Tala waited with bated breath for Master Grediv to tell them what their mission would be.

-You know, he didn’t actually say he had a mission for you.-

He implied it, though, and I don’t see a reason he’d imply without anything to back it up.

-That’s fair, I suppose.-

The Paragon straightened slightly, clearly playing it up a bit. Finally, he shrugged and smiled, “You all need to get to know one another, and Mistress Tala needs to settle in, but our detection grids have indicated that we’ll have a precise location for a new cell nailed down somewhere between one and two weeks from now.”

Tala slumped in disappointment. Not going out right away?

Mistress Cerna grimaced. “So soon? We’ll only have one rotation off before then.”

Tala frowned, tilting her head in confusion. “Rotation off?”

“Oh! There are always eight units ‘on’—each in charge of the defense of an eighth of the wall at a given time—with seven additional units in reserve—on standby—and one unit with eight hours completely free.”

“But… most people aren’t needed at any one time. Right?”

Master Clevnis smiled ruefully, laying his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “She can feel the stress of possibly being called to action. It interferes with her mindset for tasks that can’t easily be paused.”

The woman was hunched forward just a bit, hands up as if ready to fight. “Must be ready. Always ready.”

Tala decided not to comment on that. Instead, she asked about what seemed to be an obvious flaw in the system, “What about when a unit leaves the city, like ours will in the next couple of weeks?”

Master Grediv was the one who answered. “In situations where we need one or more units outside the city, we have six units in reserve, or fewer as the situation demands.”

It seemed like overkill to Tala, but she supposed it made sense to have some order of operations for calling on reinforcements. They shouldn’t need the process in the near future, but having the plan well ingrained and established would make it work better when it was needed.

That brought a thought to mind. If they plan for six or seven units in reserve… the final part of the wanings must be insane.

-Seemingly, yeah.-

“What in zeme could possibly require such levels of defense?”

The Paragon smiled. “It’s quite rare, but when it happens, it is generally the result of several egg-laying, hive collective magical beasts getting established and coordinating for a unified assault. There was one waning where we were swarmed by bombardier chicks on the ground, acid spewing tunnellers from beneath, and an odd, hive variation of blade-wing falcons from above. Things were tight for a time, but we were able to eliminate the queens in the end before riding out the remainders. We have better detection arrays for such things these days, and more robust protocols.”

Tala grunted, nodding. Such a thing could have happened a thousand years ago for all she knew; they were just being vigilant. Probably reasonably so.

Mistress Cerna pulled the group’s focus back to the matter at hand. “Do we know anything about the nature of the cell?”

Master Grediv nodded. “In fact, we do. It is definitely conceptual based power that has been contained within. Beyond that, it’s too early to determine.”

“Very well. We shall be as ready as we can be.”

Master Grediv gave a shallow bow. “With that, I will leave you.” He turned to Tala. “Mistress Tala, if you desire a wall for your use, you are welcome to any within the Gredial compound. The guards will let you through the gate if you prefer to be within the complex itself.”

Tala gave a moderate bow. “Thank you, Master Grediv. I think I would like that. Rane owes me a few games of tafl, after all.”

“I’m sure he’d like that.” With another nod of acknowledgement, Master Grediv departed.

Mistress Cerna sidled up to Tala. “So… the Gredial boy?”

Tala frowned, looking up at the tall, lithe woman. “Rane? What of him?”

“Are you officially courting? Waiting for him to Refine? What? What’s the connection there?”

Tala looked around and found all of the other Refined had drawn closer, clearly interested in her answers.

“Do we really want to be talking about this?”

Terry chirped, bobbing happily.

Traitor… She glared at Terry, but he blithely ignored her.

Mistress Vanga shrugged. “It’s something we don’t know about you, and I imagine it will come up.”

Tala grimaced slightly, feeling uncomfortably on the spot. “I don’t know about your spouses or families. It hardly seems...” She had been about to say ‘fair,’ but she realized how childish that sounded. “I mean, there’s only one of me, and five of you. Can’t I learn something of you all, first?”

Mistress Vanga smiled. “Oh, my husband is up north, running the healing center in the city under construction. I’ll see him a couple of times before the waning is over, but I know he’s safe.” She placed her hand over her sternum, where her gate was. “He’s doing what he loves, and I’m doing what I love. Though, I do miss having him around. Master Grediv asked me to come here earlier than usual, so I’m missing five or ten years that I should have had with him, but we’ll manage. Four of our children are with him, though they didn’t go the route of healing. They like working with their hands, so the Builders’ Guild was just perfect for them. The grandkids are with them, too, though most of them are out of the Academy, as well.”

Tala blinked in surprise at the sheer volume of information contained in the short spout of speech.

Master Clevnis smiled, speaking next into the short silence, “You already know that Cerna and I are married. Our kids are scattered to the four winds, and we do our best to not have any under our wing around wanings. We’ve even managed to encourage the younger generations away from having babies around wanings. It keeps conflicts from arising.”

Master Limmestare gave a wan smile. “My wife is in the city, but she’s not quite Refined. Her sessions are… rather rough. She’ll get there eventually, but not before the waning concludes, in all likelihood. We haven’t had children yet because Rabetha wants our children to have as good a start as possible. I can hardly fault the choice, and we’re hoping for a few after she Refines.”

All eyes turned to Master Girt, all but Tala’s filled with ready empathy. He shrugged and gave a sad smile. “I lost my beloved during the final days of the last Marliweather’s waning. Our kids are grown, as are the grandkids. Never managed a good connection with the greats or great-greats.” He shrugged again. “This work keeps others from going through what I did, so it’s good work.”

Tala found herself at a loss. “I… thank you for being so open. I am truly sorry for your loss.”

He clapped her on the shoulder briefly. “It was more than half a century ago. The hurt will never go away, but you learn to work around it.”

She found herself nodding in the lengthening silence.

-So, are you going to answer their questions?-

Tala felt a bit silly about being reticent in opening up to these people after their easy sharing of such information, “Well…” She shrugged. “Rane is a good friend. I enjoy training and sparring with him, and we share many interests. He’s said he wants more than friendship, but hasn’t been pushy.”

Mistress Cerna nodded. “And how do you feel?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. Everything’s been a whirlwind since I left the Academy two years ago, and I don’t feel like I’ve had any time to really process what I want. I was hoping that taking it slow through the waning would help me figure it out.”

Mistress Vanga cleared her throat. “Very well, then. We won’t pressure you, dear.”

Master Clevnis nodded. “Our unit is on standby at the moment, but we’re on wall-watch in about an hour. Do you want this cycle to get settled in the city, or would you like to take the threat, if one comes, during this shift?”

Tala gave it some thought, then shrugged. “I think I’d like to get my hands a bit dirty. I can settle in after.”

“Alright, then. If there isn’t a threat on the walls, we can do a sweep outward to get you a ‘settling in’ fight, eh?”

She found herself smiling. “I think I’d like that. Thank you.”

* * *

Tala slammed backward into the outside of Alefast’s wall, cracks spiderwebbing away from her even as she was embedded slightly into the hard surface.

Ow…

Around her, the lingering echoes of magical resonance faded from the regional zeme.

Well, rust…I didn’t think it could hit me that hard—well, that fast. I need to end this quickly.

Immediately, she bent all her power and will to reducing her own gravity. This is going to be a long jump.

She slowly peeled herself out of the wall, being careful to not drop to the ground just yet.

Consider my options, be quick about it, Tala.

Master Clevnis shouted down from just a dozen or so feet above her, “When I suggested you gauge its strength first, I didn’t mean that you should take a hit!”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Yeah, well… That’s probably fair.

He called down one last thing, “Just take it out quickly. We can discuss better tactics for next time, afterward.”

She waved one hand in acknowledgement as she lifted her gaze from the base of the wall, grabbing more firmly onto the cracked wall and bending her knees to stay stable on her vertical perch.

Her focus was on what she faced: a familiar, if distant, figure.

Alefast had decided to welcome her back with the same type of creature that had sent her off at the end of her first visit.

A cyclops.

This one was Refined in power, its aura a strong, steady yellow.

Its club was massive and deceptively quick. Even so, the blow hadn’t actually hurt that much. Only its upward trajectory had sent her flying.

The others in the unit had said that two attacks in one day were unusual, but it generally heralded a bit of a lull afterwards, so they weren’t unwelcome.

Besides, the cyclops had come from the opposite direction of the small horde that Mistress Kaeti had dispatched.

Over her shoulder, Tala heard someone yelling, “What did she do to my wall!?”

Tala heard the buzz of another voice but didn’t pay close enough attention to make out all the words.

“Fine, our wall. What did she do to our wall?”

Tala glanced backward and up, taking in what seemed to be two Archons who were closing in on her unit, clearly irritated.

Huh, by being a bit embedded, I’m within the wall's camouflaging scripts, it seems.

But that wasn’t where Tala needed to be focused right then.

The cyclops stood more than fifty feet tall, about a quarter of a mile from the city walls.

That was a hard hit…

-Yeah, I don’t think we’d have been turned to mush from a downward strike, but let’s not test it, yeah?-

She only hesitated for a moment. Agreed. Still, this might be a good chance to try another thing.

She crouched lower into the wall, bunching her muscles and flooding her enhancement scripts and surface area augmenting scripts with power.

This would never work on the ground, it’s too loose. But with a wall for footing…?

-Sure, worst that can happen is that it works too well. They’d heal back right quick.-

She made an opening around her mouth through her metal shell and took a deep breath, beginning to fill her lungs and the air they contained with the equivalent of inverted endingberry power.

It was time.

When her breath held as much magic as she could reasonably force into it, she pulled out a set of siege orbs, grabbed onto one with each hand in as firm a grip as she could manage, as quickly as she could, but not frantically, her gravity was almost nothing.

Good enough.

Then, before she could really start to fall, she launched off of the city wall, using her will and her control over her iron to throw the material along with her, using its mass to add to her momentum rather than adding to her burden.

There was a concussion of sound and wind as her powerful leap was distributed across a huge area of wall, knocking dust free to fall toward the ground.

Her leap, while powerful, wasn’t going to get her all the way to her enemy quickly enough, and if he saw her coming, he’d take a swing that she’d bet would be painfully accurate.

So she flexed her will and power.

The target of the spheres' amplified gravity changed to the cyclops, still a good distance away.

I’m not using it to pull me. I’m already sailing toward it. I’m just making sure they make it to their destination.

There was a grinding in her mind as she stretched her understanding and conceptualization of her magics, but her Refined grip kept hold and her workings flared with redirected power.

She was jerked forward—even considering her already rapid pace—steadily accelerated in less than a second until the air was screaming around her, only her incredibly enhanced perception letting her complete the last part of her plan.

Even so, she felt the magical resonance crackle around her.

She was moving too fast.

Rust. I don’t know if two resonances in such close sequence will be better or worse.

At the last moment, she let go of the spheres, allowing them to slam into the beast’s torso, one into each shoulder, blasting the creature backward slightly with the initial hit.

She felt her magic relax, no longer edging on breaking her own working by letting it kite her along. Tala broke the working reducing her gravity, knowing she’d need to be able to move downward after she slammed into the big guy’s chest.

As for the cyclops, it was massive. So, it moved after the hit more like it had taken an arrow than a powerful shove.

An unbelievably small fraction of a second later, the club clipped Tala’s side mid-flight, driving the air from her lungs and sending her spinning.

Rust, he’s fast.

Her elk-leathers, reinforced by white steel, had protected her from much of the blow, but it still moved her with ease, as she was ballistic when he struck.

The dissolution working had rushed outward with her air in a tight circle before she went spinning off into a nearby tree.

The power was not wasted in the least. Instead, it had been drawn toward the most potent thing resisting it, focusing the disruptive magics against the cyclops’s flesh.

She’d noticed this behavior previously, but hadn’t really noted it. The dissolution would target solid objects and only move on to the air, itself, if it still had power remaining.

The particular variety of dissolution targets the strongest things first.

It was an incredibly useful realization, for later.

From her more stable, mirrored perspectives, Tala was able to see the dissolution eating at the cyclops’s tough skin, hair, and flesh, fighting against his defensive aura and winning, if barely.

She didn’t dare hope she’d left enough power behind to deal with the beast with the simple, dispersed working, no matter how potent.

As she deflected off a tree and slammed into the ground, she mentally changed the labels on the orbs that she’d followed in for the hit, even while chastising herself.

Let go sooner next time. Get up to speed, then let them get ahead. Don’t be so predictable upon engagement.

The orbs blossomed outward in freezing explosions, originating on either side of the great beast’s head.

The pressure waves were like twin hammer-blows, caving in the sides of the cyclops’s skull, even as the cold seemed to cloud over his eye, turning much of the moisture within the organ to crystalized ice.

Got him!

Then, the thing turned her way, raising its club over its mangled head.

Tala groaned, even as she scrambled to get her feet under her to leap away.

Their brain is near their heart to make room for the massive eye in their head. It’s not dead, it’s just blinded.

-And deafened, and... he probably can't smell much, either? I almost feel bad for him.-

No sympathy for the enemy, Alat.

She managed to launch herself to the side just before the club came down.

Even without a killing blow, Tala had clearly rattled the monster, as it was moving much slower now.

She thought through a half-dozen ways of whittling the beast down or killing it outright before she went with the simplest that came to mind.

She pulled Flow from its sheath and threw it with all the force and accuracy that she could, straight at the creature, using her connection to Flow to push the weapon into the form of a void-sword.

The blade struck straight through the colossal sternum, passing through the magically reinforced bone with relative ease, barely slowing before it stopped, sunk up to the hilt.

The cyclops immediately seemed to hunch in on himself, mangled shoulders bowing forward and curling in around the embedded weapon, even as he crouched downward, bringing his legs closer to Flow as well.

Huh, the void aspect might have been overkill.

-Yeah, I think you actually skewered his brain. That was a beautiful throw.-

Thank you. I’m quite proud of that.

-You know swords aren’t for throwing, right?-

They are when I can magically call them back to my hand, and they never dull.

-I suppose… I still feel like they aren’t a good fit for that purpose.-

Fine… I’ll practice more with throwing the glaive.

The void crawled outward from the blade, turning the beast a purplish black to Tala’s voidsight, before slowly dragging more of the cyclops inward.

Fascinating. Have we ever stuck the void-blade into something large and then just… left it there?

-I don’t believe we have, no.-

Seems pretty effective.

-He’s resisting, so it might not have worked as well if it were our opening move, but he’s disoriented and hurt enough that I think it will end him.-

And… you know, I think he’s probably braindead. What we’re seeing is purely passive resistance.

-Hmmm. Yeah, that probably factors too.-

The blade—aside from piercing the cyclops’s brain—was at least very near his heart, causing the iron in the monster’s blood to be claimed by Tala, and she could feel it being pulled out of the beast’s body and funneled into the dimensions of magic for her use, later.

Fascinating.

-It truly is.-

The cyclops dropped to his knees, his club—forgotten—tumbling to make a crater in the ground beside him.

A moment later, the tall humanoid had curled fully in on himself, and Tala could hear the sound of breaking bones as the no-longer-discernable-as-humanoid mass shrunk down, sucked inexorably into the void.

It’s almost too bad that cyclops are noted to have weaker magical defenses than average for their advancement.

-Yeah, this would be really useful on more powerful opponents, but I doubt it would work nearly this well on them.-

Yeah…

With what could almost have been thought to be a whimper—and a final crackle of splintering bone—the cyclops vanished, leaving Flow to fall the last few feet to the ground unencumbered.

Tala allowed the weapon to return to its knife form even as she walked forward to pick it up.

“Well done, Flow. You definitely made that easier.”

Tala took a look at the massive club. What even is that made of?

-No idea, but it could be valuable.-

Tala grunted. “Yeah, I’ll take it.”

She opened Kit and maneuvered the massive club inside.

It wasn’t precisely heavy for her, though it certainly wasn’t light.

More than anything, it was cumbersome and awkward to handle just because of how big it was.

She wouldn’t be pulling it out as some ‘surprise weapon’ anytime soon.

Unless…

-Yeah, we could find a way of anchoring you down, then it would just be about muscling the weight around.-

That could work, or we could massively amplify the gravity on it, then unleash it as a missile toward some evil griffon… or some other creature.

Alat chuckled. -Ahh, the one that got away.-

I’d kill it now.

-Sure you would, Tala. You’ve grown very strong.-

Spoils retrieved, Tala began her trek back toward the wall.

She had gotten about halfway back, when she began to detect fluctuations in the zeme around her.

Oh… rust. I made too much noise, magically speaking, didn’t I?

-I’d hoped the short magic-boom wasn’t sufficient, but yeah, it seems so.-

She turned around, seeing what appeared to be a small tide of arcanous and weakly magical creatures coming her way.

She opened her pouch and called inside. “Terry? Want to kill some things with me?”

A moment later, the avian flickered to beside her, sized so that his head was just above hers.

He seemed to take in the scene in an instant before giving her what was obviously an accusatory glance.

“Yeah, this is my fault. I wasn’t careful with my magical resonance.”

He let out a chuffing squawk, showing his amusement.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just mop up my mess and get back into the city. I want a bath, tonight.”

He gave her a long look, and she found herself grinning even as she pulled out a huge hunk of jerky.

“Thanks for having my back.”

He snapped the tossed piece out of the air before trilling and charging the incoming foes.

Yeah, why wait? She took off after him without a second thought.