Chapter: 639 Bonus - Reforged?

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Xeel stood atop one of the eastern peaks, distractedly smiling at that moniker in his own mind. They’ll be the western peaks again in half a cycle.

Still, he didn’t let his attention wander as he kept watch over this enclave of gated humanity, senses focused in all directions even as he manipulated his magics which connected him to the Archive, ever watchful for anyone trying to reach him.

Even with his perspective flung wide, he explicitly did not look at one particular peak. The powerful man there rarely moved, and it was better that way. He had been there since before Xeel went to the Academy, and Xeel had been unable to find any who remembered a time he hadn’t been there—short sojourns excepted.

It had been mildly terrifying—then humorous—when young Master Rane had pursued the being just a few years earlier, actually seeming to force the normally dormant man to switch mountains a few times. Or was it more than a decade?

Xeel frowned, but finally shrugged it off. The difference wasn’t worth the lapse in focus.

There was an odd quality to the air that lent itself to his distraction. It was as if reality—or maybe even existence—was holding its breath.

Something was happening, and it had been building in the last days.

The Archive connections had been positively vibrating with messages exchanged and theories proffered. Almost every Defender of the Cycling Cities was on high alert. That is part of what made watching for truly urgent messages such a burden. He was used to his own connection being entirely quiet.

Master Rane came to mind once more given his wide ranging proclamation that Mistress Tala was advancing.

To Reforged already. It wasn’t an unheard of speed. Those who reached Paragon and intended to continue often did so relatively rapidly, but it was still noteworthy.

If the boy was right, his wife would become even more of an asset to humanity than she already had been.

Even if we do have to send her to the arcane lands… A passing thought flickered through his mind, and he grinned. The quiet has been pleasant, and I wonder how much better a deterrent she will be among them than I or others are here.

In truth, he was supposed to be on a break but the building… something had necessitated him coming back to active duty.

He genuinely hoped that what he sensed was simply the Reforging of another great warrior for their cause—even if he’d never felt the like with other Reforged—but it could just as easily be the Black Legion about to burst through, and the timing was just coincidental.

Or they are bursting through because of the Reforging… for some reason? He didn’t like that Mistress Tala and Master Rane’s daughter had the body of an automaton, but he had accepted that the girl wasn’t a threat and could actually be a help.

Still, there were too many things tied up with the Sappherrous family. Only time would tell whether that would end in utopia or devastation.

Stars send the former, Archons forswear the latter.

*

Jenna was on edge. Days of constant monitoring and attempted detections of the source of the building tension she felt within her soul—as much as behind her eyes—was getting to her.

I do hope it is that girl. A smile tugged at her lips at the thought.

Mistress Tala Sappherrous was an interesting person. She was clearly a result of the cultural and societal manipulations of the last centuries in how her individuality and world view had manifested, and her success was a ringing endorsement for the programs they’d painstakingly crafted. Even still, she was pushing the edges of sanity—both for herself and those around her.

The automaton daughter had nearly been the final decider, but to Jenna’s surprise, there had been absolutely no coercion within the feelings that Mistress Tala felt for the shell her daughter inhabited.

Stars bless us for that small favor.

The young Paragon had a way of skirting the edge of orthodoxy and finding new angles of advancement, advantage, and… she couldn’t think of another ‘a’ word that fit. Authority almost worked, actually, but she had been thinking of power or magic. In the end, she shrugged. Authority works well enough.

Regardless, the Paragon was apparently in the act of Reforging. That usually sent some ripples through the surrounding zeme of wherever they were, and when the girl’s alternate interface had notified them of pending advancement, they’d all braced for those ripples, but they’d never come.

The easiest explanation was the fact that Mistress Tala was advancing within her own expanded space, and that was containing the expected repercussions.

Seemingly in its place, what had been a building tremor in reality had begun to grow. It wasn’t anything so straight forward as an earthquake. Instead, it had seemingly rendered every unbound arcanous creature they could find either lethargic or frenzied, there was no in between.

Caravans had been able to adjust to the change, but there had been greater casualties. There had been no deaths beyond the expected few across the caravans each day, but injuries brought their own dangers, and the healers of the caravans that had been in communication were exhausted.

Jenna wanted to go hunt down whatever was causing the issues—be that Mistress Tala or something else—but a part of her feared it was the rise of an arcane to the south. They’d detected weaker versions of this phenomenon centuries earlier and eventually learned that someone on the other continent had been pushing up against advancement.

They’d also heard of other high level advancements both before and since, so it wasn’t something universal to such gateless advancement, but it did seem to occur… sometimes.

She hoped that wasn’t the case, as it would not only mean that there was another, more powerful arcane but that whoever it was had somehow gotten close, far closer than they wanted any such enemy to be.

Even if it would be easier, knowing what this is… It was seemingly starting to lessen, and had been for the last day or so, but it had yet to fully cease.

She had just turned back to some of her minimal administrative work when a message came through the Archive.

Mistress Tala’s Reforging was complete.

Jenna extended her senses, trying to feel if the oddities were ongoing.

They were.

She sighed. Well, that reason would have been convenient, if confusing.

The slow lessening of the odd effect hadn’t seemed to change either. So, it was as likely as not that the two were unconnected.

Nothing is ever easy… Still, she should send her congratulations, even if Alat would likely receive on Mistress Tala’s behalf. That’s good enough to be getting on with. We’ll cross paths soon. After all, the girl will need to head south sooner rather than later.

*

Jevin smiled as he got the message about Mistress Tala’s Reforging.

“Well done, girl. Well done indeed.”

Far, far overhead, his branches shivered in excitement at the uplifting of another peer. Each new Reforged advanced humanity as a whole, and it was a special joy to watch someone join him rather than surpassing him, as had been the case for far, far too long.

He wasn’t sure if she’d stop through on her way south—after all the Forest Spirit and Leshkin seemed to have a special dislike of her—but he hoped to be able to wish her congratulations in person.

A few moments later, he received an additional message, one apart from the general notice of advancement that Alat had made available to all requisite parties.

“Oh… oh, you poor girl.” His smile faded. He’d lost his own parents so long ago that he had a hard time remembering anything about them, but he knew how much the passing of a father could affect a Mage. He’d had enough students and friends go through it over the years. “This too shall pass, Mistress Tala.”

He spoke mainly for himself as he quickly composed a note of condolences. Alat would pass it on if and when appropriate.

His leaves shivered as he settled back down in his office, his human body comfortable within the room low down in his trunk. All losses of connection were difficult, even if they weren’t a true severing of reality threads, and each of the immortals who watched over gated humanity needed to keep a careful eye on their own state. It was all too easy to become too jaded, too ‘calculating’ about the deaths of others.

“Master Rane and Mistress Lea will keep her grounded, and she’ll need all the support she can get with the Major Houses.” Still, as a Reforged, she would be able to stand her ground, even if she didn’t have any support. Jevin hoped to the stars that the House of Blood honored their agreements.

If they did, this might just be the start of a golden age.

“And all it took was the suffering of one young woman…” He had discussed it with Mistress Tala, and she said that she wouldn’t change what had happened to her even if she could. Jevin appreciated the sentiment, but it was still hard to countenance. Too many had suffered already.

Now?

Maybe, just maybe that suffering could be mitigated for coming generations.

*

Holly glanced up from the archive slate she was working on, her eyes flicking over the missive. “Good girl. About time you realized the masterpiece you had, ready and waiting, at your fingertips.”

She felt the shifts in her own power, her own authority, even as she returned to work as, yet again, her dominion over gated inscriptions was affirmed.

If she were gateless, she’d have long since been Hallowed, if not the Sovereign, of inscriptions, but her gated nature suppressed that path of advancement, making it more difficult, less impactful.

Something tickled the edge of her awareness, an arcane trying to slip across the border far to the east. With a flaring of inscriptions and a resonating of magics in that far area of their border, the little Revered was seized and their power quieted before they were flung bodily a few dozen miles away.

They’ll survive. Her methods of defending humanity were less… final than Master Xeel’s, and as such, there were often more attempted incursions to deal with, but she lacked the power to act with lethal results against opponents of consequence, at least at these distances. She also lacked the ability to travel at even close to the boy’s speeds. No, until she advanced again, this would have to do. If the others had a problem with her results, they could take her off the rotation.

Still… For what seemed the millionth time, she considered if her Transcendence would be stepping from one form of advancement to another, but it still felt like that path would be a cheapening of her own power.

No, she would persist. She would walk the dual road of magic and authority.

A smile graced her lips, unbidden, as she worked. She would not deviate. After all, at long last, she had a fellow truly walking the two paths as well.

It might just be time to have a frank chat with the girl. Though, I imagine that the fox will use this to his advantage before we meet again.

That potential was of no consequence. Lisa’s path was not contrary to Mistress Tala, Holly herself, or humanity as a whole. Thus, Holly didn’t see an issue if he used this to take a step forward.

After all, that would be rather hypocritical of me.

*

Master Hori took a long drink of his tea, staring out the window near the top of his teahouse.

Below, his family was busily going about their day, serving customers and living life as they desired, exactly as he hoped and wished for each of them.

He felt his whole body relaxing as the last of his workings faded into the zeme around Marliweather.

That girl had been… overt in her advancement, and with so many gateless eyes on gated humanity of late, he hadn’t been willing to have her exposed, even if he didn’t fully understand what had happened.

Something odd had accompanied her Reforging, and it had sent his fellows into a tizzy. He did regret being unable to inform them that he knew of the source, but as he was actively obscuring the girl, anything spreading knowledge of her—especially on a conceptual level—would have weakened his working.

He didn’t have a good understanding of conceptual magics from the casting side, but after centuries of clashing with arcanes, he understood some of the important points of countering them.

“Be well, Mistress Tala. I do hope that whatever oddities you experienced are to your good.” He lifted his teacup in salute in the direction he could still feel her. “May blessings follow wherever you go and come from all that you do.”

*

Master Pierce grunted as his Archive connection pinged, distracting him momentarily from his stellar observations.

“It’s not enough that the Doman-Imithe is distorting my view more and more of late, but now this?” He grumbled, deciding to pull up the message before it led to more distraction. “Oh, she succeeded? Good for her.”

He then turned back to the observational magics that he’d painstakingly created, muttering to himself.

“I hope that whatever is disturbing the Doman-Imithe is alive, because sooner or later, I’m going to kill it.” He grimaced, grumbling to himself. “Mess with my readings, will you.”

The Reforged executed an intensely complicated twist of magic to finally, finally fully stabilize the image before nodding to himself.

“There, now two wonderful things have been accomplished today. If only I can find that star again…”

*

Master Nadro’s meditative state didn’t fluctuate in the slightest as he read the missives about Mistress Tala. He celebrated with her at the advancement and felt the weight of her loss in equal measure.

Humanity had gained an even more powerful champion, and she had suffered a grievous loss.

With a thought, he let Alat know that he would be available, should they wish to talk.

She responded almost instantly, thanking him for his offer, and letting him know that she would be in touch.

That was enough for him.

With no further concerns on his plate, he sunk deeper into meditation once more, his every breath, his every heartbeat, his every thought under perfect control.

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