Millennial Mage

Chapter 497: The Sooner the Better

Tala’s attention returned to her iron, her connection to it, and her authority over it. She let out a long sigh, realizing that she had a long way to go. This is a bit tenuous for our more grandiose plans at the moment. I think we need more practice to be able to have as much freedom with the iron as I foresee being possible.

-Well, then. Let’s get to it.-

Indeed.

-You know what this means, right?-

Tala sighed but then nodded before smiling. Snap drills.

And so they began. At unexpected intervals, Alat was going to pull Tala’s aura away from one or more of the iron spheres that Tala would have held about herself.

Tala had to maintain her authority over the bereft iron and keep it from being voided.

The first time—less than five minutes later—Tala failed utterly, the sphere which had been resting against her navel voiding in an instant.

She staggered at the horrific feeling of loss as it threatened to overwhelm her.

Tala let out an unconscious growl, the world around her flexing oddly without her realizing it as she unknowingly armored existence around herself against further violation.

Alat noticed—even if she had absolutely no idea how Tala had done it—immediately pulling Tala’s aura away from the iron ball that was resting between her shoulder blades.

The iron didn’t even waver as Tala’s authority on everything around her was beyond question in that moment.

Still, the second alteration so close to the first was a jarring experience, sufficiently so that it pulled Tala back to conscious thought.

She’d felt what she was doing, a broad grin spreading over her face an instant before she dropped to the ground in a pained spasm.

Alat had tricked her into using a ‘muscle’ that she’d not known she had, though she’d been using to a small extent up to that point here and there.

That little use had let it respond to her unconscious will, and as it was used so powerfully and with such a force of will behind it, it was immediately over-strained.

As when she’d first gotten control of her aura, she now had an entirely new something to deal with, that she’d always, unknowingly, been manipulating and working with.

Unfortunately, unlike with her aura, which she’d used to a large extent for years, even without realizing it, this authority was like only moving around within Kit by twitching her leg muscles so that Kit knew how to move her. Now, she was trying to walk in Zeme, and the muscles had to do more than just twitch.

Thus, her current predicament.

As she lay on the ground in metaphysical pain, she felt herself move a bit closer to Paragon. Well, honestly, she’d moved earlier as she had her series of revelations and then put them into action, but she only really noticed in that moment as she strove for—almost—anything with which to distract herself.

-Well, authority manipulation isn’t required to reach Paragon, but I suppose it does line up perfectly with part of what you were missing. It is directly connected to how you relate to and interact with the world around you.-

Tala groaned again, this time in acknowledgement.

A moment later, Rane appeared beside her, having moved himself straight out of the sanctum to be at her side.

He looked her over before sitting down and easily lifting her to cradle her in his arms. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

She grunted, nuzzling in against him.

“I felt your soul… twitch in a way I haven’t felt before.”

She nodded, wetting her lips before explaining everything to him.

He listened carefully until the end before smiling. “First, that is an incredible discovery, and I am in awe at what you’ve been able to accomplish.”

Tala pulled back and gave him a narrow eyed look. “But…?”

His smile grew a hair. “But, that sounds like something that you should have had someone else with you for.”

She blinked a few times in confusion. “Well… I did?”

He shook his head. “Alat is you, Tala. You know that. If you go down, most likely she will as well. Anything capable of disabling you in any meaningful way will most likely affect her, too.”

-Well… rust. I didn’t really consider that.-

Yeah, me neither, as obvious as it is. She sighed but nodded. “I hear you. You’re right. It would have been better to have someone else here. I won’t do it on my own again.”

“Thank you.” He gave her a tight squeeze. “Now, what are your next steps?”

Tala laughed, squirming her way out to give him a kiss. “I love you, and I love that you know where my mind is.”

“Of course. This is nothing compared to some of what I’ve seen you do.”

After talking things through with Rane, Tala and Terry moved their training of the Talons out of Kit so that Tala and Alat could continue training with authority, without relying on Kit, directly. To further facilitate the training, Tala always maintained at least two iron spheres hovering near her, though they started resting against her skin as with the first test.

That way, there was always a Talon nearby who could at least go for help if something went wrong.

She was able to keep the iron under her authority, though she felt the strain of doing so in her very soul.

Over time, she became able to move the spheres to being against her elk leathers rather than her skin. Then, finally, she was able to move them outward at steadily increasing radii.

* * *

Thus, a full six months passed at the site of old Marliweather.

Tala and Rane had Tala’s siblings come out for a visit once during that span—arriving and leaving from teleportation circles in the sanctum—and Tala was even able to engage with those who were pregnant—along with the newer little ones—without being too emotionally drained after they’d all departed.

It was clear that some of those who knew her better noticed that something was off, but no one pressed her, and she still hadn’t chosen to share with anyone apart from Rane. Though some—likely at least Terry—might have started to guess.

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Finally, it came time to move on from old Marliweather.

They could have stayed for years longer, slowly working to repair the damaged Reality bit by bit, but they had already done a sufficient variety of tests that the council had more than enough information on which to run in-depth analysis, and that would take years.

Tala had no desire to create, sustain, or even join another research outpost, and she was beginning to find her distractions less distracting.

Even with six months of intense conditioning, the Talons simply couldn’t fight against her all the time, and the last thing she wanted was to somehow make things around old Marliweather worse because she ‘just wanted to do something.’

So, all the roving groups of Talons were recalled, the Ironhold citizenry were ushered back from their countryside ventures, and the gates to Irondale were sealed.

In the end, Tala, Rane, and Terry stood alone in the middle of a rather trampled-down section of the plains, the summer grasses already starting to slowly work their way back upright, even after the recent foot traffic.

Her arm was around his waist, his over her shoulders, and Terry was perched atop Rane’s head—the highest such place currently available.

They all looked north, toward the forest that they couldn’t quite see in that direction.

Terry flickered down to the ground before them, now as tall as Tala, stretching his wings and beak toward the sky before letting out an excited trill.

That made the couple chuckle. It was just about time to leave.

Even so, Tala’s mind was wandering slightly and one thing had stuck in her thoughts, then. It wouldn’t go away, so instead of burying it, she looked up at her husband and verbalized it, “If things had gone differently, our first might have been arriving in the next months.”

Rane could have argued or pushed back, Tala even sensed the slight hesitation that showed that he considered doing just that, but instead, he gave her a squeeze, bent over and kissed the top of her head. “I’m here.”

Those simple—seemingly unrelated—words sent a wave of relief through Tala, and she slumped against him. “I know.”

They stood there for another long moment before they shared a quick kiss and separated.

Terry flickered to Tala’s shoulder and headbutted her cheek, giving a low, comforting chirp.

She scratched his neck and the back of his head in return. “Thank you, Terry. I know you’re here, too.”

After giving her a moment to press her head to his, Terry flickered away again, heading north.

Rane chuckled. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

And they were off, Rane not quite flying, while Tala leapt off the air itself, heading north.

The Anatalins had invited them to visit, and it was time to accept that invitation.

Even with the excitement and uncertainty about what was going to come of the visit to the wolves, Tala couldn’t help but be most grateful that—more than anything else—it would be a solid distraction, at least for a time.

* * *

Tala lept northward, Rane off to the west—her left—closer to the mountains, and Terry flickering all over the place, sticking his beak into random holes, chasing small herds for short distances, and generally making himself a bit of a nuisance to the local wildlife.

-Don’t you mean…-

Tala groaned. Don’t…

-...A bit of a terror?-

She sighed. Sometimes I wonder how our humor diverged so much.

-First, I can easily tell that you found it funny. I’m in your thoughts in case you’ve forgotten.-

Oh, I haven’t.

-Good. Second, it is you who has lost your puns, at least a little. I’d blame your marriage, but Rane and Enar continue to be delightful sources of puns.-

Yeah, well, most of theirs aren’t intentional.

-That makes them all the better.-

…Fair enough. She sighed again.

-Just say it, Tala. It will help more than keeping it bottled up.-

…I wonder if our children would have liked puns…

-That is easy enough to answer.-

Oh?

-Of course. Puns are specifically a type of humor used to teach children some of the nuances of language. Human brains are hardwired to both make and hear them in their native form of communication. Every child loves puns at one point or other, assuming a reasonable upbringing. So, yes. Your children will enjoy puns, whenever and however they come about.-

The puns or the children? Tala asked with a margin of bitterness.

-Both, I imagine.-

Tala huffed a laugh and gave a reluctant smile at that. Fair enough.

She flinched slightly as Alat jerked her aura away from the hollow sphere of iron dust that was floating two feet from Tala’s head.

Tala not only maintained the vacuum within the sphere—keeping it almost perfectly spherical—but she also maintained her authority over the iron, keeping it from being voided.

Hah, it wasn’t voided, but it maintained the void within.

-I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.-

Probably.

The ball still dropped, no longer having her aura to support it, but that just caused it to re-enter her aura a bit lower down—in relation to her body—where Tala caught it and moved it back into its proper path.

-Very well done, Tala.-

Thank you a lot, Alat.

-...I suppose that I deserved that, and I do appreciate the gratitude.-

Tala grinned.

Then, she turned her mind to something else to keep herself distracted.

It was something that she’d been working on, on and off for years now. The reality nodes within her artificial lung had been unified for a while by this point, but she had wanted them even more firmly connected and interlinked.

She had been ramping up the interconnectedness of the various reality nodes which had made up her artificial lung within the sanctum whenever she thought about it, which was actually much less often than would have been ideal.

Even so, the amplification of the reality threads unifying that space was… impressive.

-Are we ready to finally test it again?-

You know what? Yeah. I think that could be a very nice distraction.

Alat let out a giggling cackle that was so infectious that Tala felt herself almost begin to laugh as well. Instead, she called out to Rane, filling her voice with the appropriate power so that the sound reached his ears, “I want to test something, and I don’t want to do so on my own. Are you up for coming this way?”

Rane immediately turned to look at her before diverting his ‘not-quite-leaping’ flight to come near her. “What new madness do you want to test?”

He was grinning despite his words, and that finally did cause Tala to laugh. “Oh, you know, just my dissolution breath.”

Rane frowned. “You use that all the time. Why…?” Then his eyes went wide. “Really? Are you sure? You’re finally ready to test it? Your artificial lung is ready?”

They had, of course, talked at length about her experiments with the artificial lung and how it had almost ended in disaster the last time she’d tried it.

Now, however, she wasn’t weaving spellforms on the fly, they were already surrounding the perfectly spherical space—perfectly spherical save the singular long cylinder leading off to better align airflow. The iron was now pure iron, that little issue having been made apparent by their Unit’s gift of the fliers.

The spell-lines were truly hollow as well, and while she knew that they weren’t quite right for the medium and line composition, she had been able to get them close enough that she’d get the desired effect, even with a loss of efficiency and a reduction in power.

With the results of last time, the theoretically weaker magical effect was a boon in her eyes.

She grinned broadly. “I think so.”

“Where?”

Tala pointed and then took off, leading him to the base of a gentle slope which led up to the top of a crag.

“So… we’re doing this?” He then lowered his voice almost as if afraid that someone would over here. “We’re testing Existence magic?”

Tala could hear the capitalized ‘E’ in existence, and the lowercase ‘m’ in magic. As such, she shook her head. “No, no, I don’t think this is anything as potent as Existence magic, let alone true Existence modification. Ideally, this will be existence-Magic, though. Magic but made more Real and with more potential to bring the Void with it.”

Rana cleared his throat. “That is still a bit terrifying.” Then his smile returned. “And rather intriguing too.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I know, right?”

He hesitated for a moment. “Should we call Terry? Ask any of the Irondalians to observe? What about Lyn? Master Simon? Adrill? Brandon?”

Tala hesitated, not liking the delay that represented, but then she sighed and nodded. “Yes. I think that is the wise course.”

“Great. Let’s call them up and get them out here.”

Her smile blossomed once again. “Alright. Let’s get to it. The sooner the better.”