Chapter: 639 – Succeeded

Tala’s new body rested before her floating perception, built of reality iron and white steel, then woven through with regular iron, malleable material from her elk leathers, precious metals in the form of inscriptions, and magics of all kinds.

Her very power and will, her authority within this space allowed far more matter to exist in the size of a human body than should ever actually have been able to fit.

Around her body swirled her myriad bloodstars, all recovered from her various uses and consolidated here.

Each bloodstar was effectively the tip of a tendril of her soul, ready to bind to anything she wished to connect with. She had never really had need of that capacity in most of her blood stars, using them, instead, as anchors for her aura and places upon which she could mirror her perception.

She had need now.

She moved forward, essentially just her soul, her gate, slipping through the keystone on her body’s back, settling exactly where she was supposed to be, within her own body.

Immediately, her bloodstars began to spin and weave, threading throughout her entire physical form, drawing the ephemeral tendrils of her soul throughout the entirety of herself. As she did so, she drew along threads of power which streamed from her gate, quite reminiscent of her Fusing process.

Beyond that, with her perception as it was now, she could see that the interweaving was catching up every reality thread and drawing it close, readying it for what was to come.

She didn’t wish for a bond, not yet, instead utilizing an ancillary feature of those soul tendrils, effectively weaving her soul throughout the body in a manner that she was sure no other gated human had ever been able to do before.

There was marginal resistance when she worked across her left hand, but as this body was her, there was no reason for it to be any different. The left hand had been taken from someone else, someone left behind as Tala stepped toward who she truly was.

The magic of the merging chamber she sat within provided coherence and a sort of odd spiritual compression that helped contain and form that which she was making.

Terry, from his circle, acted as an anchor, a point of reference, and an additional source of strength.

Rane continued to pour power, love, and support through his bond to her soul, and Tala could tell by sensing in the other direction that he was with their daughter, and that was a blessing and a burden removed. She didn’t need to worry for either of their safety while she was so unable to do anything to help.

Finally, after an unknown length of time, and a truly staggering amount of weaving later, it was done.

Her blood stars were scattered throughout her form, bound close, ready and waiting.

Bond with me. Then, as she was her body, she grinned and answered herself. Yes.

A pulse of power raced down each tendril of her interwoven soul, crossing the enmeshed lengths in a blink, despite the seeming hours it had taken to create the knit.

As the pulses reached their respective bloodstars in a synchronized moment, spherical ripples radiated out from each bloodstar as it triggered, unleashing her magics to bind her, body and soul.

At the same time, two other things happened.

First, she pulled. Well, she also pushed, and also just moved. What had been enough volume for three of her split, one full body’s worth moving slightly starward, the other slightly stoneward. Those two bodies slotted into the center of their respective webs of reality iron a fraction of an increment away from superficial as experienced by the third and final body which had been left behind.

Her gate remained in each of them, all centered and anchored together, and the interweaving was maintained.

They were three bodies that would naturally mirror one another, creating a robust, four-dimensional lattice of magic and flesh, allowing for her magics to truly spark to life like never before, while completely containing her power like never before, building the magical pressure and compounding the effects of her every spellform many fold.

And it was flesh, because of the second thing that happened concurrently with the first.

She imposed her will, her authority upon the reality iron, knowing it was her body, knowing it was her flesh, down to each and every part.

The three bodies resonated, each with slightly different makeups.

The one at the heart was, of course, marginally more aligned with reality, the normal iron content was higher, and the attention to minute detail all the more precise.

The one slightly starward held a greater connection with magic. The spellforms weren’t really more densely populated there, but they were somehow more… real? That was a ridiculous word to express it, but that’s the best way she’d come up with it to comprehend the truth of the varied nature.

Finally, the echo that was slightly stoneward bore more of the void magics, actually helping to sustain the inbetween, separate-yet-together nature of her threefold existence.

The entire conglomeration was decidedly, unavoidably magical. She was gated, after all, and to try to truly deny magic from parts of herself would be to deny her self. Still, the balance was set, and Tala’s gate now more closely mirrored Lea’s in that it was not entirely anathema to Reality. More to the point, Tala’s existence actually resonated with Existence.

Now, she was there, all ensconced in her new body, and she knew that she could open her eyes and begin her existence as a Reforged, but she wasn’t done.

Instead, she took what she’d learned about the cities, about the collective unity of all those disparate souls seeing themselves as one united group, and leaned into that.

A mundane human was themselves, and as food came and went, as cells were created and died, as they grew up, they were still themselves.

It wasn’t those individual parts that made them them, it was that they were all together, forged into a singular entity, for a singular purpose.

That, more than anything else, was the origin of calling this process Reforging.

With all of her magical weight, all of her authority, and all of her raw power, she latched onto the loosely joined reality node and accompanying threads and compressed.

She was herself, not a collection of ideas, not a group of body parts, not a being that would fade from existence in time.

She was the Ravenous, Jealous Devourer.

Maternal Iron.

The Iron Matriarch.

Tala Sappherrous.

And she was made new.

* * *

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Tala opened her eyes slowly, looking about the now rather nondescript, stone room.

There were places where the now fully used up spellforms had been, but as there was no heat involved in their usage, all that was left in their wake were empty, thin grooves in the stone. The result was that the whole space had a bit of a weathered look, rather than the distinctly magical air that it had held before.

Terry was perched to one side, power roaring into him after flowing through her gate and along their bond and the surrounding sanctum, but Tala, herself, rested in a sort of calm center.

As soon as she found herself curious about what was going on elsewhere, she was immediately slammed with full knowledge of everything that was occurring throughout the sanctum and Ironhold.

Her enhanced mind rose to the occasion, parsing every minute detail with ease and giving her a holistic picture beyond anything that her vague curiosity had warranted.

Alat, take it, please.

There was a delay, and for a fraction of a moment, Tala feared that something had gone wrong, that Alat hadn’t been maintained.

It was a silly concern given that she could feel the magics that facilitated Alat were in perfect working order, as well as the connection to the Archive and the presence of the alternate interfaces slightly different memories on their soul.

Even so, Tala still let out a relieved breath when Alat responded. -Absolutely, Tala. I appreciate the ask.-

As she exhaled, Tala sent a wave of air through the room, her very unconscious desire to exhale in relief causing the wind to respond in this place of her power.

She took a moment to assess herself, finding that her body was responding to the cool of the underground room, goosebumps growing across her exposed flesh.

With the barest whisker of desire, Tala was clothed once more, the garments having grown out of her, while still being her.

In effect, she was just as naked as she had been, but she was showing a different exterior. Her clothing was now more like a turtle’s shell, or a bird’s plumage than a mundane’s clothing, but that was of little consequence.

She felt no need for ‘exterior’ clothing, now. It helped that she could feel her armored form but a thought away from deployment, so there wasn’t even a lingering desire for more protection.

She truly was set.

Her magics hummed through her, her body now—effectively—a magical construct. Those internally set magics harmonized beautifully with her inscriptions and natural magics both creating yet another three-part whole in her new, true existence.

To the side of the room, Terry was almost finished with his own advancement, his spirit being scoured and uplifted through the connection to her and her soul.

Tala knew the process wouldn’t be pleasant for him, but it was effectively just something to bear through, her own advancement having carried him forward.