As the sparkle of gold differs from the sparkle of diamond, so the strength of the mind differs from the strength of the soul.

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Oliss Methesdi was daydreaming, half asleep in the evening’s final class of the day, when time shattered around her. A hundred lifetimes, ten thousand different places and people, all crashed into her mind at once.

She screamed and collapsed to the ground, staring unseeing as visions overwhelmed her completely.

She died, crushed under a falling ceiling.

She died, skewered on a dragon’s tail.

She died, run through by an insane classmate.

She died, and lived, and died and died and died.

Oliss screamed, lost as she drowned in futures that would never again come to be.

If anyone tried to help her, she was beyond knowing.

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Jair could really use a dragoncube right about now.

Or a lizardbox.

Or even a pair of sandshark teeth with funny holes drilled in. He’d made do with those, once. Though they were extremely limited, at least it was something he could make without requiring a full artisan workshop.

Ryenzo stared up at him as he flew steadily down toward her—toward Maelstrom, since he was still using Bladewalk to not-fall.

This was the most calm he’d ever seen the creature. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

She didn’t look like a darkflame revenant. Her scales remained the exact same shade of poisonous green that they’d always been.

Also, darkflame revenants didn’t move. Or speak. Or do anything but attack any aggressor they witnessed.

She’d definitely both moved and spoken, but she hadn’t attacked him. Or anyone else.

“I’m very confused.”

Ryenzo continued to stare at him expectantly.

Rather than continue to glide closer, Jair elected to recall Maelstrom and descend from where he flew. Ryenzo had gotten quite the lead on him, but they were still a reasonable way away from the academy.

He dropped to the ground a few dragonlengths away and stared up at her.

She followed him with her eyes, watching as he descended, then leaned forward once he was on the ground. “Well? What do you want?”

Jair did the first thing he could think of, and pulled a half-finished construct that happened to have some gold out of his soulspace. He held it up. “Tribute?”

Ryenzo tilted her head this way and that, peering down at him, then crossed her forelegs under her and settled down on her stomach. “I’m going to take a nap here. If you don’t return by morning, I’ll eat your city. Go find someone who knows how to talk.”

Jair stared at the dragon who, a few minutes ago, had been unstoppably obsessed with eating his friend, now settling peacefully down on the sand.

She huffed out a cloud of poison gas, then curled her long neck around her body and tucked it in behind her wing.

Jair stood there a while longer.

He stared down at Maelstrom. It glowed calmly in his hand.

He stared up at the dragon. She snored in soft rhythmic puffs, sending sand up in a cloud at every exhale.

“What.”

Ryenzo didn’t acknowledge him at all.

He looked back at Maelstrom, then at the distant silhouette of Astralla City, away at a slightly different angle than the academy. “Guess it’s time we go carve some sandshark teeth.”

He hefted Maelstrom and threw it in the direction of the city.

“Bladewalk.”

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It was well after midnight by the time Jair returned to where Ryenzo waited, and he still had no idea what to think.

He’d been so sure that augmented darkflame was the answer, and now that he’d actually used it…

He didn’t understand what had happened. He’d been prepared for Ryenzo to die, or eat him, or any of the thousand permutations in between. But napping peacefully? Willing to talk?

The situation was so far outside his expectations for possibility, he had no idea how to react.

For now, he sat atop Maelstrom as it flew across the sand, legs crossed as he carefully carved a dozen sandshark teeth of various sizes into instruments to roughly imitate what a lizardbox did. It wouldn’t allow him much in the way of eloquence, but as long as basic communication could happen, he’d take it.

When he arrived, Ryenzo was no longer asleep. The dragon’s head was raised, eyes narrowed as she glared toward the academy. As though even now she could see directly to where Raina hid.

Jair bellowed into two of his shark teeth in succession, one in each hand. “Good hellos,” echoed out in halting draconic. Then he bowed.

Ryenzo turned to face him. “I’m very angry, you know,” she said, conversationally. “You’ve interrupted me and I don’t know why I let you keep doing so.”

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“Why anger?”

She shifted her massive body, turning from her orientation toward the academy to face him, leaning forward on her elbows with her front claws together in front of her as she leaned down. A looming shadow against the moonlight. “You have disrupted my plans for the day. I believe I already mentioned that, but perhaps you understand as poorly as you speak.”

“Know now anger. Why…” he waved a hand toward the academy. “Why other anger?”

“You are no part of my business.”

“Friend, you anger.” Jair grimaced at his atrocious sentence structure, but he had very little to work with. Even managing this much of a vocabulary was a stretch. “Me anger, you.”

“You’re angry? Hah. You are insignificant. Your meaningless existence will never touch mine.”

“You…” Jair shrugged, waving a hand at Ryenzo. “Why now you? You no wait, why?”

Ryenzo snorted, poison smoke huffing out, which then ignited immediately in a brief explosion. “Is this really the best you can do?”

“Yes.”

“I’m tempted to eat you now and save myself the torment of this conversation.”

Jair waited.

Ryenzo didn’t move, still lay regarding him with her folded claws in front of her.

Jair picked up the most intricately carved tooth again and snorted into it. “Why?” So much was packed into the word that he couldn’t possibly express, not when all he had was the barest pretense of communication.

She waved a claw in annoyance. “Why am I tempted to eat you? To save myself the torment of this conversation. Why are you insignificant? Because you are not me. Why are you no part of my business? Because you are insignificant and it is my business. And I’m angry because you keep interrupting me.”

Jair could only wave his arms helplessly in the direction of the academy. It was intensely frustrating, having Ryenzo the most sane he’d ever seen and have no way to sit down and have a proper discussion. Or interrogation.

Veor’s policy on dragons was ‘stay away and we’ll be fine’. Not that the continent had much to offer, being as dry and desolate as anything in Almas. Even the seascourge didn’t care to take it over, Veor’s channels were slow and peaceful and only killed you if you got close.

The dragons had no interest in the mana oases, and that was the only reason anyone cared about the bulk of the region. Without the oases, there would be no cities. Without the cities, there would be no need for sustenance villages like the one Jair’s parents grew up in, and Veor would be an empty nothing. Only the native sandfisher nomads would remain.

On the rare occasion that a dragon showed up to make demands—that is, the one time in recorded history prior to Ryenzo coming for Raina—the king would call for an expert from another country.

Most dragons wouldn’t be too concerned about a few weeks of waiting. But Jair knew Ryenzo’s madness too well to believe she was bluffing. If he delayed longer than a day, she would destroy everything just because.

Which left him trying to communicate using a fifteen-word vocabulary. Worse, to swap back and forth between all these different hollowed teeth made his pronunciation sound incredibly halting and sluggish. But it was better than nothing.

“Offer other sparkle, you no anger, friend no anger?”

“You want to make an exchange?” This disturbed her facade of unnatural calm as nothing else had. She drew herself up, stamping her front feet into the ground. Her angry breath melted the sand before her into a jagged wave of liquid. “You think I would sell my vengeance so cheaply that you could afford it?”

“Yes?” That wasn’t what he wanted to say, there was so much he wanted to ask, but he didn’t have the words. All the answers to a thousand years of questions could be right in front of him and he had no way to ask for them.

This conversation was infuriating. He could sympathize with Ryenzo’s desire to burn everything to have it over with. Maybe he should stab her again and be done with it.

Perhaps Darkflame would go with the don’t bother bringing her back mode this time?

No. He knew that wasn’t an option the moment he thought it. There was no uncertainty any more. Maelstrom did what it did, and to do it again would change nothing of the outcome – he could feel it, deep within his soul. The random chance, the occasional connection amid a shifting chaos, it had all been resolved.

What exactly it did do, he still had no idea of, but the fact that Ryenzo was still talking and hadn’t flown off after Raina yet was more than he’d ever had in the past. He’d been hoping for ‘disintegrate the massive dragon completely’ but if Maelstrom’s secret darkfire power was ‘make angry dragon willing to talk reasonably’, that was still better than ever before.

If only he were capable of carrying on his side of the conversation. Where was Qahrvirna when you needed her?

Ryenzo snorted again, claws digging deep into the melted sand. “Ignorant mortal. There is nothing you can offer in place of what is lost. I am not some petty king to be bribed by trinkets. The moons will fall before I abandon my hunt.”

What have you lost? How recently? If it was within the past three days, he might be able to prevent it.

But, “You now? Why no good now? Anger why?” was the best he could manage. There was no subtlety of tone to convey his desperation for the answers. His makeshift tools were barely enough to make him understood at all.

“You want to know why I’m angry? I want to know why I’m not angry! You should be dead, tiny mortal, a dozen times over. Why are we still speaking? Why are you daring to stand before me?” She lunged forward as though to crush him, but her claws landed on either side of him without touching him. She leaned down to glare at him, huffing out her poison breath, but not close enough to reach him. Her voice vibrated through his bones and the ground beneath him trembled. “You tell me WHY.”

“You wait? Me why yes. Other hellos. Wait. Yes? Other friend. Other offer. Not now. Wait?” Jair pointed up at the moon, then held up fingers urgently to indicate the time until the next lunar passage. “Wait, wait.”

Ryenzo turned back to look at the academy, fire sparking from her snout, then she looked back down at Jair. “Your other friend knows how to speak?”

“Yes!” Finally, a simple question he could answer. “Yes. Wait, other friend. Yes.”

She turned again to the distant building, body tensing as though she were about to jump into the air and go after Raina right there and then. Her claws clenched and flexed in the melted sand around her feet.

Then she slumped and lay back down, eyes closing. “What is lost will not become more lost by delay.” She exhaled deeply, then coiled her head around to rest again under her wing. “I will wait.”

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Halfway across the world, atop the third highest tower in Suthyrel’s Imperial City, rested the Crystal Eye. An amplifying crystal of unprecedented make, which some said was the very crystalized soul of the first seer, polished to a mirror-shine and augmented by a thousand years of development.

The most powerful magical construct ever created, they said. It was the nearest thing to sacred that Suthyrel acknowledged, outside the Imperial family themselves.

Bazel Temran was the unfortunate seer on duty when, without warning or provocation, the ancient and precious crystal cracked down the middle.

He shouted for help as the Eye went dark and ran toward it to do… what, specifically, he couldn’t have said, but something—

It cracked a second time, followed immediately by two more cracks, then five, then twenty.

He reached it just in time to watch as the entire thing shattered into dust.

Bazel could only stare helplessly.

It wasn’t his fault. Couldn’t have been. He’d done nothing but look.

The Empress would blame him anyway. He didn’t need to be a seer to know what would happen next.

His life was over.

But why? he thought, over and over, as he stared helplessly up at the shattered construct. Why did I never see this coming?

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