The draconic word which is commonly translated as ‘human’ does not actually denote any specific species, but rather the entire class of creatures-lesser-but-thinking.
I do not think there is any way for it to be spoken without some degree of derogatory implication.
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There were a thousand questions Jair wanted to ask.
Would Raina survive the volcano's temperature? The mana in the internal atmosphere should mitigate it somewhat, but it would be uncomfortable at the very best. Did the dragon know anything about keeping a human alive? Would Ryenzo be feeding her? Jair was already parched himself from the long flight, and he hadn’t been in a dragon’s claws the entire time.
He had no way of asking. He pulled out two of his shark teeth.
“Friend?” Jair demanded, pointing.
Ryenzo chuckled and flexed her neck, eliciting a muffled scream from within her coil. “I told you I will wait. I keep my word, even to the undeserving.”
Jair wanted nothing more than to strangle her on the spot. He swapped out the tooth and snarled down at the smug dragon below. “Anger.”
Ryenzo laughed, tongue flicking out from her mouth as she hissed. "I'm angry too, human. Don't forget that. Don't imagine there is anything but rage between us, and neither of us will be disappointed. I will kill you. As soon as I figure out how."
With a snort and final flick of her tongue, Ryenzo pulled her neck back into her tunnel and curled up there, only the vivid green of her back visible in the magmaglow.
Jair stood above, holding in his hand the most powerful soulsword ever created, and yet felt more powerless than ever before.
"I don't suppose you will let us go back in time now?" Jair asked Maelstrom.
The sword did not deign to respond.
His only comfort was the fact that Raina was alive. Perhaps Maelstrom only wanted to revert when she was guaranteed to be dead? Perhaps right now it still held out hope that this could be a successful loop, bringing them salvation and hope for a new future.
He really, really hoped that was the case. If he had sold his soul and traded away his strongest power in return for a single one time reversion and an all-consuming flame power that didn’t do more than buy them a few seconds, that would destroy him.
Jair forced his body to calm, gave his mind time to relax from the immediate panic. Until now, he never had reason to doubt Maelstrom. His soulsword had served him faithfully all of its years as an initiate blade, through its reforging, and right up to its eventual ascension.
He may not like it, but for now he had little choice but to trust in Maelstrom. If it believed they didn't need to go back in time yet, there was no point in worrying over that fact.
"And I don't suppose you’re willing to let me in on the secret of what Darkflame actually does? Why she keeps coming back?"
Maelstrom did not respond.
"Integration?"
Nothing but a tiny green and black flame that flickered down the length of the blade, almost cheekily.
Jair glared at his sword. “If I die, will that force you to revert?"
Maelstrom flickered with green fire.
"Is that all you can say? Darkflame, darkflame, darkflame? You're not a one ability weapon. Aelir, you’re fourth form! You have more soul powers than anyone I've ever heard of. Don't give me this ‘darkflame is the only thing I can do now’ nonsense."
Maelstrom didn't respond.
"I don't suppose integration could be some kind of mental communication option, could it? So I could talk to you, or Ryenzo maybe? She should be connected to us now that we got the whole ‘killing her with darkflame over and over’ down."
Maelstrom flickered darkly, fire that was almost black surging up around the blade toward Jair's hand. As soon as it reached him, it turned bright green and danced as though it were a candle flame in heavy wind.
"If you're trying to communicate, you're not doing a very good job."
Maelstrom's brief display of fire died away, leaving the blade inert.
Jair sighed and dismissed the weapon. It nestled into his soul comfortably, warm and hungry, but no longer ravenous.
“So killing Ryenzo a couple times satisfied you for now? That's good to know."
Jair glanced back down at where the smug dragon had retreated. There was nothing he could do. Nothing at all. Even if he jumped down and stabbed Ryenzo here and now, he had no doubt the dragon would find a way to throw Raina into the volcano’s heart before Darkflame could finish its work.
He could only take Ryenzo at her word and go make preparations for bringing in someone who could communicate with dragons.
And people willing to kill them.
He’d been perfectly willing to start with civil negotiation, but Ryenzo could no longer be trusted. Not even a little. She'd taken Raina; that crossed the line.
For as long as they’d been in a truce, he’d been willing to assume that they could solve things without violence and plan accordingly. Ryenzo had forfeited that chance.
Jair jumped off the mountaintop, Maelstrom leading.
There wouldn’t be any point in going back to the academy. Larenok didn't matter. Lian didn't matter. Without Raina, no one in that place mattered at all.
Instead, he headed for Sejrilo Oasis. He could bribe the family for use of their private transit station from there. And a drink. He’d gone for too long without water. Blood matted his hair from where he’d been smashed into a wall and he was running on an energy deficit as it was from pushing himself the past week.
Sejrilo was closer than Astralla, this route would cut perhaps an hour off his flight, but it still left him with far too much time to think as he crossed the silent desert.
There was nothing to gain from wondering over Raina's fate and whether she would survive. Either she’d still be there once Jair had a translator to negotiate properly with Ryenzo, or she wouldn’t, and he would deal with either option when it came to be.
Half delirious, he forced his mind away from the dread and began to mentally plot out his goals for the coming week.
In the days remaining until Dark Night’s illegal lunar passage opened access to other continents, Jair had to accumulate the resources to hire a dragon-slaying team by any means necessary.
Several of the connections he’d set up the previous week would come in handy now, as well as some potential connections he hadn’t established but could still utilize to some extent. He didn't have anything nearly as dramatic as an exhibition display in front of half the richest families in Veor, but that didn't mean he had nothing.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Jair’s first step would be to follow up on the minor blackmailing of Veor’s nobility by engaging in a one-man burglary campaign. Things he could never sell in Veor due to everyone knowing where they came from suddenly became valuable rather than useless once the rest of the world came into the picture.
He still had Maelstrom, and now that he had Bladewalk he had mobility.
The ability to cut through anything opened a lot of doors.
Being able to fly opened a lot of windows.
The ability to transit to other continents—not to mention Zelura, the Ghost Moon itself—transformed the treasuries of King Farshen and the rest of the Veori nobility into an available resource to be exploited. And if there was one thing Jair was good at, it was exploiting resources.
He began methodically planning out the coming Dark Night, from the first moment the lunar passage opened over Veor through every stop across the planet. And beyond. Lunar natives rarely got involved in planetary affairs, but some were very powerful and could be bought for the right price.
Jair knew all the prices. Of all the moons, Zelura’s inhabitants were the most easily bought.
In a way, this was an opportunity to do something he'd always wanted to. If not for the lack of lunar passage restricting travel to Veor itself, this is how he would've dealt with Ryenzo a thousand years ago.
Somehow, it had taken an entirely different and unrelated set of powers to bring about the circumstances in which his ancient frustrations could be satisfied. Not that such considerations mattered at the moment.
The world would be open to him, he would make use of every bit of it.
The Almas lunar window would only remain open for so long. Its overlap with Orard would be significantly smaller, giving him only a few hours to work with.
He could do it.
His timing windows were brief, his requirements exacting.
"I don't suppose you're still able to absorb monster soul powers, are you? Because if we could get frost to go with your flame, that would help a lot."
Maelstrom didn't respond. Given that it was busy flying ahead of him at the moment, Jair had expected nothing less.
He'd need to rely on transit and messenger for most of it, which meant anyone difficult to find like Quahrvirna or Eythron would be impossible to reach. Thankfully, even if it was his personal favourite, the Oriad was not the only place in Orard to host strong individuals.
Reskas, for all its cowardice, had warriors aplenty. They may be about to withdraw from their coastlines, abandoning the war and their long-defended polder to the seascourge, but it was not a retreat born of destruction so much as practicality. Their warriors were unharmed. The only casualties would be the city itself—and Reskas’s reputation in the international community, but what did they care about that.
If Jair happened to hasten that withdrawal by taking away some of their strongest frontliners, he had no problem doing that.
Beyond Orard, Suthyrel’s imperium had its own strengths.
His team would include people of every species, every culture, the best of the best. He’d be calling in favors he hadn't earned yet, relying on knowledge he had no way of finding, and answering questions people hadn't even thought to ask.
The price would be high, and he’d have to conceal Ryenzo’s matriarch status until it was too late for anyone to back out. No one would knowingly go up against a matriarch, however much he offered them.
He'd given up too much of himself in this pursuit. He would not be deterred, not now when he’d come so close.
He’d probably end up a fugitive from Veor for the rest of his life for this. Not every noble would have a past-seer on hand, but he was hardly being the most discreet. Haste was the enemy of discretion, and Jair was in an incredible rush.
None of that mattered. He could deal with it. He'd been a political pariah before, he could do it again. As long as he didn't have to handle it alone.
Jair was so tired of handling everything alone.
He shook away the thought and got back to planning.
If only he knew what Darkflame actually did, then he could better assess what he had to work with.
He supposed he could go out and kill a sandshark or two, see what happened when they reappeared, but there was something dissatisfying about the idea of resurrecting a useless desert predator.
His curiosity was strongest in relation to someone who could answer questions about experience. But who did he care so little about that he would be willing to risk destroying their life even if this ended up being the one and only true future? There were plenty of people's lives he'd destroyed in previous loops, but those he'd always known were temporary. It felt different, doing it for real.
Or perhaps he only imagined that it ought to feel different. The actual thought didn't bother him, except in the abstract. Perhaps he'd been repeating the same events for so long he'd been desensitized to the value of life. Was any pretense of morality no more than a pattern of behavior by now?
Irrelevant. He needed to pick someone, or else give up on the experiment.
Again, the thought of using it on himself flashed through his mind. Surely, Maelstrom would not let him stay dead. If that were the way to revert the timeline, it would make a strange sort of sense. The venix self-immolated to be reborn. So too could Jair?
Not yet. If he arrived back at Ryenzo’s lair to find Raina dead, then would be the time for truly desperate measures. As long as there was even the slightest hope, he could not bring himself to give up on saving her. Even if everyone else would gladly write her death off as inevitable.
But that brought to mind one particular man whose existence had never been anything but a detriment on society. In all the lifetimes he’d lived, Jair couldn’t think of a single time Headmaster Larenok had been anything but a horrible, selfish man who cared about his students only insofar as they could advance his own ambitions. He’d certainly never been anything but cold and dismissive toward Jair himself, but even the other students never had a single good thing to say about the headmaster.
Larenok was bitter and spiteful, self-serving and paranoid. If there were one man the continent would be better off without, it would probably be him. At least aggressive kids like Lian were young enough to still potentially change for the better. Larenok was fully established in his ways and didn’t care to try.
Under normal circumstances, Jair would have a hard time arranging a sufficiently covert assassination to not be caught. What with all the dragon damage to the Institute and everyone being in an uproar, it would be even harder.
Jair was by now long past caring about being covert. He needed information. The time for hesitation was gone.
Change of plans. Perhaps there was still something the Astralla Mageblade Institute had to offer him after all.
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Jair flew over the Institute’s empty grounds, impressed and vaguely disgusted by how quickly it was being returned to normal. The library tower was standing again, the destroyed houses had been removed, and the wall was so perfectly repaired it looked as though it had never been damaged.
Student housing was the only part not restored yet, and if Jair had to guess, that would last only as long as until the next lunar passage. Once they could get outside resources in, they’d have things back to normal overnight.
Classes had been postponed for the week, but the transit platform was still active and the towers open. Only a handful of people were present, and no one walked out in the open. The internal library transit had been connected to the outgoing platform by a heavy cable so as to facilitate suitably discreet movement.
It was as though they thought Ryenzo would be watching, and come after them if she saw anyone.
Jair shook his head. They truly had no conception of draconic motivations. Dragons were, above all, prideful and avaricious. Unless someone at the Institute had done something to offend them, no dragon would even bother noticing it existed. Let alone pounce on individuals just because they were moving.
That was more the kind of thing young moondrakes would do. Even the youngest dragon had more pride than that. Chase the moving tiny thing. Ridiculous. Most people didn’t make for good eating.
The administration building was all but empty. Only two archivists were present, and both away in a back room. Jair could hear them chatting cheerfully about how much less annoying their job was when they actually had the time and space to do it, and simultaneously complaining about the state of the academy now.
He wasn't sure what they had to complain about. This building hadn't been touched by the destruction. Ryenzo had cracked the dome in passing as she charged from the student village to where Jair and Raina stood at the transit platform, but apart from that the northern half of the place was untouched.
He sliced the lock on Larenok's door and entered the dark, domineering room. He closed the door behind himself and sat down behind Larenok's desk in the looming chair.
It could be quite a while, so he grabbed a few mostly-empty pages to use for scratch paper, then leaned back and crossed his legs atop the remaining piles of paperwork on the desk.
The fact that the next lunar passage would be Dark Night only made it better. Zelura, with its reputation for criminal and underworld connections, would be the best place to go recruiting for the kind of high power mercenaries he'd need to pull this off. Particularly if he could contact a team who specialized in slaying lunar dragons already.
The extreme financial limitations of these early weeks had been a severe restraint in the past, so he didn't actually know exactly who would be present on Zelura this particular Dark Night. He did know enough about the people who lived and traveled through the Ghost Moon in general that he could put together quite the wishlist.
So caught up was he in weighing the pros and cons of various potential recruits that he very nearly missed it when Larenok opened the door and flipped on the light.
Jair smiled. "Headmaster. I wasn't sure if you'd be coming today." He gestured to the seat below the desk. "Please, have a seat. I have some important questions for you."
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