While each class has some specific features unique to itself, many abilities are shared across multiple disciplines. It has even been postulated that all abilities are accessible by multiple classes, and we simply do not know the correct conditions to unlock the unknown combinations. However, this assertion is impossible to prove either way, so it is generally accepted to be pointless conjecture.
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Jair stood in afternoon sunlight in Raina’s study.
Raina stared at him, curious.
"Something went a little strange, I think.”
She smiled. “Oh? The test didn’t go as you expected?”
“It did not. I’d bring you with me to demonstrate, but…” he extended Maelstrom toward her and once again the sword disappeared the moment its blade touched her. “Until my manabody is back up and running, I can’t use our soulspells on you.”
“Did you say ‘our’?”
“Maelstrom’s and mine. We’re the same, it’s all my soul, but because it’s a separate physical entity it’s… hard to explain.”
“You haven’t lost your mind from too much tangling time?”
“Lost sounds so unintentional.”
Raina chuckled. “So it’s long gone either way.”
“I’ve been struggling to understand it myself. Maelstrom doesn’t have a mind, but it does have reflexive behaviors, and its powers react to my thoughts and intentions.” He held up Maelstrom. “Isn’t that right?”
Green fire flickered down its length.
“My current theory is that the problems arose from me unconsciously attributing too much agency to what is, in actuality, an extension of myself. I realized that when I fell in the sea, when I said ‘get us out of here’ and we ended up going in random circles. If Maelstrom were capable of thought and memory, it would know better. If it were capable of reasoning, it would have taken us back to where we started the moment the first seascourge intercepted us rather than letting me keep trying to move forward.”
“But you still talk to it?”
Jair shrugged, and Maelstrom’s blade shimmered with golden patterns. “I did that long before it started answering back. It’s lonely to be the only real person in a world of shadows and memory.”
“And you’re sure it’s not its own person?”
“Yes. I’d started to think of it that way, when Temporal Reversion didn’t work after you were kidnapped, to think that Maelstrom was holding me back for some purpose or through knowledge. Turns out, it was just another instance of our soulspells having changed. It wasn’t Maelstrom holding me back, it was that I didn’t know how to use Temporal Reversion.”
“How drastically did it change?”
“Before my powers were bound into Maelstrom, Temporal Reversion was something I’d activate as its own ability. Then I’d be in timefall, and try to pull myself out at the place I wanted. Whenever I tried to use it up to now, that’s what I was doing. ‘Go back’, but not to a specific time. Just like how Darkflame was recreating people in the same location they’d been when I first stabbed them until I knew to try sending them elsewhere, Temporal Reversion couldn’t take me back until I tried to travel to a specific time. It’s a subtle shift in perspective.”
“Oh. So it isn’t different, just an adjusted approach.” Raina sounded disappointed, for some reason.
“It’s very different. A lot more powerful, for one. That’s what I was testing with the practice fight, if it could let me act as an effective battle-seer. It’ll take a lot of practice, and I’m not sure how well the added focus on memory will last in the long term, but at least for the short term it’ll make me vastly more effective.”
He couldn’t help thinking back to his last desperate run up Mount Sanctum, the days of preparation necessary for every single try, even if all he wanted to change was jumping a chasm with one foot or the other to avoid stumbling later on.
If he’d been able to micro-revert back then, he’d have only needed a few years to optimize, instead of decades.
How many thousand times had he lived that same week?
Never again.
“Practice fight?” Raina asked.
Jair waved a hand at the balcony door. “In the future. I am really looking forward to being able to bring you back with me, that’ll make this all so much easier.”
“Haven’t you been working toward this for centuries? Surely you had some plan in place for once you actually succeeded in saving me.”
“Well… we would go explore the world together. Have adventures. I’ll introduce you to my mentors and friends from the future, you’ll get to see all kinds of wondrous places and kill fantastical beasts…” he shrugged. “Not the sort of thing that requires a minute by minute itinerary. Just… live. Maybe save the world a time or two, if that’s what we decide.”
“And you think we can do all that without needing to revert time once?” Then she laughed and shook her head. “Look at me, already assuming… But it’s true, isn’t it? Most people have regrets. Make mistakes. You can’t imagine that we’ll both go for our whole lives without wanting to undo something.”
“Apparently I can’t even go a week,” Jair admitted ruefully. “I wasn’t planning to revert, but… seascourge. Would rather not get my soul eaten today. And now I know it’s possible, I’m…” He grinned and sighed happily. “It felt restrictive, knowing I had no backup. If things went wrong, they’d just be wrong. I don’t like that.”
“Are you addicted to time travel?”
“No. I think I’ve proved I can adapt without it. But knowing I have it back is a big relief.”
“Mmm.”
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“Are you alright?” Jair turned back to look her over. “You’re acting a bit odd today.”
“Am I? Isn’t that the point, when you’re going to be undoing things, to be whatever we want?”
“Are you… jealous?”
“Of what?” Raina laughed. “Maelstrom? No, I don’t envy your relationship with your sword. Besides, I have Tempest and he’s not even reforged yet.”
Jair raised an eyebrow. “He?”
“I mean…”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“I…” Raina looked away and took a long breath. “I don’t understand. Why are you here?”
“If you’d prefer I go elsewhere—”
“No, not… I don’t mean… but the whole…” She shook her head, flustered. “From everything you’ve told me, after you’ve done so much, why are you holding yourself back for me? You could be off doing anything, but you’re sitting around in my back courtyard. I don’t know what to think. I’m not unhappy about it, but I don’t like feeling that I’m holding you back.”
“You’re not.”
“Aren’t I? You’re asking permission before doing tests with your power, talking about how you can’t wait until you can drag me along with you, but what’s the point? Why would it be better to have me along? I’m not… I don’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. It’s one thing when we’re kids planning to go exploring together, but you’re… how old now? And you’re still fixated on me? Isn’t that a little… obsessive?”
“I made a promise.”
She stared at him, and when he didn’t say anything more she laughed and shook her head. “That’s it? You made a promise.”
“I did. We promised to be there for each other. For a long time, I couldn’t be there for you. Now I can.”
Raina took a long time before answering. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine going so far. Even for you. It’s unbelievable.”
“That’s alright. I don’t expect you to.”
“But you expect it of yourself?”
Jair chuckled humorlessly. “You have no idea how little there is left to constrain me. Past a certain point, why does anything matter? When I can undo existence at will, nothing and no one can stop me. Until recently, they could prevent me from reaching goals or fulfilling specific desires, but with Maelstrom the way it is now? Even that would be laughable. I removed Ryenzo Draconis single-handedly. I’ve escaped from the seascourge twice in the past week. Kings, emperors, adventurers, warriors? None of them can touch me. I can rise from my own ashes even if I don’t go back before they ever contemplated attacking me to end the threat before it begins. Rules? Laws? Utterly meaningless.”
"What does this have to do with me?"
“You are my friend, Raina. My first, oldest, friend. The one who showed me what that’s even supposed to look like. I don’t know who I’d have become if I hadn’t had you all those years, but that Jair would be a whole lot more likely to cause an apocalypse than me.”
“Wait, apocalypse?”
Jair waved it away. “One of my seer friends thinks I’m going to annihilate all life or something. Not going to worry about it.”
Raina choked out a laugh. “That seems like something worth worrying about.”
“If you pay attention to a seer, they’re in control. The only way to deal with them is ignore them completely.”
“Even if that means you might destroy the world? I thought you were joking.”
“I was. Being serious is boring. But that’s not the point.” He took her hand in his. “If you hold me back, it’s because I want to be held back. You’re an anchor in a trackless desert where I could lose my way if left untethered. You’re the most important thing to me because that’s what I chose to dedicate myself to. Not because I have to, not because you need someone looking out for you.”
“Clearly I do.”
“No. No one could have dealt with Ryenzo alone. That’s not weakness on your part, it’s overwhelming strength on hers. It took me countless lifetimes to find a way. You’ve been my guiding star even when you were long dead, and now it’s my turn to repay the favor. You kept me from losing myself completely. Compared to that, what’s a few days sitting around?”
“You make me sound very grand and noble.”
“Are you not? Lady Serin, Heir to House Serin?”
“You know what I mean.”
“If my presence makes you uncomfortable, I will leave.”
“No, I’m not trying to get rid of you, I just… wanted to understand. I don’t think I’m nearly as special as you’re making it out, but you’re one of my closest friends too. Even if you’ve been gone a long time and come back so much more experienced and powerful, I don’t want that to change.”
“Good! Nothing to worry about, then. We’ll go on being friends and start having adventures together. Get Tempest reforged, slay a few dragons, find your ascension path, introduce you to Eythron and Qahrvirna…”
“Slay a few dragons, huh?”
“Small ones. Not like Ryenzo. But even if I have slain a dragon, since I technically used the seascourge to do it, the title didn’t assign. It’s unofficial. Anyone with a strong enough analysis could see that I’m unregistered.”
“Ah, yes, must protect your dragonslayer reputation.”
“Reputation is important. If you can’t convince people that you’re worth their time, it makes a lot of things far harder than they need to be.”
“Like insisting you can’t go anywhere until you can teleport there directly?”
“There’s another option?” Jair gasped. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”
Raina laughed and shook her head. “You’re in such a rush. For someone who’s been patiently chipping away at this problem for centuries, you don’t seem to do a lot of waiting patiently. Or thinking things through.”
“Who needs to stop and think? Waste of time. Better to try things until one works.”
“You know, you probably could have cut a few decades off your many, many times repeating the same things if you’d tried approaching it from different angles.”
“Or I might have spent so long jumping about from strategy to strategy that I missed something obvious the first time that could have been solved by iterating. There’s no way of knowing in advance what’ll work or not work, and as long as I get to the solution eventually, it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s an interesting philosophy. I bet it got you killed more than a few times.”
“Yep.” He shrugged. “If I couldn’t handle being eaten a time or twenty what kind of time traveler could I even call myself?”
Raina chuckled softly. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“All of it. Bringing me along. Putting so much of yourself on the line for me. Anyone else would have gone off without a thought. I can’t think of anyone who would have gone so far as you have.”
“So we’re both extraordinary and special. Sounds like we’ll make a good team.”
“I’m serious.”
“Boring. I prefer being earnest. Maybe you should practice.”
“Or maybe you should practice being serious.”
“I’m very good at it. Doesn’t mean I want to go around being serious all the time. Trust me. Life’s a lot more fun when you stop worrying about ‘should’.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you should stop worrying about.”
Jair grinned. “Then maybe you should come out back and help me practice my battle-looping. I’d like to be able to revert mid-fight without getting myself stabbed every time.”
“Alright. But after we finish, I’m going to arrange a sandskimmer to Aeiti. You promised to show me your home village, and I’m done accepting ‘darkflame won’t work yet’ as an excuse. People have been taking and receiving deliveries from the sandmarshes for generations, and none of them had the ability to instantly teleport.”
“Actually, there have been three different people with the ability to teleport instantly between known locations born in Veor over the past two hundred years. Not counting me. I definitely wasn’t born with the ability.”
“Don’t think you can distract me with trivia. If you have a reason for us to not do this, say it plainly. If not, I’m doing it.”
Jair shook his head. “Go ahead. It’s been a very long time since I’ve visited my family.” He smirked mischievously. “I wonder what they’ll think of who I’ve become?”
Raina summoned Tempest. “Let’s get this training done, and then we can find out.”
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