Chapter: 517 – Then Let’s Get to It

Tala and Rane weren’t in a hurry with their brunch, and as such, most of those that Alat had reached out to had gotten back to them by the time they were finished.

The responses to Tala and Alat’s inquiry were…incredulous. Though they did come in quickly, taking less than an hour for most to be entered into the Archive.

Even Mistress Ingrit—with Tala’s memories in hand—seemed to have a hard time believing that Terry had somehow gotten the baba yaga’s teeth, let alone a leg from her infamous house.

Alat told Tala in confidence that Terry had grudgingly admitted to her that the baba yaga had likely allowed him to claim such prizes just to get rid of him.

He’d made that much of a nuisance of himself, which was honestly an achievement in its own right.

The terror bird seemed to take a bit of pride in that very fact, even if he didn’t trill it to the stars.

Regardless of their credulity, several of the Paragons and Reforged that they’d inquired with had vouchsafed the iron, saying it shouldn’t have any lingering hostile affects.

To most, it would just be iron.

They did counsel against binding it directly—as they instantly assumed she was considering—due to its ties to Reality. They advised folding it into something already bound and stably intermeshed with her soul. That should be safe, though they didn’t have any guess as to exactly what doing such would accomplish.

So, while sitting on the throne in her sanctum, Rane at her side and a temporarily satiated Terry looking on, Tala held the iron teeth in her open palm.

“My soulbound companion won you and presented you to me. You are mine.”

There was a ripple as Tala felt her authority take hold.

There was a truly odd feeling of duality. The iron became hers in every sense, not just bound to her, but a part of her as all her iron was.

It was her authority, her power, her self.

At the same time, it shed all ties that tried to bind it… except those to itself.

Her iron was now one with it.

It was now one with her.

They weren’t two distinct things that needed ties to one another.

But if it was her, then she was it, and it would not bear being linked to anything else.

Tala’s eyes widened, and the Reality threads connected to her came into sharp focus, their usual mere background presence falling away to leave them in stark relief.

The iron—her iron, her self—was working to sever all the ties that bound them in any way.

She could already see the threads straining under the weight of Reality’s pressure, guided and enhanced with her power and authority, that of a Paragon.

Tala’s will bloomed, her focus narrowed, and her Paragon might came to bear.

More than that, she felt her husband and Terry at her side. They had clearly realized something was happening, and they wished to be of help, even if they did not know how.

That was enough to lend the weight of their power to her authority, her will.

No. You are mine. You are me. I am connected to the world. I am Maternal Iron, I am the Ravenous Jealous Devourer. I am the Iron Matriarch.

Even as she expressed it, she felt both her self-imposed distance from the assumed label and the rightness of it all over again.

I am one. Iron and all. She would never sever her ties with those she cared for. She would never deprive herself of them nor them of her.

She once might have welcomed such a severing, such a breaking of ties. She might have seen such as freedom, as a loosening of burdens and restrictions.

No longer.

She was who she was, soulbonds and all.

-A Creator and a Destroyer-

A Nurturer and a Devourer

-A Sanctum and a Sword-

A Defender of Humanity and an Eskau of the House of Blood

-A Hope and a Terror-

Mine,

-everything shall be MINE and be better for it.-

Her soul practically sang with the truth of who she was and her knowledge of it, with her power as a Paragon.

She was not the scared teen who was afraid to let anyone close any more, pushing others away as she rushed headlong toward self destruction or glory, hardly caring which she achieved.

She was more than herself, now. She was how she affected—how she connected with—the world around her.

And the nature of the Reality iron calmed, not changing, but molding to her will, bowing to the truth of how their natures fit and were one.

Those connections weren’t ties between herself and other entities in need of severing; they weren’t invasions of her sovereignty of self.

Just as my own power can act upon my iron. The connections I allow are a part of me. Why would they be rejected?

With an almost visceral click that seemed to resonate within her soul, the teeth melded with her iron, changing it and being changed in turn.

The impurities that had been a hallmark both of the dasgannach and of the iron which she, herself claimed were shed away in a conflagration that burst from her like an ice-nova.

A great outrushing of freezing air poured off of her skin, followed by an odd sort of sparking or reheating as the freed material reacted and combined with itself in new configurations now that it was free of the iron.

Rane and Terry stood beside her, hair and feathers ruffling, eyes squinted against the outpouring from her as she sat atop the throne.

Forgotten were the jerky beside Terry and the half-carved figure of stone in Rane’s off hand. They were both fully focused on her at that moment.

Her threefold perspective showed herself as readily as everything else around her, and she saw her eyes glowing fiercely with a savage power.

Her iron shifted from dull gray to a red reminiscent of dried blood.

It made no sense chemically, but it somehow fit her connection with—and dominion over—it more fully. Still, the color change didn’t last. It was a temporary visual manifestation of the reality of her self and the iron being inseparable, being one and the same.

And then it was done.

Her open palm was empty even as she held it out before her. The teeth had been subsumed into her other iron wholly and completely until there was no distinction between them.

She couldn’t have pulled that specific iron forth if her very soul depended on it.

With a moment of excitement, she once again rolled her iron over her inscriptions, hugging them as closely in every dimension as she safely could, far more perfectly than ever before.

The inscription lines on her skin became momentarily a uniform dull gray as her iron fit over every swirl, jog, and turn like a perfectly created sheath.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

By the nature of the thinness of the shell, it remained permeable to any significant amount of power, but it did require that for power to come through.

That threshold was crossed with ease in barely a breath as her Paragon power density echoed and resonated with itself.

Immediately, her spell-lines manifested anew as variegated lines of light in Reality itself, her power roaring through her like never before as her iron was able to perfectly align with her inscriptions.

She pulled in a startled breath, her pupils dilating at the sheer pleasure of the renewed power.

Her aura shifted marginally toward blue, the act of so totally harnessing her own inscriptions within her body causing her to Reforge herself just a bit more.

Her through spike hid the light almost instantly, as usual, but it was still a stark reminder of how she’d caught up to Rane’s level of natural magics—surpassing him by quite a bit even—despite him having essentially his set of inscriptions for almost twice as long as she’d had hers locked in.

Rane smiled broadly, the expression pulling her focus back to the present moment. He then laughed in delight as he clearly noticed the change in her aura. After a moment’s hesitation, he caught her up in an embrace, lifting her from the throne and spinning her around in joy. “I thought we might have lost you for a second, but then you turned it toward your own advantage.”

Tala found herself laughing in his arms even as the single spin came to an end. “You dared doubt me?”

There was no bite to the playful question, and he responded in kind. “Never again, my love. I don’t know what you just fought through, but it is clear that you did so with skill and strength.”

“And with your aid.” She reached out toward Terry, and he flickered to her shoulder. “And with yours.”