Ran stabbed out at the man with his soulsword. The man’s eyes immediately flared silver. Ran's attack slid around him, the angle of the sword shifting ever so slightly. The man slapped out with his gauntleted hand, smacking the sword further as Ran stumbled, then twisted it out of his hand and dropped it to the floor.

Before Ran had even finished recovering from his aborted lunge, the man's eyes had faded and he returned to his rest pose, cocky smile and all.

Ran blinked, eyes flickering white, and shook his head wryly to Jair’s questioning glance. It had happened so fast, he’d never had a chance.

"Ho, ho," Jair said, clapping. "Do it again, I want to see. Here, let me borrow that." He tried to pick up Ran's soulsword, but it rejected him as violently as Maelstrom. "Guh. Class missing, right. Got to take care of that too."

"Here," offered one of the other two, holding out a heavy side-sword. "Try with this. It's not as pointy but it's strong."

"Perfect." Jair swung it a few times, twirling it to get a feel for its weight, and settled into a ready stance of his own. "Ran?"

Ran nodded. "I'll be ready this time."

Jair lunged abruptly, pulling back the strike at the last second as the man's eyes glowed, instead kicking at his knee. His foot slipped as though it had hit a slick surface, but Jair followed it up with a heavy side-swipe that couldn't be deflected so easily.

His kick slid away; his slash impacted another shield beneath the soulspell.

The man tried to grab Jair's sword in the same way he had Ran's, but Jair twisted away and lashed out with an elbow to the man's side.

The blow slid, but couldn't be fully evaded. It impacted the inner shield again.

"You're good." The man sounded much more respectful now. “Not good enough.”

He took three quick steps and slammed his entire body into Jair, ignoring the sword he raised between them. The weapon’s point slid away and he tackled Jair to the ground.

“I don’t see how well you’re protecting anyone from my allies with you lying down here,” Jair pointed out.

The man laughed and helped him to his feet. “I wouldn't fight a group the same way I’d fight you alone.”

“Fair enough.” Jair glanced at Ran. “You seen enough?”

Ran nodded, smiling, eyes a bit unfocused as he searched out the details of his new soulspell.

Jair was about to dismiss the man, but caught himself. Glancing at Ran, he shifted tracks. “Then I’m satisfied. You’re in. You two?”

The negotiation continued for a time, mainly their hirelings feeling out the task and how much they could get away with charging, but Jair knew exactly how to handle this kind of situation and felt fully satisfied with their decision. They weren't cheap, but if they could handle Larenok he'd consider them well worth the investment.

Jair very much looked forward to putting this wretched academy behind him again.

Returning to the Institute had brought back far more unpleasantness than he preferred. Everything about the place, the people, even the feeling of walking around in his own younger and weaker body, it all combined to drag him back into the feeling of being an unwanted disrespected child. Of striving to prove himself to people who’d never be satisfied simply because of who he’d been born.

Unacceptable. That wasn’t who he was any more.

Only Maelstrom still tied him to Astralla. He’d have plenty of options for where to take Ran to deal with his dragon now that they had multiple lunar passages to play with. As soon as put his sword back where it belonged, the two of them could go anywhere and do anything they wanted. Very soon he could leave even the memory of this place behind.

The next day they gathered outside the front door of Larenok’s prestigious town-house. He never used the doors, so there was an unusually high concentration of traps on them. Thankfully, Yast was a professional.

They’d timed their arrival to be about a half hour before Larenok’s afternoon break, giving them plenty of time to break in and set their own ambush.

This stage of their plan called for overpowering Larenok in his home, stealing his universal authorization token, and immediately putting the primary break-in into effect before he could escape.

Jair knew the man's spells thoroughly, and spent the morning briefing their team on exactly what to expect. It would be a fight, but they were all high enough in their own classes to be confident of their victory. The bulk of Larenok’s precautions were predicated on forewarning. The ones he kept running at all times were to shield him from unexpected mental attacks, or give early warning of physical approach.

Therefore, a close-range physical attack should be able to take him off-guard, before he had time to switch to active defences.

Larenok’s house was in a lesser street than the Serin residence and its reduced size and lack of full courtyard showed it, but apart from that it was every bit as upper class as an avaricious teacher could ask.

Nothing particular stood out to distinguish it from its neighbors, apart from a transit cable running up its roof to a projection array.

"A transit platform, inside?" Ran stared. "Combined type connection? That's got to cost a fortune. And that’s me saying this."

"As far as my sources know, he hasn't so much as opened the front door in a decade. His security is going to be layered and deep."

Jair gestured Yast forward. The elf's eyes began to glow a pale teal.

Ran's eyes flicked to Jair, then back to Yast. Jair could see the unasked question. Should I?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Jair only shrugged in response. Up to you.

"What does your power do?" Jair asked, voice low so as to not be overheard. The taboo against sharing soulspell details wasn't as strong among elves as humans or beastkin, but it was still a deeply personal question.

Yast stopped moving. He glanced at Ran, standing close enough to overhear. “Is this...?"

Jair nodded. "He is as myself, my trainee, you could consider."

"Then I honor him as I honor you. My truths are his as they are yours. My Bestowal looks beyond. The shape of constructs reveals itself to me, however they may be concealed."

“Thank you. Please proceed.” Jair didn’t point out that Ran couldn’t speak Zakvari, only bowed, then quietly translated his words as Yast returned to his work, eyes glowing teal once again.

Ran thought it over for only a moment, then darted around in front of Yast and met the startled elf's glowing eyes with his own signature blank white.

Yast blinked away his soulspell, staring at Ran's teal imitation glow with a look of startled awe.

"Should I not be doing this yet?" he asked, but since he still only spoke Zakvari Ran didn't understand.

"This is how he takes the measure of a soul." Jair stepped in before it could get awkward. "It is no criticism. Proceed."

"I understand." Yast returned to scanning over the wall with his soulspell active.

Ran sidled over to Jair.

"What was it?" Jair asked, already excited by the thought of another addition to their repertoire.

“Resonant Perception. All mana flows are made visible in their native layer.”

“Sounds useful.”

Yast hovered a hand over the wall, finger following a pattern Jair couldn't see. "This construct is the one which alerts its owner if anything is disturbed. Therefore it is the first we must break."

The next several minutes mainly consisted of waiting while Yast went over the walls with his soulspell, maintaining a low commentary for Jair’s benefit.

Ran tried Resonant Perception out a couple times, but made a pained grimace every time and deactivated it quickly.

"Not working out well?"

"Too bright. Everything, everywhere. It's..." Ran waved a hand, shaking his head. "It'll take some getting used to."

"Fair enough." Jair grinned anyway. "You're going to be amazing."

"You mean I'm not already? How dare you!"

"So, what shall we do to our dear headmaster when we have him incapacitated?" Jair mused aloud as they waited for Yast to do his work. "Should we give him an unflattering haircut? Steal his money? Interfere with his imprints?"

"Does he really deserve any of that?" Ran asked. "I know he's a selfish and terrible person, but still."

"Is there any reason not to do any of that?"

"Common decency?"

Jair snorted. "Yeah, the minute Larenok even knows the definition of common decency, I'll give him a pass."

"You don't think tying him up and stealing his authorization token, then breaking into the Institute’s most secure vault and leaving him to clean up the mess is sufficient?"

Jair considered it a moment, then grinned. "When you put it like that, yeah. Make a mess, leave him to clean it up. Sounds perfect."

Yast finished his scanning and let his eyes fade to their ordinary non-glowing color. He pulled out his tools for inscribing spellwork inside of objects, three short implements vaguely resembling .

Tracing a physical path for a spell construct was the easiest method for adding magic to an item, but that could also be created fully independent of one another. Mana inherently existed on a different layer of reality than the physical. They interacted with one another quite strongly, but even if they were heavily tied together they were not entirely dependent on one another.

Like how a vampire's manabody could take over another host if not trapped and dispelled in time, spells could also be set inside objects leaving no physical trace.

The process was exacting and unforgiving. Mistakes in tracing a spell on your arm, time and the magnetism of proper mana flow could correct over time. Imprinting mana flows directly into an item, any mistake you made would be irreversible.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t be used to instantly imprint yourself with spells. Since a manabody was already fully made of mana, injecting more by force did nothing but slightly increase your capacity more slowly and painfully than basic draw intake. As much as Jair would have loved to find a way to skip past all the slow buildup of spells, outside the more versatile mage classes, no one had yet found any such thing.

Yast’s hands were steady and his attacks precise. Within another minute, the door creaked open on hinges so stiff they seemed to have been in disuse for decades.

Jair, Ran, and the mercenaries entered. Yast stayed outside, closing the door and re-sealing the wards. Undoing an incision was harder than making it in the first place, but Yast was a master of his craft and Jair had every faith in his capabilities.

Jair confidently led the way to Larenok's private transit platform, in an upstairs room which had once been a bedroom but now had been cleared of anything but the platform and the connection cable which ran along the wall up to the ceiling.

"Expensive tastes, our headmaster has."

"You two wait outside," the solo mercenary insisted, physically imposing himself between the two students and the door. "You want this to be covert, then you don't give him any possibility of seeing you."

Jair knew he’d be happier keeping them out of the house entirely, taking his position as bodyguard seriously, but Jair wasn't going to let someone else have all the fun.

"Don’t forget to call us in once he's out."

While they waited, Jair amused himself by drawing out a few interference constructs on the walls. Without proper materials to seal them their effect would be minimal even if he had anything to charge them with, but it helped to pass the time.

He tried to walk Ran through the process, explaining each line as he drew it, but construct physics were a deep field and even Ran's education only went so far. He was lost by line three.

They waited for nearly an hour and a half before their hireling called them in.

Jair leaned over and searched the man's robes, finding quite a few valuables secreted away on his person, but he only needed three of them. The Institute seal that acted as universal transit control authorization chief among them, but two others that would come in handy later. For bargaining, if nothing else.

Then, as repayment for the years of misery the man had enabled, Jair helped himself to one other item in particular. Not something he needed for himself, but one which would cause Larenok major problems to have lost.

"Done. Ran?"

Ran joined him on Larenok’s transit platform. Jair pressed the token to the controls and spelled out their destination coordinates.

A flash of light, and they stood in the public transit terminal.

Yast sat waiting patiently, an open elven book with six of its circular pages spread out across his lap. Lorsit paced anxiously nearby with his hands wrapped around his stomach, clearly uneasy over the delay.

"We're here," Jair called, and their stone mage perked up and hurried to join them.

Another transit, and they stood within Astralla Institute, no alarms sounding, no guards running. Larenok’s authorization did its job well.

"Now for the hard part. The wards here are much more sensitive than Larenok's. They're not fueled by a private mana field but run on the entire school's grid, so even diverting them will be almost impossible."

Yast shook his head. "Nothing is impossible. I will show you."

As they stepped off the Astralla transit platform, Ran's eyes abruptly flashed gold.

He winced and stumbled, half falling before Jair jumped to steady him.

“See? I didn’t even throw up on you this time.” Ran smiled up at him a bit shakily. “So what do we try next?"

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