She sat on the edge of the canyon wall, her legs dangling from the overlook. To better soak up the power of the false ethereal sun, she’d removed her shoes and outer garments, stripping down to a modest wrap around her chest and a skirt hanging on her waist.

Ash spent the majority of his time with Ian, but checked on Maria at least once a day to status her on the curriculum. It wasn’t as ambitious as Ian’s at the outset, but her Sun affinity’s rapid advancement had prompted Ash to make frequent revisions.

Maria knew that he had been tracking her advancement closely, always statusing her wristband and asking her to explain her progress in her own words. She was still surprised that he didn’t have a better way of quantifying her progress.

Eyes closed, her head hanging back toward her shoulders, she reflected on the nature of ascending to the pinnacle.

At lower levels of affinity, advancement was cut and dry and involved hitting developmental checkpoints. Sun affinity–and more specifically, fire elementalism–had a rigid progression. First, someone manifested heat. Then they gained the ability to create fire, then to control a single tongue of flame, then cast an area of effect barrage, and so on. Accordingly, practitioner universities–like the one Ian attended, Academia Hector–sorted practitioners into classes based on affinity level, assisting them in developing relevant competencies.

At the peak practitioner level, there weren’t obvious competencies to develop. Before then, skill and insight shaped the development and application of the core competencies at each echelon of power. Divergence was most often realized in affinities like Death that had multiple complicated sub-specializations. While Death practitioners could walk all specialization paths, mastering everything required too much time and most practitioners had a knack for one sub-specialization over the others. Practitioners had always been rare enough that any middling affinity brought wealth and power–there was no incentive for most to do more than the bare minimum of practicing the same sub-discipline every day.

Ambition was dangerous.

People like Ian who mastered all aspects of Death were anomalous, but even Ian had a preference for osteomancy–the shaping of bones–and animancy–the distillation of Death energy into soul gems. These specializations were what influenced the path of a peak practitioner approaching the pinnacle. She’d read all kinds of biographies of powerful Sun practitioners and analyzed how they’d developed their practice. It had all been pointless until her Sun affinity awakened from quasi-dormancy.

But as she’d researched the myriad paths of peak practitioners, Maria endeavored to break down their personal successes, juxtaposing paths of progression. As a girl, she’d delved into the problem with youthful enthusiasm, convinced that she’d be the one to find the secret to success–and with it, the key to unlocking both her Sun affinity and her mother’s affection.

To no one’s surprise, she’d failed.

As she grew older, she attributed her failure to a lack of data points. Peak practitioners were rare. Moreover, data on Sun practitioners, particularly those who wielded fire elementalism, was locked down and unavailable because they were strategic assets–in other words, living weapons of the state.

Which brings us to the Infinity Loop, Maria thought. More practitioners, more data points, and perhaps finally answers. I thought we could write the book on advancement to the pinnacle and position Selejo to lead the West into a new era, eclipsing the East.

Ash had lived for who knows how long and must have met innumerable ascendants, all of whom had attained mastery in at least one affinity. Since Ash considered himself a scientist and was personally vested in the study of developing affinities, she expected him to have the answers that she’d failed to find years ago. In Eternity, he had all the data points he needed.

And yet–he gave her a bracelet and asked her to explain herself in her own words. The bracelet was the most basic form of quantification and mirrored the capabilities of the potentioreader back home. She understood its utility. But explaining herself, freeform? No targeted questions? No measures of achievement?

Was the path of ascension really so inscrutable, her ambitions nothing more than hubris? If that wasn’t hubris, then entering the Infinity Loop and hoping to find salvation certainly had been. Maria remembered her desperation then with distinct clarity.

Her mind drifted...and she lost herself in those bittersweet memories.

—

There hadn’t been adequate time to configure the Infinity Loop for her specific usage. In the end, Zilverna’s loop scenario had been selected because it started in Selejo–though in Pardin, not Cunabulus, as would have been ideal–included Dunai, and Maria had already watched recordings of it. The Dunai of the Infinity Loop was outdated–as the Fassari Summit made clear–but it was better than nothing.

But Maria didn’t make Zilverna’s naive mistake of attacking Dunai from the very beginning. No–she’d first consolidated her burgeoning Sun practice. Her End was already at its peak and difficult to improve substantially, even with years of dilated time to work with. Sun, on the other hand, was a reservoir of untapped potential.

It was as though she were a blind man given sight. She awakened her Sun affinity when Zilverna died, but she hadn’t even realized the metaphorical muscle was there until later, and hadn’t known how to flex it.

But in the loop, she could work the new affinity with single-minded dedication. Her first goal was to solidify basic control over her practice using her knowledge of the fundamentals.

I wake with the dawn, when the sun rises and enhances my practice. I kill myself at the sun’s setting to begin again.

Soon, practicing her Sun affinity became as easy as breathing. It was almost like limbering up a sleeping limb, or remembering knowledge that she’d forgotten.

There was a limit to what she could learn alone. It had taken Zilverna months to return to Cunabulus to learn from Selejo’s best practitioner instructors. The stubborn boy had been prideful enough to think that he could master his affinity through sheer grit and repetition like a certain decemancer.

It took Maria two weeks to progress through basic mastery of the fundamentals. As soon as her progress slowed, she immediately traveled to her palace, the Cuna. Because she appeared as herself–the Eldemari–she had anyone she desired at her disposal. She received instruction from her very best practitioners, practiced against her generals and confidantes. She told them of the situation and the dire straits their nation faced. All rallied to the cause, pushing her beyond her limits, growing her power faster than she’d ever thought possible.

She effectively ignored Dunai for the first year and a half spent in the Infinity Loop. He didn’t know or care who she was; from his perspective, he’d just escaped the loop and found his mother.

But her curiosity won out, eventually, and she’d found him. Without her sending agents after him, Dunai had actually remained in Selejo. Once he realized nobody was going to come to enslave him–and that somehow, he’d managed to fly under the radar–he had even returned to Academia Hector. In the loop, there was no Ari, no ascendant. The loop didn’t recognize Dunai as a half-step ascendant, just a peak practitioner.

What a mess we made, Maria had thought bitterly, realizing the reality that might have been, had things been simpler...had Dunai not crossed that final threshold into immortality.

It was at that point that Maria realized they may have grossly misunderstood Dunai, a problem she intended to rectify.

She found him outside of Academia Hector by the ocean where he’d practiced in the loop recording. He’d almost freezed to death, then, but now he came ready for the chilly weather.

She’d observed as he played with his practice, indulging in the joy of creation, of bending bone and shell to his whims. Bone whales and dolphins flew over the waves, fish dancing among them.

She’d seen a figment of that joy for creation in the Infinity Loop recording, but it was different seeing it in person, and it was different seeing a Dunai who thought that his future was bright and unfettered.

She’d held out her hands, had let fire dance upon them, and had frowned. She knew why she was in the loop, understood her grim task. She knew what had to be done.

She’d let that desperate need both consume her and grow distant. She couldn’t maintain her initial urgency forever; soon what drove her on was her tenacious determination and iron sense of duty. But she was burning out, like a taper in the wind, down to the end of her wick.

In that moment, watching Dunai above the waves conducting an orchestra of bones, she wanted what he had. She wanted to understand.

And she realized who her next teacher needed to be.

She’d approached him then, on a whim. At first he startled, plunging the bones into the water. But she had shaken her head, told him not to worry.

He’d fucking killed her in an instant. She couldn’t exactly blame him–she’d found out his secret–but seriously? He couldn’t have had time to properly look at her and discern her identity. He hadn’t even asked her any questions. Maybe it was because she’d startled him.

Maria tried a different approach next time. She found him alone in a coffee shop outside the university. She knew he’d recognize her–almost anyone would, since she was the Eldemari and in Selejo–so she borrowed the services of one of her Life practitioner retainers and changed her face.

She’d sat down in the chair across from him and taken out a glosspad, pretending to be busy.

“Excuse me,” Dunai had said, surprising her by initiating. His gaze was intense, scrutinizing. “Why have you come to me?”

She’d raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Lowering his voice, he’d said, “I can sense a powerful practitioner when I meet one. You’re the most powerful I’ve ever met, aside from myself. You don’t seem to have bad intentions, so who on earth are you?”

She’d frozen at that. “If I tell you the truth, you must promise not to kill me, at least for today.”

He’d frowned, but nodded his head. “I can agree to that.” Then he’d smiled softly. “Assuming I’d be able to kill you, anyway.”

—

There was a part of herself that she’d succeeded in hiding from Dunai, when he’d entered her soul in the lightless plane. It was a part of her that she’d shunted to the furthest corners of her mind, a part so filled with self-loathing that it was but a shadowy stain.

It was the part of her that had fallen in love with the decemancer who taught her to love fire, who showed her that advancement didn’t need to be painful and solitary.

That part of her had broken when the loop suddenly ended and she remembered why she’d entered it and what she must do. Who she needed to kill.

She was the Eldemari. She could do anything, kill anyone, do what needed to be done at any cost to preserve her nation and forge a path for her son. There was no room in the Eldemari’s heart to love the half-step ascendant Ignatius Julian Dunai.

So why was it that at the moment the man had been weakest–when he’d entered the soul of the dying Euryphel and placed himself at the mercy of Ari...

Why was it she’d interceded on his behalf?

How could I let someone who loves so strongly–loves his practice, loves his friend, perhaps, in another world, another time, loves me–extinguish?

Maria hated herself for that moment of sympathy and weakness. For she knew Dunai hated as much as he loved, and in this world, she was certainly no object of affection.

She hated herself for loving the man who undid her world, but in truth...she had never hated him.

—

“Let me be frank,” Ash began. He held the stalk of a white flower in his hand, then plucked a petal free and tossed it over the edge of the desert canyon. In the intense light of the overhead ethereal energy, the petal blended into the bleached backdrop. Maria’s eyes tracked its descent as it flipped back and forth, eventually falling out of sight behind a pillar of rock before reaching the canyon floor. “I underestimated you.” He glanced down at her colored wristband. “You’ve already increased your Sun affinity by two percent.”

Maria tried to hide her surprise at the admission. “I’ve been developing it non-stop since you brought me here. The ethereal Sun confluence is an incalculable aid.” Moreover, training here was similar to training within the Infinity Loop. She was isolated and driven, freed from external distractions.

Maria didn’t desire worldly comforts. If she was honest with herself, training in isolation–especially when her improvements were so tangible–was preferable to being the Eldemari back home in Selejo. Still, she much preferred advancing with Ian.

Ash sighed wistfully. “An initial advancement period happens when you first awaken. Intense external influences might prompt a so-called second awakening, especially in those with low affinities, accompanied by a brief period of rapid advancement. For both cases, you should be past the window of opportunity.”

“Perhaps it has something to do with being a lich?” Maria suggested.

Ash smiled. “That’s what I’ve been trying to determine. Unfortunately, your situation with Ian is rather unique. He’s advanced more rapidly than an overwhelming majority of ascendants. Moreover, he has you. Of all the Death practitioners who ascend, how many ascend within five years of awakening? And of those, how many have sufficient mastery of necromancy to create a lich while still within the rapid advancement period?”

“Very few,” Maria replied. Their group hadn’t met or heard of many ascendants, but aside from Ian, none so far satisfied those criteria. As a necromancer, Achemiss was half there, but Maria was certain the man slowly developed his affinity over time. He wasn’t a prodigy like Ian who mastered decemancy on his own and without a teacher, relying only on a book and his intuition.

Ash’s gaze was hungry. “Ian is the only practitioner I have ever met to satisfy those criteria. I think that as his construct, you also benefit from his rapid advancement.”

If true, that was an extraordinary boon for her development.

Maria hated how Ash micromanaged them and kept her and Ian separated, even finding a way to silence their lich bond because it was a supposed distraction. Karanos pushed them hard, but he was never so controlling. He respected their autonomy as adults and practitioners.

Ash clearly thought of them as–and treated them like–experimental subjects. But there was a part of her that understood that urge, the desire to keep them in a controlled environment to obtain the best results. If that was the price she had to pay for lasting power, she was willing to pay it. Ian...wasn’t as forgiving. He didn’t understand why Ash needed to keep them on such a tight leash when they were internally driven to advance and would work hard on their own.

Ash’s chitin armor began to tremble and clack like rocks in the first seconds of an earthquake. His hand darted forward and clasped the projector displaying Maria’s curriculum. To Maria, the text looked like jumbled nonsense. When Ash removed his hand, she could tell that the gibberish was different.

“You can listen to the dictation of the revised curriculum later; for now, I’ll be reciting it as necessary.” He darted away, then stood expectantly in the distance. White, violet, and gold wildflowers covered his shins, marking the end of the Sun confluence’s desert climate.

“Where are we going?” Maria called out, taking one last look at the desolate, bone-strewn canyon before joining Ash. The grass wiped dusty grits away from her bare toes.

He grinned at her, fangs glinting. “To Ian.”