Tala was a bit off for the few days after learning of Mistress Odera’s passing.

Her thoughts were often drawn back to Mistress Odera and how much the woman had helped reshape Tala’s own perspective on the world and her place within it.

She spent a lot more time with Rane—even more than usual—as they found things to fill her off-hours.

They ate fantastic food, watched uncounted clashes from previous wanings, went to plays, sparred, and sometimes just walked through the gardens or the wilderness around Alefast.

Rane was feeling the loss as well, and Tala did her best to listen to him as he shared about his own interactions with the older Mage. Additionally, she nudged him toward sculpting whenever she had to be on duty, and even watched him work on a few statues.

It was both impressive and horrifying how long he took on each one, even though Tala knew that he completed them much, much faster than most people could have.

During that same period, her unit mates were both exceedingly helpful and frustratingly unhelpful at the same time.

They were perfectly helpful in that they listened to her as she expressed her confusion about Mistress Odera’s fate.

She was glad that the woman was no longer barely eking by, but she was sad that she’d not see her again in this life.

Tala’s unit mates were also mixed in their helpfulness in that Tala’s sharing seemed to open the floodgates, with each of the other defenders having permanently parted ways with countless mundanes and Mages over their long lives.

That was a mixed bag if ever there was one.

There was comfort in companionship, in knowing that others had gone through similar things, but there was also dawning horror that this is what she had signed up for.

This was only unique in that it was the first truly meaningful death, the passing of someone she was close to and respected a great deal.

This is what it meant to live until she was killed.

Unless she was unlucky or foolish, she’d watch cities worth of people come and go.

That was really too much to bear for the moment, so she turned to her last resort.

It was time to use what she’d held in reserve to help herself move past her own spiraling negativity.

It was time to give master Lisa’s rock to Kit.

Her unit’s duty shift was that night, so she had the afternoon free.

Thus, it was midafternoon when she stood on her dais beside Master Simon, Adrill, and Brandon.

Each of the three men had Archive slates attached to a suite of sensing items, both constructs and artifacts.

The other Zuccats had been encouraged to spend the afternoon in Alefast, and they’d taken the opportunity to see the sights.

Rane was apparently getting instruction from Master Grediv on what becoming Refined would mean as he could, in theory, start that process in a little more than a month.

But that was a ‘not now’ thing.

Focusing on the moment, Tala took out the stone from the pocket it had waited in for a few days, and Tala felt the magics bound to her—Kit’s magics—orient on the simple-seeming stone as her mentality toward the item shifted closer to devouring it.

“That’s it?” Brandon asked. He didn’t sound skeptical—after all, Tala had briefed them on what to expect—he sounded overawed.

“It is.”

Master Simon nodded once, “We are ready, begin at your leisure.”

Tala nodded in return. “Alright. Here I go.”

He had already performed as detailed an investigation into the item as their tools allowed, that way the datasets would match when he used the same tools to observe this consumption.

No… this is devouring. This stone—and its magics—are MINE.

Tala watched from many, many viewpoints as her own power closed around the rock like snapping jaws, the stone vanishing instantly with a flicker of the void.

The rest was quite obviously pulled into Kit, herself.

It only took a moment before new magics spun out, the complexity proving that the stone was their origin.

As the spellforms began to be woven through Kit’s very being, Tala felt her bound storage’s reserves of power—topped off during their soulbinding—begin to plummet, pulled into the purification scripts en masse even as they were forming.

Tala’s eyes opened wide, and she deactivated every bit of magic that she could, creating massive void-channels to boost her throughput and give Kit as much power as she possibly could.

She hadn’t needed to so augment her throughput in a long time, but it was still almost second nature to her.

The boost in flowrate allowed her to barely be able to match Kit’s outpouring.

Nearly an hour passed like that, Tala doing all that she could to eke out just a little bit more throughput, Kit interweaving the new magics throughout the intricate net that already fully encompassed the sanctum. All the while, Master Simon and his assistants frantically moved from reading to reading—measurement to measurement—trying to monitor everything, despite knowing that everything was being Archived and could be reviewed at their leisure later.

Finally, like a cord being cut, Kit’s use of power ended with a snap, and Tala’s torrent of power began refilling the soulbound artifact’s reserves.

After the strenuous but monotonous work of the last hour, it took Tala an embarrassing ten seconds to realize that the change had occurred, contextualize it, consider the options, and slow her throughput, along with allowing her inscribed magics to move out of their dormant states.

The world regained color to her eyes, and her body felt strong once again.

That was… interesting.

-Yeah. I wasn’t expecting it to have such a massive cost of power to initialize.-

Maybe because of how large the sanctum is, now?

-That could be. It makes sense, given the magic had to be integrated into the entirety of the magics…-

Regardless of the stress of potential failure, Tala felt herself smile as the working that they’d been aiming to incorporate was immediately in evidence.

Since Kit had been drained dry, the air had been incredibly lacking of any sort of zeme for the last hour.

Now that her power was flowing back into Kit, that was changing. Like air rushing to fill a vacuum, the rising levels of magic were—

Perfectly pure.

-Unbound, untainted, natural.-

Master Simon laughed. “This is amazing! The magics are working exactly as expected. There was no deviation, no hitch in the process.”

Adril and Brandon nodded in agreement, engrossed in their own experiences, measurements, and results.

Tala pulled in a long, slow breath.

Her lungs exalted in the feel of the increasing magical density in the air, and it sent a thrill racing through her.

This is glorious.

-Indeed it is.-

Tala could, naturally, see her entire sanctum, including the unshaped portions.

Her sanctum—as it had been designed by the arcanes—was intact and whole, just as they’d made it.

Then, Kit had a new, massive sphere of space waiting, barely connected low down on the squashed sphere that was the sanctum, the raw materials neatly arranged, organized, and ready for categorization.

Because she hadn’t known what to do with the space and mundane resources including rock, dirt, and water—and Kit didn’t really care, given that such menial things wouldn’t benefit her overmuch to truly devour—the space and matter had only been loosely added on, not truly incorporated.

We should probably fix that.

She glanced over at Master Simon.

“Keep monitoring, I’m going to shift the sanctum.”

Before the Fused could comment, Tala mentally made the change in her desires and the sanctum moved.

First, space.

She added a wide ring all the way around the outside of her sanctum, increasing the horizontal radius without increasing the height. Then, she added the remainder of the extra volume to the open sky.

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She filled the volume around the outside with dirt, underpinned with rock, sloping down and away, so as to not ruin the sightlines and profiles that the arcanes had so perfectly crafted.

Tala felt the artificial sun, the subtle magics extending from that to affect the ‘time of day’ inside the sanctum, as well as allowing for drastic changes of weather, along with more measured shifts over the course of the year.

Why was that still separate from Kit?

It was hers.

It was here.

It was powerful.

So, so full of power and complexity to add to her own.

New magics to imbibe and mimic.

New patterns to learn.

She could devour it.

She almost allowed Kit to snatch the very sun from the sky, but Tala managed to hold herself back, even if just barely.

Approach this wisely, Tala. We have time. It is ours. This isn’t a ‘now or never’ situation.

Tala swallowed, then wet her lips. “Master Simon. Please review the documentation I provided on the artificial sun, and give me your best guess on what would happen if it were devoured and fully incorporated.”

The Fused turned to her, eye twitching just a bit. Finally, he gave a slow nod, “Do I have your permission to consult others?”

She nodded immediately, “Absolutely. Bring in anyone you need in order to give me a proper assessment. I don’t have a spare artificial star, and so if it’ll break things, I won’t allow it.”

“Understood. Is this a greater priority than the current… goings on?” It was obvious that he really didn’t want to hear a ‘yes.’

“No, no. There’s no rush, but I do want to know.”

He nodded, turning back to his slate.

Tala briefly considered just consuming the item once again. After all, she knew that she could go without the artificial star. Kit could move anything around within the sanctum and create masterful illusions.

The main thing that the sun allowed was the automation and regulation of all the sub-aspects of the day-night and seasonal cycles.

I would not love having to somehow manually control that, even if it was subconsciously.

-I do think that Kit would handle that still, but I agree. That would be unideal.-

Oh, and we can’t forget that it gives the needed heat, light, and energy for all the vegetation.

-True. Illusion and perception are all well and good, but everything will die in the dark, even if they think they are in the light.-

Tala sighed, Existence is funny like that.

As she contemplated letting Kit eat the star more than she really should have, she continued to revel in the increasing density in the air.

Even so, she heard Adrill and Brandon breathing deeply and quietly commenting to each other about how good they felt, how awake, how clearheaded.

I’m glad they’re getting something good from it. I do wonder how much magic is in the air.

-About…twenty—maybe twenty-five—times the density of the Wilds? It’s nearly at Refined levels of power, at least right around us as makes sense. We’re dumping it outward, and even though it’s being filtered, it’s still entering the sanctum aligned with us, here. Kit is concentrating it, here, and building outward, rather than distributing the power evenly.-

Fascinating… what does that actually mean? Is it significant? What is the effect going to be? Any guesses?

-Well, it is right around the level of ambient power that arcanes have in their birthing chambers in order to induce newborns’ natural magics.-

How could you possibly know that?

-I actually read the book on arcane advancement. It is quite thorough. Literally birth to death instruction.-

Huh… that’s fascinating. How—

Alat cut Tala off. -Oh! Oh, no! Get them out, get them out, GET THEM OUT!-

Tala didn’t argue. She knew who Alat meant instantly, and she immediately summoned a door out of Kit, but it was already too late.

The sound of two bodies hitting the floor was loud in Tala’s hyper-focused mind.

Tala didn’t stop to wonder how, exactly, she knew that sound well enough to identify it instantly.

Nor did she take the time to recriminate herself for only coming out of her revelry and internal contemplations when both Brandon and Adrill collapsed, their whole bodies trembling.

“What—?” Master Simon cursed, spinning toward his assistants.

“Go get a healer.” Tala dropped down beside the two men, “The power density is too high. They are mundane, and it’s infusing their bodies.”

-Tala, I’ve read the manual. I can guide you. They can’t leave this area until we settle them, and we need to give them instruction.-

Tala only hesitated for a moment. Is this reversible?

-What? No. But if we don’t, they die, and if we do, it’s only positives.-

…Tell me what to do. She met Master Simon’s eyes even as he was moving toward the door, “We can’t remove them, or they’ll die. I believe that I can stabilize them, but we need a healer just in case.”

The man nodded in acknowledgement and left at a run.

Tala returned her full focus to the two men, “Brandon, Adrill, I know that you can hear me. I also know you can’t really respond.”—Tala forcibly took her building emotions and threw them aside—“I’m sorry; I didn’t know that this would happen, but I can help you. You need to follow my instructions, or you don’t have good odds of survival.”

This isn’t right; they should have a choice in this.

-They do. They can ignore or oppose you and die, or listen and live.-

That’s not what I—

-Now is not the time, Tala. Their lives are in our hands right now.-

Both men’s eyes moved toward her, even as their muscles continued to twitch and tremble.

“Alright. Listen closely and do as I say. If you don’t think you can do it, just pretend that you can and try anyways. First…”

Tala spoke slowly and clearly, following Alat’s wording exactly as she narrated the first steps of the Rising Sun Advancement manual to them.

In reality, the two men weren’t doing anything aside from accepting that something was being done to them, though they didn’t know it.

In all likelihood, it would be detrimental to them if they did, hence the deception.

By trying to follow Tala’s instructions, they were priming their own will—as well as the magic in their bodies—to allow themselves to be acted upon.

And act Tala and Alat did.

Even as she spoke calmly and without any stress, her aura utterly overrode that of her charges, and she, herself, acted on the magic as needed.

Exactly as a mother arcane would to her newborn babe. Though, in the case of the newborn, the dialogue was hardly necessary, as newborns couldn’t be expected to actually understand their mother’s voice.

-Focus Tala, philosophize later.-

Tala devoted all of her focus to the task at hand.

Very importantly, her gaining aura authority over the magic did not make the magic match her own. It was like the borrowing of a craftsman’s tool did not make the tool hers.

She held that belief, that knowledge, firmly in place as she worked.

The most important part was laying down channels to gather in power that their bodies couldn’t absorb just yet, so that it wouldn’t build up to toxic levels. She was carving a set of natural magics into existence to handle the excess power, effectively creating irrigation channels to prevent the pooling of magic and muddying of their bodies.

After that, she had to give them at least one power-using natural magic working.

With that part, there were a lot of requirements the spellform had to meet.

First, she had to have utterly intimate knowledge of the spellform in question.

Second, the two men needed to have at least a basic understanding of how it worked—and the effect it would create—for it to be useable.

Third, it had to be something that they couldn’t accidently kill themselves or others with.

Thus, there was only one of her magics that met the requirements, even though it was complex and actually ended up being two heavily-interlinked magical workings.

That said, it was surprisingly easy, all things considered.

Her will knew the forms she was forging, and she was subconsciously used to helping magic flow through these twists and turns. More than that, she had the exact forms blazing in existence itself around her own head, easily visible for her to study and copy.

In less than five minutes, it was done.

Adrill and Brandon relaxed, even as the natural magics flared to life, lowering the magic within their bodies to a level that they could handle.

That tolerance level would slowly grow, and when it matched the environment—or when they left areas of high-density power—their magics would slowly power down until they entered a dormant state, just pulling in enough power to keep from collapsing, much as artifacts did.

As to what spellforms Tala had given them?

The most basic portion of her mental enhancement and magesight.

Though hers were much more complex these days, the core was still the same as those she’d gotten when still newly graduated.

-You could have just given them the enhancement.-

…I did not think of that.

-You literally gave them the enhancement and magesight.-

I thought of the magesight first and realized they needed some mental enhancement partway through… you’re in my head, you know this.

-Yeah, I am, and I still can’t believe we didn’t think of just doing the enhancement portion…-

The father and son sat up, making oddly similar noises of complaint as they stretched their sore limbs.

They glanced toward each other and laughed at the unity of action and utterance.

Brandon shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I’ve got to get away from home more. I’m going to end up just like you.”

Adrill was rubbing at his own eyes. “If only we were both so lucky. Besides, you could do worse… what is this? Something’s wrong with my eyes.”

“Ah,” Tala interjected, “you both now have magesight, and the basic mental augmentation to be able to process it.”

They both jerked back slightly as the magics solidified, now that their minds and wills knew what it was for.

“My apologies. I thought I told you what the magics were as we were working.”

Adrill nodded slowly. “I think you did, but it didn’t really…”—his voice was hitching, something building behind the words—"I didn’t actually…”

As his father began to weep, Brandon turned teary eyes and a smiling face toward Tala, “We didn’t actually believe you. Magic hasn’t been a path we could actually walk…”

Adrill swallowed, cleared his throat, and continued in place of his son, “This shouldn’t be possible, but I can see the magic, Mistress Tala. I can see it.”

He devolved back into uncontrollable shudders of joy.

“It’s like looking through an artifact of magesight, but with my own eyes. I… I understand what I’m seeing to a level I never have before. How… no, you said there was mental augments too. That would do it.”

Tala nodded, understanding the emotion of the moment, even if her own emotions were roiling for entirely different reasons and in entirely different directions.

These two men had pursued the study of magic for their whole lives, even though human magic—gated magic—was forever out of their reach.

Now, something they had never considered possible had happened.

They were using magic within their own bodies.

The father and son had moved from propositional knowledge of magic to knowledge by acquaintance in a single action.

They could see and grasp that which they had studied for so long.

It was quite obviously impacting them both incredibly deeply. Though, Adrill was obviously more invested and affected as he was the older, having spent his professional life in this pursuit as well.

Tala forced herself to smile kindly. “The changes to your body will accumulate slowly, but effectively, once everything is settled out, you should age at about one third the rate as before.”

Both of their eyes widened at that.

Brandon put it to words almost immediately. “Mom… Kedva… Mistress Tala, can you do this for them as well?”

-Oh…-

Only then did Tala consider that both men had women they were tied to. Well, I rusting hope so…