Tala only had to wait some five minutes before Adrill and Brandon came back up from the former’s workshop in the family’s basement.

“Mistress Tala! Good to see you.” The older man gave her a chaste hug, before pulling back and beaming at her, “Your gift has allowed me to forward my research so much further. Thank you.”

When last she’d seen him, she’d given a goodly quantity of endingberries for use in his research, mainly to protect him when he was doing more dangerous work. Tala had returned the hug briefly, giving a cheerful laugh, “I’m glad you got use of it. You didn’t let anyone else eat any, did you?”

He huffed a laugh in return. “Are you mad? I’m not going to casually give people a sip of liquid gold.”

“Well, I can get you more if you want.”

Artia cleared her throat. “Mistress Tala…”

Tala shrugged, speaking quickly so as to move the conversation along. “But we’ll see how it goes, regardless.”

She looked around, finding the blank, empty wall beside the main entrance to the shop.

“That’s perfect.”

With a quick motion, she tossed Kit against that wall, and the pouch blossomed into a door that was almost identical to the wide, double doors that currently stood open, inviting people who came to Artia’s stall to come deeper in.

Kit took the form of a single door, however.

Even so, the three mundanes let out sounds of surprise and appreciation.

Artia muttered under her breath, but Tala was easily able to catch it, “How much did I undercharge?”

Tala grinned at them all, gesturing toward the door. “After you.”

Kit opened as she gestured.

Tala took on a tone of happy solemnity, “Welcome to my sanctum.”

The father and son tentatively walked through, and she followed them out into her central plaza.

Adrill turned to her as Kit’s door closed and vanished back to its standard internal location, “Why do you have a throne in here?”

Tala grimaced. “Why is it that people are so inquisitive about that?”

That was just the first of uncounted questions directed her way.

-I could count them.-

No, thank you.

The tour was both utterly uneventful and surprisingly quite fun for Tala.

First of all, Brandon and Adrill had much lower thresholds for amazement than those she’d shown around previously, given their lives as mundanes.

Second, Adrill actually had a surprisingly deep understanding of the underlying theories, making the experience similar to a fire Mage encountering a cataclysmic forest fire… from a safe distance.

-Or a not-so-safe distance. You know: we still don’t have proof that Kit is truly safe.-

That’s not helpful, Alat.

-I’m just saying. We outweigh Kit, magically, and she requires us to continue to exist. Mundanes on the other hand…-

Not helpful.

-Fine, fine.-

Adrill seemed to even understand some parts more fundamentally than Tala, herself.

Their tour stalled out after only a couple of stops when the man insisted on slowing down, and he spent nearly an hour just circling the isolated endingberry grove.

At that point, he turned to Tala, a glint of steel in his eyes, “You will let me get my instruments.”

She chuckled, but he didn’t laugh.

“Sooner would be better.”

Brandon leaned over from where he’d been observing. “I think he might actually do something drastic if you try to deny him.”

She looked to the son, “Like what?”

“I have no idea, but I’d rather not find out.”

Over the next quarter hour or so, Tala opened the door out of Kit a half-dozen times for the man, eventually just leaving the door in place.

Brandon was roped into his father’s activities, and eventually, Tala left them to it, a smile tugging at her lips.

Success.

-That was a little devious.-

Only a little? That’s good, then. I’d thought it was incredibly devious.

It was late that afternoon when Brandon poked his head out of the door to find Tala and Artia enjoying yet another pot of tea, chatting about the random artifacts that had passed through the older woman’s hands over the years.

Artia was speaking as the door creaked open, “It was a seemingly flimsy reed, but it never gave any sign of breaking, not even once we figured out what it was for and tried it out a few times.”

“A switch of immolation.” Tala shook her head. “That’s a bit terrifying. Did you ever figure out how it worked?”

“It was an impressive bit of magic, actually. From what my Adrill was able to determine, it generated the fire magics, somehow constructing them in a way that made them all but natural magics. The thick cloud of those magics would explode over and around whatever was struck, clinging to its target.”

Tala found herself nodding. “I have no idea how you would do that, but the result would be… awful. It would completely bypass most Mages' natural defense against direct magics, at least until they actively opposed the working, but at the time that they’d need to be figuring that out…”

“They would be actively on fire.” The older woman shuddered, “But I pray it’s never used against a person. That’s just horrible.”

Oh… right. Tala changed tactics, “Yeah, most Magical creatures likely would have the same issue. I hope you got a goodly amount for it.”

“That we did.” There was a gleam of gold in Artia’s eye. It was then that she turned to her son who had been standing there, seemingly unwilling to interrupt. “Brandon, son. Are you going to stand there all afternoon? Is your father finished?”

Brandon looked a bit sheepish. “Actually, another Mage found us in there, and after some… confusion we came to an understanding.”

Tala did her best to keep her glee from her features. “Oh? Master Simon is a rather avid researcher himself.”

Artia’s eyes narrowed as she looked back and forth between Tala and her son. “Why do I feel like I’m being set up in some way?”

Brandon sighed. “It’s magic, Mom. Dad was going to be sucked in, if he was given any leeway at all to investigate.”

At that moment, Master Simon opened the door behind Brandon and stuck his head out. “Mistress Tala? Good. This man needs to stay. His foundation is incredible, and he doesn’t have any bad habits to be trained out. Is this the research assistant that you’ve been promising me?”

Artia turned to Tala, clear incredulity on her face.

Tala sighed, “Thank you, Master Simon…”

* * *

Tala stood in a circular room, deep within Alefast’s Archon complex.

The place seemed suffused with magic that seemed both utterly still and fast flowing at the same time.

She wanted to examine it more closely, but she was still a bit stuck on the absence of Kit at her hip.

The conversation with Artia had taken another few hours, and she suspected that she’d still be there—answering the merchant’s questions—if she didn’t have this appointment with Master Grediv.

Even so, she’d had to leave Kit affixed to the outside of their shop to assuage the woman’s concerns while her husband and son explored within, alongside Master Simon.

But that was a concern for later.

At the moment, she was waiting—

Master Grediv opened a door and stepped inside, “Good, good. You’re here a bit early.”

Tala gave a shallow bow, “Master Grediv.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He waved her off. “None of that, Mistress Tala. There’s no audience here.”

She straightened. “As you wish. May I ask what the nature of this meeting is?”

He looked confused for a brief moment. “Oh? My apologies, I thought that I was clear. It is time that you learn about inner-city movement. Additionally, we really need to have the first of our conversations regarding your mindset and views of eternity.”

Tala found herself blinking, but a happy smile soon grew across her features. “Oh… well, that’s great.”

Master Grediv laughed. “I’d hoped that you would approve.”

“So, where do we begin? Is there some sort of teleportation script with limited distance but not as many downsides? I’ve theorized about such things, but it’s not really been a deep area of study.”

-What? You mean that you haven’t studied such a difficult branch of magic enough to become a master in just two years?-

You’re awfully snarky today.

-Yes, we are, aren’t we?-

Tala decided not to engage further.

Master Grediv smiled, “Well, yes on both counts. It lacks virtually all downsides but has an incredibly short range. In fact, its distance is limited to the extent of being unable to move you at all.”

Tala frowned. “What?”

He chuckled. “A bit of humor, but you’ll understand in a moment. You are young yet.”

She shrugged. “Mind if I sit?”

“If you’d like.”

An iron chair grew out of her back as she sat back, fully forming as the thick legs touched the stone floor.

Tala grinned at the Paragon.

Master Grediv chuckled. “Fair enough. We all have strengths and weaknesses.”

He waved a hand, and his own chair came out of his dimensional storage, perfectly situated and oriented to sit across from her.

He nodded once, shifting slightly to get more comfortable. “So, an explanation.”

“That would be nice, yes.”

“What is a human city?”

She gave him a level look. “I think that you and I might have different definitions of an ‘explanation.’”

A smile tugged at the edges of his lips. “Humor me.”

“Very well. A human city is the bastion of defense and power that serves to protect humanity against the predations of the arcane and magical threats of the Wilds in which we find ourselves.”

He held up a hand, waggling it back and forth. “It serves that purpose, true enough, but what is it?”

“A place where humans live in a high concentration?”

He huffed a laugh. “Fine, fine. That’s true too. I was hoping that your time in the arcane lands would have given you a different perspective.”

Tala was a bit frustrated, so she answered with more snark than was her usual, thinking about it from an arcane perspective, “It’s a place full of potential power sources?”

He smiled. “Precisely.”

She was taken aback by that. “What?”

“They are places where we’ve gathered all the gated of humanity, or at least as many as we can reasonably keep together. Can you tell me why?”

“Well…” She frowned, thinking of the moving cities, considering the vestiges and founts, and the issues within her own sanctum when gated humans walked about. “To isolate the damage.”

“Exactly, yes. More than that, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to guess.” He smiled, leaning back. “We gather the abrasive potential upon reality and concentrate it in as few locations as we can.”

“You’re trying to destroy reality?” She made it a question, hoping the answer was no.

“No, no, of course not. Though, that was one fear the arcanes had when we first began the endeavor, at least so I am told.”

“So…”

“We do it to mitigate the issue. What causes the abrasion?”

“Movement.”

“Ahh, but is it physical movement that’s the problem?”

Tala was about to say ‘Yes,’ but then she thought about it. “My bloodstars and soulbound items don’t degrade reality when I move them about even though they are effectively as much a gate as my gate is. They are magically centered on my soul, my gate… Is it movement, magically speaking?”

He nodded appreciatively. “Just so, yes. When our gates move through the world, when taking the dimension of magic into account, we stress reality. That is the nature of cities. We do our utmost to minimize the magical movement of human gates. Can you guess how?”

“Have you… what? Somehow made the entirety of each human city magically the same place?” She frowned. That didn’t make sense. Not only would that have been insanely obvious, but it would utterly change how magic functioned within the area of such a working, if it was even possible to enact.

Master Grediv chuckled. “Yes and no.”

“Explain.”

“The primary dimension of magic can be conceived of as a fourth, spatial dimension that correlates, and lies beside, the others. Just like everything with width also has a height. Generally, for the purposes of understanding any given bit of magic, you can consider it as having four coordinates, three physical and one magical. Zero on the magical coordinate means that it is perfectly aligned with whatever physical point it’s ‘connected’ to. Without delving into deep theory, I will say that, generally, there is a one-to-one correlation between dimensional sets. So, each physical set of three coordinates is the zero, zero, zero to a unique infinity within the dimension of magic. Again, this is just like for any place on a flat plane, there is a unique infinity of height above and below.”

Tala frowned, but didn’t interrupt.

“Now, keep in mind that this isn’t always true. Such can be altered, manipulated toward various ends. Just like a flat plane, rolled into a cylinder, will have overlapping ‘infinities of height.’ The arcanes let us know it was possible, but we didn’t know how until the Archive gave us a clue. Do you know much of the Archive’s nature?”

“Not really? I know it is information stored in the dimensions of magic.”

“True, but the important part is that it is information stored in a section of those dimensions that is incredibly compressed and overlapping, when relating to the physical. Basically, when in that region, something stored by someone who is a hundred miles away would only seem a foot distant. Does that make sense?”

“I… think? I think I understand?”

“Good. Well, cities are just an artificial, less lofty version of that. We’ve turned the dimension of magic around cities into giant funnels that channel the power down to a singular point. The result is: for most places relatively low within the dimension of magic, a person walking around a city is barely moving at all. The surface levels aren’t altered and thus they are still abraded and lacerated, but the underlying stability is maintained.”

“So, we have to move the cities, but less often, and reality heals more quickly?”

“In a sense, yes.”

Tala found herself nodding. “So, there exists a place above us, magically speaking, that is the same, regardless of where we are in the city”—her eyes widened slightly—“and the funnel slowly degrades over time, necessitating the shrinking of the city?”

“Well, yes, but we could fix that if we needed to. More accurately, the original perfecters of our system realized that they needed to let reality begin to heal from the outside in, otherwise it would create a much longer lasting ‘wound.’ Also, it’s magically below not above, utilizing the negative axis.”

She nodded again. “So… all that power is funneled into a singular ‘point.’ Is that the city grid?”

He shrugged. “In a sense, yes. Using the city grid is simply a tapping into that singular point.”

“But wouldn’t the power flowing in simply continue going? Inertia and all that?”

“It would if we let it, but we trap it at that singular point. There lies our second great advantage against arcanes. They have vestiges, which can supply steady power of a low quality over a long period. We have City Stones. The accumulated power of people which can supply unfathomable power in a burst or a stream. It isn’t infinite, but after accumulating for so long, it effectively is for the considerations of any conflict.”

“But it’s tied to the city.”

“And we move it. The new Alefast doesn’t have the density of power, yet, to add to the City Stone’s stores, but when this Alefast has fully waned, the other will be ready.”

“So, the city names are also the names of the Stones?”

“In a sense, yes. We do that for ease’s sake, though the cities were and are named first. I am the keeper of Alefast.” He smiled. “The scales in our bond are tipped, however, and I am the weaker of us. In fact, I have died several times, but Alefast isn’t done with me yet. It hasn’t chosen a successor. So, my soul is drawn to the Stone, drawn here, and I am rebuilt.”

Her eyes widened. “Master Grediv, that sounds like a lich.”

“In practice, I can understand that comparison, but in reality and function they are utterly different. A City Stone isn’t inanimate, but it isn’t ‘me’ either. In fact, it isn’t a singular entity at all. It is the manifestation of the collective will of those who have lived within the city and who have fed the Stone.”

Tala found herself shaking her head. “I… I need us to back up for a moment. So, we have twelve City Stones, which are massive—but still finite—reserves of mundane-level power?”

“Woven through with power from the more advanced, yes.”

“That is how arcanes advance.”

“Give or take, yes.”

“And the City Stones contain the will of the people, on a grand scale.” Her eyes widened in realization. “The Stones are City Lords.”

“Without the sapience or individuality, effectively yes.” He smiled. “I am glad that your unique experiences have gained you deeper insights into these topics.”

She decided to ignore that, keeping her focus on the matter at hand. “That’s what you meant when you said that the arcanes let you know it was possible. That’s what City Lords are?”

“In a sense. This is all a vast oversimplification, of course. We are also only speaking of magical power, not authority, ownership, or sovereignty. Sovereignty cannot be borne without a sapience.”

“You.” She felt things clicking into place. “You are the representation of the sovereignty of the City Stone.”

“As are the heads of the Archon Councils in every city. The power is not mine, but I may direct it within a limited scope, so long as it is in alignment with the general will of the Stone.”

“Then what of the rulers of the cities?”

“They wield civil authority, but we are reaching the point of over-stretching the metaphors.”

Tala grunted.

“Suffice it to say, to address your earlier concern: A lich has bound their soul—with their own power—to an object so that, in the event of their death, their soul cannot pass on. I have had an object latch onto my soul, so in the event of my death, it won’t allow me to pass on.”

“So, just a small reversal? A matter of semantics?”

He laughed. “Most important distinctions are a matter of small alterations or semantics. What is a murderer compared to one who kills a murderer in self-defense, but a small reversal?”

Tala saw the flaws in his analogy, but she also understood what he was getting at.

“But we are moving off the core point once again. Inner city movement. Have you understood?”

She pulled her mind back from the dozens of esoteric tangents it was flying down, “I… I confess, I was not thinking about that anymore.”

He grunted, smiling. “Understandable.”

She frowned. “We… pull ourselves down the dimension of magic, then pop back out somewhere else?”

“Sort of, actually. It’s more like holding onto a trapeze bar as it swings through an arc. You grab it at one point, and release at another. You have not moved at all, relative to the bar, but you have, relative to everything else. Once again, the analogy fails as it requires time and you don’t withdraw into the bar, but it gets the idea across.”

“Like walking down the spoke of a wheel, then walking out a different spoke?”

Master Grediv paused, then nodded. “There is some truth to that, yes. If it helps you grasp the concept, that is as good an analogy as any. All that said, it is not an easy process and is impossible for those with too little magical density. It might have been lethal to even you when you first Fused. To be Refined, however, is to be dense enough to survive it.”

“I think I’ve seen non-Refined appear from nowhere within cities.” Tala challenged.

Master Grediv shrugged. “It’s possible. We have some here that are dense enough, either by effort, artifact, or bound item. But to continue: Generally, we have a team stationed in this room, the center of the city. The magics required to briefly draw them deeper in the dimension of magic are here, and coming back is simply a cork rising to the surface. The main issue is aiming that resurfacing precisely.”

Tala looked around. “I think I can see that. What of the team, though? They aren’t here, now.”

He shrugged, pointing off to one side, “They are just beyond that wall. I prefer to have this discussion in here, when I participate in it. Waiting out there would only delay them for but a moment, if their services were needed.”

“Then… I suppose I’m curious as to why we don’t deploy from here to defend the walls for the waning?”

“Expediency and efficiency. This is a marvelous way to get a team to any point in the city, nearly instantly, but it is not as efficient as having a team already there. For inner city matters, it is not feasible to have Mages stationed every hundred yards, on every street, but to protect against large exterior threats? It makes more sense to have powerful defenders there and waiting.”

Tala looked at the center of the room, then back to Master Grediv. “So…”

He grinned. “Yes, I find the best way to let the lesson sink in is to use the magics, even if it is only once. Shall we?"