Tala grinned as she watched the first, quick bout. Even Terry lifted his head from her shoulder before flickering to his favorite spot on the roof to sun-bask and watch.

Adam neatly sidestepped or bent out of the way of Aproa’s attacks before moving in to place the tip of his practice weapon to her throat.

The Archon froze, simply staring at the man, before she glanced at Tala.

Adam stepped back a few paces.

Aproa laughed. “Fair enough.” Her grin was almost hungry as she looked back to Adam. “Again, please.”

He nodded acceptance, lifting his blade back to a more formal, ready position.

“With Magic defenses, to incapacitation or surrender.”

Adam hesitated. “If you wish, Mistress. That highly favors you, though.”

She shrugged. “It seems that I need a reasonable set of advantages.”

He still seemed hesitant, but he agreed. “As you wish.” And Tala would have sworn he was trying to keep a small smile from blossoming across his features.

The second fight was considerably longer. Aproa, it seemed, could thicken the air in a weaker imitation of Mistress Odera’s shields. What she gave up in strength, however, she gained in speed of manifestation.

The thickened air could be almost instantly enacted, easily fouling the intercepted attempts to strike her down.

For his part, Adam quickly adapted, seeming to notice that Aproa had to see an attack coming to enact her defense. Additionally, there was a slight visual distortion caused by Aproa’s defensive magic, which Tala guessed was how Adam saw the workings. His movements became quicker, and he added feints and re-directs that Tala had trouble following.

A simple turn of Adam’s wrist would radically change the point of attack, often bypassing the defenses Aproa raised.

Still, though Adam scored hit after hit, most likely leaving damaged flesh, and possibly even bruised bones, Aproa persisted, her own weapons sweeping through the air in dizzying patterns, their momentum mostly maintained through the striking sequences.

Tala noted that Adam was at yet another disadvantage, given that his “sword” wouldn’t cut like a real one would, but Aproa’s clubs would hit very nearly as hard as their non-practice lookalikes.

Even so, Adam didn’t seem concerned. He rarely deigned to block her attacks directly, and when he did, it was almost always a deflection.

The final strike came suddenly, with nothing to set it apart from the flurry of exchanged blows that preceded it.

Aproa was swinging for Adam’s head with her left mace, a look of growing frustration across her features.

Adam stepped in, cutting at the wrist of the striking hand. This counterstrike was stopped by thickened air, which also spoiled Aproa’s own attack.

As he was cutting towards the attacking wrist, Adam stomped down on the Mage’s leading foot, causing her to bend forward reflexively from the shock and pain. Taking full advantage of that exact reaction, Adam struck Aproa across the center of her face with his offhand, breaking her nasal bone and folding the entire nose over, to one side.

Aproa cried out in pain, dropping her maces and clutching her face, even as blood spurted from her nostrils.

The healer was there in an instant, power washing through Aproa and reversing the injury.

Adam, for his part, had quick-stepped backwards, somehow wholly avoiding getting even a drop of blood on himself.

When the healer returned to the side, Aproa grimaced, then spit onto the sand, clearing her mouth of some blood. “That was…instructive.”

Adam gave a slight bow. “Indeed. Are you alright, Mistress?”

The Archon shook her head, smiling. “The only lasting injury is to my pride.” She glanced down with a small frown. “Well, and these bloodstains will be mildly irritating to get out.” She shrugged and smiled again. “What did you learn, master Guardsman?”

Tala felt herself smile at the honorific given to Adam. Well earned, indeed.

Adam nodded. “You don’t block what you can’t see, for one.”

Aproa frowned at that. “I don’t? Don’t you mean, can’t?”

“Not at all.” He swept his sword in a tight circle around his head. “There, I have just blocked behind my head. I did not have to see behind me to defend my skull. You are capable of thickening the air out of your line of sight, yes? I believe you did so a few times when I made my next place of attack more obvious.”

She nodded in return, considering.

“Right, so here is my recommendation. You clearly have some training in striking and defensive patterns. We can map out standard defenses that cover for the openings in each of your patterns, and you can practice forming those defenses instinctively, whether you think an attack is coming there or not. Additionally, you need more practice against multiple opponents to increase your instincts for where attacks could be coming from, based on the flow of the fight.”

“That sounds wonderful.” She bowed to the man. “Thank you.”

The rest of the morning went largely as Tala had expected. Since the Mages were restricted to mostly mundane fighting to help them improve those skills to better complement their magics, they were usually beaten, whether by groups of newer guards or individual, more experienced fighters.

Throughout, the instructors gave tips and corrections to all combatants, and all in all it was a refreshing way to spend the time.

Tala, for her part, cycled between three of Flow’s forms, as well as empty hand combat. She participated in matches with each of those four weapon-sets one-on-one, one-on-a-group, and group-vs-group.

The only style of traditional fighting she didn’t practice that morning was fighting with Flow able to change shape mid-fight. Not, precisely, traditional, but it will be good to add in tomorrow.

She also deeply wanted more practice with her bloodstars, but that would also have to wait, for now.

When lunch rolled around, the Guards wished the Mages farewell, and let them know that this training ground would be open to any or all of them for the time being.

Rane, Aproa, and Tala then briefly discussed the plan going forward.

Aproa smiled. “Thank you for letting me come today. I think it was a really good change of pace. I can see it adding a lot to my capabilities, going forward.”

Rane cocked his head to the side. “What do you normally do for training?”

“A few of us meet up in one of the Mage training yards to practice defense and offense, target protection or acquisition, and a host of other things. You are both welcome, if you’d like. We meet after lunch daily. Though not everyone makes it every day. We could go grab some food and head over?”

Rane glanced to Tala inquiringly, clearly interested.

Tala shrugged. “I definitely need to eat, but afterwards, I really should drop by my inscriber. There are a lot of things that I need checked into, including refreshing my scripts.” Memory modification not the least. Truthfully, a large part of her had wanted to go straight to Holly when she arrived back in Bandfast, so that she could learn what she could about what had happened to her, but another part was afraid to find out the truth. She pushed that aside. “Tomorrow? We can do more martial work here in the morning, then the Magical training after noon?”

“That sounds good.” Rane turned back to Aproa. “I’m free after lunch, if the offer is good for just me.”

She smiled in return. “Of course!” She looked back to Tala. “And that sounds like a great plan for tomorrow. So…lunch?”

Rane and Tala heartily agreed.

* * *

Lunch was fantastic, but Tala continually found herself distracted by her upcoming visit to Holly’s workshop.

Am I just an automaton, making my choices based on what some creature put in my head? Intellectually, she knew that was silly. Xeel had assured her that the influence had been slight, a nudge more than a push, and certainly not an in-depth hijacking of her will.

Even so, she found herself almost as afraid of learning as she was of not knowing. That’s just ridiculous.

She bid goodbye to Rane and Aproa and set off to Holly’s.

As she stepped inside the moderately warm building, a buzz of power rippled across her neck. Connecting to Holly’s systems.

“Finally.”

Tala almost shrieked in surprise as Holly stood from a chair right beside the door. Terry lifted his head to glance at her, then curled back down, unimpressed.

“I thought I’d have to track you down. Come on.” Holly walked towards the back, beckoning for Tala to follow.

Tala rested her hand on the center of her own chest, feeling the need to calm her heart. Was she just waiting there? How did I not sense her through the wall?

Still, the older woman didn’t slow, and so Tala followed her back to the familiar workroom.

When the door swung shut, a series of inscriptions activated across Holly’s skin, which Tala had never seen active before.

Power hummed through the air, and a second series of inscriptions activated, this time in the shape of a cube around the entire workroom.

“Now, Mistress Tala. Have a seat.”

Tala was looking around, trying to study the working embedded in the walls, floor, and ceiling. “What did you do?”

“I cut us off from any outside intervention or eavesdropping. Be sparing with your magic, you only have what is in your body at the moment.”

Tala looked inside, frowning but found her gate…not gone, but closed off, somehow.

She began to hyperventilate. How is this possible? You can close someone else’s gate?

Of course, it made sense in theory, but she’d never… Breathe, Tala.

Holly sat on her own stool, calmly waiting for Tala to move.

One step at a time. She walked over and sat in the chair left available to her.

“Good.” She smiled. “First things first. You are not corrupted. Your mind is still under the control of the real you, mainly your spirit and soul.” She frowned lightly. “Though, you haven’t been treating your body very well, but that is a later conversation.”

“So… I’m not being controlled?”

“No, not at all. There is a bit of a lingering influence, pushing you a bit more towards dangerous actions, but that is less pronounced than you might think. I’d give it a five percent stake in your decision making, assuming you aren’t in a high stress environment.”

“You mean, like on the road? Pursued by armies of Leshkin?”

“Fair point.”

“So… what happened?”

“The short version? You had your short-term memory erased, twice it seems, but I only have a record of one.”

“Can you recover it?”

Holly gave a puzzled look. “No, dear. I don’t have a brain scan to even begin restructuring your lost memories. All the inscriptions recorded were magics in and around you, and physical stresses you endured.”

“Would that help?”

“Maybe? If we expanded the capacity of your consciousness monitor, it could delve into your mind, and pull-out memory fragments.” She shrugged. “We might be able to piece something together, but that would be a substantial upgrade to the functionality, and something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone with a lower power density than you.” She smiled. “So, the inscriptions in question would normally be reserved for those who are at least Fused, preferably Refined.”

“But I could sustain them?”

“You could.” She hesitated. “You would need a link to the Archive, though. No human mind below Reforged could handle the stress.” She tapped her side. “I keep myself well inscribed towards that end, but you don’t like staying in cities, and losing a connection required for a working within your mind would be…bad.”

Tala nodded. “What do you suggest, then?”

“Soul-bond an Archive tablet. An artifact style, of course.”

“What would that even do?”

“Well, once you’d done that, I would be able to modify your consciousness monitor to use that link to copy out your mental structure and parse through it, among other things.”

Tala’s eyes widened. “You want my mind to be copied to the Archive?”

Holly sighed. “No, dear. I effectively want to take pictures of your brain’s structure and cognitive pathways, so that your scripts can analyze a static version. That is much less intensive than trying to analyze your mind as it is actively working.”

“What then?” Tala was still quite apprehensive.

“It could then present you with recompiled memories, as it reconstructs them. In time, it could do a lot of other things as well. It would expand your cognitive abilities further and utilize your increased mental capacities better than we’ve managed already, perform calculations, and in theory it could even offer advice.”

“Offer advice.” She gave Holly a deadpan look.

Holly shrugged. “Any sort of sentience requires a soul or spirit, and since yours is the only one in there it would be coming from you. But yes, 'Advice' is the right word. It could process more information than you, alone, and then offer up the decision that you would have made, if you had time to process it all yourself.”

“That could work…” There were all sorts of odd implications, but it bore consideration. Tala had a thought, then. “What if my mind was altered again?”

“You’d have, available to your magic, ongoing versions of your mind. From those your inscriptions could fill in the gaps, and rebuild what you lost, presenting to you the memories that something tried to destroy.”

Tala considered that. “All it would take is letting my mind map be available in the Archive.”

Holly shook her head. “Not at all. Firstly, you should know by now that the Archive is inviolable. The information pulled from you would be stored in a way locked to you and your scripts. No one else would ever have access, unless you granted them such.” She held up her hand. “And before you ask, with your mental monitoring inscription, it would be virtually impossible for someone to force you to grant that access. The scripts would detect coercion and prevent the approval from going through. Secondly, the inscription will be far more than simply the capturing and transferring of mind maps.”

The more she considered it, the more Tala sort of liked the idea. Plus, I’ve been wanting an Archive Tablet anyways. “So, then could I pull other information from the Archive directly into my mind?”

“Technically, yes, but the conscious mind really can’t handle true info dumps. You could call up specific books that you were authorized to access and read phantom copies. But you couldn’t simply wish to know what a book said and imbibe it.”

Tala considered. “What about subconsciously?”

“Subconsciously?” Holly tapped her lips. “I suppose we could train your subconscious to utilize the bond, but that would take time that I don’t really have.”

“I could use an inside-out Archon star.”

Holly frowned. “An inside-out Arch-” Her eyes lost focus, like she was reading something that lay between Holly and Tala. “Huh. That’s interesting.” Her eyes began flicking back and forth, adding to the sense that Holly was reading. “Yeah, that could work. You’d have to learn how to make one though…” Her eyes refocused, then she sighed. “Let me guess, you already did so, by accident, and found someone to tell you what you had done?”

That was almost hurtfully accurate. “Something like that.”

Holly sighed again. “Alright, then. From what I understand, that would allow for some interesting things, but you would lose conscious control of the connection, at least until you trained that, specifically. I’d have quite a bit of research to do, in order to integrate it, but I like learning new things.”

“Could the conscious control be mimicked by the inscription? That would eliminate the need for training.”

“You mean you ask the inscription for a book, and it presents it to you?” Holly cocked her head to the side. “Interesting. It could work, but it would be at least a bit less efficient for that. More complex, too.” She nodded, then. “It would be far better for the memory archive and analysis of your mind maps, though.”

“So?”

“So, yes. I think that would actually be a fantastic use for you.” She shrugged. “I’ll have to finish designing the script with this in mind. As I consider it, I’d likely have come to the need for a subconscious bond in the end, and I’d have suggested it, then.”

Would you now? Tala grinned.

“What else do you wish to discuss?”

Tala frowned. “You mean, aside from the fact that an arcane seems to have altered my mind within this very city?”

Holly waved her off. “The Archon council is looking into it. It isn’t a concern for a Bound.”

Tala narrowed her eyes. “It is my mind.”

“And we are addressing that, yes?”

“Can I know what’s been found?”

“When appropriate, I will let you know.”

Tala felt some things click into place. “You want to wait until I’m inscribed with the mental monitoring.” She was leading me this way the whole time.

“That is a consideration.”

“So, you aren’t really sure I’m not still under their influence.”

“ ‘Sure’ is such a definitive word.”

Tala growled. “What’s going on, Mistress Holly?”

“You are you; you are human; and a Concept Arcane has taken particular interest in you. Until we can get you fully protected, we are on a need-to-know basis, and that is really all I can tell you. Even that is more than I was advised to share.”

Tala ground her teeth, but then had a thought. “You know, Archive tablets are expensive. Given this is a fairly critical matter…?”

Holly sighed. “One will be provided for you to bond. BUT!” She held up a finger. “I am no longer going to be giving you my pity discount.”

Tala rocked back as if slapped. “Wow, pity discount?”

“Yes. You were poor but interesting, so I didn’t want you to go off and die for lack of funds.”

“That…that is really heartless. You only helped me because I was interesting?”

“That’s what you have a problem with?” Holly gave a small smile. “I wanted to work on you, due to your magical density, and I wanted to work on your desired schemas. You are fascinating, and I wasn’t willing to let your poverty stop me from experimenting.”

Tala grimaced. “So, why not give me the inscriptions for free?”

“Because that which you do not pay for isn’t appreciated and is often abused. I calculated what I thought you could afford and charged you that.” She patted Tala’s wrist. “But you aren’t poor anymore.” She hesitated. “Well, not as poor.”

“Fine.” Tala was not happy, but she realized that she wasn’t going to get anywhere by pursuing the topic further. “I’ll inform the Constructionists to bill you for the tablet.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “Very well. I’ll deal with the Archon Council about getting reimbursed. Now, what else?”

Tala nodded once. “So, I recently encountered a hallucinogenic effect. Can we protect against that?”

Holly crinkled her nose. “We can’t really, because that’s how the body functions. If we block hormones and the like from influencing your thinking you would lose the ability to do…anything?” She shrugged. “I don’t even know, really. Messing with hormones is almost never a good idea, at least not without good reason, and blanketly blocking ‘mind altering’ compounds would be incredibly unwise.”

“What about the mental inscriptions I already have?”

“Those don’t block anything, they just streamline the processes already taking place. If anything, they might make stimulants and hallucinogens more effective, though I don’t think they’d have that effect.” She scratched her cheek. “You know, though... Once we add the expanded mental inscriptions, monitoring all of it could help you identify such manipulations more easily.” Holly began nodding. “Yeah. That is well within the capabilities of what we’ll be working with.”

“What would that even do?”

Holly shrugged. “Depends on how you imagine it. I’d think of it as making hormonal and such influence be more…secondary? Like you would have a better understanding of why you’re feeling and acting as you do. For hallucinogens, you’d likely see them more as figments, translucent and less real.”

“That sounds pretty ideal.”

“We’ll have to be careful, but I think it should be a natural feature of what we’re discussing.”

That sounds reasonable. “Alright. There are few other things I wanted to discuss.”

Holly smiled. “Well, with the Concept magic discussion behind us for the moment, we don’t need this anymore.” The inscriptions deactivated around the room, and Tala’s gate, once again, gushed power, refilling her reserves rapidly.

Terry didn’t react, simply staying where he was, content to rest.

Holly stood. “Let’s get some tea and dig into your other questions and ideas.”

“That sounds wonderful, thank you.” It was going to be an interesting afternoon.