Chương 8: Fateful Encounter

—Aelia Twilix— Aelia expected Jason to inhale a brick of zinconia crystal, given that his core was three times the size of hers. So, she wasn't surprised when the mana in the atmosphere blasted outward in a shockwave when he began, ruffling everyone's clothing. It was inspiring. Incredible. (Dangerous) She did not, however, expect his eerily smooth start to suddenly shift for the worse. It was like a clear blue sky getting swept away in a torrent of charcoal gray clouds and pelting hail.

Mana was bashing him from all angles.

"Get it under control!" Aelia screamed. She put her hands on his back, and suddenly he calmed down, taking a deep breath.

"Repeat after me! Ta tomhe tolikea makina se sesinto foraka…" 2 —Jason Newborn— Jason calmed and chanted again. For the next hour, he drained the zinconia crystal, feeling his core balloon to an unimaginable size. It felt good, but there was this… crack, or break, or indent within his expanded shell from where that memory sent his core going haywire. It drove him crazy. Despite having the largest core by a mile, the fact that that memory blemished it almost threw him into a fury.

Mal puesto, he thought as he stared at the small crack in his mind's eye, in my fucking core. I got a permanent reminder of that cunt for life. Jason stood when it was over and stormed away. He needed a drink. Another drink. It felt so natural to drink now, just like his circulation. He was changing for the worse and it was all Sara's fault. He thought of the redhead on the horse. That was her fault, he thought. I can't believe… Believe what? He never answered the question.

If what he was looking at was a prophecy, he would obtain both: love and death. He needed to be strong enough to avoid both. To ensure Sara never loved him. He wanted nothing to do with her. Ever. He unsheathed his sword before he got to the gates of the colosseum. He put the tip against the ground, and it cratered and buckled beneath the blade. Yeah, if it were a prophecy, he would know soon enough. The Markinoa Festival was in one week. And he'd see her then.

3 —Sara Reece—"We need to stop in Helscope," Sara announced, stopping at the crossroads between Mork Canyon and Markly Bluff.

"Helscope?" Edico asked.

"I know that was on your map but there's no time. We needa stretch your core before the Festival. I can tell people I trained you on the road, but you know expanding isn't something you can just do on the road."

"That's why we're going to Helscope," Sara said.

"The last thing I want is to see Jason before the Festival. Unless you haven't figured it out, people regain memories when I'm around. It's bad enough I'll have to see him at the Festival."

"Sara, there won't be a festival if we go to Helscope. Unless you haven't figured it out, we lost three whole days after the stunt you pulled in Moonlit Grove."

"It'll have to do…" She exhaled sharply.

"We're going to Helscope, Edico. There's a mana vein eighty miles east of the city. It's buried underneath a layer of marikan stone, so it won't be discovered for another twelve years when a supply line operation uncovers it. I'm gonna crack it open."

"With your core?" Edico shot back. It was something between a yell and a cry.

"Even with the Golden Core expansion, that amount of mana will kill you," he warned.

"No, it'll put me on par with Jason. They put a three-pound rock of zinconia in front of him and I know he absorbed the whole damn thing. I need something similar if I'm going to keep pace."

"You can't keep pace if you're dead! And you can't use magic if your core shatters. You won't survive that grade of tyrexis. You'll die instantly." Sara's temper flared.

"You don't know how frustrating this is. To confide in you. You know I'm not from this world. That I am. And that I'm not. And while I was once your queen, I'm not your queen now. You're loyal-bound to Trinov, and with any luck, he'll live a very, very long life. That means my secrets are his pieces. So unless you want Trinov to see me as a dark threat or a golden asset, you'll stop questioning my actions and motives and follow my instructions!"

Edico stared at her blankly, and to her deep fucking dismay, she could tell she triggered another memory.

"My… queen. You were my queen."

"Yeah. And you swore your life to me. But that was in another world, Edico. A world that's gone. Deleted. Disappeared. In this world, you're loyal bound to someone that I want to save. But if there is something in you that does want to protect me, stop asking questions and follow me to Helscope. We'll pick up the pace along the way." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"We'd need acceleration skills if we do this," he said.

"And mana restoration elixirs," she followed.

"You 'taught me' on the road. Now let's get going. We're late." Sara hated yelling at Edico, but she didn't have a choice. Her temper was like being blackout drunk and watching yourself be a fool. She could observe herself yelling and know she couldn't do anything about it. Eighteen years of war and trauma whittled her patience down to the thin marrow of her bones, and she felt like everything was collapsing. Jason was gaining unfathomable power, and she needed to reveal her trump cards just to keep up.

Worst of all, Edico's loyalty was absolute. So long as he was sworn to Trinov, he was duty-bound to explain Sara's situation. She was walking into a cobra pit at the Markinoa Festival, but she had to go there. There were people to blackmail. Resources to obtain. Plans to make. And if that wasn't all enough, she still had to find her "Secret Admirer," the asshole that destroyed everything she fought for. Two years of warfare. Three years of adventuring with the Hero's Party. One year of romance.

Two years running as a fugitive with Kyritus and Tiber. Two years to pull a coup and kill Jason and Mary. Seven years of diplomacy and warfare. One year to conquer Ansithiia and kill Agronus. Gone. She didn't know who did it, but she was about to rip out his jugular vein and use it as her bootlaces.

"Let's go," Sara said, activating a windbreak barrier on her monta and an acceleration spell. Suddenly, the woman who suffered through three weeks of gnarly chafing was riding at eighty miles an hour, en route to the City of Ironic Love, as she facetiously called it in her mind. She was gonna lay down a teleportation spell to save Tiber, and use the Sayon Twilight expansion spell to give her the strongest outer core in history. Of course, even if she pulled it off, it would only be the size of Jason's.

She wasn't strong enough to overpower Jason when they fought, but it would prevent him from sucking all the mana and aether out of the atmosphere to deprive her of her spells. But that was all. She used guile, preparation, and a special weapon to kill him in his last life, and it only worked because he was a cocky prick. Sara could surpass Jason Newborn's raw strength with the Skia mushroom and a whole lot of killing, but it would still be a perilous fight.

If Jason regained his sword, he'd have the power to vaporize a half-mile stretch of ground with a single sword strike. That said, she sure as fuck wouldn't let him push her around. She had technique, memories, locations of mythical weapons, and eight years of raw experience that he lacked. This time would be different. If he became a tyrant, she would need to cut him down with raw skill. Killing him was no longer personal—it was business—a roadblock keeping her from the life that this world owed her.

4 Sara and Edico reached Helscope in the morning rush. It was bustling with citizens collecting water from the river and others buying vegetables. Sara's heart pounded as she looked through the streets. It had been a decade since she last saw Helscope, and now she was there five years before she first saw it in her last life. For all she knew, the alleyway she was looking to hide her teleportation circle in didn't yet exist. She eyed the area nervously and then spotted it.

"I need to get a drink," Sara said.

"You mind if I have fifteen minutes alone?"

"Can I wait out front?"

"Sure."

"Then fine." Edico set up in front of a building with a huge sign that read: Sarin Tavern, like a cloaked statue. Sara nodded to him, walked into the inn, and said, "Twalla. For me and whatever this woman wants." She sat beside a drunk woman around her age.

"Company or lez?" the woman asked hoarsely.

"'Cause if it's either, piss off."

"It's neither. Gonna pay you two swans to wear my royal cloak and say nothing about it. I'll come back in fifteen minutes." Royal cloaks burned bright like starlight underneath divination spells. It was how mages pointed out authority at a glance. The second she gave the cloak to the woman, Edico's divination spell that'd let him watch her drink inside the building without even staring at the door would pick up the woman. That was the plan.

"So someone's after you?" she asked when Sara put two platinum coins on the table and slid them over to her.

"No one's gonna attack a royal," she said, opening her cloak to show a royal pin.

"Oh, Delina, why'd you choose this day to fuck me," the woman muttered to herself. Delina was the god of fortune. She was the world's equivalent of saying God or Jesus for most people in LA. Many prayed to her. Reapers often scorned her name. This woman was doing the same because an Escaran Royal was asking for a favor she didn't want to go through with—even for the money. Any job worth two hundred gold coins always ended badly.

"Fifteen minutes," Sara repeated. The woman accepted the coins.

"In the bathroom." The two disappeared into the bathroom and switched cloaks. Sara then pushed her way through the kitchen.

"Where's the back door?" she asked authoritatively, and the cook on hand, lost and bewildered by the situation, pointed down a hallway.

"Thanks," she said. Kina mi atalia morkin phorna pino i pan sikinaian, Sara chanted when she walked out of the door. Her body blurred into a mist of aura as her visible body became invisible. She then ran to the side street, screaming, This fucking core! internally as she ran. Edico should've known I'd do this. Edico didn't give her a core healing elixir because he knew she would use magic recklessly. He was correct, but his mindset was backward.

She was going to use magic recklessly whether she was healed or not, and she had just used her core on a windbreak and acceleration spell for the better part of two hours. Sara gripped her chest when she got to Break Street's alleyway. It was a bad part of Helscope where muggers tended to hang around, waiting for potential marks to use as a shortcut to the main street. It was also a place with broken cobblestones capable of hiding things. Her invisibility cracked in front of two muggers.

Sképseis, she thought, blink-stepping in front of them with a dagger against their necks.

"Go and say nothing." She flashed a royal pin. Both men paled. One said, "On Delina's breath," and they both ran away. Sara then stomped the ground, shattering the cobblestones. She pulled out all the cobblestones, opened her spatial ring, laid out the teleportation array, and then used another spell to slowly restore the stones on top of it. She did all of this under partial invisibility, core burning, working as fast as she could—moving twice as slowly as she anticipated.

Just as she was finishing, her invisibility broke when someone bumped into her.

"Goddamn it!" Sara screamed, whipping out her blade and putting it against the intruder's neck. She immediately choked.

"W-Why?" It was a strange word to hear after meeting someone for the first time, but that's what this young man just experienced. To him, it was bizarre. To her, it was a surreal moment that should never have happened. The man she was holding a blade to was none other than Kyritus Senaco.