Tala looked skeptically at the small golden bar resting in the palm of her hand. “Are you sure?”

Mistress Cerna chuckled. “Either you can give it back when we’re done, or it simply costs a couple ounces to learn something interesting.”

-She’s giving us gold, to experiment with our items. I see this as an absolute win.-

I suppose…

Tala wasn’t really sure if it would be worth it to her, at least not at the moment, but Mistress Cerna’s priorities were different, and that was alright. “If you say so.”

Tala pressed the two-ounce rectangle of gold to her elk leather sleeve, willing the void within her garments to draw the precious metal in, just as she did with the white metal.

As expected, the void magics responded to her will, reaching out and wrapping around the precious metal to draw it into the sleeve.

At that moment, she could somehow sense the gold within the soulbound item, just as she felt the reserve of white steel.

It wasn’t tangible, nor like a feeling of a full stomach. She simply knew that she had a limited amount of gold available to work with.

Tala barked a laugh. “I feel it. I think it worked.”

Mistress Cerna grinned, actually rubbing her hands together in comically maniacal glee. “Alright, now, can you let the gold back out as thinly as possible?”

-Ahh, her reasoning makes sense, now. I hadn’t considered this.-

Yeah. She wants gold threading, it seems.

Tala shrugged, turning her hand over, growing a bit of leather out onto her palm, and then wishing for the gold to come into being in a long, thin strand, extending upward.

“Alright, as you’re going, let it leave your control. I believe you’ve been able to do that before, too?”

She nodded, thinking of her scale-mail hauberk. “That’s right.”

“Good!” Mistress Cerna’s magic reached out, seizing the far end of the gold strand even as Tala continued to extrude it. The other Refined easily manipulated the gold into a classic pattern for the formation of a ball of thread or yarn. It wasn’t long until Tala had let out all the gold that she had and surrendered it all to Mistress Cerna’s working. “Excellent, excellent.”

It was odd. Tala didn’t feel any sort of emptiness. She simply no longer had gold to work with. It wasn’t a vacancy so much as just beyond her elk leathers to make parts of themselves into gold.

Tala frowned. “What was the point of that? I mean, all that I did was turn the little bar into thread. I didn’t even pass enough power through it to make it Mage gold.”

“Hmm?” The woman looked up. “Oh, it’s incredibly expensive to get precious metals made into consistent, well-wrought thread. Wire is relatively easy, thread? Horrifically difficult to do consistently.”

Tala gave her a flat look. “Really.”

“Really.” Mistress Cerna nodded seriously. “It’s my greatest expense, as I can’t manipulate the material until it is at least close to threadlike in nature. I can purify and clean it up once it’s at least roughly threadlike, removing the flaws of imperfect craftsmanship, but that’s a losing proposition in most cases, because it takes power and focus, thus inscriptions, to do so.”

“So, you pay for it again in that way.”

“Exactly. This, though?” She held up the two ounces of wound, golden ‘thread.’ “This is perfect.”

Tala sighed, shaking her head. “So, that was the purpose? To save you some time and money? I mean, I’m happy to aid you, but you could have just said so.”

The older woman shrugged with a smile, “Well, on one hand, yes. If we are in the field, in a dangerous situation, and I run out of materials, our unit’s effectiveness and flexibility will drop dramatically. This is a relatively simple means of solving that issue.”

Tala tilted her head to the side, considering. Finally, she grunted. “I suppose…”

“But there’s more.” Mistress Cerna had an almost manic shine in her eyes. “You can cause your garment to make any shape, correct?”

Tala nodded, hesitant as to where the Refined was going with this.

“Then, can you make this shape?” The golden thread, wrapped in Mistress Cerna’s power, unwound slightly, twisting into a simple three-dimensional pattern, parts splitting off to connect elsewhere to form a lattice of gold, if a relatively simple one.

Tala examined the shape, then caused leather to grow into that pattern, hanging down from her forearm. She had to nurture some minute boning within the leather to keep it in the proper shape, but it worked.

Mistress Cerna laughed with glee, her smile slipping when she saw Tala’s face. “Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“Really? Think about it. Why am I so flexible in my magics?”

“Because you can shape any spellform at need.”

“Exactly.”

-You see, right? I mean, don’t feel too bad, I just understood what she was getting at a moment ago.-

Tala’s eyes widened in understanding.

-There we go.-

“Are you saying that I can manifest spellforms, then activate them?”

“In theory, yes, but we must be careful. You do not strike me as someone who wants to delve the very edges of all possible magics. You enjoy delving the far reaches of the magics that call to you, and that is one of your strengths.”

Tala nodded, smiling. “Yeah, I think that’s fair.”

“But you do have those arrows rather ingeniously created for and by the Guards, and your own scale armor, which acts like your own quiver of arrows and bow in one…” Mistress Cerna trailed off implicatively.

Tala felt her smile broaden into a grin. “Do you think?”

“I do. We’ll need to do some experimentation. I doubt there is a robust body of work on using that mysterious metal as a medium.”

-There isn’t.-

“So, we’ll have to figure that out ourselves. Then it will be a matter of translating the provided spellforms. Once we have that, you can add specific counter-magics at will.”

Tala laughed involuntarily. “Let’s get started.”

The older woman hesitated. “I haven’t actually investigated a new medium in a long time. We should go get a primer on the subject.”

Tala’s smile pulled up on one side. “Wouldn’t you know it? I already have such a book.”

* * *

Tala looked between the three men standing near her, deep in Kit’s dark underbelly. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, Mistress.” Master Simon nodded.

“Then… why haven’t you already done it?”

Adrill spoke up, then. “Well, it’s not ours, and there's no such thing as perfect certainty.”

“So, you aren’t sure.” She turned to regard Master Simon again, more pointedly this time.

Master Simon turned an exasperated glance on his assistant. “Adrill. We have done as much as we can with the documentation that we have. The only thing left is to try it.”

The man nodded. “Of course. Even so, what I said is still true.”

Brandon cleared his throat, drawing Tala’s attention. “Mistress Tala, we are as sure as we can be, and we thought it prudent to have you present, rather than using your equipment without permission.”

Finally, she shrugged. “Very well. Do you have what you need?”

Master Simon took charge once more. “We do not. In order to follow the recipe for the white metal, we will need one part gold, three of tool steel… How about I just give you the list?”

Tala took the scrap of paper from the man.

After a long moment, she looked up to find the older two conspicuously inspecting the large magical machinery.

So, she turned to Brandon. “This is why you wanted me involved?”

He shrugged. “It was a small factor. Those are expensive materials, even if the most expensive are in quite small quantities.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll release some funds for use in this. What was the second thing you wanted to discuss?”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Adrill turned back to her. “Well, you might be curious why the device is still viable, being out of use for as long as it has been.”

Tala shook her head. “I assumed there was a vestige buried in there somewhere, or that it had defaulted to drawing power from Kit.”

“Well, this was designed to draw power from a vestige…” He blinked a few times. “Oh… you knew?”

“More suspected. Most arcane magical items have vestiges at their core, somewhere. At the very least they are designed to accept power from one. They basically never magic bond anything if they can help it.”

“Oh… well, that makes this easier.”

Tala glanced toward the two mundanes. “Are they allowed to know about vestiges?”

Master Simon glanced their way and shrugged. “We keep mundanes in the dark to prevent any potential of triggering their move toward becoming a fount to a minimum. These two don’t have gates, so they aren’t at risk.”

Adrill cleared his throat. “There were also extensive references to founts and vestiges in many of the documents we’ve been reading through for the various systems, workings, and spellforms within your sanctum and associated with your various… acquisitions.”

“Oh… yeah, that makes sense.”

Master Simon smiled, “But back on topic, can you tell us how it is getting power, then?”

She shrugged. “It’s just a guess, but I would say that it was designed to draw power from the vestige at the heart of the hold in which it was kept. Those are kept incredibly pure, so it was unbound as I’ve already said. Here, though? Here there is power within Kit, freely available. I would guess that it is pulling from that.”

Master Simon was nodding. “That does line up with what we were detecting. I just didn’t realize that the power source it had before would have been pure enough to prevent any sort of magical bonding.” He glanced toward Adrill and smiled. “As it turns out, you were right, Adrill.”

Adrill waved Master Simon off. “It was a guess based on the materials we were reading through.”

“Still, well intuited.”

Tala cleared her throat. “So, any other needs?”

The three men turned toward the tank in which Io floated, almost in unison. Brandon spoke again, “That thing… it gives off the feeling of just being asleep.”

“Really?” Tala turned and studied it, the purple liquid only marginally obscuring the fully grown automaton within.

Brandon nodded. “It subtly changes positions over time. I know that that’s likely explicable by being close to neutrally buoyant within that liquid, along with the currents as the liquid is circulated, but there’s a feeling about the thing.”

The young man shivered, but Tala only saw that in her mirrored perspectives. Instead, she was walking closer to the tank.

Do you see anything?

-No?-

Tala frowned. Nothing looked out of place to Tala’s sight: magical, mundane, or void. Not even her real, physical eyes picked up anything, as enhanced as they were. Not that her mirrored perspectives were worse, but there was just something about seeing through her own eyes.

-I could keep a watcher over it.-

That pulled Tala back to the matter at hand. Huh, I suppose so.

She looked around before directing one of her extra bloodstars to rest on the face of a nearby shelf, looking like nothing so much as a small stain once it had landed. Can you see through that mirrored perspective?

-Confirmed.-

Alright, monitor that as we leave. I think it should be fine, because Kit is magic bound to us. She’d never tested her limits on the distance she could get from her bloodstars, but the experience of losing her iron when Sole’s cell was sealed was still a bit too fresh to not consider the potential issue.

Tala turned back around to where the three men were already discussing something about the magical smelter once again.

“Alright gentlemen, I’ll grant the funds to Adrill so that he can get what’s needed while we’re gone, but for now, you two”—she pointed to the father and son—“need to head out.”

Adrill opened his mouth to protest, then sighed. “I knew this was coming.”

Tala nodded. “I told you that my unit has a mission outside the city. I even gave you a few days’ warning.”

The father turned to his son. “Can you tell your mother that I didn’t get out in time? I can apologize later.”

“I’m not lying to Mom.” Brandon shook his head.

Adrill took on a stern expression. “I would never lie to your mother or ask you to do so. I didn’t ask you to tell her I couldn’t get out in time, simply that I didn’t.”

Brandon opened his mouth and stood there for a long moment before grunting, “Huh… that’s true enough.”

His father gave a decisive nod, smiling.

“Still no.”

The man sighed. “Very well.”

Tala cleared her throat. “Adrill, do you need your equipment?”

Adrill turned to Master Simon, “Can I continue working with you, upon Mistress Tala’s return?”

The Fused smiled broadly. “Absolutely.”

Adrill turned back to Tala. “Then, I have nothing that I need to get out of here. Doing so would simply add time unnecessarily.”

She shook her head, gesturing to the door which had just appeared. “Then out you go.”

As the two men walked out the open door, Tala’s eyes were drawn to the white metal ingots that were waiting off to one side. Yeah, there’s no reason to keep those in here.

She willed herself to be beside the remaining metal and quickly took it into her elk leathers, increasing her store of the material to work with.

There. I’ve had too little in the past when that wasn’t necessary.

-It’s about time.- Alat teased. -So, are we ready to investigate another cell?-

Tala nodded to herself. There really did seem to be a lot of those popping up.

She was grateful that she seemed to be getting the hang of handling them alongside her unit.

* * *

Tala kicked up her feet with a groan, letting her head hang over the back of her chair.

That was ridiculous.

-I never would have thought that sand could be terrifying.-

Stars bless Master Girt. The man had been invaluable in countering what was effectively a sand elemental of terrifying temperament.

At first, they had all been confused as to why such a basic creature had been deemed worthy of imprisonment.

The reason was now all too obvious.

It had, apparently, inexplicably gained a penchant for terrorizing any sapient it came across. The theory was that some mad Mage had bound himself to it, and the combined being had been twisted by hatred of what he’d lost. Unfortunately, the records left behind had indicated that they weren’t actually sure.

But that no longer mattered.

She was no longer being chased by a morphic horror through the halls of an abandoned city.

She no longer had to doubt her ears as the thing somehow mimicked her unit-mates’ voices. Nor did she have to hear the creepy sounds or false calls for help from long dead children.

She no longer had to fear that any bit of wall, floor, or ceiling could turn out to be a psychopathic sand elemental that was utterly impervious to even her dissolution breath.

The cell was resealed once more, and she was back home.

“Mistress Tala?”

Tala jerked, letting out a little yelp as her eyes snapped open.

-Gah!-

Mistress Petra jumped backward, not even landing before Tala had willed herself to be standing on the far side of the room.

Tala felt her heart pounding within her chest and forcibly slowed it. She’d fallen asleep and been startled awake. That was all.

“Mistress Tala? Are you alright?”

She took another moment to attempt to calm herself before answering, “I am, Mistress Petra. My apologies. What can I do for you?”

“You asked me to let you know when dinnertime was approaching. The Fethuas will be here within the next hour.”

The Fethuas? Oh! Artia, Adrill, and Brandon.

-And Brandon’s intended.- Alat’s voice sounded… strained.

Even so, Tala outwardly smiled, remembering the planned meal. Brandon and his intended were courting now, and if all went well, they’d likely be betrothed within the year. Right, right.

She would address Alat’s seeming stress in a moment.

“Thank you, Mistress Petra. I’ll prepare. Is there anything that I can do to assist you?”

“No, Mistress. I have the food well in hand. Thank you.” She smiled as she turned back toward the kitchen.

Tala shook her head, trying to clear the fog over her thoughts. Alat, are you alright?

-That was… unsettling. I didn’t even notice us falling asleep, so I didn’t split your mind so that I could stay active while you recovered.-

Tala somehow felt Alat shudder within her mind.

-I don’t like losing consciousness. It’s pretty much all I have.-

I’m sorry, Alat. I didn’t realize I was that tired. She looked around at her sitting room. I’d definitely have gone to my bed to sleep if I’d known.

-I know, Tala. It’s still… I only exist within your mind. I don’t have a physical existence that persists while my consciousness is inactive…-

Tala willed herself to her own room, then spoke aloud, “Alat? Can I see you?”

She moved one of the bloodstars that mirrored a perspective for Alat to another part of the room.

There was a brief hesitation before Tala appeared to her own eyes, standing where the bloodstar had been hovering, arms wrapped around herself, hugging tight.

Not me, that’s Alat.

Tala took a brief moment to notice the differences that were there.

Their hair was arranged slightly differently.

Funnily enough, the style that Alat adopted for herself was one that Tala had used in her early days at the Academy, before they’d been shaved for inscriptions. It was shorter than Tala preferred now, and all bound up tightly to her head with blue-green cord, woven tightly and artfully throughout.

Alat’s eyes were a beautiful, inhuman yellow.

If Tala wasn’t mistaken, that was the precise color of their aura.

Alat also wore slightly different clothing, opting for a flowing, almost formal dress of amethyst-purple silk that complemented her eye color as much as her figure.

Tala smiled. “I like the look.”

Alat gave a small smile. “Thank you. I think it’s a bit more me than you, though you would look good like this.”

“Yeah, we do, that’s true.” Tala chuckled lightly, “I am a bit more… martially inclined, and I’ve never liked wearing dresses.”

“We should on occasion, though. They’re nice.”

Tala took another, closer look. “You aren’t wrong. This is better than a mirror, or even an aspect mirrored perspective. We should remember that. I know it shouldn’t be…”

Alat’s smile grew a bit. “But it is.”

“Yeah.” Tala stepped forward and placed a hand on Alat’s shoulder, drawing their tangent to a close. Even though she knew that the woman and sensations of touch were entirely within her head, they seemed utterly real. Regardless, that wasn’t important for the moment. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”

Alat leaned into Tala’s touch even as she gave a small nod. “I think so. I… I just wasn’t expecting it, and it reminded me of… of Be-thric.”

Tala grimaced, shuddering involuntarily at the reminder. “I can imagine.” Still, she mastered herself and smiled at Alat once more. “Is there anything that I can do?”

Alat shook her head, straightening and smiling with obviously forced confidence. “No, thank you. This was a kind suggestion, though. I think it helped to have a manifestation, even if just for a moment.”

“I’m glad. Will you be able to talk with Retson, soon?” Master Nadro’s alternate interface was a valuable conversation partner for Alat, when they had the time to dialogue.

“I will soon, yeah. Right after your next manifest conversation with Master Nadro.”

“That’s good to hear.” After a moment’s consideration, Tala smiled, “Do you want a hug?” she held her arms wide.

Alat only hesitated for a moment before stepping in for an embrace.

The manifested woman shuddered slightly with obvious tension slowly bleeding out of her.

After a long moment, Alat’s voice came to Tala’s ear, “Thank you.”

Tala nodded. “Always. We have a bit. Take all the time you need.”

Alat curled in against Tala’s shoulder, hugging her self tighter. “Okay.”