It’s funny how effective the threat of utter ruin is for winning arguments.

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"Your Majesty, is now a good time to discuss the treasury?"

King Farshen looked up a bit blearily from his desk. Last time he checked, it had been dark out, but now the sun shone clear between the curtains, taunting him with its promise of another long day ahead with no respite in sight.

“It’s as good a time as any. Go ahead."

"The pastseer we hired has discovered the whereabouts of the missing items."

Were it not for his necessity of maintaining dignity, King Farshen would have his head in his hands. Instead, he sat stoically with only a slightly furrowed brow to show his heightened headache. "Missing items? Do you have a list?"

"I don't have it with me, my lord, but it is everything that could be fit into a soulspace starting from the most valuable and going down from there."

"The Veori Crest?"

"Taken, yes."

"My grandfather's sword?"

"Taken. I can send for a list."

"Please do." Farshen closed his eyes for a brief moment of respite, allowed himself a single deep breath, then opened his eyes. "You may continue. What were you going to say? Our pastseer has discovered…?"

"The pastseer has discovered the whereabouts of the items. They are currently in the sea."

“Someone stole them and threw them into the sea?"

"That is what I’ve been told to convey, my lord.”

“Where is this pastseer? Why is everyone filtering my visitors and staff?”

But Farshen knew why. Given the number of decrees that were specifically targeted at one individual, he’d come to learn that the man he’d become in his grief had been petty, vengeful, vindictive, and utterly uncaring about who he hurt. It was a sobering realization that such a thing could have been himself.

He could very well imagine meetings that went on behind closed doors, the bribes and coercion required to keep anyone working for him at all, the layers of protection. We’ll never say your name, you'll only be referred to by impersonal code, etc.

"I'm sure I couldn’t say, sir. The decision had nothing to do with me." The man shifted uncomfortably. “I… can inform the pastseer that you wish to receive his report in person."

“Yes. I would like to receive the report in person. Preferably with a written report as well."

By the time the pastseer entered, Farshen had fully prepared himself for the eventuality in which he learned that everything he'd ever possessed had been despoiled in his absence. Absence may not be the most correct word for it but he could think of nothing better.

The pastseer walked in with footsteps so quiet Farshen wouldn’t have noticed were he not looking right at him. The man was slender, his skin several shades paler than Veori standard and his hair such a pale blond it looked almost ethereal. The perpetual white glow of his eyes made it hard to guess what he was looking at.

He came to a stop in front of the desk and stood silently.

Farshen waved a hand impatiently. "Well, tell me what you've seen."

“No." The pastseer spoke in a dreamy sort of voice, and held out one hand. "Come and see."

King Farshen rose slowly, but saw no reason for paranoia at this point. His staff had him at their mercy for most of a year. If he was to suspect everyone now, it was a bit late. He circled the desk until he was standing in front of the man, then placed one hand in his. "This won't take long?"

"But a moment."

The man's eyes flashed brightly and King Farshen blinked.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer standing in his office. Instead, he sat on a bench in the courtyard outside the palace.

A young man walked past, wearing fully concealing gray robes and a hood over his face. King Farshen rose to his feet and walked after the man without volition, his body moving on its own. If he stopped and thought about it, his body wasn't the way he was used to, but as long as he relaxed into the experience, the entire thing felt natural.

The man moved swiftly as though he knew his way around intimately. Into the palace through a side door, down passages and stairways Farshen hadn’t traversed himself until now.

The intruder stopped at the door to the treasury and held out a hand. A familiar sword appeared in it, one that Farshen would never forget. A black center with silver edges on either side, broadsword style, with serrated waves across the top. In this vision, the weapon did not glow or emit fire, but he could hardly mistake it for any other.

The weapon appeared only for a moment before it disappeared, just long enough for the intruder to slice down through the bolt and allow the door to swing open.

King Farshen noted that the intruder did not summon it using any of the traditional connection points. Speed was clearly more important to him than expense. To summon a weapon without any connection point would take an exorbitant amount of mana. Most people would find such a task impossible even if they tried.

The young man, which he now strongly suspected to be Jair Welburne himself, pushed the door open and walked in. There was no looking around or searching. He simply crossed to various display cases and sliced him open in a flash of that sword that appeared and disappeared as quickly as it was needed.

With a touch of each priceless artifact after the last, they disappeared into his soulspace. He must be setting off countless tracking spells that been placed on the items, but he paid no mind to that. He either didn’t know or didn’t care.

As he continued this premeditated rampage, two of the Hyperion guard appeared, alerted by one spell or another.

The intruder ignored them completely and continued to grab items, evading the two attackers with the effortless easel of a true master. It was as though he knew their fighting styles better than they themselves did, and could predict their every move before they made it.

Several times the guard seemed to get a hit on the intruder, but every time he whirled away from the strike in a swish of gray fabric so quickly Farshen couldn’t tell whether the attacks had connected or not.

If only there were sound.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He wondered whether the man wore armor under the robes, or if any of the glancing strikes were actually touching him. The longer he looked, the man's movement seemed a little bit jerky. As though his body was being externally augmented.

Construct user. That was one weakness of having warriors and magekillers, they were built to counter standard mages, not those who augmented themselves physically.

King Farshen couldn't help but wonder just how strong this Jair Welburne was. The fight, such as it was, had been going on for minutes now. With the amount of construct use he was employing to evade, he had to’ve been drawing on his mana very heavily.

Farshen knew a few mages who could withstand that kind of a sustained mana draw, but none so young. Who was this man?

Without warning, Welburne turned and reversed course. He ran out the door, down the hall, sliced open a window, and jumped out.

A flash of silver, and he was flying away.

King Farshen ran to the window and looked after him, but there was no way to follow him now.

"You may wish to close your eyes. This has been described as disconcerting."

King Farshen looked around for the source of the voice, but saw no one. It almost sounded as though the voice of been coming from his own throat, but—

He was falling through the sky. For a moment of extreme dissonance, his body felt perfectly at ease while his mind screamed that he should be flailing for dear life.

He pulled his cloud closer, wrapped it around himself like a shroud.

Where had he found a cloud in Veor?

The cloud felt warm and comforting. He floated gently down from a great height. He knew he was invisible, the cloud protecting him from observation.

Even so, he was observed. He felt the attention from below, from beneath the water.

His body remained calm, but his soul shivered.

Beneath, the water thrashed and roiled, uncountable seascourge fighting over scraps of some delicacy. He could not see clearly what it was.

He descended lower within his cloud, and felt the whisper of a touch as a massive tentacle slapped out and sent him spinning away.

By the time he'd oriented himself again, the frenzy was over. The seascourge separated, swimming away in their various directions. One lingered, its singular eye focused on Farshen, its seven mouths open. It drifted just below the surface like a hungry sandskimmer, flat and broad on top, narrowing to a point at either end. Wickedly sharp points, like a scorpion's tail.

Something shot past him from the water below, a thin glowing line. He turned to follow its passage and saw the distant figure on the mountainside. No, being pulled toward them from the mountainside. Farshen couldn’t possibly have made out the man's shape if he hadn't been dragged closer. The man was approaching at an incredible speed.

"Watch closely, my lord." Again, that calm, hazy voice, coming from his own throat.

Everything seemed to slow. He could see the individual twisted strands that made up the seascourge tendril flexing as they snapped the man back. Its end was embedded deep in the doomed man's eye, slicing his head open and laying bare the glowing pulse of his mana coils. It grew even in that frozen moment, cutting deeper—

The man’s soulspace exploded, showering the water with all of Veor’s most priceless artifacts. Not just from the royal treasury, but countless items he recognized from other noble houses.

Farshen instinctively tried to reach out for them, and was reminded immediately that the body he wore was not his, and not under his control. Though he felt violently unwell at the reminder of disconnect, the body remained calm.

Before the man hit the surface of the water, he burst. Black and green fire exploded out of him, leaving only ashes for the seascourge.

The living tendril slashed out at Farshen’s head, and as soon as it touched him, he ended.

For a moment, he thought he truly died, but—

Then he was standing back in his office, tense and uncertain. He felt like an alien in his own body, despite knowing that this was his.

He convulsed, his entire body seizing. He would've fallen if not for the strong hands clasping his wrist and shoulder.

"It will pass. Close your eyes, your highness, and it will pass faster."

Despite the warnings, he did not close his eyes. He stared down at his hands as though they were something foreign. His height felt wrong, dizzying. His throat felt thick and he swallowed again and again.

"Do you know what you have seen?"

Farshen looked up at the voice. The seer was a pale blur. He blinked, and the world came a little bit more into focus. "Yes. I don't understand, but I have seen. Thank you."

There was an odd stinging in his right foot, something didn’t feel quite right about it.

No, it was his own familiar ache. He knew it.

He'd not noticed it was gone until he returned.

He gripped the pastseer’s wrists tighter to steady himself, then cleared his throat and took a step back. "Thank you. I trust you are being well compensated for this service?"

The pastseer bowed shallowly, as though to an equal. "Indeed I am, your highness. You need not concern yourself with my remuneration. Is there anything else you wish to see?"

Farshen was about to say no, that is all, then stopped. "Can you show me the day Prince Orren left?"

"I can, if you have a way to focus in on it. What is unique about that day that I can use to find it by?"

Farshen shook his head. He didn’t know anything about the day. Except… "It is the last time I saw my son. Does that count for anything?"

"It does. Do you have anything of the boy’s? Anything of yours? If I use the two in conjunction, I can reasonably approximate."

The king nodded and crossed to his armoire. His wife had always saved the lock of hair from each of their children's Solaria cuts. The locks were wrapped in glass threads to preserve them, but glass could be replaced.

He picked up Orren's most recent, and shattered the glass. He held it out to the seer in his hand.

"Yes. This will work." The man's eyes flared brightly and stayed bright, staring down at the lock of hair in Farshen's hand.

Then his glowing gaze came up and met Farshen's own. "You will not like what you see," he warned. "Are you sure you wish to do this? You were not yourself."

Farshen shook his head safely. "I cannot hide from what I've done. Show me."

"Very well, my lord." The seer's eyes flared brightly.

Farshen sat at the table in his sitting room. He saw himself sitting to his right, and Orren sitting to his left.

He knew this position. He and his son regularly met in the evening to discuss their accomplishments for the day and plans for the future. Or perhaps they would debate a recent ruling by one of the councils, or discuss a proposal from citizenry.

Whatever the topic, he could not hear. The prince's casual and open expression gradually grew concerned, then upset. The expression on Farshen's face—and that looked so wrong, sitting across from himself—remained an expressionless mask. Only the faintest hardening of the eyes betrayed his growing anger.

Orren got to his feet and began to pace, turning back to speak more sharply. Farshen could all but read the sounds.

What were you thinking? Why would you do this? I do not understand.

A heated argument, certainly. He began to hope that that was all it was. The rumors were exaggerated out of proportion. Surely…

Then he watched himself jump up from his chair, which toppled to the floor behind him. The Farshen he was watching lunged for his son with an angry snarl on his face the likes of which he’d never imagined could belong to himself.

He tried to jump forward, interpose himself between them, knock the past-him aside, but the body in which he sat was not his.

He watched helplessly as his past form grabbed his son around the throat and screamed at him repeatedly to be silent, choking him into compliance. The fact that the entire scene played out soundlessly made it only more horrifying.

Farshen felt sick. He had no memory of this. He could not imagine any argument that Orren could make to drive him to such extreme violence.

When he witnessed himself toss Prince Orren to the floor, carelessly; as the gasping heir lay staring up at his father with confused betrayal in his eyes, he could bear it no more.

"I am sorry, my lord,” the farseer spoke gently through what felt like Farshen’s own throat, though he knew it to be the seer’s. “I cannot control the past, only observe it."

“It’s not your doing,” Farshen murmured soundlessly. He didn’t know if the seer heard.

This time, when the illusion ended, the king did close his eyes. And he kept them closed for a very long time. Long after the seer had departed, the king stood trembling, grief and rage and self-loathing mixing with a remorse so deep he thought it might burn him from within.

Orren.

Why? What could you have possibly said?

There could be no justification for this.

Veor’s king wept in silence, and it was many hours before anyone dared disturb him.

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