Chapter: 608 – Preparations

Tala and Lea stood in the caravan yard in which Tala had tested her empowerment of cargo wagons so long ago.

Master Himmal stood beside Tala, shaking his head. “You didn’t even have to touch them.”

Tala grinned. “Well, of course not.”

Before her was a veritable fleet of passenger wagons, ready to join the forty already in their caravan.

Fifty more. Each now had a handprint-sized and -shaped bit of her iron pressed and locked in place on each of the power influx points, allowing her to steadily rotate through each, using almost all of her inflow of power to charge five at a time through her aura and her iron’s connection to the wagons.

There was some inefficiency from a power perspective, but that wasn’t really an issue at the moment.

Once she got the process up, it would only take ten seconds or so to top off each set of five, and most of that was because she had to be careful not to overload the relatively weak, delicate scripts. That meant that she would cycle through every wagon every three minutes or so.

It was unnecessary, as each would run for a day or so when topped off, but Tala had learned that things usually happened when she least wanted or expected them to, so it was better to be safe than have to balance a fight with keeping the wagons viable.

Master Himmal chuckled. “I should surrender my moniker to you. Truly, you are more of a ‘Void Key’ than I ever was.”

Tala gave the old man a smile. “You do much more with less. I am brute forcing this into being. If you had my throughput, you could do so, so much more than just this.”

He shrugged. “Maybe so, but quantity can be said to have a quality all its own.”

She grunted in assent. “That can be the case.”

Master Himmal gave another small bow. “You’ve also helped me give just a little life back to my aching gate. I do thank you for all the knowledge you brought back from the arcane lands.”

She glanced at his gate just briefly. It was still broken beyond repair, seemingly only held together by wishes and sunshine, but that sunshine seemed a bit brighter, and the wishes appeared a bit more likely to become true.

-Wow… that’s a harsh assessment. I don’t think you classified it that way in the past.-

I didn’t. I can see better now.

-Fair enough.-

Lea stood, staring in wonder at the workyard as floods of workmen descended on each wagon, heading to build out the interiors for the extended trip to come. “How many people will fit into each when they’re done?”

Master Himmal turned to the girl, his face softening as a small smile grew across his features. “Well, Miss Lea, with your mother’s support and power, we expect a hundred in each wagon.”

“A hundred?” Her eyes widened in shock.

The man nodded. “That’s right. It is the most efficient we can be based on your mother’s capacities as tested in Alefast, Waning. She could power passenger wagons with a capacity of up to a thousand, but aside from becoming logistically difficult, and making the interior that much harder to build out, she could only power one such wagon for every fifteen of these she can handle. There are difficulties that forced this configuration as well, but I won’t bore you with those details.”

Lea nodded in understanding. “So, it would be more efficient from a per wagon perspective, but we’d be able to bring a third less people.”

“Exactly right.” His smile grew. “You are quite the clever girl. Your parents must be proud.”

Tala nodded, smiling. “We are, yes.”

Terry was ranging along their intended path ahead of their departure from Bandfast, killing or scaring off the beasts that might otherwise have been a problem. That took care of the least threats, but with so many gates moving together, there would be magical beasts coming to investigate.

Still, it was a nice means of smoothing out the way forward.

Rane was checking in on several of his projects and tasks around the city, and Tala would be effectively trapped here for the next day until they were able to get under way. He’d offered to stay with her, but she’d waved that off, telling him to go do what he needed to.

Ironhold’s entrance was open to one side of the caravan yard, workers flooding in and out of there, exchanging materials, carrying in those that were to leave Bandfast, and coming out with those destined for this city from Alefast, Waning.

Many of the Ironhold merchants were hard at work making deals and striving to earn their keep.

There was also a smaller line of gateless, politely waiting for their turn to be seen as they applied for citizenship within Ironhold. Lyn was busier than she’d ever been, but from all the signs that Tala and Alat could see, she was loving every minute of it.

Talons patrolled the workyard, rotating out to Ironhold as needed to replenish their power, white steel armor denoting rank. Each Claw was made up of four members with only white vambraces—though they had more standard armor on the rest of their bodies—and a fifth member with a chest piece as well. These senior Talons sometimes even had backplates too.

There wasn’t truly any danger needing such heavy patrols, but it was great magic retention training for the Talons, and a good show of power for the locals who flocked to the area to see the largest caravan most had ever heard tell of.

Lea got some glances from workers and the public alike, and that was likely amplified by her presence, standing beside Master Himmal and Tala, herself. The girl had chosen to stay with Tala for the time being as she wanted to see the process of caravan ramp-up. She’d spent the days in Alefast, Waning with her father while Tala was at the workyard there.

With permission, Lea began shadowing the workers, expertly staying out of their way and helping where she could and where she wouldn’t interfere.

Soon enough, her ridiculous strength was noticed, and she was happily enlisted to help carry some of the bigger prebuilt sections and materials.

Tala smiled, moving over to sit with Master Himmal at the resting area she remembered from so long ago.

They chatted and enjoyed the provided snacks and drinks for nearly an hour before he stood, bowing her way and excusing himself to go back to his other work.

That left Tala on her own once more. She didn’t have much magic free as she continued to cycle through the various sets of five wagons.

Therefore, instead of adding to her growing void donut of rapidly orbiting projectiles, or practicing her iron-self construction, she dove into her growing notes and musings on her inscription set and merging work.

Her intention was to fully merge with all her soulbonds—save Terry and Rane—incorporating their magics into her very self, reinforced and augmented by her inscriptions, but fundamentally making them a natural part of her physical self.

It was a delicate balance that she was attempting, and while the experts of the Cycling Cities had helped her create exactly the magics and schema that she needed to accomplish this, she needed to do it on her own. Therefore, she was in a place where she effectively had a working, wonderful, borrowed recipe for a dish, and now she needed to remake the results with her own, fully distinct recipe.

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It… wasn’t going well.

From what she could tell, much of what she wanted to do could only be accomplished in one way, at least as far as the Archons were concerned. With a solid solution, one containing no perceivable downsides, why would anyone look for another method?

-Because they are stubbornly determined to be remade as their own person, unhampered by any reliance on anyone?-

Don’t be a jerk, Alat. Reforging is all about remaking yourself, as yourself, not as others can make you. I don’t know of any other way to do this. She grimaced. Though this does seem like a huge portion of why so few people Reforge.

-Could be…- Alat seemed torn, but she kept whatever her hangup was to herself.

Tala just shook her head, took a large bite of a cream cheese laden bagel, a sip of coffee, and dove back into her research and conceptual experimentation.

Impressively, Lea didn’t return to Tala’s side until the sun was setting, and the construction efforts were done. Load-up would begin bright and early the next morning, and the various workers were heading home for food and a bit of rest before a final push to get this caravan on its way.

Despite Lyn’s attempts to keep Rane and Tala as the only Mage Protectors needed, the Caravaners’ Guild had insisted on assigning an additional team for every ten wagons. In truth, Tala thought it was probably a good idea, even if it rankled a bit.