“We’re about to commit to days or weeks searching for a crazy old man in the most dangerous and untamed wild jungle known across five continents, of course we’re buying constructs before we go.”

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to hire an escort?” Ran peered skeptically at the master constructist before them. The man stood hunched over his worktable in the small shop, eyes glowing red as he assembled pre-formed pieces with the speed and skill born of decades of practice, fusing them together with brief touches of fingers with a matching glow. A small town grandmaster, highly specialized into his own particular style, but the best outfitter this side of the Oriad. Well worth the cost.

Jair strapped the first of three construct bands around his forearm, aligning the mana inputs over intersection points for his as-yet unstarted spell imprints. “An escort would only slow us down. Aethron will be hard enough to reach, he’ll run if he sees armed adventurers.”

“What kind of guy runs from adventurers? Sure there’s some… problematic groups out there, but that’s such a diverse category, it’s like saying he hides from elves.”

“Elves don’t have a reputation for getting involved in everyone’s business. And there may be a few longstanding bounties on his head.” Jair shrugged as he accepted the second construct from the craftsman, slipping it on with the ease of long practice. “Aethron has lived an interesting life. There are reasons he lives in the Oriad, moves around so much, and has so many safety precautions in place. He’s not a paranoid old maniac for the fun of it.” Then Jair immediately corrected himself, “Maybe a little bit for the fun of it.”

“So, what, we wander around hoping we run into him?” Ran tried to imitate Jair’s positioning with his own armband, but wasn’t used to Orard construct conventions.

“Hah, no, that would take decades. The Oriad is vast. I’ve only seen around half of it in all my time, and that includes several lifetimes ignoring everything else going on in the world.”

Orard was not a small continent, nor were its subcontinents. As the large and central heart of Orard, the inner forest known as the Oriad stretched from mid Reskas all the way past elven controlled territory and into the vampire lands, covering parts of four continents and the entirety of two others.

It was also one of the few places Jair had lived where running water could sometimes be safe. Only some of its rivers reached the sea. His mental map of the Oriad included which streams could be crossed or used for drinking and which would lead to your instant demise. So long as you knew which of its tributaries to avoid as impassable barriers, some waters could be forded or even bridged: those ending in stagnant lakes, diffused through bogs, or which split up into a sort of inland delta.

Transit platforms were few and far between. The inhospitable environment made maintaining a physical line connection dubious, and the excessive foliage made line of sight transit questionable. There would be platforms on several of the mountaintops, but there was a lot of space between those mountaintops.

Having spent years ranging from the far west to the wild south and everything in between, the dangers to the unknowing and unaware were no mystery to Jair. He knew the Oriad intimately, its landscapes predictable in their constant shifting… except when they weren’t. Rivers led to swamps, streams could shift route in a day, changing from dry ravines to rushing floodways overnight, or vice versa.

“Several…lifetimes?” Ran gave him a concerned look.

Jair ignored it. “Aethron won’t be easy to find, but I know enough about him to narrow it down. Hideouts, hunting grounds, allies… enough to get started with. He’s probably got more he hid even from me, but as long as we don’t spook him into bolting curiosity should be enough to draw him out.” He finished with his armbands and glanced over at Ran’s. “You need to align the intakes over intersections or it’ll interfere with your imprinting.”

“Like this?”

“No, your imprints are different from mine. Here. See?” Jair adjusted the construct band for him, pointing out where the others would go as he did.

The constructist finished the next item, a rectangular wand with its wrist cable, and handed it to Jair.

“You’re sure this is all necessary?” Ran asked, watching as Jair tightened the wand’s intake on his own wrist. “Everyone says not to use more than one or two constructs until after imprinting.”

“It’s necessary.” He’d have taken several of them with him anyway, though he wouldn’t have been so heavily outfitted if he had functional imprints.

Ran took one look at Jair’s face, and stopped arguing. He nodded, accepting the next construct from the crafter.

The main problem with constructs was their lack of range and target ability. A soulspell could target anything or anyone. Many required something like line of sight or touch to initially activate, but the average soulspell didn't care about physical distance. A spell imprint had much stricter locational boundaries, requirements, and limitations; though they could still be used within a reasonable range, distance did matter and casting further away took actual time.

Constructs, most expensive and most limiting of all, mana intensive and highly inefficient, could only affect in their direct contact. If you want a fire spell, a fire blast soulspell could create one at the target location, an imprinted spell could cast one that reached the location and manifested there a split-second later, while a construct would manifest it directly and only with initial impetus and actual aim would it physically move from the wand or other implements to fly at its target.

Things like Jair's gravity spells could not be replicated by constructs. There was no construct possible for grabbing and lifting a thing, or making a distant object heavier. Though there were constructs which could be used to channel electricity through your body, construct powered enhancement spells had a much higher possibility of causing damage to the caster than anything else.

An imprinted spell would still be channeled through your own manabody and its intent would be known. The subtleties of the mana transformation would be unconsciously and automatically attuned correctly and exactly to the proper resonance for the person who cast it. A construct had no such innate considerations and would create the spell in the same exact way universally, regardless of who cast it.

For most people, the standard deviation from a construct to themselves was minimal enough that constructs only rarely caused major backlash against their wielders. The more powerful and more personally developed someone was, the higher the chance their resonance would clash with something pre-manufactured and generic.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Once Jair reached his full standard state, he could hardly use any enhancement constructs without causing more of a mana-sickness backlash than it was worth. Right now, he could potentially get away with using a handful of enhancement or augmentation types, though the way his soul and manabody interacted he may already be beyond the point where their usefulness outweighed their damaging qualities.

Offensive constructs were safer in that regard. Since the caster created a physical effect and then snapped it out at a target, inconsistent resonance would be of minimal impact. It would not affect the mage, but the target upon which he cast it.

By the time they left the constructist’s shop, Jair and Ran each had a full set of six arm mounted constructs, with a further dozen supplementary, replacement, or one-time use options on their person.

It cost them more than Ran’s family made in half a year, but it would keep them from becoming monster snacks so Jair refused to skimp.

Another few months, and he could casually stroll through the place without so much as slowing, but that required both his class and his imprints.

Maelstrom would make everything even easier then he was used to. Normally when he went out to seek Aethron he had only his reforged soulsword. The stage two weapon had significant advantages over the base form, but still nothing approaching the level of power that an ascendant blade could wield. Particularly a legendary ascendant blade.

It was with a light and eager step that Jair led the way to the village’s local transit platform. Ran paid the attendant for an additional set of charged transit crystals, then they set their first destination.

"This place feels unsafe." Ran's voice was low and he walked with slow tension, looking around in all directions. The misty haze of the morning filled in the space between trees with shifting shadows, water dripped and rustled from branches high above, and the hushed cry of distant carrion birds did nothing to ease the tension of the atmosphere.

"Don't forget to look up. Lots of predators like to jump on you from above." Jair's voice, by contrast, was casual and borderline cheerful.

Though he'd been born and raised in Veor, it was the Oriad where Jair felt most at home. Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, it killed in countless more creative and unpleasant ways than the desert, unpredictable and capricious, but the desert was so dull.

The Oriad was alive.

Veori deserts were death prepackaged. Follow the lines if you want to survive, step outside if you want to die. Simple. Easy. Once you knew the rules to survival in Veor, there was no risk.

Not so the Oriad. Even knowing everything he knew, Jair's heart jumped, the thrill of danger skipping his pulse and rushing through his veins.

The scree-caw of a hunting bird.

The disappointed chitter of a giant insect whose prey had escaped.

A slow drip of something falling from above, steady splashing against massive leaves.

Everything had Jair’s senses on alert, ready to jump into action at a moment's notice. It brought life into sharp focus.

Something thudded against a tree, quick rhythmic taps in steady force. Tap-tap tap-tap.

Jair’s head whipped around to focus on the source, assessing. A crystal octide on the hunt, brief glints visible between branches.

Pause, tap-tap tap-tap.

It moved steadily upward. Not hunting them. A younger one then.

A hunting vine rustled softly behind them.

Ran jumped and gasped, spinning to search the ground. “What was that?!”

Of course, of all the dangers in the area, he reacted to the one that couldn’t hurt them.

"It's nothing to be concerned about, just a strangler pod." Jair kept his eyes moving through the trees above them as he started down the hill, gesturing for Ran to follow. Even if it was otherwise occupied, he’d give the octide a wide berth.

The darting motion and rapid thrashing sounds a moment later told Jair that the hungry plant had found its prey, likely one of the smaller rodents that made their home in the jungles.

“Strangler pod?”

“Like a snake, but a plant. It can’t chase us and it won’t do more than bite your hand or foot if we do stumble into its range.”

“Even the plants want to kill us?” Ran moved closer to Jair, walking directly at his side. "How long did you say we were going to be here?" There was a breathy tightness to his voice now.

"Between three days and two weeks. Aethron moves around a lot, and I don't know where specifically we will be able to find him. If he's at one of his usual places, we can check them all quickly. If he's gone off on a hunt somewhere, we’ll have to follow his breadcrumb trail. That'll take a few more days at least."

"Breadcrumb trail? That sounds like a great way to attract hungry things."

Jair chuckled. "Metaphor. He likes to make people work to reach him. It's not a literal trail, and not literal breadcrumbs. It is, however, something that requires a significant amount of time to unravel and catch up to him. Depending on how many times he’s moved since the last time he was at home.”

“Should we be moving more quietly?”

“Speed is the priority at the moment.” Jair didn’t elaborate, as the explanation would only worry Ran further. Sometimes, smarter predators realized that the magical pulses from the transit platform on the mountaintop meant delicious mages could arrive there. More tourists went missing in the Oriad then survived, proving those predators generally correct in their assessments.

Unfortunately, their speed was insufficient to clear the area before something significantly bigger than the octide found them.

When the hunting brobeg dropped down on them, Jair had only a moment to react. His sword, a mundane weapon that he nonetheless felt more comfortable having, interposing its point between himself and the descending threat.

This particular brobeg was small for its species, perhaps half again as long as Jair was tall, and half that around. Its bulbous yellow-green head and wide-open mouth, trailed by a rapidly narrowing sinuous body, gave it the general appearance of a hungry cone as it plummeted from above.

Well. A hungry cone with claws and a far too flexible tongue. Its tongue snapped out at a nearby tree, pulling its body out of the way of Jair’s blade, the weapon merely scratching a line across its flank.

Ran shouted and raised his own sword.

Jair flicked his wand and fired a bladed disk of ice, which the creature batted aside with one claw, then it hissed and disappeared into the fog in a quick rustle that died off almost immediately.

"What was that? I’ve never seen a frog that big!"

"Brobeg. Not a frog. And this one’s young, it hadn’t grown its wings yet."

"Wings?"

"Yes, they are a lesser cousin to the dragon. More amphibious, not inclined to prolonged flight, but perfectly willing to glide for silent stalking."

Ran’s eyes stayed glued to the section of the tree where the brobeg had disappeared to.

Jair chuckled. "It won’t be there. It will be circling around to get us from a different angle." That dialed Ran’s paranoia up another notch, his heavy breathing denoting the level of near panic that made Jair frown in mild concern.

"If you don't want to come –"

Ran’s stubbornness was not to be underestimated. "I do. I'll be fine."

Jair grinned. "Fair enough. Duck."

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