Chapter: 292 - Don’t Change Your Body (Patreon)

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Tala hunched in on herself beneath the ongoing tirade. Just endure, Tala. It can’t last forever.

Master Cazor was long gone.

She wasn’t sure how long the stream of words had been going on, but as soon as they had entered Mistress Holly’s warehouse, a bit of magic had tickled Alat’s inscriptions, and Mistress Holly had lost her mind.

Her exclamation of outrage had knocked dust from the ceiling, even as the Inscriptionist stormed towards the reception area.

It was then that Master Cazor had wisely excused himself. “Sorry, Mistress Tala. We can reconnect tomorrow… or whenever works for you.”

He’d closed the door behind himself as he left before Tala could gather a response.

Mistress Holly had stalked out, seized Tala’s wrist in an oddly powerful grip, and practically dragged her back to her private workroom.

It was at that point that the tirade had begun, “Are you incapable of functioning without damaging yourself?”

Things had only gone downhill from there.

Mistress Holly was working incredibly hard to counter the flaws in Tala’s biology, and every new stress, strain, or degradation only made that harder.

Tala gleaned that the severing of iron from her ownership had, indeed, somehow physically harmed her. Though she was unclear on the exact nature of the damage.

Mistress Holly suddenly stopped mid-sentence, jerking Tala back to the present moment. “You aren’t even listening to me, are you.” It was not a question. “Mistress Tala. I am trying to help you.”

Tala forcefully straightened herself. “I know, Mistress Holly. I did not intend any harm. I was testing out my new soul-bond in a non-combat setting. There shouldn’t have been any chance of damage to me.”

The older Mage grimaced. “The greatest harm comes when it shouldn’t, Mistress. I hope this reinforces that lesson.”

“What even happened? All that I did was lose a bit of iron.”

“Iron that was bound to you, just as your body is. The dasgannach has no magical function for losing material as it should be impossible for the thing to do so. It should also never bond, so we’re in the realm of the impossible. In this case, the impossibility was detrimental to you. The loss sent ripples through all your soul-bonds. Your outfit self-repairs on principle, and your weapon is specifically magicked to distribute and endure magical trauma. There are minor fractures in your Archive link, but I can see that it’s been upgraded to a magical weight that is incredibly unwise below Refined, but you are an enigma.” She gave Tala a stern look. “Still, I should have been consulted before that upgrade occurred.”

Tala shrunk once again. “I apologize; I didn’t even consider that.”

Mistress Holly waved her off. “I assume Mistress Ingrit investigated it on her own; though she should have consulted me. I will have to have words with her. But, in this case, it saved you. The added weight allowed it to weather the trauma, and it is already nearly fully recovered. Your body should be in a similar place with your frankly insane magical density, but you are riddled with flaws. Each of those is a point of weakness, which allow far greater damage under stress and will never properly recover on their own.”

“Ahh… That’s less than ideal.”

“Indeed.” The Inscriptionist rubbed her temples. “We need to do something about the dasgannach. Aside from this new problem, the iron suffusing you—even if only in the dimensions of magic—will hamper Refining. As it is already going to be a complicated, delicate process, any additional interference needs to be avoided at all costs.”

“What do you suggest? I can expel all the iron, and leave it off to the side. So long as it stays within my aura, it shouldn’t cause a problem, right?”

“While that might work, your aura is going to be erratic through the process, and we cannot allow this sort of trauma to occur in the middle of Refining.”

“So, I need to merge it with another of my soul-bonds before I Refine.”

Mistress Holly hesitated. “That… that is an excellent idea.” Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know of that? Who suggested it to you?”

Tala frowned defensively. “No one suggested it. It seemed reasonable, so I asked if it was a possibility. Master Grediv gave me some information, but not too much.”

“Ahh, that does make sense. He would know, too.” She shook her head. “But that is neither here, nor there.”

What did Master Grediv do?

-Well, based on the context, it sounds like he tried to merge two soul-bound items, and it went badly.-

Yes, I got that much, thank you.

“Now, the question would be which you are going to merge it with. I hope you aren’t considering merging it with your body.”

“Noooo.” Tala held up her hands even as she drew out the word in emphasis. “Oh, by the stars no. I can’t even fathom what that might do to me. Even during the bonding process, it wanted to cause all sorts of changes to my body that I only avoided because of Master Grediv’s assistance. I can’t stomach whatever would happen if it fully merged with my physical body.”

“Good. You do have some wisdom.”

Tala snorted. “I was thinking of Flow?”

“Your weapon?” Mistress Holly looked up to one side, then she started to cackle. “That would be so deliciously ironic but, hmm…”

Tala felt herself smile. “Yeah, I considered it might make Flow into a truly morphic weapon.”

“I would bet that you will have that option, yes. Though I believe it will be among the lesser options you will have available to you. Don’t let your recent experiences taint what you can become. Even if it would be amazing to take what they intended as your death and use it to finally forge you into what they were aiming at.” The Inscriptionist shook her head. “But you are not an Eskau, not anymore.”

Tala grunted. “You think there will be better options?”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t change your body.”

“I know that, Mistress Holly.” Tala paused for a moment before continuing. “So, you think that’s the right call? Merging it with Flow?”

“I do. But!” Mistress Holly held up one finger. “I am not doing this on my own. Give me a day to consult with the others collaborating on this project, and we’ll see what we can come up with. We’ll arrange for the merging as soon after that as we can.”

“I can do that.”

Her countenance suddenly hardened. “I am still cross with you, Mistress, but I understand that you did not do this intentionally.”

Tala swallowed, hard. “Thank you, Mistress Holly. I will try to be more careful, going forward.”

*  *  *

Tala sat to the side of an incredibly complicated, but vaguely familiar spellform.

The ironclad walls of the Constructionist’s merging room were becoming more and more comforting. Though, she wasn’t sure if that was due to repeated exposure or the iron.

It had been three days since Mistress Holly had confirmed the wisdom behind the plan to merge the dasgannach with Flow.

They’d consulted experts and gathered the needed pieces to give the greatest chance for success.

Honestly, there wasn’t really a chance for failure, but there was a chance for things to go sideways.

If this went well, they would only need to wait for the merging to settle, and they could proceed with her Refinement. That should only take a month on the outside, since the greatest remaining barrier will have been removed.

If it went sideways?

Well, no need to focus on the negative.

-Yes, let’s focus on what we can do.-

Mistress Holly wasn’t present. Master Queue was facilitating the magics along with another high-level Archon who hid her aura and rank.

She was a specialist in mergings and soul-bonds, and she’d been in the city to visit family.

Mistress Holly had found her two days ago and convinced her to delay her departure.

While the woman’s presence was fortuitous, the worst that would have happened otherwise was a delay of a few more days.

But Tala was distracting herself from the upcoming process.

“Mistress Tala?”

Tala looked up and smiled at the other woman. “Yes, Mistress Aurius?”

“It’s time. We need you to place the two items in the same physical space, alongside the other materials.”

Tala nodded, standing and striding to the center of the intricate working.

With measured care, Tala sat Flow, bare-bladed on the floor amidst several minor artifacts, specifically crafted for this process. Then, with her hand on the handle, she took careful breaths and slowly moved all her non-biological iron down her arm and into the dimensions of magic aligned with the weapon’s physical shape.

Tala could see the weight of the weapon grow with her magesight. More than anything, it looked like an increasing magical reflectiveness to that sight.

“Are you sure this will work?” Tala asked for probably the hundredth time.

“Yes, Mistress Tala.” Mistress Aurius responded with patient professionalism. “While we can’t enact magic upon the iron itself, we are essentially creating a net that can interact with the stuff of soul-bonds, and then tightening it down to the point that it forces a merging.”

Tala knew this. She’d gotten the same explanation each time, but she still felt nervous. “I know… but are you sure?”

The specialist chuckled. “I do applaud your caution, especially with regard to your own soul. We don’t have to do this if you don’t wish to, but we are professionals, experts even. This will work. Remember, I will be waiting here to add my weight to the process, if you need.”

Tala nodded. That was what Master Grediv had done. It was the less obtrusive—and more controlled—version of what had been done during her raising to Archon as well. “Thank you.”

“Of course, and thank you again for the literature and memories pertaining to arcane fount-linking. It’s an intriguing area of study.”

Mistress Aurius had been enticed into helping with information surrounding how Eskau were bound to their protian weapons and Pillars to their regalia.

Tala’s memories and books on the subject had been limited, but apparently, they were sufficient to trade for a couple of days of this woman’s time.

We might need to cultivate expertise in something. That seems to be the best way to continue to gather resources.

-Yeah, that could be useful, but we can also simply continue to go out and gather things the experts want.-

That works too.

She nodded and smiled. “I’m glad you are getting something from what I could offer. Where do you want me?”

Mistress Aurius pointed to a secondary, much smaller circle in the back of the room. “In the center of that working.” She then pointed to the third and smallest. “I will be in that one.”

Tala nodded again. “Let’s do this.”

The two women sat in their respective places, and Master Queue did a couple of final checks. “Ready?”

“Ready,” they each responded.

Power blossomed through the room, suffusing the spellforms, and Tala watched an ethereal power—clearly generated by magic, but not quite the same—grow up around Flow and the artifacts, tightening inward and binding them tightly.

There was an odd pinching twist within the depth of her being, and Tala’s consciousness was claimed by the well-known white void.

*  *  *

Tala opened her eyes and instantly knew.

She was an Eskau.

Pure and simple.

She was everything that Be-thric had tried to make her into, once his initial plan failed. Though, she no longer served a House.

Her enemies died around her by the score.

Flow was more in line with its name than ever, barely manifesting fully into any given shape for long enough to deal lethal wounds to the indistinct hordes that she carved her way through.

She didn’t know how, but they were in her way.

The blood was drained with every hit. The iron built within Flow, and the remainder was consumed by the void. That metal continued to accumulate, until it hit a critical level.

Now!

She swept outward, Flow extending as a razor thin line with a heavy weight on one end.

The whole thing was hundreds of feet long, powered by her tremendous strength and the momentum she’d built up so far, and its inertia was massively increased by tremendous magical weight.

With one clean sweep, she decapitated half an army.

What the rust?

Blood fountained into the sky, soaking the ground with a true rain of blood.

Tala, herself, seemed to draw in the blood; her eyes blazing with red power as the void within her devoured the life still in the red liquid even as the iron was siphoned into Flow.

-There’s something wrong.-

Tala felt a stuttering, and suddenly she was outside herself, looking at the scene as she was used to: from outside of the offered form.

Horror overtook her.

Humans. They are all humans.

Uncounted dead lay around her, every one of them human.

She looked around, seeing for the first time that the air was utterly suffused with iron dust, pushed out of the physical dimensions to hover, menacingly, just out of sight.

The iron was a bubble of anti-magical protection, held in place and stabilized by her aura.

It was only then that Tala detected the other magic in the offered form, one that seemed to dominate all the others.

It was a magic that she didn’t have, shouldn’t have, and had been warned away from.

Reality magic? Alat, where did that come from?

-I have no idea.-

Tala was witnessing one of the paths she could take if she embraced reality magic, even if she didn’t understand how it was possible.

Master Grediv was right. I’d turn on humanity.

As she watched, the gates in the humans were winking out one by one. Apparently, the soul took a bit to register death even in the event of decapitation.

The Tala of the vision seemed enraptured by each additional gate’s departure.

Yeah… I’ve seen enough. NO.

The vision turned white, returning Tala to the void between options.

*  *  *

In the next vision, Tala was offered a much more traditional merging, in which Flow only became a protian weapon and the other aspects of the dasgannach were somehow stripped away and expelled.

In this case, Flow even somehow lost the ability to take on its void-forms.

There was a… flimsiness to this option, as if it lacked power, or it would take an incredible stretch to bring into being.

That surprised Tala; in the past, all options had seemed the same to her.

Regardless, this didn’t tempt her in the least.

Even without Mistress Holly’s warning against taking this option, Tala instinctively knew that it would be a lessening of herself.

She would be weakening every aspect of herself if she tried to force this outcome.

NO.

*  *  *

Tala watched as the next version of her lifted an arcane by the throat.

In a hyper-slowed moment, she was able to perceive spikes lance out of her blood into the man’s neck.

They eviscerated her flesh to get to him.

She recognized the magics surrounding the spikes, even as they tore apart the defensive magics that the teal hue-folk man tried to bring to bear against her attacks.

It took less than a minute to empty him of power, and in the instant in which he ran dry, a blade tore free of Tala’s hand, beheading the man cleanly.

What is with this merging and beheadings?

Before Alat could respond, they watched the manifested Tala slam her hand downward, a dark void opening in her palm to swallow the body even as the head hit the ground.

This Tala growled and a chain burst from her leg, lancing through the fallen head before it could roll away, drawing it back to be devoured.

-What the rust?-

At least it’s arcanes this time?

This Tala clearly held the merged weapon in her own blood, and that had done something to her.

The manifestation expanded, showing that this Tala stood in an arcane city. Flecks of blood were the only evidence there had ever been people in this otherwise abandoned main square.

It’s midday. There should be hundreds or thousands of people.

-Maybe they all ran away?-

They saw a rabbit beast-man scramble out of hiding in a dead-end, side alley, trying to bound away while this version of Tala had her back turned.

Her back exploded in blood and chains. The chains wove together, even as they arced through the air, and the manifestation of Tala screamed in pain and anger.

An instant later, the rabbit-man was skewered.

-Alright, I’m going to say it. The mergings involving the dasgannach seem way worse than options for any other.-

You’re not wrong.

As this version of her turned towards the central pillar that was filled with founts, hunger evident in her eyes, the watching Tala had had enough.

NO.

*  *  *

Tala was beginning to despair as option after option showed versions of herself that had been horribly twisted in body, mind, or both. She still held onto hope, however, though it was fading.

After dozens of options, she was beginning to think that she should call on Mistress Aurius.

Finally, she saw it: There were some tendrils of power linking Flow to her flesh, and Tala felt a sinking feeling.

Oh, we’re idiots.

-The iron in your flesh is still tied to the dasgannach, is that why all these options seem to incorporate your body?-

I would bet so. She really did feel foolish. This was obviously a problem that should have been anticipated. But there was nothing to be done about it, at least not now.

Or is there?

Tala gathered her will and pushed it out upon the still forming merging.

Leave my body be. She felt the tremors through the magic as her will manifested and pressed down on her two soul-bonds.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll call upon Mistress Aurius for aid.

*  *  *

The latest manifestation formed, and Tala felt a renewed blossoming of hesitant optimism.

There didn’t seem to be anything changed within the version of her in this manifestation, at least not physically.

She saw iron moving through the dimensions of magic between her and Flow, though the metal was clearly more tied to Flow than her body, now.

She could move the iron around her body even before this, so that wasn’t a change as she saw it.

Tala watched this version of herself cut through arcanous beasts, and it took only a short time to notice the first difference beyond the obvious.

The liquid that came out with each cut was clear, obviously blood that had been stripped of iron.

She was able to see some beasts cut but not instantly killed; so, the magics didn’t utterly strip them of iron.

Even so, those that survived seemed much more affected than they should have been.

So, it’s able to strip it out a little ways into their bodies?

-It seems so. The act of cutting with Flow seems to grant some limited ownership around the wound, at least for the short time of the passing.-

Flow usually cauterized the wounds it created, and that did still seem to be happening, but the added ripping free of iron seemed to cause the wounds to seep.

It seemed that the iron didn’t have to pass out of the body painlessly.

That’s… grisly.

-Would you rather strike them down and leave no evidence or damage?-

No… violent death is always ugly. If I could kill that cleanly, I don’t think I could keep viewing death as I do, as a necessary evil.

Tala was drawn back towards the vision as this manifestation of her did something new.

Iron passed harmlessly through her flesh, forming a layer on her skin as a massive creature that Tala didn’t recognize slammed its claws down on her upper arm.

The claws stopped as surely as they would have on Flow.

Tala felt herself mentally focus. The bits of lethargy that going through so many options had brought on were banished entirely.

Early after discovering aspect mirroring, Tala had tried to mirror Flow’s resilience to magical attacks onto her own body.

That had not ended well.

It seemed that the iron now functioned as an extension of Flow for this purpose.

If it worked as it seemed, she should finally be all but immune to purely physical attacks, at least those around her power level.

The iron also added to her own aura in forbidding direct magical action upon her.

She still had no real defense against indirect magical attacks, but this should help with that as well.

And I can take some ideas from the other visions.

Finally, the last portion of this option was displayed for her to observe.

For no reason that Tala could discern, this version of her created a ball of iron, and rolled it out of her own aura.

Tala held her breath, but while this version of her grimaced slightly, that was all the emotion she displayed.

On the other hand, Flow almost seemed to ring like a bell, and as the last vestiges of her authority over the iron faded, a pulse of void-magics blossomed from around the metal, and the iron simply vanished rather than being given up.

That’s… that’s actually an elegant solution.

Tala instinctively knew that it had taken a quite significant amount of power to enact, making it a detriment in the heat of battle, but it was far superior to the soul-rending agony that had previously been the result of such a loss.

I think this is it. Alat?

-Yeah, I think I agree.-

With an inward smile, Tala projected, YES.

Power blossomed outward, enveloping the whole space and drawing Tala’s consciousness back to reality, the merging complete.

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