Millennial Mage

Tala began outlining all that she was currently working on, and all that she had at her disposal at the moment.

Oh… that’s… this is going to be a long list.

-You aren’t joking.-

As a place to start, Tala explained to Master Grediv and Rane that she was studying the caravan guards’ anti-magic arrows, using them as a template to learn the specific effects to better counter opponents—rather than just treating them all the same.

More than anything, this came out of her desire to have varied approaches to varied opponents. She was good at what she did, but when she only had a limited toolbox, she could achieve limited outcomes.

Master Grediv nodded slowly. “It is commendable to want to approach things more intelligently, but what do you hope to accomplish, really?”

Tala considered for a moment. “I want to be able to protect others in more varied situations. At this point, I’m going to be fine almost regardless, but there are still a lot of opponents that I would struggle to contain or handle in a way that keeps others near me safe.”

He seemed to ponder that, making notes in the air for them to all benefit from. “Alright. Continue.”

She also was using the arrows as an easy jump-off point to translate into her experimental iron-pipe spellforms.

What, it makes sense. I’m making hollow tubes of iron and then letting magic flow through them. They’re pipes.

-Yeah, I understand what you’re getting at. The description is accurate, but the name… It’s lacking.-

Well, they are effectively like my inscriptions, when I surround those with iron, even if the filling of the pipes is different, and I’m trying to make them in the air rather than overtop of existing spellforms.

-But you do that all the time.-

Precisely.

-So, why not just have a singular name for the technique? What about… duality scripts? Reality and Magic?-

That could work… But she was getting hung up on one thing, and the whole point of this was to get a comprehensive set.

Rane responded first this time, “That’s one reason you have such an amazing magical density, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I effectively keep most of my magic in the proper place at all times, which stresses my body more, allowing it to adapt faster and contain more power naturally.”

Master Grediv smiled. “It is an incredible method of improvement in that regard. Several Archons have been researching it ever since your iron paint became more widely available through your siblings' production and subsequent sale of the liquid. Most Mages can’t use it, but those who can will benefit greatly in the years to come.”

“I’m really glad to hear that.”

Continuing down the list, there was the white-steel production which was moving ahead slowly, giving her roughly an ingot every month or so. She could speed up the process at need, but that would get expensive, and she didn’t really have that great a use for the material as of yet. She’d never arranged for anyone beyond Master Simon to really study it—along with Brandon and Adrill—and they had plenty else to do.

Master Grediv requested an ingot, which Tala immediately produced for the Paragon to take, simply excreting it from the reserve she had within her elk leathers where she kept almost all that she currently owned, similarly to how she had her reserves of iron melded with Flow. “I’ll have some Constructionists delve into this. What would the production cost be if we find uses for this material?”

Alat?

-And… Shared.-

“I’ve given you access to the current breakdown for scaling up production.”

Master Grediv’s eyes unfocused for a moment before he grimaced slightly. “You weren’t joking when you said upscaling would be expensive.”

“Yeah. Not prohibitively so, depending on the usage, but not something to do on a whim. I have… a lot at the moment, and I’m adding to that slowly. Honestly, it’s probably one of the things I’m underutilizing the most.”

The Paragon gave a reluctant nod. “That could be, yes.”

The ingot morphed in his hand at the promptings of his magic, taking on several incredibly complex shapes in quick succession.

“Immediately, I would say that you should give each of your gateless a one-inch cube of this material to play with. It would be an incredible tool for them to use in improving their magical control.”

Tala grinned, deciding to tease him a bit in return. “Even little Talax?”

The Paragon met her eyes with all seriousness. “Absolutely. Though, for a baby I would recommend it being a sphere or interlinked chain that would be difficult to get into his mouth. Maybe a little bracelet?”

She hesitated for a long moment to see if he was joking, but it was clear that he wasn’t. “Alright. I’ll do that.”

He smiled in return. “It is very possible that the Academy would benefit from as much of this material as you could spare, for teaching magical manipulation to the students there, but I’ll know more once the research is actually conducted.”

“Just let me know, and we’ll see what we can do.”

He smiled in return. “That’s all we can ask.”

Well, that would take looking into the white steel off of Master Simon, Adrill, and Bradon’s plates.

In that vein, she’d been working with those three in understanding and using the sword and needles from the prisoner Sole. Their ‘infinite edges’ were fascinating in that they were effectively mundane cutting and piercing weapons maintained by conceptual magic far above her ability to affect, except to break with attempted mergings.

-It is easier to break things than make them, after all.-

Isn’t that the truth?

“So, what are you doing with them?” Rane was quite curious as he leaned forward.

“Well, the needles we’re working into a sort of shield of sorts. If we can find a way to bind them together in an interwoven way, it would ruin the day of basically anything that tried to ram me.”

Rane nodded, considering. “Have you tried absorbing any into your elk leathers?”

“I… haven’t, no.” She tilted her head to the side. Would that work?

Master Grediv turned the conversation slightly. “What of the blade?”

She shrugged at that. “While it is a fascinating instrument, my void-blade is a better cutter. The only reason to use it instead would be if something was inherently antimagical, or in any other way would threaten my soulbound sword.” She glanced toward Rane. “He has it for now, and I think it’s fine staying that way.”

“That’s reasonable.” The Paragon glanced at Rane. “And you have it in an easy to access place?”

Rane nodded. “Yes, in my storage.” He patted Force’s handle and the leather loop that surrounded it just above the hilt. “I can get it quite quickly at need.”

“Good. It’s proper to have solid backups. What’s next?”

Tala shrugged, turning to some things that had come to her attention while in Makinaven. Master Jevin had suggested that she could use something like a cloud of her bloodstars in a defensive manner. As she’d explored the potential that lay there, her efforts had resulted in her defensive discs, tungsten spheres and rod, and the two Leshkin juggernaut shields that she’d used less often than she’d thought she would.

And less than I probably should… That would solve some of her armor issues, now that she thought of it. She’d just have to be better at assessing which attacks needed the imposition of the shields… and have them out and ready.

-That could work, yeah.-

She also had the ring with bloodstars in it that rested around the top of Flow’s hilt. It allowed her to control it with quite a degree of ease when it was away from her, but she didn’t use it very often either.

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The bloodstars themselves were incredibly useful as she could aspect mirror much onto them, but they were utterly useless for anything offensive on their own as using them to attack directly was tantamount to offering a soulbond to what she threw them at. It probably wouldn’t be an issue, but it only took one opponent being interested in such to make the whole thing come crashing down.

Master Grediv paused her there. “This seems like another example of you seeking variety in your attacking and defensive abilities. Is the reason the same?”

“Yes, I want to be able to protect others more effectively in more situations.”

He nodded, then motioned for her to continue.

That aside, Master Jevin had also suggested that she look into interlocking battlements for when she needed to defend a position, and she had to admit that there were some cells in which that could have been incredibly useful. Still, it hadn’t made the cut for her time, at least not yet.

-Add it to the list?-

Maybe? I think this whole process is meant to make that list.

-Alright.-

Master Grediv cut off the line of questioning immediately. “This is really something that we should have already discussed, but I didn’t know you held interest. Regardless, it would have come up before the next Leshkin war. I’ll get you a list of common feature sets and additions, and it will be trivial to commission you as many as you need.” He hesitated, glancing toward the white steel that he’d returned to the form of an ingot and set beside him on the table. “You, incorporating this in the interlocking mechanisms might…” He was nodding to himself. “Regardless, I’ll get you some options.”

“Thank you.” Her eyes flicked toward Rane.

Rane noticed and nodded. “Yeah, I’d be interested in seeing those options as well, though I would bet my wishes will be a bit different than Tala’s.”

Master Grediv smiled. “As it should be. Every Archon needs different tools to fight to the best effect.”

With that topic addressed, Tala moved to the next.

She and Mistress Cerna were working on a method for Tala to weave spellforms into her elk leathers at willl for a more flexible tool set.

This once more had Master Grediv confirming why she was seeking so much variety in her tool set. Nothing within his questions implied that he disapproved, but it did seem like he was doing his utmost to dig to the root of her desire.

As this was yet another thing that she was pursuing almost solely with the intention of helping her protect others, she could see what he meant. It was clearly something that was fundamental to what she wanted, to who she was.

It bore considering.

Continuing on in the vein of her elk leathers and white steel brought up her scale mail hauberk, which she hadn’t been using. Huh… could I put it under the ablative armor to… No. Focus Tala.

-I’ll add it to the list of ‘maybe have this on the list.’ Shall I?- Alat’s tone was rather smug.

…Fine.

In the same vein as the scale mail were her siege orbs. Both were means of building up stored augmented gravity for a future fight, and both had hit their current limit a while ago.

Master Grediv hadn’t ever really seen her use her hauberk, so she took a bit to describe both what it did and how it worked within her own conception of it.

“That is a clever means of storing up your combat potential over time. That is something that we should dig into more at some point.” He made some notes, specifically connecting the caravan guard arrows and the segmented defenses with the scale mail idea.

That’s interesting…

“Your siege orbs seem to get a bit more use, have you done much to look into variations of them?”

She had tried to do other types of siege orbs, but that had made that strangely apocalyptic ice… Wait… I wonder if my desire to make the compressed water into a weapon factored into what came out?

There was a good possibility, actually… mental models were key in how magic worked after all. Even so, it wasn’t worth testing. Zeme did not need another great threat eating at the underpinnings of existence.

Master Grediv’s eye was twitching by the end of her tale. “While I can’t say you handled that… badly. I definitely would have appreciated knowing of it sooner. Thank you for not bringing about a deadly ice-plague. Please inform me in the future if such dangerous things arise.”

“I will do my best.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a long breath. “I suppose that is all I can ask for. Thank you. I do so like existence. Let us keep it intact if possible.”

Speaking of existence, she needed to work on her existence shield. It had been incredibly effective against the prisoner whom she would not consider overlong and who would not be named.

But to understand and improve her existence shield—maybe even utilizing the knowledge for Flow to make an existence blade—she would need to better understand all the building blocks of existence, which meant continuing to delve into Void, Magic, and even Reality.

Master Grediv was, understandably, hesitant in that regard. “Honestly, you already have the heaviest ties to Reality of any Mage I’ve ever heard of while retaining your humanity. It could be that more wouldn’t harm you in the least, or that just a bit more would tip you over, and we’d all be worse off for that.”

“I get that, I really do. I genuinely think that a large part is the void that I am similarly bound to. The fact that I acquired the ties with Reality through what is effectively a conceptual curse of ancient origin likely helps. The very reality I’m bound to is pervaded with magic at its core.”

“That is likely, yes.”

But, reality had more to it than just iron. Specifically, Tala and Mistress Kaeti were occasionally meeting to investigate reality nodes and how they were manifest in the other Refined’s self-clones.

Master Grediv was familiar with the research and was in regular contact with the woman to work with her on what she was learning.

In that same boat was Tala’s compressing of reality nodes to the point that they had unified, and all the implications therein.

Though, those are only connected in the sense that they both involve reality nodes. They are entirely different directions of research and practice…

The Paragon expressed his gratitude yet again that she’d brought him in—and allowed him to bring in others—to investigate her actions in this regard already.

Nothing much had come of the findings, but it was still a relatively recent experiment, and they’d collected a lot of data.

Thinking of the node compression brought to mind the reason she’d tried that to begin with. It had been because of Terry, and that was another thing that she was working on. Terry seemed to be on the edge of being willing to bond with her, and that was something that she very much wanted.

-Why? I agree with you, but the whole point of this is the why behind it all.-

He is a protector at heart. He defends and nurtures his own. He’s been there when I needed him most, even at great peril. I feel like we are kindred spirits, and I don’t want to face eternity without him by my side.

Alat returned a sense of happiness and didn’t ask further.

When Tala explained the same to Master Grediv and Rane, Rane nodded along happily, and Master Grediv pointed out the overlap to what they’d already found about her own motivations.

If it wasn’t blazingly obvious before, every new revelation here made it so.

She wanted to be—and was—a protector of that which she desired to keep safe.

That sentiment wasn’t quite right, but it was moving in the right direction.

She also didn’t just want to protect what was hers, because she had no illusions of owning or having sovereignty over the other people she fought to keep safe, but there was something there.

Speaking of soulbonds, she was continuing to delve into what her soulbond with Kit meant and what it allowed. Now that she’d bifurcated Kit’s dimensional storage, she needed to practice the use of that resource in combat far more.

“There is also the fact that doing so will allow you to deploy your mobile defenses far more easily than Kit’s previous configuration would have allowed, or at least without having to take quite so many other factors into account. I think that it is an entire dimension of combat that you will need to explore and practice.”

Tala nodded her agreement with Master Grediv, adding, “And I can just drop enemies into my sanctum and obliterate them within.”

The Paragon frowned and shook his head slightly. “I think that would be a worse idea than you realize. At the moment, anyone and anything that enters your sanctum is coming under your authority knowingly and thus willingly. If you force something inside against its will, it won’t be subject to you in the same way. You may be able to batter down its defenses and claim victory—and it might even be an easier fight than elsewhere—but it won’t be an instant or even an easy thing.”

That is… very good to know. Tala took another sip of her tea. “Thank you. I might have made a critical error without that insight.”

“Of course, that is one reason we’re doing this.” He smiled. “Other Refined have the issue of soulbinding to deal with, and that acts as an effective barrier to entry. In your case, it is being subject to your authority. I could enter your sanctum in defiance of that if I wished, but it would be a fight, and you could very likely expel me with relative ease. Don’t ignore the option you presented—it is a powerful tool—but don’t consider it an instant victory either.”

“Understood.” She definitely had been thinking of it in that vein.

Back on topic, on the other side of the bifurcation, Irondale was a growing project as well, and with that the rebirth of gateless humans.

That was quite the topic.

After confirming that nothing new had really happened that Master Grediv was unaware of—he and the city had been informed about Talax’s impending rebirth before the boy was even born—he asked the now familiar question, “Why do you want to help gateless get access to magic?”

She shrugged. “On one side, it was a way to put some of what I learned in the arcane lands to use for good.”

He lifted his hand, pausing her. “Before you continue, you said, ‘use for good.’”

“I did.”

“Why is it good?”

She opened her mouth but found herself lacking an easy response. “Huh.”

“Indeed. Gateless live good lives without magic, and they are not classically seen as being good at magic, so it isn’t like they are deprived of something that could be seen as their ‘calling’ or ‘purpose.’ So, what about giving them magic is good in your eyes?”

“They deserve every opportunity to grow and thrive, to defend themselves and explore every part of our world. They shouldn’t be cut off from it when I can fix it.”

“That goes a lot farther than just defending those who need it.”

“It is…”

“So, why do you want to protect people? Do you just want them to not die? Not suffer?”

She slowly shook her head. “No… I don’t want them to be cut short. I want them to be able to continue.”

“So, how does that translate over to the magical rebirth of the gateless?”

“I want them to reach their full potential, and magic, no matter how little aptitude they have for it, is part of that potential. They need to be sheltered and nurtured so they can… I don’t know, live?”

Master Grediv gave a slow nod. “As you say. Thank you. We can continue.”

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