The biggest problem in power-based construction is that there is no way to sustain a construct without its original creator returning to do so. Layering can help, but even that is subject to decay and instability over time. Power constructs can be used to great effect in one's own home, so long as you're always there to maintain them, but the more complicated the construct the harder it is to ensure it is created perfectly and the shorter duration its manifestation will last.

As nice as it sounds to conjure advanced mechanisms in their entirety from nothing, it has proven far more economically sound to instead use that power to reinforce and repair physical constructions which can outlive their initial creators.

-Breaking Dreams, Building Futures

Desten 4 lay unmoving, floating about three inches above a bed in a well-appointed hospital room. Several tubes connected him to small machines stacked along the wall by the head of the bed. He was thin, frail from long inaction, eyes half-open but completely unmoving. If not for his steady breath and the power pulsing through him I’d have thought he was dead.

His aura clung close to his body, a thick layer of flickering golden light shot through with iridescent glimmers of blue and red and silver that flashed and faded. The core of power beside his heart pulsed a different hue each second, yellow, blue, yellow, red, silver, yellow, red, yellow, yellow, blue, silver, yellow … patternless, each flicker threatening to destabilize his aura. It thinned in places, bulged in others, fluctuating like a gelatinous liquid across his body with each pulse of his unstable power.

“His aura and power seem to have been corrupted, somehow. He’s strong enough that it hasn’t been able to kill him, but it seems to be getting worse. At first the fluctuations stayed fairly close to his own, now it’s manifesting distant hue ranges and with greater frequency. I’m not sure how long he’ll survive.”

“But he might wake up?” Desten 3 asked. “It’s possible. Right?”

“We don’t know. This is a unique case as far as we can tell. There are no records of a malady matching this description ever existing in the recorded past.”

"What about unrecorded past?" I asked. "Or, distant, buried recorded past? Desten and I are both well acquainted with researching. Is there anything we could do to help?"

"Well, it is true that we haven't had the time to scour deep archives for a solution. It's possible you could find something we've missed. Our medical records only go back about three hundred years with any reliability."

I turned to Desten 3. “Sounds like we have a research project to work on.”

“If there’s anything to find, we’ll find it,” he assured the healer, then smiled at me. “See, Astesh? I knew you were a good one to join the team.” He stepped closer to the bed. “Don’t worry, Desten. We’ll figure this out.”

I spent another hour discussing Desten 4’s condition with the healers while Desten 3 took notes about everything they could tell us regarding his symptoms and their progression.

The fluctuations in his power were strengthening at a disturbing rate. They predicted that within another year his power would reach a deadly intensity level. “He’s already burning through food almost as fast as we can pump it into him, if the consumption keeps increasing his body will be unable to keep up.”

The increase in strength also came with an increased hue range, stretching further and further from his initial innate yellow. I’d heard about hue shifting slightly with time and practice, but nothing like this. The healers said much the same. It was unheard-of, yet it had happened.

Whatever Desten 4 had managed to do, he seemed to have broken whatever limiter kept nobles’ power within their control. Maybe. I still didn't know enough about power, alchemy, or Desten 4 to guess exactly what he’d done to himself.

Once I’d asked every question I could think of that might be relevant, I thanked the healers and we left.

“You said he’s an alchemist?” I asked once Desten 3 and I were alone. “I’d imagine he must have been doing some fairly extreme tinkering to figure out this thing, right? So whatever happened, it’s likely that it’s a side-effect of his research and something went wrong. Have you been to his lab or workshop to investigate?”

Desten shook his head. “I wouldn’t have the first clue what I was looking at.”

“Well, me neither, but he might have left notes. Do you know where he worked?”

“From his house. I … I haven’t been over there since …” he trailed off uncomfortably.

I nodded in understanding. “I can go check it out, if you want to get started at the library and record offices.”

Desten nodded gratefully. “It wouldn’t be the same without him there,” he said apologetically. “You can tell Retti that you’re a friend of mine, she knows we work together.”

“I’ve actually been over there for lunch before, when I was interviewing Desten 5— I mean, er, you know, Jr, their son, uh—”

Desten raised his eyebrows at me. “Five, huh?”

I laughed nervously. “It’s just how I keep track, I’ve talked to a lot of Destens.”

“How many Destens have you interviewed?” He grinned. “And more importantly, what number am I?”

“You’re three.”

“So what do I have to do to get promoted to number one?”

“It’s not like that, it’s the order in which I met them. Well, except 4— your alchemist, I mean, I met his son but since he was older, even if he wasn’t there—”

“Are you making excuses for your internal Desten numbering?”

“Maybe?”

Desten laughed.

“Come on, let’s get to it.” I stepped into the air, but Desten didn’t follow me. I glanced back, to find him watching me with a thoughtful expression. “What?”

“Are you … alright?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I drifted back down. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I should ask you that. You seem … different.”

“Really? How so?”

“More … focused? Engaged? Before, it often felt like you were only half paying attention.”

“Oh. Well, I recently had a long time to think about what’s really important to me. And, I realized, that I haven’t been a very good friend to you even after everything you’ve done for me. So …” I trailed off awkwardly, uncertain.

“Hmm. You did abandon me for weeks with no news. I almost thought you were the one who’d been killed, when I first heard about it.”

“Someone else got killed?”

“You hadn’t heard? That’s one of the main reasons I’m back here, apart from you abandoning me. Wightok canceled everything they had scheduled, closed their borders completely. The last verdis game had to be moved to Sarosa. It was a huge disruption.”

“Who died?”

“Evein Wightok.”

I’d never heard of him. But that didn’t mean much; Wightok was small, insignificant, and far from the Sarosa and Varon region where I’d spent most of my life. I’d never even visited Wightok territory. “Someone important?”

“No. He was a kid. Not even old enough to duel. Went missing on his way home from volunteering with the preparation committee. They knew something was wrong when all his constructs went out at once. By the time they found him, he was dead and torn apart.”

My heart sank. While I was convalescing, killer Desten had struck again. There was no way this was the usual young idiots following a stupid dueling fad. “Do we know anything about Evein’s family?”

Desten shrugged. “I haven’t been following the story, to be honest. I only know that much because Wightok canceling was such big news. It’s been decades since any house canceled touring completely, and the verdis circuit had to scramble to find a replacement host for the semifinals.”

“Over one kid? But haven’t people been turning up dead regularly? Why start paying attention now?”

“Because this wasn’t a duel, this was murder. Not even subtle.”

“Were there any spectrum traces? If they found him soon enough—”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask someone in Wightok, and they’re closed to visitors. This isn’t the sort of thing we can solve, Astesh. We need to work on the societal issues that we can address. The thinking and the planning are our forte. Leave the spectrums to the investigators.”

I sighed. He was right, whatever happened in Wightok wasn’t within my power to solve.

Wait.

“Where’s abridged right now?” I asked, struck by an idea.

Desten thought a moment. “Novarot, alongside reverse. Why?”

“I need to find Trancy.”

“Who?”

“Trancy Wightok, Desten 6’s girlfriend. She might be able to find out more.” She’d seemed reasonable enough, though she had avoided me after the first day. But I’m sure once I explained things to her, she’d be receptive. And by ‘explain things’ I meant come up with a very convincing story.

Desten shook his head. “You can’t fix every problem in the world by yourself. How about we focus on one at a time?”

“Desten 4 can wait. He’s got months to live even if we don’t find the solution right now. But these people are being killed while I stand by and do nothing. I have to move faster.”

“Astesh, calm down. It’s tragic, but there’s nothing you or I can do about it.”

“I can. I know I can. I just need more information …” I sighed as reality caught up with me.

The chances were good that I wouldn’t be able to find Trancy; chances were even higher that she’d refuse to talk to me. Even if I could convince her to drop everything and rush back to Wightok, what would she be able to learn? If they find spectrum traces of yellow and red, if they don't, what would that even change?

“Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “Maybe I need to focus on one thing at a time.”

“Research Desten’s condition first, solve global political tensions tomorrow?”

“And stop a killer in between if we have the time,” I agreed.

“I’ll start collecting a list of archives with documents from before the current era," Desten said. "You still willing to check his workshop?"

“Yep. We’ll meet back at your place in a few hours?”

We spent another few minutes discussing logistics, then parted to go our separate ways. I remembered where Desten 5’s house was, and it was the matter of but moments to fly over. I knocked, but no one answered. I peered through the window, but the interior was dark. Oh, right. I’d forgotten his family was touring on the reverse circuit. They’d be in Novarot now.

Was there another way in? I circled the house looking for a back door to the workshop, and located it in the back garden. It was closed, but not locked. I pushed the door open, then hesitated. This felt weird, but I wasn’t going to steal anything or cause any harm, so I stepped inside. My power gently increased its glow until I could see everything clearly.

It looked more like a lab than a workshop, vials of brightly-hued liquids and powders carefully labeled with sequential numbers and letters lined the shelves across the walls, metal and glass contraptions whose use I couldn’t begin to guess set carefully on tables through the space. By the far wall, a bookcase held dozens of books, while a desk to the right held neat stacks of pages.

But something felt off. The room seemed dead, empty, lifeless. It took me a moment to realize why; there was no powerlight painted in the corners for illumination, none of the ubiquitous little support constructs glowing anywhere. Indeed, now I was looking, I saw how some of the contraptions of glass and metal lay crooked or uneven, one had fallen and shattered on the table, another lay in a disassembled pile.

I could easily imagine everything when it had been held together with power constructs, the stability and brilliance, but now it lay dead and cold. I could see why Desten 3 wouldn’t want to come back here with Desten 4 gone. It was hard enough for me to see it in this state, I couldn’t imagine how it would feel for someone who was used to it bright and alive and occupied.

I shook aside the melancholy thoughts and crossed to the desk. The pages were stacked in neat piles, but each pile was as haphazard as anything. Most were single paragraphs or lines, sometimes quotes, most with a hasty notation of a book title and date, some with a location or a person’s name.

So, his research was a bit less organized than my own, and considerably more so than Desten 3’s. I flipped through the stacks to get a feel for what each contained. The first was about powerstones: classifications of the colours, training regimens for increasing power, methods for repairing a damaged stone before it destabilized enough to kill its host, speculation on how inheritance of colours worked, anecdotes about instances when an incompatible childstone had been used due to deception on the part of the parents, and more in that vein.

I found a handful that seemed useful, particularly those about attempting repair to a damaged stone without harming the person. I hesitated uncertainly, but we were trying to save his life, so I pushed down the impulse to never tamper with someone else’s documents and slipped them from the stack to show Desten 3.

The second stack was incomprehensible for the most part, a lot of math formulas and recipes, probably related to the potions on the walls, but none of which I could understand. The third contained several pages from various Sarosi religious texts, most related to the Lost God. Many I was familiar with, which I found interesting. I hadn’t realized the nobility believed the same things we did. Or maybe it was related to his quest to understand commoners. I scowled, vaguely disquieted at the thought, and moved on to the last stack.

This last contained a lot of details about the body, diagrams complete with squiggles and focus points and enough descriptions that I began to feel mildly disturbed about how anyone had learned this much. If not for the fact that Desten 4 had been unconscious for almost a year now, he might well have jumped to the top of my suspect list. Why would anyone need to know this much about what people looked like on the inside? It just felt wrong.

I flipped through them quickly, but found nothing of particular note. Feeling weird and mildly disturbed, I took the pages I’d selected to show to Desten 3 and left, carefully closing the workshop door behind me.