Sometimes, people born on the moons do not understand the need to fear the water. The rivers on Terlunia are safe, the sea of Zelura hides only mundane monsters. They visit Neptus and find us hiding from the sea and building walls around rivers and think us mad.

They rarely survive long.

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"Ready to go?" Jair asked, glancing over Raina's collection of accoutrements.

In addition to the contents of her soulspace, and the items stored in Jair's, she'd brought a rather large backpack and three different smaller bags.

"Sure you haven't forgotten anything? Not like I can bring us back here with a moment's notice."

Raina tucked her hair behind her ear. "We're going to be visiting, it'd be rude to keep coming home for every little thing."

"You think my parents are going to care about my noble heiress friend being rude by teleporting back to the city a few times a day?"

"Most people can't transit from house to house as easily as you, you know."

"But you can. I've seen your private platform, I know how many keys you have."

Raina smiled dazzlingly and hiked her backpack higher up her shoulder, making for a very cute but also incredibly confusing image. Noble heiress… overstuffed backpack…

Jair loved it.

"Then it seems I'm the premier authority here on what is and isn't rude, and teleporting about mid-visit is incredibly insulting. It's a clear demonstration that you didn't prepare, or your host isn't taking care of you properly, either of which is unforgivable."

"Right. Forgetting to pack extra underwear... unforgivable."

Raina snickered. "Just send them to be cleaned, it's not a problem."

Jair shook his head. "I always forget just how drastic the class divide is in this place." He hefted Maelstrom and aimed the point at Raina's arm. "You ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready. Have been this whole time. If you didn't love hearing yourself speak so much…"

"I much prefer hearing you speak, but if you insist." Jair lunged forward to stab her.

Maelstrom disappeared.

Jair stumbled at the lack of resistance and nearly ran into her, but pulled up short just in time.

Raina stared at his suddenly empty hand, then at Jair’s confused face.

He blinked in surprise and frowned. With a thought, Maelstrom appeared in his hand again. Darkflame flared up, and he carefully moved to pierce Raina's bare shoulder.

The moment Maelstrom even brushed her skin, before it could so much as indent, the sword vanished.

Jair looked at her untouched shoulder, then at his empty hand. "That's... not normal."

"You're expecting normal behavior from the ascended... wait, no, post-ascension—soulsword?”

"Would it be too much to ask that a sword be capable of stabbing someone?" Jair asked, but his heart wasn't in it. He'd resummoned Maelstrom for the third time and was staring down into its flickering fiery core. "What's the matter now?"

Raina laughed. “At this point I’m almost surprised it hasn’t grown wings." She started flapping her hands and grinning. “Maybe Tempest will be able to grow wings. Who needs Bladewalk when you can Blade-FLY!”

Jair wasn’t paying attention. He slipped his thumb against the activation blade, and darkflame burned him away and deposited him on the opposite side of the room. "Fully functional. So why?"

He held out the sword to Raina. "Try poking yourself with that little blade on the crosspiece."

Raina held up the sword in one hand and brought her other hand to press against the bladed protrusion.

Maelstrom disappeared.

"I guess its aversion to hurting you is stronger than my desire to teleport us to Aeiti." Jair frowned in consideration.

"You said it doesn't hurt."

"Larenok says it doesn't hurt, but he's also more than a little crazy by this point. Looks like I’ll need to do some further experimenting.” Jair hummed thoughtfully. "Speaking of Larenok, though, I do wonder what he's doing. Maybe I should leave a note for him this time."

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King Farshen paced his room with a steady discomfort growing in his gut. He'd done so much and gone through so many people and allies during his madness, he couldn't quite fathom how thoroughly he’d set his kingdom on a path to open rebellion.

He’d tried to murder his own son.

He still couldn’t quite come to terms with that one. It felt so very unlike him, if he hadn’t witnessed it himself he’d have continued to deny it. Even now, part of his mind was scrambling to come up with excuses. Maybe it had been an impostor. Maybe…

But there was only so much denying he could do against the weight of evidence.

Attacking Orren wasn’t the only thing he’d done that wasn’t him-like. He’d created whole complex webs of laws and regulations just to ruin one particular individual, completely disregarding what any of them would do to the rest of the kingdom.

Even reversing course now, to some extent the damage was already done. He’d need to do something more than merely undoing what he’d done.

He wished his wife were here. He desperately needed someone to talk to, to unravel this mess he’d apparently built around himself. He wished Orren were here. His son wasn't ignorant or stupid, regardless of what he'd apparently said and done while not in his right mind.

He’d even take his daughter, though in her case it was more because he wanted to see her face and hear about her chaotic day rather than wanting to go to her for advice. Princess Fahla and her father had very different ideas of what was important.

While King Farshen considered ruling the kingdom well to be the highest priority, greatest honor, and heaviest responsibility of their family, Fahla believed that it was his and Orren's job to handle that and she had her own life to pursue.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

He definitely disagreed with her decision to join an adventuring company. That was the kind of thing that got people killed on a regular basis. He wasn't sure whether to be impressed or irritated with her for having left when she did. Standing up to your father was hard enough without that father also being the king... but she'd never been good at being sensible.

All of which was just diverting his thoughts away from the actual topic that was bothering him.

Jair Welburne.

The Phoenix Healer, who'd brought Farshen out of a stupor he wasn't sure he could have ever escaped on his own. Who'd quickly become a byword among the wealthy, something to brag about or envy those who'd had the opportunity. Rumors claimed that Welburne accepted or turned people away without even looking at them, that he read their souls directly as they were reborn from the fire.

The Royal Robber, who'd taken not only the greatest treasures of the royal treasury, but those of nearly every house on the continent. Who'd then lost them all beyond repair by dropping them into the sea.

The Dragon Destroyer, who'd gone alone to fight a dragon and returned alive while she disappeared to the waves. How he'd pulled that one off, Farshen still wanted to know. Dragons weren't stupid enough to fly anywhere near the ocean, so how had Welburne convinced it to go so far?

And those were just the titles he'd learned about in the past few days. Who knew how many others the man had that he hadn't mentioned.

Farshen didn't know what to do. He wanted to recruit the man. He should definitely lock up the man. Jair's behavior was the sort of uncontrolled chaos that would bring Farshen's kingdom down around his ears before he knew what was happening.

Welburne claimed to know where Orren was hiding, and that he could convince him to return before the end of the year.

Welburne hired a mercenary company to kill a dragon, then didn't bother to wait for them and left them with nothing to do but collect the prizes left over.

Which... that was a whole other headache Farshen didn't want to think about right now. He'd retained the dragon-speaker Kryr-Anarkin for the rest of the month so he could negotiate with the Draconis Mercurios and ensure that there would be no longstanding repercussions for these strangers' actions, but even there he had no idea where to start.

As long as the dragons were as confused as him about what was going on, they might not know who to blame. Once he started talking, it would be very easy for them to jump on him as the problem.

So long as Farshen only kind of knew what was going on, he was in no position to navigate the world he'd found himself in.

And that was just one man. Not counting all the councilors clamoring for blood. Not to mention the merchants in an uproar. Not to mention the plague gradually creeping across the continent.

Just thinking about it made him long for that moment of pure peace and clarity, before he'd started to refill his mind with duty and obligations, when it had been just him and the warm comfort of a fiery rebirth…

He stood and stretched, then rang for his assistant.

"Is that Larenok fellow still around? I'd like to arrange another appointment."

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"You called for me, your grace?" Larenok bowed obsequiously. "I am honored."

"You're in charge of that band of hooligans out in my courtyard, hauling up art from the dragon's mountain?"

Larenok saw no reason to deny it. He nodded. "Yes, lord king. I have been placed in that situation by circumstance. I assure you, most of them are unknown to me."

"Yet I'm told you advocated strongly for my recruitment of half of them, and provided a substantial amount of their hiring fee up front."

"What can I say, I know a good deal when I see one."

"Since only half of them are in direct command of the Crown, any questions of reimbursement must also go through you. You understand the power that represents?"

"I do."

"Good. Then my first question: where is your partner?"

Larenok frowned at the king, then promptly owed his head again. "Partner, my lord?"

"Jair Welburne. He was seen to have stolen over a third of Veor's royal treasures, and then threw them into the sea."

Larenok stared, no longer even noticing how many protocols he was breaking by doing so. "He... what?"

"Broke into the treasury, helped himself to all our most valuable possessions--our being the Kingdom of Veor--and then threw them into the ocean."

"That... why?" He'd known the kid had some instability issues, but to take millions of nirei worth of priceless treasures and drop them into unsafe water? That was beyond stupid. He didn't even have a word for how insane that was.

"I was hoping you could answer." King Farshen squared up the stack of pages he'd been flipping through before Larenok arrived. "You're working on Jair's behalf, correct?"

"Not to steal anything, only for our business. He's known as the Phoenix Healer, I'm sure you've heard of him by now."

"Yes, he came in and did his phoenix healing thing for me. Otherwise I would be in bed right now, rather than at my desk."

"Oh? I thought you weren't available until just before Solaria?"

"Some things cannot wait." Farshen leaned down and pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk. "This is an itemized list of what was stolen. Not all of it has been independently appraised but you can see the approximate values in the far column here."

Larenok looked it over, heart doing some sort of strange tight-heavy pulse as he read the numbers. "That's a lot," he managed faintly. "You say Jair took all this?"

"I witnessed it by pastseer personally. He hid his face, but the sword is unmistakable." Farshen chuckled mirthlessly. "If he'd waited a few days longer to heal me, I'd never have recognized it. Unfortunately for him, his timing isn't well conceived."

Larenok nodded. "I keep telling him to stick to my schedules. Not that we steal anything, or would. If he's going rogue, I don't know what to say. I'm in charge of setting up appointments and collecting payment." For a moment he opened his mouth to ask for payment right then and there, but remembered the eighty million nirei worth of treasures Jair had apparently stolen and held his tongue.

"I have here the catalog of new items being brought in, as well as the finder's fee for each." He passed over another sheet of paper. This one had numbers which looked a lot more reasonable.

Unfortunately.

"I'll need to confiscate your entire share of the treasure to cover your partner's theft. I'll write out a fine for the remainder, to be paid incrementally as your business continues to generate revenue. Do you understand and accept these terms on behalf of your partner?"

Larenok dazedly shook his head. "I can’t make any guarantees. He's been out of contact for days now, and unless he shows up to start fulfilling his side of all these healing deals, I won't have any way to come close to repaying that."

"I will not hold you personally responsible. We have our ways of locating people who are in default. You will still be required to surrender your share of the dragon treasure, however."

Larenok sighed and waved a hand. "I accept the arrangement. My people won't be happy, but I can manage them. If there's enough more treasure to cover the full cost, I'll expect full discretion over its disposition."

"Fair. If you're going to be managing the finances for your company, that falls within your jurisdiction. But I highly doubt it'll come close. We've moved over half the hoard by now and the values hold steady."

Larenok nodded glumly, suddenly more glad than ever that he'd been traveling with the expedition each day and slipping out a few unregistered bonuses for himself. "Of course, your majesty. Was there anything else?"

"Well, now you mention it, I could use another visit from the Phoenix Healer," the king said offhandedly. "I'd be willing to waive eight percent of the outstanding obligations if you can get him here within the day."

"The ways of the Phoenix Healer are mysterious," Larenok said with a frown. "How much can I get if I bring him here by the end of the week?"

"How about this. For each day longer it takes, I'll remove two percent from the waiver. So today is eight, tomorrow six, day after four, then two. If it takes longer than four days, I'll simply pay the usual fee."

Which was less than a fraction of a percent of the huge debt Jair had accrued.

What was the kid thinking? This was insane even for him. Larenok had to respect the fact that he'd pulled it off--and was apparently being hired despite that, instead of hunted down as a fugitive-- but it was too late to change now.

As soon as he got his hands on Jair, they needed to have a good long talk about responsibility, communication, and teamwork. How was Larenok supposed to manage his itinerary if the kid kept running off doing stuff like this?

“Understood, your majesty. I’ll do my best to get in contact with him.”

“If you’re unable to find Welburne, inform my staff and I'll employ my own searchers. You may go."

Larenok bowed and left, his habitual scowl growing on his lips.

What in the world did Welburne think he was doing?

As he made plans for hunting down his wayward partner, he didn’t once think about the fact that he had obtained a substantial amount of potential leverage over Jair. Larenok’s only considerations were how to get both of them out of this alive, free, and wealthy beyond belief.

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