Chapter: 615 – Right to Business

Tala and Rane sat with their daughter as the caravan circled up for the night. There were already magical lights strung through the trees around long tables of laid out food. The passengers were streaming out of the wagons that were in proper position and moving through the food lines before grouping up in various sized smaller gatherings off to the sides.

Terry was doing loops as the caravan settled in, ensuring that the last movements didn’t draw anything too powerful, and the Talons were moving through the camp, keeping the peace when there was the occasional scuffle, and ensuring nothing cropped up within the nearly finished wagon circle.

Lea was staring at Tala’s left arm… well, the stump of it. “That’s so weird.”

Tala quirked a smile, disliking how calm she felt about the whole thing but not willing to purposely make herself freak out. “Explain what you mean.”

“I remember you having a left hand, but the absence… It doesn’t feel wrong? It’s creating an odd dissonance in my mind, and I don’t like it. The whole thing just makes me feel uncomfortable, like when someone stares at me too long.” She shuddered. “It’s just weird.”

“Yes, you said that.” Tala fought back a small smile.

Rane cleared his throat. “For me, it’s almost the reverse. It’s like someone is telling me it’s fine, but I know it’s not. I both remember your hand, and it being missing feels wrong, but it’s like I shouldn’t feel that way.”

Tala gave a slow nod. “Maybe a combination of your advancement and our soulbond?”

“That could be, yeah.”

She looked down at the stump of her left arm. “I don’t even know how I lost it. I assume it was the smiler, but I didn’t feel anything at all. It wasn’t like when I lost my legs in the Doman-Imithe last time.”

“-Yeah, I try to keep a close monitor on our health, especially in hostile situations, and I didn’t notice it disappear at all. Even going back through our memories, it is really difficult to pin down when it vanished, because there was no change to our physical state. It simply wasn’t there, as if it had never been.-”

Tala grimaced. “I hate to think what would happen if someone was completely consumed in that way.”

Rane shook his head. “I don’t think that you could have been.”

That brought her full focus. “Oh?”

“Think about it. Even Anatalis said that your soul is special, it has a weight beyond even that of most Paragons. I think this effect came about as an odd combination of Void and Reality, though I could be wrong. Regardless, I think you lost as much as it could take.”

That… that was somehow both comforting and horrifying. “So, if it could have killed me, I’d be dead?”

“Likely? Yes. There’s also your bonds to me and Terry. I think that gives your existence additional weight. Though, in this case, I’m theorizing. It lines up with what we’ve learned about such things, but I don’t know how often people have the weight of their existence so tested.”

Tala grunted, but then slowly nodded. “I can see that. So, another person… or me as a Fused?”

He shrugged. “They—or you—would be utterly gone… in theory.”

Tala’s gaze kept flicking down, but it was becoming harder to see it as something that needed to be fixed. She growled. “Okay. Let’s fix this.”

She closed her eyes and focused on her magic… but she didn’t know what to focus it on. There was no wound, nothing to heal.

“Fine, this will be… unpleasant.” She pulled out Flow and sheared off the end of the stump before she could change her mind. It hurt, of course, but her authority and mastery over her iron in her blood meant that it didn’t even bleed, at least not in any normal way. Instead, arcs of blood connected the pathways that had been cut, allowing blood to flow as it had.

It was effortless to fill her regenerative scripts with power and… the stump healed over. “What the rust?”

Lea looked mildly horrified, but Rane was grimacing in determined understanding. “It heals by following your internal map. It seems that’s been changed, too.”

“That makes no sense. Injuries don’t change a person’s blueprints.”

“But that’s not an injury. Instead, it’s something else.”

Tala growled, cutting free the end again. This time, she meticulously began rebuilding the hand, just as if she was creating her iron-self.

The first step was sending the blood through all the paths that it would have taken had she had a left forearm and hand. It took nearly an hour, during which Rane sent Lea to get food from their sanctum.

The girl only vanished for a couple of minutes before returning to the superficial with three laden plates.

When Tala finished the circulatory system, she wove the magics around it with raw power. She only broke focus—and then only slightly—to take bites of the food Lea had brought her.

Finally, she connected the last of the spellform pieces for her regenerative magics. She’d even done her best to ensure that the magics would take the blood flow into account and try to mirror her right hand.

“Here it goes.” Rane gave her an encouraging smile, and Lea leaned forward.

Power rolled through the magics, and Tala’s reserves gave up the material needed. Her left arm reformed all but exactly how it should have been.

Rane let out a breath of relief, but before he could say anything, Tala retched. “Oh… That’s… that’s so strange.” She retched again, her anti-vomit inscriptions enacting for what felt like the first time in ages. “That feels so wrong.”

The fingers were twitching—almost writhing—in unnatural ways, completely out of her control.

“It’s like I tried to grow an extra hand out of my shoulder.” Tala tried to focus, bringing calm to her mind, but her body just felt wrong.

-I’m doing my best to take in everything, bear through it as long as you can.-

I’m trying!

Losing the whole arm to the leshkin juggernaut hadn’t felt this awful, this strange, this wrong. Moreover, even though every connection was exactly right, she couldn’t control the limb. It was like her mind just wouldn’t send the proper signals despite her magically forcing exactly that.

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It didn’t matter.

She stuck it out for five minutes, Alat examining every part of her in every way they could think of for the entire time.

Finally, Flow snicked back into Tala’s hand, and she lopped off the offending addition. It healed over in an instant, a stump once more.

Tala shuddered in almost overwhelming relief.

Rane caught the hand before it fell to the ground, waiting as Tala pulled the blood from it and drawing it back into herself.

With that done, Rane willed himself into the sanctum, taking the hand and placing it in a container before returning.

When Tala gave him an inquisitive look, he shrugged. “It might be useful for others to examine it themselves as we seek a solution.”

That brought a smile to her lips. “Thank you, Rane.”

“Of course.”

“-I’ve packaged all the information I gathered and sent it over to Mistress Ingrit with a high priority. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a resolution sooner rather than later.-”

Rane smiled. “Thank you, Alat.”

“-Of course, Rane.-”

Lea took her last bite, dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, then spoke into the growing silence. “So, momma?”

“-Yes, dear?-”