When what has been will never be and what is coming has been done since time immemorial… who are we to oppose the tide of destiny?
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This wasn’t the first time a seer had tried to stand in Jair’s way, but this was Nay Ahll Mersine. She’d saved his life countless times with timely intervention, helped him take a modicum of control over Temporal Reversion instead of flailing helplessly and landing at the whims of time, and been instrumental in tracking down some of the rarer ingredients used in Maelstrom’s reforging and later ascension.
“You’ve never tried to oppose me.”
“And I do not do so lightly now.” She took a step forward, swaying just enough that the hem of her dress avoided brushing against the slightest spot of mud. “You’ve done enough. The good you seek to do will not outweigh the disaster you will bring if you continue on your current path.”
“Not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but the world is a little bit doomed either way? Seascourge upsurge, lunar vampire invasion, beastlord armies?”
“The world is not in danger, only those who live upon it now. In the wake of the purge, life will return, continue, and thrive.”
Well. That was new. “You’ve always known I planned to prevent those disasters.”
Her voice was soft, remorseful. “And I’ve always known you would not succeed.”
Jair frowned. “You helped me. Every time, you helped me.”
“Your silent war would save more than it destroyed. But what you will do now… your interventions will destroy more than time. You would break reality itself and never look back.”
Anger flared, briefly. “If that’s what it takes, yes.”
“I know I cannot stop you, but I pray you will reconsider. If you continue on this path, the world and moons will all know your name, and many without kindness. You will destroy more lands than Sekir ever could, kill more than all Letyra’s armies, and when it is done you will be your own final casualty amid the ruin of what should never have been. I beg you to spare the world and allow your path to end where it always should have.”
“The slopes of Mount Sanctum.”
“Yes. In all the futures I ever saw, that was where you died. Your sword would have gone on to save the shores of Celsin in the hand of another, and your legacy became one of hope to the survivors who would rebuild civilisation.”
How many thousands of times had he died in that final week? He’d been so close to breaking. If he hadn’t succeeded this time, if Maelstrom hadn’t been created in time... if it hadn’t interposed its own soul to save his, their connection created at the last desperate instant…
And she’d always known.
Jair’s his jaw tightened. “Why are you telling me this? What changed?”
“Everything. Last week, on the twelfth of Xulok.”
“The day of the initiation.” Not a date Jair would ever forget.
“Nothing I saw matched what I remembered, and you instead became the catalyst for greater chaos than even the direst futures from before.” The seer smiled sadly, looking for a moment every bit of her uncounted centuries. “Time warps itself around you, and it’s starting to crack. You have pushed beyond reason and madness both, and now you are poised to become an untethered maelstrom of catastrophe.”
Jair stood opposite the seer who'd just foretold his destruction of the world and could only shake his head in uncertain denial. He had no idea what to think. He certainly didn't plan to destroy the world, or all the peoples upon it.
Nay Ahll Mersine didn't interrupt, giving him time, only watching him with eyes devoid of hope.
He raised his chin defiantly. “No.” He may have beef with one or two of the countries (and several individuals,) but that wasn't cause to go destroying the whole thing. He may be crazy but he wasn't that crazy.
“You cannot refute what I have seen.”
“I do not accept this. If I can cause it, then I can prevent it. I don’t care how many times I have to go back. I can save her without destroying everything else in the process.”
“You cannot. There is only one path to success, and it is that success that will break the future beyond repair. What you have done until now can be corrected from. What you would do has no recourse.”
“I will find one.”
“There is none to find. I have searched as none other could.”
Jair recalled Maelstrom to his hand and slammed it point-first into the ground in front of him. “Then I will make one. If I can break time once, I can break it again.”
"You have gone too far already. What you would do cannot be undone."
"Most people don't get to undo anything at all."
"You are not most people, Jair. I will not beg, because I know it will mean nothing, but hear me. I see only disaster the further down this road you walk. If you will not turn away, then at least allow me to counsel you. I will find a way to save your Axiom from her destiny, so long as you promise to do as I say and not destroy anything more than what must be destroyed."
"I didn't come all this way to be a seer's puppet, Mersine." Jair's voice came out icy and relentless. "Anyone else who stood before me and said what you have would be dead by now. I do not take kindly to threats or blackmail."
"It is a warning, not a threat. We both know the futility of animosity between us. I propose only that we work together for the betterment of the future. That is what you planned to do already, is it not? Stabilize Veor, militarize Reskas, protect Celsin?" Her voice turned sharp. "Or are those no longer things you plan to do in this new world of yours?"
Jair thought back to Larenok's suggestion that he uses Darkflame to heal Veor's King. There were a lot of people who could do with a mental reset.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"If anything can be done to convince you to stop before you do more, before you commit further desecration upon the face of this world, I will..." her usually strident voice was halting as she spoke the last, as though it physically pained her to get the words out. "I will submit myself to your desires. Ask of me what you would." The way her eyes flickered here and there, brief flashes of green light, Jair knew that every word she spoke was rewriting some future that she saw. And not in a way that pleased her.
The fact that she made the offer anyway meant she was truly and deeply serious about this. Jair had never seen Mersine anything but calm and controlled. It was vaguely terrifying to see her like this.
If it had been any other day, any other circumstance, Jair would have obeyed her without question. She had never steered him wrong before. But now, all her motives were in question. If her goal was always for him to die and fulfill his alleged destiny, leave Maelstrom to be carried off by some farmer's son with delusions of heroics, Jair would not stand for that.
"Tell me how to save Raina. Now."
Mersine swallowed, opened her mouth, then swallowed again as though she couldn't get the words out past something thick that clogged her throat. Her eyes flared with green light and she half turned away.
Jair shrugged and took a step forward. "I don't need you. I have a plan. If you want to help, speak. If not, get out of my way. I don't have all day. And I don't care what you've seen, I'm never going to roll over and let myself be killed, whatever destiny wants."
"You have everything you need already," she choked out, almost a sob. "You don't need to draw anyone else into this. You are enough."
"Explain."
"Your sword. Darkflame. You're using it wrong."
"I am aware. It isn't killing anything. It's having some strange mental effect. None of this is what it should be doing."
Mersine shook her head. "You are thinking of destruction and rebirth, but remember the legends. The Venix is not reborn at the same place where it dies."
It took Jair a moment to comprehend, then Maelstrom reappeared in his waiting hand, already reversed so its point was directed at himself. He looked up to meet Mersine's eyes. "If you are lying to me, I will never forgive you in this or any timeline."
"I know," she whispered. "I am not deceiving you."
There was such a mournful note in her voice that Jair didn't know how to react. She knew he wouldn't stop, that nothing she said would change his mind, and yet she brought him the answer he'd been so desperately searching for anyway.
“You didn’t have to tell me.”
A sad half smile lingered on her lips. “You’ve been a friend for longer than you’ve been an apocalypse. There would be no point in leaving you to blunder through a path of violence and destruction alone. If I could have reached you sooner, I would have. Your isolation makes communication difficult.” There were tears in her eyes as she raised her hands. “May Aelir bless your path and lighten your steps, Jair Welburne.” She strode past him, then paused after two steps and spoke with her back to him. “I hope she’s worth it.”
“She will be.” Jair said it firmly, as though by sheer confidence he could make it so.
"Do what you must do, and once it is done, cast your sword to the deeps and use it not. It has become what should never exist, and can now no longer be unmade."
"I won't do that. I could as easily throw myself into the sea."
"Then that is what you should do," Mersine burst out fiercely. She spun back to face him, silver dress snapping with the abruptness of it. "Do you not understand what you're doing? How much you are going to destroy for your own purposes?"
"My purposes are all I have. If you think the destruction incidentally caused is bad—"
"You need not tell me," Mersine said, voice low. "I have seen," and again her voice broke, a weakness Jair had never before seen in the ancient seer until today. She turned away. "I know what you could be. I know what you have been. I do not know what you will be, but…"
"I'm sure you'll find me if I change my mind."
Mersine shook her head. "Not in this life, Jair Welburne. I go now to my own war. You know now what you can do. Do it and be done. I’ll see you at Meliarn. Aelir guide you.”
“And Dovak guard you,” Jair replied automatically.
Nay Ahll Mersine stepped up onto the platform, just as the lunar passage pulsed, and she was gone.
Jair fixed an image in his mind and slid Maelstrom point first into his stomach. “Darkflame,” he whispered, and green and black fire consumed him.
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Jair appeared atop Mount Ryenzo in a burst of heat and light. Flickers of green-black flame danced at the corners of his vision for a moment before they faded away. He might have laughed, or screamed.
It worked. But at the same time, something had been torn from him, violently, and it was all he could do not to pass out then and there.
He gasped for breath, dizzy and disconnected. His manabody had been drained so thoroughly it nearly collapsed. His soul burned. He’d pushed himself through extreme overdraw in the past but never this badly. He was used to disregarding pain of all levels. This was something much deeper.
Darkflame flickered around him as he staggered back. It felt something like when he’d died feeding his soul into Maelstrom, but without the release of a Temporal Reversion to bring it to an end.
Perhaps teleporting himself all the way from Zelura had been a mistake.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, trying to recover, but by the time Ryenzo’s voice shook him out of his strained fugue the moons had noticeably shifted in their paths across the sky.
“What’s this, a visitor so soon? And alone?”
Jair stared down at the ledge where Ryenzo held Raina, fixing it in his mind, and Maelstrom flared up in his hand.
Nothing else happened. Jair and Ryenzo stared at one another.
“You really can’t do it without me stabbing myself every time?” Jair muttered at his sword.
Maelstrom did not respond. Darkflame danced merrily along its length.
Jair turned Maelstrom point towards himself and drove it into his chest. Darkflame burned through him, and then he stood beside Ryenzo.
“Oh? You are fast for an insect.” Ryenzo’s claw descended toward him. “Not fast enough.” She snatched him up in one claw, gripping tight. Maelstrom split two of her massive finger's scales and thick corrosive blood seeped from the wound, but she seemed not to notice.
“Raina," Jair raised his voice to shout, "I’m going to stab you, and it will take you back to your father’s house. Don’t panic, I’ll be there shortly.”
Jair heard a muffled squeak from within Ryenzo’s coil, but whether it was an acknowledgement or a request for him to repeat what he said, he had no idea. He tilted his head up to look Ryenzo in the face. Her claw fully restrained his body, but it had not even nicked him. Only held, not harmed.
“You can’t hurt me either, can you?” Not that Ryenzo could answer, since he wasn't speaking draconic.
“I have seen the eye of the Deathmoon opening. You promised to bring your other friend to negotiate." Ryenzo peered about exaggeratedly, stretching her neck out over the magma to stare up, then behind herself. "Where is your other friend? Why have you returned alone?”
Her claw clenched around him, uncomfortably tight, but still not so much as piercing his robe.
Jair flicked a thought to Maelstrom and darkflame flared up. It ate away at the claw surrounding him, the tiny gash in Ryenzo's finger becoming an ashen void that grew until he dropped free to the ground.
Ryenzo growled in frustration, eyes flicking to her stub of an arm. “I have seen this trick before, human. You will not frighten me!” Her neck flexed and Raina screamed. “I may not be able to kill you, but I can make her wish she was dead. How long do you think it will take before she can follow through? If her only way out is to throw herself into the lava, do you think I can’t stop you from saving her?” Ryenzo grinned wickedly and slowly twisted her coil tighter.
Raina's shriek rose, then abruptly choked off. The silence was more terrible than any sound she could have made.
Any tiny flicker of doubt over what he was about to do vanished. Kidnapping Raina as collateral against his return had crossed one line. Threatening to torture her until she killed herself crossed all of them.
Jair returned Ryenzo's grin with a glare of his own, fierce and determined, as Maelstrom surged with black flame. “Alright, Ryenzo. I’m going to enjoy this.”
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