Chapter: 613 – At the Source

Tala, her immediate family, and the caravan left Marliweather in good spirits after their two day respite.

On the magical side, she’d been informed that, yes, particularly potent magical beasts seemed to somehow bolster Reality when they attacked—or it was bolstered by something else—thus allowing them to freely attack without endangering Reality. Or it was the fact that a gated was being attacked, but given a similar effect didn’t happen when arcanes and humans fought, that seemed unlikely. In either case, it had been pursued, but it wasn’t replicable by any Archon. Even so, Tala had been given the information available in the Archive, in case she was able to suss something out.

On the business side, Ironhold had done brisk business selling, buying, and trading goods of various kinds, making tidy profits and preparing to make even more on the next legs. This was, of course, spread throughout the more mercantile-inclined citizens, but the Sappherrous family—due to Lyn’s work—also benefited from the transport of needed and desired goods, and would continue to do so.

Honestly, Tala was a bit surprised when she was told about their profits, but apparently, Rane had been networking behind the scenes to get good deals and established connections all along their route.

Sometimes, that man is quite surprising.

-Indeed.-

On the personal side of things, the time with Tala’s family had been pleasant enough, and only Latna had asked—blessedly in private—if Tala was going to introduce Lea to ‘their’ father.

Tala had answered flatly that she would not, not anytime soon.

Latna and Master Leighis were on the edge of officially courting, their interest in one another long withstanding the modicum of separation that the two had wisely chosen into. Still, he didn’t have any ‘official’ standing with the family, despite everyone having known him for more than a decade and a half by that point. Tala, of course, was the exception due to her time of distance and lack of communication while at the Academy.

Still, he’d been invited to the dinner, and he was as kind and welcoming of Lea as everyone else, just as he had been during their previous encounters.

It really was true what others had told her previously. The easiest way into a parent’s heart was to be kind and good to their children, and in that vein, Tala was much more inclined to approve of Master Leighis than she had been previously.

-I doubt that is universally true.-

Maybe, but it does seem to be generally true.

-Fair.-

Lea had met up with some of her relatives the following day, while the caravan delayed in Marliweather, and Tala—reluctantly—had let her daughter attend the gathering of ‘younger’ relations alone.

She’d sent Terry of course, but that just wasn’t the same as being there herself.

-I’m going to tell Terry you thought that.-

…You know what? Fine. I bet he’ll agree. I trust him, but leaving my child to someone else isn’t the same.

-…Fine. You’re probably right.-

She’d said hello to Mistress Anna, and given Anna’s parents the days off to spend with their daughter while the caravan was in Marliweather.

Aside from the familial visits, Tala had put the time to good use, refining her use of the ‘magic sinkhole’.

It took a much deeper look than she’d really taken before—with the context and experience she’d gained over the first two legs of the trip—to see that the stoneward distance of the City Stones wasn’t actually chosen due to the size of the area they covered, at least not exclusively.

It also helped that she had other City Stone setups to compare it with, even if most had only been seen in a passing manner.

For City Stones, there was a city’s worth of filtering, processing, and de-aspecting spellforms and magics of various kinds. Without a Mage exclusively dedicated to the task—of which there were apparently only a couple in the entire history of gated Mages—that put the process outside the reach of any individual.

In the end, she was reminded just how much more was involved in the process than most would be able to accomplish.

Tala was, of course, the exception for two critical reasons.

First was the item that Lisa had traded to her so long ago, which she’d incorporated deeply into Kit’s very nature. The magics were powerful in their simplicity, accomplishing what took a good three-quarters of the City Stone magics to do. The removing of personal aspects from power was a vital task that naturally occurred as Reality and the aspected power abraded one another.

Make no mistake, unaspected power still abraded Reality, but more as a heavy, smooth weight could still stress a cloth, where aspected power was more like a rough—or even sharp—item of similar weight.

Regardless, that was but one reason that Tala was capable of what only City Stone holders backed by vast arrays of spellforms could do. Vestiges obviously accomplished the same task in a much smaller package by perfectly tuning the de-aspecting to a single gate. Cities didn’t have that luxury.

Second—and perhaps more importantly—she could actually put the power to use, or at least store the majority of it.

Cities, as it turned out, used magical lights and other amenities in large part because they needed to bleed power, even after that power was de-aspected. The City Stones, by their very nature, were storage vessels of magic, but they couldn’t take in all the power coming their way at once. Instead, a good portion of it had to be used up, or the Stone would be overwhelmed… though, she didn’t really understand the reasoning.

Part of that was the fact that they weren’t willing to explain the creation process of a City Stone to her. She and Alat had suspicions, but they weren’t confirmed.

-They are obviously ‘magic’ dasgannach, somehow modified and bound. That’s why so many people are obsessed with more mundane varieties of the creatures.-

Like the information dasgannach in the Wandering Wilds?

-Yes, but that one was unbound and ‘natural,’ where I believe the core of the Archive and each of the City Stones are anything but native.-

Yeah… That would make a certain amount of sense. I’m not sure how that aligns with them being a type of curse, or how they are created, but we are a perfect example of how such a creature can open up a wide suite of possibilities otherwise completely out of reach.

-Exactly.-

It would be nice if our nature didn’t limit our intake.

-Well, it only limits us in so far as we wish to keep our current nature.-

Yeah… that’s what I was saying.

Regardless, Tala’s ability to draw in ambient power, purify it, and utilize it on her own—within Kit—was the only reason this caravan worked at all.

Even still, it was an uphill battle against creatures that would have ended her caravan career very quickly, back when she’d started.

In just the first day outside of Marliweather, Terry slew more than a dozen Fused level threats and Rane drove back a pack of Refined beasts. Additionally, the Talons were almost constantly engaged with lower level beasts either trying to harass the caravan or strike when Terry or Rane weren’t nearby.

Tala, herself, was on overwatch most of the time, keeping her threefold perspective at the forefront of her focus, ready to engage any truly overwhelming threats.

Blessedly, no Paragon level beasts had even been spotted besides the roc.

Things were even better at night when the caravan stopped and they became, effectively, a tiny ‘city’.

-The word is town.-

I know, but I mean it in the sense of being like the cities…

-Fair. All magic caught and brought down to a single, immovable point. I can see it.-

Exactly.

As such, they weren’t quite the same ‘beacon’ to surrounding magical creatures while still, and that let the caravan sleep more peacefully than it would have otherwise.

The food was fantastic on the trip, but that was no surprise. The Culinary Guild had sent more than two hundred gateless to work within Irondale to provide the food for the trip, and they were cooking practically non-stop.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

A few had already put in applications for permanent citizenship within Ironhold, and Lyn was dealing with the assessment of that possibility.

The Talons were thriving in their active role. There had been a few who had balked at actual combat, but since they weren’t alone, their Claw members had been there to support them, and every one of the Talons had eventually risen to the occasion.

Many had even earned great allotments of white steel due to the higher-stakes ‘training’ pushing them to new heights.

Still, despite the dangers and somewhat frequent clashes, none had died, and the injuries were minimal enough that none had been taken out of commission for more than a single rotation.

The single Talon who had been forced to wait out that full time had lost his entire right leg to an odd snake-like creature that had seemed the size of a worm until it sprang up from the ground, already chomping down, high up on the limb.

Alat and Tala had increased their vigilance on anything showing even a hint of dimensional power after that. The ‘worm’ had shown itself to be a remnant of a long-dealt-with dimensional fount that had been in the area some three hundred years earlier. Apparently, it had not been the one to spawn dimensional spiders, but it was still similar.

There was actually somewhat of a debate on dimensional Mages as a whole. They were incredibly powerful and versatile, useful almost all through society, but their founts spawned horrors. The Archons tried to police potentials to eliminate such founts as quickly as possible, but some beasts inevitably got such powers, and they tended to be more hereditary than ideal…