"Father, I would like to take charge of the Serin fortune, effective immediately."
Lord Ajriol Serin stared across the desk at his son, eyebrows furrowed. He briefly met Jair's eyes - Jair sat behind Ran in the position of advisor - before turning back to Ran. "Full control?"
"Yes sir. I have information which will undeniably improve our fortunes, directly proportional to the investments I am allowed to make. Therefore, I would like full access to our funds in order to best monopolize on the situation."
Ajriol glanced between Ran and Jair again. "Information?"
Ran nodded.
Ajriol folded his hands together on the desk in front of him, frowning more deeply as he considered.
"I can guarantee a full return on investment."
Then they all sat quietly as Ajriol considered.
Jair relaxed back into his chair, not letting the tension of the scene get to him.
Ran sat stiff and upright, the picture of ideal nobility.
Ajriol sat slightly forward, but otherwise made no move until he finally broke the silence. "Is there a reason you cannot tell me what you wish to do, and trust my judgment on how to carry it out?"
"Some of the investments are time sensitive. Others are personal in nature. Clearing everything through you would reduce our effectiveness by twenty-seven percent."
"Twenty-seven percent? That much? Just to get verification?"
"The time delay alone, yes sir. If we take into account the fact that some of the investments are obscure and strange, and the likelihood that you will deny some of them, we can increase that loss to almost forty."
Ajriol straightened as he took this in, three fingers tapping across the back of his other hand.
Silence. Jair stifled a yawn.
"You aren't going to tell me the source of this information?" Ajriol looked pointedly at Jair as he said this.
"If you demand to know the answers, I will give them." Ran answered calmly and smoothly.
"You are willing to give me the information if I demand it, but do not put it forward immediately and upfront?" Ajriol’s frown turned into a considering look.
Ran nodded once.
Silence a moment, then, "Ah." Ajriol’s face went very blank and very neutral as he regarded Ran.
Ran smiled faintly. "Yes. You are correct."
"Do I want to know how?"
Ran shrugged with one hand raised. "That is a question you must answer."
"Hm." Ajriol moved his hands behind his back, leaning forward to look between Ran and Jair. Ran smiled faintly. Ajriol frowned, then straightened for the nod. "I'm satisfied with your sincerity, but I'm not inclined to trust the entirety of our fortune to mere certainty."
"I thought you mightn’t. My soulspell allows me to travel back in time."
Ajriol froze. His eyes didn't so much as flicker, his mouth stopped half open, breath held as he stared.
Jair grinned. He had never in his life seen Ajriol so completely stunned. He’d seen the man devastated, when the news of Ran's death reached him, he'd seen him in a wide variety of surprised and irritated moods in the years following, but never such a state of complete shock.
Ran sat with bated breath, waiting for the verdict.
"Hah." Ajriol lifted a piece of paper from the stack to his left, scrawled out a few sentences, then pressed his seal to the page’s lower right corner. He repeated this process twice more, placed one copy on a stack of papers to his right, leaned down to file second in the drawer below his desk, and held the third out to Ran.
"Congratulations on your early ascension, Son." Ajriol’s face broke into a genuine smile.
Ran accepted the page with reverence, his own smile blooming as he read the contents. "Thank you, Father. I appreciate your trust. I swear to you, House Serin will rise far beyond what either of us could've dreamed."
That seemed to signal the end of the business meeting. Without preamble, Ajriol stood up from his desk, still grinning, and walked over to envelop Ran in a tight hug. "Look at you go," he spoke softly, but not quietly enough to prevent Jair overhearing. "I always knew you'd make this family proud."
"Thanks, Dad. I couldn't have gotten here without your guidance."
Ajriol stepped back, all business again. He tapped the page still clutched in Ran's hand. "Don't lose that. If it falls into the wrong hands—"
"We’ll be ruined. I know dad." Ran folded it reverently and slid it into an inner pocket of his robe.
He beckoned for Jair to follow him out of the room. They waited until they were a full floor down before bursting into excited laughter and jumping up and down like small children.
Dignity? Who needed it. They had full control of the Serin family fortune. If that wasn't something worth celebrating, all dignity aside, Jair didn't know what was.
Then there was the investigation.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Hyperion guards were constantly in and out of the Institute and prowling through Astralla City, questioning everyone, poking their noses into everything. Jair and Ran were questioned multiple times about if they’d had contact with any strangers, seen anything, heard anything, or knew of any elves in the city.
The Hyperion had obtained descriptions of Yast and Lorsit from somewhere, but that was all they had to go on. They had the afterdrift traces for a few days, but without someone to match them against it did them no good.
Jair had already warned their co-conspirators to stay indoors and out of sight until Terluna. Since he’d taken care of renting their rooms himself, there wouldn’t be any record of their names on any paperwork. Come the lunar festival, Lorsit and Yast would slip away back to their respective homes without a trace, disappearing in the crowds of Terluna travelers.
Terluna would also be the day Jair and Ran left for Orard, Ran as part of his official Reforging quest to advance his mageblade class and Jair as his attendant. Hopefully. Larenok refused to grant Jair an appointment any sooner than the day itself, so he’d need to deal with that first.
The days passed. Slow, tense, but gradually life slid back into the ordinary chaos of day to day without any dramatic turnarounds that would necessitate going back in time.
Thankfully so. Jair wasn’t sure how many more times Ran could do it without losing his mind. It would be good for them to have a nice rest from the constant looping.
Running lunar calculations for the coming months, transiting to northern Orard on Terluna would give Jair and Ran a six-day window to search for Aethron before Dark Night, at which point they’d have to choose either to abandon the search or commit to staying in Orard for another three weeks until the next Ghost Moon passage.
The next major event on Jair’s mental calendar was the Reskas flood and the country’s subsequent withdrawal from the coastal conflict. Reskas was significantly distant from the Oriad, the doomed city at the far southern tip of the Orard supercontinent while the Oriad filled the northern central continents.
Just a couple more things to take care of here, then they could be off.
Terluna arrived, the day of their departure, but first, Jair had to survive his appointment with Larenok.
He could see this encounter going one of a few ways, and wasn’t sure which one he’d actually prefer. He showed up on time respectfully, confident and calm.
Headmaster Larenok didn’t bother showing up on time. His office door was closed, his secretary curtly informed Jair that the headmaster had important matters to attend to and would be with him ‘as soon as possible’.
Jair nodded, used to such inconsiderate treatment, and took a seat in the hall outside Larenok’s office.
The insistence on playing such petty power games against students was only one more reason Jair didn’t particularly care about the outcome of this encounter. He truly held nothing against Larenok by now. The deep dislike would probably never fade, even if the man were to change his ways and become a beacon of generosity and support, but Jair held no lingering enmity.
As he’d known from the first minute he saw him, Larenok was simply one obstacle in a line of hundreds of obstacles. Something to be moved past with as little fuss as necessary.
So Jair sat calmly, hands folded in his lap, eyes closed, breathing in slow steady rhythm as he listened passively to the comings and goings of the school.
Terluna moved higher in the sky, elsewhere the Terlunia festival would be underway. People celebrating, traveling, reuniting and visiting, taking full advantage of the global access the lunar passage provided. Transients who traveled between continents every terluna would be packed up and moving on - Lorsit and Yast would already be gone by now.
If not for the formalities required, Jair and Ran would be gone as well, but Jair felt no particular urgency.
Everything he needed to do for the next few months took place on Orard. Granted, even on such a unified continent the subcontinents could be difficult to navigate without making use of lunar passages, but it wasn’t nearly to the same extent of division as Almas. Almas had countless channels, while Orard had rivers and lakes. Travel would become difficult and convoluted to pass from Penriet to Reskas, or from Garne to Desyov, but nothing like the certain death of trying to leave Veor between lunar passages.
The grumpy thud of Larenok’s feet as he strode to his office brought Jair’s awareness back to the moment. Took him long enough.
“You sleeping, Welburne?”
“Nope.” Jair rose and followed the man into his office, ignoring the looming intimidation intention of the architecture. He stood beside the student supplicant chair until Larenok impatiently ordered him to sit, and when he did so it was at a slant with one leg draped over the other in casual disregard for propriety standards.
Larenok’s ever-present scowl grew more scowly. “So, what’s this nonsense about wanting to go out on adventures before you’re initiated?”
“Ran Serin is departing today to begin his Reforging quest, and I plan to accompany him.”
Larenok shuffled through the pages on his desk with a frown. “He did submit a claim for an off-site Reforging allowance, and you are listed as an allowed companion.” The man sounded disappointed not to have an excuse to disqualify Jair immediately.
“I submitted my own request the next day. Everything is filed correctly.”
Larenok didn’t bother searching for that page; he clearly knew as much already. Instead he leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “You don’t seem to understand how this works. Reforging Quests are not to be lightly undertaken, certainly not something you go rushing off into without even receiving a single semester’s training after initiation. Ran Serin’s whole expedition is premature. Allowing a pre-initiate to accompany him would be absurd.”
“Is that so?” Jair asked lightly, allowing a half smirk to tease at his lips. “You’re refusing to verify the allowance?”
“Unless you have a parental countersignature, you are under my care as a student of this academy. It is my prerogative to ensure your safety and education aren’t interrupted by foolishness.”
“Are you trying to forbid my departure to accompany Ran?”
“Trying to?” Larenok’s voice lowered as he tried to keep his anger controlled. To be fair to the man, he hadn’t had a great week, but Jair wasn’t particularly inclined toward fairness at the moment. He stood. “Jair Welburne, your request is denied. And you’re late for class.”
Jair slid out an envelope from his robes, and tossed it up to Larenok. “Then the time has come. I must regretfully inform you that I will be withdrawing from the Astralla Mageblade Institute, effective immediately. I will be accompanying Ran Serin on his reforging quest. I’ll be pursuing my own further education as it becomes necessary without need of the Astralla Institute.”
Larenok caught the envelope and simply stared at it for a long moment, frown more pronounced than ever. “You’re giving up? Only a few months before your initiation?”
“I am thankful for the time I have been given here,” Jair said with exaggerated sincerity. “It has shaped my life in ways I never could have imagined, and I'm a better man now than I was when I arrived. But the time has come for me to move on to more important things."
Larenok's face shifted to a condescending sneer. "I see. You know you’re never going to amount to anything, and rather than put in the work to change that, you would rather throw away everything that you’ve been given rather than risk being seen as the failure you are. I should have guessed."
Larenok tore open the envelope, which contained Jair’s written resignation of his place as a student and his student authorization token. He wouldn’t be able to use the transit platform here as an arrival destination again. No great loss. Astralla City was plenty close enough to the local oases.
The headmaster read over the form with intense scrutiny, then tucked it and the token away in a drawer.
"Very well. You are dismissed. Get out and never darken my doors again."
"With the utmost sincerity, I will gladly comply."
If they never saw each other again, it would still be too soon.
Jair stood, bowed with the bare minimum of politeness, and walked away.
"There you are. Took you long enough." Ran grinned at him from where he waited beside the transit platform for their final departure. "Let's go find your crazy mentor."
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