Death Lake is one of the great mysteries of our era. What Zesaam did to provoke the seascourge is unknown. In the course of one lunar cycle it went from a thriving trade and manufacture continent to an island less than half its usual size surrounded by deep bands of water and missing any transit platforms. We had no chance to ask questions. By the next lunar passage, even that island was gone, leaving only Death Lake.
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Raina had never seen anything like it before. She stared, transfixed, as Jair blasted through round after round as though facing children’s toys instead of highly sophisticated weapons capable of dealing with even seascourge. For Starshaper to spend a month away from the front lines and back at the oasis for this show was not cheap. Not only his own personal fee—which was considerable—but also replacement bribes to fill the gap that his simulacrums being away from the fight would cause.
Frontline level war spells. And Jair was smashing them like they were made of cheap glass.
He cleared the second intermediate round and went straight into a third, setting a new record and aiming to surpass it all in the same afternoon.
Raina tried to take a drink from her long empty glass, hand freezing halfway. She felt an odd mix of exhilaration and dread as she watched her friend tackle something even advanced students struggled with, something made for war turned to play.
She’d never seen him move like that. In all their years studying and preparing together, she’d always been the one more physically inclined. And that, only of necessity. She’d never enjoyed doing the fighting and running and form practice sessions, and with Jair perfectly happy to avoid them apart from the bare necessities they’d fallen into their own patterns and schedules.
A knock at her balcony door broke her focus, and Elini Veshin entered without waiting for permission. They weren’t exactly close, but like with Denor they’d grown up in close enough proximity to have no qualms about walking in on each other. Elini’s dark hair was tied up in such a way that it cascaded around her face in tight ringlets, combining with her fitted dress to give her an air of playful maturity.
She handed Raina a replacement drink, then slipped into the seat beside her with a sly smile. “So this is what you two have been up to all this time? I should have known you’d have something more going on than what it appeared.”
Raina smiled, as though this were all part of the plan and she wasn’t as shocked as anyone.
“I must confess, this is beyond my expectations,” Elini continued. “Even the most optimistic conjecture came nowhere close.”
“If you’d come by sooner, we could have placed a bet on the outcome.”
Elini laughed. “Good for me that we didn’t.” She leaned forward, watching as Jair shattered the simulacrum’s sword arm and retreated. “His fighting style is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I recognize some standard moves, but others… who did you hire to teach him?”
Raina smiled secretively. It wouldn’t do to admit that she was as caught by surprise as everyone else. “Jealous?”
Elini didn’t answer at first. Instead she leaned forward to watch the next round as Jair faced off against the first set of two intermediate opponents. “Every time I start to think he’s over-reliant on that weapon of his, he shows he isn’t. But it still feels unpolished, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d call it quite advanced for someone who only received his class and soulsword a few hours ago.” Understatement of the year. Play it calm.
Elini made a considering hum, and didn’t speak again for a time.
Below in the arena, Jair moved from cover to cover, exchanging blows with the glowing blue simulacrums with a speed and precision Raina envied. Where had he learned to do that? The way he used the environment to his advantage in every possible way spoke of an incredible awareness of everything around him at all times.
Raina never saw this coming. If he’d been training in secret, he’d hidden it very well.
Jair abruptly reversed direction, sword flashing from one hand to the other instantly, and stabbed through the first simulacrum’s shoulder. Fifth strike, and the opponent stopped moving before dissipating into a cloud of blue sparkles.
“You know he has to do that effect intentionally?” Elini’s voice reminded Raina of her existence. “When other hardlight casters dissolve a simulacrum it disappears instantly. That sparkle cloud he makes is his signature move.”
“I’ve seen people imitate the technique.”
“Not like this. You can always tell a fake.”
They both turned back to watch as Jair skipped backwards to evade a barrage of ‘spells’ from his remaining adversary. He wasn’t fast enough to fully escape, but even the momentum of the few hits he took was used to aid his escape from the others.
“Whatever that is,” Elini said quietly, “it’s not fake.”
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“Round ten, clear!” Lord Veshin grinned, enthusiasm in full swing as he shouted to be heard over the crowd’s overpowering applause. “Finishing the entire intermediate tier on his first day as an initiate? Unprecedented! Let’s hear it for Jair Welburne!”
By now, Jair looked notably worse for wear. His robe had been slashed and torn in several places, bruises beginning to show, and blood seeping into the fabric. Not enough to debilitate him, but enough to drive home the point that he was far from untouchable at the moment.
Observation, prediction, and Maelstrom’s sheer overpowering strength only went so far against the skill and speed of his adversaries. Every moment the fights dragged on increased his frustration at being unable to move the way he needed to.
He’d get used to it, he could adapt, but right now it was all but unbearable.
He wanted to push on into the next tier, prove himself capable despite this against the graduate level challenges, but the way he’d struggled against the previous fight he knew this untrained version couldn’t keep up. As desperately as he’d love to throw himself against all comers, today was about making connections.
And connections would be harder to establish if he got himself knocked out by a third-tier challenge as a first-tier combatant. He’d pushed himself far enough. Farther than he should have.
He didn’t interrupt Veshin’s exuberant congratulations, bowed and accepted the applause, and departed the arena through the lower door.
“Second tier combatants, you may now make your way down to the preparation rooms! We’ll resume in a half hour. Our soup chef has prepared something special for you in the meantime.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Jair had barely left the arena before Lord Veshin came striding after him. “Jair! I trust you have a moment? I did promise to introduce you to my friends. We can start with your intermediate level peers.”
Jair smiled and nodded.
They paused long enough for the Veshin healer to tag Jair with a recovery soulspell. “It will take a few days to fully heal you, and if you undergo any further damage it may stop functioning entirely, but as long as you take it easy you’ll be back to normal by the end of the week.”
“Thank you, Shirien.” Jair bowed to the healer, already calculating how to best implement the healing boost to fast-track his strength and flexibility training for the coming week. It couldn’t have been better timed, and it was the kind of resource he normally wouldn’t have access to.
Everything about this exhibition was so far outside of his ordinary plans and resources, it kept surprising him with how beneficial it would be.
Back in the front ballroom, people mingled and chatted. The soups were light and creamy with a broad range of flavor profiles, well suited to a brief downtime, unlikely to induce any sluggishness in the competitors for the upcoming rounds.
These introductions went fast and smooth. Lord Veshin’s ability to talk endlessly somehow transitioned them seamlessly through almost everyone present in under a half hour. He was done in time to return to his box and enjoy an excellent savory herbed vegetable soup topped with perfectly crisped suncat scales. After repeating the same years so many times he rarely found a recipe he hadn’t eaten more times than he could remember, and the novelty was almost as pleasant as the soup itself.
If Jair thought people were interested in him after the lightshow Maelstrom put on when upgrading to its full ascended form in the instant he received it, that attention was nothing compared to the hungry way they watched him now they’d seen its power and his skill on active display.
He heard ‘unlimited potential’ more times in that half hour than he normally heard in full lifetimes. By the time the other exhibition stages were done, he’d accrued personal invitations of one sort or another from practically every family in attendance, as well as an open invitation to come train with Denor in the Veshin training rooms any time they wanted.
Kyson Teretho tried to reinforce his precedence to Jair’s attention, not quite coming to blows with Curad Veshin, but clearly feeling his claim had been infringed upon by Lord Veshin’s behavior. Lian was nowhere to be found, probably off sulking somewhere over being shown up. Jair would have to keep an eye out for trouble from that quarter.
Jair spent some time chatting with Kael Falkon, one of the recent graduates showing in the third set of exhibition challenges. Kael’s reputation for near-genius levels of skill meshed well with the up-and-coming star persona Jair had begun to cultivate.
And then it was over. Final course eaten, last rounds watched, and Veshin Oasis began emptying for the night.
Jair found Raina easily, he’d been keeping her in sight the whole afternoon. Together they walked out into the dark evening toward the departure platform, between visible blue wisps of mana that drifted lazily in all directions like oversized flower puffs on unseen winds.
Returning to the Institute after the event felt dissonant. The subtle games and elegance of the nobility replaced with the mundane, the promise of acclaim and future power meaningless in the face of what was to come.
In four days, the Astralla Mageblade Institute would be subjected to one of the most effective and dramatic attacks of its history: an angry dragon determined to devour a specific student at any cost. Attempts to warn the faculty ahead of time were disregarded. A dragon attack was so vanishingly unlikely that by the time anyone took it seriously it was already too late. Attempts to evacuate the student in question did nothing but buy a few more hours, and there weren’t many hours on the market.
Jair had tried anything and everything, within reason or outside it. Nothing was ever enough.
"Something the matter?" Raina asked Jair as they walked back toward their apartment. "You've been acting unusually tense this evening."
Jair latched on to Raina’s voice, forcefully dragging himself out of the memories that threatened to consume him. "It's been a very long day."
She stared into his eyes, her own expression worried, questioning.
He wanted nothing more than to tell her everything, except he knew how that would end. He hated seeing the calculation behind their interactions, hated that he could predict her reactions to near-perfection. He spent whole loops avoiding her, others drawn helplessly close.
“Then it sounds like you have a lot to tell me.”
“Not tonight. I need to take care of a few things, and then I desperately need some proper rest.” With the excitement and adrenaline high of his exhibition matches far behind, a deep weariness had settled over him. Part mental, part physical, the result of pushing himself so far for so long.
Raina picked up on the exhaustion in his voice. “Maybe you should do the resting first. There’s plenty of time to take care of things tomorrow.”
“No, I think…” Jair slowed his steps as they neared the student housing village. He’d felt a growing unease for hours, one which he couldn’t fully pin down, but right now it peaked into a tense certainty. Something wasn’t right here.
“Jair?”
He swallowed and shook his head. "Nothing. I'll handle it."
“Handle what?”
“Everything.” He looked around the area, taking in the black-cobbled walkways lined with their dimly-glowing brown and purple shrubs, the looming silhouettes of the student apartment houses. Nothing looked out of place, but the certainty of something being wrong only grew sharper. "You go on ahead, I'll meet you there in a few minutes. I have a few things to take care of."
"I'm not sure I want to leave you alone when you're acting this way."
"I'm quite sure you don't want to be involved."
"Involved in what?"
"I’ll explain it all, later. You go on home, I’ll be along soon enough."
"If you're sure..."
“I am. Please trust me.”
Raina nodded and started walking. She only glanced back once as she reached the turnoff to their apartment.
Jair waited until she’d stepped inside and closed the door, then walked slowly down the central walkway, every sense on alert.
A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, a not-quite-right shadow on the side of a building.
Yeah. He’d thought so. He tapped his forehead, completing the circuit to manifest Maelstrom into his hand. The silvery flash of light illuminated the scene as clearly as a lightning strike.
An arrogant female voice broke the silence. “Well, well, looks like we’ve been discovered.” Eria Ylles, the closest thing Lian had to a second-in-command, sauntered out from where she’d been leaning against the side of Jair’s neighbor’s house, coming to stand between him and his front door.
People stepped out from behind cover, or rose from where they’d been crouching in shadows. Bren Tolo stepped out into the path just ahead of him, while Korin, Atrek, and Zyn closed in around Jair from the sides.
Jair continued walking forward with a smile, allowing himself to be surrounded in return for closing the distance to Bren. He’d prefer to deal with them relatively peacefully, but in the likely event that it came to a fight, Bren would be the one to target first.
“Ah, there you are, I was wondering if you were even planning to show up.”
Lian’s whole gang was here, minus the ringleader himself. At least Lian paid enough attention to politics to know when to take personal action and when to let the blame land on others. He wasn’t actually stupid, just petty, cruel, and perpetually angry. With the upcoming duel on the record, he couldn’t do anything directly to Jair without risking his standing. But allowing his friends to beat up the upstart before Jair could cement his improvement, leaving him crippled or terrified by the time of the duel? Fully viable strategy.
“Too late, Welburne. Seeing us won’t be enough to save you.”
His smile didn’t waver. They were expecting a Jair who was inexperienced and afraid, temporarily buoyed by his unreasonably strong weapon, but without real strength or courage to back it up.
Unfortunate for them.
Even weak, injured, and tired, Jair had a major advantage over them, knowing how to fight with a summonable blade. No one here had ever trained against an ascendant. He may only have the one trick at the moment, but it was quite a good trick.
“Eria. I’m giving you this chance to walk away unharmed.” Jair turned in a circle, pointing Maelstrom at each of them in turn. “I’ve no quarrel with any of you, but I am done letting you attack me with impunity.”
Eria laughed, ringing and harsh. “You think your sword is worth more than all of us?” She rolled her shoulder and stretched out her arms, watching him with a predatory expression the whole time. “This is going to be fun.”
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