Tala followed Rane into the Refining room.

Master Grediv came up directly behind her, not commenting on her heavily armored state.

Inside was completely bare save a wrought iron chair with legs melded into the floor.

The wall, floor, and ceiling were all smooth planes of iron, the corners somehow welded to create a seamless whole, as if the box were cast all together and then polished smooth.

With her threefold sight, she could see that those near-perfect welds went all the way through the nearly foot thick surroundings.

It’s no wonder this is on the ground floor. It must weigh… just so much.

-At times, your precision is just staggering to behold.-

Hush, you.

This room was significantly more iron-armored than the room in which Rane had undergone his first session.

He was—once again—devoid of all inscriptions save those required for the procedure.

Even so, she knew that the walls would soon be scored deeply.

From what Tala understood, the increase had been necessary because Rane’s flailing magics would likely be even more extreme and powerful.

She, herself, had come out mostly unscathed because her iron had been within—and backed up by—her aura, dispersing the magics as they hit her armor. Iron on its own simply reflected or dismissed those magics, yet allowing the kinetic blades they had created and directed to still impact and cause damage.

It wouldn’t be as easy for her to do that this session as he was now closer to her advancement. Additionally, she knew that he’d been making improvements to his understanding and mental models based on discussions with Master Tai.

This session was going to be interesting to say the least.

Tala took a moment to look around at the iron surrounding the room, panning its depths with her threefold sight even more extensively.

There were no obvious flaws at any level, but she wasn’t exactly a blacksmith or metallurgist. Mainly, she found that she was curious how she would use this much iron.

Honestly, she could buy literally tons of iron if she wanted to, but something told her that it wouldn’t be a good idea, at least not yet.

She needed to keep a balance within her being, and that much iron would heavily weigh her toward Reality in all the wrong ways.

As she’d glanced around, Rane had moved to sit in the chair.

Master Grediv handed him the seemingly innocuous device which facilitated and directed the Refining.

It effectively looked like two knife handles—formed to be comfortable to grip tightly—connected by a wide, flat bit of material.

The whole thing was, of course, utterly entwined with magics of various natures, all aimed toward helping an Archon Refine.

Tala moved to stand behind Rane, causing Master Grediv to glance her way before returning his eyes to Rane. “Rane, are you sure you want her in here? Having someone in here for these sessions can make things worse.”

“Is that always the case?”

“No, of course not. It generally hinges on whether the one Refining truly wants the person in the room. That is why I am checking.”

Rane shook his head, then glanced back toward Tala. “Do you wish to be here?”

“If it helps even marginally, yes.”

He nodded, looking back to his former master. “I am sure. I want her here.”

Master Grediv gave a small bow. “Very well.”

His magic shifted through the device in Rane’s hands.

“Remember, my boy, there is nothing holding your hands to the device now that the first session is complete. If you ever let go with both hands—even for an instant—the session will end, and you will have to fully recover before undergoing another.”

Rane nodded. This wasn’t new information by any means. “And if I don’t let go, this session will end on its own when I’ve Refined as much as my body can handle this time around.”

“Precisely, yes. Have you determined your preference on intensity?”

“Maximum, please.”

Master Grediv hesitated, and Tala knew why.

She’d seen the unadulterated reports on Rane’s condition. To have a better than fifty percent chance of succeeding, he only required an intensity near the upper range, not the absolute maximum.

Even so, it was more important to a successful Refining that Rane be the one to choose the intensity.

“As you wish.”

The Paragon’s magic seemed to activate certain pathways in the device that Rane held.

“Once the door is sealed, please wait a slow count of ten. Then, run a bit of power into the construct. Things will proceed automatically from that point.”

Rane nodded and gave a strained smile. “Thank you, Master Grediv.”

With one last meeting of Tala’s gaze—or at least an attempt to do so—Master Grediv left, pulling the door shut behind him.

Rane started taking deeper breaths, specifically inhaling twice for each exhale, trying to calm himself.

His hands were trembling on the device.

Tala stepped a bit closer, setting a hand on each of his shoulders.

She felt him tense up, but then, tension seemed to bleed from him at the light pressure she was exerting.

With a thought, she banished the armor from her palms and the fronts of her fingers, allowing her hands to sink down until her skin was resting on the cloth of his tunic.

She felt a smile pull at her lips.

Leaving those particular portions of herself bare reminded her of her iron salve.

She remembered meticulously putting glue on her palms and the pads of her fingers to keep iron from them as she did her best to impregnate her skin with the concoction of iron and bee’s wax.

Oh, how far we’ve come.

Rane must have reached ‘ten,’ because Tala felt him send a flick of magic into the construct.

There was a sensation through the magic in the room, like the deep in-draw of a bellows.

The construct was suddenly ablaze with power, some pulled from Rane, but some clearly drawn from the city's grid of magical power.

To complete the metaphor, the bellows was compressed, magic rushed into Rane, and his top layer of skin was blown off entirely.

His hair and nails also were flung away with startling force.

His clothing tore in quite a few places, letting out rushes of dead skin and shed hair.

He was even lifted slightly off of the chair as even the portions of his exterior that rested against the chair were purged.

Tala’s hands were forced up for an instant, and when they came down, her palms contacted raw, new skin, the fabric atop his shoulders broken.

She was very grateful for the full face mask as the air was instantly filled with swirling eddies of dead material.

Rane let out a groan that edged close to being a whimper after the fact. Clearly the exfoliation had happened too quickly for him to react in the moment.

A moment later, a second pulse of power tore through him, and a familiar type of black sludge oozed out of his pores like the worst sort of sweat.

Tala almost pulled her hands back in disgust, but she was already dirty, and it hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Then, she noticed that the gunk that had gotten on her palms was moving away from her like a magnet being repulsed by the same pole on another.

The ooze was thick, so it moved slowly, but this stuff clearly didn’t seem inclined to be near her.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Interesting. I’ll have to highlight this memory for Master Simon.

But… she couldn’t. Master Simon wasn’t Refined, and even this much could negatively affect his attempt.

She grimaced but was quickly pulled back to the matter at hand… or under hand in this case.

Rane was taking gasping, ragged breaths when the third pulse raced through him, and he tried to scream.

Unfortunately, he’d just exhaled when it struck, making the attempted scream sound entirely inhuman.

Something deep within Rane seemed to stir and his grip on the device tightened, his knuckles turning white with the effort.

More black oozed out with every increasingly rapid pulse of power from the construct.

Soon, that is precisely what it reminded Tala of: the pulse of a nightmarish heart, pumping black sludge instead of blood.

Rane’s jaw was straining even more than his forearms as he fought to keep from screaming as much as he struggled to maintain his grip.

Finally, the magics within him—the tainted boon that plagued so many of the Gredial line—couldn’t be held back any more, and the berserker-like state activated.

Kinetic energy rose up from his natural pathways—and was drawn through his soulbond with Force—to lash out in every direction.

Thankfully, none shot upward from his shoulders into her exposed hands.

Also, blessedly, none shot downward into the seat of his chair either, but nothing else was spared.

In less than a minute, the room looked more ravaged than the previous room had after his entire first session, and billowing clouds of iron shavings filled the air along with still-drifting clouds of dust and hair.

The blades that shot toward Tala this session were far more resilient to her dispersion, and far more coherent even after she shredded the magics imparting them.

The first blade impacted her sacrificial armor, causing loud snaps and sending cracks and other damage radiating outward throughout her protection, just as the design was intended to facilitate.

With a minor effort of will, she molded the armor back into perfect shape after each hit.

This process was made easier partially because she had such a solid model for its construction in her head, but mostly the ease was from the fact that all parts of the armor were still very nearly where they should be, just no longer properly interconnected.

Thus, it was rather easy to enact small shifts and reestablish proper connections after the attack landed.

Still, they were powerful hits, having already shredded the back of the iron chair with ease.

None of the blades reached Tala’s skin, of course, and if they had she’d likely have held up fine.

In the worst case, there was nothing about the slashing attacks that would have made it hard for her to heal.

She was going to be just fine.

She was sure of it.

Her armor was honestly working even better than she’d predicted.

Where a single one of Rane’s blades had passed through two inches of wrought iron before seemingly fully dissipating, Tala’s armor stopped the slashes in less than a half inch.

By accepting, and even designing for, widespread failure at each strike, she forced the incoming energy to disperse over a far greater area, rendering it incapable of making it deeply into her layers of defense.

This method of defense was honestly a wonderful coherent extension of her own bodily enhancement methodology. She took the hits, dispersing and enduring them to the best of her ability, then she fixed the damage.

She was pleased, even if the actual effectiveness of the attacks momentarily left her baffled.

It took her a few deep slashes in her armor before she realized what was happening.

Rane’s blades of kinetic energy—if uninterrupted—effectively tore apart whatever they struck by using the very molecules in the target, imparting the velocity upon an incredibly thin line of material, to send it cutting deeper in.

Now, when she tore apart the magics, the kinetic energy simply grabbed onto the air it was already overlaying, creating a fast-moving, deadly blade of air that no longer had anything magical about it.

It was a simple, yet completely new way of thinking about kinetic energy… apparently.

Rane had mentioned something about working on new applications like this after his latest conversation with Master Tai, but he hadn’t told her he’d gotten the methodology to work.

Good for him.

She grit her teeth and enforced that sentiment even as she continued to repair rents in her defenses.

I’m glad he’s improving.

Another deep slash was mitigated by her armor, and she reformed the layers and interconnected hexagons.

This is good training.

It was a bit frustrating, and not at all indicative of how she’d fare against Rane’s attacks in almost any other setting.

She couldn’t even extend her aura to break apart the incoming attacks more effectively, because she couldn’t allow for even the chance that she, her magics, or her aura would taint or otherwise negatively affect Rane’s Refining.

Tala fought the urge to tighten her grip on Rane’s shoulders, keeping her hands resting gently, reassuringly upon his skin.

Rane, for his part, had his eyes scrunched shut, and he was breathing shallowly in ragged, panting breaths, each exhale accompanied by a sound like the keening of a child at his father’s funeral.

If he was crying, the tears were lost in the black ooze flowing from around his eyes as much as from every other pore.

Thankfully, the kinetic blades were originating far enough away from Rane that none carried any of the blackness with them.

Tala had no idea what effect that would have had, but it couldn’t possibly be good.

The man’s arms trembled under the strain that was more mental than muscular.

Tala watched one or the other of his hands almost unconsciously try to flex open, only to be re-clamped down with vicious growls of determination.

Each time the growl was just a bit closer to a whimper than the time before.

Throughout it all, Tala didn’t move her hands, nor in any way interfere, no matter how much she wanted to try to help.

She knew that anything that she could do would only make things worse, and despite her doing her best to focus on what was affecting her, and learning to better utilize her own magics, she felt her eyes begin to fill, just as they had during Rane’s first session.

Therefore, she endured, standing behind Rane as he endured worse.

She stood stalwart, even as Rane bore the brunt of the ordeal.

She wept, even as Rane experienced the pain and suffering.

* * *

Tala knew she was pale as she held Rane’s limp body in her armored arms.

Don’t kick down the door, don’t kick down the door, don’t kick down the door.

Master Grediv was likely almost there to let them out and see to Rane’s condition. She could see him with her threefold sight moving their way.

Don’t try to claim the iron to get free, don’t claim the iron to get free, DO NOT CLAIM THE IRON.

He had endured the entirety of the session, lasting until the construct had powered down of its own volition.

I am fine, he is fine… he will be fine.

Master Grediv stopped outside the door and seemed to be looking at his Archive slate, though what he was seeing was shielded from her threefold sight by the man’s aura.

What is he waiting for?

She felt magics sweep through the room, despite the solid iron surrounding it and the flecks of iron dust in the air.

Oh… that would be a reasonable reason.

She growled, manifesting her own iron flush with the ceiling before dragging it downward, rolling it over and around herself and her burden before it pressed into the floor, trapping all the detritus that had been in the air.

A moment later, magic swept through the space again, and Tala got to watch—through her threefold vision—as Master Grediv twitched slightly at what had to seem like a stark change to his scan.

Then, the door swung open.

Tala was striding through as soon as there was room for her to pass with Rane still in her arms.

He was an awkward burden, even if not heavy, and she was forced to sidestep her way out of the Refining room.

His clothing was shredded and barely hanging off his substantially emaciated frame.

No, not emaciated. His muscle was still there, but it was as if he’d been pulled thin, beaten flat, and then reinflated… somehow.

She would have bet that he’d lost quite a bit of weight, and what was still there had been compacted into even less of his body than would be expected.

Tala had done her best to scrape the black ooze from him as she ran the iron down from ceiling to floor, but it hadn’t been intended to be a perfect cleaning, and there was still a lot of the substance in his clothing and hiding in the harder to clean parts of him.

Master Grediv gestured toward the recovery room, and Tala moved that way.

Behind her, on the floor of the room, her iron wrapped around the black sludge that she’d grabbed, and dragged it stoneward to be brought along until she returned to Kit.

For good measure, she claimed the iron fragments that Rane had torn free.

She knew that they’d be thrown out regardless, so it was trivial for her to enact her ownership over them.

That done, she refocused on who she was carrying.

Rane’s now utterly bald head was resting on her shoulder, and his feet were barely above the ground, but she was managing him alright, his body held between her arms in front of her.

One arm was across his back, holding him up under the far shoulder, and the other of her arms was braced below his knees.

When they reached the recovery room, Tala once again shuffle-stepped sideways through the door before striding across the small room and laying Rane on the waiting bed.

The two Healers already in the room—neither of which Tala knew—waited until she stepped back before they came forward to examine Rane.

Tala watched as the Refined and Paragon Healers delved through Rane’s ravaged body.

There was magic in the sheets of the bed which activated as soon as the top one was pulled over Rane.

They shredded what remained of his clothing and then caused the clothing and all remaining sludge to flow down into a collection container at the base of the bed.

Normally, it would be contained to prevent it from contaminating anything else until it faded away—but Tala had been granted the right to examine it, now that it was separated from Rane, even if it was a bit gross to think about.

She used her iron to dump the portion of the sludge she’d already collected into the same container, nearly filling it entirely.

Master Simon will appreciate having another Archived perception for comparison.

They had similar material from Adrill, Brandon, and Kedva, which didn’t seem to fade, or at least didn’t fade as quickly.

He had been able to determine that the material which had been gained from the others had traces of iron throughout.

Tala didn’t send any magical examination through the black, knowing that would cause it to disperse more quickly.

Instead, she set Alat to examining it with their threefold sight in as detailed a fashion as possible until the stuff vanished entirely.

But Tala was distracting herself once again.

Alat had that covered.

Rane was unconscious, and the Healers weren’t healing him.

She knew they couldn’t, not in a way that would really help, and they’d already done what they could.

He had to come back to consciousness on his own.

The two reported to Master Grediv, not trying to keep her from overhearing.

He was doing as well as could be expected, and they believed that he would wake within a day or two.

That was all that they could determine for the time being, as Rane’s body struggled to begin recovery.

So, Tala grew a chair—following the same principles that underlay her armor as a form of practice—before she sat and settled in to wait.