Chapter: 625 – Learning

Tala willed herself, Rane, Lea, and Mistress Holly into their sanctum, specifically, a far-flung meadow, well away from anything precious or easily destroyed.

They’d discussed this earlier, and Mistress Holly had insisted that the ignition happen in a controlled space. She then further stated that she would not be the one in control of the space.

Thankfully, as no one resisted—and Mistress Holly’s workshop’s odd, artificial closeness with Kit was still in effect—they moved without issue.

As they arrived, Lea sat, taking up a cross-legged position on the ground. Even though it was still hidden by the girl’s hair, the lowered frame of reference gave Tala a better vision of her new keystone, simply by the angle afforded her with her threefold sight.

She could, of course, see it all with her perception within Kit, but she generally didn’t tap into that, leaving such to Alat.

At that thought, Tala almost took a look at Holly through that perception, but Alat blocked her. Tala could have overcome the block with relative ease, but she didn’t. What?

-Don’t. Mistress Holly knew when I tried, or else there’s something interfering. Even here, something goes sideways in my head for a second whenever I try to look. It doesn’t hurt me beyond that, but I think a flesh and blood us wouldn’t fare so well.-

…Fine. She returned her focus to Lea.

Unlike every other Mage Tala had ever heard of, Lea’s keystone was on the back of her head. In fact, it made up the majority of inscriptions across her entire head. Just like with a more normal Mage, there were layers of spellforms deeper and more surface level than the keystone, but they were by far the minority.

This makes me extra glad that we had the hair-piece and core covering made. The inscriptions couldn’t have been added to the core itself.

-Indeed. That would have made this whole process far trickier.-

And that was all the time Tala had to just observe. The three Archons gathered around Lea in a triangle pattern, Mistress Holly in front of her, Tala behind her right shoulder, Rane behind her left.

Mistress Holly then began leading Lea through the feeding of the first tendrils of her power into the edges of the keystone. That would ignite that central spellform, and from there, the rest of her inscriptions would empower.

Tala hadn’t had to consider that step in years. Her own initial activation with Mistress Holly had been far more of a loosening of her own, tightly held grip on her gate. In this case, Lea was effectively threading a needle in the dark while wearing thick gloves.

The only thing she had to go off of was Mistress Holly’s instructions.

Needless to say, it took a bit.

Tala, Rane, or even Mistress Holly could have done the work for Lea, but that would have hampered the girl’s growth and learning. She needed to start controlling her own power at a minute level, not relying on her body’s inbuilt mechanisms.

Finally, the thread went through, and it was practically snatched by the hungry spellforms.

Copper briefly flashed outward in a complex, interconnected ripple downward, providing the ignition sequence as it spiralled across the girl’s body, but that light was quickly replaced by hues of silver and gold.

They’d opted for as many always active scripts as possible for the girl, both to stress her gate—allowing it to open wider more quickly—and to make the entire process faster to acclimatize to.

-Yeah… that’s not true. This will take far, far longer to get used to, but when she does, it will be a seamless part of her.-

Fine… faster in the long run, because she’d have to learn this eventually. So, the trade off was that it would take longer to gain control over initially, but nothing is a ‘perfect’ solution.

-That’s true enough.-

The series of lights, individually, would be hard for mundane eyes to see as it spiraled, twisted, and interwove all around Lea. Together, they were mesmerizing.

A funny, unintended side effect—since most of the more surface inscriptions were gold—was that Lea’s hair and skin took on a slight golden tinge, the inscriptions being too fine to really be easily picked out by mundane eyes.

Given the girl’s inexperience, the inscription’s thinness meant that she’d need to get reinscribed far more often, but Mistress Holly had been insistent that they needed as few iterations as possible, given the girl’s unique physiology.

More inscriptions of the same schema would be infinitely preferable to further spaced inscriptions of slowly altering sets.

So, this was what they’d landed on.

Tala felt a lump growing in her throat, as her daughter had never looked more human.

She felt conflicted about it, as she didn’t want Lea to hide her true self, but she could hardly condemn the idea, given how long that she’d lived her own life under a veil of illusion, rather than scare those around her with her constant aura of manifested power.

Was this so different?

-Well, it is in the other direction, sort of. I feel that the illusion is less ‘you’ than this is Lea. This is her now. She has power, and she will not be giving it up if she can help it. You disguise yourself with what you ‘should’ look like given who and what you are.-

That’s true enough.

A final, large ripple of power rolled out from the crown of Lea’s head, traveling through her new inscriptions in a wave.

Lea gasped, her eyes snapping open, revealing a vibrant red-gold color, flecks of silver only occasionally in evidence.

Rane sighed, glancing Tala’s way. She smiled, shaking her head in solidarity.

Their daughter would garner far more interest from admirers now.

Lea moved as if to stand up, but she was moving quite a bit slower, to her obvious irritation. That enforced, slower movement, seemed to make the act of getting up strangely difficult.

The girl growled, and Tala barely willed Mistress Holly to be a yard to the right before Lea sprang upward, drilling straight through where the woman had been.

Lea let out a scream of panic, instantly stopping dead, ten feet from where she had been, her every part locked in place.

Lea’s voice came to them, clearly projected without use of her lips. “What do I do?”

Mistress Holly was the one who responded, speaking calmly. “Remember your magics, girl. You are in control, here.”

Lea instinctively reached out to her granted authority within Kit, but Tala and Rane both denied her. Rane was the one who spoke. “She meant your inscriptions, sweet. Don’t forget the purpose of this. Using Kit would be a crutch.”

Lea made a frustrated whimpering sound.

Tala watched closely as magic surged through the girl. There was a building of power in the ‘momentum storage’ areas of the inscriptions. Apparently, the magics had been activated to steal all the momentum from Lea, locking her entirely in place, and it was quickly gathering more and more.

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It took nearly a minute, but finally, Lea jerked into motion, dropping downward, but Tala was able to tell that she fell more slowly than she really should have. The scripts were still storing away about five percent of her momentum as a default, causing Lea to have an almost ethereal quality to her, as if she were just barely set apart from the rest of the world.

She landed, and once she did, she began moving through a martial form that she’d been taught months earlier.

She had known what to expect from her own inscriptions, but the reality of actually experiencing and being in control of the magics was entirely different.

Still, she’d mastered her surprise and moved onto the first step that they’d agreed to beforehand.

…the first of many, many steps.

As she performed the rote exercise, her movements started off jerky and slowly smoothed out as Lea regulated the power she was putting into each motion.

By the time she reached the end of the first set, she seemed to be moving normally, taking each motion with a slow, steady, measured pace.

With that complete, she turned, seeming to move exactly as she had before the inscriptions, only her hair betraying the change. Its motion was just barely slower than expected. That would be far less discernable once it was bound up—as both Lea and Tala preferred—but in the moment, its loose nature made it almost seem like she was moving underwater.

“There, I think I have it! Let’s go for pastries.” Lea grinned triumphantly. “I don’t know why you thought that this would be difficult.”

Mistress Holly chuckled. “No.” She then turned to Tala and Rane, bowing to each. “My work here is done. I leave her in your capable hands.”

The two bowed in turn, Lea following her parent’s lead a moment later, her movements jerky once more, much to her obvious irritation.

Without further delay, Tala willed Mistress Holly back to the workshop. As soon as she had departed, Tala felt the shift as the odd artificial closeness between the two locations faded.