find it by?" Farshen shook his head. He didn¡¯t know anything about the day. Except¡­ "It is the last time I saw my son. Does that count for anything?" "It does. Do you have anything of the boy¡¯s? Anything of yours? If I use the two in conjunction, I can reasonably approximate." The king nodded and crossed to his armoire. His wife had always saved the lock of hair from each of their children''s Solaria cuts. The locks were wrapped in glass threads to preserve them, but glass could be replaced. He picked up Orren''s most recent, and shattered the glass. He held it out to the seer in his hand. "Yes. This will work." The man''s eyes flared brightly and stayed bright, staring down at the lock of hair in Farshen''s hand. Then his glowing gaze came up and met Farshen''s own. "You will not like what you see," he warned. "Are you sure you wish to do this? You were not yourself." Farshen shook his head safely. "I cannot hide from what I''ve done. Show me." "Very well, my lord." The seer''s eyes flared brightly. Farshen sat at the table in his sitting room. He saw himself sitting to his right, and Orren sitting to his left. He knew this position. He and his son regularly met in the evening to discuss their accomplishments for the day and plans for the future. Or perhaps they would debate a recent ruling by one of the councils, or discuss a proposal from citizenry. Whatever the topic, he could not hear. The prince''s casual and open expression gradually grew concerned, then upset. The expression on Farshen''s face¡ªand that looked so wrong, sitting across from himself¡ªremained an expressionless mask. Only the faintest hardening of the eyes betrayed his growing anger. Orren got to his feet and began to pace, turning back to speak more sharply. Farshen could all but read the sounds. What were you thinking? Why would you do this? I do not understand. A heated argument, certainly. He began to hope that that was all it was. The rumors were exaggerated out of proportion. Surely¡­ Then he watched himself jump up from his chair, which toppled to the floor behind him. The Farshen he was watching lunged for his son with an angry snarl on his face the likes of which he¡¯d never imagined could belong to himself. He tried to jump forward, interpose himself between them, knock the past-him aside, but the body in which he sat was not his. He watched helplessly as his past form grabbed his son around the throat and screamed at him repeatedly to be silent, choking him into compliance. The fact that the entire scene played out soundlessly made it only more horrifying. Farshen felt sick. He had no memory of this. He could not imagine any argument that Orren could make to drive him to such extreme violence. When he witnessed himself toss Prince Orren to the floor, carelessly; as the gasping heir lay staring up at his father with confused betrayal in his eyes, he could bear it no more. "I am sorry, my lord,¡± the farseer spoke gently through what felt like Farshen¡¯s own throat, though he knew it to be the seer¡¯s. ¡°I cannot control the past, only observe it." ¡°It¡¯s not your doing,¡± Farshen murmured soundlessly. He didn¡¯t know if the seer heard. This time, when the illusion ended, the king did close his eyes. And he kept them closed for a very long time. Long after the seer had departed, the king stood trembling, grief and rage and self-loathing mixing with a remorse so deep he thought it might burn him from within. Orren. Why? What could you have possibly said? There could be no justification for this. Veor¡¯s king wept in silence, and it was many hours before anyone dared disturb him.
69 - Plans Awry Sometimes, people born on the moons do not understand the need to fear the water. The rivers on Terlunia are safe, the sea of Zelura hides only mundane monsters. They visit Neptus and find us hiding from the sea and building walls around rivers and think us mad. They rarely survive long.
"Ready to go?" Jair asked, glancing over Raina''s collection of accoutrements. In addition to the contents of her soulspace, and the items stored in Jair''s, she''d brought a rather large backpack and three different smaller bags. "Sure you haven''t forgotten anything? Not like I can bring us back here with a moment''s notice." Raina tucked her hair behind her ear. "We''re going to be visiting, it''d be rude to keep coming home for every little thing." "You think my parents are going to care about my noble heiress friend being rude by teleporting back to the city a few times a day?" "Most people can''t transit from house to house as easily as you, you know." "But you can. I''ve seen your private platform, I know how many keys you have." Raina smiled dazzlingly and hiked her backpack higher up her shoulder, making for a very cute but also incredibly confusing image. Noble heiress¡­ overstuffed backpack¡­ Jair loved it. "Then it seems I''m the premier authority here on what is and isn''t rude, and teleporting about mid-visit is incredibly insulting. It''s a clear demonstration that you didn''t prepare, or your host isn''t taking care of you properly, either of which is unforgivable." "Right. Forgetting to pack extra underwear... unforgivable." Raina snickered. "Just send them to be cleaned, it''s not a problem." Jair shook his head. "I always forget just how drastic the class divide is in this place." He hefted Maelstrom and aimed the point at Raina''s arm. "You ready?" "Yes, I''m ready. Have been this whole time. If you didn''t love hearing yourself speak so much¡­" "I much prefer hearing you speak, but if you insist." Jair lunged forward to stab her. Maelstrom disappeared. Jair stumbled at the lack of resistance and nearly ran into her, but pulled up short just in time. Raina stared at his suddenly empty hand, then at Jair¡¯s confused face. He blinked in surprise and frowned. With a thought, Maelstrom appeared in his hand again. Darkflame flared up, and he carefully moved to pierce Raina''s bare shoulder. The moment Maelstrom even brushed her skin, before it could so much as indent, the sword vanished. Jair looked at her untouched shoulder, then at his empty hand. "That''s... not normal." "You''re expecting normal behavior from the ascended... wait, no, post-ascension¡ªsoulsword?¡± "Would it be too much to ask that a sword be capable of stabbing someone?" Jair asked, but his heart wasn''t in it. He''d resummoned Maelstrom for the third time and was staring down into its flickering fiery core. "What''s the matter now?" Raina laughed. ¡°At this point I¡¯m almost surprised it hasn¡¯t grown wings." She started flapping her hands and grinning. ¡°Maybe Tempest will be able to grow wings. Who needs Bladewalk when you can Blade-FLY!¡± Jair wasn¡¯t paying attention. He slipped his thumb against the activation blade, and darkflame burned him away and deposited him on the opposite side of the room. "Fully functional. So why?" He held out the sword to Raina. "Try poking yourself with that little blade on the crosspiece." Raina held up the sword in one hand and brought her other hand to press against the bladed protrusion. Maelstrom disappeared. "I guess its aversion to hurting you is stronger than my desire to teleport us to Aeiti." Jair frowned in consideration. "You said it doesn''t hurt." "Larenok says it doesn''t hurt, but he''s also more than a little crazy by this point. Looks like I¡¯ll need to do some further experimenting.¡± Jair hummed thoughtfully. "Speaking of Larenok, though, I do wonder what he''s doing. Maybe I should leave a note for him this time."
King Farshen paced his room with a steady discomfort growing in his gut. He''d done so much and gone through so many people and allies during his madness, he couldn''t quite fathom how thoroughly he¡¯d set his kingdom on a path to open rebellion. He¡¯d tried to murder his own son. He still couldn¡¯t quite come to terms with that one. It felt so very unlike him, if he hadn¡¯t witnessed it himself he¡¯d have continued to deny it. Even now, part of his mind was scrambling to come up with excuses. Maybe it had been an impostor. Maybe¡­ But there was only so much denying he could do against the weight of evidence. Attacking Orren wasn¡¯t the only thing he¡¯d done that wasn¡¯t him-like. He¡¯d created whole complex webs of laws and regulations just to ruin one particular individual, completely disregarding what any of them would do to the rest of the kingdom. Even reversing course now, to some extent the damage was already done. He¡¯d need to do something more than merely undoing what he¡¯d done. He wished his wife were here. He desperately needed someone to talk to, to unravel this mess he¡¯d apparently built around himself. He wished Orren were here. His son wasn''t ignorant or stupid, regardless of what he''d apparently said and done while not in his right mind. He¡¯d even take his daughter, though in her case it was more because he wanted to see her face and hear about her chaotic day rather than wanting to go to her for advice. Princess Fahla and her father had very different ideas of what was important. While King Farshen considered ruling the kingdom well to be the highest priority, greatest honor, and heaviest responsibility of their family, Fahla believed that it was his and Orren''s job to handle that and she had her own life to pursue. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. He definitely disagreed with her decision to join an adventuring company. That was the kind of thing that got people killed on a regular basis. He wasn''t sure whether to be impressed or irritated with her for having left when she did. Standing up to your father was hard enough without that father also being the king... but she''d never been good at being sensible. All of which was just diverting his thoughts away from the actual topic that was bothering him. Jair Welburne. The Phoenix Healer, who''d brought Farshen out of a stupor he wasn''t sure he could have ever escaped on his own. Who''d quickly become a byword among the wealthy, something to brag about or envy those who''d had the opportunity. Rumors claimed that Welburne accepted or turned people away without even looking at them, that he read their souls directly as they were reborn from the fire. The Royal Robber, who''d taken not only the greatest treasures of the royal treasury, but those of nearly every house on the continent. Who''d then lost them all beyond repair by dropping them into the sea. The Dragon Destroyer, who''d gone alone to fight a dragon and returned alive while she disappeared to the waves. How he''d pulled that one off, Farshen still wanted to know. Dragons weren''t stupid enough to fly anywhere near the ocean, so how had Welburne convinced it to go so far? And those were just the titles he''d learned about in the past few days. Who knew how many others the man had that he hadn''t mentioned. Farshen didn''t know what to do. He wanted to recruit the man. He should definitely lock up the man. Jair''s behavior was the sort of uncontrolled chaos that would bring Farshen''s kingdom down around his ears before he knew what was happening. Welburne claimed to know where Orren was hiding, and that he could convince him to return before the end of the year. Welburne hired a mercenary company to kill a dragon, then didn''t bother to wait for them and left them with nothing to do but collect the prizes left over. Which... that was a whole other headache Farshen didn''t want to think about right now. He''d retained the dragon-speaker Kryr-Anarkin for the rest of the month so he could negotiate with the Draconis Mercurios and ensure that there would be no longstanding repercussions for these strangers'' actions, but even there he had no idea where to start. As long as the dragons were as confused as him about what was going on, they might not know who to blame. Once he started talking, it would be very easy for them to jump on him as the problem. So long as Farshen only kind of knew what was going on, he was in no position to navigate the world he''d found himself in. And that was just one man. Not counting all the councilors clamoring for blood. Not to mention the merchants in an uproar. Not to mention the plague gradually creeping across the continent. Just thinking about it made him long for that moment of pure peace and clarity, before he''d started to refill his mind with duty and obligations, when it had been just him and the warm comfort of a fiery rebirth¡­ He stood and stretched, then rang for his assistant. "Is that Larenok fellow still around? I''d like to arrange another appointment."
"You called for me, your grace?" Larenok bowed obsequiously. "I am honored." "You''re in charge of that band of hooligans out in my courtyard, hauling up art from the dragon''s mountain?" Larenok saw no reason to deny it. He nodded. "Yes, lord king. I have been placed in that situation by circumstance. I assure you, most of them are unknown to me." "Yet I''m told you advocated strongly for my recruitment of half of them, and provided a substantial amount of their hiring fee up front." "What can I say, I know a good deal when I see one." "Since only half of them are in direct command of the Crown, any questions of reimbursement must also go through you. You understand the power that represents?" "I do." "Good. Then my first question: where is your partner?" Larenok frowned at the king, then promptly owed his head again. "Partner, my lord?" "Jair Welburne. He was seen to have stolen over a third of Veor''s royal treasures, and then threw them into the sea." Larenok stared, no longer even noticing how many protocols he was breaking by doing so. "He... what?" "Broke into the treasury, helped himself to all our most valuable possessions--our being the Kingdom of Veor--and then threw them into the ocean." "That... why?" He''d known the kid had some instability issues, but to take millions of nirei worth of priceless treasures and drop them into unsafe water? That was beyond stupid. He didn''t even have a word for how insane that was. "I was hoping you could answer." King Farshen squared up the stack of pages he''d been flipping through before Larenok arrived. "You''re working on Jair''s behalf, correct?" "Not to steal anything, only for our business. He''s known as the Phoenix Healer, I''m sure you''ve heard of him by now." "Yes, he came in and did his phoenix healing thing for me. Otherwise I would be in bed right now, rather than at my desk." "Oh? I thought you weren''t available until just before Solaria?" "Some things cannot wait." Farshen leaned down and pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk. "This is an itemized list of what was stolen. Not all of it has been independently appraised but you can see the approximate values in the far column here." Larenok looked it over, heart doing some sort of strange tight-heavy pulse as he read the numbers. "That''s a lot," he managed faintly. "You say Jair took all this?" "I witnessed it by pastseer personally. He hid his face, but the sword is unmistakable." Farshen chuckled mirthlessly. "If he''d waited a few days longer to heal me, I''d never have recognized it. Unfortunately for him, his timing isn''t well conceived." Larenok nodded. "I keep telling him to stick to my schedules. Not that we steal anything, or would. If he''s going rogue, I don''t know what to say. I''m in charge of setting up appointments and collecting payment." For a moment he opened his mouth to ask for payment right then and there, but remembered the eighty million nirei worth of treasures Jair had apparently stolen and held his tongue. "I have here the catalog of new items being brought in, as well as the finder''s fee for each." He passed over another sheet of paper. This one had numbers which looked a lot more reasonable. Unfortunately. "I''ll need to confiscate your entire share of the treasure to cover your partner''s theft. I''ll write out a fine for the remainder, to be paid incrementally as your business continues to generate revenue. Do you understand and accept these terms on behalf of your partner?" Larenok dazedly shook his head. "I can¡¯t make any guarantees. He''s been out of contact for days now, and unless he shows up to start fulfilling his side of all these healing deals, I won''t have any way to come close to repaying that." "I will not hold you personally responsible. We have our ways of locating people who are in default. You will still be required to surrender your share of the dragon treasure, however." Larenok sighed and waved a hand. "I accept the arrangement. My people won''t be happy, but I can manage them. If there''s enough more treasure to cover the full cost, I''ll expect full discretion over its disposition." "Fair. If you''re going to be managing the finances for your company, that falls within your jurisdiction. But I highly doubt it''ll come close. We''ve moved over half the hoard by now and the values hold steady." Larenok nodded glumly, suddenly more glad than ever that he''d been traveling with the expedition each day and slipping out a few unregistered bonuses for himself. "Of course, your majesty. Was there anything else?" "Well, now you mention it, I could use another visit from the Phoenix Healer," the king said offhandedly. "I''d be willing to waive eight percent of the outstanding obligations if you can get him here within the day." "The ways of the Phoenix Healer are mysterious," Larenok said with a frown. "How much can I get if I bring him here by the end of the week?" "How about this. For each day longer it takes, I''ll remove two percent from the waiver. So today is eight, tomorrow six, day after four, then two. If it takes longer than four days, I''ll simply pay the usual fee." Which was less than a fraction of a percent of the huge debt Jair had accrued. What was the kid thinking? This was insane even for him. Larenok had to respect the fact that he''d pulled it off--and was apparently being hired despite that, instead of hunted down as a fugitive-- but it was too late to change now. As soon as he got his hands on Jair, they needed to have a good long talk about responsibility, communication, and teamwork. How was Larenok supposed to manage his itinerary if the kid kept running off doing stuff like this? ¡°Understood, your majesty. I¡¯ll do my best to get in contact with him.¡± ¡°If you¡¯re unable to find Welburne, inform my staff and I''ll employ my own searchers. You may go." Larenok bowed and left, his habitual scowl growing on his lips. What in the world did Welburne think he was doing? As he made plans for hunting down his wayward partner, he didn¡¯t once think about the fact that he had obtained a substantial amount of potential leverage over Jair. Larenok¡¯s only considerations were how to get both of them out of this alive, free, and wealthy beyond belief.
70 - Very Awry Cartography is exceptionally difficult when one cannot even go within sight of running water. Were it not for lunar observation facilities studying the planet¡¯s surface, we¡¯d never know how many neighbors each continent may have. Whether a channel or an ocean, the separation is absolute.
With his plans for immediate departure foiled, Jair spent the morning meditating in the oasis to refill his inner mana cloud. It couldn''t be called a ''body'' yet, not even close. After some consideration, Jair concluded that Maelstrom¡¯s Darkflame failed to teleport Raina with him due to a few simple complicating factors. Maelstrom innately refused to cause her harm, therefore Jair¡¯s own resources would be used to fuel the transportation and rebirth. Thanks to his brush with the seascourge, Jair¡¯s manabody had been fully destroyed. Therefore, he no longer had the capability of powering spells, constructs, or abilities that drew on mana. Though Maelstrom acted with soulspell-level perfect efficiency, there had to be at least some power for something as dramatic as destroying and recreating a person. With Raina¡¯s own mana being off limits and Jair¡¯s nonexistent, they¡¯d need to either involve a third person as a battery or wait until Jair could reconstruct his manabody. As much as he¡¯d prefer to sit down and meditate for a week straight until his manabody could be returned to normal, the process of rebuilding took more than a constant power draw. There was a huge difference between empowering an existing manabody and rebuilding one from nothing. It needed time to coalesce before any drastic training methods would be effective. Once the boundaries were solid, he could stuff it with as much mana as he wanted and as long as he had the focus and willpower to hold it firmly in place his manabody would gradually integrate all of it. Without the edges firmed up, though, the ambient mana pressure would equalize and drain the power back out as quickly as he pulled it in. All of which meant that he had some free time between his morning and evening hours-long sessions of sitting and being painfully attentive to ongoing simple action that repeated with a tedium that threatened his sanity more than any number of chaotic upheavals. Today, he chose to use that time walking Vaes City. The capital of Veor was beautiful, he could grudgingly admit. Varied buildings in a similar but distinct style from the rest of the continent''s cities lined overly-broad grand roadways capable of supporting a full eelship. If eelships had needed roads. The city''s philosophy on architecture was to hire the best of the best, set them in competition against each other with only the most minimum of restrictions, and see what happened. As it turned out, what happened was a beautiful city with each block trying to outdo the last. It was a marvel of modern creativity pushed beyond reasonable extremes. Did the Baker''s Guild really need a twenty-story compound with sharp diagonal slopes and whole sections of mirrors down the angled sides? Perhaps not, but it did make for a dramatic statement. In any other city it''d be a stand-out spectacle. Here, it was just one more demonstration of peak Veori overspending. Astralla City liked to think it was something like Vaes City, but it was really no more than a cheap imitation. They couldn''t afford anything like the same scale of creativity, leading to their blocks feeling disjointed rather than seamlessly varied. There were a handful of places in Silvas and Parein, the twin trade cities, that came close to Vaes City''s level of architectural achievement, but not as many as one would expect. Those cities preferred efficiency over aesthetics, leading to large districts of blocky housing, extensive warehouses, and manufacturing facilities. Anything that could be done safely outside of the oases was shipped out, and everything that required the oasis was used to maximum efficiency. But Jair wasn''t here today to admire the architecture. He¡¯d begun to notice some aberrant consumer behavior and wanted to investigate, purely for curiosity¡¯s sake. He was used to having the economy play out in fairly similar ways, reacting predictably to his interference by injecting money into certain enterprises. To see people preferring different goods than he was used to was a pleasant surprise. He did so love it when unexpected events offset the predictable tedium of the day to day existence he¡¯d watched happen so many times. In today¡¯s instance of unpredicted chaos, a specialty diner Jair particularly enjoyed had experienced a sudden influx of customers. Normally, it was all but abandoned. Without his interference, it would go out of business within another two months. If he sponsored it directly, it could limp on another year before the owner¡¯s self esteem overtook his desire to keep going and he stopped accepting Jair¡¯s money. In fact, it seemed the food industry as a whole had been turned askew. Many of the businesses that had been in the process of failing had revived practically overnight. The competition between them for marketing power was obvious, as nearly all of them had hired one form of attraction or another to draw people in. It lent the place a rather carnival atmosphere he appreciated. Though the addition of waiting in line for his lunch wasn¡¯t his favourite, it did give him the chance to ask what was going on of the others nearby. ¡°Something about the king loosening restrictions and reinstating previous import standards,¡± seemed to be the gist of it. So, stabbing Farshen had done more than just make him willing to consider a proper reconciliation with his estranged prince, it¡¯d also let him objectively reassess the bizarre laws he¡¯d been setting in place. Good for him. Unfortunately, while Jair was attending to his purchasing, someone recognized him and within a few seconds he¡¯d gone from one more anonymous nobody to inundated with recognition as the Phoenix Healer. Where had that title even come from? It¡¯d spread far too quickly to be anything but intentional. Larenok¡¯s doing, probably. And wasn''t that ironic? The biggest thing Jair ever did, getting rid of a dragon matriarch, almost no one even knew. One unintended side effect of his sword''s ridiculous power, and everyone was all over him. It made him intensely miss the peace and calm of the Oriad, where you only had to worry about giant monsters eating your body and vampires overwriting your soul. Whispers followed him, but he''d started to get used to that. People tugged at his sleeve or tried to catch his eye, hoping to be noticed by the Phoenix Healer. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Fame was so tedious to deal with at times. He sighed and shrugged off the attention. He¡¯d waited this long, he¡¯d stick around long enough to collect his sandwiches before disappearing. Maybe that¡¯s what he should be doing with his afternoons. Rather than trying to squeeze some new revelation out of Veor, was there anything stopping him from just¡­ popping over to the Oriad for a few hours? Jair may not know where to find Eythron, but Qahrvirna''s tower was a place he was intimately familiar with. There was no reason he couldn''t stop by, introduce himself... Or, wait, at this point in the timeline, she''d still be hiding out from Cyrindenth, wouldn''t she? Even better, he could help her get past her personal dragon gatekeepers and maybe commission a dragoncube for later pickup. Or buy hers... Hmm. What sort of things did he have access to that Qahrvirna would want? Aside from his body and soul, of course. He collected his meal and began walking as he ate. The seasoning in this particular fish sandwich was one he¡¯d never found replicated elsewhere, and it invoked a sort of pleasant nostalgia that Veor rarely managed. Between the meal and his pondering, he successfully ignored the looks he was getting from everyone and anyone in sight. Any reason to delay? He¡¯d wanted to introduce Raina to his mentors, but there was no rule that he had to wait until she was able to travel before stopping in to say hello. He stopped by a butcher shop to pick up some extra large steaks, as a peace offering, then Maelstrom appeared in his hand. Even as he went to activate it himself, people crowded around, reaching out for it. ¡°Stay back, this isn¡¯t safe,¡± he tried, but they didn¡¯t listen. If anything they only pressed closer, grabbing for the sword. Very poor timing on their part. Jair and three other people disappeared in a burst of green fire. Instead of instantly reappearing in the crevice outside Mount Cyrindenth, Jair registered a sudden impact, then something was choking him. Not his sandwich, unfortunately. That would have been far preferable. He was in deep water. Panicked, he reached for Maelstrom. Any time you found yourself in water unexpectedly was very bad. Something gripped his arms, something else wrapped around his throat. He couldn''t move. He felt its breath on his back, like acid melting through his clothes and into the skin. Come on! Qahrvirna''s tower, then. Not the random cave. Maelstrom twisted in his grip, the hilt reshaping into something thin and covered with thorns. Jair may not be able to move his hand, but in the brief opening created by Maelstrom''s reforming, he squeezed down. Fire, darkness. Impact. Sinking through heavy water. Not again! Something was latched onto his leg, dragging him down. Not far away, the eldritch glow of something with a lot more teeth than the previous one came languidly drifting toward him, somehow closing the distance far faster than its movement would seem to indicate. Qahrvirna''s tower. Come on. Maelstrom''s thorns were still driven through his hand. Just as he''d done with Larenok, he held Darkflame active as he reappeared and disappeared faster than thought. Water. So much water. Even staying in each location only moments he kept accumulating injuries. If not for Darkflame returning him to full health each time, he''d have been torn to pieces. What is happening? The feeling was the same as when he¡¯d tried using a normal transit line across water, being grabbed out of nowhere midway and dragged down. Something tore Maelstrom from his grip and hurled it away. Jair choked on a mouthful of seawater at the unexpected jolt out of his strange surreal voyage, and it took him a moment to realize it hadn''t been just Maelstrom but his entire hand. He reconjured it to his other hand, but barely made it a few moments away before he was slammed back into the water again. He knew he''d traveled less far this time because he could recognize the thing that had torn off his hand, heading straight for him with hungry red pulses of light down its flexible blade appendages. Forget Qahrvirna, just get us somewhere safe! Anywhere! Darkness beyond darkness, no stars, no moons, no glimmer of torchlight. Pressure slammed into him, threatening to crush him. He was still choking, the darkflame rebirth doing nothing to remove the water from his lungs. Something had definitely gone wrong with his ears, but that was the least of his concerns. Nothing was waiting for him, but that only meant he had a few seconds to claw his way toward the surface in hopes of catching his breath before any other seascourge noticed him. He didn¡¯t make it anywhere close. Something rippling and glowing cut through the water toward him. He still had Maelstrom¡¯s thorns gripped in his hand. Darkflame flared up, and he was in more darkness. The pressure was the same, right at the edge of survivable, wreaking havoc on his body but nothing close to what the seascourge would have done to him. Again. Again. He had no idea where they were. They didn¡¯t seem to be getting anywhere. He felt a deep desperation and the sensation of running helplessly in circles, disconnected but deeply central to himself. Maelstrom desperately wanted to help, to get them out of this, but it had no idea where they were or where to go. It was moving them from random patch of ocean to random patch of ocean, anywhere out of reach of the enemy, but that wasn¡¯t a destination. Oddly, its panic was what snapped Jair out of it, as though transferring his own intensity away. It''s okay. You can stop. He had moments before one seascourge or another noticed them and came running, as they always did, but at least this time he''d appeared in a spot of Maelstrom''s choosing rather than being dragged in by something. There was nothing but water in every direction. More water than he''d ever imagined. He''d heard about oceans being deep, but the deepest lakes he''d swum in didn''t come close to this. He''d never survived long enough to even try swimming down, any of the previous times he''d landed in the ocean for whatever reason. And the creatures who lived here wanted nothing more than to tear apart the continents at their base and drown the entire world. He gripped down on Maelstrom''s thorny hilt and focused on the Vaes City square where he''d come from. If he couldn''t bypass the ocean to get to a different engaldria, maybe he could backtrack. It needed guidance. That had been the problem with Darkflame for the longest time, Jair not realizing what he was supposed to be providing to the equation. Go back. Maelstrom lit up with golden light. The pattern of his soul burst through him like an intricate laser grid the size of his entire being. Jair stumbled into one of the people next to him as he stood waiting in line. His body felt strangely light, the sound was briefly overwhelming after the dead silence of the deeps, and Maelstrom was nowhere to be seen. The moment he thought that, it appeared in his hand, thorns and all. He gripped it reflexively tight, though blood seeped between his fingers and ran down the pommel. People reached out to touch the blade, but Darkflame wasn''t active at the moment so they only cut themselves for their trouble. Jair had the distant impression Maelstrom helped itself to a sliver of their souls anyway, but right now he was in no condition to care.
71 - Temporal Dominion So You Want To Be A Sandfisher? Join our simple thirty-six day correspondence course and learn the secrets of this oft-overlooked class option! Sandfishing is a Veori tradition going back to before the first oases were discovered, and you too can be a part of this historic occupation. Act now for a 10-nirei discount on your first lesson!
Jair managed to walk far enough to locate a bench, stunned and hyperventilating. He¡¯d been in close calls before, but that was by far the most prolonged and terrifying thing he¡¯d ever experienced. People murmured and reached for him, offering help, asking if he was alright. Part of his mind was stuck teleporting in desperate circles in the heart of the ocean with no way of knowing if he was even moving in the right direction. Deep enough to have no stars and no hope to guide him. The memory had seared itself deep, replaying so intensely even the darkflame rebirth did nothing to ease his mind. Or... had it even been Darkflame? It felt different. He gripped Maelstrom tighter. Only the fact that he could still breathe prevented him from trying to teleport away, but given how fixated his mind was at the moment he¡¯d not end up anywhere good. Someone tried to pry his fingers open and he lashed out. Darkflame flashed and the person disappeared, and did not reappear. Well, he''d been mentally drowning in the ocean, so... Briefly he wondered if there was any way to rescue whoever it had been, but his mind flinched away. He couldn''t even imagine choosing to take himself back into that. "Sorry," he murmured, then thought of Raina''s study. Darkflame brought him there in an instant, along with two people who''d grabbed Maelstrom''s blade despite having seen one of their fellows disappear completely. Jair glowered at the idiots as they let go of the blade and looked around in confusion. "This is starting to get tiresome." With a quick slash that burned through them both, he sent them to the Institute dome. He had no idea what the state of the academy was at the moment and he didn''t care. Raina wasn''t in her study, but a quick search of the house and conversation with Carn located her sitting in one of the oasis gardens, working on her manabody. Jair burst into the area far enough away not to disturb her. He just had to be sure she was still here, that he hadn''t somehow dragged her along into the ocean and left her behind. He knew it was impossible, but the more confirmations he had that fate had it out for his friend the more reasonable absurd scenarios like that started to sound. She was here. He was here. His soul had been clawed at, some of the outer pieces were damaged, but he was alive. Maelstrom''s integrity was at 98%, reflecting the damaged state of their shared soul, and Jair had the distinct impression that it would have been lower if not for the idiots hitchhiking a ride. "We''ve got to stop doing this," he told Maelstrom wearily. "I don''t even know what this is, but it''s clearly not where we belong." Maelstrom flickered with green fire, a glint of gold deep in its core. Jair considered it, the sleek curve of its blade as it narrowed to a point, the deep darkness of its runnel hiding a window into their soul, the hilt with its thorns. "You couldn''t stab me yourself," he mused, rolling the blade from hand to hand. "Even to save our soul from destruction, I needed to be the one to break the skin." Maelstrom slowly reshaped as he passed it from hand to hand. The thorns withdrew, the hilt returned to its normal comfortable spiral, but with a razor-thin blade twisted into it. Less invasive than the thorns, only enough to make the shallowest of cuts, but would require only the slightest pressure. No more wasting a quarter second reaching his thumb across to the blade, the faintest flex of his hand would suffice. Jair sat down. He looked over at Raina, confirming again that she was alive and safe. He couldn''t bring her with him using Darkflame until he had a functional manabody, or at least a manacore, but that didn¡¯t mean he had to leave her behind. He''d slipped back into solo mindset without noticing, going off to do his own thing as though no one else in the world mattered. Though everything in his body demanded action, some odd mix of panic and aggression and relief and anger, he forced himself to relax into the tedium of collecting and compressing mana that he couldn''t sense or feel. The only indication he had was the faint drifting lights that floated throughout the oasis. They began to slowly move toward him instead of continuing on their aimless way, a clear indication that the ambient mana flow was being disrupted. By the time Raina finished her meditation, he''d accumulated enough mana that he could vaguely tell it was there. If not for his years of extensive focus and hypersensitivity, he''d not have noticed the tiny wisp of fog-like power he''d collected. Clear progress in one way, at least. He stood and walked over to join Raina, but didn''t once let go of Maelstrom. She stretched and yawned. ¡°Won¡¯t miss this once we¡¯re on the road, I can tell you.¡± Then she caught sight of him properly and one hand jumped to her forehead, Tempest appearing in the other as though about to jump to his defence. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± ¡°Nothing.¡± Jair shook his head and waved her down. ¡°I¡¯ve learned one of the limitations of Darkflame. It operates on a similar principle to standard transit, so crossing water is not an option.¡± Raina¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°You¨C you didn¡¯t. Are you¡­ how did you¡­?¡± ¡°Time traveler, still. Thankfully. I don¡¯t think I¡¯d have escaped if not for that.¡± He glanced down at Maelstrom, the golden glint of Temporal Reversion in its core. ¡°It¡¯s not like it used to be. I was expecting the timefall, the cliff to still be there. Instead it¡¯s more like Darkflame. I need to think of the time and place when I activate it. At some point I¡¯d like to test it further, but¡­ not today.¡± ¡°You look terrible.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be fine.¡± ¡°You should sleep.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t need it. Darkflame¡ª¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t a substitute for proper rest.¡± Stolen story; please report. ¡°I¡¯ve spent hours every morning meditating.¡± ¡°Not resting.¡± Jair wanted to argue, but he didn¡¯t have the energy. He felt deeply drained, and the exhaustion of the meditation effort didn¡¯t help. As long as he¡¯d been ignoring it, he could keep ignoring it, but now he¡¯d been made aware of it, Raina¡¯s suggestion that he sleep sounded awfully nice. She must have seen his acceptance, because she stopped arguing and took his arm instead. ¡°Let¡¯s get you home.¡±
¡°I¡¯d like to test time traveling.¡± ¡°Good morning to you too. Did you sleep well?¡± ¡°Yes. I don¡¯t want to surprise you too much if I start behaving very differently over the next several hours. Or days. Depending on how it goes.¡± Raina considered this a long moment. "What does that mean, really?" "I don''t know for sure." Jair hesitated. "This feels wrong, but I have to know.¡± ¡°Okay. Then do it.¡± Jair looked around at the room, memorized the slant of the sunlight, the curious tilt of Raina¡¯s head, the glint in her eyes. This moment. ¡°Alright, ready. What do you want to do when it¡¯ll never have existed?¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t done it yet? I thought you could come back in time. Shouldn¡¯t you already know all my secret desires?¡± ¡°We have to live through it before I can revert it.¡± Jair tilted his head as a thought occurred to him. ¡°I wonder if¡­¡± he grinned mischievously. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go out back. I want to test something.¡± The Serin townhouse had a sizeable courtyard, ideal for doing things like training with your friends. Jair drew Maelstrom and stood in the traditional ready stance. ¡°Let¡¯s fight.¡± ¡°Is this to do with time travel?¡± ¡°Yes. Join me.¡± He gestured with Maelstrom. Raina took her own stance, hand on forehead, other extended, and Tempest appeared. Maelstrom flickered with a crisscrossing maze of golden lines, glow pulsing up and down its length. Jair lunged, leaving himself intentionally open. Raina countered, and the fight was on. Jair maintained absolute attentiveness on the entire area as the fight progressed. It was an alteration of his usual style, since he was trying to remember it rather than just act through it. The difference in focus made it harder to keep up, especially since it was still only a couple weeks into his prime reversion and his body wasn¡¯t wholly up to speed. Raina tapped him a few times, but pulled her strikes to avoid hurting him. She frowned in confusion at first, but as the fight went on she had no time for being anything but fully focused. She may have had a minor advantage, but he was far more used to ignoring his limitations and doing ridiculous things anyway. As it drew on, Raina began to tire, which seemed a good time to start experimenting. Without warning, Jair focused intently on the moment toward the start of the fight where Raina had first hit him. The distraction let her hit him again, but then Maelstrom flashed gold and he was a half-minute earlier. Jair had no time to react, Raina''s strike was already committed to, but that didn¡¯t matter. He let himself fall backward, catching himself against the wall, laughing. Raina frowned. ¡°You alright? I didn''t hit you that hard.¡± ¡°I can do it. It doesn¡¯t have to be¡­¡± with a thought, golden light flared up. He had no time to react, she¡¯d already committed to the strike. He couldn¡¯t remember clearly before, the different stages of the fight blurred together. ¡°I don¡¯t have to rely on ledges any more. I can micro-revert.¡± No more falling past the place he was aiming for, no more being forced to relive weeks to redo an hour. He¡¯d need to practice a lot, increase his memory tracking capabilities, but this was an absolute revelation. As long as he remembered it, he could revert to it. He ran a hand across Maelstrom¡¯s surface fondly. Anywhere, any time. ¡°I wonder if it works on other people.¡± Darkflame was also intended as a self-application ability, but Maelstrom could forcefully apply it to others. He may not be able to stab Raina for the moment, but he did have other people available. He reverted to the room upstairs, the moment he''d fixed in memory. Raina stared at him, curious. ¡°I¡¯m going to go into town. Remember, this timeline doesn¡¯t exist, so do whatever you want.¡± He left her standing there and darkflamed himself to Vaes City. Apparently the scene the previous afternoon had caused enough of a stir that people didn¡¯t feel quite so comfortable running up and grabbing his sword. Good. That was annoying all around. But he may as well exploit his fame, since he was here anyway. ¡°I¡¯ll give a free phoenix purge to anyone willing to test my time travel spell,¡± Jair called out. ¡°First five applicants only. No refunds.¡± Hesitant they may be, but there was still a rush the moment he indicated he was open for business. No one pressed into his personal space, but they did shove each other to try and reach him. Jair thought back to the moment he¡¯d entered the city. ¡°If any of you notice you¡¯ve gone back in time, come to that square over there and you¡¯ll get your purge. Ready?¡± The gathered people nodded eagerly. Jair gave a quick swipe of his sword, focusing on Temporal Reversion and holding the time of his arrival in his mind. The world flickered. The other people walking by abruptly shifted forward a few paces, as though an interruption to their progress hadn¡¯t occurred. The chosen people who¡¯d been standing next to him now stood in the square instead, looking uncertain as they tried to catch his eye. Were they supposed to wait there, or come over¡­ what was he doing? Interesting. That was not the outcome he¡¯d expected, but it made sense. Jair dusted off his robe, then turned toward the gathered five people. ¡°You all time traveled?¡± Nods. ¡°How far?¡± ¡°A few minutes. I didn¡¯t quite believe it at first, but everyone was doing the exact same thing they just did.¡± The woman shivered. ¡°Creepy.¡± ¡°Yep. You¡¯ll get used to it.¡± Another sweep of the sword, Darkflame trailing in its wake, and Jair¡¯s promise was fulfilled. The people looked immediately more relaxed and less exhausted. They gave him smiles and thanks and went on their ways, chattering about how fortunate they were. Jair thought back to just before he¡¯d shouted his offer, when he¡¯d been meandering through town, and sliced his hand on Maelstrom¡¯s hidden blade. Temporal Reversion. An elegant tracery of golden light tore through him. He stood a few steps back from his previous location, half a minute previously. Looking around, he found the people he¡¯d reverted already standing in the square. They watched him uncertainly, unsure whether to stay in place or approach. The woman he¡¯d been talking to patted herself down with a frown, as though checking for damage. How about the exact moment he¡¯d sent them to? He wanted to see their full reaction, not just the outcome. Would they still retain memory of the reversion, or would his own new loop overwrite theirs? A flash of gold, and he was back in the square. At the same moment, the selected people looked around in surprise, then started towards him. ¡°It¡¯s not going to do that many more times, is it?¡± the woman he¡¯d been talking to asked uneasily. ¡°The first time was bad enough. When you say we¡¯ll get used to it, how many do you plan on us doing? I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯ll be worth it.¡± Jair frowned, then chuckled. ¡°How many times have you done so far?¡± ¡°Two, but one stopped midway for a second.¡± ¡°Huh. Interesting. It should have been one, according to my calculations.¡± ¡°Should have? You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re doing?¡± ¡°I did say it was a test. Does that mean you¡¯re permanently integrated into Temporal Reversion now? Or just that you¡¯ll remember this specific period of time no matter how many times I reverse it?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t sign up for permanent anything,¡± one of the men said angrily. ¡°You said test, not lifetime enslavement.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t be a slave, don¡¯t worry.¡± Jair grinned down at Maelstrom. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you know how to unloop these fine people from our timeline?¡± Maelstrom¡¯s brightly glowing golden tracery dimmed and its silver edges glinted. ¡°Yeah, I still don¡¯t speak soulsword. You¡¯re really going to need to simplify it for me if you want me to understand.¡± Jair focused back to the moment in Raina''s study, the angle of the light through the balcony door, and activated Temporal Reversion. A flash of golden light, and he was gone.
72 - Not Alone While each class has some specific features unique to itself, many abilities are shared across multiple disciplines. It has even been postulated that all abilities are accessible by multiple classes, and we simply do not know the correct conditions to unlock the unknown combinations. However, this assertion is impossible to prove either way, so it is generally accepted to be pointless conjecture.
Jair stood in afternoon sunlight in Raina¡¯s study. Raina stared at him, curious. "Something went a little strange, I think.¡± She smiled. ¡°Oh? The test didn¡¯t go as you expected?¡± ¡°It did not. I¡¯d bring you with me to demonstrate, but¡­¡± he extended Maelstrom toward her and once again the sword disappeared the moment its blade touched her. ¡°Until my manabody is back up and running, I can¡¯t use our soulspells on you.¡± ¡°Did you say ¡®our¡¯?¡± ¡°Maelstrom¡¯s and mine. We¡¯re the same, it¡¯s all my soul, but because it¡¯s a separate physical entity it¡¯s¡­ hard to explain.¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t lost your mind from too much tangling time?¡± ¡°Lost sounds so unintentional.¡± Raina chuckled. ¡°So it¡¯s long gone either way.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been struggling to understand it myself. Maelstrom doesn¡¯t have a mind, but it does have reflexive behaviors, and its powers react to my thoughts and intentions.¡± He held up Maelstrom. ¡°Isn¡¯t that right?¡± Green fire flickered down its length. ¡°My current theory is that the problems arose from me unconsciously attributing too much agency to what is, in actuality, an extension of myself. I realized that when I fell in the sea, when I said ¡®get us out of here¡¯ and we ended up going in random circles. If Maelstrom were capable of thought and memory, it would know better. If it were capable of reasoning, it would have taken us back to where we started the moment the first seascourge intercepted us rather than letting me keep trying to move forward.¡± ¡°But you still talk to it?¡± Jair shrugged, and Maelstrom¡¯s blade shimmered with golden patterns. ¡°I did that long before it started answering back. It¡¯s lonely to be the only real person in a world of shadows and memory.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re sure it¡¯s not its own person?¡± ¡°Yes. I¡¯d started to think of it that way, when Temporal Reversion didn¡¯t work after you were kidnapped, to think that Maelstrom was holding me back for some purpose or through knowledge. Turns out, it was just another instance of our soulspells having changed. It wasn¡¯t Maelstrom holding me back, it was that I didn¡¯t know how to use Temporal Reversion.¡± ¡°How drastically did it change?¡± ¡°Before my powers were bound into Maelstrom, Temporal Reversion was something I¡¯d activate as its own ability. Then I¡¯d be in timefall, and try to pull myself out at the place I wanted. Whenever I tried to use it up to now, that¡¯s what I was doing. ¡®Go back¡¯, but not to a specific time. Just like how Darkflame was recreating people in the same location they¡¯d been when I first stabbed them until I knew to try sending them elsewhere, Temporal Reversion couldn¡¯t take me back until I tried to travel to a specific time. It¡¯s a subtle shift in perspective.¡± ¡°Oh. So it isn¡¯t different, just an adjusted approach.¡± Raina sounded disappointed, for some reason. ¡°It¡¯s very different. A lot more powerful, for one. That¡¯s what I was testing with the practice fight, if it could let me act as an effective battle-seer. It¡¯ll take a lot of practice, and I¡¯m not sure how well the added focus on memory will last in the long term, but at least for the short term it¡¯ll make me vastly more effective.¡± He couldn¡¯t help thinking back to his last desperate run up Mount Sanctum, the days of preparation necessary for every single try, even if all he wanted to change was jumping a chasm with one foot or the other to avoid stumbling later on. If he¡¯d been able to micro-revert back then, he¡¯d have only needed a few years to optimize, instead of decades. How many thousand times had he lived that same week? Never again. ¡°Practice fight?¡± Raina asked. Jair waved a hand at the balcony door. ¡°In the future. I am really looking forward to being able to bring you back with me, that¡¯ll make this all so much easier.¡± ¡°Haven¡¯t you been working toward this for centuries? Surely you had some plan in place for once you actually succeeded in saving me.¡± ¡°Well¡­ we would go explore the world together. Have adventures. I¡¯ll introduce you to my mentors and friends from the future, you¡¯ll get to see all kinds of wondrous places and kill fantastical beasts¡­¡± he shrugged. ¡°Not the sort of thing that requires a minute by minute itinerary. Just¡­ live. Maybe save the world a time or two, if that¡¯s what we decide.¡± ¡°And you think we can do all that without needing to revert time once?¡± Then she laughed and shook her head. ¡°Look at me, already assuming¡­ But it¡¯s true, isn¡¯t it? Most people have regrets. Make mistakes. You can¡¯t imagine that we¡¯ll both go for our whole lives without wanting to undo something.¡± ¡°Apparently I can¡¯t even go a week,¡± Jair admitted ruefully. ¡°I wasn¡¯t planning to revert, but¡­ seascourge. Would rather not get my soul eaten today. And now I know it¡¯s possible, I¡¯m¡­¡± He grinned and sighed happily. ¡°It felt restrictive, knowing I had no backup. If things went wrong, they¡¯d just be wrong. I don¡¯t like that.¡± ¡°Are you addicted to time travel?¡± ¡°No. I think I¡¯ve proved I can adapt without it. But knowing I have it back is a big relief.¡± ¡°Mmm.¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Are you alright?¡± Jair turned back to look her over. ¡°You¡¯re acting a bit odd today.¡± ¡°Am I? Isn¡¯t that the point, when you¡¯re going to be undoing things, to be whatever we want?¡± ¡°Are you¡­ jealous?¡± ¡°Of what?¡± Raina laughed. ¡°Maelstrom? No, I don¡¯t envy your relationship with your sword. Besides, I have Tempest and he¡¯s not even reforged yet.¡± Jair raised an eyebrow. ¡°He?¡± ¡°I mean¡­¡± ¡°What¡¯s wrong, then?¡± ¡°I¡­¡± Raina looked away and took a long breath. ¡°I don¡¯t understand. Why are you here?¡± ¡°If you¡¯d prefer I go elsewhere¡ª¡± ¡°No, not¡­ I don¡¯t mean¡­ but the whole¡­¡± She shook her head, flustered. ¡°From everything you¡¯ve told me, after you¡¯ve done so much, why are you holding yourself back for me? You could be off doing anything, but you¡¯re sitting around in my back courtyard. I don¡¯t know what to think. I¡¯m not unhappy about it, but I don¡¯t like feeling that I¡¯m holding you back.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not.¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t I? You¡¯re asking permission before doing tests with your power, talking about how you can¡¯t wait until you can drag me along with you, but what¡¯s the point? Why would it be better to have me along? I¡¯m not¡­ I don¡¯t¡­¡± She shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t understand. It¡¯s one thing when we¡¯re kids planning to go exploring together, but you¡¯re¡­ how old now? And you¡¯re still fixated on me? Isn¡¯t that a little¡­ obsessive?¡± ¡°I made a promise.¡± She stared at him, and when he didn¡¯t say anything more she laughed and shook her head. ¡°That¡¯s it? You made a promise.¡± ¡°I did. We promised to be there for each other. For a long time, I couldn¡¯t be there for you. Now I can.¡± Raina took a long time before answering. ¡°I don¡¯t know what to say. I can¡¯t imagine going so far. Even for you. It¡¯s unbelievable.¡± ¡°That¡¯s alright. I don¡¯t expect you to.¡± ¡°But you expect it of yourself?¡± Jair chuckled humorlessly. ¡°You have no idea how little there is left to constrain me. Past a certain point, why does anything matter? When I can undo existence at will, nothing and no one can stop me. Until recently, they could prevent me from reaching goals or fulfilling specific desires, but with Maelstrom the way it is now? Even that would be laughable. I removed Ryenzo Draconis single-handedly. I¡¯ve escaped from the seascourge twice in the past week. Kings, emperors, adventurers, warriors? None of them can touch me. I can rise from my own ashes even if I don¡¯t go back before they ever contemplated attacking me to end the threat before it begins. Rules? Laws? Utterly meaningless.¡± "What does this have to do with me?" ¡°You are my friend, Raina. My first, oldest, friend. The one who showed me what that¡¯s even supposed to look like. I don¡¯t know who I¡¯d have become if I hadn¡¯t had you all those years, but that Jair would be a whole lot more likely to cause an apocalypse than me.¡± ¡°Wait, apocalypse?¡± Jair waved it away. ¡°One of my seer friends thinks I¡¯m going to annihilate all life or something. Not going to worry about it.¡± Raina choked out a laugh. ¡°That seems like something worth worrying about.¡± ¡°If you pay attention to a seer, they¡¯re in control. The only way to deal with them is ignore them completely.¡± ¡°Even if that means you might destroy the world? I thought you were joking.¡± ¡°I was. Being serious is boring. But that¡¯s not the point.¡± He took her hand in his. ¡°If you hold me back, it¡¯s because I want to be held back. You¡¯re an anchor in a trackless desert where I could lose my way if left untethered. You¡¯re the most important thing to me because that¡¯s what I chose to dedicate myself to. Not because I have to, not because you need someone looking out for you.¡± ¡°Clearly I do.¡± ¡°No. No one could have dealt with Ryenzo alone. That¡¯s not weakness on your part, it¡¯s overwhelming strength on hers. It took me countless lifetimes to find a way. You¡¯ve been my guiding star even when you were long dead, and now it¡¯s my turn to repay the favor. You kept me from losing myself completely. Compared to that, what¡¯s a few days sitting around?¡± ¡°You make me sound very grand and noble.¡± ¡°Are you not? Lady Serin, Heir to House Serin?¡± ¡°You know what I mean.¡± ¡°If my presence makes you uncomfortable, I will leave.¡± ¡°No, I¡¯m not trying to get rid of you, I just¡­ wanted to understand. I don¡¯t think I¡¯m nearly as special as you¡¯re making it out, but you¡¯re one of my closest friends too. Even if you¡¯ve been gone a long time and come back so much more experienced and powerful, I don¡¯t want that to change.¡± ¡°Good! Nothing to worry about, then. We¡¯ll go on being friends and start having adventures together. Get Tempest reforged, slay a few dragons, find your ascension path, introduce you to Eythron and Qahrvirna¡­¡± ¡°Slay a few dragons, huh?¡± ¡°Small ones. Not like Ryenzo. But even if I have slain a dragon, since I technically used the seascourge to do it, the title didn¡¯t assign. It¡¯s unofficial. Anyone with a strong enough analysis could see that I¡¯m unregistered.¡± ¡°Ah, yes, must protect your dragonslayer reputation.¡± ¡°Reputation is important. If you can¡¯t convince people that you¡¯re worth their time, it makes a lot of things far harder than they need to be.¡± ¡°Like insisting you can¡¯t go anywhere until you can teleport there directly?¡± ¡°There¡¯s another option?¡± Jair gasped. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you mention this before?¡± Raina laughed and shook her head. ¡°You¡¯re in such a rush. For someone who¡¯s been patiently chipping away at this problem for centuries, you don¡¯t seem to do a lot of waiting patiently. Or thinking things through.¡± ¡°Who needs to stop and think? Waste of time. Better to try things until one works.¡± ¡°You know, you probably could have cut a few decades off your many, many times repeating the same things if you¡¯d tried approaching it from different angles.¡± ¡°Or I might have spent so long jumping about from strategy to strategy that I missed something obvious the first time that could have been solved by iterating. There¡¯s no way of knowing in advance what¡¯ll work or not work, and as long as I get to the solution eventually, it doesn¡¯t matter.¡± ¡°That¡¯s an interesting philosophy. I bet it got you killed more than a few times.¡± ¡°Yep.¡± He shrugged. ¡°If I couldn¡¯t handle being eaten a time or twenty what kind of time traveler could I even call myself?¡± Raina chuckled softly. ¡°Thank you.¡± ¡°For?¡± ¡°All of it. Bringing me along. Putting so much of yourself on the line for me. Anyone else would have gone off without a thought. I can¡¯t think of anyone who would have gone so far as you have.¡± ¡°So we¡¯re both extraordinary and special. Sounds like we¡¯ll make a good team.¡± ¡°I¡¯m serious.¡± ¡°Boring. I prefer being earnest. Maybe you should practice.¡± ¡°Or maybe you should practice being serious.¡± ¡°I¡¯m very good at it. Doesn¡¯t mean I want to go around being serious all the time. Trust me. Life¡¯s a lot more fun when you stop worrying about ¡®should¡¯.¡± ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound like something you should stop worrying about.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°Then maybe you should come out back and help me practice my battle-looping. I¡¯d like to be able to revert mid-fight without getting myself stabbed every time.¡± ¡°Alright. But after we finish, I¡¯m going to arrange a sandskimmer to Aeiti. You promised to show me your home village, and I¡¯m done accepting ¡®darkflame won¡¯t work yet¡¯ as an excuse. People have been taking and receiving deliveries from the sandmarshes for generations, and none of them had the ability to instantly teleport.¡± ¡°Actually, there have been three different people with the ability to teleport instantly between known locations born in Veor over the past two hundred years. Not counting me. I definitely wasn¡¯t born with the ability.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t think you can distract me with trivia. If you have a reason for us to not do this, say it plainly. If not, I¡¯m doing it.¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°Go ahead. It¡¯s been a very long time since I¡¯ve visited my family.¡± He smirked mischievously. ¡°I wonder what they¡¯ll think of who I¡¯ve become?¡± Raina summoned Tempest. ¡°Let¡¯s get this training done, and then we can find out.¡±
73 - The Old Homestead The all-new Akimari Whisperblade is the sword you never knew you needed! It¡¯s invisible, intangible, and sharper than a sarcastic advertisement! Place your pre-orders now, and get a second Whisperblade absolutely free of charge. Astound your friends and deter your enemies with this once in a lifetime special offer. *Quantities are limited, only available until people stop giving us money.
¡°Your destination is right up there,¡± their driver said, beginning to slow the sandskimmer. ¡°You can walk from the outpost to whichever village you¡¯re looking for¡ª¡± ¡°No, keep going. Marisbog is the furthest village and I want to be right in the middle of it.¡± ¡°Sandskimmers aren¡¯t made to travel that close to buildings,¡± the driver protested. ¡°I can¡¯t guarantee¡ª¡± ¡°Are you trying to make a spectacle?¡± Raina asked. ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Because it¡¯s easier to downplay pure chaos than to escalate from normalcy. If I act all standard-visit-y, then it¡¯ll be one gasp of shocked revelation after another. If I fly into the middle of town shouting about how incredibly powerful I am, people will see anything else as an improvement.¡± Raina pulled the collar of her robe up over her face until only her eyes were visible. ¡°Why am I traveling with you, again?¡± ¡°For fun!¡± ¡°Is that what this is?¡± ¡°Yes. Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯ll all make sense soon enough.¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t drive any closer.¡± ¡°Then get out of the way, I¡¯ll do it.¡± The driver¡¯s eyes bulged. ¡°Ahh, no, I¡¯m the only one authorized to operate this vehicle, if I let a civilian¡ª¡± ¡°Then drive us into the middle of town.¡± ¡°Do you have to terrorize the poor man?¡± ¡°Not if he¡¯d just do his job.¡± ¡°My job is to transport people across the desert! Not into the middle of a village. There are houses. There could be people. I¡¯m not going to recklessly endanger¡ª¡± ¡°Then I can easily relieve you of the responsibility.¡± Jair had Maelstrom out before either of the others could react. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ll be fine. I¡¯ll bring the skimmer along back once our visit is over.¡± The man backed away from the steering panel with his hands raised. ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this.¡± ¡°I know! I don¡¯t have to do anything, ever, so you¡¯re lucky I¡¯m in a good mood today.¡± A quick stab of Darkflame and the man disappeared, leaving the sandskimmer to drift. Jair ran over to the controls and expertly shifted the lift and yaw to bring them around in a wide sweeping curve toward the village. Raina bit her lip. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I should be laughing or horrified.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± Jair pointed to one of the short balance wings at the rear of the vessel. ¡°Grab that and lift it about halfway. It¡¯ll resist, so be ready.¡± Raina¡¯s bemusement turned to fear as the village¡¯s outermost buildings loomed nearer. With a quiet yelp, she ran to the fin and did as instructed. It slipped out of her hand the first time Jair tried to execute the hop-jigging maneuver to straighten them out from their curve, but the second time she held it steady and they were able to correct course right on time. The first buildings, a pair of storage houses beside the sand-dock, whipped past with barely a handspan to separate them from the side of the ship. Jair laughed aloud and pushed the skimmer to speed up, wind ruffling his hair and throwing dust into their faces. ¡°This is insane!¡± Raina shrieked, but she was laughing too. ¡°I can¡¯t believe we¡¯re¡ª¡± ¡°Let go now!¡± She jumped back as though it¡¯d burned her, and Jair executed a much sharper hop in the other direction as they reached the center of town. The sandskimmer dipped sharply, one side dragged on the stone of the road, and it lost all momentum. With a dull thud, it settled just short of the general store. ¡°Hmm,¡± Jair mused. ¡°We seem to be making a minor spectacle.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d be concerned with that.¡± Jair grinned. ¡°I prefer to be a much larger spectacle.¡± He tossed Maelstrom into the air at head-height, activated Bladewalk, and flipped himself up to stand atop it. ¡°People of Marisbog Village! I, Jair Welburne, have returned!¡± Maelstrom flared brilliant silver with flickering black flames dancing at the edges. He reached down for Raina with one hand. ¡°Care to join me?¡± She gestured around helplessly. ¡°I can¡¯t jump that high.¡± Maelstrom drifted lower, until it was closer to waist-high, and Raina took his hand and hopped up. ¡°What¡¯s the purpose of this?¡± she muttered, smiling and waving to the people peering out their windows at the duo as though she were on a parade. ¡°Trying to see if you¡¯re easily embarrassed. The answer is, yes, but it doesn¡¯t stop you.¡± Raina put a hand to her cheek with a grimace. ¡°Cheater. Also, ¡®easily¡¯? This is not even remotely standard behavior.¡± Jair raised his voice again. ¡°Does anyone know if Zaen and Kyami are at home?¡± ¡°They¡¯re out fishing,¡± shouted one older man, throwing his window open to glare at them. ¡°You¡¯re gonna leave your boat there?¡± ¡°Of course not.¡± Jair gave Maelstrom a quick nudge to send them floating toward the back docks. ¡°I¡¯ll be taking it with me when I go.¡± Raina kept smiling fixedly, but there was a hint of discomfort in her eyes as she glanced around at the sparse houses. ¡°This is really your village?¡± ¡°Not any more. It¡¯s where I lived before I went to the Mageblade Institute, but it hasn¡¯t been ¡®mine¡¯ in a long time.¡± ¡°And I thought the academy was underwhelming¡­¡± The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Not what you expected?¡± She shrugged and her smile cleared. ¡°I¡¯ve heard people live like this, I just never actually knew what it looked like. It¡¯s surprising, that¡¯s all.¡± ¡°Surely your fancy schools have drawings?¡± ¡°Of course I know what it looks like, but it¡¯s different to stand in the middle of it.¡± Jair waved cheekily to the glaring old man before Maelstrom¡¯s drifting moved them out of his sight. ¡°Be sure to let them know I¡¯m here. I¡¯ll be at the house.¡±
¡°Lil! I¡¯m hooome!¡± Jair¡¯s family home was a two-story building, like most in Marisbog. "Jair!" Lilin frowned down at him over the upstairs railing, worry tinting her voice. "What are you doing here? Something go wrong?" "No, nothing''s wrong. Wanted to introduce you to Raina." "Oho, the mysterious girlfriend," Lilin singsonged. Her expression shifted to excitement in an instant. She vaulted the railing and landed halfway down the stairs, then bounded down the rest of the way two steps at a time. "Hello hello." "Hello," Raina said with a courteous nod of her head. "I am Raina Serin. Pleasure to meet you." "Lilin Welburne, nice to finally meet you too. This guy won''t shut up about you." She elbowed Jair in the side with a grin. "Makes you sound like a hero from the stories." "Indeed?" Raina raised an eyebrow at Jair. "A storybook hero, am I?" "Of course. Why would we be anything else?" "I half expected a proper goddess," Lilin continued, "though I can¡¯t say I''m disappointed." She ran her eyes over Raina''s face, her hair, the simple robe in quality fabric, then back at Jair. "I see she''s finally managed to convince you to upgrade your wardrobe too. I thought you were never going to change.¡± "I have indeed changed my standard attire," Jair admitted. "And I''m a full mageblade now, so it''s a reasonable time to swap out my old robes for something more combat-ready." "It''ll take more than a set of nice robes to make you combat ready," Lilin laughed. "Last time you were here, you couldn''t even out-wrestle a sandfish. Has that Academy gone and made you weaker?" "Any physical weakness I have experienced is the result of my own negligence and not external factors. I have taken steps to rectify the deficiency, and will be able to both hold my own in a fight and out-wrestle sandfish in the near future. I''m also a certified sandshark-rider now, if you''re interested in verifying my credentials for desert survival." "We don''t get many of those around here, things are too loosely packed for them to be comfortable, but you know that." She narrowed her eyes at him, grinning. "But, okay." She lowered her voice to whisper. "I won¡¯t poke holes in your story in front of your friend." ¡°All that means is that she''ll get a ride in a sandshark with me before you do," Jair answered mildly. "Unless you want to come with us." Lilin''s eyes widened. "That''s abrupt." Then she frowned. ¡°With you where?" "I''m setting out on my Reforging Quest, and your brother has agreed to accompany me.¡± "Oh, I''m sure you don''t want me along." "Actually, I would love to have you along." "Why?" Lilin frowned in confusion. "This some kind of ploy?" "We are fully capable of providing for ourselves and for you. There will be no obligation on your part, and you don''t have to worry about us overreaching or running out of resources." "I wouldn''t want to be taking advantage of your friend," Lilin said, eyes darting back and forth between Jair and Raina. "This is sudden." "Yes. Because I know if I give you too long to think about it, you''ll end up talking to Mother, and she will convince you that your entire destiny is to be here and take care of her." Lilin frowned at the casualness of Jair''s tone. "Your mother too, Jai." "You know there was more than one reason I left." Now it was Raina''s turn to look back and forth between them. "What am I missing?" "Nothing," Lilin said hastily. "My brother is somewhat separatist, is all." "I identified an environment in which I would not thrive, and took steps to distance myself from it." The words came out calm, free of any of the emotion that once would''ve colored them. He would protect his family, make sure they were safe, and take steps to prevent their assassination, but his parents had lost his respect a long time ago. "So you want me to disappear,¡± Lilin said quietly. ¡°Like you did." "I told you I was going to leave." "And I told you I wasn''t coming." "I was hoping you¡¯d reconsider, given that the situation has changed. It would no longer be a couple of penniless nobodies with no support. I can personally ensure we are never helpless or without resources again. I don''t want to see anything happen to you, Lil." "Why would anything happen to me? You said it yourself, I''m not going anywhere.¡± "We don''t have to decide this right now," Raina said. "This is something that¡¯s going to require thought. We''re in no rush, take your time and think it over. We¡¯ll be visiting a lot of different places, some of which will be dangerous. I can guarantee your brother¡¯s capable of protecting us no matter where we go. He''s not exaggerating about his skills. He killed a dragon to protect me, and a matriarch at that. If he can do that, I don''t think there''s anything left that can challenge him." ¡°Dragon?¡± Lilin stared at Jair like she''d never seen him before. "Dragon! Dragon?" Jair laughed. "Yes. Dragon. She was being a nuisance, so I got rid of her." Lilin stared speechless. "I should probably warn you, he''s not going to be anything like the person you knew. Any preconceptions you might''ve had, disregard them. Jair has changed in more ways than just getting a class." Lilin slowly nodded. ¡°You''re right, there is something different about him." Then she shook herself. "You¡¯re a guest. Come in, we shouldn¡¯t be standing in the entryway. Let me get you something to drink." Jair raided the cabinets and put together a simple casserole for their dinner. It was an old recipe, one he knew by heart. Rather tedious by now, but effective at providing necessary nutrition in an inoffensive way. At one point it had been his favorite thing to eat, but repetition wears away at natural preference. He¡¯d tried countless variations throughout the years, until he¡¯d thoroughly exhausted the potential of the dish and flipped back around to its original default. Lilin and Raina spent almost the entire time he was preparing it talking in the other room, and he left them to it. Seeing his sister again had stirred up a lot of half-forgotten memories¡ªnot all of it good¡ªand the methodical preparation with the distant background hum of their voices to remind him he wasn¡¯t alone made it easier to sort through his thoughts. He¡¯d considered Lilin his best friend for years, before he understood that friendship was something deeper than mutual necessity and obligation. She was the only one he¡¯d told about his application to the Mageblade Institute before getting his acceptance letter. He''d been wanting to get her out of their dead-end family ecosystem since before he got himself out. He''d offered to take her with him to Astralla City with the last of his savings, back when he first was accepted to the Mageblade Institute. Lilin had declined at that time, and every time since. But this was the first time he¡¯d brought Raina with him. Until now it¡¯d never been viable as an option, so of course he hadn''t. Lilin was prideful and stubborn, dedicated to an ideal that Jair wasn''t sure existed. She thought their family could be improved, healed from within. Perhaps it could be, but not by him. His presence only ever exacerbated things, never calmed them. Before he became a time looper and gradually disconnected himself from everyone he used to know, he had tried to keep everyone happy. When he first started looping, once he¡¯d accepted he needed something more to successfully save Raina, he''d tackled his sister next. With time at his mercy, he tried everything he could think of to resolve the perpetual tension within their household. He chose a side and played it through to the end. He chose a different side and saw that through. But time and again, he was forcefully reminded that promises to change were empty words. And Jair was not the right person to see those words fulfilled. He didn''t think Lilin was the right person either, though she stayed and tried as long as she lived. Sometime in the next two years¡ªa different time depending on what he did, but always inevitably¡ªshe disappeared. All his investigations, and he never found any reason for it. At least Ryenzo was a clear and specific threat. Overwhelmingly powerful, sure, but that was something that could be fought. An absolute unknown? She didn''t have a secret relationship going on, not a reliable one at least. Various flings with local boys didn''t count, since depending on how he maneuvered the situation she could be in any number of relationships or not at all. None of them ever got to the ¡®run away and disappear with me¡¯ level regardless of whether Jair interfered or not. It wasn''t a kidnapping or assassination as far as he could ascertain. It happened even in timelines where Jair did nothing to arouse any attention whatsoever, just as reliably as when he became a public figure and had half the noble factions coming after him. He¡¯d questioned her a hundred times to no avail. Whatever it was, it wasn''t something she was aware of. Sometimes he could delay the disappearance for months, though what exact actions of his made that change were hard to track. Even if he kept her in sight at all times, she would eventually disappear in the night without a trace. He could only hope Raina''s presence would be enough to change that.
74 - Revisiting I can¡¯t help but feel there¡¯s more to it. We¡¯re fighting a losing war of attrition against an enemy who could annihilate us at a whim. Why? What are they waiting for?
By the time Jair emerged with his hands full of dishes and a large pan of his signature tuber-and-fish bake, Raina and Lilin were sitting close beside each other on the sitting room sofa, talking animatedly. He sat down a towel to protect the dubious quality of the table¡¯s surface from the steaming hot casserole, then dishes for all three of them. He drew up a chair from the other side of the room, which placed him across the table from the two girls. He didn''t interject as they continued their discussion, one regarding the price of various fabrics, interspersed with the occasional pause to complement his cooking. Unsurprisingly, one or another of the king''s mad decrees had caused a disruption in the industry and now that he''d reversed it people were scrambling to adjust to the new economic situation. Overall, given that the restrictions had been prohibitive and frustrating for all involved, having the king lift them all would be in the long term a good thing for Veor''s economy. That said, the sudden burst of releasing them all at once may not have been the best way to go about it. Even Sekir, when he took over, repealed the decrees in a reasonable and gradual way, rather than cancelling all of them within the space of a week. Regardless, Lilin was eager to learn and Raina was happy to introduce her to the nuances of the fabric market. Watching the two of them side-by-side, chatting casually as they ate, they couldn''t have looked more different. Lilin was dark and drawn, brow furrowed with concerns that should not have been hers at such a young age. Raina was bright and curious, bearing far greater knowledge and far more dramatic pain with a grace even Jair could envy. After lunch, Raina excused herself to go walk around town. Jair offered to escort her, but she waved him away. "You should talk with your sister," was all she said. Jair started to put away the leftovers, while Lilin took the dirty dishes to the kitchen. He wasn''t sure what he was supposed to talk about. For several minutes, they both worked in silence, each occupied with their own task. "You know this sounds insane, right?" Lilin burst out. "You suddenly start winning competitions, hobnobbing with nobles? If it were that easy to break in to wealth and power, everyone would be doing it." Jair laughed. "Easy? You have no idea how many years of research have gone into this outcome." "Years?" Lilin turned her back on the sink to face him. "I know how long you''ve been gone, and I know what you were studying before that. Whatever this is, you hid it way too well." "I haven''t lied to you, Lil. My plans changed after I saw how things really are." "Oh? And how is that? Because I seem to remember you thinking that you could just work your way up by being good at what you did." Jair chuckled. "Yeah, the degree of excellence required to make that route viable is admittedly a bit beyond what I could manage in three years. But it''s not unattainable." "And Raina! Raina Serin," she emphasized the surname. "I''m supposed to believe that you two just happen to be friends? Someone in the highest echelon who just likes you inexplicably? What have you done to her?" Jair laughed, genuinely taken aback. "Of all the deception and disruption I¡¯ve had a hand in, Raina is the one thing I had nothing to do with. She came to my rescue when the rest of them wanted to force me out, and¡­" Jair shook his head fondly as he thought back. Those memories weren¡¯t memories any more, after so much time they were just stories he¡¯d retold himself again and again, but the emotion remained. "I didn''t quite believe it at first myself. There were a couple months where I was cold, perhaps. But our Raina is a stubborn one. Once she gets in her head she''s going to befriend someone, she won''t let you get away so easily." "See, that I believe. She seems the sort to take pity on the underdog, to want her own little project. But it''s been three years, Jai. Three years, and only now does she actually come visit, after you''ve become rich and famous." "That''s coincidental. My fame has nothing to do with her, nor does my wealth. They are independently earned." "That''s what you think. Who''s to say it isn¡¯t some ploy of hers?" Jair snorted a laugh. "If you''re trying to posit a conspiracy, you need to decide who is the aggressor here. Am I taking advantage of Raina, is Raina taking advantage of me, or are you taking advantage of us both?" "It''s not funny, Jair. This is very serious. If there''s something going on with either of you, or both of you, I need to know before I agree to leave everything and everyone I know and follow you into the unknown." Jair raised an eyebrow. He shoved the bowl of leftovers into the frost box and held out the empty pan to Lilin. She stood with crossed arms, not taking it. "So you''re actually considering coming?" "Raina said she can ensure our parents are looked out for, that I don''t need to be their caretaker. I don''t¡­" She stared into the empty casserole dish as though it held the secrets of life. "She said I''m plenty old enough not to be beholden to them. That I need to decide on my own what I want to do, rather than just letting time go by without me." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "Raina is a wise woman. Is traveling with us on ridiculous adventures all over the world and moons something you¡¯d enjoy pursuing?" "I don''t know." She reached out and took the dish from him, turned her back and resumed cleaning. "At one point I thought that''s what I wanted, but it''s been a long time since I seriously considered it. You can''t deny this isn¡¯t giving me a lot of time to think." "There''s no rush. Take as long as you need.¡± "Right now I don''t know what to think." "Clearly, or you wouldn¡¯t be accusing me and my friend of exploiting one another by turns.¡± "You know I don''t actually think that." "Do I?" "Yes.¡± She set aside the cleansed dishes and they walked back out to the living room. ¡°This is the kind of decision that would change all of our lives.¡± ¡°Good. It can''t be made lightly, but it has to be made soon." They sat. Lilin tucked her legs up under her, while Jair crossed one foot over the opposite knee. Neither spoke for a few minutes, then Lilin said quietly, "Funny how things change. I never thought that this would be an option, let alone so quickly. I always thought it would take months after you graduated at the very least." "I know it''s abrupt, I''m sorry. If I had any way to make this easier for you, I would. But opportunity doesn''t wait for convenience. We have until Terlunia if you want to come with us right away. After that if you want to join us, you¡¯ll have to send a message. We can arrange times to check in if you prefer, or¡ª" "You sound like you''re assuming I won''t come." ¡°Are you? I''ve seen no indication of your inclination to do such." Lilin shrugged and looked away. ¡°And you''ve been paying such close attention to me these years while you''ve been gone, have you?" ¡°I have. I¡¯ve never forgotten you.¡± Lilin frowned and turned back to search his face. ¡°You¡¯re not happy.¡± Jair smiled. ¡°Of course I am.¡± The facade came easily. Centuries of being anything and anyone made it trivial to inhabit any persona he needed at the time. ¡°No.¡± His sister shook her head and scooted closer to him. ¡°Don¡¯t try that with me. What¡¯s wrong?¡± ¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong. I¡¯ve killed the dragon, Raina¡¯s safe, we¡¯re about to go out and start her upgrades for Tempest. What¡¯s there to be unhappy about?¡± ¡°You tell me.¡± Jair dropped the pretense of happiness, face reverting to neutral as he stared out the window. ¡°I still can¡¯t do anything for you.¡± ¡°And that bothers you?¡± Lilin smiled, reaching up to rest one elbow on his shoulder. ¡°And here I thought you¡¯d decided not to care about us.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not used to being powerless.¡± Though that seemed to be an all too frequent circumstance lately. Even an archmage could be overwhelmed, and he was months away from reclaiming his rightful magical power. ¡°Guess that academy of yours really changed things, huh?¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t the academy.¡± "What''s this I hear about Jair coming home?" a gruff voice interrupted. Jair and Lilin looked up in unison. Their father stomped his way into the living room and frowned at the two of them. "What are you doing?" "Talking. Where''s Mother?" "Out back, tying up.¡± Zaen Welburne made a vague gesture as he stripped off his outer layers of dust-covered robe, leaving him wearing a loose grey tunic that didn¡¯t quite reach his knees. ¡°Weren¡¯t you supposed to be doing some big ceremony thing last week? I''d have thought you¡¯d be swamped with that for a while." "That was last week. Now I''m making travel plans. My friend Raina is about to begin her Reforging Quest and needs escorts." Zaen scoffed and shook his head as he threw himself into the largest chair. ¡°Don''t tell me after all this fuss you''re about to throw away your education for some girl. I don''t care how rich she is, your future is more important than whatever you''re feeling right now." Jair laughed at the irony. "What I''m feeling right now is a strong inclination to leave and never come back." ¡°Ungrateful brat. We''ve been getting by without you this whole time, let you run off to that fancy school of yours, and now even your expensive education isn¡¯t good enough for you? You¡¯d rather go running off with some rich girl. I''m surprised you bothered to come back long enough to say goodbye." "I didn''t. Raina wanted to meet my family. If not for that, you wouldn''t have seen me before graduation." Of course, by the time he reached graduation, Veor¡¯s economy would have collapsed, there would''ve been a minor war, potentially an assassination or uprising, or both, and the Astralla Institute would no longer be so liberal with allowing outsiders to visit¡­ so he wouldn¡¯t have to put up with Zaen then either. ¡°Think you¡¯re already too good for your family, do you?¡± If things had continued to play out the way they always used to, Jair would only have interacted with his parents when trying to safeguard them from assassins. He may not get along with them very well, but they were still family. And, more importantly, Lilin did care. For her sake, he would do a lot, whatever his own thoughts on the matter. "Please, don''t," Lilin said, standing. "Dad, there''s food in the box. Jair, why don''t you go help Mom tie up." Jair stood, but paused before grabbing his own over-robe. "Care to join me?" Lilin¡¯s eyes darted between the two men in the room. "I should probably¡­" "Jair, your sister¡¯s right. Go help your mother. Lilin, come." Lilin shrugged apologetically and followed Zaen into the kitchen. Jair knew better than to stay and listen, but he did it anyway. The low tirade about knowing her place, not trying to tell them what to do, and so on was all too familiar. Lilin always tried to make everything work, to find a compromise for the least unhappiness, but Zaen didn''t want to compromise. Jair had heard it all so many times before. It frustrated him for years, being powerless to do anything. But without Lilin agreeing to leave, there was nothing he could really do. Having unstoppable strength and destruction capability only went so far. Then again, he had a new weapon this time. Darkflame didn''t have to be only an expensive service for rich people. After all, if it had turned Larenok into an ally, maybe it could resolve the enmity within his household He''d have to try that sometime, catch each of them alone and see what happened. For all he knew, it might not even work. There were people whose physical injuries were healed and others for whom it did nothing. Some whose minds were cleared and refreshed, and others who only grew more confused or angry. He could always go back now, though, so he didn''t need to worry. If something went wrong, he once again had the fallback of Temporal Reversion. Speaking of going wrong, he couldn¡¯t help but notice as he walked around the house toward the back, Raina still hadn''t returned. There shouldn''t be any problem. Marisbog was a working village, small but not disorderly. The average crime was a disgruntled neighbor stealing credit for a shipment, or trying to sabotage your skimmer so they could get a few hours lead on you during a particularly tumultuous shift. But then again, they didn''t often see nobles wandering the streets alone. Then he shook his head at his own concern. As if Raina couldn¡¯t look after herself. Ryenzo may have been a bit much for her to handle, but any ordinary problems that arose¡­ she and Tempest could handle it.
75 - Revisiting (2) Caring for an eelship is no light undertaking. In addition to ensuring it has sufficient space to roam, it must be kept within a highly controlled environment of stable mana. Terlunia is their native habitat, though the protected domes of Zelura have been nearly as effective at keeping these transportation behemoths alive. The surface of Neptus itself, however, requires significant modification in order to satisfy their needs. While it is not harmful for them to be in such an oversaturated area for the hours necessary to load and unload their cargo, attempts to keep them over between lunar passages must be prepared for well in advance or you¡¯ll find yourself with a very dead eelship.
Dalin Larenok was having a very confusing week. From the moment Jair Welburne ambushed him in his own office, everything about his life had fallen perfectly into place. ¡­And then promptly went so completely off the rails that he was half convinced this was all some mage¡¯s construct of an illusion designed to drive him mad. The chance for fame and fortune and getting away from those brats at the Institute? He''d be a fool to turn it down. He''d fought and schemed his way into what wealth and power he could cling to, but Welburne was breaking all the rules and ignoring all the normal limits. If anyone could fully change the paradigms under which he lived, Welburne seemed perfectly poised to do it. A nobody from nowhere, who in the course of one week became wealthy, powerful, and adored? Who wouldn''t take the chance to latch onto a rising star like that? But then things got weird. Forget the attempts to slay ¡®a dragon¡¯ that turned out to be a dragon matriarch. Having the power of rebirth and near-complete healing, Welburne could solve problems that had plagued Veor for years now. The King''s gradual descent into abnormal behavior, Larenok''s own gradual decay and years of bitterness directed at everyone and anything that got in his way¡­ All of it lifted in a few moments by the madman¡¯s viridian flames. Which left Larenok with a ruined school, a destroyed career, and an employer/benefactor who told him to hire the best of the best Veor had to offer, and then disappeared. That on its own would''ve been irritating, but there were plenty of people with the power to locate a missing person. The bigger problem by far was the question of what exactly Larenok should do when he found the brat. Not only had their fortunes gone from a rising star and glorious wealth to desperate amounts of debt, but Welburne had also stolen half the Veori royal treasury, and accounts were still trickling in about other places he¡¯d robbed. As it turned out, Welburne¡¯s sudden fame and fortune was built on lies. He should have seen this coming. Normally Larenok would be much harder to swindle. But that fire¡­ He sighed and scowled at no one in particular. In the flurry of people coming forward after having been swindled, robbed, or blackmailed by Welburne, this rising star had taken a sharp turn into uselessness. Remaining attached to the fellow was no longer an asset, and would be a major liability if Larenok couldn''t extract himself soon. For the moment, however, even the king considered Larenok to be an integral part of Welburne''s retinue. He needed to find a way to resolve matters without entangling himself further. He¡¯d already spent most of his personal fortune covering the fees for all the people they''d hired. Mercenaries and warriors of the top caliber who¡¯d ended up doing nothing but carrying off treasures that they weren''t allowed to keep. Part of the necessary funds had been paid by Welburne''s stint as the Phoenix Healer, but now he was missing appointments and Larenok was beginning to think he hadn''t even bothered to inquire as to the new itinerary. No longer having any sort of power over the boy made things more difficult. Back when he''d been headmaster, and Welburne a student, he could demand the child attend him, and the child would come. He may be grumpy about it, Welburne liked to be a defiant ball of aggravation, but aggravation and defiance were preferable to this complete disappearance. ¡°Ahh¡­¡± the gasp of breath from the farseer across from him brought his focus back to the moment. ¡°I see. Yes, this is the one you seek.¡± "Well? Where is he?" ¡°The southern sandmarshes." Larenok frowned. If he recalled correctly, that was the boy''s original home. The region from which he''d originated. "Can you narrow it down from there" "I can. Do you have a map?" Larenok did, though not with him. "The longer I hold this information in my sight, the harder it will be to fully clarify." "I''ll get you a map." Luckily, the shop next door sold maps. Larenok immediately suspected there was a direct cause and effect to this, but either way it was convenient enough he couldn¡¯t argue. One that included the entirety of Veor was much more expensive than the smaller ones showing a specific town or city, and they didn¡¯t have any maps of the sandmarsh villages themselves. There was one with the overall region with small circles for each village, which was actually more detailed than the one Larenok had at home. He grumbled about paying the full asking price. If he hadn''t been in such a rush, he would''ve done his best to pressure the seller into lowering the price to something more reasonable, but right now every minute he wasted was potential money to be made. Or at least debt to allay. As long as he didn''t have any idea where Welburne was, he couldn¡¯t be doing his job, and Welburne couldn''t be doing his. Larenok spread out the two maps on the countertop, and the seeker spread her hands upon them. Her eyes glowed with the pale ivory light, as they had been doing for the past several minutes. She lifted first one map, then the other, holding each out further and closer away from her face, moving slowly without blinking. "Here. Hold this." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Larenok did so, and she placed her finger onto a point. "Here. Marisbog Village.¡± It was one of the smaller circles on the map, indicating something barely worth noticing. Part of Larenok sneered in derision. Welburne thought he could come from so little and just catapult straight to the top? That wasn''t how the world worked. No matter how powerful his little spell was, no one shortcutted past working their way up ¨C unless you knew the right people. He drew a check mark on the map and folded it away into his soulspace. He paid the tracker-seer, glowered at the map seller¡ªwho only gave him a friendly wave and grin in reply¡ªand stalked his way toward the local transit platform. He didn''t know what kind of transit options would be available for such an obscure village, but he had the distinct feeling they wouldn''t be quick and easy. Or reasonably priced. Larenok shook his head. Welburne truly had no appreciation for the sacrifices being made on his behalf.
Jair folded in the mana wings in standard sequence, each a slanted layer with a delicate membrane of crisscrossed open mesh made from conduction wire. Anywhere near one of the mana oases, such a contraption would be overkill. There was no need for complicated gathering and re-distributing with plentiful ambient mana, the device would passively absorb more than enough power just by being present. Marisbog was not such a place. The nearest mana oasis was more rumor than reality for those present. The emptiness of the Sandmarsh didn''t exactly drain his manabody, if he''d had one, but it was a sort of neutral pressure that made it difficult to replenish anything you spent. Most people with a full night¡¯s sleep would recover about enough mana to get through a few hours of light work. To do anything more required external aids. Which was also why transit platforms weren¡¯t used this far out. It would take an entire village months to gather enough mana to power one for a single trip. Not a cost-effective or time efficient use of resources. Sandfishers¡¯ sand-skimmers were a different sort of technology from standard nomad sandskimmers. Since sandfishers¡¯ craft need to be capable of sharp stops and holding position against great force, they included a lot more power accumulators and several additional engines which could be adjusted to any direction as needed. "You¡¯ve been gone a long time." Kyami Welburne finally broke the silence as they finished the folding and shoved it under its protective canopy. ¡°Yes I have.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the occasion? I¡¯m sure you didn¡¯t come back just to help pack up the skimmer.¡± ¡°I¡¯m about to leave with Raina for her Reforging Quest. I probably won¡¯t be back for at least a few years.¡± ¡°Did you come to say goodbye, or do you need money?¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping Lilin will come with me.¡± ¡°Of course.¡± She sounded choked, on the verge of tears. ¡°Not enough to go running off yourself, you have to take my daughter too.¡± ¡°She¡¯s plenty old enough to choose her own path in life.¡± ¡°Like you did? How is that fancy school treating you, huh? I¡¯ve seen your letters.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure you have.¡± Jair sighed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry you consider me such a disappointment, but I¡¯ve finally finished a project I¡¯d been working on a very long time and I¡¯m ready to move on.¡± ¡°Yes, your initiation ceremony.¡± She looked over at him, shaking her head. ¡°A shame about that. We got the invitation, but¡­ you know how it is. We¡¯re barely staying on quota without you here. We¡¯re incredibly proud of your achievements, of course, but we do miss you. It¡¯ll be a lot better for everyone once you¡¯re back home where you belong.¡± ¡°Yeah, I know how you feel.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t need to sound so dismissive about it. We¡¯re your family. Or has your fancy school convinced you otherwise?¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be here if I didn¡¯t consider you family,¡± Jair said neutrally. ¡°I¡¯m not here to argue with you about the past. I¡¯d like to make you an offer. Have you heard any news from the capitol?¡± ¡°You mean all that about the king changing all the trade pacts? Of course we¡¯ve heard. No one¡¯s talking about anything else.¡± ¡°Have you heard anything about the Phoenix Healer?¡± ¡°No. It sounds like one of those scams.¡± Jair snorted, amused. ¡°It does, doesn¡¯t it? But in this case, it¡¯s entirely real. I happen to have connections with the Phoenix Healer¡¯s agent. I¡¯d like to offer you, and Zaen, the opportunity for a life-changing rebirth. The process can heal the body and restore the mind, clearing away the unwanted patterns that build up over the years, allowing for a fresh start.¡± Kyami scoffed faintly. ¡°And you¡¯re sure this isn¡¯t a scam?¡± ¡°I can personally attest that it is genuinely life-changing. I¡¯ve seen it happen dozens of times.¡± ¡°I appreciate the thought, but you know how your father feels about that sort of thing.¡± ¡°What, trying to improve your wellbeing?¡± ¡°It¡¯s going to be expensive.¡± ¡°No. I can guarantee, no fees.¡± She hesitated a moment before answering. ¡°Even if you¡¯re right, what would it actually change? We have obligations. I know you like to believe things can change, but you know you¡¯d only make things worse. Coming in with some fancy healer and then traipsing off again. You know that¡¯s not going to help anything.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know that.¡± Darkflame was a new ability this time around. He had yet to try it on anything so personal as his family, but there was no reason to hold back. Except¡­ if he tried it and it didn¡¯t do anything, the tiny hope for change would be extinguished. He wasn¡¯t sure if it would ever come back this time. ¡°Come on, Jai. You know we need you here. We¡¯ve made allowances for your scholarship, but you don¡¯t know how hard it¡¯s been.¡± ¡°I do. I¡¯m not going to come back to stay. You¡¯re right that I won¡¯t be able to help anything.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not what I said and you know it.¡± ¡°I have money, I can hire someone to take Lil¡¯s place. We¡¯re not going to leave you without help.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not about the business!¡± She punched the side of the ship, then burst into tears. ¡°She¡¯s my daughter. You¡¯ve had such a hard time at that place and now you just want to drag her off too? You¡¯ll ruin her life and not listen to a thing anyone says against it because you always know best.¡± ¡°I do.¡± Once, such an accusation would have made him question himself, backtrack, submit to the preferences of his family. It¡¯s why he¡¯d concealed his application to the Mageblade Institute until there was no going back on it; they¡¯d have talked him out of it if they knew. Now, though, he¡¯d heard so many variations of every possible attack angle that it had lost all power over him. He maintained a neutral expression, tone unchanged. ¡°I know better. Lilin isn¡¯t happy here and she never will be.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know anything about her! You left. You abandoned her¡ªabandoned us all.¡± She turned away, still loudly crying, and hunched over with her arms across her stomach. ¡°I¡¯ll see that you¡¯re provided for before we leave. I¡¯d like you to consider the Phoenix Healing, it really could help.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not taking your bribes,¡± she spat. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can assuage your conscience by throwing your girlfriend¡¯s money at us. Just be ready to beg for forgiveness when she dumps you and you¡¯re forced to come crawling back.¡± Jair laughed softly. ¡°Now that¡¯s something to imagine. Raina¡¯s never had the opportunity to dump me before. I wonder what that would be like.¡± ¡°You¡¯re heartless,¡± Kyami sobbed. She still didn¡¯t look at him. ¡°I don¡¯t know why you even bothered to talk to me. Just want to show off how rich and fancy you are now?¡± ¡°I wanted to offer my help one last time. I¡¯ll do my best to protect you whatever you say or do. Whatever disagreements we may have, you are still family. Without you, I wouldn¡¯t exist, nor Lilin. Veor would be lost and the rest of Almas not long after. But as much as the world may owe you for your contributions, I¡¯ve no patience for tantrums and mind games. I will see to it that Lilin has the chance to leave, and I won¡¯t allow you to interfere. I won¡¯t force you to take my healing, I get the feeling it wouldn¡¯t be able to help you anyway, but the offer is open. I¡¯ll even throw in a free trip to anywhere in Veor if you like.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want your bribes, I want my family to stay together. I don¡¯t want to lose my children to reckless foolishness.¡± Jair smiled. ¡°Reckless? You don¡¯t know the half of it.¡±
76 - Revisiting (3) We know there is another land we cannot reach. It can be seen at the edges of the southern lunar passages, but it is not within a viable line to establish an arrival platform. Disconnected from all other engaldria, a continent adrift on its own. How lonely must it be to have no neighbors, nor even the hope of lunar travel to alleviate the tedium.
By the time Jair returned to the house with his mother, Lilin and her father had resolved their discussion and both sat calmly at the table. Zaen was eating the leftovers, while Lilin doodled exotic Terlunan flowers on the borders of the shopping list. ¡°I hope there¡¯s enough left for me,¡± Kyami said, eying Zaen¡¯s plate with obvious judgment in her eyes. ¡°There¡¯s a little more in the pan.¡± Lilin jumped up immediately, retrieved the food, and set about heating it back up. Kyami sat down opposite Zaen with a long sigh. She stretched, eying her husband assessingly. By Jair¡¯s reckoning, she wanted to ask for something but wasn¡¯t sure if this would be the right time to do so. If she was going to offer Jair¡¯s phoenix healing service, then she needn¡¯t bother. He wasn¡¯t convinced it could do anything for Kyami, but Zaen was too much of a demanding jerk to not at least try. If it could improve Larenok¡¯s outlook unrecognizably, what might it do for Jair¡¯s father? But he¡¯d wait for them to agree, just in case their greed was stronger than their caution. If they hadn¡¯t decided by morning, he¡¯d just stab Zaen and be done with it. Zaen didn¡¯t make more than a cursory inquiry after Jair¡¯s health and wellbeing, instead preferring to complain about their catch for the day and how expensive sandskimmer repairs were. ¡°We¡¯ll be downstairs,¡± Jair finally said. He caught Lilin¡¯s eye and nodded toward the back hall. The basement was divided in four with a hallway down the middle. Their parents¡¯ rooms were on either side of the stairs down. At the far end of the hall, Jair and Lilin¡¯s room was on the left, and the cellar on the right. Jair had always thought it was an inefficient use of space to put the food storage farther away from the stair, but apparently being able to catch their kids sneaking out was more important than convenience. Not to say Jair and Lilin didn¡¯t figure out ways to sneak past anyway. ¡°Remember when we had to use pieces of salvaged fishskin on the door?¡± Jair asked, practically automatic. He had no memory of the event, but mentioning it always helped Lilin relax. Sure enough, she laughed and started to reminisce, a familiar story. Jair selected responses to continue the casual and relaxing direction of the conversation. To his surprise, it was she who first shifted the conversation to an unfamiliar direction. ¡°You really like Raina, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Of course. She¡¯s my best friend.¡± Lilin tilted her head as though that answer confused her. ¡°But the way you act around her¡­ aren¡¯t you interested in¡­¡± she blushed faintly, ¡°something more?¡± ¡°What more could I need? She¡¯s already left her family to travel with me.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t possibly be this oblivious. How are you so unmoved? Didn¡¯t you get flustered at just the mention of Wythri having a crush on you? And it¡¯s beyond obvious that Raina would do anything you ask.¡± ¡°Yeah, don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll fix that by the time we¡¯re done.¡± Lilin laughed, incredulous. ¡°You clearly care about her. Why are you pretending otherwise?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not pretending anything. Right now, the power dynamic would be extremely unbalanced. I¡¯m not going to put her in a position to make a decision without having the full autonomy to make it properly.¡± Lilin snorted. ¡°Only you would turn a relationship into an equation.¡± ¡°Everything is an equation.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s made you boring and angry.¡± ¡°Boring, me? You¡¯ve clearly not spent enough time around me yet.¡± ¡°We grew up together.¡± ¡°Oh, I won¡¯t deny I used to be extremely boring. But once you know all the formulas, following them all the time gets so tedious. May as well live a bit.¡± "So you''ll ask Raina out?" Jair narrowed his eyes at her. "She''s already traveling with me, how much more ''out'' do you need?" "You know what I mean." Jair shook his head. "Raina has never once tried to exploit me, renounce me, or exclude me from anything. There are a lot of people I wouldn''t hesitate to take advantage of¡ªprobably only a handful I would think twice about. Raina has her own category." Lilin frowned, an oddly lost look on her face. "It''s okay if you don''t understand. I''m a strange creature." "I don''t know what to even ask. You''re not anything like what I remember." "Are you surprised? I''ve been away for three years." "You didn''t seem different in your letters. It''s just..." she tucked her legs up under her on the bed and leaned forward to stare at him. "I''d have expected you to be different in... different ways. You have this super close relationship with one of your classmates, but you don''t act like any people in love I''ve ever seen. You clearly are, but..." Jair chuckled. "The word you''re looking for is fixated. Perhaps obsessed." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. "And you admit it?" "Why deny it? I''ve spent practically every day since I discovered my soulspell living for her. I would die for her without hesitation. Though at this point, there''s quite a lot I''d die for and very little that would make me hesitate." "I''m not sure what to say." "You don''t have to say anything. Except tell me about your choice to travel with us." "I''m not planning to travel with you." "I know, you think you have to stay, but you don''t. It''s not like before, I have the money to give them an easier life than you could manage no matter how much you tried. We can hire someone to come and help with the company,¡± Jair promised. ¡°Or just hand them a pile of money if you think that would help." Lilin shook her head. "No. Father is way too proud." "And mother is way too stubborn.¡± Lilin chuckled. "That too." It would drive them both crazy to think that they were relying on their reject of a son for their livelihood. But he didn¡¯t have to be blatant about it. ¡°I¡¯m serious. Anything you do, I can find someone else." ¡°Who could you even hire to do my job? You''d need specialists." Jair laughed softly. "You''re not irreplaceable here. Any of the things you do, someone else can do. But you are irreplaceable to yourself. Is any of what you do moving you closer to who you want to be? Where you want to go?" "What else would I do? I''m not like you, not like Father. I don''t have these grand ambitions for going off and learning the secrets of the universe or rewriting the sandfish industry.¡± ¡°The secrets of the universe are surprisingly dull, actually. Sandfish might be a more rewarding a pursuit. But if you don¡¯t have ambitions, you must still have desires.¡± ¡°I don''t think so. Do I really want anything? I''m perfectly happy being here." "Are you?" Lilin shrugged. "Why wouldn''t I be? I love my family." Jair tilted his head at her, then nodded upward to indicate the house. ¡°And you can''t think of anything else you''d rather do than stay here forever?" "I know you want to travel and explore. I¡­" Lilin looked away. "I used to think I wanted to go with you, but¡­" "I know. When the opportunity came, you made your reticence very clear. However, the situation has changed. Raina and I can more than sufficiently compensate them for your absence. The family business will go on with or without you. I can provide any sort of expert necessary for any facet of their lives. If they''d be better off never working again, I can arrange that. If they''d rather keep working and just need help, I can arrange that.¡± ¡°I don''t know. I never actually thought that it would be an option. I''ve always been essential here." ¡°No one''s essential. Think about it. If there''s anything you want, tell me. We can make it happen." Lilin sat down and closed her eyes, hands tightening in her lap. "I do want things to be different," she said faintly, "but it¡¯s not possible. Everything I do here, everything Mom does, everything our father does¡­ It''s all so meaningless. Sure, he has grand aspirations for building a business empire. We¡¯ll have bigger ships and more workers, break into the whole industry like a new revelation. Someday. But I don''t see anything happening. You''ve been gone for three years, and we''re still exactly where we were. Still working toward the same tedious survival, in hopes of some distant future that I just don''t see happening. If it''ll take years, okay. I''m fine with it taking years. But I don''t¡­ We¡¯re not doing enough." "Do you want out, or do you want more workers?" Lilin opened her eyes and looked up at him sadly. "I don''t think either one will help. The way we''re going, it''s indefinitely sustainable but nothing more. You can add workers, ships, but there is no genius here. We¡¯re just one more normal sandfisher family, destined to live and work and die.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to end that way.¡± ¡°I told you already. I''m not ambitious. I don¡¯t care. I just want us to live and live well. If that looks like going out on the sandmarsh every other day, staying home and cooking two or three days a week, managing the bookkeeping and driving the shipments into town¡­" Lilin shrugged. "Are you going to say that''s wrong?" ¡°But are you happy?" "I''m not unhappy. I don''t hate it." "If you stop and think back over the past three years, then extrapolate that forward throughout your entire life, will that have been a life you¡¯re satisfied with?" "I don''t think I''m ever going to be satisfied with anything. I thought I wanted to go, but apparently I don''t. I think I want to stay, but I don¡¯t know¡­ do I really? You¡¯re making me question everything and I just don¡¯t have an answer." "Then how about this? Come with us. Spend a year traveling. Come places you wouldn''t have otherwise gone, try things you normally wouldn¡¯t do. See what the options are before you commit either way. I¡¯ll arrange for workers to come fill in for you at the family business, all you need to do is bring yourself." "And if I change my mind? If it turns out I don''t want to travel, and I¡¯d rather be back here?" "I''m not going to hold you to this, this isn''t some kind of soul contract. Any time you want out, you''re welcome to come home. I¡¯ll escort you personally. Though I can''t guarantee immediate passage between lunar cycles, I''ll get you on the first passage back." Lilin didn¡¯t reply, and Jair didn¡¯t press. He allowed their conversation to flow on into other topics, catching up as if he¡¯d been away at school for a couple months and didn¡¯t already know everything she¡¯d ever think was worth saying. They headed back up to the main floor when Raina returned a few hours later. She¡¯d changed into a local robe instead of her finer city clothes, and seemed quite pleased with herself for having done so. Her arrival set off a round of interrogation as Kyami and Zaen both demanded answers to various questions in an attempt to either scare Raina off or ensure she would remain a valuable resource for years to come. Raina answered honestly and politely. She and Jair were friends who would be undertaking her Reforging Quest together over the next few years; she wasn¡¯t currently in any romantic relationship; she had no plans of abandoning Jair for being poor; her family¡¯s holdings in Veshin Oasis were indeed as substantial as had been rumored. There was more, but the most amusing part of the evening was watching how deftly Raina controlled the conversation despite Jair¡¯s parents clearly convinced they were doing all the deciding. Thankfully, they both were early sleepers, so after dinner and a couple hours of discussion, they headed downstairs to their bedrooms. Raina offered to find a room at the inn, but Lilin insisted they stay in her and Jair¡¯s room. ¡°It¡¯ll be a bit tight with all three of us, but we can make it work.¡± It felt more than a little strange to be pushing mattresses together on the floor like they were playing at having a sleepover at their age, but Jair only smiled and went along with it. There was a beautiful innocence to both Raina and Lilin that he could watch forever. Each carried her own scars, but neither was crushed by it. Sometimes Lilin¡¯s body went stiff and her face blank, sometimes Raina stared into the middle distance with a haunted expression, yet for the most part they were able to live in the moment freely. Someone who didn¡¯t know them would never guess anything was wrong. They ended up talking more than sleeping that night. Jair had years of stories to share in response to Lilin¡¯s repeated interrogation¡ªat least those he hadn¡¯t already written about in his letters. Raina had further insights on the economy to share, and she somehow managed to sneak the conversation around to travel and adventure more than a few times. Lilin had her drawing pad out, scribbling little landscapes Jair recognized as modifications from one of his old history books. Though she talked as though she didn¡¯t care for leaving, and treated staying here with her parents until they died of old age as her inevitable fate, Jair could see that reticence for what it was. She was afraid. Same as before. It was easier to stay with the familiar struggles than face the unknown. Without the excuse of having no money, she fell back on ¡®they need me here¡¯. Jair didn¡¯t interrupt. He could have kept up with Raina¡¯s flow and shifts easily enough¡ªand he looked forward to tag-teaming against the nobility once they returned from their powerup arc¡ªbut Lilin specifically would only be more reticent the more Jair pushed her. He could only watch and wait. Maybe Raina¡¯s influence would be enough.
77 - Revisiting (4) Orard is unique in that it retains the most land connectivity of any engaldria. Though it has countless rivers and streams, if you know the right paths, you can walk from the far south of Reskas to northern Desyov or even to the Imperial Skyway to Suthyrel. Only Pevir is fully disconnected from the rest.
There was no decision made that night. After the girls talked themselves out, they turned off the lamps and then kept going another several hours, through overtired laughter as their stories grew wilder and more exaggerated, until they finally succumbed to sleep. Long after their voices fell silent, Jair lay awake in the darkness. The familiar room felt alien. Moonlight slanted through the narrow windows at the top of the wall, ground level on the outside. Silver light glinted off Lilin¡¯s collection of pens where they lay haphazardly on her desk, the narrow shaft of brilliance throwing their shadows sharply behind them. He¡¯d forgotten the dry earth scent of the place, never sealed properly and left to nature¡¯s mercies. The floor was stone, but the walls between the support struts were only packed clay. He¡¯d once considered digging a tunnel from the side of his room, the edge it didn¡¯t share with either of his parents¡¯ bedrooms, just to have a private place to get away. Instead, he¡¯d ended up at Astralla Mageblade Institute. He wasn¡¯t sure if that was an improvement. It felt too right to lie here with his sister and best friend peacefully beside him, a kind of completeness he''d not even imagined possible. It was one thing to pursue a happy ending, but when you actually had it... how did you deal with that? In Jair''s case, it was to soak in every moment, each soft exhale, every semi-snore, and the quiet calm of no one trying to murder the people he loved. And every beautiful, peaceful moment, he was afraid. This wasn''t how things went. His life was a nonstop ride of chaos and conflict. There wasn''t any timeline where things simply went well. He had plenty of time before the Sekir thing would be relevant, the man built his powerbase gradually over the next two or three years. Without Jair¡¯s interference in the noble politics, there would be no reason for anyone to assassinate his parents. Nothing was going wrong. It couldn''t last, and he didn''t want it to end. Jair memorized the angle of the light, the feeling of the air, the smell and texture, ran over it again and again in his mind. This moment, between uncertainty and indecision, perfect peace. If ever he needed a new anchor point, this was a good one. In the morning he''d have to confront Zaen, and whichever way that went things would change. He would probably join the family in an expedition, show off his sandfishing prowess to Raina, perhaps give her a net and see how embarrassed she could get if he pushed her into doing it wrong. In another week, they''d leave to find a lunar platform, with or without Lilin. Then he could start showing Raina all the things and places they''d always talked about exploring. He didn''t have to think about Veor or worry about it for another year at least. Sekir would be plotting in the background, but if there was one thing Jair had down to a science it was the timing of major events. Veor''s fall wouldn''t be coming for a long time yet. The only thing that mattered was Jair becoming an archmage by the time Sekir went to Meliarn, and without Jair to drop the right rumors and trigger an early intervention, that particular revelation would take the sorcerer years to uncover. Jair had been so intensely focused on optimizing every moment for so long, it felt unfamiliar and almost overwhelming to have this much freedom of movement without a pressing disaster. Even his relatively relaxed months in the Oriad training with Qahrvirna and Eythron had been overshadowed by the need to find some way to deal with Ryenzo. But now Ryenzo was dealt with, and they had all this free time. They''d been running from one thing to the next in the days since then, but now it finally began to really sink in. Ryenzo was done and over with. The weight that had been haunting him for longer than he could remember was gone. He didn''t know how to feel. He should be relieved, shouldn''t he? Not this panicky dread. Not empty and confused. There had to be another disaster, something he''d overlooked. Jair pushed away the perpetual calculations, closed his eyes, and slowly released the tension in his chest as he breathed deep and slow. This was a moment of peace, not time to worry over the future. His to-do list was simple. Repair his manabody. Travel with Raina. Go to Nuprima and reclaim his archmage status. Find upgrade items for Tempest. Though, now he thought of it, he should probably give King Farshen the full info on the plague/curse. Now the man wasn''t lost in his grief-maddened mania, he might be able to actually quarantine the continent before the curse could spread too far, and let it die out with minimal casualties. Jair pondered over where to slot that into his mental schedule, then snorted softly and shook his head at himself. Why wait? He stood and crossed to the door. Looking back, he spent one more moment basking in the quiet peace of having everyone he loved close and sleeping safe and secure, then slipped out into the hall and quietly closed the door. It took only a thought for Maelstrom to appear, and darkflame to carry him to the king''s chambers. Since it was deep into the night, King Farshen was very much asleep. At least until the flash of green fire deposited Jair in the middle of his warded rooms, and an alarm quietly started blinking. By the time Jair made it into the bedroom, the king was awake and armed. Jair raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were in a hurry to see me again." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. The king scoffed and lowered his sword. "Of course it''s you. Took you long enough." Jair shrugged. "I''m here to give you a rundown on the upcoming plague so you can take care of it while I''m away. And if some guy called Sekir shows up, don¡¯t let him in." "That''s not why I summoned you." "It''s why I came, though." "You would defy a summons from your king?" ¡°What summons? I''m here to tell you how to handle the biggest disasters you''re likely to face during your reign, and you want to complain about my reasons for doing so?" King Farshen ran a hand across his forehead and frowned. "You''re right, I''m taking my frustrations out on you, when you''ve done nothing but try and help. While I would prefer it if you at least pretended to follow normal protocol, I think it''s obvious that you''re beyond the stage where I could enforce anything upon you even if I tried." Jair chuckled. "I keep being more surprised by Darkflame. You''ve no idea how many times I''ve tried to have this conversation." Normally, the mad king would have him executed or imprisoned for daring to question him, assuming Jair found a way to slip into the palace at all. Maybe when the time came around he could have a talk with Sekir too? He wasn''t going to hold his breath, though. The man was far too slippery to be trusted, and Jair had already seen Darkflame¡¯s effects varying from person to person. If anyone were going to be fully impervious to its calming and rejuvenating properties, Sekir would be just the sort to remain spitefully stubborn about killing Jair. ¡°I have no idea what I may have done or said in our previous encounters,¡± the king said, sounding sincerely ashamed, ¡°but I apologize.¡± Jair shook his head. "I¡¯m not here to demand apologies. As I was saying, the plague. It''s actually classified as a curse, but it can be combated with some specific actions to prevent resonance. You''ll want to start establishing spread-out camps around cities on the far side from oases, since the curse amplifies itself with the abundance of mana as well as when being in close proximity with others who carry it. Get more than a handful of affected people together and all of them will find themselves growing dramatically weaker." ¡°And you can¡¯t cure this yourself?¡± ¡°I¡­¡± Jair frowned. He hadn¡¯t actually tried, not with Darkflame. ¡°Perhaps I can.¡± He still had the list of prime carriers in the back of his head, around two hundred names. He¡¯d tried killing them in one of his particularly desperate lifetimes, only for the curse to transmit through their friends and relatives instead. That had been before he knew the plague¡¯s nature. The curse was almost intelligent in the way it jumped from person to person, as though it knew when it had to move and where it could afford to linger. He doubted anything he tried now would work. He could gather the earliest carriers all together and try using Darkflame to purge them all at once, see if they were reborn with or without the curse intact, but with the speed of its transmission it would probably just stay one step ahead of him the whole time. Plus, that sounded like it would be a huge fuss and take way longer than he had any interest in. The curse was tenacious and aggressive, and the only way to kill it for good was to starve it out in isolation. ¡°I will do what I can, but I cannot stay to ensure it is successful.¡± That was a reasonable compromise. If he thought of anything he could attempt with a chance of success, he¡¯d try it, but as long as the king was prepared to deal with it either way he could leave without abandoning Veor¡¯s future entirely. ¡°The other option would be to evacuate completely, but I understand that would be infeasible for a number of reasons.¡± ¡°While you¡¯re here, I would like to request another flame healing. I am¡­ troubled by what I have learned, and cannot settle myself.¡± Jair shrugged and stabbed him. The king flinched only the tiniest bit, an instinctive reaction to someone lunging at you, before the darkflame flowed out and consumed him. He reappeared a moment later, sitting on the floor and more relaxed than he¡¯d been before. He climbed to his feet and stretched, the weariness gone from his face. ¡°Thank you. How soon will you be leaving?¡± ¡°Terlunia.¡± Jair considered him a moment, but it was pretty easy to guess why he¡¯d asked. ¡°I can stop back once more before I leave, if you wish, but you should probably learn to deal with your stress on your own without relying on me to fix things every few days.¡± Farshen nodded. ¡°I have no idea what I was thinking, these past months. Untangling this mess¡­ I¡¯ve somehow alienated so many of my former friends and allies, it is difficult to find anyone willing to help without trying to adjust things to their benefit. Politics and contingencies¡­¡± He shook his head. ¡°But that is not your concern, I apologize. It seems I miss my son more than I¡¯d realized.¡± ¡°I can let him know you¡¯re back to your right mind next time I¡¯m in his area, but I can¡¯t promise he¡¯ll want to return.¡± The look of hope, then fear, then resolve that flickered across Farshen¡¯s face told him everything he needed to know. Orren would be in no danger here. Jair changed the subject, since there wasn¡¯t much point saying more and it would be months before he could reach northern Almas even if he set the trip as his highest priority. ¡°Here, get me a paper I can write on, I¡¯ll list out the steps for dealing with the plague so you don¡¯t forget them.¡± Fifteen minutes later, Jair darkflamed himself back to Veshin Oasis, leaving the king busy at his desk, reading reports and drafting new edicts with vigor. Veor was in good hands. It could survive on its own while Jair went off and gathered the power necessary to deal with the next steps. Using every shortcut and unfair advantage he had at his disposal, going from nothing to archmage would still take a while. Even the most intense training regimens required pauses for things to settle and consolidate. One step at a time. For now, he spent the next several hours while everyone else slept working to expand and solidify his manabody. Once he felt the pressure starting to spill back out, he darkflamed himself back to his family home to nap for the rest of the night. He could still become archmage on schedule, while still leaving plenty of space in between for having fun. And actually doing the upgrade quest for Raina that they pretended to be on, of course. It wouldn¡¯t do to neglect Tempest in all the fuss. Jair eased his way back into the room, Raina and Lilin still sound asleep, and looked around for the sword in question. Raina hadn¡¯t fully integrated it internally yet, so it retained a perpetual physical presence for the moment. At the moment it hung beside the door next to Lilin¡¯s sunrobe. Jair drew it very softly, then slipped back outside into the hall. He summoned Maelstrom and tapped its point against Tempest¡¯s. Light surged down the blade, a veritable stream of multicolored sparkles, which disappeared into Tempest¡¯s influence without fanfare. Then, the flow reversed. A surge of silver light flashed from Tempest¡¯s point and flowed up Maelstrom¡¯s center, spreading out until it engulfed the entire sword. Jair frowned. That wasn¡¯t what he¡¯d expected. What had changed? ©¤ Tempest ©¤ Type: Soulsword ©¤ Rank: Uncommon ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade We hunger. ©¤ Bound to *?*???* & ****??*? Nothing new here. Maelstrom? ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne Exactly the same, and after a moment the glow faded to nothing. Further contact between them produced no results. ¡°What are you two doing?¡± Jair wondered aloud. Neither sword answered. With a shrug, Jair returned Tempest to its sheath and Maelstrom to his soul. Whatever was going on with their swords, it would resolve itself eventually. There was plenty to do in the meantime.
78 - Revisiting (5) The Reskas polder has always stood as an example of hope, that lands seized by the sea can be reclaimed. For it to fall¡­ it is a loss that concerns far more than those whose lives it directly impacted. This is the second major loss of land within living memory. How much more will this accelerate, and will any of us survive as it does?
¡°So, ah, Jair¡­¡± Kyami cleared her throat, glancing between her son and husband once they¡¯d all sat down to breakfast. ¡°What¡¯s this I hear about you robbing the royal treasury?¡± Lilin coughed and choked, spluttering into her porridge. She stared up, wide-eyed. Jair shrugged. "I don''t know. What have you heard about me robbing the royal treasury?" Raina just sighed and put her face in her hands. ¡°You didn¡¯t¡­¡± ¡°I got a message from your headmaster. It says he needs you back at the capitol immediately to¡­¡± She frowned and ran her hand down the message wire. ¡°Discuss the items stolen from the treasury, the disposition of the dragon¡¯s hoard, and the king¡¯s request for another flame-healing.¡± ¡°That last one I already took care of. He didn¡¯t mention anything about payment or the treasury stuff. I don¡¯t think I can get it back now, though.¡± Kyami stood sharply, shoving her chair back with such abruptness it fell over with a bang. ¡°Jair! First you run off, now you come back with this disrespectful attitude, blatant disregard for rules and custom, and on top of it all you¡¯ve broken into the royal treasury? Young man, you are clearly allowing bad influences to steer you away from everything we¡¯ve tried to teach you. We are not going to permit this blatant corruption to continue.¡± She turned to Raina. ¡°It¡¯s been lovely meeting you, but I think it¡¯s time for you to go. We need to have a word with our son. Alone.¡± ¡°Anything you want to say, you can say in front of Raina. If you send her away, I¡¯ll just recite it all to her afterward anyway. And probably laugh at you while we do it.¡± Raina groaned from beneath the hands covering her face. ¡°Jair¡­¡± Zaen stood more slowly, but with a look of determination that promised violence. ¡°Lilin, you too. Out.¡± He didn¡¯t need to say it twice. Lilin all but bolted from the room, pausing only briefly at the doorway to give Jair a panicked, wide-eyed apologetic stare. He shook his head, smiled, and waved her away. Raina hadn¡¯t moved, except to shrink even further down into her chair, hands still over her face. "I don''t know what you expect to happen here." Jair leaned back in his chair, not more than glancing at his parents. "If you think I''m going to stop doing whatever I please, you clearly haven''t bothered to comprehend the message you''re delivering. You think if the king of Veor couldn''t stop me from breaking into and subsequently out of the royal treasury with impunity, that anything you do could restrain me in any way?" "We''re your parents, ungrateful boy." Zaen looked like he wanted to say more, but glanced at Raina and visibly restrained himself. "Thank you for your support throughout my childhood. I''m glad that I was able to grow up in a household where I could learn to take action and the value of discretion. But that''s ancient history. I''m an adult, Lilin''s an adult, and the longer you try to hold onto some sense of control over us, the further you''re going to push us away." "You¡ª" Jair ignored the interruption. "I''m here to give you the chance at perhaps starting over. I''m here to offer Lilin the chance to travel. That''s all. I''m not coming back to stay, I''m not going to be living under your authority. I will protect you, but as you are I cannot respect you." "Please, Jair," Raina mumbled. "Don''t." "I''m not doing anything." "You''re being intentionally provocative. We both know you''re capable of being more diplomatic than this." "And what if I don''t want to?" "Then I would question why you''ve waited this long." Jair considered the question. "You should really go," Kyami told Raina. "You don''t belong here." Jair stood. "Then neither do I. Lil? You out there?" Lilin peeked back in from around the doorframe. "You coming with us, or staying here?" "I..." Her eyes darted madly between the three of them. "Mother, you have my proposal. Now you know the king vouches for the process. Do you want the fire healing, or not? You''ll be able to brag about it to all your friends." "I told you, we don''t need anything from you. All we want is for you to be a part of this family." "The time for making this a family was years ago. Too late now. If you''d cared enough to bother getting to know me when I was growing up, you might have been able to keep me around. But all things considered, I''m glad you were selfish and incompetent. It makes it easier." "Jair!" Raina stood, put a hand on Jair''s shoulder, and gave a short bow. "I''m sorry, Mr. Welburne, Mrs. Welburne, he''s normally a little more restrained. We''ll be leaving." "One minute, Raina, and I''ll be with you." Jair shrugged off her hand and strode around the table. He didn¡¯t bother giving his father the choice. He simply walked up to Zaen, stabbed Maelstrom through his chest, and stepped back as the darkflame overtook the man. ¡°What¡ª?¡± ¡°Jair!¡± Lilin jumped forward on instinct, stared at Jair like he¡¯d lost his mind. ¡°What are you¡­¡± she trailed off as Zaen reappeared, looking dazed and confused. He clutched at his chest and his eyes darted between Jair¡¯s impassive face and the fiery green glow of Maelstrom. ¡°You¡­¡± ¡°How do you feel?¡± ¡°Furious! What in Aelir¡¯s name are you doing?¡± Zaen looked like he wanted to lunge forward, but Jair¡¯s flaming sword had a way of deterring such actions. Jair gave Maelstrom a casual twirl. ¡°Striving for harmony. I¡¯d like Lilin to travel with me and I don¡¯t want you to try and stop her.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t get to decide that,¡± Zaen said through gritted teeth. ¡°This is my house.¡± ¡°Then we¡¯ll discuss it elsewhere.¡± Lilin backed stiffly against the wall, eyes wide. Jair backed toward her, keeping Maelstrom in line. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about this, Lil, I¡¯d have preferred not to force things but it looks like my efforts to defuse things were doomed from the start.¡± ¡°You think trying to stab me is going to defuse anything?¡± Zaen kicked over the table, clearing the space between him and Jair. Raina jumped back to get out of the way. ¡°Is everyone in your family as crazy as you?¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°You can¡¯t fool me. That sword¡¯s nothing but illusion and flash.¡± Jair stilled, sword extended in one hand as though beginning a duel. ¡°Then by all means, come and prove it.¡± Zaen clenched his fists, but couldn¡¯t quite convince himself to charge Jair. ¡°You think you¡¯re brave, hiding behind your flashy blade?¡± Jair sighed and dismissed Maelstrom. ¡°Go on, then.¡± Zaen didn¡¯t need another invitation. He charged. Jair ducked below the wild swing, twisted aside, and returned to a calm waiting stance on the other side of the room. Zaen had to bring himself up short of tripping over a chair. ¡°Please don¡¯t!¡± Lilin begged. ¡°Quiet,¡± Zaen snapped. ¡°Your brother needs to learn respect.¡± ¡°And you think this is how you earn it?¡± Jair took a half step to the side and leaned out of the way as Zaen flailed past. The man may have the size and strength of a sandfisher, but he had no experience fighting someone who was paying proper attention. His moves were so blatantly obvious Jair could probably have handled this on his Astralla training alone, even without the extra experience gained through hundreds of years of time looping. ¡°Is that all you can do? Run away?¡± Jair danced aside, rotating on one foot before planting himself once again facing his would-be assailant. ¡°I don¡¯t enjoy beating up helpless opponents. You¡¯d need to be a much bigger threat before I¡¯d consider taking you seriously.¡± Lilin gasped. Zaen bellowed in rage. Unfortunately for him, it didn¡¯t matter how angry he was, that only made him easier to read. He did stop rushing headlong. Instead he stalked closer to trap Jair in the corner. Jair avoided his attempts, but the increased tempo meant he could no longer stand around calmly between strikes. The next several seconds passed in a flurry of attacks and evasions as Jair kept on the move to counteract the bigger man¡¯s sheer brute strength. ¡°Please stop!¡± Lilin shrieked. ¡°Father, don¡¯t¡ª¡± Zaen, unable to land a blow on Jair, growled and lashed out at her. Maelstrom appeared in Jair¡¯s hand in an instant, and intercepted the man¡¯s arm mid-swing. Zaen screamed and clutched his arm to his chest. The tip of the sword had nicked the bone, leaving a deep slice in his forearm as it deflected the attempted attack. ¡°You will not touch Lilin,¡± Jair said coldly, sword once again pointed at the furious man. ¡°We¡¯ll be leaving. Don¡¯t try to follow us. Raina?¡± Raina nodded and took Lilin¡¯s arm to lead the stunned woman outside. ¡°Dovak!¡± Zaen raged, blood pouring between his fingers from the gash in his arm. He didn¡¯t try to follow, eyes fixed on Maelstrom. ¡°What happened to you? This is not how my son behaves!¡± ¡°Time happened to me,¡± Jair said. ¡°It¡¯s funny what that much perspective can do.¡± He continued to back away toward the girls. Kyami hadn¡¯t moved from the door, but now she blinked out of her shock and ran to get a towel and bandages, sparing only one moment to send a horrified, fearful glance at Jair. He didn¡¯t dismiss Maelstrom until they were well away, and kept alert for any attempt at following them. He doubted either of his parents was that angry, but he had no faith in anyone right now. The sandskimmer Jair had appropriated remained where he¡¯d left it, tilted on its side against one of the shops. There was a larger crowd now, people arguing. Lilin stood trembling, wide-eyed and confused. She rubbed at her arm absently. ¡°Okay, we¡¯re away from any threat, and you won¡¯t be going back there unless you want to.¡± Jair waved a hand at the sandskimmer. ¡°We can get you out right here and now.¡± Lilin gave her head a small shake and stared out across the town in the direction of their house. It was out of sight, but they both could walk to it unerringly. "I can''t leave them. I can''t leave Mom. They need me." ¡°No they don''t.¡± ¡°All the more after you stomped in there and declared war.¡± Jair grinned. "I wouldn''t say ¡®declared war.¡¯ I''d say I struck a decisive victory." "Only if you assume our family is the enemy." Lilin glanced back at Jair, eyes faintly accusatory. "I don''t want to imagine what they''ll be doing if I''m not there to keep things civil." ¡°There is nothing civil about what happened." Jair''s voice was flat and uncompromising. "You¡¯ve put up with far too much for far too long. At this point, you¡¯re just enabling the cycle. Zaen will be mad at Kyami and you''ll jump in the way to save her. Kyami will be furious with Zaen and you¡¯ll jump in the way to save him. Zaen will be furious with you and Kyami will jump in the way to save you. Kyami will be furious with you and Zaen will punch her." Lilin winced. "That makes it sound like all we ever do is argue. We don''t. Most of the time everything is fine, but when things are stressful¡­ everybody has bad days." "Like that lecture he was giving you about ¡®knowing your place?¡¯ When all you did was talk with your brother and his friend for a few hours?" "You know how he gets¡­ he doesn''t like other people making decisions for him." "Making decisions, like letting me in to visit my own house?" Jair shook his head. "No, he wants to make them for everyone else, and he has no right. If you''re expecting me to apologize for what I did, I won''t." Lilin shook her head. ¡°I don''t know. It''s all so much, so sudden.¡° "But surely there is something you¡¯ve wanted at some point? You can''t honestly say you¡¯ve never wanted anything to be different at all. I know we wanted to change things." Lilin stared at him, then looked out at the sand that surrounded them. Jair didn''t speak, giving her time to think, but their quiet conversation was interrupted before she could come to any decision. "Welburne!" Headmaster Larenok stomped toward them with his perpetual scowl. "There you are. What were you thinking, robbing the royal treasury? Now, we have to pay him for all of them. You realize this is going to take the entirety of our share of the dragon''s hoard and then some?" ¡°Yes, my mother got your message. At the time, I was thinking that I needed to hire mercenaries to help kill Ryenzo. I had buyers lined up on several of the moons, and a few specialists from other continents, but when I figured out how to use darkflame fully, the hiring of mercenaries became unnecessary." "Is that why you left us to march on the dragon''s mountain alone?" "Yes. I dealt with her myself and¡­ To be honest, I forgot about you guys." He did so many things in so many timelines and reverted so many of them, remembering which events existed in the active timeline required constant attention. At the time, his full attention had been on figuring out how to deal with Ryenzo. As soon as a new option presented itself, he normally would''ve reverted and tried it. The fact that he couldn''t revert didn''t change the fact that his mental tracking for the whole affair had switched from figuring out how to use Veor¡¯s resources to hire mercenaries to dealing with Ryenzo on his own. Until now, there¡¯d never been a reason for it to flip back. Larenok sputtered indignantly. "This is the most extreme campaign I''ve ever been involved in. How in the world did you just forget about it?" "As far as most extreme situations I''ve been dealing with, this doesn''t even come close to the top ten. Once you get Celsin or Sekir, you''ll see." "Celsin is a long way away. Doesn''t it only overlap with Almas once every three years or so?" "Yes, moving north and south is much more difficult than moving east and west, but as long as I travel to Orard first and then head south to Reskas from there, I can use a more Southern passage next time. It¡¯s slower, certainly, but far from impossible.¡± ¡°What¡­ have you been doing?" "Living. I¡¯ve been living." "Well, the king wants to see you immediately. We¡¯ve already lost too much time while I was hunting you down.¡± ¡°I took care of it last night.¡± ¡°Oh. Good.¡± Larenok scowled and took a breath to reinflate his ire. ¡°But how do you expect us to pay back the king for everything you stole?" "Don''t worry. I''ve already placed investments in several companies, and arranged partnerships with several noble families. I just need to do that again in a few more places and we¡¯ll have more money than we know what to do with. In another year, the amount you''re charging for Phoenix healing will start to sound like small change." Larenok considered this a long moment, then nodded. ¡°You''re a strange kid, but I can''t deny you seem to know what you''re doing. I''ll talk to King Farshen and set up a payment plan. One year, you say?" "Yes. Also, don''t forget to collect our fee for the Phoenix healing. I went through your list from a few days ago, but if you¡¯ve added any in the past three days, I haven''t gotten to them yet." Larenok''s expression cleared. "Oh. I thought you''d abandoned me. I¡¯ll be sure to collect from those people. I''ve only arranged seven after that, I''ll get you the list." "Perfect. Just leave it in your office, I''ll pick it up there." "I don''t have an office anymore, I''ve lost my job." "No, your study upstairs. The one across from the portal room, with a big calendar on the wall." Larenok''s eyes narrowed. "How do you know what the inside of my house looks like?" "Because I''ve been in there several times." ¡°How?¡± "You do know I have a sword that cuts or anything, right?" Jair hefted Maelstrom in demonstration. "There''s nothing you can keep me out of. Need a lift back to the city, or you planning to take the slow route? I assume message-received is sufficient.¡± Larenok nodded, but stepped back with one hand raised before Jair could transport him. ¡°Check in with me once a week. I¡¯ll keep the schedule up to date.¡± Larenok stepped forward into the tip of the sword, and disappeared in a burst of green fire. Jair dismissed Maelstrom and turned back to his friend and sister. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s get this ship sandworthy, and we can be on our way. Lil, you in, or not?¡± ¡°I¡­ have questions¡­¡± Lilin said faintly. ¡°And I¡¯ll answer them to the best of my ability. But do help me get this ship upright first. We¡¯ll have plenty of time to talk on the way.¡±
79 - Repairs There is a distinct difference in the makeup of crystalized mana when compared to mundane physical crystals, but it is easiest to verify by breaking open the crystal in question. Since altering the natural shape of a mana crystal decreases its capacity by a disproportionate amount, this manner of testing is most often used to verify the veracity of crystalline gemstones as being genuine. Counterfeit mana crystals are simple enough for a mage-type class to detect, but those without such abilities are more easily deceived.
Raina stood a bit away from the crashed sandskimmer, watching Lilin¡¯s back as she walked stiffly away. "Do you think she''ll change her mind?" ¡°Hard to say.¡± Jair shrugged and climbed up onto the sideways sandskimmer. "We''re a stubborn family. I know how far I''ll go." "But this place, it isn''t good for her. She has to see that." "We''re also a self-sacrificing family." Jair grinned. "I''m just more selective about who I''ll give up my everything for." Raina blushed. "You say things like that so casually." "It''s true, and I''m way too old to worry about what anyone thinks." "Physically, you''re younger than I am." "Physically doesn''t mean anything." Jair began inspecting each of the component pieces to see which ones would need to be replaced and which could simply be repaired. Raina watched him work in silence for a time, then, "Is it really okay to leave her there? After what happened¡­?" "What do you want us to do? Kidnap her? She wouldn''t cooperate." "And you can''t talk to your dad, convince him to¡­" "What? Stop being himself?" Jair snorted. "Trust me. If there were any way to fix him, change him, I''d have found it by now. If there''s anything, it''s not something I''m capable of." "And you don''t think she can manage it?" "She''s been trying." Jair scoffed and waved a hand back toward the house. "You saw how well that''s been going. Enabling only perpetuates. It would take something much more extreme to get his attention." "Like her leaving with us?" "No. Even her disappearance only pushes him further into¡­ That. If anything, removing her is likely to make him worse. But he doesn''t respect me and never will, which makes it hard for me to get through to him." "But you''ll leave them there?¡± Raina climbed up beside him, but still stared after where Lilin had disappeared. ¡°I don''t understand. How¡­? I know, we have to work with what we have to work with and things aren''t always ideal. But this is obviously not a good situation. How does she convince herself this is the best place for her?" "Normal is what''s familiar. Not what''s right, or good. It''s all she''s ever known. Her desire to improve things there is stronger than any instinct for her own best interests." He located a crumpled fin and pulled it free, then set about bending it back into shape. ¡°That¡¯s terrible. They¡¯re just exploiting her better nature.¡± ¡°Yep.¡± Jair finished with the fin and screwed it back in place. Raina followed him around, observing with curiosity. "You interested in mechanical things?" Jair asked, since there was clearly no point continuing to talk about Lilin. She would make her decision one way or the other, and speculating about what she could or should do would get them nowhere. "I''m interested in this. Sandskimmers are one of those things with a kind of mystique to them." "Needlessly so. They''re tricky to learn, but once you get the hang of them they¡¯re no harder than any other vehicle. You need to be able to feel the balance of it, adjust to the minutest vibration, but it''s mainly because the parts are expensive and easy to lose. None of them are Veori native ingredients, which makes importing them a notable obstacle. Not to mention the power requirements are pretty high." "Aren''t most of them solar powered?" "Yes, but that only goes so far. The wings get dusty, the intakes wear out..." Jair pulled out an angled piece and held it up to demonstrate the thinning toward its edges. "It''s a lot more work to keep it running compared to grabbing a passing sandshark. They tend to keep themselves running quite well without nearly so much effort. There''s a reason sandskimmers are the domain of the wealthy." Raina glanced back the way they''d come. "You''d call your family wealthy?" "Oh, theirs is on a payment plan, leased through the packing coalition. As long as they keep up on deliveries, they won''t have to pay any additional interest, but if they''re below quota the fees start building up. Everyone knows once you start to fall behind it''s a fast slide to destitution." Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! "That sounds exploitative." "It allows independent groups to get started and earn money from the start without needing a huge loan or tens of thousands of nirei up front. The fact that it''s on a limited contractual basis sidesteps the necessity to pay off the entire thing yourself¡ªthey can rent it for a few years and pass it back to the coalition with no further obligations." "Still. I bet the return on investment heavily favors the owners." Jair shrugged. "If you want to completely redo the economic paradigm of Veor, you''ll need to wait at least a year or so. Once our investments return enough to give you sufficient startup capital, you can test your adjustments to your heart''s content." ¡°Right. Your spectacular income. I¡¯ll be sure to start planning around it as soon as you¡¯ve paid off your crippling debts.¡± "True. I don''t have nearly as much money to play with as I''d prefer. Losing the artifacts, the dragon''s hoard, and my discretionary nirei to the king''s fines is surprisingly limiting. I suppose I could try for the other half of the royal treasury, but I already grabbed the stuff that could be sold easily. Anything more would be a bit too much risk without any guarantee of return." He sighed heavily. "If only I could annihilate seascourge as easily as they can annihilate dragons." "You want to be the prime predator on the planet?" "Is that really so much to ask for?" "Tiny bit." Jair smiled. ¡°Thankfully, financial domination isn¡¯t the only path to influence.¡± ¡°Oh really?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°Increasing a house¡¯s prestige and power can be done several ways. One of which I happen to have a very strong head start on.¡± ¡°Knowledge? Because I think you¡¯ve already burned a lot of bridges with your blackmail.¡± ¡°Not all knowledge is about exploiting others.¡± He grinned and passed her a worn coil. ¡°We¡¯ll need a replacement for that.¡± ¡°Sandskimmer repair is your big plan?¡± He shook his head. ¡°That¡¯s unrelated. You ready to plan out your ascension to Archmage?¡± Whatever she¡¯d expected, it wasn¡¯t that. She burst out laughing and shook her head. ¡°That¡¯s impossible, even for you. I¡¯m only human.¡± ¡°I understand if it¡¯s too hard and you¡¯d rather not. We can stick with High Mage for you if you want, but becoming the second verified human Archmage in history would be a much better accolade on your resume. Your house would be swimming in alliances in no time.¡± ¡°Jair, becoming any kind of advanced mage tier requires years of training and preparation before even attempting¡ª¡± ¡°Nope. It normally requires years of training and preparation. You have me instead. More training and preparation than you¡¯ll ever need. And I can get you there in a few years.¡± ¡°It normally takes three years to advance a tier, that¡¯s not much of an advantage¡ª¡± ¡°Eight months to High Mage. Five years to arch.¡± Raina blinked. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Jair grinned back at her. ¡°You won¡¯t quite be ready to handle Sekir on your own, but even a Master Mage will be a big help when we head to Meliarn.¡± She stared at him a long minute before finally clearing her throat. ¡°You¡¯re serious?¡± ¡°Fully. We¡¯ll need to spend some time on Nuprima doing incredibly painful and extreme training, but I somehow think that won¡¯t be enough to deter you.¡± ¡°Archmage¡­¡± Raina murmured, shaking her head. ¡°You know that you could have offered me the throne of Veor and I¡¯d be less shocked.¡± ¡°Do you want it? You¡¯re already, what, twenty-eighth in line. I can make that a much shorter jump.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t even joke about that. A lot of those are my friends, relatives, or allies. I¡¯ll have enough to do managing my own house without trying to juggle the rest of them too.¡± ¡°So, personal power rather than political control, then?¡± ¡°I suppose¡­¡± ¡°Why do you hesitate? That doesn¡¯t sound like your usual reluctance.¡± ¡°You''ve been saying so much outrageous stuff, it''s hard to tell when you''re serious or not." "When have I said something that I didn¡¯t follow through on?" "Well... uh..." Raina frowned. "I''m sure you must have at some point. You can''t be entirely serious all the time. And you just offered to murder half my family." Jair grinned and tossed a faulty fin over the edge. "Serious? No. Truthful? Different matter. I have no need for anything else." "You''ve been making over the top threats to people seemingly at random." "I am fully prepared to follow through on any of them if they call my bluff. I don''t make empty threats. I may prefer not to engage in such behavior since it complicates the timeline later on to have a certain sort of reputation, but that doesn''t mean I''d hesitate." Raina shivered. "That''s... cold." "I''m not a person who has the luxury of warmth. I know too much about everyone and everything, and if I were to pretend otherwise it would only get people hurt. Even inaction is constantly permitting things to get worse. I''m not going to be able to change the world without being willing to go to any extremes." Raina laughed uneasily. "Yeah... change the world." "This is why I need you, by the way." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "I''m no longer a reasonable judge of my own decisions. I have a perspective so far removed from the day to day that I could easily just..." he shrugged. "Anything. I could justify anything." "So I''m supposed to be your moral compass?" "Among other things. Also, just a friend who I don''t have to hide from or lie to. You can''t overvalue that." "Right." Jair sighed. "I keep doing this. I don''t want you to be uncomfortable. If you want to leave, you can." Raina snorted. "You think you can scare me off that easily? I know you. I trust you with my life. I''m not going to go running off just because you''re making threats against the continent my family and I live on." "I''m not going to do anything to damage Veor itself, that''s Sekir''s deal." "Yeah. Sekir. That''s another thing you''re going to need to explain at some point." "What do you want to know? He''s a sorcerer, he resurrects in a new body whenever he''s killed, and he weasels his way into the leadership of Veor by exploiting Farshen''s grief and madness. His leadership is based around a platform of defying the seascourge, and he manages to get their attention to the point where Veor becomes a second Zoraam. Compared to that, anything I might do is pretty tame." ¡°I¡­ see.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry, we have years yet before we need to worry about it. For now¡­¡± he held up the last few pieces that couldn¡¯t be fixed by hand. ¡°We¡¯re going to need to exploit you not being in debt and replace a few things.¡±
80 - Departures Without any form of manabody or core, the mana pressure is insufficient to activate any but the most aggressive of constructs. The fact that such constructs do exist should serve as a sufficient warning to anyone considering sourcing from unverified creators. Excessive mana drain can cause long-term health repercussions and utilizing drain powered items is strongly discouraged.
"I think we might have a problem with your plan." "Oh? Which problem is that?" She gestured to the other end of the ship, where Lilin stood staring out at the desert. At no point did Lilin come right out and agree to come with them, but by the time they had the ship repaired and ready to be underway she had somehow ended up with her most essential possessions packed and stowed. "You and I have spent the past three years learning how to be magical combatants. Your plan involves going to the most dangerous place in any of the moons just to shortcut your way to archmage status, and I''m making a list of the most valuable creatures we could be hunting in order to steal their pieces for Tempest''s advancement." Jair contemplated this with a solemn nod. "Yes, I see. Lilin will need to decide if she wants to be a civilian or combatant." He jumped up with a grin. "I''ll go ask her now." Raina sighed. "Really? Just like that--" He was already halfway across the ship. "Oh Lilll!~" She spun, eyes wide. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± "Nothing. Just have a question for you. You want to fight monsters or watch us fight monsters?" "Uh...?" "It''s a simple question, but it changes the kind of equipment I get for you. If you want to be a fighter, that''ll be a more aggressive kit. Civilian bystander just requires lots of protection constructs and a few alarms to bring me running with Maelstrom if there''s ever a need to actually get you out of the line of danger." "Jair... what...?" "Maybe give her a minute to think before assaulting her with one of the biggest decisions of her life," Raina commented, joining them by the railing. "Nah, she''s a Welburne. Making dramatic decisions on a whim is how we are." Lilin shook her head. "Liar. I remember how much you agonized before sending in your application. You are the last person to talk about being decisive." Jair waved dismissively. "That was a long time ago. I''m a different person now. So, you want to fight, or not-fight?" ¡°What¡¯s brought this on?¡± ¡°He wants me to do some crazy Archmage training regimen. I need to know what you want to do before I agree or not.¡± Lilin tilted her head at them. "I''ve noticed you throwing around that ''Archmage'' title a lot, but I don¡¯t know what it really means. I thought you were a mageblade. Is archmage an upgrade? Second tier? But Raina sounds impressed by it. Third?" Jair laughed. "I''m currently at tier four, Integrated Mageblade, which is higher than anyone else in recorded history. Most third tier classes are obtained between fifty and two hundred years into life. Being fourth tier at my age is unheard-of, even if it weren¡¯t a mixed-discipline class.¡± ¡°Okay¡­¡± ¡°Archmage is tier five pure mage. To attain it as a non-magic class is almost impossible, and it is generally considered to take a few hundred years to attain as a pure mage. Closer to a thousand for a mage-adjacent combination class, such as mageblade." Lilin''s eyes went glassy, then squinty. "Huh? But you just said¡ª" "That I''d do it in three months, and help Raina reach it in five years. Yes. Because the vast bulk of the time spent is in doing it safely. The people who rush the process almost always end up destroying themselves in the process. Lucky for us, I have a way around that particular holdup." "So... I could become an archmage?" "Anyone can, technically, since it''s a non-exclusive title. It''s not uncommon for a mageblade to attain mastery titles in both blade-mastery and magic, though anyone going as far as archmage is practically unheard-of. People wanting to become an archmage wouldn''t dilute their potential for advancement by taking a combined class." "So I''d need to have a mage-type class?" "Having a non-mage class will severely limit the sort of spells you have access to. Some are universal, but a lot of them rely on class translation. It''s why there are no viable gravity constructs, yet any mage can lift anything with relative ease." "What kind of spells are universal?" Jair eyed her suspiciously. "Is that disappointment? Have you already chosen your class?" Lilin shifted uncomfortably. "I... maybe." "Sandfisher?" "No..." but she didn''t sound happy as she said it, more resigned if anything. "What did you do?" She winced. "Caretaker?" Jair leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Right. I forgot. You always did choose that one." "I never told you because I thought you''d consider it... you know, a waste." "It is, but that''s not the end of the world. A sub-optimal class is just that¡ªsuboptimal, not disastrous. Caretaker is, what, a production and advocacy class? The fastest way would be if you could branch it out into healing routes and take a secondary mage-type. It''ll take a few months of dedicated effort to qualify for a class upgrade, but I can walk you through it if it''s what you want." "Really? You think I could become a Healer? I thought that was only possible for really rich people." Jair chuckled and patted his chest. "Who do you think you''re talking to?" "C''mon, Jai, you know you''re not actually rich." "Right now, he''s in debt to the crown," Raina put in with a grin. "So he''s technically even worse off than you." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. "See!" Lilin pointed to Raina, then Jair. "Told you." "Money comes and goes. Knowledge is ...not quite eternal, but lasts a lot longer than money." he knew that better than most. "That said, I''m not sure if I''d suggest pursuing archmage." "Why not? If Raina can do it and you can¡­" "Remember when I said most people die when they try to rush it?" Lilin hesitantly nodded. "I can reverse that, but even in the best case the process is excruciating. Most apprentice mages undergo an advancement exactly once. They go to mage, and having experienced the division once, never try again." "Most?" "Almost all. Mage towers and academies are all built around the assumption that you''ll reach two layers and stop there. The few for High Mage and above are small and exclusive for a reason. The further you go, the harder it becomes." "But it''ll give me more power?" "Yes." Lilin nibbled at her lip, thinking. "It''s the same for healers?" "If you''re seeking higher mage titles, yes. If you''re just looking to advance as a healer, no, no torturous manabody surgery necessary." "I think I''d like to be a healer, then." She said it very timidly, as though she thought Jair would deride her for it. ¡°But not fight with monsters.¡± "Good. I''ll run you through the basics. After that, it¡¯s up to you to practice as much as you can to get yourself up to the necessary skill levels. You¡¯ll also need to be responsible for the survival of something weaker than yourself. I normally suggest getting a pet, but in our case¡­¡± He glanced at Raina, then chuckled as she noticed and narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°So you should think about what kind of pet you¡¯d like to drag around with us everywhere.¡± ¡°Do I need to smack you?¡± Raina demanded. ¡°Only if you want to.¡±
"You really thought she''d say ''yes, let''s throw me straight into life-and-death confrontations with monsters?''" "I guess I''ve been around the ambitious too long." Jair shrugged. "You can''t deny that every single one of our classmates would jump at the chance to do what we''re about to be doing." "If they had any idea how valuable your experience was. Most of them would think it''s a vanity project." Jair gave Maelstrom a fond pat. "Nothing vain about it. Purely practical." "So, you''ll be ordering her a set of protective gear?" "Already did. Just need to specify what the constructs will be." Jair frowned. ¡°I haven¡¯t ever outfitted a healer before. Huh. You¡¯d think I would have, but they tend to come already equipped or dead.¡± Raina narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°Not everyone has to be a direct combatant, you know.¡± ¡°I never said they did.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t have to say it. You embody disdain for support roles so perfectly it screams from your very soul.¡± Jair squinted at her. ¡°Now you¡¯re definitely exaggerating.¡± ¡°Says the man with a soul literally built around doing everything himself.¡± ¡°Just wait, as soon as I¡¯m no longer powerless, you¡¯ll see just what you¡¯ve been missing out on. Then you can start your defence of support classes.¡± ¡°I look forward to it.¡±
¡°Why do we have to stop at every little place?¡± Lilin grumbled under her breath. She stood staring out into the desert as they waited at the sandskimmer for Raina to return from a quick shopping trip at one of the smaller stops along their way. ¡°You never know where we¡¯ll find something exciting.¡± He couldn¡¯t help but notice that the direction she was staring was back the way they¡¯d come. "These little outposts are so inconvenient. Why do they even exist? Wouldn¡¯t it be better just to go from town to town? Why have trading posts without a proper mana grid?" "Because running cables this far would be ripe for exploitation by nomads, bandits, or just anyone nefarious." "It''s a rhetorical question,¡± Lilin grumbled. ¡°I already know the reasonable explanations." "You should announce your rhetoric in advance." Lilin sighed and glanced back toward the town. "Where is Raina, anyway? I thought she was supposed to be here by now." "She left five minutes ago. It''ll take longer to get to town and back." She scowled. ¡°Do you want to talk, or just stand there being grumpy?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Jair shrugged. "In that case, I''m going to go to the oasis and work on my manabody. Let me know if Raina shows up." "What? But how do you expect me to¡ª" Jair summoned Maelstrom and darkflamed himself to the rooftop he''d started to think of as his in Veshin Oasis. He didn''t stay long, just enough to snag a few drifting motes of loose mana and shove them into his fluffy diffuse core. No more than an hour. By the time he returned, Raina was still gone, and Lilin was looking rebellious. "Hello, sister dear. What has you in this mood today?" "My brother is being frustrating." "That''s just his standard state of being." "Well, maybe I don''t like it." Jair hummed noncommittally. "What''s actually bothering you?" "Nothing. You. Raina. All of this." Jair shook his head. "You love me, and Raina''s done nothing to you. What''s wrong?" "Nothing, apparently." "Is this about our parents?" "What do they have to do with anything?" "You feel responsible for their welfare, and being out here means that you''re not in a position to control the situation back home. You''re not only incapable of influencing it, you''re fully ignorant. So it''s ripe to imagine the worst case scenarios you can think of." Lilin didn''t answer for a long moment. "Maybe." "Maybe?" She sighed. "Okay, yes. I shouldn''t have left. I knew I shouldn''t have, but I really shouldn''t have left." "Don''t worry, we''ll fix that too." "I don''t want you fixing my relationship with our parents!" "No?" "Well. I don''t think anything you do will help." Jair chuckled. "You could be right. I do tend to be a bit provocative." "A bit?" "Yes. If I wanted to be more provocative, you wouldn''t be able to mistake it for anything else." "I don''t mistake your current behavior as anything else." "Then your standards are very low." "Or yours are too high." Jair considered this. "Very possible. I''ve done some pretty extreme things these past few... years." "How extreme? You''ve been at school." "Oh, I should probably tell you something about that, at some point." "You''re being incredibly suspicious." "Remember how the king of Veor was asking for my immediate presence, and my headmaster wanted me to return half the royal treasury that I''d appropriated?" Lilin reluctantly nodded. "I assumed it was exaggerated." "Not in the least. The king needed help with this plague, and wanted me to do the fire thing for him again." "Plague?" "You haven''t heard? I suppose news hasn''t reached this far out yet. It''s starting small, but in another few months it should be system-wide news. Anyone in Veor who comes in contact with the carriers will pretty quickly become a new vector. It has a long delay on it, probably intentionally since it''s artificially made, but as long as we''re far from Veor it''ll be more annoying than dangerous." ¡°Is that why you kidnapped me?¡± ¡°I can send you back any time.¡± Jair lifted Maelstrom, green fire flickering along its length. ¡°No need for that.¡± Lilin backed away. ¡°We can take a few days to think about things before deciding.¡± ¡°You have until Terlunia. Once we¡¯re off-world, sending you home is going to get much more complicated.¡±
It was early morning on the 25th when their sandskimmer arrived at the depot from which they¡¯d departed. There was a mild argument about Jair¡¯s decision to send the driver back without the vehicle, and additional fees to be paid for the damages, but it was all ultimately trivial. Once all that was dealt with, they headed to the local transit platform to return to Astralla City. Raina and Lilin threatened to take him shopping with them, but everyone mutually agreed to sleeping first. Staying up overnight steering the sandskimmer had left them all weary and hungry. Within a half hour of their return to the Serin townhouse, Carn somehow got a breakfast together for the household, after which the girls headed off to nap. Jair detoured to the oasis for a couple hours of work on rebuilding his manabody¡ªmana core currently, and a barely perceptible one at that, but it was progress. Only once he judged he couldn¡¯t make any more progress without a break to consolidate did he return to the city and allow himself to succumb to sleep.
81 - Brother, Sister Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing particularly magical about elven breads. They¡¯re just excellent bakers. Not a method of obtaining extra powers or secret classes. (This message is sponsored by the Elven Bakers Protection Union.)
Jair didn''t want to force anything with Lilin, since this was new territory and he worried about pushing her away, but he also knew how hard it could be to move away from everyone and everything you knew. He knew he''d had a hard time adapting to being in the city, at the Institute with all these ambitious nobles, and that was even with Raina befriending him almost immediately. Not that his memory of the time before he was looping was particularly reliable, but there were a few highlights that stood out. He''d also seen other people repeat the same patterns over and over throughout his years. She would need to forgive herself for what she saw as a betrayal, even though it was the right thing for her future. She may need to forgive Jair for pushing her to the edge of the decision, or Raina for making her doubt her commitment to her family. It wouldn''t be something she could just flip off overnight, and he couldn''t expect her to. Though his personality shift appeared instant to anyone on the outside, it had taken hundreds of years to transform him from the person he''d once been into who he was now. So when he walked by her room and heard her quiet sobs, he pushed away all the calculations and plans for the future and gently knocked. She cut off in startled silence, then, "Who''s there?" "It''s me. Mind if I come in?" "Go ahead." He pushed the door open and stepped inside. She''d scooted up to a seated position on her bed to leave room for him. She smiled, though the redness of her eyes made it hard to pretend it was genuine. "Hi." "How you doing?" He slid his hand toward her, and she took it with a huff of tearful almost-laughter as he twisted two fingers around hers. "Been a while." "I don''t know." She stared out the window at the moons. "It doesn''t feel real." "I know that feeling." Even now, he had to frequently reinforce the idea of which timeline he was living in. "You''ll be fine. I''m here. Raina''s here. We''ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe and help you find your way forward. Okay?" She nodded. "I don''t..." her voice was faint, choked. "I''ve never seen him that mad. I don''t think... I don''t think he even knew who I was, when he..." She gripped his hand tighter and wrapped her other arm across her chest. Tears started to gather in her eyes. "I should be there." "No. They''re not your responsibility." "They''re family!" "Then they should have known better." "It was one time. You pushed him¡ª" "Because he was trying to shove me around to get his way, keep his sense of self-important power. All he has is his delusions of control, and playing along does no good for any of you. He won''t change, and you''ll be more and more convinced that you have no other options. That isn''t where you belong." I never figured out why you disappeared, but when this is your life... I can think of a few potential reasons. Lilin scooted closer, and he shifted back to let her lean her head on his shoulder. "But even if Father isn''t going to change, we didn''t have to leave Mom there." "She''s made her choices. She keeps making them every day. She could walk away at any time." "No she can''t. There''s nowhere for her to go, what could she even¡ª¡± Jair held up his hand. "If she really wanted to, she could leave. Zaen isn''t wholly a monster and he does love her. He probably even thinks he loves you and perhaps even me. She doesn''t want to live on her own, she wants people to love her and take care of her. And you''re so well trained, she comes in and you''re already jumping to give her whatever she wants. She plays you two against each other to always stay the one who needs protecting and care, and you fall right in line." Lilin''s hand tightened on his. "That''s not how it is." "It is." He leaned his own head against hers and reached around to put a hand on her shoulder. "I know it''s hard. You can love someone and still acknowledge that they don''t belong in your daily life. They don''t need you nearly as much as you think. They''ll be fine. They''ll adapt. You''ll recover. But that starts with staying strong now. You can''t go running back. Please. Stay with us at least a month or two, give yourself a chance to breathe." "It wasn''t that bad," she mumbled, sniffling, into his shoulder. "It''s not that bad." "I know. I''m sorry." For a time they only sat there. He wasn''t used to seeing Lilin like this. Sure, there''d been bad days when they were kids, but those were facts he remembered only by rote. After he started looping, any time he''d forced a confrontation, it''d driven her closer to Zaen rather than further away. Something in what she and Raina had talked about must have changed her mind that tiny amount. At least introduced a grain of doubt. Perhaps it had taken an outside perspective, Jair''s point of view was too easy to perceive as biased. He''d always been at odds with his parents, and couldn''t be considered the most objective. Sure, he''d been through so many lifetimes by now that he could treat them entirely without emotional bias, but there was no reason for Lilin to know that. So he held her silently, lending his presence in the only comfort she could accept right now. "You''ll come through," he told her. "I know you. You''re strong and bold. You can do this." "But it''s not meant to be about me. I''m abandoning them. Running away." She sniffled and sat up, tearily meeting his eyes. "I couldn''t even talk to them when I went back for my stuff. I snuck in the back door when they weren''t looking. I... I already felt like an intruder. Like I didn''t belong. I hate it. We''re family." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. "As Kyami is constantly reminding everyone, in case we forgot," Jair said wryly. He smoothed back her hair. "Lil, it''s going to be fine. I promise. I''ll look out for them. Their business won''t collapse, they won''t become destitute. Everything will go on." "It doesn''t feel like that. It feels like I''ve made an awful mistake, one I can''t take back, and everything is just getting more and more out of control." "Do you want to take it back?" "I..." she swallowed. "I..." "It''s okay to not know. I know it''s confusing and hard. This is the furthest you''ve been from home in your life, and we''re only going to be going farther. But this doesn''t have to be an ending. If you decide after a month that you want to go back, once you''ve had time to get away from it all and reconsider without the heat of the moment, I''ll get you home safely. And if you decide to stay with us, I''ll protect you. No matter what you choose, you won¡¯t be alone.¡± "I''m glad you''re here." She mumbled into his arm. "I missed you." "Did you? Even if I''m such a disruptive and provocative presence?" "Yeah. You''re a good kind of disruptive, most of the time." "I never thought you''d be willing to admit it." She hiccupped and shook her head. "I''m not that petty. I do love you, Jai, and I know that you''re trying to help. I just wish your way of helping didn''t break as much as it did." "Hopefully I didn''t break you too much." "Well, you promised to help me get back together, so you''ll have to live up to that if we''re traveling together." "You''re not going to go running back home immediately, then?" She hesitated, then shook her head. "I don''t know how to feel about that. I still... I..." "It''s okay, you can take your time, you don''t need to know what to say right away." "I was so scared. I thought he was going to kill you. I thought you were going to kill him. I thought you did kill him. I never want to see my family fighting like that again." "No worries. I don''t plan on getting into a spitting match with Zaen again. I made the point I meant to make, and if he decides to cause more trouble it''s on his head." "You can''t just say something like that and pretend to be not confrontational." Jair shrugged. "When did I ever try to pretend I''m not?" "I... guess I don''t know. You never used to be. What happened?" "Hmmm, that is a very long story. Do you want to have your entire worldview shattered again tonight?" She chuckled. "It can''t be that bad." "It is. Worse, perhaps." "Really?" She shifted, wiped her face, and tilted her head to stare at him. "You''re not kidding, are you?" "No. I''m serious. I want to tell you something, but it''s the kind of thing that will completely destroy the person you thought I am." "Are you secretly a clone?" "Why would you think that?" "You don''t act anything like Jair, but you''re also undeniably him. So maybe you''re a copy." "That''s surprisingly close. No, I''m just a lot older than you think." "How does that work? Time doesn''t pass differently in Astralla than back home, does it?" He chuckled and grinned at her. "It only passes differently for me. You don''t have to be surprised. I want you to know before we get into any situations where I have to use it. You saw how I stabbed Zaen and he reappeared in the same place he was, but with green fire?" "Is that what happened? I couldn''t really tell with all the flashing and moving and punching and slashing." "I have two abilities.¡± Three technically, but he didn''t need to get into whatever Integration was when he himself didn¡¯t understand it. "Darkflame lets me move people anywhere in space and rebirth them into a cleansed and rejuvenated form. It''s been able to do anything from repair lost limbs to cure depression and also... just do nothing. It depends on the person what it does and how much effect it''ll have, which makes it rather hard to predict. But it''s also able to be used as a teleportation which is what I use it for primarily." "That''s very useful. Getting around places faster will certainly save a lot of time." "That''s only the second ability I developed, however. The first... is Temporal Reversion. I can rewind time. Replay events however many times I need to to get the outcome I want." "That''s insane." "Yes." She stared at him. "You''re not joking." "Nope." "You''re... you¡¯re Jair, how...? That''s the kind of power you''d expect from an emperor, not a sandfisher''s son." "I don''t know. My soul is incredibly strong by now, but whether that''s a precursor to what my power developed into or something that came about as a result of all the reliving of the same years over and over, I can''t guess." "So you can go back in time and change things." Her eyes lit up. "You can go back to before we yelled at each other. You don''t have to fight Father, we can just go our separate ways in peace." "Yes. I could." Her face fell as his tone got through to her. "You''re not going to, are you?" "No. I''m not interested in reconciling with Zaen by folding under his demands. We''ve seen how he reacts to being opposed, and it''s not with graciousness and a willingness to compromise. If he can''t let us walk away without throwing a tantrum, then he''s not worth reversing our progress for." "What progress? All we did was spend two days crossing the desert." "You think I want to spend two more days crossing the desert? I''m almost to where I can use my manabody without burning myself out again, and I''d rather not start over again from where I was a week ago." "You shouldn''t have told me," she mumbled. "Now I''ll always be thinking about going back." "If you want, I can send you back. I don''t have to return myself." "How does that work?" Jair shrugged. "I don''t actually know. I haven''t tested it before. But I can send you back to that moment if you want. You can change your mind. But I don¡¯t want to be hiding this from you if we¡¯re going to be traveling together. I am a time traveler, and I may well bring myself or others back regularly once we start hitting obstacles that can¡¯t be easily solved with our existing resources." "I..." she stared into the distance, eyes going distant and empty. "I don''t think I can. I don''t want to see that again. I think... I think it would be worse, the second time." Jair wrapped his arms around her as she started to cry again, and he didn''t try to continue the conversation for a very long time. By the time Lilin had cried herself out and fallen asleep, he slipped out into the afternoon sun and darkflamed himself back to the oasis to get in a few hours of manabody gathering before it was time to meet Raina for dinner. He had to rush things a bit, cramming the power in a bit more tightly than it wanted to, because his timeline was much tighter if he wanted to get it finished before they left. It wasn''t much worse than his usual strategies for gaining more power faster, though, and he hardly noticed the aching strain that tugged at his soul as he forced it to substitute itself for the mana shell that the manabody should be providing on its own. It turned him into something of a power magnet, drawing in power more quickly and strongly even if it was out of his normal aura range, but also strained his soul. If he''d been anyone else, it might even have done permanent damage. Jair''s soul had been through so much by now it took something very out of the ordinary to so much as scratch it, let alone actually damage it. Seascourge, the star hydra, the Zeluran beastlord, and a few other soul-attacking adversaries were the only ones that could hope to do it. A little drastic training was nothing. It was more likely to rupture his fragile manabody in progress than harm his soul. He did end up needing to revert once and start over. It¡¯d been a long time since he did this particular method, and it was rather finicky. But on the whole, the afternoon went well. Lilin hadn¡¯t run away or demanded to be returned home yet, and after another couple days of this he¡¯d be ready to start imprinting his spells by Terlunia right on schedule.
82 - Girl, Friend You¡¯d think an existential threat from the unknowable depths would be the subject of fewer love ballads.
Lilin didn''t do much but sleep the first day. The second day, she holed up in Raina''s family library and Jair hardly saw her apart from at meals. Even then, she only came to some of them. She wasn''t exactly avoiding him, and he wasn''t exactly avoiding her. He had things to get done in the few days they had before Terlunia arrived, and she didn''t seem interested in company. Raina talked to her several times, and Jair left them to it. He knew the effects that his presence tended to have on his family members, and it was not generally a calming one. He could get things done, but to do so without alienating people in the process required time and caution. The remainder of their stay was largely uneventful. Larenok showed up with a new list of customers for Jair''s Darkflame experiments, though at this point he was pretty sure he knew as much about what the power did as anyone ever could. It didn''t function identically for everyone, and it did so in a way that was well outside normal parameters for measurement. Larenok and Jair had tried controlling for age, sex, soulspell color ¨C though that one was very sensitive in Veor ¨C and none of them yielded any reliable trend one way or another. Some customers who started out happy ended up even happier, while others shrugged and saw no difference. Some unhappy people ended up even unhappier, while others found themselves free and emboldened like Larenok. Jair suspected that they would never find a correlation perfectly. Much like how soulspells operated outside of any normal conventions, anything that focused so deeply on the individual was going to be chaotic at best. Even among soulspell classifications, there were outliers. Jair¡¯s own soulspell was the wrong color for time-related powers, but with a name like Temporal Reversion, there was no denying what it was. He strongly considered using Darkflame on Lilin, but she was in no fit condition to give consent, and that was the sort of thing that could be a negative influence over their entire relationship from this point on. If they were going to be traveling together, she needed to be able to trust him. Forcing his powers on her without warning or a chance to say no wasn''t the impression he wanted. Zaen was worth trying, just in case it could have done a Larenok and mellowed him out a bit, but seeing how thoroughly unrepentant his father had been, Jair decided against using Darkflame on potential allies without permission or a very good reason. Enemies, though, were fair game. When they went to deal with the Tsael vampires for instance, Jair anticipated a lot of them ending up as piles of fiery ash. He hadn¡¯t actually had the chance to try Darkflame on a vampire yet. Would it resurrect them, or not? He was curious to find out. Too bad Qahrvirna wasn''t here. Though¡­ Yeah, probably a good thing. She would be way too into it, regardless of whether she ended up dead for real. Jair shook his head. He was getting sidetracked. He was meditating here to finish the last few pieces of his manabody, not to reminisce on the potential for the future. It was astonishing to him how thoroughly his body and soul could flinch away from something that he had done a hundred times before. The pain shouldn''t matter, the tedium shouldn''t matter. Yet the necessity of doing it still triggered his desire to find anything at all else to do. Gathering power was one thing, slicing it into pieces and gluing it together from the soul out was not a fun process. He sighed, tightened his fists, closed his eyes, and focused inward. The power he''d been accumulating all week waited for him in a diffuse cloud, centered around the pseudo-core in his forehead and spreading out from there throughout his body. It didn''t fully match the outline of his body, being more oval-shaped, but that''s what he was here to fix today. He had enough raw materials he could get the process started. Jair stilled his breathing and willed his heart into stillness. He needed his body perfectly unmoving for this, the slightest motion could throw the entire thing off. The body would start to cannibalize the manabody and then eventually the soul if he kept it in this suspension for too long, but he was an expert at working on his own bodies. He knew what he needed to do. It shouldn''t take more than an hour, which would be just about enough to eat up the excess edges of manabody that he''d been collecting power for anyway. Using his unmoving physical body as a template, and his soul as a blade, he sliced into his fledgling manabody. He cut away the edges and folded them back in on themselves, reinforcing the outline of his physical body as the boundaries of the mana, one tiny piece at a time. It was not fun. Manabody construction, at least the fast-tracked version he practiced, was one of the most uncomfortable things he had done in a long time. And he¡¯d recently been stabbed in the head by seascourge, so that was saying something. He simply needed to endure. This process was not one he could shortcut away; this was the shortcut. Performing complex manabody surgery on yourself was generally considered a terrible idea and extremely unsafe. More so than trying to do a physical equivalent. You could sooner replace your own liver. But for someone like Jair who¡¯d been in every extreme situation conceivable and then some, the drastic disciplines of merging, splicing, and operating on and with multiple phases of his own existence at once were second nature to him now. Though he¡¯d delayed beginning, once he was underway there was no hesitation. He cut and sealed and cut and sealed, forcing the diffuse cloud into a clearer and clearer imitation of his physical body. The biggest potential drawback of this method was the likelihood of failing to perfectly line up the manabody with the lifebody which ended up causing rather severe issues in future. If the angle of your spell imprints were even a few degrees off, they may malfunction or simply not work at all. If your manabody wasn¡¯t in contact with your skin, you¡¯d need implant constructs instead of the standard touch-based ones, making everything exponentially more complicated, expensive, and unpleasant. To risk mutilating your future internal synergy just to save a few weeks of gathering power was never considered worth it. So many cautionary tales, the method itself buried from sheer disuse. It¡¯d taken him almost as long to discover its method as to perfect its application. But as with so much other ancient, hidden, forgotten, or lost information, he had unearthed it in the end and now considered it an integral part of his capabilities. The mental and physical strain on him as he forced himself beyond mortal limits again and again barely registered. It was present, but his focus was so intent there was no attention to spare for the danger signals from his concerned bodies and mind. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Today he would return to his status as an initiate mage, tomorrow they would go have adventures on Terluna, and a month after that he would repeat the process on Nuprima to brute-force his way into archmage status. And for once, he wouldn¡¯t be alone. That made everything wondrous and new, even if he¡¯d be going through the same rote actions that he¡¯d played out a hundred times before. Jair had never been happier.
¡°Jai¡¯s out meditating again, isn¡¯t he?¡± ¡°He¡¯ll be back eventually. You¡¯re welcome to hang out with me until then.¡± Raina patted the bed beside her. Lilin came in slowly, then sat down as though she were expecting the bed to collapse out from under her. "I''m sorry." ¡°That¡¯s what you came here to say?¡± Raina glanced at Lilin sideways, one eyebrow raising. "Why? What do you possibly have to apologize for?" "I''m taking up space in your house, eating your food, and infringing on your special trip with Jair." "So? That just means now it''s a special trip with Jair and Lilin." "I don''t think that''s how it works." Raina turned to face Lilin properly and took one of her hands. "I want you to come with us. Honestly, it''ll help to have someone else along. I know Jair is still Jair but with everything that happened and everything that he''s been through... I sometimes feel like he''s not living in the same reality we are. I need to process, to catch up on so much, and he''s become so..." "Aggressive?" "Assertive. Which I love to see, but I''m not used to it. So if I have to get used to it, and so do you, we may as well get used to it together." "And you don''t think having his little sister along will ruin the mood?" Raina scoffed. "Aren''t you the older one?" "After what he''s been through? No. No I am not." Lilin sighed. "I was so happy for him, going away. Meeting someone nice. So proud of him. But now I almost wish he hadn''t." Raina''s voice came out flat, doing her best to suppress any emotion. "If he hadn''t been here, I''d be dead. I''ll never forget that feeling of absolute helplessness." Her voice trembled despite her best efforts, and then it was Lilin''s turn to squeeze her hand. "Can''t you ask him to undo it all? He said he could undo the argument back home. Offered to send me back in time to before it happened." "He offered. Asked if I was sure I wanted to live with these memories. Said he could go back to before any of it happened, destroy Ryenzo before she even set out to attack me. Fix everything before I was ever aware of it. Ensure I never had to face that in the first place." Tears gathered in her eyes and she tried to steady her breathing. "But you''re still here," Lilin noted. "I''m already so far behind. I''ve lost so many years of adventures, of training, of improvement. So many battles he''s had to fight alone." Raina shook her head firmly. "I don''t want to start over. I don''t want him to have to start over. What would he even do? Lie to me? Come out with this absurd story without any proof? Try to replicate any of what we''ve talked about, replay our conversations? Neither of us wants that." "You really love him, don''t you?" "I''m not sure I''d say ''love''..." Raina felt herself blushing despite her best efforts to the contrary. No one else could get such a reaction out of her, but when it came to Jair¡ªespecially since the whole Ryenzo thing¡ªit was like her body had a mind of its own. "Why are you two trying to deny what''s so blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes?" "It would not be appropriate for someone of my station to take advantage¡ª" Raina started. "That is such a load of fishcrap. You can date anyone you want and you know it." Raina bit at her lip, trying to think of the right words. "It really isn''t like that. He''s always been brilliant, inquisitive, vulnerable. At first, that last one was the reason I followed him around. He was so determined, so hopeful, and to see everyone else doing their best to crush the enthusiasm out of him... I couldn''t just stand by." "Yeah,¡± Lilin agreed. ¡°He never told you how bad it really got. He thought it would just be burdening you needlessly, and he had to learn to take care of himself on his own." Raina shook her head, laughing despite herself. "Yeah. He always had that stubborn independent streak, just not always as uninhibited as it is now." "I can''t even imagine what he''s been through." "Me either." The parts she could imagine were awful enough, and she was absolutely confident that he was still hiding the worst of it from her. Just like he always had. She snorted and shook her head again. "Trying to protect each other. Guess we''ll always have that in common." "And you''re sure you''re not interested in...?" "I¡­¡± Raina huffed out a breath. ¡°Honestly, I don''t know. I''ve long ago resigned myself to marrying for a strategic alliance, so I''ve been entirely focused on obtaining more strength and knowledge for myself, to become a better future head of House Serin." She didn''t mention the small part of her that thought she might have ended up betrothed to Prince Orren, before he went missing. House Serin wasn''t the highest nobility, and they were nominally in decline, but they still had a substantial amount of influence, significant assets, and an eligible daughter of the appropriate age. She''d always secretly suspected that was why she''d been allowed to play in the palace as a child, to get her and Orren used to one another, test the waters. Until recently, she¡¯d only seen Jair as a friend, and not one of a station to even think about in that way. To see him suddenly as a valid peer that no one would think of objecting to¡ªeven to the point where they might object to him spending time with a middling noble like herself¡ªfelt¡­ very different. She didn¡¯t know what to think, how to feel. It would take time to sort through everything that had happened, and she was in no position to go making romantic decisions in her current state. "And you don''t think the God of Time Travel would be a strategic enough alliance?" "He''s not a god. He has limits." Even if Raina hadn''t observed them, she was sure they existed. "Not from what I''ve seen. And he certainly doesn''t act like a man with limitations." "Unlimited redos makes mundane obstacles a non-issue, I''m sure." "I wish I could just ignore mundane obstacles." Lilin flopped backwards onto the bed. "He''s so unaffected by everything. It''s not fair." She sounded a little choked, but Raina chose not to mention it. "I don''t want to know what he had to go through to reach that point," she said softly. "And I think it does affect him a lot more than he lets on. He still needs us.¡± Lilin lay unmoving, arm across her eyes. "Still trying to protect him?" She peeked under her arm just in time to catch Raina blushing again. "You can''t say you aren''t," Raina demanded, a little defensive. "There was plenty of time to turn back if you really wanted out. You''re as concerned about him as I am." Lilin shrugged, the hint of a smile twitching her lips. "Don''t presume that my motives are the same as yours." "Oh yeah? Miss ''technically not older'' sister? You feel responsible for him. Don''t deny it." Lilin closed her eyes. "So what if I do?" "Then can you do something for me?" "What''s that?" "Play along." Lilin rolled on her side, squinting suspiciously at Raina. "What are you up to?" "Nothing nefarious. Just... I think we all need a vacation, and if you can at least pretend to have fun, maybe we can all relax a bit." "You say that like you believe I''m incapable of having fun." "I think that right now you''re trying to process so much sudden upheaval in your life that you can barely breathe, let alone focus on enjoying life," Raina said dryly. "It''ll get easier, but it''ll get easier faster if you''re not wallowing in it all day every day." "Alright... what did you have in mind?"
83 - Terlunia You will think you¡¯ve discovered something new, that no one else has tried. I guarantee you, they have. They just didn¡¯t survive testing it.
"Is there anything more we need to take care of before we go?" Raina asked, forearms resting on the railing of the balcony. "I don''t think that we can possibly be here long enough to deal with the whole fallout of what you''ve done." "What, the thing with the king?" "Yeah." "Well, I don''t plan on dealing with the fallout of that any time soon." He grinned. "Larenok will take care of it. He''s ambitious and ruthless. Nothing to be concerned by." "I feel like that''s not a good reason to be unconcerned. Besides, this is Larenok we''re talking about. How do you know he won''t leverage your reputation to turn himself into a grand czar or something?" Jair shrugged. "Does it matter if he does?" Raina frowned. "Of course it does. He''s a jerk." "And he''s ambitious and self-centered and doesn''t care at all about convention or requirements of sanity." "Why do you sound like those are good things?" "They''re reliable things. If he does take over the country, I guarantee he''ll do a better job than Sekir." "You really are obsessed with this Sekir guy, huh." "He''s the next major checklist item to deal with. Of course he''s going to be on my mind." "And you can''t just... let it go for a while? Enjoy life?" "That''s what I''m doing. If I couldn''t let go, I''d be sitting in an oasis right now. Or trying to convince you that your imprints needed to be sorcerer-killers." "I wouldn''t be opposed to some anti-sorcery spells." "I would. It''s a waste. Most sorcery can be counteracted by strength of will and a competent soul shield." "You know that I''ve never even heard of a soul shield, right?" "Yeah, they''re not commonly taught. They''re pretty advanced, but we''ve got years. Plenty of time for you to learn." "So you want to teach me to be an archmage, and learn this soul shield technique that I''ve never heard of. What else?" "We need to upgrade Tempest, naturally." He pulled out the list of potential ingredients from his soulspace. "Any of these strike your fancy?" She stared at it, read through it quickly, turned the page over, unfolded it, scanned the list, then unfolded it another time before raising an eyebrow at Jair. "You gave me every option you could think of?" He laughed. "No, only the best ones. And only those specifically available on Terluna or in the Oriad. If we want to roam further afield, you''ll have to give me another few days to compile all the information necessary." "You want me to decide in the next three days?" "No rush if you don''t want to. Like I said, we have years." Raina folded the page and set it aside. Clasping her hands together, she leaned forward earnestly. "Jair, I understand that you are very enthusiastic about this. But you have to understand something. I''m not going to be able to keep up at this pace." He waved away the concern. "It doesn''t matter what your pace is. I''m perfectly capable of handling the logistics. If you want to spend the next year doing nothing but traveling, that''s entirely reasonable too. I''ll take one cycle to visit Nuprima and get my own archmage status back, then I''m all yours." "We''ve got almost a month until a Nuprima passage." "And until then, I''m all yours." He flashed her a brilliant smile. "I don''t demand much for myself, you know." "Just the time to become an archmage, right."
Between shopping, meditating, packing, meditating, and sparring with a side of meditating, the week passed in steady tempo. Terlunia arrived on the 30th with much fanfare, the lunar festival in full swing by the time the passages to Terluna itself opened in the morning. Jair, Raina, and Lilin were at the front of the line as the first incoming eelships arrived and began unloading their goods. All the waiting passengers joined in the handoff, as was traditional. Several of the buyer''s criers oversaw the delivery, and within minutes the entire load had been deposited in the waiting storage warehouse or one of the three wagons. By the time the passengers had finished lining up, the eelship was already being led away to the next warehouse to be loaded up for the return trip. "This''ll be my first time off-world," Lilin said, both excited and nervous as they stood waiting. "Nothing to worry about. Entirely like a normal transit, except bigger and heavier." The platform flashed, then, and they were hurled through crushing and stretching space to a matching platform on the distant Terluna. Lilin stumbled and would have fallen if Jair hadn''t caught her. "I didn''t like that," she mumbled woozily. Dozens of people stood around, either waiting for friends and family, or queueing up for their turn to head down. The south-central Almas passages weren''t incredibly popular, but there were still enough people to make it feel crowded. The arrival station was open to the sky, but walled around by high hedges. Eelships drifted up and down outside, as the steady flow of goods came in and went out. Terluna didn''t have nearly as much in the way of natural exports as someplace like Nuprima¡ªwhere the shipment of mana crystals were the vast majority of its traffic¡ªbut as a way to transport things between continents on the planet without running afoul of the seascourge, it thrived. "Alright, we have about eighteen hours before the passage to Orard. Plenty of time to see the sights." Jair glanced at Raina¡ªpolitely interested¡ªand Lilin¡ªopenly gaping. "It''s so green? How..." Raina smiled. "Terluna''s unrivaled in its gardens. Shall we go for a quick tour of those?"
Raina''s idea of a quick tour turned out to be three hours long and cross two thirds of the way across the moon, but the look of undeniable awe on Lilin¡¯s face at each new discovery was worth every minute of walking around garden after garden. They finished up at a natural courtyard formed by an ancient lunar crater whose dust had been magically compressed into a smooth stone, while the curved melted walls were overgrown with Terlunan vines whose overly-large leaves formed a canopy around the outer rim of the courtyard. The place had been turned into an open-air cafe, and that¡¯s where they ended for lunch. ¡°Anyone have suggestions for what to do after?¡± Raina asked. ¡°After all, we still have half a day of lunar festival to play in.¡± Lilin shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m flexible,¡± Jair said. ¡°I''m eager to introduce you to Eythron and Qahrvirna, and to get to Nuprima to start our mage advancement, but neither of those is on a timer. We have plenty of time to play with before we need to start worrying again. Did you have something in mind?" "As it happens, I do." Raina smiled. "Have either of you ever been storm-sailing before?" "Is that like sandfishing?" Lilin asked. "Only slightly. Terlunan storms are a lot tamer than Neptian ones, and they have the advantage of not being infested with seascourge. It''s slightly terrifying at first, but once you get used to the idea of a vast body of water that isn''t going to eat your soul, it''s quite thrilling." Thrilling was one word for it, though not necessarily in a good way. Of all the things he¡¯d become accustomed to and lost the fear of, falling into water was not one of them. He probably never would be used to it. Repetition tended to dull the threat of just about everything, but seascourge and the star hydra stood out as major threats that could not be underestimated. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Even now, the faintest slip-up could cost him his existence. And that would cost the world a whole lot more. Given how quickly seascourge moved on a soul-destruction level, keeping that instant reflex of water=death, run was probably the most important fear he had remaining. But Terlunan seas were secure, safe, and ostensibly fun to play around in. So he actively suppressed the parts of him that screamed he should avoid water at any cost, and followed his friend and sister toward the storm-dock. Terlunan weather was one of those peculiar things about it that just never stopped being weird. While Neptian weather varied and fluctuated more or less unpredictably, Terluna''s weather followed a very simple pattern. In these areas, it would be warm and damp. In those areas, it would be warm and dry. In these areas, it would be wet and cloudy, and in the storm seas, it would be stormy. The storms occasionally spilled over onto the shore by a half mile or so, wind and temperature fluctuations happening as they swirled on by, but even that was in its own way entirely predictable. If they stopped by the storm center there would be a chart of how far the storms would be reaching on any given day of the coming two weeks. Jair wasn''t used to the buffeting flow of the storm beneath their slender vessel, but his balance was so incredibly attuned after uncountable years of doing everything and anything that it would have been easier to unbalance a nonizard. Lilin lasted all of three seconds before she was tossed off the flat ship into the sea with a shriek. Raina, clearly an experienced storm-surfer, lasted almost a full minute before it got the better of her and she slipped, laughing, through the clouds below. It was a peculiarity of Terluna''s particular atmosphere that these low-lying clouds were thick enough to be used as lift beneath their ships. The turbulent water below mimicked the flowing and shifting of the storms, and made for a relatively safe landing when you inevitably lost the war for balance with the tumultuous stormtop. The whole activity was incredibly popular with tourists. To those living someplace where water could never be trusted, the novelty of being able to fly over a lot of it and fall in without being obliterated in an instant carried that thrilling edge of danger, the forbidden. Sure, baths and ponds and even controlled streams from secure springs existed, but this was a full stormy sea. Jair deactivated the lift and let the ship drift down through the clouds to collect his fellow passengers. ¡°Wha¨C ho¨C I¨C¡± Lilin was grinning and laughing and couldn¡¯t string together a coherent thought as Jair hauled her up onto the cloudship. Raina was laughing too as she climbed up. Her robes soaked through, hair framing her face in wet strands, but eyes bright and gleaming, delighted at the chance to share what seemed to be one of her favourite activities. ¡°Again?¡± she shouted over the whipping wind and crashing waves. Lilin nodded emphatically. Jair smiled as he shifted the ship back up through the tumultuous clouds, then set it to drift atop the roiling storm. Lilin squealed as she clung to the central sail pole, the ship sending her first one way, then the other. She managed to hold on a few moments longer this time before she misjudged her adjustment and slipped backwards off into the storm. Raina looked almost as comfortable with the bucking and tossing cloudship as Jair himself, adjusting her balance in constant flow and only occasionally reaching out to grab the pole. Jair kept one hand lightly on the control interface, swaying and shifting with the chaos below. Then he laughed. ¡°What?¡± ¡°If this isn¡¯t a metaphor for my life, I don¡¯t know what is. Riding atop the chaos¡­¡± he grinned at her. ¡°With you at my side, of course.¡± ¡°I doubt I can keep up with you long,¡± she said, and immediately proved her words by yelping as the ship spun in a tight circle. Only by grabbing the pole with both hands did she remain on board. ¡°I think you¡¯ll surprise yourself.¡± ¡°But not you?¡± She grinned and released the pole, shifting back to balancing with arms out. ¡°You¡¯ve already surprised me.¡± He waved a hand at the roiling storm beneath them. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have guessed this as the first thing you run to.¡± ¡°I know I¡¯ve mentioned it before.¡± ¡°In a list of things you¡¯d like us to do, yes. But I¡¯m getting the impression it¡¯s more¡ª¡± Raina¡¯s attention to the conversation left her off-guard as the ship bucked, and she tumbled off into the clouds with a startled yelp. "No fair," Lilin complained as they retrieved her the third time. "I keep falling almost immediately." "We''ve had more practice. Just got to keep trying." "This is nothing like a sandskimmer." "No, it really isn''t." "Can you... turn it to easy or something?" Lilin asked hopefully. Jair gestured to the perpetual storm. "Does that look like something we can turn down?" Lilin shrugged. "You''re a mage, right? Can''t mages control wind and stuff?" "At the moment, I don''t have any spells. You realize I only became capable of using imprints without sabotaging my class a couple weeks ago, yes?" "And you can''t wave your hands and chant the spell?" Jair released the ascension lever and went back to lightly touching the activation input. "If you just finished learning how to build a house, should I expect you to have one completed the next day?" "Well, no, it takes time to build something." "Spells are the same. I can know how to do a thing, but I still need to take the time to actually do it. It doesn''t matter how much I know if I don''t take the appropriate actions to make use of that knowledge." "Like teaching me to¡ª" Lilin lost her grip and went sliding backward, flailing helplessly as she tried to regain her balance. "Help!" Raina lunged to grab her hand, but that only meant that they both went tumbling off. Jair released the panel and let the ship drift downward. "You could try holding hands the whole time if you think it''d help." He snickered. "Tandem balancing isn''t that much harder." Raina scoffed. "Then you do it." "With you, or with my sister?" "The point is to help Lilin, why would you and I be any use to her?" Jair helped Lilin up onto the ship and started their ascent again. Mist dampened his hair and by now he''d been splashed enough that his robes were almost as thoroughly soaked as the girls who''d been swimming. Once they reached the cloud layer, he passed off the task of holding them up to Raina, then took Lilin''s hands in his. "The key to tandem is to move very small. Much less than you think you''ll need. Because there''s two of us, if we both fully adjust, we''ll throw things off." Raina grinned. "Ready?" Without waiting, she flipped the lever and they dropped onto the clouds. Lilin immediately overcorrected, nearly knocking Jair over. He had to whip out a hand and grab the pole to anchor them both. "Slow, careful movements. Crouch slightly, lower your balance. Put your other hand out flat. Use it to guide yourself through the wind." Lilin extended her hand, the other gripping Jair''s painfully tight. He didn''t mention it. For the next several minutes, Jair kept a firm grip on the pole and continually instructed Lilin on how to shift until she was no longer throwing off his balance every second. "I''m going to stop anchoring us now," he warned. "Don''t change what you''ve been doing. I''ll continue to adapt the same as I was before. There''s no need to be concerned." He slowly released, and she immediately overcorrected and sent them both flying off into the clouds. Jair took a breath and adjusted his body as he fell, cutting smoothly into the water. Part of him flinched, absolutely convinced that he was about to see glowing lights of death coming toward him, but he forcefully suppressed the instinct of fear. This was a different ocean. He was safe here. He was grinning again by the time he surfaced, treading water as they waited for Raina to come down. Lilin coughed and spluttered, but the safety construct she wore kept her from going under. He''d eschewed such a device, long since past the point where any sort of protective gear was helpful here. If he was going to drown, he could revert the timeline. Why carry around something heavy and power-hungry? A construct like that would burn through his fledgling manabody in minutes. "You having fun?" Jair asked as Lilin waved to show Raina where they were. "Yeah." She laughed. "I didn''t ever think water could be so... exciting." "Water is always exciting." "Not that kind of exciting..." "What, fear for your life and soul is excitement." Raina arrived, interrupting their debate before he could get any further into his argument. Lilin continued to practice in tandem with Jair for another twenty minutes, with several pauses to fish them out of the water, before he switched back to controller and let Raina have a turn. All the progress he''d made with Lilin seemed to disappear the moment she had someone else next to her. Jair had spent enough time with his sister to be able to read her quickly and coordinate his movements to match hers even if she was not so great at matching his. Raina''s perpetual tumbles as Lilin dragged them both down in moments proved that it was more due to his capability than Lilin''s progress. Oops. After the tenth time in a row that they fell almost immediately, Raina suggested they stop for lunch. No one objected, so Jair returned their ship to the rental dock and led the way to one of the more well-reviewed buffets in the vicinity. Owned by a pair of largely feline beastkin, one with a full mane, the other with stripes on her tail and scales on her arms, the place specialized in exotic meats prepared with the kind of perfect skill that could only be obtained by a family business with generations spent improving their craft. Jair picked out some of the spiciest stormfish and a pile of tangy tubers with a thin gravy, but held out an arm to stop Lilin when she went to imitate him. "Try the other things first," he advised. "Unless you want to be incapable of tasting anything." "It can''t be that bad." ¡°Oh?¡± He held his plate toward her. Lilin took one sniff and nearly passed out. She backed away, coughing uncontrollably. "Okay. Yep. Ah. Maybe next time." "Oooh, starpepper stormfish!" Raina darted over and snatched one from his plate before he could stop her. She already had a cup of creamy soup in her hand, which she dropped the spicy fish into. "Just what I wanted." She leaned past him to spoon in a scoop of cubed boiled greenbells, filling the last of the empty space she''d left intentionally for the purpose. She stirred her soup together, breaking up the fish, then turned and scooped up more of the greenbell cubes and held them out to Lilin. "Try these, they''re a lot less dangerous." Lilin didn''t protest quickly enough, and Raina dumped them on her plate. "Hey, I wanted¡ª" "I''ll be on the balcony." She glided away, somehow balancing her plates and bowl and cup with perfect elegance. Lilin nudged Jair with her elbow. "You sure you don''t want to marry her?" "Hm?" "You were staring dopily after her." "I do not stare dopily. I was observing her mastery of balance and efficiency of movement." "Suuuuuuure." Lilin slid down the buffet toward the less heavily seasoned meats, choosing a frosted drake-steak with a curried grain mash. "Keep telling yourself that." Jair added another three pieces of the fish, spooned more sauce over them, and followed Raina to the balcony without deigning to reply. That didn¡¯t stop Lilin from giggling at him the whole time he walked away.
84 - Terlunia Interludes "I''m sorry, Father," the young woman sobbed. She held her scarf to her chest, a splash of purple against the pure white of her tight-fitting gown¡ªa gown stained at the fringe and up the side with dust as though she¡¯d been thrown to the ground. "I have failed us. Failed our house." Soehn Yles frowned up at his eldest daughter. "I didn''t expect this plan to succeed in the first month. You don''t need to come running back to me with every little misstep. This is a long game, not a quick gambit. Maintain your position. Our time will come." "No, father, you don''t understand." Her voice wavered as she struggled to keep her emotions in check enough to appear remotely stable. "I did everything as you said, we were progressing well, but this morning he¡­ he shouted at me, told me to get out of the palace and never come back. I don''t know what possessed him. He was so loving and gentle before, I do not know what turned him into this raving madman." "You knew the risks going into this. You know he would have good days and bad days. This may be a worse day than we''ve yet witnessed, but it will pass.¡± He flicked a glance to the stack of paperwork awaiting him. ¡°Wait until he is out of the area, then move back in as though nothing happened. When next he speaks to you, pretend the incident never occurred. He is benevolent and doting, and he has never behaved otherwise for as long as you''ve been there. Understand?" "That¡¯s what I tried, but the guards wouldn''t let me in. They said my room had been¡­ That my possessions would be¡­" She lost control, sobbing as she clutched her scarf close to her chest, gasping in broken wordless heaves as tears drew glistening tracks through her makeup. Soehn crossed his arms impatiently and waited for it to pass. He had a great many obligations to get to today, and watching his daughter blubber all over the place was not one he''d scheduled today. Couldn¡¯t she have these little meltdowns on the weekends instead of during the busiest part of the week? But, she was his daughter¡ªpotentially the key to their greatest coup yet, so he supposed he could give her a little patience. This patient lasted for all of three minutes. When she still hadn''t managed to get another word out, he snapped, "Pull yourself together, girl. This is a time-sensitive matter. You need to get back to the palace as soon as possible. Tell me what the matter is." "He''s had me forbidden. He, he, he¡­ threw out my¡­ Destroyed my¡­ and my¡­ And mother¡¯s¡­" She could barely catch her breath between choking sobs, words coming out broken and unclear. It took a while, but Soehn got the gist of it. The king had one of his fits, decided to throw out his mistress and all of her things, and went so far as to banish her from the building. It was more extreme than the previous incidents, by a lot, but Soehn was used to dealing with the unstable man by now. Though with the rapidity with which he¡¯d been issuing edicts and renouncing previous decisions the past week, he was obviously going through another phase. Soehn should have seen this coming. "Did you say anything to set him off?" "Not¡­ no, nothing. He opened the door as if to come in, stood in the doorway staring¡­" She broke down sobbing again. "As¡ª as though he''d never seen me before¡­ After all this time¡­" "Then he relapsed significantly. No matter. I will take care of it. Your old room is still around somewhere. Talk to the maids or something. I''ll send word when you may return to the palace safely. Dismissed." He wrote out a quick note to his head maid, then set the sobbing girl out of his mind. Rumors were flying about some new set of mercantile edicts, but he was more concerned with the potential changes rumored about the enforcement policies on certain obscure disallowed acts. Perhaps his cousin''s indiscretions could be resolved without needing the boy killed. That would be nice. The lad had potential. Before the sound of her crying had faded into the background noise of the office home, his daughter was entirely forgotten. She may be an important piece to the family''s potential future, but she was far from the only one in play. And right now, her chances of success seemed rather minimal. No point investing any more energy into a failed gambit.
Kryr-Anarkin knew more about dragons than anyone else on the continent, though that wasn¡¯t saying much. Veor being the cultural equivalent of a small backwater in the middle of nowhere, it was completely helpless and taken off guard when its local dragons decided the time had come to start demanding tribute from their neighbors. The fact that the group had promptly decided the best way to handle the situation was to rob the dragon matriarch only showed that their incompetence lay far beyond what he could ever have predicted. Who treated a dragon this way? Who thought it was anything but suicidal to treat a dragon as a mere creature and potential resource rather than the unstoppable force of nature they were? It¡¯d been a while since Kryr so vehemently wished he could depart immediately after coming. There was a very particular strategy when dealing with creatures that could annihilate entire civilizations, and provoking them was never a part of that strategy. Try telling that to a horde of mercenaries with the glint of treasure in their greedy eyes. He half wished the matriarch had shown up while they were there, so he could watch the look of dawning recognition as these looting fools understood just how thoroughly they¡¯d ruined themselves. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Instead, the mountain lay empty the entire time, the dragons outside busy with their own searches, none of which infringed upon the matriarch¡¯s mountain. All week, over a dozen trips all told, and not a single dragon objected to their queen¡¯s horde being systematically dismantled and carried away. Kryr had expected conflict and chaos. Instead, he found uncertainty and hesitance. The Mercurios seemed convinced that this was all some complicated game Ryenzo was setting up, and were afraid of angering the volatile matriarch by interfering in the wrong way. Even though none of them had seen her in weeks. Finally satisfied that there was nothing more to be learned here, he turned in his final report and booked his Terlunia passage back to his comfortable north. Whatever was happening, it wasn¡¯t an imminent threat, and Veor had better things to spend their money on than keeping him on retainer another full cycle. He¡¯d done his duty, whatever future chaos erupted when the matriarch finally returned to find her mountain emptied¡­ no amount of negotiating could avert.
¡°I''m terribly sorry, my lady, but your outfit is not quite ready." Curad Veshin bowed in profuse apology. The twelve members of the Ardent Shield Adventuring Company stood before him¡­ eleven of them fully outfitted in their new custom armor. The twelfth, the healer, stood looking small and exposed in only her chest piece and robe. "I was assured that you had time to complete our order," she said briskly, in the best imitation of a highborn Veori accent he¡¯d ever heard from an outsider. He wasn''t sure if she was mocking him or not, but he smiled and bowed again anyway. "Indeed, my dear lady. You must understand, there was an emergency order. Miss Serin¡ª" the woman¡¯s spine stiffened and she scowled¡ª "required us to help her slay a dragon. It was incredibly urgent, you see.¡± "A dragon, here?" One of the elder men in the group spoke up, a dark-haired fellow who carried a spear. The one they called Storm, if Curad was remembering correctly. "I thought the only dragons here were in the mountains. Poison, right? They don''t bother anyone." The woman with no armor shifted uncomfortably. "I don''t suppose you know the name of the dragon this¡­ Serin person went after?" There was a faint tremor in her voice, almost concealed, but if he didn''t know better Lord Veshin would have called it worry. He waved his hands hastily to reassure them. "No need to be concerned, the Draconis Mercurios has not seen fit to impose any penalty on us over this, you''re in no danger here. Ryenzo''s death¡ª" "Ryenzo!" the woman gasped, putting a hand to her chest. "Dead? And this Serin person¡­ is she alive? She survived?" "Of course she is! She had our armor after all. I would never have advertised it as dragonproof before now, but we have definite proof that it works. Young Miss Serin survived several days in the dragon''s very lair, before emerging alive and well. Miraculously so. And there is no sign of Ryenzo. It is as though the great matriarch has vanished entirely. But I have it on good authority that she¡¯s not going to be coming back." If the somewhat crazy kid who kept teleporting in and out of the oasis without any consideration for waking people up in the middle of the night counted as good authority. But enough other sources said similar things, it was impossible to disregard. "I see.¡± The healer cleared her throat, in an obvious attempt at nonchalance. ¡°How long would it be until you could complete my armor?" "No more than a week, my lady, but I know by then the passage will be closed and you''ll be stuck here. I will of course offer you housing and provision if you wish to remain. It is my own fault for accepting another order, however essential, and prioritizing it over yours." "That is of no concern," she said faintly. "Yes. I will stay. I trust your craftsmanship as no other, Lord Curad. Where we go, I will need it." "Teresa, are you sure?" A white-haired mage asked. "If we delay¡­" "If you must go without me, go without me. You know I cannot enter a dungeon of that magnitude without appropriate protection." Grudgingly, the mage nodded assent. "Then we too shall remain here until the order is fully complete. Please direct us to the nearest inn where we may obtain lodging for our stay." "Fear not, dear guests, I shall make all the arrangements." Lord Veshin gestured expansively with both arms spread in welcome. "You need not worry for anything while you are here. Let it never be said that Curad Veshin does not fulfill his obligations to the utmost.¡± "I am very curious about this dragon slaying," Teresa said. "Do you know where the woman who killed it resides?¡± "Certainly!¡± Lord Veshin exclaimed. ¡°Let me get you her address."
Sekir Lifekeeper did not appreciate being killed, no matter how ineffectively. Worse, he had no warning and no sign of who¡ªor what¡ªactually did it. One minute, he''d been continuing his assigned patrol¡ªpointlessly searching the desert¡ªthe next he''d been violently shoved into one of his backup bodies with no indication of what had gone wrong. He needed to change his plans. If at least one person had enough suspicions of him to assassinate him, this personality was clearly a dead end. The shortlist of people who could pull off such an assassination without him noticing was a very short list indeed, none of whom he wanted to tangle with right now. Sekir had plans to deal with all of them in the long term, naturally, but that would be on his timing and with his full strength, not because they stumbled upon him alone and vulnerable. At first, he''d assumed his adversary must be someone in the Hyperion itself. No one else would have any hint of his location. He''d done very little in this persona, and couldn¡¯t think of anything that could evoke such drastic retribution. However, upon returning to the capital, he found a new factor had entered into the game. His control over King Farshen, which had been growing very near to completion, had been broken completely. So completely, in fact, that he suspected that might''ve been the cause of his death. He¡¯d poured more than two thirds of his power into maintaining that ongoing connection, and to have it suddenly destroyed could very well have backlashed onto his currently active manifestation of the time. At least there was one thing he knew for sure. This new adversary, this Phoenix Healer, was not going to be difficult to find. Rumors of his existence, people bidding over slots in his schedule, a prestigious specialist academy¡¯s headmaster acting as his agent¡­ this newcomer made no attempts to hide himself. The only question was how to approach the situation and what to do about him in the long run. He selected an untouched persona with no established background, one he¡¯d planned to use as his secondary avatar once Farshen was fully under his control, but which could be used for reconnaissance just as readily. A faint smile touched the lips of Sekir¡¯s new persona. This Phoenix Healer had no idea of the enemy he¡¯d just made. Nor would he ever see his death coming. It was only fair. He¡¯d caught Sekir off guard once, and set the stage. Taking Sekir¡¯s king off the board was one hell of an opening move. But first, Sekir needed more information. Only then could he begin to arrange things to his designs. Let the game begin.
85 - Meeting With Friends Most seers have better things to do than mess with you. Most have better things to do than let you know they exist. But if ever you come to their attention, the best course of action is complete, unquestioning compliance. They know how to make you do what they want regardless of your preferences, and if you force them to prove it, not all of them will be nice about it.
"I can''t wait to introduce you to everyone!" Jair was walking backwards as he spoke, stepping up onto the lunar platform that would take them from Terluna to Orard. The rest of his group came up beside him, along with a handful of heavily-armed strangers who wanted to try their luck in the wild jungles. There were no piles of crates or eelships piled high with trade goods on this platform, which was about as small as possible for a lunar passage. "You''ll love them. Eythron, Qahrvirna¡ª" The portal flashed and threw them down to the planet below. Lilin staggered slightly, but handled the transition relatively well. The increased gravity of Neptus took a bit of getting used to after spending the whole day on Terluna, but she¡¯d get used to it quickly. ¡°I don¡¯t like this,¡± muttered one of their fellow travelers. ¡°Feels like a setup.¡± Jair spun. He¡¯d used this platform¡ªthis exact lunar passage¡ªcountless times before and never had any trouble. This time, though, someone was waiting for them. Three someones, in fact. A vampiress in a sleeveless red dress with flairs of black lace curving across its top in a suggestive X pattern before twisting around the skirt, spell imprints visible on her arms above the elbow-length black gloves. A grey-haired man with weathered features and looking very grumpy about being present, arms crossed over his haphazard armor of homemade monster-leather, no visible weapon but a glint in his eye that would dare anyone to underestimate him. And towering over the both of them, a muscular beastkin man with black scales and fur, pale ivory horns and claws, and glowing gold eyes. Jair knew them all. And he knew no reason for them to have gathered right here at this particular time. "Qahrvirna. Eythron. Uqiar. What are you doing here?" Under normal circumstances he would have been overjoyed. But today, he felt only suspicion. Qahrvirna stepped forward, grinning. The rest of the passengers edged away hastily to get clear of the platform as she joined Jair atop it. "I have a message for you. Go back. We''re coming with you." "No we aren''t," Eythron grumbled. "I agreed to come deliver the message, not join an intercontinental crusade against a mad sorcerer." Jair blinked. "Uh, well. Qahrvirna, nice to meet you. I''m Jair Welburne, we''ve been friends in several futures. This is my sister, Lilin, and my best friend, Raina." The three females exchanged knowing smiles. "Eythron, you''re my mentor in¡ª" "All the futures where I don''t succeed in murdering you first, yes yes. That damned seer told me. Now go away. You don''t have much time." "You''re coming," growled Uqiar. He picked Eythron up in a bear hug, from which the struggling mageblade was too slow to release himself, and hopped up on the platform. Qahrvirna grinned at Raina. "You look delectable, may I say." Eythron continued trying to squirm free. "Uqiar, let me down. I will hurt you if I have to." "You will not." "I will." The platform flashed, returning them to Terluna along with the lone return passenger who wasn¡¯t there to ambush Jair. "Put me down. I will kill you all." Uqiar didn¡¯t release Eythron. ¡°No.¡± "Yay, we have just enough time to catch the last portal back to Veor," Jair said tonelessly. "Why do I feel like I''m going to very much not like the next few hours?" "Because if it had been any other collection of people waiting for you, they''d be dead by now," Qahrvirna said altogether too cheerfully. "Want to try it? I''m so curious. She wouldn''t tell me what happens." Jair sighed and shook his head. "We can find out what happens to a vampire with Darkflame another time. Right now, we need to convince Eythron not to murder us all first." He''d never once succeeded in convincing his mentor to leave the Oriad, let alone the continent. That he was here was only due to the trickery of Uqiar betraying him at the last moment, but that wouldn''t be enough to move him all the way across Terlunia to the Veor return platform. Not when they were on as tight a deadline as this. Eythron summoned his sword. ¡°I¡¯m serious.¡± "All right, that''s enough of that." Qahrvirna jumped at Eythron and bit down on his shoulder, hard. He responded with a murderous glance and raised his soulsword. Before he could slash, Qahrvirna jumped back, leaving only two pinpricks of blood barely visible against Eythron''s dark tunic. "You... can''t do this... to¡ª" he slumped, unconscious. Qahrvirna licked her fangs, then made a disgusted face as she tested whatever she''d had on them. "Nasty stuff. Eugh." She swayed dizzily for a moment, then her eyes flashed bright red and she stabilized. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Jair sighed and started walking toward the internal transit platforms. Qahrvirna followed, the others trailing after. "I have no idea what''s going on," Lilin said, raising her hand. "Me either, but I''m sure it''ll sort itself out," Raina said, much less concerned. "And it sounds like we''re heading for home?" "Yes. Though I''d appreciate an explanation as to why." "I was told that ''Sekir is starting early'' and that you''d know what that means. Also something about not being at Meliarn this time, so you''ll be on your own. Except with us." "Well, Dovak. I didn''t see that coming. So now I''ll have to deal with him, not only without a full archmage loadout, but without any spells at all, and without seer support?" Qahrvirna shrugged. "That''s what you have me for." "You''re not a seer, or an archmage." "No, but I''m a vampire and a witch, so that''s got to count for something." Jair shook his head. "I don''t suppose you have a plan for how to keep him calm after we reach Veor?" "We''ll deal with that once we get there." Eighteen expensive transit flashes later, and one more lunar passage, and they were back at the twilight desert Jair had hoped they''d seen the last of for a while. "Guess our Terlunia holiday will be just that," Raina commented. "Still the best Terlunia I''ve ever had," Lilin said shyly. "I... I had a lot of fun today." "Perfect! Now we just need to decide what to do, where to do it, with whom, and¡ª¡± Jair spun on the Oriad contingent. ¡°WHAT IS GOING ON!" "Jair, dear, no need to shriek." Qahrvirna patted his head like he was an unruly child. He ducked, lunged, and bit down on her hand in a split second by pure reflex. She grinned at him and slowly raised her hand to lick the blood from its back. "I do like you. How refreshing." Raina and Lilin were staring at the pair of them like they¡¯d never seen them before. ¡°This is normal,¡± Jair and Qahrvirna both said in unison. The vampire grinned even wider. ¡°I think this is the first time a seer has given me something enjoyable.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t give her so much credit, I was going to find you either way.¡± ¡°I think the most reassuring part of this all is that Jair also has no idea what¡¯s happening,¡± Raina said to Lilin in an aside. ¡°That means we¡¯ll get an actual explanation. If he knew everything, we¡¯d stay in the dark indefinitely.¡± Jair glared at her. ¡°I tell you things.¡± ¡°Sometimes. When you remember to. If I point it out.¡± ¡°Also.¡± He turned back to Qahrvirna and gestured at Uqiar with one thumb. ¡°Is the only reason he¡¯s along to babysit our kidnapped mageblade? And what use is having someone who¡¯ll go violently aggressive the moment he realizes he¡¯s away from his precious forest?¡± ¡°Take us to the dragon¡¯s mountain. We¡¯ll be safe there.¡± Jair stopped and turned to her with a frown. ¡°You want us to set up base inside Ryenzo¡¯s mountain?¡± Qahrvirna shrugged. ¡°Or I can give you the message in the middle of the public when we have no idea who, where, or what your mysterious nemesis is up to.¡± Jair glowered, but nodded and held out Maelstrom. ¡°Everyone, grab on.¡± With a tiny stab into Eythron¡¯s back and the rest voluntarily connected, Jair darkflamed the entire group of them to the ledge where Ryenzo had last stood before her untimely demise. ¡°Ooh, I like this place.¡± Qahrvirna immediately started walking around, showing no ill effects from the darkflame, and waved her hands at the walls as though trying to decide how to decorate them. "Alright, we''re secure. You can go furniture shopping later. What''re you here to tell me?" "Right to business, eh? I suppose impatience has an allure of its own.¡± ¡°The message?¡± She drew herself up and put on a haughty tone. ¡°Jair Welburne. By the friendship we have had in the future, I send you¡­ blah blah blah. I wasn¡¯t really paying attention to that part.¡± Jair had no doubt that Mersine had gone on exactly the necessary amount of time to wear through Qahrvirna¡¯s boredom until she flipped over into resignedly memorizing the remainder of the message. "I don''t know how you managed to break things this much worse in one week, but there is no longer time to delay. You must return to Veor immediately. I have gathered your allies and will send them to you, but you are the one who must do what is necessary. I will not be able to reach Meliarn this time, I am needed elsewhere, but I believe you can do this even if I have not seen it. Do not leave Veor again until Sekir is dealt with.¡± Qahrvirna dropped out of her recitation voice. ¡°Who¡¯s Sekir?¡± ¡°A powerful sorcerer. You¡¯ll like him.¡± Jair grimaced. She¡¯d probably like him a lot. Anyone fringing on immortal, and especially those with extreme healing abilities, tended to land in Qahrvirna¡¯s sweet spot more often than not. ¡°I don¡¯t mind if you play around with him, but please don¡¯t join him in trying to destroy the world.¡± Qahrvirna''s eyes glinted, and she continued her recitation without answering. ¡°Whatever you''ve done, he is a lot more inclined to take action than ever in the futures I saw before. He''s never been this aggressive this early and I don''t know why. Eythron is important, though I don''t know why. Without him present, the continent is destroyed with or without Sekir. I do not know how you can prevent it, but it is clear you and he are the only ones capable of doing so. Blah blah, something, our world has lost too much already. Oh, and I''m going to send Qahrvirna along too, so you have someone to play with. Don''t break her too badly. I still need her for the Mynora Disputes." Qahrvirna paused and tilted her head, eyes narrowing at Jair. "What are the Mynora Disputes?" "You think I know?" He did. "Yes." "Nope," he lied. She squinted at him suspiciously. "Please, continue." "On a more personal note, whatever you are doing to yourself is rapidly destroying your timeline. It used to be you would survive eight years like clockwork, right up to Mount Sanctum, but now I''ve yet to see a single timeline where you make it to Celsin at all, let alone the final invasion. I know you won''t listen, but at least be aware. You''re not the only one you''ll be destroying if you continue down this path. You are so powerful and capable of so much. I wish you weren''t in such a hurry to throw yourself away." For some reason, hearing Mersine''s words of concern in Qahrvirna''s voice made tears come to his eyes. He shook his head and blinked the unexpected wave of emotion away. "Crazy seer lady. I''ll never know what she sees in me." Qahrvirna licked her lips, grinning. "I can think of a few potential options, and I''m sure we could figure out a few more with a little effort." "We just met." "All the more reason to get to know each other better." Jair only raised an eyebrow at her. She pouted when he ignored her proposal, then tapped a finger to her lips. "So, if you¡¯re dying anyway, want to try out becoming a vampire?¡±
86 - Reevaluation Competitive spell-crafting is as much a chance to prove yourself worth recruiting to a position in frontline supply chains as it is a chance to show up your peers with your skills. Not every high-placing participant goes on to a lucrative career in the one industry guaranteed to always be in demand, but it¡¯s by far the most direct path to such a job.
If he¡¯d be stuck in Veor for the foreseeable future, Jair had a few plans to rearrange. First, Solaria. One week remained until the celebration of the transition to the new year, and he had received several invitations in the process of setting himself up as a prodigy. He might be able to accrue even more if he went public as the Phoenix Healer, but that sounded like a lot of hassle. Better to stay anonymous¡ªto whatever extent that was still possible. Anyone he''d met in person would potentially recognize him, and he''d have to keep Maelstrom hidden if he didn''t want his identity leaked, but it was overall a minimal danger compared to if he went around announcing himself. It wasn''t the same situation as his previous trying to work his way up to financial independence, but considering how to deal with Veori nobility gave him the same vaguely slimy feeling. "I''m going to need to assess things first," he decided. "What things?" Raina glanced up at him from where she lay on her stomach on a gaudy divan with an open book in front of her. Ryenzo¡¯s collection of oversized furniture was largely more decorative than practical, but there were a few pieces they¡¯d hauled up to use for their makeshift home. "Several things.¡± Jair paused his pacing to meet her eyes. ¡°And I''m going to need your permission for a few of them." "Oh?" She sat up straighter. ¡°What kind of permission?¡± "I know Sekir. It''s hard enough to deal with him as a full archmage, and we won¡¯t have that. Maelstrom will make up for some of the difference, but I can almost guarantee that we won''t get this right on the first time. I''m going to need to revert at least a few times, potentially a lot of times." "Naturally. So what''s the problem?" "Do you want to come back with me, or stay ignorant?" "Of course I don''t want to stay ignorant! Why would I ever¡ª" "I''m going to set this moment as my default return point. If at any point you want to forget, tell me. Otherwise, I''ll not revert until I get to you or I have no other choice." Raina didn''t respond immediately, and when she did it was with a gravity that showed she understood how absolute a commitment he''d just made. "Thank you." "Now, as my partner in the upcoming loops, should we bring in others, or keep it to just us?" Raina considered, then shook her head. "I don''t know enough. Argue each point for me." "There''s no one else I''d trust as much as Eythron and Qahri. If we''re able to snap Eythron out of his ... distressed state, then his insight would be an invaluable tool to have at our disposal. Qahri can be erratic, but if she knows what''s been happening she can be differently erratic and obtain new information." "You didn''t mention the beastkin." Jair grimaced. "I don''t exactly mistrust Uqiar, he''s Eythron''s most trusted friend, but his appearance is just... too much." Raina raised an eyebrow. "You, prejudice?" "It''s not that. He shares an unfortunate genetic combination with the Letyran Beastlord who conquers and burns Celsin to the ground, and personally killed me and ate my soul several hundred times. I can''t look at Uqiar without being aggressively reminded of the other guy with the same appearance, and that makes it very hard to remain calm and civil in his presence." "Can you focus on the differences when you see him? Different eyes, or horns?" "There are none. They are genetically identical." "And you''re sure it''s not the same guy?" "Absolutely. I spent several lifetimes following him everywhere to see when he turned into a violent conqueror, and he never does. It''s just an unfortunate genetic coincidence." "So you trust two out of three of them, and one of them can vouch for the third. What''s your argument against?" "None of them has a reason to trust me. The more information they have, the easier it would be for them to act against me if our goals cease to align. The more people I''m trying to wrangle the harder it''ll be to ensure we all come back together. If I''m forced to prioritize, especially if I bring Qahri back and not Eythron, but even the other way, they might grow paranoid and angry about being left out. If I don''t bring any of them along, I can maintain that my information is based on a prophecy power rather than living through it. As you''ve mentioned, reversing the entire universe is not the sort of soulspell anyone has." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Raina pondered this. "Do you have a preference yourself, now that you''ve listed them out?" "I trust them. But I also know them. Without years to accustom ourselves to one another, it would not take a lot to throw us into conflict. If I had a reliable way to easily and absolutely bring back everyone, I''d be more willing to do it. As it is, the risk of someone getting left out and throwing everything into chaos is too high." "I agree. Any knowledge or erratic behavior they may provide can be requested with your prophetic visions as easily as if we brought them back. And we can always revisit the issue if we need them to experience specific things personally to learn from them." "It feels strange to be hiding from them, but this is a first. I''ve never convinced them to come to Veor with me before. I wonder what they were promised in return for their help?" "I''m sure we''ll learn that when the time comes." Raina laughed, then looked around awkwardly. "What about your sister?" "I have no plans to bring her back in time unless necessary. She''s been through enough, and has expressed a disinterest in reliving potentially traumatic experiences over and over.¡±
Jair didn''t expect the situation in Veor to fall apart overnight, so when he showed up at Larenok''s to pick up his next set of assignments it was a surprise to the man pacing in agitation like someone had just told him he had to personally repay the value of a dragon''s hoard. "Surely you''re distracted for good reason?" Jair asked, as he appeared in a flash of green fire behind the man. "I can''t imagine someone as ambitious as you getting bogged down in petty drama." "Welburne!" Larenok jumped and spun. He looked like he hadn''t slept in days. "You''re not concerned?" "What''s there to be concerned about?" "Well, normally, an entire posse of dragons burning down an oasis would be something everyone would be concerned by." Jair''s smile disappeared. "Which oasis?" "Veshin." And Serin. Jair was already disappearing in a flash of fire before Larenok could say anything more. In the two days since he''d been to Veshin Oasis last, the place had been destroyed. Mana still floated up from the ground in drifting blue wisps, but that was the only similarity. The ground was scored and pitted, buildings melted into acidic lumps, all greenery withered and sickly. A green haze hung over it which the ambient floating magic only strengthened rather than clearing away. Millions of nirei worth of in-progress products¡ªperhaps even billions¡ªhad been crushed and slagged. All the curing warehouses were destroyed and gutted. The underground Veshin weapon labs were torn open and hollowed out, misshapen pits in the ground with none of its contents or architecture remaining. The Serin gardens were gone. The Veshin armory. Even the handful of outbuildings maintained by smaller houses who had no oases of their own but wanted a presence for one-off projects or meditation. Jair tossed Maelstrom up and ascended, higher and higher, until he could see the entire oasis. The whole place was one dark scar on the land. He leaned down to grasp Maelstrom and darkflamed himself back to Larenok''s office. The man was still pacing, and nearly ran into Jair as he appeared right in front of him. "Welburne! Can you give at least a little notice?" "Nope, that''s not how my power works." He crossed his arms, consciously slowing down his cadence so he didn''t betray his panic. "Do we know what happened?" "No. The Mercurios came down, burned the place, smashed up the Avrighton district, and flew away again." Avrighton. That was where the Serin townhouse was located. Jair no longer had any doubts. This was targeted vengeance and if they hadn''t been away in Ryenzo''s chambers instead of in the city, if they''d been asleep in Raina''s bedrooms like they''d been before, they would be dead and none the wiser over what had happened. Curse you, Mersine. Couldn''t have given me a straightforward warning, like ''get Ajriol out'' could you? "The entire Ardent Shield company was slaughtered," Larenok continued, and Jair stopped pacing. "Ardent Shield?" The name rang a minor bell. "Adventuring company. One the princess joins after their supplementary team gets assassinated. But that''s not for years yet. What are they doing in Veor?" "How would I know? I know a lot, but I''m not omniscient." "Right. I need to ask them myself." He paced faster. "Veshin. Serin. Serin again. Ardent Shield. Related? Or accidental?" He shook his head. "I have to get to Raina. Give me the customer list." Larenok handed it over. Jair scanned it, memorized it, then dropped it and darkflamed himself back to the dragon lair they''d appropriated.
"Raina, we have to go." She woke up with a start, eyes wide. "What? What is it?" Jair smiled grimly. "Your first chance to travel back in time to save your loved ones." Raina stiffened. "What?" "Veshin Oasis and the Avrighton district in Astralla City were attacked and leveled by the Mercurios last night." "No! They can''t¡ªfather?" "We can investigate further if you want, or we can go back now." He held out Maelstrom. "Your choice, but either way, we have to move." "Give me a minute." Raina sat up, staring blankly, breathing too fast as she stared at the wall across from her. "What happened?" she asked after a few minutes. "During the night, the dragons attacked both Serin holdings and destroyed them, along with a significant amount of collateral region." "Is that vengeance for what happened here, for us moving in?" "It could be." "We need to find out." Jair nodded. "Good thing we have Qahrvirna here." "Why so?" "She can speak draconic."
87 - Retribution Ancient magic is often depicted as being simpler than the modern variations, but that is a misconception. Modern spells are often streamlined and clarified versions of previous iterations, but that doesn¡¯t mean the old ones are any less effective. Only more difficult to use.
The sky echoed with the scream emitting from Ryenzo''s volcano, augmented with a slapped-together sound enhancement construct. "Who dares attack the humans beneath my eye? You will answer to me! Mercurios? You defy me?" The first dragon to approach was small, barely big enough to fill one wall of Astralla Institute''s outer wall. It hissed at the tiny figures standing around the former-caldera, circled, and landed. "Who dares to lay claim to Mother''s throne?" "I am the consort of Emyxnar of the Crimson Flame, and you have transgressed on my rightfully inherited land." Qahrvirna stood defiant, Jair and Raina at her sides. Lilin had elected to stay behind, Uqiar was watching Eythron, and Eythron was trying to throw himself into the lava. The young mercurios huffed out a cloud of poison gas, not quite near enough to melt the flesh off their faces but near enough to make a point. Jair traced his Storm Runner imprint while they waited. He''d started carrying the measuring tools with him at all times just so he didn''t have to waste potential imprinting time. "You do not belong here, Consort of the Crimson Flame." Qahrvirna chuckled arrogantly. "Who is it who trespasses upon land not his own, young drakling?" The mercurios dragon reared back, affronted by her intentionally provocative tone and terminology. "I should eat you where you stand." "Try it and it will be your last act." Qahrvirna waved a hand, and Jair stepped forward. He held up Maelstrom between them as though to challenge the drakling to a duel. The mercurios tried to feign indifference. He sat back on his haunches, only looking at them sideways through one green eye. "You no longer amuse me." "You were not summoned for your amusement," Qahrvirna said, though Jair detected the slightest quaver in her voice. They''d need to practice that a bit more for the next one. She was used to fawning over dragons, or sneaking around them, not defying them to their faces. Gonna need to get used to that, traveling with me. Qahrvirna coughed, cleared her throat, then continued. "I asked you a question and I expect an answer. Why have you attacked the humans under my protection?" "You hold no claim over these lands. They have belonged to Mercurios for centuries untold! They belong to Mercurios still." "And I have taken them by right of conquest." Qahrvirna''s eyes gleamed brilliant red. "Ryenzo Draconis is no more and I take ownership of this land in the name of Emyxnar the Magnificent. Lord of the Crimson Flame. You may submit yourselves to our rule and continue to abide in your homes, or you may defy us and die. The choice is yours." The dragon crouched, raised its wings, and tensed to attack. "I see no Lord of the Crimson Flame here. Only a handful of defiant humans about to be a morning snack." Qahrvirna made a severing motion with one hand. "Sir Goldenflame, you may dispose of this insolent child. Perhaps his parents will be more open to reasonable discussion." Jair was in the air the moment she said it, Maelstrom leading as he threw a Bladewalk straight at the dragon''s eye. It reared back, opened its mouth, and lunged forward to snap him out of the air. The blade nicked its tongue, and black-green flame poured out to engulf it. Jair remembered a particularly nice spot of empty ocean for it to die in, far far from any shore, and the dragon vanished into green fire and black ash. "Ack, that was not fun." Qahrvirna had spat out her dragoncube and massaged her throat. "You do not want to know about the month I''ve just had..." "Let me guess... Cyrendenth went off on another of her mad nonsense crusades, prevented anyone from getting food to Emyxnar, and they both blamed you somehow? And then Muegvygh subjected you to an entire day of increasingly inane riddles before letting you go?" Qahrvirna narrowed her eyes at him. "I thought you were a future seer." "I have seen futures that will no longer be for many many years," Jair said, in a tone of ancient wisdom and utmost patience. He held out his hand. "Now, I want to try that." He suppressed the reflex to gag or throw up the pointy dragoncube as he crammed down his throat, took slow hissing breaths, and began feeding mana into the cube at various angles and strengths. He''d gotten some practice with it in a previous timeline, but most of that had been basic technique. Now he knew how to do it, he needed to learn what to do. He found himself surprisingly impressed even more than the first time around. It was one thing to hear Qahrvirna using natural sounding sentences, and another to recognize the sheer flexibility the dragoncube offered. There wasn''t a single word he could think of that it didn''t cover. It wasn''t just better than a lizardbox, it was flawlessly effective. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "I don''t understand how you escape having a constant flood of people at your doorstep demanding these," Jair said in perfect draconic. Qahrvirna raised an eyebrow. "All it takes you is three hours of random grunting and screeching and you become fully proficient?" "I have been fluent in draconic for longer than you''ve been alive," he told her. "This is merely a new instrument to adapt to." He was used to performing invasive surgery any time he desperately needed to talk to a dragon, implanting constructs, and doing some minor rearranging of his vocal functions, but that whole process took several weeks even with a team of healers on hand, and couldn''t be reversed. He''d always speak with a hissing growl to his voice thereafter, and human words became mildly painful to form afterwards. It wasn''t a practice he engaged in often any more these days, once he''d reached the limits of what any dragon was willing to say to him. But the dragoncube was a complete game-changer. It let him speak draconic one moment, standard the next, and do so with only the minor discomfort of having a pointy object cutting into his throat for the duration. He swallowed another of Qahrvirna''s orange potions to mitigate the damage. "You going to give that back?" she asked. "Never. It is mine now." "You''re going to keep that in indefinitely?" "You will need to act as translator." Qahrvirna''s eyes flashed. "I''m not here to be your petty flunky." Jair snatched the sound amplification construct from her with a grin. "Yo! Mercurios! I have slain your matriarch and her idiot child who dared challenge me! Who will come give an accounting for your behavior?" Qahrvirna winced and took several steps away from Jair. "What did he say?" Raina whispered to the vampire. "He said ''I killed your queen, get over here.''" He stepped up onto Maelstrom''s blade and rose into the air, green fire blazing beneath his feet. It was dramatically visible in the dawn dimness, burning against the sky like dragonfire. Growls and roars rose up as the Mercurios roused. There were seventeen dragons living in the direct environs of Mount Ryenzo, and another thirty one who were too young to be out on their own but could be brought to the fight if necessary. There was no particular reason for them to stay home when a threat came to their doorstep, so the full forty-six dragon complement of the Mercurios clan survivors rose into the air in a rather impressive cloud of green and flickering aura. "Intruder, you challenge us?" Jair flew straight at him, unflinching. He got a blast of extremely potent acid to the face as a response. "You will serve as an example to your kin," Jair growled, and dove into the dragon''s mouth. The rest of the clan hovered, waiting, and then their spokesdragon burned apart from the inside out, shrieking and clawing at himself as though he thought he could stop the destruction by grabbing the pieces and holding them together. Jair laughed at him, and immolated himself in a brief flash. He promptly reappeared without the injuries he''d so recently sustained. To an outside observer, it would merely look like he''d dived into the dragon, impervious to his acidic breath, and in a flash of green and black fire burned it alive before emerging unscathed. "I have killed your matriarch, and two of her idiot children who dared defy me. Who will stand and give an account for yourselves?" The hovering dragons didn''t move. No one stepped forward, no one retreated. "I will give you one chance to speak to me willingly or I will begin killing you one by one until you answer me. If I need to depopulate this entire continent, it will not bother me." "What accounting do you demand?" a voice called out from the back of the pack. A younger female, one Jair didn''t know the name of. "Who are you?" "I am the Brother of the Ignis, Dragonslayer, Kingmaker, Breath of the Storm, Lord of Time. Your people have damaged the cities I lay claim to. Who has done this and for what reason?" One smaller female dragon off to the left side of the hovering group hissed and spun on the cluster of draklings she escorted. They puffed up their tiny chests, stuck out their tiny chins, and hovered a bit higher in absolute defiance. "It seems some of our young decided it would be an amusing game," she growled. "They will be confined and reprimanded for their insolence." "No. They will be brought before me one at a time and I will determine their fates." One of the larger males flew forward, swooping down to be on a level with Jair. "You have taken our history," he growled, "and now you would demand our future? No. You can kill one of us, but you cannot kill all of us." "Then I''ll save you for last," Jair said coldly, "so you can witness the whole thing." He dove at the cluster of young draklings, switching from riding atop Maelstrom to flying with it extended in front of him in a single blink of a flash. Dragonbreath burned the sky around him. At one point, someone bit one of his legs off. He found himself engulfed in a dragon''s oversized mouth. He burned himself, and he burned them, and he didn''t stop moving. The first few dragons were surprised when he caught them. The next few were angry, violently defiant. The second half broke and fled. He had to chase them down. To his credit, the male who''d called him out¡ªlikely the one who considered himself patriarch now that Ryenzo was gone¡ªcontinued trying to destroy Jair the entire time, despite evidence of its uselessness. When Jair held the last struggling drakling by the throat¡ªthat is, hovered in front of it with Maelstrom stabbed through, since even a drakling of this age was easily ten times Jair''s size¡ªhe hovered in front of the final member of the Mercurios clan and stared him down. "You have lost your bet," he said calmly. "Now choose. Will you be the last casualty, or will this child stand to account for his deeds?"
88 - Daughter of Ryenzo The draconic concept of honor is distinctly personal. Never presume you know what matters to one based on any other, whether by kin or kind. And woe to you if you trespass upon that honor.
The dragon reared back, wings beating the air, and glared furiously at Jair. "She is under my care. You cannot¡ª" "I can do,¡± Jair interrupted, ¡°whatever I wish. Your people are nothing to me. I want information, and I will have it whatever stands in my way." "I will not stand aside. I know you will kill me, but I will not stop." He dove at Jair one final time, one more futile attack, and then he was ashes and Jair retained only the young drakling he''d speared on the end of Maelstrom. It twitched and choked and tried to spit poison at him, but it was barely holding on to life. Jair flew lower, then dropped them both to the ledge beside the others. "Bring Goldsparkle." Qahrvirna laughed. "That''s your best translation? Haha!" Jair narrowed his eyes at her. "Yes, yes, one goldsparkle coming up." She flashed over to the stairs tunnel in a sprint fast enough it almost could be mistaken for teleportation. "Raina, dear, your overlord demands your presence." Jair growled at her. She winked and stuck her tongue out, fangs on full display. "You object to my translations?" "You are doing an acceptable job as my herald, bloodfang. Continue, and I may let you live." The skewered drakling, meanwhile, continued struggling to escape the sword through its throat, only making its injuries more extreme in the process. Jair turned back to it with a frown. "Now, we have two options here. I can heal you and interrogate you right here and now, or you can give me your solemn vow that you will serve me forever without question or hesitation, and I''ll bring your family back." The drakling stopped struggling, eyes glowing with green light as it stared at him. "I told you, I am the Lord of Time. What I have done I can undo, but I will only do so if you bind yourself to me." "Er... Overlord dearest... what are you doing?" "Preparing to make a soul pact with a dragon. Why do you ask?" Then Raina came out, and the dragon stopped staring at Jair. It spun, sharply enough that Maelstrom nearly severed its head entirely before Jair noticed, and lunged at her with an angry hiss. "Woah, there, no. Mine." He darkflamed the dragon to the other side of the caldera. "Stay there if you wish to be forgiven for your offense," he snapped coldly. The drakling tensed and flared its wings, threatening, but didn''t move from the spot. "Herald, I will need you to act as binder." "I can do that." "Tell Raina to grab Maelstrom. You too." Once they were all aboard, he darkflamed them over to the drakling''s side. Raina advanced slowly, looking up at the dragon crouched over them with wide eyes. Though it was only the size of a small house, it was still a miniature copy of Ryenzo. It even had the same snout shape, the same little horns around the eyes. It looked down at Raina with an anger that burned like fire in its eyes, but Jair''s warning had stilled its brief impulse for violence. "Alright, thank Aelir you''re still young enough for this to work, or we''d have a much more complicated process to deal with. Herald?" Qahrvirna stepped forward. "I, Brother of the Ignis, Lord of Time, Dragonslayer, Kingmaker, do swear on my life and soul to behave according to the Accords of the Unsevered so long as my companion does the same." He held out his hand to Qahrvirna, who carefully bit down on it with one fang. Once she''d withdrawn enough of his blood that he started to feel mildly dizzy, she turned to the drakling and waited. Jair circled the drakling, tracing complex and precise patterns along its side and neck with a mana-inscription pen. The pen¡¯s intended use was enchanting and construct creation and what Jair was doing was technically very illegal. Injecting foreign mana into a living creature was nominally harmless, technically mildly detrimental, and potentially incredibly damaging if you just happened to do it wrong. Bindings such as this were not enacted lightly, and not without special dispensation. Jair wasn¡¯t going to wait for permission, and no dragon would ever deign to request it¡ªor complain about the outcome, for that matter¡ªso the legal status of their ritual enactment was irrelevant. That didn¡¯t stop Raina from looking on askance. Lilin would have no idea what was happening, but Raina knew full well how dangerous this kind of process was. If he formed even a single line wrong, the whole spell would fall apart. The spell formation process took nearly a half hour before Jair stopped and returned to stand in front of the drakling. He traced the line down her arm to her right foreclaw, then ended in a circle at the side of her palm as he held it. "Do you accept this binding?¡± The drakling nodded quickly, eyes still huge. ¡°I do.¡± Qahrvirna stepped forward and pierced the tiny circle Jair had drawn with the fang holding Jair¡¯s blood. ¡°Repeat the oath. You will be my subordinate for the rest of your existence, but I will return your family to their places and you will have a second chance to convince them not to fly against me." "I, Nyrala Mercurios Draconis, Final Daughter of Ryenzo, do swear on my life and soul to behave according to the Accords of the Unsevered so long as my master does the same." She was tense and trembling as the oath was all but torn out of her, stuttering over the unfamiliar phrases, but the magic enacted was strong. She instinctively felt the meaning of the ceremony Jair had evoked, even if she didn''t know anything about the Accords themselves. Her ignorance wasn''t surprising. Jair''s knowledge of the ways of the powers of the world, and especially anything to do with the soul, was far beyond what any individual¡ªor even any collective¡ªcould boast. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He''d once tried binding anything and everything to himself, in the hopes that making the soul pact would be enough to last through time. It hadn''t. But things were different now. He could send people back in time, and he had a very strong feeling that by traveling back in time along with her, the pact would be maintained. Jair¡¯s instincts were guided by enough centuries of research and experimentation¡ªmuch of it forgotten in conscious practice, but still filed somewhere as vague instinct. They may not be infallible, but they were generally reliable. Unfortunately, he failed to take one new factor into account. So as Qahrvirna forced Jair''s blood into Nyrala''s veins, his existence tracing the drakling inside and out as the ancient ritual pact joined her power to his, Jair and Maelstrom got into a violent mental argument over the new intruder to their shared soul. Maelstrom wanted to eat the dragon. Jair wanted the dragon to not be eaten. Maelstrom really wanted to eat the dragon. "Stubborn thing..." Of all the parts of this pact process that he expected to be a problem, Maelstrom was not one of them. Unfortunately, Jair''s attention was divided, and Maelstrom''s was not. As Nyrala hissed and convulsed at the intrusion into her soul and binding through her every cell, she lost her balance and flopped over sideways. Her bulky out-of-control form nearly squished Raina by sheer size. Raina''s yelp as she jumped out of the way was enough to distract Jair''s thoughts for a flicker of a moment as he glanced her way. That was enough. With a satisfied flare of silver light, Nyrala disappeared into Maelstrom''s glowing tip. "Hey! That was my dragon! How am I supposed to interrogate her now?" Maelstrom flickered with black, green, and gold, then a more acidic green the color of the Mercurios'' signature breath. Jair coughed out the dragoncube and tossed it to Qahrvirna. He massaged his throat, voice hoarse. "Not going to need that for a while, no more dragons left." She stared at him, then up at the sky where a few minutes ago an epic battle of green fire had raged, then back to where the dragon had just disappeared into his sword. "Remind me not to get on your bad side,¡± she said breathlessly. ¡°Although there¡¯s several sides of you I¡¯d love to be on if you¡¯re amenable.¡± Jair ignored her. "Raina? I''m going to need you over here a minute." Raina approached hesitantly, looking around as though expecting Nyrala to reappear at any moment. "I have no idea what''s going to happen when we go back in time after this, but I''m very curious to find out and there''s no point staying in this dead-end timeline any longer." "Hey, who''re you calling dead-end?" Qahrvirna demanded. Jair held out Maelstrom, and Raina wrapped her hand around its blade. A flash of complex golden lines, and the two of them slipped backwards through time.
Jair and Raina stood back at the ledge below, a day previously, when they¡¯d just arrived. "Ooh, I like this place." Qahrvirna started walking around the empty dragon lair, measuring it with her hands as though preparing to start decorating. "You''re welcome to it," Jair answered. "But I need your dragoncube." Qahrvirna gasped and whirled to stare at him, hand on her chest. "You want my what?" "Don''t pretend with me. You have a nice little pointy cube that lets me speak draconic. Hand it over." "How would someone like you know about that?" Jair sighed. "Remember the part where we''re friends in the future?" Raina was watching them silently. Lilin was watching Raina equally silently. Eythron was slumped against the wall while Uqiar watched over him. "Oh, and Uqiar, you should move him away from the ledge. Once he knows there''s lava here, he''ll do his best to dive into it." "Idiot man," Uqiar complained, fondly. He picked up the unconscious man gently and carried him down the tunnel. "Alright, Qahri, I still need the dragoncube. Maelstrom, show yourself." The sword appeared in his hand. "Inspect." ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion ©¤ Unsevered Pact: Nyrala Mercurios Draconis Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, the bound soul of a venom dragon, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne "Does that mean you can bring her back out, or that she''s permanently part of your makeup?" Nyrala appeared in a flash of silver. She looked dazed and confused, but uninjured. Her body had taken on a vaguely metallic appearance, as though she were a statue of herself rather than a living being, and Jair had the distinct impression that she would no longer eat or grow in the same way a living creature would. Whatever Maelstrom''s interference had done to the Unsevered Pact, it had fundamentally changed the nature of the dragon it had absorbed. Or... Integrated? Jair filed away that line of investigation for later. He held out a hand to Qahrvirna. "Dragoncube?" "I can get it for you," Nyrala offered, eagerly. She crouched, tail flicking and claws flexing. Qahrvirna took a step back. "Ah, Jair... you didn''t mention having a dragon in your sword?" "She''s a recent addition." He turned to the dragon. "You can understand me?" "Of course, Lord of Time. We are one. Why would you be anything but clear to my understanding?" "Well, that simplifies things. What is your understanding of the Unsevered Pact we have entered into?" It was an ancient form of the binding currently used for eelship servitude, one enforced by magic itself, from back when spells were made of word and intent more than precise lines carved in conductive materials. "You will return my family to life and I will serve you forever." Most ancient vocal spells had lost their power generations ago, but the Unsevered Pact was one of a handful of ancient magics that remained active and viable. Jair suspected that was the influence of a handful of immortals who still maintained active companion bonds, not that he knew how magic itself translated between voice and motion and flow. Some mysteries were beyond even him. "That''s all?" She bowed her head. "I acted in violence against those who did nothing to me, because of an echo of a promise. I deserve the destruction you wrought on my family, but I will accept servitude in their place." "You''re a very honorable creature, Nyrala Draconis." She didn''t raise her head. "Please allow me to speak to them so they know better than to oppose us again. I do not wish them to be destroyed a second time." Qahrvirna watched the exchange with narrowed eyes. Raina and Lilin only heard Jair''s half of it since Nyrala''s would be incomprehensible screeching and growling. "Permission granted. Speak to your brothers and see to it that they do not attack the humans in the cities or oases. If they damage my property, I will destroy them." "I will tell them." Nyrala took off, swooping upward out of the volcano''s open mouth, and disappeared. "Okay, that''s going to require a little bit of explanation," Qahrvirna said, pointing. "If you had a dragon in your pocket this whole time, why did you need me?" "Figure it out yourself." "And what use is Eythron going to be away from his precious forest? I¡¯ve only seen him this way once before, when he was first coming south, and it wasn¡¯t pretty. He''s going to be either homicidal or suicidal the whole time." Jair shrugged. "That one, you''d have to ask whoever actually made the plan. I''ve never gotten him to Veor before." "Seers are so annoying." "Agreed." She glanced at Jair sideways. "Are you denying that I''m annoying?" She laughed. "So, what now?" "Well, we can set up camp here for the night. Hopefully, everything will be fine, and we''ll wake up in the morning to Nyrala reporting success and no damage to the city or oases." Raina nudged him with an elbow. "Why do you sound so thoroughly unconvinced by that possibility?" "Things are never that easy."
89 - Unsevered Many things have been lost through tragedy, accident, or chance¡­ yet others were left behind intentionally. Some secrets are best left forgotten.
Things were... that easy. Nyrala reported success, after showing off her shiny new soulbond to her siblings, they agreed to put off their vengeance. With one caveat. "They all want to be soulbound too." Jair looked at her without comprehension. "They saw how much happier I am now, and they want to join us too." "What''s she saying?" Lilin asked. Jair shook himself back to awareness. "Hey, Lil, have you ever wanted your own dragon?" "You''re joking." "Nope. Nyrala''s siblings apparently want in on the deal. So, as long as Maelstrom''s okay with it...?" Maelstrom flickered Mercurios-green, then flashed silver. "Yep. Hungry little bugger. You wouldn''t say no to anything I found for you, would you?" It flashed black. "Right, apart from the brobeg. Antimagic and you don''t get along." "Are you having a conversation with your sword again?" Raina asked, emerging from the cave she''d claimed as her lair for their stay here. "Tempest is going to get jealous." "Do you want a dragon?" Raina blinked at him. "Come again?" "Dragons. Free for the taking." He chuckled. "See, across six hundred lifetimes, I couldn''t possibly pay enough for a dragon to agree to binding itself to me. Now, they''re throwing themselves at me before I can even ask. How times have changed." "I suspect the fact that you can burn them out of the sky en-masse has something to do with it." Raina''s eyes were distant, replaying the scene from the following morning. "I''ve never seen anything so beautiful and so terrible." "Stick around. I do that a lot." She refocused on him. "And the dragons are still willing to sell their souls to us?" "Not just willing, eager. Apparently Nyrala is a good salesdragon." Nyrala puffed herself up, preening. "Qahri? You want a dragon?" "Of course I do! Who wouldn''t?" "Eythron?" "He''s an idiot. He doesn''t count." Jair snorted. "Alright, everyone aboard, let''s go." Nyrala was small enough to be comfortable to sit astride, only a little awkward. If she''d gotten much broader, it would have been harder, but she was a relatively slender dragon with long forearms, thick rear legs and massive wings, more long than broad. They flew out around the mountains to a low valley between three of the smaller mountains, not the verdant one where Raina had been held captive. Nyrala landed outside a cavern entrance and pointed inside with one wing. Jair could feel her excited eagerness, along with a spark of hope warring against dull resignation. He dismounted and considered the dark opening. "Will they attack Raina if we go in there?" Nyrala pondered this, huffing her breath out in an acrid puff. "Maybe. Our mother''s anger was very strong. It echoes still within them. More so without her here to restrain them." "Then I suggest you bring them out to me one at a time." The next several hours were spent making ancient contracts with baby dragons. They were only a few years old, not even thirty, and all very weak in comparison to their older cousins. Jair held all their contracts¡ªor, rather, Maelstrom did, since the blade hungrily integrated anything Jair tried to add to his soul¡ªbut he subsidized their management to the others as agreed. That left a dragon each for Raina, Lilin, and Qahrvirna, and another three who remained with Jair himself. As each one emerged from their cave, they invariably hissed at Raina before conceding to Jair''s control, but afterwards each apologized to her for the uncalled-for aggression. "What is going on here?" Qahrvirna demanded, as the seventh and final drakling submitted without hesitation to Jair''s integration and disappeared into Maelstrom. "I''ve never heard of such a thing." "Their mother is gone unexpectedly and they fixated on the nearest source of unstoppable power as a replacement?" Jair shrugged. "Am I taking advantage of infants, sure. Does it bother me, no. Not at all. By holding them they''ll be unable to harm anyone, and their legacy won''t be scarred by Ryenzo''s anger." He turned to Nyrala, the only one still physically present. "Do you know why your mother was so angry at the Serin family?" Nyrala shook her head. "She only said that they were the enemy and we needed to destroy them by any means. But the curse didn''t work, and then Mother died too..." Jair blinked. "Curse. A poison curse? That spreads from person to person?" Nyrala nodded. "It was bound to us all, and would grow stronger the more of us died. With Mother gone it would¡ª" "Spread faster and more aggressively," Jair finished. "The Veor Plague. That was always you?" She nodded, then bowed her head. "We didn''t know. Mother said they were enemies, so they deserved it. But I see now that they don''t." "With all of you bound to me, does that mean the curse is tied to me, unbound, or dispelled?" She had no idea, and said as much, but he was already drawing Maelstrom. ©¤ Maelstrom ©¤ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form) ©¤ Rank: Legendary ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion, Blood-Venom Curse ©¤ Unsevered Pacts: Nyrala Mercurios Draconis, Ynzeri Mercurios Draconis (Sub-Pact: Raina Serin), Enryzan Mercurios Draconis (Sub-Pact: Lilin Welburne), Silverscale (Sub-Pact: Qahrvirna Syse), Zyesi Mercurios Draconis, Okrine Mercurios Draconis, Detyar Mercurios Draconis Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, the bound souls of a venom dragon''s clutch, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Bound to Jair Welburne Raina was staring at the sword too. "Blood-Venom Curse. That''s where the plague came from?" Jair nodded thoughtfully. "Yo, Maelstrom, I don''t suppose you can use that curse as a link to do the phoenix thing and purge anyone who''s currently being affected by it?" Maelstrom flared up bright black-green, so dark and so brilliant that he had to squint and look away. Power flooded out through Jair, his manabody drained in an instant, then forced into overdraw. Jair staggered. Qahrvirna jumped to catch him and Nyrala moved in the same instant, leaning up against him to keep him upright. He wanted to say he was fine, but he was fully consumed in maintaining the overdraw without causing any damage to his fragile new manabody. It was stable, but wouldn''t stay that way if he made any mistakes here. Thankfully, though the overdraw was dramatic and lasted several minutes, it wasn''t nearly as extreme as some of the things he''d done over the years. He could bear it, he could balance it, and he could maintain it without damage to himself or others. His vision doubled, then split further, until he couldn''t tell the difference between his surroundings and a hundred other locations. Jair was there, in all of them, felt his soul reaching out through each of the people in question, weakly to those alone, stronger to those in groups. He found the delicate threads of the Blood Venom Curse, twisting like an insidious vine through blood and bone, tangling around the soul and oozing through the manabody, and gently teased them out and drew them back. Not meant for you. It felt like hours, but passed in a blink of a moment. Only when he emerged from the strange trance did he collapse under the weight of the spell he''d just performed. But his manabody remained intact, and he''d been using Maelstrom as a conduit so he didn''t even have any strange imprints that would be showing up as a consequence of the overdraw. "Why do I get the feeling that becoming an archmage would be almost irrelevant at this point?" Jair mused. Maelstrom was limited by distance and physical location¡ªhe could only slice things he could either reach, throw to, or otherwise stab into. Summoning four dragons at will, though... that was the kind of thing that even legendary heroes from ancient tales never did. One dragon that they befriended and/or defeated until they surrendered, regularly. Far more regularly than made sense given how violent, aggressive, prideful, territorial, and stubborn the average dragon was. Four though? Any of the stories of a hero raising a whole clutch of dragons invariably ended up in tragedy as the draklings fought one another for supremacy until only one was left. Without a clear hierarchy to hold them in line, and without anyone above them to restrain their violent instincts, they would go all out without regard for their shared species. Only Ryenzo''s firm presence would have kept these from following that same path. Without her around... Was that why they bound themselves to him so readily? Because they knew that without a ruler, they''d destroy each other? That was an awfully forward-thinking attitude for draklings. But, who was he to complain? He blinked several times, drawing his perception back in to focus on the others in the vicinity and block out the thousands of people who¡¯d become temporary extensions of his perception. He¡¯d been returned to the cavern while he was indisposed. Nyrala lay curled up protectively around him while there was no sign of the others. "Where¡¯s Raina?" "Took Ynzeri to visit her father." Jair nodded to himself. Of course, after hearing what happened in the previous timeline, she''d be concerned about her father''s safety. Then he frowned. "She was able to pull a sub-contract out of Maelstrom while I was away?" "Is Ynzeri not the one assigned to her?" "He is, but..." Jair shook his head. "Never mind. Maelstrom and Tempest have been trading stuff back and forth as it is. Who knows what kind of connection they have now. It''s pretty convenient, actually, if I don''t have to micromanage dragon-summoning for everyone." "I do not want to be a burden. You have saved my family from their own destruction, rescued us all from dying alone. I cannot possibly repay this." "You don''t have to. Just help me with my goals. Protect Raina and Lilin. That''s about it." Then he considered. "We should probably run some tests. Can you be recalled from a distance, or do you have to be within touch range to get drawn into Maelstrom? If so, you could basically live your own life except when I need you." "What life would I live? I have known nothing but pain and anger. Mother never told us how to live. Only to destroy until we died." "Eesh. Every time I start to feel a little sorry for Ryenzo, she goes and does something like that. Turning her own children into mindless weapons? How unmotherly can you get?" "I know she did it from a desire for our bettering, but it was a cold and empty path to an end I do not agree with." "I don''t suppose you know who your father was?" Nyrala shook her head. "Mother said he didn''t matter. Only she did." Jair sighed. "Of course she did. Well, this has been... enlightening. Ready to go start some chaos?" Nyrala leaned her neck down so he could climb aboard, which was answer enough. "I see Qahrvirna immediately asserted absolute dominance over her dragon and even changed his name?" "It is her right. You may change mine, if you wish." "You don''t like Nyrala?" She hesitated before answering, flexing her wings as though she wanted to be moving. "Mother gave it to me." "So you don''t want to discard it, but you''re not sure you want the constant reminder?" Jair guessed. "What would you like to be called?" "Silverscale is a nice name." "Well, we won''t be stealing your brother''s name. How about Skyclaw? We can keep Nyrala as your second name, since you won''t need the Mercurios any more." She perked up immediately. "Skyclaw!" She posed with one claw raised dramatically. "It''s even better than Silverscale. Thank you." Jair chuckled and peeked at Maelstrom''s stats, where Nyrala''s name had indeed changed to Skyclaw Nyrala Draconis. "Let''s get back to Astralla. I''d like to check on Raina, then we''ll fly over to the capital. If Sekir is going to be moving soon, we should be in position."
Raina was fine. Ajriol was fine. Curad Veshin was fine. No dragon attacks. No Sekir sightings. The plague had mysteriously disappeared overnight. All was well. Jair didn''t trust it. There was no way this would simply resolve itself without anything going wrong at all in a single reversion. That wasn''t how it worked. But... he finished checking in on everyone up to and including the king, and nothing went wrong. He finally stopped searching for problems and went to Larenok''s house to pick up his new customer list. "You''re still here? I thought you were leaving for months." "Yeah, plans changed. Got any more customers I need to deal with?" "Well. I do have a waiting list started, but none of them are expecting you." "You''ve increased our rates? Now that the king is a repeat customer." "Of course! We can''t repay the missing treasury with basic prices. You''re providing an exclusive luxury service." "Perfect. Contact your waiting list, give them a chance to pay an additional fee to get special timing pre-Solaria. Everyone else can wait until after." Larenok nodded, made notes, and went on with his ramble about prices and details that Jair immediately tuned out. He was thinking about what he''d just said. Solaria. The biggest holiday of the year. Unlike the monthly-or-so Terlunia, Solaria only happened at the transition between the years of Xu and Azir or back again. A major holiday one week from now. A warning to return to Veor. The dragon attack was unrelated, the plague a blip. No seer would be paying attention enough to notice the destruction of two minor noble families in Veor. The place wasn''t popular enough to be worth noticing in the first place, short of something dramatic like the entire thing disappearing into the sea. But Sekir was that strange combination of charismatic manipulation, overly dramatic, and unbendingly stubborn that very well might get it in his head that, with things changing in Veor, Solaria would be a good time to announce his presence to the world. Jair grinned. As much as trying to stay ahead of his sorcerer nemesis was frustrating, it was also interesting. And if there''s one thing he didn''t get enough of when almost everything was a painful repetition of tedium with the occasional impossible wall, it was interesting changes. For all that Sekir was an existential threat to Almas as a whole and Veor in specific, Jair had to respect the guy''s adaptability. So many people stuck to their routines and their plans regardless of how he changed the timeline. So much stayed the same whatever else he changed. Sekir was almost never the same. He shifted like water, flowing with every minor adjustment of events, always searching for every advantage he could seize, no matter how small. And making a dramatic Solaria entrance would be quite the statement.
90 - Uqiar of Zoress The children of vampires are not vampires until conversion, and vampires cannot physically reproduce with others of their own kind. To be a vampire is not a thing of body, but of soul. The physical changes are only a symptom of the deeper corruption of self.
In the meantime, Jair had one more pressing problem to deal with. And he had no idea where to start. Eythron Zoress, his beloved madman of a mentor, would not stop trying to jump into the volcano. Despite Uqiar pleading with him, despite Qahrvirna threatening him, despite a dragon sitting on him¡­ The moment he got a chance, he¡¯d be running for the volcano¡¯s central shaft. In all timelines he''d lived, Jair had never successfully convinced Eythron to leave Orard. He never even convinced him to leave the Oriad, much less the continent. It felt unfamiliar and wrong to see him here, delirious and self-destructive. Jair was used to Eythron being gruff and chaotic, but always in a way that was generally understandable. Eythron was insane, and he had his own particular brand of chaos, but he wasn''t entirely unreasonable. What he was doing now was entirely unreasonable. People are not meant to jump into volcanoes. Yet any attempt to move him away would result in him fighting his very hardest to get back as close to it as possible. Once, Uqiar wasn''t quite fast enough to notice he''d slipped out of his shackles. Eythron ran out past them and went ahead and dived straight into the magma without pause. Whatever compulsion he was following, it wasn¡¯t a bluff. Jair cursed and jumped in after him, just in case it was something survivable that he could pull him out of, but it wasn''t, and he had to revert the timeline. Fortunately, they only had to repeat the afternoon. It was nice not having to go back whole days or weeks every time. Being able to lose only a few hours was so luxurious. Even holding Eythron in the antechamber a bit off to the side was a fight, away from the overlook to the main shaft but still within a few steps of the volcano''s molten core. Jair doubted he''d be able to get him to leave the mountain entirely, unless he forcefully moved him elsewhere with Darkflame. Though he may end up doing that anyway if things kept on as they had been. As much as Jair didn''t want to forcefully apply his abilities to his allies and friends, it pained him even more to watch Eythron try to destroy himself again and again. Not an enjoyable experience or one Jair considered worth salvaging. "What is wrong?¡± Jair demanded, frustrated, as Uqiar chained Eythron in a new set of shackles. ¡°Why does he keep doing this?¡± Eythron''s incoherent mumbling about death and the call he must answer were the only response he got. Uqiar turned to him once they were out in the hall alone. "I do not know why he does this, but it is nothing new. This happens every time that he leaves the Oriad." Jair glanced back to where Eythron watched them with blank adversity. "I''ve never seen it before. This is nothing like him." "True." Then the beastkin man paused to frown down at Jair. "You were very close to him in the future?" Jair nodded. Unfortunately, this far back in the timeline, from Eythron''s perspective Jair was a stranger. He was not Eythron''s trusted student, his most frequent companion throughout their adventures in the Oriad. He was just some kid the seer convinced Eythron''s friend to drop them off with. That distance was painful. He''d rebuilt his relationship with Eythron countless times in various ways over the years. From the initial versions with Jair little more than a scared child, overawed by the great wild hermit, through the years when he started to see Eythron more as an inseparable part of his life. Then the years they worked out the recipe for Maelstrom together, loop after loop, trading notes back between timelines as they iterated toward perfection. Jair had seen his mentor in so many circumstances over the years, but never once like this. This was an Eythron Jair didn''t recognize. That was the real problem, wasn''t it? Throughout all those loops, Jair had been the one changing. He''d grown, tested, shifted, while Eythron remained constant. Chaotic, unpredictable at times, but reliable. He may not agree with what his mentor chose to do, but he could always believe that Eythron had a purpose for whatever he was doing, however mad it may appear on the surface. This was not that. The manic gleam in Eythron''s eyes as he struggled against his bindings did not conceal the dullness beneath. Whatever was possessing him, driving him, it was not of his choosing. "If you knew he would get like this, why did you agree to bring him?" Uqiar grunted and crossed his massive arms over his dark-furred chest as he leaned back against the wall where he could keep an eye on their friend-turned-prisoner. "If you knew Mersine¡ª" "I do. And I know you. You''re not the sort to bend easily." Uqiar gave Jair a reassessing glance. "She promised to destroy the Oriad entirely if I didn''t." Jair blinked. "That doesn''t sound like her." Uqiar snorted, and Jair reflexively flinched back. Maelstrom was in his hand before he consciously recognized the sound. That was the exact same snort that the invading beastlord made every time he found Jair in the ascension forge at Mount Sanctum. Uqiar lowered his tone. "Are you alright?" "I will be." Jair took a breath and closed his eyes. His heart was racing. So many lifetimes of vigilance were hard to shrug off, even knowing intellectually that this was a different man entirely. "You were going to say something?" "I don''t think you know any of us as well as you seem to think. Fame is a strange thing and tends to distort the images it reflects. No matter how well-known we are to the community of the Oriad, that is not the same as true friendship." Jair scoffed. "Easy excuse there. No, my experience is personal. He and I go way back. I spent more time with him than anyone else. Not that he¡¯ll remember." ¡°I don¡¯t like seers.¡± ¡°And yet you¡¯re willing to practically kidnap your friend at her request.¡± ¡°You do not know Mersine.¡± Jair frowned. ¡°I¡¯m beginning to think you¡¯re right. But I do know Eythron. He vowed never to leave the Oriad. You forced him to break that oath, and now he¡¯s doing his best to destroy himself. What part of this is of benefit to Veor? Or the world?¡± He started pacing as he thought aloud. ¡°It can¡¯t be to get him away from the Oriad, or it would have happened in previous timelines too. She specifically sent us to this volcano, despite it providing him a ready destructive option.¡± ¡°He does not need a volcano to destroy himself.¡± Uqiar shook his head. ¡°I have seen his contingencies. He has always been paranoid. This is something else.¡± ¡°But what?¡± Jair spun to narrow his eyes at the massive beastkin. ¡°And how exactly did you two meet?¡± ¡°He is my¡­I believe the correct term for our relationship structure is uncle. Though without the genetic relation." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Jair was immediately and vividly reminded of the fact that this man was genetically identical to a tyrannical conqueror from another world. If he was some kind of created clone, or if both of them were part of some experiments, it would go a long way towards explaining the impossible similarities. But¡­ Eythron? Of all the people to have potentially created that monster, Eythron was the last person Jair would have suspected. Granted, a large portion of his failure to even consider it was Eythron¡¯s absolute determination to remain in the Oriad at all times. It would be very hard for him to mastermind an invasion from one of the moons while hiding in the jungle the whole time. Jair had largely avoided Uqiar in the past, as a result of his genetic similarities, not wanting to treat the man unfairly based on something he had no control over, but also incapable of looking past the surface. If the beastlord of Celsin were dead, Jair could probably have convinced himself to look past the similarity and treat Uqiar as his own person. But, since he had to face the beastlord time and again, the associations with danger were impossible to excise. Jair looked the massive beastkin up and down. ¡°How old is Eythron, really?¡± He¡¯d never gotten a serious answer from the man, but generally assumed it to be in the seventy to ninety range. That seemed about right for a magical human of his caliber. ¡°Qahrvirna said he¡¯d been in the Oriad around sixty years, but knowing her that could mean anywhere from thirty to three hundred. Her idea of time is not the best.¡± Uqiar laughed, and it was the first sound he¡¯d made that Jair had never heard from his evil lookalike. ¡°That it isn¡¯t. But in this case, she is correct. Eythron and I arrived in Orard a little under sixty years ago.¡± ¡°You traveled with him before he came here?¡± Another piece of information he¡¯d never heard before. Uqiar had never been the forthcoming sort, and Jair had never found a way to break his dedication to silence. Apparently, watching his oldest friend and honorary uncle try to throw himself into a volcano was what it took to crack his composure. It was a long time before Uqiar responded, and when he did speak it was with a gentle quiet that Jair could barely hear over the background roar of the volcano. ¡°I owe him more than my life. I would do anything for him.¡± ¡°So tell me what you know. Perhaps we can figure out a plan to help him.¡± ¡°His secrets are not mine to share.¡± ¡°Is there any point holding onto them if it means he¡¯s going to die? Is not the honor of your survival owed the honor of his in return?" Jair held his breath as he waited for the response. Beastkin were very particular about things like honor, except where they weren''t. The exact nuances varied not only between subspecies, but from clan to clan, and even individual to individual. This made it very difficult to know how to avoid offending them in any given situation. Jair had gotten pretty good at the generalities of beastkin honor, and many more specifics about those individuals he interacted with regularly. Uqiar was not one of them. Jair knew enough to hold a civil conversation with him when he came to visit Eythron, and how to get out of a conversation with him without causing offense. He also knew that the man was exceptionally resilient to any manner of violent coercion. There''d been a few times when Uqiar¡¯s resemblance to the beastlord came too close and hit too strongly for Jair to ignore it, and he ended up taking it out on the more accessible beastkin. Twice it was purely an accident, the other times it was purposeful. Even if the timelines had been reverted, it was painful to recall just how far he¡¯d gone. But even then, Uqiar had refused to answer any questions about his and Eythron¡¯s relationship. Even the ¡®uncle¡¯ term was new information. "I do not know how it will change anything, but if you can find any way to help him, I will be in your debt forever." Jair raised his eyebrows. "That''s a bit stronger phrasing then I would expect for someone who is only a kind of uncle." Uqiar gave one last look at Eythron, chained against the wall and doing his best to slice through the reinforced chains with his soulsword, and the last hint of uncertainty in his eyes disappeared. "I will tell you, but only you, and if you use it against him, I will kill you." "Understood.¡± Jair exhaled with relief. ¡°So tell me, what is it I¡¯m missing?" ¡°He saved my life, but more than that. He built my life." Uqiar spoke haltingly with long pauses, as though each sentence were a struggle. Jair gestured for him to go on. "When my parents fell to Zoress, I was too young to take care of myself. Eythron held me safe within the collapsing dungeon, prevented it from crushing us, and there he raised me." "You were raised in a collapsing dungeon? How?" ¡°The collapse was gradual. The chambers my parents fought in were among the first to fall, but Zoress was large and it lasted many years.¡± ¡°Wait. Zoress is the name of a dungeon?" ¡°No longer. Zoress is gone.¡± ¡°Eythron Zoress, Heir of Death,¡± Jair murmured. Pieces were starting to come together, but this chapter of Eythron¡¯s history only raised more questions. "But what was he doing? No one stays in a dungeon that long and comes out." Jair only had to spend six months in a dungeon¡ªOronthire, the crystal bastion¡ªin pursuit of the dragon-tear pearls he¡¯d used in Maelstrom''s forging, and even that left a chunk out of his soul. Nothing so dangerous as a seascourge or star hydra, but dungeons were not to be trifled with. They would wear away at you gradually, until you don''t even notice there¡¯s nothing left of who you started as. Who knew how many of the monsters and creatures that inhabited it were, in fact, previous visitors who had stayed a little bit too long? And yet¡­ Eythron and Uqiar had survived. Years, if the beastkin¡¯s recollection was to be trusted. "What did you do in the dungeon for that long? It doesn¡¯t sound like a good place to grow up, constantly fighting." "It was a place I will always remember fondly. Yes, we would fight every morning when the monsters came for us, but then we would spend the rest of the day living. He taught me to read and to fight, to cook and survive. We went through the dungeon¡¯s every layer, until I could survive in all of them blinded and handicapped." Jair narrowed his eyes. "You were born to actual parents? That isn¡¯t just a cover story for you being a dungeon creature that escaped the destruction of your home?" Uqiar¡¯s voice was brutal and cold. "I''m not a liar. I was born to a fourkin woman and her moonkin consort." "And you¡¯re sure you don''t have a twin brother?" He¡¯d asked this more than once in previous timelines, but this time he was getting more information than any other. "I do not." "No son, or clone?" "Not as far as I know. It is possible that I have spawned off somewhere, I have not been without the occasional fling. If so, none has ever acknowledged me." That was new information, technically, not very helpful. "Isn''t staying in a dungeon long term dangerous? Aside from all monsters, won''t the dungeon itself sort of¡­ eat you?" Uqiar shrugged. "I do not think we have been eaten, but how would I know?¡± ¡°You¡¯re exhibiting no traits of being soulless,¡± Jair admitted. ¡°So that¡¯s just one more question for Eythron once he snaps out of this.¡± ¡°He is not forthcoming with information,¡± Uqiar agreed. ¡°He will probably kill you for hearing this much.¡± ¡°You mean, the dire secret that under all the violent murdering he¡¯s a decent guy with a soft spot for chaotic young disasters? I already knew that.¡± Uquiar snorted in amusement. Jair successfully suppressed the urge to draw Maelstrom at the sound. ¡°What happened to the dungeon? You said it was collapsing for years, but how long were you there?¡± ¡°It finished its collapse after twelve years. The furthest floors crumbled first, until only corridors remained. When that happened, Eythron brought us out. We stood right at the entrance as the last remnants of Zoress fell in on themselves, leaving no sign of its presence.¡± ¡°Do you have a title from that? Heir of Death, perhaps?¡± Uqiar shook his head. ¡°My only titles are those I have earned since reaching adulthood.¡± Jair considered this a moment, then gestured for Uqiar to continue his story. ¡°The day we left Zoress, Eythron gave me a sacred charge. He said we must go to the heart of the Oriad, and that nothing he did or said after should change that. Even if it meant I had to fight him and carry him screaming over my shoulder. He gave me exact instructions for how to travel, who to speak to, where to go. At first, we simply traveled together. We took a lunar passage to Suthyrel, and it is there that the fight began.¡± ¡°On Suthyrel, not on the moon?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Which moon was it?¡± Uqiar pondered this and shook his head. ¡°I do not remember.¡± ¡°So you took him to the Oriad.¡± ¡°I did. He tried to turn back many times. He screamed and argued and fought. But he never hurt me. Even at his most furious, he could not bring himself to do any harm to me, as I think he knew would be the case. No other could have been entrusted with this charge. He would have destroyed them." ¡°Yeah.¡± Jair chuckled at that. Jair certainly had not escaped his apprenticeship with the mad mageblade unscathed. Eythron had killed him many times, in various circumstances. Which only made Eythron¡¯s intense connection to Uqiar all the more unexpected. "So to him, you¡¯re like a son." Uqiar shook his head. "He has been there my whole life, but he has never sought to supplant my parents¡¯ memories. They are precious to me in a way he can never replace.¡± Jair had never heard that voice so gentle, and for the first time he was able to fully disconnect his perception of Uqiar from his evil lookalike from the future. For all that they had in common, Uqiar was nothing like the Letyran Beastlord. When they were both silent monoliths it was easy to confuse them, but having seen glimpses of Uqiar¡¯s heart finally gave Jair the perspective he needed. But understanding Uqiar¡¯s connection to Eythron was only half of the puzzle. He still needed to understand Eythron himself, and figure out what exactly was pushing him to such vehement self-destruction. But Uqiar was right about one thing. This wasn¡¯t Eythron simply trying to destroy himself. He was specifically jumping into the volcano. Something about the situation was tickling at Jair''s memory. Something to do with Reskas, the Oriad, Orard as a whole. But he couldn''t quite bring the pieces together. ¡°I think it¡¯s time we had another chat with our new neighbors. Perhaps the Mercurios know more about their matriarch¡¯s lair.¡±
91 - Waiting Games This ability of vampires to reproduce with non-vampires regardless of their species is widely regarded as the most likely explanation for the existence of creatures like beastkin or humans. Without this dilution and intermingling of genetics that should never have been combined, the world would be populated only by animals and elves.
"Mercurios Draconis! It is I, your new patriarch. Send your wisest and most knowledgeable scion to meet with me. We must make plans." Such a dramatic challenge would lead to a lot of infighting, and several days worth of dragons murdering each other before one of them finally came out on top as the best candidate for the position. Jair, therefore, did not stick around to watch, but waited inside the sheltered valley where he could keep an eye on things if necessary but mainly do his own thing without worrying. There was plenty to do while he waited. In this instance, his own thing involved teaching Raina how to perfect her imprints and updating her on the progres of his various investigations. He¡¯d also pop over to various cities once a day or so to keep tabs on the political and economic situation. So far, things were well within expectations. Different chaos than he was used to, but nothing Sekir-flavored yet. Which reinforced his suspicions about the sorcerer planning something for the upcoming Solaria celebrations. Jair worked on imprinting his own spells as well but that was more of a casual thing he did all the time rather than a particular thing that needed its own timeslot.
"What...?" Lord Curad Veshin stared at Jair like he''d lost his mind. "I''d like you to make armor for my dragon. Skyclaw." He waved a hand, and Skyclaw appeared, her green scales glinting with silver and blue light. "I... how¡ªwhat¡ªyou...?" "Preferably something that can be soulbound so it''ll summon and desummon with her." Lord Veshin only looked back and forth between Jair and the dragon, speechless with shock. "I''d prefer it to be ready before Solaria, but I understand if it''s going to be difficult to get in custom dragon-shaped armor pieces. If you need a down-payment, you''ll have to talk to the king, he''s managing my finances for a bit." It was a very long time before Lord Veshin managed to speak.
"We''ve got three customers willing to pay to fast-track themselves," Larenok reported when Jair checked in a day after making the proposal. "Here are the names and addresses." "I''ll have them done by the end of the day." Jair disappeared in a burst of green fire, reappearing on the street outside the first location. Even if he had been inside most locations at one time or another, after a while they all blurred together into indecipherability. Without something specific to set them apart, they''d be lost in the haze of everything that wasn''t notable. Even notable things tended to get mixed around with each other. He''d been practicing teleporting and accidentally ended up in a very different place than intended because he''d swapped mental impressions of them in his head, or simply made up something that wasn''t accurate enough and ended up in the next closest matching place. He meandered along the row until he got to the right numbered house, then shoved his way in to announce himself and ask after his customer. The guard at the gate looked scandalized as Jair teleported past him into the interior courtyard, then fumbled anxiously to get the gate opened before anyone realized someone unauthorized had slipped through. Jair wasn''t going to be caught and thrown out by one little gate guard though, and simply ran at a pace that kept him one step ahead of the man the entire time. Which was to say, he walked calmly and teleported every few steps, either to one side or the other, while continuing to progress forward. This forced the guard to rush back and forth trying to catch up. Jair reached the door, knocked, and waited for it to open. The guard finally caught up and tried to grab his arm. Jair lightly poked him with Maelstrom and teleported him back to the gate. The guard growled and shouted invective, but Jair had bought himself another few minutes free before the man could reach him again, and by that time the door was opened. "Phoenix Healer, here for Ser Metee. I''ll be in the sitting room. Send him down when he''s available." He didn''t wait for a response but pushed past the woman who''d opened the door and poked his head into doors until he found one that seemed appropriately sitting-capable, and sat. He wondered if Skyclaw would fit in here if he summoned her, examined the ceiling and walls, decided that yes it would work, and summoned her. She promptly crushed half the furniture, knocked the chandelier off the ceiling, and broke one of the windows with her tail, but she did fit. "I think we can arrange you a bit more dynamically," Jair said, standing to pace. By the time Ser Metee arrived, his room had been completely redecorated to accommodate the man seated atop a seemingly-sleeping dragon who had a single eye peeking open. "Ser Metee, pleasure to meet you. I am the Phoenix Healer. Are you ready?" Ser Metee stared at the dragon, then at him standing with Maelstrom glowing sinisterly in his hand, and slowly drew a sword of his own. "Really? You''d pay a fortune for me to come and then attack me just because we squished a few of your sofas?" "No, it is not just because of the sofas," Ser Metee growled. "You are intruding in my home without permission, without protocol. Anyone can claim to be¡ª" Jair teleported behind him, stabbed him in the back, and darkflamed him to the other side of the room. The man squeaked and gasped helplessly, toppled over, then stared up blankly. "You alright there? The process should leave you feeling invigorated and revitalized, sometimes with a clearer mental state, sometimes just untouched from your default status, but it has never been known to have negative effects." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. That was untrue, but just in case people''s belief had an impact on what results they got, he may as well convince them of its infallibility. Couldn''t hurt anything. The man just lay there. "If we''ve killed him, I''m going to have to refund them their money, won''t I?" Jair walked over to the man and nudged at him with one foot. "Ser Metee? You alive down there?" The man didn''t answer. "Well, I guess we''ll have to chalk Darkflame up as ''not necessarily safe''. But still, this is only one in... how many, seventy? Two hundred? I''m sure that we can do better if we keep going. Keep that ratio down." "There''s not much of a ratio to deal with if it''s just a single instance," Skyclaw pointed out. "You don''t think that we can save him?" "Hm, true." Jair stabbed him with darkflame a second time. If he could revive him, that could save his reputation and record from taking a major hit. If he''d given him a deadly shock by stabbing him from behind or something, that could be dealt with by bringing him back again, right? He tried darkflaming him to the other side of the room, and the body just lay there. "Back in time, then?" He switched to Temporal Reversion and tapped the guy, reverting him and Jair to two minutes before, and hoped that the being-unconscious thing wouldn''t carry over. Ser Metee started, staring around the rearranged room with startled shock. "What? Who? How?" "Phoenix Healer, as requested. There was a long delay while waiting for you to get here, so I let my dragon out for a few minutes. It''s alright, she won''t bite." Skyclaw gave a friendly hiss. The man nearly passed out again. "No need for that." Jair cleared his throat. "I believe we may have gotten off on the wrong start last time. Please, tell me what it is you''re hoping to get out of this service?" "My bad knee. My friend said you were able to... it is you, you''re not some kind of strange robber?" His hand crept over to his sword. Jair sighed. "Why are you so suspicious? You asked for me, I came, that''s all there is to it." "You broke into my house and your dragon has creatively rearranged my furniture and window. I don''t know how you managed to fit the beast inside, but that''s beside the point. This is an unacceptable sort of behavior." "You''re the one paying a fortune for me to be here." "And I''ll be sure to tell everyone I know what a terrible guest you are." "Oh, no, my reputation. What ever will I do?" Jair stabbed him. Darkflame relocated him across the room. Jair held his breath, hoping that the man wouldn''t topple over and disappear... He didn''t disappear. He did fall over. Skyclaw caught him in a coil of her tail and gently lowered him to the ground. ¡°He¡¯s not alive.¡± Jair sighed. "Guess this guy has an allergy. We''ll have to call that a loss." He reverted to when he was standing outside the gate, gave the guard an elaborate apology to deliver, and headed off to the next location. Maybe he should keep Skyclaw in-soul for the next one. Even if her presence wasn''t a factor in the effectiveness of the Darkflame, it was important to keep up appearances.
It was three days after his demand that he finally got his dragon representative, Liselanzis, an older female who may well be the largest dragon left after Ryenzo¡¯s disappearance. She flew over to their volcano and hovered, all pride and confidence. "Who are you that dares to summon me?" ¡°Be right back,¡± Jair told Raina the moment he heard the dragon¡¯s voice. He swallowed the dragoncube and darkflamed himself to the edge of the caldera. He paused and pointed at the mountaintop in front of him. Liselanzis growled and hovered defiantly. "I am the Stormbrother and Skyholder, whose fire destroys without hope of escape. Sit. Obey me or die." She landed crouched, her scales standing up as she flexed her claws and flicked her tail. ¡°You have no right to make demands of me. I should tear you apart where you stand.¡± Against anyone but Jair, the show of aggression would have been effective. An angry dragon was something to be feared even if it were a small and young one. This was not a young dragon. It would be a humorous sight to any outside observer, the tiny human beside the predator that could crush him without even trying, yet treating as equals. Jair had killed enough dragons, even not counting Ryenzo, that their displays meant nothing to him now. He had called and she had come. Any posturing at this point was meaningless. He simply waited until her roar faded and she stared at him in silence, then went on without acknowledging her bluff. ¡°I require your knowledge, Draconis. The heart of Ryenzo''s mountain. What is special about it?¡± The dragon punched her neck and hissed at him angrily. "You trespass upon our matriarch''s land. She will destroy you when she returns." "She will never return. Tell me. What is in the volcano? Why has it never erupted?" "Mercurios is kept tamed by our matriarch¡¯s will. If you provoke it, it will destroy you." She leaned back on her haunches and laughed harshly. "And I will be overjoyed to watch." "Mercurios is the mountain?" Liselanzis scoffed and her disdain echoed across the hills. "No. Mercurios is the dragon¡¯s heart. The well of power from which we are all born. It cannot be satisfied and no mere mountain could contain it. The pit of fire is merely the doorway." "All right. How do I talk to it?" ¡°You do not converse with Mercurios. Mercurios is so far beyond you that to even approach would destroy you." From which we are all born. Doorway. The way the dragon talked about it didn''t sound like a mountain, didn''t sound like a place. Or, rather, it sounded like a very specific kind of place. A kind of place that the Oriad specifically had none of. "Is Mercurios a dungeon?" Liselanzis hissed, tail flicking. "Do not compare Mercurios to the likes of your Meliarn. They are nothing alike." Jair nodded. That was confirmation enough for him. "Thank you. You''re dismissed. You have done well." The dragon huffed out a cloud of acidic vapor, not directed at him, but a clear indicator of her dissatisfaction. But whatever Skyclaw had told her family to keep them in line was clearly working. Instead of trying to tear Jair apart, she accepted the dismissal and took to the sky. He watched her fly off toward her own mountain, pondering, then darkflamed himself back to the valley. "What was that all about?" Raina asked, as Jair spat out the dragoncube and massaged his sore throat. Eventually he would build up enough scars there to be able to use the dragoncube without constantly ripping his flesh open, but for now he¡¯d spend a while swallowing blood as repayment. As far as costs to speak draconic went, this was a minor sacrifice. He drank another of Qahrvirna''s soothing potions before relaying the conversation to Raina. "Basically, the heart of their domain is a dungeon, and its entrance is in the middle of Ryenzo''s mountain. Given what we''ve learned about Eythron having spent a lot of time in a dungeon previously, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if what''s happening here is a¡­ latent soul corruption, for lack of a better term. Something deep in him got twisted from so much exposure to Zoress, and now it draws Eythron irresistibly toward the nearest dungeon.¡± ¡°How did he survive this long?¡± ¡°There are no dungeons in the Oriad, monsters and vampires take care of that particular danger niche.¡± "Where can we take him then? South? He should be safe in the sandmarsh villages. Or Hasti oasis?" "I don¡¯t think that will work. Meliarn extends under most of Veor. If my guess is right, anywhere a dungeon¡¯s influence exists, Eythron will be deeply influenced to seek it out. For what purpose, I don''t know, but given that he put in so much effort to flee and avoid being drawn into one in the past, I can assume it''s not good." The thought of watching his mentor corrupted fully by a dungeon and turned into a mindless mockery of himself was even more painful than watching him try to throw himself into the lava over and over again. ¡°Sounds like we need to go investigate that dungeon,¡± Raina suggested. ¡°Yes. Unfortunately, humans aren¡¯t really capable of swimming through lava, which we¡¯ve demonstrated quite clearly. Even if I get city-grade protection constructs, they¡¯ll burn out on the way in and we¡¯ll have no way to get back out.¡± Raina shook her head. ¡°We don¡¯t need constructs. We have dragons.¡±
92 - Mercurios Which came first? The monsters, or the dungeons?
Sekir Lifekeeper had better things to do than sit through yet another tedious meeting with yet another tedious ''noble''. Veor had so little to it, nothing worth salvaging after all. He would save it, rule it, and then leave it behind as readily as anything else. Only one person in this entire continent held his interest. Jair Welburne, the Phoenix Healer. He''d been shockingly elusive, despite being so incredibly well known. Rumors always swirled around him after his every appearance, but Sekir could never quite manage to catch sight of the man. The days were slipping by without visible progress, but he was used to plans taking a long time to come to fruition. He''d spent months scouring the desert for someone he knew wasn''t there just to solidify his presence within the Hyperion, after all. Of course, that particular plan had backfired when the backlash from Welburne''s phoenix fire had destroyed that body and forced Sekir into his next phase much sooner than intended, but there were always going to be unpredictable factors in any plan. That''s what made it tolerable. If he were infallible life would be so unbearably tedious. Such as toying with these nobles. They thought themselves so superior to the common underclass, but from where Sekir sat they were all the same. Equally petty, equally small-minded. Not one of them was worth the time he so graciously spent upon them, even the necessity of going through the motions of convincing, befriending, guiding, leading, gently pushing them in the directions he wanted, it was like juggling a single ball from hand to hand. Too trivial to be more than a distraction. "Welburne? Why would that have anything to do with our agreement?" Sekir refocused his eyes, bringing his interlocutor''s confusion to the forefront. He''d apparently muttered something while the fellow was droning on. "Apologies, I merely thought I saw something out the window." He continued to play through the motions, convinced the man it was his own idea to propose Sekir''s desired outcome, and signed the agreement all without more than passing attention. He had to know. His interest was quickly growing into obsession. The more this Welburne avoided his sight, the more desperately he wanted to meet him. Who was this who so casually dismantled years of preparation? Was it possible he was another person of vision? Or just another of the mindless masses who happened to get lucky? Sekir shook the nobleman''s hand and took the contract and smiled and said meaningless words, and as he walked away toward the next inevitable negotiation with someone who had nothing of worth to provide but one more tiny step toward the power and influence he needed, he still hoped to catch a glimpse of black-green fire. Just a single confirmation that he wasn''t imagining it all, that this wasn''t some grand scheme his mind had concocted to keep him amused. It was one thing to imagine a worthy adversary stalking him from the shadows, and another entirely to see it manifest. Yet so far, Sekir was making his moves and no one appeared to counter him. It was enough to make him wonder. Perhaps he was overestimating this Phoenix Healer. Perhaps it truly was a coincidence that he''d so thoroughly destroyed Sekir''s groundwork. But he couldn''t help but hope otherwise. He''d been alone in the world for so long, weaving his plots and laying out the steps one after another, it would be so refreshing to have an actual nemesis. So caught up in his thoughts was he that when the moment came and he actually caught a glimpse of the man, he nearly missed it. But there it was, the mysterious young man appeared in a flash of fire, and turned around in a slow circle, scanning the area. Their eyes met. That was all it took. Sekir focused on his adversary until everything else disappeared, even himself. As Welburne casually interrogated those around him with oddly specific questions, Sekir seized on every word. The answers he found were both greater and lesser than he''d have ever dreamed. Most importantly, he was not imagining things. Welburne not only knew of Sekir''s existence, he knew of him by name. He turned and slipped away through the crowd, never making himself known. Welburne knew his name and three of his faces, without having any idea what Sekir was actually doing. Welburne''s motivations were entirely twisted, trying to rescue Veor''s landmass as though the stone and sand held any value. He could use that. But there was one other thing Welburne knew that Sekir hadn''t. ¡°Meliarn.¡± Sekir¡¯s eyes widened slightly as he heard the word leak out of Welburne¡¯s lips. The answer he''d been seeking for so long, and it was right there for the taking, only a whisper away. This new adversary was actually a stroke of serendipity. Sekir didn''t need to play these nobles¡¯ games. He didn''t need to raise himself to king. All he needed to do was get closer to Welburne and tease out the essential details without betraying himself in the process. It seemed like Welburne expected him to make a grand declaration on Solaria? Well, then. Sekir was nothing if not considerate. His adversary wanted them to party? Sekir would put on a party no one would ever forget. Meliarn. The secret lingered on the edges of his mind, the answer so delectably elusive. What did Welburne know and how did he know it? He couldn''t wait to find out.
There were two problems with the idea of using dragons to swim through lava. The first, of course, was that they were poison dragons and everything about them was destructive to the extreme. Jair had been dissolved in a poison dragon''s mouth, stomach, or half-destroyed corpse enough times to be intimately familiar with that particular method of demise. In theory, one could wear protective constructs, but the energy for those would be extreme even for someone with Jair''s budget. Until he had a chance to get to Nuprima and collect some raw mana crystals, he''d be forced to rely on commonplace power sources, and his little trick with the academy wall had drained most available backup power sources from Astralla and its surrounding environs. But even if they had construct armor, the crystals to power it, and no concerns about messing up their fledgling spell imprints... The second problem was one of volume. They had dragons, yes, but these dragons were babies. Big enough to bite you in half in a casual snap, but not so big that they had cavernous mouths big enough to float an eelship into. And this wasn''t one of those cases where you could sort of cram it in and call it good enough. If they didn''t have an absolute seal, the magma would seep through and that would be a quick recipe for roasted passenger. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. "Skyclaw, you ready?" Jair¡¯s dragon nodded and opened her mouth. She wasn''t big enough to swallow him whole with ease, but if he curled up in her mouth she could get it closed over him. Not comfortable for either of them, and he couldn''t wear anything to mitigate the acid in her saliva from burning through his outer layers of skin, but he wouldn''t be in here long. All he could feel in the warm darkness was the general orientation of gravity as she soared overhead and then dove. Warmth turned to heat and their passage slowed as she struggled to force her way forward against the weight of the molten stone. Skyclaw swam down and down, the heat growing from comfortable to uncomfortable as she continued. Jair breathed shallowly as his body screamed at him. Burns both acidic and fiery demanded attention and went unanswered. He wasn''t quite in a trance, but it was close enough. He knew this would be painful and detached himself from it. Experience it but don''t let it control you. After his slip with Uqiar he felt the need to maintain control more strongly than ever. It felt like hours later that Skyclaw spat him out into an entrance hall of the grandest scale, though it couldn''t have been more than a minute or two. She bowed. "Sorry to be so slow." Jair summoned Maelstrom to restore himself. The darkflame was an unspeakable relief. ¡°I¡¯m glad we decided I should just try it alone first. This is Mercurios?" Skyclaw nodded. ¡°It¡¯s amazing.¡± Her voice was small and reverent as she slowly advanced up the first few steps, then more quickly as excitement overwhelmed her. She even let out a few wordless eager squeaks. Jair gave the place a good look around. The dungeon itself was very green. Green-tinted light from green crystal lanterns hanging on pillars, green haze in the air. Unsurprising, given that the venom dragons who guarded it were green, along with their poison, venom, and acid. Jair coughed as the fog assaulted his lungs, but he could tell from the mildness of the sting that it wasn''t going to do anything immediately crippling. He''d need to do something about it within a few hours, but not immediately. The floor was vaguely yellow, like ivory stained by swampy greens over the course of a thousand years, but polished and lustrous like jade. The floor rose in long curved steps that made the entry the bottom of a slowly expanding half-circle. Of course, steps for dragons were long enough that Jair could fit his family house on one of them with room to spare, and tall enough that he needed to use Maelstrom as an interim step to ascend each tier. The walls were alternating deep green and vibrant yellow, paneled and carved in detailed friezes of dragons in majestic poses wreaking destruction on all before them, with the volcano always in the background behind them. It was a style he recognized immediately from the entry hallway of Ryenzo''s mountain. The detail was even greater here, and on a smaller scale, but the way the designs were laid out was unmistakable. The ceiling wasn''t visible, only the haze of poison fog that went on and on without end until everything was obscured fully. "Isn''t it beautiful?" Skyclaw¡¯s claws sent echoing clicks through the massive entry hall as she bounded from panel to panel, more like an eager child than a three-ton monster. She stopped at one three steps up and ran her claw across it. "This is us." This carving depicted a collection of eight eggs arrayed beneath the cold pride of Matriarch Ryenzo. The shape of her head was distinctively her even in the carving, impossible to mistake after being her sworn adversary for so many lifetimes. The next panel was unrelated, but Skyclaw kept going until she found another. "Here! See us being born?" Jair examined this panel more intently. Ryenzo¡¯s body was crouched over the eight eggs in a pose that was aggressively motherly, but her face was turned away from them and a teardrop was carved beneath. Each of the eggs was in the process of breaking open. Some had claws reaching through cracks, others were poking heads out. Skyclaw pointed to one whose tail had somehow managed to get stuck in the top of her eggshell while one eye peeked out from the bottom. "That''s me." Jair chuckled. "I''m not surprised." "I don''t do things the same way as everyone else," Skyclaw declared proudly. "Then I''m glad we were able to meet. I wouldn''t want to miss out on the opportunity to work together." Jair stood back from the image to take it all in. "I can''t help but notice there''s eight here and only seven of you. What happened to the other one?" Skyclaw''s head drooped. "Our blood-venom curse. We hadn''t figured out how to diffuse it among the humans yet at that point, so it was very concentrated. He wasn''t able to survive it." She ran a claw tenderly around one particular hatching egg. Now that Jair looked more closely, the claw and eye did look rather emaciated. "You were also harmed by the curse?" "Up until you bound me." She stretched her neck and wings with a happy sound. "I''ve never felt so good in my life. All the burning and seizing is gone completely, I can move in whatever way I want. It''s amazing. I never thought it could happen." "So that''s why your whole clutch was so eager to sign up." Jair frowned. "What could cause a poison dragon''s venom to turn against itself? Especially a whole clutch. What happened?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. Mother always said it was the humans'' fault. That¡¯s why we turned it back against them.¡± ¡°And Serin humans in particular.¡± Jair frowned. ¡°Do any of these panels show a record of human interactions with dragons?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, but I¡¯m sure I can find some!¡± Skyclaw bounded off deeper into the hall. ¡°It¡¯s got to be in here somewhere, right?¡± Jair bladewalked toward the center of the room, ascending several of the massive broad steps. "How often have you been in here before?" "Never. Only before we were born. But mother told us about it." "What did she tell you?" Jair climbed up another step while she considered this. "Not a lot. She never wanted us to worry about ruling, only being ourselves and destroying every person with that one bloodline." ¡°House Serin.¡± ¡°Is that what it¡¯s called?¡± She didn''t seem very interested though, and redirected the conversation by bounding over to Jair. "I can carry you if you like." Jair waved away the offer and continued to float on Maelstrom while Skyclaw rushed forward and back again. The room went from a half circle in one direction and then curved back the other way, sinuous and unchanged in tone. More pictures, more pillars, more crystal lights, and the inescapable poison fog. Jair was rapidly losing faith that any of this would be directly related to Eythron¡¯s condition, but it was a chance to investigate secrets he¡¯d never even known existed. How could he resist? "So, apart from the fact that your mother didn''t tell you much, what do you know about Mercurios?" "Syrsamal says it''s the burial place of our first ancestor. That Mercurios Draconis fought the original dungeon spirit for control and the place became his tomb. Ever since, the creatures who live here have done nothing to harm us but only carved out the stories of our lives." "Ruling a dungeon is a pain." Jair shook his head. "If he really wanted the job, good for him." Skyclaw turned back to him, eyes wide with excitement. "You have a dungeon? Can I visit?" "Not any more. There''ve been a couple through the years, but in my opinion it''s not worth the tradeoff. Losing that much of your independence of action is a steep price for being able to create a few monsters and items at will." As a soul-based tie, it was one thing that persisted across timelines. Experimentation with dungeon cores led to some very awkward times where he felt his home core on a different continent perpetually trying to pull him back without either him or the core being able to do anything about it. It was the exact opposite of the power he¡¯d hoped to bring back with him through time, inflicting the worst soulsickness he¡¯d ever experienced and giving him nothing in return. He suffered the backlash of that for months, enough to kill him in more than a few timelines, before he eventually figured out how to sever the tie without causing too much permanent damage to himself in the process. After that in future loops the dungeon he''d temporarily bound himself to returned to its normal behavior without any indication that he''d ever been involved. Being eaten by a dungeon was corrosive, but eating a dungeon back was like swallowing a living chain of infinite length that twisted through you until you were almost equally hollow. "How do you mean? I''ve never actually been in one before now." "Well, the process of binding yourself to the dungeon is complicated and risky as it is. After binding, you''re basically tied to that physical location. Trying to leave is incredibly uncomfortable, you''ll need ongoing healing to sustain your form so long as you''re away. It''s not impossible to leave, but it would be like leaving home without your bones. Perpetual absence, inability to move quite right. Excessive energy just to compensate." "That sounds unpleasant. Why would our grand-patriarch subject himself to such pain?" "He didn''t. The pain of separation only happens when you leave the dungeon. As long as he stayed inside, there would be no pain or risk of damage. It¡¯s an interesting way of obtaining a pseudo immortality. Not one I¡¯d enjoy, but a powerful alternative to dying. Let¡¯s go talk to this first patriarch of yours."
93 - Mercurios (2) Dungeons are a law unto themselves. Never assume that the rules of nature you are familiar with will remain true.
Before they could talk to the grand-patriarch of the Mercurios, they first had to traverse the entire dungeon and reach its core. Which meant climbing stairs. A lot of very large stairs. The panels of pictures went on and on and on as they advanced up the hall. Ryenzo''s brood was only one of the family lines being followed here. Dozens of dragons, born, fought, bred, died. Similar scenes, different scenes. Always the mountain in the background. Several of them died to the sea, but always with the mountain still within sight. Five hours later they were still in the first room. It wound back and forth in grand sweeping curves, perpetually climbing upward, as the tales of dragons upon the walls grew more distant and ancient. By now they were several generations back, with Ryenzo''s many-great ancestors and their feats which looked startlingly similar to those of their modern descendents. The backward march of progression within the human towns in the old friezes was fascinating to observe. Jair often stopped to look at one more closely, those that weren¡¯t fully focused on dragon lairs but depicted the outer world. The world hadn''t always been broken into tiny continents. At one point, Almas had been a single united continent rather than the divided engaldria it had become. Around the time that the divisions happened, a huge amount of technology and magic was lost. Global trade became nonexistent, and each culture had to rapidly adapt to the loss of information and resources they''d been relying on. But here, history was preserved perfectly. The story of the Draconis Mercurios continued back unbroken. There were pictures of them flying between landmasses, with water beneath them in a way that made Jair''s instincts twinge. Pictures of them hauling strangely smooth seascourge out of the depths, ones with fins instead of tentacles and only two eyes. There was even a depiction of one dragon flying to the moon. He couldn''t help but wonder how many of the similarities between native Neptian creatures and those on the moons had been facilitated by dragons in their long, long history. This wasn''t just a few generations ago. This was a visual history predating human civilization. He saw the first humans come to the dragon mountain where they worshipped at the patriarch''s feet, and he gifted them fire and magic. He watched in reverse the growth of the oases from simple geographical features to the thriving base of industry they''d become today. The regression from Veor''s sprawling walled cities to simple encampments just far enough away from the oases to be safe to sleep in. The friezes weren''t in perfect order, but ran in sets. The ones about a given generation were generally within the same area, but only some were in full chronological order. Sometimes it would show a dragon¡¯s birth and death together and then followed by its feats, or start with an adult dragon already doing things and only show their birth later. Despite the alien logic, Jair found himself drawn into the narrative. He moved steadily through the hall, not lingering overlong on any one image, but as he moved back and forth from side to side to absorb the full story of countless generations of dragons, he found his sympathy for Ryenzo''s family growing. Most dragon rulers weren''t depicted nearly so coldly. In every one of her images she was shown either angry, sad, or emotionless. Her father was shown in celebration, in play, in destruction, in fear. His father, and his mother, and hers back and back, most showed a fully expected range of emotion. Ryenzo was not the norm. Which made sense. Dragons and humans had been sharing the continent since before they built cities. If all dragons were as keen on destroying humanity as Ryenzo apparently was, there would be no remnant of non-draconic life in Veor. Even more interesting, though, were the panels from the separation of the world. Before the war with the seascourge that showed dragons dying and retreating inland, when they still flew over water without concern, the landmass that Almas had once been before it split into its many continents began to break apart. Jair wasn''t sure what to think of this development. He paused on those images, walked back toward the entrance to see the later progressions, then forward again. He could come to only one conclusion. "The seascourge prioritized breaking up the land before claiming the skies." "They do not own the skies. They only forbid them. One day they will overstep and we will take back what is ours." Skyclaw spoke with such calm conviction that Jair had to raise an eyebrow at her. "What? It''s obvious." She wrapped her tail around his waist and tugged him back to a particular image. "See?" It was one of the earliest confrontations between dragon and sea, and ended with both parties limping away. The seascourge missed three of its eyes and half its tentacles, while the dragon was scarred across the chest and missing half his tail and one entire rear leg. His wings were ragged and hung weakly at his sides. "What about it? They''ve been aggressive for generations, taking more and more." ¡°And we will never give in to it.¡± Skyclaw puffed out her chest and imitated the pose of the retreating dragon, tense shoulders and proud neck despite the trailing wings and limping stride. ¡°We will reclaim the seas.¡± ¡°When?¡± Jair pointed further inward to the image of a dragon soaring over the continent pre-separation, the volcano cozily in the middle. The Almas here depicted was easily half again its current size, even if all the current continental channels were filled in. ¡°You¡¯re going to run out of land.¡± ¡°We will not.¡± A new voice echoed, deep and vibrating like a thousand drums in unison. Jair and Skyclaw both froze. The voice continued, reverberating from all around. ¡°The Enemy knows better than to encroach on what is mine. Though the rest of the world may drown, I will remain. My children will always have sanctuary here.¡± ¡°Grand-Patriarch Mercurios?¡± Skyclaw asked, looking around. ¡°Is that you?¡± ¡°It is. I welcome you, daughter. Come, sit with me.¡± Two of the panels on the wall slid away from each other, opening into a golden haze over a pit into darkness. The edges around the pit were broad enough for dragons to walk without fear of falling, but sloped with obvious intent for funneling downward. Shapes moved in the dimness, stately elven or beastkin silhouettes that shifted to the sides and disappeared into dark openings as Skyclaw moved forward. She edged up to the side of the pit, then sneezed as she inhaled the sparkles of gold. ¡°Down there?¡± ¡°Yes. Come. Let me see you properly.¡± Skyclaw paused and lowered one wing for Jair to climb up onto her back, then hopped into the shaft and glided down. At first she drifted slow, then started to dive, then pumped her wings to throw them down at increasing pace. They descended for minutes, and only as the passage curved and narrowed did the voice of Mercurios speak again. "Slow your descent, daughter, the landing is close." Skyclaw flared her wings to slow them down, then tucked her wings in and came to a landing on a shelf of gold that glittered like diamond. Perhaps it actually was diamond, over a layer of gold. The clink of claw against crystal echoed as Jair and Skyclaw advanced. The Grand-Patriarch of Draconis Mercurios lay sprawled on a pile of sparkling gems of impossible size and flawless clarity. He looked barely twice the size of Skyclaw, more like a dragon in his early young adulthood than an ancient. But as he opened his eyes and raised his head, Jair saw the depths of this creature''s soul staring back at him. Even without his soulspell active, Mercurios'' power resonated through the room, absolute and undeniable. Jair felt light and unsteady, like an autumn leaf staring at a hurricane. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. He''d faced dragons¡ªfought and killed dragons. He''d faced dungeons and survived more or less intact. Mercurios was far, far more than the sum of his parts. Despite his small size as far as dragons went, the sheer power of his presence hit Jair like a deluge. The ancient dragon rose to his feet and took a step. Instinct screamed at Jair to run. He felt the same as when he was about to face down an army, body and magic amped up to instant readiness. If he¡¯d been anyone else, he¡¯d be gone already. But this was someone new, someone he¡¯d never even heard of, let alone met before. How could he walk away from this kind of discovery? It didn¡¯t matter how dangerous it may be. If he left now, he¡¯d be haunted by the potential forever. He stayed unmoving. Mercurios paced down to them, completely ignoring Jair¡¯s presence as he walked around Skyclaw. Skyclaw stood proudly, but her eyes were concerned as she followed her grand-patriarch¡¯s progress. ¡°You are beautiful, daughter, but something is wrong. What have you done to yourself?¡± Mercurios leaned forward and traced one claw over the intricate carvings of the Unsevered Pact. They would disappear once she shed her scales next, the power imprinted into her very being rather than her body¡ªthough now he thought about it, Jair wasn¡¯t sure if dragons still shed after being eaten by Maelstrom. Skyclaw looked down at herself sheepishly. ¡°I don¡¯t know. It stopped the blood-venom curse from killing me though.¡± ¡°May I look?¡± Skyclaw nodded, then squeaked in shock as she immediately floated up into the air, body stiff except for her neck and rapid heartbeat pushing her chest. Her wings were drawn up and fully open, providing full access to her marked body. Mercurios sat back and peered at her with intense focus, one claw twitching ever so slightly as he rotated her gradually this way and that to examine the pattern Jair had carved into her. The grand-patriarch¡¯s expression grew more and more unhappy, the atmosphere in the room growing heavier by the moment. He started to move the younger dragon more abruptly, peered closer, scanning one section then another. ¡°Grand-Patriarch Mercurios?¡± He ignored her as though he hadn¡¯t even heard, fully absorbed in his perusal. Skyclaw squirmed uneasily while she hovered upside down, and Jair decided they¡¯d gone far enough. With a thought, Maelstrom flickered into his hand and he dismissed Skyclaw back into their soul. Mercurios snapped out of his focus with an angry snarl. ¡°Who are you to dare lay a finger on my grandaughter?¡± ¡°Jair Welburne, Unsevered Pact brother to Skyclaw and her clutch.¡± ¡°Unsevered? So that is it.¡± Grand-Patriarch Mercurios took a step forward. The room shook with his ire. ¡°A pact of absolute submission. Promises of loyalty without restraints. I do not permit this. Return her immediately.¡± ¡°No. You were hurting her, and unless you¡¯re going to apologize, I won¡¯t be returning her to you. I¡¯ve had enough of watching people hurt their children, and Skyclaw is under my protection which makes it very much my problem. I don¡¯t care what your relation is, no one hurts my friends in front of me.¡± Mercurios stalked closer, and Jair¡¯s body screamed that he should be anywhere but here. Yet his fingers couldn¡¯t quite press down, held in place. ¡°Release her from your service or be destroyed.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t kill me without hurting her, and her whole clutch with me.¡± Force pressed in around Jair, body and soul held in place with a grip beyond anything he¡¯d ever experienced before, but he maintained defiant eye contact with the irate dragon. He could only hope the mad patriarch had that much family feeling. If he truly cared nothing for his relatives, there was nothing Jair could say to hold him back. ¡°Bring her back.¡± The threat in the air grew stronger, sharper. Jair had no intention of surrendering Skyclaw and her clutch to their patriarch, and the longer this went on the more likely Mercurios was to do something drastic. The chance of catching him unprepared was minimal, but better than simply waiting around for the inevitable. ¡°She chose this. Chose to save herself and her whole family from destruction. You don¡¯t get to override that decision.¡± Jair couldn¡¯t move his body, but he silently activated Bladewalk. Maelstrom slid slowly from his hand. ¡°And now they are saved. I do not permit you to continue this desecration.¡± ¡°The Unsevered Pact is a simple contractual¡ª¡± Jair hurled Maelstrom forward with all his mental strength. Forcing Bladewalk to move at full speed from a standing stop was incredibly difficult; it was intended to gradually accelerate so its rider could adapt, but that didn¡¯t make for a very effective attack. The sword sliced into Mercurios¡¯ side. The dragon looked down at it for one moment, as Jair activated Darkflame. It felt like throwing his soul against an unmovable wall. And then the wall hit back. Something slammed into Jair across every layer in an instant. Mercurios¡¯ fury shredded his manabody, tore it free of his physical body and scattered it through the air. In the same instant, it dragged Jair¡¯s physical body forward, leaving his soul behind, and crushed it against the floor, killing him instantly. It was so sudden he didn¡¯t have a chance to react. Maelstrom clattered dully to the crystalline floor as Jair¡¯s perception dimmed to shades of grey. In his fading soulsight, Mercurios shone out as an unspeakably white glow against the dull inorganic surroundings. Most people wouldn¡¯t even be able to perceive that much as a disembodied soul, but he¡¯d died more times than most and developed quite a few skills that couldn¡¯t be obtained any ordinary way. ¡°Now, I will take back what is mine.¡± Pressure surrounded his naked soul, pressed down on him and yanked. His soul, scarred and tested again and again over hundreds of lifetimes, was strong enough to keep him together much longer than the normal dissipation for things that had been killed. Strong enough to win a soul war against any human, most vampires, and even a few elves. Jair¡¯s hard-won strength was nothing to this force. Mercurios unwound Jair¡¯s soul and spread it out across the sky as easily as a housewife shaking out a tablecloth. Maelstrom? Temporal Reversion? Help? His silent pleas flickered through his soul in a pulse of silver, gold, and green. ¡°Enough of that. Be still.¡± The force holding him twitched the slightest bit and disruptive tremors shook him apart. Every last shred of coherent thought fled Jair¡¯s desperately struggling soul. Golden light flooded out across the twisted network of stars and lines, coils and patterns, shapes and memories. Everything that formed the essence of who Jair was took up the glow, but it was diffuse and soft, like an unformed manabody leaking out in clouds of glittering fog, and faded away without activating. All he could do was perceive. Mercurios effortlessly vivisected centuries of growth, strength, and improvement, separating all that he was and ever had been as effortlessly as drawing a finger through sand. ¡°Hmmm. I¡¯m surprised you¡¯re even alive. No wonder you wanted to bind my children. The power you steal from them is enough to live on another few days.¡± Jair¡¯s soul was a tattered thing, pieces all but disconnected from the rest, torn gaps reminiscent of Maelstrom¡¯s initial soulmap back when it was only at 10% integrity¡­ but where Maelstrom was bounded and comprehensible, incredibly complex but limited in form, Jair¡¯s soul was like staring at a night sky torn apart by a cosmic painter spilling fragments of life across everything. He¡¯d never seen it like this before. Even his most invasive soul surgeries had treated the whole thing as a single object, like a heart or a statue. He could carve pieces off, push it into different shapes, but doing too much would destroy its integrity. Spreading it out like this¡­ it felt like epiphany. Wordless, ephemeral. He could barely comprehend the experience even as he was within it. It was also the most terrifyingly helpless he¡¯d ever been. Mercurios prodded and clawed at his soul, casually tearing new pieces free and tossing them away, leaving Jair with a wordless diminishment. Distant, barely perceptible. Red light rippled across various sections as Mercurios worked, but even that Jair could only distantly perceive. The ancient dragon had somehow separated his soul and his self, things that were normally synonymous torn apart. Only once he¡¯d been thoroughly examined did the dragon speak again. ¡°Hmph. You weren¡¯t lying. Your pact is flawless. Looks like I¡¯ll have to keep you alive. But no one desecrates my family without recompense.¡± Jair¡¯s soul was abruptly shoved back together into a crumpled ball vaguely approximating its normal shape. Before he could even wonder about the fact that his old body had been destroyed, or consider that this was a dungeon he was within, not merely a dragon lair, Mercurios waved a claw and created a small newt. ¡°This should suffice,¡± the old dragon said, malicious glee in his voice. ¡°If you survive, I¡¯ll consider letting my daughter keep you as a pet. Or you can release her to me at any time, and I¡¯ll let you go.¡± Mercurios held out Jair¡¯s faltering soul, still disembodied and technically-dead as it struggled to hold itself together, but didn¡¯t drop it into its new intended vessel. He watched a moment as the edges of it gradually broke apart and faded away, and if not for the fact that Jair held seven of his descendents he probably would have continued to watch until final dissipation. With a look of irritation, the dragon flicked him down before he could dissolve entirely. ¡°I may not be able to destroy you, but defy me again, and you¡¯ll find I have been merciful until now. This is my domain and you will never leave until you give back what is mine. How long it takes and how much you suffer in the process¡­¡± the dragon leaned down until his huge eye was all Jair¡¯s little newt eyes could see. ¡°That depends on how stubborn you insist on being. As much as I want my children back, they are safe enough where they are. I hope you last a good while. It¡¯s so much more fun with the ones who think they¡¯re strong.¡± Jair understood the words, the intention behind them, but his soul and self were so disoriented still that he could barely even process the sensations his new body was giving him. If the dragon expected any sort of response from him, he¡¯d be waiting a while. Mercurios chuckled, a sinister echo that rebounded from the walls and chorused from the ceiling. ¡°I look forward to seeing that soulspell of yours in action. I don¡¯t think you¡¯ll last a day without it.¡± He leaned back on his pile of treasure and flicked one claw. A tall elven man with feathered wings and extra arms walked forward and picked up the newt that was now Jair. His hands were warm, comforting after the chill of the crystal. Jair¡¯s body instinctively curled up in the warmest spot, while his mind and soul struggled to return to anything resembling coherence. Even as the man carried Jair away from Mercurios¡¯ throne room and out into the dark tunnels of the dungeon, the dragon grand-patriarch¡¯s voice still echoed out after them. ¡°I do wonder¡­ how many tries will it take before you¡¯re ready to accept the truth?¡±
94 - Mercurios (3) While the ¡®Dragonslayer¡¯ title is one commonplace among the wealthy who wish to show off, it rarely means anything. Young dragons are cornered, hunted by groups, brought down by a dozen noble scions and twenty trained adventurers. Needless to say, this is never done where any adult dragons can observe. That¡¯s an easy way to lose a whole generation¡¯s heirs.
Life as a tiny lizard in a dungeon shaped by a cruel and capricious ancient dragon was surprisingly simple. Run for your life. Get mauled, eaten, or otherwise dismembered. Reverse time. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Jair could summon Maelstrom, but it was massive. He could barely climb up onto its pommel, it was like scaling a silversteel cliff. The threaded blades through its hilt were still sharp enough to cut him even in his lizard form, but he couldn¡¯t revert to before he entered the dungeon. The first time he reverted, he thought he¡¯d found the way out. Golden light sliced his tiny form apart in an impossible network of lines and he reappeared back at the entrance to the dungeon, just after Skyclaw had deposited him, before he¡¯d even used Darkflame. Fortunately, the reversion unwound his state back to human, albeit with some poison-dragon injuries from the passage in. No thank you. Further please. He gripped Maelstrom, Temporal Reversion tore through him, and he reappeared the exact moment again. Not good. He needed to get away. He¡¯d been mauled by a star hydra, half eaten by seascourge, and came close to losing himself in Oronthire more than once. Nothing in his countless years of experience came close to Mercurios¡¯s power. Even Ryenzo was like a trivial, inconsequential thing compared to this. The last thing he wanted was to be kept as a dungeon¡¯s pet for eternity, his self slowly supplanted until all that remained was yet another creature for it to direct at will. No. He couldn¡¯t stay here. Again. Again. ¡°Where do you think you¡¯re going?¡± Mercurios¡¯s voice echoed around him, deep and mocking. ¡°Don¡¯t you remember where you are?¡± Right. Dungeon rules applied: he had to enter or leave physically, couldn¡¯t use a soulspell to escape. Jair hissed, ran a hand through his hair¡ªor, rather, ran the melted remnant of his hand across the raw flesh of his skull. ¡°Gah.¡± He darkflamed himself back to Skyclaw¡¯s mouth. ¡°We¡¯re leaving.¡± ¡°We just got here. And who was that voice?¡± She stared up wistfully at the endless fog that passed for a ceiling. ¡°It sounds familiar, like I¡¯ve heard it before in a dream.¡± It felt as though his body and soul were still disconnected, thoughts and control drifting further apart by the moment. ¡°I just wanted to see the place, now I have, we should go.¡± ¡°Jair? What¡¯s wrong?¡± Skyclaw nudged at him with her nose, concerned. Jair fell over, his body no longer responding to him even enough to stand. Mercurios chuckled. ¡°Leave him. This is his punishment.¡± ¡°Punishment?¡± ¡°He refuses to release you from your oaths, daughter.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to be released. I want to travel the world with him and fight the vampires on the moon!¡± ¡°That is only your foolish attachment talking. I will teach you better, as soon as he divides you from his soul. But it seems he must learn that there is no defying me before he will do so.¡± The hint of irony in Mercurios¡¯ voice was enough to forewarn him. Jair knew what was coming an instant before the full force of Mercurios¡¯ wrath hit him, but knowing wasn¡¯t enough to let him counter it. The force of the grand-patriarch¡¯s will pulverized his body, scattered his manabody, and left his soul drifting and dying. Normal dungeons were dangerous enough, but Mercurios was ancient beyond compare. He did things Jair would only have considered theoretically possible in the most extreme of circumstances, and casually broke the restraints common dungeons operated under as though they were inconsequential things. Before he could panic too much, Mercurios made him a new copy of his newt body and shoved him into it, and once again Jair was a tiny newt. Skyclaw towered over him, a single claw bigger than his entire body. She leaned down, grinning. ¡°Ooh, is that him? He¡¯s so cute!¡± One of the strange alien elves stepped out of the shadow of a pillar and came over to pick Jair up. Mercurios¡¯ voice echoed down as Skyclaw came to follow. ¡°Do not try to help him, or I will have you separated by force.¡± So she stood back, and Jair¡¯s life became the most torturous repetition since his run up Mount Sanctum. The attendant dropped him into a maze full of rats. Which wouldn¡¯t be a problem if they weren¡¯t easily ten times the size of the tiny newt that was now Jair. He could summon Maelstrom, but it didn¡¯t fit in the maze so it ended up wedged in his way and blocked the way forward, and getting past the crossguard to reach a bladed part was a struggle. The rats were hungry. Jair had nothing to fight back with. He ran. He summoned Maelstrom to hide behind. He died. He reverted to the beginning, spent a confused moment as the human he¡¯d once been before Mercurios grabbed him and crushed him and threw him back into the maze. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. He lost track of time, as he often did when repeating a specific section of the timeline. He survived a few minutes longer, called Maelstrom at just the right moments, tricked his adversaries into running into it, the one weapon he had at his disposal. Finally, when he cleared the entire maze and stood perched atop Maelstrom¡¯s hilt with a small pile of dead rats around him, Mercurios only laughed. ¡°Still defiant, I see. Don¡¯t imagine you¡¯ve won anything. I have all the time in the world.¡± And had one of his attendants drop him into an even bigger maze. This more closely resembled a dungeon floor, more open areas and cave-like tunnels rather than the flat stone walls of the rat maze, but this one also had cats. Playful kittens, who would bat him about and carry him around without killing him. He didn¡¯t want to imagine what Mercurios got up to in his free time, if he had such a sadistic sequence of trials already prepared. How many people had he broken in this same sequence? Or did he only wait until the presence of the dungeon wore away at their soul enough to let him take over? Either way, Jair had a limited timeline. But being a tiny newt did restrict his ability to really¡­ do anything but run and hide. And die. Sometimes Mercurios grabbed his soul and shoved him into a replacement body, let him continue the current trial rather than starting over. Sometimes he waited until the last moment, then nudged Jair back into contact with Maelstrom so he could revert. The kittens were harder to outwit than the rats, and just thinking that made Jair want to murder someone. That he was wholly at the mercy of something so helpless frustrated him to no end. But if Mercurios thought this would be enough to break him, he hadn¡¯t taken nearly a deep enough look at Jair¡¯s soul. Frustration was a familiar companion. He wouldn¡¯t ignore it, wouldn¡¯t dull it, would endure it and face it and listen to what it told him. Even if that was just Mercurios is an evil old monster. When he finally survived long enough and found the perfect route to destroy the kittens, there were swarms of wasps half the size of him and those were another new layer of awful. After a while, he took to prolonging the time running desperately in the rat maze and being tormented by kittens just to avoid moving on to the wasps, and even he could tell how warped that was. When instead of searching for the optimal path forward he was optimizing staying stuck in place the longest, it felt like a betrayal of everything he was¡­ but he was so tired and so afraid all the time. However much he might try to tell his dumb little lizard body to relax and just wait it out, he always found himself running, fighting, hiding, running. Dying. Surviving. Existing. The maze. The tunnels. The hive. He couldn¡¯t do anything about the hive. It was simply overwhelming, no matter what sequence of events he undertook. Too many enemies, no way to really protect himself. Run. Die. Repeat. ¡°Just give up, foolish mortal. Let my children go.¡± ¡°Never.¡± Mercurios hadn¡¯t made him a mute lizard, and Jair¡¯s grasp of draconic was sufficient for him to speak, just so he could admit defeat when he¡¯d had enough. But, being Jair, ¡®admit defeat¡¯ wasn¡¯t something he was capable of. Only reframe. Attack the situation from a new angle. He was no stranger to feelings of helplessness, overwhelm, crushing impossibility. Sometimes he could win by throwing himself against it over and over, but sometimes he needed to change his approach before he could progress. And though he was here to protect Skyclaw, she was still an asset. He didn¡¯t have to do this alone. He summoned Maelstrom the moment he was dropped into the hive, then called out Skyclaw. She looked around in confusion for a moment, then noticed Jair. ¡°Why does it feel like it¡¯s been a long time since I was out here?¡± She looked around, swatted away a few wasps that came close, and Jair hid under her claw. ¡°Jair? What¡¯s happening?¡± ¡°I¡¯m tired of getting killed, so I figured you could help relieve the monotony.¡± ¡°So you¡¯ve finally decided to give her back?¡± Mercurios demanded, his laughter rumbling through the dungeon. ¡°Come, daughter. Bring the wretched thing with you.¡± Silverscale picked up newt-Jair and followed the path the dungeon opened for them back through passages and into Mercurios¡¯ throne room. Mercurios looked significantly larger from his perspective as tiny tiny. Oddly majestic, probably intentionally so. He loomed over the two of them with ¡°Huh, I would have expected you to look less like a lazy lizard from this angle,¡± Jair commented with faux innocence. The initial shock of helplessness from however months or years ago might have kept him silent or cautious at first, but after playing Mercurios¡¯ games for too long left him desperately in need of anything that wasn¡¯t the same dull chases over and over again. Mercurios growled low and stalked forward. Green acidic fog wisped from his mouth, so dense it melted through the diamond of the floor and the stone of the pillars as he walked closer. ¡°I grow weary of your tiresome defiance. Skyclaw set Jair down and crouched over him protectively, even taking a step toward her irate ancestor. ¡°He is mine, not yours.¡± ¡°All within my domain is mine.¡± Mercurios circled her lazily, prowling the edges of the room. ¡°You can do nothing I do not permit.¡± Skyclaw turned to keep herself between him and Jair. ¡°I don¡¯t understand why you¡¯re so unhappy. He¡¯s only ever helped us! Well, apart from the time when he killed the entire clan, but we undid that.¡± ¡°He holds undue power over you, over your siblings.¡± He huffed out an acidic breath that burned through the diamond layer to the gold underneath, sending it running and warped. ¡°My grandchildren.¡± ¡°I gave myself freely and do not regret my trade. My siblings chose this without anything being promised in return or threatened if they did not.¡± She reared back, then shouted at full volume, ¡°Silverscale, back me up here!" Silverscale appeared beside her, to both his and Jair¡¯s confusion. "What? How am I here? I thought I was with Qahri-Seni." "It''s time for us to convince grandfather to let our soul-brother go." Skyclaw stamped a tiny foot imperiously. "Come on, Zyesi. Enry! Ynze!" One by one the entire clutch emerged until they stood around Jair in a protective circle. Mercurios¡¯ eyes narrowed dangerously. "You would defy me? For a miserable thing like him?" "He saved us," Enryzan said hotly. He raised his head and huffed out a cloud of poison gas, which then exploded with a spark. "Stop tormenting him." "You are my children, not my masters. If you insist on pitting yourselves against me, I can put you in with him." "Do it." No hesitation. Zyesi stepped forward, and Detyar and Silverscale were close behind. Skyclaw wavered, glancing up at the patriarch, then down at the tiny lizard beneath their gaze. "Then join him." Mercurios'' voice echoed and reverberated, fury shaking the ground. The three who''d stepped forward froze stiffly, then their bodies lifted into the air helplessly before they scattered apart, torn to unrecognizable shreds of blood and bone under the weight of Mercurios¡¯ fury, splattered across the walls. But where Jair''s soul had lingered after his body''s destruction, theirs were not free for Mercurios to play with. Maelstrom pulled them back in, protective, and Jair felt their souls nestle warm within him. "You dare interfere?" Mercurios snarled. He jumped down from his throne, so irate that he physically shoved Skyclaw and her remaining siblings aside to glare down at Jair. "You think you can turn my family against me so easily?" Mercurios raised one foreclaw. The cold fury in his eyes made it clear that he wasn''t going to be letting him off with something simple like becoming a lizard this time. "Grandfather, don''t!" Skyclaw threw herself forward, snatched up Jair in her mouth and crouched over him in a protective ball. Mercurios stopped, stepped back and stared her down. Skyclaw''s chest was pulsing rapidly but she stood defiant. "He''s mine. You won''t hurt him." "Just get us out," Jair whispered. He summoned Maelstrom, and Skyclaw jumped as it sliced into her tongue. "Get us out." Temporal Reversion swept them away, back to the entrance. Darkflame carried Jair from where he lay to right beside Skyclaw. He''d become so used to being a lizard shape that his human body didn''t respond correctly, but Skyclaw was on it. She grabbed him in her mouth and dove out of the dungeon entrance. "Daughter! What are you doing?" Skyclaw clamped her mouth tight around Jair and leaped out through the dungeon entrance into the lava beyond.
95 - Loyalties Some things are so obvious they do not need to be spoken. Yet it is important to speak them, lest they go from unspoken to forgotten.
The moment they were outside the dungeon''s influence, Jair darkflamed them back up to the ledge. He promptly fell over. "Jair!" Raina stared at him as Skyclaw bounded over to his side and nudged at him. "Mnghh hhhom," Jair mumbled, his mouth and throat not really coordinating. "Give him time, he''s been a lizard for..." Skyclaw turned to Jair, eyes open wide with horror. "How long were you in there?" "Hlurnggh," Jair answered. "What''s she saying?" Raina looked between Jair and Skyclaw. "What happened, why are you back so soon? I thought you were going to wait an hour." Jai tried to sit up and ended up flopping himself over sideways instead. This body was so complicated, so many fiddly little pieces. He remembered how it was supposed to move, but the dissonance in his soul insisted that he should be able to crawl with a different set of legs. Being a newt was so much easier. ¡°It¡¯ll be a few minutes,¡± Skyclaw said resignedly. Raina had no way of comprehending her. Then she perked up. ¡°Oh! Silverscale!¡± Silverscale appeared, looking just as confused as the first time. ¡°Bring Qahri-Seni!¡± Skyclaw commanded, and her brother immediately bounded off down the tunnel. Jair flopped himself back over onto his stomach. His arms made sense again, but the legs were all backwards. The next several hours were an irritating combination of awkward convalescence and burning impatience as he struggled to return to his body and fully reclaim his sense of self. Qahrvirna came to play translator between Raina and Skyclaw. Skyclaw started trying to teach Raina how to speak draconic. Eythron went running by at one point, followed by a furious Uqiar, but they didn¡¯t return. Jair sat amid it all, unmoving. He perceived the world through soulsight, fully immersed in himself as he tried to rebuild what Mercurios had damaged. Everything in his bodies was as it should be, manabody stable and ready to receive imprints. It was his soul that was the wrong shape. Mercurios had worn away at him, reinforcing certain parts and starving others. A soul was an adaptive and malleable thing, and while that helped one to survive and better deal with unexpected or abrupt changes in active or ambient magic, it also meant that others could theoretically reshape it over time. In Jair¡¯s case, the surface details may change, but he himself was solid and unshakeable. The core of who he was had been crushed, broken, rebuilt, and worn back down more times than he could remember. The problem was that the shape of his soul no longer fit the shape of his body, and the unexpected dissonance between them made using the latter very difficult. His manabody adapted most quickly¡ªas a fluid and barely formed thing itself, it easily reshaped itself around his returned soul. This resulted in an awkward combination of layers where the most efficient way to do anything was to use the manabody to puppet himself around. He had enough experience with this method to do it without damaging anything, but it required a distracting amount of focus. A few experiments showed that he could get by reasonably well without running out of mana, since he was still without imprints. At this point, he wasn¡¯t sure what imprints he even wanted. As soon as a Nuprima passage opened, he¡¯d go brute force his way to Archmage which opened up a lot more options, but there were other preparation she could do in the meantime. Assuming he could get his bodies to synchronize properly. He had no idea how long he¡¯d been trapped within Mercurios, repeating those same days over and over, but with how battered his soul was looking it had to have been months at the least, perhaps years. He had to give it to the old monster. Just about anyone else would have given in under such an assault. Good thing he¡¯d never discovered this dungeon in previous loops. Without Maelstrom and Skyclaw, he¡¯d have been entirely at the ancient creature¡¯s mercy. At the same time Jair slowly pieced his soul-body connections back together, he also contemplated the deeper implications of this whole experience. It had been overwhelming at first, then frustrating, and later tedious. But while the return to human form quickly overwrote the specifics of the being-a-newt thing, one part of the visit lingered inescapably. Seeing his soul spread out in full, all the tangles smoothed and separated, the full pattern of Maelstrom, of himself, of the countless lifetimes he¡¯d experienced. It felt as though he hovered on the verge of some elusive comprehension, some answer that would bring it all together. The process of weaving body and soul back into one another. The tangled chaos that was the soul itself. The way it looked spread out like a map across the stars. A galaxy of its own. He often found himself staring into space, mentally playing and replaying that moment. It was almost enough to make him want to go back, see if he could manage things differently, stay there longer. But he couldn¡¯t possibly trust Mercurios. Not unless he was willing to trade away his dragons, and they¡¯d come to him for healing and protection. ¡°Do you want to go free?¡± he asked Zyesi. The dragon manifested in front of him at the thought. He intentionally didn¡¯t choose Skyclaw since she¡¯d be the most biased. ¡°I¡¯ve destroyed your curse, you can go live on your own now.¡± Breaking an Unsevered Pact wasn¡¯t fully impossible, but it did require full participation from both members. And that was without taking Maelstrom¡¯s influence into account. Zyesi sat down, tail coiled around his legs, and looked around the cave. ¡°If you want to send me away, I will go.¡± Jair put his forehead in his hand. ¡°What do you want to do with your life? Putting aside me one way or another. What would be your ideal future? What do you want to do in a day?¡± ¡°I can do whatever I want freely, my sisters are no longer dying. What more would I need? I don¡¯t need to hunt the humans any more. I don¡¯t need to stay away from the rest for their safety. Though¡­¡± he ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, a posture of shyness Jair had never seen from a dragon before. ¡°I don¡¯t think the rest of my family wants me around anyway.¡± This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Your Grand-Patriarch Mercurios would welcome you, if you want to go live with him in the dungeon.¡± Zyesi¡¯s eyes narrowed and his crouch turned protective, aggressive. ¡°No. I¡¯m not going back to him. Ever.¡± That was a more dramatic reaction than he¡¯d expected. ¡°You remember that, then?¡± ¡°How could I forget?¡± Poison mist huffed out with Zyesi¡¯s breath. Jair wasn¡¯t sure what that meant about the dragons in his soul. While in the dungeon, Skyclaw had seemed to forget when he reverted the timeline, but now Zyesi was displaying clear knowledge of their brief altercation with the dungeon-dragon even though Jair had only been close enough to bring Skyclaw back in time with him. ¡°I do not acknowledge him. I will not bear the Mercurios name any longer. I chose to come to you and I choose to stay with you now.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know me.¡± Zyesi tilted his draconic head, eyes staring deep into Jair¡¯s. ¡°I do. I know you in ways I didn¡¯t know were possible. You gave your soul to save my family, so it¡¯s only fair I do the same in return.¡± Jair scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m not going to turn down an offer of an army of dragons. I guarantee you, no one would.¡± ¡°If anyone else had bound themselves to us, they would have shared our curse and fallen. You took on the full cost of our damaged bloodline and destroyed it entirely. You would ask that I not acknowledge that?¡± ¡°It was nothing, I¡¯d have destroyed the plague, curse, long ago if I knew how to.¡± ¡°You work so hard to convince yourself that you¡¯re unexceptional. Almost enough to believe it.¡± Jair shook his head, using his manabody to puppet himself without thinking about it. ¡°I simply acknowledge my limitations and boundaries. I¡¯m exceptional for humans, but elves, vampires, dragons, even some beastkin, have an innate advantage I¡¯ll never be able to match. Let alone an ancient dungeon consumed by an intellect like Mercurios.¡± ¡°You plan to casually obtain in three months what elves and beastkin don¡¯t manage in centuries.¡± ¡°Magic is the only way I can level the playing field even a little. Even then, it¡¯s not enough.¡± One man however tireless, however empowered, could only go so far against a full army. Zyesi snorted. ¡°It is not. And you know it.¡± ¡°You think I¡¯m wrong about the ideal path to power, after this many times of trial and error?¡± ¡°One man will never be enough.¡± Zyesi waved a claw to their surroundings. ¡°Raina, Lilin, Eythron, Qahrvirna, Uqiar, my siblings and I. You¡¯re building an army of your own.¡±
The first step in infiltrating the Phoenix Healer''s power base was to discern exactly where that power base was headquartered. Knowing the man¡¯s name was insufficient. Sekir¡¯s searches of public records came up with no Welburne anywhere in any Veori city. (Technically there were three, but none were young enough to be his target. His visit to each of them to verify whether they had children turned out to be a waste of time as expected, but he was nothing if not thorough.) So, with Welburne himself a dead end for now, the next best thing would be to locate the other members of his network. Sekir¡¯s first step to that end was trivial: find a customer who''d been bragging about their phoenix healing and pay a quick visit. Customers were many and far from discreet. A few casual conversations later and all the details he needed were at his disposal. The name and appearance of the one contact point for the elusive Phoenix Healer, Dalin Larenok. From there, the next challenge was finding the man. He''d ended up in an enigmatic sort of limbo. His home address was unknown and the place he normally stayed¡ªthe Astralla Mageblade Institute¡ªno longer had any claim over him. But Sekir didn¡¯t need to find the man¡¯s house, only the man himself. And regardless of Dalin Larenok''s paranoia, he could only collect the customers his precious Phoenix Healer needed by going out into the world. He couldn¡¯t stay hidden forever. Sekir waited in one of the more heavily populated market district of Vaes City. Larenok was known to occasionally visit this particular plaza, and Sekir¡¯s persistence was rewarded a mere three days later. Larenok started a conversation with a particular woman of questionable intention, one whose husband was known to be ailing. Sekir could''ve told Larenok that he was pursuing a pointless lead, talking to her about his healer friend. She had a much stronger vested interest in her husband''s death than his survival, and was in fact already out recruiting to find who she should attach herself to next. But it didn''t matter to Sekir who Larenok was talking to, as long as he had eyes on the man himself. He observed without interference for nearly an hour as Larenok casually chatted his way through several of the most wealthy individuals present. He seemed to have a real nose for money, if nothing else. That made approaching the man a different sort of challenge. Sekir had spent enough time around these people to know what the subtle cues were that you give it pass himself off as one who belonged in this company. While he could do the physical mannerisms effortlessly, it would also require a different outfit. His current wardrobe was intended to blend in as an unremarkable middle-class merchant. Wealthy enough to be present here and reasonably loitering, but not so wealthy as to attract unwanted notice. Fortunately, he kept stashes of appropriate clothing and accoutrements for various potential personas in his soulspace at all times on principle. A moment to slip away into the unwatched alley, divest himself of his current garb, and he emerged as a new man. Sekir walked up to Larenok with his soulspell active and shining his eyes. "You there, are you the errand boy of this Phoenix healer I¡¯ve heard so much about?" Sekir intentionally chose a strident and borderline accusatory tone. Larenok bristled and turned to face him indignantly. "I am Phoenix healer''s agent, yes. What is your business with him?" "Nothing in specific," Sekir said, keeping his eyes fixed on Larenok. His gaze was intense enough to unsettle most, and though Larenok''s constant stronger than most, he still shifted the slightest bit beneath Sekir''s weight of interest. "I must know, who is this Phoenix healer? Where did you meet him? Who are his friends, his allies? Does he have enemies?" Sekir asked each question slowly, drawing it out to give Larenok the maximum amount of time to think over each question without actually pausing long enough for him to give an answer. "Does he have a wife? Someone close to him? Family?" Larenok scowled and crossed arms. "You''re asking¡ª" "Is it true he was a student of yours? How was he like, as a student? Did he have any particular specialties? What would you say are his greatest strengths and weaknesses?" Images, jumbled memories, pages of notes, data reels, all that flicked through Larenok''s mind even as he grew increasingly suspicious of this aggressively pushing man. "Nothing to worry about," Sekir said, accompanying it with a heavy imprint of unconcern. He blinked, and Larenok blinked in unison. ¡°Do I know you?¡± Larenok asked uncertainly. "I understand you''re the agent to the Phoenix healer?" Sekir asked in an overly excited tone tinted with just the right touch of affected indifference. "I would simply love to arrange a meeting, is that possible?" ¡°Certainly.¡± Larenok¡¯s confusion cleared and he shifted into business mode, brief distraction left behind without another thought. "Simply pay the upfront fee and I will contact you with information on paying the remainder after service has been delivered." "And how much is this upfront fee?" "Eight thousand nirei," Larenok said shamelessly. Sekir''s eyebrows rose at that. That was more than most people made in a year. Even among nobility it wouldn¡¯t be a casual expenditure. If this was just the upfront fee, then he would definitely need significantly more of his financial schemes to pan out before he could start buying Phoenix Healing. "Where can I find you?¡± he asked instead. ¡°I don''t carry that much on my person. I''ll send an agent to arrange things." They negotiated a time and place for Larenok to meet Sekir¡¯s agent to collect the payment, and parted ways. To Dalin Larenok, the earlier half of the conversation was forgotten as though it never happened. But it had, and Sekir walked away knowing everything there was to know about one Mageblade Initiate, Jair Welburne.
96 - Preparations 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.
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."
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 ¨C a standard that Jair himself tended to agree with ¨C 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¡ªshe''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."
97 - Invitation The connections between souls can neither be proven nor denied. Too many events point to the phenomenon being genuine, but it is like so much else impossible to predict and measure. All we have to work from are anecdotes.
Jair exhaled in relief. Any promise of cooperation was better than he¡¯d expected after how the week had been going. "And you won¡¯t try to murder yourself in a volcano? Or anywhere else?" Eythron¡¯s eyes opened, drawn inexorably back to Maelstrom''s glowing form. "I don''t need Mercurios any more. The call will be answered, just not here and now. But please do keep watch and maintain the restraints. I may be capable of self control at the moment, but the call of death is insatiable and my mind is only so strong." "Would it help if I transported you far away? I can use Darkflame to teleport you wherever you want." Eythron shook his head, eyes drifting closed again, voice going distant. "The pull is stronger the farther I am. Right now it is gentle. A lure, not a demand, but if I were to go further..." Jair nodded, frowning as he considered the implications. Yet another proof that whatever this was it wasn''t any ordinary dungeon core. From his own experience bound to a dungeon, he knew that it was the initial departure that was the hardest. The influence of the dungeon''s demand to return was strongest around its entrance. Going further away wasn''t any harder than the perpetual drain against your soul. Which was fortunate for him, otherwise he''d have been completely debilitated in those dungeon timelines when he reverted to Veor. But whatever was going on with Eythron was something else entirely. Inverted from the ordinary. "That sounds like a good deal to me. I''ll gladly help you hunt the star hydra as soon as we return to the Oriad." "Your presumptions are strange and uncomfortable," Eythron said wearily. "I don''t know you." "I know. Hopefully we can get to know one another better during this coming campaign." Finally things were back on track. With no more urgent disasters to head off, he could get back to preparations for the inevitable confrontation with Sekir. "I don''t suppose you know why Mersine wanted you here?" "She only said that she would destroy the Oriad if I didn''t meet her friend at the platform. If I''d known what she planned, I''d never have gone. Let her burn it all, what do I care?" That threat of overwhelming destruction again. A side of Mersine Jair had never seen in all his lifetimes. When they next met he was going to have some serious questions for her. ¡°You do choose to live there,¡± Jair pointed out. ¡°I always assumed that you had at least a reasonable amount of attachment to your home." "Of course I do. I love it there. But that doesn''t mean I''m going to give in to a seer''s manipulation. I swore never to leave. Talking to some friend of hers is one thing." He eyed Jair with a glower. "But forcing me away from my home is too far. If I see her again, she''s dead, and she knows it." Jair shook his head, smiling. "You''re still you, in the end. Even with this dungeon-adjacent nonsense." "Dungeon adjacent? Mercurios'' demands are more than adjacent." "But you''re not a dungeon core." Eythron scoffed derisively. "Of course I''m not. You see me walking around? Talking, thinking? I''d never bind myself to one of those monsters. They corrupt even when they''re undermined and overpowered." "Then why?" "You won''t get my secrets so easily. I don''t like seers." "I know. You''ve mentioned it often enough." "See? This is why I hate seers." Jair sighed. "Alright, old man, I''ll leave you to your death and call of voids. If you ever think of a reason Mersine might have sent you to me, let me know. Until then I''ll be off trying to stop an arch-sorcerer from destroying the continent." "You think a sorcerer is going to destroy the continent? That''s not a sorcerer kind of thing to do." "Well, you know those futures you hate me knowing so much? I''ve looked down on Veor when all that remains is the dragon mountains and another Death Lake." Eythron went very still and very quiet. "You were there. The first Death Lake. You know something." "Where is this sorcerer?" he asked quietly, cold fury in his voice. "I don''t know yet. Should I let you know once I find him?" "Yes. I want him." Eythron''s hands gripped the chains around his wrists and he hauled himself upright. "Forget the star hydra. I want him." "One Sekir, coming up. But you should be warned, he can leave his body at will and return in a different one without warning." "That won''t be a problem." Eythron closed his eyes, then twisted and his sword flickered into his hands; one, then the other, then gone again, so fast you could almost not see it. The chains and shackles fell away, sliced clean through. Jair blinked. No wonder the man had been able to get past them so often. "I regularly forget just how terrifying you are, master." "I''m not your master." Eythron wiped his palms on his tunic, then strode out toward the central passage. "Master?" Uqiar asked, concerned. "No need to worry." Eythron waved him away. "I have a stronger call now. I''ll be in the valley." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Jair let him go, once he saw that he wasn''t headed toward the volcano. But it only made him more curious. "What are you hiding, old man?" he wondered aloud, before turning back to head indoors. He, Lilin, and Raina had shopping to do. They''d already done the preliminary searching for most of the basics, but there was still plenty to occupy them while he went through the checklist. Solaria was going to be a spectacle, and it''d be one they planned to redo several times. The invitations he''d been handed so long ago, the different factions fighting over who would get to gloat over his accomplishments and imprint themselves into his future... finally he''d be able to see just what kind of commitments they''d be willing to give him in return for his patronage. His position was so different now than it had been. Even just the genius prodigy of a month ago was ancient history. His reputation as the Phoenix Healer eclipsed his prowess with the blade and Maelstrom''s grand introduction at Lord Veshin''s arena. Either way, he could think of plenty of people who''d be more than happy to gain his notice. "You good with this?" he asked Lilin as they loaded up on every possible outfit they could need for a dozen different social events across a half dozen factions. "I''m not going to drag you around through time over and over unless you want to." "Are you kidding?" Lilin grinned. "This is a chance to do whatever I want at parties where someone like me would be lucky to get a job as a cleaner afterwards. I wouldn''t miss it for anything." "I''m not sure if I should be excited to see what she comes up with, or terrified of what she''s going to do," Raina said in an aside to Jair, but loudly enough for Lilin to hear. She turned back to face them with her biggest, most mischievous grin. "Just wait and see."
Without being tied to open lunar passages, it was harder to merchandize Solaria. It had, thus far, remained a rather sedate holiday rather than falling into the same umbrella of excited commerce and travel that Terlunia had been consumed by. However, having a holiday whose primary function was a celebration of intimate friendship and planning for the year to come, it was all but inevitable that it would quickly become a political hive of backstabbing and undercutting, with who went to whose party capable of breaking alliances and shifting the tides of whole factions. Jair knew from experience. He''d guided those tides enough times himself in the past¡ªenough to know that he never wanted to do it again. Even his best preparations couldn''t do more than minor adjustments without throwing everything into full chaos. As the day itself approached and their preparations continued in a rapid frenzy, Jair didn¡¯t even think about the one Solaria invitation among the vast list to choose from that he''d never been given before in all his lifetimes. Not until Raina cornered him in one of the smaller caverns where he¡¯d been practicing quick mount and dismounts with Skyclaw. "So, before we start partying with all the others¡­ I have something to ask you.¡± She looked unaccountably nervous, hands behind her back as though to hide something. ¡°You don¡¯t have to ask permission to ask a question.¡± Jair slid down from Skyclaw¡¯s back. ¡°Well, I know that after this we''ll be playing games of houses and political alliances, but I¡¯d like for the first Solaria¡ªtrue Solaria, we should celebrate properly. Just friends and family, like it''s supposed to be. I¡¯ve already asked Lilin before I came to you, since I know you''re going to be the tricky one to convince." "Hard to convince? I''ll do anything for you," Jair answered. "All you need do is ask." Raina smiled and held out an envelope. "Then come to Solaria at the oasis. We can start testing the waters at the other political events after." Jair¡¯s universe stuttered. For a moment, intense vertigo overwhelmed him. He''d found the invitation a long time ago, shortly after her death. So carefully written in her own hand, sealed and stored in an intimate drawer of her private desk. She''d filled out much more than was traditionally necessary, giving him a full rundown of the things to expect and what he should bring. She''d offered to help him find items from the previous year''s intentions if he didn''t have them¡ªhe did, the Institute hosted its own Solaria celebration for its students. They loved to pretend to be significantly more intimately involved in its students'' lives than they really were. Solaria was an incredibly intimate holiday, for all that the houses liked to use it for political maneuvering. For someone like Raina to take the time and effort of preparing an invitation for a nobody like Jair... It had broken his composure beyond repair. At the time, he''d been young enough to believe it was a sign. He''d never dared to speak, never been willing to risk breaking what they had in the hopes of something more. He''d been determined to save her before that, already vowed to himself never to rest until he found a way, however impossible and absurd that kind of an oath may be from someone who hadn''t even begun attuning his soulspell or integrating his class. But that was when he''d truly devoted himself to her, cemented and unshakeable. Even with the nagging doubts in the back of his mind, the question of how long ago she¡¯d written that and if she ever intended to send it, it had been a single tangible symbol of their connection. And she just casually held it out to him, entirely unaware of the turmoil it caused within him. Anchorpoints buried so deep within him he never even thought about them any more shifted. Resolutions cracked. He mindlessly accepted the invitation, then stared down at it. His name, written in Raina''s familiar handwriting on heavy Serin letterhead. He ran a finger over the seal, Raina¡¯s official personal crest as heiress of House Serin, everything within him shaken loose and spinning uncontrollably. ¡°What? Why so silent? You have to have seen my crest before.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not something you¡¯ve given me in person.¡± He ran a hand across the seal again. ¡°If I¡ª¡± He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. ¡°If I never upgraded Maelstrom, if I hadn¡¯t become as powerful as I have, would you still have invited me?¡± ¡°Of course. I¡¯ve actually had this ready for months. I was just waiting for the right moment. But then with all the¡­ being kidnapped and fighting dragons and everything¡­¡± She blushed faintly as he just smiled at her. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t you already know that?¡± ¡°This is the first time you''ve actually been able to hand it to me," Jair said, voice carefully neutral. "I wasn''t ever sure..." He closed his eyes and took a long, laughing breath. "You''ll never know how much I agonized over that invitation, when I found it. You hadn''t mentioned it to me, I couldn''t guess if it had been a true intention or simply an exercise in creativity. You''ve never been shy about anything. Why would you have held back from inviting me already? Until less than a month before?" Raina blushed and looked away. "I... there were so many obstacles, so many considerations. I couldn''t just... do as I pleased. And I wasn''t..." She bit at her lip. "I didn''t want to drag you into anything out of a sense of obligation. When we were working on things together, it could feel like all the outside world didn''t matter." Jair laughed softly. "So you were afraid to talk to me, and I was too much of a coward to talk to you. Of course." "I¡ªhey! I''m not¡ª" Jair shrugged it away. "Ancient history." "It was only about a month ago." Jair turned to look at her, and she blinked and stared, expression gradually growing sad and distant. "Another lifetime," he said softly, and she nodded. "Yeah." She was so close, staring so deeply into his eyes, that all the forgotten¡ªintentionally buried¡ªemotions of his early years came flooding back into him. She''d been a symbol for so long, an anchor for his continued existence, he didn''t quite remember when he''d forgotten exactly the woman she was. He''d been trying so hard to protect her from being overwhelmed by his own forcefulness, to avoid pushing her into something she didn''t want, he didn''t stop to consider that perhaps this was what she''d always wanted from the start. He couldn''t help laughing. "Is this what we''re doing now?" She leaned up and wrapped her arms around his neck, her own laugh breathy and light. "I think it is." Jair chuckled as he leaned down to meet her. "Lilin is going to be absolutely insufferable."
98 - Solaria 1: Serin Acknowledge the past, celebrate what is worthy of praise and release what should have been yet is not. Only in such freedom can the future be clearly built.
Sekir''s heartbeat pulsed against his ribs, an excited grin on his face even as he carried out pre-planned preparations. He''d dared to imagine he could find an equal, but never truly believed it. Yet now he had confirmation. This wasn''t just a battle of wits, but a game of immortals. Welburne could die as many times as Sekir and come back just as little inconvenienced. And in this game, all that mattered was information. Welburne didn''t even know it, but he''d already lost. Sekir''s opening move would be only the start. He wouldn''t stop until he had the Phoenix Healer isolated and overwhelmed, trapped across every possible encounter in every future timeline. He wouldn''t be the first time traveler Sekir had to put down, but even without meeting in person he was already proving to be the most fun. "See you soon," he murmured, then affixed a bland expression of subservience on his face as he lugged his bundle of tools up the steps to the target location. He banged on the door, then when a servant answered, he presented his card of qualifications with a hopeful smile. "I''m multi-talented. If there''s anything at all Lord Serin could use help with, I''m sure I can handle it." The man examined the card, then shook his head. "We work through an agented service. I''m afraid you''ll have to look elsewhere." Sekir shrugged and grinned. "Worth a try. Guess you don''t get to live after all." Before the other man''s expression could even change, he''d already landed a knife in his heart. "I have an urgent appointment, you see," he told the stunned, dying man as he twisted the blade and yanked it free. "It wouldn''t be polite to be late." He stepped inside and guided the body to the floor, then closed the door gently behind him. He had a great many preparations to make.
"You sure you don''t want to save this for last?" Jair asked as the three of them neared Veshin Oasis and the Serin holding''s meeting courtyard. The drifting manalight of the oasis gave the whole place a mystical ambiance which he appreciated. Yellow and white lights were strung between buildings and draped across the walls of the courtyard. The traditional Solaria feast was to be served at exactly midday, but right now the dim pre-dawn light left only the accent lights as illumination. The table was set up already, bare and empty for now, but surrounded by chairs. "Who all is coming?" Jair asked, glancing across the seats. "Twelve more aside from us and your family." "Cousins, mostly." Jair remembered more than a few Solaria feasts at Serin Courtyard, and they''d always been minimal to the point of stark. Ajriol and his direct household. The three specific cousins who were going to be arguing their merits as alternative heirs now that Raina was gone. He''d never been in attendance himself. Raina''s death was too heavy between him and Ajriol, and he didn''t want to disrespect her family by treating them the same as anyone else, frivolous, inconsequential. He would crouch on the walltop and watch, offering his own silent promise for the coming year, before disappearing without making his presence ever once known. Now¡­ "You''re sure this dress is okay?" Lilin tugged at the hem of her short, elegant dress. It was soft blue and cut across one shoulder and under her arms in a curving sweep, accented with a teal gauzy fabric in oversized sleeves, white gloves, and a single purple flower over her heart, accompanied by a sun-hat with more teal mesh, a matching purple flower, and a white ribbon. Raina wore a much more extravagant dress, layers of frills in three super-thin overlapping styles with complementary styles, red and yellow and white in long sections that seemed to drift around her as she walked. Combined with her fiery eyes and golden hair, it made her whole affect one of flickering flame. Jair''s battle robes were standard issue for adventuring heroes, complete with merit medals for campaigns he''d fought in the future. White with silver slashes across the left shoulder to display the number of his accolades. Since this timeline wasn''t one they''d be keeping, Jair had gone all in and concealed none of his accomplishments. He looked like a retired general from a peak adventuring guild who''d gone out on private royal contracts on the side. He¡¯d included subordinate rankings for the dragons, a verification of future-sight, and designed an entirely new seal for fourth-tier mageblades since such a thing had never existed before now. On the right sleeve he wore the merits of a dozen other cultures, from the aerians of Nuprima to the elves of northern Almas and the High Empress of Suthyrel. The seamstress he commissioned had given him more than a few raised eyebrows as he''d continued to list the features to be included, but he received exactly what he''d requested. Now, as he walked in the main gate with Raina and Lilin at his sides, and he wasn''t sure he''d ever been so contented. ¡°It¡¯s perfect,¡± Jair told her. Things were chaotic, and they were going to get even more chaotic. He had a new perspective on life, the universe, and everything. But in the end... It had been a good year, and he looked forward to an even better one to come. He squeezed Raina''s and Lilin''s hands, grinning first at one, then the other. The two people he''d never been able to save in the past, right here beside him, protected and strong. Alive and vibrant. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Lilin''s attention was drawn constantly by the drifting motes of mana in the air. She reached out to one, then giggled when it floated right through her hand without stopping. "You need to establish a manabody before you can touch them," Jair told her. He reached out and grabbed the mote from the air with one hand. "We can work on that this new year, if you want." "I''d love to. I''ve always wanted to see what magic is like." "She already told you she wants to be a healer," Raina reminded him. "Did she?" "Back when we brought her away from Marisbog." "That feels like years ago." Jair took his position on Raina''s other side, Lilin next to him. Ajriol would take the head of the table, and the other cousins arrayed around it. "We''re just going to sit here all day?" Lilin asked dubiously. "Not all day. Only until sunrise. That is when we acknowledge the past and speak our gratitude from the previous year." Raina tilted her head at Lilin. "Do you not celebrate Solaria where you''re from?" "We have a nice meal and go over the finances from the year." Lilin shrugged. "Not such a big deal." "Then you''re in for a lot of surprises." Raina took her own seat. They were the first ones here, only the preparation staff already present setting things up in the corners and around the edges. The main table was already present, but smaller tables were being brought out as they waited, set up around the sides of the courtyard. "Where are your cousins staying?" Jair asked, as he once again scanned the number of empty seats. "I''ve never met most of them in a formal setting." ¡°Oh, there¡¯s another guesthouse in Astralla we can open for these kinds of things. They¡¯ve been there since Terlunia.¡± Jair nodded and watched the small gathering as it assembled more fully. Two of them in particular he would probably end up ruining just from the principle of the thing¡ªthose who''d been dismissive or satisfied by Raina''s death. They did not deserve to hold positions of value in her family, all the less now that she was there to be impacted by their behavior. Raina and Lilin both wore soft shawls against the night chill as they sat conversing quietly across Jair while he just sat back and listened and enjoyed their presence. People began to arrive only a few minutes later, giving Lilin plenty of opportunity to gawk. Cousin Borab was Jair''s least favourite of Raina''s cousins, and it turned out that he was also the most aggressively friendly. Excessively so. He somehow managed to make agreeableness look slimy and what should have been brotherly admiration vaguely creepy. The fact that he celebrated Raina¡¯s loss with hardly the bat of an eye didn¡¯t win him any points in Jair¡¯s books. Raina didn''t seem to notice his exaggerated attitude. She interacted with him with the same flawless political politeness that she used with everyone. This was Jair''s first time seeing her in a fully political social event¡ªapart from the Veshin exhibition, but that had been much more informal and chaotic. This, a quiet and intimate gathering of friends and closest allies, was not something to be treated with the same frivolity. She handled the various factions within House Serin flawlessly, never promising too much, while also not leaving anyone feeling neglected. For some reason, every interaction between Borab and Stephani made Jair twitch. Their dynamic was nothing like what he''d seen in the future. With Raina out of the way, they''d been the bitterest of enemies. Aggressive rivals, each trying to undercut the other at the first opportunity. Yet here they were, flirting and lurking like they were a team. Whatever caused those two to unite was surely not good. And specifically knowing how fiercely they''d fought for leadership, he doubted that their targets would be anywhere near as benign as one another. For the first time since he removed Ryenzo from the picture, Jair began to worry about Raina''s survival. She didn''t have cause to suspect her family of plotting against her, but even if Jair couldn''t prove that there was any real danger, he would keep a close eye on everyone present. A known threat he could eliminate before it was ever a problem, but this was all unknown territory now. It was entirely possible that, without Ryenzo doing the dirty work for them, none of her family would ever make a move against her. But she was the primary heiress, only daughter of a missing mother and single father. That kind of vulnerable position practically screamed assassinate me to win. He squeezed her hand under the table, and she smiled over at him. Thankfully, Lilin was still too distracted by the floating mana lights to pay either of them much attention.
By the time sunrise lit up the horizon, everyone but Ajriol was present. The conversation was muted and respectful, and fell silent as everyone turned toward the archway facing the sunrise. Ajriol stepped into sight holding a woven basket in both hands. "Welcome, friends. Today we celebrate the accomplishments of the past and prepare ourselves to begin anew." He placed the basket on a pedestal at the far end of the table, a pedestal with a dark cloth covering it all the way down to the floor. Ajriol stood behind the basket and held up a list he had created beforehand to read aloud. Though only a brief summary of House Serin''s affairs from the previous year, it took several minutes for him to complete, then placed it into the basket when he finished. He next took out several small trinkets of various shapes and styles¡ªa message spool, a tree seed from Terluna, a folded cloth, a single chain link, etc¡ªand described what each symbolized to him and how it had been accomplished during the year. Or hadn''t been, in a few instances. He placed them each into the basket whether or not he''d succeeded in what he set out to do. Jair''s heart lightened at how normal and peaceful everything was. He couldn''t help but contrast this with the way Ajriol had gone through the motions in the previous timelines. So soon after his daughter¡¯s death, he hardly spoke, and would throw the entire handful carelessly, almost vengefully, into the basket without even trying to describe them or their purposes. Today, Ajriol finished his own turn and concluded with a smile. He bowed and called Raina up, and she brought her own handful of items and papers. After Raina came Cousin Borab, then Jair, then Cousin Nerry, then Lilin, and so on down the table until it reached the end where sat the handful of committed staff to House Serin--Carn the household manager, Lisa the head cook and her assistant Moira, and Indra the cleaner. They too each described their triumphs and failures, before committing everything both done and left undone to the basket. Ajriol returned to the pedestal once the last person had deposited their pages and items and took the opposite corners of the long black cloth, wrapped it one direction and then another until it was fully concealed, then tied it down and stepped back. "The year of 1427 is over!" With a flick of one hand, the cloth burst into flame, flash-incinerating the contents in the basket. The cloth burned away, leaving only the basket itself untouched. For a moment everyone sat in somber silence, then Carn stood and waved for the serving staff to bring out the morning feast. In addition to the traditional dishes and local cuisine, House Serin had splurged on several exotic imports. Each of the cousins had brought a dish in addition to those provided by Ajriol. Symbolically freed from the bounds of the old year, the mood shifted to unrestrained. People congratulating each other for their accomplishments, friendly ribbing about what hadn''t been done, placing bets and trying to guess what various people would try for in the year to come.
99 - Solaria 1: Serin (2) In creation there is destruction. For what can be made except by removing the nature of what already is in service of what is to be?
The first half of Solaria afternoon was spent in further expansion of the past year¡¯s goals: extended celebration of success, and the cathartic release of what hadn¡¯t been accomplished. His first few times involved in the nobility¡¯s Solaria parties, Jair had initially found this strange. In his family and community, much of the traditional purpose was stripped out of the holiday. It was still a day that wasn¡¯t part of the normal week, the neutral time between sunrise¡¯s final greeting to the previous year and the sundown signifying moving into the unknown of the new year, but there was a lot less ceremony to it. You got up to have breakfast at sunrise, then had a day off to do whatever they wanted. Which did involve a reasonable quantity of bragging about the past year or drinking away the regrets of uncompleted goals, but it was far more informal. For Ajriol¡¯s party¡ªor those of any other noble in Veor¡ªthe reflection on the past was turned all the way up. Some people¡ªmainly the more distant cousins¡ªhad brought books or information reels with the specifics of their accomplishments. Most simply spoke or asked after others, but there were whole presentations that everyone attended together. Jair noticed a distinct pattern between those who tended to be all about themselves and those who were curious about others. Ajriol and Raina were both curious about others, as were two of the other newcomers that he hadn''t seen in the past. At least not in this sort of context; he¡¯d met just about anyone with any degree of political power or influence at one time or another. The usual suspects were all as self-absorbed as ever, and several of the newcomers also seemed to care less for the acknowledgment of others'' accomplishments part. As far as they were concerned, what mattered was focused solely on receiving praise themselves¡ªand soliciting it whenever not naturally occurring. Around midday, Carn excused himself to finish the preparations for the evening feast and pronunciation of future intent. The latter half of the day was also to be spent in contemplation of how one wanted to proceed, though that¡¯s not exactly how it played out. There was some discussion of how to move forward, but a lot of the nobility treated the future resolution part as something of a reveal rather than a simple culmination of the day''s discussion. Very unlike the small personal home events Jair had been used to that included both back to back, one single discussion covering everyone with none of this additional trappings. They went to great lengths to conceal what they planned to announce as their intentions, even going so far as to employ misleading conversation topics to subtly influence people to think along different lines. Jair was used to the nobility''s games in general, but with this being so close to the start of his loop, this was the first time he''d been able to actually be present for this specific Solaria. He knew what most people would choose, because he knew what they would declare the results of in another year, but not what their past accomplishments would''ve been. Raina did her best to help him integrate with the cousins she found the least objectionable, but they were all so young that Jair found them objectionable regardless. He knew too much of what they would become and couldn''t quite bring himself to respect them. He did put on a decent fa?ade for Raina''s sake, but there was a reason she and Ajriol were the only main-line members of House Serin to maintain local residencies. The rest of the family may get along obligatorily, but there was no love lost between them. The number who started snapping at Raina''s legacy the moment she was out of the picture had long ago clarified this. Apart from Ajriol, Jair had no true allies within House Serin. But, he had Raina back now. And he would play whatever role she wanted if it meant he could stand beside her and watch her smile and hear her laugh. News of her dragon-kidnapping had spread a long way. Even those most self-absorbed weren''t likely to pass up such an exclusive piece of gossip. Their very own family member, being attacked by a dragon! That was the sort of thing that happened in stories, not in reality. In reality, dragons came and ate people and then left, they didn''t kidnap people. Not anymore. That was the sort of thing that happened in bygone ages. But Raina had the scars to prove it. Even if it weren''t for cousin Terrence being a Witness, too much of her story would ring too accurate to be denied. Jair did help to gently shift the conversation toward other topics when Raina seemed to be getting overwhelmed. Though they had looped several times since the event itself, so it was nowhere near as recent for her as it was for the rest of the world, it had still been horrifying and scarring and there was no way she would be over it so quickly. As the day passed, Jair couldn''t help but wonder what manner of chaos Lilin would be getting up to in their next several trips. She was behaving very demurely for Raina''s family, so meek and quiet that most people didn''t even notice she was there, but her eyes were alert and watching everything. Jair would be willing to bet already scheming for how she would disrupt the various noble events whose hosts were not personal friends. It was nice for Lilin to be able to think about something besides her feelings of disconnection and loss. Apparently, living in a dragon mountain with a vampire and two crazy nomads could shake anyone out of their complacency. Who knew? He should probably be concerned about how much time Lilin had been spending with Qahrvirna, but he trusted them both. Whatever trouble they got up to, it wouldn''t be too extreme. Probably.
Around an hour before sunset, Carn returned to bring everyone inside so the servers could finish the final preparation of the courtyard. He stayed with the guests personally to attend to anything that came up, from running to the kitchen to fetch refreshments or showing people around various rooms. This would free up the rest of his staff so they could finish setting up for the evening feast, plus he was the one most intimately familiar with the layout of the place. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The Serin compound in the oasis was very different from their Veshin neighbors¡¯ grand constructions. While Veshin had huge underground training facilities and a massive arena for everything from gladiatorial contests to ballroom dances or theater performances, House Serin''s oasis compound was built much more on the concept of luxury. There would be no resting rooms, no beds or sofas for sleep, but there were sitting rooms, a secondary library, and some of the most extensive baths to be found anywhere in Veor. Mana bathing had been a fad for several years a decade or so back. While its popularity had died down in recent years, several people who had converted to it in the past continued to find the practice valuable. As far as Jair could tell, there was no particular bonus or empowerment associated with bathing in a mana oasis. It was more exposure to the mana, so if you bathed in a different location you would have less quantity of mana drift motes available, but that wasn''t any different from if you walked or sat meditating or anything else. The water was more an insulator if anything, though its advocates swore that the mana absorbed into the water and helped with skin health. He¡¯d never been able to conclusively prove these claims to be accurate. Apart from the lack of bedrooms, the Serin compound was equivalent to any of the best hotels as far as amenities. It had a large and ornate meditation room complete with paintings and relics to suit the vibe¡ªthough Jair personally found those distractingly restrictive. The gym contained top line exercise equipment, and of course there were kitchens and a dining hall adjacent to the courtyard. It was a small dining hall, compared to most. It could seat maybe twenty-five people at most, and was most comfortable at twenty or below. All of which pointed to Serin''s specialization on small and intimate gatherings, but of the highest quality standard. Their House may be numerically in decline, but its pride was as strong as ever. As the sun crept lower and lower on the horizon, Carn finally excused himself to go verify that all the preparations were in place. Raina was looking around the gathering with a frown. "Have you seen my father?" Jair also scanned the area, but Ajriol was nowhere to be found. "No. I haven''t seen him in a few hours, actually." "I''ll be right back, I want to check on him. He must''ve lost track of time, he¡¯s not usually this late." "Do you know where he is? I can Darkflame us straight there." Raina shook her head. "I''ll just have to search." ¡°Let me know if I can help.¡± While Raina hurried off through the compound, Jair stared out at the sunset. This sky he''d seen so many times from so many angles, but never this specific one. Not this exact sunset from this exact spot. It looked familiar, so similar, but just that little bit different. He was still contemplating when he heard Carn''s scream. Jair was instantly on alert, Maelstrom in hand. Carn was not an easily surprised man. He did not show his reactions readily. You could tell him he needed to have a five course banquet ready for twenty people in the next three hours, and he would nod and get to it. Jair had never heard him scream. He had cried silently at the news of Raina''s death, but never made a sound. A flash of Darkflame and he was in the courtyard. Carn stood frozen in the gateway, staring at what should have been a scene of preparation and hope. Instead, it was a massacre. Each of the seats intended for one of the guests had been filled with one of the serving people or hired help for the evening, each of whom seemed to have killed themselves in a different way. At the far end of the hall, where the grand window opened onto the rising sun, instead of the festive banners and lights that had been strung across it in the morning, Ajriol Serin had been strung up instead. Cables had been threaded through his disconnected limbs like grotesque lanterns, while his torso and head were strung vertically in the center of the window. Bloody gashes across his chest spelled out "Heal this." Seven dragons appeared around him and Maelstrom was in his hand. "Find Raina. Get Lilin." Their respective dragons rushed off, while Skyclaw crouched down at Jair sighed ready for him to mount if he wanted. He didn''t want to. Not yet. He spun to Carn. The man had fallen to his knees, breath spent, staring blankly as tears coursed on his face. The man''s fists clenched tight against the stone and beneath the grief his eyes were tight with anger. "What happened?" Carn shook his head. "You''d have to ask Lisa." He gestured to an older woman in a chef''s hat who¡¯d apparently poisoned herself. Carn couldn''t stop shaking his head. "She was in charge of getting things ready. How could this¡­ How?" He couldn''t tear his eyes away from his liege lord, Ajriol''s bloodied fragments decorating the wall. All lit up perfectly by the last rays of the setting sun. "Who would do this?" ¡°I only know of one wildcard with the kind of power and influence necessary to pull something like this off,¡± Jair said grimly. ¡°Don''t worry. I will fix this." Carn looked up to him, eyes wild. "Fix what?" There is a sort of wild desperation in his tone, the grief close to choking him. "Heal this? No one can heal this!" "I can." Jair knelt down before him and looked into his eyes. "I am the Phoenix Healer and I promise you, Ajriol will be fine. Right now, I need an exact timeline. When was the last time you saw him? Where was he going? Who was he with?" Carn swallowed. "I saw him¡­" he took a deep shuddering breath. "We were preparing the plans for the seating. He wanted to move Beatrice and Camilla so they wouldn''t be next to each other. I was with Moira at the time. She was¡­" He swallowed again and wiped his face. It didn''t help, the tears kept coming. "She was working on the bread dough, so it was at least three hours ago. Not more than four." Jair nodded. Around two hours after Jair had last seen him. But he had been doing preparations for most of the morning. Afternoon. "What happened after that?" "I made the seating changes and have been assisting guests ever since. And keeping an eye on Miss Raina just in case¡­" Carn¡¯s voice choked off. "I guess I needn¡¯t have bothered. Completely useless. I cannot protect my liege, so what use am I as a watcher for his daughter?" Jair took a deep breath. "Carn. You are the most loyal member of House Serin, Raina''s most trusted advisor. If I share with you a secret no one else in this world knows, can you guard it from any but her and I?" Carn nodded hesitantly. "Then hear this. I can revert time. I will bring Ajriol back, one way or another. I can give you the chance for revenge, if that is what you want, or if you''d rather forget this ever happened, I can let you. You will wake up this morning completely unaware of what might have come to be. The day will end with Ajriol still safe and whole. Or, you can come back with me and help unravel this attack. Punish the fiend who has done this. No matter how many times it takes.¡± He held out a hand. ¡°The choice is yours.¡±
100 - Solaria 1: Serin (3) One must be cautious when making deals with immortals. Often their sense of timing is severely out of alignment with we shorter-lived beings. You hire one to show up as your bodyguard at a social function next week, they get momentarily distracted, then show up twenty years later wondering why their employer is dead.
Lilin didn¡¯t want to be left behind, but she hadn¡¯t spoken since arriving in the courtyard. Their plans for partying their way across Veor suddenly lost their playful veneer. Jair was used to Sekir¡¯s ordinary methods, but this was dramatically outside the norm. It was more like the sort of thing he¡¯d expect once he¡¯d already killed the man a time or three, not as a first contact. Jair closed his eyes and thought back. He could revert to any point he''d memorized, but once he went back he couldn''t come back forward except by living through it. He could set his own handholds to revert to, so long as he was able to remember it clearly enough to visualize as he reverted. What had been happening an hour or so ago? Recapture the moment. Fortunately, this whole party was a new and novel situation. He didn''t have any old memories of the day to jumble things up. The Serin Solaria parties he''d looked in on in the past carried an entirely different atmosphere. It wouldn''t be precise. He hadn''t been memorizing moments intentionally at the time, since they''d been planning to revert the whole day, but he could still recall enough events throughout the day to use as rough checkpoints. The closest brought them back a little under an hour to start, which let them reach the courtyard before the scene was fully set. But not entirely before. Ajriol wasn¡¯t present, but three of the servants had already been killed and set up in their places at the table. Lilin made a small noise and held Jair¡¯s arm tightly, staying half behind him. Raina looked around, then ran for the house. A servant stepped into the courtyard carrying a tray, yelped in shock, dropped the tray, and screamed. Jair looked around, but didn¡¯t see Carn. The location part of reverting time was always questionable, half the time it seemed to leave them wherever they¡¯d been at the time and the other half they went where Jair intended, and often without warning as to which would be which. He wanted to go back further, if he were alone he¡¯d have jumped back already, but right now the only one of the group he had in reach was Lilin. ¡°Mersine was right about him moving up the timeline.¡± Jair sighed. ¡°This is going to get very complicated very fast.¡± Carrying Raina back with him every time was one thing. Bringing all four of them was another. He couldn¡¯t let any of them get too far, or Sekir could take them out individually and whatever they learned would die with them. He could revert the timeline, but he couldn¡¯t return people¡¯s memories once their soul was reset. "You sure you want to stick through this?" Jair asked, turning to Lilin. "I can leave you out of this. There''s a high probability that bringing you in will make you a target." "I wouldn''t be a target already? Being your sister?" her voice was small but with a spark of defiance in it. "If I''m going to live my own life, I don''t want it to be something where I opt out every time something goes wrong. I don''t want to be the innocent sheltered thing you need to drag from place to place without ever letting on that something more is happening." She took a deep breath, looked out at the scene of carnage and the abandoned tray from the fleeing servant, and shifted her grip to lightly hold Jair''s forearm instead of clinging to his bicep. She was trembling, but that was only natural for someone who''d unexpectedly witnessed an entire courtyard full of violent murder. He suspected it hadn''t really sunk in yet, or she''d likely be reacting a lot more dramatically. Still in the numb semi-disbelief stage. "It''s alright," he told her, patting her hand in turn. "None of it will last. We''re going to prevent this." Lilin nodded and let her hand fall to her side, still staring out at the three dead servants. Jair walked over and looked at each. One was the head cook, Lisa. She lay slumped over a tipped-over goblet, lips the wrong color and eyes frozen in an expression of horror. Same as an hour later. Her position wasn''t changed in the slightest. "So he''s setting these up one at a time," Jair mused. The other two were unknowns, hired staff for this event. The murdered people weren''t clustered together, however, scattered out around the table. "He has a specific order in mind, and takes the opportunity whenever one comes in?" Jair looked around, but the courtyard was empty. "So where is he?" There''d been no one when he arrived except the servant who''d run off, one he recognized from the original tableau. He would have been seated at the far end, in the seat where Raina sat in the morning ceremony, with a steak knife through his eye. Jair''s appearance had saved his life, but if he was about to discover the scene, where was Sekir? There''d been no premature scream. This man would have been silenced within a minute of when Jair arrived. He ran a finger across the bladed edge of Maelstrom''s pommel as he looked around, searching for anywhere Sekir could be hiding to watch from. Then laughed at himself for staying land-bound. He tossed Maelstrom into the air and drifted upward, searching the area from above. He kept forgetting Bladewalk was available, out of the habit of verticality without his gravity imprints. No sign of the sorcerer. No one behaving suspiciously, only the one servant still running for the main house full tilt, breathless from the unaccustomed intensity. Jair would have preferred to search the area fully before the scene was disturbed. He could watch how this played out, but he couldn¡¯t shake the feeling he was missing something. Those initial moments after they arrived were too essential. The servant''s scream would have alerted any watcher and Jair wasn''t moving fast enough to catch them. He needed to go back, try the past few minutes again. Without really meaning to the intensity of his desire to be back a few minutes before flared golden and reset time to the same point again. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. "¡ªto kill y..." Raina blinked and swayed dizzily. Lilin grabbed Jair''s arm to steady herself. Jair gave her a second, then jumped into the air, Maelstrom beneath his feet as they ascended rapidly. The scene below was exactly the same, except the servant with his tray was walking carefully toward the courtyard instead of running away. Jair watched for any movement from anywhere in sight, eyes unfocused to take in as much of the scene as possible. Raina was talking with Lilin, hand on her arm. The servant stepped inside, bowed politely to Raina, then saw past her and screamed. The tray fell. The man stared for a stunned second, then he turned to Raina¡ªwho hadn''t gone rushing off yet this time¡ªwith a wild look of panic. "What happened? What do we do?" Jair ignored their conversation as he continued to scan the immediate surroundings for any movement out of place. Nothing. The entire conversation played out, with Raina comforting the terrified servant until she took him inside to speak to her father. Lilin glanced up at him, then trailed after the others when he showed no sign of leaving his perch in the sky. No Sekir. Jair stared at the three bodies, anticipating some kind of trick. Maybe one of them was faking? Sekir''s manabody was flexible enough to shift from form to form within a day. Jair once killed him three times in two days in a particularly chaotic past timeline, but none of these were bodies he recognized and none of them showed signs of being anything but fully dead. Though he watched until Ajriol and Carn emerged with Raina and Lilin, no one else came or went. Jair reluctantly descended, convinced that he''d seen all there was to see. Carn briefly explained the scene they''d seen in the future to his master, while Ajriol looked between his murdered staff, Jair, Raina, and Carn. "My house is cursed," he said at last. "There''s no other explanation. One dragon, could happen to anyone. But this kind of targeted and personal devastation? This cannot be a coincidence." Raina didn''t look at Jair. Jair grimaced. "There is another explanation. I believe this is the work of the sorcerer Sekir, who has until recently been working to install himself as an advisor to King Farshen. After my appearance upset his plans by returning the king to his right mind, rather than going along with whatever plans Sekir was building, he''s changed his target entirely." "Why would an immortal sorcerer target my family? What has House Serin ever done? What benefit does he gain from my death?" Jair took a breath. "I believe his plans are multifold. First, he distracts Raina and puts her into an unfamiliar situation, which would also distract me. Second, he begins to sow chaos between houses and within the Councils." Carn scowled fiercely. "How would an outsider murdering our lord do anything? We know this sorcerer has no political associations. He is only making more enemies for himself." "Remember, he doesn''t know that I''m aware of his existence, so he has no reason to think that we''d be able to immediately pinpoint the source of the chaos. As far as he knows, making a statement like this would drive us to suspect rival houses. And since there''ve been quite a few upheavals in the financial world. The economy is in confusion, half the nobles are at the throats of the other half, and the trade cities are closer to the edge than they''ve been in decades." Carn''s fists tightened. "So this sorcerer would murder Lord Serin just to disrupt the economy?" "And weaken House Serin. Raina isn''t a full mageblade yet, so it''s reasonable to anticipate the house being a bit thrown awry with her being suddenly thrust into a leadership position. There''ll be the usual succession squabbles, cousins thinking they''re older and wiser and deserve the position. And," his eyes met Raina''s, an unshakeable promise of relentless justice, "it''s one of the best ways to distract me." Carn frowned at him, eyes briefly flaring with green light. "And who are you that''s so important? You''ve always been a quiet student, and now you''re slaying dragons and healing kings? How are we to know this isn''t your doing?" "Carn, peace," Ajriol said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Jair is a protector to Raina and a friend to us all." But there was a tension around his eyes, one Jair hadn''t seen since the timelines where Raina didn''t survive. "You can fix this, my daughter tells me?" Jair nodded. "I can undo it all as if it never was." "And there''s a reason you have not done so already?" "The closer in to the event itself the more likely I am to catch the culprit in the act. Sekir is incredibly slippery, if any slightest hint of something going wrong throws him off, he can change his plans wildly on a moment''s notice. He''s infuriatingly flexible." As if in answer to his words, someone in the main house screamed. Jair slashed out reflexively and darkflamed himself, Raina, and Lilin inside without pausing to think. It took them another moment to find the commotion. The servant who''d gone running lay at the bottom of the back kitchen stairs, his body broken and twisted the wrong ways by the impact. "What happened?" Jair stared around at the assemblage¡ªMoira the assistant baker had been the one to scream. Most of the rest were guests who stared either with horror or shocked fascination at the gruesome sight. "I¡ªhe was¡ªI¡­" Moira couldn''t seem to manage more than a word or two, stuttering over them again and again. "Were you here when he fell?" She shook her head. "He was¡ªhe''d already¡ªI wasn''t¡ª" So, even after the situation changed and the target moved inside, Sekir continued his way down the checklist. That¡­ was new. "Thank you. This is very helpful." He grabbed Raina and Lilin and rushed them back out to where Ajriol and Carn were coming in. "I''m going to revert us the past twenty minutes again, and a little bit further. Carn, you know where that man was assigned?" "Molash?" Carn shook his head, grief clouding his eyes. "He was new, but such an eager kid. Good worker." "So you can find him before he comes out to the courtyard?" Carn nodded slowly. "Yes, probably. Why?" "I believe Sekir is executing your staff in some particular order. For whatever reason, he went ahead and killed Molash even though it was more public and less exhibitive. Shoving him over the stairs doesn''t have the same impact as setting him at the table with a¡ª well, it''s the first hint of a pattern we have." "Can''t you take us back to before any of it happened?" There was a note of frantic desperation in Carn''s voice now. "Save everyone?" Jair raised his hands. "We will, eventually. But with an event like this, once we go back to the start there''s the chance the timeline is corrupted. Working our way gradually back is the best way to figure out what happened." Of course, he was used to doing it in chunks of days or weeks, piecing together events from careful repetition and painstaking observation. The ability to go back by minutes or hours was such a luxury, he couldn''t get used to how nice it was not to have to relive an entire week to change a few minutes of a single day. "If you don''t want to come--" Carn''s expression firmed, resolute. "No, I''m the best poised to watch everyone. I won''t let this happen again." "Ajriol, you want to come along too this time? Just keep an eye out for anything unusual. And obviously, if anyone tries to kill you, do your best to prevent it and let us know what''s happening." Ajriol nodded, and the four of them grabbed Maelstrom''s blade.
101 - Solaria 1: Serin (4) Most dungeons are controlled by adventurer groups, specialist training academies, or wealthy merchant lords. Meliarn is not unique in being owned by the continent¡¯s rulers, but it is one of the few to be so thoroughly hidden that even Veor¡¯s inhabitants have no idea it even exists.
Jair flexed his hand on Maelstrom''s hilt. Golden light burned through them all, and then they were back in the courtyard, a bit earlier in the day than their previous arrival. Well, Jair and Lilin were in the courtyard. Raina, Ajriol, and Carn weren''t physically present, presumably in the house wherever they''d been before. "The fact that Raina isn''t here seems to indicate something," he mused, looking around. The courtyard was already as they''d seen it last, with three bodies arranged at the table in their purposeful morbidity. "I''m not entirely sure what." He smiled at Lilin, trying to break the gloom, but she only shook her head and looked stunned and vaguely horrified. Right. It normally took more than a half hour to get used to horrible death. "Wait, I know what we need." Jair darkflamed himself to Mount Ryenzo. It took him a few minutes of searching to locate who he was looking for, but they weren''t hiding. "Qahri, want to come solve a murder mystery?" Qahrvirna grinned like he''d just offered her an extra moon. "I''d love to!" "Do you know where Eythron is?" "Out by the pond. He keeps staring into the water and trying to burn it." "That''s... different." He stabbed her, darkflamed her to the courtyard, then himself to the pond. Eythron was indeed sitting beside it, and he did seem to be trying his best to set it on fire. A thin layer of burning oil flickered out even as he watched. "What are you doing?" "Practice." "For?" Eythron looked at him like he was an idiot. Jair sighed. "Star Hydra again?" "You claimed to know me, how do you keep forgetting that this is the most important piece of my plans?" Because until now you''ve never been forthcoming about your plans, Jair didn''t say. "I think I know where Sekir is today. Want to come?" Eythron stood at once and nodded grimly. He held out a hand. "Take me to him." "First, I should warn you what we''re walking into." He gave a quick description of the situation, and his plans to micro-revert by half hours or so to see as many pieces of the event as possible. "Going from three to ten in one hour seems fast. Why the increase?" "They weren''t stumbling in as frequently until the end? Once he finished with Ajriol, he wanted to move things along? Who knows." Eythron regarded him flatly. "You say we''re up against an Arch-Sorcerer and you don''t think the timing of the ritualized murders is important?" "They were all killed in different ways, and there¡¯s no pattern drawn around it. What kind of ritual fits those parameters? It feels more blatantly violent, as though he were trying to make a point." "If you want my advice? Pull everyone out. Revert time clean. Let it play out. I want to see the result, before you start tampering. And Qahri. She''ll know more about this than me." "How familiar are you with death rituals?" "I thought you said you know me?" Apparently not as well as I thought. This was becoming a recurring trend. And he wasn''t even sure if it was due to neglect or simply lost information that he''d learned and forgotten over the years. His life was a maddening thing, and reflecting back on it could go on forever without getting anywhere. He shook himself out of the repetitive draw of what had been and would never be, dragging his focus forcefully back to the moment. He should be thinking over the future, not the past. He had a murder to solve and a sorcerer to catch. Hopefully. He''d still need to deal with the ¡®immortal¡¯ part at some point. Killing Sekir physically only bought him a day or so. Sometimes as much as a week, other times only a few hours. There was only one place the sorcerer¡¯s soul would be trapped in place, unable to escape his death. But the timeline was so different now. Without the king ailing and the princess available to be subverted to his cause, Sekir had no reason to go near Meliarn. If only he could chuck the guy into Mercurios. That would solve the problem for good. But something told him Sekir wouldn''t sit quiet for a several-minutes trip in an acid dragon''s mouth, even if Jair was willing to trust Mercurios with Skyclaw or one of her siblings. Still, if there was any way to make that happen¡­ it wouldn¡¯t matter how strong Sekir was out here, to Mercurios he¡¯d be just as helpless as Jair had been. Was there a way to drain the volcano? Open the entrance to access? Eh, but then it would be accessible. That would be worse in the long term, even if it would be a very nice short-term solution. The fewer people going into Mercurios, the better. Starve out the old monster. By binding himself to a dungeon, the dragon had limited himself to that area. He''d probably collapse in another few millennia, if no one ever went in to feed him. But the blood-bonds to his descendents... Jair shook himself out of that line of thought. He could deal with the terrifying dragon-dungeon some other time. Or, better yet, ignore him until they both died of old age. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Sekir first. Which started with learning where he was and what he looked like this time around. Perhaps some hints as to his plans. Was this simple revenge against the Phoenix Healer for his interference with Sekir¡¯s plan to subvert King Farshen? Or did he have some other reason to target House Serin? This felt targeted at himself, but that could be biased. "You ready?" he asked, holding out the sword to Eythron. Eythron wrapped his hand about the blade, gently, too gently to break skin. "I don''t know what I''ll do," he warned. "At an unknown distance." "If it''s too bad, I''ll bring you back," Jair promised. Eythron nodded and Jair darkflamed them back to the Serin side of Veshin Oasis and the courtyard with its¡ª "Qahri! What are you¡ª" Qahrvirna, crouched beside the dead cook, looked up innocently, blood running down her cheek. "What? They weren''t using it, and they''re nice and fresh." She stared at him with a suggestive tilt to her head, then closed her eyes and leaned back in to continue. He should have known better than to expect anything else. "We¡¯re here to investigate, not¡­" He''d been thinking in terms of preventing the further deaths of anyone else at the event, and while Qahri may be a bit of an isolationist she was also a master socialite. If anyone could slink her way through the crowd and learn absolutely everything everyone knew without drawing any suspicion, it would be Qahrvirna. But... fresh blood, right there. Vampire. Yep. He definitely should have seen that coming. Eythron had started walking, haltingly, shoulders tense, roughly northward. "Master, the party is this way." Jair took his arm and steered him around. Eythron stared at him blankly. "Not this again. Snap out of it! You don''t want Mercurios, you don''t want Meliarn. You just want to find Sekir. Remember?" Eythron took a deep breath, seized Jair''s forearms tightly, and stared wildly into his eyes. "This one is weaker. I can do it. I can do it! Finally. I can be free." Then, as though that was all he needed to explain, he turned north again. "Master, there''s a wall¡ª" Eythron stabbed his sword into it, swung himself up to the top of the wall, then hopped down over to the other side. He continued across the oasis without pausing to go around any obstacle, only over. Jair sighed. "So much for help." He turned back to Qahrvirna, who''d finished her snack and was standing on top of the table and looking critically down at the people lying slumped over it. "So, apart from making yourself look like the culprit, what do you¡ª" "They''re equally aligned." Jair frowned at the three dead staff members. One on one side, two on the other. But the cook was the one closest to the head of the table, the other two further down and on the other side, so it wasn''t even forming a triangle. Three empty seats on this end, none on the other. "How?" She pointed up to the arched window that opened toward the sunrise¡ªthough, of course, the sun was overhead now¡ªthen to the bodies. "The next one would go here." She pointed at the seat where Jair remembered Molash''s body having been. "Young and male. Violent. Head." Jair blinked. He hadn''t told her those specifics of the final scene, and yet she predicted it exactly. "So Eythron was right, this is some kind of death ritual." Qahrvirna shrugged. "I don''t know how it''s a useful ritual for anyone but a vampire, is the thing. It forms an internal binding between the targets, trading magic for physical. It''s normally used at fancy parties where a lot of vampires are planning to gather and someone wants to show off." "When you say trade magical for physical...?" "The ritual cannibalizes their manabodies to keep them physically pseudo-functional for longer. Keep their blood from decaying, replenish it faster. But it''s usually done with alive targets." She shook her head. "This is pointless. Sure, keep this guy fresh for me an hour or two longer, but it''ll run out soon enough, and then they''ll go right back to decaying. Probably faster than before, since there''s only physical left." "Could it be to disguise what times they were killed?" "Could be, but it won''t change the time of death, just the rate of decay." ¡°Yeah, that felt like a stretch, but if Sekir wasn''t planning on being found until after the whole tableau was ready... would he go to all the trouble of digging up an obscure vampire preservation ritual just so everyone looked freshly-dead instead of having been around all afternoon?¡± Jair snorted. "Yeah he would, he''s such an exhibitionist. It doesn''t matter how magically inefficient it is, he just wanted it to look good.¡± Though the idea of Sekir being familiar enough with vampires to use their rituals so casually was worrying, knowing where he got some of his knowledge wasn¡¯t going to change his capabilities. ¡°You recognized it immediately, how far does it extend?" "Infinitely, just has to be done sequentially. The first three sets up the array, then more can be added as long as they follow the pattern. It''ll be connected stronger the more you add, but that just means it''ll burn through the available mana faster. With just these three, you may get seven or eight hours. Add another five or more and you''ll be lucky to get three." Jair missed his archmage spell loadouts. Until he could get to Nuprima and redo all his imprints, he couldn''t even switch into manasight. "Do you have manasight? Can you tell how far these are decayed to?" Qahrvirna''s eyes glowed brighter red as she stared down at the bodies. "An hour or two, it looks like. They''ll last another six before starting to decay." "Plenty of time to take it slow, set up his scene however he wants." Jair shook his head. "This is just excessive." "So the guy wants to party like a vampire. I think I''d like to meet him." "Of course you would. Just be sure to let me know if you do, so I can take care of the cleanup." Qahrvirna grinned at him suggestively, blood still streaking her fangs and down her chin. "Don''t worry, I''ll leave some fun for you." She waved at him, hopped down, and hurried inside with a swishing gait that showed off her form in as flattering a light as she could manage. Jair let her go. She knew what she was doing, even if she pretended otherwise. He turned back to where Eythron had gone running. He tossed Maelstrom into the air and flew off after his wayward mentor. At least if Jair went with him he could prevent the most blatant of Eythron''s self destructive tendencies. Even if he threw himself into Meliarn there should be enough time to stop him from doing anything permanent. Veor''s dungeon was a much more standard thing compared to an anomaly like Mercurios. Most dungeons hadn''t had their cores eaten by ancient dragons, and thus followed the same predictable patterns year in and year out. Being a normal dungeon meant it was unlikely to have any instant-death options, mainly monsters that wanted to eat you. Perhaps once he experienced being eaten alive a time or two, Eythron could put Meliarn behind as easily as he''d escaped the lure of Mercurios. For that, however, they''d need to spend almost five hours walking across the desert. Meliarn wasn''t out in the open, nor was it somewhere easily accessible. There was a reason only the Veori royal family knew about it. Meliarn had five layers, each successively smaller than the previous. The top layer would take a month to fully explore, while the lowest level could be fully traversed in less than a day. But they were full of ordinary monsters trying to eat you alive, not... whatever Mercurios had been. If you knew your way through and had a full complement of archmage spells, you could get top to bottom from Meliarn''s entrance to its core in just under three days. With Bladewalk and Maelstrom''s ability to one-hit anything short of a dragon, Jair could probably carve another eight hours off that time. He left Eythron running across the desert, since he had both a known destination and an unwavering trajectory, and darkflamed himself back to the oasis. There was plenty of investigating left to do. His mentor¡¯s particular form of madness could be dealt with when he actually reached his destination, but until then Jair had hours to observe the timeline play out.
102 - Solaria 1: Serin (5) Never wear blue to a convalia of Stormkin unless you¡¯re prepared to spend the entire event fighting to defend your honor. It is a good way to attract attention, though, if you¡¯re able to survive the attempt.
When Jair arrived back at the oasis, Qahrvirna had integrated into the party as though she''d been there all along. She was a natural, sailing effortlessly from conversation to conversation, getting exactly as much as anyone was willing to share without ever pushing them into uncomfortable territory. Jair briefly envied her carefree joviality. He¡¯d always lacked the natural interest of a born socialite. He could play the part, follow the rules of politeness, but there was a certain tedium running under his conversations. The skills could be learned, but repetition tended to make even the most lively conversationalist dull and irritating to deal with. Qahrvirna made it look effortless and clearly enjoyed herself the whole time. In the ten minutes or so he''d been talking with Qahrvirna and checking on Eythron''s progress, Carn had deftly rearranged the staff schedule to keep Molash out where they could protect him and disappeared off to take care of things behind the scenes. Raina and Ajriol stood by the lower bannister of the sweeping stairway, conversing with one another while keeping an eye on him. Molash circled the room with a tray of pastries, looking entirely like this was a normal part of his routine. If anything, he seemed happier to be out among the prestigious guests. Jair wandered over and helped himself to one of the pastries. The flaky crust hid an intricate internal network of thin crunchy caramelized cookie, like a manufactured honeycomb with heavy nutty undertones along with the light sweetness of the outer wrap. It was a specialty of Penriet modified from an old Suthyrel recipe, not common in Veor. Which cousin was trying to show off with this display? Irrelevant. Jair stayed beside Molash as he ate. "Never been to one of these things before," he commented in an affected Khellan accent. He grabbed another pastry in each hand. "It''s a bit fancier than I expected." Molash hadn¡¯t stopped staring at Jair''s ostentatiously-decorated battle robes, showing record of his feats both present and future. He kept his voice carefully neutral, but he couldn¡¯t fully conceal an undertone of excited interest. "Of course, sir. I understand the transition from service to civilian life can be a difficult adjustment." He gave a respectful nod and glanced away. ¡°I should¡ª¡± "Oh, don¡¯t mind me, I can walk along.¡± Molash resumed his slow circuit around the room, Jair lingering beside him. ¡°I see you''re new?¡± Jair asked after finishing his second pastry. ¡°Haven''t seen you around the Astralla townhouse at least." "Oh, no, sir, I''m only working here. Not at the main house." "You work here in the oasis year round?" "I wish." Molash paused and tugged at the flowing sleeves of his nondescript white tunic, balancing the tray on one hand with flawless balance. "It''s the best chance I have to get in a place like this, y''know?" Molash resumed moving around the room, and Jair moved with him. "What kind of perks come with the job?" Jair absently nibbled at his third pastry, scanning the crowd around them. He wasn¡¯t really engaged with Molash¡¯s responses by now, only paying enough attention to keep the conversation going. Several people came up to take a pastry as they moved on, but none of them triggered Jair''s immediate Sekir-vibe-meter. No suspicious behavior, no suddenly drawing a knife and trying to kill him on the spot. Which was unusual. For all his chaotic unpredictability, the one consistent across every timeline was that Sekir hated Jair with a blind, unstoppable hatred. The moment they saw each other, every time, Sekir would drop everything to kill Jair even if it meant his own death in the process. He''d half hoped that by making himself blatantly visible it would draw the sorcerer into an immediate confrontation, just as a concrete verification of what they were up against if nothing else. Instead, the rest of the plan went without a hitch. Raina and Ajriol discreetly slipped away once they saw he was in place; they needed to clean the courtyard before preparations resumed, if they wanted to avoid the rest of the staff causing a scene. Jair shadowed Molash at a distance throughout the afternoon without anyone ever trying to kill the kid. He only slipped out for a minute every hour or so to check on Eythron''s progress and give the poor man some water. Jair''s mad mentor did at least retain enough sense to drink when a waterskin was shoved in his face, but attempts to turn him around remained as fruitless as ever. He could have taken Eythron directly to Meliarn¡ªor moved him further away, though they''d need to deal with his odd obsession someday. But not just yet. The moment Jair entered Meliarn and subjected himself to the dungeon''s domain and rules, he wouldn''t be able to teleport himself in and out readily. Right now was not a good time to be gone for hours. Better to leave Eythron¡¯s obsession passively ongoing until they finished the investigation at the oasis. They could tackle whatever was going on with him and Meliarn after the party. ¡°It feels a bit disrespectful to go on partying,¡± Raina whispered when she rejoined him. Her practiced smile hid the strain well, but some of the staff they¡¯d just buried were as good as family to her. ¡°I know, we¡¯ll be redoing the day at least several more times, and they¡¯re going to be fine in the end, but¡­¡± Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Jair nodded agreement. ¡°I know. It¡¯s going to be hard for a while. You don¡¯t have to follow through if you want out. Sekir is ruthless and merciless. This isn¡¯t going to get any easier.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not doing this without me. Sekir doesn¡¯t know who he¡¯s messing with.¡± Jair chuckled and put his arm around her. ¡°It¡¯s normal to be sad and angry. You don¡¯t have to hide it.¡± Raina lifted her chin. ¡°I¡¯m not hiding anything from you. But this is my father¡¯s event. I¡¯m not going to ruin it, even if we have to do it many times over again. I can break down when it¡¯s over and we¡¯re back at the mountain.¡± She paused. ¡°Is it strange that the dragon¡¯s lair has started to feel more like home than this place?¡± She looked around the grand celebration hall with a motionless smile and glint of sorrow in her eyes. ¡°Not strange at all,¡± he answered softly. ¡°Home is rarely about a place. The place only holds the home.¡±
Despite lingering concerns, nothing at the oasis went wrong the whole rest of the day. Sunset arrived, Ajriol stepped out to lead them in selecting their tokens for the following year, and if there were four fewer staff members bustling about, none of the guests mentioned it. Molash survived the night and went home oblivious to the peril that''d been hanging over his head all afternoon. Carn held a secondary Solaria ceremony for himself and the serving staff once the cleanup was finished. Qahrvirna reported nothing suspicious at all when they met up afterward to debrief. ¡°It looks like he has a specific order he''s going to follow and if we interrupt it, he won''t move forward. But was our presence really enough to make him discard the whole plan after that?" "You remember the one thing all immortals fear?" She bared her fangs at him. "Anything that can rewrite your soul." ¡°You don¡¯t think you¡¯re giving yourself too much credit? If a glamorous vampire was all it took, he¡¯d have been done for long ago.¡± ¡°No one seemed unduly bothered by me.¡± She shrugged one bare shoulder and grinned. ¡°They all seem sufficiently complex to be more than a cover identity, but if he¡¯s as good as you say that doesn¡¯t mean much.¡± Jair frowned. He''d been throwing himself into the center of anything and everything for so long that it felt strange to consider that he might not be the focus of Sekir''s attention. The man had spent so long hunting him personally, their confrontations in previous timelines escalating into near-absurdity. But that shouldn¡¯t matter. Any way of stopping the mad sorcerer was better than nothing. It didn''t have to be Jair personally. Just because it''d always been him in the past didn''t mean anything. They didn''t have to kill each other personally just because they were nemeses. Or were they? If this Sekir would quietly slip away rather than charge him? "Two years early." He had to remember that. This was not the Sekir he was so intimately familiar with. "A lot can change in two years. This Sekir is younger, more rash, more aggressive." "I think you''re talking to yourself again." "Yeah, I do that." Jair considered for a long moment, then shrugged. "Guess it''s up to Raina." Qahrvirna pouted. "You''re not going to even ask me?" "You have no idea what I was going to ask." She licked her lips. "I''m sure I can make it more interesting." "Yeah, I''m sure you can. Want to come with me to the dungeon?" Her smile froze, eyes going tight. Jair couldn¡¯t resist giving her a very pointed grin. "Oh, right, what''s that you were saying about immortals? Soul-changing things not your friends? Mmm, too bad, guess you''ll have to sit this one out." Qahrvirna hissed at him and then trounced off, giving her best dismissive wave, as though she were the one making the decision here. Jair laughed at her, because it was Qahrvirna and she always deserved to be laughed at, then went to collect the others.
Jair found Raina, Lilin, Ajriol, and Carn once the last of the guests had departed. Carn still looked shaken, Ajriol frowned uncertainly, and Raina was twitchy and impatient. Jair strode into the small gathering projecting calm confidence. "We have a couple options for what we do next. Eythron''s gone running off to Meliarn, so we could deal with that and see if we can snap him out of it. Or we could ignore him and go on investigating today. Anyone find anything?" "I didn''t see anything suspicious at all," Carn said, shaking his head. "There were only the usual number of vagrants and gate-crashers." "That''s normal?" Then again, he was often one of those gate-crashing vagrants in previous timelines, so who was he to talk. "Who''s coming with me to the dungeon, and who''s not interested?" "Where are you planning to find a dungeon?" Carn asked. "There''s no lunar passage for over two weeks." "No lunar passages required. There''s one right here in Veor. But according to my calculations, my mentor should be arriving there any minute now so we should hurry." "I''ll leave that to you," Ajriol said. "I am weary and the last thing I need is to go rushing about in dungeons." Carn looked disappointed, but nodded. "I should rest and prepare for the morning. Do you think this arch-sorcerer of yours will be back to try again, or have we escaped him?" "Oh, he''ll definitely try again, but you don''t need to worry about that. Once I finish with Eythron and Meliarn, I''ll be reverting to before the day started. You didn''t think I was going to leave your three friends dead for good, did you?" "May I come along, in that case?" Carn looked between Jair and Ajriol, not quite sure whose permission he needed. "You''re welcome to come," Jair told him. "No need to worry about neglecting your duties, since the day will be undone once we finish. You just need to stay where I can reach you when it''s time to revert if you don''t want to lose your memories." Carn''s startled gasp was a reminder that Jair hadn''t actually explained the mechanics of his soulspell to any of them yet. "I''ll come back here before I revert, even if you don''t come with us," Jair assured them. "Since we''re going to be investigating Solaria again and will need you to be aware of the danger so you can keep an eye out." And Qahrvirna was an important part of the group. "I''d like to come anyway,¡± Carn said. ¡±I''ve never seen a dungeon before." Jair nodded and held out Maelstrom for them. "This shouldn''t take more than a day or two," he told Ajriol, who still didn''t join the group, and Qahrvirna who hung back a good distance from the edges of the small gathering, just close enough to pretend she wasn¡¯t listening in. "As soon as Eythron¡¯s settled, I''ll be back for you." Ajriol stepped forward, took Jair''s forearm and nodded deeply. "I cannot thank you enough for everything you are doing for us. Your dedication to our house is more than we can ever repay." "You don''t owe me anything. I''m not doing this with any expectation for repayment. Your family is under my protection. No matter who comes against you." "Still, I thank you." Ajriol bowed again as he stepped back, and Jair darkflamed the four of them to the gates of Meliarn.
103 - The Gates of Meliarn It can be tempting to search out a dungeon for the title and potential class upgrade from destroying it, but the momentary benefit to an individual is heavily outweighed by the potential long term benefit of it continuing to exist. Therefore, nearly every country on Neptus has a law forbidding the destruction of a dungeon for any reason or under any provocation. Dungeons are a limited resource. Once destroyed, they cannot be replaced.
The Veori royal dungeon was far from any city, deep in the north desert. To the east, the western dragon mountains stood against the horizon, guarding this side of the river that flowed north and split Mount Ryenzo and the main cluster of mountains from their cousins. The river didn¡¯t quite reach the center of the continent¡ªyet. Once the seascourge surged against Veor, that river would swiftly divide the continent in two, leaving the eastern mountains around Mount Ryenzo fully separated from the remainder as the ocean devoured the desert and lesser mountains alike. But for now, seascourge and dragons alike were far from reaching Meliarn, and the only people Jair needed to be concerned with were Eythron and his companions. Jair, Raina, Lilin, and Carn arrived at Meliarn''s outer gate, an archway carved into the side of a stone outcropping, to find Eythron already there. He didn''t know how to open the entrance, but was making a good start on carving it open by force. His sword flashed and danced, slicing away chunks of stone one strip at a time. ¡°You plan to cut through the whole door this way? Have you considered a bigger weapon?¡± Eythron didn''t respond. After a few more fruitless attempts at communication, Jair went ahead and opened the dungeon entrance for him, pressing his hand against the keystones in proper sequence with a quick burst of mana to each. No point waiting around for Eythron to break in. He¡¯d inevitably succeed in the end anyway. May as well get on with things. The grand entrance to Meliarn opened, gates dissolving away and leaving behind an opening that looked very much like a chasm into an endless abyss. "I don''t suppose you''re ready to tell me why you''re running into the nearest dungeon you can find without any preparation whatsoever?" "I need it." Eythron¡¯s voice was distant, as though his attention was elsewhere, and he stepped forward. Jair followed, Raina at his side, Lilin and Carn trailing along behind. Meliarn¡¯s entrance hall was a massive marble cavern, floor paved smooth with pink and crimson-streaked marble, the walls were smooth and gleaming, and the curved ceiling asymmetrical just enough to leave an implication of natural formation without the actual nature part. The upper floor was made of curving stone and marble passages, all vaulted and carved with abstract patterns of wind and dust. It was a beautiful place, perhaps one of the most beautiful in Veor. It had a timeless elegance to it which some of Vaes City''s more spectacular architecture could match, but taken to extents no human craftsman could accomplish. Beautiful, but impersonal. Complex and intricate, with something subtly inhuman about it. The angles weren¡¯t quite right, the proportions were more off the longer you stared at it. As though they''d been scribbled by a child rather than created by an architect.. but even that was more human than this. The angles, the proportions, Meliarn was masterfully manufactured but there was no sense of true aesthetic to it. Jair could appreciate the ways it presented itself but it was clearly an unpaired dungeon that had never known a living avatar. Should he feel bad for it, or just use it as the weapon he intended it to be? Eythron stood in the center of the entry room, eyes fixed blankly ahead, head tilted as though listening. ¡°Okay, old man, we¡¯re here. Does that mean you can think clearly now?¡± ¡°I need it,¡± Eythron repeated softly, head turning this way and that. ¡°Do you really?¡± ¡°I always assumed we¡¯d have a bit more post-graduation experience before seeing the inside of one of these," Raina mused, looking around. Jair tried to imagine the place as though he were entering it for the first time, instead of the familiar battleground where so many of his life-or-death confrontations had taken place. He¡¯d probably spent nearly as much time fighting in Meliarn as in the Oriad. The best part about a fight taking place in a dungeon was that the entrance formed an automatic shelf of its own. Back when he had to struggle to control his landing point in the timeline by anything more precise than a week or more, having a clear designated starting point for the whole encounter was invaluable. But before that? ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can remember what I expected from life after graduation,¡± Jair admitted. ¡°As a trained mageblade, assuming we survived the plague and escaped Sekir¡¯s rampage¡­¡± If he hadn¡¯t broken away from the previous sequence of events, the major chaos would have been right around the time of his graduation. ¡°We¡¯d probably have been recruited to one of the Veori defence expeditions.¡± Thinking about it, if he¡¯d been someone with any other soulspell, he¡¯d have probably ended up as one of Sekir¡¯s mundane subordinates. One more mage doing what he was ordered and going where he was sent. If he¡¯d escaped Sekir¡¯s vendetta, he¡¯d have been qualified for a broad range of positions from adventuring or military to any number of research or exploration positions requiring magical flexibility and a basic ability to defend oneself. Mageblade was a prestigious and rare class, with stringent requirements and precise training methodologies. Most people who managed to stumble on the class on their own never even reached second tier, let alone ascended. ¡°What even is a dungeon?¡± Lilin asked. ¡°I know what the stories say, it''s like a building but it grows on its own and has monsters appear in it that want to eat you. But what is it?" "You might think of it as a monster of its own." Lilin looked around at the dungeon¡¯s entrance hall. "If it were a monster shouldn¡¯t it have more teeth?" "Sometimes. Its form depends on what the avatar is, sometimes it''s a person, other times it''s someone''s idea of a monster or perfect creature. More often than anything it''s just a person." "That''s not what she asked," Raina said. "You''re leading her astray by deliberately obscuring the facts." "It¡¯s true that a dungeon takes on the aspect of the first thing it consumes and then adjusts it from there." "How do we know it''s the first thing? No one has ever seen a dungeon''s beginning. For all we know, they''ve been here longer than we have." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. "They have been." Jair remembered Mercurios with his records going back thousands of years. "So how can you tell which imprint is actually the first one? Or that it¡¯s what matters?" "Because I bound one to myself in the past, and as the prime avatar of a dungeon I knew everything it knew." Which was... strange, after disconnecting. Now that he was a completely separate entity from his far away dungeon, he couldn''t recall more than a few faint echoes, mere remnants. The dungeon¡¯s knowledge stayed with it while Jair himself was left with only his personal memories. "What does that mean, for you to be prime avatar?" Lilin asked. ¡°What kind of avatar are you? You don''t turn into a giant bear, do you?" "Why would I become a bear? Even if I were going to transform into something inhuman it would at least be vaguely humanish. I might add fur or claws but it wouldn''t be fundamentally a different species.¡± Lilin looked disappointed. ¡°Do you at least grow huge and untouchable?¡± ¡°Not exactly. Being bound to a dungeon core does provide some protection, but I could still be destroyed. And if I leave the dungeon¡¯s domain, it¡¯s a perpetual drain on my soul. I could augment myself in any number of ways, but at the core an avatar is always a single thing¡ªwhatever thing they originally were. Then more is added on: a tail or wings, fur or scales, maybe give it the power to breathe fire or emanate ice from its claws.¡± ¡°I never knew you were dungeon-bound,¡± Raina said, looking him over again as if expecting him to sprout claws on the spot. ¡°I¡¯ve done and been a lot of things. Some more easily reversed than others.¡± ¡°What was it like?¡± ¡°Being a dungeon is probably the closest to being a god, just a god of a very small domain and limited in ways that no true god would ever allow. I could create and destroy at will, as long as I had the materials necessary and remained within the dungeon. Outside, I was only myself.¡± Which was a shame. If he could have gone up against Ryenzo with fire-dragon scales and frost-dragon breath, if he could have created a mythical deity weapon¡­ but the core could not be removed from the dungeon, and by binding himself to it he made the dungeon his home as well. To leave it was weakness and pain. Emptiness. Incompletion. ¡°So every dungeon has a tiny god in it?¡± Lilin asked. ¡°No. Dungeons aren¡¯t intelligent. They only remix things in whatever chaotic ways work. Like rapidfire evolution at work. The creatures that do best at killing or retaining visitors grow stronger and those who¡¯re destroyed are less likely to be remade.¡± Jair shivered. He remembered all too well the sensations of each of his dungeon''s creatures as its death echoed through him. The way each one surged as it upgraded. ¡°It was so strong,¡± he murmured. ¡°I lived as each one of them. But they were also disconnected from me. I was an impassive observer with absolute investment in the outcome. I had to care, because to not care was a betrayal of my existence, but as long as I could improve things I had to do so without mercy for whatever I may destroy in the process.¡± Raina stood closer by his side. ¡°Sounds overwhelming.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t say it¡¯s something I want to repeat.¡± In a way, he could sympathize with the old dragon for being such a grumpy creature. Living by himself in a dungeon for millennia left very little that he could say or do to break out of the monotony. Jair shook off the memories as Raina nudged him with an elbow. "You there?" He smiled and shook his head. "I''m fine. Thank you. This place is just... dungeons in general, they feel..." "But there''s nothing to be afraid of here, right?" Lilin asked, glancing around at the grand pillars and paintings and carvings. ¡°Not in the entry room, no. Dungeons will test you occasionally if you linger, but they won¡¯t generally kill you. The monsters will try, but more skirmishes to lure you in deeper. The whole purpose of the dungeon¡¯s internal ecosystem is to entice you to stay as long as possible so it has the best chance of siphoning your entire soul. That¡¯s why it creates such powerful and valuable items progressively the deeper in you go, and why so many monsters fight to capture rather than kill. If people are satisfied with their results after spending weeks in the dungeon and come back again for more, that¡¯s more chance for the dungeon to finish its meal.¡± Lilin shivered. ¡°That sounds like the exact opposite of safe.¡± ¡°A dungeon of Meliarn¡¯s strength will take around a year and a half to fully convert a standard soul if you¡¯re mainly sitting and only reacting when necessary to protect yourself. Stronger dungeons like Oronthire can do it faster. More active use of soulspells or heavier draw on magic, straining yourself physically with intense fighting, those all wear you down faster. The regular avatar battles a few times a floor are designed to push you to your limits, but provide even better rewards than usual. All a trade. Everyone¡¯s gambling that they¡¯ll be the one to come out on top. But I¡¯ve seen too many addicted adventurers who just keep coming back until they disappear into a dungeon for good.¡± ¡°You¡¯re sure I should be in this thing at all?¡± ¡°Do you anticipate becoming a combat-obsessed thrill-chaser?¡± ¡°Well, no, but what if something drags me in and I have no choice?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll find you. Or revert to before it happened.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure why he could revert soul damage to anyone but himself, but he¡¯d verified on multiple occasions that the only damage retained on a soul level when reverting was that done to him. Same thing with improvements. For anyone but Jair himself, all changes were undone when he reverted. At least, until Maelstrom. Damage he did still tended to be partially healed when reverting, but the parts that Maelstrom consumed remained with him. He wasn¡¯t sure how that worked now that Maelstrom was no longer missing pieces of its soulmap, though. Now, with the ability to bring people along with him, he could also retain soul-level changes for them¡­both for the better and worse. It was a simple question of whether whatever they¡¯d learned was worth more to keep than the soul changes. The dungeon went on for miles in every direction, sprawling out and down and off in random directions, each section its own distinct type of challenge. It would be much easier to revert to a time when they were together than to hunt someone down who¡¯d been taken into its depths. At one point in his life, Jair spent several lifetimes just exploring Meliarn''s depths. The varied challenges, monsters, traps, and mazelike layout made it endlessly entertaining for a bored time looper. But anything grows familiar after enough repetition, and Jair''s capabilities had quickly outstripped the dungeon''s challenges. Meliarn could grow and adapt, but like any dungeon it had no true intelligence. A dungeon only reacted to its visitors, never preempted them. It evolved to keep them moving as long as possible, burn as much energy as they could. Its only aim was to keep people within its influence a few more minutes, hours, days, until it could consume them entirely. Jair''s ability to revert time meant he couldn''t be truly trapped. Whenever his soul started to wear down, he could simply turn back time to the moment right after he entered the dungeon and step back outside to recover before coming back for more. Eythron, who¡¯d been ignoring their conversation, smiled then, a smile full of predatory hunger. He turned without a word and walked briskly down the leftmost passage. "Wait here,¡± he told Lilin. ¡°I''m going after him." "Should I come with you, or stay here?" Raina took a step to follow, but hesitated. ¡°Up to you.¡± Jair shrugged one shoulder. "Whichever you prefer." ¡°He can handle himself,¡± Carn said, stepping over to put a hand on Raina¡¯s shoulder. ¡°We would only be getting in his way. Better to stick together.¡± Raina looked torn, but nodded and stepped back. "Go. Talk to him. Maybe he''ll listen to you." "I hope so." Eythron wasn¡¯t listening to anything at the moment. He was walking now, though, instead of running, which was progress. Jair jogged to catch up with his mentor. ¡°What is it you need? Fighting the monsters? Avatars? Some particular essence or material?¡± ¡°The dungeon core.¡± ¡°What do you need it for?" Eythron ignored him. Jair stepped in front of him when he didn¡¯t answer. "See, you pretty specifically told me you don''t want to be bound to a dungeon.¡± Eythron didn¡¯t answer, only continued walking. Jair walked backwards as he kept the conversation going. ¡°So when you say you need the core with a look like that on your face, I''m not sure you''re in a position to be making good decisions for yourself." "Help me, if you truly consider yourself my friend. Leave if you must. But my path is onward." It was the most he said in one piece since they arrived in Veor. "I don''t believe you have the necessary¡ª" Eythron didn''t stop, and Jair shook his head. There was no point in trying to talk to him. "Will it help if I take you straight to the core, or do you need to fight the monsters and lose some fragments of your soul first to make you in the mood for it?" "Direct route would help." ¡°If I do this, you have to promise to talk to me after.¡± Eythron stopped moving, eyes finally fixing on Jair properly. ¡°Agreed.¡± Jair stabbed him. Eythron¡¯s soul fought him a moment, then they reappeared in the core room in a flare of black-green fire.
104 - Echoes of Hunger Some consider dragons to be the ultimate predator of the land, and in many ways this is true. But a dragon can be reasoned with, bribed and appeased. A dungeon, though quieter, is unrelenting in its hunger. And no dragon can eat the soul.
The walls of the dungeon shuddered and twisted as Jair and Eythron appeared in its inner sanctum, but with visitors inside the room the core couldn''t do anything to them. Its creation powers were limited to the rooms outside the reach of any other soul. Only once it had nibbled off enough fragments of you could it start creating things directly around you. Eythron walked straight to the hidden panel behind which the core rested, as though drawn by a magnet. It''d taken Jair a solid week of searching the room to find the hidden core. Eythron simply placed a hand on the wall and the panel melted away into teal sparkles of light. Wait, what? The old mageblade leaned in and whispered something. Then the room trembled a second time as Eythron reached in and drew out the core in both hands. Meliarn was a light teal-green crystal, a bit larger than Eythron''s head, teardrop shaped with countless glittering facets. A white light shone from within its depths, refracting into a rainbow through every surface, casting light on everything like a teal-tinted stained glass window. Eythron held up the crystal in one hand and summoned his soulsword in the other. He paused to look Jair in the eye. "You can get us back out quickly?" Jair nodded, then yelped as he realized what his mentor planned. "Wait, no, don''t!" Eythron tossed the core into the air and his movements became a blur. He slashed it in half with a ringing note that echoed in the enclosed space, other hand already moving upward as he switched the blade from hand to hand. He divided the core again and again even as it fell, until the ring of steel on crystal was a continuous note. Fragments of the core fell around Eythron like a rain of sharp-edged marbles. Jair had never seen a dungeon so thoroughly destroyed. A dungeon core was a soul so condensed it solidified to the point of near impenetrability. Physically damaging it was all but impossible. It required specialized tools to even scratch it. Eythron had shattered it into a hundred precise fragments in under two seconds. Soulcutter. No other explanation for it. The one ability he''d seen on Eythron''s soulsword but never before witnessed, put to glorious, destructive use. And eliminated their most reliable weapon against Sekir. Maelstrom manifested in a sudden surge of... something. Jair found himself taking a step forward before he caught himself. Much like how Maelstrom had wanted Skyclaw, it wanted the pieces of Meliarn. That wasn¡¯t something Jair was prepared to deal with. If he reverted now, he could restore Meliarn to before it was shattered. If Maelstrom ate it, the dungeon may never be the same again. He couldn¡¯t risk that. Not when it was the one place he could guarantee the sorcerer¡¯s soul was locked down. ¡°No.¡± Jair leveled Maelstrom at Eythron, denying both Maelstrom and mentor as the old man reached for the fragmented core pieces on the floor, three of which were still glowing weakly. ¡°I need Meliarn intact. You don¡¯t get to kill it.¡± ¡°And I need it in pieces.¡± Eythron¡¯s sword reappeared in his hand between one heartbeat and the next. ¡°You want to fight me over it? I¡¯ll win.¡± Jair tightened his grip on Maelstrom. He reverted to before he darkflamed them into the inner sanctum and everything reset in a blaze of golden lines. They stood in the hallway. Eythron raised an eyebrow, questioning. ¡°What do I need to do or say for you to leave Meliarn intact?¡± Eythron¡¯s eyes snapped to Jair¡¯s, then narrowed suspiciously. ¡°Why would you ask that?¡± ¡°I told you, I need it intact.¡± ¡°No you¡­ ah.¡± Eythron¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°I don¡¯t like seers.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve mentioned.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure I have.¡± Eythron crossed his arms, but his eyes kept drifting past Jair down the hall. "Conditions. I cannot overpower the call. Every moment within its range will be a fight until Meliarn is shattered." "Yeah, well, as major of an asset as you are, Master, the ability to lock Sekir in place is too valuable to give up. If you need to stay here murdering monsters for a few months, go ahead, but if you touch Meliarn before Sekir is dealt with I will not let it stand." "You don''t understand." Jair crossed his own arms. "If I can fight a hopeless battle for a hundred years, then you can manage a few weeks of resisting your need for destruction! Your soul is easily the equal of mine, and a bit more toughened too." Eythron shook his head. "You have no idea what you''re asking." "I need your help against Sekir. You were able to resist Mercurios. Can''t you do the same with Meliarn?" "It''s different." "How! Please, tell me. I need you. We have to be able to figure this out." Eythron ran a hand through his hair violently, lips pressed tight together as he looked anywhere except at Jair. "You can trust me," Jair shouted. "Just tell me, old man!" "Fine!" Eythron retorted. He drew his sword and aimed it Jair''s eye. "You want the truth? Don''t resist." Maelstrom appeared in Jair''s hand almost in the same instant, but he resisted the instinct to strike back and held it loose at his side. Eythron didn''t move. "You trust me, or you don''t. Which is it?" The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Jair took a breath, nodded, and dismissed Maelstrom. Eythron lunged. The imprint on his upper arm flared brilliantly blue as his sword passed straight through Jair''s skull as though it weren''t tangible at all. But Jair felt it. Not in his lifebody, but something much deeper rippled and stretched, then tore, as Eythron''s other hand came up and slammed into Jair''s forehead, blocking out his vision and sending him backward to the ground. He had time to fight back, but he didn''t. If this was what his mentor required, he would allow it to play out. Eythron wouldn''t have given him warning if he actually wanted him dead, and he could always revert if necessary. For a moment, everything Jair was went fully blank. It was incredibly brief, barely a split second, then he became aware of a divide. It was shallow, barely a scratch, but through it something alien waited for him. Invited him inward. He hesitated. Reached out ever so carefully. The moment he touched it, he became someone else. Eythron''s memories were nothing like his own. Where Jair''s mind was overlapping layers and gaps overwritten again and again and again, hopes and fears and analyses and impulse, Eythron''s were so organized it felt unnatural. Jair slipped into the specific moment Eythron wanted to show him without resistance. They stood at the southern edge of the Oriad. In the distance, a shimmering overlay of blue teased at the edges of his vision, as though the whole world beyond that point stopped being real, instead made of hardlight simulation. "Are you sure, Ty''esi?" Uqiar''s low voice was drenched in worry. That may well be the highest possible beastkin honorific, Ty''esi¡ªnot one that Jair had ever heard used before. ¡®Ty¡¯ meant something between lord, master, king, teacher, depending on the specific context. One-who-commands-for-betterment. Pairing it with ¡®esi¡¯ which was generally translated as ¡®greatly honored¡¯ made it almost exaggeratedly obsequious. Ty¡¯Eythron or Eythron¡¯esi would be more than respectful already. So much for honorary uncle. This went far beyond any such familial connection. Closer to a sworn retainer to an emperor. And a particularly devoted one at that. "There is danger to far more than just us. I must try." Eythron''s voice sounded lighter from within his own memory, lacking the gruff edge that Jair was familiar with. His accent was stronger as well, the words tasted more Zoraanish. "Your oath..." "Will not stop me. This once. I must try." "And if you are wrong?" They turned to face Uqiar, rested a hand against his black-furred forearm. "Then you will save me." The words were accompanied by absolute confidence, as though Uqiar''s reliability was as much a bedrock of Eythron''s psyche as protecting Raina was core to Jair''s. Together they stepped forward, cautious and slow, toward where the world turned to light. Uqiar didn''t notice when they reached it; he kept walking while Eythron came up sharply to a stop. The ground before him didn''t look real. It was an illusion of light painted over an endless abyss, and he couldn''t unsee what lay beyond. "Ty''esi?" Uqiar turned back when he noticed Eythron had not followed. He looked all around. "Is this the edge?" Eythron nodded. He summoned his soulsword, then hesitated even longer. Finally, he gave the weapon to Uqiar. "I will not take it unless I truly need it," he said. Then he stepped across into the unreal reality. Anger slammed into them. Solid, palpable, helpless fury. Nothing could satisfy it but destruction, and there was no way to destroy. Jair nearly lost the connection, even in memory the sensation was so strong. Just as strong as the anger, a counterpoint against it, rose an unsettling hunger. Hunger from within. The anger fed into the hunger, and the hunger fed into the anger, and both grew and grew and grew until it was all he could think about. Crimson light glowed from the far distance. Past the blue of the artificial world, deep within the unreal reality it waited, both the source of the anger and the target of the hunger. There was no thought, only action. The only sound was the roaring of his blood, the thunder of his heartbeat tripping over itself, and the hollow echo of his footsteps as he ran desperately at the crimson core. Jair only heard Uqiar''s voice because he was straining for it, reaching desperately for anything but the still-growing war within Eythron. "You haven''t answered me, Ty''esi! Do you need to be taken back?" Eythron in the memory didn''t even recognize it as words. A distant hum far softer than his inner war, than his own body. His forward progress was arrested and then reversed. The chaos intensified the further back he was dragged. No. He fought and bit and screamed. The sheer unthinking violence of his mind was impossible to supplant. Even Jair¡¯s ability to observe rationally was swept away by the emotional torrent that flooded through Eythron relentlessly. Uqiar dragged him away, deep back into the Oriad, and still it lingered, overpowering. The memory flickered, jolted. Darkness. Jair¡ªEythron¡ªstood leaning against the wall in Ryenzo¡¯s lair. Only he didn¡¯t recognize it at first, because all the stone was woven from green light and a dizzying quantity of it in all directions. His hands were chained behind him and the relentless hunger tore at his soul. What echoed back to him was not the violent anger of the crimson Orard core, but a deep apathy that threatened to suffocate him entirely. The hunger sharpened itself against the apathy and the apathy dulled his resistances with its slow persistent presence. The chains clinked as Eythron tried to pace. He felt wrong. Off. His body wasn¡¯t right. His soul wasn¡¯t right. Lightheaded. Dizzy. Uncertain. Hungry. HUNGRY. He paced desperately, trying to center himself in his body. He counted steps. Looked up to search for Uqiar and reassure himself that his friend was still there. (Friend wasn¡¯t the term for it, but Jair had no word for how Eythron felt toward his ward. Fatherly was too soft and teacher too formal.) He resisted as long as he could, but the lure grew too strong. He had to go. Death called and he could not deny it any longer. He fought his way past Jair and dove into the lava, even as something slammed into his back and burned through him. When he returned to awareness, it was back in the same room, but the echo of Mercurios had stilled. Something in him repelled the dragon. With its presence deflected, the hunger had nothing on which to feed. Brightness as everything shifted again. Then, Meliarn. Where the dungeon in Orard had been angry and Mercurios had been disinterested, Meliarn was afraid. The fear echoed against the hunger, and just as the others had, reinforced each other in an endless building crescendo. Meliarn was afraid already, but sensing the hunger the fear grew irresistible. Predator sensing prey, Eythron felt its weakness, its vulnerability. The piece of him that had been suppressed for so, so long growled to life. Meliarn¡¯s fear grew. The hunger surged. It had been denied Orard¡¯s dungeon. Mercurios was beyond its reach. But Meliarn? It was right there. Meliarn was weak. Vulnerable. He wanted it. Needed it. Finally, finally finally a call he could answer. A call he would gladly answer. So deep and so intense was the inner draw of the memory that it took Jair almost ten minutes to realize it¡¯d been the same scene in the courtyard where he¡¯d first brought Eythron to the oasis. Eythron had noticed none of it. The overwhelming presence of Meliarn was all he could see, yellow light overlaying everything. Defining everything. The sand, the wall, the table, the layers of the house one behind the other¡­ And behind it the desperate, all-consuming hunger. Then the connection ended. The tiny tear in his soul rejected the intruder, mana flowed in to cover it until it could reknit itself, and Eythron staggered back away. He leaned against the wall, bracing himself with one arm. ¡°There has to be another way.¡± But Jair¡¯s voice lacked conviction. ¡°If there is, I haven¡¯t found it.¡±
105 - Fractured Souls There are legends that claim a dungeon¡¯s core can grow large enough to split into a parent and child, that new dungeons are formed thus. These stories are entirely unsubstantiated, and no record exists of the number of dungeons ever increasing. It has only ever gone down. Some day, dungeons may be only legends themselves.
Even though the memory-merge had ended, Jair was still gasping for breath like he¡¯d run miles without stopping. As the intensity slowly faded, he was left drained and exhausted. Even disconnected, the memory of that hunger lingered. He¡¯d been through just about everything the world had to offer at one time or another, and no withdrawal he¡¯d ever experienced had been so all-consuming. Physically, mentally, but this was deeper and stronger than all of it combined. ¡°I¡¯ve been bound to a dungeon before, but it was nothing like that.¡± Even at its most extreme, Jair¡¯s years sharing a soul with a dungeon didn¡¯t come close to what Eythron had experienced. ¡°I had no idea it was possible.¡± He had experienced something similar to the kind of pain that Eythron had, though not to the same extent. It wasn¡¯t something you could get used to. After a while, anything physical could be overridden and disregarded. Magical was harder, since it was a layer deeper, but it too could be filtered out. The lifebody and physical mind controlled the majority of sensation, and could be deceived into ignoring it. But nothing could deceive the soul into ignoring what threatened it on an existential level. Being consumed by a dungeon was a slow torture. Inescapable, impossible to soften or ease. It could only be endured, again and again and again. ¡°I have discovered things no one else knows.¡± Eythron¡¯s eyes were haunted as he looked up, his voice low and hoarse. ¡°Call me weak if you must, or selfish, but I swore to remain in the Oriad and every time I break that oath results in pain without benefit. With your power, I can return home. To aid you, I must shatter Meliarn to walk in Veor freely. If you must deny me this, then allow me to leave.¡± "What if you bind yourself fully to Meliarn? Sure, it would be extremely limiting, but perhaps a whole dungeon¡­" ¡°You think I¡¯m an idiot?¡± Eythron snorted disdainfully. "That was almost the first thing I tried. After the fall of Uraam, I sought out Zoress in hopes that the pieces could balance each other, but it would not accept me. Yet I could not leave. Without Uqiar, without Tireth, I would likely remain trapped there to this day." Jair waited. Eythron stared into the distance. ¡°My fragment from Uraam was an accident, an unknown unplanned factor. Zoress was different. I didn¡¯t know where to begin. I wasn¡¯t an adventurer back then, I had no experience with fighting endless waves of monsters day after day. I was trained for duels, not frontline war. Every time I tried to leave, the hunger drew me back relentlessly. I couldn¡¯t win. Couldn¡¯t retreat. Only fight.¡± ¡°Tireth?¡± Jair eventually asked, when Eythron didn¡¯t continue. It was the only unfamiliar name, and he knew already that Uqiar couldn¡¯t have been the one to change things. Uqiar had only come into Eythron''s life after he was already trapped in the cycle of trying to sustain Zoress. Eythron sighed heavily and nodded. ¡°Tireth broke the core and left. I tried to follow him out, but even fragmented the dungeon screamed for me. I couldn¡¯t leave and didn''t know what to do. Now, I know I could have timed my departure to match up with its pre-collapse, and knocked myself out for the minutes necessary for it to fully disperse, but at the time I couldn''t do even that." ¡°So you stayed.¡± "Only my efforts kept Zoress''s empty shell from collapse. Slowed its collapse, anyway. And when my desperation outstripped my fear, I tore Zoress apart, searching for the answer. I repaired its core, fed it with my own soul, then shattered it and remade it and shattered it in a hundred different ways.¡± That was a level of dedication even Jair had to admire. No wonder Eythron¡¯s soul was so strong and so deeply scarred. ¡°I learned what the dungeon is, what it is made of, what it can be made into. Its creation, its destruction. And in the end, I found where its hunger resides. The precise contours of it. How to divide it out without bringing anything else along with it. And that¡¯s when I finally consumed it." ¡°Intentionally, or accidentally?¡± Eythron shook his head, eyes distant. "I don¡¯t even remember. Did I always intend to take it, or did it draw itself to me? But adding a second dungeon¡¯s remnant only made the hunger stronger. I have tried to correct it, but there is no satisfying it, a perpetual imbalance. Why fight a war I will lose every time?" ¡°To see if you can win it.¡± ¡°Not all of us can reverse the entire planet at will.¡± Jair laughed softly and nodded. They were silent for a time. After all of this, Jair had only one idea, and it was one he hesitated to commit to. But if it was the only way¡­ "What if I took over Meliarn instead?" Eythron scoffed. "How would that help?" "It''s afraid of you, right? And that fear incites your hunger. But Mercurios has no interest in you, so you could walk freely within his territory. Correct?" "It''s not quite that simple. With Mercurios, the hunger comes slower, but over time it does return." "We shouldn''t need more than a few weeks. I know how to sever myself from a dungeon. Not a fun process, but it''s something I''ve done before and I can do again. If I take over Meliarn, we don''t have to destroy it. You can temper your hunger and I¡¯ll still have it available." "Being dungeon-locked won''t distract you from your own war?" "It will. But I can bear the pull of a full dungeon better than you can resist the twin hunger of your fragments. I''d rather not, but if it''s the only way I''m going to get your help, then it''s worth it." Eythron watched him through narrowed eyes. "And when this is done, you will give me Meliarn?" "What use will it be to you? You tried adding a piece from another dungeon already." "I tried adding the hunger. This time, I want the creation. Even if they cannot balance one another, it will aid me in my other goals. I never planned to hunt dungeons, but since I¡¯m here I may as well benefit from it. I''m only here because I was tricked into it and kidnapped by my Resh¡¯aesyi. That will not happen again." Jair didn¡¯t recognize the term, but it was clearly the counterpart to Uqiar¡¯s Ty¡¯esi honorific for Eythron. The ¡®aesyi¡¯ would be ¡®much beloved¡¯, but the ¡®Resh¡¯ prefix was one Jair had never heard used before. And he¡¯d lived among and studied with beastkin for several years. They rarely shared their secrets willingly with kinless like himself, but enough repetitions could stack those rarities into a pretty clear picture. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. But the specifics of Eythron¡¯s relationship with Uqiar weren¡¯t the priority at the moment. To conquer a dungeon and overwrite its control involved more than reaching its core. Before contacting the core and being accepted as an avatar, an invader needed to systematically clear every area in succession¡ªsecret rooms, hidden back passageways, and all. If they were going to do this, they had a lot of work to do. Jair nodded. "It''s a deal. Let''s get clearing monsters."
Until now, Jair would have said he knew Meliarn pretty thoroughly. But having Eythron with him now revealed whole new sections that had been obscured from normal vision and that he¡¯d overlooked in his wall-testing runs. Eythron''s ability to see the world as their framework of light betrayed walls that were not walls and hallways that were not hallways. They did not fall for a single one of Meliarn''s traps as they advanced relentlessly. The two men fought side by side, just as they had so many other times in so many futures. They cut their way through every sort of monster that Meliarn could throw at them, everything from simple reproductions of Veori native wildlife to mutated versions combined with one another or adding different traits. From monsters the likes of which hadn''t been seen since before the Erosion to entirely made up creatures that Meliarn had devised on its own, bizarre amalgamations of claw and scale and countless other parts. He didn''t need to look further than that to know that several beastkin had met their end here. A dungeon could only work with what it had absorbed at some point, only reproduce materials it knew inside and out. ¡®Materials¡¯ here meaning creatures. People. Jair didn''t want to guess whether it had killed one or a thousand. Dungeons were ravenous destroyers. Since beastkin had dozens or even hundreds of distinct ancestors, even a single beastkin could give a dungeon countless possible traits to work with once it unraveled the creature''s genetics. They cleared another twenty rooms, another layer, and pressed on further and deeper. Days passed. Weeks. They rested and continued on, fought and won and continued on. "You''re sure you want to do this?" Eythron asked as they finally finished clearing the final top floor avatar fight¡ªCyanyan, a water goddess in the shape of a scaled cat. ¡°There¡¯s no guarantee it will help anything.¡± If there were any other way to stop Sekir, Jair would not hesitate to let Eythron shatter and consume Meliarn on sheer principle. But with a soul as slippery as Sekir''s, the only way to pin in place was for him to enter a place where he could not leave intangibly. Kill Sekir anywhere outside a dungeon¡¯s domain, and the man would just pop up again in a new body a few days later. Jair needed Meliarn and he wanted Eythron¡¯s help. He could see no intersection of those that didn''t include him taking on the dungeon''s control. "Are you actually trying to discourage me from doing something insane and dangerous?¡± The item rewards for this fight appeared, a pair of magical water bottles that would never empty so long as they remained inside the dungeon. ¡°I¡¯m unused to having strangers sacrifice themselves in my stead. It is an unfamiliar sensation which I do not entirely enjoy." Eythron grabbed his bottle and immediately started drinking, then looked disappointed. "It makes me wonder what I''ve done for you that you would care so much." "Maelstrom, for one thing. Its description may not bear your name, but its substance has always been yours. I am merely the hand that shapes it, yours is the mind that guides." "Sacrificing your soul by binding yourself to a dungeon does not seem equivalent payment for a few weapon designs.¡± Eythron regarded him with suspicion. ¡°Some materials and blueprints? Compared to this?" ¡°No. It is not merely that, it is the centuries we spent together working out those formulas and blueprints. It is the understanding you gave me about myself and my class. I was a newly reforged when we first met, and you taught me every step of the way. How to rework my reforging, the steps of preparation necessary before I could undertake my ascension, and what the different materials were capable of. Without you, I would not be here." Eythron stared at him very seriously. "Life for life, soul for soul? That''s very old-fashioned of you. I approve." And that was the last he said on it. Another time, as they rested halfway through the third floor, Jair dared broach a topic he¡¯d been quietly obsessing over since the day he¡¯d learned about Uqiar¡¯s history with Eythron in Zoress. "Did you create Uqiar?" Eythron blinked open one eye to lazily glance in Jair''s direction. "Do I look like I''m capable of fathering something with that much fur?" "I didn''t say fathering." Eythron''s other eye opened and he squinted at Jair suspiciously. "Why do you ask?" "You''re a dungeon." "No I''m not." "You are, at least partially." Eythron scoffed. "Haven''t you been paying attention? I have a dungeon¡¯s hunger, not its creation." "Then why does he have an identical twin running around on the moons trying to conquer the world?¡± Jair pressed. ¡°A twin he knows nothing about?" "He doesn''t have a twin." "So what does he have? If it''s not a twin and it''s not a copy¡ª" "It is a copy. But there''s not only two of them. And I didn''t create them." "Who did?" "He did." "They''re his children?" "No." Eythron sighed and leaned back, eyes closing again. "You remember when I sliced Meliarn into pieces? Zoress didn''t break nearly as neatly. I took its hunger, and Uqiar absorbed its creation. But he was a child. He didn''t understand why his parents were gone. He kept trying to bring them back. But a dungeon''s creation, it can only make what it knows, and all he knew was himself." ¡°Dungeon creatures can¡¯t leave their dungeon.¡± "True. And of the countless copies Uqiar spawned in those first years, most did not survive. But just as I am not a true dungeon, neither is Uqiar. Some of his copies couldn''t live even within Zoress. Others were perfectly fine to be elsewhere. Most were off in one way or another. But... I think I know the one you''ve encountered. He''s the one who took Zoress''s destruction. The keypoint of its final collapse.¡± ¡°A creation of a false dungeon with a portion of the dungeon¡¯s fragmented power?¡± It certainly explained a few things. The Beastlord¡¯s affinity for monstrous creatures. The bent for destruction and unwillingness to compromise. The lack of a personal name. The hunger for souls. So few natural creatures consumed souls. Even vampires didn¡¯t eat your soul, only rewrote it in their own image. He should have guessed it would be related to a dungeon. "Protecting Uqiar from that collapse took everything I had,¡± Eythron continued. ¡°Until now, I assumed the imitations all died with Zoress. Perhaps I could have learned more if I searched. I think I was afraid to know the answer. My hunger is terrifying enough." His voice went low, regretful. "If a creature with a dungeon''s destruction but none of its restraints were to survive? I can''t imagine." "I can. Or, rather, I don''t need to imagine. I''ve lived it." The plains of Celsin, death and ash. The Beastlord''s assault on Mount Sanctum, the last pure manaforge left in the world. The absolute latest he could possibly delay before committing. Ascension was supposed to be done after decades of attunement post-reforging, not three rushed years, but if he left it any longer the manaforges of the world would be obliterated and his best chance gone forever. "I''m sorry." "What?" Jair''s head whipped around. Had he heard that right? Eythron, apologizing? "This Beastlord of yours is, in the end, my fault. So if there''s any way I can help you better prepare, I will do it. But I have one condition." "What¡¯s the condition?" "Don''t tell Uqiar. He''ll blame himself if he finds out. Let him think it was a lost twin or his evil uncle or... whatever nonsense explanation he comes up with for himself. If he wants to blame me, let him. But don''t let him blame himself.¡± ¡°I understand.¡± Eythron gripped Jair''s arm. ¡°He was a child with power far beyond what anyone should have to bear, grieving and grasping for any sanctuary. The fact that it resulted in untold destruction is not his doing. I am the one who refused to do what should have been done." Jair smiled. "Yes, master. Thank you. I will keep your secret." "I''m not your master." "You have been. And you always will be."
106 - Unity Too many would seek this power only to become enslaved by it, destroy thoughtlessly and never look back. Dungeons are not meant for the likes of us. They are beyond us and should remain so.
Jair and Eythron fought their way through Meliarn, through the known and the unknown; sections Jair knew like the back of his hand and hidden passages he had never imagined existed before. Not that Meliarn really posed a threat to either of them. Even its strongest avatars were predictable enough to be handled easily by a pair of ascendant mageblades. Some of the fights dragged on for minutes or even hours, but never once did Jair need to revert due to either of them being severely injured. Eythron never questioned his conviction again and they fell into casual cooperation with perfect ease. Sometimes they fought in silence, other times they spoke either in brief or to great depth. Jair wasn¡¯t sure why this timeline was so different. There was a natural fluidity to their conversation this time that normally took years to obtain. Eythron never opened up so much even with a lot of careful planning. Was it seeing Maelstrom right in front of him, the unmistakable proof that he¡¯d trusted Jair at least somewhat in other timelines? Being far from his home leaving him off balance? The fact that they were dealing with dungeons on his behalf? Their discussion ranged from such heavy topics as the moral and ethical quandaries of using soul-devouring beings like seascourge or dungeons as execution methods, through mundane chatter and alchemical recipes. Eythron knew a lot of recipes that he''d never shared with Jair in the past. Or perhaps he had, and Jair had forgotten. Alchemy had never been his specialization and so much information tended to jumble up and fade over the years. They¡¯d been in here for nearly a month now, though that didn''t matter either. Once Jair connected to the core, he could revert the entire thing to when they entered. They could leave moments after they arrived and the soul-deep binding would remain in place. All he needed to do was find the dungeon and make that core connection. He couldn''t hesitate once the moment came, dungeons would find any excuse to escape being bound, unless they were desperate. Which, come to think of it, Meliarn might be. If it was so drenched in fear, perhaps it wouldn¡¯t require the usual tests. At one point as they were searching through Meliarn, they encountered someone Jair hadn''t expected to, but probably should have. Princess Fahla. "What are you doing here?" Jair demanded, leveling Maelstrom at her. She jumped and spun, voice a low hiss. ¡°Who do you think you are? Sneaking up on me?¡± "You should be off somewhere where you aren''t going to get your soul eaten, don¡¯t you know this isn¡¯t a safe place to hide?" ¡°Keep your voice down,¡± she whispered, scowling. ¡°I''ve been waiting for my team. They were supposed to come get me a few weeks ago but I haven''t seen them." "The dungeon is dangerous and you''re quite deep in." Jair frowned. "Which team is this?" "Ardent Shield." "I think I heard something about them being killed. Are you sure they''re the ones?" "Yes." She stood up and drew herself up to a more dramatic poise. "If you are here to rescue me, I will permit you to escort me to the surface." Aelir, had she always been so self-centered at this age? Jair reached out. "I''ve healed your father." She flinched back. "My... what?" "You''re Fahla, right? Farhesn''s daughter?" "How did you know that?" she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I haven''t told anyone who I am or where I''d be." "Clearly that''s not true if you were expecting the adventurers to find you." "They don''t know who I am, just that I''m rich." "And I know you and your father very closely. We''ve worked together in the past." "I don¡¯t remember you." She lifted her chin. "That''s a suspicious thing to say." "You''re very suspicious of everyone, aren''t you?" Jair smiled. Seeing her again brought back memories of the years they''d spent together in a few particular timelines. "That''s a good trait. You should keep it." "Who are you?" "Jair Welburne, Phoenix Healer, Dragonslayer, a bunch of other titles. Right now I''m aiming for Avatar of Meliarn." The princess stiffened. "Don''t." "I''m aware of the risks." "Meliarn has never known an avatar. We have kept it pure for generations. Do not corrupt its innocence." Jair scoffed and shook his head. "Innocence? A dungeon? And since when are you concerned with Veor''s legacy?" "I am always concerned with Veor''s legacy." "That''s why you''re running away with an adventurer company at the first opportunity, yes." Fahla huffed, hands on her hips. "Who do you think you are, judging me?" "I''m sorry, Princess, but I think I like you better when you''re a couple years older." She opened her mouth indignantly to respond, and Jair stabbed her. Darkflame returned her to the entrance. With any luck, she''d have enough sense to go out and find her way to safety rather than insisting on continuing to roam the dungeon. But even if she did try to come after them, they were deep enough in it would take her days even if she knew the exact route. ¡°Princess, huh?¡± Eythron stared at the place she¡¯d been standing. ¡°I agree with your assessment.¡± "She''s normally here two years from now, but I didn''t know she came in already. Either she has an incredibly resilient soul, or she comes back to the dungeon multiple times over the years." "I wouldn''t be surprised if she has a familial protection,¡± Eythron mused, still watching the spot where she¡¯d disappeared. ¡°There are often individuals who are immune to a dungeon''s hunger, who can enter and go freely. But I don¡¯t think there would be a guardian link if it were avatarless like she claims. I expect one of her ancestors was an avatar for a time and left an imprint when he left." "Why haven''t I heard about that? If it''s a commonplace occurrence, it should be recorded somewhere." This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. "You place too much emphasis on recordkeeping. You forget that people want to preserve the secrecy of their advantages.¡± "I understand how people work," Jair grumbled. "But how do you know it if I haven''t found it in decades of searching specifically for dungeon information?" "Because I''m better at finding information than you are." Jair grimaced, but given the context he couldn''t exactly argue.
By the time they reached Meliarn''s core room, this time with the entire dungeon cleared behind them, their old camaraderie was more than fully reinstituted. In some ways, they were closer than they ever had in the past. Jair knew secrets now that Eythron had never shared in the past, and having faced new dangers together bound them in much the same way as hunting to Oriad had the earliest loops. It was almost disappointing to come to their unplanned journey¡¯s end. "Well, here we are." Eythron ignored Jair¡¯s reluctance and crossed to the core''s hiding place. He gave the wall a forceful tap and whispered something Jair couldn¡¯t quite understand. He wasn¡¯t sure if it was because he was too far away or because it was an unknown language. The room trembled, and the core hatch slid open. Eythron stood back and waved Jair forward. Jair crossed to Meliarn''s brilliant teal core and gently placed his hands upon the crystal. It glowed like a miniature star. With its entire collection of inhabitants cleared, all of its power was forced into the core itself. Trying to take over with any of its created avatars active would result in a prolonged power struggle. Far quicker to eliminate everything in the dungeon first. Concentrated, open, available. Jair reached out to it through his manabody, initiating a brief connection. Meliarn emitted nothing but a sense of relief. This was not the hunter who came for it. If Jair wanted to take responsibility for dealing with the alien hunger, Meliarn would give itself to him gladly. He''d expected at least a small war over control, but the dungeon surrendered at barely a touch. There was no debate, no exchange of testing attacks. Meliarn offered itself unconditionally and he accepted it. For a moment, everything was in confusion. Jair was too many things all at once, too many places, too many himselves. Maelstrom was shoved aside to make space. His soul tried to protest. Maelstrom didn¡¯t appreciate its place being shared, but though it was strong for a weapon, Meliarn was thousands of years of evolution and power and a soul beyond mere mortality. Nothing other than a dungeon had a soul so concentrated that it became physically tangible. Without a mediator, Meliarn would have simply taken over, but it was mindless and Jair was determined. He would hold this power, but he would not be dominated by it. The hierarchy of Jair¡¯s soul shifted back, then settled as Meliarn, Maelstrom, and himself reached a stable equilibrium. The world became lines of teal, then it expanded into the same light framework that Eythron experienced even outside a dungeon. It showed Meliarn in all its vast sprawling depth. Meliarn reached the edges of the sandbogs, stretched across all the oases, to the eastern cliffs overlooking the Leikovar Channel and the northwestern shores. Immediately, Jair felt the lethargic urge to sit down with the core in his lap, close his eyes, and not move. Perhaps never again. He resisted this inclination. He placed Meliarn¡¯s core back into its hiding place and left the dungeon blueprints untouched. He held out Maelstrom to Eythron, and darkflamed them both the entrance. Jair felt the draw back to the core room immediately, a pull that would continue to tug at his soul no matter where he went. Unsettling, an inner imbalance, spiritual vertigo. Like he was perpetually about to fall from the edge of a cliff within himself. But he had lived with this feeling before. While distracting, it was bearable. He couldn¡¯t exactly ignore it, but it did not demand the totality of his attention. It only tried to. The others were no longer waiting for them at the entrance, but that wasn¡¯t entirely surprising. Their little trip had ended up going a lot longer than anticipated. Jair could detect anything alive in the dungeon now that he was bound to Meliarn¡¯s core and none of them were present. Neither was Princess Fahla, thankfully. He didn¡¯t particularly want to go chasing her down to get her out again. ¡°Hold on, this could get weird for a little.¡± He stabbed Eythron in the back and then reverted them a few days at a time. At first, each reversion took them back to the spot in the dungeon where they¡¯d been at the time, but Jair continued to strain to hold both the time-memory of the place they¡¯d been and the presence-memory of the entry hall so he could bypass constantly darkflaming them back each time. It only worked about half the time, but that was still progress. If he could revert to anywhere in one step that would make things a lot more flexible. He hadn¡¯t gone back even half the duration of their trip before they reached a point where the others were still present. "Where''d you come from?" Raina jumped. "I thought you were..." she looked back and forth between the tunnel he¡¯d disappeared into, then back at him. ¡°I didn¡¯t see the darkflame. Did you time travel?¡± Jair nodded. "What does it look like when I do that?" he asked, curious. "The transition from past to future. Do I go gold? Green? Black? Silver?" Raina shook her head. "No flash of light, just you¡¯re suddenly there as though you always had been. Is this something you''re trying to figure out now, reverting to a different physical location?" "Working on it. It''s something that happens whether I want it to or not, and I don''t know if it''ll ever be understandable." Too much to do with soulspells was arbitrary to degrees that could not be studied. Even if you tried, you''d get inconsistent results even with the same exact conditions. Study of the soul was all but impossible. Even trying to understand your own was difficult, but attempts to learn another¡¯s were entirely unreliable. But the fact that he could appear silently and without the flare of venix fire that accompanied Darkflame¡¯s rebirth functionality¡­ that could be incredibly powerful in the right circumstances. "You waited here for weeks?" Jair asked, shaking his head. "Why?" Lilin crossed her arms. "You were going to be right back." Raina shrugged. "Tempest was convinced you were fine. Up until you appeared just now." ¡°I was fine. What does it say now?¡± Raina shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s just not happy. Seems to think I should stab you. A bit distracting how insistent it is.¡± "What were you doing this whole time?" Lilin demanded. "Becoming a dungeon''s avatar." "I thought you didn''t want to do that?" "I didn''t. But it became obvious to me that it is a necessary sacrifice to obtain otherwise unattainable resources." Eythron scoffed. "That''s an excessively pretentious way of saying he wanted my help and the dungeon was an inescapable distraction." "That''s my brother, always excessively pretentious." "Hey, since when do you care about what''s excessive?" Lilin made a fake innocent face. "Me, excessive? I would never!" "Your immediate denial is practically a confession." [---] Once everyone was together, he reverted them to the beginning, the moment they first stepped inside. Time strained. The dungeon tried to revert to its original state, but it remained bound to Jair and the strength of his soulspell forced the dungeon¡¯s soul to conform into its new shape. The desire to return to his core continued to press at Jair¡¯s mind, and he disregarded it. "Ready to party this Solaria?" They emerged back into the desert outside the gate, Eythron leading, Raina and Lilin on either side of Jair, and Carn trailing quietly behind. Jair had been aware of Eythron''s presence in the dungeon since the moment he bound himself to Meliarn, but as soon as they stepped outside, something shifted and the urgent awareness of Eythron''s danger level rose drastically. If Jair didn''t know him, he would''ve assumed the man to be an implacable monster, stronger than a dragon, more on the level of seascourge. Some monstrous abomination capable of leaving the water and roaming the earth. Meliarn''s fear tickled at the back of his mind, clawing for purchase, demanding he fight back. Jair suppressed it effortlessly. He knew Eythron. If he ever decided to kill him, nothing would talk him out of it, but even then being afraid of him was pointless. Eythron let out a surprised grunt, the tension leaving his shoulders in slow hesitant twitches. "You''re right. It''s gone. There is nothing to feed on." ¡°Hah, I knew it!¡± His plan had paid off. If an unbound dungeon would always trigger his hunger, but one bound to a creature might not¡­ and it had worked out perfectly. Eythron nodded, eyes closed. "I will be ready whenever you need me." His voice was unusually mellow, as though he were intentionally moving beyond calm into¡­ something Jair couldn''t quite describe. "Thank you, master. For now, I think it''s time we start this day over again." "This day?" Lilin asked. "Solaria. Time in the dungeon doesn''t count if we revert it before it ever happened. Let¡¯s go collect Ajriol and Qahrvirna and we can get started." Time for round two. And this time, they''d be watching everything.
107 - Solaria Redux Before you can prepare for the future, you must release the past. Likewise, to fully acknowledge the past, you must set aside expectations for the future. This is the paradox of Solaria. The moment, eternal, unknowable, constantly stretched between what was and what will be.
"So, Eythron wanted us to let things play out as they would without interference this time around. I don''t know who all¡ª" "That would be you," Qahrvirna interrupted. "You''re the largest out of place factor." "I don¡¯t see why. He has no reason to assume anything about me one way or another." "But you would be attracting attention with all your fancy titles. And as the heiress''s companion." "Companion is it?" Lilin sidled up closer with a sappy grin. "Finally admitted what''s been obvious to everyone else for years?" "You only met me a month ago," Raina protested. "Years!" Lilin danced away grinning. "Maybe keep her with you," Qahrvirna said low, giving an eyebrow raise in Lilin''s direction. "Controlled chaos can handle this. We don''t need interference." "So you want me and Lilin to go off to somewhere else and just hope that things don''t go terribly wrong?" "You can check in." "I want to see." "Then come back next time," Eythron grumbled. "I''ll keep an eye on everything." Jair nodded, but he was mentally deep into planning. Perhaps this would be for the best. Let Lilin loose on some other noble''s party and let her have her fun there, then he could double back and lurk about the oasis. Keep an eye on things without being officially part of the group. As long as Sekir didn''t have any reason to notice Jair''s existence, then there would be no change of his plans. "You alright with playing noble on your own for a bit?" he asked Lilin. She batted her eyelashes at him and waved a fake fan in front of her face. "Yep, that¡¯s good enough for me. Go ahead and pick out your outfit for today." Lilin needed no second invitation and rushed over to the storage cave. "And don¡¯t worry, as soon as we''re done with Sekir, we''ll get you into a good healer apprenticeship." She called back, voice muffled slightly, "Oh, Qahri said she could teach me." "Qahrvirna? Teach you healing?" "Alchemical medicine. Which is better because it doesn''t rely on magic. We can figure out manabody and imprints and all that magic stuff any time.¡± "Eythron can help you with that too." Eythron stuck his head around the corner to glower at him. "What, you''re great with alchemy!" "I am not a teacher. I have more important things to do with my time than help children learn their homework." "She wants to be a healer, that''s a bit different." "Then find a proper healer to apprentice to." Eythron snorted, then pulled his head back out of sight. "Qahri isn''t improper!¡± Lilin protested. She emerged wearing a soft pink floor-length gown. ¡°She''s been showing me how to discern and distill the different essences, and how they should be combined for best effect." "Is that what you two have been up to all this time?" "Yeah." "And here I was worried she''d be inducting you into some creepy vampiric rituals behind my back." Qahrvirna laughed uproariously. Lilin bit at her lip and looked away. "Whatever makes you happy, Lil. I mean it. If that means becoming a vampire, I''ll still support you." "I don''t think that''ll be part of the plan." "Good. Vampires creep me out." "Even Qahri?" "Especially Qahri. Though she is a very good kisser. In case you ever need lessons." Lilin snorted, shaking with unsuppressed laughter. "That''s... not something I''d ever have expected you to say." "Well, I thrive on being unexpected, don''t I?" "Always have," she agreed. ¡°Though I¡¯d have expected an unusual historical fact rather than¡­ this.¡± ¡°Qahrvirna is definitely an unusual historical fact.¡± That made Lilin burst into another flurry of giggles. ¡°Time to get this started, shall we?¡± She nodded and grabbed her hat, and when she turned back around it was with a pure joyfulness that made him smile in response. ¡°Let¡¯s go crash some noble parties while we wait for the crazy sorcerer to wreak violent chaos.¡± ¡°Yep. There¡¯s my Lil. Chaos creature under all the fluff.¡± She batted her eyelashes at him. ¡°I¡¯m the soul of purity and decorum, good sir! You slander my good name with your talk of chaos and beasts!¡± ¡°I never said beast. That¡¯s allll you.¡±
Solaria morning dawned bright and pink, just like the first time. Raina, Eythron, and Qahrvirna were already in place at the Serin party in the oasis. Jair watched for a few minutes from the roof of the gathering hall, then darkflamed himself back to Mount Ryenzo. Home? Meliarn whispered, tugging at him midway, and he ignored it. Lilin waited, lounging on the oversized furniture with a book while they waited. For their event, they¡¯d be delaying departure a bit longer. Neither of them particularly wanted to be there for the boring part with listing out the previous year¡¯s accomplishments, especially since it would be all strangers. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! ¡°Ready?¡± Lilin closed her book and stood. Jair held out Maelstrom for her and they arrived just as everyone moved inside to the freely mixing and gossipping portion of the event. Perfect. Today¡¯s venue was a Parein townhouse, complete with balconies on each of the five floors and a double-height ballroom in the center. ¡°Alright, here I go! Wish me luck.¡± She didn¡¯t wait for him to do so but walked into the crowd with the confident stride of someone heading to market with a dunetrout over her shoulder, completely ignoring the way those around her reacted. Her pink gown for today and its matching sun-hat were delightfully out of place in Parein, where white and lace with earth-tone accents were the style, and she didn''t try to blend in at all. Even then, it wasn¡¯t until an hour into the event that anyone bothered to check for his invitation. Unfortunately, that meant he had to be announced and have half the attendees staring at him. The party wasn''t one of the main ones that he anticipated creating potential alliances at¡ªthough now that Sekir was operating openly, he wasn''t sure if he needed to worry about Veor''s political scene at all. There were ways to influence the flow and sway of the elite, but when he could just walk directly into the king''s office and give the man a list of suggestions, the power of the councils was only minorly relevant. The king''s personal faction had enough strength to push through most things, and if Jair tried to build up his own it would take time. So while his original plan for Solaria was to test out alliances and prepare politically for what would be coming in a few years, Sekir stepping out into the open made it all something of an insignificant undertaking. Which meant it was a chance for him to sit back, sip expensive cocktails, and watch as Lilin traipsed her way into noble society with all the subtlety of a sandshark in a canyon. He alternated between lurking on the Serin event hall back at the oasis and lounging about in the Parein party as people came and went. So far, nothing of note had happened in either location. The Serin courtyard had emptied for the morning and staff were occasionally popping out to move something or drop things off, but it was largely unused. Most of the times Jair popped in no one was outdoors at all. Lilin was making enemies like a pro, but they were all doing their subtle undercutting noble games rather than anything overt enough for her to notice. Jair wasn¡¯t sure which was more amusing: the fact that Lilin simply had no idea what they were doing, or how furious it made them that she accidentally blundered out of their traps time and again. It was almost enough for him to think she was doing it on purpose. But that couldn¡¯t be the case. She¡¯d never been in such society before, so had no way of knowing. Sheer glorious beginner¡¯s luck. Eythron and Qahrvirna had integrated into Ajriol''s party flawlessly, and it was only sheer luck that Jair caught a glimpse of the intruder as he slipped in during one of his check-ins midway through the morning. He stiffened immediately and went very still. There was no mistaking that silhouette. It was definitely Sekir. Tall, slender, nondescript build and unexceptional robes, he looked like one more traveler. But Jair would recognize that face anywhere. Purple light shone from his eyes, his soulspell of unknown definition. Purple generally implied a physical change to the soulspell¡¯s user, but whether that was how he appeared in different guises or if it had some other purpose, Jair had never been able to convincingly test. Sekir was far too slippery and behaved so unpredictably. Jair slowly dropped to lie flat on the roof, but the man below didn''t glance up. Sekir¡¯s full attention was devoted to breaking the lock on the back kitchen hall window. Jair crept over to the edge and peered down at him. He''d never been easy to pin down but Jair had been right in the party the first time around and never caught a glimpse of him. This was one of the forms he knew, so even a hint of his presence would have been enough for Jair to verify who it was. Did he have some kind of invisibility power, perhaps? Why wouldn¡¯t he be using it if so? Too much about Sekir¡¯s capabilities remained confounding. As did his motives and behavior. Instead of climbing through the opening once he had it open, Sekir only tested the window, then closed it again and crouched down to circle around the house further. Jair crawled slowly after him above, silently observing from the roof without being seen. Sekir opened three other windows at various places, including scrambling up a pile of stacked stone with an absolute lack of dignity or decorum to reach one on the second story, before finishing up at a side door which he wedged very slightly open with a thin piece of metal. Jair followed his progress the whole way but there was no clear objective in the chosen windows. Once he''d unlocked all four of them, Sekir turned around and walked silently back out into the desert without looking back once. Jair frowned at this display. He continued watching until it was undeniable that Sekir was leaving, then returned to the balcony party in Parein to check on Lilin. Lilin was doing about as well as could be expected from someone who had no experience with nobles until today, talking her way through every group she could get her hands on. She¡¯d finished up with the initial blundering and was actually making friends now. She wasn''t nearly as shy about approaching people as Jair had been when he was first looping. At this rate she might end up becoming an even better political manipulator than him. He always had a certain gruff overbearingness about him these days, as a result of his years of fighting and... everything. But she was young, female, innocent-looking. Even if she wasn''t nearly as experienced and would never be able to truly catch up to him, he could already see her becoming a major asset to any future schemes they needed to pull off. If only he''d had her the first times around. He might never have lost his mind or shattered himself over and over, if he didn''t have to be alone. But back in those days, when he was doing what she was now, when he was first fumbling his way through interactions so far beyond him that they shouldn''t even be in the same room let alone the same conversation, he''d been just as oblivious as any sandfisher boy suddenly thrust into a society he was unfamiliar with. And he''d been angry. Grieving. Angry. Very angry. It didn''t help at all that the nobles were the epitome of everything he''d always hated about Veor. The elitism, the controlling nature, the dismissive attitude. Even when he worked his hardest to integrate into their groups, to play by their games in their societies, they still considered him lesser. Always second class. Never a true equal. It had taken until this set of loops, until he had Maelstrom and sheer overwhelming power, before they''d even begun to respect him. Sure, they''d used him in the past. Would allow him to sit at their tables and talk with their children. But they never really considered him as a player. Just a particularly interesting piece. Well. Now he was so far beyond their games that they were the irrelevant ones. Jair smiled to himself as he watched Lilin blundering through the interactions, making friends, enemies, starting feuds obliviously, and gathering a group of followers who''d be far more committed to her than she could currently imagine. She''d be fine. He left the party again, returning to the Serin section of Veshin Oasis. Sekir was further away by now, in the minutes Jair had been away the man had continued walking. He was skirting the edge of the oasis toward the Berris holding. Berris, a smaller house, didn''t have a full oasis presence like Veshin or Serin, only a handful of out buildings and a single curing warehouse for its own private creations. Specialty pickling was their business, one of relatively high repute, but why would Sekir be going there? What use did he have for pickled sandtrout or preserved starfigs? Jair followed at a safe distance, hovering on Maelstrom rather than leave footprints or raise a dust cloud, crouched low to avoid presenting a clear silhouette. Sekir walked straight into the first building in the cluster, and didn''t emerge for hours. Jair checked back on Lilin several times, and on the Serin courtyard, but there was no sign of any disruption. Noon approached without incident. The afternoon began to draw on, and Jair wondered if they''d disrupted the timeline too much for anything to happen. Then the door re-opened and an older man emerged. Shorter, a bit on the hefty side, with dark hair greying at the edges and a well-trimmed beard. He was wearing standard white robes with only a single red triangle over one shoulder. It had something written in it, but Jair couldn''t read it from here. He might have doubted who it was, but the irregular flicker of purple light from his eyes was a dead giveaway. Sekir wasn''t the only person with a purple soulspell, certainly, but the coincidence of someone else coming out of the same building he''d gone into? Especially when he was known for changing his appearance? Incalculable. Jair had no doubts as to who this was. Sekir-version-2 moved with a sort of hasty bustle, more like a lackey with orders to carry out than the self-confident stride of the previous version. Jair waited until he was out of sight back toward the Serin side of the oasis before breaking into the building. House Berris was ostensibly using this place for the preservation of perishable foods, but that wasn''t the sort of thing Sekir would need. The ground floor was empty, just a reception area without an attendant, and several record spools for contract details. Jair ran a hand across a few of them just to check the sort of people House Berris was contracting with, but they were all fully ordinary Veori merchants and fellow noble houses. So what was Sekir doing in here for so long?
108 - The Sorcerer鈥檚 Secret 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.
Before he did anything else in the Berris storehouse, Jair darkflamed in a quick circuit to check in on Lilin¡ªwho 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¡ªthey 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¡ª 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.
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¡ªthe 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.
109 - The Vampire鈥檚 Visitor It is interesting that of all the various holidays and traditions that have sprung up across the world, despite being thoroughly unrelated to lunar passages, Solaria is the one most similar across cultures. Countless holidays are widespread among the continents of a given engaldria, but very few exist across more than one of the four.
As Jair stared on in bafflement, Sekir left through the side door he¡¯d left unlocked with Qahrvirna on his arm. She had a crimson parasol to protect her from the sunlight, giving them their own personal blob of shadow. Their heads were close together, talking too softly for Jair to make out, but she looked happy and he looked starstruck. They giggled and sneaked around the outer edge of the courtyard, then ran off toward the nearest rock formation with the full appearance of naughty children. Jair glanced back and forth between the courtyard, which was empty for the moment, and the duo rushing off together. He couldn¡¯t tell if Qahri had seduced Sekir, or he had seduced her, or they were mutually oblivious, or¡­ Nah, no way. They were both too smart for that. Of all the outcomes for today he''d envisioned, this wasn''t one of them. Though perhaps it should have been. For a time everything was quiet. Jair kept checking on Lilin, checking on the vampire and sorcerer who seemed entirely caught up in each other, sitting side by side under an overhang and whispering together. Had this happened the previous time too? Is that why after the first three murders nothing had happened, because Qahrvirna was keeping him distracted? But... why would she not tell him, if that were the case? No, never mind, it was Qahrvirna, of course she''d think it was amusing to completely derail the timeline and then keep it secret. She could feel like a hero and also be the one keeping secrets from everyone. "Well played, Qahri." Jair glanced down at the two of them. He''d been planning to wait and observe more of Sekir''s specific methodology, but as long as he was this distracted¡­ He couldn¡¯t resist. Jair darkflamed beside them¡ªcloser! Come! please¡­¡ªand slashed down in the same fluid movement, bisecting Sekir''s body in a diagonal cut that sent the top half flopping down into its own lap. Qahrvirna looked up at him reprovingly, then shrugged and licked at Sekir''s blood while it splattered everywhere. "Rushing things today, are we?" "Were you ever planning to tell me you''d lured him off alone, or just play games with him for weeks?" Qahrvirna grinned. "Whichever I thought would be most entertaining. Guess we''ll never know now." "I begin to question my decision to bring you along." "Don''t be a sore loser. The goal was to save the poor little humans from the scary elf mage, and I did that." ¡°Elf? He looks human.¡± ¡°Of course he does. He was undercover. But he tastes like an elf.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve only ever seen him as humans.¡± ¡°What else would he look like in Veor? Humans are the only ones dumb enough to think this place is worth living in.¡± Did this change anything about his collective assumptions regarding Sekir? Not really. Though it made his use of vampire rituals less concerning. Elves lived long enough they collected all kinds of magics just as a matter of course. His body-shifting could be something similar, some elven secret passed down in his family, finally turned to nefarious purposes. It certainly explained Sekir¡¯s resilient soul. No human could have held up to Jair¡¯s soul strength after a few hundred loops of throwing himself recklessly against anything and everything. Whatever would give him any tiny advantage."Well, this gives us at least one way to get his attention." "You mean me." "Obviously." "No, I mean there is no us. I am able to get his attention. I do not need or want your or anyone else''s participation." She continued to lick at the bisected corpse of the temporarily dead sorcerer. "I''m perfectly capable of doing my own hunting, you don''t need to come in and save me." Jair ignored her excessive display. "I wasn''t coming in to save you. I wanted him dead and I''d do it again." "Well that''s just rude. What if I wanted to save him for later?" "I can revert if you''re that dead set on having him back alive. But I think I found where he keeps his backup bodies and I''m desperately curious to learn what his return process looks like." "Why bother? I can do it faster." She licked Sekir''s blood off her fingers, then grimaced and wiped the rest on his robe instead. "Such a waste. Didn''t give me time to set up preservation even. It would have been better alive." Jair sighed. "You do know we were here to observe without interference this time, right?" The vampire stood, parasol over her shoulder and an innocent smile on her face. "I won''t tell if you don''t. Didn''t you say you want to watch him come back? Go ahead and do that. I''ll keep an eye on things. I''m sure I can keep him distracted if he slips past you. No one needs to know." Jair chuckled. The hidden downstairs room of Sekir-bodies had only one narrow ladder for entry and exit. "He won''t be sneaking by me. But he''s a very powerful arch-sorcerer, I don''t think you''d have survived if I hadn''t caught him off guard." "But you did and I did so you can''t go making claims like that.¡± She tapped her chin and tilted her head slyly. ¡°I''m pretty sure I''m stronger than you, anyway." Jair brandished Maelstrom. "Want to test it?" Qahrvirna grinned and threw herself forward, impaling her chest right through with the silver-wavy blade. Jair obligingly sliced her into pieces. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. "Boo." Something intangible and Qahrvirna-shaped slammed into his chest. Jair¡¯s manabody strained, struggling to stay attached. Something bit down and started to draw out the power he''d worked so hard to accumulate and keep together in one place. "I hate vampires," Jair grumbled. "All right, point taken." He slashed at the intangible Qahrvirna-remnant. She hissed and backed away. "Careful with that! You could''ve killed me!" "You say that like the whole point of this wasn''t you proving that you''re stronger than me." "I am. You rely on your sword''s abilities entirely. Without it, you''d be helpless." "Incorrect. I don''t rely on it any more than you rely on your fangs." "I rely on my fangs for a lot of things." "But not everything." Qahrvirna''s ghost scowled at him. "Just revert already so I can have my body back." "I think I''ll go and verify the¡ª" he paused and looked down at the fragmented pieces of Qahrvirna, then up at the intangible remnant. "I wonder..." he stabbed Maelstrom into one of the bigger pieces and activated Darkflame with the intention of restoring her fully. The pieces all disappeared and Qahrvirna had enough time to let out a startled yelp before she reappeared in a burst of green and black flame, the same as if he''d been transporting her normally. She let out an undignified squeak of pain and flinched away from the sunlight and back into the shadow of the overhang, her clothing scattered into scraps from having been cut apart into so many pieces. ¡°Ah. Yes.¡± Jair stabbed her and reverted them to just before he demonstrated his vampire-slaying capabilities. "Well, now¡­¡± Qahrvirna grinned. ¡°That''s convenient." She patted herself down, then started toward him with a gleam in her eyes. "I could get used to this. I can think of quite a few ways we can¡ª" "Nope, no thank you, I''m not interested." Jair stabbed her and darkflamed both of them back to the Serin oasis estate. Why gone why abandoned where? Jair growled and shoved the dungeon¡¯s voice aside. It was growing both harder to ignore Meliarn¡¯s demands and easier to move past them. Every time he darkflamed, in that moment between departure and arrival, the dungeon¡¯s call screamed at him with all its strength, desperate to drag him back. He reminded himself forcefully that this was purposeful, and he had good reasons for not letting Eythron just shatter the thing, though the temptation was only going to get stronger. "Hey!" Qahrvirna glared like she wanted to slap him. "So impatient, you can''t wait the ten seconds for me to grab the thing?" Jair blinked away the persistent tug of Meliarn, relegated it back to its corner of his mind. "It''s faster this way." "And it ruins my clothing! Again!" She plucked at her dress, where a Maelstrom-shaped slit marked the space where he''d stabbed her. "This isn''t cheap, you know. I can''t just go grab a replacement." "Oh. Right. I''ll try to aim for your non-clothed areas next time." Qahrvirna huffed irritably. "If that''s the best you can manage, it''ll have to do." Ajriol and Raina made their way over while they were arguing. Qahrvirna gave one airy wave as she watched them down her nose, then flounced off to find someone else to talk to. Or seduce. Probably both. A lot of the other guests were looking his way too, the entrance in a burst of green-black fire dramatic enough to draw attention. ¡°Did something happen?¡± Raina asked. ¡°I thought you were going to be in that other place with Lilin.¡± ¡°Well, I think I found where Sekir stores his backup bodies, then Qahrvirna found his current version, lured him out on his own, and I killed him. So I¡¯m going to go see if he tries to come back, how it happens, the duration, anything that could help us.¡± ¡°That sounds like a busy morning.¡± ¡°It was. Right now, I need to know about the extra guest who left with Qahrvirna. Who was he?" ¡°Extra guest?¡± Ajriol shook his head and waved Carn over. ¡°Yes, Lord Serin?¡± Carn had been hovering about, disappearing only long enough to take care of whatever had come up before returning quickly to the vicinity of his lord. Ever since seeing Ajriol''s fragmented corpse strung along the window, Carn had been significantly clingier than normal. Constantly reassuring himself that Ajriol was still fine. Not that he was the only one. Raina seemed equally unwilling to let her father out of sight this time around. "We have a question about the guest list." Jair started to describe Sekir''s second form and Carn nodded along, then got a pensive expression and nodded. "Wait a minute, I need to check something." Carn returned a few minutes later with a sign-in book and a pair of record spools. "Describe him for me?" Jair gave him the description as Carn ran a hand over the records. "Ah, yes. That is Ser Elsven Mykoras, one of the lower nobles in the Erathien contingent. He''s been included in the afternoon event as a guest of Stephani Serin but did not arrive until several hours after the morning ceremony." "How many guests were brought in throughout the day, who weren''t there at the start?" Jair glanced around the meeting spaces, which were quite a bit livelier than the fifteen or so people and almost as many staff who¡¯d been present at the start of the day. Aside from Eythron and Qahrvirna, there were several other newcomers as well. "Around half of our guests declined to participate in the morning ceremony, preferring to do their acknowledgements privately, but are happy to join in the afternoon''s revelry." There was generally some switching around between different events during the day, only the truly committed stayed in the same party throughout the whole day. It was traditional to stay with your closest group, but why stick with tradition when you could go off and show off how many other people you could meet and mingle with? There wasn''t much in the way of regulation either. Solaria parties were one of those weird things that pushed toward the boundaries of being an official thing but were actually not at all, and it was one of the few places where illicit dealings could be made without anyone so much as commenting. More so when there was such a convenient Dark Night immediately prior. Was that what Jair used them for? Not usually. Generally he used them more as a way to test his reach, get his name out there and see how much further he had yet to go, but he could always try to get in a quick trade for some crunchy terraroot. Jair shook himself out of the contemplation as Carn stared at him curiously. "Nothing to worry about, just contemplating the popular culture surrounding Solaira. There''s a lot of chaos that goes on between parties, and there are enough people coming and going that there''s a lot of work to do keeping track." "Most parties are by invitation only, but people with invitations to multiple events do tend to flip around at will rather than staying at one." "And cousin Stephani''s entourage is among them?" "Stephani will do anything to maintain her reputation. You think she would have allowed Ser Elsven to stay away from an event this important?" "I''ve never felt the draw of these things myself." Jair shrugged. "But anyway, he arrived and did what? Went to find Stephani?" "No, he was immediately sidetracked by your beautiful vampiress. She took one look at him and they just walked straight at each other like they''d found the missing piece of their existences." "That doesn''t sound normal." Carn chuckled. "Stephani wasn''t pleased by it either. She said that there was a certain expectation that wasn''t being upheld here and... well, there was a lot that she said." Jair shook his head. "Oh no, that sounds like exactly the sort of chaos Qahri thrives in. Let me guess, they almost came to blows and Stephani screamed at her for nearly an hour before running off in a huff?" "Close. I wasn''t here the whole time, but from what I saw the man was completely taken with the vampiress and didn''t even give his original companion a moment''s consideration, and she was very displeased with that fact." Jair frowned. "This is too easy. How are we this far ahead of Sekir already?" "Pardon?" "Well, Qahri lured him off by himself and I killed him. He''ll be back in a few hours or a day at most but... this doesn''t seem like him, being distracted so thoroughly by one girl? However amazing at her job Qahrvirna is, she''s not using any actual magic to attract people, just her own personality." "There is a lot of magic in personality." Jair nodded absently. But if she was willing to keep this a secret from him, how much of her report would she actually be willing to share? He shook his head. She was still too secretive, too possessive of her information. He''d take other precautions too.
110 - Reawakening Some things cannot be defined, only experienced.
Jair stopped back at the overhang just in case, but Sekir hadn''t miraculously repaired himself there. He glanced down at the empty shell of Sekir''s previous form one last time, then darkflamed himself to the Berris pickling shed''s secret sub-basement. PLEASE COME BACK. ¡°Not now,¡± Jair gritted out. He was getting a headache from all Meliarn¡¯s interruptions. Sekir¡¯s backup bodies all lay exactly where they¡¯d been last time he checked, except one that was faintly twitching. "Well, well, well. What have we here?" Jair crossed to the twitching body. It wasn''t quite moving, more convulsing like it was having a seizure, muscles contracting and loosening seemingly at random without any visible pattern. Its eyelids were closed and the eyes beneath lolled wildly, sometimes zipping around, sometimes just lying there in slow drift, but never opened. It wasn''t breathing yet, but it was rather fascinating to watch Sekir v3 come gradually to life. Jair was torn between the feeling of ''should kill it'' and ''want to see the whole thing.'' And he would, but first there were a few things to verify before he could sit down to watch. If the previous hours-long transition between his original version and the one Qahrvirna had lured out away was any indication, he didn¡¯t need to rush.
Jair found Eythron sitting in the corner at a small round table with three bottles of assorted drinks, wearing a simple tunic and sleeveless overrobe that left his imprints on full display. Without Jair''s ostentatious collection of medals and awards and title pins, that made him the most blatantly veteran-fighter person in the room. "I didn''t realize there even was a table in the corner," Jair said by way of hello. Eythron chuckled. "I brought it over." "Of course you did. And no one minds?" Eythron waved a hand at the seat across from him and pulled a cup out of his soulspace for Jair, then a second for himself. "Take your pick." "I''m not here to join the party. I think I found Sekir''s resurrection chamber." Eythron''s eyebrows rose minutely. He picked one of the bottles and poured out a pale pink liquid for both of them. Jair didn''t take his but leaned forward, voice an urgent whisper. "I killed him, so he should be coming back any time. I''m going to go watch. Qahrvirna said she''d keep an eye on things here, but she also didn''t tell me she was luring him off by himself by fluttering her fangs at him. Did she tell you anything?" Eythron shook his head, eyebrows going still higher, and took a small sip of his drink. "So, since I''m sure her report will be heavily abridged to let her feel superior, can you take careful note of who''s where when?" Eythron snorted. "Already would have." "Thank you." Jair stood to leave, then paused and looked back. "And do be on guard. If there''s one thing I know about Sekir, it''s that the more times he''s killed, the nastier he gets." "You don''t have to worry about me. Worry about yourself. If you die in some hidden experiment chamber who''s going to help me kill that star hydra?" Jair shook his head and laughed. "You really are a one-note guy, aren''t you? If it''s not killing dungeons it''s persecuting this poor hydra who''s done nothing to you." "It''s a threat to the whole Oriad," Eythron said quietly, eyes going distant. "As is my absence. As soon as I can get back there, we need to deal with the hydra." "Yes, you have my word, once we''re done with Sekir, you can destroy Meliarn and I''ll help you hunt your hydra." Eythron nodded and threw back the rest of his drink in one go. "You going to drink that?" Jair shook his head. "All yours. I have a sorcerer to hunt." Eythron grunted in reply, dropped his own cup back into his soulspace and leaned over to grab Jair''s. "I mean it, lad. Be careful. Sorcerers in close proximity are not safe adversaries." "I''m well aware." Jair rubbed at his arms, still bare of any imprints. "I''m not equipped to face him right now, but I am equipped to escape with information that he can''t take away from me. Even if all I get is a verification of whether or not he can return in this particular location, that''s good enough."
¡°Stephani Serin, the one whose party the second Sekir was ostensibly a member of, had no knowledge of any ''Ser Elsven'' and had never heard of a Mykoras family,¡± Carn reported, falling in step beside him as Jair left Eythron and started back toward Ajriol and Raina. ¡°She was, in fact, quite indignant to find that such a personage was pretending to be a member of her entourage, and determined that if she ever caught sight of the rogue she''d give him quite a piece of her mind. And not politely.¡± This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°Did anyone else know anything?¡± ¡°No one I¡¯ve spoken to was directly involved with Ser Elsven''s inclusion in the party. It seems his name simply showed up without anyone remembering having put it there. I tried to cross-reference the rest of the list to see if this was the only persona Sekir could sneak into the party under or if there were others who''d slipped through the cracks, but the invitation list has been assembled over the whole past year. Even I don¡¯t remember who or when half the invitations were added.¡± ¡°Which ones could you verify?¡± He gave a list, but it was a disappointingly familiar list. Basically, it narrowed things down to ''not the actual Serin cousins'' but Jair was sure Raina or Ajriol would have already noticed if someone was pretending to be a nonexistent relative. ¡°Thank you. Keep looking.¡± Carn nodded. ¡°I will.¡± He hesitated, looking away, then back, eyes flickering with green light as though he wasn¡¯t sure what to do. ¡°You have something to say?¡± Carn blinked and the light of his soulspell disappeared. He straightened, the uncertainty gone. He took Jair¡¯s arm earnestly. ¡°Be careful.¡± Jair nodded and smiled. ¡°You don¡¯t have to worry about me. Watch over Ajriol and Raina. I¡¯ll be fine.¡± Carn released him and Jair walked outside before darkflaming himself away to avoid attracting too much more attention. See, I can be subtle too. The afternoon was still young. Plenty of time for their nemesis to show back up if his switch took the two hours he''d observed the first time. Speaking of. He checked on Lilin before continuing his observations, and she was doing well. Had only formed eight life feuds already, and had plenty of afternoon left. Jair was convinced by now that she was trying to intentionally push people into misalignment just to see if she could. To her immense delight, Jair''s reputation was sufficient to allow her all sorts of undeserved tolerance. They wouldn''t do anything to disrupt her because of him, and she would do everything she could to disrupt them for no better reason than because she wanted to. As the representative of the Phoenix Healer, she was considered an honored guest, but as a ball of chaos given form, she was throwing everyone''s alliances into pure chaos. She had caught on to what she could and couldn''t get away with very quickly and then proceeded to use that knowledge to join temporary alliances and leave them just as rapidly as she quickly turned the whole event into a game. She wasn''t playing the noble''s game, she was playing them. They thought she was entering as a participant in their games, but she had made up the rules all on her own. Jair smiled proudly and left her to it. There was a lot of fun to be had messing with nobility, and the fact that he could shortcut the ''earning their respect¡¯ part for her and get straight to the ''doing fun things with their existences because I can'' made it altogether more entertaining. She would never have to fight her way up from nothing like he had. She would never have to scrape and beg for the faintest scraps of recognition. He would give her everything she wanted and watch while they floundered in her wake. Lilin¡¯s penchant for chaos was beautiful. What would the political scene look like by the evening? He couldn¡¯t wait to find out. But in the meantime, he had Sekir¡¯s equally fascinating magical process to observe over in his secret hidden underground room.
With everything else handled and moving smoothly, Jair sat himself on the empty slab nearest the ladder, Maelstrom across his lap to provide light, and settled in to watch. Sekir¡¯s reawakening process was so fascinating that Jair wished he had any way to obtain manasight, because he would be willing to bet that there was a lot of metaphysical stuff going on in there that he simply couldn''t observe because he was only watching it with light. The body would twitch wildly for a time, slow, then stop and lie still again for minutes. Sometimes only a few minutes, other times nearly a half hour. Then it would start up twitching again, more violently each time. The first few were self contained and relatively minor but the ones that went on included it thrashing about and only held down by the restraints it wore. They weren''t something it couldn''t escape from, they were clearly intended as protection rather than control, and had simple releases that even a child could have gotten out of, but it was enough to prevent him injuring himself as he gradually came into alignment. Jair considered taking them off just to watch the fun as Sekir''s own resurrection process tore his body into aggressively bruised pieces. He smiled faintly at the thought. It was tempting to wait until just before the new form was active and ready to be used, only to destroy it and force Sekir to begin again, but he couldn''t bring himself to interrupt. He wanted to see how it was supposed to go first. Then he could start hunting the man. He counted the seconds between convulsions, noted their gradual changes as the new Sekir went from thrashing to twitching, and measured the duration of the stillness between. At first there would be several minutes of spread out activity before Sekir fell still as though comatose, nothing moving at all. This state would remain for several minutes, sometimes as many as ten, before the body started going through its twitches and convulsions again. Jair couldn''t be sure at first if he was keeping proper count, but as they went on the duration of these stillnesses between connection attempts fluctuated wildly. Sometimes it would last only a minute or two, other times it would be ten or once even twenty minutes before it resumed. But after the twenty minute one, they began rapidly coming closer together. Jair counted no more than four minutes between the twitching sessions for almost an hour, and the amount of twitching was increasing just as steadily. From what had been a few minutes, it became almost constant. The durations had reversed, with the body flexing and straining for minutes at a time while the brief stillnesses were few and far between. Then the moment came to an end, and the body went abruptly fully still. Jair stared at it, then the body slowly blinked its eyes open. Finally. Jair stopped pacing and watched, wondering. Would this finally be the chance to talk to the man without a violent altercation? Or would Sekir find a way to attack him even weaponless in an underground room? Either way, it had been far too long since they''d seen each other face to face. This meeting had been a long time coming. Far longer than Sekir could ever guess. Allowing Jair to discover this place was a terrible mistake. He couldn''t have known he was observed, but having a plan convoluted enough that it involved him visiting the same location in multiple different guises was risky under the best of circumstances and absurd under others. Jair wasn''t going to be able to do anything to his soul, apparently even Maelstrom wasn''t able to grab onto the man''s slippery essence, but that didn''t mean he had to make the man''s life easy. He grinned as he periodically paced the tiny room, watching and waiting as his nemesis prepared for a doomed life.
111 - Nemesis Never travel alone in northern Nuriz unless you¡¯re certain you¡¯re ready to be married. The chances of a solo traveler returning south without a bound partner are roughly one in thirty. Over half never return at all.
Sekir Lifekeeper opened his eyes blearily against the green brightness. He''d been switching between forms far too quickly today, and that always made it harder to settle into the new one. At least this one was familiar, one he''d used several times before, so it shouldn''t be¡ª Wait. Green light? There was no reason for there to be any light down here until he activated one of his imprints, what...? He turned his head sharply, and the answer stood right in front of him. The Phoenix Healer himself, just like he''d been described. "Hello, Sekir." Sekir smiled. "Ah. Finally. I wondered what was taking you so long." He unstrapped himself from the holding slab and sat up carefully, then scooted backward so he could lean his back against the wall. "I was sure you¡¯d have come for me long before now." "You don''t know how long I''ve been wanting to talk to you." "You''re a fan? How nice. Where do you want me to sign? Should I use your blood or mine?" Welburne''s smile was tight and controlled. "Is that how you greet all your visitors?" "Only the ones who''re worth my time." Sekir stretched and twisted, shaking the rest of the body into alignment. But he kept the connection loose instead of tightening it down. He might have to leave at any moment. "Which you have yet to prove." "You expect me to prove I''m worth your time? When you''re the one obsessively hunting me and my friends down?" "Yes. I''ve been putting in all the work in this relationship. You realize I had to come this close to murdering your little girlfriend before you even bothered to come say hello?" Welburne''s face went cold and hard. Sekir couldn''t help grinning. That look. If he could bottle it, freeze it, breathe it in forever. The fire in Welburne''s eyes, the rigid restraint in his entire body, as though barely holding himself back. He wished he had access to his soulspell, but that wasn''t something that could be so easily moved from place to place. He would need to devote a lot more to this connection if he wanted to fully activate his abilities, and something told him this wouldn''t be a worthwhile investment. Better to let things play out as they would and only worry about the ultimate aftermath later. But Welburne was right here. The temptation was so strong. Sekir closed his eyes, imagining the terrible glorious beauty that would be Welburne''s despair, and accepted the sacrifice of this moment in service of the greater. "You didn''t think I''d miss the fact that you and that Serin girl are always running around together?¡± he murmured. ¡°If you were even a little concerned with her safety, you should have been more discreet." "I will kill you." Welburn slashed down at one of Sekir''s backups and incinerated it in a burst of ashes. "As many times as it takes." ¡°I could say the same. You¡¯ve proved yourself remarkably adept at ignoring the world around you, but eventually you¡¯ll have no choice but to notice you¡¯ve been so thoroughly outplayed that there¡¯s nowhere left for you to turn.¡± Welburne visibly stilled himself, controlling his emotions down to calmness before speaking again. "You have to stop." "Stop what? Trying to murder you? That''s a lot to ask on a first meeting." "Trying to unite the continents." Sekir stopped stretching and squinted at him. "What are you talking about?" "Your plan to merge Veor into Njarel is going to destroy us all." He''d heard that right, yeah? His new body wasn''t failing on him. Sekir laughed with unrestrained mirth. "And here I thought you were going to be boring. I take it back, Welburne. You don''t need to prove yourself. You''re exactly the man I''m looking for. More than I''d been willing to hope for. You''re completely mad, aren''t you? This will be such fun. Unite the continents? Why would I do something like that?" "That''s what I''ve been wanting to ask you." Welburne frowned. "So if you''re not trying to unite Veor with Njarel, what exactly are you here for?" "To stop the plague, of course. They don''t call me Lifekeeper for nothing. But you¡¯ve gone and stolen my flag there too, so I¡¯m left with all this free time on my hand and no one but you to take it out on." Welburne was thoroughly confused by this, which made Sekir willing to forgive his intrusion into what should have been a private rebirth. "But you''re trying to kill people basically at random to get at me." Sekir continued to smile as he rolled the stiffness out of his new neck. "You assume everything is about you. Why would you think that?" His soulspell was still out of alignment at the moment, but there wasn''t anything he could do to speed that up. Rushing something like this would ruin everything. Besides, having his adversary where he could see him was far more valuable at the moment than anything he could gain from it. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "You admitted a moment ago to trying to murder me." "Of course I would. You''ve been killing me. Why shouldn''t I return the favor? At least once or twice. But until you started hunting me without warning or provocation, I was only in Veor to deal with the soul-curse plague." Welburne blinked at him. "You planned to murder Prince Orren, kidnap Princess Fahla, and take over the kingdom entirely." "Yes, so? You seem to be having a hard time understanding this." Sekir crossed his legs and leaned forward. "I will do whatever it takes to accomplish my goals." "But... the plague, I already dealt with." "Exactly. So I don''t need to worry about anything. All I need to do is play with you until you''re boring and I murder you for real." Welburne leveled his sword at Sekir''s face. "I will kill you again and again until there is nothing left but your soul, and then I will consume that so you''ll never exist again. It doesn''t matter if you have ten bodies or a thousand. It''s over." "You think this is the endgame?" Sekir laughed, genuinely and uncontrollably. He''d been running around so long without pause, shifting and acting and shifting again for days on end. He''d put in so much work to prepare this all, and Welburne thought it was over? "It took you until the end of Solaria to catch up to me! You have no idea how mistaken you are. I only wish I could see your face when you finally realize. This game has been going on so much longer than you imagine, and you''re only just¡ª" Welburne lunged without warning. Sekir released his hold just in time. The sword''s point drove through the body he''d been occupying a moment before, every trace of remnant mana slurped up in a fraction of a second by that monster of a sword, then the body itself burned away in black and green fire. But despite the perpetual threat of destruction hanging over him, even with the necessity of finding a new hiding place to return his new bodies to, Welburne was the most interesting thing to happen in years. Reskas had been a pushover, Zoress tried to fight back but it was no match for him in the end. Veor had been looking like nothing but another bland interlude between essential steps. Until now. He couldn''t wait to see what the Phoenix Healer tried next. Would he eliminate this timeline prematurely, or stick around long enough for Sekir''s other surprises? Well, surely he¡¯d end up reverting sooner or later. And when he did¡­ See you last week, Welburne. Hope you''ve enjoyed the smooth ride so far, because it''s about to get so much rockier.
"So much longer than I imagine?¡± However many years Sekir might have been planning his conquest of Veor, however long he¡¯d lived, it couldn¡¯t be more than the number of times the two of them had battled across timeline after timeline. Jair waited a few minutes to see if Sekir was going to try using any of the other bodies in this place, but after no sign of movement for he decided there wasn''t much point leaving them. Even if Sekir had more stashed somewhere else, these were vulnerable right now. He destroyed them all, leaving the hidden sub-basement empty but for the stone slabs and ashes. Apparently Sekir hadn''t come up with the idea of uniting the continents yet at this point in the timeline, but it was too consistent of an event to be wholly unplanned. And still¡­ something about the entire encounter felt hollow. He''d fought Sekir across so many timelines, seen him fierce and cold and implacable. Bragging about his plans? That was so suspiciously out of character. It had to be a trick of some sort. But what exactly it was intended to accomplish, he couldn''t guess. It was tempting to slot it down to younger-Sekir being more reckless and forward than his years-later self, but knowing he was an elf put everything in a very different perspective. There was no way that a few years would change his personality that dramatically after however many hundreds. For whatever reason, Sekir had decided that instead of stabbing Jair on sight, he should talk to him and brag about his plans going back who knew how far. It was almost like¡­ he wanted Jair to go back in time. The implications of that were far more dramatic than any of the rest of what he¡¯d said. He was certain Sekir wasn¡¯t capable of time travel himself. So what kind of scheme could he possibly have set up that he imagined would be good enough against someone who could try it again and again without limitation? He ran a finger across the bladed edge of Maelstrom''s hilt and darkflamed himself back to Lilin''s party. They''d been such good hosts this whole time while she ran rampant, he should at least give them an official appearance where he didn''t skip out after three minutes. Unfortunately, he appeared right in the middle of what appeared to be a very volatile argument. Lilin and two other women were screaming accusations at each other, and the moment Jair appeared, three more came stomping over to try screaming at him. "You alright, Lil?" "This soulless sap-mouthed rock-eating¡ª" Jair gently removed the fluted glass from her hand. "I think it''s time we get you back to the others." Clearly, her tolerance for alcohol was nowhere near as strong as his own. "But she insulted our family! Our whole profession. The entire region. She thinks she''s so much better but she''s never done a day''s work in her life!" This last was shouted back over her shoulder directly at the sap-mouthed noble in question. Jair sighed. "Yeah, they do tend to have that kind of attitude." "I''ll show you hard work!" Lilin screamed. "I''ll burn your house down!" Jair laughed. "Are you sure that''s what you want?" "Yes! And I want to watch her smug little face when she comes home and finds that she''ll have to put in some effort for once in her life!" "If that''s what''ll make you happy." He held out Maelstrom for her. "Empty vengeance it is." "Oh, there''ll be nothing empty about it," Lilin seethed. "She''ll wish she never even thought to look down on Marisbog." "Should I bring Qahrvirna along? She''s not the biggest fan of fire, but wanton destruction is very much her kind of thing." Lilin hesitated only a moment. "Yes, that sounds even better." Jair darkflamed Lilin to the plaza outside House Parlek''s primary residence, then darkflamed himself back to the Serin party to collect his wayward vampiress. Only to come up short. The courtyard was all but paved in blood. Dead staff members sat in their grotesque parody of a party. All the guests lay spread out around them in a circle. Carn lay sprawled beneath his master. And on the wall¡­ Ajriol¡¯s scattered remnants, with Raina and Qahrvirna just as thoroughly dissected hanging on either side.
112 - Investigation Fae work customs often seem barbaric to those larger races who expect to get a full night¡¯s sleep between shifts, but twenty hour days are fully expected for creatures who can rest for a half hour and be ready to go for another five.
The entire courtyard was eerily quiet, uncannily still. Even the normal mana drift was absent, absorbed by the vampiric ritual preserving their bodies and allowing their blood to continue to flow. Jair had been with the reviving sorcerer the entire time, so there was only one explanation. Sekir wasn¡¯t working alone. ¡°Bladewalk.¡± Jair jumped onto Maelstrom and floated up far above the oasis, searching for any survivors. Eythron wasn''t anywhere to be seen, but Jair would bet the old man had fled the moment he realized he couldn''t defeat Sekir''s companion. That, or he''d already killed¡­whoever it was Sekir had been working with. During their whole conversation, Sekir knew his lackeys were doing this. Why else would he''ve been so casual? Sekir kept Jair talking, holding his attention. Saying whatever it took to keep him from running off and interrupting whatever his allies were doing. Jair''s heart burned with pure rage. He tried to darkflame Raina back together, Ajriol, Qahrvirna, but it''d been long enough even the vampire''s remnant spirit had dissipated. He''d lost them. Any memories they''d created since... he didn''t know how long it would be, but they''d all have reset to their initial status without him looping them. He took himself back to Lilin, half expecting her to be dead too, but she was happily shouting insults at the doorman for House Parlek. "We have to go." He took her arm and darkflamed them back to Silvas, then Mount Ryenzo. He half expected to find Eythron here, but of course he wouldn''t be, not yet. Even if the old man decided to bladewalk his way here at full speed, it would take hours and hours. "What''s wrong?" Jair''s curt abruptness shocked Lilin out of her ire, and now she looked at him with wide, concerned eyes. "I miscalculated. Got caught up in something when I should have been paying attention. I need to find Eythron, if he''s alive." Dovak, let him be alive. Jair didn''t want to see any more of his loved ones dead for today. "What happened?" "Sekir wasn''t working alone. I was gone too long." Is this what would have happened the first time around if he hadn''t heard Carn''s scream and gone to investigate? Without Jair present, Sekir would have just kept killing his way through everyone? Not even Sekir personally, but whoever he''d hired. Jair frowned. That was another problem. Where were these people? Who was actually doing the killing? He''d never seen anyone in the courtyard. He''d never seen anyone in the party who didn''t belong there. The only one who he''d seen inside who didn''t end up dead was the known-Sekir that he''d bisected when he found the man cuddling with Qahrvirna. "I''m sorry." Jair huffed out a tired breath. "Don''t be. It''s not your fault, or anything you could have prevented." "Was it..." she swallowed. "Was it bad? Like...?" "Yes." Jair didn''t go into details, and she didn''t ask. "Wait here. I''m going to search for Eythron. Uqiar can protect you." Lilin nodded, her brow furrowed in worry, but she let him show her to where Uqiar sat in his room working on his crafting something from a greyish leather, but Jair wasn''t sure if it was a piece of armor or something intended as decoration. "Keep her safe. I need to find Eythron." "He''s that way." Uqiar pointed with absolute certainty and no hesitation. Jair blinked. "How do you know?" "I just know." Jair teleported himself directly upward to well above the volcano, then tossed Maelstrom ahead of him and shot off in the direction Uqiar had pointed. Teleporting himself midair didn¡¯t come naturally, but it saved a lot of travel time. The first few times he almost fell out of the sky as he lost the connection with Bladewalk when he used Darkflame, but the more times he repeated the practice the more he acclimated. Before long he was flying along at insane speeds, skipping forward every few seconds while maintaining a steady flight between. It still took almost an hour to find Eythron. The old mageblade was hiding out of sight beneath a stone overhang, one Jair overshot the first time. Only after he''d gone off further than the oasis and doubled back did he manage to locate him. Eythron lay up against the rock at the back of the sheltered area, eyes closed and sword in hand. He wasn''t wearing a robe any longer, as it had been repurposed into bandages. Jair jumped forward and darkflamed him a few paces to the side to instantly repair the damage. Eythron''s eyes snapped open and he instinctively lashed out with his sword before recognizing Jair. "It''s you." Jair nodded. Eythron slumped. "I tried, lad. But he could read my every move. I''ve never fought someone so perfectly matched to my skills. In the end, I barely escaped. I couldn''t beat him." A swordfighter? "Who? What did he look like? What spells did he use?" ¡°No spells. Just pure skill. He was like no one I¡¯ve ever faced.¡± ¡°Were there more than one, or just him?¡± Eythron lay back and closed his eyes wearily. "Just one. If you don''t count your vampiress." "What! Qahri?" Eythron nodded weakly. "Surprised me too. I guess it goes to show you never can trust a vampire. Should have known better than to bring her with us." "Are you alright? You seem very worn." "I''ve been stabbed more times than a dustrat on a skewer, what do you expect?" "Darkflame should have healed you, at least the most recent injuries." Eythron scoffed. "I think I''d know if you''d done anything like that." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Jair sighed. Of course Eythron would be one of the ones who was unresponsive to Darkflame. Of everyone he could have picked to not be healable, Eythron was one of the worst options. But Eythron''s soul was strong and stubborn. Even if Darkflame was a positive force, it was still a deeply invasive one. "Guess it''s a good thing Qahri ended up dead." "That was my doing." "Thank you. That must have been hard." "Eh. She''s always been asking for a beating. She tried possessing one of the kids and I had to put him down too." It stung to have someone he''d considered a friend and ally turn against them, but of anyone in Team Oriad, Qahrvirna had always been the wildcard. Of course she''d find Sekir''s plans more fun than Jair''s. His didn¡¯t include nearly enough mayhem. ¡°Good thing you escaped, or I''d probably have kept reverting with her.¡± Fortunately, in her case, the solution was simple enough. Just leave her back at the mountain in future loops and she''d never have the chance to be corrupted by the sorcerer''s tricks. Since she''d been killed this loop, she wouldn''t have any memory of having been Sekir''s ally, so he couldn''t interrogate her about his plans once they reverted. But she also would have no reason to think they were anything but allies still. She should cooperate. Unless she was planning to betray them all along. He really hoped that wasn''t the case. Eythron suppressed a groan as he patted his bleeding and bandaged chest. ¡°It¡¯ll take more than this to keep me down. If there weren¡¯t two of them I¡¯d have finished them both in the end.¡± "I don¡¯t doubt it.¡± Jair hefted Maelstrom to take them back to Lilin, then paused. ¡°You wanted to see the final product. Did you get a good look at it, the courtyard after¡­all of it?" Eythron growled wordlessly. "Or did you leave before it was finished?" "I left." "Then let''s go back and get you a look. If it had to happen, we can at least analyze the outcome." Eythron nodded stiffly. Jair darkflamed them both to the courtyard entrance, with less difficulty this time as Eythron knew not to resist it. Meliarn¡¯s urgent draw tried to tug at him, but his burning rage turned its voice into distant static. The scene remained as he''d left it. The staff sat around the table in the same configuration as the previous time, all dead by different methods. The guests lay spread out around them, all facing feet toward the table. Everyone except Jair''s allies. Raina and Qahrvirna had been divided into sections like Ajriol and decorated the walls on either side of him. Carn lay sprawled on the ground between Ajriol and the table, bloodless and lifeless like the guests, one arm reaching toward his master. "Yes, this is very purposeful." Eythron walked slowly around the scene, examining it from every angle. He paced out the distance between guests, the space between Ajriol and Raina and Qahrvirna. "And they set most of this up after they were dead. Those two for sure¡ª" "This isn''t like him." Eythron paused and raised an eyebrow at him. "I''ve fought him so many times, and yes, he likes being grandiose, but this is way outside of his usual methods. He''s always been more... subtle. Covert. Not blatant aggression. Not until I''ve already beaten him a few times and he''s getting mad." Jair frowned. "He did say I''ve killed him though. Have I killed anyone in Veor? I don''t remember killing anyone. That one guy who was allergic to Darkflame? But I reverted him to being alive." "You have some more genius ideas as to why what''s happened shouldn''t have happened?" Jair snorted and shook his head. "Go ahead. I''ll wait." The metallic taste of blood in the air was making him twitchy. It reminded him of... too much that he''d rather not relive. But if there was anything Eythron could discern from the mess left behind, it would be better to learn it now than have the incident repeat itself. He couldn¡¯t stop glancing at Raina. What was left of her. Every time it hit him all over again, deep in his chest, suffocating pressure, a yawning emptiness. Too deeply familiar and too raw all at once. He could gladly strangle Sekir a hundred times over and still not be satisfied. Sekir wanted Jair¡¯s attention? Well. He was about to get it. All of it. Eythron continued circling the table, then came to an abrupt stop. Jair forcefully shook away the desperate grief and turned his attention to his mentor¡¯s investigation. ¡°What did you find?¡± "This doesn''t fit." Eythron peered closer at Molash''s body, then went down the table slowly, checking all the others before returning to Molash. "This isn''t fake.¡± He prodded the boy¡¯s shoulder with one finger. ¡°This was a true suicide. The others are just staged to look that way." "So he terrified the kid into playing along?" That would be very much in line with Sekir''s preferences for coercion and control. He loved his mind games. Jair did not love mind games. They made him want to stab things. "This was all done very hastily.¡± Eythron waved a hand to indicate the whole courtyard. ¡°Within an hour. And there''s no sign of hesitation. This kid just went for it." "And this isn''t the one Qahri possessed?" "No, that one." One of those lying on the floor midway around the opposite side of the table, who did have several more slashes than the others. Jair tapped a finger to his lips as he contemplated Molash''s corpse. "The first time we came back to this scene partly set, Molash was the only one in the area. When he saw us he screamed and dropped his tray... but the first time around when we weren''t in the courtyard, no one raised the alarm. He kept dying, so I assumed he was being targeted, but if he''s one of Sekir''s forms? He could be killing himself to free him up to move to a different body. Covering it up with all these others, making it look like part of his ritual rather than something he needs to do for his own reasons." He thought back, trying to remember if he''d seen Molash alive and active at any point in the day later than when the primary or secondary Sekir incarnations had been lurking around, and he didn''t come up with any. Molash was around for the first half of the day, then either died or went off somewhere. Coincidentally, a couple hours later, Sekir came around opening windows, then another version used those windows to enter. Had Jair checked the courtyard specifically? He''d been distracted by Lilin''s party and watching the Sekir bodies. He¡¯d left it to Eythron, Qahrvirna, and Ajriol and Raina to keep an eye on things. And he¡¯d neglected to check on anyone after he started watching Sekir''s reincarnation process. Which had given him valuable information, so it wasn¡¯t a complete loss. Better to have seen it through to the end than be distracted halfway and learn nothing. Even if it felt wrong at the moment. He¡¯d allowed himself to become fixated on Sekir, not considering the fact that he might have allies of his own. "We lost whatever Ajriol or Carn saw, but we can try again. This time with me present. I just need to catch him unprepared." "Is that all?" Eythron snorted. "I think you''re still underestimating our adversaries." "In what way?" "Do you anticipate being able to catch him unprepared when every indication has been that he''s incredibly adaptable and fully capable of dealing with anything we throw against him?" "Is this you being defeatist?" Eythron scoffed. "You weren''t there. You haven''t seen him fight. Qahrvirna wasn''t even close." "Whoever you were fighting, it was an accomplice, not Sekir himself. He was busy being rebodied at the time. And I''ll still need a description." Eythron described him, but it wasn''t anyone Jair recognized. Still, he filed away the information for future reference. "I think we¡¯ve learned everything we can from this. We know more about how he operates than ever before, especially this far into the past. I''ve got access to a whole set of his backup bodies, and we know roughly how long it takes him to switch into a new one when he dies. Just need to find a way to deal with him permanently now the princess isn¡¯t in the picture.¡± ¡°You think a princess is the best way to permanently deal with a master sorcerer? I never got the idea that he was so easily distracted. Let alone permanently.¡± ¡°Tangentially, not because he¡¯s actually interested in her. Back when he was trying to take over the kingdom, he¡¯d have to go to Meliarn to kidnap Princess Fahla, so that¡¯s where we always had our final battle.¡± Eythron huffed derisively. ¡°Yeah, kill him and leave him stuck inside until the dungeon dissolves his soul. That sounds horrific.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not a fun way to die, no, but if anyone deserves it it¡¯s Sekir.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve heard plenty about him being your nemesis and worthy adversary and only one who can challenge your supremacy nonsense, but what is it he¡¯s actually done to deserve being dissolved by a dungeon on a soul level?¡± Eythron tapped his chin. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t wish that on my worst enemy.¡± Jair gestured to the blood-soaked courtyard around them. ¡°This doesn¡¯t seem deserving of death?¡± ¡°Death, sure, but slow soul dissolution by dungeon?¡± ¡°Do you have another way to pin his soul in place? Because if not, Meliarn is our only option. Unless we can lure him into Mercurios.¡± Jair turned to stare at Eythron intently. ¡°Do you think you could do your dungeon slicing routine on a twenty thousand year old dragon?¡± Eythron stared back, then very slowly shook his head. ¡°I think that is outside my pay grade by a large margin.¡± ¡°Worth asking.¡± He held out Maelstrom. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go back to the mountain to pick up Lilin, then we''re reverting."
113 - Reverted It is unknown why so much of Orard remains tenuously connected rather than fully divided like every other engaldria, but surveys of the Oriad have shown that in over sixty years none of the waterways have been expanding at the same rate as those elsewhere. While Reskas loses coast at a startling rate, Nusier and Garne remain almost exactly the same now as they were in my grandfather¡¯s time.
Jair, Eythron, Uqiar, and Lilin stood together to return to the past. Eythron protested against dragging his ward into this, but Jair wasn¡¯t going to risk leaving anyone out of the loop. With how many of them Sekir had managed to take out this time, the more chances of someone surviving to report something they could use against the sorcerer in the future, the better. It certainly wouldn¡¯t hurt anything to bring the beastkin along. After one more cursory attempt from Eythron to keep Uqiar safely out of the whole affair and not a potential target for Sekir¡¯s vengeance, the four of them gathered around and took hold of Maelstrom. But now that the moment had arrived, he found himself frozen in indecision. None of the moments he wanted to return to were ones he¡¯d experienced, so he couldn¡¯t envision them properly. "We doing this, or am I just going to stand here with my hand bleeding all over your sword all day?" "I''m thinking." Jair mentally sorted through the various keypoints throughout the day that he could revert to. "I could go back to right before Sekir woke up and we started talking. That shouldn''t lose too much." Eythron shook his head. "Not far enough. By the time you found me, it''d been hours." "Hours." Jair hissed irritably. "The closest one I have from before that is when Lilin was drunk and ranting at that Irheshri girl in defence of her hat." "It''s a good hat," Lilin muttered. "I don''t care that it''s last season''s style. That doesn''t make it any less beautiful." "Farther," Eythron grunted. Jair frowned. "Really? How early did he start this time?" "People were leaving all afternoon, but having seen what happened they weren''t leaving nearly as voluntarily as it seemed. He must''ve ambushed them and stashed them somewhere else out of sight because I checked that courtyard a thousand times before the swordmaster came at me." His scowl deepened. "Let me get my hands on that man without his allies and I''ll show him who''s the superior blademaster." "None of that matters. We can revert again after. When did he get Raina?" Eythron pursed his lips and stared intently into space, searching his memory. "She and her father went upstairs with one of the staff right after you checked in the last time. I don''t remember seeing them since then." "You let them out of your sight for hours? I thought you were supposed to be guarding them!" "Lord Serin ordered me to stay. I stayed." Eythron shrugged. "It''s their house, not yours." "Why would Ajriol go off on his own at a time like this?" Jair growled softly in irritation. "He knew he was a target, he shouldn¡¯t have let any house business interfere today of all days. Stubborn, prideful man." "Then take us back to then, we can ask him ourselves." Jair nodded and focused in on the time-memory of the last check in on Ajriol and Raina, holding the location-memory of the courtyard. It would be best not to suddenly appear in the middle of the party, to avoid causing more of a scene than necessary. The courtyard was a solid enough location to bring to mind almost without effort. Meliarn had other plans. His dungeon had been neglected too long. Golden light flashed through them as Jair activated Temporal Reversion. HERE! NOW! COME! The visualization faltered and his ability to recall the day blurred as Meliarn''s gates shone bright in his memory. Just as it had been interfering mid-darkflame, it interfered mid-reversion, and with a determined desperation that caught him fully unprepared. Time strained, doing its best to slip from his grasp. Temporal Reversion was stretched tight between Jair''s desire to go back and save everyone as immediately as possible and Meliarn''s firm recollection of the last moment he''d been within its reach. Not that far, don''t you dare. Too late. His concentration was already broken, and the reversion redirected. By accepting the dungeon into his soul, he¡¯d forged an unblockable connection to everything else with direct access to his soul. To cut the dungeon off would be a longer and harder affair than could be accomplished in a few moments. They''d already fallen too far into the past, missed the moment Jair was aiming for. Even if he¡¯d been positioned to sever Meliarn''s connection immediately, it would have been too late. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. But the memory that Meliarn was using as a time-anchor was from a timeline that had already been overwritten, and it didn''t really understand how Temporal Reversion worked. It kept pulling back and back and back, searching for what could never be found, and shedding days like offcast skin as it dragged them all with it. No. Jair cut off Temporal Reversion, abruptly dropping them out of timefall. Days before they should have, Eythron emerged from Meliarn''s gate, Raina and Lilin on either side of Jair. Or, so it seemed. They all appeared mid-movement, but not continuing them as they fell into unbalanced heaps. Neither the point in the timeline they¡¯d been taken from or brought to carried the necessary impetus for handling the transition with any grace. Eythron was the only one to catch his balance fully. Jair should have been ready for it as he was used to reversion, but he wasn''t used to the way Meliarn interfered with it. Before they even finished stumbling, Raina¡¯s scream shook the air. She crumpled to her knees, face tight with abject horror and body trembling in helpless fear. Lilin jumped to her feet and ran to her, then pulled up short when Raina scrambled back, sword raised. "Stay back! Stay away!" She slashed out wildly with Tempest. Not using her trained and practiced forms, just sheer blind panic. "Hold, stop." Jair caught Lilin''s arm, feeling her own abrupt adrenaline at the unexpected reaction. "Let me." Lilin nodded and fell back, teary-eyed. "What''s wrong? What happened?" "I don''t know." Jair knelt down in front of her, making himself small and nonthreatening. "Raina, it''s me, Jair. You remember me?" His voice stayed low and calm, trying to keep her from panicking worse. That he had no idea how this happened mattered nothing. He could solve that later. Right now, the moment demanded his attention. She was twitching and flinching away from every movement, staring and pointing Tempest first at Eythron, then Lilin, then Jair himself. It was nearly ten minutes before she calmed down enough to speak, and even then she continued to whip out Tempest at the slightest provocation. "What''s wrong, Rai? Did something happen?" "I don''t know, it was... there was..." She was still gasping for breath, shaking. Unable to calm down. "Is it alright if I sit by you?" "Y-y-you..." Quick pants of breath, then a quick jerk of a nod. She let Tempest drop to her side, still in hand, but no longer raised ready to strike. Jair lowered himself to the stand and scooted over beside her. "Is this about Meliarn, or did you have something more than--" She shook her head, eyes glazed with tears as she glanced at him, then away. "I was-- I..." her voice went very faint. "I think I was dead." "You were." "And I kept-- I couldn''t--" She turned and clung to his arm, burying her face in his shoulder. "I was so helpless. That''s all I could think. All I knew. I''d failed. My father, my house, your friends. I let them all die. I''m only an apprentice, I don''t even have functional imprints yet. There''s nothing I could do. Even if I were able to try again and again and again, it would never be enough." Jair shifted so he could hug her properly, and sat holding her while she let out all the pent-up emotion from her ordeal. "It''s alright," he murmured. "I''m here. You''re not alone. You don''t have to try it all over and over by yourself. You never will." But what actually happened? He''d lost control of the reversion and ended up... two or three days earlier, at a guess. Nothing particular was going on at that time. Shopping, planning. Yet from everything Raina said and how she was acting since the reversion, it seemed almost as if she''d been brought back from her farthest forward point despite having died far from Jair''s reach. She could recall up to the moment of her death. Perhaps beyond, though that part was less certain. Being dead and also soul-aware was a strange thing, not commonplace. Even he, with more research than most whole engaldria combined, could only linger a few moments after dying before the cohesion of his self started to unravel. Tempest''s black abyss of a blade lay forgotten beside her, with no sign of the normal constellations that drifted within its depths. Somehow, that seemed like a bad omen. If he took Maelstrom''s chaotic storm of countless powers and colors and forms was a reflection of Jair''s own tumultuous existence, for Raina''s soulsword to have become dark and empty felt ominous. "Did you see who did any of it?" he asked once she''d calmed somewhat. "Solaria?" "It was all a blur. I... I thought it was some of the staff, but I guess they were impostors. I don''t remember. It was all so fast and then I had no way to really remember it properly. I was dead..." "Try not to think on it too long. You''re alive now and I won''t let you out of my sight again. You won''t have to go through that again if I have anything to do about it. I swear." "Thank you." She pressed a quick kiss against his cheek, then promptly fell asleep in his lap, thoroughly exhausted by the emotional gamut. Jair waited a few minutes to see if she would wake, then summoned Maelstrom and stared down into it. "You kept her from fully dying, didn''t you?" Faint sparkles started at the handle then swirled down to the tip, where they lingered, rotating impatiently before darting down to the tip again. "I don''t know if I should thank you or curse you. It doesn''t seem to have been pleasant." Jair sighed as the glowing sparks swirled faster. "I know. It''s unfair to shelter her forever. If she''s our equal, she deserves the chance to face the reality of this war even if it''s painful and awful. She can leave if it''s too much, but that''s her choice. Not ours." He carefully leaned over without disturbing the sleeping Raina and tapped Maelstrom''s tip against the flat of Tempest. Myriad sparks of light flowed down it, mostly gold and various hues of green, blue and pink, with white and silver now and then. By the time Raina woke and Jair dismissed Maelstrom, the constellations within her blade had returned, dimmer and seemingly more distant, but present. But if he wasn¡¯t wrong, on closer examination, there was one other change. A slender line of gold threaded around the grip. Out of curiosity, he examined the blade again, and for the first time since its bizarre awakening, something had changed. It shouldn¡¯t have surprised him, but it still did. ©¤ Tempest ©¤ Type: Soulsword ©¤ Rank: Uncommon ©¤ Abilities: Temporal Rebirth ©¤ Class Requirement: Mageblade We hunger. ©¤ Bound to Maelstrom & Raina Serin
114 - Recalculation While it is no longer socially acceptable to execute wrongdoers by banishing them to Nuprima, it is unclear whether this is from moral or financial objections. Instead, we offer them the chance to redeem themselves by choosing to go to Nuprima in lieu of further punishment. If they don''t survive, all the better.
The reasoning wasn''t hard to figure out once Jair thought about it. Maelstrom had always known protecting Raina was their highest priority. They had always been the one to bear whatever cost it took to move her though it would use others'' energy to move themselves or perform the Darkflame rebirth. Maelstrom had a full on soul-level connection to Raina, their highest priority to protect, through Tempest. Of course it had imparted some mutant child of Darkflame and Temporal Reversion to give her her own absolute protection against losing herself when he reverted. It was exactly the sort of thing he¡¯d have done if he knew it were possible. But even if that part made perfect sense, so much about the situation now did not. With Raina no longer fully in meltdown, Jair looked around to see where everyone had ended up at the moment. Lilin hung back by Meliarn''s entrance, watching, concerned. Eythron was examining the gateway with deep curiosity, probably trying to work out how to open it. This close to the dungeon entrance, the urge to step inside just for a bit and look around was almost unbearable. Jair was angry enough at Meliarn to ignore its pleas, however. So Raina, though she¡¯d been dead, had still been brought along both temporally and physically, but there was no sign of Uqiar. Jair frowned down at Maelstrom. "You really like making things complicated, don''t you? And Meliarn, you are going to get yourself killed one day if you keep this up, I swear.¡± His dungeon¡¯s only response was the urgent insistence that its highest priority was for him to kill Eythron immediately. And if he could just pop back inside as soon as that was done, all would be right with the world. "I''m not killing Eythron for you. If you keep pushing me on this I may let him kill you, though." Meliarn was unrepentant. It knew its enemy and it would not pay any attention to Jair''s lies. Well, fine, he''d known the thing would be a pain when he agreed to take it on. He''d just need to be a lot more forceful in his mental imaging in future and this shouldn''t happen again. ¡°Jai?¡± Lilin asked, looking around. ¡°Who are you talking to?¡± ¡°No one. Just Meliarn.¡± ¡°What¡¯s wrong with Raina? Is she going to be alright?¡± ¡°I hope so.¡± ¡°What now?¡± Jair considered the situation for a long moment before responding. ¡°I¡¯m going to need everyone to tell me the furthest forward thing they remember. Raina, I think I¡¯ve got enough, but just to verify, Solaria evening?¡± She nodded. ¡°Lilin?¡± ¡°Solaria evening. You came and got me, we went back to the volcano with Eythron and you grabbed Uqiar. Then we ended up back here.¡± ¡°Eythron?¡± The old man frowned and gestured back to Meliarn. ¡°We just finished here and reverted. This should be Solaria morning. Is it not?¡± ¡°So you don¡¯t remember the party?¡± ¡°That¡¯s where we¡¯re going next.¡± Jair sighed and thumped his head against the stone outcropping into which Meliarn''s entrance was built. "Of course it couldn''t be that easy. Maelstrom, what chaos have you concocted this time?" He thought back to the strain of the reversion, the way things had felt like they were slipping and shifting. Moving so many people so far back with Meliarn throwing its massive soul into the mix had been an unprecedented undertaking, and apparently one not to be pursued lightly. Maelstrom''s capabilities were very high and its power extreme, but everything had limitations. Apparently they¡¯d reached Maelstrom¡¯s storage cap. So it had prioritized Raina''s survival and memory preservation to the absolute highest degree, drawing enough power to keep her soul stable that whole time, long enough to be reverted safely. Lilin was clearly Jair''s next priority, though she was easy since she hadn¡¯t died and was physically present when reverting. Eythron, for as much as Jair respected the man, apparently didn''t rank highly enough in his list of people who needed his protection for Maelstrom to prioritize. So when Meliarn''s interference forced them to start dropping people prematurely, Eythron was the one to go. Probably Uqiar too, considering how little Jair was attached to him. He hadn''t even been brought along physically. Well. They could deal with it. Jair was used to things going wrong. After a while you just shrug and try something else. "You good to travel?" Jair asked, offering Raina his hand. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s get out of here.¡± Jair darkflamed them all back to the Serin estate in the oasis. They¡¯d landed at least a day or two before Solaria, maybe more, so the only person present was a single groundskeeper who looked up from watering the window boxes long enough to give them a curious glance before shrugging and getting back to it. Even in the oases, there was almost never any rain, so anything above ground level needed special care. But seeing the place brought something to mind. Before anything else¡­ ¡°Silverscale. Get out here.¡± Qahrvirna¡¯s assigned dragonling appeared in a flash of green fire, hunched in shame and not meeting Jair¡¯s eyes. ¡°I know it¡¯s not your fault.¡± Qahrvirna had, shockingly, managed to undercut even his lowest expectations for her behavior. It was one thing for her to go around seducing Sekir, that was practically expected. But actually joining him in murdering people was a new low. He couldn¡¯t talk to her right now. He was absolutely livid over what had happened. She¡¯d also been an ally and friend in enough timelines that he couldn¡¯t quite hold it against a version of her who hadn¡¯t done anything yet. But he wasn¡¯t about to let her do it again. What was she thinking? Was she thinking at all, or just exploring the moment? It was a pretty extreme departure, even for her. Then again, sorcerer. Even if Qahrvirna¡¯s soul was highly resilient, if Sekir could use his spells to subvert her mind, that sidestepped the issue entirely. Either way, it ended now. Her involvement had become a liability. ¡°Keep her in the mountain,¡± he ordered. ¡°Don¡¯t let her leave. If she tries, come to me.¡± The dragon nodded and flew off. "I still don''t believe she did that," Jair muttered. "What''d she do this time?" Eythron asked, not sounding interested in the least. "Seduction. Murder. The usual. But don''t go stabbing her just yet. We may still want her help sometime. Just need to be careful how we get it and ensure she''s not left unsupervised." "An ally who can''t be let loose unsupervised doesn''t sound like much of an ally at all." "Is Qahrvirna ever much of anything but herself?" Eythron only grunted in reply. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. "She''s proven herself capable of getting close to Sekir, so if we don¡¯t make any progress after a few tries, she may be our best chance at getting more information." "Getting it, yes. Sharing it?" Eythron snorted. "If it comes to that, we¡¯ll deal with it." Jair sighed. "You sure you don''t remember anything from Solaria?" "We haven''t lived it yet, boy." "Guess it''s a good thing we debriefed before reverting, then. We definitely did live it." If there was an upper limit on the amount of soul-data that Maelstrom could bring back, it had to be enormous. Ordinarily, Jair would never have had to worry. He''d reverted himself years at a time without a problem. But now he had Meliarn eating up a huge chunk of that, they were close enough to the limit that they''d have to be more strategic about ensuring they didn¡¯t lose any more information than necessary even in the worst case. ¡°So. What happened?¡± Eythron asked. ¡°What do we know?" Jair recounted the past several days. Eythron''s wisdom would be better utilized if he was back in the loop fully. Several times his mentor asked clarifying questions about the situation, trying to reconstruct the whole thing from what he''d told Jair, but the more they talked the more concerned Eythron''s expression grew. "What, what''s wrong?" "What was the description I gave you again? For the blademaster?" "Crimson sylvan elf, mismatched blue and purple eyes, wearing yellow battle robes and a gold chain around his throat. Had poisoned swords and twinblade abilities. Wore you down until you were forced to flee." Eythron''s brow furrowed more deeply still. "That''s very strange. I didn''t mention what specific twinblade lycin he was using? Autumn Storm, perhaps?" "No, you didn''t mention." "And he outfought me?" "Unless there''s another reason you didn''t tell me for why you were hiding in a cave just short of bleeding to death. I¡¯m sure you¡¯d never withhold important information out of pride or concern that it made you look bad." "While you had the sorcerer occupied elsewhere?" "Yes." That part, at least, wasn''t in question. "And there''s only one sorcerer?" Jair hesitated. "I''ve never seen another one in Sekir''s company, but I can''t guarantee there isn''t more than one. Especially not this early in the timeline. The blademaster is new to me as well." Sekir could have an entirely different network for his early campaign before Jair ever met him the previous times. ¡°If he had an ally that powerful, why would he not still be using it in the future?¡± ¡°He¡¯s always struck me as the sort of man who had to be fully in control. He doesn¡¯t have allies, he has subordinates or people he¡¯s fooled or coerced. This blademaster sounds like it would be uncomfortably close to an equal. I¡¯m sure Sekir found an excuse to get rid of him at the earliest opportunity once he¡¯d established a proper foothold in Veor and no longer needed his help.¡± Eythron frowned. ¡°That¡¯s wasteful.¡± ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s cold even for me, but that¡¯s the way he thinks. Anything that could be a threat to him has to be removed.¡± Lilin had been listening quietly, but now she spoke up. "But do we have to keep doing this?" She looked back at Raina, then at Jair. "If the guy has a private vendetta against you, can¡¯t we just leave? Come back later, if we must, when we''re stronger?" "We won''t be stronger. That''s the whole problem. Coming back in time resets everything. All you have is knowledge, and against Sekir that''s never going to be enough." "You''re avoiding the question, boy," Eythron grunted. "Is there a reason you can''t let it be?" "It''s¡ªSekir is the next thing on the list. The next disaster we need to prevent." "But do we really?" Eythron stared at him intently. "Do you need to prevent this disaster? You can¡¯t leave it up to anyone else?¡± ¡°They''ve never been able to deal with it in the past.¡± ¡°But this time you''ve cured the plague curse. The king is in his right mind. It¡¯s his job to deal with his own country''s problems." Jair scowled. "It feels wrong, turning it over to someone else. It¡¯s always been my responsibility. If I didn''t do it no one would." "This is a new world. You''ve changed things. Perhaps it''s time you take a step back and let the people you''ve rescued live their lives. And you go live yours." "This is my life. I''m..." Jair shook his head. Everything felt wrong. He looked at Raina, the haunted look in her eyes, the fear beneath her perpetual determination. He never wanted to have to be the cause of that kind of expression. Not to her. Not to anyone he¡¯d consider a friend or ally, but especially not to her. She was barely holding it together, but refused to let it show. What have I done? In trying to pull her up to his level, he dragged her down as well. Toward the heights of his power¡­ and the depths of his chaos. How much of that until he turned her into an empty echo? Never. Not if he had to throw himself into the volcano and never speak to her again. Not if he had to burn out his own soul. "What do you want?" Eythron asked. "Where do you want to go, who do you want to be? Not what you think you need to. What would make you happy?" Images came to mind immediately. "Training with you¡­" Months spent in the treacherous Oriad, fighting and becoming better acquainted. The weeks in Meliarn. "Talking with Raina¡­" Hours spent in the libraries. Days spent debating one thing or another. Arguing for days over which imprints to pursue. Sitting on the walltop as they waited for death. "...Lilin." Seeing her enjoying life for once, no longer restricted and fearful, no longer staring out at the world with resignation at her own powerlessness. "And,¡± Eythron asked into the silence, ¡°is killing Sekir one of those things?" Raina and her family and guests all butchered, purposelessly, gratuitously, just to get at him. The image would never leave him, he knew, however long he lived. Rage flooded him. ¡°Sekir is a monster,¡± he gritted. ¡°Sure, he may not have done any of it yet in this timeline, but he''s already proven he will do so. And would do so more than once. This wasn''t an exception, not a one-time thing he was pushed into, this was premeditated. Gleeful. He enjoyed setting up such a display. Destroying Sekir is not for my happiness. It is a necessity. He isn''t going to stop unless someone stops him, and no one else has the knowledge and tools necessary to do so." "So if I swear to kill him, you''ll let it go?" Jair''s head snapped around to Eythron. "You already know he and his allies can defeat you. What''s the point of engaging a hypothetical that''s never going to happen?" "Imagine for a moment that Sekir truly is the absolute monster you claim. That he''s going to do terrible things and sacrifice thousands of souls to the sea as collateral in his own ends. You think that isn''t a creature I could bring myself to destroy?" "Imagine he is? This is in doubt? You think he might not be?" "Peace, boy, I''m not calling you a liar." Jair took a breath, but peace was the last thing on his mind right now. "Then what are you saying? Explain yourself." "I am asking you how much this matters. If you care more about Sekir being removed, or in being the one to do the removing. If I commit my resources and knowledge to finding a way to deal with him, you think I can''t do it?" "Why wouldn''t you have done so before now if you could? Your knowledge and resources weren''t limited even if you physically couldn''t leave the Oriad. I''ve fought him a hundred times, I know what I''m talking about here. You''re not prepared to defeat him. There''s no way¡ª" Eythron''s sword was in his hand between one moment and the next, his voice low and cold as he rested its tip on Jair''s chest. "There''s always a way." "You wouldn''t." "That''s not the question. If I were to destroy him for you, would that be good enough, or do you have to do it yourself?" Lilin¡¯s question lingered in Jair¡¯s mind. Could they walk away? Raina hadn¡¯t spoken in the whole time they¡¯d been debriefing and discussing. She put on a good facade of strength and stability, but Jair knew better than most that dying horribly didn¡¯t just go away just because it had been reverted. It may have never ¡®happened¡¯, but to you it had. Jair wanted to rip Sekir''s manabody apart with his own hands. Banish his soul into Meliarn¡ªor, better yet, Mercurios¡ªand then watch. However long it took for his trapped and screaming soul to finally dissolve into nothing. Whatever Eythron''s morals about soulkilling were, Jair had no qualms about wreaking disproportionate retribution. If there even was such a thing. Sekir had gone to extraordinary lengths to antagonize him. Could any punishment come close to sufficient? But. But¡­ Raina was here. Confused, angry, hurt, afraid, and alive. If Jair went rushing off after Sekir himself, he''d either be dragging her deeper into this private war or leaving her alone when she needed him the most. Fists clenched, jaw tight, he gave a short nod. "Go ahead. All that matters is that he''s stopped." Eythron''s sword disappeared back into his soulspace and he regarded Jair searchingly. "You''re not as young as you look." "I am not." Eythron closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. "I will speak with this sorcerer." "Talk? I thought you said you¡¯d kill him." "Oddly enough, I¡¯m capable of doing both. They just require a certain order of operations." "And if he brings in his blademaster and kills you?" "I¡¯ll handle it. Now, where do we find him?" "We can check his underground repository first." Jair held out Maelstrom. "See which one he''s using at present." However, when they appeared in the underground chamber in a burst of green-black fire, there was no sign of life. Every slab was filled with its one restrained body, all lifeless. "All of them?¡± Jair turned in a slow circle. ¡°Weren''t there four or five missing last time? How fast does he go through the things? Four in two days?" If they were all here and non-animate, that meant Sekir definitely had more than just the one set of backup bodies. Jair had suspected as much, but this was clear confirmation. "Not what you were hoping to see?" "It puts us back to zero, basically," Jair said. ¡°There¡¯s a few hints I could investigate, but I doubt we¡¯ll be tracking him down easily.¡± ¡°Then leave it to me. If he¡¯s anything like you described, I know how to get his attention.¡±
115 - Mageblades Gamble Over the years, the distinction between basic classes, advanced classes, subclasses, and specialist classes have blurred beyond all recognition. Definitions vary from culture to culture, even dynasty to dynasty. To some a basic class is one that can be attained without assistance or following a calculated set of actions, but then most advanced classes are brought into question as well. After all, before a guidebook could be written, someone had to discover them in the first place.
Eythron waited patiently at his chosen location, a private stone pavilion in the middle of the closest thing to a park the city had to offer. Several tables with benches were set up in rows, testament to the pavilion¡¯s ordinary usage as a party venue. Today, Eythron was the only one present. Jair had gone off doing whatever Jair things he thought were necessary, probably taking his girlfriend shopping or something. At least he was able to do that much without fussing and worrying. Given how hard he worked to control everything around him, it was pleasant being the one thing the time traveler didn¡¯t try to micromanage. Not that Eythron would have cooperated if the kid had tried. Eythron spent the morning wandering through the markets and financial districts of the city, having casual conversations with everyone he met, and mentioned that if they happened to meet a sorcerer named Sekir he wanted to talk. Now, Eythron sat atop one of the tables, legs crossed and chest back, breathing calm and steady as he passively observed his surroundings. The curtains over the arched openings fluttered in a warm breeze. A spider¡¯s lurking was disturbed by the movement and she promptly set about repairing the damaged section. The hunger of Zoress tugged at him perpetually, an inner void that could not be satisfied. It was not incited to the extreme lengths it had been before Jair took on control of Meliarn, not unbearable, but still very noticeable. It pushed him to move, restless dissatisfaction without an outlet. Eythron breathed slow and sat unmoving. He was not a slave to his desires, and even less to those externally imposed. He expected to be at this for days, cycling from city to city until his path and Sekir¡¯s overlapped. It didn¡¯t even take three hours. The man who walked in was dark-haired and unexceptional in height and feature, could have been any random Veori citizen. He wore a grubby tan overrobe that marked him as a member of the working class, but he carried himself with the confidence of a king. "I understand you''ve been looking for me.¡± The man made a small bow, more an acknowledgement than any true mark of respect, smiling the whole time. ¡°It''s not often I''m called to a meeting so forwardly." "Eythron Zoress, Heir of Death. You Sekir?" "Indeed. Sekir Lifekeeper, Starslayer and Tidecaller. It is my utmost pleasure to meet you. I must ask, when you claim the name of Zoress, does that mean...?" Something in his tone was overly-familiar, almost possessive. "I lived within the dungeon for a time,¡± Eythron answered carefully. ¡°Its collapse, that was you?" ¡°You¡¯re the first to put that together.¡± Sekir¡¯s smile widened and he gave another acknowledging nod. "Indeed. Zoress was rather clumsily done, I had little experience at the time. I assure you, I can do much better now." "As can I." The two men regarded one another silently for a very long moment. Eythron didn¡¯t even know what he should be feeling. For so long he''d been searching. The sheer weight of coincidence necessary to force this meeting was unfathomable. Yet here they sat. Survivor and destroyer, face to face. Perhaps this was fate. Sekir''s eyes flickered faintly with purple light as he activated his soulspell. Eythron raised his sword. "No. Talk or fight, but keep your soul to yourself." ¡°Very well.¡± Sekir let the power fade. "What would you have us talk about, Heir of Zoress?" When he made no move to attack, Eythron lowered his sword. "Tidecaller. You took the upgrades for shattering Zoress and then destroyed the entire continent to conceal your passage." "That is a very crude way of putting things. Besides, I believe Zoraam survived many years after my departure." "You don''t try to deny your culpability in its fall." Sekir shrugged and took a seat on one of the benches, facing out opposite Eythron. He leaned back and sprawled an arm across the table behind him languidly. "Why should I? It''s not like you''re going to tell anyone. We both know there''s no way you''re leaving this place alive." "Then explain yourself, Tidecaller." Sekir laughed softly. "You want to know why I''m sinking continents? How I''m calling the mindless monsters to their feast?" "Yes." "Alas, those are answers I can share with no one. Not even the survivor of Zoress." Eythron lifted his sword to point at the sorcerer. "Then I can only conclude you are a monster yourself." Sekir laughed, maintaining his casual posture. "This from you? When you''re following the Phoenix Healer around? Do you have any idea what that man is capable of? He makes me look tame. I may break apart the land and open the path of the sea, but he is an emptiness deeper and hungrier than any seascourge. I am but a servant. If any who walks among us is a monster, it is Jair Welburne." "He may be an arrogant child but he holds no malice." "He is a soul-devouring monster." Sekir raised his hands. "Ask the seers if you doubt me. Ask why the future is fragmented and the fate of our world in chaos. Ask whose blade has split apart what is and what should be. You will find it is not me." "Convenient claim, when I''m not going to leave the room alive." Sekir waved a hand. "Oh, come now. There''s no need for us to be barbaric. I can prove it to you, if you¡¯ll allow me. If you will not permit my soulspell access, may I offer a memory?" Eythron frowned, but dismissed his sword back into his soulspace. "You imagine you can convince me to see your perspective as anything but monstrous and unacceptable? You''re welcome to try." The sorcerer held out one hand, the palm-imprint facing Eythron. The faint lines of light seemed to blur for a moment as they rearranged¡ªproof that the man was at least a two-layer caster if not more. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. It was always hard to tell with humans when ''arch-something'' meant the actual technical status and when it meant anyone they perceived as very good at a thing. Eythron was a four-layer mage himself, which was substantially above the curve for mortal races. He might be able to reach five or six if he dedicated himself to it, but even that was questionable. He was more likely to seriously damage himself in the attempt than he was to survive all the way to High Mage, let alone true Archmage. But full elves were not limited by the same restrictions as he. They could spend decades making a single division, ensure it was flawless, and then do it again. They would win by sheer weight of time, even if moving far slower. The spell imprint on Sekir''s palm clarified, then began to glow white. Eythron slid down from his tabletop and slowly approached. Once they were within range, he reached out with one hand. Sekir leaned forward to meet him and the spell flowed violently into him, direct contact transmitting it from manabody to manabody like an electric current. The hardest part of sorcery was ensuring that the translation between caster and target was comprehensible. It was all too easy to begin a spell only to wind up transmitting pure nonsense. Like trying to harmonize with another singer you couldn''t hear. Very easy to do incorrectly and wind up sounding like a fool instead. Or missing the mark just enough to create dissonance. Sekir was an artisan. His spell asked and answered in tiny questing images, first static, then a vague impression of a field under a blank sky, then more complicated and detailed as it adjusted itself in seconds to match Eythron''s own frequencies. He found himself impressed despite himself. He¡¯d already known the man was good but this was a whole other level. Sekir wasn¡¯t just a true arch-sorcerer, but probably a specialist as well. Mere moments later, he received the invitation to the memory, a gentle layer that tried to insert itself between his manabody and mind. He didn''t resist. Though it would leave his body physically vulnerable he didn''t care. Information was more important. And then he was someone else. Sekir stared at the fragmented mirror, forged of the purest metrochite and backed in soulsilver. It had been a magical wonder, part of the world''s heritage of the power of creation. The Crystal Eye. The only known augment for seers that allowed access to other timelines beside the current one. For generations it was used to guide possibility through dangerous paths to the outcomes best suited to Suthyrel¡¯s empresses and emperors. More than simply a national treasure, the Eye also lured the greatest seers and scholars, curious students and magical tourists. It had made Suthyrel''s capital one of the richest and most prosperous on the planet. And now it had shattered. Sekir knelt down and stared into the fractured pieces, each one stuck in a different image of a future that may never be. Every one contained the image of a sword. Not the same sword, not at first glance, but the core shape of it remained similar though the colors and patterns changed. A sword through the heart of the Empress. A sword through the skull of a frost dragon. A mirror dragon. Star hydra. Brobeg. Vampires. The sword through the screaming outline of a fleeing soul. Sekir stared closer at that one, breath catching. His fleeing soul. That one was repeated in five different fragments, five different swords in five different futures. There were more. The sword demolishing a mountain in a single strike. The sword shattering Zelura. The sword a looming shadow against the sun in an image that should have been beautiful but instead evoked nameless dread. The sword on fire, crimson light reflecting from the cold eyes of its wielder as the man waded through an army dispassionately, leaving death and ashes in his wake. The sword transparent ice, driven through the core of a dungeon, snow falling from far above. A hundred more. A thousand. Scene after scene of destruction and madness. "Who is he?" Sekir asked, his gaze drawn back once again to the image of the man wreathed in golden fire as he hovered above a city-shaped crater. His features weren''t distinctive, the image distorted oddly as all captured visions tended to be. "When is this?" "We don''t know. No one in our histories. As for when..." the man pointed to the upper left corner, then ran his hand down and around from there. "This is the soonest." Upper right corner. "The farthest." Sekir scanned through the fragments again with that in mind, and found a disturbing trend to them. "The farther forward, the more destruction." "Yes." The earliest images were merely single people, monsters, and sometimes just the sword on its own. The farther on in the timeline the visions went, the bigger and worse the attacks became. Shattering Zelura wasn''t even the final one. There were two more after it. The first was hard to comprehend, the sword driven into a cracked and broken mesh, odd shapes spread out across a backdrop of blue. The scale was off. But he finally recognized it as a view of Neptus as seen from the moons, somehow moved close enough to see only the planet and not the space beyond. "That''s... the whole planet?" "That is our guess, yes." "And he just... breaks it?" It made Sekir''s acts of destruction look downright tame. What was sinking a continent here or there compared to shattering every landmass in the world at once? Then he turned to the final image. What could be worse than¡ª The memory blurred, thought and perception going hazy as Sekir obscured whatever happened next. Eythron reflexively tried to refocus, but the memory shifted and faded. Now. In that moment of dissonance, he struck out with his off-hand, soulsword appearing even as he moved. His eyes were closed¡ªvision would have been useless even if his senses weren''t completely overwritten by the Sekir-memory version¡ªbut he knew how to move without his body''s feedback. He was training to take on the kind of creature that attacked the soul, a simple disconnect between perception and movement was nothing. The vision was collapsing around him, sound distorting and fading. "I never thought I''d say this, but you''re the lesser danger." Eythron couldn''t tell who was speaking, not even whether it was male or female. "At least your destruction will be slow enough to escape. If we must¡ª" Then he was back in the room, his own body, and Sekir''s lifeless body slid from his sword to land in a pile at his feet. "You''re wrong," he told the dead sorcerer. "The boy is a lot of things, but a mass destroyer isn''t one of them. You''re going to need a better argument than some nebulous prophecy from a broken mirror to turn us against each other." Sekir coughed and groaned, pressing one hand across the hole in his chest. "He will destroy you too. If you keep protecting him, you''re only ensuring your own destruction." "Then I will be destroyed. No one lives forever, not even immortals." Eythron drove his sword through Sekir''s eyes one after the other. "Leave us alone. I know the taste of your soul now. If you think Jair is dangerous, you''ve been worrying about the wrong person." Sekir laughed wetly, voice gurgling through the blood as he coughed. "If you were going to kill me, you would have already. You''re not sure who to believe. You know I''m right. He''s dangerous. That sword of his is an abomination." Eythron snorted. "That sword is the least of your worries. I''m giving you one chance. Leave him alone. Don''t touch his friends or family. This is your chance to prove you''re not a monster. Otherwise, I will hunt you without mercy." Sekir tried to speak again, but even his power could only go so far. His body was dead, his spirit fled, and the mutilated corpse fell still for good. Eythron flicked the blood off his sword and dismissed it back to his soul, knelt to check the body for any valuables, then walked away with his hands in his pockets. If Sekir thought he¡¯d catch Eythron off guard easily just because he¡¯d been outfought in a previous timeline, he was deeply mistaken. Even if he had a swordmaster ally, a sorcerer was still a sorcerer. And a mageblade was still a mageblade. Spellshields were all well and good for mundane weaponry, but a soulsword was another matter entirely. Meeting a mageblade alone as a pure spellcaster was enough of a mistake without compounding it by getting within touch range. It wouldn¡¯t be this easy next time, but that didn¡¯t matter. An advantage was to be used, not hoarded indefinitely. And he had the feeling his message had been received quite clearly. Eythron opened the door and came abruptly face to face with the crimson elf blademaster, eyes alight, twin blades already moving. ¡°Overconfidence,¡± he grumbled, as he barely blocked one of the blades and the second slid into his thigh despite his attempts to twist away. He was in an assessment layer at the moment, and switching mid-combat was always challenging. He leaped back and began the process anyway, as he prepared to fight for his life. He could only hope to drag this out long enough to think of something out of the box. Ordinarily, a twinblade would be no real danger to him, but knowing he''d already lost to the man once meant he needed to take this absolutely seriously. Sekir may not be the only one who''d made a fatal mistake here.
116 - Together Some of the oldest records put a third deity alongside Aelir and Dovak. Where the capricious trickster of the Above and the stalwart protector of the Below are well known throughout myth, legend, and history, this third is almost never mentioned except by name. Vamisel.
After returning everyone to the Astralla City townhouse, Eythron went off to his scheming while Jair went upstairs to sit with Raina. She was still trying to recover from the ordeal of remembering being killed, and Jair didn''t know of any way to make that less horrifying. Whether she¡¯d be able to block it out or integrate it and adapt, he didn¡¯t know. All he knew was he didn¡¯t want her to face it alone. ¡°I¡¯ll be right here. Speak up if I can help with anything.¡± ¡°All right. Thank you.¡± Her lifeless reply made him feel there should have been something more he could do. They may have forestalled the issue at Meliarn, but now she was back in a secure environment, it couldn¡¯t be put off forever. The temptation to find a way to exclude her from the time travel just a little so she could go back on this one thing rose ever stronger. But that had to be her decision. He¡¯d promised himself not to steal her future and that meant not forcing his idea of protection on her either. As he sat quietly meditating, he slipped into his soulmap. It was a tangled mess of a thing by now. Pieces replaced by Maelstrom, other pieces replaced by Meliarn, sections torn apart by Mercurios, and the connections that Jair had been reshaping on his own time. That was going to be a lifelong project, at this point. Carefully adjusting and reinforcing each section wasn¡¯t something to be rushed through. Souls, particularly old and scarred ones like Jair¡¯s, didn¡¯t change easily. Without the damage Mercurios had done, he wasn¡¯t sure if even these improvements would have been possible. Anything changing the soul took a lot of time and effort, and the deeper the areas the harder to change. The central region was entirely formed of Maelstrom. But things had been changing since the last time he checked. Threads and lines trailed off out of reach, fading from his perception as they left the realm of his own soul. The line to Raina was strong and interwoven through multiple different sections, and instantly recognizable. It was unlike any of the others. Strong and thick and purest black, putting Darkflame to shame for how dark it was. Jair could poke it or tug on it, but he couldn''t directly change it. He tried moving it a little and it didn''t budge. As though that black void thread was the anchorpoint around which the rest of his soul was connected. "Yeah, definitely nothing weird going on here," he muttered. He couldn''t stop wondering what was going on with Tempest. Maelstrom was one thing. He''d reforged and ascended it with the most powerful ingredients available across the planet and all three moons. But Tempest had been nothing but an ordinary soulsword, not even held for a full year yet. Not even reforged, and it was already soulbound and had its first ability. And a terrifyingly powerful one at that. To anyone but Jair, Temporal Rebirth would be a game-changer among game-changers. To him, it was the reassurance that he wasn''t alone. Not now. Not ever again. And neither would she. So he released the soulmap and scooted up on the bed, then leaned over to rest his shoulder against Raina''s. They just sat there. She didn''t speak, and neither did he. No words were necessary. Simply staying in one another''s presence. And when she casually slipped her hand over to claim his, he threaded his fingers through hers without looking. They just fit. Like they''d always been meant to. Then she made a small sound and leaned against him, shaking silently. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said softly. ¡°This is my fault.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t.¡± She exhaled heavily and rubbed at her eyes. ¡°None of this is your fault. I knew the risk, you gave me every chance to change the plan or stay back. I¡­¡± She shook her head, voice low. ¡°I¡¯m trying to understand. It¡¯s hard. I still want to.¡± ¡°If you want to talk through any of it, I¡¯m here. If you¡¯d rather not, you don¡¯t have to.¡± ¡°I died.¡± Raina swallowed and closed her eyes, one hand gripping Tempest¡¯s hilt. ¡°It was so empty. I couldn¡¯t¡­ there was nothing I could do.¡± ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have to remember that.¡± He¡¯d died enough times to be used to it by now, to the point where it wasn¡¯t much of a consideration. Even trying to think back to his earliest memories within the loop, he couldn¡¯t quite recall anything specific about his deaths. Raina¡¯s, he recalled in vivid clarity, but his own were more of a formality. ¡°I couldn¡¯t see anything,¡± she said low, haltingly. ¡°Endless emptiness, slowly turning to ice. I didn¡¯t know what was happening. Only that I¡¯d failed. All the different choices I could have made and instead I led everything straight into disaster.¡± ¡°No. This wasn¡¯t your fault either. You haven¡¯t failed. We can¡¯t fail. We¡¯ll get it right, protect everyone you lost. And you won¡¯t have to wait in that emptiness again. I won¡¯t leave you behind. As long as we¡¯re together, I can always revert before it gets that far. I can ¡± ¡°You can be my constant temporal bodyguard, make sure I never have to experience that again.¡± Raina looked at the floor with a sudden surge of guilt through her features. ¡°I will.¡± Jair could guess what she was feeling guilty about, too¡ªRaina was too kind, like that¡ªso he continued, ¡°And no, you are not a burden.¡± ¡°What is this, then, except for being a burden? You fight hard enough battles already, but now you¡¯ll have to constantly look out for me, ready to protect me or loop back, just to keep me feeling ¡®safe¡¯, just because I couldn¡¯t bear something you¡¯ve already faced so many times¡­Is it always like that? Every time you¡­?¡± If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°Never. Maelstrom was holding your soul, not letting it dissipate, but that¡¯s not how it is for me and won¡¯t be like that in the true end. I can¡¯t promise I know what comes after, or if there is any after, but I do know it isn¡¯t that.¡± ¡°Still. There¡¯s no way I¡¯m really worth that much. To throw away everything else you could do just to guard me? It doesn¡¯t make sense. It¡¯s one thing when I¡¯m being hunted by a dragon, that¡¯s specific and directly damaging to everyone around me, but you¡¯re talking about just following me forever? Don¡¯t you have more important things to do than waste your time on me? Shouldn¡¯t you be¡ª¡± ¡°Rai,¡± Jair interrupted sternly. ¡°You keep me sane. You¡¯ve kept me sane, just with your existence, and now, you¡¯re keeping me alive. Hopeful. Human. You¡¯re one of the very few things stopping me from losing myself, or just giving up. It would be so easy to slide into apathy or destruction, to disregard everything and everyone as meaningless shadows. You¡¯re one of the very few people who¡¯s willing to suffer for me, someone I trust. How dare you. How dare you call yourself a burden?¡± Raina opened her mouth before closing it again, bewildered. ¡°You are a blessing to me, Rai. Only and always.¡± The sheer emotion in his words must have gotten through to her, since her ears and neck turned a lovely shade of red. ¡°Still¡­¡± ¡°Say the situation was flipped,¡± Jair asked, ¡°You wouldn¡¯t do this for me?¡± Raina, once more, opened her mouth, clearly ready to say something like, ¡®but that¡¯s different!¡¯ before she closed her mouth and nodded. ¡°...I would.¡± ¡°And you¡¯d have thought of it as a burden?¡± ¡°...no.¡± ¡°And neither will I. Not for a single moment.¡± She nodded and didn¡¯t speak again for a long time. Finally she swallowed and looked up at him. ¡°It feels like none of this is real. Like I¡¯m trying to pretend I believe in a phantom version of the world because I can¡¯t accept the truth.¡± She raised her free hand and turned it over and back again, then let it fall to her side. ¡°Is this even me any more?¡± Jair didn¡¯t know what to say to that. It echoed too much of what he experienced almost constantly. He chose his words carefully after a few seconds of mulling over them. ¡°I¡¯ve faced something like this myself. After a while of starting over again and again, events happening and then not, remembering things no one else did¡­ yeah. Nothing feels real. This moment probably will be undone. But that doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s pointless or meaningless.¡± Raina blinked at him uncertainly. ¡°The way you feel now, the confusion and pain, does it matter that the event that caused it was undone? That it never happened and will not happen again? We are phantoms threading our way among echoes. The only future that will be is the one that we choose. But the path is just as important. This moment changes me, changes you, even if it makes no impact to anyone else. Even if it never happens or will have happened again.¡± ¡°But what¡¯s the point, if everything feels so¡­ hollow, so empty?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s something I can answer. For me, the point is you. Lilin. The people my original self was incapable of protecting, who I couldn¡¯t save. Seeing you live your own lives, decide your own futures, rather than having them cut short or dictated by others. That¡¯s what matters most to me, more than saving Veor or stopping Sekir or any of the rest of it. If you want us to leave it all behind, I will.¡± Raina didn¡¯t reply immediately. They simply sat there for a few seconds, the silence not quite comforting, but not painful either. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I know what matters to me,¡± she said eventually. ¡°I¡¯ve always been training to take on my family¡¯s responsibilities, but now that all feels so far away. With dragons and sorcerers and the fate of whole continents¡­ I don¡¯t know if I can go back to managing my house¡¯s finances and arranging shipping and maintaining storage inventories.I don¡¯t know if I can be satisfied with showing off in occasional tournaments.¡± ¡°Life changes us all.¡± Jair held up her hand, still interlaced with his. ¡°Just because this timeline might not be real in the end, does that make it any less real right now? For you, for me? We have the opportunity to change anything and everything, however we desire. And if that means spending a few years away from it all while you sort out who you want to be, all you need to do is ask.¡± ¡°It feels wrong.¡± She blushed and looked away. ¡°You have all these grand timelines and important friends and massive disasters to prevent. To bring up my petty emotional confusion feels so selfish.¡± ¡°Then be more selfish. Eythron¡¯s right, it doesn¡¯t have to be my job to fix everything for everyone else. You and Lilin are the ones I¡¯ve chosen to commit myself to. I¡¯ve solved the plague, destroyed the curse, saved the king. That¡¯s more than enough.¡± ¡°What about Sekir?¡± Jair shook his head. ¡°All of this, it was only escalation and retaliation. It never happened in previous timelines.¡± Mainly because Raina hadn¡¯t been alive, so everyone had taken Jair¡¯s existence out on his immediate family instead, but that wasn¡¯t relevant at the moment. ¡°Whatever Sekir¡¯s actual plan was, I disrupted it, so he went overblown vengeance to get back at me. All we need to do is go far away and he won¡¯t have a target to take it out on. I¡¯ve been fighting him almost out of habit more than anything.¡± A few seconds passed, the silence present comfortable enough that neither of them spoke. ¡°We can¡­¡± Raina laughed softly and shook her head. He could see the corners of her mouth rising. She cozied herself up against his shoulder once more, and Jair kept his arm steady around her, trying to express that he was there, that she wasn¡¯t alone, that he would never let her be alone, not while he was still breathing. ¡°I think I know why you¡¯re all heroic. This much power is overwhelming.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be.¡± ¡°But¡­¡± she waved a hand at the city around them. ¡°How am I supposed to justify walking away? Condemning all of Veor to destruction because I didn¡¯t want to have to deal with it?¡± ¡°There is no way to fix everything. To prevent one disaster is to allow another. Being in one place means being absent everywhere else. If we save Veor now and Celsin in four years, Almas will remain as it has been and magic will remain strong. If we allow them to fall, Almas will be reshaped and an era die out, but life will go on.¡± He hesitated, but had to make the offer. ¡°If it¡¯s too much, if you want to go back to your family and normal life, I will find a way to release you from this. Maelstrom has bound your soul without your knowledge or consent. You don¡¯t need to feel obligated to continue deeper into this madness.¡± The very thought of her forgetting every single time, not knowing, being alone once again stung, stung so immensely, but Jair was used to being stung. He didn¡¯t struggle this hard and fight this long only to crumple in the end. This fabulous woman in front of him¡­ She deserved so much better. Nothing in any world would convince him to let her experience such torment when she did not want to. He would not force her to follow his path, however easy it would be. He wasn¡¯t expecting the lightness in her voice when she replied. ¡°Silly. Of course it had my permission.¡± She wiped her face and squared her posture. ¡°I didn¡¯t understand what it would mean at the time, but I would have given almost anything to be able to stay in the loop with you. And that doesn¡¯t change now that I know more. I want to help. I want to save Almas and protect the magic of Celsin with you.¡± Jair shook his head, overwhelmed. ¡°Every time I think I¡¯ve figured you out, you manage to surprise me.¡± ¡°The only thing worse than living with myself and the knowledge that I chose to run away and leave you to fight this war alone would be not even knowing it¡¯s happening,¡± she said firmly. ¡°You always promised we would travel and have adventures. You¡¯re not planning to go back on your word, are you?¡± ¡°I never would.¡± She scooted around to face him more fully and leaned closer, a mischievous smile on her face. ¡°Then you have only yourself to blame for this.¡± He couldn¡¯t say he didn¡¯t enjoy it.
117 - Recourse There is no such thing as a safe river. If anyone tells you there is, they''re trying to get you killed. No dam is sufficient, no block permanent enough. By the time you think to barricade the stream, it''s already too late.
Eythron slammed the door open and staggered into the dining room. One hand grasped at the doorframe and he still would have fallen if not for his sword driving a gouge into the Serin¡¯s wood floor to provide more support. Jair jumped up, dropping his bowl in his rush. "Master! What happened?" ¡°It was him.¡± He didn¡¯t look quite as bad as the time he¡¯d been hiding in the previous timeline, but only barely. His clothing was torn to shreds and five of his seven imprints were glowing as he struggled to keep himself mobile. Jair ran to him, summoned Maelstrom before remembering Eythron was immune to Darkflame. He helped the old man to a seat, but that was all he could think of. He could revert them, but that would leave several others out of the loop. What else could he do? "Relax, boy, I''ve survived worse. Sekir is a very dangerous man." "I know that." Eythron shook his head and grabbed Jair''s forearm. "More dangerous than you know. The swordsman is¡ª" "My lords!" Molash burst into the room, then bowed and held out a bottle. "Here is a¡ª" Eythron lunged forward so fast his chair toppled over and bounced. He swung his sword across the unfortunate young man''s chest in a deep diagonal slash that cut through ribs and left Molash¡¯s stomach torn open. The bottle fell from Molash''s hands and shattered on the floor as he collapsed to his knees. "I see," he said, any note of subservience gone. "You''re right. I shouldn''t have underestimated you." Then flopped over lifeless. "W-what?" Jair looked between the abruptly-deceased servant and severely-injured Eythron. "Sekir." Eythron casually jabbed his sword a few more places on Molash''s body to ensure it was thoroughly ruined, groaned, and leaned on his sword again. "He''s been attacking me nonstop. I barely made it here. None of them is strong enough to really threaten me, but even I have limits, and he is not weak." Eythron coughed and grunted, pressing a hand to his leg where a large patch of blood spread. "I have seven more descriptions for you, if you want them." "Seven? But the..." Jair closed his eyes. "That doesn''t fit the timeline." "Then the timeline is wrong." "You''re saying Sekir was pretending to be returning for hours while he was running around killing people?" "Yes." Jair thought back. "He was only moving periodically," he said at last. "So you could be right. But that implies his speed of switching is... near-instant. How? That''s not... you can''t just jump from body to body like that." "Or, perhaps, you''re wrong." Eythron pointed to the dead body on the floor, then winced and sank to his knees. "You can if it''s your own bodies. There''s a similarity to them that''s clearly intentional. The more similar, the faster the transition." "So Molash has been an impostor from the start." Jair looked down at him with a frown. "How did he even get in here, wasn''t he hired specifically for the oasis event?" He''d gotten so used to the man being around that he''d almost not noticed the discrepancy. "Yes." "That''s... not unexpected, after what you found in the previous loop, but still." He was used to Sekir being far more subtle. If he had such an effective inroad to the Serin group, shouldn¡¯t he have maintained that secrecy rather than try a doomed attack on Eythron? Jair glanced back to where Raina sat. She met his eyes and smiled before quickly looking away. He lowered his voice as he addressed Eythron. "Is there any reason to stay here?" "Stay where, this city?" "Here." Jair waved a hand broadly across the red-tinted windows facing out to the skyline, "Veor. You''ve killed Sekir seven times, that only means he''s going to get meaner and more aggressive. Why stay in his territory? If he¡¯s so bent on revenge, then let him come to us. It buys us time and lets us prepare our battlefield." "And if he stays behind and sinks Veor anyway? You can forgive yourself?" Jair only shrugged. "Then we''ll come back and try something else."
As Sekir Lifekeeper shifted into a new body for the eighth time in less than an hour, he couldn''t help but grin at the sheer fury that burned through him. His usual games were exhilarating, but this¡­ this was something else entirely. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. He was used to being outplayed once, maybe twice, usually early on in an infiltration or overture. He was inevitably going to slip up, neglect some mannerism or misconstrue some custom that was so obvious no one even thought about it until it was too late. But this was something else altogether. Eythron had been hard to beat the first time. It had basically come down to throwing himself at him over and over with every resource he had available. But now he was forewarned, he''d taken it to a whole new level. And here in the city, Sekir didn''t have nearly so many options to draw on. He could hunt the man with brief glimpses through others'' eyes but that wasn''t enough to stop him. Even as he ran from his tertiary backup location to give one last try at putting the mageblade down, he was torn between cursing and exulting. Two different nemeses, in the same town at the same time? For so long he''d gone uncontested. To find not one but two who could even come close to matching him... It was forcing him to move at speeds he''d rarely ever even tried. He''d thought he was moving fast the first time, but trying to keep up with both Welburne and Eythron was a whole new level of challenging. But even as he rejoiced in the chance to push beyond his normal limits, he chafed at the limitations represented by the duo. And the more they killed him, the more he wanted to destroy them. If he could kill them, if they were careless enough to let him kill them, he would, but it would be so much more satisfying to break them first. Interfering with Veor right when he was getting started was perhaps forgivable, but threatening him to his face could not be allowed. Sekir was not a mere mortal to be treated as beneath them. He would force them to acknowledge his superiority and grovel at his feet before this was over. All his previous plans would have to be discarded, of course. He couldn''t guess how many times they''d already played them out without him. They would all be thoroughly predictable by now, surely. It was a shame he didn''t get the chance to see how that went. He''d put a lot of preparation into some of them. But while part of his mind was occupied with recalculating his plans for the future, behind it all the nagging thread of doubt assailed him. There was no reason at all to assume the Phoenix Healer was also the prophesized Consumer of All... except that sword he carried. When he''d first concocted the plan it had been merely one step in a thousand, one more way to drive a wedge between Welburne and his support system, tear them away one by one. What better way than to convince his own beloved mentor that he was a monster and set them at each other''s throats? But Eythron had rejected the vision and denied it, and that should have been that. His gambit failed, move on to the twenty others behind. Yet Sekir couldn''t get the image of his own memory out of his head. The faceless unknown, the blade unknowable, a thousand fragmented futures all driving toward doom. A world empty and dead, only one living creature remaining. No. That was his destiny. No one else''s. Sekir would be the one to purge the world and stand as sole lord of its rebirth. And if that meant he needed to break Welburne''s soul apart to get the sword out of it, then so be it. He slowed to a walk as he approached the street where the Serin townhouse was located. By now it would be too late to stop him. He''d gotten lucky once, keeping Eythron from having the chance to spill his secrets, but now that stage of the game was over. No more hiding what he could do, no more getting away with eight things in the background because they were busy staring at the one in front of their face. From now on, his every move would be scrutinized with the utmost attention. The moment he made a move, the mageblade would be there to cut off that body, and while he had hundreds he did have limits. Couldn''t throw them all away too carelessly. He walked past the house without turning to look, without slowing. Perhaps it would be better to withdraw for now. He needed more resources and better, more capable forms if he was going to take these two head on. A smile played at his lips. Perhaps they''d even believe he''d given up. Taken their warning at face value and disappeared. Sooner or later, they''d lower their guard. Someday they wouldn''t be quite so quick, and that would be his moment. He briefly fantasized about wrenching the soulsword from the old man and carving the Phoenix Healer to pieces with it, but breaking the binding on a weapon was not something easily done. Especially against the owner''s wishes. Even if Sekir had the ability to capture Eythron and have his way with him, the old mageblade would be far too dangerous a prisoner to play around with. The old man was a physical threat, Welburne an informational one. Even more briefly, he considered finding a way to break Welburne in front of the old man, but from everything he''d seen Eythron didn''t truly care for the boy anywhere near as much as Welburne cared for him. Their relationship was remarkably skewed. Then again, it seemed any relationship with Welburne involved was skewed. He threw his whole heart into these people with such reckless ease, it made Sekir grudgingly impressed by his resilience. But no resilience stayed unbroken forever. Welburne''s already had its first cracks. All he needed to do was widen them. Bit by bit, until he was nothing but a broken puppet waiting for the fire. Sekir made his way to a private storage house he maintained in the city and returned his body to its inactivity. One more thing to take care of, then he could see about preparing for the long haul.
"So, Ajriol¡­ How would you feel about celebrating Solaria in Orard?" "Why Orard?" Ajriol closed his eyes. ¡°Do I want to know?¡± "It''s where I can keep an eye on things directly. But if you''d rather go elsewhere, there''s a lot of places you could choose if you prefer." "I worry that Cousin Darsus will see this as confirmation that he is being favored in the succession and begin taking liberties." "That won''t be a problem. I can put him in his place easily enough. In fact, I can frame the entire thing as my fault if you like. That way it won''t reflect on you at all. Only, how attached are you to your oasis estate?" "Wait, what?"
118 - Adjustments Zeluran flora is notoriously hardy as it has to tolerate the rapid variation between eternal twilight and the harsh sunlight. Harvesting darkgrass or voidvine is nearly as much of a challenge as surviving the local monsters to reach them.
Darsus Serin read the missive yet again. But as his fingers tracing the knotwork on its miniature spool, its contents only reinforced the dread that had been building ever since he read it the first time. One day before Solaria. One. Day. They couldn''t have waited to throw such chaotic news until after? Or brought it up sooner so there could be proper adaptation to it? No, just ''oh, we need to change venues, do you have a place free.'' Who did they think he was? A free hotel? He stomped right down to the city gate and made enough of a fuss that they brought him a sandskimmer with a driver, though the man was very disrespectful and demanded far too much in tips, but Darsus had more important things to do. He wasn''t going to take some nebulous ''the venue has to change'' as sufficient evidence. He absolutely had to see this place for himself. Whatever had happened to make it so unsuitable? He¡¯d toured the place back a few weeks ago when he first arrived, and it seemed perfectly quaint. A bit behind the times, but nothing wrong with classical architecture. Not everyone could have their buildings reshaped every year, he wouldn¡¯t hold it against his patriarch. Even if it did speak of a rather unambitious mindset which would be better off corrected before¡ª Then he arrived in sight of the oasis and knew immediately that something was amiss. The skyline should have been broken by low buildings, but instead it was flat and featureless. Only the faint haze of blue and sparks of drifting mana indicated they¡¯d arrived. "This is the right place, yes? Serin Court, Veshin Oasis?" he shouted to the driver over the wind. "I know my sands," the man replied, waving a hand toward the sun. "That way is east, you need a differential of thirteen if you want to get to Serin." Then he pointed to the steering gear, which was set on thirteen. "Thirteen." Darsus growled. "Then something has gone wrong with your device. There should be buildings here." "There aren''t. Not since yesterday." Darsus¡¯ ear for gossip perked up immediately. "What''s that? You know something about this?" The driver yawned and rested a hand on the steering gear to hold it in place, the other hand toyed with the sail cable. "Sure do. What''s in it for me if I tell you? It''s mighty dry out here to be yakking on about news, you know." Darsus searched his soulspace for anything and found only a single bottle of his personal vintage. Soulspace pressure tended to increase the degradation of quality in anything perishable, but that also made it an interesting option for fermentation projects. It wasn''t quite like any other process that could be replicated outside, and since every soul was different that only made the outcomes even more unpredictable. "Here." He held out the bottle. The driver took it and sniffed suspiciously. "Strange beverage, this is." "It''s my last one,¡± Darsus admitted, a hint of pride in his tone. ¡°Won''t find anything like it anywhere else." The man licked the mouth of the bottle, smacked his lips contemplatively, then took a hearty gulp. Then he violently choked and spewed it out in a spray. The bottle shattered against the sandskimmer''s floor. "What is this, saltwater tea? Vile stuff." Darsus stared forlornly at the uneven puddle seeping into the wood of the skimmer. "It was my last bottle." "I did you a favor getting rid of it before you poison yourself. Now, since I was too subtle about it before, how much will you pay for the information you want?" Darsus shrugged and shoved his coin purse at the man. "I don''t care. Just tell me." "Dragons.¡± Darsus blinked. ¡°Uh¡­?¡± The man grinned and nodded, clearly enjoying Darsus¡¯ bafflement. ¡°Yep. Dragons. Five of ''em. They descended on the place yesterday afternoon.¡± ¡°But¡­ why?¡± ¡°Why do dragons do anything?¡± He patted his beard and nodded wisely. ¡°Broke up the buildings and started carrying off pieces of ''em. By evening there was only a few bits left, and this morning the place is bare.¡± Darsus turned back to stare at the blank horizon. The man tilted his chin to indicate the region. ¡°You can see for yourself." ¡°I¡ªI¡¯ll do that, then.¡± Darsus dismounted the vehicle unsteadily and spent the next half hour searching the area for any sign of the Serin compound that used to be here. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. No sign of it. Even the foundations were gone, only loose sand left in their place. What by Aelir¡¯s name is going on here? Whatever it was, he suddenly didn¡¯t want to be involved. Going back home to Orard sounded like an infinitely preferable option. He spent much of the return trip to the city glancing fearfully over his shoulder for the sight of wings. Several times he asked the driver if he¡¯d heard a roar, to the man¡¯s amusement. ¡°Dragons don¡¯t come back, they take what they wanted and move on. Y¡¯ don¡¯t need to be worried.¡± But that was anything but reassuring. The longer he thought about it all, the less any of it made sense and the more desperately he wanted to just have nothing to do with it. When Ajriol came out to greet him as he mounted the steps to the guesthouse, Darsus could only nod weakly. "I believe you are correct. My estates would be a more suitable venue, indeed, Lord Cousin. Let us make preparations and depart as soon as possible." "Thank you for your generosity, Cousin Darsus." Ajriol inclined his head. "You''re quite right that we must leave immediately. Will you be prepared to set out in the next hour?" "I will be." He wasn''t sure he wanted to stay here even that long. First the heiress being kidnapped by a matriarch, and now the estate in the oasis being carried away by other dragons? Clearly Serin had some enemies going on here that Darsus wanted nothing to do with. The sooner they could get to a different continent entirely, the better as far as he was concerned. So what if it meant he''d be scrambling to throw together an event in mere hours instead of sitting back and relaxing? He''d take an event-planning nightmare over a trip to a dragon''s stomach any day. His mind was already running through the menu and layouts, the ways he''d need to rearrange the tables, how his wife would fret over the mis-matched covers... but he could also use two different styles of place setting, make it look intentional. Perhaps add a third style so it wouldn¡¯t look uneven. Nothing to worry about. He could make this happen. Anything would be better than staying in Veor.
It was late when Sekir finally emerged from his concentration trance, invigorated and confident. After a bath and oversized dinner, the first thing he did was go to check on his various primary and secondary targets. Unfortunately, that was as far as the plan went as hoped. "What do you mean, he''s not here?" "Lord Serin has decided to move the seat of the family to Orard for the indefinite future. The Astralla townhouse will be auctioned and their oasis shares sublet. The guesthouse is available for renting if you¡¯re interested." Sekir stared at the man, the sole member of the Serin household present. "You... he what?" "Orard, sir. There was a rather abrupt vote last evening and he and the cousins have gone to prepare for Solaria." "That''s tomorrow." "I am aware, sir." Sekir was tempted to kill him on the spot. The false respect, politeness with nothing beneath, infuriated him as little else could. Or perhaps it was the fact that his adversaries had so utterly disregarded him that they thought they could escape to another engaldria with impunity. Sekir looked up at the sky. The Ghost Moon was waning, the faint glow of its last arrival platform almost out of sight. He cursed and started running. "You won''t be able to catch him," the infuriating servant called after him. "They''ve left hours ago." Only the fact that Sekir had no time to waste spared the man''s life. He had to take a sandshark, and nearly killed the creature with how aggressively he stabbed his mana into its control centers. But he reached the sealed platform beneath Sectri Oasis with a quarter hour to go and hauled the massive gate open. He lit the beacons and pressed mana into the platform, overcharging it to the point where the slightest brush of connection would activate the transportation. Then he waited. There had to be someone watching. Sekir Lifekeeper knelt right there in the middle of the circle and closed his eyes. Aelir, grant me this one thing. The capricious deity of the Above must have been listening, for the lurch and flash of teleportation took hold no more than a half minute later. Sekir drifted as reality stretched, then slammed him to the ground on the arrival platform. He stood slowly and nearly fell at the dissonance of being so far away from the majority of his forms. He¡¯d not made any proper preparations for this trip. He kept a body or two on Zelura in case of emergency, of course, but even at maximum speed his soul couldn''t possibly make the jump from planet to moon, which made them all but irrelevant to normal operation. He''d tried flying to the moon before, as had most spiritwalkers at one point or another. If it was so easy to get there, a mere flash, a simple step, why couldn''t he do it himself? The distances were deceiving, was the answer. It would take months at the very least. Perhaps even years. He didn''t know anyone who''d tried it and survived, except those who gave up within the first weeks. As the transit flare faded, Sekir scanned his surroundings. He''d ended up on the far south edge of civilized land, and a grinning group of vampires waited for him. Naturally. Anyone who''d accept an unsigned flash so quickly without a return flare were sure to be predators. Sekir turned his palms outward to display the gleaming imprints shifting across his hands and inner forearms. "Welcome, my friends," he said in a measured and calm tone. "Please, step closer. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in." Half the group frowned in confusion, prepared weapons raised halfheartedly. The other half blankly stepped forward, joining him on the platform. "Wait for me," he told them, with a quick shooing motion. He sealed their entrancement on his left arm and held it against his chest to give it full access to his mana. Then he stepped forward toward the remaining half, who''d been able to resist. He held out his right palm and activated his soulspell, flooding the world in purple light. "I need to get to Orard as soon as possible. What arrangement can we come to to make this happen?" The answers were hesitant, confused, and varied, but the overall answer was the same. "You can''t." "It''s too late in the day. This is the last platform, and Almas is further along than Orard." "Unless you plan to somehow create a new platform in the wildlands, the only option is waiting for the next Dark Night to cycle around." Sekir killed them each in turn once he was satisfied with their answers, then signed to his subordinates. "Come. You, bring me to your leaders. The others of you, follow." Three weeks. A lot could be done in three weeks. If he was going to be stranded on Zelura for the duration, then he may as well make the best of it.
119 - Back to Orard Don¡¯t confuse Orard for the Oriad while booking your lunar passage! Orard is the entire engaldria, including everything from the northern bridge to Suthyrel down to the tip of Reskas, while the Oriad is the untamed wildland of a jungle that fills the central portion of Orard. You¡¯ll find the Orard platforms a lot more welcoming¡­ unless you¡¯re in the mood to be eaten by local wildlife.
The dimness of the jungle was a relief after the unrelenting brightness of Veor¡¯s deserts. As always, stepping out into the Oriad felt like coming home. "Looks like you were wrong." Jair watched the last light of Zelura''s transit platform disappear from the moon as it turned away from them. "No visitors today." "All the better. You''re not ready for him." Jair raised an eyebrow. "Me? I thought you were the one who was going to deal with him." "I''ll ensure he''s in a position for you to destroy." Jair pressed a hand to his forehead. "Still? Even if he chases us halfway across the world for no better reason than vengeance, and you still think his soul is worth saving?" "I have my rules and I will follow them. I''ll kill him as many times as you like. But that is for only one purpose." "Dungeons." "Mindless predators." "You think the star hydra is mindless?" Eythron made an angry, disgusted noise. "For the hydra, I''ll make an exception. I don''t care if it comes out and speaks, it''s still going to die." "You certainly are angry at this star hydra. Care to explain why?" Eythron looked at him for a long moment. "I need it to not exist," he said carefully. "It is anathema to me." "That''s not an answer." Eythron''s eyes flicked between Jair and Raina, then Lilin and the other Serins. "All you need to know is the objective. My reasons do not matter." "They do, if I''m going to use them to convince you to destroy Sekir instead of playing around with the most dangerous sorcerer in the world." "Oh, don''t worry," Qahrvirna interjected. "Playing around with sorcerers is my job." Normally, Jair would¡¯ve put on a smile at her quip, but his heart wasn''t in it. Ever since learning she''d been an assistant in the Serin massacre, his whole relationship with her had cooled to the point of almost nonexistence. Everything he thought he''d known about her, her limits and preferences, years upon years of teasing out how far she would go and under what circumstances, all invalidated when she went blatantly against his every prediction. He couldn''t trust her, and worse still, he couldn''t even trust what he thought he knew about her. Either one he could deal with and move forward with her as a reliable ally. Both at once, though, made her worse than useless. "You''re no longer necessary, Qahri," Jair told her bluntly. "We''re back, you can head to your tower." "Keeping the sorcerers for yourself, I see," she pouted. "Don''t worry, Qahri," Lilin said, taking the vampiress by the arm. "I''ll come with you! You can show me all the recipes you were telling me about in person." She glanced back at Jair, vaguely guiltily. "You''re going to be hunting, so you won''t need me around. Right?" Jair''s cold gaze met Qahrvirna''s playful one. "If you allow her to be harmed in any way, I swear I''ll burn you and your tower to the ground." "Oh, nothing to worry about! I''ll protect her with my life. You have my oath." She raised a fist that briefly glowed with crimson light. "Lilin Welburne will be under my guardianship until such time as her brother reclaims her protection." Jair continued to stare at her as her smile slowly slipped. He struggled within himself, years and decades of considering her a friend and ally, warring with the knowledge that she¡¯d been unreliable when it mattered most. He didn''t expect her to do anything unprovoked, but he was all kinds of twitchy now. Having someone he trusted turn on him wasn''t something he was used to having happen, especially with how few he trusted, and it threw all his beliefs in who Qahrvirna was out the window. He''d known her a hundred ways across countless timelines. While she was regularly surprising in a mundane way, it was always within the ''oh, of course, that''s Qahri'' way. To find her and Sekir kissing under a rock was fully believable. But fighting Eythron? Murdering the partygoers at the very event she was attending? That was so far out of character for her that he really struggled to integrate it into his mental map of who she was. Luring them off one by one and quietly assassinating them, sure. And that too was assuming if she came to the place with ill intentions, but the straightforward blatantness of it was so un-Qahri-like. It looked more like what would happen if Jair decided to massacre a place than what he''d expect from her. And going along with Sekir''s existing plan? Not changing it at all to suit her better? Jair hissed softly. He wished he could interrogate her about what her previous version had wanted, but Sekir had thoroughly finished what Eythron started. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. This was her home territory. Her pride should be more than enough to keep her in line. Normally he¡¯d be able to take her at her word for something like this. But could he rely on that? She respected no one, and that made it hard to keep her in line. At a certain point, when someone fully refused to bend, there was no recourse aside from violence. But did he really want to drag Lilin into the fight against a soul-eating monster when she seemed happy elsewhere? "Don''t make me come after you," Jair finally said. "I could throw you in the sea as easily as the dragon." Qahrvirna''s grin returned in full. "Oh, dragon! I almost forgot. Silverscale, come on out!" Silverscale appeared in front of them. A moment later he was joined by Lilin''s assigned dragonling. Jair had almost forgotten about them. Knowing that they were there to keep an eye on things was what finally allowed him to relax. He nodded. "Go ahead, Lil. Enjoy yourself. Learn well." "I will!" She hopped on her dragon, Qahrvirna sprawled out suggestively on Silverscale''s back, and the two of them quickly disappeared into the forest heading roughly north. Jair watched them a moment, then turned back to Eythron. "Where were we?" "No one asked you to use my morals against me," Eythron grumbled. "I''ve told you what I''ll do and won''t do. If you want to eat his soul, you''ll have to do it yourself." "You say that like it''s easy. I would have already if I knew how to." Eythron snorted. ¡°What exactly do you think we¡¯re here to do?¡± He summoned his sword and slashed at Jair''s face. Maelstrom appeared between them as Jair''s hand rose, the two blades locked together. Eythron dismissed his sword and poked one finger against the flat of Maelstrom''s blade, hard, pushing it back into Jair''s chest. "You have a mutable sword. You think I''m the only one who''ll benefit from killing the star hydra? That blade of yours should be able to reshape itself too." "Maelstrom isn''t stealing soul fragments to repair itself any more," Jair argued. "Its abilities are already set." Eythron regarded him flatly. "You expect me to believe your legendary weapon is finished growing after less than a year?" "Might have been more than a year. Perhaps even two." Depending on how long the times he repeated while hunting with Qahrvirna and later Eythron had been. Counting days hadn''t been the most important thing at the time. "I don''t care if it''s been five. You don''t seem to understand the meaning of what you''re holding. LEGENDARY, boy! This is not some simple weapon that you forge and seal and that''s the end of it. It''s not even a relic like mine, that has been imparted special capabilities through extraordinary means. It is inherently a different kind of object. It will continue to change and grow with you for as long as you live." "And you believe that includes eating a star hydra''s ability to bite at the soul?" "Why would it not?" He prodded at Maelstrom¡¯s dark central window into the abyss, like a shard of depthless obsidian set into the blade within which the golden lines of Temporal Reversion drifted seemingly at a great distance. "This weapon has plenty of room to grow, and a star hydra is one of the highest quality upgrades you could ask for. But first, deal with that." Eythron jerked his chin toward the group of their fellow travelers. "I don''t have the patience." Jair turned and met the indignant and demanding stares of Stephani Serin and the rest of Raina''s extended family. "I hope you have a good explanation for this," she demanded, holding her skirts up to keep them from brushing the mud. "I was promised proper accommodation. I don''t see any such thing." Jair closed his eyes and turned back to Eythron. "How many rivers are there between here and Darsus Serin¡¯s estate?" ¡°Depends on where his estate is.¡± ¡°Southwestern Garne, across the channel from Tolue.¡± "Eighteen," Eythron answered immediately. "Three secure, the rest forbidden." "Guess that means we''re taking the long way." Jair sighed, then stepped over to join the group of Serins. "Come on, let''s get you moved." He swung Maelstrom in an arc, relocating each of them to the nearest land-bridge with a quick flash of Darkflame. The next several minutes were spent darkflaming the group through each leg of the winding land routes that connected the inner Oriad to the outer continents of Orard where more civilized cities could be found. Since Jair couldn¡¯t safely darkflame across water without being grabbed, it made for a very convoluted and lengthy procedure despite his best efforts at keeping everyone together and moving rapidly. If it¡¯d been anywhere else, he would have had to do the trip in much smaller pieces still, but the one thing you absolutely had to keep memorized in the Oriad was where rivers were hiding and which ones were safe and what angles to move past them at. Darsus¡¯ estate ended up being a large manor right in Garne¡¯s capital. It would be an entirely extravagant venue for their Solaria, and one which he seemed simultaneously proud to show off and irritated at having to share. Regardless of its owner¡¯s mixed emotions, Jair dropped them off at the front door and turned to go. "Do you want to stay with them, or stay with us?" Jair asked Raina before they left Ajriol and the rest of the Serins to their own devices. "As much as I appreciate the event that is Solaria, I think I''ve been to enough family parties for a while." She didn''t let go of his hand. "Let''s go hunting for monsters." ¡°Good enough for me.¡± The return trip was almost instantaneous; transporting himself and Raina through the maze that was the rivers of the Oriad until they were back at the transit platform and rejoined the others for the walk to Eythron¡¯s nearest hideout. "I think there has been some kind of misunderstanding," Uqiar said, sidling up to Jair as they walked. He kept his voice low and walked more slowly, so that they fell back behind the rest of the group. "I believe your sword has malfunctioned. Or something else has gone wrong." "We''re here fine, aren''t we?" The massive beastkin let out a rumble of a growl that still set Jair''s instincts on edge. "He does not remember the previous version of our day." "Yeah, I know that. We already talked about it when we first..." Jair paused and turned to face the beastkin fully. "How do you know that?" "You both told me everything so I could bring him back into knowledge if something went wrong. But I do not know what has gone wrong. Was there an additional loop where he died without me?" Jair frowned. He held up a finger for quiet and mentally replayed the relevant events. Things did tend to blur together when reliving the same events, but they were recent enough to almost be able to trust his recollections. "No," he said finally. "He wasn''t. Remind me, what exactly do you remember?" Eythron called out to see if they were coming, and Uqiar shouted back that he knew the way. Eythron took that as good enough, and he continued on. Raina hung back, not coming close enough to intrude on Jair''s conversation but lingering nearby. Uqiar went on to recite the events from the previous loop where he''d been initially brought in. They were surprisingly accurate, with a slight skew that was only natural for the cultural and personal differences between them. "He was not well before we reverted," Uqiar concluded. "Not acting like himself. I am concerned." "Quantity," Jair whispered. Suddenly, the whole past loop rearranged itself in his perception. He laughed and clapped Uqiar on one black-furred arm. "Thank you. You''re absolutely right. Something did go wrong, but it wasn''t on my end. Come on!" He took off running after Eythron.
120 - A Walk In The Woods Terluna is known best for its paradise climate and the facility of visiting friends and family on Terlunia every month, but its underbelly as the supplier of exotic creatures is largely overlooked. It''s not uncommon to find Terlunan fauna widespread across Neptus despite much of it being non-native.
As Jair hurried forward Uqiar easily kept pace and Raina fell in beside him. "What was that about?" she asked. "We''ve been working on inaccurate information. Qahrvirna is innocent." "Innocent? I thought she was¡­¡± she glanced uneasily around. ¡°Is that why you let her take Lilin?¡± "That was Lilin¡¯s choice. I do trust Qahri to treat her apprentice reasonably well. But I couldn¡¯t figure out the point of Sekir¡¯s vampire preservation ritual. It doesn¡¯t make sense to put that much energy into something only for show. Thinking he had to take hours to switch between forms, there would be no point to it, but since we¡¯ve seen he can move from copy to copy within minutes?¡± ¡°What qualifies something as a copy?¡± ¡°Exactly. Sekir was keeping the bodies of the people he killed stable physically but draining their manabodies. Eythron could have taken him on one on one, no matter the circumstances. Claiming Qahrvirna was in the fight made it confusing enough to let the inconsistencies slide, but Eythron is not the sort to run and hide." "Yeah, he''s almost as bull-headed as you." Raina nudged him with a laugh. "We do get along well for a good reason." "When you¡¯re not trying to kill each other." ¡°Eh, arguments and violent altercations are only natural between two high-end mageblades with similar personalities. If we couldn''t stab each other now and then, are we even living?¡± ¡°Mmm, I¡¯ll keep that in mind.¡± She patted Tempest, grinned, and leaned in closer. ¡°Unless you want to take it back.¡± Jair considered it, but the thought of Raina trying to fight him was far too adorable to forbid. ¡°You¡¯re welcome to try and stab me whenever you please.¡± She laughed, as did he, but he had the feeling she wasn¡¯t going to let it go. ¡°You think I¡¯m going to forget?¡± he teased. ¡°That you can catch me off guard?¡± ¡°Those are two very different questions.¡± ¡°True. I probably will forget. I won¡¯t be off guard.¡± Uqiar made an uncomfortable huff and walked more quickly to get ahead of them. Raina cleared her throat and put on a more serious affect. ¡°Right, so Sekir, he was doing something with the people who he killed?¡± "Right. I''d been assuming he had to use his own bodies, created for the purpose, when he dies and starts over. Where else would he get something physically functional but magically inert, without a soul of its own to get in the way? But that assumption relies on him needing them to be usable for the long term. With his switches taking hours, they would be no use to him. But if he can move instantly and all he needs is a few minutes of use? Just long enough to throw at Eythron in an unending flood until he wears him down and overpowers him with sheer quantity. And he had all the pieces he needed right there." "Vampire ritual. Dovak. That''s awful." She gripped Jair''s arm more tightly as a thought occurred to her. "Does that mean... do you think I was...?" Jair shook his head. "If he could have taken you over, I''m sure he''d have impersonated you instead of Eythron. Maelstrom was binding your soul, so I don''t think he had any chance at using your body either." Just as decoration. That image flashed again in Jair''s memory, and the urge to find the sorcerer and tear his soul out of his body and shred what was left rose stronger than ever. He wrenched his thoughts back from that trail and refocused on the point he was trying to make. ¡°Like Qarhvirna said. Immortals. Soul attacks would be the only threat to him. So he set up this whole farce to make me take Qahrvirna out of the picture. If I distrusted her and left her behind, he¡¯d have free reign to play with us as long as he wanted.¡± They caught up with Eythron then, who grunted and gave them a welcoming glare. ¡°Sorry, Master, you should disregard anything I told you you said from the previous timeline. That was an impostor. I should have guessed. You were talking awfully respectfully about Sekir. Giving him a lot more credit than he deserves. But he imitated your argument style almost perfectly.¡± Jair thought back to what other assumptions he¡¯d been making based on the encounter with ¡®Eythron¡¯ after the massacre, and one other thing stood out. ¡°Darkflame. Does it really not affect you, or only him?¡± Eythron slashed a gash out of his arm without question and held it out. Jair stabbed him and darkflamed him to the other side of the clearing. There was almost no resistance this time. Surprisingly, there was also no pleading from Meliarn. His dungeon seemed to have gotten the message and subsided. It remained a constant yearning presence at the back of his mind, but no longer actively tried to insinuate itself into his ability usage. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Eythron held up the arm, properly restored. Jair grinned. ¡°Well, now. That gives us a major advantage over any impostors. If we can tell who¡¯s real or not with a quick darkflame test.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t go jumping to too many conclusions,¡± Eythron warned. ¡°We haven¡¯t verified that beyond a single test case.¡± ¡°Of course.¡± ¡°Star Hydra first. Then testing.¡± ¡°Yes.¡± It was a relief, finally having something he could understand about Sekir¡¯s schemes. It had started to feel like something unreal, disconnected actions that couldn¡¯t be turned into a single picture. Now, it all fit. Darkflame hadn¡¯t healed Eythron because ¡®Eythron¡¯ had been dead at the time. He¡¯d argued against Uqiar¡¯s inclusion because the beastkin knew Eythron better than anyone and could probably sniff out an impostor if they stayed around each other longer than a few minutes. As, indeed, he had. Jair¡¯s lips began to twitch up as a plan began to take form. ¡°Why are you smirking?¡± Eythron demanded. ¡°Nothing specific yet, just thinking through our options. But the only thing more powerful than knowing our enemy¡¯s plan? Him not knowing that we know it.¡± Not needing to suspect Qahrvirna of betrayal at every moment was a relief. The note of dissonance in his mind was clarified, now he could disregard it. The massacre hadn¡¯t felt like her because it wasn¡¯t her. All Sekir, and he¡¯d just tried to pin it on her after the fact. Sekir¡¯s use of Eythron¡¯s body was concerning on a number of levels. He hadn¡¯t done anything blatantly out of character, and Jair had been in his presence for over an hour without catching on. Thinking back now, almost everything suspicious at all were the things he didn¡¯t do. He¡¯d not insulted Jair or attacked him, but it was also the scene of a massacre and ¡®Eythron¡¯ was severely injured. Even if Jair had noticed the discrepancy at the time, it could easily be explained away by Eythron being considerate for his would-be student¡¯s grief and loss. Jair just about smacked himself. ¡°He even said ¡®stuck like a dust rat.¡¯ That is such a Veori thing to say. You¡¯d have said something about snapvines or crawlers.¡± ¡°And you didn¡¯t notice?¡± Eythron stabbed a nearby bush until it squealed and ran away. ¡°I thought you said you knew me.¡± ¡°I was a little bit distracted at the time.¡± ¡°And next time you¡¯ll be a bit dead.¡± Eythron threw his sword at Jair without warning. Jair ducked and caught the weapon by the hilt, then slung it back in a spinning slash. ¡°You died first.¡± ¡°Won¡¯t happen again.¡± Eythron dismissed the sword before it reached him and continued walking as though Jair hadn¡¯t said anything. The bigger problem was the fact that he¡¯d reverted with Sekir while thinking he was Eythron. Sekir may or may not have had secondhand knowledge of the loop before, but he definitely knew about it now. Sekir had seen them. He knew who they were, and he knew enough about their relationships to correctly target Raina and Ajriol, Jair, Qahrvirna and Eythron. The only person he might not have recognized was Uqiar¡ªbut, now he¡¯d seen him too, at the mountain before reverting. ¡°Here we are.¡± Uqiar¡¯s voice cut across Jair¡¯s pondering. Jair¡¯s heart only skipped a little as he waded the safe stream. He was used to Eythron¡¯s unorthodox protective measures. Raina yelped and screamed his name, at which he paused and turned back. ¡°Eythron¡¯s streams are protected,¡± he told her, waving a hand up and down the waterway in demonstration. ¡°They never touch the sea.¡± ¡°Impossible.¡± ¡°Reservoirs,¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°Excess is thrown into the air so high it becomes mist rather than a stream they can follow.¡± Jair ducked beneath the bramble, and up into the cozy hideout beyond. It was currently set up for occupation. A low fire burned in the hearth, Eyhtron¡¯s mattress and sheets lay on the wooden framework of a bedframe, and the purposeful placement of his personal trinkets and mementos showed the place to be his current home. Eythron traveled between regions often and unpredictably enough, there were countless times when Jair would visit one of his homes to find him away. When its master was away, the place would lie dork and empty, bare but for the built in furniture, without a single sign that it had ever been lived in let alone recently. Sometimes he would leave an indicator for his friends to indicate which other region he¡¯d headed to, but more often he left without a trace. Now, Eythron and Uqiar crossed to the worktable in perfect sync. ¡°The girl coming with us?¡± Eythron asked. ¡°Or she staying here?¡± ¡°I¡¯m coming.¡± Eythron gave an approving grunt, which shouldn¡¯t have made Jair quite so pleased as it did. But it was reasonable for him to want his mentor to get along well with Raina. Nothing weird about being happy for that. He probably could have stopped smiling if he really tried. ¡°How long do you think this will take to prepare for?¡± Jair asked. ¡°Three weeks. More if we have trouble with any of the ingredients.¡± Uqiar and Eythron started pulling materials out of their soulspaces, passing them back and forth as they each did different steps of the process. This was a process he¡¯d seen Eythron do alone more than a few times, but he¡¯d always found reasons to be elsewhere when Uqiar would be around so this was the first time seeing them work together. It was mesmerizing, watching the two of them at work. They barely spoke, occasionally a word or two of instruction, but they worked in almost complete silence. Jair glanced over to where Raina sat. She watched Eythron and Uqiar at their work, as mesmerized as him, one hand absently toying with the jade river stones Eythron kept on the shelf by his bed. The firelight in the hideaway really accented the flickering reds and golds of her eyes, and even the hair framing her face seemed almost to be made of molten gold. He took a slow breath and the tightness in his chest eased the tiniest bit. They were here, they were alive. They knew more than ever before about the sorcerer¡¯s methodologies and plans, and they were far away and entirely safe for now. Sekir was a problem for another day. He didn¡¯t need to worry about him. Not now, not here. He walked over to Raina and knelt beside the bed, leaning in to talk without disturbing the concentration of the two craftsmen. ¡°Wanna sneak out into the jungle and fight some carnivorous plants?¡± She lit up immediately, carefully set Eythron¡¯s river rocks back on the shelf, and jumped to her feet. ¡°I¡¯d like that. It¡¯s been how long and you still haven¡¯t found me a proper monster to slay? I was starting to think you¡¯d forgotten your promise.¡± ¡°No need to worry, dearest Raina, I can find you monsters aplenty. The slaying part, though, will be up to you.¡± She gave Tempest a quick flick and nodded. ¡°However many times it takes.¡±
121 - Explorers of the Oriad There is no record of Vamisel''s presence after the Division. Once the world shattered and the lands split apart, so too did much of our knowledge become fragmented and lost. What has survived this long, passed down in its own pieces from generation to generation, is very difficult to now piece back together.
Jair drove Maelstrom into the octide''s crystal-shelled back in the same moment that Raina skewered its head. Something like triumph flashed through him, so quick and exhilarating he gasped involuntarily in the moment before it faded. "Woah." Raina held up Tempest, looking a bit unsteady as she did. "What was that?" "Synergy," Jair guessed. "Is this the first time we''ve mutually killed something together?" "Surely not." Raina turned to look back into the trees, though of course there was no sign of their path of terror. The fights had taken place far enough apart for none of the monsters to witness one another''s demise. Those that did tended not to stick around waiting for their turn. "This is incredible," Raina laughed. "We should try that again." Jair nodded. He hopped onto Maelstrom''s flat and ascended to search the treetops for sign of more octides. They were usually not alone, there should be at least a few more in the area. "You make that look so easy," Raina grumbled. She stood on Tempest, which remained lying flat on the ground. "Bladewalk!" Tempest didn''t budge. "Up, come on, you don''t want to let your big brother show you up, now do you?" Tempest remained flattened to the ground beneath her feet. ¡°Why do you get all the unfair cheat powers,¡± Raina grumbled. ¡°What do I need to do to catch up?¡± Jair chuckled as he rose through the canopy and out of sight. It took only a moment to find the octides'' path. "They came from this direction," he called down, then started flying casually in that direction. Raina muttered something about how unfair it was that he got to revert so many times without her, picked up her sword, and strode along in the indicated direction. Twice, Jair had to drop from his flight to deal with some of the smaller threats that waited in ambush. Each time, he jumped in front of Raina, then gave a demonstration of what the danger was and how to better recognize it in future. A lot of it he''d learned from painful experience. The Oriad had probably killed him more than anything else. Well, aside from the Letyran Beastlord who invaded Celsin and pursued him up Mount Sanctum, but that was something else entirely. "I thought snapvines were blueish." "Those were snap pods. These will knock you down and wrap you up and wait for you to die, not bite your fingers off." She shook her head and gave the vine another stab for good measure, though it was already dead by now. "If this is your favourite place, I''d hate to see the ones you consider worse." "Veor," Jair answered without hesitation. "Worst place ever." Raina looked at the dead murderous plant, then at Jair, and ran a hand across her face. "Yeah, sounds about right for you." "I''m nothing if not inconsistent." "Consistent, you mean?" "Exactly." They were still playfully arguing when they reached the rest of the octide nest, and the next several minutes were spent in slashing and stabbing an angry bunch of crystal-shelled monstrosities eager to avenge their fallen kin. The next time they managed a simultaneous killing blow on a monster, Jair was ready for it. He caught the brief flash of light that pulsed up both Maelstrom and Tempest''s blades in perfect sync, overflowed into him with that same feeling of elation, then disappeared as fast as it had come. "That could be distracting," Raina commented as she spun to face another octide. "Look out!" Two more were closing in on her, and she wouldn''t have time to catch them both before they reached her. Jair threw Maelstrom into her back, darkflamed her across the clearing, and dove into the group of octides with Maelstrom flashing. "Hey!" Raina overbalanced as her attempted swing ended with air instead of the octide she''d been aiming at. She spun to face the ongoing fight but by the time she crossed the clearing Jair had already finished off the last of their current cluster. Another group was descending from above in a rustle of branches and leaves, so she rushed to take up a defensive position beside him. The one main disadvantage that Tempest had was being non-legendary. It couldn''t slice through creatures in the same way Maelstrom could. It had to deal with the physical body of its targets. More than once, Tempest got stuck where Maelstrom could sweep through them without pause. This slowed Raina down and threw off their rhythms. They¡¯d been at this for several days now. The process of crafting their anti-star-hydra equipment took weeks, so they were practicing while Eythron and Uqiar did the material preparations. Which was probably a good thing. Raina was well-trained for a first-year mageblade initiate, but all her experience in fighting was duels against other humans. Fighting monsters in their home terrain was an unfamiliar challenge to her. ¡°Watch above you,¡± Jair had to keep reminding her. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°I know,¡± she growled. ¡°I just lose track sometimes.¡± ¡°Too many times. I¡¯d rather not have to watch you die.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t think it¡¯s inevitable?¡± ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be.¡± He frowned at her. ¡°Is that why you¡¯re fighting so aggressively, you aren¡¯t worried about dying?¡± ¡°Of course I¡¯m worried about dying. It¡¯s not fun. But it¡¯s not paralyzing.¡± She grinned and stabbed at an octide, slipping Tempest between its crystal plates, then danced aside as it careened into the tree behind where she''d been standing. "Besides, you don''t have to watch, you can always turn away." "That''s not something to joke about." He''d already watched her die too many times, to Ryenzo, to unrelated disasters caused indirectly or directly by Ryenzo, and now the aftermath of Sekir''s rampage. "You joke about yourself dying. Maybe you shouldn''t do that either." "Do I?" "Perhaps not ''joke'' exactly, but treat it with casual unconcern." "I''m generally good enough not to die easily, and if I do die I can come back." "So can I, now." "I... I do know that." Jair frowned as he sliced through another quartet of octides. Why was this bothering him so much? He never wanted any friend to die in front of him, Raina least of all, but she had Temporal Rebirth to protect her even if he was too slow to revert her before things went terribly wrong. Jair had hunted with Eythron through these jungles more times than he could count. He¡¯d spent years with Qahrvirna doing the same, albeit with different priorities and strategies. He¡¯d only rarely witnessed them dying; in almost every instance of such it had been only because they were trying to rescue him back in his era of still needing rescuing. He¡¯d never seen someone actually outfight them in their own territory. Perhaps that was the difference. He was used to being the student, not the teacher. And now he understood on a visceral level that instinct to throw himself between his beloved student and whatever threatened her. Even when it meant she growled at him for being overprotective. Hunting with Raina was an entirely different experience. He¡¯d imagined it would be like¡­ any number of things. But the reality didn¡¯t match anything he¡¯d guessed. She was both more aggressive and more cautious than he¡¯d expected, in different areas than predicted. She took to killing the local monsters with impressive enthusiasm. He¡¯d always thought she might protest the violence of intruding into creatures¡¯ territories to depopulate them, but the subject didn¡¯t even come up. ¡°Have you been hunting much in the past?¡± he asked at one point, as she made a point to kill one of their targets without damaging its body in the wrong places for its future crafting. ¡°I don¡¯t remember if we¡¯d talked about it before.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t. But I¡¯ve worked with material preparation teams.¡± She laughed. ¡°You hear enough guys complain about misplaced kill strikes and it sticks with you.¡± "You never mentioned this before." "Yeah I did. We discussed it when we had to put together the presentation about the economy of combat, remember?" Jair did not. Raina bit at her lip. "Right. Not going to retain anything that far back. Well. It wasn''t a particularly interesting period of my life, just a lot of listening to complaints and trying to ascertain what I could do to make things go smoother when I was in charge." "Did they know it was you, or were you undercover?" "I wasn''t announcing myself, but I wasn''t denying it either. More, I just sat around quietly and after a while they stopped worrying about me overhearing. The more I didn''t report them or do anything but laugh along, I''m not sure, I think they did consider me kind of one of them by the end. Maybe just a mascot." "Mm... You''ve always been the champion of the commoner, have you? Guess I just got lucky." "I''d argue I''m the lucky one." She leaned up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Not everyone gets an immortal time traveler for an unhesitatingly loyal friend." "Unhesitatingly loyal, am I? I think my loyalty hesitates on a regular basis." "Only because you''re torn between trying to save me and trying to save me." "How does that figure?" "Well, you can either protect my body or my soul, right? Either you let me face the consequences of my actions and grow from them, or keep sheltering me to the point where I become helpless without you. These are extreme examples, but it''s a demonstration of the general trends. You can protect me but harm my development in the long term, or you can allow my development and safeguard my soul but at the expense of there being a lot of pain in the middle. And you''ll not only have to watch that happening, you''ll have to watch it knowing you could prevent it, and that it''ll probably happen again." She grinned brightly. "Have I left anything out?" Jair stared at her. "Um." "Yeah, you''re not as subtle as you think you are." "I wasn''t trying to hide from you..." "Then you should try even less." Jair laughed and kissed her back, more properly. They may have been slightly distracted when the next pair of vylix came for them, and they might have had to revert, but neither of them complained. The vylix were much less happy with the outcome the second time around. ¡°We¡¯re getting better at the timing on this,¡± Raina commented as the two of them stabbed the catlike monster in unison. ¡°I don¡¯t know exactly what the point of it is, but it does feel very right.¡± ¡°I think Maelstrom is trying to fast-track Tempest¡¯s upgrade path by using its innate power control to steal pieces and slip them over. I suspect that once we get to reforging your sword, it''ll jump ranks pretty dramatically." "You think that''ll be a while from now? Or soon?" "That''s entirely up to you. If you want us to go reforge Tempest right now, you need only ask." Raina contemplated the offer. "No, I don''t have the ingredients I need yet,¡± she said, and forestalled his followup suggestion before he could make it. ¡°And I think... I''ll know when the time to start searching is right." "That is how it''s traditionally done. Maelstrom may be in a rush but there¡¯s no reason for you to need to be. If anything particularly calls to you, grab it and keep it for when you''re ready. Just be aware of the values and degradation levels of your items. If you find something organic like wood it''s best not to store it in your soulspace for longer than a few days. Better to use standard preservation techniques and leave it in a vault somewhere." Raina snorted and raised an eyebrow. ¡°House Serin, remember? You think I don¡¯t know how to care for materials?¡± ¡°Right.¡± Though they may be a nominally declining house in Veor and their presence in Veor minimal, they had a sizeable intercontinental footprint and remained notable despite their decreasing numbers. Though, now that Ryenzo had been dealt with, perhaps their numbers could stop decreasing. Raina laughed and kissed him again, then turned to the dead vylix. ¡°So, what¡¯re we keeping from these things? I think some of these spines would make for a good hilt wrap, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°They¡¯re a little stiff for that. Also spiky.¡± Raina had already squatted down next to the monster¡¯s remains and begun to carefully slice it open with Tempest¡¯s tip. ¡°Then we¡¯d better take a lot. I have some ideas for soaking them to make them malleable, but we may need to try several compounds before hitting the right one.¡± Jair considered the suggestion, half convinced it was an elaborate joke, but there was no reason he could see not to include monster parts in a sword¡¯s reforging. Even if gems and metals were more traditional, stranger things had happened. After he ascended Maelstrom with his blood as he lay dying and then subsequently gave it full access to his soul, he had no right to criticise nontraditional upgrade choices. He squatted down next to her and got to work.
122 - Future and Past The first thing you need to know as a newcomer to darkmoon smuggling is how to perform a vampire check. They tend to hide inconspicuously among the goods, invisible to all but soulsight, but being harmless in their stowaway form does not mean they¡¯re any less of a threat to your livelihood.
"Have you ever thought about what we could do once we''ve finished saving the world?" Raina lay with her hands behind her head, watching the swaying of branches overhead. She was a mess, the sweat and blood of their recent battle stiffening her clothes and matting her hair, but that didn''t bother either of them. Jair sat against the trunk of a nearby tree, smiling at nothing in particular. "Of course I have. I''m sure I have. Why wouldn''t I have?" She leaned up on one elbow and squinted over at him. "You haven''t?" "I have. I may not remember it very well. Or at all. But I certainly have." "You don''t remember?" "I don''t remember most of what I''ve experienced. Probably for the best. I''m sure I''m mad enough with just this much." "Is mad the right word for it?" Jair laughed madly. "You have another word for it?" Raina smiled and lay back, shaking her head as her eyes returned to the sky. "Nah. Why bother putting labels on it? You''ve been through enough without adding preconceptions to the pile. The question isn''t about your sanity or lack thereof, anyway." Jair snorted. "I don''t think sanity is a scale I even recognize at this point." "Exactly. So, what do you envision us doing after the end of the war?" "Whatever you want." "Whatever I want. You don''t realize how sad that sounds?" "Sad? It''s all I''ve been fighting for all this time. Why would it be sad to finally enjoy the freedom once we''ve destroyed our enemies and can relax?" "Do you even know what you want any more?" "I want you to be safe," he answered without thought or pause. "I want a world where Lilin doesn''t have to disappear. Where you can both be happy. Where lunar vampires aren''t going to slaughter whole continents of innocents." "Exactly. That''s the start point. But what comes after?" Jair shook his head. "If I knew that, wouldn''t it lose a bit of its magic? It''s not like I have a checklist of what you should do with your lives once they''re free to be lived without the looming threat of destruction." Raina huffed softly and shifted her gaze to the dead monster at the edge of the clearing. "You don''t know what you want. Being our perpetual bodyguard isn''t a life, that''s an occupation. Not a passion." "I''m pretty passionate about it. You think I''d have been able to go on this long if I wasn''t?" "What do you do for fun?" Raina pressed. "When you''re not pushing yourself through chaos scenario after chaos scenario?" Jair paused before answering, thinking it over. "Debating with Eythron, talking with you, training. Terlunia was fun, right?" "You have to ask?" Raina giggled. "And what happens when you''re strong enough that nothing can threaten you, nothing can get past you, we''re completely immune to anything but old age, and the seascourge themselves are gone?" "I''m not planning to fight seascourge," Jair answered immediately. "The adversaries I already have to deal with are plenty for me, thanks." "Lunar vampires?" Jair grimaced. "Yeah, exactly. They''re as tenacious as regular vampires, but with the added bonus of being stronger in daytime for whatever reason." "Shouldn''t they be called solar vampires, then?" "They''re from the moon." "Only one?" "Zelura." "The Ghost Moon. So they should be Solar Ghost Vampires." ¡°Heh. When they''re all dead and you''re writing their history, you can call them whatever you want." They both laughed, then fell off into comfortable silence. "I don''t know what I want either," Raina said quietly after a time. "Everything I thought was going to happen has fallen apart. I don''t know. These months feel like years and even then there''s so much and only more." "If you don''t want to travel with me, you don''t have to feel obligated. I''ll protect you either way, but the goal is for you to be able to live your life freely and safely. Not for me to dictate your every move." "You know that''s not what I''m saying at all." "What are you saying then? Please, I''d love to know." Raina sighed. She sat up, shifting to crossed-legs and staring directly at him. "You don''t know what you want and you''re afraid to find out." "That''s ridiculous. I''m not afraid." "Then why do you keep putting it off? Jair, you''re a time traveler. We can go have fun for days, months, years, and still be back on time to save the world. If all that matters is our experiences, then why on earth would we stay beholden to a timeline that only wants to make things worse? You keep acting as though we have to replay specific days, weeks, hours, as if it''s absolutely urgent that we get it right as soon as possible, as if there''s some timer running down that you have to outrun. But you''re so powerful, so capable. Why are you limiting yourself so extremely?" Jair leaned back with a frown, tilting his head back against the tree trunk as he thought. He resisted the urge to argue immediately, which after so many years with Eythron was almost irresistible reflex. "I didn''t want to run out," he said at length. "There''s not enough to see for me to go wasting it on temporary jaunts." But that didn''t feel quite true either. Raina tilted her head over to stare at him, brow furrowed as she tried to understand. Jair huffed softly. "I don''t think you can understand it, not yet. Keep going, keep fighting with me and I''m sure you''ll..." Then he shook his head and ran a hand across his face. "No. I hope you never have to. I''d rather you never understand." "Why? I want to know everything about you." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. He stood to walk over. She sat up, staring as though she thought he was going to leave, but he only sat down beside her. "Ask me anything and I will answer, but I will not gladly drag you through the hell I have become." "Isn''t that what we''re doing? By fighting the same battles over and over and over, never stopping until we win?" "That is simply the way it must be done." "Oh, really? The one and only way is to throw ourselves at it until we break or it does?¡± ¡°The only shortcuts to power are by hard and painful paths. I will not drag you against your will, and it will bring me no pleasure to watch you struggle, but if you¡¯re serious when you say you want to keep up, this is the only way I know.¡± ¡°Because that sounds pretty hellish to me." Jair put one arm around her and leaned closer. "If you ask me to leave Sekir alone, abandon Veor, flee with our families and never look back, I will. If you want us to retire to a farm on Terluna and only use our swords as decoration, I will. And if you want to fight through hell and reforge yourself stronger¡­ I will guide you through it." Raina shifted and looked away. "I don''t want us to abandon Veor. But have you considered that throwing yourself into the deepest part of it at all times might not be the best solution?" "I have no choice." He was surprised to find it to be true. "I can''t keep going if nothing matters, and if I do whatever I please without concern for the timeline, it all disappears. I can lose myself for as long as I want, and it only ends when the world collapses in on us. There''s no answer, no outcome, no solution. It''s only me dissolving from the inside out. When I let myself forget the urgency, the necessity, for even a moment... I wake up months later somewhere else, someone else, and can''t remember the path that brought me there. Only that I have neglected to protect the things I committed myself to protecting. And there''s only so many times I can walk away from everything I''ve committed before I''m no longer me. Only a hollow facade." "Taking a break doesn¡¯t have to be giving up, it''s important to rest between throwing yourself into everything full tilt." "You can say that. I can say that. But I cannot believe it. I can think of ways to escape this cycle, yet when the moment comes to live them they fall apart every time." "You truly believe that the only thing you can do is charge ahead at full speed without pause every time or you''ll... disappear?" "Worse. I''ll become a mockery of myself." He pressed a hand over his eyes. "You remember Mersine''s warnings, that if I don''t follow her convoluted plans for perfect outcomes, I''d end up destroying more than the greatest threats of the world ever would? You want to see that outcome? That''s what I could be if I stopped binding myself so tightly to the exact specifics of the current challenge." He held up Maelstrom. "Look at this, Rai. Look at it. Tell me you want this in the hands of someone with no restraints, no goals beyond gratification in the moment. Tell me you wouldn''t despise the world that came to be." She shook her head, confusion on her face and pleading in her eyes. Jair drew her closer, pressed his forehead against the top of her head. "I''m sorry, Rai. I know this isn''t what you wanted. I don''t know how else to explain it to you. I am not a person any more, I''m a collection of principles and objectives. I''m a painted shell sewn back together enough times that it''s only held together by threads. The only part of me that remains is the part I committed to you." There were tears in her eyes as she cried for him, and he wished he remembered how. There wasn''t much that could truly move him any more, but his heart ached as he held Raina. Not one of the frivolous facade emotions that he lived through every moment as he tried again and again, not the over immersion in the present that kept him from being nothing, but something true and deep. It felt like it would be disrespectful of her if he were to falsify the tears. So he only held her and told her softly that it would be okay, because it ultimately would be. He had her and she had him and as long as they didn''t give up entirely they could still save the world and play with magic and explore the furthest depths of the moons... "I''m sorry," Raina whispered through her tears. "I don''t know what to say." "Perhaps I shouldn''t have told you. But I don''t want to hide. Not myself, not my goals, not my history. I don''t want you to have to worry. I may be a mockery of a man but for as long as you want me I''m yours." Raina buried her face in his chest. "It''s too much. Is that really why you''re doing this? Only for me?" "Not only. It''s more like you''re an anchor to hold all the rest of it together. I want to defeat Sekir before he can provoke the seascourge into eating Veor. I want to stop the Beastlord from consuming all the world''s magic and leaving us defenceless against the lunar vampires. I want to protect my family and yours. I want my friends to be happy and not murdered. These are my goals, my desires. There may be others, smaller or more situational." "And you can''t do any of that without me in the middle of it?" "I haven''t dared to try. If I were to remove you from that keystone position, would the rest of me remain, or would it all collapse? Contrary to what Mersine seems to think, I have no desire to destroy the world or the people upon it. I don''t agree with allowing another''s visions to guide my future. Especially not blindly. And she withholds too many details for me to make knowledgeable choices." "Is what she said bothering you that much?" Jair closed his eyes. "It''s my policy to ignore seers. I don''t even remember what specific advice she gave, how to avoid becoming this great destroyer. But it''s one thing to ignore her attempts to control me and another to blindly rush toward a fate none of us wants." "Can''t you ask Qahrvirna to repeat the message? Or go back in time to listen again?" "I don''t want to. The solution to avoiding her control isn''t to give her more chances to direct my path. It''s to move forward in my own time on my own route. Our own route. So if you think I''m going too far out of line, tell me. If you think it''s time to cut our losses and go on to a different plan, tell me. We can argue it out and come to a functional solution." "That''s your idea of discussion? Arguing?" "Exchange of perspectives until a middle ground is reached. Call it what you will." He grinned. "Weren''t you the one who didn''t want to use labels?" ¡°I wonder where you picked up that habit from. Oh, wait¡­¡± and she waved a hand toward something behind him. Jair turned. Eythron stomped into the clearing cursing up a storm such as even Jair had rarely been witness to. The mad mageblade looked downright dangerous, eyes wild and snarl fixed. ¡°You,¡± he growled, sword pointed at Jair. ¡°Yes, master?¡± Jair said reflexively, before considering that perhaps it would have been better to behave more informally. ¡°Stop it.¡± The sheer fury in his voice set Jair immediately on alert. That was the sort of tone he used when he was about to try and kill Jair. ¡°You¡¯ll need to be more specific.¡± ¡°The time traveling. Stop.¡± ¡°What time traveling? I haven¡¯t reverted you at all since we arrived here.¡± ¡°Then why does it keep skipping us around, hm? Every time you turn things back we lose track of what we''ve done or haven''t, have to redo steps we already did, or miss steps we thought we had. It''s turning this whole process into a nightmare. So stop. Try going at least a day or two without dying, eh?" "Wait, so you''ve been reverted with us every time, even when we''re out of reach physically?" "You have ears, congratulations. Now try using them." "I apologize, Master, I didn''t think you''d be impacted by our smaller reversions." "Now you know." Eythron turned and walked away without another word. Jair looked at Raina. Raina looked at Jair. They both giggled. The interruption had dispersed all the heaviness of their former conversation topic, drawn him back into the moment. And the moment was an unmissable opportunity. Jair reverted time. Somewhere in the distance, Eythron let out an angry roar. ¡°Oops!¡± Jair shouted as loud and insincerely as he could, cupping his hands around his mouth. ¡°Sorry, Master!¡± Eythron didn¡¯t answer, or if he did they couldn¡¯t hear over their own laughter. ¡°Bet he tries to stab me next time we go to visit,¡± Jair said offhandedly once their humor subsided. ¡°Ready to get going, or want to lie here talking about the future a bit longer?¡± Raina got to her feet. ¡°We can talk while we walk. I still think you¡¯re treating this prediction of doom too lightly, but I¡¯m not the one who knows your seer lady. Maybe she¡¯s regularly throwing out inaccurate prophecies of no consequence.¡± Jair frowned. ¡°No, she¡¯s always been entirely correct in the past. But I will no longer accept a future that requires us to die without having any say in the matter.¡± ¡°Do we have to stay dead? We could fulfill it and escape it at the same time.¡± ¡°Not how it works. Reversion undoes it, so the prophecy would remain unfulfilled.¡± ¡°Aw, so much for cheating fate.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure we can find a way. Nothing¡¯s unbreakable.¡± Not even himself. ¡°We haven¡¯t broken enough things already? Got to set your sights on destiny?¡± ¡°What else am I good for?¡± She smacked him on the shoulder, laughing, then linked his arm in hers and leaned against him. ¡°You¡¯re good for quite a lot, as it turns out.¡±
123 - Nuprima Many elves make excuses for the Moon King¡¯s lineage. Disregard the atrocities they perpetuated, the incredible changes to society and trade are worth far more. Or, sometimes, that those destroyed were deserving of their fate, unworthy of the lands they once inhabited. It is easy for elves to sit back and wave away the troubles of lesser races, but when the lunar vampires try the same tactics against them, suddenly ¡®atrocity¡¯ is back on the table.
One advantage of the extensive crafting period was the inclusion of a Nuprima lunar window in the month between their arrival in the Oriad and them being remotely close to ready for the actual hydra hunt to take place. A little over two weeks after Solaria the frozen moon would have one of its rare windows of availability. Which meant Jair could finally do something he¡¯d been meaning to do as soon as he got access to the frozen magical moon. ¡°So, Raina¡­ what are your plans for your spell imprints?¡± She held out her arm, which showed faint impressions of the weeks of imprinting they¡¯d been working on while hunting. ¡°You know my layout.¡± ¡°Not the primary layout. I mean for your advancement layers.¡± ¡°A bit early to be worrying about that, don¡¯t you think?¡± ¡°It¡¯s never too early to plan for the future. Also, I need to book Nuprima passage, so we¡¯ll be pausing the monster hunting for a few days. You can think about your imprint plans while we do that.¡± They left two days before the lunar passage would open to get themselves to a platform and bribe their way into passage. Nuprima passage was incredibly expensive, being the magical pulse of the economy. With the passages rare relative to Zelura or even Terluna passages, and Nuprima the only place where crystalized mana could be exported¡­ its passages tended to be booked solid for economic reasons. It ended up taking them extensive discussion at four different cities before they secured outgoing passage on the first trip of the day and return passage on the last trip of the day, and cost Jair quite a few promises he¡¯d rather not have made, but he waved away Raina¡¯s concern. ¡°It will be more than worth the tradeoff.¡± ¡°What¡¯s so important about Nuprima?¡± Raina asked once they finally finished the last negotiation. They sat out at the last destination city at one of the open-air cafes that catered to tourists. Since they were only a few days away from a lunar passage, prices were easily triple their standard rate, but Raina wasn¡¯t concerned with the cost and Jair liked the place. "Are you familiar with forced imprinting?" Raina looked up sharply. "Of course. It''s generally considered a risky prospect, but it''s quite commonplace in certain circles. The permanent scarring tends to make it less popular, but some people think it''s worth the cost." "And what do you think about it?" She shifted uncomfortably, then shrugged. "My father has always strongly advised me to stay away from it, so I haven''t really given it much consideration." "Your father isn''t wrong, it''s an exacting process that goes wrong more often than anyone will tell you, but it''s also one of the few ways to speed up spell imprinting. You trade immediacy for permanency.¡± ¡°Yeah. That¡¯s why it¡¯s not recommended. If it goes wrong, you don¡¯t get a second chance. The slot is ruined and you can¡¯t imprint anything there. Worse case scenarios, you can also invalidate the mana flow to further imprints, so if you botched a shoulder imprint you may lose access to the whole arm. Forced imprints are very rarely used for anything but hand or forearm spells.¡± ¡°True, but not what I¡¯m getting at.¡± ¡°No?¡± ¡°The point is there¡¯s the possibility of incredibly increased imprint speed. Assuming the imprinting goes correctly, you get to take one day to obtain spells that would take months otherwise. The tradeoff is that these spells are burned in, not just imprinted. Where a normal mage can layer their manabody to provide rapid flexibility or, at worst, erase an imprint and put in something else, someone with a forced imprint is stuck with it. But what if there was a way to make imprints at that speed without the chance of scarring it permanently?¡± ¡°If that were a possibility, everyone would know about it.¡± But her expression had turned mischievous, hopeful. ¡°Unless you¡¯ve found some kind of hidden ancient secret technique in all your searching?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve spent whole lifetimes searching out every cheat shortcut I could get my hands on. Unfortunately, none of them were quite fast or strong enough to deal with a full dragon in under a week, but a lot of them do come in handy for things like this.¡± ¡°Wait, don¡¯t tell me. Let me guess.¡± Jair smiled and nodded for her to continue. ¡°Hmm. Nuprima is known for ice and magic. We¡¯re talking about magic, so I¡¯m going to assume the ice has nothing to do with it. Imprinting rapidly.¡± She frowned and tapped a finger against the table, then her mumbling fell silent as she continued thinking it through quietly. She was still pondering when their orders arrived, and then it was midway through their spicy soup that she startled and grinned. ¡°I¡¯ve got it.¡± ¡°Have you?¡± She wiped at the slightly spilled soup from her outburst with a napkin, then shrugged and left it. ¡°Forced imprinting is done with mana crystals formed into a scalpel,¡± she recited. ¡°A single continuous line that must be formed while actively pushing mana through the scalpel at a steady rate the entire time.¡± ¡°That is the method, yes.¡± She grinned triumphantly. ¡°But! The only reason that¡¯s necessary is because we¡¯re on a mana-poor planet! Neptus is only about a third the density of Nuprima. So, I bet that if you used a raw crystal and only pressed it to manabody thickness, rather than actually cutting the skin, you could get a similar effect by way of the standard mana pressure of the moon without the permanence effect!¡± Jair nodded, impressed. ¡°Very close. The problem with that method is the pressure. What you can do safely down here becomes explosively dangerous in a place with triple the mana density. Making an impression in your manabody over and over becomes a strong channel, but those channels are essentially scars on the manabody level. The lines you draw are openings until they heal over.¡± Raina nodded along, brow furrowed. ¡°So it¡¯s just as permanent, only on a mana level rather than a physical one?¡± ¡°No. Much simpler than that. When you draw a line, you¡¯re making an open tear in your manabody. A manabody used to standard Neptus mana pressure when opened into Nupmira pressure will overload and explode, basically.¡± ¡°Oh. That sounds a lot less helpful than I imagined.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a good reason people don¡¯t use the method I¡¯m going to show you. There are about twenty things that could go wrong at every step and each of them will kill or cripple you. Lucky for us, we¡¯re not going to be tampering with the soul, spell imprints are only on a manabody level so I can revert us until we get it right.¡± ¡°Us? So I finally get to be in on some of your crazy overpowered tricks?¡± ¡°Only if you want to. It¡¯s not going to be enjoyable. A full day of intense awfulness is one thing, repeating every few minutes until it¡¯s perfect is even worse.¡± ¡°Yeah, but the result is skipping months of imprinting in a single day.¡± Raina grinned. ¡°That¡¯s more like it! Finally using your ability to its full potential.¡± ¡°This has been my plan from the beginning,¡± Jair protested. ¡°It¡¯s not my fault that there¡¯s almost a full month between the start of my loop and the earliest opportunity to get to Nuprima. I can shortcut my way to archmage, but I can¡¯t change the fundamental nature of the world.¡± ¡°Pff. Not reshaping the world to his whims? Some immortal time god you are.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°I¡¯m still only human. Very heavily enhanced human, but not quite a god. Even with Maelstrom.¡± ¡°Why can¡¯t you find a way to make the planet turn faster and the moons come into alignment more often? With all the time in the world, you should have been able to by now.¡± Jair shook his head and threw the crust of his bread at her. ¡°Your support is appreciated, even if your confidence is misplaced.¡± Raina caught it and dropped it into her soup with a grin. ¡°So if we can¡¯t slice open our manabodies safely on Nuprima, why bring up the forced imprint thing at all?¡± ¡°Because there¡¯s a solution. Just not one that many people are willing to take.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± ¡°Patience.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know how far the range on my reversion is,¡± Jair told Eythron before they left. ¡°I¡¯m going to be spending all of Nuprima reverting as often as necessary, so maybe take a day off if it¡¯s going to bother you.¡± ¡°Understood.¡± Jair waited for him to ask for clarification, but Eythron just keep working. Apparently he either trusted Jair to take care of his own affairs, or didn¡¯t care. Probably both.
The lone attendant at the transit platform collected their fee for incoming Nuprima traffic¡ªa separate charge from those of the platform owners on the surface. After the thick warmth of the jungle dampened their robes so thoroughly, the frozen moon felt more chilling than ever. Jair directed them to the clothing sellers, who made a fortune renting their protective gear to underprepared travelers. It was quick and effective, though, so worth the cost. The lady at the stall they were patronizing gave them more than a few skeptical glances when Jair requested outfits with detachable sleeves, but didn¡¯t say anything about it. She did require an escrow down payment to cover the replacement cost of the outfits if they died and couldn¡¯t return them. They also paid for a mana crystal harvesting license, since they¡¯d be going through quite a few of those and it was far cheaper to collect them himself than go through other channels. ¡°Normally, I¡¯d spend a month here and come back as a full archmage, but since we have only today we¡¯ll be unlikely to make it past two layers. Possibly four if we¡¯re lucky.¡± Raina¡¯s eyes almost popped out of her head. ¡°What¡­ four layers? In one day? Even two is insane. Aelir, even one is insane. A full set of imprints in under a day?¡± Jair nodded. ¡°I think we¡¯ll stick with two. I could probably push to four for myself, but I doubt you¡¯d want to do it on your own. So, four total, two for each of us.¡± ¡°Insane.¡± She hugged him, and if they weren¡¯t wearing protective helmets to provide them with non-frozen breathable air, she¡¯d probably have kissed him too. ¡°We¡¯re going to have to move fast. Each step of the day, we¡¯ll walk through it, verify we know what we¡¯re doing, then revert and do it flawlessly.¡± Which would be a thousand times easier without having to also perfectly relive the entire week leading up to it. ¡°So we go out into the cold, and find some mana crystals. Then what?¡± ¡°I just told you. Then we revert and do it faster. Every moment after our arrival at the platform is valuable. Split up and take care of different purchases. Have exact change ready for when we rent the outfits. Give her the collateral without waiting for her to ask for it. Be putting them on as we move. That kind of thing. The sooner we can get to a manamount the better.¡± Raina nodded. ¡°Should we revert now?¡± ¡°Not yet. We need to scout the terrain, find the nearest viable location that isn¡¯t being used by others.¡± Raina nodded and followed him out of the airlock into the open air of Nuprima. The place was visually stunning. Outside the protective domes over the platforms, Nuprima¡¯s surface was frozen and shattered. Massive rifts, floating mountains, and uneven cliffs made up its white and grey landscape, offering a thousand ways to die if you were the slightest bit careless or unprepared. The very air resonated with magic. Mana was so thick here that it naturally crystalized, forming the basis of most industry down on the planet. Nuprima transit was expensive and limited, dominated by bulk transport of the month¡¯s mana crystal supply to companies and cities. Mana crystal collection was a dangerous but insanely profitable job. For every dozen people who came to make their fortune, one walked away rich and successful. One or two more might survive if they gave up before they were too far from the safety of the domes. Jair had spent a few lifetimes with this as his primary income source, before he moved on to longer term and less personally involved methods, but he still liked to come collect a few dozen crystals any time he was in the area. They were valuable in more ways than just to sell, being the core power source for many constructs. Less efficient than self-powered, but more reliable. ¡°Woah.¡± Raina stared up at the nearest floating mountain, like an iceberg hovering in the sky casting a shadow over the cracked landscape beneath. The interplay of gleaming whites and blues against the dark sky beyond was stunning. ¡°You think that¡¯s amazing, wait until you see the view from up there.¡± He pointed to the underpeak of the mountain, where mana crystals hung down in gleaming clusters ¡°Wait. We¡¯re going to be holding on to the bottom of that thing?¡± ¡°No, there are paths with an inversion field. The mountain¡¯s gravity is localized, you can walk all over it, top to bottom. But wait until you see how this place looks from there. It¡¯s truly breathtaking.¡± They checked three different mountains before finding the one they¡¯d be using. The first had too few crystals of viable length, having been harvested recently, and the second had a work crew spreading out just as they arrived. That would be incredibly disruptive to the intense focus required, so they went even further afield. Third try they did find a remote mountain a bit smaller than the first two and its crystals not quite to full harvesting length. Jair demonstrated the appropriate grapple and hop technique for moving between the gravity of Nuprima and the localized gravity of the manamount, then had Raina practice it until she could do it flawlessly. For a while they stood at the inverted peak of the mountain, staring up at the glittering beauty of the moon¡¯s landscape spread out above them. Raina couldn¡¯t stop smiling, gripping his hand tight enough he could feel it even through both layers of gloves. They stayed there for almost an hour, then spent another two wandering the mountain itself, both underside and upperside. On the top of most manamounts there would be an avian colony, but this one was smaller than most. Its only inhabitants were a trio of harpies who¡¯d set up their respective huts on three different sides of the mountain. Each of them would offer a riddle to grant passage. Fortunately, like with the philosophy-hating dragon Muegvygh, Jair knew all the answers. He let Raina have fun guessing first though. She did get one of them right, but the other two relied on heavily cultural context that would be impossible to convey quickly or easily. ¡°So, when do we start?¡± she finally asked once their exploration of the mountain was thoroughly exhausted. ¡°Back to the start?¡± ¡°Back to the start,¡± Jair agreed. He reverted them to the moment of their arrival. Raina took off running toward the protective clothing seller, while Jair speedran paying arrival dues and signing up for the mana crystal harvesting license. They met up three minutes later at the benches beside the airlock, finished pulling on their outfits, and were out into the frigid landscape of Nuprima within moments. Jair darkflamed them to their chosen mountain¡¯s peak and grinned. ¡°That was amazing. I¡¯ve never done this so fast.¡± Being able to teleport at will was so nice. This whole process would be practically luxurious this time. Torturously painful, yes, but temporal and transportational control would make it much less so than ever before. Raina raised a triumphant fist, her own excitement mirroring his own. ¡°So where do we start?¡± Jair broke off one of the slimmer mana crystals and sat down beside the cluster. ¡°We start with planning. Exactly what spells do you want in which locations? Tracing the existing ones is going to be easy, but once we split off the new layer you¡¯ll have to do some fancy trickery.¡± ¡°What kind of trickery do you mean?¡± ¡°Choosing similar spells for similar slots¡ªsimilar patterns, not similar outcomes¡ªcan make it easier to fill them in if you decide to keep the partials. Or they can be blanked out in transition and start out with nothing but the anchor or anchors.¡± ¡°Uh¡­¡± She frowned. ¡°Why have I never heard about any of this? Anchors?¡± ¡°Right. Advanced mage theory, we would have gotten to it in another couple years if we¡¯d stayed at the Institute. I think it¡¯s restricted from anyone below Reforged rank unless specifically taught by a certified source. The transition from mage initiate to mage presumptive requires dividing your manabody into two layers¡ªbut the layers must remain connected or it would stop being part of you. That¡¯s where anchor points come in. You keep one spell between layouts and keep that section and that section alone unseparated.¡± ¡°And that lets you have twice as many spells, just like that?¡± Raina frowned. ¡°No, that¡¯s not how layering works. I do know that much. You can only have one layer active at a time. So how do you switch between them?¡± ¡°Successful layer-switching is the step that moves you from mage presumptive to full mage, and it¡¯s not one we have time to deal with today. All we¡¯ll be doing here is choosing your anchor, making the division, and filling out your second layer¡¯s spell imprints. You can learn how to use them once we¡¯re back in standard mana pressure and your manabody has time to recover a bit from what we¡¯re about to put it through.¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t sound so bad.¡± ¡°If you don¡¯t hate me by the end of the day, I can guarantee you¡¯ll at least hate yourself.¡± Raina chuckled uneasily at his suddenly serious tone. ¡°It¡¯s just manabody training, even if it¡¯s a more extreme environment? I¡¯ve done reinforcement, absorption, and enhancement exercises in the past. And obviously we¡¯ve been imprinting for weeks now. How hard could it be?¡± ¡°You think I would exaggerate the difficulty?¡± She swallowed. ¡°No, you¡¯re more likely to understate it.¡± ¡°So trust me when I say that what we¡¯re about to do will feel like an endless nightmare. If you want to go back, you can do so at any time. I will be staying either way. You don¡¯t need to rush things just because you can, if you¡¯d rather take the standard year or three to reach a proper layer division.¡± ¡°I¡¯m coming with you, that¡¯s final. And it¡¯s not going to be endless. Not really.¡± ¡°True, there is an end. All we need is flawless perfection.¡±
124 - Spell Imprinting For Cheaters Beginner mages are advised to choose the spells Strike Bolt and Basic Shield as your hand spells if you plan on engaging in combat, either hunting in dungeons or duelling. For coastal protection, you should go with Starbeam instead of the shield, as magical protection is entirely useless on that front.
"The normal procedure for doing this is to make your imprints stable to a ten minute duration. If you can sustain the drain without the imprint destabilizing after that long, you''re considered capable of moving on to the next preparation step." Raina frowned down at her imprints. "They won''t last even a few seconds, let alone minutes." "Not yet. But this is just background information still. The second step, once your imprint is stable, is to increase the mana density of your manabody." "Strength exercises, increase its capacity. Which also takes months." "Exactly. But the one thing Nuprima is best at is pressure. You must have already noticed the strain of maintaining your form?" "It would be a good place to exercise magically even without any of your cheating tricks." "A lot of tourists come here for that reason. My cheating tricks are incredibly dangerous. But when used effectively, you can use Nuprima to normalize your manabody at an incredibly high density. The challenge is to keep it under your control rather than letting it slip." "Then it''ll collapse and you have to start over. Which we don''t have time for." Jair grinned and hefted Maelstrom. "We can start over without losing months of progress, and we have plenty of time. The point is, the constant strain you''re under to maintain the outward pressure of your manabody against the outside, you''re going to have to balance and invert it throughout the process. We will be gradually letting Nuprima take over the mana density of your manabody, but that means that if you maintain your standard outward pressure, you''ll explode it instead." "That sounds like it would be a relief. To treat it like any normal atmosphere instead of this weight trying to crush me... why are you shaking your head?" "Because you can''t just let up on the outward pressure. You also need to hold inward pressure. Otherwise the whole thing will equalize and the boundaries dissolve. Like how you need to hold the stability when leaving an oasis and heading out into the desert." Raina exhaled with relief. "Okay. I can do that. It''ll be hard, but¡ª" "Before you go thinking this''ll be easy, that''s only one part of it. The background to the rest of the process, which will be ongoing throughout." Raina blinked. "Ongoing? I thought stabilizing your manabody was a prerequisite step." "It is, for standard practice. We don''t have time for that, so we''ll be doing them all at once. You''ll be drawing the imprints, retaining and pressure-adjusting your manabody density, and re-sealing the manabody incisions made by your imprint drawing simultaneously." Raina flopped back onto the ground and stared up at the moon above them. "That sounds impossible. Any one step is going to be..." she swallowed and leaned her head up to stare at him. "Weeks if not months of effort to perfect." "Yes." "And combining them together will take even longer." "Yes." She lay back down again, groaning. "I really am going to hate myself, aren''t I?" "Yes. And hate me too. If you''re still sure you want to go through with this, I will not let you stop. You''ll want to, probably beg to, maybe attack me. Not sure, haven''t tried it with anyone else who could time travel before, but that seems likely." He certainly would have, if there were anyone else he could blame for putting himself through this. As he pushed himself in every possible way, beyond limit after limit only to find there was another barrier beyond which even he could not break. If he''d been any less spiteful toward his own weakness, he probably would have given up a thousand times by now. "I thought you considered murder attempts the equivalent of a friendly greeting?" "I didn''t try to refuse you the chance. If you want to kill me, go right ahead." "And if I need to stop and go somewhere else for a few months before getting back to it?" "No. We will do this and then we''ll stop. Once it''s done and the results are evident. Otherwise, you will never be able to force yourself to commit to it again." "Never is a bit extreme." "You still don''t understand how difficult this process is. There''s a reason elven grandmaster mages still take months for a single division, deep meditation supported by their entire communities as they gradually split off their next layer. And that''s without the pressure of the moon trying to crush you, without trying to add new imprints at the same time." "We''re cramming months of progress into a single day." "Each step would take months. Prodigies can do the whole cycle in a year. Most people take a decade, and of those who succeed in performing a full manabody split, the majority never do it a second time. If so many people can''t bring themselves to try again after a success, how would anyone convince themselves to go through it again on a failure?" Raina sighed. "Point made." She sat back up and started to brush the snow off her back before it melted. "I hereby grant permission for you to refuse my refusal to follow through on the awful thing we''re about to do to ourselves." Jair handed her the crystal. "First step is to finish the anchor imprint. Most people wait until they have a full set before dividing, but technically you only need one. This will be easiest because the imprints are already started, but it''s still going to be tearing gaps where the ambient mana can push in. Unless you have practice with manabody manipulation already, there''s no way to prepare you for this apart from saying ''start drawing'' so I won''t try. I''ll be right here." "Not going to do it yourself?" "I will. Once we''re ready to do it for real." That more than anything else sobered Raina. That he would not even demonstrate prematurely. She took a breath, nodded, and pulled free the left sleeve of her protective outfit. She shivered as the frozen air of Nuprima brushed her bare arm, clenched it into a fist and rested her forearm across her lap securely. She flexed her hand, glanced at the paired forearm imprints, then back to her hand. "Where should I start?" "Not with the hand, unless you''re absolutely confident in wanting it as your anchor. It''s a lot more sensitive." Raina nodded. She took another breath, then pressed the crystal to her arm. Then gasped and flung it away with a sharp cry, clutched her arm to her chest. "Raina." Jair took her shoulders. "It''s alright. Breathe. It''s just your manabody. Hold it together. Don''t let it collapse." "W-what¡ªwhat is this?" She could barely breathe. Her voice trembled, further distorted by the protective faceplate. "I don''t¡ª" Then she doubled over with a silent gasp. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. "That''s what the atmospheric pressure does when it finds an opening. The first thing you''ll need to master if we''re going to do this is looping that power flood back out and using it to seal itself." It was another several minutes before Raina could talk coherently, and when she did it was with resignation. "I couldn''t, the whole thing collapsed." "Pretty normal for a first try. Did you manage to integrate the mana influx at all?" "No. I had no control at all. It just kept coming and coming and the imprint tore and..." she shivered and stared down at her arms, now bare of even the partial imprints they''d spent the past weeks obtaining. "I''ve never felt anything like it." "Welcome to secret overpowered cheating techniques 101: it''s going to be painful and difficult. Last chance if you want to back out." She paused, still staring at her bare arms, then slowly shook her head. Her fists were clenched tight, both the gloved and un-gloved, bare arm tight to her chest, but gradually she calmed. Breathing deep, she finally swallowed and nodded. "I think it''s dispersed." "Then let''s try again."
Once she could manage the initial incision of the imprinting''s beginning, there was continuing the pattern to be done. It had to be done incredibly slowly, even more slowly than Jair would be doing, since the primary difficulty would be managing the amount of mana flooding in from Nuprima''s atmosphere. She had around forty seconds from first opening to losing control, and a further two minutes until full collapse if she couldn''t get it back under control. With a longer imprint line, that happened even faster. When she first tried to make a full stroke at once, the entire thing dissipated in seconds. "Very slow. Just keep it steady and stay focused on holding the power where it belongs, and sealing the imprint as you go." That took countless hours, and then countless hours more as they moved from the initial line to the intricate patterns. Jair started on his own once she was getting along reasonably well, since the end goal would be for them to finish simultaneously, but had to do so from a position where Raina couldn''t see him since she invariably tried to imitate his speed and had nowhere near the experience to handle it. He could probably still get to three layers while she finished her first. The process grew more and more frustrating with each failure, since it was almost impossible to resume an imprint midway. Even Jair would invariably wobble at least a little when reverting into an in-progress line. Time disappeared in the endless cycle. Try and fail and start over. But each time they got a little further, a little closer, and the frustration of failure grew softer with repetition. It was inevitable, do your best, try again, see how far you can get. Not that the path was smooth. Sometimes she made a mistake sooner than before, or her hand slipped, or she just had to stop and scream for a while, but overall the early steps went almost universally just fine and the later ones moved faster and faster. She still wouldn''t be close to his speed even at her best, but for someone who''d only started this morning she was coming along incredibly well. One good thing about reverting the same hour over and over was that the weather was entirely predictable. She started to automatically shift her shoulder to block the wind at just the right moments, lean back against it when it gusted particularly heavily, and continue the line with slow continuous pressure. Another good thing about the constant reversion was that they didn''t need to worry about their physical requirements. Their lifebodies didn''t have time to grow hungry however many weeks or months worth of time passed. They would be just as strong at the fiftieth try as the first, weariness only mental with no tangible detrimental effects. When they finally got Raina''s anchor imprint fully finished, she just sat and stared at it with her breath held for almost ten minutes, waiting for something to go wrong and it to collapse on her, before turning to grab him with unrestrained ecstasy. "We did it! I did it! Look!" Jair jumped up to dance around with her, hiding the flawed imprint from where she''d disrupted his flow. He was on his third by now, and Storm Strike wasn''t so essential that he would make her do it all over again to preserve it. He could add it to a different layer. Not all of them had to be perfect. As long as hers were, that was all that mattered. He''d come this far without any imprints at all, he could go without one or two per layer if that''s what it took. They spent several minutes talking, stretching, walking around¡ªjumping and dancing in Raina''s case¡ªin order to give him a solid reversion window that he could clearly envision and not accidentally revert them into the initial process. They went up to the overmount to chat with the harpies for a few minutes, further cementing the moment as distinct, then headed back down/up to the inverted peak of the undermount. They each chose a new mana crystal, since the first had been worn down and drained in the process, then got started on the next imprint. The exhilaration of the first success carried them through several more false starts and reversions before it all dulled back into the familiar cycle of struggling for a little bit more progress each time. Or, if not every time, at least pretty often. After they finally finished Raina''s second imprint and Jair''s fifth, they paused to go have a late breakfast. The amount of manabody exercise they''d been doing over the past few hours didn''t translate to much on any layer but magical, and sitting in place wasn''t particularly straining physically, but the sheer passage of time did require them to pay some attention as the day progressed. "Do you hate yourself yet?" Jair teased as Raina picked out their menu back at the dome. "Oddly enough, no. Not yet." "Not yet, really?" She looked down at the two imprints on her arm, which was beginning to regain some of its normal color now they were inside. "Not any more." "Did I miss an existential crisis in there somewhere?" "More than one, I think." She laughed it off, running a finger along her second imprint again. "It''s fine, I didn''t want you to see." Jair considered arguing, but decided to simply nod. She was certainly entitled to maintain her dignity. Was that what this would have been like for him, if he''d not been alone? If he''d been able to describe what went wrong and be offered a path to the solution, instead of simply throwing himself against it again and again until he broke through... "What''s that smile for?" Raina demanded. Was he smiling? Was that why his chest felt light and his heart warm? "Nothing, I''m just happy for you. You''re doing so well, coming along so fast. We''re really going to do this." "It''s amazing!" She held up her arm, showing off the imprint again, then drew Tempest and activated the spell. Fire rushed down her arm and flared up around her blade, a line of ember-orange surrounding its edge. "One morning! You remember how weak this was yesterday? And now it looks like I''ve been imprinting for months, not weeks." She gave the flaming blade a sweeping flourish, trail of fire flowing out behind it, imprint alight. "I could keep this up all day. It''s amazing." "It really is." Somehow, seeing her success seemed to validate every terrible moment he''d spent in piecing the strategy together inch by painful inch. Destroying his bodies over and over until he got it right... and now all that effort was saving Raina years of struggle herself. She could put in the effort knowing she was on the right path, that it would definitely be rewarded when she finished. Jair had tried teaching people in the past, but without the ability to learn from their mistakes it was an exercise in futility. He could revert himself a thousand times, but no matter what he said it wasn''t enough to convey the necessary understanding. This was different. Raina could learn and they could adjust and she could repeat it immediately with direct feedback from both her own body and Jair''s experience. Raina giggled and poked him with her spoon. "Were you going to eat, or just grin dopily at me all morning?" "I can eat later. The morning only lasts so long." She laughed. "I never imagined it could be this easy." "Most people would consider what you''ve been through this morning anything but easy." Raina waved it off. "Sure it was uncomfortable at first, but that''s just when I didn''t know what to expect. Being able to finish the spell in one go is so satisfying." Can''t possibly be as satisfying as watching you be so happy about it, he didn''t say, only watched with pride and satisfaction. She''d worked so hard, with such focused determination. Finally, all the obscure things he''d learned were able to be useful for something other than stored away in case of emergency. He could see how much it meant to her, and it brought her that much closer to being able to survive on her own without him needing to even consider looking over her shoulder every moment for a snapvine or a stray vylix. She could take care of herself. She wasn''t weak, she wasn''t ignorant. Only young and untrained yet. But that was something he could help with. And she was eager and determined, more so than so many others. Stubborn, loving, protective Raina. Finally able to be the one who could pursue her advancement on her own, not one who had to be always looking out for him. For her family. For anyone and everyone except herself. She could do whatever she wanted here, choose her path and lock it in with no outside influence having any say in the matter. No looking back and double guessing. And she dove into it without more than a moment''s pause. "I love you so much." He said it without thinking, a response to the vast swelling of pride and happiness and relief and so much more. He''d worried that this might break something in her, but couldn''t deny her the opportunity to try, and yet she survived and pressed through and seemed to be handling it all better than he could ever have imagined. She blinked up at him, the grin stretching even wider across her face as she reached across to grab his hand. "I love you too, silly. You sure we can¡¯t take a bit of a break before getting back to it?" ¡°As it turns out, I think I can trust you to come back to finish.¡±
125 - Hydra Hunters Whether she is of Void or Beyond or some other realm entirely, we do not know. Vamisel''s reach is either omnipresent or nonexistent. The records are too universal, and too minimal. The name lingers long past its associated meaning has been forgotten.
They didn¡¯t end up getting to Raina¡¯s layering before their window closed and they had to return to Orard, but she did get all but one of her imprints finalized. Jair¡¯s estimations had severely underestimated how much his own resilience contributed to the speed of the process. He¡¯d done it so many times it barely registered as anything but an obligation, but he had decades of manabody control to rely on. Raina had never done any of this before, and even reaching as far as she had was exceptional. After it took her so long to get each one completed successfully, he couldn¡¯t bring himself to force her to try again just to get it a little faster. She¡¯d fought through enough frustration and failure after failure to get this far, it wasn¡¯t worth it to force her to retry even more. As long as they had basic mobility and enough attack spells and augments for Tempest so she could actually hit the thing while it was intangible, that was enough. Jair did add two of his own layers before they left, and began the process of erasing the nonfunctional imprint. Having been made with direct mana incision it would be slow to remove, but not fully impossible unless he ran too much mana through it. Eythron gave him a very, very judging look when they returned. Jair grinned and waved. He wondered how his mentor had spent the months of repeating the same few hours over and over, but decided it would be more amusing to just pretend nothing had happened. Eythron was far too dignified to make a fuss about it, especially when he¡¯d been forewarned. Watching him quietly furious was so worth it. Avoiding time travel made the remaining weeks of preparation pass very quickly. With each day only happening once and their new spell loadouts fully prepared, there was plenty of practice to be done that didn¡¯t require deadly danger. After the pervasive chill of Nuprima, it took Raina a few days to acclimate back to the damp warmth of the Oriad, but Jair was used to it by now. They avoided anything dangerous enough to require reverting, apart from twice when they joined Eythron and Uqiar in hunting more brobegs for their hide when the crafting project ran low. Froglike draconic cousins known for their antimagical abilities and the propensity for swallowing people¡ªand other monsters¡ªwhole, brobegs were bulbous and territorial things that Jair felt no guilt in eliminating. The easiest way to do so involved waiting for it to glide down from its ambush above, then allow himself to be swallowed and slice it apart from the inside since its outer layers were resistant. Also, since they wanted to use the hide, the usual slashing and stabbing necessary to get to all its various essential and backup essential vitals would be best done from somewhere that wouldn''t leave the outside shredded. "What exactly are we looking at for timeline on this now?" Jair asked after the fight, brief as it was, as they carefully skinned the dead brobeg. "Curing the hide is a whole other process now to get done." He was normally a little more patient than this, but he''d discovered that not being able to freely revert without disrupting his mentor''s progress felt surprisingly restrictive. "You don''t need to worry about that part," Uqiar told him. "I can do it in three days." Jair squinted at him. "I don''t care how good you are, this isn''t a process that can be just done. Each step requires time." "Don''t question the expert," Eythron interrupted before Uqiar could explain his unreasonable speed. "He can do it. Three days, then another week of crafting to finish the rest of the armors." He eyed Jair sideways. "You''re surprisingly effective at brobeg hunting. If I''d had you fifty years ago..." "Well, you have me now, so that will have to suffice." Eythron nodded toward Raina. "Have you briefed her on hydra head protocol?" "Not yet." "Should do that." Jair nodded. "So, Raina, what do you know about a star hydra?" "They''re one of the rarest of hydra types, incorporeal and highly resistant to physical damage. Can only be damaged by attacks that take place during the same moment as it''s doing a physical attack of its own. Usually a bite, but it could also be a tail swipe, claw, or stomp," she recited with the clear enthusiasm of someone who knows a thing because they chose to, not because knowledge was pushed upon them. "This does mean that most star hydras are engaged in mutually destructive attacks, but while it can afford to sacrifice a head or two to get its teeth into your soul, you can''t survive the inverse." "What about its non-physical properties?" "Those are unknown. Depends on the specific hydra. Since they grow new heads to embody the soulspell of the creatures they''ve consumed, it depends on what this specific hydra has eaten to tell you what its abilities will be. They don''t always match up with the powers of the thing they consumed, but they do in the majority of cases. There are not very many actual examples out there, though. Majority of known cases is like... three out of five." Jair chuckled. "Yeah, something that bites your soul out and can''t be hit in return is surprisingly difficult to study." "Easy to study," Eythron grunted. "Hard to survive to report your results." "Same thing." Raina waved it away. "So, what''s this hydra head protocol?" "First, we need to all concentrate on dealing with a single head at a time. When one of us calls out either a number or color that''s the one to focus attention on. Order of operations, in case you end up in a position to be the caller for the next head, is most damaging first. Anything unsurvivably devastating needs to be taken out immediately. After that, weakest first. The more dead weight it has to haul around, the harder it''ll be for it to do anything properly." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. "Since this one is local to the Oriad," Uqiar put in, "it''s most likely to have powers similar to these creatures." Maelstrom was pretty similar, in a way. It and the star hydra could almost be cousins. Except it was a violent monster and Jair''s sword wasn''t. "If you had to put a quality grade on the hydra, what grade would it be?" Raina asked. "Legendary." Eythron didn''t even pause to think it over before answering. "This particular one is hundreds of years old, had a minimum of eight heads last I saw it, and has ruled its riverside for the entire time I''ve lived here." "Did you say riverside?" Raina stared at Eythron incredulously, her hands falling still. "And it''s still alive?" Eythron snorted. "Soul killers know to respect one another''s territories. In a way, the hydra did me a favor. Without it guarding the river there, I''d never have been able to set up my reservoir and dispersal systems in the first place. Now, even once it''s gone, my streams will be secure." "It''s done all this work for you and now you simply murder it? How cold." "It''s a soul-eating monster. You expect me to let it live just because it''s convenient for me? What if someone else comes by that swamp? What if it decides it wants to expand its territory? What if it finds a mate?" Jair shivered at the thought of that last one. Hydras were not native to Neptus, one of those pests that ended up importing themselves through various combinations of accident and mischance. It only took one hydra egg to slip through and suddenly you''ve got twenty tiny almost unkillable monsters running around trying to hide under and behind everything, eating your rats. That latter part briefly made them the novelty pet of choice in many societies around the first initiation of the lunar passages. Who wouldn''t want an adorable six-headed maybe-dragon who would keep your warehouse free of pests? They were cute at birth and small in their youth, but though they grew slowly, they didn''t stop. There was no ¡®adult size¡¯ for a hydra, only the size it had reached so far. By the time people started to realize that their cute little pets would outlive and outpower them¡ªby a lot¡ªthe popularity quickly sank. The number of hydras being requisitioned for parts grew exponentially as the market for eggs and infants plummeted. But wild hydras were wild hydras. There were enough of them out there and they reproduced fast enough and in large enough quantities that Neptus would never be free of them. And occasionally one got big enough to claim their own territory and hold it against all comers. Star hydras were among the rarest of an already rare breed, made scarcer by their unique disadvantage in being largely non-physical beings. While they could sustain themselves on pure magic on their home moon of Nuprima, even there they needed food to grow, and Neptus was a much less magically abundant location. The adaptation between magical predator and helpless slitherlings who needed help to even eat was a difficult one. While most forms of hydra were running around being cute destructive balls of fire or ice or whatever their alignment ended up being, star hydras struggled to survive. Without their parents to manage the transition between physical and nonphysical, regurgitating prepared food much like a bird mother to their young, many star hydras never quite figured out how to eat things for themselves. As a result, star hydras often ended up attacking their own heads or eating others of their nestmates in lieu of accessible prey. Fortunate for the survival of any other species on Neptus. Otherwise, the invasive hydras could have wiped whole continents clean faster than anyone could do anything about it. Generally, any time you had a soul-eating predator on the loose, it was a good time to take drastic and immediate countermeasures. Being able to selectively phase through anyone or anything gave a star hydra several disturbingly effective fighting styles. It could bite out your heart without the rest of your body showing a scratch, claw your soul out through your eyes, or simply walk through you until you were inside its stomach. Raina nodded understanding. "So we take out the fireball head first, then anything injured or vulnerable, and work our way up from there." "That''s one part of it. The other part is to try to assess its abilities as quickly as possible. Anything you notice, even if you think everyone else also saw, be sure to call it out. Along with the color of the head''s eyes that can do it. The most important thing to do in the early moments of the fight is to get the threat fully assessed. Since there''s no way of knowing until it starts doing things, communication is vital." "That sounds like it could get very dangerous and confusing very fast." "Yes. That''s why people normally don''t fight these. And those insane people who do don''t survive." "We''re going to do both." "Yes." "Truthfully, boy, if not for that sword of yours I''d still be planning this for another decade before being ready to move forward with it." "Yes, I know that. You would have sent me after it but not tried to face it yourself." "Alternate potential futures don''t qualify you as knowing what I''ll do," Eythron grumbled. "They really do. I''ve seen you in so many different situations, I think it''s going to be more of a shock if you manage to do something I truly don''t expect." Eythron tried to stab him without warning. Jair had already darkflamed himself to the other side of the clearing. Eythron chuckled. "Keep up that kind of reaction time when we find it and we might all survive after all.¡± ¡°You expected we wouldn¡¯t?¡± Eythron shrugged. ¡°This has been the focus of my life for so long, if I go out taking it down with me, my life will have been well spent.¡± Jair¡¯s insides all tightened in something akin to panic. ¡°Wait, you don¡¯t want to kill the hydra for any greater purpose, it¡¯s just your arbitrary goal before you die?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd. I¡¯m not planning to die.¡± ¡°Sounds like you are.¡± ¡°This is one of the things I¡¯m willing to die for. Doesn¡¯t mean I want to.¡± But what about after, Jair wanted to ask. He¡¯d anchored himself with Raina¡¯s survival, and that was a blessedly ongoing challenge. Sure, he didn¡¯t need to figure out how to deal with Ryenzo any longer, but she was still a person traveling through an unsafe world. The nature of his anchor had changed, but it remained as strong as ever. If Eythron¡¯s reason for living was to destroy this hydra, that wasn¡¯t an ongoing anchor. Once it was dead, it would be dead. Suddenly, Jair¡¯s eagerness to help with this fight dropped significantly. He would follow through, because he¡¯d promised to, but fully prepared to take his mentor hostage if necessary once it was over. Overreaction? Maybe. It surely wouldn¡¯t be as bad as with Mercurios and the volcano, but having seen Eythron in such vulnerable states¡ªnot to mention knowing that he¡¯d actually died to Sekir at one point¡ªhad left Jair with a drastically shaken perception of his teacher¡¯s survivability. A year ago, he¡¯d have laughed at anyone suggesting Eythron was even capable of dying. Now, he couldn¡¯t quite shake the feeling of impending doom. He¡¯d just need to be extra vigilant. As long as he could revert time, things couldn¡¯t get too bad.
126 - Hydra Hunters (2) 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.
¡°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¡ªone 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¡ª¡± 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¡ª¡± 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¡ª" "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.¡±
127 - The Star Hydra The so-called ''star hydra,'' hydrus stellaris, is so named because of the colorful constellation formed by its luminous eyes in the darkness. Though nearly every other creature has a maximum of exactly one soulspell, the star hydra can have as many as one for each head. The specific capabilities of any given star hydra can only be learned by experience, and for some reason, no one has returned with sufficient information to create a proper compendium.
They arrived at the swamp the monster claimed as its home with plenty of time to prepare. The star hydra lay sleeping atop a mound of its destroyed prey and stolen horde of magical shiny objects. Or so Eythron claimed. From what everyone else could see, the whole scene was indistinguishable from a pile of skulls and vaguely magical trash half submerged in a horrifying-smelling pit of swampy mud. Any monster present was completely invisible. "You sure this is the right place?" Raina asked. Eythron held up a slate of glowing symbols. He turned it toward the forest, demonstrating how the light dimmed, then brightened dramatically when he pointed it back toward the central mound. "It''s there. It won''t attack us until it notices us, but once it does we have to move fast." "Star hydras are intangible, not invisible." "Unless it ate something invisible," Okaya proposed. "It might have done since the last time we were here." "You''ve been here before?" Qahrvirna asked. "And you didn''t tell us?" Okaya and Eythron exchanged a look that spoke of things none but them could comprehend. Even Uqiar looked between them, faint confusion in his glowing eyes. ¡°Information from a hundred years ago would only have muddied the water,¡± Okaya said. ¡°We do not know if the hydra is anything like the creature from back then.¡± ¡°And it might be exactly the same,¡± Qahrvirna retorted. ¡°You¡¯d rather we go into this blind than with potentially outdated information?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± Eythron said quietly. ¡°You¡¯ll understand better what you experience for yourself.¡± ¡°I have to say,¡± Jair interjected, ¡°I¡¯m with Qahri on this one. I know it¡¯s your nature to be secretive and not tell anyone anything ever, but you have existing intel on this specific hydra and didn¡¯t think that was worth mentioning?¡± It didn¡¯t matter so much now, since they could scout it and revert, but when Eythron sent him against it in the future the man hadn¡¯t even mentioned its potential capabilities. Every time he thought he¡¯d reached the limits of what the old man was hiding from him, something new came along. ¡°This is not up for discussion.¡± Eythron shoved the detection tablet into Jair¡¯s chest. ¡°Go stab the thing or get out. Some of us are here for a reason.¡± ¡°And what exactly is that reason?¡± Qahrvirna demanded. ¡°You offer me a feast, I¡¯m not going to turn it down, but this is a bit much.¡± ¡°It was too long ago,¡± Okaya insisted with finality. ¡°Get into position.¡± Knowing how stubborn they could be, Jair let the issue drop. He circled the designated section with Eythron''s hydra-detection tablet, and it continued to point directly inward to the pile of hydra loot. Any hopes of it having been further into the jungle were dashed. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s there,¡± he reported once he¡¯d completed a full circuit of the open area. ¡°Either invisible or under the water.¡± Perhaps both. Couldn¡¯t be sure of anything with star hydras. ¡°Well?¡± Eythron demanded. ¡°You going to stab the thing, or keep standing around like you¡¯re trying to invite a girl to dance?¡± ¡°Why don¡¯t you send Skyclaw?¡± Raina asked. ¡°Do you have to do it yourself?¡± ¡°The unsevered pact is a soul-level tie, but it¡¯s external,¡± Jair explained. ¡°It can¡¯t be undone without killing one or both of us, but if one doesn¡¯t mind destroying the pact target it¡¯s not hard to do on a soul level. The pact will have weakened Skyclaw¡¯s soul defences as it is.¡± ¡°Besides,¡± Qahrvirna added, ¡°what would they do? Try and claw it? They¡¯d just be an overly large target and liabilities we can¡¯t get back once they¡¯re gone.¡± Jair¡¯s hand tightened on Maelstrom''s hilt, biting the blade into the flesh of his palm, ready to darkflame or revert at a moment''s notice. Less than a moment. A blink. A thought. His heart raced madly. This was exactly the kind of fight he did not want to get involved in, and here he was about to throw himself into it anyway. One deep breath, then he darkflamed himself into the middle of the swamp, atop the center of the mound. The hydra didn''t wake up. It didn¡¯t rise from the depths to surround him with a dozen heads breathing fire and death. As far as any of Jair¡¯s senses could tell, the hydra wasn''t present. He hopped down from the pile and splashed around in a circle, murky swamp water up to his knees. Nothing. He kicked into a large submerged rock and stumbled awkwardly as he tried to reclaim his balance in the water. Yet even that moment of weakness, no monster appeared to take advantage of. "You sure it''s here?" "It''s here. Just stab it." Jair summoned Maelstrom and stabbed it down into the ground with a mighty cleave. The water surged, going from knee-high to waist-high in a vast swell as something very large displaced it from below. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Jair darkflamed himself to the far side of the clearing just in time. Water lapped at his shins, flooding out over what had formerly been dry ground. A soft growling hiss echoed through the swamp. The hydra¡¯s translucent form rose from the water like a spectral creature made of smoky glass frosted with blue-green scale texture. It hissed in sinister chorus as its heads looked in all directions, then turned to glare down at the gathered intruders to its domain. Jair scanned the whole thing in a heartbeat, cataloging everything he could observe about it in the split-second between arriving at his original destination and reverting himself away. It was bigger than he remembered. Even ducking its necks to half height they were too far above him to reach with Maelstrom even if he were to stand on Uqiar¡¯s shoulders. Eight heads stared down at him in a loose array. Another two heads hung dead, strapped tight to the creature''s chest with a combination of vines and the untanned twisted hide of some beast that stank of rot and death to keep them out of the way. Most of the hydra heads were clearly empowered by various monsters from the Oriad. Two were brobeg, yellow-green eyes watching him hungrily. One was vylix, the neck and head bristling with spines, with crimson eyes and tearing teeth instead of stabbing fangs. Another glittered crystal like the arachnids that haunted the upper layers of the jungle canopy, its eyes silver-tinted yellow, as though made of glowing liquid metal. This head had the thickest neck, and it hung lowest as it stretched forward toward Jair hungrily. Topmost, towering above the others, a smaller head on a thinner but more flexible neck watched haughtily with glowing golden eyes like threads of molten amber. Beside it on the sides were one that had teal eyes, another with blue, and below them a gleam of pink. Good enough to start with. He reverted to before they¡¯d woken it, just after Eythron had told him to go stab it. Eythron, Raina, and Qahrvirna stumbled awkwardly as they were interrupted mid-motion and thrown back into the past. Uqiar and Okaya looked at them curiously. ¡°Alright, here¡¯s what we saw. The vylix, red, and crystal octide, silvery-green, shouldn¡¯t be a problem as long as we avoid being physically bitten. Iit also has two brobeg heads, yellow-green. You¡¯ll want to avoid those. Their fangs can cut through magical shields with impunity, and I¡¯m not sure how effective their hides will be against them.¡± ¡°Minimally.¡± Eythron tapped at the armor on his arm. ¡°It¡¯ll block spirit and spell attacks but once it pierces through, there¡¯s nothing more to be done. The bigger problem will be them interfering with our spells. If a brobeg head catches your fireball, it¡¯ll pop the mana right out of it before it can do anything.¡± ¡°So keep track of which head is where. The blue-eyed one will spit scalding-hot water in brief but intense streams sharp enough to tear through most materials in seconds. The pink one likes creating illusions. I¡¯ve never seen the gold or teal ones before.¡± They all turned to Eythron expectantly. The old man shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s more than I know. I suspected the blue one would have something water-related. The red-eyed one is very aggressive and likes to chew, not just bite. If it gets hold of your leg it¡¯ll be perfectly happy to start eating you alive right there, without waiting for the rest to get at your soul. Might even let you try to limp away before dragging you back.¡± There was an edge of anger in Eythron¡¯s voice, the faintest hint of a deeply-controlled tremor. They spent another few minutes going through the size, shape, orientation, and other details of what he¡¯d witnessed, then spread out to start the fight for real. Jair elected to start the combat from a distance this time. He hurled Maelstrom into the space where the invisible, intangible hydra lay sleeping, using Bladewalk to guide it in a flawless straight line. The hydra snapped awake. Its body mistily came into form and its many glowing eyes all fixed on him. An angry hiss rose from all eight throats at once, and the battle was joined. The topmost head kept its golden-eyed gaze on Jair as he used a combination of Lift and Bladewalk to keep Maelstrom darting at the hydra¡¯s throat. The monster always managed to sway just out of the way in the last moment, never once being scratched. Meanwhile, the body and other heads rampaged about wildly, thundering across the swamp, sending up waves and splashes of vile water, crashing into trees and snapping them clean off. Jair darkflamed himself to the side of the clearing. The blue-eye head was facing him before he''d finished turning and a scalding stream of water blasted out at him. Jair cursed as he barely managed to darkflame away to another side of the area. Fire was waiting for him, as the vylix head lunged and the pink-eyed one set up a barrage of the flame. Jair ignored the flame¡ªillusory flame, with no heat or substance¡ªand slashed out at the vylix head. Yet again, the whole body moved away, yanking its head out of his reach at the last moment. Another head dove at him from the side. He jumped away, then swung out at it. The hydra took a step forward and to the side, the top head scanning the area as two of the others lunged at him. Jair darkflamed himself out of the growing swamp and into the farthest tree he could see. The tree was promptly crunched into splinters as the hydra lunged with three heads and an echoing hiss. It wasn¡¯t his imagination. It was fighting the others, but in a rather obligatory manner. Its main focus was on him. Jair darkflamed back out of its range, but that wasn''t going to last for long. There was no way to escape it at this rate. Good thing the goal wasn''t to escape. It threw itself forward, sending water arcing up. Jair hopped onto Maelstrom and flew around the hydra in a wide circle, trees crashing in his wake as it lunged out at him again and again. Jair risked a glance back to see how the others were doing. Raina and Qahrvirna threw spells at it, which the brobeg heads were doing a good job of intercepting. Too good. As far as Jair could see, none of them had landed a single hit apart from his starting blow with Maelstrom. Uqiar roared and charged it, grappling two of the necks at once, one in each of his enormous black-furred arms. Unfortunately, he was so close to the trunk of the hydra¡¯s body that he barely even wobbled the long necks, and it provided them an easy, stationary target. Jair reverted just in time, to a few seconds ago, as the triumphant pink-eyed head dove down to grab the beastkin¡¯s soul in its fangs. ¡°Look out, Uqiar!¡± he shouted. ¡°Above you!¡± The beastkin released one of the heads and let himself swing down and out of the way. Okaya jumped into the fray again, only to be forced back by a blast of illusory fire. ¡°The fire isn¡¯t real, pink head is illusions!¡± ¡°I¡¯m a sunfist,¡± Okaya snapped. ¡°I know fire when I feel it.¡± Jair caught sight of the pink-eyed head hissing at him in amusement, even as the teal head fired out another blast of fire. So they were augmenting each other. That complicated things. Eythron rushed in with Soulcutter gleaming at the edge of his blade. Unlike Maelstrom, Eythron''s weapon looked quite standard and had no embellishments to set it apart from any other soulsword. But though it looked fully ordinary on the outside, its core was as strong as any. Perhaps better. There was little Eythron couldn''t do and this moment showed his skill in a way that little else could. Unfortunately, as fast and well prepared and equipped as he was, the hydra was faster. Eythron was fast and agile, as was Jair, but the hydra remained a step ahead of them and moved to evade strikes before they were even begun. Jair took a quick breath to recenter himself. The hydra needed to die, whether it could predict his movements or not. Jair''s loop superseded whatever time-sight power the hydra had. His timeline could progress with impunity. As long as he was able to checkmate it fully, he didn''t need to worry about anything else. All he needed to do was completely outmaneuver a creature that could react in a split second, had a range of hungry heads with various magical powers of their own, and could see the future at least to some extent. Easy.
128 - The Star Hydra (2) Stowaway vampires have a tendency to set up incredibly convoluted schemes to take ownership of anything that catches their fancy. You may not immediately pay for neglecting your checks, but you will pay for it. Often disproportionately so.
It was not easy. Against the hydra¡¯s relentless and targeted assault, he had to revert constantly. Jair had Bladewalk, Lift, and Darkflame for mobility, but none of his attack spells did more than irritate the creature. The frantic chaos of hydra necks and heads and teeth was more of a dance of evasion than anything. It attacked relentlessly in rapid sequence, phasing itself in and out of reality as it slid through obstacles and struck out with a dozen attacks at once. Jair darkflamed behind it. Three of its tails lashed for him immediately, the first very nearly hitting him the moment he appeared. He teleported in front of it and one of its heads was ready and waiting for him. Its golden-glowing eyes stared into his as he twitched and teleported himself back away, only to meet another of its tails lashing out to coil around his leg. Mere moments into the fight and he was already on the back foot against this thing. He slashed out at the tail that held him, but it hurled him away before he could complete the strike. He caught himself with Lift and stabilized in midair, then threw himself upward and out of the way of a lunging head. Jair darkflamed again, landing atop one of the nearby trees and fully out of sight from the monster''s swamp. Qahrvirna''s vampiric attacks, Eythron''s Soulcutter, and Maelstrom would all be sufficient to damage it even when incorporeal, but the creature was too fast and had too many attacks of its own. Any time they attacked from a distance, it predicted the attack and moved out of the way before it could get anywhere close. For any of them to get in close enough to checkmate the thing would mean getting close enough for it to bite back in retaliation. It had the advantage of multiple angles of attack, its long necks able to snake around to attack from unexpected directions, and there was nothing any of them could do to hold it back. It was too big, too heavy, too fast. They simply didn''t have the size or strength to do anything. Jair could have stopped it with magic very easily if it had been any other type of hydra, but that did them no good here. Jair took a moment to reorient himself and give the hydra a chance to forget about him and refocus on someone else, then darkflamed himself above it with Maelstrom already pointed down. "Bladewalk," and he was diving at the hydra''s back¡ª But its golden-eyed head was already there, again, its mouth perfectly positioned to bite down on his arm as he flashed past, so he aborted and reverted before it could bite down. The speed at which the thing could move put the rest of them to shame. When it decided to rush through, they could do nothing but scatter out of the way. Its low body was solid enough that even if you tried to duck and managed to avoid being stepped on, it would still crush you flat from sheer impact. The hydra¡¯s bulky main body didn¡¯t turn very fast, but its heads whipped around at unbelievable speeds. It could snap out and bite with pinpoint accuracy mid-charge, and only needed one of its heads to be paying attention to driving. It reminded Jair of a carriage full of archers running at full speed, except instead of arrows they had magically-enhanced soul-eating hungry hydra heads to deal with. It was a perfect stalemate. The hydra had insane mobility, enough to match Jair and Eythron evenly, and such a wide variety of attacks at its disposal. But they had enough dangerous weapons of their own to keep it from fully engaging. It knew as well as they did that the first one to move would be just as dead as the other. The problem was, the hydra had a lot more lives to play with. Each of its heads had its own independent life and soulspell, so as long as it traded one for one it could kill them all with heads to spare. It shied away from anything short of a killing blow, but the number of times it found an opening and Jair had to revert to save one of them bordered on ludicrous. Unlike most fights he¡¯d experienced, which he could reverse even after physically and magically dying, in this conflict he couldn¡¯t allow himself to be hit. Being killed or even injured would leave terrifying long-term repercussions. Only a minute had passed in real time despite the fight going on for nearly an hour; he¡¯d needed to revert that many times. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration. Every advantage Eythron and Uqiar had spent years building up, all of it was enough to level the playing field just closely enough for Jair to stalemate the thing with his best efforts and full exploitation of Temporal Reversion. Finally, when they¡¯d shown no indication of being able to outmaneuver the monster, Jair reverted all the way to before he woke it up. ¡°What¡¯s this for?¡± Eythron demanded. ¡°We barely got started.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t working.¡± Okaya stared out across the calm flat surface of the swamp that a moment before had been thrashing with hungry hydra heads. ¡°It wasn¡¯t this fast before.¡± ¡°It¡¯s predicting us. That top head, with the gold eyes¡­¡± Jair summoned Maelstrom and held it up to display the window into its gold-lined depths. Identical gold. ¡°I fought this hydra once before, several years into the future, and it didn¡¯t have this head at that time. But since my soulspell is temporal in nature, I believe that it¡¯s inherited part of my ability. Whether to revert or see the future, I can¡¯t guess, but it¡¯s moving too perfectly. Predicting us too precisely.¡± Eythron grunted. ¡°So we need to take out that head first.¡± Jair nodded. ¡°But it must know that¡¯s its greatest strength,¡± Raina pointed out. ¡°Won¡¯t it protect it above all?¡± ¡°Yes. If you pay close attention to its patterns, you¡¯ll see that head never makes attacks itself, always stays up out of range. Which is why we need to be unified and decisive. Have to get it into a situation it can¡¯t escape no matter what it does. I don¡¯t see any way to do that without any of us being in its reach.¡± ¡°You¡¯re quick to give up.¡± ¡°No, I¡¯ve assessed the situation and come to a conclusion based on that information.¡± Eythron scoffed. ¡°Two minutes? Three? That¡¯s not long at all. This is going to be a fight that lasts for hours and you¡¯re upset that we haven¡¯t won in the opening stanzas?¡± ¡°We¡¯re not going to survive hours at this rate. If I hadn¡¯t been here, you¡¯d have lost Uqiar and Qahrvirna already in the first eighteen seconds.¡± ¡°Sounds to me like you¡¯re giving up.¡± Jair flung his hands in the air. ¡°What do you want, old man? It¡¯s all I can do to keep you all alive! Any time I lose its full focus of attention, it would have one or more of you dead in moments. But without you all to split its attention, it would be able to kill me in moments. So what¡¯s your plan?¡± ¡°Kill it.¡± Jair¡¯s tense breath was the closest he could come to control. ¡°We can¡¯t just kill it. That¡¯s not how this works.¡± ¡°It would if you stopped interfering.¡± Jair narrowed his eyes at his old mentor. ¡°You really expect me to sit back and watch you die?¡± ¡°I expect you to take advantage of the opening and kill it.¡± Jair took two steps forward and grabbed Eythron by the front of his robes. ¡°That¡¯s not how I operate, old man. You don¡¯t get to die on me. I won¡¯t allow it.¡± ¡°This is inevitable. You only make it sooner.¡± ¡°No. I do not accept that.¡± Eythron¡¯s sword was between them, pressing against Jair¡¯s throat. ¡°Give up if you want, boy, but I will not be delayed any longer.¡± Jair stood still, but for the heaving of his chest. He tried to think of something, anything, to persuade Eythron against this course of action, but the way his mentor looked right now he wouldn¡¯t put it past the man to actually stab him if he tried to hold him back. Raina¡¯s voice broke the tension as she raised her hand. ¡°I can do it.¡± Jair spun on her, prepared to argue. ¡°It¡¯s a trade, right? One head for one of us?¡± She hurried on before he could interrupt. ¡°Maelstrom has highest priority on my soul, so it¡¯ll hold it in escrow until¡­¡± She licked her lips and swallowed. ¡°Until you can get me back out. Right? All I need to do is wait.¡± ¡°And once the time-sight head is out of the way, the rest of us can finish it off quickly,¡± Qahrvirna said, eagerly. ¡°It won¡¯t be a match for us without that.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t do it. I won¡¯t let you.¡± Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Eythron didn¡¯t relent. ¡°Either help me or stand aside.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll find another way.¡± He threw himself back into the swamp, unwilling to budge, determined to find the way through. There would be a way. There had to be. He darted around the battlefield, slashing and darkflaming and moving through the chaos of flailing hydra heads. A one-minute fight stretched out into hours as he replayed it one moment at a time until each was flawless. Lift Qahrvirna out of the way. Fly at the teal head and it¡¯ll back off of Raina. Darkflame out of reach and stab toward its foot to make it dance back. Block the blue head from getting to Eythron. Darkflame right up in the gold head¡¯s face so it doesn¡¯t see Okaya¡¯s attack. Stab the crystal octide head when it comes in for a bite, then darkflame Uqiar out of the way as soon as his claws connect. In theory, the tiny damage his allies were doing could add up in the end, but the hydra would definitely be willing to overcommit to an attack long before it got anywhere close to dying of its dozen or so cuts. Each moment was harder than the last. The hydra kept pushing and pushing, always exactly where it would be most difficult for him to intervene, always going for a killing blow. He could only stall it for so long. Gradually his progress slowed, then stopped. The hydra had too many of his allies locked in place, could strike three at once and he couldn¡¯t possibly save them all. Jair fought and he reverted and he fought and reverted and fought and reverted in an endless stream. The same half a word from Eythron. The same two steps from Raina. The same grin from Qahrvirna. That damnable hiss of triumph as the hydra knew it had him outplayed. The only two things to change were Jair and the hydra, as they played out this eternal war in micro reversions. The others tried to adjust, but there simply wasn¡¯t time. The hydra snapped and retreated, never quite catching him again but tearing little rifts into his armor with each bite. Jair slashed and stabbed, never quite connecting fully enough to get a real grip on the soul, and when he did it was always too brief to do any real damage unless he was willing to accept its bite in return. If it had only the one head, it might even be a tradeoff he could accept, but with how many heads it did have¡­ giving it that much time to ravage his soul was not something he wanted to experience. The stalemate dragged on, and on, and on. He reverted further back, but that only shifted the battleground. The same slash from Eythron, the same yelp from Raina. The same darting array of strikes from seven of the eight heads as the golden-eyed one presided over them and watched Jair with unsettling intensity. He reverted and darkflamed, he slashed out and reverted. He darkflamed and stabbed down, reverted and roared as its fangs sank down and reverted before they could reach skin, and darkflamed and slashed up... This was too much, too painful, too draining. He didn''t remember ever being so miserable. Even Mercurios had been more interesting. Even Ryenzo had been more understandable. Sekir was downright fun in comparison, even if he was infuriating with his subversion and mind games. The star hydra was pure death. He''d watched this fight from every angle, every possible move. He knew its reactions better than he knew his own, and yet it wasn''t enough. Neither could win without subjecting themselves to the same destruction. The same judging glare from Eythron, the same pleading in Raina¡¯s eyes. It wasn¡¯t only himself he was subjecting to this endless nightmare, and he¡¯d fully exhausted the possibilities. He couldn''t take it any more. That grinning hydra head watching him, necks twisting and flexing out of the way of his every swing, mouths darting in to snap at him then withdraw before he could target them to retaliate. Eythron¡¯s eyes met his, cold and demanding. Jair looked between his two dearest friends, both of whom were so eager to throw themselves into danger. He hadn¡¯t thought his heart could get any heavier, that any dread could come close to what he¡¯d already experienced in the past. He¡¯d been wrong. And something deep inside him cracked. He reverted one last time. ¡°Fine. We¡¯ll do it.¡± His voice came out flat, his body moved with collected calm, as though his heart wasn¡¯t racing, as though his mind wasn¡¯t collapsing in on itself. ¡°Raina, with me. Eythron, take it head on. We won¡¯t get a second chance at this.¡± Raina stepped onto Maelstrom¡¯s flat with him. Lift and Bladewalk augmented each other, shooting them across to the center of the swamp. Raina held Tempest in both hands, ready. Jair mentally replayed the hydra¡¯s rise and appearance, the exact positioning of each of its heads. He positioned Raina directly behind where the golden-eyed one would appear, then flew down to the place where he¡¯d started the fight the previous time. "Do not hesitate." Raina nodded, picking up on his serious mood. Jair struck downward. The hydra rose up to face them. Its golden head whipped around, forewarned already, diving at Raina as she drove Tempest into its oncoming throat. It accepted the trade, biting down on her arm as it took the sword through the inside of its mouth, three other heads rushing up to finish her off. Jair darkflamed above it and drove downward. The time-sight head couldn''t release itself from its victim quite fast enough to react in its own defence, but it was able to bring two more of its heads up to meet him. Jair slammed down with Maelstrom through its skull just before the other two reached him. Raina looked up at him, trust deep in her eyes even as she cried out and the hydra tore her in half. He didn¡¯t dare allow his doubt to show on his face. He¡¯d experimented on his own soul enough times and ways, but always within his own control. Soul-eating enemies were not something to play around with or gamble. Jair''s turn wasn''t long in coming, but he was ready for it as the other heads reached him. The tradeoff would be a tradeoff. He¡¯d already amply proven he couldn''t simply win without sacrifice. Time to meet this thing on its own level. Within his mind and soul, Maelstrom screamed and Tempest roared in fury. Their connection had always before been a brief thing, momentary as they consumed and divided their enemy¡¯s essence between them. This was not brief. Tempest¡¯s anger was a hunger beyond anything Jair had ever experienced before. It had its tiny teeth in the hydra¡¯s soul and it wanted more. Maelstrom had never been so desperate, never needed so much power so fast. Holding Raina¡¯s soul securely when she¡¯d been killed by a sword was an entirely different thing from snatching it back from a soul predator¡¯s grip. The only way to keep her safe was to consume the hydra whole. Each hydra head¡¯s soul was connected to the others by a complex network of intangible mana threads. The golden-eyed soul went down easy, but all the rest resisted. The threads got tangled and choked his metaphorical throat. Jair felt the hydra''s soul within Maelstrom''s grip even as hydra fangs from every angle pierced through body and spirit. He pulled harder, pitting his soul strength directly against the hydra¡¯s, but it was no contest. The hydra was ancient. Not prehistoric-ancient like Mercurios, probably only a few hundred years old, but its soul made Sekir''s and Eythron''s both look trivial and childish. It didn''t matter how much he was hurt in the process. There was more than just himself on the line. No room for hesitation or failure. All or nothing. Win or die. Any other fight, this standoff would have been enough to send him running to the past to escape. Anything pitting him soul to soul against something of equal or greater strength? Nope. No way. Do not want. Maybe Jair had been a little bit too cautious of soul attacks in the past. It was his one true weakness remaining. In hindsight, it seemed foolish to train only a little beyond the peak of human knowledge. The peak of human knowledge was a pathetic thing. Elven techniques took centuries, and they were in no hurry to share with lesser peoples. Beastkin had innate differences that made their techniques all but impossible to replicate for non-beastkin. Limits, barriers. But in reality, none of those could have stopped him if he truly committed himself to the pursuit. They were excuses he told himself. He saw that now. It had been fear that kept him from further developing his soul¡¯s strength. He¡¯d tested his soul, stretched it, and experimented on it. He¡¯d used it as a weapon, and used it as a shield. He¡¯d told himself he was doing everything he could¡­yet any adversary that could remotely threaten it, he avoided instead of confronting. Perhaps that had been the right call. Perhaps if he¡¯d gone up against a vampire or star hydra or seascourge or any of the other soul-touching monsters, he¡¯d have been destroyed for good. Or maybe he could have been better prepared for something like this. He hadn''t. Now was his trial by fire. Without having already consumed that first head¡¯s fiery soul, without the threads dragging out to all the rest, he¡¯d have been dead already. Maelstrom would not be so easily disregarded. It anchored him, prevented the hydra from slurping him in as easily as it wanted to. Yet neither could he gain any ground, one against seven. Within that suspended soulsight there was no room for either side to claim advantage. But this time, he wasn¡¯t alone. In those moments between death and dissolution, his eyes flicked from the hydra to Eythron, to Uqiar and Qahrvirna and Okaya. They would take care of him, even if this fight left him helpless and shattered. He could, for once, trust in something outside himself. He didn''t have to be the only person doing anything. He didn''t have to fully deal with the fallout. Didn''t have to hide alone and run and scrape for every moment of survival. He''d survived years of recovery before, and he could survive years of recovery again. He could accept the damage and the pain and grow from it, and he could rely on his friends to keep him from being lost entirely. This wasn''t the first time he''d had people he could depend on. Some of these very people had been there for him in countless other situations across so many timelines he couldn''t count them, but there was a difference to it now. They knew. Not just believed, not just trusted, they were fully committed to his course. Their course. Their goals were unified, their destination clear. They travelled in time with him. They would finish Eythron''s hydra hunt together. They would deal with Sekir together. They would find Raina the materials she needed to reforge Tempest together. They would deal with the Beastlord and whatever other future threats may have come up beyond when Jair had gone forward into the future. Together. There was nothing to be afraid of. So he let go. He released every part of himself that had been holding back, trying to keep him safe at all costs, and threw his soul straight into the center of the hydra''s remaining tangle with a wordless roar. The time was now. And he was hungry. The hydra¡¯s heads tore at his body and soul, but Maelstrom was beyond their reach. They could tear apart the connections that let him move, breathe, fight physically, but the star hydra was never going to be a physical opponent. This was always going to be a battle of souls. And Jair''s had been timid and avoidant for too long. Sometimes the only way to win was to throw everything into it, no matter the consequences. He''d not held back when he was forging Maelstrom, not to the very moment of his death. And he couldn''t hold back here. He''d tried that. Danced and danced that wearying fight of never engaging, of no sacrifice, of no risk. But when had he ever won by playing it safe? Maelstrom''s hunger would not be denied. Jair had never felt so desperately ravenous in his life. He''d been hungry physically, sometimes to extremes, and he¡¯d experienced a severely depleted manabody, but he''d never had a hungry soul. It felt like what he remembered from having a chunk torn out of his soul, except worse. It wasn''t an external attack or superficial loss, it was internal. Like his soul was eating itself from the inside out. It would be excruciating under ordinary circumstances, but knowing that every second he didn¡¯t finish this was another moment for Raina¡¯s soul to be broken apart? Unbearable. He had to have it all.
129 - Soul Breaker We know nothing of Vamisel¡¯s domain or personality, only that she is universally respected. Those who would not hesitate to write fiction with our two known patron deities have thus far refrained from infringing on the emptiness of our forgotten third deity¡¯s history. Can it be coincidence?
The hydra''s second head lost its soul, its threads joining the first as the ravenous hunger within Maelstrom, within Jair, surged into the forefront. The third came almost trivially, though Jair''s body no longer functioned and Maelstrom remained stabbed into the already-dead head, the connection was strong enough for him to just. Keep. Eating. "Jair!" "Idiot boy." The voices were barely audible over the hisses and tearing, but Jair wasn''t going to let something like that stop him now. He''d rebuilt the connections between body and soul when Mercurios turned him into a lizard, and he could rebuild them from this. However long it took. But he would never win if he let fear hold him back. He''d been running from this fight for too long. Perhaps he couldn''t have managed it before, perhaps it was wisdom, perhaps it was necessary. But now was the time. He could avoid it no more. The third hydra soul slipped in alongside the first two, and Maelstrom all but purred. Jair''s vision was blurry and grey, soulsight and manasight slipping together as his physical eyes were long gone, but he wasn''t done. Just getting started. Maelstrom was no longer in his hand, but he wasn''t sure he even had a hand any more. He might not even be Jair anymore, he might just be Maelstrom himself. The hydra ignored the blade through its dying time head. It ignored Eythron, Qahrvirna, Uqiar, and Okaya. It continued to shred Jair into smaller and smaller pieces, ripping his manabody apart, as though destroying those would be enough to stop his inner assault. It was fighting the wrong target. Maelstrom was all the anchor he needed. Either way, he drew in a fourth hydra''s head and a fifth at once, both fighting and slick, but his mouth was bigger now and they couldn''t begin to resist. Both were crushed together, hot and shining, and then the balance tipped and all the rest of it came struggling and hissing down, down, and at last the demanding hunger was satisfied. He couldn''t hear the voices, couldn''t perceive the movement, but he felt the raggedness of the edges of his soul as the power he''d just consumed flooded out, pressing into the raw open gaps and soothing, burning, cauterizing the edges so they no longer pulsed and screamed. And the pieces within that were Raina¡¯s, Maelstrom gently tore out and pushed back to Tempest for reconstruction. All was not well. It wouldn''t be for a long, long time. But it would be. It absolutely would be. So Jair relaxed into the emptiness, into the darkness, and allowed himself to rest. He drifted, a mote of green fire and golden angles and silver light and venom and hunger. Then something else pressed against him. Sparks and hunger and curiosity and eagerness, childlike and demanding. I want to be more like you, and I can help. He gave it what it wanted, allowed the floating fragments to exchange, released what he didn''t need and accepted what it had to give. The ragged torn gaps within him slowly knit together, healed over, filled in. The hydra''s eightfold soul broke down slowly and hesitantly. It tried to devour him from inside even as he tore it apart piece by piece, but it was fighting a losing battle. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to feel the presence of the physical, then the magical. His manabody had been shredded, but his lifebody was much less damaged than either of the other layers of himself. It had been pierced again and again, but the stabs were only so much in comparison to the amount of metaphysical damage the hydra had been inflicting. It was the connection between body and soul that had been torn apart down to tatters, the body itself somehow remained relatively intact. Or perhaps it had been reconstructed. He couldn''t be sure, but he suspected it had been a lot longer than it felt. Oddly enough, the resumption of perception of the physical made him more aware of the spiritual. While fully embodying his soul, he hadn''t been able to observe it directly, it was more a thing of intuition and metaphor. Now, though, the connections between him and himself, between body and soul, between soul and mana, shone out clearer than ever before. Memory of the moment Mercurios had spread his entire soul out like a constellation lingered vividly. No ordinary dungeon had the power to directly impact someone like that, not until it had already subverted you from the outside in. Otherwise, with that kind of power, even a normal dungeon would be unstoppable. But Mercurios was lazy, greedy, and insufferably draconic. Mercurios played with his visitors for his own amusement rather than out of the endless drive for expansion and conquest that most dungeons pursued thoughtlessly and relentlessly. Jair laughed humorlessly to himself. While it had been horrific in the moment, crushingly overwhelming and relentlessly dehumanizing, being a newt in a tiny maze had been oddly helpful. By not giving him time to stop and think, retaining an eternal now as the intense focus of his existence, it had preserved the memory of that moment of first contact nearly flawlessly. Instead of being processed and forgotten it lingered in recent recollection for months or years until it was burned into his mind as thoroughly as if he''d experienced it a thousand times. While he was reattaching his body and soul, he could weave the inspiration from that event into the process. Certain connections that he would never have been able to make under ordinary circumstances seemed suddenly so obvious. Ways the shifts and flow of himself would better integrate into the physical and magical shells that surrounded him, the ways mana interacted with the deeper self. The difference between manabody and body, and how to exploit those differences to make them more tightly unified rather than more distinct while still enhancing the unique strengths of each. It wasn''t quite the same as instantly improving his strength or magical capacity, but it wasn''t far from it. If he were to make a comparison between magical and physical, the intensive training he planned to undertake on Nuprima would be like adding incredibly powerful enhancement constructs to his body, while this reconnecting was more like having enhancement constructs implanted into his bones. Even in the wake of Mercurios''s drastic reshaping, none of it came close to the sheer amount of not being the same shape as himself as had come about here. It wasn''t a reshaping, it was a full on remaking. The connections he''d strengthened before shone out clear and bright, thick and strong, like a network of steel ropes where before it had been embroidery thread. Still other connections¡ªvital ones¡ªremained entirely absent, though. It wasn''t fully an upgrade. At least, not yet. The absence of existing pathways meant he could recreate them however he wanted, and he had some ideas about that. The way Mercurios had reshaped him. The way the star hydra integrated powers on the soul level and then repeated them out into the world. The way Maelstrom and himself were bound together, the same and yet distinct while still being inseparable. The way Eythron hungered for dungeons, as he hungered for the star hydra. The way Sekir shifted so quickly from one persona to another, still able to use magic though he should have had dissonant and wrong-shaped manabodies from taking over a lifebody so unlike himself. The way he integrated his spells on Nuprima. The way Maelstrom clicked into place when he fed it his soul. Everything he''d done and experienced and been and become, it all flooded through him on a perpetual loop. Repeating, repeating. He couldn''t move forward until he knew where he''d been. He thought he''d known, but even then, even after creating the greatest weapon known to humanity, even after fully integrating that weapon into himself... he was still missing something. Pieces of him were left behind when he reverted. He lost his imprints, he lost his physical improvements. Reverting brought along his thoughts and memories, his soul strength and his integrated weapon, but it did nothing for the rest of his magic. Why should that be the case? If the hydra could eat his soul and manifest it in the past as a time-seeing head. If Sekir could switch from one shape to another in the matter of minutes. Why shouldn''t Jair be able to integrate his imprints on the soul level? Why couldn''t he carry his manabody back with him too? If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The answer was simple. Because the manabody was connected first to the lifebody. The soul tethered both, but the lifebody was the one through which both connections centered. It claimed precedence in the hierarchy, standing above the manabody and barely a step below the soul. Body and soul were the original pair, and then you used your lifebody as a template to build the manabody from. But right now, Jair was nothing but soul. The other layers were distant, entirely untainted, only the most basic and fundamental connections established. Connections he could sever at will, or rearrange. Reshape the hierarchy however he wanted. He wanted his manabody to be as much a part of him as Maelstrom. Not this manabody, but the one that felt most like himself. The archmage he''d become, the one who''d fought the Beastlord''s armies single-handedly, who''d outraced mage-slayers and drakenhounds alike. The man who reached the pinnacle of Mount Sanctum and threw his life and soul into forging Maelstrom. That was who Jair was. Not the child he''d been a thousand lifetimes ago. Not the barely functional warrior who could only continue through these fights because he was being supported by his sword and his friends, time-locked into a body he could not possibly improve fast enough. The person he''d fought and sweat and bled to become. The power he''d forged over countless repetitions. That was who he was. Who he should be. The imprints were still there, in the back of his mind. Countless layers, pristine and flawless. Protection spells royals would kill to possess. Enhancement spells built from the best of elven lore and then taken further and further until they could be refined no more. Gravity spells no one else could come close to matching for strength because they would spend twenty times as much power on them as he would. More and more. Everything he¡¯d learned and created and collected over uncountable lifetimes. Thick power, heavy and sturdy, unflinching and uncompromised. His lifebody languished, whining at him weakly about being neglected. Brief sensations reached him, flickers of sensation. A touch, a breath. Voices. Broth salty against his lips and warm in his throat. The fight had ended outside, and nothing had gone so wrong that it required his attention. He offered no more attention to the physical, but allowed it to slip away despite the sound of someone¡¯s frantic cries. Then they were gone, brief distractions from the work that he''d been waiting all his lifetimes to undertake. Without knowing it, this was what he¡¯d been working toward in every moment he pushed himself body and spell and soul beyond what should be done. The star hydra''s soul was such an expert at picking apart the pieces of what it consumed that Jair''s perception became focused to an impossible degree. If what Mercurios had done to him was insight, this was pure wisdom. Mercurios showed him the substance, the star hydra showed him the structure. Except even that was too much a simplification. The whole thing was far too nuanced and complex for such simple descriptions to do it justice. Jair felt simultaneously overwhelmed and enlightened. There was so much and yet he understood all of it. Intimately, flawlessly. The pieces of him that were himself, that were Maelstrom, that were Raina and Eythron and Qahrvirna and Sekir and Tempest and Meliarn and a thousand other people and creatures. Most were tiny fragments, almost memory rather than substance, with only the loosest connection to the being from which they''d been taken. Some were strong and heavy, pulling on something far away. There was his body. His memories. His manabody. His senses and perception. All of it imprinted into the soul to one degree or another, all of it forming the smallest image of itself. Little markers of acceptance. This is what should be. It explained why he was regularly so out of sorts when first reverting a great distance. The layers would fall out of sync with each other. If his soul remembered a different manabody than the one he had, it needed to relearn it. But... why should it have to? If he could store a physical weapon within the fabric of the soul, why couldn''t he store the rest of himself too? Meliarn hummed anxiously, a crystalline vibration that demanded recognition. "What to do with you, hmm," Jair mused. "That''s actually a pretty important question." Meliarn was vast and powerful. Right now, right here, it was subordinate to his will. The cord that bound it to him was bright and strong. If he followed it to its origin he would see the dungeon''s core itself. They were deeply but not irrevocably connected. What Jair was doing right now, in this suspended eternity, was the exact opposite of revokable. If normally his soul was made of stiff clay that required effort to reshape, what he was about to do would fire and glaze it into solid stoneware. Once he chose the final shape of himself it would not be changed so easily. Perhaps not at all. To sever Meliarn now would be painful and difficult. To sever Meliarn after he integrated it into his fullest deepest self would be to shatter himself and leave a gap that would probably never heal. Now or never. What mattered more to him? His own freedom, or Eythron''s? If Jair took the connection to Meliarn fully into his soul, it would no longer see his mentor as a threat and Eythron would no longer see it as prey. It wouldn''t be a bound entity but a part of the whole. But that would also forever tether him to Veor. He could travel elsewhere, but the urge to return would always remain. He would be physically free, but his heart would be held. And not where he wanted it to be. Not good enough. He pulled on the shining cord, dragged the core from its place, and ordered it to stay. Something cracked. Something splintered. Neither was Jair, so he didn''t worry about it. He wanted to maintain control of Meliarn, but he didn''t want to be trapped in place. He wanted the core to be secure, not vulnerable, not immobile. I will be your core. Not your avatar. Meliarn didn''t even try to fight him. Its core broke cleanly into eighteen pieces and the dense cord that was Jair''s soul connection to it split as well. One by one, he drew the pieces in and sealed them into the new tapestry that would be himself. The threads of communication remained, the abilities and powers, everything that made Meliarn Meliarn. The only change was the physical location of its core. Jair integrated it into the soulmap of his body. That wasn''t quite as easy as he''d thought at first. Due to the inability of dungeons to impact the world outside themselves, moving its core outside of its domain generally ended up causing catastrophic damage to both the core and the idiot carrying it. Having that counterreaction take place inside his soul was both better and worse. Better in that it was something he could observe fully and intricately in all of its layers and facets and come up with a solution for; worse in that it hurt. The shards of Meliarn tried to both draw together and blast apart, turning the pattern around them into an uneven thing. Pieces split apart, other parts crushed together. Jair¡¯s stubbornness could far outlast the dungeon. Repetition didn''t bother him. Annoying and frustrating to deal with in the moment, yes. Enough of a problem for him to stop? Never. If he could live and die a hundred times in pursuit of a slightly better outcome on one afternoon, then something like this was utterly trivial. He reshaped everything again and again, one adjustment at a time until Meliarn was a new kind of thing entirely. Jair himself became its domain, a piece unified yet disconnected from the rest. And even as the dungeon changed, Jair changed with it. Where the dungeon grew more flexible, his own self grew more rigid. The more physical characteristics he forced into his soul, the more solid it became. He was recreating himself from the inside out. The shredded pieces of his soul brought together again in a new configuration. Meliarn¡¯s stability formed the foundation. The hydra''s fluidity shaped the reconstruction. Sekir''s rebirth offered a guidepost. And Jair''s soul provided the rest. Memories of lifetimes. Growth. Power. Never enough, but always the best he could possibly get. Countless attempts, each more chaotic than the last, always pushing to the most extreme. And through it all, Maelstrom bound him and anchored him. The hydra''s power that could so easily overwhelm and overpower and reshape him remained subdued and contained. His to use. Not a threat but a potential weapon. A tool. A material at his command. He couldn''t continue without it, could never have done this in the real world. With the lifebody present, it would always have stolen focus. Even if he knew and tried to avoid doing so, it would have retained central focus, but it didn''t need central focus. His body was as much a tool as Maelstrom''s starsteel form. He was what mattered. Lines of power gradually formed, tracing patterns from the mana it slowly absorbed. They were still in Orard. The Oriad was a more magically saturated place than Veor in general, though the mana oases in Veor made up for it with their highly focused power. It was nowhere near enough. The power it took to split a manabody into distinct layers was massive. There was a reason that even at his peak he only ever did it on Nuprima where mana was so concentrated it physically crystallized. But the demands of his soul would not be denied. He knew what he wanted, knew it without the possibility for denial. No matter how long it took, he would not stop, would not release this weaving until it was perfect. By the time he emerged from the trance, the entirety of his being was bound in physical form. Maelstrom''s center, where there had once been a dark window, now contained an intricate crystal of whites and blues and greens, edged in black. It took him an hour to figure out how to open his eyes. His body was no longer a primary vessel, but a container for a tangible soul. He felt both larger and smaller, his domain like a manabody that extended out beyond him as far as he could reach in any direction, while his lifebody contained both physical and magical fused into one. Adapting to that new distance was disconcerting. Even more disconcerting was the sheer amount of control he had over his¡­ avatar, he supposed would be the word for it now, since he was¡­ Where was he? What was he now? He sat up, then smiled as Raina slammed into him in a full hug that threw him back down to the bed. ¡°You¡¯re back! You¡¯re alright!¡± He hugged her back, careful not to crush her. ¡°I am. Thanks to you.¡± ¡°I was so worried.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t have to worry again.¡± He sat up and wrapped his arms around her properly, rested his head against her shoulder, reveling in the physical contact after so long as a disembodied soul. ¡°What happened?¡± He began to explain, then held out a hand. Maelstrom appeared with a faint inner tug in his chest. It felt both lighter and heavier. Everything about it felt more substantial, thicker, larger, yet he could swing it effortlessly. As though the wind itself aided its movement and gravity didn¡¯t bother to pull it down. When he examined it, he had to read it several times to be sure he wasn¡¯t seeing things. Slowly, shock gave way to comprehension, then excitement. All his work, coalesced perfectly. Jair Welburne, Maelstrom of Time ©¤ Type: Integrated Soul (Dungeon Core, Soulsword, Archmage/Mageblade) ©¤ Rank: Mythic ©¤ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion, Blood-Venom Curse, Souleater, Avatar Creation, Spirit Assignment Unified with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the fire of the Venix, the core of Meliarn, and the hunger of a star hydra, this soul holds limitless potential. Do not stand against us. ©¤ Unsevered Pacts: Skyclaw Nyrala Draconis, Ynzeri Mercurios Draconis (Sub-Pact: Raina Serin), Enryzan Mercurios Draconis (Sub-Pact: Lilin Welburne), Silverscale (Sub-Pact: Qahrvirna Syse), Zyesi Mercurios Draconis, Okrine Mercurios Draconis, Detyar Mercurios Draconis ©¤ Bound with Tempest, Raina Serin And this version of himself would never be lost again, no matter how many times he reverted. All that he had ever become, finally unified.
Soul Breaker - Epilogue ¡°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.
¡°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¡ªwhich 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.¡±