Terlunia: The lunar holiday taking place when Terluna is full and its lunar passages open. Generally a time of visits, reunions, and travel. Be sure to book your stays in advance!
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Half the Institute leadership had been eaten, along with thirteen students. Another twenty people were injured in the chaos, two of them teachers, and less than half expected to survive. Dragon blood poisoning was not a fun way to go, Jair could personally attest, but there was nothing he could do to help them.
Classes were canceled, students evacuated by skimmer to Astralla City while repairs were undertaken, and no one cared to keep watching the man who’d seen it coming. Then again, this wasn’t one of his seer runs, or one where he’d tried to convince anyone to help. In fact, apart from Raina herself, he hadn’t told anyone exactly why he was in such a rush.
Veshin could put it together, but there wouldn’t be much benefit to the information for him. Jair knew danger was coming, he could just as well have heard it from Oliss. Who… was still running around saying she’d predicted it and everyone should have listened to her.
The number of people who’d seen Maelstrom was more likely to become a problem.
Even bound, a legendary item was worth killing, kidnapping, and more to get control of. Jair may be momentarily forgotten in the fallout of the dragon attack, but once the initial chaos died down, he was sure there would be people coming after him one way or another.
He didn’t plan to stick around for it.
The next available lunar passage would be Zelura on Dark Night, the following week. He took an apartment in Astralla City and spent the days leading up to his departure arranging his finances and avoiding everyone not directly relevant to making money.
Since Jair didn’t know how long he’d be staying in this timeline, he made preparations to keep him well funded for several years. If he ended up needing to collect the same rare ingredients as when he’d first reforged and ascended Maelstrom, for instance, that would take most of the decade.
Lord Ajriol Serin asked to speak with him, and he rejected the invitation. The last thing he needed right now was to talk to Raina’s father about her death.
This was a dead timeline anyway. Nothing he did mattered any more, except what made Maelstrom stronger or helped him survive toward that end.
He also stocked up on traps and explosives and had his armor repaired, taking advantage of all Veor’s best constructists. Crossing the Oriad to find Eythron would be no simple trek, even if everything went well.
When he disappeared on Dark Night, no one tried to stop him. He took a sandshark under the full moon out to the nearest oasis with a private lunar platform, where he bribed his way through guards, nobles, and smugglers into accompanying the next shipment. While he waited, he joined in loading the eelship. It was good exercise for his body, and to survive the Oriad he’d need every edge he could get.
Then people were shouting and clearing the platform as the lenses were brought into position. Someone shoved a box of something heavy into Jair’s arms before rushing away.
Moonlight warped, space itself twisted, and for three seconds there was complete silence and darkness. Then light flared back into existence and Jair, the eelship, a few dozen camels, and a handful of other passengers were being hastily disembarked from a matching platform in a very different location.
A multicolored dome made of rings of light filled the perpetual twilight sky, transparent enough to see the dark shapes of things moving outside and the distant blue sphere of Neptus itself.
Zelura was feared for good reason. It was also a valuable tool that Jair wouldn’t eschew.
The dome was crowded with buildings, homes and warehouses and narrow alleys abounding, shops facing the main thoroughfare. Overall, its perpetual twilight and close confines provided exactly the sort of atmosphere people would expect from the criminal hub of the ‘ghost moon’.
Whether that was intentional or coincidental, Jair didn’t know.
He handed off the box to the unloading team, bribed a few more people over his lack of proper documentation for his visit, and strolled along the familiar twisting roads toward the local transit station.
Twice, someone tried to accost him; once to rob him, the other because he was young and alone. Both times ended up with Maelstrom a little bloodier and Jair a little colder.
Once, he’d have taken note of such people to deal with in future loops. Now, such considerations had lost their intensity. There was no perfect outcome where he could save everyone and fix everything. With four worlds of people, any choice was a tradeoff. Every moment he was here, he couldn’t be somewhere else, and if somewhere else he wouldn’t be here.
Some situations had no correct solution. He could only decide what mattered most to him and what he would fight for. ‘Everyone’ was the same as no one. Fixating on saving Raina, stopping Sekir, protecting Veor, Celsin, Terluna… these were the battles he had chosen. The focus that kept him from losing himself completely.
The first Orard arrival platform in Reskas was currently closed, due to a recent flood, forcing him to wait another three hours and arrive in Garne instead.
In the first half hour, he dealt with another two groups trying to take advantage of the rich academy student off on his own. No one bothered him again after that.
He offered to help with the loading here as well, but the offer was flatly refused. He was handed a sack of vegetables to carry through, not trusted to touch anything more.
Garne’s lunar arrival platform was significantly larger than the departure platform back in Veor, and the environment couldn’t be further apart. Veor’s climate was primarily desert, sand, dirt, rocks, and more sand. The mana-infused growth around its oases were the only plants you’d find—outside of cultivated greenhouses like the academy’s dome.
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Garne, as with the rest of the Orard ingaldria, was bountifully overflowing with growth. It wasn’t as dramatic as the dense jungles of the Oriad that filled the entire heart of Orard, but the difference was still stark. Fruit bushes and trees bloomed year-round in the humid warmth, making it one of the largest exporters of fresh produce during seasonal winters elsewhere.
Jair was amused to see two crates of Veori sandfish being unloaded, and idly wondered if his parents had packed either of them.
The larger platform accommodated a full three eelships, which were immediately swarmed with beastkin workers unloading everything with regimented efficiency. Jair handed off his bag of vegetables and walked away. An official stopped him, but she was easily satisfied with his itinerary and entry fee.
It felt so natural, so utterly standard, he had to remind himself what he was doing and why. How many times had he had this exact interaction? Even if he was still technically in uncharted territory, it didn’t feel that way. He’d never had the money to leave Veor this early, but the world was still the world.
People were still people.
The Oriad was still waiting.
He spent an exorbitant amount to transit to the furthest station north and east Garne had to offer, which brought him dangerously close to the dragon mountains that occupied the no-man’s-land between Garne and its northern neighbor, Desyov.
Verdant hills abounded here, the gaps between them dammed and filtered into reservoirs to prevent water escaping to meet the sea. There were fewer trees here than south or across Twinlake Channel to the east, more orchards and groves than the wild profusion of the Oriad.
Jair visited every outfitter in the place, filling out the gaps in his equipment loadout. While Veor’s constructists were sufficient for the basics, Garne stood close enough to the dangers of Orard that its specialists were more focused. Especially some of the trickier dragon-related things.
Veor’s attitude toward dragons was ‘ignore them’, but with the only way between Garne and Desyov being through the mountains, the locals were the closest thing to dragon experts as one could come. Not everything could wait for a lunar passage, and dragons were easy enough to bribe as long as you were properly respectful. The fact that a good third of Garne’s beastkin shared some form of lizard ancestry didn’t hurt either.
Jair spared no expense, ordering in custom constructs from every expert in the network, and rented a space in the outpost’s guesthouse for the following days while he waited.
Now that he was at liberty upon the world, Jair would have no shortage of funds. Away from anyone who’d judge him by his background or know how little he ‘should’ know or possess, he could present himself as a wealthy expert in any number of fields.
With the ability to act freely and make use of all the knowledge he had about everyone and everything, he’d never need to worry about money again. By the time he finished with Eythron his initial investments would be paying off nicely.
The first night he was too restless to relax, and spent the time alternately exercising his body and tracing his spell imprints.
His status as kinless—having no beastkin ancestry—made him a curiosity at the outpost, but apart from questioning children wondering what it felt like to have such thin and fragile skin or why his tail was missing, he was largely treated no differently than any other traveler.
He spent a few hours sparring with some of the local warrior and bladestorm classes, refreshed his imprints an excessive number of times, and joined in with a few odd jobs around town to round out the physical exercise portion of his preparations.
The second night he fell asleep almost immediately from sheer exhaustion, and dreamed of fire and death. He stood at the mana forge atop Mount Sanctum. Outside, the beastlord held Raina over the drop by her throat. He turned back to finish Maelstrom, carving his soul into its blade with tears.
I’m sorry, Rai…
She screamed as she fell, and Jair startled awake. He lay gasping in the dark, and even once he’d mostly calmed himself sleep didn’t return.
He rose before dawn and paced the outpost, pausing to stare out at the mountains that stood between him and his destination after each circuit. At first they were only darkness against the stars, but gradually the dawn began to lighten the sky beyond, then a touch of orange, then glorious sunlight burst across the horizon.
With the dawn, people began to rouse, shops to open. Half his requests had been fulfilled, the rest were still in progress but should be completed by evening.
He spent the day collecting food supplies, a variety of fresh and preserved goods packed as lightly as possible. This trip could last anywhere from weeks to years, depending on how quickly he could locate Eythron and how involved the improvement process for Maelstrom ended up being.
Some things didn’t survive well in soulspace, perishables like food foremost among them. There was a certain amount of pressure on items when being stored intangibly, breaking down anything too soft or changeable. It had no effect on things like swords or coins, but clothing was best to store only if necessary and not for more than a few days, and food tended to become inedible very quickly.
Once the last of his orders trickled in, he shifted his constructs to be sure their connections were in place without interfering with the imprinting process, finished packing everything into backpack or soulspace, and started walking.
Jair felt more like himself with a sturdy bag over his shoulder and a staff in hand. This was where he belonged, trekking into the wilds, not locked up in a stuffy academy.
He kept the lizardbox and obnoxiously fancy jeweled tribute in a belt pouch ready to hand as he entered the lower hills of Emyxnar’s territory. Dragons didn’t appreciate undeclared intruders and were all too eager to shake down visitors for everything they had. Even just passing through once would be expensive, but Jair kept everything of real value in his soulspace and was prepared to surrender enough of his open possessions to satisfy the creatures.
Technically the crossing could be made by climbing over and around Cyrindenth’s mountain without entering anyone else’s, but that route was convoluted and would introduce needless delay. The fastest path crossed three different dragon territories, Emyxnar, Muegvygh, and Cyrindenth, each of whom would require bribes to allow him through their land.
Assuming everyone could keep their temper. He wasn’t opposed to doing some auxiliary dragon slaying to burn off some of the renewed hatred of dragons that Ryenzo had riled up. Probably not now, he was still weeks away from functional magic and months away from sufficient flexibility of movement, but on the way back he wouldn’t rule out the option.
He also wanted to get to Nuprima at the first opportunity, to do some hardcore manabody training, but that wouldn’t be until the new year. Three weeks until Solaria, a little over two more after that.
There were no lunar platforms in the Oriad. Even if the northern vampires hadn’t expressly forbidden them, a standard transit platform attracted monsters from miles around. The fallout of a full lunar passage would make a dragon attack look tame.
There had been one established, at great expense, which was used a single time over a hundred years ago. Its ruins were long buried, but its cautionary tale never forgotten.
A hundred years isn’t long to an immortal, and the vampires saw to it that no one repeated the mistake.
Which meant that he’d need to calculate in another two weeks for travel if he had to return the way he’d come. Though the Reskas portal should be repaired or replaced sometime in the next two months, if he recalled correctly.
He was still mentally calculating the various available locations and timing for lunar and intercontinental travel when a shadow swept over him, immediately followed by a roar that shook the air and nearly knocked him off his feet.
“This is not your land, tiny one, and I am hungry.”
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