Tala stood back up after sending the note to her siblings for their birthday.

While she was composing it, Mistress Ingrit had sent her a short inquiry, so she’d told the Archivist that she was on her way to Bandfast in the company of Masters Grediv and Rane.

There. That’s done for now.

She didn’t want to be distracted by her surroundings. Thus, she narrowed her focus and turned toward Master Grediv. “So, combining two already soul-bound items?”

The Paragon glanced her way, then to either side. They were moving through the pass, incredibly steep slopes on either side. “Not one for taking in the scenery?”

Fine… Tala did look around, then. It was stunning.

Behind them, she saw the rolling, lightly forested plains running down from the mountains to Alefast, Waning, and beyond where the trees all but disappeared, and in the far distance, the forest proper where the trees returned in sudden force.

Before them lay a wide valley between stark mountains, sloping down toward the west, toward Bandfast.

It was an idyllic scene not marred by anything to her normal sight.

The angle is wrong to see the caravan campsite just north of this pass, and it doesn’t seem like any caravan is passing below us at the moment.

Her magesight, however, showed swirling storms of power, making the zeme utterly chaotic in the area. The mountains were filled with magic, the centuries of human cities circling the region had built up quite the reserves within the land itself.

It wasn’t free-floating, and as such couldn’t be claimed by an arcane. Somehow, the world itself had laid claim to the magic. That’s probably how it can then sustain magical beasts.

But she was letting her mind wander.

Don’t let yourself get distracted.

-Yes, that would be quite out of character.-

Hush, you. “It is beautiful, and I would like to know what you have to say.”

Master Grediv quirked a smile.

Rane sat off to one side on their wide, but not overlarge, disc.

He briefly cracked an eye open, glanced towards Master Grediv, and closed it once again.

Listening without being obvious, eh? I wonder if he’s soul-bound anything else? She could try to figure it out, but now was hardly the time.

Master Grediv finally nodded and sat cross-legged, gesturing for her to do the same.

She did.

“A soul-bound item is a magical item that is bound to your soul.”

She gave him a flat look.

He gave her a happy, slightly smug, smile. “What each one of those words is, in actuality, really matters, though.”

That caused her to frown, before she slowly nodded. “Like my elk-leathers. They are ‘one item’ while really being numerous pieces, physically.”

“Precisely, yes. We can address that side of things first. Your elk-leathers have been bound on a spiritual, or magical, level and are thus a ‘magical item’ for want of a better descriptor.”

“So, a ‘magical item’ is anything that is spiritually or magically ‘one?’”

“For the most part, yes.”

“But wouldn’t that mean that, after the bond, I am ‘spiritually and magically one’ with that item?”

“Ahh, and you immediately focus on the ‘least’ part, as usual.”

She grinned sheepishly, and Rane smiled without opening his eyes.

Master Grediv waved placatingly. “I don’t mean that negatively, Mistress Tala. You have drilled right to the heart of the matter. What I am about to describe is not literally true. Do you understand?”

“A metaphor, yes.”

“Yes, good. So, there exists a network of ties, each one of your soul-bound items is linked to your soul and to each other. Together, you are a group all bound as a unit.”

She nodded and didn’t interrupt.

“The same goes for me. Now, as a hypothetical, what would happen if you and I were to marry?”

Tala frowned, putting aside the awkwardness of the question. “We would soul-bond.”

“Yes, and our soul-bound items?”

Her head tilted to one side. “They would intermesh? All connecting to each other in one big wibbly-wobbly, ti—”

He held up his hand. “I’m going to stop you right there. That is what would be expected to happen based on the previous metaphor, but remember, it’s not a perfect analogy.”

She nodded, clearly following what he was trying to say.

“Instead, a singular link would be made between our souls, the weight of which would be the sum total of our power and the power of bound items.”

“So, they add to the link, without being a part of it?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Sure, I suppose that makes sense. How is it relevant?”

He smiled. “Why is there a difference between binding an item and a person?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. There was an obvious answer but was it really that simple? Finally, she decided to just go with it, “Our minds?”

“Precisely. If we married, you would want to bond with me, and I you, not our soulbound items, just each other.”

“But items don’t have minds.”

“Exactly. So, when they’re brought into a bond, they just… bond.”

“Hence, the network of connections.”

“Yes. And that gets complicated and exponentially more complex as you increase the number of bonds you have.”

“So, bonding someone or something with a mind is less stressful on your soul?”

“Differently stressful. It’s a stronger, two-way connection, rather than another node in a net.”

“So… this is interesting, but how does it factor into my question?”

“How would you combine them?”

Taking his question seriously, Tala thought before responding. Alat?

-In the metaphor? Just directly overlay the nodes in the net, then somehow pin them in place?-

That sounds close to what he’s asking, but rather than pinning them, “Overlay the items and interweave their connections to everything else?”

“That… yes. That is correct.”

She hesitated. “Oh! So, it is possible?”

“Only if you can get the items to occupy the same physical and magical space…” He hesitated, then nodded. “You want to combine the dasgannach with your body.”

Rane’s eyes snapped open. “What now?”

Master Grediv closed his eyes, rocking backward and wincing. “Ah, Mistress Tala, I apologize. That was an egregious breach of trust. I should never have disclosed your soul-bound items to another.”

Rane whipped his head to stare, wide-eyed at Tala. “You soul-bound a dasgannach?!”

The Paragon reached over and smacked Rane on the back of his head. Somehow, the Fused’s defensive scripts didn’t activate, allowing the hit to land. “That was obvious from the context, if you’d taken even an instant to think. Don’t try to make what I’ve done seem worse.”

Tala shook her head, holding up her hands. “It’s fine, Master Grediv. I don’t mind Rane knowing.”

“So… It’s true?”

“It is, though the dasgannach in question was heavily modified by arcane concept magics, at least that is my assumption of how they did it. It wasn’t really voluntary? I had to offer the thing my Archon star to keep it from killing me, but I think that the results will be beneficial, in the end. Though, to be fair, I’ve only barely explored the bare edges of what those results are.”

“What are the results you know?”

Tala grinned wickedly. “Well.” She consciously suppressed her through-spike.

With that action, she knew that she almost fully disappeared to their magesight, even as their mundane vision was filled with the impression of her light wreathed form. “It’s better than the iron paint ever was. Somehow, the iron is surrounding every one of my inscriptions, but within the dimensions of magic rather than physically. I also have a lot of extra iron interwoven through me, which is giving me additional mass and density, which I imagine will take a bit to get used to, but once I have adjusted, it will make me both more offensive and resilient.”

“So, an iron dasgannach?”

“Yes.”

“I can see why that would have been an issue.” Rane was squinting. “Your skin looks normal. How are you still creating the echoes?”

“That’s because it is.” She frowned. “I just said the iron was around my inscriptions. It’s not on my skin anymore.”

He shrugged. “What if you had it on your skin, too?”

She frowned.

-Tala? That’s a pretty interesting thought. Why didn’t we think of it?-

Because we haven’t exactly had a lot of time to consider these things, yet.

-Fair enough. So? What if?-

Her eyes had initially widened at the idea. Now, they narrowed as she nodded to herself. “Well, let’s see.”

With an almost effortless flexing of her will, some of her iron reserves flowed through her and out, onto her skin, coating it in a dark grey semi-liquid.

It moved with her easily, though somehow, she knew it would feel hard and unyielding to anyone who touched it.

The wreathing of light vanished, the magics that carved them now contained within another layer.

-Oh, wow. That feels good. I feel more, somehow. Keep it up!-

Tala felt her enhancements ramping up even higher and her efficiency increase, not due to the scripts being more efficient, but because of an additional recursion being added on top of those already flaring through her.

“Huh. That was unexpected. I don’t—”

Master Grediv’s eyes widened. “Release it! Remove it, now!”

Tala acted instantly, pulling the iron back into her reserves. Only then did she notice the issue.

As the near perfect seal dissolved, a wave of power rippled outward.

Tala felt her regeneration scripts flare to full activation with what power was left to them even as a wave of pain shuddered through her.

-Tala? Tala!-

Tala had collapsed to the side, twitching as her blood flowed from her eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and every pore across her body.

It didn’t make a mess on the sapphire disc, because only clear liquid flowed off of her, the iron stripped from the liquid before it dripped free.

That iron then melded back into her, leaving no trace on her skin.

Vaguely, Tala saw an antlered and horned head peak over around the side of a nearby mountain, clearly alerted by her pulse of power. However, this time, the creature took a look at the source and vanished from sight, likely running as fast and as far as it could.

But, on the flying disc, Rane’s eyes had gone wide, and he was clearly scanning her with his magesight and possibly other spellforms for detection and diagnosis, but he kept from touching her for the moment. “Tala?”

She groaned. Her mind felt sluggish after the brief moment of flared power. Her senses felt dull, even at their now standard levels of enhancement.

She looked inside and saw devastation.

It was like what she’d read of extreme hyponatremia, the oversaturation of water that could cause a person’s cells to burst apart. Her body seemed to have been strained to splitting down to the deepest levels. She only hadn’t noticed because her hyper-powered spellforms were masking it, keeping her alive and functional even as her body degraded, physically.

Without sitting up, she stuck her hand into Kit and pulled out some food, beginning to mechanically eat.

Rane sighed, obviously relaxing, if just a bit. She still hadn’t responded, but she was eating, and he likely took that as a good sign.

As for Tala, she still felt oddly blank, even while she clinically examined herself.

The damage had affected her brain as well, and her consciousness was only really functional at the moment due to her magics and Alat.

-I… rebuilding... Hang on...-

She couldn’t think. She seemed able to act but thinking was oddly out of reach.

So, she ate mechanically.

Rane turned to his mentor. “What happened?”

“Extreme magic oversaturation. An unrefined body simply can’t take the level of power she started to pack into it. It was too much, too quickly.”

“But she’s been completely covered in iron before.”

“She hasn’t been, not really. You’ve learned a little about the nature of reality, Rane. Before, her iron covering was not a unified, unbroken layer between her and the rest of reality. Now? Now that it is basically a part of her? Well, it’s unprecedented, so I don’t know, but in theory it should be far closer to perfect.”

“Would it really make that much of a difference?” Rane was frowning, clearly trying to understand.

Master Grediv gave his student a reproachful look. “A pressure tank with a steady ten percent rate of leakage will reach equilibrium at a much lower pressure than one with a one percent rate of leakage, assuming the same rate of in-flow. I would hazard a guess that Mistress Tala’s earlier versions of iron covering were in the forty to sixty percent range. Now? What we just saw? I’d guess it had at most a ten percent leakage.”

“So, she tried to quadruple her power density almost instantly.”

“At the very least, yes.”

“No wonder it didn’t go well…” Rane hesitated, then, when he opened his mouth to speak again, Tala finally stirred, speaking before he could.

“Not your fault.” She grimaced and tried to scrape the awful taste off her tongue with her teeth.

The two men turned to regard her as she slowly pushed herself up.

“That rusting hurt, but I’ll survive.”

Rane quirked his signature smile, seeming to relax further. “I figured that much when you started eating.”

Tala grunted at that. “Fair enough. I still think I’m more… not right than right. I’m glad we’re not getting to Bandfast today.”

Master Grediv nodded. “Yes, you should use the time to recover.”

Tala gave him a baleful look even as she continued eating. “After you answer my rusting question.”

He hesitated, then laughed. “Oh! Yes, I suppose I haven’t answered, have I?”

“No. No, you have not.”

“Well, I won’t know until we fully explore your bond to the dasgannach, but in theory?”

She nodded, swallowing and taking another bite.

“You should be able to combine it with your body in a way that few have ever been able to do with two soul-bound items. Though, I wouldn’t recommend it before you Refine. You are already obviously capable of things your body just can’t handle. I’d hate for you to make it worse.”

“I should do that soon, regardless.”

Master Grediv shrugged. “We’ll run some tests. I would bet that Mistress Holly will want to tweak your scripts at least marginally, and even with your rather impressive throughput—don’t think I haven’t noticed, by the way, and you will explain eventually—you will need at least a couple of weeks for the new scripts to shift your natural magical patterns.”

Tala shrugged. “Soon is good enough. It’s important, not urgent, and I’d rather do it right.”

Master Grediv cocked an eyebrow, his surprised skepticism obvious.

Rane smiled, the look almost congratulatory, as if she’d said something specifically worthy of note.

-Unusually wisely said, Tala. Well done.-

Tala glared back, ensuring that the sentiment was reflected inward as well. Rusting jerks, I hate all of you.

Finally, she just shook her head. “I’ve had a long few months, and I am looking forward to taking a slower pace for a little while.”

Rane nodded. “I can understand that. Was it really that awful in Platoiri?”

Tala grimaced. “Yes and no. It was strange, being in a place against my will, but holding the lives of most of those around me in my hands. I felt like a press-ganged judge. It was…” She frowned. “Wait.”

Rane tilted his head, waiting just as she’d asked.

“I never said what city I was in.”

Color drained from the Fused’s face. “I… you didn’t?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No. I didn’t.”

Did I?

-No. You didn’t.-

Yeah, I thought not.

“So? How did you know the name?”

Rane looked at a loss. “I… I can’t say.”

“Rane, so help me. You will tell me or—”

He held up his hands. “I apologize, Tala, but I truly can’t.”

Master Grediv cleared his throat. “If I may, Mistress Tala?”

Tala wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but she rounded on Master Grediv. “What.” There was no question involved, only irritation.

“Rane refused to give up when most others did, after your disappearance. I don’t know all the things he sought, but I do know that, around three months ago, he returned, sure that you were alive, and unable to tell anyone more than that. He petitioned to be allowed to venture south and was denied. Even so, he maintained that you were alive and that you would have a chance to make your escape sooner rather than later.”

Rane was a funny shade of red, but he wasn’t saying anything.

Tala looked back and forth between the two men before finally throwing her hands up in surrender. “Fine. I won’t press. I need to eat.”

And so, she ate, while the sapphire disc continued its rapid journey toward Bandfast.

The afternoon turned to evening, and Master Grediv gathered their attention. “I can continue on through the night, and we will likely reach Bandfast before dawn, or we can put down for the night and be on our way at first light. We’ll still get to Bandfast well before noon.”

Rane shrugged. “I’ve no preference either way. Tala?”

She sighed, the food Rane had procured for her long since consumed. “I’d prefer to arrive sooner rather than later. We could slow down just a bit, to arrive around sunrise? No need to cause a ruckus by arriving in the dark.”

Master Grediv hesitated, then nodded. “Very well. That is quite possible.”

The disc slowed down noticeably, but not over-much, and they continued their journey uninterrupted.