Ranvir gasped falling back from the circle, he felt the creature’s presence pull back from his veil.

“Ranvir?” Kirs asked. “Are you okay?”

“What was that,” he muttered. “What are you?” he said more quietly.

“Ranvir? Who are you talking to?”

Ranvir shook his head, “I…” Shit, how did he get out of this one? He couldn’t just tell her nothing, but he also couldn’t say that a creature made of color and something else that also lives in his mind is speaking to him. Could he?

“Something’s been happening over the last few months…” Ranvir said wondering if he should just shut up and soldier on. In the next room he heard Esmund get up and from the sounds Frija was making, taking the child with him. “Since the riots, I think.”

The creature started pacing, the movements rote. Soon, it would settle down again.

“Is this about your eyes?” Esmund asked. He was leaning against the doorway, Frija resting on his hip and happily burbling into his chest.

“My eyes?”

“When they’re glowing.”

“Like, glowing glowing?” Ranvir asked.

“No, the other glowing…” Es shook his head, “You’re lucky you’re good at tether stuff, otherwise you’d be properly fucked,” he glanced at Frija, “Uhh… Screwed, I mean.”

“I can only assume they’re related,” Ranvir replied bringing the conversation back on track, “I started feeling this creature… it doesn’t look quite human, but the upper torso have the broad strokes right,” he shook his head, “Anyway, it started appearing in more or less detail, but since my advancement its been appearing more often. It’s even speaking to me on occasion.”

Kirs and Es exchanged a glance, worry clearly outlined on their faces. Ranvir ran a hand through his hair. As he scooted back and leaned on the wall.

“Do you want to hold her?” Es asked to which Ranvir nodded and he handed over the baby. Ranvir mumbled quiet nothings to Frija as he accepted her into his arms. She squealed once and slapped him on the mouth, causing him to smile.

“I worry…” Ranvir confessed unsettlingly violent black and sick green clouds roiling from the pits of his stomach up into his throat. “The tethered that have tried to mimic Saleema all went mad, somehow… I’m afraid that maybe that’s what’s happening to me.”

Kirs pursed her lips looking at him from across the room. She was idly tracing chalk across the ritual board with one hand, the other clasping Esmund’s. While Es’ hand was mostly limp in Kirs’, Ranvir could see his other squeezed into a fist.

“I don’t think so,” Kirs said tersely. “You’re not a generator, nor have you advanced that far. It’s only supposed to be happening in the late stages of advancement, if at all. It’s hard to tell, we don’t have any modern information. Besides, you show no other signs of going crazy.”

Ranvir bit his lip and adjusted the collar on Frija one-piece, it had gotten a little askew. “I’ve been paranoid… You remember, after seeing Saleema that first time, I got a little crazy maybe that’s another sign…”

“It’s not, Ranvir,” Esmund said without a trace of doubt in his voice. “I know you. You’re prone to worrying and overthinking, you got in a bad situation. You were assaulted, saved, and then threatened by those saviors, it’s completely normal to be worried. You dealt with it as best you could and it abated after a few weeks. It’s not like you’re turning around every corner looking for her, right?”

Ranvir shook his head, “No, I guess not.” He didn’t say that on occasion, he thought he’d felt her tether-sense monitoring him.

“Besides,” Es continued. “Are you going to stop? Lay down your powers? Go to the front lines and hope that you won’t get hurt, or worse? Are you gonna pray to the Triplet Goddess that she save you? That she bring you back to Frija unharmed?”

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The unsettling black clouds in Ranvir’s stomach froze in a moment, the nausea and sickness inherent in them recoiling from the onslaught of protective gold and angry red light. It burned down the clouds at the mere thought of leaving Frija alone. Ranvir would not make her an orphan. He would do whatever it took to watch his daughter grow up happy and safe.

Ranvir shook his head, “No, you’re right.”

“Then what is it helping when you’re worrying? Is it just to make yourself feel good? Is it working?”

Ranvir shook his head, his mind feeling clearer than it had since the creature—Latresekt?—spoke in his mind.

“It’s not helping and I’m not going to let it get in the way again.”

Esmund smiled getting to his feet as well, “You just need someone to clear your mind up sometimes, focus you on what’s important.”

“Which is my rituals,” Kirs interrupted them as Ranvir handed back his daughter. “Which it seems we need to start over…”

The pocket-space had collapsed on itself at some point in the conversation, which was a lot faster than the smaller one Ranvir’d made before advancing. He might have a solution for that, however.

“The rest of the ritual holds up to your power, so I want to try my new circles.”

Ranvir nodded and stepped over. “Let’s get started on them, then.”

They quickly erased the chalk from the board and started over. Some adjustments had to be made in order to make sure everything fit together. Kirs only had a rough sketch of the new ritual in her notebook, without nearly enough detail to copy it directly.

The first of her new additions was what she’d called a distribution circle. It was a circle of her own devising, that should, in theory, cause just about a three-to-two energy distribution allowing them to split it between pocket-space and brace better. Ranvir still thought that was a too even split, the bracing shouldn’t need that much energy, not even for a space that large.

It was a fairly simple circle, working on the principle that the energy would travel through more chalk more easily. Ranvir started by drawing two thick lines, one going in each direction that they needed, then halfway towards the braces rituals he carefully erased a line in the middle, splitting it in two. He narrowed them further, though the exact measures was more art than science at this point.

Kirs had come up with idea after seeing how energy slowed down when racing through the thin detailed lines of the basin, as opposed to the simpler lines of ambient collection. It only took Ranvir a little while to complete the circle after which he moved on to the rest as usual. Finally, at the end, he made a small circle inside the main ritual, instead of on it’s outside.

This was the more experimental of the two new sub-circles Kirs wanted to test. Thankfully, it wasn’t as intricate as the basin, though, it was a lot smaller to make up for it.

At its base, was the space glyph. Since it wasn’t directly connected to the rest of the circles, Ranvir would have to power it individually. He’d seen Kirs discuss the particular pattern before, she’d spoken with Sansir many times to trace it from falling snow. He knew she’d taken notes from all of them as well. So far as he could tell, it didn’t matter the element, it didn’t matter the type of tethered. According to Kirs’ notes, the pattern was universal, the energy fed into it might matter, though.

Ranvir stilled his excitement as he pulled away from the final circle.

“Is it done?” Kirs asked sounding out of breath.

“Yeah,” Ranvir replied, leaning back on his heels.

“What’s it supposed to do?” Es asked.

“You’ll see,” Kirs said barely hiding her glee.

Ranvir smiled as he pinched off a small pocket-space to start off the process. This time, he focused his intent on the space, modifying it to better accommodate growth. He knew it was a long shot working off instinct like that. Often times, it failed to produce reliable results, but he would examine it as it grew and learn more about how it adapted.

Then, he started powering the circle. It was a joy to be able to do it from a distance, no longer forced to crouch over the ritual, reaching into the middle to maintain the pocket-space.

He stepped back, having more than enough space with Veil to reach the glyph. Standing next to Kirs and Esmund, who handed him Frija, he watched eagerly as the space grew, filling in. He saw how the fabric of the border adjusted and adapted as more was added to it.

He saw the hook-like construction of energy that hooked into the new material and slotting it in. As he feared, some placed failed to do it well, and a few places that could’ve benefited from the hooks didn’t have them.

He slowed when it grew tall enough to stand in. The pocket was still stable, the aperture hadn’t torn open, and the braces weren’t struggling to support the weight of the space. In fact, he thought once more there were more braces than necessary.

“Alright, I’m ready…” Kirs took a deep breath, “Do it.”

Ranvir touched the newest sub-circle with his Veil and filled the glyph with power. Something rippled through the pocket-space. It reached through the aperture, the beginning of the space, followed all around the border, before meeting opposite the entrance then bounced back.

Then Ranvir’s senses were shut away from it. He could only sense the middle point of aperture, the connection to reality.

“Stasis?” He asked turning wide-eyes to Kirs.

“Dormancy, more like,” she smiled from ear-to-ear, then broke into giddy laughter. Frija joining with her own baby giggles.