Ranvir put the bed down in the corner of the living room, it was getting cramped as it was accompanied by his dresser but it did leave a whole lot of space in his bedroom for more important matters. Tethered matters. He’d already stocked up a few candles, gritty obsidian dust, a few kitchen knives, and the rest of the stuff he’d need to perform rituals. All he didn’t permanently store in his room was the things that didn’t keep, cold water and the like.

Of course, with what else he’d moved into the room, it doubled perfectly as a ritual circle room as well. Kirs had even bought a finely put together plate of wood. It was made from sturdy oak, the plate itself was almost five centimeters thick so it could easily bear his weight should he need to sit on it.

In fact, it had a template for a ritual painted on it. The circle where the obsidian went points for the candles and everything. But the other side also benefited from the smooth sanding and treatment with a special that made it easy to draw on.

Ranvir kick-shoved his bed into the corner once Kirs had moved away. He listened to Esmund make lots of noises as Frija’s rattle swam through air above her dodging light blasts from evil tethered and catapult stones launched by the flesh-torn.

In the other room, he heard Kirs throw out a carpet, it was the mismatched, stitched together hide they’d used to secret away their circles in the sleeping room Esmund, Sansir, and Grev still had.

Ranvir grabbed the big oak plate, grunting as he lifted it. It wasn’t terribly heavy, just incredibly unwieldy. He had no way of getting a proper grip due to the sheer size, his fingers aching from holding onto the sides.

With Kirs’ help he carefully lowered it onto carpet, template side down, they’d been planning to begin their experiments again. Apparently, Kirs had some new theories that she wanted to try.

“Ranvir, I’m off!” Hjara called as she left Frija’s room. She’d been in there milking herself in private. Ranvir was slowly getting more and more comfortable with the idea, though he still found it somewhat unsettling. Milk just came out of a human, just like from a cow.

“Bye Hjara, thank you for your help,” Ranvir replied, hearing the door close moments later. “What’s the first thing you want to try?” he asked Kirs.

“Well, I think we should go over my notes first,” she explained, “There are some things in there you might need to know.”

Ranvir nodded and she went to her bag to grab her notebook. He briefly perused the relevant sections then arched both eyebrows in surprise.

“Is this even possible?”

“It might be, which is good enough to try.”

“Then I think we need to.”

“Maybe let’s start with a stress test first.”

“Stress test?”

“We don’t know if there’s some latent problem in the ritual that only shows itself when you pump a lot of power into it.”

“Is that a thing?” Ranvir asked.

“It’s happened to glyphs, though, only with masters. Sometimes they output so much power that it ruptures and breaks down.”

“Right,” Ranvir muttered. “I’ll get started on the circle, then.”

“I’ll ask Es if he can grab us some lunch, while you’re at it.”

Ranvir nodded already breaking out the chalk. Part of him wanted to invest in getting a template similar to what he had for the regular ritual, so he didn’t have to draw the circle all the time. Though as he thought about it, it wouldn’t work as the determination circles would likely change often as they progressed in their research.

Also, the ritual circles seemed to work better with thicker layers, which made chalk a more ideal medium, for now. He quickly sketched out the rough design for the basin, pocket-space determinatin circle then started the close detail. He had to consult her notes a few times, especially when drawing the basin as it was so intricate.

Soon enough, however, he was standing on a chair getting some distance as he judged length and curves on the finished ritual, including ambient catcher though he might not need that anymore.

From his brief experimentation before taking care of his daughter took all his free time, he’d found that he couldn’t manage an immediate full Veil manipulation, though he got pretty close with most of the area he could reach manipulated it some way. As he’d been suspecting that put him right behind light as the second most efficient type of tethered. Which was interesting since space generators were only mildly more efficient than warp generators, who were the third worst.

Ranvir stepped down from the chair already aware that his circle had been perfect, he’d just had to check to be sure.

“Are you ready to begin?” Kirs asked from where she was playing with Frija, she looked slightly uncomfortable, which wasn’t surprising as Ranvir saw the look of growing discomfort on his daughters face.

“I’ll get her, you open the door for Esmund,” he said moving over to pick Frija up just as she started crying. He’d already sensed the warp tethered making his way through the halls back to them. “Shh, shh, let me take a look at you.”

Ranvir changed her diaper as quickly as he could before rejoining his friends and getting some lunch. Esmund had brought sandwiches up, though Ranvir had to halt in the middle of the meal to feed Frija, then burp her, and then put her to bed.

Finally, he was ready to begin the ritual. He crouched at the front reaching for the space glyph, before a thought struck him. He didn’t have to do that anymore. Instead, he straightened and reached for the glyph with his power even as he pinched off a pocket in the center.

He started out low and slow, only letting a trickle through though he realized it was probably the equivalent of a decent effort before his advancement. He shook his head, blue and yellow astonishment filling him. A single advancement had changed so much.

He cleared his throat, turning to look at Kirs, “Are you ready?” she nodded in return and fed more power into the circle. Soon purple lights glowed from each of the lines more thickly than they’d ever seen them before.

While he wasn’t sure of his ‘running’ speed after his advancement, however, he made a guess and attempted to stay within those confines. Soon enough, embers of purple space flickered from the spot where the pocket connected with reality.

“Is that normal?” Kirs asked.

Ranvir shook his head and slowed down the flow of energy, however, it didn’t fix the issue. In fact, as the space kept growing the flickers became more and more regular until a hole appeared before them.

With his senses so closely layered onto the connection point, Ranvir immediately recognized the aperture. It was failing to keep up with the growth of the pocket-space. Ranvir slowed down until it was just maintaining itself, but the aperture didn’t close properly.

“Obviously,” Kirs said after looking at the aperture for a minute, “there are some issues. Thankfully, they seem related to the determination sub-circles.”

“They probably change or adapted somehow once the pocket grows beyond a certain size.”

Kirs nodded waling to the aperture, “Ready to look inside?”

Ranvir nodded stepping up next to her, with a flick of his mind, he drove open the broken aperture revealing the insides of the pocket-space. He hadn’t thought overly much about the insides, though he had looked inside once or twice since his advancement. Mostly, they were just dark and empty.

Now, they both looked into the full size of the space. It was an odd feeling, having his Veil reach into the pocket since it also reached around it to the rest of the room. It was like they’d added an extra direction he could reach into.

The pocket-space was empty. When he looked into it, he saw nothing. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floors, no nothing.

“Crazy,” Kirs muttered looking around, “how big is it?”

“Slightly shorter than you,” Ranvir said his Veil giving him the dimensions. “Slightly wider than shoulder-width and just as deep.” He could’ve probably pulled exact measurements but he doubted it would actually help since that wasn’t what they were trying to do.

“That’s crazy,” Kirs said looking around inside it. She tentatively put her hand in, though she didn’t dare put more in yet. That was probably smart. Occasionally, a flicker of purple space would run across the outer barrier of the area.

Suddenly, a balled up piece of paper flew in and landed on the bottom of the space.

“Huh, I’d kinda expected it to fall away,” Kirs said. “Why didn’t it fall away? I guess you’ve been storing things in pocket-spaces like this and they don’t fall away.”

Ranvir searched through the connection point and found it very wide and thick, tightly bonded to Vednar’s reality. That connection suffused the tissue of the space, “I think it might be because of its proximity and connection to reality. I think the barriers would become permeable if it wasn’t so tightly pressed against our plane. I should be able to mimic that…” Ranvir inserted his senses more strongly, which caused the beast, Latresekt, to stir, “effect though.

“Are you traveling?” Ranvir felt something brush through his Veil, similar both to his tether-sense and the energy that flowed through his tether. Like energy mimicking a tether-sense. “No guide… hmm.”