Ware the waking of the ancients. While children will fight easily they forgive just as quickly; wrath long held cannot be so readily defused.

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As soon as she was inside, Raina cleared the table out of the way, leaving the full center of their living room open, and took out her soulsword.

Seeing Jair’s demonstration at the exhibition had sparked a bit of competitive fire. Neither one of them was ordinarily very athletically inclined, but she'd still been trained in the basics of the class.

For a moment she weighed her sword in one hand, then lunged like a fencer, raised it in a cross-parry, and tossed it to her other hand to continue into a familiar set of warmups.

Raina thought she heard voices and paused midway through a practice sweep.

Who'd be outside this time of night? It was too late for the studious types, and too early for the partying crowd. They'd all be down at one of the dining halls, anyway.

She crossed to the window and peeked out through the curtain.

Silver light flashed to illuminate the scene. Jair stood surrounded by several figures she recognized. That group was always hanging around with Lian. The one Jair always avoided answering questions about.

Five to one were terrible odds, even if not all his opponents were initiated yet, even if he weren't already exhausted. She'd seen how much he put into the fight at the exhibition. He’d pushed himself to his limits, and even if he'd been looked at by the healer, he'd been injured as well as over-strained.

Switching her sword to her main hand, she opened the door in readiness to go out and show them the folly of their ways. No one messed with her friend on her watch.

But, like in the exhibition, Jair moved with uncanny and unprecedented speed and focus. If she didn’t know better how impossible it would be to improve to that level over the course of a single day, she’d have said he moved even more cleanly and quickly than before.

His sword was everywhere, flashing, stabbing, lunging, switching, throwing the whole scene into dramatic chaos with its brilliant glow.

Anyone watching from anywhere on campus would be able to see something was going down.

She lost focus of what she’d been planning to do, again taken in with the spectacle. And… he didn’t need her help. She’d been his protector for so long, it was a mixed feeling that stirred in her heart to see him doing so well on his own. She couldn’t have been happier, to know he could take care of himself, but to see him improve so very much in such a short time…

If she wasn’t careful, she’d be left behind.

By the time Jair finished his fight and returned to the interior, she’d quietly closed the door and returned to her practice.

"Everything alright out there?" she asked, glancing up from her lunging stretch as her somewhat battered roommate walked in.

Jair shook his head. "I'm fine, I just perpetually wish idiocy were curable."

Raina paused, slowly returning to basic stance. "Idiocy?"

He shook his head. "The whole society of Veor is ridiculous. The fact that people like Lian feel justified in behaving like that and the Institute won't do anything about it and will in fact take his side just because of his money and position."

"Another analysis of how we should take over the world for its own good?" Raina pivoted on one foot, twisting into another slow lunge. "Pretty sure we decided that wasn't viable."

"Did we?" Jair half smiled, a wistful expression in his eyes that made her feel oddly melancholy. "Funny how hard that ends up being in practice."

“Is this the first time?” Raina asked, with forced casualness. “That they’ve attacked you like this?”

“No, but it should be the last.”

“You sure about that? If I need to stab someone…”

Jair chuckled and shook his head. “If they come after me again, it won’t be from the front. They’ll come up with something convoluted and ridiculous and get themselves hurt in ways that can’t be healed so easily.”

“I’ve never seen you like this.” She couldn’t suppress the concern in her voice. “You’re really starting to worry me.”

“Only starting? Give it a few days, you’ll be downright baffled.”

“Are you… dying?” Raina whispered.

Jair let out a startled laugh. “No, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone as far from dying as me.”

Another hint about the nature of his soulspell? She desperately wanted to ask, but held herself back. It wouldn’t be proper. “I can’t think of anything else to explain all this,” she said instead. “You’ve never been this reckless.”

“Reckless isn’t the word. I’ll be fine. That soulspell the healer tagged me with should take care of just about everything, and probably bring me out of the whole thing significantly stronger too.” He gestured with one hand in her direction. “Want company? I could use a good workout to cool down. I know we decided it would be better to rest first, but after that out there I think it’ll be a while before my body calms down enough.”

“You’re welcome to join me,” she said automatically, continually stunned by his casual disregard of every precedent for behavior he’d ever set. Since when was a workout his preference for calming down?

“Ready when you are.” He took his stance, sword appearing in a brilliant flash of silver.

Raina stared, all but mesmerized by the pulsing glow. This was the closest she’d seen the weapon, and from this distance its peculiarities showed themselves. “What happened? It looks… smudged?”

“Oh, of course, you haven’t been introduced.” Jair flipped his sword around to hold it out flat in front of him. “Raina Serin, may I present, Maelstrom.”

She gently lifted it with both hands, giving it a good searching look before she turned it over to examine the back. One-edged along the top three-fourths, more symmetrical at the tip of the blade. One side was rippled, as though something had melted it with its hands and dulled what should have been a second edge.

Despite that, the sheer power radiating from the weapon made her heart race. She wasn’t even sure why. An undirected sense of excited anticipation, as though the sword itself were eager to fight.

The intricate play of silver, pale grey-blue, and bright sapphires was marred only by the strange reddish smudges down the middle.

She desperately wanted to inspect its stats, but to ask would be akin to asking Jair to derobe. If he chose to offer its examine text, fine, but she’d never put him in an awkward situation by asking.

“It’s so broad.” Raina still couldn't tear her eyes away from the sword—Maelstrom. She shifted to gripping it by the hilt, then looked up at him hopefully. “May I?”

“Go ahead.”

She swung the blade in a quick slash then tried to twirl it, but the unaccustomed weight almost tugged it from her hand and she had to add a second hand to keep it under control. She grunted as she changed stance. “Not well suited for one-handed use.”

“More control with two hands, and more power. Most of what I fight is best dealt with aggressively. Fencing is all well and good for display but monster hunting requires a different strategy.”

Raina slowly lowered Maelstrom, suspicious. “You’ve been sneaking out to fight monsters?”

“I speak of the future, naturally.” Jair gestured down at himself. “Do you think I could have done any monster fighting without ruining my robes?”

She passed his sword back to him. “I still don’t understand.”

Jair ran a hand lightly down the blade, over the odd indents, eyes going distant. “It’s a long story, and I’m very tired. Ask me after Terlunia.”

"There's got to be a way to fix that, right?" Raina gestured to the dull sections: the wobble streaked with traces of blood, the middle pearls scattered in broken sequence.

"The containment is faulty,” Jair explained. “That's why it glows so much. Once we kill your dragon, we’ll have to visit Eythron. He’ll know how to correct the imbalance, if anyone will."

“So it’s not just a dragon, it’s my dragon now?” Raina threw her arms in the air in frustration. "And who's Eythron? Jair, what is going on?"

"I suppose you could call him my future mentor. He's a bit crazy though." Jair's face broke into a smile. "I can't wait to introduce you! You'll love him. I can just imagine the debates now."

“That does it, something is definitely wrong. If you had a mentor lined up, I would have known about it before now."

“Well…” Jair drew out the word awkwardly. “We haven’t technically ever met, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I exist, but I’m confident I can convince him to take me on!”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Exhausted Jair isn’t to your liking?”

“I’ve seen you exhausted plenty of times. That’s nothing like whatever has been going on with you today.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He smiled mysteriously. “Then I suppose I have you at a disadvantage. Face me, young one!”

Raina raised her sword. She wanted to argue, but there was no time. Jair lunged, and she was far too distracted trying to keep up with his relentless tempo to try to speak further.

The disconnect and dissonance in her head continued to grow. The more things he did that felt nothing like him, the more uncertainty built up.

Not that she had that much time to contemplate it.

“You’re good,” she told him, breathing hard from their limited sparring. If they’d gone out to the dome or one of the smaller practice areas in the academy they could have practiced more involved combat, but even just in their enclosed room they had plenty of progress they could make.

“I’ve been practicing.” His sword—still glowing almost unbearably bright—slipped past her guard and tapped gently against her shoulder.

“When!” Raina couldn’t help the outburst, as she disengaged and stepped back, wiping sweat from her face. “I’d swear you’ve never had the time to do anything like this without me noticing.”

“It’s a surprise. Give me one more week, and I’ll explain everything.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“No.” But something about the way he said it felt off, a note of sadness or regret. That only made her even more worried. “You’re concerned anyway.”

“Yes. Everything about today has been unexpected. I don’t know what to think.”

“Then don’t think. Everything will be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Very sure. Also, tomorrow we need to go shopping. I have some supplies to pick up in town. The next few days are going to be quite busy.”

Raina seized on the plan at once. “If we’re going to the city, we’re going to stop and get you looked at. Something abnormal happened when you unlocked your class and I don’t want to ignore it and pretend it’ll go away when there’s every chance something went wrong.”

“If something went wrong, I’d know about it. We have more important things to deal with. Like research!”

“Finally, something that makes sense.” Jair’s love of research matched her own enthusiasm well, one of the many things they’d bonded over through the years.

Her relief was doomed to be short-lived.

“Into dragons,” Jair added, his smile making it clear he was fully aware of what he was doing.

“Dragons, again? What is going on? And why can’t you tell me?” She groaned as the solution came to her. “Jair, why didn’t you at least ask me first? If you want the Dragonslayer title, there’s better ways to do it than… whatever this is.”

Jair continued to grin, unruffled. “And what is it you think this is?”

“Did you secretly sign up for a hunt? Is that why you’re suddenly talking to everyone?” She started ticking off on her fingers as she fell into step beside him, “If you want to slay a dragon, you need access to one, and the slots on teams aren’t cheap. So first you need financial backing—which, really, why didn’t you come to me?”

Jair put on an exaggerated pleading voice, dropping to one knee and putting his hands together in mock desperation. “Raina dear, will you sponsor me as a Dragonslayer hopeful?”

“No! Even with what you’ve done today, you’re still only an initiate. If that’s your goal, we need to work up to it. It’ll take years of preparation.”

“Exactly.”

She scowled. “So you’re not just reckless, you’re suicidally reckless. Good to know.”

“Not in the slightest. If I were suicidal at any point, I wouldn’t still be here.”

Raina chose to ignore this, any response she could think of felt worse than saying nothing. Instead she continued expounding on her theory. “So you somehow found a sponsor who’d take you on. Probably leveraging the fact that no one understands what happened, but that big flash you made on stage was more excitement than most people see at a dozen initiations combined. You still had no combat records worth taking note of, so you needed to go to the exhibition to prove your qualifications.”

“Pretty close, actually, apart from the core premise. What else?”

“Now you’re just patronizing me. This isn’t like you, what—”

“I’m doing no such thing. I’m genuinely curious to know what you think is happening here. It’ll make things easier.”

She glared at him. “You’re lucky there’s nothing around to throw.”

“Indeed,” Jair said solemnly. He was standing between her and the sofa. “You’re such a violent little thing. I wonder what I ever saw in you.”

“But… dragons. Really? I’d say you’ve lost your mind, but in this mood you’d probably just agree with me.”

Jair winked, grinning back as if he weren’t behaving like a complete madman. “Trust me, it could save your life.”

“How? You…”

“I’m insufferable today?” he guessed.

“Yes!”

“Am I ever not?”

“You never used to be this…” she shook her head helplessly, gesturing up and down at him, “this about things.”

“Your eloquence is unmatched.”

Raina silently searched his eyes, deeply concerned, words failing her entirely.

“Give me one week,” Jair said gently, turning serious. “After that, I’ll tell you everything. Can you trust me that long?”

“I…” Raina took a deep breath, then released it. “Of course I trust you. But if you’re not going to explain anything, you can’t blame me for being confused.”

“I don’t blame you. Of anyone in the entire world, you’re the last person I’d ever blame.” Jair beckoned and raised his sword. “One more round, then I’m desperately in need of sleep. We’ve got a lot to take care of in the morning.”

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"What happened?" Lian paced the recovery ward where his allies had gathered, one hand bandaged, the other clenched in a fist. "I thought you were going to take care of the upstart, not let him keep thinking he's better than us all."

Bren was still deeply unconscious, his injury coming a lot closer to deadly than the others. Healer Notek had been able to repair the damage and keep him alive, but it would be days at the minimum before he’d wake up, let alone start attending classes again. Korin was notably absent, leaving him with only three of his usual five allies. And three injured ones at that.

"We tried, but he had all those stupid tricks." Eria flipped her hair out of her face and scowled. "First he scares Korin off with some crazy nonsense about her brother, then takes out Bren like it’s nothing. He's too fast with that sword. I swear he's not been secretly practicing."

"I don't care how much he's been practicing, what I saw out there was not normal." Lian paced, hands tightening into fists. "He's been doing something but I can't tell..."

"I can," Atrek spoke up, voice matching Lian’s for cold fury. "He's got that soulspell that lets him flash his sword around wherever he wants. We got it away from him like we planned, but he just took it back without moving."

"So he also attuned it right away."

"How does he do it?" Eria complained. "I've been trying and it doesn't do anything!"

"I've shown you plenty of exercises," Lian snapped. "Practice them."

"They’re so boring, I just want my soulspell to unlock already."

“I’ve spent years doing boring things to prepare my body and mind for this integration, and even I won’t be able to unlock it for another day or two. I've given you the same access to training materials no one outside House Teretho has seen in generations. If you can't put them to good use then that's only further proof that you belong as our subordinates."

Eria pouted, but didn't seem bothered. She was perfectly happy being second on the pecking pole, as long as Lian was the only one above her she didn't care if she actually came close to his level. Lian sometimes appreciated that about her, but right now the lack of ambition only infuriated him further.

Atrek sneered in Eria's direction, shaking his head. "And you wonder why you can't keep up with the rest of us."

"Hey! I'm perfectly fine, thank you."

"In classes, maybe. I'd like to see you fight any one of us."

"It's not my fault my soulspell is being stubborn! If even someone like Welburne can get his just showing up on day one then it's not fair for mine to make me put in so much work for it."

Lian closed his eyes and tuned out their bickering to drop into his own thoughts again. He went over every minute of the exhibition, every feint, every block, and the picture they painted was a truly intimidating one.

Welburne wasn't moving at full capacity. The way he moved had a stiffness born of lack of training, but the way his eyes moved, the way his balance shifted, everything about him but his body was moving at a level far in advance of anything Lian had ever seen in anyone below Blademaster.

Welburne's soulspell had done more than let him flash his sword from hand to hand. It had also given him the instincts of mastery. Informational soulspells weren't uncommon, but something on this level developing in a single day was beyond unheard-of.

Lian's jaw tightened. Of course his one adversary would be the one to get the best soulspell he'd ever heard of. Lian would've killed for that kind of shortcut. He'd been putting in the effort year after year, gradually moving from novice to apprentice to standard initiate level, while Welburne sat around and doodled equations- for weird magical experiments. The fact that none of those experiments came to anything was cold comfort when he could manifest something like this out of nowhere.

More than ever, Lian wanted Welburne under his boot. This upstart was only going to become a bigger and bigger problem as time went on. He could ignore the growing issue and wait for it to explode, or he could take actions to head it off.

Right now, neither he nor his group was in any position to do anything about it. Bren needed time to heal, and Lian needed time to unlock his soulspell and integrate it into his fighting style. When he fought Welburne, he intended to do it with every advantage on his side.

"I'm going to go practice. Eria, Atrek, with me." He spun on his heels and marched out to the back yard, then thought better of it and stalked across the academy grounds to the transit platform, his allies following in his wake.

He keyed in Teretho manor, subtransit seventeen, and they materialized in the training hall. "Servant, send for Luso. And I need a dozen sets of metal armor prepped for practice."

The training room servant on call bowed deeply and scurried off.

"Eria, you're going to meditate with me for the next ten minutes," Lian declared. "Atrek, you too."

They glanced at one another, then at him. Eria scowled grumpily, while Atrek looked neutrally pleased.

They sat comfortably waiting, practicing basic cyclical breathing until Luso arrived to guide them through the deeper meditations of attuning a soulspell.

It wouldn't be a one-day process, reaching his full potential. It may take weeks, or even months, but this was just the beginning.

Welburne may be on even footing right now, but next time Lian would be ready for him. Now he knew what to expect, he could counter every one of the upstart's moves and he'd do so with the utmost pleasure.

No one humiliated House Teretho and got away with it.

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Oliss Methesdi dreamed. She dreamed of darkness and fear. She dreamed of fire and death.

She dreamed of disaster.

The sky fell. Stone crunched and shattered. Dust showered down. Fire ignited in a roar of heat. The air vibrated in deep resonance.

Oliss caught her breath, choking on the acrid smoke.

She knew this was coming. She'd seen it before. Lived it before. She remembered remembering, the event echoed forward and backward, time and death and repetition.

She heard screaming, but it wasn't hers. She was struck dumb, immobile, frozen in the terror, in the knowledge of inevitability. People stood around her, shadows without clarity. Some tried to run, others tried to hide.

The building fell apart, toppling. Huge blocks fell, just missing students. One flew over Oliss's head, shattering with a crunch into a pile of rubble beside her. An uneven chunk bounced and wobbled as it rolled toward her, falling still beside her foot.

In the distance, the dome broke with an echoing crack that made the fallen stones jump.

Oliss was dreaming. She'd dreamed it before. Lived it already.

She was going to die. She'd seen it, lived it.

Couldn't avoid it.

Silver light flared through her vision, snapping her awake with a rush of relief, body tense with the visceral memory of a future yet to be.

Silver light. That was new. Timely Glimpse’s activation glow was purple. Why would it be flashing the wrong color at her?

No matter. She yawned and rolled over.

She'd have to think of how to frame this one to the girls. Saying 'a few buildings collapsed and one caught fire' was hardly sensational. It had felt like the end of the world, but without concrete details, would anyone care?

She would say it was an earthquake, caused by a massive sandshark so ancient that the sun itself had forgotten it. Or maybe they were bearing witness to the birth of a new firemount, as the long-restrained Astralla Oasis burst forth to consume those puny mortals who dared try to control its power. Yes. Something like that. Surely, then she would be admired, her great Gift acknowledged, and her ascension guaranteed.

Oliss drifted gently back to sleep amid contemplations of the future's potential, and she did not dream again.

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