Chapter: 450 Bonus - Mistress (Cethira) (Patreon)

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Cethira sighed internally, moving to go. She’d wasted more time than she really had already, and she was going to have to take even more time to recover, and level out her roiling magics.

But that’s when Mistress Tala laughed a deep, resonant laugh.

Cethira hesitated, a feeling of uncertainty making her wait to hear what Mistress Tala had to say.

The woman was good at projecting her voice outside of the metal suit that made her look like a construct. If Cethira weren’t looking with her own eyes, she would have sworn that the laughter was natural.

Mistress Tala’s words made the thoughts of praise die in Cethira’s mind, however, “What makes you think I will let you leave?”

Cethira gave a half-smile at the posturing, feeling relief at the simple words. “Mistress Tala, it has been a long time since I cared what others let me do. I honor my agreements and obligations because I choose to. Don’t mistake our positions. You are powerful, but even your Paragons do not command me. I do hope our paths cross again, when we both have more time.”

Based on what she’d seen in the fight, Mistress Tala had some means of seeing through things to what lay beneath. Because of that, a portion of this next part would be tricky.

Her Ruam lent power through her dimensional inscriptions, easily making her be more than a hundred yards away in a blink without having to cross the intervening distance.

It was a ridiculously useful means of movement, but it was limited to short range, and was straining to do too frequently.

But she was away, and that was the first part, which brought her to the tricky bit. With Ruam still fully active, she pulled those scripts a half-step out of sync with her manifested body, while aligning her Aerth gate and magics to interlace properly with Ruam in the right way.

The result was truly spectacular. Ruam and Aerth wove together to add both illusion and dimensional bridging over and throughout her entire being, not just creating a shell to deceive a casual glance.

There, now no matter what that woman can see, it will only be what I wish: nothing.

It was incredibly straining to hold the unified melding, and it strained the Ruam scripts most of all, because those were holding the two sets of natural magics in variable, interleaving, dimensional half-steps.

Still, it was sufficient for her to make good her departure.

She couldn’t dimensionally hop out, that would be too much for Ruam while maintaining the cover, but she was able to use Aerth a bit more to slowly fly away. She went as slow as she did because she did not wish to create any overt wind currents, just in case Mistress Tala was that observant, or used air magic of some sort to perceive the world around her.

Whatever the methods used, Mistress Tala didn’t seem to see Cethira as she left, and once she was more than five miles away, she allowed her magics to drop, speeding up to put another ten miles between them before touching down to the ground and dropping into a seated position.

She allowed Ruam and Aerth to fade from prevalence as she drew Kliro’s gate forward, running her healing through her body and spirit, fixing the stress-damage that she’d wrought on herself through the fight and subsequent departure.

She’d likely been a bit paranoid, but it was better to be a bit wasteful and alive than facetious and dead.

She spoke out loud, then, “Thank you, Ruam, Aerth, Kliro. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

The gates within her, bound to her, tied to her by links that were still beyond her comprehension, seemed to pulse with warmth at her words.

The feelings she got from Ruam made her want to turn and sprint back into the fight, but Aerth and Kliro were in agreement with Cethira. Withdrawing had been the right thing to do.

She felt like she could have pulled out a victory, but it wouldn’t have been worth it in the end.

Still, by her agreements, she had another task that she had to do.

Sighing, she pulled out an Archive slate and made a full report on Mistress Tala and what she’d seemed to be able to perceive.

This is why I’m only allowed in Audel… She represented too many secrets—too many taboos—for her to be welcome in ‘polite’ society.

Such was the legacy of her maker.

She grimaced, the very act of having to report the interaction reminding her of the woman, even if she had been taken, removed from Cethira’s life so long ago.

A Paragon should have known better, she should have been better, but she’d apparently been broken. From that place of brokenness, she’d broken others.

In the beginning, there had been many like Cethira, subjects of a crazy Paragon’s experiments, but even before the woman was found out—captured and imprisoned—most of those like Cethira had died as a result of the twisted magics wrought upon them.

Cethira had endured, and the Paragon had even told her why she thought that was.

As a gateless, her soul was solid, strong, and ready to be an anchor. As a half-arcane, she’d not suffered from whatever human flaw kept them from conceptual magics, and she’d manifested the ability to connect with others on a deep, empathetic level. It had been the core of her magics, of who she was.

The Paragon had capitalized on that, distorted it, and used it to forge a set of chains. Cethira’s empathy was entirely turned inward after that, only capable of pointing toward that which was bound to her, just another method of containment.

Still, she had gotten fairly good at faking empathy. Such was required to interact with other sapients.

Cethira grimaced again. Ruam, Kliro, and Aerth had been magically forge-welded with her into an incomplete set—bound by those chains—before the Paragon was taken away. Cethira was yet unfinished when that occured, leaving a gaping wound that Cethira felt compelled to fix and at the same time horrified at the very notion of adding another to their existence.

When she’d found Mistress Tala, it had seemed like a star-sent sign that the Mage could join them, but Cethira had misjudged. It was rare to find a Mage alone in the Wilds, even rarer for them to be an Immaterial Guide. In fact, aside from Mistress Tala, Cethira had never found a lone, un-Bound, female Immaterial Guide in need in the Wilds.

It really was a rather stringent set of requirements, which is why that lack of potential fourth gates was probably the greatest reason she hadn’t completed her quintet in all her years of wandering. It hadn’t been moral superiority but a simple lack of opportunity.

She was able to resist pursuing candidates in the cities, but in the Wilds? Apparently not.

Regardless, the young Mage had been more resilient than Cethira had realized. Mistress Tala hadn’t needed rescuing, and the offer had been out of place.

But she might have… No. She shouldn’t draw anyone else into the half-life that was their existence, not even if it could make the constant ache go away for herself and her sister-selves.

She shook herself, returning her attention to the slate in her hand. She had to finish the report, recover, and get on her way.

She was supposed to be quickly checking on the ruins on her way past, in order to ensure that nothing was using the damage to Reality in order to come through from the Doman-Imithe. It hadn’t happened for centuries, but it needed to be watched for regardless.

Thankfully, the signs were unmistakable, and so there didn’t need to be a constant watch, just periodic checks.

It was one of the few tasks that she could do, outside of Audel. Master Hastel had been incredibly kind to her through the years, and he’d finally gotten the others to agree to allow his city to be more… free with information and those allowed within.

Still, Cethira felt more comfortable in the Wilds that had been her home for centuries. Millennia, now.

She sighed. “Are we about ready to go?”

The three souls Bound to her each sent back a feeling of hunger.

“Ahh, yes. It would be good to eat. Just let me finish this up, then we can grab a snack.”

As she continued to write furiously, two more hands manifested and undid her hair, pulling out a brush and fixing it up after the clash that she’d had.

“Oh, thank you.” She smiled gratefully at the sure, gentle strokes. “That feels really nice.”

Another pair began pulling food and drink out from her dimensional storage.

Beside her, a body seemed to fade into existence, moving around and fussing over her sweaty, dirty clothing.

“Ahh, that’s right.” Cethira stood, allowing Kliro to pull off the dress along with the remnants of the one that Mistress Tala had ruined. She had been more focused on getting away quickly, and hadn’t taken the energy to keep herself cool and away from debris as she moved through the plains to this copse of trees.

Kliro then used a cloth to clean the remnants of blood, dirt, and grime before helping Cethira put on new clothes.

With that done, Cethira smiled contentedly. “Thank you.”

Kliro’s gate pulsed with satisfaction at the gratitude.

Each gate had its own body—both real and not—bound to Cethira and under her will, while still being subject to the gate—the soul—it had been born with.

Cethira had been a woman of empathy, reforged with her adoptive sisters into a being unlike any other.

Their bodies could not get too far from each other, and their natural state was to be physically overlaid in a way that was only possible because of Ruam’s always active magic.

Which is why the Paragon chose her as the first to be joined to me… Aerth's gate pulsed with warmth, sending soothing feelings to Cethira. “Right, right. Don’t get stuck on the past.”

Still, the encounter with Mistress Tala had awoken so many old memories.

She really had been willing to add Mistress Tala to her existence, and that… that scared her.

“I thought we had grown past the mindset she engendered within me, but it's clear that we still haven't. Even after all these millennia, if I was so eager to manipulate Tala into a bond… I had thought we were beyond spreading misery.”

Ruam was a solid presence, comforting even as she continued to work the tangles out of their hair.

“I know… we talked through this after she rejected the offer years ago, but… it still doesn’t sit right with me.”

Though, she would be lying to herself if she said that she knew if she were more irritated at herself for making the offer or Mistress Tala for rejecting it.

Regardless, there was the issue of the other Archons. Tala had told some people about their encounter, and Cethira had gotten a bit of a talking to, but it hadn’t been more than that. Neither what she’d done nor what she’d offered had actually been illegal in any way, but it had had the potential to expose secrets that she was bound to keep.

And now I’ve encountered her again, exposing some of those exact secrets.

Cethira growled in irritation before sitting on the cushion—at a low table—that had been set up for her while she finished the report and got lost in her own thoughts.

The food wasn’t complex, but it looked delicious nonetheless.

It was simple fare, fruit-and-veggie-leather, prepared and dehydrated to be as complete a food as possible with apples, spinach, cranberries, and chia seeds. With that was some spicy jerky, not because the leather lacked protein but just because she enjoyed the flavor.

A nice mug of chilled wine completed the simple repast.

Cethira enjoyed the meal, letting their magics monitor their surroundings, ensuring nothing could sneak up on them.

By the time she’d eaten her fill, a City Leader had responded to her report.

As she read through it, she couldn’t help but laugh.

“So, she’s a known oddity herself? That’s good to know. It also explains how she’s advanced so far in just a few years. Truly one of the outliers of humanity. More than that, she has enough trust in the established society of gated-humanity that she reported our clash.” Cethira grimaced at that. If she hadn’t done as she’d promised and filed the report, just hoping it wouldn’t come to light, that could have gone very badly.

Well, doing the right thing is the right thing to do, after all. It should work out better… even if it doesn’t always.

But with the report sent and responded to, she could put the whole thing behind her, now.

It was nearly a day later that she found her next destination, a little dell to the south of Bandfast.

One of the isolationist arcanes—a fox beast man—had requested assistance with his dimensional anchor, and Cethira had been granted the right to the contract.

She wasn’t the most skilled by an inch or a mile—even if she could make an inch into a mile or vice versa—but she was the one who was available.

Rust, there was an expert arcane in Bandfast. What was his name? Lendard? Leupold? Lira? Lisa? Lisa! It was Lisa.

She was happy to have sorted that out, but it didn’t actually matter. That fox, ironically, didn’t like leaving human cities.

Before her, the problem was obvious enough. A cave was flickering in and out of dimensional alignment with the hill before her.

There was turbulence in the zeme, and it seemed that this particular fox had decided to buoy their home in the ambient magic rather than anchoring it properly.

It was a cheaper solution, but it spoke to the ignorance of youth, especially when the den was so near a gated human city. Everyone—and she did mean everyone—of consequence knew that such cities were the epicenter for all sorts of magical turbulence.

Cethira sighed, reaching out with Ruam’s magics to perform two actions.

First, she erected a small pillar of dimensional stability and lashed the cave entrance to it, ensuring that it wouldn’t shift as she stepped through—that would cause all sorts of complications.

Secondly, she ‘knocked’ on the exterior of the den, causing the whole dimensional conglomeration to resonate with her greeting and the announcement of her arrival.

The foxes were an interesting group. They had an almost instinctive understanding of four-dimensional building, yet they often seemed woefully ignorant of how to interface those constructions with three-dimensional reality unless—and until—they were properly trained. Even then, they seemed to take decades of seasoning before they stopped making foolish mistakes like this one…

Ah, well, it helps me keep food on the table, I suppose.

A few moments later, a small, bipedal fox strode out of the cave, looking a bit woozy. “Greetings…” He sounded woozy too. “Are you Mistress Cethira?”

She nodded.

He forced a swallow. “You are late.”

“I am still within the projected arrival window.” Barely, but even so, she wasn’t about to concede such a thing so early in the discussions.

The fox narrowed his eyes at her, but then sighed. “True enough, and I really do need some help.”

“Absolutely. I am here to serve.” She smiled politely.

What followed was the standard exercise in extreme patience and repetition. The fox both desperately wanted her help and seemingly refused to believe that she knew more than he did about dimensional magics or the construction that he’d built as his den.

Her temporary fix also caused a bit of an issue—just as it always did—because once the fox noticed, he tried to convince her that he was satisfied, and she could go.

It took long minutes to get him to accept that her temporary patch was just that: temporary.

One of the key reasons for this was due to one of the base level cultural touchpoints for the fox arcanes out in the Wilds.

Mainly, anything given was given, and no payment should be offered or accepted for it. That meant that if her temporary fix removed the issue, he owed her nothing. Also, if it later broke, it would only be polite and right for her to ensure it was repaired once more. Hence, the importance of convincing him that she had not gifted him a perfect fix.

Secondarily, while her availability to assist was a courtesy, the fox would still have to pay her to do anything permanent.

He didn’t like that, but it wasn’t actually an issue. Such an attitude was to be expected as a part of the negotiation process.

So, Cethira settled in to dicker over exactly what the fox would provide for her to fix his poor foundations. She also had to emphasize that it was a fix for the current state, not a warranty against any issues with his den going forward.

She kept a smile from pulling at her lips, but Aerth, Kliro, and Ruam were clearly as pleased as she was at what they’d be able to extort—earn—from the fox for their efforts.

It seems that this is going to be a worthwhile venture after all.

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