Jair headed back across the city, intending to rendezvous with Ran as soon as possible.

As highly focused as he was at the moment, entering the transit terminal felt like walking into a thorny bramble that rubbed painfully against his manabody. He'd been on such intensely high alert searching for any trace of Sekir that he felt the minutest brush of every stray scrap of afterdrift in his path.

He used his student token to transit directly to the Institute, where he stood for a long moment to re-center himself. It took a concerted effort to return his perceptions to normal, closing down the concentration and allowing him to relax. The school wasn’t much better than the city, but at least here things tended to be more predictable in their patterns.

Even at his most alert, most afterdrift blurred together, indistinguishable from one another as background noise. If he weren’t so intimately acquainted with Sekir’s particular presence…

Jair frowned, tilting his head as he waved a hand through the faint remnants of past students’ spells. They felt dull and indistinguishable from one another, but Yast was an elf. Someone unusual to the city.

Jair himself couldn’t have sorted out Yast’s specific afterdrift from the rest of the chaos without significantly more study of their security expert’s power. But it was theoretically possible someone with a higher specialization focus could have tracked him.

He allowed himself a minute to settle himself, then set out to find Ran. That wasn’t difficult. The Institute was large, but there were only so many places he could be.

Jair hung back without interrupting when he found him. Ran stood leaning against the Mastery obelisk to rest his injured leg, chatting with two female students of a particularly giggly and blushing nature.

Two of Oliss’s hangers on, if Jair wasn't mistaken. He glanced around, but didn't see any sign of Oliss herself.

That was another potential failure point. Could it be that the future-seer had overseen something? Was that where things had gone wrong with their escape?

Prophecy was always an unreliable branch of magic, even the most potent soulspells apt to encounter faults in their predictions, but Oliss in particular was known to be fairly imprecise.

The other tricky part about prophecy was that it changed constantly. Even if Jair repeated the same day a dozen times in quick succession, changing almost nothing, Oliss was all but guaranteed to give a completely different prophecy each time.

Still, she wasn't always incorrect.

If that was all this was, if she’d happened to notice Yast in one of her visions and came forward about it, it could be circumvented simply by going back and doing it again.

Even if that would be the simplest answer, he didn’t trust it. When had anything in his life been simple?

Ran finished his conversation and waved away his interlocutors with a smile.

Jair walked over to join him. "Find anything?”

"No one knows what's going on. There are rumors. Some students claim that they saw various things various times, but we were far enough away that none of them have any specifics. If something gave us away, it wasn’t being overseen by a student. What did you find?"

Jair gave him a full description of the encounter with Yast, the Hyperion, and what he'd learned and surmised about Sekir's presence.

"He hasn't any idea how they found him. Was Oliss involved?"

Ran shook his head. "She was busy prophesying the breakup of Voric and Nize." Two of their classmates who weren’t actually ‘together’ in the first place.

"Of course. I should've known." Which left them back where they started. “There’s no way to verify if Yast’s afterdrift is how they’re tracking him, but for now let’s assume it is. If we stay ahead of them and keep him from casting any more spells until after their traces fade, they’ll have nothing to go on and no way to prove it’s him if they do catch up later.”

“Is there anything more we should investigate before reverting?” Ran asked hopefully.

Jair chuckled. “Sorry. But knowing Sekir’s involved, we really should get out of this timeline sooner rather than later. The last thing we want to do is end up tangled with him before I’m ready.”

“What’s so dangerous about him? You haven’t said much.”

“You’re stalling.”

Ran made a show of looking around. “He’s not in the school, so does a few minutes hurt anything?”

“Fair enough. And if he does end up more deeply involved in this, it’s for the best that you’re forewarned.”

Jair gestured for Ran to sit, seating himself close beside him.

“Sekir is an enigma. One which I’ve learned many things about, and of whom many things remain a mystery even to me. He’s one of the three most powerful adversaries we’ll face throughout my lifetime, and the one to give me the most trouble in these early months. Should I start with the summary, or start chronologically?"

"Summary. Then you can go into chronology and I'll have a better idea of what's going on."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Sekir is a dark sorcerer. He's one of those who has surpassed the normal limits of magic, much like myself, to do things others would consider impossible. I do not know the nature of his soulspell, but the majority of what he does is with magics and constructs unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I once spent several years trying to convince him to teach me, by any and every method I could conceive, but without exception he tries to kill me. There is no approach subtle enough to convince Sekir to set aside his absolute secrecy."

"Wow. It almost sounds like you admire him."

"It's hard not to respect someone with that much commitment. He is an incredible magician, not someone I'd ever have chosen as an enemy. But, if time has proven anything, it's that Sekir and I will never be allies. Not even temporary ones."

"So what does he do that’s so terrible? Apart from try to kill you, I mean."

"As King Farshen's mental health continues to decline and his edicts become more and more unusual, in a year’s time Sekir will rise to prominence as one of his new wave of advisors. During that period, King Farshen's health will continue to decline at an increased rate, and his attempts to kill off the rest of his family will escalate–"

"Wait. The King is going to try to kill off his own family? I thought the whole point was that he was grieving and didn't want to lose anyone else?"

"Far from it. It may have started out that way, but the King quickly became convinced that Prince Orren was a traitor who wanted him dead. The Prince is in hiding specifically from his father, not because of whatever excuse they're using to cover it up. Sekir's presence only exacerbates this. Without my interference, Orren will end up dead and Princess Fahla will become Sekir’s figurehead as he rules from the shadows after King Farshen's death.”

“Your interference being…”

“Killing Sekir at least once before King Farshen is past the point of no return and preventing him from returning to his position of power.”

“Wait. ‘At least’ once? Isn’t killing someone once usually plenty?”

“Sekir has a nasty habit of coming back from the dead. Could be his soulspell, could be something else. He’s also uncomfortably good at keeping his secrets. Most of the time, I have to kill him at least three times before it sticks, and usually only with overwhelming destructive force.”

“Wow. Well. I thought that kind of thing only happened in stories.”

“Stories come from somewhere.” Jair shrugged. “Keeping Sekir at bay buys us a couple years of relative stability, though the king does always end up losing it completely and needs to be removed one way or another. Things get chaotic again after King Farshen’s death. Prince Orren is almost always the one to take the throne, but more often than not Sekir succeeds in having him assassinated before too long.

“In those situations, the best outcome is to rescue Fahla before he can install her as a puppet Queen, forcing him to take over as himself. It's harder for people to deny what's going on. If I'm making allegations that can’t be proven against the Queen's chief advisor, someone who served her father faithfully to the end of his days… People tend to take it less than well. If, on the other hand, there’s an obvious usurper ruling in plain sight, that's easier to convince people to stand up against."

"So you know he'll be an advisor in the future, but you never tracked him backward from there? I thought you had all the time in the world. I’m shocked there’s something you don't know."

"I'm flattered." Jair laughed softly. "But, no. I may have done the bored immortal thing for a time, but not this early on. By the time I found a shelf past Sekir, I never wanted to come back this far again. If I hadn't found a way to bring Maelstrom back with me to save you, I still wouldn't have."

“Because of the ‘not wanting to use up every possible interaction with me’ thing?”

“That was less of a factor than you’d think.” Jair held up his scrawny and unmarked arm by way of demonstration, prodding mournfully at its soft flesh. "I’m so weak, so untrained. My body doesn’t move right, I’m incapable of doing most of what I know I should be able to. Setting up my imprints is painfully slow before my manabody reaches its proper stability. What should take days is a months-long drag.”

“You have knowledge of the future, shouldn’t that be enough to–”

Jair shook his head. “I have no resources, no reputation, no connections. No one takes me seriously unless I give away so much that they pay me too much attention and my movements are severely restricted. No, I have to rebuild the same base that I always require before I can feel remotely comfortable. This is not the sort of timeline that I have any desire to repeat. The sooner we can get out of here, get past the weakling stage, the better. I can't wait to show you what I'm supposed to be like."

"Something to do with all the exercises you're constantly having us do?"

Jair grinned secretively. "Something like that. Did you know that there are eight basic frameworks within which you can form over a dozen different spells?"

"Sure. It still takes weeks to switch between them, even if you have an Atrin Array."

Jair laughed and shook his head. "Of course the noble knows about Atrin Arrays. Why did I expect otherwise? But, no, the weeks of switching time isn’t as necessary as people think. You just need to have the right tools."

Ran elbowed him in the side. "You were telling me about Sekir."

"You sure you don't want me to continue praising myself?"

"You can do that after. Sekir?"

Jair fell silent for a moment while he mulled over what exactly to say. "Sekir is cunning, ruthless, doesn't accept any possible threat to his supremacy, and cares nothing for anyone but himself and his own ends. What those ends might be, he is reliably reluctant to part with. I can only say what I’ve observed, and that is a conqueror whose destabilization of the region leads to much more damaging repercussions down the line. If he's left unstopped, he'll instigate one of the most dramatic coastal attacks in recorded history.”

"Does he try to build a bridge?"

"If only it were that simple. Bridges don't require a full erosion forced to deal with. No, Sekir tries to fill in the channel between Veor and Leikovar entirely."

Ran stared at him, blank-faced.

"Yes, you heard that correctly. He is incredibly ambitious. He's just an idiot about it. He thinks he can rewrite the world, when in fact the world is the way it is for a reason, and not one easy to counteract. Sekir may be capable of many things, but taming the waters is a greater task than anyone can hope to accomplish.

“His attempt to bridge the Almas continents is genius in inception, but in practice our adversaries aren't ones to give ground easily. Almas has traditionally been considered safe, the inland channels are relatively tame, no particular threat as long as you stay away from the water. Veor, being an inland continent, is completely surrounded by channels tame enough that it is considered a safe haven. All that ends the minute someone like Sekir goes riling up the water.”

“What happens?” Ran asked, sounding almost afraid to hear the answer.

“South Almas ends up with a full-focus erosion right through its center. Veor is right in the middle of it. Half the continent ends up drowned. Without the oases, we wouldn't even hold half.” Jair shivered at the memory, weeks spent trying in vain to put a stop to the endless waves of destruction. Sand swallowed by sea, flowing endlessly away... “Stopping Sekir is hard, but at least it’s within the realm of possibility. If he riles up the waters? Nothing can save Veor then.”

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