Chapter: 621 – Inscriptions Please?

Tala and her family bid the city administrator goodbye and headed back toward where their sanctum waited, just stoneward of superficial.

As they walked, Lea was unusually quiet. She would occasionally look toward things of interest, but she lacked much of her standard exuberance.

Even so, Tala and Terry were content simply being silent as well, the two of them enjoying quiet more than the others. Rane, however, worked to tease out words from their daughter.

She responded well enough to his promptings, but it was clear that her heart just wasn’t in it. Finally, he simply asked, “What’s going on, Lea? You seem to have something on your mind.”

“Hmm? Oh… I suppose that I do…”

They continued in silence for another long moment.

Finally, Lea stopped and turned to her parents. “I’m ready for my inscriptions.”

Rane blinked a few times, and Tala frowned. She was the first to respond. “Lea, we’ve talked about this. Inscriptions are incredibly important and dangerous. You need a solid foundation, and that usually takes years, and that doesn’t even count the foundational education that is meant to build upon.”

“Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “I understand that. I have that solid foundation now, Mom. Momma has worked very hard with me, along with Dadde, to teach me all that I need to know. Test me, and I’ll prove that I have the knowledge it takes to use inscriptions safely. I’ve even studied, in detail, the schema Mistress Holly has built out for me.”

Tala looked to Rane, and her husband frowned. “I think we should talk about it privately.”

Lea opened her mouth, but hesitated, seeming to realize something. “That’s not a no?”

Rane didn’t bother to hide his smile. “No, that isn’t a no. Can you accept that your Mom, Momma, Dadde, and I will talk about it in private?”

She nodded excitedly. “Yes, Dad!”

Tala fought back a smile at her daughter’s exuberance, then realized that there was no reason to do so. She grinned widely. “I’m glad that you are so excited, Lea. It is good to have goals and go for them. Even if we decide that it isn’t the right time yet, I hope that you keep this drive.”

Lea nodded sagely. “Yes, Mom. I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you, sweet.” Tala’s perception caught a rarity in this new city. “I think that’s a bakery with a specialty more toward sweet treats than bread or other savory items. Is there anyone in my family who would enjoy that?”

Rane raised his hand, a wide grin on his face, unashamed.

Lea rolled her eyes glancing around at all the people around them.

Terry cracked open an eye before shifting and lifting one of his taloned feet into the air.

That brought a smile to Lea’s lips, wiping away her burgeoning concern for what others might think of her. She raised her hand and did a little hop. “Me too!”

Tala’s smile grew to match her husband’s. “Come on, then. Let’s get treats!”

“Hurrah!” Lea dropped her hand and scampered forward.

Rane put his arm around Tala, pulling her and Terry—resting on her shoulder—close. “Nice job, Mom.”

She leaned against him. “Not so bad yourself, Dad.”

* * *

Later that night Tala and Rane sat, alone, in a little side alcove on one of the myriad paths through their sanctum. It had a commanding view out toward one quadrant of the sanctum, but was only large enough for four people to comfortably sit. They generally preferred larger spaces, so this was very rarely used.

Terry was off hunting in the wilds. He’d apparently taken to helping the local hunters, which Tala assumed meant that he was taking care of the things that were beyond them, but who really knew with Terry? She was sure that he wasn’t hurting anyone in the very least.

Lea was ‘out on the town’ with Lyn and a couple of Talon ladies. Apparently, there were a few places that catered specifically to the smaller, female population of the city, giving them places where they wouldn’t stand out quite as much. One was a playhouse, right beside a nice restaurant, and that was their plan for the night.

Tala was a bit sad to not be going with the group, but this was an important conversation, and she got all too little time with Rane of late.

They had moved off of their standard script and had cracked open a bottle of wine.

While that was usually a turn of phrase, Tala had actually accidentally broken the bottle, but her authority within Kit had kept the liquid contained and the glass fragments from getting mixed in.

“-It’s nice to just be here, all together.-”

Tala raised an eyebrow. “But you’re not…”

“-Right… let’s fix that.-”

She huffed a laugh and glanced at Rane, who shrugged. “Fine.”

A moment later, Alat and Enar manifested. As usual, Alat wore a dress, this time in a deep emerald green. Her skin was almost as pale as Lea’s, without actually crossing into ‘true’ white, and her hair was closer to black than Tala’s, making her blue-green eyes—a trait she purposely differed from Tala’s blood-red—stand out all the more. Beyond that, she looked like a slightly taller, bit less muscular version of Tala, not that Tala was in danger of being called ‘buff’ despite her strength.

-I also have two hands.-

You’re a jerk… but thank you for not projecting that.

-Of course. My sass can be just for you, when needed.-

Enar wore black slacks and a green shirt to match his wife. His physical difference from Rane was greater than Alat’s from Tala, but he was still a tall—though not quite as tall as Rane—powerfully built man. The glasses were clearly a stylistic choice, but they did serve that purpose nicely.

In Tala’s threefold sight, the manifestations were… not odd, but unusual. The two alternate interfaces had obviously gone the extra mile in creating entirely human forms for themselves, down to their digestive tracts.

When she noticed that, Tala pulled another set of wine glasses from elsewhere in the sanctum and poured the two their own.

Alat flounced slightly as she took hers, spinning to swirl her dress before moving to sit down in one of the two remaining chairs. “Thank you, Tala.”

“Of course.”

Enar was far more subdued as he came forward and took his own, bowing in thanks.

Once everyone had settled in and begun enjoying their wine, Rane started off their conversation. “So, you two have been working to prepare Lea for her inscriptions?”

Enar looked to Alat, who was already nodding. “Yes, we have. As we’d discussed before, we are spearheading the more cognitive side of her education. To our minds, that includes her understanding of magic and inscriptions.”

Rane was nodding along, but he still glanced toward Tala. She smiled before responding. “Yeah, I have no issue with that. I’ve been working with her in that regard as well, as has Rane.”

Alat was nodding along, clearly aware of this, and Enar hmmed. “Yes, it is good for her to be learning from multiple sources. It helps to confirm the facts, and gives her different perspectives on the various topics.”

None of them really considered it odd that the alternate interfaces differed enough from the physical forms to actually be able to provide that different perspective.

“So…” Tala took another long sip. “How about you catch us up on where she’s at from your side? You both obviously already know what we do.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Rane nodded, leaning back. “I think I’d appreciate that as well.”

It was funny, what followed felt to Tala like sitting in a parent-teacher conference, but this time, she was the parent, and the child wasn’t present at all. There were definitely things that surprised her, and from his reaction surprised Rane as well.

Apparently, while Lea had been focusing on kinetic energy, leaning more toward Rane’s magics than Tala’s, she was approaching it far more from an inertial perspective. That was something that Tala had often touched on, especially in her early magics like Restrain.

With that simple explanation, Tala found that the schemas she’d reviewed dozens of times clicked into place. They didn’t seem like they would work in her mindset, but she supposed that it made sense that Lea’s foundational understanding was different from either of her parents.

Apparently, Lea had been especially fascinated by the hanging ball demonstration of the transfer of momentum, and that had led to her foundation being ‘momentum can be perfectly transferred.’

What’s more, that means of thinking about it—which Tala immediately found dozens of flaws with, but she wasn’t about to poke holes in—meant that the change was on Lea’s side of things, rather than forcing a working on her opponent. In that way, it neatly bypassed any question of comparative magical density or weight.

That was one of the flaws in Rane’s magics—or it might be more accurate to call it a drawback. He couldn’t directly impart kinetic energy into his target unless he entirely magically outclassed it. Instead, he imparted that energy into his weapon or fist or the air, in order to then attack with that in a ‘mundane’ final step. He had been working to overcome that, and he’d become largely successful with a Refined level of aura control and magic density—backed by Tala—but it was still a ‘flaw’ in his magics that he’d had to overcome and still worked past and around.

If Lea made this work? She would simply make her physical motions perfectly transfer force to that which she attacked. That, coupled with her greater-than-human strength and speed? She would be a terror. She’d have battlefield mobility close to Terry’s, with the added ability of using that power in strikes, where Terry’s talons couldn’t really do anything similar.