Chapter: 243 - Ask an Expert (Patreon)

<Contains content which may be considered grimdark>
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Tala had to call back the servants four times to get more food. After all, the fight, specifically with the drake, had left her reserves in dire need of a refill.

In truth, the only reason it was limited to four requests for more was that Meallain had intervened, simply telling the servants to keep Tala’s portion of the table filled with a variety of foods until Tala requested a stop to the meal.

Tala’s gratitude toward the woman grew, as did her mixed feelings. Yeah, I really don’t want to fight her.

-And that has nothing to do with her power.-

Of course, it has to do with her power. No one wants someone they like to punch them in the face. It ruins the otherwise genial feelings.

Alat snorted a laugh within Tala’s head. -Truer words have rarely been spoken.-

Once the others had finished, despite eating much more slowly, Tala decided to ask an expert about something that had been unclear to her. “Eskau Meallain?”

“Yes?” The elvin woman was enjoying a cup of tea and seeming to have been lost in internal contemplation.

“How does the Doman-Imithe, Zeme, and the next world, the source of magic, work? I must admit, even the existence of the Doman-Imithe is new to me, and so I’m not really clear on…”—she gestured around herself, indicating the world-fragment they sat within—“how all this works.”

Gallof’s eyes widened, then looked back and forth between Tala and Meallain, but didn’t say anything.

Meallain simply smiled. “I would be forced to give young Be quite the thrashing if you had known, so don’t feel bad for asking.”

Thron and Gallof both seemed to be almost holding their breaths.

The older Eskau quirked a smile. “Stop trying to act small, you two. It’s embarrassing. You can listen as adjuncts to a Pillar and Eskau. Everyone in this dinning hall already knows this, if they’ve ever cared to ask, so there’s no concern about that either.”

“What of the servants?”

“They are all irreconcilably bound to the house and to discretion.”

Tala had no idea exactly how that would be accomplished, but she really didn’t want to change the subject. Because of that, she simply picked up another bit of food and began eating it as the elf gave the explanation.

“The long and short of it is rather simple. Our planet was broken, and all was thrown towards the next world in a very literal sense. The very planet dying. Some very powerful workings were cobbled together in the last moments, and Zeme was formed from the fragments, at least most of them. But, Zeme wasn’t…right. It had been dead. Our entire world could be considered undead, by the loosest definitions, but that’s beside the point.”

What now?

-Say what?-

“The point being, the physicality of our planet was scattered through the dimensions of magic. The greatest concentration is here.” She hesitated, then laughed. “Well, not here, outside of this hold: the world we call Zeme.”

Okay… I think I follow that at least.

“The world your gate and our founts access, the ‘source of magic’ as you called it, is underneath Zeme, underpinning it. It is stable, and the literal foundation of reality everywhere. It is the source of stability in the physical world, which is why magic attempts to act as a stabilizing force, generally speaking, but that is also tangential to the current topic.”

-Alright, this tracks so far.-

Shush, you. I’m trying to listen.

“As the source is underneath, Doman-Imithe is on top of Zeme, for lack of a better description. It is a wasteland of planetary fragments, wild magics—some of which could make a Hallowed quail, and beasts older than Zeme itself.”

“Void beasts?”

“Hmmm? Oh, no. The void is…” Meallain scrunched up her face. “The void isn’t part of this discussion, but I will say that, to continue this analogy, the void is above Doman-Imithe, though that is a nearly entirely deceiving analogy. When our world broke apart, part fell towards the next world, dying, and part was pulled towards the void, also dying but in a different way.”

“So, Zeme is closer to the source of magic than it should be, and Doman-Imithe is closer to the void?”

“As a high-level concept? Sure. It’s more like an odd triangle projected into a fourth dimension of randomly alternatingly compressed and expanded existence, but I could also make any string of words into a relevant analogy to the void because it is chaos, just as the ‘next world’ is order.” She grimaced again. “Incredibly loosely speaking, but not actually. But, you’ve gotten me off topic.”

“I apologize.” Tala felt a bit of a headache building as she tried to grasp what the woman was saying.

Meallain waved her off. “No apologies are needed for curiosity. So, the final part of this, which is the real skull twister, is: Which is ‘reality?’”

“What do you mean?”

“Is the Doman-Imithe real? Or is Zeme?”

Tala frowned. “I don’t understand. Aren’t they both real?”

“Well, yes, in most senses. I suppose a better question, which I did try to ask, would be: Which is aligned with reality?”

“Oh. Ummm…Wouldn’t it be Zeme?”

“We’d hope so, but no.”

She blinked. “What?”

-What?-

“If you leave our planet, even only traveling as far as the moon, you pass out of disrupted reality, and beyond the patchwork creation that we call Zeme. Out there, there is only one existence.” The elf laughed. “Ironically, it is real, it has magic, and it is a void, all at the same time, but each of those have different connotations out there, and I’m getting off topic again.”

Tala shook her head, trying to clear it as she frowned. “I… I don’t think I understand.”

“It’s a little joke, and I’m not going to explain it. You might discover for yourself one day. Then, you can look back on this conversation and chuckle.” She shrugged. “But that’s beside the point. Once you get out that far, if you turn back, what do you think you see?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Wise answer. You see the Doman-Imithe: a broken planet that has been decimated by magic, time, the void, and creatures outside of our comprehension.”

Tala’s eyes widened as something clicked into place for her. No human who has left the planet has ever come back. “What if you try to return?”

“Then, you are in the Doman-Imithe. Unless you know how to travel through it, and leave it to enter Zeme, you will never come back to what we know as our world.”

And there it was. Someone has to know this.

-Among humanity? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll add it to the list of things we’ll share first.-

Tala knew that the implications were uncountable, but at the moment, she was in a state of information overload. “Umm…thank you… thank you for telling me all of this.”

“Of course. It is something that must be known at some point, though it doesn’t really affect us very often.”

“So…How does one get back from Doman-Imithe?”

Meallain frowned. “Why would you need to know that?”

“I deal with gravity, and so, there’s a non-zero chance that I will eventually, somehow, end up flung beyond our planet.”

Thron choked a laugh into his tankard and started coughing.

Tala closed her eyes and took a calming breath, suppressing her mix of mirth and irritation. I’m the one who said it. Him agreeing shouldn't be that insulting…

When Tala opened her eyes again, she saw that Meallain was suppressing a smile.

“It seems like you and I might need to spar some time, Eskau. As to your question? That’s not for me to say. Not yet at any rate.”

Spar…her? Tala felt a bit of a thrill. She could wipe the floor with me, normally. I wonder how she’ll handicap herself for the fight.

Tala found out less than half an hour later: Meallain didn’t.

Be-thric and Thron had gone off to take care of various tasks, and Gallof had come with the two Eskau to the training arena. Apparently, he had to call the start to their first fight, then he would be on his way as well.

He had done just that.

Tala groaned as she lay on the ground, waiting for all four of her limbs to regrow. She apparently did that more slowly when they all needed to be regenerated at the same time. Her toughened body had meant nothing before the Eskau’s power.

I didn’t even see her move.

-Well…you actually did. See?-

Alat replayed the memory from less than ten seconds earlier.

Gallof called, “Fight!”

Meallain’s hand lifted, seemingly in slow motion, while Tala was frozen.

In reality, the elf had moved so quickly that it was less than one of Tala’s racing heartbeats between the call to begin the fight and the attack landing.

As for the attack, Meallain’s gauntlet, or more accurately the protian weapon overlaying the gauntlet, sprouted four blade-whips, each moving independently but in tandem.

The cuts had been so clean that Tala had not even felt a twinge of pain until her limbless torso hit the ground.

The replay of memory ended, and Tala grimaced, though that was more at the shocking pain than the unpleasant memory. Yeah, I didn’t need to see that.

-Really? I think it was quite informative. Additionally, it distracted you for a bit from the agony, didn’t it?-

Tala just grit her teeth before opening her eyes again as someone approached.

Meallain stood over her, smiling down in sympathy. “Apologies, Eskau. Ranking and betting is only allowed upon the first fight between Eskau, unless they both agree otherwise, or the previous loser has advanced significantly. If I were to have leveled the playing field our first time around, it could have had…implications.”

Tala managed to respond around the pain and tingling of regrowing limbs, “So you said.”

“We can have a…productive match, now.” As she stood over Tala, Meallain shed her armor, the plates simply seeming to fade away.

That sharpened Tala’s focus. “What? How did you do that?”

Meallain grinned. “Magics to allow my armor to become insubstantial at will. Costly to use, when not in our hold, but useful in allowing me to be battle ready at all times without the encumbrance, if I so wish.”

“Then, why eat in the armor?” Tala sat up, her arms and legs back in place and her clothing regrown atop them. They still itched and tingled. And my reserves are down again.

-You could always eat the limbs? Recover the reserves directly.-

Tala fought the urge to gag, even though she knew that she couldn’t actually vomit.

Meallain shrugged, helping Tala stand. “It is a good habit to show strength at all times, and it builds familiarity and dexterity. Every edge is useful. There are Eskau of other Houses that I’d not like to fall behind.”

That…was a terrifying thought.

-Yeah…let’s avoid them.-

Agreed.

Tala took a moment to take in the woman’s outfit, the clothing that she’d been wearing under the armor.

Meallain wore quilted, form-fitting pants of a ruby-red linen.

On her torso was a similarly quilted, black gambeson that hung down to just above her knees. It fit her perfectly, not in the sense of hugging her curves, but in fitting her so that it wouldn’t pull or bunch in ways that restricted her movements.

Like a Mage’s clothing.

-Like the clothing of anyone who has to move, and where perfection is the goal.-

That’s fair.

-And, she obviously will have magics, probably even inscriptions.-

You’re probably right. Those are less common among arcanes, as they don’t seem to need them the way humans do, but they are still pervasive.

Still, Tala had questions, “Wouldn’t the armor just slow you down? I understand it’s protective, but is it protective enough to justify the increased hits you certainly take because you wear it?”

The elf grinned. “It has no inertia in respect to me and my movements, nor a transfer of any force to me from its own movements, unless I so allow.”

Tala’s eyes widened. As she thought about it, there would be few magics more useful on heavy armor for an agility-based fighter.

“I see you understand the utility. I do quite like it. Plus, it throws people off. They expect me to be slow, or at least slower.” She shrugged. “Its fun to disabuse the onlookers of that notion.”

“Not the person themselves?”

“The dead can’t change their point of view.”

Oh…right.

-She’s just a bit terrifying, but in an utterly different way than Pallaun. Huh. Do you think…?-

No. Pallaun would wipe the floor with her.

-Yeah, that was my impression too.- Alat seemed to consider. -Why is he serving Sanguis, then? Or, more to the point, why isn’t Sanguis more prominent or powerful?-

Politics?

-Must be…-

Or something else. It’s not like we understand the inner workings of the House, even though we’re ostensibly part of the governing structure.

-Eh, they seem to like to educate us when it’s important, and not before.-

So, it seems. Though, some of that likely depends on when we ask.

-True enough.-

“So, Eskau Tali. Are you ready?”

Tala looked her way and froze. To her mage-sight, Meallain now matched her in power exactly, meaning the elvin woman now sat halfway between orange and yellow. At the same time, a ring on her finger that hadn’t been there before radiated blue power.

Wait… Tala looked closer.

There was no ring, at least not physically. Instead, it was simply a tightly controlled loop of power, held outside the arcane, around her finger.

-That…that is impressive control.-

To say the least.

Tala swallowed. “I suppose so, yeah.”

Meallain moved.

Tala couldn’t think, she couldn’t really register the woman’s attacks, she could only let her instinct take control.

An oddly resonant gong sounded with each clash of the protian weapon against Flow.

Tala used her weapon more fluidly than she ever had before.

After exchanging an uncounted number of strikes and counterstrikes without any solid hits landed, Meallain began to move towards her, causing Tala to realize that the woman hadn’t been moving her feet. Oh… that’s not good.

Tala strove to keep her back, Flow clashing with the protian weapon as each took various forms.

Glaive countered spear, then greatsword.

Sword countered longsword, then shortsword.

Knife countered dirk, then chain.

That failed spectacularly.

The blocked chain simply continued its trajectory, wrapping around Tala, seeking to entangle her.

Tala growled, Flow being a void-knife that severed the protian weapon.

The entire length of chain beyond the cut fell to the ground in a splash of blood.

Meallain struck out, hitting Tala in the chest and driving her backwards.

“There it is! Now, let’s get serious.”

On the positive side, Tala found that she was both stronger and faster than the elf, at least with their internal powers roughly equivalent. Additionally, Tala never lost another limb, though she took an alarming number of wounds.

It had been a long time since her healing had been so thoroughly strained.

The number became a bit embarrassing as Tala knew that her armor had actually stopped the majority of the strikes, which got past her guard.

Needless to say, Tala lost every bout. She wasn’t able to even land a hit on the woman.

True, she didn’t use her tungsten spheres, but Meallain didn’t use any other magics either, and Tala was losing badly enough as it was. She didn’t wish to add another aspect in which she could be overcome.

The sun was setting when Meallain helped Tala up for the last time. “Well done!”

Tala laughed humorlessly. “Hardly. You utterly outclass me.”

“I should, with millennia of experience.”

She paused at that. Yeah, that makes sense. Her movements were perfect. Every action exactly what it needed to be.

“For a youngling? You’re fantastic. In a couple of hundred years, you’re going to be a terror to the other Houses.”

“And until then, I’m going to be rather easy to kill for anyone of note.”

“What? No. No one of worth or power would stoop to killing younglings.”

Tala grunted. That makes sense, I suppose.

As she considered, she was of three minds. On one hand, that seemed like so long. On the other, it was really no time at all in the grand scheme of things. And regardless of both of those, she wouldn’t be here, then.

She found that the thought of it made her a bit sad.

These people strove for excellence, just as she did.

They did what they believed was right, even though she fundamentally disagreed with that definition.

The House of Blood was actually quite well arranged, with members and even servants benefitting from the setup.

Doesn’t change the fact that they kidnapped me.

-Yeah…that’ll never be great. All of this is built on that foundation.-

Yeah…But, I can’t help but feel that if I could shift their understanding, just a bit, they could be stalwart allies to humanity.

-And if you could change the perspective of a wolf, he would be a great boon to the sheep.-

That’s why sheep dogs are so fantastic, right?

-And that took millennia of directed and selective breeding.- Alat paused for a moment, seeming to consider. -That’s an interesting idea, actually.-

Tala sent a glare towards the alternate interface.

Meallain clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t look so down. While the Pillars spend all day tomorrow in their stuffy meetings, you and I will train.”

There was a mischievous glint in the elf’s eye.

“And if my understanding of your magics is accurate, you are in need of much food, once again. Yes?”

“That’s true.”

“Is your sanctum producing yet?”

“It is.”

“Good! Good. We’ll find a place to set up your entrance, and I’ll procure a few cooks for you.” She hesitated. “You do have a kitchen up and running, right?”

“I do.”

“Good, good.” She nodded to herself, seemingly already lost in thought.

Tala glanced towards the setting sun, then frowned. “That’s not a magical construct.”

“Hmm? Oh, no, it’s not.”

“Then… what is it?”

“It’s the sun.”

Tala frowned. “But it was night outside when we arrived.”

“It was.”

“So…if that’s the sun, how?”

“Oh, why are the time-zones not aligned?”

“Yes.”

“Well, because this fragment comes from a different place on the original world. What you see up there is an echo of how things should be, it is the sun, but it’s not really there. If you tried to fly to it by any means, you would simply be cast into the Doman-Imithe…” She frowned. “Probably. There’s actually a reasonable chance that you’d end up in the void…”

The woman grunted.

“Don’t try to leave the world-fragment, except via the door.”

“Understood.”

“Come on. Let’s find your adjunct and a place for your sanctum.”

Tala sighed, considering. “He’s probably in the library if you have one.”

“If we have one?” The elf gave her a bemused look. “You’re joking, right?”

“No. I just thought you all might have it elsewhere, to not take up space in the fragment.”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense. So, he’ll be there?”

“Probably. He’s a rather voracious reader.”

“Ahh, one of those? I thought I liked him.”

She laughed. “He is pretty knowledgeable, yeah.”

“Well, then. Shall we head to the library? We’ll have to be careful crossing the sand.”

Tala frowned. “What?” What on earth do they keep in the sand that we need to be careful of?

“Sand.” Meallain pointed. “The sand training yard is between us and the library, and you’re a bit…sweaty. We wouldn’t want to track in sand.”

“Oh…right.” She stepped to the side. “One moment.”

Tala aspect mirrored the elk-leather’s self-cleaning and hopped in place.

Sweat and grime fell off of her in a wave, splashing just a bit when it hit the hard ground. Tala had chosen the stone training area because it was what she was used to of late. Maybe, we’ll use the sand next time.

Meallain cocked her head to the side. “That was…effective. A bit odd? But effective.”

“Yeah.” Tala kept herself from apologizing, but only just. Tali wouldn’t have apologized…

The elf huffed a laugh, clearly seeing at least some of Tala’s feelings. “It’s fine, Eskau Tali. This is a training arena. No one’s going to complain about a bit of grime.”

Tala nodded, sighing. “True enough. Shall we go?”

“Yes. After you.”

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