Tala and Rane ran through the lush wilderness toward Bandfast.
Traveling in the summer was so different from the winter, and it wasn’t only because the pervading color was green instead of white.
The trees being full of leaves meant that lines of sight were changed, as even her threefold sight flattened out to the superficial at any sort of range.
Thankfully, there were never enough trees close together to constitute a forest, so it wasn’t too much of an issue.
Additionally, they were still able to sense large sources of power and avoid them, but it made for a more tense traveling experience.
Even so, as she traveled with Rane on this leg, she was careful not to hover, even while keeping an eye on him with her threefold sight.
He, in turn, didn’t purposely try to put distance between them that she would have to cover quickly in order to keep close enough for emergencies.
When they stopped at midday, Tala produced the spread of food prepared by Mistress Petra, and the two Archons lounged in the tall grass of the rolling plains, beneath a lone tree.
Rane and Tala chatted over the food, and the man seemed to have a bit more life in him than before.
After they’d finished the spread, they were taking a moment to simply enjoy the little spot that Tala had found for them to eat their fill.
Terry was splayed out on a nearby boulder, catching the few beams of sunlight that came through the summer foliage.
Tala glanced Rane’s way, taking in the contented smile he wore below closed eyes as he enjoyed a moment of silence in the shade.
She almost decided not to disturb him, but he cracked an eye and looked her way. “What?”
She quirked a smile. “What do you mean?”
“You were staring.”
“Not really.”
“Sure.” He smiled. “Now, what were you thinking?”
She shrugged. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged in turn. “Well enough. How are you? Your sister basically rejected your entire way of life.”
“Eh. Not really? She just decided it wasn’t for her…” Tala sighed. “That does mean that she…” she swallowed. “She won’t have as long a life as she could have, but that is her choice to make.”
He sighed and nodded. “Yeah. We each have our own path.”
Tala opened her mouth to ask him about his own path, but she stopped herself. He had already deflected once, and she didn’t want to be pushy.
Instead, they finished their rest in silence before continuing on.
Terry alternated between running and flickering across the plains, riding on Tala’s shoulder, or riding in Kit.
As such, it was a rather easy trip from Marliweather to Bandfast.
* * *
Tala and Rane spent a couple of days in Bandfast catching up with their friends and acquaintances there.
Master Cazor did not spar with Tala, though he and Rane had a few fun matches.
Rane’s partially Refined nature helped him edge out victory more often than the last time they’d fought, but it still wasn’t a clean sweep.
Master Cazor had been continuing his specific training to combat Mages of all stripes, and Rane still mainly trained to fight magical creatures. That difference—by its very nature—gave the less advanced Archon his own edge.
Mistress Aproa was out on a caravan run, so they didn’t get to see her, but most everyone else was around.
Tala almost dropped through to say hi to master Lisa and ask him about the magic-dimension squid horrors. She really should have asked him about those before, there had just been so much else going on that it hadn’t come up.
Regardless, the option was taken from her this time around because the store was locked when she went by.
She didn’t know if that was because the fox-man was out, or if he’d seen her coming and locked the door.
Regardless of why, she wasn’t going to be able to enter without either physically or magically kicking down the door. So, she let the idea go.
Tala briefly dropped by Mistress Holly’s workshop, and the woman took some time to sit down to enjoy coffee and scones with Tala and Rane.
Mistress Holly initially gave Rane a rather intense look, but didn’t actually say anything to him in the end. She did mutter something under her breath that Rane couldn’t have heard.
Tala, herself, only barely caught it. “Good, someone else already slapped some sense into you.”
Beyond that, Mistress Holly was a busy woman, and they didn’t take too much more of her time.
While in the city, they stayed with Lyn and Kannis, using Lyn’s house as a convenient spot for Kit’s door to manifest.
Whenever the two women weren’t working, they spent time with Rane and Tala, eating, chatting, or playing some newer strategy games.
One was an odd variant of tafl that had been designed to be played by four players.
It was a bit awkward to learn initially, but that was mainly because it was so alien from the way Rane and Tala had been playing the game. Even so, in the end, they decided to have a board commissioned for their use back in Alefast.
All told, there was little of note in the city, and after those two days, Rane and Tala headed back home, back to Alefast.
* * *
Back in Alefast, Tala and Rane fell back into their common routines.
They trained, socialized, played tafl, caught plays when they could, and just lived life, seeing each other more often than not.
Tala didn’t have to leave the city for missions very often as it seemed like the number of cells bubbling up had lessened. Even so, the number of magical creatures attacking the walls was continuing apace, so she and her unit were fighting more often over all.
Brandon and Kedva officially moved into Kit—into a house just on the edge of Irondale to be specific—and they settled in to be permanent fixtures of the place.
Kedva helped Mistress Petra as well as worked to improve various parts of the sanctum. She wasn’t showing yet, but as many first-time mothers, she was being careful with almost every action.
Healers were being consulted on the repercussions of the increased magic density, and Kedva, herself, had come down from the increased power until several healers were able to verify that her magics wouldn’t harm the baby in the slightest.
They would have to be factored in at the birth, but the general recommendation was that she allow them to fade before going into labor regardless.
Brandon settled in as a full-time assistant to Master Simon.
Tala found herself paying them, somehow, even though she didn’t ever actually agree to any such thing officially.
Still, they were helpful, and they did good work, so she didn’t mind much.
It was because of their joining her workforce that Tala found herself within her sanctum on her first day fully off since her return to Alefast. She stood beside her sparring ring, amplifying the gravitational attraction of the reality nodes toward one another.
Master Simon and Brandon were continuing to monitor what her magics were doing, even though, from what she could see, she was doing nothing.
That’s why I have them, I suppose.
-Yes, more specific sensing magics—and more minds to comb through the data—are quite useful.-
Moreover, it gave her more time to read.
That was precisely what she was doing, sitting back outside the ring as her magics continued to work and as the men monitored those magics.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
-Why are we here? We can keep these magics going from anywhere near to Kit.-
Where else would we be? Rane is getting some one-on-one training with a weapon master and as fun as that is to watch, I have some reading that I’ve been meaning to catch up on.
-Well… that’s fair.-
Tala had read through four books—as well as eating both lunch and dinner—before Master Simon finally sighed.
He walked over to where she was sitting, Brandon at his side.
“I’m sorry, Mistress Tala, but it seems like it doesn’t matter how much we increase gravitational attraction between reality nodes, nothing really seems to come from…that…”
Behind him, the air above the sparring ring rippled.
The Archive slate in his hand shifted, its pigment becoming entirely dark red before flipping back to displaying the various readings. It alternated back and forth in what was clearly a bid to grab the man’s attention.
Tala was standing an instant later, even as Master Simon and Brandon spun around.
She had not stopped her amplification, and at this point, the multiplier of the gravitational constant for this particular interaction was so absurd as to be almost comical.
There was an audible crack, and Tala watched the reality nodes merge into one.
At the same time, Tala watched all of the void that had been within the sparring ring—between reality nodes—ripple outward, pushed to the edges of the sphere that she’d been acting upon.
Somehow the infinite void that already existed at that delineation grew more distinct.
The sparring arena was somehow more separate from her sanctum than anything else.
It felt even more separated than the superficial was, even if that made no sense at all.
Yet, Tala could still see it with her mundane eyes as well as her threefold sight.
It was also still within her authority, still within Kit.
There, at the same time, was an uncrossable void and no gap at all.
She stopped increasing the amplification but kept hold of the magics. “What’s going on, Master Simon?”
He was manipulating his Archive slate in a frenzy. Brandon, beside him, was doing much the same.
Finally, he shook his head in frustration. “It’s obviously a bit more stable and should be more resilient to magical abrasion, but beyond that? I have no idea.”
* * *
An hour later, the state of the sparring circle hadn’t changed, and Master Grediv was staring at it intently.
The Paragon turned to speak to Tala, Master Simon, Brandon, and the few Constructionists that Master Grediv had brought with him. “This somehow crossed the barrier into a conceptual working, or it might as well have.”
There were several intakes of breath, many eyes glancing toward Tala.
“In some stars—as well as black holes and similar phenomena—the separation between things—the void that makes up the bulk of the volume of normal matter—is crushed away. You have done something similar, but without affecting the matter involved at all.”
Tala frowned, and when he noticed her clear lack of understanding, he continued.
“You compressed the reality nodes to the point that the distinction between the various parts was meaningless.”
She nodded, then, slowly. “But that separation was more conceptual than actual.”
“And that conceptual separation is now gone. If you are willing, I have a few elementally specialized Mages here. May we test some things? Will you allow their auras and magic to work within this space?”
The researchers gave her searching looks at that question, but they didn’t say anything. Tala considered a moment before nodding, pulling her aura back out of the space, and relaxing her hold on that portion of her sanctum.
Master Grediv turned and motioned to a woman on the far side of the group.
Tala watched inscriptions light up, magic blazing through her as she reached and seized some of the rock within the sparring circle.
Well, that seemed like what she tried to do at the very least.
The Mage’s eyes widened, and her nostrils flared along with her inscriptions as she dumped power into her magics.
The woman was a Refined and likely very skilled at what she did.
Even so, when she finally collapsed in frustration a minute later she had only managed to raise a couple of stone spikes two or three inches high in a half-foot diameter circle.
After coughing and then guzzling some water, she shook her head. “I’ve never had that much trouble. Even back at the Academy with my first inscriptions, I could manage more than that.”
Master Grediv nodded slowly. “Can you describe the feeling?”
The woman huffed. “It felt like I was trying to move dozens of times as much stone as I was actually trying to work with, but it was as finicky as if I were trying to make perfectly legible text instead of generic spikes. I could have powered through it, but that wasn’t the point of the test. I was limited to the pre-specified amounts of power, but it just wasn’t enough for what I was trying to do.” She huffed a laugh. “I even tried to use more power internally to strengthen and augment the power I used for the working, but it didn’t help as much as it should have.”
The other Constructionists looked at each other in confusion. They were likely familiar with this woman and what she was capable of.
Master Grediv motioned for Tala, “Can you please smooth that out?”
Tala shrugged and willed for it to be flat once more.
It leveled out just as any other part of the sanctum would have bent to her will.
There were murmurs at that, as they had all clearly seen that she didn’t use any magic, directly.
They had been briefed on what to expect, but it was one thing to be told and another to see with one’s own eyes.
Master Grediv motioned to another Refined, a man this time.
That Refined extended his hands, his inscriptions blazing with power.
Tala watched and was able to interpret his actions as reaching for the air within the bubble of altered reality.
The air actually did move and shift, giving Tala a very interesting view through her threefold sight.
The reality nodes didn’t actually move around. They… traded air?
That was the only real way to describe it.
When air left the sphere, other air was pulled in, acting as if it had always been there.
Sweat was building across the exposed skin of the air focused Archon. “As soon as it exits the sphere, it acts as I expect, but within? It’s like trying to lift a mountain with a feather.”
There were some chuckles at that.
It was obviously a bit of an arrogant statement, because the man was actively doing the supposedly difficult task, but he was also obviously being hyperbolic.
Finally, he released his magics and sat down heavily. “I think I agree with Mistress Brisa’s assessment. I’d estimate that it is around fifty times as difficult to enact workings within that space. That said, I got the distinct feeling that if I approached the working differently it would have acted more in the vein of what I was expecting.”
The other Refined—Mistress Brisa—nodded. “I got that feeling as well. It was like I was missing a part of my mental model, and I was having to bridge the gap in understanding with power.”
That started a long discussion about what might be missing, but Tala wasn’t paying strict attention.
Alat would let her know if anything important was said or realized.
Instead, she walked toward the water that encircled the sparring circle.
Her threefold sight swept over the oddity that was the reality node before her.
It was massive as she considered such things.
Most reality nodes that weren’t associated with a life form were only a couple of feet across at the largest.
Except the world fragment. Well, that was an assumption. When she’d explored the world fragment, she hadn’t really had any truly practiced form of voidsight.
Still, the massive reality node felt similar to that place.
She glanced back. “I’m going in.”
That stopped the Constructionists’ conversation dead. When there was no immediate response, Tala continued.
“Is there any reason that I shouldn’t?”
A few shaking heads were all that she needed.
“Alright, then. Monitor closely.”
Without further preamble, she willed herself into the middle of the sparring circle.
This was her sanctum.
Everything within was hers.
It was trivial to move into the center.
As she appeared, she felt the true stillness of everything.
She felt a groundedness that made her stagger slightly, as odd as that sounds.
It was as if her whole life had been on shifting sands, and finally, she stood on solid rock.
The disorientation passed quickly.
I didn’t feel that in the world fragment.
-Your senses are better now, but it’s also likely that this is a different phenomenon.-
She moved her hand, not feeling any extra resistance in the air, but also feeling like it was more… real than it had been.
It was no harder to breathe, nor do anything else, but there was decidedly less movement to the magic within the space.
In fact, as soon as Tala noticed that, she could feel that it was almost like the zeme was still there, moving and shifting, but slightly removed from the reality node, itself.
Her own reality node was intact and separate within the larger node, just as she’d expected. Though, here, it seemed like her node was compressed more tightly around her physical body than it usually was.
She needed another perspective.
“Terry?”
Terry flickered into the circle beside her.
She’d seen him watching from a nearby stand of trees. “Does this place feel odd to you?”
He chirped, then flickered around her, moving essentially as fast as he usually did.
If she was reading him correctly, though, it was taking more power for him to move, but not that much more. “You’ve made the mental adjustment to function normally, here?”
He stopped his movement and trilled.
She found herself smiling. “Of course you have. You are fantastic. I wish you could just tell us what we’re missing.”
His look was full of incredulity.
“Right, right. If we don’t figure it out for ourselves, our understanding will be lesser.”
He bobbed once, then flickered to her shoulder to wait.
Tala, for her part, turned and walked toward one of the exits to the sparring circle, one of the stone bridges that spanned the flowing water.
As she came to the edge of her working, she paused and examined the space in front of herself.
There was nothing different that her mundane eyes could see, but her threefold sight insisted that the void was larger there at the edge of the ring.
As she stepped across that void, her physical body and mundane sight experienced nothing of note.
Her magical density seemed to take a slight dip, and her threefold sight briefly took in the void far more clearly.
It was odd, like passing through the doorway into a house and having the feeling that the walls were thicker than she had been expecting.
She basically never noticed the doorframes of houses she entered, but here, it struck her as being oddly large.
And then she was through, and it was like nothing had happened.
Once again she almost stumbled as she suddenly felt a bit wrong footed once again, like her foundations were a bit less sure, here.
She glanced back and didn’t notice any oddities from this close on the outside.
Master Grediv walked her way. “I think the last thing we can test is to have you dismiss the working.”
“Oh? Is it time for that?” Tala found herself smiling. “You know, I’ve been building this off and on for a year, right? I’m going to be… frustrated if we aren’t actually ready to record as much information as possible.”
He chuckled at that. “We understand the investment you’ve made here, Mistress Tala. Yes, I think we are ready.”
“Very well, let’s do this.”