Chapter: 440 - Prepare for the Days to Come (Patreon)

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Tala stood before the armorers with a bit of quiet sadness. “You’re sure?”

Master Armach nodded. “Yes, Mistress Tala. No matter how we approach it, your armor works better if you only implement ablative plates at need, interposing them in between yourself and incoming attacks. Otherwise, they are unnecessary complexity that actually work less well in many scenarios.”

She and Alat were reviewing their tests and analyses, and she had to agree with the man. “I do appreciate the extensiveness of the tests.”

He smiled wanly. “We know how much you liked your current structure. So, we attempted to find a way of keeping as close to it as possible.”

“It just wasn’t possible.” She sighed, nodding in understanding. It did make sense, now that she really considered it. Ablative armor was best for dealing with long-range, burst damage, the exact type of attack that she was rather likely to see coming, all things considered.

“We do recommend that you become practiced at building your lattice, ablative armor plates quickly. That will let it be the most useful. In fact, doing so over a shield would be ideal, as it would give a strong backing and help shirk off some of the damage… assuming it was a properly designed and constructed shield.”

She nodded again. “Alright. Now, let’s go over what you all have come up with.”

The next hours passed both quickly—in that they were incredibly full—and slowly—because it was very minute, focused work.

Tala ended up with thick white steel armor with a interconnected network of iron within. In that way, she could aspect mirror Flow’s resilience onto the iron at need, while relying on the white steel in most cases. Beneath it, her padding was made of the wolf fur that she’d absorbed from the Anatalin. As to looks, it was reminiscent of mundane full-plate,. In her case, however, there weren’t really joints as the metal could flow with essentially no resistance or restriction when she had power flowing through it.

Indeed, that was the trick. She had to keep her elk leathers filled with enough power that the extruded—but still connected—white steel armor would move exactly as she wished and expected. This allowed it to bend and flex without any inhibition of her movements while remaining utterly ridged against attacks of any kind.

Another thing that had taken so long—and indeed took the greatest portion of the time that day—was the understanding of what should happen to each joint, should any given part be hit while she was trying to move it.

Each joint responded differently, and in different ways depending on the angle and severity of the hit, not to mention what portion of the joint took the hit.

The end result was amazing.

She looked to have been dipped in the white metal, entirely hidden and sheltered within, as she obviously didn’t need eye slits or breathing holes. At the moment, she was also keeping her through-spike illusions suppressed for ease of observation by the armorers working with her.

When she moved, the metal seamlessly flowed along with the movement. It was only when one of the assistants struck her that the armor looked any different. At the moment of the hit, the white steel would take on an aspect like plate armor with interlocking pieces that allowed easy movement while maintaining protection designed specifically to excel against the particular attack which triggered the reaction.

The protection would be slightly less than the more liquid-seeming form, but as each configuration was designed for the specific hit, it should never suffer from that weakness from singular attacks. Where it could become an issue was if an opponent was able to attack intelligently twice at the same time, or if a group of enemies were able to coordinate sufficiently to create openings, but that was the weakness of basically any defense.

She had easily memorized the required structures down to the molecular level for each joint in each defensive arrangement. The main issue had come in gaining at least the basic level of training to force her will to enact the memorized structures without conscious thought.

Alat helped some with that, but they didn’t want her to have to consciously be involved either.

It took some time, but finally, they were all satisfied that she had achieved a basic level of proficiency with at least the most common responsive structures. More would simply take time and training.

With that accomplished, Tala really focused on herself and how her new armor actually looked.

In all honestly, now that she’d taken the time to really look, Tala marveled at herself from her external perspectives.

She still looked vaguely feminine, but only just so. She still had two arms, two legs, and a featureless head, but otherwise, she looked utterly inhuman.

Her fingers melded together when close together, only pulling apart to be separately armored at need. Her feet were thickly sheathed as part of the rest of the protection.

She also felt like she looked a bit too… sterile, a bit too like an unfinished doll. Or an automata…

-Here, this is something they suggested for that.- Alat pulled up some of the ancillary notes for improvements or optional features that the armorers had put together while testing the other facets of her complete armor.

Oh! I like that. Tala pulled some of her iron dust to the superficial, embedding it uniformly across the surface of the white steel until the whole thing looked gray. That made the armor a bit less blinding white, but otherwise, it wasn’t much better. She still didn’t like the uniformity.

For fun, she shifted the iron into the spellform that she’d worked out for lining her artificial lungs—the one that imbued the air affected with dissolution magics. These would obviously not have that effect, unfortunately. With the lines being composed of solid iron, they wouldn’t be able to be used for anything—and being on a humanoid shape instead of a near perfect sphere, they didn’t mesh quite correctly to be functional even if they had been otherwise usable—regardless, the end result looked far more polished than the uniform white or gray had previously.

To add to that, she followed another suggestion from the armorers and lined the inside with a thin layer of iron between the wolf-fur lining and her skin. It was odd to not have anything underneath the armor—given the lining was attached to the metal more than her—but as the armor was her elk leathers, it could hardly be considered going naked.

Now, she had iron between the two, so she was really not naked. She felt the expected pressure of power building within and actually took comfort from the feeling. It really has been too long.

Shortly thereafter, manifestations of her natural magics blossomed into being just away from the surface of the armor. Just as usual, they weren’t spellforms per se. Instead, they were simply existence itself bending to acknowledge the weight of her magics.

As stunning as the effect was—and as much as it could intimidate many a lesser opponent—Tala was now aware of just how much it could harm her against any who were more intelligent and knowledgeable of magical lines.

A sufficiently knowledgeable opponent could read her manifested spell-lines like a book and choose how to attack her based on what was learned.

The Anatalins certainly could. She still occasionally got twinges—the feeling of teeth clamping down on her—but she dismissed it as usual, putting it out of her mind before the feelings had fully manifested.

Still, most of the time, allowing the manifestation would work quite well—it would certainly let her get back to increasing her density at a greater rate—and with the iron spell-line like embellishments on the surface of the armor itself, it was actually somewhat hard to pick out the specifics.

In fact… do you see that?

-I do, yeah.-

Wherever the light-like manifested lines came near the iron interweavings, the light altered, not quite blurring, but definitely reacting to the magic-reflecting iron between them and the inscriptions and natural magics that caused them.

Did I just make a scrambler for my magical manifestations?

-You just might have.-

Tala flagged down Master Armach and asked him about it.

That started a flurry of activity as the various Archons scanned her with their Archive slates and tried to deduce her magics based on what they could detect.

Finally, the head Constructionist had to concede. “I cannot make heads or tails of your magics based on the manifestations shown. You should be safe to use it in this form.” He chuckled. “Even with your full schema already in the Archive for us to compare to, we can’t quickly make a model that connects that to what we’re picking up around you.”

Tala grinned within her helmet, before once more creating her voice in the air outside, “That, Master Armach, is excellent news.”

  *

That summer passed quickly and fall came in a flurry of leaves and more of the same duties, tasks, training, and time spent with the same people.

With her next brother’s twelfth birthday coming up, Tala and Rane were going up to Marliweather to see Osip.

When she’d said she was going, Rane had initially wished her well, but easily agreed to accompany her when she invited him specifically.

She was of two minds in that regard. At first, she’d taken his coming along as a given, and she was a bit miffed that he hadn’t seen it that way. But as she considered it longer, she had realized that she actually appreciated that he hadn’t assumed he was invited. Additionally, she appreciated that he had been willing to give her space if she had wanted it and wouldn’t have forced her to figure out how to tell him not to come, if that had been her desire.

Regardless, they and Terry would be making the trip, hopefully to arrive a couple of days before Osip’s birthday. That way, they wouldn’t be just dropping through to wave goodbye to him at the teleporter, assuming he chose to go to the Academy.

Taking the time off as Defenders was easy enough, and with Master Simon and Brandon’s work—alongside Alat’s—arranging for Irondale’s movements was essentially a non-issue for Tala.

When the day arrived, she collected Irondale without any fanfare. No one was trying to enter or leave, and there were even gates closed across the entrance within the expanded space to enforce the end of ingress and egress.

Well, that’s rather clever. It makes this whole thing almost pleasant.

-We aim to please.-

Tala, Terry, and Rane took off through the Wilds in what was becoming an incredibly familiar route, and they crossed it faster than ever, pushing the edge of magical resonance and not stopping for meals—or even for the night—as they had in the past.

Rane was tantalizingly close to being able to apply kinetic energy to himself without a true ‘solid’ backing, but he still did have to come down between long leaps for the moment.

Tala found that her newly enhanced surface area expansion scripts were able to be augmented with extra power to the point that she could push off of the air itself. It created breezes behind her with every powerful push, but that really wasn’t an issue.

-You could probably ‘stair step’ up pretty high, before the air thinned out too much. Even then, it would only taking a lightening of your personal gravity to go higher.-

Tala had grunted at that. Maybe one day. I think there’s enough on Zeme to be getting on with at the moment.

The three of them planned to stop through Bandfast for a few hours the following day, and they did end up arriving and opening the doors to Irondale just after noon.

They grabbed a late lunch with Lyn and Kannis. Afterwards, they dropped through the Library, where Tala gave Mistress Ingrit a small cube of the white steel as an extra thank you for all that the Librarian was doing for her.

Mistress Ingrit was touched by the gift, and she even began playing with the gift as Tala, Rane, and Terry were leaving. As expected, the older woman quickly got the knack of it, and even before Tala lost sight of her with her threefold sight, Mistress Ingrit was making complex, interweaving shapes with the bit of magic-malleable material.

The three travelers swung by Lisa’s store and found it locked so they left him be undisturbed on this trip.

All told, they were only in Bandfast for a few hours, departing before sunset without issue. Once again, Irondale had closed its gates in preparation for Tala’s collection of the expanded space and so it cost her essentially no time to collect the growing village for transport.

She was informed that they’d increased the population by about fifty people—gateless all—who had applied for citizenship the last time that Irondale had been in Bandfast. Since that time of application, the applicants had been vetted by those working for Tala, and only those who seemed to be able to contribute positively to the small, growing community were invited to join.

It was all rather fascinating, but Tala’s favorite part was the fact that she didn’t have to be involved at all. Her little experiment grew on its own.

-You know, some people just get fish in a bowl.-

Some rich people. I don’t have time for that.

-...says the woman with a town to poke at. Don’t tap on the glass, Tala, it scares the people within.-

Tala huffed an internal laugh at that, but otherwise let the topic drop.

Their trip up to Marliweather from Bandfast was across even more familiar terrain due to how many caravan trips Tala had taken between the two cities, acting as both Mage Protector and the Dimensional Mage at the time.

The trio moved so quickly that Terry barely had time to hunt along the way. That, unfortunately, made him a bit grumpy, but when they were passing a small herd of cloud hinds, Tala and Rane stopped for a voluntary snack while Terry had some fun getting a snack of his own.

The herd did not have fun, but since there was no herd when he was done, there was no one—sapient or not—to complain about it, so it hardly mattered… Right?

I’m sure it’s fine.

-Yeah. Terry is Terry. It’s not like he leaves the bodies about to rot. He eats them whole. Nothing goes to waste.-

Yeah… She didn’t focus on it overly much. There were plenty of deer in the world, and Terry hadn’t made them suffer.

They arrived in Marliweather near sunset the day after they had left Bandfast, having traveled straight through the night yet again, simply because they could.

As Alat had been in communication with the city administrators about the deployment of Irondale, Tala’s group found that they were expected and greeted at the gates when they arrived.

After the greeting, the guards gave them simple directions, even if Tala didn’t need them because Alat had easy access to a precise map with the location marked on it in the Archive. Even so, Tala thanked the guards, and the three of them moved to the designated place.

By that point, Terry was curled up on Tala’s shoulder, tucked in with his eyes closed since they were within the city.

When they got to the designated wall, Tala was grateful to not have the same large potential audience that she’d had in Bandfast for the first opening of Irondale. As it was a somewhat chilly fall evening, there weren’t as many people about to witness the act. She was not going to dither enough for that to change.

She was also excited because she no longer had to put up signs once the opening was in place as Irondale had taken care of that themselves. They even had a countdown timer as to how long they were estimated to be in a given place and a projected itinerary.

Everything was clearly laid out in a rather easy-to-read setup. It was becoming rather well run, if Tala did say so herself.

And not a bit of it requires my involvement.

-Yup. You are quite the benevolent, ambivalent dictator.-

That I am. Tala smiled broadly even as Irondale’s gates swung open, allowing those within to spill out, going about their pre-planned activities. Even with Irondale projected to be in Marliweather for a few days, the folk were already learning to get what they needed done fast in case plans changed.

Not that Tala had had to force a change in plan… not yet.

-No, you just emphasize that you could whenever you talk with anyone about upcoming events.- Alat then projected the feeling of a mischievous grin. -And I do the same, so we project a good, unified front.-

Tala smiled at that, causing Rane to give her a questioning look. She briefly explained, and he chuckled at the idea.

Terry shook himself then, and flickered to her waist, their standard means for him to ask to go into her sanctum. It took barely a thought for her to open a coin-sized portal into Kit and Terry flickered in.

I do wonder why?

Alat sent a feeling of incredulity but didn’t provide any insight.

Regardless, Tala and Rane found a place to eat dinner together—just the two of them—a place to just be. Even though they took time together in Alefast, it was almost always doing something.

It was nice to not have any task that needed doing in the moment.

Still, Tala was marginally stressed about the following days with her siblings, and Rane was nervous to interact with them for the first time since he and Tala had started courting. That was a damper on the generally good feelings of the time together.

They had gotten a private dining room with a good view over the city and they used that privacy and vantage as the setting to talk late into the night. Thankfully, the restaurant catered to Refined. So, the place was open twenty-four hours a day, otherwise Tala and Rane would have had to cut their chat short.

As to what they discussed? They talked about small things, reminiscences, and even nothing at all.

In the end, it was exactly what Tala needed in order to prepare for the days to come.

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