Tala was finally ready, her preparations complete.

She stood within a guild’s main hold, within the city of Platoiri.

Around her lay the broken bodies of basic model automata.

Before her stood the entrance into the next section of this dimensional pocket complex.

Her tungsten sphere pairs were gravity amplified to lethal levels and awaiting her need in the pouch at her waist.

Not Kit. A different pouch.

Kit hung beside the lesser pouch, together balancing out Flow that hung on her opposite hip.

She had contemplated holding Kit when she went through, but decided that there was no need.

She still did have her tungsten rod and sphere in position, along with the three defensive discs in random orbit around herself, however.

The book didn’t say anything about ranged combatants, but they sure did seem to throw accurately enough.

With one last nod to herself for confirmation, she unlocked the door into the next section, watching with her mage-sight as defensive fields and spatial locks retracted to give her access.

Instead of swinging open, the doors faded away, and she was left standing in a decorative archway, leading deeper into the facility.

She knew from the book that if she put the key back into the center of the empty space she could reestablish the doors and seal off the welcome atrium, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

Sadly, there were no convenient automata standing right in front of the door this time, so she was forced to leap to get within range of the closest ones.

Flow snapped into her hand, taking the form of a glaive as she lashed out.

The space she was in now was a faux outdoors, roughly a mile or so across.

Dozens of outbuildings were scattered throughout the lightly wooded area.

The trees were conifers, a mix of pine and fir if Tala’s guess was right.

The ground beneath her feet was a well-manicured lawn, and there were seating areas, including picnic benches, scattered throughout, especially concentrated near the paths and waterways.

It was a park, exclusive to the guild and their guests.

Well, now exclusive to solely their arcane creations.

-And you.-

Tala smiled at that. And me.

The first automata she slew in quick succession were all the base model, and none of the first dozen even had time to come out of their magic absorption mode before they were decommissioned.

Regardless, it wasn’t long before she saw squads of the armored variant, the ‘foot soldiers’ coming her way.

In addition to the armor, they were all armed with mundane weaponry, but nothing seeming to be long range.

-Yeah, what sort of madwoman would throw a sword?-

Hush you.

There was a single odd automaton in the middle of each squad of five armored units.

That’s odd. Do you remember anything like them mentioned in the book?

-No, but the concentration of power within them is much greater than the others.-

Conveniently, there were four squads coming Tala’s way, so as she fought through the base automata she pulled out pairs of spheres, switching their targets one set after another, to take out the twenty armored enemies.

The air cracked with a series of reports that sounded like hail striking a metal drum, assuming the hail was as large as Tala’s fist.

The first two armored foes died easily, but not in the way Tala had hoped.

Their chest armor, heavily reinforced over their cores, was harder than she’d hoped, and it deflected the tungsten sent to destroy them.

Blessedly, the angles of the armor sent the attack up at an angle, into their heads.

Two heads vaporized, and their bodies began to fall.

Tala took a couple of punches from the basic units around her as she finished sending off her twenty spheres.

This is ridiculous. Holding them in pouches is slower than keeping them in my hand, and still takes my hand to get them free for use.

They didn’t really hurt as her elk-leather’s defenses actually deadened the blows. Hey! My defenses weren't immediately overpowered.

That was a nice change, honestly.

Four more bodies dropped, then twelve were falling, then sixteen.

Interestingly enough, as Tala had targeted the things’ cores, the tungsten returned to slam into the fallen bodies once again, sometimes ending up resting in a newly created divot in the tough armor exterior, and sometimes finding a way down inside to actually reach the targeted destination.

Even so, while they were struck down, they were adapting.

Tala could see magic flowing through their armor as it reshaped. It wasn’t fast enough for most of her targets, but the final four? It did quite a lot.

The seventeenth and eighteenth armored foes had morphed enough of a deflection that only half of their heads were blown off, rather than the entirety being basically vaporized by the redirected impact.

It was still decommissioning for them, but it was an improvement from a defensive standpoint.

The nineteenth and twentieth had enough time to alter their armor, having morphed the defense to have something like a gorget, but grown up from the breastplate. Isn’t that called a bevor?

-Your guess is exactly like mine.-

In any case, it caused the spheres to deflect up and to one side, knocking the targets around, but not killing them.

Tala cursed, but it quickly didn’t matter as those spheres, like all the others, were still locked onto her foes’ cores.

The tungsten slowed as it moved away then quickly accelerated back down with another nearly unified crack in the air.

They drilled down through the less armored necks and struck the cores.

Gravity for the win! It wasn’t a single attack that could be deflected and then ignored. Her projectiles just start coming, and they don’t stop coming, forever.

Well, until they hit their target, but that means they’ve arrived.

-The sentiment stands, I think.-

Tala held in a maniacal laugh as she finished wiping out the twenty-five or so basic units that had swarmed her at the beginning.

That worked so, so well.

-Well, aside from having to pull them out of your pouch.-

Yeah, that wasn’t ideal, but the rest? Amazing.

With the armored units dealt with, she just had the four examples of the unknown variant. What idiot in the guild decided to try to hide these?

They were approaching slowly, making Tala wish that she’d kept some spheres back to speed things up.

The four were still more than a hundred yards from her when another group of armored foes charged through a large, decorative shrub just about thirty feet to her right and sprinted at her with incredible speed.

The two in the lead would reach her at the same time, and from what she’d seen with the deflection of the spheres, she didn’t think a single cut would go through both armored enemies cleanly.

So, she transformed Flow into a glaive and thrust it with her dominant hand, skewering the one on the right. To her surprise, her grip held firm, despite the somewhat awkward angle even as the massive thing rammed home upon the blade.

Its weight and momentum threw her backward, but she held her stance and slid across the ground, even as the skewered automaton was already eliminated, its core breached.

The one on the left closed the last feet a little slower than it expected due to her backwards movement, and Tala had time to get into position and slam her left hand forward in a half-fist punch.

She almost just used her fist, but something deep inside her made her realize that she needed penetrative power, so she trusted herself, and her body, to get the job done.

Her hesitancy was unfounded.

Tala often forgot that she was strong.

Her bones were strong, her connective tissue was ridiculously robust, and her muscles were even stronger.

Sure, she used her elevated strength to do quite a few things, but she rarely used it directly.

Now, she did.

She felt the bones in her hand groan in protest as her knuckles rammed into the magically reinforced armor of the automaton.

If all she did was punch, she’d be more likely to throw the attacker away than do real damage. That is why she had used the extra moment of set-up time to jerk her three defensive plates into place behind the foe, pulling them against the thing’s back to act almost like a tripod to support it, and force it to take the full power of her strike.

A low crunch resounded over the battlefield, Tala slid further back, causing her glaive to pull free.

An instant later another crunch resounded, and Tala’s fist exited the back of the being, coated in purple fluid and fragments of the automaton’s core.

At the same time, the opponent that had been skewered upon Flow’s blade fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

Hah! Take that, you rusting creations.

The foe she’d punched through became a limp weight on her arm, dragging her downward, and she let it as the next three enemies arrived.

Flow took off two legs while in the form of a sword, one from each of two of Tala’s foes.

As Flow was literally cutting their legs from under her enemies, Tala kicked the right knee of the third opponent, breaking the magically reinforced joint and causing that one to collapse next to her as well.

She then plunged Flow into three cores in the form of a knife, each piercing thrust getting more difficult as the armor over each subsequent automata’s core thickened in anticipation of her tactic.

It wasn’t enough.

She rolled back to her feet to face the odd variants, even as she felt power build above where she had just been kneeling.

An explosion of purple fire washed over the downed automata that Tala had just decommissioned, and she watched as they melted into an indistinct puddle.

There was no heat outside of the fire, but Tala could tell that within was hotter than a forge.

Yeah, that’s pretty obvious due to the melting automata. She grimaced. And, great. They’re magic users?

-We knew they absorbed power.-

To reinforce their bodies, Alat! Not to act like rusting Mages! Needless to say, there had been nothing about this in the notes.

Who begs for a favor, then doesn’t warn the asked about rusting magic users!?

The second Mage variant lifted its hand, and Tala was engulfed in the arcane fire.

The elk-leather defenses, mundane and magical, kept out most of the initial blast, but heat was still unbelievable, as it warred with all the enhancements within her own body.

She found her body failing.

The fire only lasted a second, and when it had passed, Tala’s body reknit itself.

Blessedly, nothing had truly scorched, it had just started to melt.

Yeah…that’s a… that’s a real blessing. Tala grit her teeth against the pain as her body pulled back into proper placement.

-Deep breath! It’s coming again.-

The next one extended its hand and even though Tala dodged, the fire still blasted down upon her.

This time, however, she noticed a few things.

First, her tungsten began to look a little droopy, which seemed… bad. With a thought she willed the sphere and rod out of the fire.

Second, the fire seemed to be shooting from a single point over head, rather than simply coming into being all around her. That explained why her aura hadn’t been contested.

Third, her iron paint had flashed off, even under her elk-leathers.

That’s annoying.

She filled her lungs with power, inverted the spell-form and exhaled upward at the down-rushing fire.

The ending-tree power slammed into that of the arcane fire and consumed it, eating the entirety of the power remaining in the blast.

Good, that’s an okay counter. It’s a bit annoying that I have to look at the source and exhale, but it’s workable.

Well, it would have been workable, except that the final Mage variant was extending its hand, and she had just fully exhaled.

She had a choice to make: Was she going to take the full brunt of another blast?

Yeah, no. Rust that.

She acted on reflex, allowing her instincts and reactions to counter the attack more quickly than even her enhanced thoughts could command.

She extended Flow upward into the form of a void glaive.

The power requirements were enormous, and she knew her body would be utterly drained dry of power in less than a second, despite the massive void-channels she was already directing into Flow.

But that was more than enough time.

The void-glaive stabbed through the point at which the purple fire was about to erupt, and it consumed the working whole.

Even better, if more expensive.

Flow shrank back to its dormant, knife shape, and Tala took a couple of panting breaths.

She looked critically towards the four enemies moving to surround her.

Defense isn’t going to win me this one.

-Well then, let’s go.- Alat sent Tala the impression of a determined, fierce smile.

Tala flung Flow in the form of a sword towards the farthest enemy, while charging towards the closest herself.

-See? Madwoman.-

I said hush.

She lunged and wove, managing to stay out of the areas of effect of the next two purple blasts.

The fourth never came as Flow easily cleaved through the Mage variant.

Sadly, the one right beside it, less than five feet away, was unharmed. Why do I feel like I should be able to hurt that one too?

-Life is a mystery sometimes.-

Tala vaulted the last stretch as she slammed her knee into the chest of the automaton. With both her hands free, she grabbed onto its shoulders as she did so, riding the thing down to the ground.

Even as it slammed down, she grabbed its head, giving a great, twisting pull.

She used a large portion of her strength as her back arched, and she growled in determination.

With relatively little resistance before her efforts, the head tore free.

I might need to get another weapon somehow. Throwing Flow is awesome, but it leaves me unarmed.

-Your hands work pretty well.-

Yeah, so would a rock, but it’s not ideal.

-Fair, fair.-

She pulled, and Flow zipped back to her, clipping another of her foes on the way by.

Sadly, that damage was healed rather quickly.

Feeling a bit ironically vindictive, Tala flung the headless Mage variant at its fellows, sprinting after the body to capitalize on the chaos.

Less than half a minute later, the other three Mage like things were out of commission.

Not bad, Tala. Not bad at all.

-Yes, let the self-congratulations flow through you.-

Rust you, Alat, I’m doing great.

Alat just chuckled. -You’re right; you are.-

Tala took a moment to look around at the park-like surroundings. They were a bit torn up nearby, but for the most part, this place was still pristine.

Good. I think parts of this can be quite useful to us.

A thought occurred to her, likely born of what she’d seen out of the edges of her vision earlier.

She pushed Flow into its void-knife form, and her vision changed.

With the void-sight, she was able to see the edges of reality for the simple reason that there was nothing past them at all.

Ahh, I can see the void.

-Well, you can not see anything, and that absence indicates the void.-

Semantics.

-Fair enough.-

This pocket dimension ended only a foot or so below Tala. She could also see that, below the trees, great bowls of reality had been created, extending down and out in a half-sphere to allow the trees to have a solid foundation.

That’s a clever way to save on internal volume while still allowing healthy, large trees.

She continued her examinations as she retrieved all her tungsten spheres from the bodies of the armored automata.

She could feel something watching her.

The book had indicated some sort of unified connection between all the things, and that it could observe within the hold as a whole. So, the feeling wasn’t unexpected.

Even so, she wasn’t in a rush.

In fact, no matter how long she was in here, within reason, her duties would be taken care of by others. It would be nice to have a bit of a break from the monotony, honestly.

It couldn’t last forever, sadly.

I give it a week before Pallaun is sent in after me.

She definitely wouldn’t need a week, but she was tempted to take as much time as she could, regardless.

Eh, I’ll see how this plays out.

That’s when her enhanced hearing began to pick up the thud of footfalls.

She hadn’t had a chance to charge up more than a single set of tungsten spheres to a lethal level.

Well, that’s irritating.

She also really didn’t want to hold the spheres…

She cocked her head in thought, an idea striking her. With a mild application of focus and power, she willed her elk-leathers to grow a set of ties on her upper chest.

She then deftly fastened those around the two spheres, using the dip between them to keep them from moving side to side.

Their attraction to each other was sufficient to allow her to pull the cord relatively tight without pulling between them.

She tested it out, moving around. The spheres did pull a bit, but it wasn’t too bad.

She’d reduced their downward pull first, so they weren’t weighing her down with anything but their inertia.

Well, let’s give this method a try.

She looked up as, around a bend in the main path, a squad of ten automata came into view.

These were armored as expected, but a few things seemed to have changed.

First, their armor had grown.

This was not mere stretching or reshaping. Unfortunately, they looked to have doubled, if not tripled, the mass of metal in their armor as compared to the initial armored units Tala had slain.

Additionally, their heads were pulled lower, seemingly more closely connected to their shoulders. The shape of the armor was now clearly meant both for deflecting blows away from the head and core and to make it difficult to get a good grip on the head or neck.

They can upgrade to counter me, too? Not just change behavior or do surface level changes?

-This was listed as a factory for them, Tala.-

Yeah, but their production speed can’t be this good.

-I believe that these were merely upgraded based on your previous clashes.-

That made a lot of sense, actually.

Building new ones? Slow.

Upgrading existing ones with a bit more armor? Fast.

Alright, then. I suppose it’s time to make some more scrap.