Tala stood on the wall of Alefast with all but one of her unit-mates. The dark night sky was filled with high, wispy clouds that did little to block the stars, despite the light pollution from the city at her back.
Though, that is mostly due to my vision, rather than the nature of the stars or sky.
Master Girt, alone, had dropped over the edge of the wall, treating the hardened earth and rock at the wall’s base as water, diving into it in order to disperse the energy of his fall.
He surfaced a moment later, rising up to stand in the cleared area before the wall.
The eight canine hocken slowed, spreading out in a wide arc to come at him from multiple angles.
Honestly, Tala was rather curious how the man would handle the threats. She had sparred with him, and even seen him in several fights, but never on his own against so many non-human opponents.
It would be enlightening.
Do we have good perspectives?
-That we do. I’m keeping a wide eye out as well, so we aren’t surprised by overfocusing.-
Thank you.
With a ripple of magic, stone flowed up the man’s legs, coating him from head to toe in as little time as it took to draw in a deep breath.
Additionally, there was a fluctuation that Tala would have entirely missed without her threefold sight.
Stone was lifting out of the ground between him and each of the hocken. The spacing was staggered to create an uneven place of impact.
The reason Tala wouldn’t have seen those walls without her threefold sight was that Master Girt was actively manipulating their properties, making the walls transparent to the point of being effectively invisible in the dim night time illumination.
The hockens were predatory, but they were also usually stalkers. That alone made their attack on the walls unusual. Even so, they were clever opponents and not to be underestimated. Thankfully, Master Girt seemed to have taken that into account.
As one, the shadow canines charged forward.
The first one slammed into one of Master Girt’s walls. Only then did Tala see the extent of what Master Girt had done.
That first hocken skewered itself on invisible spikes, which even Tala hadn’t been able to easily see.
-I’d have noticed if we were closer.-
Likely true, yes.
Additionally, the impact of the hocken broke something at the base of the wall, causing the whole base to splinter and the bulk of the wall to unbalance, quickly slamming down and crushing the already perforated hocken.
As that was happening, the other canines seemed to become insubstantial for brief bursts.
Two passed through the randomly spaced walls, but two more phased back into physicality, halfway through.
The melding of shadow-flesh and stone was instantly fatal.
One move, a properly prepared battlefield, and he killed three before even engaging.
-And with less power than you put into even a single of your siege-orbs… not that that is a fair comparison.-
True, though.
The remaining five hocken had either phased through, moved around, or jumped over the impediments in their way.
Even so, because they were guessing more than anything, three of those five stumbled over or bounced off of the stone.
The last two made good their aggressive charge and slammed into Master Girt… somehow melding with his stone armor.
Instead of tearing into the rock, they shifted stoneward, while remaining latched onto Master Girt’s armor.
Then, their magic caused them to do the opposite of phase out of existence.
It was an odd way to think of it, but it was also the only thing that made sense to Tala. They seemed to solidify, growing more dense, and Tala immediately saw Master Girt shift under immensely increased weight.
Then, from their stoneward perch, they began to rip into him.
Oh, rust. That’s… terrifying.
-Yeah, I now understand why these are actually considered a threat. Depending on the limits of their magic, they could slip into a city and wreak havoc while the defenses struggled to pin them down.-
I would assume that a waning city has defenses oriented stone- and starward.
-That is likely us Defenders, but there could be more, too.-
The shadow canines' ability to move stoneward seemed to require them to be anchored to their prey, but it was still a powerful tool.
Basically every normal Mage would be powerless to do anything once one had latched onto him or her.
Blessedly, the Defenders of a waning city were exceedingly outside the norm.
Master Girt’s armor rolled, churning along the stoneward-starward axis.
Like quicksand—or an industrialized, magic driven, rolling crusher—it seethed, pulling everything connected to it inward while tearing, mashing, and cutting.
In less than a handful of seconds, the two hocken had been ground up entirely, their shadow-flesh splattering the ground around Master Girt.
-And inside his suit. The splatter was rather indiscriminate in which direction it went.-
That is hardly important. That was brutal.
“Rusted gold, man,” Tala muttered under her breath.
Master Clevnis huffed a laugh. “He is rather impressive.”
Regardless of his impressiveness, Master Girt had been injured by the hockens during their brief stint latched onto him.
Even as his armor settled back down, its surface becoming smooth once more, the three delayed canines were closing in, more carefully than their predecessors.
He raised his fists into a fighting pose, but then, he vanished.
Master Girt was simply gone from within his armor, the suit remained, but was now filled with stone.
Even Tala and Alat lost sight of him for a moment.
Tala caught movement in the ground. Whatever it was was incredibly insubstantial. She just saw a hint of it, but as she started focusing in, Alat grabbed her attention.
He was stepping fully armored from one of the still standing invisible stone walls.
Only then did the set he’d left behind crumble into gravel, causing confusion among the pack of hocken.
Master Girt’s armor was now directing light around him, making him all but impossible to see, even with Tala’s three-fold vision.
How did he get over there? Tala was incredibly confused. She thought she’d seen movement, but it hadn’t been between where he started and where he got to.
-I think he dropped into the ground and moved over to the other stone?-
We definitely should have seen him do that.
-Ask him later?-
Yeah. I’ll do that.
The hocken let out yipping barks of confusion, communicating with each other in clear attempts to narrow in on their suddenly missing prey.
Things were once again fully under control, the battle going as Master Girt seemed to have planned.
Alat’s gasp was Tala’s only warning that her assessment had been incorrect.
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A pair of hocken that they all had somehow missed spotting in their approach lunged out of the ground, snagging onto Master Girt.
This time—instead of attacking and dying in the same manner that their brethren had—they seemed to pull the Refined stoneward for a quick bob before he returned to the superficial world, leaving the stone armor behind.
Tala and her whole unit moved forward as one, but stopped when they heard Master Girt laughing.
When he’d hit the dirt, he had slapped the ground and made himself gauntlets wrought of stone. Those immediately began to churn and roil, obsidian-like blades slashing in a maelstrom around his fists.
He swept around himself, driving his foes back even as he regained his feet.
The hocken seemingly couldn’t latch onto him directly, likely because of his aura and magical weight.
They were powerful enough to have been able to gain a measure of supremacy on his armor, but his flesh and thin clothing were too close to him and too flimsy to give them purchase.
Thus, they were forced back to the superficial and kept there for their continued assault.
All five were circling Master Girt, then, giving half lunges or swipes in feinting attempts to cause the man in their midst to stumble or fail.
Tala knew that Master Girt could have re-armored himself in an instant, but he seemed to have realized that such would be a disadvantage in this fight.
More than that, however, his continued laugh was deep, like the bones of Zeme were laughing along with him.
He was having a wonderful time.
His blocks and strikes were a blur, every one of them leaving splattered shadow-flesh across the ground even if they didn’t kill or maim the creatures impacted.
It seemed like the melee had come to a stalemate, but Master Girt wasn’t just focused on the melee.
Less than two minutes after jumping off of the wall top, Master Girt straightened, stretching.
The hocken hesitated. As they had learned to respect him as a fellow predator, his sudden seeming lack of care made them wary of a trap.
They were right to be wary.
Even so, it didn’t help.
Transparent spikes slammed down across the entire battlefield, pin-cushioning all five remaining opponents at once.
“Clear!” The Refined Defender called a moment later, the stones resonating around him, amplifying his proclamation.
* * *
The room in the wallbound tower was a far more boisterous place after Master Girt returned to the unit.
Everyone offered their congratulations, along with hearty slaps and other gestures of approval. Additionally, food and drink were ordered in celebration.
While some of the beverages were alcoholic, they weren't magically so. Thus, such drinks were only chosen for taste, and even still, only by Mistress Vanga and Master Clevnis.
Of course, Mistress Vanga patched up Master Girt before all of this. That was both protocol and good manners. The man had several bites taken out of him, as well as ragged gouges across his back and arms.
Mistress Vanga fixed him up in no time at all.
Once the healing was done, the celebration had gone on for a while, and things had finally settled down once more, Tala sat down beside the much more peaceful-seeming man. “Do you feel any better?”
He nodded, a soft smile evident across his features. “It is good to remind myself that I am capable of peace.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. What do you mean?”
“Well, if you have no capacity for violence, you cannot be peaceful; you can only be harmless. No one wants to be harmless.” He huffed a laugh at that.
Tala leaned back as she processed the statement, feeling like something had hit her between the eyes.
He grinned. “It’s alright if it sounds odd. You’ll get it eventually. You’re still rather young.”
She smiled back, “That’s true enough, yeah. Even so, I’d like to understand.”
He nodded, considering. “It’s like being gentle. In my case, a weak man cannot be gentle, because gentleness is strength under control. If I am not capable of breaking a thing, I can’t be gentle with it. I can do whatever I want, and it will be fine. It is only when I am capable of doing damage that I can be gentle.”
She understood that quite well, given her own prodigious strength. “Oh! That makes sense. So, to be peaceful, you have to be capable of not being so.”
“Exactly.”
“Otherwise you’re just irrelevant.”
He nodded again, happy. “Exactly right.”
“I think I can understand that.”
“I’m glad.” His smile shifted a bit as he continued, “Thank you for giving me that fight, by the way. You could have taken it if you had wished.”
She shrugged. “It seemed like you might have a need.”
“It was helpful, yeah.” His gaze became a bit distant, but his mind returned from whatever he was contemplating a moment later.
Tala wasn’t sure if this was the right time to ask. Even so, after a moment’s hesitation, she decided to simply ask, “How did you move into that stone wall, near the middle of the fight?”
He shrugged, “Well, my rock and I are one. Why shouldn’t I be able to do so?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but found herself without anything to say.
He chuckled. “If it helps with your understanding, it is anything but free. It is practically a teleport, but because it’s short enough range, it doesn’t have the same restrictions or effects.”
“Oh, so you have a limit on how far you can go?”
“Well, yes and no. It has to be my rock, which limits my range in the way you are thinking, but what I meant is that, because I and my rock are one, I am always with my rock. Being here or there isn’t really much of a difference. The distinction fades and returns, and I am where I wish to be.”
-Through the void?-
No, not void magic. It almost sounds like the opposite? He drives away the void between himself and the rock, and when it returns, it finds the placement of the two different?
-Yeah, he’s connecting through the void, not using void magic.-
Oh… then maybe?
Master Girt patted her on the shoulder. “I can see that you’ve got a lot to think through. Just remember: Don’t try to adopt another’s mindset as your own. Learn from everyone, blindly follow no one.”
She nodded, smiling. “Thank you. I will remember that.”
* * *
Tala fell into a pattern over the coming weeks, spending time with her unit, Rane, and her ‘reborn children.’
-I still can’t believe you let them call themselves that.-
I made the mistake of objecting too strongly… Kedva seems to find being contrary a form of affection.
-I personally think you lost the battle when you started calling it ‘rebirth.’-
Yeah… you probably have a point there.
Regardless, she spent time with Adrill, Brandon, and Kedva, helping them further establish their new abilities. The two men decided to be inscribed, and they were digging into that potential.
Kedva had declined for the moment. Though, there was obviously still time for her to change her mind.
Tala didn’t much care. She wasn’t going to pay for it, and so the three had that limitation to consider as well.
Tala also spent some time with Artia. Even so, the woman mainly did her learning from books, usually asking her husband or son for clarifications on more esoteric things.
With Rane, Tala observed an interesting progression in his mindset.
He seemed to pay special attention whenever anyone called to her on the street, having recognized her for her work as a Defender.
At first, she thought it was some oddly misplaced jealousy, but it quickly became evident that he felt something akin to being excluded when people would come up to them and only address her.
It was worse when he spent time with her and her unit, because they were all recognized… all of them but him.
That, coupled with quite a few other things, made Tala not surprised in the least when Rane confided something in her. At the time they were celebrating the turning of the year within her sanctum with her unit and their other acquaintances and friends.
“I’m going to Refine as soon as I can.” His countenance was firm, but Tala could tell that he still had some trepidation.
“That is a big step.” Even so, she could see in his aura that he was almost precisely halfway between Fused and Refined, the color a rather happy, sunshine yellow.
Still, before she could say more, Terry flickered to her shoulder, interrupting their conversation for a moment.
“Hey, Terry. Are you enjoying yourself?”
He trilled happily.
He’d been entrusted with far more children than Tala would have expected, but apparently the various parents took Master Simon and Mistress Petra at their word when they testified to the avian’s trustworthiness. Most were friends of the Feshuas or that the Zuccats had made in the city.
Her unit invited some acquaintances as well, though.
Terry had been playing various forms of tag, hide-and-seek, and similar games with more than a dozen children for the last couple of hours.
Kit had really become much more resilient to the erosion of gates since she and Tala had soulbonded. Even so, they had agreed to move the celebration out of the sanctum for a few hours before returning for the countdown to midnight.
Tala felt herself smile. She remembered celebrating the turning of the years with her family as a child, before things had turned bad, and she felt a combination of nostalgia and excitement to be doing so once again.
More than that, it was almost exactly one year since she had killed Be-thric.
Without realizing or really knowing it, she had done the deed on the first day of the new year.
Has it really only been a year?
-Yeah, but it seems like so much longer…-
Rane greeted Terry before meeting her gaze once more and continuing their discussion, “Refining is a big step, yeah, but I’m ready. My preparatory scripts will be fully integrated in less than a week, and with a week further as buffer to ensure the predictions and scans aren’t mistaken, I’ll be ready for the first session in less than two weeks.”
“First session?”
“Yes,” He nodded, “I know you did it in one session, but that is apparently much more dangerous.” He grinned broadly at that. “I suppose I should have expected that it would be, given that was the course of action you took.”
She grimaced slightly, remembering the damage the dasgannach and other things had done to her body. “I didn’t really have that much of a choice…”
He waved that away, nodding his acknowledgement. “Regardless, I’ll be taking the tried and true route.”
“Four sessions.” She spoke softly, knowing that she could make it harder for him if she implied any sort of pain or extraordinary difficulty.
Even though her statement was obviously not a question, he answered as if it had been, “Yes, four sessions. There is a minimum of a week between sessions, but I’ll be advised how long to wait after each.” His smile spread. “So, in the best case, I’ll join you as a Refined in six weeks time.”
“In the best case, yeah.” She swallowed, feeling mildly awkward.
He chuckled at that. “Don’t worry, Tala. I know that that case is incredibly unlikely. In some instances, it can take decades, though I can’t find out why. Obviously, in the worst cases it’s never finished, but that shouldn’t be a concern. Master Grediv has done everything he can to prepare me, after all.”
She nodded and gave him an encouraging smile. “I know you’ll do great.”
* * *
Less than two weeks later, she stood outside the room in which Rane was Refining, holding back tears while listening to him scream.