Tala, Rane, Lyn, and Kannis moved quickly away from Brand’s restaurant, all likely quite happy that the two Defenders hadn’t been recognized until the end.

Kannis shivered. “That was… That was something else.”

Lyn nodded. “Absolutely surreal. I felt like their respect for the two of you was almost tangible.”

Rane shuddered. “Yeah. There was definitely something there.”

Tala analyzed his advancement and found that it hadn’t moved at all. Hers had, and while it wasn’t much, she had expected it to help them both. Strange.

-Maybe it was because he wasn’t focusing on it?-

Or because he already learned what it could teach? Tala looked up to Rane. “I think it was something like authority.”

Alat was monitoring the man’s aura closely, and it didn’t even waver. Instead, he simply nodded. “Yes, respect and deference are near cousins to authority. Master Grediv once explained to me that respect and deference come when authority matures.”

Tala blinked a few times, trying to process that. “What?”

The four of them were walking toward the Caravan Guild so that Lyn and Kannis could get back to work, but all three of the women were listening closely nonetheless. “Well, if I have authority over someone and I wield it clumsily, they still have to listen, but they won’t respect me, and they certainly won’t defer to me, unless I make them. Even then that wouldn’t be deference, it would be capitulation.”

Tala found herself nodding. She continued the thought out loud so that her understanding could be checked by the others, “But if you have earned your authority and used it well, then respect and deference come as a natural result.”

“Exactly. Those—among other things—are the fruits of authority properly used.” Rane smiled, seemingly excited that she’d understood so easily. “Master Grediv did say that none of that would actually be pertinent until I had surpassed him, so I imagine it’s more important for higher levels of advancement.”

Tala grunted. That did make some sense. Advancing to Paragon was a focus on the self, the soul and who she was… she wasn’t very good at focusing inward like that. Going over her myriad projects, power, and possibilities was helpful, but she hadn’t actually thought deeper on what she’d learned.

Tala grimaced even as the other three began discussing lighter topics.

Tala spoke incredibly quietly, trusting in Rane’s hearing, so that she didn’t have to derail the ongoing discussion. “We need to take some time to meditate on what we’ve been learning… well, I do, and I think that having you there would help me and probably you as well.”

He smiled, reaching out and giving her hand a light squeeze before letting go and responding even quieter than she’d been speaking, “After dropping off these two, then? We don’t have anything planned until dinner.”

She gave a small nod. “Thank you.”

Soon enough, they said goodbye to their friends, planning to meet up later for a meal in Tala’s sanctum. Toward that end, Tala and Rane went to Lyn’s house.

The door was locked, but Tala was able to form a key of iron with ease to unlock it. She did so even though she still had the key that she’d been given… somewhere.

Wasn’t Terry playing with it? It didn’t really matter. She couldn’t find it in her sanctum with a quick inspection, so it had probably been taken out or repurposed at some point or other. She’d purposely never claimed the iron—not like she had her iron dust—so it was just like every other small item in her sanctum.

With the door to Lyn’s house unlocked, Rane and Tala went inside, locking the door behind themselves. Tala then opened a door into Kit across from the entry washroom.

When the door swung open, Terry was right inside. He was the same height as Tala and giving her an intense look.

“Hey, Terry.”

Rane smiled and waved to the avian as well.

Terry squawked a response, keeping eye contact with Tala.

Tala tilted her head to the side. “We were going to meditate for a bit. You’re welcome to join us.”

He looked at her for a bit longer before bobbing a nod.

He didn’t want to come out any time I invited him today. I guess he’s gotten lonely again?

Regardless, Tala and Rane stepped through, out into a beautiful dell beside the infinite river.

There were two flat stones, perfectly sized for Tala and Rane to each sit on while being in reach of one another but not touching.

Tala sat on the smaller stone, facing the river, and Rane sat on the larger, facing the other way.

The exit door closed but didn’t vanish. Tala wanted it to remain so they’d have easier knowledge when their friends had arrived.

Terry flickered to the grass between the two stones and curled up, seeming quite content just to be nearby.

Tala and Rane both sat cross legged, hands resting on their own knees, backs straight, eyes closed.

Please keep the threefold sight from me. Warn me at need, but otherwise, please keep me undisturbed.

-Understood.-

With that, the world—usually so easy to perceive of late—went dark, leaving Tala alone in an emptiness.

She could have reached out and felt everything with Kit, but she didn’t do that. Her threefold sight was similarly available to her, but she didn’t access it.

Alright, Tala. Think. She reached out with one hand and called a snack to it, which she ate with barely a thought, using the flavor and magic within as additional things to keep her focus inward.

Her conversations with Master Grediv and others played through her mind.

Key points in her life became a regular cadence across her thoughts as she delved into who she was, into who she wanted to be.

What felt like moments passed, but the number of snacks she consumed made it clear that it had been far longer, and she felt like the various threads were coming together into a fairly clear tapestry of intent and desire.

It was odd, because she already knew what resonated most with who she was. She was the ravenous, jealous devourer.

The thing was, that was the inward focused portion of her identity, and could be manifested outward in so many ways. A nation could devour the nations around it; a predator could devour its prey; a scholar could devour knowledge.

What she wanted was similar to the nation-type devouring, but not quite.

The devouring could also have differing purposes. The first was to expand, the second to survive, and the third was to thrive.

She wanted to thrive, and help those she cared for to thrive too.

She wanted to bring out the best in others. More than that, she wanted to expand their capacities, then help them realize that new potential as well.

Rane’s presence nearby reminded her of how much she enjoyed testing him and pushing him to improve, and how much she appreciated him doing the same with her.

Her siblings also came to her mind, not as examples of her having done that, but as those she wanted to help even more than most.

So… why wasn’t she? She was doing more than some siblings did but far from all that she could.

Well, for starters, it wasn’t her job, but neither was it her job to do so for Brandon, Adrill, Kedva, or anyone else.

So, why do my siblings seem…more so ‘not my responsibility?’ She frowned, digging through her memories and feelings. With her mental enhancements, she was able to relive much of her time as a Mage with a critical eye. In fact, she did it several times, each time taking a substantial portion of an hour—and a substantial number of snacks—to review.

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Finally, the pieces seemed to fit, and her perspective subtly changed.

I’m not their mother. True, she wasn’t anyone’s mother—not in a literal sense—but she had been instrumental in the rebirth of the gateless she was nurturing. But that wasn’t the point of her shifted perspective.

Her siblings had a mother, someone who hadn’t mothered Tala, not in the way she’d wanted, not in the way that she wanted to help others.

Well, that isn’t true. She did her best with an awful situation. She stayed with her husband and worked to make the best of the awful circumstances until the man she’d married came back to himself, likely with her help… Tala didn’t know if she could do the same… but she was getting sidetracked yet again.

She wanted to help others in the way a good mother should.

She felt her soul resonating, her aura shifting, but she ignored that, focusing on her thoughts and memories.

So, what? I long to be a mother and that’s it? Are you kidding me? But… no. That wasn’t right. This wasn’t simply some biological imperative nor anything like that. Still, that didn’t change what she wanted.

Not a biological mother… a good parent, metaphorically at least. That isn’t just something for mothers. Fathers are equally important, if not more so in many regards.

Tala realized that she likely felt the disproportionate importance of a father because it was her own father whom she had lacked protection and nurturing from in the later years of her childhood. She wanted to fill that role for others, alleviate that lack, but she also wanted even more than that. She wanted to continue the protection and nurturing until everyone under her wing was the best that they could possibly be.

That turned her mind back to her own choices and experiences as she analyzed the underlying themes and thought processes behind them.

There had been many jobs that she could have taken up when she graduated from the Academy. Rust, she’d been set up perfectly to be a Dimensional Mage for caravans, the picture of using her skills in relative safety and luxury while making a large amount of gold, comparatively.

Instead, she’d found herself drawn to fight, to test herself, to learn… to be a Mage Protector.

She wanted to defend so that those she protected could thrive.

Is that it? I want to be a ‘mother,’ but I see mothers as self-sacrificing, and I don’t want that? She almost laughed, her mind filling with all the times she’d put herself on the line for the purpose of protecting others.

She might not have a self-sacrificial bent, but she certainly didn’t let that stop her from doing what she believed was right.

Even so, as she considered the ‘mother’ or parent angle, she felt more and more certain that her purpose was not simply to birth children. She knew that she wanted some eventually, but they weren’t—and would never be—her true purpose… but she did hope that they would be a part of it… eventually.

Not now.

Not soon.

Probably.

Then, her thoughts were pulled to Irondale and the home that she was making there for the gateless. She’d invited master Lisa to live there as well, or at the very least, she was open to the idea.

She wanted to protect and nurture those who had been left out of gated-human society. It was understandable that they had been—given all that was going on and all the constraints—but Tala didn’t want to leave it that way.

So… I’m a mother to the gateless? Metaphorically speaking? I uplift them, protect them, provide them with a home? Something in that resonated, even if it wasn’t quite right or wasn’t complete.

Even so, she felt like her soul was a muscle that she hadn’t even known was cramped, and now it was releasing just a bit, her gate opening wider not because it was actually widening, but because it was no longer pulling in on itself so much to stay… safe?

Advancing to Paragon is an opening of the cognitive self to the soul. It is the aligning of the two so that the physical and the magical can work together more smoothly.

Speaking of the physical, she had a passing realization, and so she asked Alat to connect with Master Cru after so long without their sparring sessions—she’d been prioritizing other things—and ask him for a resumption of those sessions so that she could reassert the Way of Flowing Blood over her movements and fighting style.

Sparring with Rane was helpful, but they fought so often that she was beginning to fight him instead of truly training for fights in general. She suspected it was much the same for him. So, shaking things up by adding in purely physical sparring sessions with other fighters would keep them from crippling their ability to fight others. Additionally—

A knock sounded from nearby, interrupting her thoughts. Tala opened her eyes, a smile coming to her lips unbidden.

Her aura blazed around her, filling half the dell around her with a beautiful yellow-green. Beside her, Rane similarly radiated his own aura, still slightly greener than her own, but they had both made incredible strides.

The two auras pushed against one another. The contact was not hostile or clashing in any way. From both sides, it was simply the meeting and differential avoidance of acknowledged equals.

Her threefold sight returned, and she saw Lyn and Kannis waiting just outside the closed door to Kit.

It’s dinner time already?

-Yup! You two have been meditating for nearly six hours. I communicated with Mistress Petra, and food will be ready shortly.-

Thank you, Alat.

Tala easily moved Rane and herself to the dining room along with the door beyond which Lyn and Kannis were waiting. She deposited Rane in a chair without jostling him, but he clearly still noticed the change in scenery and opened his eyes. He looked around before his eyes landed on Tala, and he smiled.

She smiled in return without giving the expression much thought or consciously choosing to. Then, she willed the door open and greeted their guests.

The meal was delicious—just as Tala had come to expect from Mistress Petra—and the four diners overflowed with praise, which the Fused accepted with grace and a smile of genuine satisfaction.

After that, the four walked through the sanctum while chatting before turning in for the night. Lyn and Kannis exited the sanctum into Lyn’s house and their own rooms, and Tala and Rane retired to their own beds.

Rane had essentially moved into one of the guest rooms whenever the two of them were traveling, and Tala simply left it as it was between such trips.

She, herself, still enjoyed her own room quite immensely. There’s no bed like the one that’s yours.

-Indeed.-

* * *

Tala looked dubiously at the ‘inscription extractor’ that Mistress Holly was holding up for her inspection.

“You’re sure this will work?” Tala did not particularly like the idea of something extracting metals from her; it reminded her a bit too much of the dasgannach that had taken her gold inscriptions back in Platoiri.

“Yes, dear. So long as you pull all magic from your inscriptions—and don’t resist—this will pull all metal from your inscriptions out of your body.” Mistress Holly gave a tightlipped smile of encouragement. “It’s something that I had made specifically for you. No one else would be able to recover on their own after such an extraction.”

“So… custom for me, but as such untested?”

“That’s accurate, I suppose.”

“And what of the gold, silver, and copper that my body is using?” There were other ways that this could be done, but if it worked as Mistress Holly said, this was the most efficient. Additionally, the extracted metals would actually be better for use in the new inscriptions than new metal that would be required if they removed the inscriptions through other means.

“It shouldn’t take any biologically utilized metal, no. Inscriptions are naturally isolated by the body, and this only targets that isolated material.”

Tala sighed. She knew it would hurt, but what was a little pain? That wasn’t her hangup at the moment.

Moreover, this would actually reduce the cost of her reinscription—rather than costing funds like other methods—in addition to the other benefits. Rane was doing a quick teleport to clear his inscriptions at that very moment, and that cost him money.

She frowned, thinking through that. A teleport only costs two pounds silver…

No. She shouldn’t consider it. This was the best way forward… she was sure it was. It just made sense.

-Eh. Both are existentially terrifying to me, so the choice is yours.-

We’ll get through this. At least this way you should maintain continuity. Tala sent encouragement toward Alat before addressing Mistress Holly, “Do it.”

Mistress Holly reached forward and tapped Tala with the heavily inscribed wooden orb. As it contacted Tala, the metals within the sphere pulsed with power.

Tala held her own magic back from entering her inscriptions, and willed for those inscriptions to leave her. That wouldn’t be enough to actually eject them of course, but it put her mind in the proper frame to allow for the metal’s removal without there being a contest of will or any of her natural magical resistance coming into play.

There was pain, of course, but it was like she remembered the pain of pulling a hair from an infected pore, or removing a splinter. Sure, it hurt, but then there was relief. In this case, it was magnified a thousand times over, and her whole body trembled at the hormonal whiplash.

Her magic also had a similar experience. It had been fighting her to flow through the well-wrought channels that the inscriptions were by design, but as soon as the metal was removed, her power suddenly wasn’t straining anymore. Instead, it instantly flowed down her natural magical pathways with utter ease, moving like never before.

There was a lot of blood—as was to be expected—but that wasn’t anything new for Tala. Most of her body was lacerated, inside and out, but her natural magical healing restored her in short order.

Without inscription support, ‘short order’ ended up being about five minutes of feeling every part of herself pull back together little by little.

It itched like mad, but she resisted… Well, after she was capable of movement again she resisted. Before that she just itched and had nothing that she could do about it.

When her eyes came back together—her usual eye-protecting scripts now being their direct undoing—she knew that it was almost over, and she was greeted by the sight of Mistress Holly standing to the side, manipulating a set of two reasonably sized balls, one of gold and one of silver.

The Inscriber looked her way and nodded. “Good, you’re almost healed.”

Tala grunted, then spit out a glob of blood and phlegm to clear her mouth.

-Yeah… being this limited is… awful.-

Shh… conserve your consciousness. We’ll be inscribed again soon.

“Since you’re cognizant again, I’ll go over the highlights of our changes in order to ensure they are fresh and to distract you through the end of your healing process.”

Tala sighed internally before nodding. Very well.