The next morning saw the last hours of Jair’s imprisonment for ‘recovery and observation’, but apart from that very little went according to plan.

“I want to see my test results.” Jair said as soon as Notek arrived to check on his status.

Notek barely looked up from his instruments. “Absolutely not.”

“I can fix this. I just need more information.”

Notek’s expression shifted to one of understanding pity, but still he shook his head. “No one can fix this. I’m sorry, but convincing yourself otherwise will only make things harder. Take what time you have left, settle your affairs. Go home to your family.”

“What will it hurt to tell me?”

“It’s out of my jurisdiction. Institute policy requires that all medical information remain confidential. Not shared to any student.”

“Remember how I told you a dragon planned to come, even though there was no rational reason for it to be true? You said after that you should have believed me, should have listened. I’m telling you again. I know I can solve this.”

Notek’s lips tightened. “It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t tell you what you want to know. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. You have to let this go, Jair. Wasting your last weeks chasing the impossible? I won’t be the one to enable that kind of foolishness.”

“Then let me go. It’s been three days, the antivenom is as established as it’s going to get. It won’t hurt anything for me to move now.”

After a few cursory protests Notek grudgingly admitted that keeping him longer would do no good. The immediate damage couldn't be undone, the antidote to slow its growth was now well established in his body, and nothing more could be gained by inaction.

Notek handed Jair a square crystal bottle full of sickly yellow liquid, the antivenom that would keep him alive, slowing down the destructive spread of the dragon’s blood through Jair’s system.

“Remember, three drops every morning and every night.”

“I won’t forget. If Ran comes by, tell him I’ll be in the library.”

“Of course.”

“If you ever change your mind, I still want to see my results.”

“I’m sorry, but that won’t happen.”

With one last deep breath, Jair turned away. He collected his things and departed, setting the encounter behind him.

First stop, the library tower. He doubted there would be anything valuable there, but it would suffice while he waited for Ran.

The library towers were built in half-tiers, circling ever upward through the interior. There were uncharged transit platforms for ascent and descent to and from the higher levels, some of which older students worked to keep charged for fun, others which went unactivated until someone cared enough to fill them. They were a bit too much of a pain to be used regularly, so they were only set every fifth floor of the twenty.

Each half-floor had a glass floor, allowing you to stare down into the lower floors, sometimes all the way to the ground if you were standing just the right place. It gave the whole interior an almost mystical atmosphere, as though you stood in a spiral of hovering bookshelves and the stairs were only incidental.

One more way the Astralla Mageblade Institute showed off its wealth and superiority.

Jair didn't pay the edifice any notice, instead heading straight to the transit platform leading up to the tenth floor. A good midpoint to start the search.

It didn’t take Ran long to show up, but by the time he arrived Jair had fully immersed himself into research mode. He’d already collected any books on dracology and medicine that seemed remotely relevant.

A new topic to pursue, an exciting challenge he'd never dived into in the past, on a tight deadline, with his best friend at his side? He couldn't be happier.

"First, I need to find the methods for curing other dragon bloods. We know that Fire and Shimmer are curable, but what about the others? Why is Poison a different case?"

“Alright.” Ran took a stack and sat down opposite him to get started.

For a time they read in silence, only the flipping of pages audible in the tower.

He'd tried to solve this particular problem before in the past, in some of the loops where Ran died and Jair survived until he died of the dragon's blood, but eventually given it up as impossible.

Now it had been brought back to the forefront, he could approach things a bit more systematically. Last time he'd been in this situation he'd still been in the early years of his reversions. He'd been a child fumbling in the dark with a power he couldn't control. Later, when he'd tried to defeat the dragon with more clarity and focus, he'd simply reverted any loop that resulted in being poisoned, knowing the inevitable outcome. After that, he'd been occupied with enough other things that he never seriously revisited the subject.

Now he had perspective and experience his earlier self hadn't. The lengths to which he could push himself now would have been unimaginable to the Jair he'd been last time. He could try things that would have scared off the usual victims of poison dragon attacks, that would cause most ethical healers to flinch back, and try it all again slightly differently the next time.

Well. If he had to. Even if he could push through just about anything if he needed to, he'd still rather do things painlessly if possible.

"Ah, here it is.” The book provided only a brief overview, among a list of many other creature venoms and their treatments in simple terms. “Shimmer dragon blood is almost entirely magical in nature, so the only known treatment is a full mana purge. You can flush it out by overdrawing without stopping to continually dilute it further until it’s fully expunged. Full rebuild, so complete imprint loss too. Eesh, that sounds annoying."

"Less annoying than dying."

Jair grimaced. "Maybe."

“You’d rather die?”

“No, it would be pretty easy for me. I’ll probably try it anyway just to verify. But for someone else? To entirely burn out your tainted boundaries and rebuild them, all while preventing the spreading poison from tainting the new manabody? It would take hours at best, likely days. As someone who’s spent more time overdrawing than I care to remember, I can safely say that trying to maintain that kind of throughput for days would be torturous.”

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

“I take it the ‘without stopping’ part is essential?”

“Yes. Any pause would allow the dragon blood to repopulate through the entire manabody, requiring a start from the beginning within minutes. And this kind of intentional self-destruction isn’t something you can sustain unconsciously. You’d have to tirelessly remain actively engaged in the process the entire time.”

"In that case, annoying sounds like an understatement."

It would be a complete nightmare on a scale that made the desperate run up Mount Sanctum seem painless; at least then Jair only had to actively overdraw for a few minutes at the end. But if curing dragon blood were easy, it wouldn’t be so infamous.

Unfortunately, their peace didn't last long. Their pleasant discussion about terrible death and even more painful life was interrupted by the tower door slamming open with an echoing bang, as though struck with a battering ram.

Jair and Ran looked down through the glass floor at the unfolding spectacle, only half visible behind the intervening shelves, but that was enough.

Four men had entered the tower, wearing the red-trimmed vests of the Hyperion Legion - royal enforcement who rarely strayed from their assigned duties. There were usually a handful in Astralla City around this time, ostensibly searching for Prince Orren, though everyone knew the prince had likely left the continent. Why trap yourself in a city within reach of retribution when you can isolate yourself safely at great distance?

Jair's first instinct was to hide. They've found me.

Which was of course ridiculous. He hadn't assassinated anyone yet. There would be no reason for them to be hunting him already.

But the uniforms still triggered the instinct of avoid, escape, do not engage.

Individually, he could defeat any one of them, but they traveled in groups for a reason. With so many people of such extreme power in the kingdom, having the king protected by anyone unable to survive a single archmage would be pure idiocy.

The Hyperion weren't the elite of the elite, that would be the Silver Stars, but they were close enough.

Ran's eyes narrowed as he saw Jair's reaction. "What's wrong?"

"I've had trouble with these guys in the past. Don't want a repeat performance." He frowned. "I don't remember anything happening around this time that would necessitate them being at the Institute. If they were investigating the dragon's remains, I could understand, but the tower?"

Below, the four men were speaking with the librarian. She shrugged and gestured, speaking inaudibly. Two of the men walked toward the transit platforms at the side, the others started up the stairs.

"I feel uneasy about this." Jair stood slowly, not making any sharp movements that could attract attention through the glass floors. "I think we should be somewhere else. I miss Lift. Would be so much easier if we could take the window."

"Of course your first thought is to jump out the 'rodeing window, I don't know why I expected otherwise." Ran closed his book with a soft thump and stood as well. "How are we escaping? If the transit platforms are out... wait, we could go up to the fifteenth floor, then wait for them to pass the tenth and go back down to the fifth."

Jair smiled faintly, reminded of why he liked Ran so much. He listened and didn't do the idiotic-disbelief thing most adults tended to default to when confronted with a ‘mere initiate’ acting with ‘unearned’ confidence.

No hesitation with Ran. We need to leave, okay, let's make a plan.

"That only leaves slipping past the two below when we leave by the stairs." Ran squinted down at them.

"If they're focusing on watching everything, it'll be hard to get by them. We'd need a distraction."

Ran looked around at the library. There weren't many people present, mostly more advanced students who didn't have morning classes. Anyone else their age would be at a lecture.

"Think we can use your dragonslayer status to convince a couple of those guys to transit down at the right time and cause a ruckus?"

"Worth a try."

Ran hesitated, just briefly. "And you're sure we need to avoid them? We can't just let them do what they're doing, ask their questions?"

"Not sure, no. This is the first time I've lived this particular timeline, as I said. But my instincts are usually very good for things like this. I don't want to get into a huge brawl and have to revert again already. We haven't even got my scans yet, and if we can't even escape for a single morning without something going drastically wrong, that'll make future loops incredibly difficult. Evasion is the best plan for now."

Ran's expression firmed. "Then let's go."

The pursuit was around the second floor by now, speaking with a girl sitting by herself with a stack of what Jair recognized as heavily fictionalized 'biographies' of certain infamous queens. Wonder what her project is that she needs to read about that nest of hydras? No, not important right now.

Jair and Ran walked unhurriedly up to the fifth floor, carrying a stack of books as though to return. They had to pause to charge the transit platform to the fifteenth floor. Short distance transits like this didn't take long to activate, so they weren't connected to the main academy grid. Considered a luxury and an exercise both, if a student wanted to instantly move from one floor to another they could provide the power themselves.

They weren't quite fast enough to escape attention, however. The flash of the transit platform alerted the pursuit, who began rushing up the fourth floor steps faster.

Jair cursed softly and hurried over to the nearest students. "Hey, can you go down to the main floor for me? It's very important."

They looked at him like he was crazy, looked at each other, then ignored him.

Ran strode over imperiously. "This floor is being cleared. Report to the lobby and tell the Hyperion that you'll answer any questions they have."

Jair smiled sheepishly and indicated Ran with a thumb. "Yeah, what he said."

"Why is the Hyperion here?" asked one boy.

"Not sure, but they're asking everyone questions." Jair pointed downward. "You'd better clear the area before they reach here, you'd be better off proactive in cooperating than caught resisting."

Ran nodded along solemnly.

"Hey, guys," the talkative one said uneasily. "They're not lying, there's a couple Hyperion guards coming up the stairs..."

That sparked a frisson of concern, which Ran flawlessly seized upon.

"Go. Now."

The command in his voice, the strangeness of the situation, and their existing uncertainty combined to perfect effect. They scrambled up, collecting their books hastily, then walked to the transit platforms. Jair and Ran hurried upward toward the twentieth floor, then ducked out of sight as the angle of the twisting layers put shelves between them and the lower floor's transit platforms.

"If they go for the fifteenth, we'll head upward. If they go for the twentieth, we go down."

Ran nodded understanding.

They waited in tense quiet, only the faintest echoes of voices from above and below echoing to them, the words indistinct.

"Down," Jair hissed, as the upper floor transit flashed.

They hurried back the way they'd come, transited from the fifteenth to the fifth floor, then followed the stairs down at the fastest pace that could be construed as casual.

"We should probably feign lighthearted conversation," Jair suggested happily, leaning toward Ran as he spoke, shifting his stack of books to his other arm. "We have nothing to hide, after all."

Ran hid his unease less successfully. He laughed a bit too sharply, and replied in a stifled voice that sounded less natural than if he'd tried to whisper. "Why, yes, my good friend, there is a lot of important information in these books."

Jair groaned. "How are you a noble of such high standing and this bad at being subtle?"

"Hey, my subtlety lessons were things like how to insult a rival through the positioning of a salad fork, not how to sneak around and evade the law!"

"Don't worry, I'll get you lessons."

"This isn't going to be a regular thing!" Ran protested, then pursed his lips and groaned. "This is going to be a very regular thing, isn't it?"

"Yep. Running with me is going to put you waaaaaaay over the legal limits for 'upstanding citizen.'”

Ran gave him a flat look, strangely unenthusiastic about his future life of crime.

"But I'm sure we can get a pardon once we save the world a few times, so no need to worry about it."

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