Tala was not sure she could get into the Doman-Imithe, but she had a good idea of how it might work, and she’d been doing experiments around similar things for a while now, even if she hadn’t actually done it yet.

Alright, let’s do this!

First, she wrapped herself in void.

To do this, she funneled more power into the void magic aspects of her elk leathers along with aspect-mirroring the void magics from Flow onto them as well. With force of will, she impressed the power into the defensive magics that created a full shell around her, vaguely in the form of armor but without the gaps.

She was very careful to not add iron into the mix.

She still had her inscriptions completely contained within iron, but she didn’t sheath her skin, her elk leathers, or her defenses in it.

She did not want to use her existence-shield.

In truth, what she was doing was probably overkill.

She thought she would only need void magic over her gloves, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

As soon as she was sheathed in void magic—the direct counter to reality—she felt the slight disconnect from the physical world around her.

So far, so good.

The Paragon and her unit-mates stood at a distance, but she could tell they were all intently focused on her, and on what she was doing.

Tala ignored them as her threefold sight focused in on the ‘in between’ spaces, between increments stoneward of superficial. She was looking to where she’d seen hints of the Doman-Imithe in the past.

Then, with an effort of will, she upped the gravitational attraction between her hand and what she found.

After less than a minute of positively dumping power into the working, she felt a small pop and her hand vanished, followed by her forearm, as they were pulled stoneward.

To those looking, it seemed like her arm was being tucked behind some invisible object, not able to be seen from any angle.

Tala’s hand felt… odd.

She had never purposely separated her body along the stone-starward axis before. She’d only moved as a whole, and it was decidedly odd.

The arcane, Lisa, made it look effortless. That was likely due to his particular magics or makeup, however.

As to her, her biology was not designed to function like this.

Her blood flow shouldn’t have worked at these oblique angles, but her pervasive inscriptions and natural magics kept everything in the paths that it should go, despite the odd misalignment.

Tala felt the void magic around her fingers brush up against… something.

She seized it and pulled.

Her muscles were not really positioned or designed to pull along the star- stoneward axis, but she managed regardless, feeling the odd tweaking as she used more leverage than directly applied strength.

When her hand felt like it popped back to the superficial, she had a fistful of void.

With her other hand, she grabbed on, and then pulled it apart, just as she had when making a door to get out of the Doman-Imithe so long ago.

No, that was only barely more than a year ago.

-Some years are longer than others.-

Tala considered that, then felt herself smile. You know what? I think that you’re right.

She pushed her own void magic outward, using her aura—along with her hands wrapped in void magic. Together, she used the combination to leverage the captured bit of true void—and the hole that she’d created through it—wide, feeling like she was creating a bridge more than a door.

On the superficial level, it was definitely door-like, but to her threefold sight? It was an intricately latticed bridge that vanished into between the superficial and the increment just stoneward thereof.

Through the door, she saw the Doman-Imithe.

Yeah, that looks right.

-Well done! Theory and reality meet.-

Tala stepped back and smiled. “There! I knew I could do it.”

An instant after she let go of the thing, it snapped closed, vanishing from the superficial and winking out of existence.

Rust…

She sighed. “Well, that was rusting foolish of me.”

It didn’t close last time.

She turned to regard the Paragon and her unit-mates, and saw them all wearing various expressions of interest, surprise, or incredulity. Mistress Sigyn’s right eye was twitching.

“So? I think I can stabilize it. Is that what you were looking for?”

The Paragon seemed to take a calming breath, then nodded. “Yes, I believe that was the Doman-Imithe I sensed through the doorway. Are you… I apologize to pry into your magics, but was that void magic?”

Tala nodded. “It was.”

Mistress Sigyn nodded in return but more slowly. “Alright. I suppose the information about you did mention void magic. Would you be able to check for the cell-core?”

Tala hesitated a moment. “What am I looking for, exactly? Things in the Doman-Imithe aren’t exactly conducive to just ‘finding something out of place.’” She chuckled to relieve some nervousness. “Because if that’s what I’m looking for, the answer will be: Me.”

That got a laugh from the Paragon. “Fair.” She grinned. “You are looking for a wooden sphere, bound in an iron alloy that will feel like a mirrored tube to magic. It should seem to be pulling in your power more than reflecting it, but honestly, if you’re testing for that minute of detail, you should just let us know that you’ve found it.”

“Wood?” Tala considered, then grinned, realizing the most likely reason. “Is it Master Jevin’s work?”

Mistress Sigyn shrugged. “Most likely. He makes most of the cell-cores we use these days, and the others who do so use his schema, so they use wood as well. He really has the most amazing grasp on so many types of magic.”

Her admiration for the man was clear.

Honestly, Tala couldn’t blame her. Even if she didn’t know Master Jevin’s age, she knew that he had done a lot for humanity in various ways.

She smiled, nodding. “Alright. That’s what I’ll look for then.”

She turned back to the rockface before her.

This time the process of forcing herself to reach stoneward was… well, not precisely easier, but it was smoother.

Simpler?

Yeah, it was simpler because she knew better what to expect.

Even so, it was still incredibly odd even if she recognized all the feelings from the process a few minutes earlier.

The door opened, and Tala saw the Doman-Imithe through the opening once again.

Yup, very Doman-Imithe-like.

-Exactly as expected.-

Tala nodded to herself. Well, I don’t want to stand here, holding it, and I’d rather have the door open after I step through. So, I’ll stabilize it, then… Oh… right…

-Yeah… I just remembered that too.-

Tala turned her head toward her unit-mates. “There might be some reality beasts coming our way. They seem to not like doors connected to the Doman-Imithe.”

Master Clevnis nodded, turning to look outward. “Understood.”

The others similarly oriented their perspectives outward in various directions.

Tala smiled, glad that she could trust their competence.

Still, she should give them some assurance, “If one manages to close the door, I should be able to reopen it from the other side. They seem to be more stable when opened from the other side…”

She considered, reorienting on the door she was still actively holding open. Maybe…?

-Yeah, that would make sense. These are less damaging from this side, like pushing aside blades of grass to see the soil instead of digging up from below.

She still needed to hold it open.

-Iron?-

Iron.

She pulled iron to the superficial, wrapping it around the entirety of the inside of the doorway, creating a sort of U-channel, bracketing the magical portal, half in zeme half in the Doman-Imithe.

There. She released her hold on the portal, and it settled into the iron channel, swaying and oscillating a bit, making her extremely glad for the shape that she’d chosen.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

At that point, she also began to get some odd feelings from the thing, likely information from her threefold sight, that she couldn’t interpret any other way.

The strongest was an overpowering gratefulness that she’d opened the door against the cliff. Something deep inside her said she should not look at the backside.

Mistress Sigyn sighed, a mix of gratitude and resignation. “Well, your profile did say void and iron. I just didn’t quite incorporate the truth of that.” She chuckled. “More the fool, me.”

Tala nodded noncommittally, and gave the woman a smile before she stepped through the portal. “Be back shortly!”

As she put her foot down on the other side, a truth smacked her in the face.

She knew that she’d been looking into the Doman-Imithe through the door, but she hadn’t actually processed anything that she could see through that opening.

It was as if her mind utterly filtered out whatever it had been.

Now, without the void-door as a medium, her mind was exposed to the truth of the backside of Zeme.

The broken world.

The Doman-Imithe.

The door behind her was gone, even if she could still feel it.

Something was very not right.

Well, rust…

* * *

Tala took in her surroundings as quickly as she was able.

There weren’t any smilers in immediate evidence, but the thing before her might have eaten them.

No, there’s no ‘might’ about it. It definitely did.

A single eye floated about a hundred yards from her, while also seeming within easy reach.

It wasn’t physical in the sense of being an eyeball.

Instead, it looked like a malevolent toddler had tried to draw the eyes of a kind parent in sparkles and good feelings.

-That made absolutely no sense.-

Am I wrong?

-...no, and that disturbs me a little bit.-

As to how an eye could eat smilers?

Tala didn’t understand that either, but the way it regarded her made her feel like it would have eaten her immediately, if she’d been a smiler.

Because she wasn’t one, it didn’t much want to bother with her, at least not at the moment.

You know, I think I might actively hate the Doman-Imithe.

-We don’t have the greatest experiences here, no.-

Aside from the horrifying, yet non-threatening creature of the not-void, her surroundings were just close enough to mundane to set her on edge.

She stood on a vast flat plain of rock.

She assumed that it was just her mental manifestation of the near region of the Doman-Imithe, and if she moved even a few hundred feet it would radically change, but that didn’t change the fact that it was what it looked like.

There wasn’t a pebble or bit of dust on the smooth surface.

As she’d already noticed, the doorway back to Zeme seemed to be gone, even though she could actively feel it.

There was no magic in the area at all, making Doman-Imithe not contain even a hint of the namesake of Zeme.

Oh, and the rock upon which she stood was the deep, glowing purple of a clear blue sky.

Tala’s mind hurt.

This was so much worse than when she’d seen this without magic.

Now, she could perceive so much more of the nonsensical existence, and her brain was striving to understand it.

So, instead of being a pedestrian walking into a wall that she couldn’t see, her higher capacity mind was an entire caravan slamming into the same wall.

It was awful.

Her eyes flicked back to the murder-eye, and she realized something, the information seeming inexplicably coming to her from her threefold sight.

Oh… I’m looking at it from the inside.

She felt herself whimper involuntarily, despite herself.

As if responding to her thoughts, the world inverted, the stone momentarily becoming the black of a summer sunrise.

Stop… Tala staggered slightly, but when she looked up, she was standing on plain gray rock, and the eye was now a flat black.

-Oh, wow. This is so much more awful experiencing it in person than in your memories.-

She swallowed reflexively.

I was… I was in its mouth?

-Like a baby, it decided to taste us before deciding what we were.-

An eye with an oral fixation…

She felt like the synapses within her brain were committing frantic suicide in a wholly inadequate attempt to escape what she was experiencing.

On a positive note, the doorway to Zeme was behind her once again, and she almost stepped through it just to be free of this place.

No, I need to see if…

And it was as easy as that.

There it was.

The cell-core she had come to try to find was in easy view.

It was a wooden sphere the size of her head with hexagons of metal inlaid into its surface.

The cell-core was directly below the now-iconographic, darkly glowing eye.

The eye was still watching her.

She could somehow tell that it was still trying to decide what to do with her.

Something brushed against her on a conceptual level, passing through the iron on her skin as if there was nothing there, and she felt all of her magics invert for a horrifying moment.

Alat was gone.

Tala’s physical enhancements became restrictions that locked her in place, rendered her insensate, and utterly—sensorily—cut off from the world around her.

It was like the worst eye-blink to ever occur, and when she came back, her magics working properly again, she felt like she’d been partially obliterated.

It was obvious to her how that had happened. The dissolution magics of endingberries were enacted throughout her being for that brief instant of inversion.

Only the fact that she was Refined had kept her from puffing into dust in that singular blink of magic-reversal.

In a show of stalwart strength, she then dropped to her knees and vomited everywhere, the inversion of those magics taking a moment longer to take effect.

Yeah, goodbye!

She rolled backward through the door, pulling her iron away and letting the portal slam shut.

Collapsing to the ground, she continued to heave. Though this heaving was blessedly due to a passing shortness of breath rather than more vomiting.

She managed to rasp out, “Oh, that was awful.”

Mistress Vanga was at her side before she’d fully reoriented. “You are fully healed, but your entire body feels strained and stressed.”

Tala just vaguely nodded, still rather out of sorts. “Yeah. But, hey!” Tala tried to put a positive spin on things, “Mission accomplished. The cell-core was there.”

Mistress Sigyn’s voice came to her. “Oh! Good. Well, we should look into the cell, but if there’s a cell-core, we’re most likely going to want to extract it. That will return the cell to Zeme and we can gather up the contents.”

…What?

-What?-

Did she say…?

-...yes. She most definitely said ‘extract.’-

Tala groaned. Lovely.

* * *

Tala marveled, walking into the incredibly dry, cold air of the cell and glancing around. “Is this… a seed vault?”

Mistress Cerna was nearby, similarly looking around as she answered. “This section at least seems to be.”

“What did they think would happen to Zeme? Some of these labels are for things like wildflowers of various kinds. Did they expect all plant-life would be obliterated, somehow?”

“I’m not sure.”

Master Girt grunted. “At least seeds make some sort of sense. Why are there a whole bunch of tiny metal bowls with corrugated edges and rubberized insides?”

Mistress Vanga called from the other side. “I have bags of... sand? I have both black and white sand…” She hesitated. “I think it’s ground and powdered, crystalized bone? What the rust?”

Master Clevnis added what he was finding as well. “Here is some armor and weapons. It looks like they chose armor types that could be fitted to the wearer after construction. It’s well made stuff, and it seems to have held up well in the cold and dry.”

Master Limmestare sighed. “I suppose we’re all just spouting off what we see as we add the inventory to the Archive? Yes? Yes. I have stacked reels of various metal wire, like those used to help set magics for new cities. Honestly, this looks like miles of metal.”

They continued through the incredibly well stocked vault.

It made a sort of sense that it was so well stocked.

If the people of the time believed that they were helping to equip what was left of society after a horrific disaster, and they believed it to the point of using a cell-core, then they weren’t going to be scrimping on the contents.

Tala found herself frowning. “Wait a moment.”

She felt everyone orient on her.

“If we expect the cell-cores to be wooden, because of Master Jevin… Does that mean that he’s older than this cell? Than any of the cells with cell-cores?”

Mistress Sigyn grunted. “Oh! Great question. I was a bit unclear earlier. Master Jevin makes them now, and he has perfected their design, but the original cell-cores—at least from what we know—were made by the Mezzannis. Master Jevin simply adapted the design when humanity was running low.”

Mezzannis… wait. That’s the Leshkin.

-Yeah.-

“The Leshkin made them?”

“No, Mistress Tala, the people who fell and became the Leshkin made the earliest known versions of them. That is why they’ve basically always been wood. The magics involved seem to work best in the medium as well, even if we aren’t sure why.” She chuckled. “Well, I’m not. It’s not something that’s ever really piqued my interest.”

Tala grunted. “That’s fair.”

They proceeded through the space, recording everything they came across.

Tala…had Alat scan the entirety of the contents with their threefold sight and record it in the first five minutes, only wandering over to the most interesting things after that.

At the fifteen minute mark, Tala got to watch Master Clevnis have the realization.

He glanced her way with an evident frown.

At that moment, she’d been lazily looking through a box filled with sets of playing cards. They had different suits than she was used to, and she thought they even had different numbers of suits as well as different numbers of cards in each suit.

What sort of games could you play with these?

Master Clevnis opened his mouth, possibly to reprimand her, but then he looked like he’d been struck between the eyes. “Oh… well, that’s on me.”

Mistress Cerna seemed to have heard him, because she glanced at her husband, then followed his gaze to Tala.

The smallest frown creased her brows then she blinked a couple of times before sighing. “Mistress Tala?”

“Yes, Mistress Cerna?”

“Are you already done?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

The woman grunted. “We can stop. Mistress Tala has already cataloged the space.”

After a moment’s pause, Master Girt began to chuckle, and Master Limmestare gave Tala a dirty look.

Mistress Vanga seemed vaguely disappointed in Tala when their eyes met, but Tala decided it had been worth it.

It was pretty funny, and no one had gotten hurt. She also hadn’t let it go on for very long.

Moreover, they all should have remembered that she was capable of it.

Mistress Sigyn seemed a bit confused, and Mistress Cerna filled her in. “Mistress Tala has recently improved her perception in a manner that allows her to see around and inside physical obstructions. I believe that she has already itemized the entire vault’s contents. It was likely trivial for her.”

Tala cleared her throat. “Trivial? No. Honestly, it was a bit difficult. There is a lot in here.”

-I’ve moved the information into the appropriate, shared portion of the Archive.-

“You should all be able to see the itemization.”

-You’re welcome.-

Thank you, Alat.

-Anytime.- The alternate interface was dismissive of her gratitude, but Tala still felt Alat’s contentment.

“So?” Mistress Cerna asked as the group gathered together. “What is the plan?”

Mistress Sigyn nodded to the question. “Great question. I’ve granted the relevant information to those who have to make the choice. I expect they’ll want to look over the inventory list, and then get back to us with a decision. We should expect it to take up to two days for us to get a response.”

Master Limmestare nodded once before turning toward the section that Tala knew held books. Before he could get far, however, Mistress Cerna called him back. “We should leave the cell until then. We don’t want to contaminate or degrade anything in here.”

Master Limmestare hesitated, then his shoulders slumped, and he spun, striding toward the exits, the others following shortly after.