Orard is unique in that it retains the most land connectivity of any engaldria. Though it has countless rivers and streams, if you know the right paths, you can walk from the far south of Reskas to northern Desyov or even to the Imperial Skyway to Suthyrel. Only Pevir is fully disconnected from the rest.
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There was no decision made that night. After the girls talked themselves out, they turned off the lamps and then kept going another several hours, through overtired laughter as their stories grew wilder and more exaggerated, until they finally succumbed to sleep.
Long after their voices fell silent, Jair lay awake in the darkness.
The familiar room felt alien. Moonlight slanted through the narrow windows at the top of the wall, ground level on the outside. Silver light glinted off Lilin’s collection of pens where they lay haphazardly on her desk, the narrow shaft of brilliance throwing their shadows sharply behind them.
He’d forgotten the dry earth scent of the place, never sealed properly and left to nature’s mercies. The floor was stone, but the walls between the support struts were only packed clay. He’d once considered digging a tunnel from the side of his room, the edge it didn’t share with either of his parents’ bedrooms, just to have a private place to get away.
Instead, he’d ended up at Astralla Mageblade Institute. He wasn’t sure if that was an improvement.
It felt too right to lie here with his sister and best friend peacefully beside him, a kind of completeness he'd not even imagined possible. It was one thing to pursue a happy ending, but when you actually had it... how did you deal with that?
In Jair's case, it was to soak in every moment, each soft exhale, every semi-snore, and the quiet calm of no one trying to murder the people he loved.
And every beautiful, peaceful moment, he was afraid. This wasn't how things went. His life was a nonstop ride of chaos and conflict. There wasn't any timeline where things simply went well.
He had plenty of time before the Sekir thing would be relevant, the man built his powerbase gradually over the next two or three years. Without Jair’s interference in the noble politics, there would be no reason for anyone to assassinate his parents.
Nothing was going wrong.
It couldn't last, and he didn't want it to end.
Jair memorized the angle of the light, the feeling of the air, the smell and texture, ran over it again and again in his mind. This moment, between uncertainty and indecision, perfect peace. If ever he needed a new anchor point, this was a good one.
In the morning he'd have to confront Zaen, and whichever way that went things would change. He would probably join the family in an expedition, show off his sandfishing prowess to Raina, perhaps give her a net and see how embarrassed she could get if he pushed her into doing it wrong.
In another week, they'd leave to find a lunar platform, with or without Lilin. Then he could start showing Raina all the things and places they'd always talked about exploring.
He didn't have to think about Veor or worry about it for another year at least. Sekir would be plotting in the background, but if there was one thing Jair had down to a science it was the timing of major events. Veor's fall wouldn't be coming for a long time yet.
The only thing that mattered was Jair becoming an archmage by the time Sekir went to Meliarn, and without Jair to drop the right rumors and trigger an early intervention, that particular revelation would take the sorcerer years to uncover.
Jair had been so intensely focused on optimizing every moment for so long, it felt unfamiliar and almost overwhelming to have this much freedom of movement without a pressing disaster. Even his relatively relaxed months in the Oriad training with Qahrvirna and Eythron had been overshadowed by the need to find some way to deal with Ryenzo.
But now Ryenzo was dealt with, and they had all this free time.
They'd been running from one thing to the next in the days since then, but now it finally began to really sink in.
Ryenzo was done and over with. The weight that had been haunting him for longer than he could remember was gone.
He didn't know how to feel. He should be relieved, shouldn't he? Not this panicky dread. Not empty and confused.
There had to be another disaster, something he'd overlooked.
Jair pushed away the perpetual calculations, closed his eyes, and slowly released the tension in his chest as he breathed deep and slow.
This was a moment of peace, not time to worry over the future. His to-do list was simple.
Repair his manabody. Travel with Raina. Go to Nuprima and reclaim his archmage status. Find upgrade items for Tempest.
Though, now he thought of it, he should probably give King Farshen the full info on the plague/curse. Now the man wasn't lost in his grief-maddened mania, he might be able to actually quarantine the continent before the curse could spread too far, and let it die out with minimal casualties.
Jair pondered over where to slot that into his mental schedule, then snorted softly and shook his head at himself. Why wait?
He stood and crossed to the door. Looking back, he spent one more moment basking in the quiet peace of having everyone he loved close and sleeping safe and secure, then slipped out into the hall and quietly closed the door.
It took only a thought for Maelstrom to appear, and darkflame to carry him to the king's chambers.
Since it was deep into the night, King Farshen was very much asleep. At least until the flash of green fire deposited Jair in the middle of his warded rooms, and an alarm quietly started blinking.
By the time Jair made it into the bedroom, the king was awake and armed.
Jair raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were in a hurry to see me again."
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The king scoffed and lowered his sword. "Of course it's you. Took you long enough."
Jair shrugged. "I'm here to give you a rundown on the upcoming plague so you can take care of it while I'm away. And if some guy called Sekir shows up, don’t let him in."
"That's not why I summoned you."
"It's why I came, though."
"You would defy a summons from your king?"
“What summons? I'm here to tell you how to handle the biggest disasters you're likely to face during your reign, and you want to complain about my reasons for doing so?"
King Farshen ran a hand across his forehead and frowned. "You're right, I'm taking my frustrations out on you, when you've done nothing but try and help. While I would prefer it if you at least pretended to follow normal protocol, I think it's obvious that you're beyond the stage where I could enforce anything upon you even if I tried."
Jair chuckled. "I keep being more surprised by Darkflame. You've no idea how many times I've tried to have this conversation."
Normally, the mad king would have him executed or imprisoned for daring to question him, assuming Jair found a way to slip into the palace at all.
Maybe when the time came around he could have a talk with Sekir too? He wasn't going to hold his breath, though. The man was far too slippery to be trusted, and Jair had already seen Darkflame’s effects varying from person to person. If anyone were going to be fully impervious to its calming and rejuvenating properties, Sekir would be just the sort to remain spitefully stubborn about killing Jair.
“I have no idea what I may have done or said in our previous encounters,” the king said, sounding sincerely ashamed, “but I apologize.”
Jair shook his head. "I’m not here to demand apologies. As I was saying, the plague. It's actually classified as a curse, but it can be combated with some specific actions to prevent resonance. You'll want to start establishing spread-out camps around cities on the far side from oases, since the curse amplifies itself with the abundance of mana as well as when being in close proximity with others who carry it. Get more than a handful of affected people together and all of them will find themselves growing dramatically weaker."
“And you can’t cure this yourself?”
“I…” Jair frowned. He hadn’t actually tried, not with Darkflame. “Perhaps I can.”
He still had the list of prime carriers in the back of his head, around two hundred names. He’d tried killing them in one of his particularly desperate lifetimes, only for the curse to transmit through their friends and relatives instead.
That had been before he knew the plague’s nature. The curse was almost intelligent in the way it jumped from person to person, as though it knew when it had to move and where it could afford to linger.
He doubted anything he tried now would work. He could gather the earliest carriers all together and try using Darkflame to purge them all at once, see if they were reborn with or without the curse intact, but with the speed of its transmission it would probably just stay one step ahead of him the whole time. Plus, that sounded like it would be a huge fuss and take way longer than he had any interest in.
The curse was tenacious and aggressive, and the only way to kill it for good was to starve it out in isolation.
“I will do what I can, but I cannot stay to ensure it is successful.” That was a reasonable compromise. If he thought of anything he could attempt with a chance of success, he’d try it, but as long as the king was prepared to deal with it either way he could leave without abandoning Veor’s future entirely. “The other option would be to evacuate completely, but I understand that would be infeasible for a number of reasons.”
“While you’re here, I would like to request another flame healing. I am… troubled by what I have learned, and cannot settle myself.”
Jair shrugged and stabbed him.
The king flinched only the tiniest bit, an instinctive reaction to someone lunging at you, before the darkflame flowed out and consumed him. He reappeared a moment later, sitting on the floor and more relaxed than he’d been before. He climbed to his feet and stretched, the weariness gone from his face. “Thank you. How soon will you be leaving?”
“Terlunia.” Jair considered him a moment, but it was pretty easy to guess why he’d asked. “I can stop back once more before I leave, if you wish, but you should probably learn to deal with your stress on your own without relying on me to fix things every few days.”
Farshen nodded. “I have no idea what I was thinking, these past months. Untangling this mess… I’ve somehow alienated so many of my former friends and allies, it is difficult to find anyone willing to help without trying to adjust things to their benefit. Politics and contingencies…” He shook his head. “But that is not your concern, I apologize. It seems I miss my son more than I’d realized.”
“I can let him know you’re back to your right mind next time I’m in his area, but I can’t promise he’ll want to return.”
The look of hope, then fear, then resolve that flickered across Farshen’s face told him everything he needed to know. Orren would be in no danger here.
Jair changed the subject, since there wasn’t much point saying more and it would be months before he could reach northern Almas even if he set the trip as his highest priority. “Here, get me a paper I can write on, I’ll list out the steps for dealing with the plague so you don’t forget them.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jair darkflamed himself back to Veshin Oasis, leaving the king busy at his desk, reading reports and drafting new edicts with vigor.
Veor was in good hands. It could survive on its own while Jair went off and gathered the power necessary to deal with the next steps.
Using every shortcut and unfair advantage he had at his disposal, going from nothing to archmage would still take a while. Even the most intense training regimens required pauses for things to settle and consolidate.
One step at a time.
For now, he spent the next several hours while everyone else slept working to expand and solidify his manabody. Once he felt the pressure starting to spill back out, he darkflamed himself back to his family home to nap for the rest of the night.
He could still become archmage on schedule, while still leaving plenty of space in between for having fun. And actually doing the upgrade quest for Raina that they pretended to be on, of course. It wouldn’t do to neglect Tempest in all the fuss.
Jair eased his way back into the room, Raina and Lilin still sound asleep, and looked around for the sword in question. Raina hadn’t fully integrated it internally yet, so it retained a perpetual physical presence for the moment. At the moment it hung beside the door next to Lilin’s sunrobe.
Jair drew it very softly, then slipped back outside into the hall. He summoned Maelstrom and tapped its point against Tempest’s.
Light surged down the blade, a veritable stream of multicolored sparkles, which disappeared into Tempest’s influence without fanfare. Then, the flow reversed. A surge of silver light flashed from Tempest’s point and flowed up Maelstrom’s center, spreading out until it engulfed the entire sword.
Jair frowned. That wasn’t what he’d expected. What had changed?
─ Tempest
─ Type: Soulsword
─ Rank: Uncommon
─ Class Requirement: Mageblade
We hunger.
─ Bound to *?*???* & ****??*?
Nothing new here. Maelstrom?
─ Maelstrom
─ Type: Integrated Soulsword (4th Form)
─ Rank: Legendary
─ Abilities: Darkflame, Integration, Temporal Reversion
Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum, the lifeblood and soul of its creator, and the fire of the Venix, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become an artifact of limitless potential.
Do not stand against us.
─ Bound to Jair Welburne
Exactly the same, and after a moment the glow faded to nothing. Further contact between them produced no results.
“What are you two doing?” Jair wondered aloud.
Neither sword answered.
With a shrug, Jair returned Tempest to its sheath and Maelstrom to his soul.
Whatever was going on with their swords, it would resolve itself eventually. There was plenty to do in the meantime.
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