Ascendant energy arcs between a flock of twelve bone birds, the decemantic constructs small and swift. They work in subgroups of three to concentrate the circuiting energy. Where the trios detonate their payload, the air parts, revealing slivers of other planes.

Ascendant energy swirls around Maria’s legs and torso, empowering her movements as she dances away. Fiery blasts from her arms help to adjust her trajectory–necessary given the speed she’s going.

She overcorrects once and that’s the opportunity the birds need. They shift their trajectory slightly and catch Maria from the side. She twists her body to avoid the four nearly-invisible slits in the sky but her arm glances against one of them. Sharper than any knife, the sundered veil nearly tears the limb in half.

The exercise halts now that I’ve drawn first blood.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side ever again,” Maria smirks, unperturbed by her damaged arm. As a lich, she doesn’t feel pain like the living. I can feel the sensation of dulled throbbing over our bond, accompanied by the instinctive need to restore the damage. While I consciously still consider Maria an independent person, my practice loves to remind me otherwise. Like it or not, she is your construct.

“Alright, time to test out your technique,” I say. We haven’t had a true duel in several weeks, mostly because we’ve realized it’s pointless. Maria and I are never going to fight against one another. Instead we’ve settled into practice sessions where we rotate using techniques against one another.

She raises an eyebrow. “Arm?”

Oh. Death energy wisps off the leviathan riftbeast soul gem and swirls around Maria’s arm. In a second, the limb is restored. “You’re welcome.”

“Alright, warning that this might hurt,” Maria says.

I look around. The ashy desert sand is devoid of visible arrays, and I would have noticed if Maria dug around and inscribed an array earlier. This must mean she’s testing out speed inscriptions.

Thin strands of fire dance over her fingers like vines. Soon they’ve grown to cover the area around her like the tentacles of an octopus, writhing on the ground. Where they touch the sand, it turns to glass.

Death energy condenses into a mantle my combat robes, dying Suncloud’s neutral brown fabric iridescent black. “I’m waiting,” I taunt.

Suddenly she’s skating over the dunes, fire sweeping out in front of her to turn the sand to glass. Her ascendant energy then lubricates her feet like skates. Finally, a conflagration extends out from her back like an oversized fox tail, pushing her forward. The end result is that Maria rockets across the ground like a missile, too fast to follow, even after the perception exercises Messeras put me through when we traveled together. She must be as fast as Messeras when she’s moving like this. And normally that kind of speed might harm the user, but Maria’s undead body is naturally resistant to physical damage.

If she hits me while she’s like this, there’s no doubt I’ll die. But that’s not what she’s going for. In the blink of an eye she’s already put down a ring of glass around me. This isn’t the first time I’ve faced this technique–at this point usually she spirals inward, her flame tentacles leaving precise inscriptions on the ground. She doesn’t control their movements in the moment, of course–that would be too difficult–but instead relies on a series of pre-programmed arrays to coordinate their patterns of motion. I’m proud to say that I helped her develop that part of the strategy. Never underestimate the value of a glossy programmatics degree!

Of course, the spiral pattern is predictable, and her high speed a weakness. The shark tooth whip I first created back in the Jermal trench rift has seen a lot more use lately as a result. I flick the whip and it extends out like a sentient chain, not even pretending to move under the laws of normal physics. It zigzags and shatters the glass, then ripples up and down to form a sort of vertical barrier.

Maria grunts and punches right through the whip, scattering bones, but it’s thrown off her course.

But then she smiles.

A shudder passes through my body and I feel like a bug about to crawl into the spider’s web. I was wondering why her actions were so predictable–what was she hiding?

Suddenly fire combusts around me, instantaneous, unavoidable. I’m not currently using my trilayer bone shield defense–this is a practice, not a battle to the death–so my only defense is the ascendant-empowered Death energy around my body.

“Yield!” I call out.

The flames stop and Maria smiles coyly. “Remind you of someone?”

I give her an exaggerated sigh. “Zilverna.”

She laughs. “His use of spontaneous combustion is a bit different, since his affinity isn’t as high as mine, so he uses consumable foci to fill the gaps. But it’s actually rather impressive what he’s able to do. Manifesting flame so far from my body is difficult.”

I nod. “I never expected him to force my hand in the Fassari Summit. So, you’ve spoken to him again?”

Maria’s expression grows contemplative. “I have.”

“And?”

“He still doesn’t know that I’m...like this.”

I walk over to her. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell him the truth in the first place.” Suncloud gave Maria an item that makes her appearance more human-like. She doesn’t bother to use it normally–claims it makes her “feel unlike herself”–but she always uses it around Zilverna.

“He’s only seventeen. I don’t want him to worry about me, or whether I’ll ever be able to return home without being killed on the spot for what I am.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You told Kaiwen the truth.”

“Kaiwen can keep secrets,” Maria retorts. “Like Euryphel. There’s a reason Zilverna hasn’t been pulled into his closest circle.”

I scoff. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “He doesn’t hate Euryphel. Sometimes he acts petty and short-sighted, but he’s a smart boy. He understands how the world works. If he was the child you seem to think he is, he wouldn’t have signed the peace accords and submitted Selejo to the SPU.” She licks her lips. “In which case, he probably would have died for his defiance.”

After our morning bout, we join Karanos, Crystal, and Sah for breakfast. Crystal eats some kind of seaweed carted over from an aquatic plane, while Sah munches furiously on the whole carcass of a deer.

Karanos isn’t as much of a chef as Messeras, but his storage is filled with ready-made meals that are piping hot. He’s been sharing them with Maria and I without reserve. Eating doesn’t provide Maria’s body any benefit, but she can eat, and it’s not like Karanos’ food is in short supply. It helps her feel human.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Today’s breakfast is a bit plain: oatmeal with a side of eggs. As usual, the egg yolks are green; in the beginning they were rather unappetizing, but I’ve grown used to it.

“You both have been training for a while now in this dilated space, but I can tell you’re both running up against diminishing returns,” Karanos says, interrupting the meal. “While I could theoretically lock you in a dilated plane for a few years and you’d probably get better, the best teacher is real world experience. We don’t need hundreds of dilated years to defeat Achemiss. What do we need?”

Maria puts down her fork. “I’ve been thinking about this. In the end, the decisive factor won’t be overpowering Achemiss using brute force. Victory will come through careful preparation and the element of surprise.”

“The main challenge is for Ian to assassinate Achemiss after using the beacon,” Karanos affirms. “Assassination is far from a direct confrontation. Like Maria said, it’s all about preparation and surprise, rather than raw strength. Here’s a fun question: Why not have Ian go face Achemiss right now?”

I finish swallowing my oatmeal. “...Because I would lose?”

Karanos’ eyes glint. “But you killed me, didn’t you? You caught me by surprise and I died before I even knew what was happening. You have the capacity to assassinate the vast majority of ascendants.”

I open my mouth, then close it, unable to muster a response.

Seeing my confounded expression, Karanos grunts and begins to explain. “Most ascendants aren’t expecting to be killed all the time, and even if they are, there’s no true danger–they’ll just revive. The biggest worry is probably theft. There’s thus no reason to be constantly alert.”

“But you are training Ian, so it can’t be that easy,” Maria murmurs. “Else you would just send him to Achemiss.”

Karanos nods. “Achemiss is a man of many artifacts, crafted from the stolen souls of peak practitioners. He is arrogant but paranoid and always wears a regalia that offers potent protection from different kinds of attacks. Energy blasts dissipate harmlessly. Heavy physical attacks are sapped of their strength and absorbed, actually making his defenses stronger. He’s not immune to Light illusions, as those work on the external world, but he can always close his eyes and rely on his perception of vitality. His residence is covered in defenses against intrepid End practitioners. While his mind isn’t impervious, it’s well-shielded. As for Life, Death, and Dark, he relies on his own power to resist them. Passively, his body should resist the kind of attack you used to kill me.”

Karanos is right–Death and Life practitioners are always a pain to deal with because of their ability to resist Death energy. They’re the only ones I can’t kill with a thought within my range.

“Dark?” Maria asks.

“He ascended as a Death practitioner, but his command over darkness is nothing to dismiss,” Karanos clarifies.

That makes sense, given what I saw in Achemiss’ visions–thin dark fingers covering everything, the man’s form melding with the void. And like Karanos said, even if Dark is a secondary affinity, Achemiss has had hundreds of years to master his craft.

“Is that all?” I ask.

“No. He might be wearing any manner of artifact on his person, depending on his current mood. He has too many to choose from.”

Maria shakes her head. “Why don’t you or your organization supply artifacts to level the playing field if he’s really so untouchable?”

“You can’t make powerful artifacts without suitable reagents,” Karanos replies. “This is the biggest hurdle. What makes Achemiss so dangerous is that he found a way to send his constructs to worlds beyond. There are others with powerful artifacts, of course, but not so many–and really, there’s no need for them. Why would I need artifacts?”

I consider for a moment. Why would Karanos need a powerful regalia to protect him from others? “To protect yourself from torture, I’d presume. You’re not afraid of dying but of being captured.”

Karanos nods. “Ideally, I could kill myself before capture if someone really nasty was after me. But if I failed, that’s where having companions and a backing organization comes into play. In truth, if someone wants to hurt you badly enough, they’ll find a way, even if you have all the defenses in the world like Achemiss.”

He suddenly twists one of his rings and fifteen small, assorted trinkets clatter out. “These are all artifacts, though they have niche uses.” He grabs an earring with a slotted red gem whose color shifts like real flames. “This one makes you immune to extreme heat.” He places the earring on his ear–I didn’t even realize it was pierced–and black liquid spews out from all around his neck, covering the lower half of his body like dark mud. In the blink of an eye, his whole figure is encompassed in heavy black armor made out of the synthetic material. Not even his eyes are visible. He removes the earring and the material disappears without a trace.

“As you can see, not the most convenient thing to wear all the time, but useful in some situations.” The collection of artifacts disappears into his storage.

“Do you have anything to increase your firepower?” Maria asks.

Karanos sighs. “You’re not getting the point–why would I normally need such a thing?”

“To defeat people like Achemiss,” Maria retorts. “If he has defensive artifacts, offensive ones should be able to counter them.”

“Sure, if the goal was to kill someone, that might be true. But kill an ascendant and they’ll return. As you said earlier, the real goal is theft or inflicting torment. Is my time so cheap I can waste it all spitefully sieging my enemies? And even if I did do that, Achemiss doesn’t live in a vacuum–the scum he calls allies would come to his defense and shoo me away.

“For most people, it’s a better use of time to seek enlightenment and increase their ability to use ascendant energy than to seek out or craft elusive artifacts. Only someone with a cheat like Achemiss spends all his time and energy on them. If I found an artifact to increase my firepower, it would be by chance–I wouldn’t seek it out deliberately. And no, I’m not going to walk you through my entire artifact collection. If I had something that would help Dunai, I would have given it to him.”

This conversation hasn’t been very encouraging. “If Achemiss really is so untouchable, and you don’t have any artifacts to give me...how am I supposed to kill him?”

Karanos’ eyes are hard like steel. “Specialization is always a weakness–one we can exploit. Using the return beacon will isolate Achemiss from his workshop and most of his artifacts. Then, if you divest Achemiss of his regalia, he’ll falter."

I frown. “He’s a thousand year old practitioner–regalia or not, I’m not sure...”

Karanos nods. “He’s also a shut-in, like some overgrown man-child lurking in his parents’ basement. He would never admit it, but he thinks he’s untouchable, that he’s prepared for everything and seen it all. To him, the world is a small place. He will underestimate you and you will destroy him.”

I’m not perfectly sold by this uncharitable characterization. Maria and I share a dubious look, clearly on the same page. Off to the side, Crystal watches expressionlessly, observing but not speaking. Sometimes it feels like she knows all the answers but chooses to let us figure them out on our own.

Maria taps her lips. “So you’re saying that if we can find a way to disempower the regalia, Ian will be able to kill him?”

“Exactly.”

“Right, but how?” I ask. “This sounds easier said than done.”

“If we had the answer to that question, you really could waltz in now and try to kill him. But in five years, I expect you’ll find an answer.”

“That’s not a lot of time,” I point out. Karanos is making me uneasy–I thought he had more of a plan.

“Recall that Eternity is a place that rewards attempting the impossible,” Crystal interjects. “There is a place where Eternity’s will is more present, where wishes become manifest. I suspect Karanos intends to send you there.”

Karanos snorts in surprise, his eyes narrowing. “Well, well. You didn’t read my mind for this one–thought of it on your own, I suspect. Smart fish.”

Crystal nibbles unassumingly at her seaweed.

“She’s right–I intend to send you to the lost quadrant. For the next five years, most of the passage of time will occur within it, as you seek a solution to the problem of Achemiss. The goal will be to expedition for one month at a time before returning to a dilated plane. You’ll be able to assimilate your experiences and train for however long you’d like before setting out again.”

“The lost quadrant is a minefield of danger,” Crystal observes. “There are numerous stretches where you must traverse through the space between planes–the void.”

“Right again. And there are more planes with both dilated and compressed time than usual–stepping into a compressed zone could prove catastrophic. That’s why I’m going to be accompanying you on the first trip. After that, it’ll be the two of you on your own.” Karanos turns toward Crystal. “You understand why you shouldn’t go, right?”

“Yes. I would prefer to live.”

“I have the transmission artifact, so we’ll be able to communicate,” I point out. I feel a bit bad leaving Crystal behind with Sah, but if the lost quadrant is a dangerous place, it makes sense not to bring creatures whose deaths will be permanent.

“We set off tomorrow,” Karanos announces. “Prepare yourselves.”