Raina lingered a moment on the walltop once they were finished with the wind-ward project to look out across the dark desert at the distant glow of Astralla City. It wouldn't be glowing tomorrow, whether the dragon showed up or not.

Then she climbed down and took Jair's hand and they walked side by side back to their apartment in the quiet glow of accomplishment from having completed what they set out to do.

"A full six hours ahead of schedule," Jair said. "I've missed working with you, you know."

"You never had to work alone in the first place," she grumbled.

He laughed hollowly, as though she’d made a terrible attempt at a joke. "With any luck, that'll change soon." And he gave her hand a comforting squeeze, with a smile that more than anything else dispelled the growing distance Raina had been imagining between them.

Did it really matter who or what he was learning when she wasn't around to see? If he spent every class they didn't share off secretly training to walk and speak particular ways and how to impress the various nobles? She'd had classes like that in her childhood, so why would she begrudge them to him? Sure, imagining the fully adult Jair walking about with a book on his head or teacups on his shoulders as he tried to daintily walk with the proper posture was almost enough to make her burst out laughing then and there, but that was no reason to accuse him of trying to leave her behind.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly, as they prepared a much-belated late night dinner together in their small kitchen.

"What for?" Jair asked, glancing her way before returning to slicing the currin-leaf.

Raina didn't have an answer.

It would be impossible to explain all that she'd been thinking and feeling throughout the past day, how severely she'd doubted him, how silly she felt over that fear. She was blushing again. Maybe she was the one who needed to go back and take remedial manners lessons.

"Nothing," she finally muttered, not meeting his eyes and fully focusing on mixing the cubed meat into its seasoned coating.

"Then you're forgiven for all your nothing," he said lightly.

Oddly enough, that did make her feel better.

Once they'd eaten, they headed to their respective bedrooms, and for the first time in far too long Raina actually slept through the night with only vaguely horrible dreams to disturb her.

----------------------------------------

Dragon day dawned with a bland mundanity that Raina didn't entirely approve of. If this were to be the day of her death, shouldn't there be the rumble of distant storms, or at least a sinister hiss of wind through the windows?

Instead, the sky was clear, the air was free of sand, and it had all the makings of a hideously hot—and therefore perfectly ordinary—day.

She couldn't possibly sit still for classes in the morning, so she joined Jair in eating a quick breakfast of leftover dinner, then the two of them spent the first part of the day assembling constructs.

Mid-morning, they paused for her to go collect her anti-dragon specialty armor from Lord Veshin. Jair stayed behind to continue with the constructs—which had now begun to take on the character of armor amplifier pieces. All of it would be unthinkably expensive to run. Though, given this was the man who casually pulled out multiple industrial-grade mana crystals just to carve some protection wards on the walls, he clearly didn't care about costs.

If things kept up like this, she and Jair would bankrupt House Serin long before she ended up inheriting its responsibility properly.

Though when she saw the armor the Veshin workshops had produced for her, she couldn't do more than gape in awe.

She'd seen expensive armor. She'd seen Veshin armor. She'd even seen royal armor, during one notable visit to the palace as a child during which she ended up slipping away to explore the royal treasury with the then-young Prince Orren.

She'd never seen anything like this.

It was dark, deep blue like the evening sky, but with a faint iridescence. Each curved piece was fitted and measured perfectly to her body, from the smooth round shoulder guards to overlapping leg pieces and flawlessly jointed fingers.

She couldn't tear her eyes away from it. The ceramic was layered and offset, cushioned and reinforced in ways Lord Veshin proudly described but she couldn't quite wrap her head around.

It was beautiful. And it was hers.

The Veshin assistants helped her fit into it, strapped each piece in place, settled the various layers. It started with the gloves and boots, with cables running along her arms and legs to the central chestplate. Each successive piece connected to those central cables, slipped in under the previous one and spreading out to leave space for the next.

The chestplate brought it all together and tucked three city-grade mana crystals discreetly against her stomach. She was glad that the armor’s outside shape completely concealed the fact that she was walking around with a month’s worth of power on her person.

This was the kind of wealth that made even someone used to extravagance vaguely uneasy. It would have been cheaper to buy up an entire city block.

“You’re all set. Go ahead.”

Raina tentatively took a step, twisted and shifted to test how it felt. The armor was heavy, but less so than she'd have expected. The first thing she noticed was how strange and tight it felt to have her arms so closely restricted.

Apart from the sheer oddity of it, though, the armor fit her like a second skin. She tested some stretches and twists once they finished, and though the armor made soft clinking as the various plates shifted against one another and the protective halos tapped into the other plates, it hardly restricted her movement at all.

She'd never trained to fight in heavy armor—as a mageblade it was more important to stay fast and keep your spells available—or worn anything over her arms but standard wired protective cages to deflect enemy blows. The armor’s protective halos would perform much the same function, except they were designed to deal with something much larger. A standard sword could slip between them with ease, but a standard sword wasn’t what they were built to protect against.

"Take good care of it, and it'll take good care of you," Lord Veshin told her, as he reeled off the usage and care instructions.

Raina did her best to memorize them all, though one part of her mind wondered why she bothered. If she was going to die today, why worry about long term armor care?

No. The whole point of today was that she would survive. She'd seen how hard Jair was working, and she'd allowed herself to get swept up in it too. Now was no time to be fatalistic about it.

But... dragon...?

She ran her gauntleted hands over the cool solidity of the armor she wore. She had no idea how Jair had gotten this arranged, even with the amount of money he was willing to throw at it. Secret connections, or whatever else he'd been up to.

One more day, then she could have all the answers she'd ever need.

Just survive today.

Easy. She'd survived 100% of days so far. Just keep living. Simple.

"Are you alright?" Lord Veshin asked, concern on his face. "You look like you're about to pass out, can't have that. Do you need something to eat? I can have Lemris put something together real quick if you're hungry. Or a drink?" He waved to one of the attendants. "Bring us a drink, please."

The attendant rushed off, before Raina could even get a word in edgewise.

She waved away Lord Veshin's concerns and pulled off her helmet so they could speak more easily. "I'm just adapting to the armor, it's alright."

"I can have it packed up for you. No need to wear it until your event."

Raina snorted a flimsy laugh at that. 'Event.' Yep. Her death would be an event alright. "I'll handle it myself. If you could just go over how to equip and unequip it again before I leave, that will suffice."

Though she did end up accepting a drink when the first attendant returned, and wouldn't admit that it helped a lot more than she'd have expected.

----------------------------------------

And then, all too soon, they stood on the wall in the evening, preparations complete, constructs assembled, wind wards ready to activate at a moment's notice.

Jair stood staring out to the east, hands clasped behind his back, wearing the most absurd hodgepodge of armor she'd seen in a long time. It was... frankly a relief to see. He looked more like a sandfisher scavenger who'd put together his own set of armor in imitation of hers, and for once the dynamic between them seemed reflected by their outer protective shells.

Setting aside the fact that Jair had paid for hers, while she'd paid for his. Thinking about that only confused her more.

In every other way, their positions had been reversed. He stood patiently, unmoving, while she paced anxiously.

She reached the end of her short path between the tower and the spot where Jair stood on the battlements and turned back. She reached him and stood beside him a moment, staring out in the direction he watched so fixedly.

"There's definitely going to be a dragon?"

"There is."

She didn't see anything, and said as much.

"It'll be here."

For a minute they stood there, silently, then Raina paced away toward the tower again.

The armor was heavy and close. Even after hours of wearing it in hopes of adapting, she had only somewhat gotten used to it. The cooling circuits that ran through it prevented it from becoming a deadly oven in the hot sunlight--in fact, apart from the weight, it was the most comfortable outfit she'd ever worn. Like being inside the dome in the evening, rather than the heat of late afternoon on the wall.

The circumstances made it very hard to enjoy. If she survived the next few hours, she'd have to give it a better chance.

"Want to spar or something?" she asked, when her pacing reached Jair again.

"Save your energy."

"I'm not going to save much of anything at this rate." She stopped beside him, stared out at the distant horizon, and failed to see anything that looked like a dragon. "You're sure there's going to be a dragon?"

"Yes."

She paced away, sweating despite the comfortable cool of her armor, heart beating fast against the perfectly-fitted chestplate. It felt restrictive, but necessary. She wanted to tear it off and scream; she wanted to curl up in it and pretend she was invisible.

She did neither.

The minutes passed with excruciating slowness, but they did pass.

"There." Jair pointed, and she saw a tiny speck against the sun. It might have been a bird or a chunk of sand, but it stayed far too still to be either.

It didn't move up or down, didn't circle or wheel, only hovered there.

"It's not getting any closer."

"Yes it is. It's just so far away you won't be able to tell at first."

Raina paced, breath coming in unstable huffs. She wasn't sure if she was going to laugh or cry or just collapse.

"Breathe." Jair's voice was coldly commanding. "You'll be fine."

"That's not very reassuring."

He gave a tiny half-shrug, eyes still fixed on the distant spot.

"You're sure it's a dragon?"

"It is."

Raina shivered and hugged her arms to her chest. "How can you know?"

"I know."

For a time longer they stood. Then Jair stiffened and dark green light flared around him. Raina turned in time to see a sword appear in his hand, black and silver with wicked serrated waves across the back, glinting with deep green fire.

For a moment she couldn't be sure what she was seeing. He looked down at the sword, whispered its name with tears in his eyes. "Maelstrom."

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"Wow, what happened?" Raina felt awkward interrupting, but this was... inexplicable. "Your sword can shapeshift?" At least it was something to distract her from the maybe-dragon.

Jair didn't answer. He turned the weapon over and over, laughing as though it were a revelation.

Raina had no idea what to think. "You alright?" she asked, tentative.

"I'll be fine."

"What happened?"

Jair looked up toward the distant speck, then sat down right then and there. "I'm going to meditate. Inspect it if you want."

"You sure?" She stared between Jair and the sword, the already-priceless artifact that had somehow transmutated in front of her eyes for the second time in four days.

"I trust you, Rai. If you want to kill me for it, go ahead."

"I would never!"

He didn't respond, sword resting across his knees, hands lightly on the sword.

Raina waited for him to move, but when he stayed in clear meditation she hesitantly knelt down next to him. "Inspect," she whispered, feeling intensely intrusive.

─ Maelstrom

─ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form)

─ Rank: Legendary

─ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion

Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential.

Do not stand against us.

─ Bound to Jair Welburne

This was... nothing at all like the weapon she'd seen after the initiation.

Integrated? There was no such level. She'd been training as a future mageblade for her entire life. She knew the lore. She knew how many people topped out at Reforged, how the next step—the pinnacle—was Ascended.

Mageblade was a three-step path. She knew it. Everyone knew it.

"Fourth... form...? How?"

She hadn't noticed she spoke aloud until Jair answered, his meditation concluded. "Isn't it obvious? I fed it my soul." He jumped to his feet, heedless of his hodgepodge of armor, and turned around to help her up.

"Time to activate the wards?"

"Not yet. I need to check the tower." And then he ran over to the tower, and she heard his footsteps ascending at an unreasonably quick pace. Before she quite knew what she was looking at, he'd emerged from the trapdoor onto the top. He stared out at the distant speck from there, absently twirling the sword in his hand, then ran down and over to her, grinning. "I've done it. It's time."

"The wards?"

He shook his head as though the wards were of no concern whatsoever, then let out another burst of manic laughter and ran back up to the tower. If anything, even faster than before.

He'd clearly lost his mind. But... Maelstrom's sudden evolution...

It'd been accompanied by a drastic change in behavior and personality the first time, too, and that was before he fed it his soul.

There was an inherent risk to tying anything that deeply to your core self. Risks every mageblade knew long before they began their Reforging Quest, and certainly before attempting an Ascension.

But would Jair know them? He'd only been here three years. Until arriving at the Institute, he'd belonged to a poor, uneducated family, where the only access he had to books was an expensive trip to their local outpost.

He'd told her about days spent poring over every page of the thin volumes he'd been able to access, how obsessively he'd memorized everything remotely related to magic, anything that might help him apply successfully to the Astralla Institute.

He'd never cared about the 'blade' part of the class, only that it was the only magic type class he was likely to meet the requirements to unlock in his lifetime.

Jair was in it for the spells, not the soulsword, and it was very possible he'd found some forbidden technique somewhere to instantly advance and jumped into it without bothering to check for warnings.

That kind of uncontrolled advancement could be deadly, let alone mentally destructive.

Raina looked back out at the dragon, then at her friend as he ran back to her still grinning, having topped the tower and descended again in the moments she was pondering.

"Come on, let's go look!" Maelstrom vanished in a flash of black and green fire and he grabbed her hand, his armored gauntlet clinking against hers. He tugged her along after him, up the tower. Jair all but danced up the steps, Raina's hand in one of his. Raina struggled to keep up, the tension of the past days and the weight of the armor combining to wear her out unnaturally quickly.

Perhaps he'd been right in the first place, and she should've been saving her energy instead of pacing all afternoon. Still.

"Yep, it looks the same from up here. You sure we don't need to start the wards yet?" They'd worked so hard on them.

"Not yet. Come on." He started down the stairs, and she reluctantly followed back to their designated spot on the wall.

"How do you still have this much energy? Just walking in this armor makes me feel like I'm going to pass out. Let alone running up and down the tower."

"I don't know!" Maelstrom reappeared in his hand and he pointed it out at the setting sun. "Hear that, Ryenzo?"

"What has gotten into you?"

"Hope. I promised I'd find a way to save you, and now I have."

"Why do you sound surprised?"

"I'll explain everything in the morning." He laughed in a carefree way she’d never heard from him, something so purely unrestrained that it made her question everything. Before she could say anything, he turned and ran off back to the tower yet again.

She stayed behind this time, staring out at the distant speck. If she squinted at it just right, she could imagine it was shaped like a dragon.

This was torture. Staring at her death coming closer, inevitable but so excruciatingly slow…

“And it’s definitely a dragon?” she would have asked, if she hadn’t been standing alone for the moment.

She looked back up to the tower. Jair stood on the precarious edge as though it were a perfectly ordinary thing to do, still laughing, still playing with his sword in one hand without seeming to notice as he flipped and spun and twirled it about.

Silver gleamed from Maelstrom’s edges, gold glinted in deep subdued patterns beneath the dark core, and green fire flared up in eager little flickers. Raina couldn’t deny it was a beautiful weapon, but looking at it made her uneasy in ways she couldn’t explain. Do not stand against us. Ominous, almost threatening.

Then he threw the sword over the wall. It flew straight and smooth, so much so that she instinctively looked around to see if their custom ballista had been delivered after all. It hadn’t.

Then Jair jumped off the tower.

“Jair?!”

He turned back and waved, gliding elegantly through the air after his sword like he’d been bladewalking for decades. “I’ll be back soon! I’ve got a dragon to slay.”

The feeling of distance Raina had been grappling with all week surged up stronger than ever as Jair's flawless bladewalk carried him in a perfect line toward the oncoming dragon.

No prodigy she’d ever seen could fly that casually, and she’d seen quite a few.

“Without me?" She ran to the edge of the battlement, but could go no further. "What happened to becoming dragonslayers together?”

“Next time! I promise!”

“Next time? What do you mean, next time? Jair!”

He was too far away.

Raina looked over the wall, but she couldn’t jump off after him. It was too far down. She’d barely begun connecting to her sword, and had made no progress on unlocking her soulspell.

She could only watch helplessly, so far away. She didn’t like the feeling. She wanted to be able to stand with him, fight beside him. For so long she’d been the one in the lead, doing her best to pull him along behind her.

Now he was the one taking the lead and she was standing still. She didn’t even know what she should be doing. The whole situation was beyond insane.

The receding speck that was Jair grew smaller and smaller, even as the dragon-shaped speck came closer and closer, absolutely dwarfing the silver glint. The clash looked like nothing so much as… shifting clouds.

At this distance there was no knowing what happened to Jair. He’d been too small to be seen for several minutes before what had to be the fight.

The dragon’s barely discernible shape seemed to warp and twist, then the dark blot that was Ryenzo fell to the ground.

A sudden desperate desire rose up in her, wordless and complex, taking everything that she’d been struggling with the past days and everything she saw now and boiling it down into something more intense than she’d ever experienced before.

Fear for her friend, a pervasive sense of impending doom, anger at Ryenzo… and at herself. And perhaps not pride, but something near to it, refusing to be so thoroughly outdone by someone who’d had his class for only three days.

He’d been stronger and braver than she’d ever been. She stood up to petty bullies and political enemies, but a dragon was something else entirely. The sheer breadth and confidence of his plan shook her.

She’d not have gone nearly so far. She’d have contacted her family, used their money and connections, but when she really thought about it their reactions would probably be pretty unhelpful on the whole.

Not many people would agree to fight an angry dragon for any pay. Raina would, if that's what was threatening her friends, but what use would it be to throw her life away if it didn’t accomplish anything?

"I'm not sure who's crazier right now, me or you," she muttered. Alongside the fear for what might happen, guilt over being the reason he had to do this at all, and desperation to find some way to help, another feeling had begun to grow in her. Something less solid, nebulous and sharp.

He’d heard about a threat to her and gone so far as to defy everyone and everything he’d previously crumbled under, collected resources in record time, impossibly upgraded his sword and then done it again, and all that without a moment’s complaint.

She’d never have thought of using Reskian sea wards to stop a flying dragon. She’d never have been able to design a custom armor, let alone arrange for its creation. Honestly, she didn’t know how Jair thought of even a fraction of the things he’d done in the past few days, but that didn’t matter.

He’d done so much and tried so hard, and then he’d gone flying after a dragon alone. Never mind that the dragon had seemingly fallen out of the sky. That could mean anything.

She looked down at her own sword, basic and unimpressive, then strained her eyes as dusk turned to twilight, staring at the unmoving lump that was Ryenzo. She set aside her helmet so she could see more clearly, but nothing had changed.

All the thoughts and feelings that had been churning within her grew overwhelming.

“What does it take to unlock a soulspell? The two most reliable factors are intensity and calm. Which sounds like a paradox, but it isn't.”

It all sounded absurd, the kind of thing everyone told you forever but was just words you couldn't quite understand.

But now, helpless and alone, no longer afraid for herself but even more terrified for her friend, furious and powerless, it made perfect sense.

She'd never felt so intensely.

She'd never been so paradoxically calm.

If there was ever a moment for her power to finally manifest, now was the time.

Raina knelt down right there on the wall, soulsword point down in front of her with both hands over its pommel. She closed her eyes and searched for the soulspell she'd never been able to find through all these months of trying to attune herself.

There was nothing there. She could see it perfectly in the crisp clarity of this moment. She had a gaping hole at her core, an infinite void where her soulspell should have been.

She'd failed to attune to it because there was nothing to attune... never found it because there was nothing to find. The void had a vague sort of edge to it, something that couldn't have been drawn or described. As though a golden rim surrounded it fully, leaving the black orb of nothingness contained by an unseen boundary. As though the sheer absence at her core repelled everything else away.

Impossible. Every mageblade had a soulspell. Anyone with any magic-type class did. Even if your soulspell was something as minuscule as 'cause a paper to ignite' and nothing more, everyone had one.

How could hers be nothing?

It wasn't her soulspace, that she could see just fine. If she looked upward, it hovered well away from either soulspell or sword, a white oblong mesh through which she could insert or remove physical items.

She breathed fast and deep, heavy rhythm as her body remained in preparation to fight at any moment, but steady as she internally searched for her sword's soul next.

Her soulsword, at least, was easy to find. A tiny silver speck hovered above the void at her core. When she focused on it, its soulmap opened exactly how it should have.

The basic weapon's soul was a simple lattice of woven steel. It formed a small sphere normally, a circle with cracks spreading and widening into a spiky starburst when unfolded.

At least one thing was working properly in here.

‘I fed it my soul.’

But Raina's soul was empty, so she tried the reverse instead. She tried to pull the sword's soul inward, to fill the void.

It was a laughable attempt. The speck of the sword compared to the size of her gaping void was completely incapable of filling it. It was like dropping a single grain of sand into a well and expecting it to be filled.

Yet that's what Raina did.

Immediately, she toppled forward as her soulsword disappeared from under her hands. She landed awkwardly on her face, forcefully snapped back into reality.

For a moment she lay where she'd fallen, half-dazed from the abrupt transition from soulsight.

Then she sat up, checked over her armor for any cracks—there were none, thankfully—and held out a hand for her soulsword. "Soulblade, manifest."

Nothing happened.

Putting a bit more mental energy behind it, she tried again. "Soulblade, manifest."

Nothing.

She must have broken something.

She leaned back against the battlements, all strength deserting her.

Hope, desperation, determination, all of it drained away.

What was the point? She was a void.

She'd been falling behind because she had nothing to work with. She couldn't brute force manifesting a new soulspell where none existed.

Maybe it would have been better for the dragon to eat her after all.

Instead, Jair had thrown away his limitless potential and gone to die in her place. Maybe he would succeed in killing Ryenzo before dying himself, but she didn't see any future where one man fought a dragon alone and the result was an alive man.

It should have been me.

Tears slid down her cheeks unnoticed, the void in her emotions growing to match the void in her soul.

But beyond the emptiness was the same fire at her heart. The same determination, the same anger and willingness to fight whoever and whatever tried to mess with the people she loved.

And as she struggled with her own inability to be what she needed to be, as she grieved the closest friend she'd ever had, that fire built underneath it all.

‘I fed it my soul.’

Raina rose slowly to her feet. Dusk had fallen fully, the distant shape of the fallen dragon visible only by the sickly glow of its green scales.

Still no sign of Jair.

She walked half in reality, half in spirit, or perhaps in neither. She felt disconnected from herself, an impassive observer who could push things this way or that without repercussion.

The sword was still in the void that should have been her soulspell. She'd been trying to manifest it into reality as a weapon, but it wasn't a weapon any more. Obvious error there.

She held out a hand and the sword appeared. Or... something vaguely in the shape of the sword appeared. Darker than night, made of solid void, it seemed to break light around it. Reality itself looked unreal as she gave the sword a quick slash, leaving wavering air and glitching light behind it.

And then the moment ended, and she stared in confusion at the blade-shaped void she held.

"Inspect?"

The wavering outline of a sword didn’t respond to the command, as though it were no more an item than the sky itself.

It had no weight, no texture, yet she could feel it in her hand. It may as well not have existed.

"What...?"

She very well may have broken something. Hopefully in a useful way. But however crazy her sword might be, it wasn't going to help her unless she could get over to the dragon.

The intensity had disappeared, leaving her with mild confusion amid a sea of calm clarity. She tucked the not-sword back into her soul innocently. Best to keep any potential reality-breaking abilities hidden until she needed them.

She had other work to do first.

----------------------------------------