The plan was simple: ruffle some feathers, make some noise, and see what came out of it. From the way Rex was finding it harder to hide his anger, I must be doing something correctly.

Rex gritted his teeth and drew in a deep breath, and when he seemed to have placed his emotions under control, he replied slowly, as if he was afraid I would not understand his statement,

"You are, however, asking me a great many questions about a conversation I did not have, a scholar I am not in the confidence of, a commander who does not report her movements to me, and you spouting nonsense while you look like you have not slept properly. Are you ill, Voss?"

I blinked. When he said it like that, he sounded very reasonable... too reasonable in fact, but there were gaps in his story, and I had seen strange things after several loops that defied meaning, but at the moment, I could not find the right words to reply with, and I said.

"I am in great shape, in fact, I had eight hours of pleasant sleep."

Rex frowned before he swept his hand to the side, "Then perhaps you should do what I am about to do. Go back to your tent, compose yourself and stop speaking nonsense. This expedition would be the greatest opportunity of our lives, and instead of preparing for it, you are here wasting time. What would Master Seravyn say if he saw you like this?"

He did not wait for my answer. He turned with conviction as if saying that the conversation was over, and walked the three paces to the front of his tent. His hand reached for the flap.

Rex had apparently shut me down with common sense, but there were things that he had missed.

The first one was that he had stopped breathing for one beat when I had quoted his own words back to him.

Any normal person would have responded with puzzlement, as he did, but that pause was not normal; it showed that I had spoken a truth he did not expect to hear from me, and in that brief moment, his mask had slipped.

He had not asked, in the full course of our exchange, what I thought Orath had found. Not once. That was the second thing that drew my attention.

He had said the scholar would be at the eastern face for some time, and he had said it with the certainty of a person who knew the scholar’s schedule, when the scholar’s schedule on the morning of an eruption was something Rex should have had no special access to.

This was the final straw; this noble brat was hiding something, and I was going to shake it out of him.

His hand was on the flap, and I had time for one more question, and it was the question I always wanted to ask, because everything had been slowly leading up to it.

In the past loop, I had glanced across the cookfire and seen him scribbling on a small flat object that had caught the light in a way that ordinary parchment did not, and I had known that it did not make sense.

"Hey," I said. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Rex paused with his hand on the tent flap.

"What about that golden sheet I see you carrying? Where do you put it? Your pockets are too small."

I had been in enough danger at this point to know when something had changed.

Rex slowly turned around, and it was hard for me to describe the expression I saw on his face because he did not have one.

His face was blank, like he was no longer concerned with the illusion of having to pretend that he had emotions, and I was seeing the true face of Rex.

It was as if I was looking at someone else, and for the first time since I had begun watching Rex Aldran, I was looking at the thing that lived inside the noble boy and not at the noble boy himself.

The part of me that had grown sharper during battle alongside my Observation had pointed out that Rex had turned without moving his feet.

I don’t know why my mind should notice that particular oddity, but I did not have the time to fully deliberate on this when Rex’s staff was already in his hand.

One moment, there was no staff in his hand, and the next, it was there. I saw a faint shimmer appear near his palm before the staff appeared out of thin air, and I suspected that this shimmer was due to Staff Resonance, but it was much higher than my own.

I knew that Rex was strong, but not that he was this strong. Attunement skills were something that we should not even consider under our fifth year, and only going through hell had I gotten mine, and yet, from just this faint shimmer, I could see that Rex was very far ahead.

Rex raised the staff, and another part of my mind noted that this was a position for casting.

I had time to register this, but I did not have time for anything else, as my mind was seemingly full with the surprise at Rex’s progress and the fact that he was going to attack me without any hesitation.

The cast left his staff before he had taken a breath to draw it, faster than normal, as if he had used this spell a thousand times before.

What leaped out of his staff was Flame, and it was not Acolyte Flame.

I knew this because Acolyte Flame produced a discharge of fire the size of a fist that traveled four or five meters before dispersing, and what left Rex’s staff was a column the width of a man’s chest that crossed the four meters between us in less time than it takes the eye to track a thrown stone.

Mortal Shell registered the incoming heat before my mind did. The weave in my chest tightened, the binding pulling tight across my body in the same instant, and I felt my body brace in a way I had not consciously called for, my left arm rising across my face, the staff in my right hand coming up in a guard position, my body choosing without consulting me.

Then the column of flame hit me like a heavy punch.