Build a bridge the day you plan to cross it, and you may survive. Build a bridge and return tomorrow, and you will die with your bridge.

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"...fair, I've been doing this for my entire life. How can you—"

“Aaaaagh!” Jair tore off the page containing his half-finished quraam drawing and threw it aside. “It’s not enough.”

“Jair? You alright?”

“No,” he snapped, then took a deep breath and stopped himself when he saw the hurt expression on her face. “I’m… trying.”

She came over and picked up his crumpled drawing. “If this is so terrible it makes you angry, I hesitate to ask your opinion on mine.”

He stared at the page blankly a moment, mind still full of the dragon and positioning. “Right.”

“What’s wrong?” She looked up at him, eyes softening. “This isn’t about the art, is it?”

“No, it’s not, and I don’t know what to do.” He took another breath, willing the adrenaline and fury to dissipate, but his control over this body was significantly less effective than he was used to. Volatile emotions continued to flood his body and mind, making it hard to reclaim any sense of calm.

“Is it about the headmaster? Is he still harassing you about your sword?”

Jair grimaced. “Kind of. Yeah.”

Accepting he couldn’t do this alone meant spending days, weeks, months, approaching everyone he could possibly think of to convince, coerce, or deceive them into showing up battle-ready on that wall. The dragon attack took place during an evening class, so half the teachers would be otherwise occupied. It was inside the Institute, so bringing in anyone from outside would be an enormous hassle.

The ability to mold the terrain here along with the defences on the wall made it the most defensible location to confront the dragon in, but Larenok’s resistance to external visitors made it disadvantageous in other ways.

“I’ll talk to my father, I’m sure we can—”

“Hyperion.”

“Huh?”

“Hyperion. They’re not my favourite people, but they’re the one organization that could reasonably force their way in against Larenok’s wishes.”

“You mean… The Hyperion Guard? The king’s personal enforcers?”

“Yes, that Hyperion.” He snorted with humorless laughter. He’d been captured or killed by them enough times that he still reflexively avoided them on sight if at all possible. He reminded himself that there was nothing to be concerned about here and now. He hadn’t assassinated anyone, supported any rebellions, or even performed any high-profile thefts yet.

“And how are we going to make them listen to us? They’ll take the headmaster’s side over a couple of students, no matter who we are.” Her eyes flicked to Jair’s waist, which didn’t hold a sheathed soulsword. “Don’t tell me you’d let them know about Maelstrom? They have to be the worst people you could choose.”

“You don’t understand what’s at stake here. So what if it might be a problem for me in the future?”

Raina set aside the drawing and stepped closer, lowering her voice. “I know this is essential to your future, but this isn’t the kind of thing you can brush aside. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be moving in circles where this kind of drama could bite you for years to come. Setting off a quarrel between the Hyperion and the Institute is not going to help in the long run.”

Jair sighed deeply. “You’re right. Come on, let’s do some soulspell meditation. I don’t think I can concentrate on drawing at the moment.”

“We’ve already put it off for three weeks so you could practice your soulspace, and it’s due first thing next week—”

“Next week doesn’t exist yet. We’ll get it done when it matters.”

Raina hesitated, then nodded and moved the easel aside to clear a space on the rug to sit.

“Any progress?” Jair asked, though he knew the answer would be no.

“There’s a reason we have a six-year course here, not every soulspell shows up immediately. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Jair wasn’t so sure. Knowing what he did about time, souls, magic, causality and variations, he’d started to have the uncomfortable feeling that Raina’s soulspell never developed because it knew there was no point. He’d begun to develop a theory on the temporal impunity of the soul. Too many people had soulspells that seemed arbitrary in the beginning, but later on in their lives turned out to be the exact thing they needed.

It was this theory of universal soul intemporality that led him to believe that creating Maelstrom and binding it to his soul on such an unbreakable level would allow him to carry it back to before it was created, something that should have been impossible by every other metric.

So long as Raina’s soul never bothered to develop any power, it felt to him like a pre-emptive acknowledgement of her inevitable death. He wanted to be wrong. Desperately, he wanted her to prove him wrong.

It was hard to settle his own thoughts enough to enter proper meditation.

When he did, he forced away any thought of dragons and begging for help from selfish cowards, and allowed his focus to settle on the interweavings of his own soulspell.

Temporal Inversion was an incomprehensible tangle of golden light, crossing and binding and looping and recrossing, trailing off to the furthest reaches of himself and then twisting back around to the center.

He’d simplified his soul’s pattern down to the coiled symbol stamped into Maelstrom’s blade in blood, but to fully replicate the pattern in its entirety would take years. Decades. If it were even possible.

Twisted into the heart of his soul’s golden light, the silver spark of Maelstrom looked tiny and inconsequential, but it gleamed with a solidity that couldn’t be denied.

Despite its lowered integrity percentage, whatever that meant, he knew that without drastic soul-level destruction, Maelstrom wasn’t going anywhere. Even its brief exposure to the poison dragon’s blood would be enough to damage any ordinary weapon, but Maelstrom wasn’t any the worse for wear.

Exactly the same as ever.

Reassured, he emerged from the meditation trance, but for a long time he didn’t move. Raina sat opposite him, eyes closed, breathing with purposeful slowness. He smiled softly, the frantic desperation tucked away for now.

He could allow himself to enjoy sitting here again, with her alive and well. There was no rush. He could start recruiting any time, or …

“Hmm?” Raina peeked open an eye.

He must have sighed aloud. “Nothing, keep meditating.”

There was one obvious question he’d been ignoring, almost as much as he’d been resisting the idea of begging for help.

If all of this was Maelstrom at 10%, what could he do if he got it to 100%?

Just because he’d come all the way back to the beginning didn’t mean he had to stay here. He’d wanted it to be different this time—and it was, in a lot of ways. But it might not be in enough ways.

So far, he hadn’t even survived long enough to see Raina’s hard-won armor in action. Maybe he was too fixated on Maelstrom, on dealing with everything on his own. Or maybe he was still in a worse emotional state than he’d acknowledged.

The temptation to go running off and do something drastic was always there. Being back at this place brought a lot of buried anger to the surface, which certainly didn’t help.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The days he’d spent talking things through with Raina before diving into the real work of figuring out the loop felt so far away. Almost nothing they’d talked about ended up being relevant, after Veshin threw everything off the rails.

Part of him wanted to do it again. But if he let himself start to indulge like that regularly, would that be fair to Raina when he finally did get her out? He’d have lifetimes of memories of them while she’d have nothing.

He resisted the impulse. He had rules for a reason. He’d allowed exceptions in the initial aftermath of Maelstrom’s ascension, but that was a major event.

Living every day of the Celsin invasion a hundred times over, a thousand, he didn’t even know how many. Every step toward ascension had been looped again and again until it was as close to perfection as humanly possible.

And yet, in the end, even the absolute best case was far from perfect. Some things couldn’t be solved, no matter how many times he repeated them.

It had been so long, so very very long. And he was so tired, weary beyond what he could have ever imagined.

Perhaps abandoning himself to the reckless chaos, giving in to the emotion and impulse of each moment, was a shield against something worse.

“How long were you going to stare at me?”

“As long as possible,” he said, low and genuine.

Raina got to her feet, cheeks faintly flushed. “And you scold me for being distracted when I should be meditating.”

“I bet I’ll still unlock mine sooner.”

“I’ve got a head start.”

“Months wasted isn’t a head start. Just proof of how slow you are.”

“Seriously, what’s going on? There’s been something off about you all week, ever since the initiation. And don’t say it’s just Maelstrom.”

“It’s not just Maelstrom.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I have to go somewhere for a while.”

“Eythron?”

“Yes.”

“I already told you I’m coming. You don’t need to sound so sad and lonely.”

“I’m not ready. Whatever I do next, I’m not ready.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Survive?”

She laughed uneasily. “I definitely plan on doing that.”

“Good plan.”

“Is that what’s bothering you? This dragon thing?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, I wouldn’t have believed it either. I mean, who at our age could possibly be worth noticing to a dragon. Much less a matriarch like Ryenzo.”

“So why do you believe it?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, after.”

“If there’s no dragon, you’re still telling me.”

“After the time at which the dragon should appear, whether it does or not. Yes.” He cleared his throat and stood. “Meanwhile, we have some shopping to finalize.”

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“You’re sure it’s a dragon?”

Jair nodded, eyes distant. It had been several more repetitions by now, and his concerns about scale and positioning only continued to be borne out.

“And we can’t go anywhere to hide until it goes away?”

He shook his head.

A few dozen failures weren’t enough to prove that he couldn’t possibly beat this alone, but he was starting to think his continued insistence at throwing himself at the dragon personally might be symptomatic of something else. Such as, to avoid facing rejection from everyone who’d failed him in his first lifetimes running this section of the loop.

He didn’t want to stand there as they looked down on him and sent him away with nothing like a worthless child of no importance.

He didn’t even want their help. It would be only more evidence of how pointlessly, stupidly prejudiced they were. If he walked into the offices of people who’d rejected his every plea for years, only for them to smile and promise their assistance, that would be worse. Solidify the emptiness he’d come to see within them.

Why does this even matter?

Shouldn’t he have moved past all of this by now? He’d fought warlords and sorcerers, slain dragons and vampires, held off an entire army by himself for a whole lunar cycle. How could the pettiness of a few administrators even register?

They might respect the person he’d become, but if not for their disrespect in the first place, he might never have needed to become that person at all.

It was all so hollow. So pointless.

They’d never been enough in the past, even once they were forced into action. He couldn’t rely on anyone but himself and Maelstrom.

But, however he changed the fight with the dragon, he never made more progress. No matter how many times he repeated this final day over and over.

Veshin’s armor was holding up better than he could have hoped. During the past twenty repetitions, he’d witnessed Raina smacked across the Institute by a dragon’s tail, grabbed in a claw, and crunched down on more than a few times.

Though the armor would crack and twist, it had held its form enough that Raina was never fatally crushed.

Of course, surviving the external physical threats weren’t enough. Though the armor bought enough time for panicked students and concerned teachers to come out and stare in shock, the best the Institute had to offer were unprepared and did nothing to truly stop the dragon. And being swallowed by a poison dragon still tended to be fatal.

Jair missed Lift. Even if the spell would fail the moment the dragon got close, if he could at least throw himself into the air a few times, drop down on its back, get some additional slashes in…

It still wouldn’t be enough.

One hit, two, maybe four at best. Its neck was too heavily scaled, and the rest of its body was simply too big. It was like trying to cut down a forest alone in a single night. Even if every piece of success was something he could do, no one could be everywhere and do everything at once.

He’d already augmented his movement as much as possible, slowed the dragon’s to half of its normal speed, and they were still no match for it.

“It’s time.”

Raina stared at the deadly monster closing in.

Jair gave her a quick nudge, breaking her out of her paralysis, and she ran.

Wait. Jump. Explosion. Slash tail. Dome, crack. Jump, stab higher.

Wait. Raina, dragon jump. Wall. Run up tail to main body. Stab venom sac, ignite. Explosion takes out that wing, slash other wing.

Fall. Run. Duck, deflect claw. Jump over tail, stab down.

The tail snapped out, flinging Jair and Maelstrom off and across the academy grounds. He bounced off the back of the dining hall, landed in a crouch. The dragon had dug out Raina by the time he reached them, and students and teachers were starting to shout at the commotion. No one was doing anything useful yet, but they were at least paying attention now.

It wasn’t going to be enough. Not even close.

He slashed up at its leg, towering over him, deep green scales still impenetrable.

The dragon casually stomped, trying to crush him. He dove past, stabbing at an angle, hoping to chip away one of the scales to create an opening.

Raina screamed. It had grabbed her, claws tightening on the armor, which creaked but did not shatter.

He couldn’t reach her.

Standing right below, he had a perfect view as the dragon tried to bite her in half, then hissed in a draconic shrug and swallowed her whole when the armor resisted its teeth.

The dragon was too big, and he didn’t have any kind of mobility. He couldn’t fly around it, slicing it in pieces at his leisure. He couldn’t even jump up far enough to stab it in the belly.

It clawed its way up the wall, its ruined wings still clawing at the stone even though they were useless for flying.

There was a note of smugness in its echoing roars as it bellowed a vast cloud of venom across the Institute.

KILL THE CHILD, BREAK THE MOTHER!

Jair watched the injured dragon rampage around the academy, too far away to do anything. It toppled one library tower, set off an explosion that rocked the entire place, destroyed half the walls and fully disrupted the mana grid. Every ward in the place went dark. The perpetual lights of the dome disappeared.

People were running and screaming. Something caught fire in the kitchen building.

The dragon roared its triumph one last time, then bounded away across the desert back toward its mountain in the north.

He’d crippled its ability to fly, and even then no one could stop it.

Destruction and devastation.

He’d survived, but Raina was gone and the Institute was in ruins.

He’d failed to stop the disaster, but he’d survived it.

The temptation to go back and try again was strong, but he’d already seen enough to recognize the scope of what he was trying. He didn’t need to live through every iteration of the fight to know he couldn’t do it.

One hit. Two. That was what he had to work with.

He couldn’t get the thought out of his head. Legends of impossible weapons, the things they could do.

Maelstrom was at ten percent. He could stab through dragonscales. Through. Not slip between, not slice off. Stab. Through.

Not the darker, thicker scales, granted. But what if he could?

What if he could run up to its stupidly long snake of a neck and just… slice it off. Being beheaded was incredibly disorienting, and the dragon wouldn’t even have the practice Jair had at puppeting his manabody without being able to see or feel himself. Hard to eat someone without a functional head.

Wouldn’t it be worth it?

He’d planned for this contingency, but standing here in the moment it was harder than he’d thought. It felt like abandonment, like surrender.

He once stood in a very similar scene of devastation and admitted he wasn’t enough, everyone in Veor wasn't enough, and he needed something more. It had taken him uncountable years to finally forge Maelstrom into something that could survive the trip back through time with him.

And that quest wasn't over.

“I’m not ready,” he whispered as smoke and dusk swallowed the school.

He ruthlessly suppressed the piece of his heart screaming betrayal. He wasn’t giving up.

This was not acceptance. The fight wasn’t over.

He would be back.

As soon as Maelstrom reached its full potential.

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