Korin Rhebina stared at him in bafflement. “You want me to… what?”

Jair calmly repeated his request.

“That’s it? You threaten my family over something this petty?”

“I’m not threatening, I’m offering my protection from any accidental slips.”

She glared. “Fine. Call it what you want. I’ll distract the receptionist, but I’m not going to be held accountable for whatever you’re up to. If anyone asks, I’ll be sure they know you were threatening me to make me comply.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

“And if I catch the slightest hint that you’re moving against my family–”

“You’ll hunt me down and murder me slowly, yep. Fair terms. Go in about three minutes. After that, you shouldn’t see me again until we can meet as equals.”

She sighed, shrugged one shoulder, and waved him to go.

Jair returned to the transit platform, collected Yast and Lorsit from where they’d been waiting in Astralla City, and relayed the full details of the trap and the security on the door. Then, while Yast worked on those, he relayed the specifics of their next steps to Lorsit.

Ran should be already in place. There was no room for error, no time to wait around. If this was going to work, they had to move fast and make no mistakes.

Once the stairway was open, he handed Yast the authorization token for his escape and sent him back to Astralla City.

Jair sprinted through the maze, Lorsit just behind him. They traversed the shifted route flawlessly, arriving at the vault within minutes. Lorsit cut a doorway this time, shoving an entire chunk of stone free from the wall with a single sharp gesture. It slammed to the floor with an echoing thud. Less impressive than the melting shifting effect, but much quicker and more effective for their purposes.

Lorsit set to work while Jair grabbed the blank sword that would become Maelstrom.

The sword’s soul surged down into its physical form, and Jair wrapped it immediately in the holding cloth for transport.

By the time he turned back, Lorsit had opened a hole in the floor and was beginning to shape the door piece to better suit their escape. Jair stayed out of the way, mentally counting seconds. Firdon would be entering the maze soon. Once they started moving in any given direction he’d move to cut them off.

They might be able to do this, but they wouldn't have any margin for error.

Jair stepped onto the reshaped door section and crouched, grabbing the edges where Lorsit was creating handles, Maelstrom fitting into an indentation down the center made for that purpose, his body holding it firmly in place..

"It's not going to be smooth," Lorsit warned, not stopping his work. He finished shaping the front and crouched in front of Jair on the block, clamping the stone up around his own legs to hold himself in place.

"Understood." Jair ducked in tight, holding himself as streamlined as possible.

Lorsit took a deep breath, chest visibly tight through his poncho as he gestured, then the floor tilted and dropped them into a diagonal freefall.

Jair could do nothing to help with this stage of the plan. It was all up to Lorsit now.

The slide built itself before them as they went, Lorsit's full power on display as he opened the path with one arm, the other throwing slanted sections beneath them that pushed their makeshift stone sled to move faster while hopefully slowing down their pursuer.

Firdon was a fairly traditional stone mage. He wouldn't jump immediately to 'use sled to pursue down slide tunnel' and that should buy them the moments they needed to make their escape.

Once they were out in the open, they'd need to disappear fast. Jair had seen the kind of ammo Firdon could bring to bear, and he didn't want to be crushed by a massive block of stone any time soon.

They flew down the tunnel as it started to level out, Lorsit's heavy breathing as he strained to continue their trip the only sound aside from the screeching of stone on stone as they hurtled onward at reckless speed.

Then the stone opened onto brilliant sunlight and they shot out of the side of the cliff below the Institute and into the desert. Jair released their sled and held Maelstrom’s wrapped form close.

The sun was blinding as they sailed out over the sand, everything a blur of color. They fell. Lorsit shoved downward, slamming the stone into the ground with earth-shaking force, the two of them continuing to fly a bit further out before skidding to a stop in the sand. The speed of their collision stung, tearing through Jair’s robes, but that was the least of his worries.

Jair glanced back. Firdon was only seconds behind. The cliffside shattered apart, breaking into twenty large chunks that hovered in a formation over the desert.

They had enough time to hear Firdon begin to shout something, but not time to make out what.

Then the sand beneath them erupted as Ran’s sandshark slurped them down into darkness.

Lorsit cried out in shock. Even having been warned of what would happen it caught him off guard.

Jair moved immediately, diving into the darkness to take over steering.

“How’d you do?” Jair asked, instructing their shark to dive. They had to go deep, and fast. Firdon would be close behind, tearing the ground apart to reach them.

“Not ideal.” Ran hissed through gritted teeth. “It got my leg.”

“Got, how badly?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It’s still attached, but I don’t think I’ll be walking on it any time soon.”

“Should we restart?”

“I thought about it. Would have if we hadn’t been split up. But we got away and this is the kind of thing that happens, right? I should be getting used to it."

"Ehh... the kind of 'used to it' that I have? That took years to develop, it's not something you'll just magically manifest in a day or two."

"I want to be able to keep up with you," Ran insisted. "I don't want to be left behind."

"I wouldn't leave you behind, even if you never stopped being a questioning wimp."

The long silence was probably Ran glaring at him, though they couldn't see one another in the darkness. "That's not what I meant. I mean keep up with you, as an equal. Not as a pet you let tag along."

"You're far more important than that."

"Yeah, well, let me do this my way."

"You sound like you're going to pass out at any moment."

"Yes, and you sound like you're going to get punched any moment."

"It's alright, you don't have to hold back."

"What is wrong with you?" Lorsit asked, his voice interrupting their argument. "We just broke into a high security vault and stole something serious enough for them to chase us, and you're bickering like a married couple about, what?"

"Are you doubting our ability to uphold our end of the bargain? Don't worry. Retrieving your family's artifact is monumentally simpler now we have Maelstrom back. I just need to find an initiator to give me the class before we go get ourselves locked up by vampires." Jair nudged the shark into an upwards incline, heading in the general direction of nowhere particular but well away from any cities.

Ran interrupted, a bit unsteadily. “Wait, did you say–”

“I was going to talk to Irres, but something tells me it may be dangerous to go back there at the moment.”

“No, you… vampires?”

Jair ignored the question. "Suspecting is different from certainty. Institute leadership may think it was us if we disappear, but if I show up with a fancy new sword they'll know. So plan B. Retrieve Yast, and head out into the wilds. We're going to need to lie low a couple weeks until the next Terluna passage.”

“I’ll need to see a healer before we go anywhere.”

“True. I don’t have any of my stabilization constructs yet. I’ll have Yast start on those while we wait.”

“I think the best place to start is telling my father everything.”

“How much is ‘everything’?”

“Everything.”

“I thought you didn’t want to drag your family into this?”

“I don’t want to hide my soulspell and we’re going to need his help sooner or later. I’d rather be honest up front than be caught out in attempting deception later.”

“And you think the middle of a manhunt is the best time to be completely honest?”

“We may not need to resort to foreign initiators. My father is a firefist, but most families of the local oases have at least one mageblade. He can help us contact someone."

They surfaced for air far away from any of the cities, the academy just visible on its clifftop, Astralla City a lumpy smudge on another horizon.

Firdon wasn’t visible from this distance. If anyone had chosen to pursue them, there was no evidence of it.

Jair couldn’t help but feel it was a little too easy, but if he’d already spent a dozen loops pushing through the earlier challenges it made sense. It didn’t feel as real without having experienced them himself.

“I don’t remember any Veori local mageblades outside the school being particularly impressive, but this issue isn’t one that’s come up before.” If it had, he’d have a list long before now.

“It doesn't matter. I'm sure my father can find someone for you. Trust me, he’ll listen.”

Jair knew he was right; Ajriol practically doted on his son, even if he put up a good facade of being stern and commanding. If Ran wanted something, seven out of eight times he could convince his father to make it happen.

After all, they had resources available. No need to abstain from utilizing them.

When they finally headed to Astralla City in the evening, their first stop was a healer, to help with Ran's leg. The story of a sand-shark attack wasn't questioned and the treatment administered. It would be several days before Ran could do anything particularly strenuous, and he was instructed to walk with a crutch for the duration of the remaining repairing his body needed to do on its own, but on the whole it was a straightforward and painless process.

Next, they went to drop off Lorsit at the rooms they’d rented for him and Yast until the next passage to their respective homes.

Yast didn’t answer the knock at his door.

“Think he got lost on the way?”

“Unlikely. Constructists aren't the type to be easily confused by city layouts. He'll have a complete map of the place in his head from the first day he arrived."

"You think something happened?"

"Yes. He hasn't spent much time away from his people, he may have been accosted or distracted." But Jair couldn't help feeling that it was more than that. He felt a nagging uncertainty, a question of something related to their infiltration that had escaped their attention.

They left Lorsit at his suite, assuring him that nothing was the matter and he shouldn't be worried, then retraced their path back toward the arrival transit station.

Jair kept a lookout for any sign of a disruption, any flash of elven features in the crowds, but found nothing.

The midweek crowds were thin, casual and unhurried. Nothing of the chaos Jair had half expected to see.

"Larenok's house?" Ran suggested in a whisper. "Would that be worth checking, or too much of a risk?"

Jair scoffed. "Unless it's going to get your soul broken, there's no such thing as too much risk. Let's go!"

"I shouldn't have said anything..."

"I would have suggested the same anyway, even if you hadn't."

Ran sounded resigned. "Of course."

They crossed the town toward where Larenok's house sat quietly and unobtrusively among the others of its kind. There was no sign of disturbance to the front door, Yast had re-sealed all the constructs they'd broken to get in, and from the outside there was no distinguishing between its current state and the way they'd found it before undertaking their day of chaos.

No sign of local authorities investigating, nor any of the Hyperion guard as Jair half suspected would be the case. They'd already proven that Larenok had the connections to bring them in.

Perhaps his investigation would be centered on the school, but that didn't explain Yast's absence. Unless Larenok had gotten back minutes after they instigated their heist, Yast should have been well away from Astralla Institute long before any potential trouble.

Jair knew Larenok didn't show up that soon. They'd stayed longer through the earlier loop, when he'd been searching for Rhebina the first time, and they'd had no problems from that end.

The more they found nothing wrong, the more certain Jair grew that something definitely was wrong.

They'd overlooked something, somewhere. It was the only explanation.

Part of his mind was already calculating the variables. Yast would be the absolute worst person to be caught. As an elf, and a vaguely-underworld constructist at that, his presence was the one most likely to lead to political chaos and unpleasant intercontinental entanglements.

Jair hadn't done anything to safeguard them from Yast's knowledge, since he'd been assuming they'd remain allies for years to come.

This wasn't going to be pretty. Salvaging their freedom and validating his plans for investment into Yast's future would be a whole different sort of challenge than simply physically escaping.

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