The invitation arrived with a quiet knock at the door of Xiaxoan Blues. A pale-skinned courier, bearing a translucent crest that resembled an ocean wave, delivered the scroll with a perfunctory bow. Tyrs, ever wary, took the scroll first and read the contents aloud.

"Larin of Xiaxo, by the virtue of Myrith Crestfoam, Seafoam House Magi, you are invited to a chosen few minds to be thrown into a multidisciplinary framework to integrate the magic of Sinlung into the Sublime Auqua Project. You will be provided with protection, access to resources, and knowledge that would make you beyond the limits of your world. Attendance is not mandatory, but absence will make a difference towards future chances for a diplomacy.".

She spread the scroll on her legs and looked at Larin. "Diplomatic chances?"

"That's a velvet-chain cover," Mynta grumbled, crossing her eyes.

Ted fell silent, and when he finally spoke his voice was guarded, contemplative. "It's a challenge, Larin. An offer masked by mystery. Refuse and face ostracism. Accept, and one's into the lions' den. We come to know its bite.".

"She values your mind," Tyrs added, her face stern. "And a mind valued can also be a mind manipulated."

All the words his mentors had given him were there, all the sum of their wisdom weighing like an accumulation of stones. Yet he knew that Auquans moved with an assurance bred of dominion only. Yet he knew also that without knowledge, power means nothing. "If I go," he said, "I need to understand them—how they think, how they live."

Ted nodded. "You will be our eyes and ears. Learn their ways, but keep yours. The Auquans don't give anything without expecting to receive something back."

---

The next morning, a sleek ship appeared just past the garden of Xiaxoan Blues. Nothing like it Larin had ever seen. Its hull was of shining scales that glistened with a wet appearance, faint runes etched patterns that seemed to ripple like currents across its surface. Its name was inscribed along the bow: *Azure Tidebreaker*. Not a ship in the way of tradition; it seemed half-living, half-crafted, a construct of magic and bioengineering. Now, known locally as a *Voricaen* by the people of the Auquans, its name came from their own tongue to mean "sea-walker."

He was met at the entrance by Myrith Crestfoam, whose hair draped tentacle-like over her shoulders in such elegance. She smiled at him, offering one hand out to welcome him aboard. "Larin of Xiaxo, it is an honor to host one of your brilliance aboard our vessel."

Larin bowed his head slightly, his face as unreadable as stone. "It is an honor to be invited."

---

The inside of the *Azure Tidebreaker* was a wonder of otherworldly craftsmanship. The corridors seemed to breathe, their walls pulsing gently as if alive. Light came not from lanterns or crystals but from glowing, gelatinous orbs suspended in water-filled recesses. The air was cool and heavy with the scent of brine.

As they walked, Myrith spoke of her house's legacy. "The Seafoam House is one of many that serve under the Sublime Auqua Project. Each house has its own purpose—some focus on conquest, others on diplomacy or research. Our purpose is to weave worlds together, finding commonalities between disparate magics and technologies."

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"Is conquest ever far from diplomacy?" Larin asked, his voice carefully even.

Myrith didn't flinch. "The tide carves the shore, yet it nourishes the vibrancy clings to."

---

They stepped into a great hall, officers and scholars everywhere in it filled the space. A round table stands at its centre, on surface so slick, liquid flows across it where coiled and curved projections of the starry, shifted runes, coiled on above as oceanic movement; the figures there variously blue-skinned, variously green, many wearing laced gills upon the jaw, like fin crests or flowing hair.

Myrith indicated a tall man with broad shoulders, whose eyes seemed sunken pearls that shone. "Commander Arken Thalmar, chief strategist." The commander nodded brusquely, his weighty gaze running over Larin. "It's a pleasure," he said, though the words narrowed through his hand in a blade of a tone. And this is Lia Suthai, he went on to say, nodding toward a smaller stature with delicate webbing between the fingers, "cultural integration".

Suthai smiled warmly. "You bring the magic of Sinlung, a weave I have longed to study. A connection of your people to the land piques our interest greatly."

"It's a relationship of mutual respect," Larin said. "Not one of dominion."

"Respect," Suthai mused. "An interesting lens. Many view the land as a resource to command. Your perspective may offer unique insights."

---

The rest of the next few days aboard the *Azure Tidebreaker* were a bit of a blur of lessons and revelations. So thoroughly was the culture of Seafoam House shot through with both water as symbol and force that fluidity and adaptability formed core tenets, even as control over the tides and dominance upon them were to be celebrated virtues.

He saw them performing their rites-the water assuming sculptural shapes that existed but for the lashing of an eye before dissolving into nothingness, but he remembered the lines and contours reminding him that power was as fleeting as life itself. He heard chanting in harmonies, every verse, every lone note speaking with a different language on sorrow, victory, finality.

Every night, Myrith, Lysara would sit across from him at dinner, from cosmology philosophy to the brevity of earth kingdoms' survival.

"The Sublime Auqua Project is not conquest in the old way, Myrith said one night. "It is a coming together of what might be. Every world we touch becomes part of a larger ocean, its tides drawn forward into prosperity."

"And yet," Larin said, "those tides often scour away what went before."

"Change is always scours away," Lysara countered. "But it is also makes anew. Which do you prefer, stagnation or flow?"

Larin took another sip of his drink and spoke slowly, weighing each word. "Balance. A tide that knows the depth and knows when to push forward and when to retreat."

"Balance," Myrith repeated, her smile mysterious. "A worthy pursuit. Let's see if it holds against the waves.".

Besides this, Larin learned their linguistic magic. The Auquans used words as forces rather than as fixed spells, with each of them woven into the very texture of thought and perception. Nowhere on the constructs of their people were found the brackets that had been left to Sinlung's magic; the spells seemed instead to run like verses of an eternal song, unbounded and fluid.

He learned how they did it, combined them into this so that he was able to make it part of himself. The language is so fluid, so intoxicating-the dance of all possibility. Yet with that he devours this much as well, with dangers: a formless liberty too easily collapsing into chaos; a power with no restraints to drown the person wielding the thing.

He walked with Larin on the final night of the first journey upon the observation deck. Stars cavorted within that great, wet blanket of night above. "Your people's magic holds such a truth long sought after by us," Myrith told her. "One greater than a bond of subjugation-that is, it is tied in with the very earth itself. Think of what we might raise together."

Larin met his eyes and the sweeping sweep of possibility that lay before him. "I am here to learn," he said. "But learning and building are not the same thing as surrender."

Myrith's smile grew even wider. "And that, Larin of Xiaxo, is why you intrigue me."