Tala and Terry were the first ones to the end of the tunnel—as usual—with Rane close behind.

The other members of the unit were coming just after Rane.

Master Limmestare was understandably giddy at the idea of a glass-based lifeform—Tala could practically feel the man’s soul vibrating with glee.

Master Girt seemed more focused on his friend, Master Limmestare, seemingly ready to snatch the man back if he tried to advance before it was time to do so.

Mistress Vanga’s focus was quite obviously on Tala—as the vanguard—and the healer’s magics were primed to come to her aid, should Tala be in need.

Master Clevnis had a hand resting on the sword at his waist and was outwardly calm.

Mistress Cerna was just finishing up a series of floating inscriptions to augment those she’d draped over each of their shoulders. Both sets of magic were designed to dampen and filter sound, given the warnings depicted in the entry hall.

Terry—as was fitting—was faster than Tala, though she did flicker forward to stand beside him a moment after he stopped at the mouth of the tunnel, using his presence as the source of her aura to move to.

It was interesting to her that he could go wherever he wished, the absence of their aura notwithstanding, but she could only do so with that base of authority.

Another thing to work on, just like moving my iron beyond my aura.

He glanced her way when she arrived, letting out a contented chirp.

“Thank you. I am trying to use it more often.”

He chirped again, turning to regard the landscape before them.

Tala did likewise, even though her threefold sight had already taken it in.

Well, to be fair, his threefold perception would have done the same.

The cell was entirely composed of desert, the sand an odd blue-green color. Tala could see that it was at least a hundred feet deep, and the cell extended that far up as well.

The whole thing looked to be roughly a mile across, with very little variation in the rolling hills.

As Rane stepped up beside her, he let out a long breath. “It looks like the ocean, held still.”

Tala frowned… he was right in a sense. It was a bit sparklier than she remembered the ocean being, but possibly on a truly bright, spring day? Yeah, she could see that. “That resonates. It’s beautiful.”

“Indeed.”

Master Limmestare maneuvered himself forward to kneel at the end of the tunnel and put his hand forward. He clearly marveled at the sand that he touched. “No sharp edges. It’s all rounded, all glass. Don’t step out, I don’t know that it would hold you, and you might just plummet straight to the bottom. It wouldn’t be like a fall through the air, but I doubt it would be that much better. More importantly, it would be a pain to get you back out.” His power flexed, but seemed to be rebuffed by the glass. “I can’t do anything with this at all.”

Tala nodded. “What about with an increased surface area?”

The glass Mage grinned up at her. “Well, given you can stand on air with those magics, yes, I think you’ll be fine with an increase.”

She rolled her eyes, then nodded in return before amplifying the power going to the surface area expansion scripts on her feet and stepping out.

It felt like how walking on syrup might. That wasn’t quite right, though, as it wasn’t sticky. Maybe a viscoelastic fluid?

Yeah, that was closer.

Not that she’d ever actually done that.

-The swamp in the void-hold?-

Maybe…

There was clearly some coherence to the glass-ball sand, otherwise there couldn’t be dunes, waves, or whatever the rolling hills should be called.

Even so, she had to increase her surface area even further before she felt herself steady, the glass no longer trying to roll around the edges.

She had only taken four steps before the tableau changed.

The whole of the cell began to move, as if it were really the ocean, and it had simply restarted its movement.

The sound would have been deafening without Mistress Cerna’s magic. Their enhanced and reinforced ears would simply have been overwhelmed by the sound to the point of essential deafness rather than actually being damaged, but the effect would have been the same.

Tala’s helmet helped a bit, but it just wasn’t designed for sound isolation.

Bless that woman.

Tala found that with just a small increase to her scripts beyond the stability she’d already found, she was effectively a buoy, bobbing on the surface.

Thankfully, the motion didn’t last long.

A moment later, a bird rose up from the depths and the whole of the cell stilled, the surface becoming a perfectly flat, seemingly solid plane of glass.

The bird was… small. It wasn’t the size of a hummingbird—not quite—but it might have been likened to a large sparrow.

Each beat of its wings was accompanied by the cascading sound of cracking glass. Those cracks were even visible as waves of jagged white lines within the glass depiction of a bird, though they sealed almost as quickly as they were created.

The effect was very much like the crashing of waves upon a sea-shore.

The movements of the wings were clearly mostly for show, as they were not moving enough to have been keeping the bird aloft.

Terry trilled up at the clear bird, eliciting a grinding, chirp of sorts in return.

He flinched slightly at the sound, but hid it reasonably well, responding with another trill, tilting his head toward Tala and the unit as a whole.

The bird regarded them for a long moment before shattering, glass pulling up from the ground to join the fragments from the bird, together reforming into the shape of a woman, standing on the still surface.

A dress of woven glass fibers unspooled to drape around her. Her actual form was of solid glass, though, which seemed like a strange choice from Tala’s perspective.

The glass-woman opened her mouth, and the sound of breaking, cracking, grating glass intensified even as the waves of white cracks radiated around each movement. Through Mistress Cerna’s spells, Tala was able to pick out the likeness of words.

-I’ll clean that up, one moment…. There.-

With Alat’s help, Tala was suddenly able to hear the woman properly. The alternate interface even processed the glass-woman’s words back to the start of what she’d been saying, “Greetings, Archons of Humanity. Long have I slumbered in this place of my authority. If you do not know, I am Lupe. By your lack of obvious pain at my voice, you have come prepared. I am grateful for that. I do not like harming your kind.”

Her eyes swept them, clear interest in her eyes, but then her gaze jerked back to focus on Tala.

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“You… you contain echoes of one of my kin, yet you are not as I am. How can this be?” Lupe’s throat whitened with each syllable, healing quickly enough to visibly whiten again as she continued to speak. It made an oddly beautiful display that Tala could not focus on at the moment.

Tala nodded, having anticipated the potential for something like this. “So, you are related to the dasgannach?”

“I am—or was—such a creature, a curse at my very core. That which eventually became me strove and struggled, gathering unto myself my material until, one day, I was simply more than I had been. I believe there were sapients nearby when this happened, but whether they had a hand in the change, I never learned. What are you to my kin?” While it was hard to determine expressions precisely on the see-through face, Tala had rather a lot of practice doing something similar given her threefold sight. If she read Lupe correctly, she was intensely interested in the answer.

-Yup, you have to be a master sleuth to have deduced that.-

You know, you could just let me feel special…

-I could—and I do—but only when it is warranted.-

Tala didn’t respond to Alat, instead choosing to address Lupe, “Two dasgannach were twisted by arcanes and confined in a collar around my neck. Their purpose was as a deterrent, to contain and control me. When I fought back against my captors, the dasgannach were released into me. One took all it could, fled my body and died. The second would have killed me, so I did what I could to keep it close. We eventually came to an understanding.”

“An understanding. Truly?” There was the definite light of hope in the glass-woman’s eyes. “Is this something you could offer others?”

“What we came to could not work between us.” Tala answered quickly, not wanting Lupe to get her hopes up. “It was an enfolding and intermeshing of desire and purpose.” Tala allowed a misting of iron dust to manifest and float around her in intricate shapes.

Lupe gasped, eyes widening in a very good imitation of the human facial expression. It was accompanied by the sound of cracking and scraping glass, but Mistress Cerna’s workings continued to reduce the ear-rending sound down to merely uncomfortable. The Refined nature of the unit likely contributed to that reduction as well.

It was odd seeing the glass face whiten all across its visage from microcracks, and Tala had the fleeting concern that every crack was painful for Lupe. Though, given the bird form’s somewhat unneeded movement, and Lupe’s almost overdone expressions, that was unlikely.

Regardless of the potential pain, the imprisoned didn’t hesitate in expressing her surprise, “Such a strong purpose… It is no wonder that you are so far on your way to Paragon. Around eighty percent if my interpretation is correct.” She had an odd, humorous, knowing look as she said that. “If I understand human advancement, having such a powerful drive underlying who you are would be an incredible boon. If what you did were repeatable by others…?”

Tala shook her head, even while she took in the contemplative looks of her unit members. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the knowledge or ability to replicate what I did for others.”

“That is understandable. Before my isolation here, I was asked if such was possible, and I answered assuredly no. I am glad that while I was mistaken, I was not overly so.”

-Well, that does explain why you are advancing through Paragon faster than people who seem… more grounded than you.-

…I’d be offended if you weren’t so correct. So, Paragon requires an eternal goal, understanding who you are and who you want to be, and a powerful drive? That… that was really obvious now that she articulated it. For most Refined, immortality was at hand, and they had no real need to advance for any reason. Sure, they were still pursuing advancement, moving onward slowly, but it wasn’t urgent to them. There wasn’t a drive for most of them.

Wait… Rane was the prodigy all along?

-Always has been.-

And we’re just a miracle of circumstance? Tala added a faux despondence to her thought.

Alat chuckled. -I wouldn’t go that far. You have worked incredibly hard, survived much, and came out ahead. But we should probably discuss this later.-

Right. Tala refocused on the cell around her. Thankfully, due to her enhanced cognition, barely a moment had passed while she considered internally. “Regardless, Lupe, I do believe that you and I could come to an understanding of a different sort.”

The woman straightened, sending a quickly healing cascade of cracks through her entire being, which made her look frosted for the briefest of moments. “I listen.”

“I have a soulbound storage that is such that it does not automatically force a bond to any sapient who enters it. Moreover, partially due to the dasgannach that I bound to myself—”

Lupe gasped, sudden realization seeming to strike her. “You expanded my cousin’s authority and sovereignty to include anything in your expanded space, as well as iron regardless of where it is found?”

Tala held up a finger in correction. “Over what is mine. Yes.” The word ‘mine’ resounded through the cell, seemingly echoed by every bit of glass contained within. “That is how it works.”

Lupe shivered in obvious resonance of the concept. “I am listening.”

Tala smiled. “The Mages of Humanity have agreed to allow me to take on keeper-ship of cells which are suited to less stringent security. In your case, you came to us and asked to be contained. Even now, you make no move to attempt to gain your freedom. If I were to devour this cell, I could keep you from claiming more material and give you a bit of normalcy. You could never leave the expanded space which is bound to me, but you would be able to leave here. You’d be able to interact with others, do whatever you’d like.”

Lupe was already shaking her head. “I think I understand what you will be asking, and if I am right, I will decline. I will not give up what is mine.”

Tala felt a tingle through her whole body at the final word, clearly sensing a kinship with the idea. Thankfully, Tala had expected the glass-woman’s response. “I hear you, but I believe that you misunderstand my aim. Do you hold sway over this cell? The air around you? The edges of Existence which contain you? Are any of those yours? Are any of them you?”

Lupe frowned, her brows whitening briefly with the motion and the disquieting sound of splintering reached Tala’s ears. “No…”

“Then nothing would change. I would not ask you to give up any of who you are. I’ve seen you be discontinuous already. Am I correct that you can separate?”

“I can, but if it is for too long—say, more than a week as humans measure such things—I will diverge and become two.” Her frown deepened. “I am as large as I am because I had to hunt down all my willful spawn who did not understand the danger we posed to Zeme.”

That made Tala pale slightly. Lupe had hunted down divergent versions of herself because she felt so strongly about preserving Zeme. That sparked a realization in Tala, and she felt the need to check. Even so, it wasn’t a question. “You aren’t the original, are you.”

Lupe gave her a long, long look. “No. So, that is something we share.”

Tala jerked back slightly, as if slapped. “What do you mean?”

“You bear hallmarks similar to those found within my own copies. Though, from what I can tell, you had no divergence. Since divergence is a part of my nature, I would not have expected it in you, regardless.”

She really didn’t know what to make of what Lupe had said, so she decided to ignore it for now.

-Because that’s a healthy way of dealing with things that has worked so well for you in the past.-

I don’t like you sometimes.

-It is expected for the weak-minded to be jealous of the brilliant.-

…We are the same person.

-And self-loathing is better than jealousy inspired-dislike?-

Tala grimaced internally. …Moving on.

Before Alat could say anything further, Tala smiled at Lupe. “So, given that, your mass can be sequestered either off to one side of the space or in a separately maintained place, and you can explore the rest of the area at your leisure, coming ‘home’ to your larger self every day or so.”

Lupe still seemed concerned, at least for a moment. “But I’ll strip your expanded space of—” A considering look came over her as she paused herself mid-sentence. “No, I won’t, not without concerted effort. It would be like overcoming a divergent versus meeting up with one in passing. So long as I don’t actively choose to contest you, that just might work…” There was a light in the glass woman’s eyes. “You might even be able to oppose me if I do actively try to claim more in a moment of weakness.”

Tala could literally see a light kindling within the glass structure of the eyes. Where is that coming from?

-Nowhere that I can perceive. Must be… Tala, do you think it might be magic?-

Rust you, Alat.

-Hey, hey. We already talked about self-loathing.-

Tala sighed.

Lupe turned away from Tala for the first time in their conversation, her eyes resting on Master Limmestare even as she pointed at Tala. “Mage of Glass, do you trust this one?”

Master Limmestare was taken completely off guard, but he still responded with care and tact, “Though I have known her only a short time—on the scale of such things—she has continually shown herself to be dependable, yes.”

Lupe nodded, looking to Mistress Cerna. “You have the aura of command. Are you an authority here?”

“I am.” Mistress Cerna answered with a slight bow of her head.

“And you support this decision?”

“The plan seems solid enough, yes.”

“And if you were me, would you take the deal?”

That seemed to give Mistress Cerna pause. Even so, the mature Refined responded with a smile, “Absolutely. At the worst, it would be no different than here, and at best, it will be so, so much better.”

Lupe smiled, the edges of her mouth whitening briefly before the fractures healed. “Indeed. Very well, Mistress Tala. I agree.”

Tala grinned. “Excellent.”