Tala was walking up behind the caravan as the third-to-last wagon entered the gatehouse to be examined before entry.

Two caravan guards approached slowly, each holding short spears and shields.

Tala noticed the archer on the last wagon as that woman seemed to consider before selecting an arrow and putting it to her string.

Thankfully, the archer didn’t draw back that string. So, the guards—generally—were just being cautious.

The nearest caravan guard spoke loudly and clearly, “Greetings, traveler. Please stay back from the wagons until we are within the city. We mean no offense, but we need to get our charges inside safely as soon as possible.”

Tala lifted one hand in greeting. “Actually, I’m not a traveler.”

Their hands tightened on their weapons before she continued.

“I’m a Defender. I was just doing a sweep of the surrounding countryside.”

She had stopped walking some fifteen feet from their advanced position to prevent any misunderstandings. In total, Tala was a bit more than a hundred feet from the gate.

The caravan guard’s weapons probably wouldn’t do anything to her, but there wasn’t really a reason to be wasteful, or to cause stress to such fine folk.

The two guards shared another glance, before the other spoke up. “My apologies…Mistress.”

Tala opened her mouth to say that, of course, she was a ‘Mistress.’ What sort of idiot would she have to be to be out here without magic?

Then, however, she realized that their concern was that she was some sort of magical creature, trying to accost them before they could get into the city, or to get into the city, herself.

She sighed.

She considered using Kit to simply move past them, appearing where she wished to go, one wagon further up the line, or even beside the gatehouse.

That, however, was guaranteed to cause at least a minor panic. It would probably be worse than simply walking forward and letting them try to stab her.

After a moment of consideration, she came to the conclusion that any means of verifying her identity would slow everything down for everyone, and that wasn’t the point at all.

Fine. She grimaced in mild irritation.

“Very well. I will wait here.”

She manifested a thin tendril of iron, physically attaching herself to the ground. Then, she enacted her mental model and magics to remove the vast majority of her own effective gravity before pulling her legs up so that she was sitting cross legged mid-air.

Then, she dismissed the iron from the superficial, leaving her simply floating there, as she closed her eyes to continue her various mental exercises.

She did keep her perception open with her threefold sight, of course. There were weapons being brandished at her, after all.

The guards paled, slowly backing up as the caravan made its way into the city.

-Did you need to scare them that much?-

No, it wasn’t meant to scare them. It was just meant to be a statement that I’m waiting because I choose to, not because they’re making me.

-Because you’re irritated.-

…yeah, I’m a little irritated. I could have gotten exactly what I wanted, but it would have caused issues for others.

-So, you just decided to scare them a bit?-

Precisely.

-For doing their jobs?-

Well, I didn’t really mean to scare them… just make them back off.

-Which they were already doing.-

Tala hesitated. After a long moment, she sighed. Fine, that was unkind of me.

-Just a bit.-

The caravan still had a bit left to go, and now the guards were watching her from nearly fifty feet away.

She did not want to just sit here.

Hmmm… I wonder.

She extended her aura outward, not encountering any resistance of note.

Where she did encounter even the minimal bit of expected push-back, she simply rolled around the defenses, leaving the people and animals of the caravan their own sovereignty.

After a moment’s consideration, she dropped her aura downward, into the ground before continuing to advance.

There was no reason to enclose them in her aura.

If anyone was capable of sensing aura, even obliquely, it could cause a lot of terror in that poor person.

Even so, it was trivial to reach the halfway point of the gatehouse, where her aura hit an effectively impenetrable barrier, the aura-focused equivalent to what kept out Kit’s dimensionality.

Tala manifested a bit of iron on the ground, right there at the edge of the defense. Then, with a simple act of will, she pushed her iron across the infinitely thin line.

The barrier didn’t stop the iron in the slightest, and as soon as it was through, her aura had a foothold on the inside, and it was like getting a good handhold on a previously slick surface.

She had expected something like this, as she’d never had issues with her aura when walking through the gatehouse.

Now inside Alefast, her aura rolled on through until it reached fully past the gatehouse.

It was easy to get rid of Kit’s physical manifestation from the outside of the gatehouse and create a new one on the city-side of the structure.

With that simple change, Kit was now ‘inside’ the defense, and her dimensional authority spread out.

Tala decided that she didn’t want to wait, and she would just catch Brand a bit later.

Please notify… someone that what I am about to do was done by a human Defender.

-...fine.-

She moved herself into Kit, vanishing right out from under the guards' watchful gazes.

Kit was centered and anchored beside the gate, so Tala was easily able to remove the new physical manifestation there and create a door once again at Artia’s shop.

As she’d come to expect, making this change didn’t alter the location of Kit’s center of influence.

This was what Tala had found through previous experiments, too, but it was always good to confirm.

Unless she was present, outside of Kit, the center of Kit’s realm of influence would not move.

She could reshape the area as a whole, but she couldn’t move the anchor point while she was inside.

But she wasn’t here to experiment with Kit. She’d come in to bypass the gatehouse.

She had not brought herself inside of Kit anywhere near Rane.

He was still bathing… probably.

Just as she hadn’t gone near him, she didn’t check to see if he was still bathing. That wouldn’t have been appropriate.

Don’t. Tala headed off Alat’s teasing before it began, and the alternate interface acquiesced.

She stood there, on her dais, for a long moment, before she sighed.

I need to get out of here.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

She willed herself out of Kit and into the alley beside Artia’s shop.

It was going to be a little while before Brand got here, so she built herself a chair and focused on her rotating masses of iron and void.

She was now manipulating four compressed clouds of iron dust through varying shapes at the same time.

-You know, I wonder if you can connect two of the voids and separate them again without them being exposed to the outside.-

That… was an interesting idea for a challenge.

Tala set her mind to the task, all the while being extra vigilant because she suspected that Alat was setting her up for an ambush. After all, it had been days since Alat had successfully breached any of Tala’s voids.

-Hey, Tala.-

Here it came, the distraction. You aren’t going to distract me, Alat.

-Sure, sure. I just wanted to ask you a question.-

…Fine. What is it?

-You moved out of Kit so you weren’t tempted to look in on Rane, didn’t you?-

…maybe… Tala hardened her resolve.

-Interesting. That has a lot of implications.-

Uh-huh. Tala did not spend the concentration to roll her eyes at the alternate interface.

-Regardless, there is a flaw in your reasoning.-

So, the flaw was her method of attack. Tala decided to divert Alat. What implications?

-I fight dirty, Tala, but even I’m not that mean. I won’t touch on those at the moment, because I’m kind like that.-

Tala grimaced, fending off a small probing push from Alat’s will even as Tala connected two of the four oddly twisted pockets before disconnecting them again. The integrity of the voids were perfectly maintained.

-But back to the flaw.-

There was a long silence before Tala sighed, knowing Alat wouldn’t let it go. In that case, it was better to get the distraction over with. What’s the flaw, Alat?

-You can still see into your sanctum from here.-

Tala twitched.

Alat struck.

Four voids fell apart with little pops.

* * *

Tala was feeling rather grumpy, but she did her best not to let it show as she sat with Rane, Brand, Adrill, Artia, Kedva, and Brandon within her sanctum.

There was a massive spread of food, mainly provided by Artia and Kedva, but Mistress Petra had thrown in a bit, even beyond providing Tala’s food and some of Rane’s.

Tala’s irritation was mainly directed at Alat because the alternate interface had managed to distract her.

Tala had obviously already recovered from that, and her iron-void-magic roiling conglomerations were back in motion around her head, hidden by illusion from mundane sight.

But she wasn’t here to think about her training. She was here to be with friends and acquaintances.

The conversation was mainly just friendly banter as most things had been conveyed when Brand had been there most recently.

He had brought an engagement gift for Brandon and Kedva, and the couple had spent an appropriate amount of time examining it with obvious glee.

As it turned out, everyone had been interested, though Kedva had been appropriately secretive of the exact contents.

It was a book of recipes from Lissa, Brand’s wife. They were the recipes that she and Brand had perfected over decades of restaurant work.

It was full of notations, containing many recipes that Lissa couldn’t make work, but upon which she’d noted where she believed the issue to be.

It was, effectively, the collected knowledge of Lissa’s cooking experience, distilled into a usable form.

Brand had beamed at the couple upon presenting it. “Lissa was sad to not be able to be here to present it herself, but she said that she’d love to have you in her kitchen whenever you wanted, and she’ll be coming back with me for the wedding.”

That was something that had begun to dominate the minds of those who surrounded Tala of late.

Kedva and Brandon were set to be married in a little more than two months’ time.

Tala was still a bit in denial of that fact, not just because it didn’t feel like it had been the traditional year since their engagement—though there was some of that. Most of it, however, was the fact that they’d asked her to officiate the wedding.

It was traditional to have a Mage speak counter to the couple in the public ceremony, and they—for some reason—saw her as influential in their lives.

-Maybe because you’ve effectively massively multiplied the length of time they’ll be able to spend together?-

That might be part of it… But Tala didn’t want to think about it in that moment.

The wedding would be after Rane’s birthday, and before Tala headed back to Marliweather for her sister Nea’s twelfth birthday.

Tala had been exchanging some messages with her siblings, but not as many as would likely be ideal, and she wanted to be there for her sister when the girl made her choice about the Academy.

But all of that would be after Rane could, in theory, undergo his third Refining session.

It was shaping up to be a busy summer, all things considered.

But she was getting distracted by future events.

She laughed along with everyone at a joke as Brand delivered the punchline.

This was what was important at the moment. She was spending time with those whom she chose to be with.

The future would be here soon enough.

* * *

Tala squeezed Rane’s shoulder as the Healer—not Mistress Vanga this time—explained his professional opinion to Rane, Tala and Master Grediv.

It was best summarized as a simple statement that Rane should wait at least four more days.

Apparently, something about the healing process was not quite where the Refined wanted Rane to be before undergoing another session.

Rane grimaced slightly at the news but then nodded, turning to Master Grediv, “Let’s set it up for then.”

Master Grediv sighed, but gave a slight nod of his head. “If that is your wish.”

Four days later, Tala stood behind Rane as he thrashed and screamed through clenched teeth, his hands irrevocably clamped around the construct that was facilitating his Refining.

Tala’s armor felt more like rippling water as it took hits and settled back into shape, absolutely none of the force transferred through to her.

True, these were not full-powered attacks, nor were they delivered in the most effective manner, but she was incredibly pleased with the results of her practice and training.

She was not, however, pleased with what was happening to Rane.

A horrific sound was coming to her enhanced hearing, and she suspected she’d be hearing it even without that, given the acoustics of the room.

It was like walking across the sand of a training arena, where the small particles rubbed and rolled across each other.

The sound was accompanied by unnatural distortions sweeping across various portions of Rane’s body.

Her threefold sight let her clearly see as his bones were utterly pulverized in waves, being knit back together after seeming to be squeezed like an orange for its juice.

Black gunk was rendered out of every bone, forced along with the leading edge of the Refining.

The sludge would build up until it splattered the walls, floor, or ceiling, having burst out of massive, fluid-filled—

Tala swallowed, diverting her perception.

The less time spent focusing on that the better.

She bore through the horror, knowing that as awful as it was to witness, it was almost infinitely worse for Rane to experience it.

She tightened her grip on his shoulder, and his own grip on the construct firmed.

They endured through his torment, together.

* * *

Tala sat beside Rane’s bed, reading out loud as he lay, his eyes closed on the edge of sleep.

As soon as the session had ended, Rane had dropped into unconsciousness, his berserking-like state vanishing with the ongoing damage.

He had awakened, screaming and trembling, shortly thereafter.

He’d hurled the Refining construct away from himself so hard that it had embedded in one of the rents in the iron walls, bending thin ribbons of abused iron out of the way with ease, despite his weakened state.

Once again, Tala had swept the iron flakes and dust from the air, claiming it and removing it from the superficial entirely.

As soon as she did that, a magical scan passed through the room, and the door unlatched.

Rane had already curled into a ball on the stool he’d been given this time around, weeping into his knees.

She had, once again, picked him up and carried him from the room as soon as the door opened.

The Healers did what they could, and she’d asked them to leave.

With only the barest hesitation, they had honored her request, and Tala had done the only thing she could think of to help Rane as he huddled under the thick, pre-warmed blankets.

Tala remembered that her father had always read to her when she was younger, if she was afraid or sick… or just generally to help her fall asleep.

In fact, every single night, he would sit in the room with the kids and read until everyone had fallen asleep, at least until he’d gotten ill.

Without any idea of what else to do, Tala had done the same.

She had chosen a tale of myth and legend and begun to read.

Tala didn’t speak loudly, but she kept a steady stream of power to her throat to put a hint of magic into her voice so that she would be heard nonetheless.

Soon enough, the story seemed to act as a lifeline to Rane, and his trembling slowly abated.

Finally, he seemed to have calmed down enough to uncurl, and slowly—ever so slowly—he moved toward sleep.

And thus, Tala found herself continuing to read the story, her mental vision flicking over the figment of a book provided by Alat.

Her threefold sight was watching for external threats, and for anything taking a turn for the worse within Rane.

Her eyes were locked on his face, searching for any clues there.

Rane, for his part, drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the day.

Tala had Alat let her unit know that she would miss her afternoon shift with them on the wall.

They got back to her through the Archive that they completely understood. Furthermore, they wouldn’t expect her for the morning shift the next day either, unless she told them differently.

That let her relax quite a bit, no longer feeling like she was shirking her responsibilities to stay with someone who needed her.

Rane needed her, and she wasn’t willing to let him lose that lifeline.

She didn’t want him to diminish, because then she would lose him.

She wasn’t willing for that to happen either.

Therefore, she spent the remainder of the day—and that night as well—continuing to read with one hand resting on his.

By voice or by touch, Rane would never doubt that she was with him.

She would ensure he had a firm grounding in reality at least until he had recovered enough to pull himself back into a functional state.