Jair and Ran arrived some distance away from any of Astralla City’s gates, but circumnavigating the city to an open gate took only minutes.

No one gave them a second glance as they entered the city and walked through the outer markets toward the city center. Most commerce took place around transit terminals, but some were willing to travel further to expand their clientele, leading to these little shopping streets showing up, especially around gates. Anyone whose job required them to leave or enter on foot instead of by transit would be more likely to purchase from here than go all the way to the stifling inner city markets.

"I suppose you know the best bookstores in the city? I have a few in mind myself but we are looking for some fairly specific technical documents."

"Of course. I'm not confident they'll have anything like what you're looking for on hand, but they can surely get them in on terluna if not before." Ran glanced sideways at Jair. "You'll still be around by terluna?"

"Yes. I have plenty of things I want to trade for, and I have no doubt that we'll need to do this several times to find the right ingredients. Even the simple dragon blood purging requires specialized tinctures, I doubt the unsolved ones will be any less complex."

Ran looked around the street, eyes wide, as though he thought someone might overhear, then lowered his voice. "I thought you wanted to keep your... thing a secret?"

"Making several trips to solve a problem isn't unusual at all," Jair replied, not bothering to whisper. "Your knowledge is biasing you. Most people when they hear that will assume something innocent. We really do need to get you those subtlety lessons.”

“I can be very subtle. Just not in the way you want.”

“Of course.”

Ran scowled. “Next time, you’ll see. Down this way."

They turned off the main thoroughfare and into a dimmer narrow road, barely wide enough for a single carriage. Makeshift awnings above blocked out the harshest sunlight, thin fabric that still provided light but left the passage feeling close and stagnant.

Jair breathed very shallowly through his mouth, once again missing the clean cool scents of Aethron's forest home. Wild and dangerous, sure, but at least it didn’t taste like rust every time you took a breath.

Afterdrift kept clinging to his manabody like invisible black wisps of spiderweb stirred into the air by their passage, clogging up his boundaries. He had to cycle twice just to clear them, the motion tearing deeper rifts around the channels of his poisoned blood. Technically he didn’t need to - afterdrift wasn’t harmful unless you were trying to cast or channel, and without his imprints ready he couldn’t do the former, and he could easily clear them at the time if he needed to do the latter - but it was the principle of the thing.

“I hate this city,” Jair grumbled aloud. “Why are we using these stuffy back roads?”

“If we’re being pursued by the Hyperion, there’s a good chance they’ll have someone stationed in the main arrival area, so we’re avoiding that area.”

“Oh, right.” Jair sighed, then immediately regretted it as it required inhaling. “I forgot about them. Annoying. I could do without dealing with them.”

"So why are you?" Ran demanded, stopping to face him. "Really why. Why haven't you gone back and done it differently? Not that 'I want to cure this thing' crap. You can cure this any time any way."

"The reasons I've given are completely truthful. I'm not going to lie to you, Ran. Not now, not in the future, not in the past. I may hide things from you, or refuse to answer, but I will not lie."

Ran laughed humorlessly. "Didn't you just tell me that oracles and truthseers are useless because you can lie with complete honesty?"

When Jair didn’t immediately reply, Ran resumed walking.

Jair fell into step beside him, hurrying to catch up. "I don't want to risk losing you again,” he hissed. “You don't know how many times I've done this, how many things I've tried. I took you halfway across the continent from one city to another, back and forth in hopes to leave the dragon stranded in between. It burned down Hastven and Astralla before using the transit platform itself to come after us. I lured it to the capital and stood outside the palace, and it still ate us both before the king's guards could finish it off. I told every one of the teachers the complete truth, full details of my soulspell, and they still never took it seriously. I lured the dragon into every trap I could think of, every trick to slow it down. Even now it feels too easy, like we got away with pure luck. I can't convince myself that... that if we go back we'll be able to repeat this. I've failed so many times, it's..."

Jair's throat burned and he stopped talking, looking away to watch the street as though that were of utmost import.

"But... why?" Ran pressed. "We've known each other for three years. That's not enough time to justify something like this. If..." He hesitated, looked as though he wanted to stop, then plunged on ahead. "If our positions were reversed, if I had the ability to--" he glanced around and lowered his voice. "If I had your power and you were dying, I... I don't think I'd go nearly as far. I'd try to save you, yes. Try everything I could think of, probably. But spend how many decades repeating the future only to come back to try again?" Ran shook his head. "It doesn't make sense."

Jair tilted his head, peering at Ran. “Why are you so eager to get rid of me? Why do you want this timeline erased so desperately?”

“Is it too much to ask that you not slowly die in front of me?”

“Pff. I told you, this is only a challenge to be overcome.”

“I want a reason. I don't think this is as simple as you're making it out to be."

Jair’s immediate instinct was to continue dissembling, wave it off and move past without confronting the issue, but this was Ran. If anyone deserved his full honesty, it was him.

"You were my anchor point. Throughout those years when nothing and no one cared for me, you gave up your own best interests to help me time and again. I may only be one of your friends - and that's fine! - but you were my only friend."

"And that makes sense for the Jair I've known these past three years. But this? You've done so many unbelievable things, and are going to do far more. Surely you've outgrown me long ago."

"I told you, I'm completely insane now. You don't go through that much that many times with any semblance of reasonable behavior intact."

"You're very good at pretending, then."

"Patterns. That's all." Jair huffed out an unsteady laugh. “I avoided telling you before I saved you because I didn't want to... run out, I suppose. I didn't want to fully exhaust every potential interaction we could have. Didn’t want you to become a pattern. I wanted to save something that I would use only on rare occasion, only when I desperately needed to share it with someone I trusted. The one thing I allowed myself to hold back. One indulgence in a life of madness."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ran didn’t answer immediately, and they walked in silence.

"Fine. I forgive you for lying to me, over and over and over again, even if I don't remember it. But you said this is the first time you've saved me. Doesn't that mean that none of this matters? That I'm going to forget it all over again, next time you go back?” He was speaking faster now, the underlying agitation clear. “You'll either drag me off across the desert again, or you'll remember that I don't like it and try something different. Maybe we'll go with the guards to see what they want, maybe we'll hide in the basement, maybe we'll sneak into the records rooms upstairs, maybe--"

"Ran, slow down. You don't need to ask everything at once."

"But I do! What if you were to revert right now? Isn't that the same as killing me, this me, now?"

Jair couldn’t reply. He'd tried to solve the conundrum of his power's existence many times, but some things couldn't be calculated out and pinned down to a formula. Some questions had no answer.

"So why even bother?” Ran went on bitterly. “Am I just an accessory to you now? A resource to be added to the pile? Oh, Ran's here, now we can buy more expensive stuff. Ran's here, now we can try this?"

"It isn't like that. I told you, you can leave if you want. I won't chase you down if you'd prefer to be left alone."

"Not in this timeline, maybe, but what about the next? What about five hundred from now, when you're lonely and tired of figuring out excuses to send me packing?" Ran took a heavy breath, then another, softening his voice before continuing. "But you can see why this obsession could be concerning, right?"

"Yes." Jair's voice came out tense. He hadn't realized how much he'd been counting on Ran's support, or at worst neutrality. He'd been living with an imagined version of the person for so long, he'd inadvertently forgotten the full reality.

"I'm not going to abandon you." Ran's voice firmed. "We're going to figure out this poison thing. I promise that much. We'll solve the immediate crisis first, and then... we can discuss it. At length. Properly. With all the information on the table, not just a few hints here and there. What is your plan, what do you want to do, what do you expect. All of it."

"Yes. Okay."

"Good. Because we’re here.”

Now they stood by the door, Jair recognized it. Ran had brought him here a few times in other lifetimes, back before Maelstrom.

A soft mana hum resonated against their skin as they walked in, the ambient power of the place significantly higher than the street outside, constrained by whatever the proprietor used to keep it from leaking.

The front desk was empty, the heavy wood shelving and paneling clearly showing off the owner's dedication to aesthetics.

"Andra, you here?" Ran shouted. "It's Ran, I have a friend I'd like you to meet."

Andra emerged from the back a minute later. Meeting him in person and realizing how short he was always caught Jair off guard - the man’s presence always seemed to outreach his body.

Andra’s dark hair was gathered atop his head in a tight knot to keep it out of the way, and he wore his usual loose shirt and trousers beneath an overcoat made entirely of engraved glass rectangles connected with silver links. With fiery lantern light refracting from it, the initial impression was that he’d dressed himself in a fancy chandelier.

In reality, Jair recognized the outfit as a spell-shroud, a flexible linked construct used by artificers and those dealing with volatile materials, providing an alternative to Ward or similar protection shields. Not everyone wanted to tie up one of their six potential spells on utility. Not when swapping them out was such a time-consuming process.

“Ran Serin, wonderful to see you again. You’ve been away so long I started to think you’d forgotten me. And this is your friend?"

"Yes. Andra, Jair. Jair, Andra is one of the best procurers of artifacts and rarities this side of the moons. Let him know what you need and there's a very good chance he can get it for you."

"How quickly, is the question," Jair smiled knowingly. If he remembered correctly... "If I were to need something by the end of the week then would you be able to accommodate that?"

"It would depend on the object, naturally. I think there's a good chance of it."

"Perfect. I need the most advanced texts you can find on the study and treatment of dragon blood poisoning. All types, but most particularly analyses of the dragon blood itself, its makeup, and the specific ways in which it can be counteracted. Poison dragons would be best, but all types are acceptable."

"That is an interesting list." Andra glanced up and down Jair's body, as though searching for something, but shook himself after a moment and began writing out a list. "Give me a few minutes, I'll see what I have in stock. Anything else... by the end of the week, you said?"

"Yes."

"I'll have more for you if you return then."

Jair grinned. Andra wasn’t one of his usual contacts, but Jair wasn’t going to turn down any opportunity to get ahead of things. The ways of the underworld were convoluted. It would be safer to go through an established intermediary, like Andra, rather than try to get in touch with them himself. This man could be exactly what he needed.

"Samples of each type of blood as well," Jair called after him, "If you can find them. I'll pay extra for those."

Ran stared at him agape. "We can't afford that," he hissed. "It'll take all my allowance for the month just to get the books and documents. Dragon blood? That's--"

"I'll take care of it. Don't worry."

"You have less money than anyone I know. How can you possibly--"

Jair grinned and reached in his pocket. He pulled out a handful of dark poison-green scales, running them back and forth across his knuckles like coins. "I'll trade directly."

Andra returned after several minutes with three books, one of loose sheaves bound by hand that looked handwritten, and a tiny vial. Jair's eyebrows rose. So he kept dragon blood on hand? That wasn't normal. While it was a potent weapon for assassination, it was also incredibly magically dense and thus easy to detect. Even standing on the other side of the counter from the vial, Jair could feel its weight through his manabody like a strong magnet.

"This is the best I can do at the moment, there are more that I can obtain once I talk to my other branches throughout the city and collect them together."

Jair nodded. If he pressed him on the matter, he'd never admit that his storage locations were anywhere but inside the city, admitting you traded with ghost moon smugglers was very unacceptable by any reasonable standard.

Ran paid for the books, Jair negotiated for the dragon blood - it was standard fire dragon type, from an Aragay Pyros, but still worth having. He didn’t haggle too much, though it cost him half his pilfered scales. He was more interested in establishing Andra as a personal contact than scraping for every coin. Information couldn’t be stolen once he’d obtained it.

By the time Jair and Ran left the bookshop, the sun was high in the sky, piercing down through the ragged gaps in the thin canopies that covered the streets. The wind had died down, leaving the city stuffier than ever, the local medley of sweat and refuse even more offensive.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing to have changed.

The pair of them emerged into the back street heading toward the center of the town, but Jair immediately flattened against the wall as he spotted a flash of crimson ahead.

Ran stopped short, frowning. "They've spread out into the city? Really?"

They must really want him badly. "Still not sure why."

"Wait here and I'll go ask." Ran started forward before Jair could protest. Then he turned back and grinned. “Subtly.”

Jair didn’t voice his concerns. He crept closer, staying out of sight but within earshot. If something went wrong he had to be ready to act.

Ran's voice cut through the surrounding chatter as Jair narrowed in on it.

"Excuse me, Sir Hyperion, may I inquire as to the purpose for your patrol in this area of town?"

"We're searching for a fugitive." There was a pause. "From your institute, too. You seen anyone around?"

"From the Institute? I only came out shopping with a friend, haven't met anyone else all afternoon."

"Well, you be careful if you do see anyone. This is a dangerous one."

"One of my classmates? Who could be so important?" Ran asked, his voice full of the exact right amount of incredulity, awe, and childish eagerness.

So maybe he was capable of being subtle, in his own particular ways.

The guard lowered his voice. "Jair Welburne."

He didn't even say it right, pronouncing it like 'chair' instead of giving the J the proper zh undertones and completely ignoring the second syllable. Must have read it from a page. Jair wondered if it would be worth the trouble of officially changing his name to do away with all the confusion. Surely there was some way to write it that wouldn't be so confusing to these people. Add an apostrophe? Ja'ir? No, that didn't convey the long E. Jha'Eer? He hated the look of it, but...

"And what's he done to warrant this kind of manhunt?" Ran's voice cut through his woolgathering, and Jair leaned closer to listen.

"Put together some convoluted scheme. Thought he was real clever about it, acting the victim. Well, we're not going to stand for that."

“What kind of scheme could an academy student possibly put together that would require your intervention?”

The Hyperion guard’s reply was grim. “Orchestrating the assassination of Garow Firdon.”

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