Chapter: 521 – Exactly on Time

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.

Stolen story; please report.

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.