Eliax blinked slowly at the necromancer in front of her, trying to comprehend the request through the tired haze in her mind. She needed to take a break from memories, maybe it would give her a lull in the nightmares?

Niun watched her expectantly, “Well?”

The tired Tuvei put a hand to her head, wincing as a random wave of headache appeared. Yeah…she should take a break from the deep memory scans. “Sorry, what exactly did you want?”

“Are you going to my brother’s game? I heard you’re friends.”

“Uhhhh…who’s your brother?”

He sighed, “Raendus. The Echoball player.”

“Right! I don’t want to go.”

Niun folded his arms, “Eliax, you owe me still for basically ruining my life.”

“That was…Illila.” She reminded him, yawning.

“That doesn’t matter, you have to come with me, I don’t want to spend all day alone with Jiuhen.”

“Isn’t Hivren going?” Eliax muttered.

“No, he has to take an assessment.”

“This is why I’m -yawn- not going to school, too much…assessing.”

“How much sleep did you get last night?”

Eliax glanced at her hands and held up all eight fingers, then paused and dropped one off, then another…and…another. One. Yes. That's how much sleep she’d gotten. One.

Niun stared at her for a long moment. “Well, I’m going then.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. You need to go back to sleep, the game is tomorrow.”

Eliax rested the side of her head on the table, “That’s fantastic.” She glanced vaguely at the area, which was just Alsen’s front room. She wasn’t quite sure how Niun had tracked her down, but whatever. She closed her eyes, “I’m going to just…sit here and die for a while.”

-

She wasn’t sure when he left, but he was gone when she next opened her eyes. In fact, there was a blanket over her and when she looked out the window it was dark outside. Sparks, it had been around noon last she remembered!

She sat up, blinking, feeling odd cramps all over from the weird sleeping position. She glanced to the side when she saw movement and relaxed as she realized it was just Alsen with a book. There was a light spell hovering above her hand, and she was watching Eliax.

“You must’ve been tired. I think you were out for almost ten hours.”

Eliax put a hand to her head, which felt much clearer than before. “I…sorry. I’ve been having a lot of nightmares lately.” She stood up, her feet were shaky, but manageable.

Alsen frowned and closed her book, stepping forward and supporting her, “Eliax. You’ve been pushing yourself remarkably hard the entire time you’ve been here. I’ve seen you studying, going to the library, coming back tired and then studying some more. If you push yourself so hard, how will you continue once you finally do achieve your goal? Life doesn’t simply get easier.”

Eliax frowned, following Alsen as she started up the stairs. “You’re right.” She was just so close. It always felt like she was. What would she do once she stored all this out?

Those were the questions that plagued her as she slipped into a real bed and continued her battle against nightmares.

A dragon. I remember serving a dragon.

He was mighty, fair, and he wanted peace. The dragon would talk with the king late into the night about plans for the future, I was his scribe, his messenger within the bounds of the city. I would be sent to retrieve certain books from an archivist, books after books, the dragon seemed to hoard the knowledge, frantically pouring over the documents into the late hours of the night.

“Foralen.” He said once, “What would you give up to save the world if it was on your shoulders?”

I blinked at him from behind my quill and ink, and just as the Mistress had taught me I stopped taking notes. No one records the conversations between a noble and his scribe. That was the same here, right? Even if he had no title, even if he was a dragon. “I’m not sure, master, I’ve never thought about it.”

The dragon who was shaped like a human hummed in thought, his dark brown skin rippling slightly as his form went out of focus. I was becoming more and more certain that he did that on purpose just to make himself seem more magical than he really was. “I suppose that’s true. Tell me if you think of it, I’m curious.”

I nodded slowly, “Is there anything else, master?”

He looked out the window in thought for a moment before shaking his head, “I’m merely thinking of my kin.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I hesitated and nodded again, picking up the ink. I preferred to use a charcoal pencil or something, but those notes would fade faster. Preserving knowledge was always worth the price. At least, that’s what Lady Raia always said.

I felt a sudden urge to stab the desk with my quill, just to see if it would leave a mark, but…no, that would get me in even more hot water with the king.

The dragon kept talking, but this time it wasn’t to me. That was better, dragons freaked me out. “-And so it makes me wonder. Xien would certainly love to burn the world down, but she’s too vain to use her wish for anything other than immortality. I wonder how long it will take her to realize that I won’t be joining her in that venture.”

I wrote it all down, every stroke, letter, and word. But my mind was elsewhere. I couldn’t tell you any of what it said besides those short musings.

--

Eliax stood in line beside Niun and Jiuhen, wondering if there was anything she might get out of going to this game. It was far too late to back out now, but instincts like that were hard to break.

Jiuhen was flirting with the lady beside them in line, one who looked way too old for him. In fact, she was clearly long past childbearing age and seemed to be both amused by his ‘flirtation’ and quite a bit flattered.

She didn’t seem to be taking it seriously, and besides a reminder when they’d first stepped through the gates that he was in a relationship, Eliax hadn’t mentioned Givei this entire time. This was wise apparently since Givei was the reason her two companions hated each other.

Niun was simply glaring at Jiuhen as he flattered the older woman, and Eliax had long ago decided to just ignore all of them. Those birds that were resting near the top of that building were rather amusing to watch after all.

It took far too long to get seated, once they did, Eliax decided it would probably be much louder than she’d initially expected. She was right next to Jiuhen after all, and his lungs were impressive.

Before she knew it, the game was starting.

She didn’t know the rules, and generally would have completely ignored the game in favor of plugging her ears from the crowd. Except when it started she sensed something. Eliax blinked and opened her eyes, examining the field below with a frown. She couldn’t see the magic so well from up here, but there was clearly a powerful and selective anti-teleportation barrier set up all around the area. In fact, it was so powerful that her subconscious mind was trying to get her to move away from it.

No one else seemed to feel it, but that was easily solved when she realized what kind of barrier it was. The golden reflection really should have told her that, but Eliax didn’t realize until she noticed several prominently placed flowers planted evenly around the field, it was too far to make out details, but it was a safe bet that it was Timestrider Silvi. There wasn’t really anything else it could be.

Silvi barriers were almost entirely unfair, they were trivial to mold to the desired shape, they powered themselves as they were technically living things, they were powerful, and they weren’t aggressive. It was like warding except you didn’t need math or any supplies beyond what could keep a Silvi alive.

Eliax examined the barrier in awe, knowing that one day she might be able to make something like that, barriers were hard though, it was essentially tricking the air into being solid without actually being solid, and since it was technically time magic, it would be even harder for her.

She let out a long breath, perhaps she could get something out of this venture after all.

-

In essence, the game was very simple.

Get a disk into a net.

It didn’t matter which net, there were three of them. One in the middle, and one on either end of the field. Each team had their own disk that they had to get into the nets multiple times, either until time was up or a certain number of points was reached. If the other team scored a point with your disc, you lost points.

The trick was that the two disks were charged with a restricted wild magic, granting them the ability to teleport…basically whenever and wherever. Hence the Silvi barrier, to keep the disks in a certain area. The discs would be spinning through the air toward a teammate one moment and then the next be spinning in the air to the other side of the field.

Eliax liked making fun of the players when the things teleported, but they were actually rather good at adapting to the whims of the wildmagic.

The game went on. And on. And on.

Eliax wasn’t quite sure how long it was supposed to be, it seemed to have multiple sections where various numbers of discs were put out, some were different kinds with more or less powerful teleportation abilities depending on…some criteria, and the points probably reflected that. But generally it took forever.

Jiuhen was screaming the entire time, Niun shouted occasionally when Raendus did something cool, and the old woman Jiuhen had been flirting with wasn’t any quieter. Nevermind the others nearby. There were probably a couple hundred people total there, not as many as the markets back in Ceruleia, but enough to kill someone if they were all shoved into a small room.

After a couple of hours, Niun elbowed her, “It’s nearly over!”

Her smile was strained from being around so many people for so long, but somehow she wasn’t at her breaking point just yet. “Great.”

She glanced back down at the field in time to see Raendus catch one of the disks, he started running with it, which was apparently allowed, jumping to throw the disk into the net and-

It was gone.

Eliax shook her head and tried to see where it was now, but she looked back at him when the crowd went eerily silent. Raendus lost balance in the air with the absence of the projectile, he landed, but it wasn’t on his feet.

The other players wavered when he didn’t get back up, but the timer only had a couple of moments left on it. One guy rushed to his side, but Eliax could already see his white uniform turning cyan with blood.

Niun was already running. Eliax was behind him, but all she could remember were the nightmares. Losing people she cared about. A battlefield of corpses turning into fine ash as the void sucked them in.

She tried to flood her mind with paint.

They got out of the seating in record time, Niun shouting, he ran through the barrier perfectly fine, it only blocked dimensional anomalies then. Eliax was right behind him, feeling in her gut as her magic tried to push her back from the barrier.

Inertia kept her going through as her muscles locked up by instinct. She felt the Timestrider Silvi stab at her viciously, halting her in place and violently pushing her magic away. Scraping her mind until it was bare and pulling against her like she was the space being distorted.

It only blocked dimensional anomalies.

She fell to the ground, her muscles locking with pain, her entire being reviling against the thing that was her opposite. Over and over she felt it pull at her, pulling, pulling, pulling. Just like rubber that could no longer go any farther, Eliax felt like something inside her was about to-

Snap.