Jair’s immediate thought was that he needed to kill more dragons. Or other legendary creatures.
If killing one dragon could modify Maelstrom and give it additional attributes, why not more? Get a fire dragon, frost, shimmer. Aelir, he could even try for a crystal chimaera, or a shadow phoenix. Why not go all in?
Most of Maelstrom’s examine text remained unchanged, but the percentage had gone up again. Whatever repair or integration process he’d unknowingly initiated by killing the dragon, or whatever else had triggered it, it remained passively ongoing.
Focusing back into the inner map of Maelstrom’s soul, Jair examined the slowly advancing insubstantial substance that his mind represented as a network of angular lace. Proportionally, its section looked three quarters of the way filled.
Assuming the process continued at the current rate it would be full and stop growing in another day, rounding things out to somewhere around 14%.
Was there any reason to be opposed to this? Should he try to curtail its growth, or should he be filling as many in as possible?
Aethron would probably have Opinions on the matter, but Aethron was a crotchety old grouch who’d take weeks if not months to bring around to helping a stranger. Even if Jair did take the terluna passage to Orard when it opened, this patch would be filled in long before then. If he were going to act, he had to decide now.
Apart from vague concerns that he may end up causing more damage, he saw no reason to hold back now. Inspect and the inner soulmap both agreed that whatever was happening was an improvement, moving Maelstrom closer to full Legendary status.
The longer he stared at the sword’s soul the harder it became to hold it in his inner vision, but he forced it to stay in place long enough to chart out the various sections. There were three large gaps, huge ragged tears that split the whole pattern into separate pieces, and then a dozen smaller rends, individual holes similar to the one currently being filled in by the poison dragon’s angular presence. Some around the same size, some smaller, a few larger.
He wouldn’t try to stop this one, but… he also wouldn’t rush to fill in the others yet. Changes to Maelstrom were the one thing he couldn’t revert away. As much as one part of his mind was eager to pounce on any opportunity to gain more power, he’d spent too long working toward the best possible ascension for Maelstrom. The potential drawbacks of recklessly progressing its advancement without knowing exactly what he was doing quickly overcame his initial excitement.
If he could experiment at length with different creatures and powers and improvement types without it being permanent, that would be his immediate focus. But for now… he would be patient.
By the time Jair finally emerged from his inner contemplation, the sky was dim with only the rim of Zelura, the ghost moon, appearing on the horizon. He had maybe three hours until it rose fully enough to establish passage.
Three hours to decide if he wanted to make the trip alone against Ran’s wishes, or wait for terluna before leaving the continent.
Glancing over at his friend, he saw Ran had fallen into a focus trance of his own.
Jair squatted down to peer closely at his friend’s closed eyelids, hoping to see any hint of a burgeoning glow, but if Ran’s soulspell was ever going to manifest itself it wouldn’t be today.
That perpetual emptiness worried Jair more than a little.
It was one of the biggest reasons he couldn’t convince himself to risk reverting until he’d gained a lot of temporal distance from the dragon. A dragon described as ‘Ancient’ by the sword’s inspect text, which placed it as a much more formidable foe than the ordinary young dragons that were so commonly hunted for sport. It had always been an implacable, inescapable fate, beyond all reason.
They’d escaped that inevitable destiny. For now. Yet even if his logical mind insisted he could easily replicate the exact circumstances again, even if this time everything had gone progressively better and better, there was still that dark certainty buried in the furthest depth of his mind that whispered it was hopeless.
That there was no way to cheat destiny and retain what was meant to be lost.
Then Ran groaned and his eyes blinked open - eyes the same familiar fiery color as usual, with no hint of unnatural glow. He startled at seeing Jair staring so intently, then laughed quietly and shook his head as he realized what he’d been looking for. “No progress, sorry. I ended up meditating on your situation instead mostly.”
Jair scowled and rocked back on his heels. “I can deal with my own problems, you get your soulspell up and running. That’s what matters most.”
“No you can’t.” A spark of anger in Ran’s eyes. “Your plans are stupid. You’re going to run into this thing by blunt force and try to solve by repetition what can’t simply be solved by reason. Which means that you’re going to end up reverting sooner or later. But you have me. More important, you have my father. How many times in the past did you leverage our family wealth to your advantage?”
“You think I would do that? I told you, you’re my friend, not a resource to be–”
“Idiot.” Ran punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to topple Jair onto his back. “If as you claim you did everything possible in the past, why would Larenok turn down my father’s bribes before now? Why wouldn’t my father have sent a full hunting team to protect me? Why did you have to go around begging to everyone in the Institute?”
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Jair laughed. “You know how I was back then. I tried to bribe him myself, but I wasn’t about to go begging your father for money.”
“Not even to save my life?” Ran sighed. “It is so like you to rather go through… who knows what all, over and over for decades, rather than admit you needed money and didn’t have it. You spent how long working to ascend Maelstrom?”
“I don’t remember. It was three years, but the number of times I repeated each section… a few decades? Twenty or so?”
“So you spent hundreds of years desperately trying to find another way, when we could have solved this… the first time, practically, if not for your stubborn pride.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be a resource to be exploited?”
Ran snorted derisively and got to his feet. “You’re an idiot. You can revert time. Yet you didn’t even think to try. You don’t consider a whole subset of options, just because you’d have to admit you need help.” He held out his hand to Jair, still lying on his back.
Jair grabbed Ran’s hand and wrapped his legs around Ran's ankle in the same instant he pulled, rolling to the side to drag Ran off balance, tumbling them both into the sand.
“Of course I tried. You think this is the first time you've suggested it? I'm not that prideful. I could spend a year listing every why and how of what doesn't work, but the short story is 'no lunar passage within the time limit, no way to import anyone strong enough'.”
“Then no more arguing,” Ran said firmly. “There's no such barrier now. I need to speak with my father. We can put my entire fortune into hiring the best researchers, the best specialists, the best healers. There’s no need for you to personally brute force a solution when I can solve it in a fraction of the time.”
“Spending the money on his heir is one thing. You think you can convince Lord Serin to spend his entire fortune to cure a nobody?”
Ran regarded him flatly. “You don’t know me very well, do you.”
Ran strode back toward the house with the air of someone on a mission who would not be stopped.
Jair did know him quite well, and when he got that particular look in his eye there wasn’t much to be done to stop him. Why bother trying to stop him? He wasn’t wrong. Even if he drove his house into utter financial ruin, Jair could revert time and retain whatever information they obtained.
They were probably far enough from the dragon to be safe by now, but he couldn’t be certain. Temporal anchor points formed entirely outside his control or knowledge. While sometimes they were very clearly connected to important events, most of the time they’d be entirely arbitrary.
He couldn’t ‘preview’ the temporal landscape either, he either threw himself down it or it remained a mystery.
A sort of recklessness began to overtake him the more he considered. He’d started to think of this as being ‘real’, even while he gave lip-service to the fact that he’d end up reverting at least a few times.
Even if Ran’s impulsive behavior and fatalistic mindset were uncharacteristic, they weren’t incorrect.
Jair had spent how much time repeating the same few days to come to a set endpoint, perhaps he didn’t know what to do with himself now that he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted.
Had he accepted the challenge of the dragon’s poison because he truly wanted to learn about it? Or because it imposed restraints on him, a way to structure his future into familiar chunks of crises?
“Nah,” Jair told himself aloud. “It’ll be fun.”
He mentally ordered his steps.
Current crisis priority, find a doctor or healer who could run a full assessment and analysis for his body’s condition.
Whatever Ran ended up doing, it would take time, and having the information already to hand would speed things up. Even if they needed to take their own tests to verify, it would give them a second data point.
Terluna would be the soonest they’d be able to make any sort of officially sanctioned trip to the larger, more populated outer continents. Veor was isolated by the inhospitability of its dead desert surrounds, with cities and estates only possible around the naturally-occurring mana concentrations that formed the hearts of the oases. Its internal transit network had only a handful of connections aside from private ones, and as far as Jair knew the entire continent boasted only two official lunar passages - those in the twin trade cities.
The ghost moon passage hidden beneath the Sejrilo estates, on the other hand, would provide access to a great many distant locations much sooner. Even if there was no one with the proper equipment and expertise on Zelura itself, the Association kept extensive records on contacts across the world.
He couldn’t be sure if any of those contacts would be within Zelura’s accessible window today, its faster spin meant each window only covered part of the planet’s surface.
Long term priority, get in contact with Aethron and figure out what was going on with Maelstrom, how and what he should do to repair and advance it.
The more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of putting it off. Yes, running off to Aethron meant leaving Ran behind for weeks, but that could be reverted. Same thing with the trip allowing the poison to progress dangerously far; it would be uncomfortable but ultimately could be reverted.
Accidentally breaking Maelstrom’s already fragile ascension, or allowing it to shift in dangerous or damaging directions? That was irreversible. Knowing what he could and shouldn’t do, that was the absolute key knowledge that he needed before he could proceed.
Jair slipped out over the back wall, though it required a good bit more scrambling and a lot less application of gravity magic than he’d have preferred.
He wouldn’t be able to reach the Oriad directly today, he’d need to arrive at a Reskas platform and find his way north from there. Orard wasn’t a safe place to travel alone, especially without any imprints, but he had a lot more money this time than he ever had in the past.
The Sejrilo oasis was closer to the city than the Institute was, a very short trip by sandshark. Jair skulked his way across the city, moving carefully to avoid any Hyperion who may still be wandering around. He only saw a single pair at a distance, loitering by the transit terminal. Hah. Like he’d be that careless. What kind of fugitive would use the official transit network?
He bypassed that plaza and headed around to the outer gate, where he knew the night guards would readily accept bribes to let people out. In, that cost more and subjected you to additional scrutiny, but even if the gates were technically supposed to remain closed, no one really cared about someone going out into the desert at night.
Perhaps it was the Hyperion sniffing around, or maybe he looked more suspicious than usual, because the process of actually leaving took nearly twenty minutes longer than it should have. He had to up his bribe twice before the guards opened the gate enough to let him out, closing it silently and hastily behind him.
Then he was off, running across the desert toward the distant glint of Sejrilo Oasis until a hungry sandshark arrived to carry him the rest of the way.
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