Millennial Mage

Tala lay, splayed out on her bed, feeling mentally bleh.

As it turned out, she could move Kit around to different stoneward depths without causing any issues within, but it was straining on her will and authority, even with Kit’s very nature making it possible and facilitating the process.

Doing so did divide the damage being done to existence into smaller, less contiguous chunks, which would heal faster—at least according to the experiments that they’d done and the information that had been shared with them.

I still say there has to be a way to increase the structure of existence around gated so that they don’t do as much damage regardless of anything else.

-I agree, but that honestly sounds more like area of effect magic, which…-

Tala shook her head. Yeah, that’s not our thing. I still feel like someone should have come up with a way of doing it.

-...you mean like the stability magics incorporated into the keystone inscriptions?-

…that’s… fair actually. That was described to me as helping contain the bounds of my gate so as to keep it from ‘breaking out’ or some such… Her eyes widened a bit. So, all of this is with mitigations in place?

-Yeah… imagine how it used to be? No wonder the gateless races disliked and distrusted us.-

Tala grunted. I suppose.Rane looked up at the sound from where he was working off to the side, fiddling with a bunch of metal parts that he’d picked up from Sunnydale. “Are you feeling any better?”

She groaned long and low. “No…”

He gave a wry smile. “I’m sorry, love. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah…”

“Is there anything that I can do to help you get there?”

She thought for a long moment. “Food? Rest is only doing so much.”

“I’m happy to get you some food.” He set his project aside and pushed himself to his feet. “I did want to ask you, though… Isn’t Alat moving the flier as we speak?”

“She is.”

“How is that restful for you? It’s still your mind doing the work. Right?”

She grunted again. “Yes and no?”

-Mainly yes, but—-

Hush. Aren’t you busy?

Alat grumbled a little, then turned her attention back to the flier, which was moving well below its maximum ‘safe’ speed to be extra cautious.

“Basically yes, but while I am mostly thinking and acting cognitively within the biology in my head, Alat is mostly doing so within the magical enhancements and expansions to the same. There is obviously a lot of overlap, but that still means that she ‘wears out’ mentally a lot slower than I do when under extreme strain.”

Rane raised an eyebrow. “Really? Huh. That’s not how Enar and I work at all.”

Tala lifted her head to look at her husband. “Really? I thought you all worked like Alat and I do.”

-I’ve tried to tell you otherwise several times but—Ah!-

Tala flicked her attention to one of the perspectives around the flier, and saw Terry flicker into being beside it, taking a playful swipe at the construct.

The terror bird had decided that Alat needed some ‘evasive’ training, and he’d volunteered to provide just that.

Rane shrugged, unaware of the crisis occurring for Tala’s alternate interface. “No, I think our minds are different enough that it made more sense to do it differently. Essentially, I can now think of up to three things at once—meaning that I can have three continuous, unbroken, and ongoing lines of thought at a time—and Enar and I freely utilize those. Usually, he is using two and I am using one, but sometimes he uses three and sometimes I use two.” He shrugged again. “It’s an enhancement magic that will let us have even more, but that will happen at the first deepening of the inscriptions which isn’t scheduled for another year or so.”

Tala gave a slow nod. “I see.”

He pushed himself up to his feet. “But I promised you food. I’ll be right back.”

True to his word, he came back with a large spread of food for her less than five minutes later, and they sat together on their bedroom floor.

It would have been trivial to go to their dining room, but something about eating together on the floor was… nice. It was a change of pace and fun in a way that Tala felt they were lacking of late.

Following that line of thinking, she somewhat abruptly stated, “Once we find Howlton, and investigate the clockwork thunder, I think I’m ready to head home. We need to solidify ourselves as Paragons, and just breathe a bit.”

“Oh? I’d thought we came out here to do just that? Breathe, I mean. I don’t think either of us expected to reach Paragon on this trip.” He gave a self-effacing smile.

Tala chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d have taken that bet.”

“We did come out to get away from responsibilities and to keep your mind off of…” He hesitated.

She gave him a sad smile. “You can say it. If anyone can, you can.”

He returned her expression, loss clear in his own eyes. “We came out here to keep our minds off of our inability to have children.”

Tala had braced for a wave of unpleasant emotions when he actually said it, but instead, she found herself almost relieved to have had him express it out loud. “You’re right. We did. I…”

He shifted around and draped his arm around her while she collected her thoughts.

She leaned into the embrace, laying her head against him before she continued. “It still feels silly, to have felt like I lost something precious which I never actually had.”

He squeezed her once, tightly. “But you did lose something. You lost your plans. You lost the hope for our children. Sure, nothing tangible was taken from you, from us, but often it’s that which we cannot touch that hurts the most to lose. Even if there is the potential for hope for the future, that is something we’ve regained since.”

“Oh?” Tala frowned, looking toward Rane. “Like what?”

“Well, aside from the ability to have children which we’re already discussing. Let me see… Our innocence? When going from childhood to adulthood. It happens a bit differently for everyone, but it’s almost always a… difficult experience. Our plans—not just a plan for children, but any plan when it is foiled—a friendship? The person is often still there, even as we feel the friendship fading. That can hurt worse than that same person moving away. I could go on, but I think you understand what I mean.”

Tala pulled back and gave him a narrowed eyed look. “Could you really go on?”

He grinned back. “Yeah, but it would be more difficult. I think I could come up with one or two more examples if I had to.”

She huffed a laugh. “That’s what I thought.”

They leaned against one another again, taking comfort in the contact, the closeness. They ate slowly even as they simply enjoyed each other’s company.

This. I needed this.

* * *

Time passed as Terry continued to stalk and surprise Alat, Rane continued to carve and fiddle with the metal parts he’d acquired, and Tala worked on her iron self.

She found the process confusingly both more and less easy with the alteration to her iron brought about through the acquisition of the baba yaga’s teeth.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was easier, because the iron seemed more willing to take on the imposed characteristics, adopting and holding them much more easily, almost seeming to drink in her intentions and alter itself with almost no effort.

On the other side, some of the finer specifics became far more important. Before, she could lean on her innate knowledge of human biology to fill in the gaps, and make things work more smoothly, but now? No, the iron took on exactly the properties that she wished it to, under the influence of Kit’s power and her own direct authority.

It would be decidedly better in the long run, but for now? For now she was doing far worse than she had been.

Her latest iteration had just fallen apart before she even tried to make it take a step—rust, it had fallen apart before she’d finished crafting it—when Alat interrupted her experimentation.

-We’re coming up on the meeting place.-

How are we in regards to timing?

-Exactly on time. I’ve been taking it slow as we don’t have to stop, and there was no reason to cause damage when we weren’t really in a rush.-

Tala was surprised that three days had passed without her really realizing it. Huh… traveling by flier is… less exciting? Less interesting?

-Yeah, I can see that. You get to focus on experimentation and training, but you can do that anywhere. Part of the point of this travel was to see the sights.-

Yeah, and I’m not seeing any of the sights…

-The memories of what the flier perspectives took in are readily available to you.-

That’s not the same… Tala groused.

There was a pregnant pause before Alat cleared her metaphysical throat. -...You don’t say.-

Tala sighed. I know that’s basically how you experience everything, but I don’t really like it.

-Yeah, it isn’t quite your style. You can get used to it—I’m evidence to that—but it does make all of existence feel a bit abstract.-

…Alright, then. We’re walking for the next leg… or at least moving under our own power.

-Agreed.-

Tala willed herself and Rane out of the sanctum, where they appeared on the top of an escarpment, overlooking a larger stretch of the plains.

Rane, for his part, had a bronze gear in hand, and was bending forward as if looking intently at something.

As soon as he appeared beside her, he turned her direction, raising an eyebrow.

Tala flushed. “Oh… I’m sorry, Rane. I didn’t think to check if you were free. I just sort of assumed that you would be.”

He sighed, working his tongue over his teeth. “Can you give me five? I’ll be at a good stopping point, then.”

“Sure. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

Then, he was gone, having willed himself back to whatever task he was working on. He’d asked her not to peek, so she hadn’t.

-I know what it is.-

Of course you do. He didn’t ask you not to peek.

-But he did ask that I keep it to myself.-

I know, I know. I’ll be excited to see it when he’s done.

-Yeah, it’ll be fun for you to see, but it’s actually pretty funny that I’m to keep it to myself, because you are myself. I could just tell you, and it wouldn’t be a violation in the least.-

Tala sent a feeling of non-amused incredulity.

-Fine, fine. Allow your husband to keep his secrets…-

With that little embarrassment aside—and Alat reminded of the order of things—Tala really focused on the world around her.

The forest was almost directly to the west from this point, with small stands of trees in evidence all around, here and there.

A few streams carved their way through the low points of the terrain, coming together here and there to make larger waterways.

The grass was a bit yellower than it had been in early spring, but as they weren’t even to the summer solstice yet, it wasn’t extreme.

She could sense pockets of magic hidden underground, or moving through valleys or above the clouds overhead, mostly hidden from mundane sight, and she guessed that most of those were arcanous or magical creatures of one type or another.

Similar magical signatures in the surrounding landscape were essentially always in evidence, even if she rarely paid them any mind.

She, herself, was veiled to displaying a Fused level of power at the moment, though the spark of obviously Paragon power in the flier beside her ruined the disguise just a bit.

She closed the portal that was within the flier, then opened another for it to pass through, into its storage place in the sanctum.

There. Now I look properly Fused.

She rested her left hand on Flow at her hip, taking comfort in the familiar handle.

I still haven’t revisited reworking Flow into an existence blade, now that I have more practice and a greater advancement…

It was yet one more thing on her ever revolving and expanding list. She’d get to it eventually.

With his erstwhile prey gone, Terry flickered to Tala’s shoulder and headbutted the side of her head.

“Hey, now. We can play more later.”

He squawked in resigned understanding then settled in to wait with her.

As long as our list is—and as much as I’d like to focus on doing some more things off of it—we have another task now. The plan is to see another moving settlement and get to Howlton. The Irondalians are rather excited for another chance to trade with a moving settlement.

-And that other settlement should be arriving… now.-

As the alternate interface gave the cue, the settlement’s cloaking field rolled over them, revealing a land-bound construction, though much squatter than Howlton.

This one had six legs and looked to only be three or four stories at the tallest, the bottom-most floor held roughly fifteen feet off the ground. What it lacked in height, however, it made up for in size.

It looked to be a bit more than three hundred fifty feet long and half that wide. It was a blockier construction, even if the corners seemed to have been rounded off.

She could see windows of various sizes and shapes scattered across the side facing her, and by what she could see with her threefold sight, there were a wide variety of uses the rooms with those windows were put to.

The city as a whole seemed to be made mostly out of wood and metal just as Sunnydale had been, but there was some stone incorporated as well.

Specifically, the legs themselves seemed almost to be made of granite, held together and given mobility by massive interconnected and interwoven roots.

The top of the village sprouted trees of immense width, even if they weren’t that much taller than many of the nearby trees in the prairie.

Her threefold sight saw cords of power running through each and every root, as well as in the seemingly random spirals, grooves, and cracks in the rock. Together, the powers seemed to make an incredibly powerful and flexible foundation.

The town came to a stop beside the escarpment on which Tala stood, lining up an exterior entrance with the ground through slight adjustments of the legs. At that point, a small platform extended, making the connection even easier.

-Lyn’s ready.-

Tala nodded to herself, then pulled Lyn to the superficial beside her, whisking her right out of her office where she’d been waiting.

At nearly the same moment the door opened, and a young woman stepped out, bowing toward Tala and Lyn. As she straightened, her gaze lingered on Terry for a brief moment before she spoke, “Greaters. You are expected.”

Lyn smiled and bowed in return. “You must be Cait. We’ve been confering through the communication device?”

“Oh! Greater Lyn, yes, welcome welcome.” The young woman smiled, her freckles standing out in starker relief because of the expression. “The heads of this village would like to speak with you and… may I assume that this is Greater Tala?”

Tala gave a slight bow, Terry not even needing to tighten his grip to stay in place. “I am.”

“Be welcomed.”

Tala and Lyn stepped onto the platform before the door, and almost immediately, the village began to move once more, swaying gently as it ambled across the land.

They passed through the polished copper-plated entry door and into a wide, but still cozy feeling, hallway. The slow sway of the walking gait was actually rather easy to become accustomed to, and so Tala put it from her mind after walking barely a dozen yards down the entry passage.

“We here in Astraya welcome all who wish to join us, whether for an hour or a lifetime.” Cait gave them a side-eyed glance. “I will warn you that we have several groups from the House lands to the south as well as quite a few individuals of non-human species both in residence and traveling through. We do not wish any conflicts within our fair town.”

Lyn nodded and glanced toward Tala.

Tala sighed, and shifted her through-spike illusion to leave her iron faceplate exposed. Even as a Paragon, she wasn’t going to enter a new place unarmored.

While she had been trying to keep a polite facade in place with the illusion, if there was even the tiniest chance that she’d be recognized? She would risk a bit of rudeness.

-You are practically an exemplar of wisdom.-

Hush you.

Cait gave her an odd look, hesitating only briefly, but she didn’t say anything further on the matter. Instead, she and Lyn began finalizing the arrangements that had been made for their passage with the city, as well as the deployment of Irondale’s gate in the town’s hold area. Though, that would have to wait until after Tala and Lyn met with the town leadership.

They passed random groups of humans—mostly gated, but a few gateless—and arcanes.

Most of the gateless—human and arcane—would be in the holds, but obviously not all were.

Tala made particular note of the elves that she saw, though she didn’t recognize any individuals. They were similar enough to Meallain in appearance that she more than once thought she saw the woman, only for the elf in question to turn, revealing a slightly different set of features.

There’s no cause to be jumpy, Tala. There’s no way that she’d be away from the House of Blood.

The three women and one bird got inquisitive looks, but most seemed to recognize Cait well enough to not do more than look, even with Tala’s obviously obscuring mask.

Terry, himself, seemed to only get stares of cautious interest from those they passed.

More the fool them. He’d be a positive terror in these tight confines if he chose to go on a rampage.

-Which he won’t… right? And you won’t ask him to… right?-

Right. Of course.

Cait led them up toward the front and top of the moving town, and the number of others around them hit a peak and then slowly diminished until they were all but alone in the corridors once more.

Just before they came to a set of massive copper-bound wooden doors, Rane signaled that he was ready.

Tala willed him forth, and he came to the superficial without preamble or sound to announce his arrival. Even so, his sudden appearance caused Cait to jump before she gave a bow. “Oh my! Welcome, Greater…?”

“Rane.” He bowed in return. “Thank you for the welcome…?”

“Cait, Greater.” She bowed again, then turned to push open the doors, revealing a spacious room with a commanding view of the shifting and swaying land before the town. “The town Leadership will see you now.”

The three gated humans walked into the space, and Cait pulled the door closed behind them, remaining on the outside herself.