Tala sat in the disjointed place known as the Doman-Imithe.

She’d been sent there to die, but she hadn’t complied, at least not yet.

A dasgannach was ready and willing to rip all the iron out of her, as soon as her Archon star was no longer preventing that.

The only reason she wasn’t dead already was because there was iron in the blood that made up her slowly growing Archon star, and the dasgannach wouldn’t leave until it had claimed all the iron.

It would have already claimed the iron in the star too, but dasgannachs don’t bond. This one was heavily magically modified, so she hadn’t known if that would hold true, but it definitely seemed to, at least so far.

That’s right, Tala, review where you are, so you can see where you’re going.

Kit was sealed to her, the Doman-Imithe apparently put at least dimensional storage items into an odd semi-stasis. With Terry in Kit, Tala was basically alone.

Well, Thron’s here, but he’s only here to await my death. Unless I can convince him otherwise. That was probably going to be required one way or another, regardless.

The dwarf sat a little ways away, sorting through the pack that Pallaun had given him.

Tala had no inscriptions, and that lowered her capacities to an incredible degree.

But all those were medium to long term issues.

In the short term?

Kit was almost full of power, and when that happened, she’d have nowhere for her power to go.

Nothing she could think of would actually use up her magical energy.

She was purposely using as little as possible to pour into the creation of the Archon star in her finger, because once that was full, her time was up.

Normally, she’d prided herself on an incredible flowrate through her gate, but this might be a situation where that would bite her, hard.

I wish I could see the magic around me clearly enough to determine if simply dumping my power into the environment would be detrimental.

She could see this place being fairly magically barren, and her power becoming like a beacon, summoning who knows what to kill her.

It could also be the case that the Doman-Imithe would distort and alter itself in unknowable ways in the presence of ambient magics.

She just had no way of knowing, and what little of her magesight remained, now impressed into her natural magics through repeated use, wasn’t nearly detailed enough to even let her take a guess.

And I didn’t research it, because I didn’t expect to ever be without my inscriptions. She grimaced.

What she needed more than anything else was information.

Huh. Wait a minute… She grinned. That just might help.

She opened her eyes, placed a hand on Flow where it hung at her belt, and directed power into it, purposely not using any void-channels to amplify her flowrate.

Flow took basically all the magic coming through her gate to take on the form of a void-knife, only leaving the fraction that she was directing into her left ring finger.

The pressure within her body instantly lessened, and she let out a relieved breath. Well, that’s a nice fringe benefit.

She wouldn’t have to deal with excess magic, at least not in the short term. At least not until I need to sleep.

But that isn’t the only reason she’d pushed Flow into a void-form.

She could feel something around her eyes as her void-sight opened.

She was greeted by a cacophony of sights so convoluted, that she instantly snapped her eyes shut against the insanity.

It felt like she’d gotten two black eyes, and now some overly helpful person was trying to shove ice against them, but was applying entirely too much pressure.

Tala took seven long, measured breaths.

Four count in.

Hold for four.

Four count out.

Hold for four.

And around it went.

Finally, she was able to master herself enough to try again.

She cracked her eyes open to a squint and was able to barely perceive through the gap.

It was… a lot.

Cords of reality crisscrossed everything.

The floating chunks, like the one she currently sat on, seemed to be knots manifested in the tangle of fragmented reality.

As to what lay between the strands?

Nothing.

Not the nothing in the sense of ‘there’s nothing there.’

Truly nothing.

Void magics and power clung to the strands of reality, hugging tightly over it all like a skin.

There wasn’t even void in the nothing, which made absolutely no sense at all.

Tala couldn’t look away for what felt like an incredibly long span of time. Though, whether it was an instant or a day, she had no idea.

The fact that Thron didn’t speak to her, or throw something, meant it probably wasn’t actually that long, but the experience seemed to put that to lie.

Finally, she pulled her vision away from the nothingness, and focused on the void-coated-reality threads.

Alright, so no jumping between fragments to search for another way out. Something deep within her was assured that anything entering the nothing would cease on the instant.

She followed one strand, which led within and down a small walking path that quickly passed from sight off to the side.

This path had been there from the beginning, along the edge of the sheer drop past the obsidian wall, but she’d not really focused on it because of… well, everything else.

Given what she’d seen of the other fragments, Tala would have expected such a path to go nowhere, and since she couldn’t see where it was going, any speculation was just that: speculation.

However, she could perceive the reality thread, and that continued.

I’ll have to actually move around to see if I can figure out how this place works…

Then, as she looked around with squinted eyes, she saw another oddity.

Floating over the obsidian disk, right where they’d come through into the Doman-Imithe, was a small… something, extending from the threads of reality.

Tala got up and walked closer, ignoring Thron’s grunt of surprise and questioning gaze.

She approached the something, which looked like nothing so much as a lump woven into the thread, and she examined it.

What are you?

Unlike most threads, this one didn’t have material wrapped around it, and seemed to extend into nowhere, without ending.

She had a feeling that it continued a few hundred feet behind her, and when she glanced that way, she saw another strand that almost seemed to be coming out of nothing, while feeling like it connected to the one in front of her.

This place makes no sense at all…

Even so, she needed to learn.

Thus, she reached out to attempt to feel the odd nodule.

She could almost feel it as her hand came close, but she couldn’t quite touch it. In fact, it seemed to slip away from her fingers as they got close, the reality of her flesh repelling the outside of the void-skin on the thread.

Fascinating. Maybe, void magics?

Since she couldn’t touch it with her hands, she moved close, pressing her eye to the lump, and the void-magics flowing through that part of her seemed to snap into place.

After an odd sort of flash, she was looking into the obsidian gazebo from which they’d come with the eye she’d used to connect with the lump.

Pallaun had departed, and it was a simple, empty space.

She gasped, jerking back.

Thron jumped to his feet, looking around in alarm. “What is it?”

Tala ignored him for a moment longer, her eyes wide now, searching along the threads of reality, finding at first a few, then a few dozen, then hundreds, and finally too many protuberances to count.

Touchpoints to Zeme. She sat heavily, wincing at the impact with the hard surface, but she couldn’t be deterred. She let Flow fall out of its void-form and her eyes returned to normal.

“Tali?”

Tala looked to the dwarf. “We have some things to discuss. I’m pretty sure I can get out of here.”

Thron’s eyes widened. “Really?”

She hesitated. “Well, I’ve got the beginnings of an idea.”

He huffed at that but didn’t interrupt.

“I think if I can find a safe place to come through, I can test my theories. Now? Now, I can see into Zeme, so finding such a place should be possible.”

When she didn’t continue, Thron nodded. “I think I understand what you are saying. What I don’t understand is why I should allow you to try?”

Tala took a deep breath. First gamble, here I come. “Because you should come with me.”

He narrowed his eyes but didn’t interrupt.

“You obviously want the… item, but there are other things that I can offer.”

“Oh?” He leaned forward. “I’m listening.”

“Firstly, I would give you the item once we were free, obviously. While I’d like the opportunity to study it, but it would be yours, free and clear.”

He grunted.

“In that regard, I am a superior supplier to the House of Blood, because if I give it to you, no one will know you have it. Even if they are sworn to not interfere with your possession of it, rumors get around.”

He grimaced but didn’t comment.

“Second, I stole a book on advancement from the House of the Rising Sun.”

His back straightened slightly. “If such a thing were just laying about, it was likely generalities or even misinformation.”

“I got it from a protected vault. The same place I got the logs and ledgers I handed over to you.”

He leaned back, then. Likely to give himself time to think, he pulled out a loaf of brown bread, and stuffed butter into it before taking a big bite. Around the first mouthful, he prompted her, “Go on.”

She made a motion with her hands, and he rolled his eyes before starting to prepare some for her too. “Thank you. Well, I’d bring you with me, if you wanted to go.”

He swallowed. “Where?”

“The human cities.”

One bushy, silver eyebrow raised. “You’re going to the human cities?”

“That’s the plan.”

“A former Eskau of a major House.”

“Well, that wasn’t the plan, but it’s how it is.”

“They’ll kill you before you can get within a hundred miles.”

She pointed to herself. “Why would you assume that? I’m human, remember?”

He grunted and scratched his beard. “That’s true, I suppose. So, you’ll get within a dozen miles before they kill you. They aren’t a peaceful people, Tali. They kill and take, lay waste to the land and just leave it to heal on its own without regard to the harm they’ve done.”

“Wait a minute.” She frowned. Nothing he’d said was wrong, per se, but it wasn’t really a fair representation, either. “That is a rather biased characterization.”

Thron hesitated, taking another bite. He tossed her her buttered bread and chewed in silence. After swallowing, he shrugged. “That may be so, but neither you or I know different.”

“Well… That’s the thing. I do know different.”

The bread was halfway to his mouth for another bite, but it paused, slowly lowering. “Go on.”

She took a deep breath. “So, Be-thric kidnapped me from the human lands, mind-wiped me, and inserted a fake personality into my head to control my body, and I only just recovered myself right before the fight for our raising to the positions of Eskau and Pillar.”

The dwarf blinked at her a few times, then set the bread aside. His skin had paled, and there was a mix of confusion and anger in his eyes. “Come again?”

“Which part?”

Overall, he seemed rather ruffled as he responded, “All of it. You will tell it all to me again, but this time slower and with more detail, please.”

She grimaced but nodded. “It will be abridged, but when you agree, I’ll tell you more, while we walk. Rust, I’ll throw in the answer to almost any question you want to ask to sweeten the deal.”

He simply grunted, waiting.

So, she gave him the five-minute version, which was very light on details.

At the end, Thron leaned back, scrubbing his face with his hands.

“That is a lot to parse.”—a frown stole over his features—“So, you’re telling me that you never wanted to win? You whipped us all to… what? Pretend?”

“I had no idea about the dynamics of the situation. Be-thric could have erased me again on a whim for all I knew. I needed to be a prominent figure so he couldn’t make me disappear.”

The silver bearded dwarf sighed at that but nodded. “I can understand that, I suppose.” He grimaced. “What he did to you… I don’t have words for that.”

She shrugged, feeling a bit awkward talking about it. “It wasn’t great, and I’ll not sign up for it again. I can’t even say that it doesn’t give me nightmares, but he’s dead.”

“He is at that…” Thron shook his head. “So, you’re a human from the ‘wild’ cities up north.” He huffed a cautious laugh. “That does explain quite a few things, if I’m being honest.”

“So, you see? I’ll be welcomed back with open arms to the human cities, and they are not how you describe them, at least not in the way you put it. You can make anything sound bad if you word it right.”

“That’s true enough, I suppose.” He grimaced. “I would like that book, though I don’t know if it will really be helpful.”

“It could be.” She smiled broadly in what she hoped was a convincing sort of way.

“Stop that. It’s creepy.”

She let her smile fall. “Sorry…”

“As fascinating as it would be to see the human cities, I’d stand out like a diminutive boulder, rolling through their streets.”

“We can get you a through-spike to make you look human. You’re only a little shorter than a short human. Sure, you’re built like a bull, but that just makes you look like you fight for a living, which is true. You’d be unusual, sure, but not instantly recognizable as nonhuman.”

He sighed. “What would I even do in the human cities? Sightseeing for a bit would be interesting and all, but that’s not a life.”

“What were you planning on doing away from the human cities?”

He glared at her. “Serving as your adjunct, until you went and mucked that up.”

Tala winced. “Ahh, yes.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “But what you’re really asking is: What would I do if I didn’t go with you? If I let you die, took the sword and left?”

She nodded.

“I’m not sure. I don’t really have any connections here on this little continent. I’d probably try to cross the water to head back home. Returning with a concept weapon would gain me standing, and fighting well with one would net me power. If nothing else, the House of Blood has honed me as a fighter, though I’d still need to get used to a non-morphic weapon. Our practice has helped, but I have a lot of ingrained habits still to work through. Battle prowess reigns supreme on the other continent. It’s a brutal place over there, not like here.”

Tala snorted, but Thron didn’t look like he was joking.

“Here, the Houses follow the lead of City Lords and remain mostly civil. There? There are no City Lords, not really. Whichever House gains sway lords it over the others, trying to drive them out and usually succeeding in the end. It’s anarchy, or near enough. There is no consistency in the laws between cities, and changes in leadership often cause sweeping alterations even within a given territory.”

“How is that sustainable?”

“It isn’t, not really. There is stability these days, in the sense that most cities are controlled by singular Houses, and they only wage war when they’re bored, or there is some perceived slight. Even so, the foundation of the place is rickety at best.”

“How do they have protian weapons, away from the human lands? Or do they use a different method for the ruling and determining of major Houses?”

He gave her an odd look, then shook his head. “I suppose you’d have no way of knowing: Gated humans are bred and traded like prized steeds. There is an art to their… rearing, and most aren’t harvested until they are quite advanced in years or until their masters have a need for their gates.”

“Ahh… So, golden cages all around?”

“Some more golden than others, but yes, for the most part.”

She sighed. “Well, I’d be interested in seeing the other continent when I’m a bit more powerful.”

He laughed. “You’d need to be at least a few ranks higher before you’d be able to keep yourself out of too much trouble.”

“Or have a way of not seeming human?”

“That might work, if you were exceedingly careful.”

“Well, then. Come with me to the human cities. See what no arcane has been freely shown, then we’ll go back to your home in the next hundred years or so.”

He grimaced.

“What?”

“Arcane, as in ‘arcanous beast?’ That’s sort of a slur, Tali.” He hesitated. “But that’s not your name, is it?”

“Well, no. My name is Tala.” She frowned. “You know, I think I remember hearing that arcane was a slur. I apologize for that. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He shrugged. “It’s a funny thing. You said I was built like a bull, and I took it for a compliment, but compare me to a magical creature, and suddenly it’s a slur?” He shook his head. “Cultures are odd like that, I suppose. I appreciate the apology.”

She perked up. “So?”

“I really have no interest in going to the human lands… Tala.” Her name seemed odd coming from him for the first time.

“Oh, I see.”

He hesitated. “One major issue is that, nothing you can offer me, long term, will matter if you die.”

She opened her mouth to object, but he raised his hand to forstall her.

He shrugged. “That said, you do offer a far more compelling option for me. If you can get us out of the Doman-Imithe, away from Platoiri without getting caught, I am in.” He held up a finger. “But you turn over the sword and book the instant we are out of here. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” She grinned. “Oh, thank you, Thron!”

He held up his hands, forestalling her joy. “Well, this works out much better for me. It costs me nothing to let you try. I’d be a fool to be unwilling to let you see if you can get out. If you can’t? Then, nothing has changed, and we only need to wait a few more days. If it does work? Then, that has the potential to give me great gains. All that said, what about you? I mean, honestly, how are you going to handle that… slime in your system?”

“I’m working on it. Since we’re parting ways after we’re out of here, you don’t really need to concern yourself.”

He frowned at that, then shook his head. “I don’t want you to die, Tala. I’ve still not fully processed what was done to you, but even without that, I’d rather you lived.”

“Well then, if I need to bounce around any ideas, I’ll be sure to talk with you.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

Now, I just need to actually come up with some ideas… Regardless, she put a smile on her face and stood back to her feet. “Alright, then! Let’s see what I can find.”