Euryphel walked Ian to the door, pulling it open to reveal an empty parlor in the outer palace. “Wait here for a few minutes,” he instructed, shutting the door with a gust of air.

Euryphel then opened the door again, frowning at the sight of a gray rat leaking juices onto the unkempt tile. “Urstes,” he called out.

The guardian was leaning on the wall, staring off aimlessly into space. He pushed off its blanched surface and gracefully stepped over to Euryphel’s side, passing through the threshold. The two walked into the sun room and stood by the parakeets’ little fountain.

“What do you think of him?” Euryphel asked, glancing at Urstes from the side.

“I don’t know the first thing about him,” Urstes replied. “The most I know is that he’s from somewhere North. And that he immediately seized your attention.” Urstes frowned. “Is he a visiting royal?”

Euryphel shook his head. “Nothing like that. He’s a practitioner.”

“That’s it?”

Euryphel gave him a small smile. “He’s a powerful decemancer, Urstes.”

The guardsman snorted. “He can’t be too powerful for you to enter the same room as him.” A powerful-enough decemancer could inflict a killing blow without moving a finger, as quickly as the blink of an eye. While there were ways to take precautions against such attacks, meeting with such a decemancer was ill-advised, even for someone like Euryphel with a potent Regret affinity.

Thankfully, the number of decemancers of that caliber in the entire world could be counted on one’s fingers. As far as Euryphel knew, none of them were free agents. While the decemancer was undoubtedly powerful, the prince had trouble accepting that he was at that level now. If all it took was a few years in a dilation loop to turn one into an unparalleled expert, they’d be as common as weeds, every family of means renting a chamber out or commissioning their own. Dilation chambers were tools, not miracle-makers.

Though if the decemancer isn’t that powerful now, he soon will be, Euryphel thought.

“I convinced him to do some work for me,” he explained. “In exchange, I said I’d break a joint-fulfillment oath on his mother.”

Urstes raised his eyebrows. “Is that all?” He held out a finger for the blue parakeet to grasp. “I never realized that the Crowned Prime’s time was so cheap.”

Euryphel ignored him. “He’s the one you told me about yesterday. The man chosen to enter the Infinity Loop.”

Urstes turned his head to face the prince, his lips curving downward. “The decemancer is from Selejo?”

“He’s from eastern Shattradan, don’t be ridiculous; nobody from Selejo would have a Solarian accent. But homeland aside, he escaped from Selejo; so at the very least, the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”

The guardian let out a dry chuckle. “He escaped from Selejo and immediately ran to you? Did you forget the purpose of the Infinity Loop?”

Euryphel sighed. “It–” he cut off abruptly, reconsidering his words. “I tested him thoroughly, Urstes. I’m convinced he isn’t a Selejan assassin.”

The guardian soon let the matter drop, changing topics. “Who should see to his mother’s oath?”

“Bring her to me,” the prince said. “I can ask her more questions about the decemancer.”

—

Euryphel dropped Urstes off by a servant corridor in the inner palace. He followed behind, waited for a moment, and then re-opened the door and walked into his bedroom.

The prime stripped off his outer robe and shoes, then lay on his bed, his bun forming an uncomfortable mass beneath his head. He pulled his hair loose with a tug, scattering his locks messily across the comforter.

He had canceled his afternoon meeting to deal with the decemancer, and still had about half an hour of spare time before his next meeting with the governor of Yuruv’a, a small province to the southwest.

“Under what circumstances did he come to know me?” Euryphel wondered aloud, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t think it was as enemies. In fact, the decemancer seemed almost incapable of attacking him: never once had Julian employed lethal force against the prince, no matter the provocation.

Euryphel had experienced their meeting over a hundred times, utilizing his Regret affinity to its utmost. His mind wandered to some of the more memorable moments.

—

Euryphel started the very first scenario as the guardians led the decemancer and his companions through the servant’s passageway. He had been meditating on his divan, concentrating on the arrows of fate within Zukal’iss. The arrows ignored all physical obstructions, so with his eyes closed, he could map out the entirety of the city. He’d noticed immediately when the decemancer and his small entourage approached, one of the decemancer’s arrows of fate particularly...distinctive.

Euryphel planned this first scenario to be the baseline for comparison.

He tracked the group’s movement with his fate arrows while using his wind elementalism to communicate with the guardians, whispering commands in their ears. He didn’t give Urstes or the others any odd instructions; the group naturally split off as the servant’s passageway came to an end, with the decemancer going toward the inner palace and the women the outer palace.

Urstes walked the decemancer over to a door in a small, less-traversed courtyard. Before the guardsman could open the door that would temporarily lead to the sun room, Euryphel used his wind elementalism to send a few words to his guardian’s attentive ears: “Attack him.”

After years of working together, Euryphel trusted that Urstes would carry out the order without hesitation, even if his commands seemed absurd or suicidal.

From deeper inside the palace, where the sun room lay, Euryphel could hear the resounding crack of rock as Urstes attacked the decemancer. Yet the sounds of Earth elementalism were short-lived, and Euryphel watched as wisps of violet-tinged, oily darkness spilled out from beneath the door and into the sun room’s main chamber. His parakeets screeched and cowered; a moment later, the decemancer stepped into the sun room as if nothing had happened, earth shattering loudly on the door just as it closed behind him.

Euryphel waited for the decemancer to strike. Dying within a scenario was uncomfortable but ultimately harmless, and sometimes necessary in order to gauge the intentions of the enemy. But rather than attacking, the decemancer stood quietly at the center of the room. He opened his mouth to speak, but Euryphel lashed out, hoping to force the hand of his opponent.

The first glaive of wind threw the decemancer against the wall, but he quickly regained his composure enough to block the subsequent flurry of blows. A look of confusion came over his face; he tried to raise his voice again, but just over a minute since the start of the scenario had elapsed: Euryphel snapped back to his original position on the divan.

Round 2, Euryphel thought to himself as he reappeared. He tried to keep track of his scenarios, but usually failed as the countless variations stacked up.

Euryphel started the next scenario a bit differently, choosing to change up the paths of the guardians. Rather than having them separate out the group, he decided to bring them all to one of the rooms in the outer palace. For purposes of observation, Euryphel linked the sun room to a door in the outer palace.

“Head to the Ramsay Room,” he instructed the guardians. There was a particularly good viewing angle in the hall across from the Ramsay Room; with a small scope, his wind elementalism, and his End arrows, Euryphel found the corner alcove an excellent location to view engagements.

At this point, there was still a good forty-five seconds left to the scenario, and everyone was just where he wanted them. With a bitter, knowing smile, the prince began to recurse.

Wasting no further time, Euryphel used wind elementalism to signal the guardians to attack. Guardian Urstes split the floor in half, forming a fissure in the earth. The earth around the fissure surged up like the craggy jaws of a massive beast, attempting to swallow the decemancer and the women whole.

The other three guardians jumped to action just behind Urstes. Guardian Por’sha cloaked herself in darkness and took a wind-empowered leap toward the earthen maw. Meanwhile, Guardian Druni stepped toward a pipe broken by Urstes’ unconventional remodeling and funneled its gushing liquid to Guardian Zuliman. Zuliman then used the water to form barriers of enforced mud around the area, closing off avenues of escape from the Ramsay Room.

Euryphel watched as the decemancer and his companions shot out of the earthen jaws just before they snapped shut; at the same time, each of the people in the room stopped moving, as though stuck in a block of ice. While Zuliman and Druni appeared to have trouble keeping up the stream of water and forming the barrier while physically arrested, Urstes and Por’sha continued their assault, using earth and wind, respectively, to direct their bodies’ movements.

The decemancer and the two women floated in the air above the destroyed floor.

“I don’t want to fight you,” a tired-sounding baritone called out.

The guardians ignored him completely. Por’sha sent a gale towards the decemancer’s entourage, aiming to slam them into the ceiling. A moment later, Urstes’ earthen jaws ascended upward behind the decemancer, boxing him in; the scene was reminiscent of a shark leaping from water to catch a seal.

Euryphel felt the scenario begin to strain as the last second came to its conclusion; before he could see the end of the engagement, he snapped back to his recursion checkpoint just moments before the start of the previous scenario’s fight.

From his alcove across from the Ramsay Room, he considered a plan for the third scenario. After a moment of contemplation, he whispered for only Druni to attack, and for her to specifically use lethal force on the woman with hair tied into a severe bun: the non-practitioner.

Druni’s hand was already on the woman’s back when Euryphel issued the kill command. Without warning, the woman dropped dead, her heart imploding within her chest.

From the engagements so far, Euryphel had gleaned that the deceased women’s companions were Life and Death practitioners, respectively, meaning that they would immediately notice the woman’s depleted vitality.

The Life practitioner jolted to the side as though struck, her face aghast with horror. Her eyes locked onto the figure of Druni, whose hand hovered in the air inches from the non-practitioner’s collapsing figure.

The decemancer’s eyes flashed red-violet; Druni dropped dead just as suddenly as the non-practitioner woman, her body thumping softly on the marble. Though unlike the woman slain by her hand, Druni’s death was far messier: her body was covered in lesions, as though every bone within her body had splintered outward through her skin. Euryphel noticed one particularly nasty, curved shard jutting through her eye, likely part of the woman’s collapsed skull.

The Life practitioner staggered backward, her entire body trembling. But suddenly, a spark of determination shone in her eyes. She regained her faculties and dashed toward the decemancer. “It’s a Regret scenario, Julian! They’d never dare kill your mother like this. Calm down!”

Euryphel snorted. This woman is probably more than just a Life practitioner. A Beginning practitioner, most likely. This will complicate things if I want to test them all together.

While the decemancer did kill Druni, his first instinct was to lunge to the side and catch the falling woman. It was only after he was cradling her limp form in his arms, shock clear on his features, that Druni’s body tore itself apart. Euryphel could both see and sense with wind the way the man’s hands trembled–perhaps from grief, or rage; the prince couldn’t be certain.

Upon hearing his companion’s warning about being in a Regret scenario, the decemancer–Euryphel now knew him to be called Julian–didn’t immediately respond.

Euryphel watched with rapt attention, interested to see how he would react. Would he trust the words of his companion?

The decemancer looked around at the other guardians, all of whom were stationary, showing no signs of aggression. His figure slumped and dropped to the floor, the dead woman draped over his knees. Rather than retaliating against the other guardians, Julian pressed a hand to his face, covering his eyes. His shoulders convulsed slightly, as though wracked by sobs.

Euryphel noticed a tear bypass the decemancer’s hand and streak down his cheek. Before he could see anything more, the prince snapped back to the alcove in the hall at the same time as before.

Euryphel frowned, considering whether to keep testing the group together. Ultimately, he decided against it: bringing a Beginning practitioner into the mix would add unnecessary unknown variables.

He dissolved his checkpoint, then terminated the scenario early, this time snapping back to the sun room.