Tala sat cross legged in tall grass at the edge of the former city of Arconaven.

Rane and Terry were almost to the center of the city.

Mistress was standing fifty feet from where Tala sat, the grass swaying about her knees in the gentle breeze that danced across the unnaturally level expanse.

Tala hadn’t seen Mistress since the woman had come to her ‘aid’ after Tala had been abducted by a flock of chickens.

-Nightwing ravens.-

Fine.

In truth, Mistress had shown up after Tala had dealt with the arcanous creatures simply to offer a bit of healing and a golden cage.

She offered me a thousand gold to exchange Archon Stars with her. At the time, Tala hadn’t really known what that meant, but she had still had enough understanding to refuse.

-I’ve notified Master Grediv of Mistress’s presence.-

Thank you.

The woman stood casually, exactly as Tala remembered.

Mistress was still a woman of inhuman beauty.

She stood almost daintily on delicately sandalled feet. Her simple, one-piece dress swayed pleasingly around her with the currents in the local zeme instead of the wind which caused the grass around them to shift. There was a slight cream color to the material, which appeared to be silk of some kind.

The woman carried nothing else that Tala could see.

“Tala.” She almost purred the A’s in the name, and her voice was somehow more like silk than the dress appeared, and while it was soft spoken, the force behind it caused the grass around her to tremble, collectively making a sound almost like that of a rattlesnake.

Well, that explains how I heard her within my armor.

“Fate has been kind to me, it seems. And you as well. You survived that winter wasteland and advanced… and advanced again, and again.” Her stunning smile was almost wicked as it clearly held unspoken secrets.

Tala still had not stood up… nor responded in any way actually.

Keeping her words to herself, Tala used the anchor of her iron spike to push herself up within her own aura.

She almost froze in shock. She’d never actually done that before. Of course, my body is soul-bound to me. Of course, I can move it within my own aura, so long as I have another anchor.

It was so laughably obvious that she felt a bit foolish for having not considered it earlier.

Regardless, now was hardly the time to consider such things.

She slowly drifted up, letting her legs drift down until she stood facing Mistress, still not saying anything.

She pulled out a few back-up bloodstars, creating a new cloud around herself stone- and starward, leaving the cloud around Rane to Alat.

Tala needed her threefold sight.

Mistress was frowning, now. “Why the silence? We are nearly of a kind in advancement, do you now disdain me? Are you still angry that I refused to return you to that silly caravan?” Her frown deepened as she seemed to notice something. “Why are you clad in an illusion?”

She snapped, and a wave of power washed outward from the woman.

Tala’s eyes widened.

The magic was obviously simply one of breaking illusions, so Tala didn’t contest it. Even so, she wasn’t entirely sure she could have, at least not easily.

It wasn’t that the working was powerful. On the contrary, it was intricate to the point of being almost impossible to fully parse, with innumerable parts that supported the whole, and others that stood ready to work around any form of resistance.

The only thing that came to mind to simplify the complexity of what she was seeing was a sword with hinges built in. If someone blocked a blow, the sword would simply bend around the block and hit anyway.

Though, Tala couldn’t imagine how such a sword could be designed without a high level of limitation and weakening of the blade.

And there is nothing lesser about this magic at all.

The anti-illusion working pulsed outward faster than anything Tala had ever seen, reaching her in less than a breath, utterly uncaring of crossing into her aura.

It stripped away the illusion she’d been clad in, which had originated from her through-spike.

Mistress’s eyes went wide as she took in Tala’s fully armored form.

“What? A Black Guard?” Mistress almost seemed to step back, but she clearly caught herself. “No, your magical signature is the same as I remember. What are you playing at, girl? What danger are you expecting that you are so armored?”

Tala shook her head slowly. Her threefold sight had shown something that had been invisible to Tala the last time that they met, something that she wouldn’t have understood even if she had seen it.

Mistress somehow had three gates, all thrumming in unison, clearly all soulbound to each other and to her body.

Tala decided to break her silence. “What are you? Tri-gated? You seem human enough besides that, but are you Arcane?”

Mistress’s eyes widened. “That is not for you to have seen.” She shook her head. “And here I thought this would be a pleasant reunion. More's the pity.”

Magics began gathering and flowing around Mistress, clearly gathering for some form of aggressive action.

Well, that conversation didn’t last long.

-Well, she was talking to you, so…-

Hush, you.

Tala shrugged in response to Mistress, her armor moving smoothly with her. “I’ll get my answer one way or another.”

She took all the iron she had with her and formed twenty spikes—each one just bigger than the head of a boar-spear—making them begin to spin around herself.

“I am not the un-Bound that you met before, and even though you’ve sensed my advancement,” Tala’s voice dropped lower, taking on a menacing tone, “you have no idea what you are dealing with.”

“We’ll see, child.”

Only then did Tala fully comprehend what she had been seeing with her threefold sight. It was hard to process, given Mistress’s aura was nearly equal with hers in advancement, so the woman’s magics and internals were obscured. Still, they weren’t blocked entirely.

From what Tala could see, each gate seemed to be tied to a different set of inscriptions and natural magics, all overlaid over the same physical body.

Well, it’s the season for impossibilities, it seems. This should be interesting.

-All of this is still going to the Archive. You have fun, now. Let me know if I should call for Rane and Terry.-

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Terry can’t help against her. She stopped him with ease last time… I’ll let you know if I think Rane would help.

She watched in fascination as only a single set of inscriptions and natural magics filled with power from a singular gate, the others seeming to be in a nearly-closed, dormant state.

Just like with the anti-illusion working, the magic that reached out wasn’t strictly powerful, but it was so intricately interwoven that Tala did not have confidence in opposing and undoing it with her aura before it reached her.

So, she didn’t try.

Her iron spikes flicked forward, shredding the magics like a horizontal hurricane.

Even so, since the magics had still had power when they were broken, barely a foot in front of her, a wave of wind blasted across her.

Iron coffin?

-Iron coffin.-

Tala would attempt to surround the woman entirely with iron, but she would have to at least stun her first.

Tala bent her legs even as she fell forward. An instant later, she launched at her opponent, driving a series of five iron spikes into the ground as she covered the intervening distance in a blink.

As she pushed off, she opened a portal into her sanctum, grabbing Flow’s handle. Thus, when she shot forward, the motion also fully drew Flow.

She was about to strike out, when she slammed full-force into an impossibly solid wall of air.

Her magics flared, keeping her bones and brain intact despite the concussive collision.

Even with the stunning results of her charge, she retained enough awareness to shoot iron spikes off to either side, driving them into the ground barely five feet to each side of Mistress.

Mistress—for her part—took a single step forward, thrusting her hand at Tala.

A blade of wind—so tightly compacted, interwoven, and bound that it seemed practically solid—shot from her hand.

Tala’s aura denied the incoming magics, beginning to degrade them instantly, but there simply wasn’t time to fully take apart the attack, especially not at this close of a range.

The small attack struck Tala’s armor and scored a deep gash, not penetrating but marring the surface nonetheless.

Mistress’s eyes widened, clearly having expected her attack to do more than it had. “What is that armor made of?”

Tala didn’t answer, pushing off toward the right, trying to get around the relatively small air-wall that stood between them. It was obviously one-way—somehow—and Tala didn’t like being kept at a distance.

Unfortunately, Mistress easily rotated to keep the wall between them, and while Flow could cut through it, each new slice sealed as quickly as Tala had repaired her own armor.

That was fine, though.

Tala now stood atop one of the two spikes that she’d thrown out at the last. The other was directly behind Mistress, maintaining Tala’s aura supremacy in that area. Though, to be fair, Mistress hadn’t actually contested that, not yet.

Regardless, Tala opened a portal into her sanctum near that other spike. Specifically, she opened it into where she had some of her siege orbs stored, immediately changing the target of two of their augmentations to Mistress.

The crack of the air as they ripped toward her back should have been the only warning the woman had, but she managed to react regardless.

The wall disappeared between Tala and Mistress, even as the woman turned—seeming almost to twist in on herself before simply facing the other direction—and caught the orbs, one in each hand, somehow arresting their momentum with a simple pulse of power.

Well… air… she’s been using air magic. I’m not sure why I expected that to go differently.

Still, Tala wasn’t idle, and it was still a great distraction that allowed her to close in, driving a thrust at the woman’s spine.

Before Mistress could turn or otherwise move the orbs, Tala changed her internal label for the two, triggering their explosive decompression.

Instead of detonating in a perfect sphere as they usually would, their compressed air shot out directly away from Mistress, clearly having been countered and guided at the moment of activation in some way that Tala hadn’t been able to track.

This created two long tracks of frozen grass—the heat having been pulled away by the rapidly expanding air—which shattered in the near constant, gentle breeze. The resulting sound was like millions of tiny bells, bouncing down a short slope.

Even with the orbs’ normal damage countered, the force of their expansion still threw Mistress back toward Flow.

At the last instant, a third arm seemed to materialize on the superficial, entirely different magics blazing within it—from one of the previously dormant gates—as it slapped Flow out of alignment, spoiling the initial thrust.

A voice resonated through the air along with the block, a voice that sounded exactly like Mistress’s, while somehow obviously not being her voice, “You will not hurt the Mistress.”

The second gate—and second set of magics—had come into play.

-Well, that’s new.-

It’s her arm… but not?

The third arm had vanished as soon as its task was complete, but Tala could still perceive the second set of magics blazing brightly, somehow both overtop Mistress’s wind magics and simply alongside them at the same time.

Tala didn’t slow her assault, using the force of the deflection to speed up Flow as she whipped the blade around for another strike.

But Mistress’s defenses were there, her deflecting left arm now filled with the power that the third arm had contained, her wind-magics now seemingly separate and… in reserve? At least that’s how it seemed for the upraised arm.

She can trade out what magics are in play here?

-And she somehow has extras of at least her arm.-

Huh… Tala felt a grin pull at her lips as she continued her assault. This should be interesting.

Flow clashed against Mistress’s arms in a series of rapid strikes during which three things became quickly apparent.

First, Tala was far more skilled than the other Refined in melee combat. It was to the point that Tala wondered if Mistress had ever had any formal training at all.

Second, Mistress didn’t have to directly block strikes in order to counter them, else she’d already have been cut a dozen times over.

Third—following closely on the heels of the second—Mistress’ secondary magic seemed to project an almost physical magical blade.

It was odd, because it honestly seemed almost exactly like her first set of magic, but simply a bit closer range and a bit sturdier.

That, of course, led Tala to the conclusion that she wasn’t fully comprehending the variance.

As they continued to clash, the true differences began to surface. Primarily, ‘a bit sturdier’ was underselling the resilience of the new magics involved.

Flow had been able to cleave through the wind walls and wind blades with ease, even if her weapon couldn’t disrupt them entirely. This new magic—which Tala still couldn’t quite identify—could utterly stymie Flow, seemingly putting no pressure back on Mistress behind the block. It could even deflect the iron that Tala wove into her attack patterns.

That shouldn’t be possible, given the defense appeared to be magical in nature, but Tala wasn’t disheartened. She was utterly in command of the rhythm of the fight by this point, Mistress clearly striving simply to keep Flow away from herself.

The woman occasionally activated magics elsewhere on her body from her first set, sending wind blades—or attempting to erect wind walls—to hamper Tala, but Tala stuck too close for the tactic to be very effective.

Tala’s expression was, of course, inscrutable to Mistress given the full-faceplate. Mistress’s, however, was quite the opposite.

She had started with an expression of supreme—almost bored—confidence, but that had slowly morphed more and more into the realm of confusion and from there into frustrated concentration.

Finally, what Tala was seeing clicked. Dimensional magics. She’s creating dimensional barriers, simply ending the dimensionality of my attack where the two meet.

-And it can stop iron because the iron isn’t interacting with the magic, just the result. Your iron is stopping at the edge of dimensionality.-

Exactly. Like the border of the inside of Kit. Tala had never considered using dimensional magic in that way, and in truth, the mechanics of it still didn’t make much sense to her. Even so, it did give her an idea on how to bypass it.

She let Flow fall back into the form of a knife once more.

While she had been holding the void-forms in reserve—partially because she still wanted Mistress alive—she had been using whichever physical form was right for each given strike, easily flowing from one to the next with the Way of Flowing Blood. But this time was different.

She thrust with the knife, feeling it hit the immovable barrier that the woman projected.

Tala then dumped power into Flow, transforming it into a sword, the blade extending without Flow’s handle moving. The quick expansion wasn’t a strike, and dimensionally speaking, Flow didn’t move.

Tala held that truth in mind, filling both Flow and her own aura with that certain knowledge, and whether that was enough or something else allowed the blade to get through, Flow drew first blood.

Mistress must have noticed something was going wrong, because she tried to twist out of the way at the last moment.

She succeeded in preventing Flow from driving through her side and into her mid-spine, but the magical blade still cut a line across her lower ribs, easily severing the silk-like dress and the flesh underneath.

She used the opportunity to steal a bit of iron from the woman’s blood. Unfortunately, she was surprisingly resistant to the tactic, likely, in part, because seemingly three souls held collective claim over the body, fighting in unison against any claim of Tala’s.

Tala’s opponent still let out a whimpering growl before her third set of magics activated, clearly acting to heal her with startling ease.

If anything, it was even faster than Mistress Vanga’s magics would have been able to heal someone.

That’s when it clicked for Tala.

She has air magic that is Material Guide at its base.

Alat made an internal sound of understanding, filling in the next piece, -And dimensional magic that is Immaterial Creation at its base.-

And healing that is Material Creation… she only needs an Immaterial Guide power to have a full set.

-Which we are… no wonder she made the offer.-

Still, why wouldn’t she have completed the set? We are hardly the only Immaterial Guide in existence?

-Well, that’s just another thing to ask her once we win.-

Indeed. Tala hardened her resolve.

Mistress’s eyes were burning with a fiery fury as all three gates—all three sets of magic—blazed fully to life for the first time. “Enough of this, I've got places to be.”