Chapter: 614 – Return to the Doman-Imithe

Tala began coming down in a swamp, the ghosts of trees all around her, and her mind sharpened, enhancements flaring in order to give her time to process all that she was seeing.

No… Those aren’t ‘ghosts’ of trees… Are they the reality nodes of the trees on the other side?

-Could be, yeah.-

As she focused on them, she saw that each was made up of dozens—if not hundreds—of smaller nodes, and as she briefly glanced at those, each was shown to be made up of yet smaller nodes, and so on down the line in a seemingly infinite regression.

Tala pulled her focus back before she could be lost in that rapidly growing expanse. Why is it so different than the times previous?

-You are more powerful than when last you came here, is it possible that your aura, will, and authority are imposing themselves on the Doman-Imithe? You haven’t actually been in here since you were merely Refined. You’ve come a long way since then. Still, you were torn in half then, so…-

Exactly. Nimbleness and don’t poke the greater powers in here. If I leave them alone, and don’t take their stuff, they should leave me alone too.

-That’s all good in theory…-

Come on, Alat. Help me do this quickly.

-Right. ‘Nimbleness over defense’… This won’t end badly at all.-

Hush you, less snark, more analytics.

-Well, in that case…- Alat sent the thought that if Tala was greatly influencing the local structure of the Doman-Imithe, wouldn’t it be quite the beacon to anything that might wish them harm?

Tala paled, purposely pulling her aura back, only maintaining it around herself at skin level and extending back through the gate behind her to maintain her connection. The gate was already framed in her iron, a mix of reality iron and regular, held separate by her gilded will.

That wouldn’t be closing.

Her feet touched the surface of the water, but it was already changing, now that her aura was withdrawn. The ghosts of trees had fractured away from each other, becoming the various strands and nodes that Tala had seen in the past.

She was coming down on a ball of stone, covered by about three inches of water. In the short space behind her—between her and the gate—there were still hints of the superficial forest being imposed, but otherwise, she was in the Doman-Imithe she recognized once more.

Her threefold sight was almost immediately overwhelming both to her and to Alat in all that it showed, every layer that she could see seemingly entirely different than the ones around it.

The sky was an incomprehensible kaleidoscope of madness, various terrains folding and rolling into one another. Yet, just behind that, physically closer than her vision said was possible, a crescent smile floated without any accompanying body or even head, visible for only a moment.

It wasn’t a smiler either, as it somehow evoked a feeling of feline superiority. There wasn’t even a medium for the smile to be in, but somehow it was there, occupying everything in that single layer of existence within the Doman-Imithe.

To the right, behind what seemed to be an elbow joint with no bones—she had no idea how it looked like that, but it absolutely did—a skeleton with a head composed of uncounted finger bones and hands made of reptile heads stared at her. As it did so, a beetle the size of an ant took bites of it that would make a dragon proud, the dimensionality of perception be rusted.

When she tried to process all that was coming through her threefold sight, half the sky seemed to be somehow missing. The missing portion didn’t stay still, though. It was always the portion that her left eye was trying to focus on, regardless of her focus with the threefold sight. There was nothing wrong with the eye, and both eyes took in the same rolling ‘nothingness,’ but it acted like a reset even as her gaze swept around her, the manifestations within the Doman-Imithe changing at almost every layer as it passed.

There were two eyes like burning stars on the far side of the stone ball, looking directly away from her, turning all they gazed upon into ash.

Inside the ball were a thousand puppets, tearing each other apart to build new versions with the remnants. At the same time, the same ball was filled through and through with stone, with blood, with nothing.

Somewhere, piles of mushroom caps were stacked like gold in a vault, a tiny toadstool seemingly nearly finished counting them with meticulous precision.

A book sat atop a statue, slowly turning through the layers of a man spread out before it.

Tala felt her mind fracturing.

She needed to either impose her aura and authority or limit her sight, and she was torn as to which she should do.

Then she saw the first of them, the smilers. It was peeking out from around a bush that was slowly pulling its leaves back in, growing in reverse. The creature and bush were far, far away, and there were no visible connections between there and where Tala stood, but it had found her.

She knew that it had.

Tala shuddered, briefly closing her eyes, and Alat was madly trying to limit their threefold sight.

Like before, the smiler didn’t move, and like before, that was somehow worse.

-Tala!-

Alat’s internal shout jerked Tala out of her spiral of roving, utterly overwhelmed focus.

The Doman-Imithe was a place to make madmen seem sane, and she’d almost allowed herself to get lost in it.

She shook herself, returning her mind to the immediate surroundings, and utterly blocking off everything but her immediate focus.

In the eyeblink that had passed since she arrived, the rock-ball she stood upon had changed. It was still rock, but a great gap had opened, allowing all the water to flow into the opening.

It was her threefold sight—newly hampered and focused—that showed her what it was changed into.

She stood on a great eyeball, encased in rock, and now actively looking around.

The only other thing in the immediate area—assuming she didn’t impose her will to draw in the nodes of flora and terrain on the superficial—was an odd swarm of small bugs that were scattered about the rocky, now dry surface.

On the superficial, the hyenas seemed to fall back on more instinctive behavior, and that solidified it for Tala… well, that and the obvious reality threads that were thicker than her legs connecting the creatures each to one of the swarm of gnats that were circumnavigating the eye, coming at her from all sides.

Each gnat was Fused equivalent in level, but they acted in concert, a unity in purpose more like a symphony than a single creature.

As she watched, she saw them try to approach the greater reality nodes that were her people on the superficial, and out there, the hyenas lunged in.

It was mind-bending to try to see both sides of this conflict, and she was not about to let it continue.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She tried to open a portal into Kit to release a dissolution breath, but it wouldn’t budge.

Right! She couldn’t open extra dimensional spaces in the Doman-Imithe.

Her gate was giving her power still, but it felt like it was having to come further. That was no issue, but it was an odd feeling all the same. Even so, she didn’t let it distract her.

On the superficial, one of the beasts was lunging for Lea, and on this side, Tala stretched out her power, targeting the gnat that seemed to be the source of that shadow.

She spun her power out more quickly than ever before, her need driving her to be ever faster, ever more precise. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Just as Lea’s sword passed through the shadowy neck in a useless attempt to decapitate it, Tala enacted Crush on the insect, specifically having included the shadow beast on the superficial.

There was a startled yelp that cut through the chittering laugh-like barks of the other beasts, and that one vanished.

Lea let out a cheer, holding up her sword and looking at it with new eyes. Tala saw the girl’s lips move, but the distance on the superficial was just too great for her to hear what she said, even for Tala’s enhanced perception.

Funnily enough, the other hyenas backed up, seeming uncertain.

On Tala’s side of things, the gnat had turned black as all its shadow was drawn in, then it had popped out of existence.

The rest of the swarm were drawing closer, even as they continued to direct the shadows on the surface, the conjurations that were somehow more real than simple illusions, yet not embodied enough to be easily destroyed.