Chapter 309: Void It Is!
If audio player doesn't work, press Stop then Play button again
Chapter 309: Void It Is!
Tala contemplated the Mage in the valley below even as his own magics altered him, transforming him into a fount by unknown processes.
Was it worth it? The price for magic?
One answer came back quickly, as uncharitable as it was.
That is the price for mediocre magic. That is the price for failing to advance.
She knew that wasnt true even as she thought it.
Mistress Odera, until quite recently, could have matched or beaten Tala, in almost every metric of magical skill, despite having a handicap in her level of advancement.
No, becoming a fount was not a failure in effort.
Some just didnt have the capacity to advance further, and even so, they had tried; they had aided humanity in their own ways.
Their efforts were fruitful, sometimes nearly doubling the Mages life and allowing them to contribute that much more, that much longer.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the first flickers in reality, a precursor to what was to come.
The information that Alat had been able to get from the Archive gave them some markers to watch for, so that they could at least have a rough understanding of where they were in the process at any given time.
Tell Master Simon that its about to happen.
-Hes ready.-
Tala quickly set Kit beside herself. The pouch opened briefly, and six small spheres rolled out.
Then, Kit grew upward until she formed a wall with a window in it. Through that window, Tala could see Master Simon and Mistress Petra sitting, prepared to watch from within the safety of the sanctum.
As Kit morphed, Tala picked up the spheres and carefully threw them with enough force to imbed them in the ground surrounding the Mage down below.
They were observation artifacts, feeding information to Master Simons Archive slate and through Talas connection to the Archive itself.
All of that took less than a handful of seconds. Thus, Tala was still able to give her full attention to the valley as a pulse of power reached outward, reality itself seemingly being bent and twisted to her voidsight.
To her magesight, the man was finally, fully saturated with power.
Even her mundane sight could see a fiery glow beneath the Mages skin.
His cells. His body was being stuffed with power, far beyond their safe capacity, in order to?
And then it hit her, and all the pieces came into place.
Somehow, the nothing was enacting either an attraction or a containment to allow the magic within the mans body to reach insane levels.
As she considered it, the magic had likely wiped the mans mindutterly erasing his personhoodif something else hadnt done that first.
Is that what allows him to be taken over?
-Whatever eliminates his personage likely does, yes. Whether its magical density? I dont think so; they dont have that much power when they leave, at least not according to the research we have access to.-
Maybe something else then. But it wouldnt be detectable if it was focused around their mind, and contained by some means with nothingness.
-Thats not really the best name for something, given that nothing literally isnt something.-
Do you have a better suggestion?
-no.-
Alright, then. We can ask Master Grediv if theres a better name for it when we see him.
As they had watched, the Mage had built up power to the point where his entire being matched the magic suffusion of the next world.
Tala leaned forward unnecessarily, witnessing the edges of the mans gate fade away. Rather than closing, the through-put increased manyfold.
There was a silent impact that rippled outward through reality to her voidsight.
Even her magesight didnt detect anything but an increase of power, and her mundane sight hadnt seen anything at all.
The restriction on magical power that had been acting on the man was obliterated, and his power radiated outward on the heels of the ripple in reality, flickers of flame scorching the ground across the whole valley.
The soil directly where the man had been kneeling was almost liquified by the heat.
Tala watched as the sketch vanished to ash and then into nothingness before the initial burst of heat.
-Yeah, were authorized to close a flame fount of this flavor.- Alats voice faded as she noticed what Tala was staring at. Her focus had been on communicating with Mistress Ingrit, so she hadnt seen it immediately. -What the rust?-
Talas eyes, her voidsight, was locked on the fount.
There was no reason it should have remained.
A gate without a body or other containment should simply slip into the next world. Even the arcanes knew this, being careful to have artifacts prepared to contain and harvest founts. But this natural fount had no vessel. Instead, tendrils of nothingness looped around it, holding it as it clearly tried to move on.
Tala knew that she couldnt be the first to have seen these, or at least seen evidence of it.
Moreover, she was sure that nothing of the kind had existed in the founts held by arcanes within housings of various kinds. It would have been obvious in the extreme.
Unless its only something thats visible, or that happens at all, right at the time of formation?
It was likely a result of it being exposed or having naturally occurred. Even then, it might fade with time.
Regardless, likely because of her experiences in the Doman-Imithe, the tendrils took on a very specific look as her conscious mind struggled to interpret what she saw.
The fount was gripped by an eight-fingered hand, quite obviously from a creature like those shed seen before. Very likely it was the one that shed seen echoes of just earlier, when looking closely at the Mage.
Its not trying to get in. This Mage is specifically at the point where reality is the strongest
-To destroy Zeme? Is that its goal?-
Maybe? That doesnt make sense though right? What would it gain?
-We have no idea what the true nature of these things is. How can we even begin to guess on their motivations?-
Yeah
Talas voidsight was showing her a struggle, like saltwater and fresh fighting at the mouth of a river, the two forces were pushing on each other, each gaining supremacy for a short moment before waning.
The white metal receded everywhere else, to allow her full focus to orient on the task before her.
The fount flickered back to the size of a small ball, and Tala lunged forward, closing her void-coated hands around it.
At the same instant, she caused the white metal to flow over the fount, fully encasing it with metal and void-magics, simultaneously locking her hands together.
The power fought to try to escape, but it couldnt.
She outweighed the departed Magemagically speakingmany, many times over.
You know, I most likely out weighed him physically, too.
-Focus, Tala.-
Right!
Additionally, the void was specifically suited for the containment and consumption of well everything else.
The mans power, his flame, was pouring into her elk-leathers, but it wasnt nearly of sufficient quantity to cause any sort of substantive change.
But her mind was not focused on that, not really.
As soon as her hands had wrapped around the fount, she had been faced with something across from her, something that was seemingly also holding onto the fount and only visible to her voidsight.
As soon as she noticed the figure from the Doman-Imithe, the world began to flicker between three places.
What? This is not how the instructions described the dispersal of a fount.
Her three forms of vision showed her the valley in which the Mage had knelt.
Then her surroundings changed to a place that was clearly in the Doman-Imithe.
The threads of reality called to her voidsight, and while, blessedly, she couldnt see any other too-smiley creatures, the distorted and entirely alien landscape could only exist within the Doman-Imithe.
Trees grew out of one another, holding up the ground which she was somehow hanging from.
The leaves each had a single nostril which gave off the sense of desperately trying to catch a whiff of the scent of prey.
The bark of the trees looked more like diseased, encrusted blisters than anything resembling wood.
Even in the Doman-Imithe, this place was twisted to the extreme.
It looks like one of the floating cages I saw when I first entered with Thron.
Before she could do more than barely register what she was seeing, her environment changed again, and she was slammed by a tidal wave of magical power that, blessedly, crashed against her iron covering and was rebuffed, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately, even in the brief instant of exposure, the magical power flooded through breaches in her iron covering, mainly her eyes, ears, and nose. As it entered, it began burning everything it came in contact with.
Her every cell was anathema to the pure power that flooded into her, even the magic within her body was being seared away, the impurity of her unique aspects enough to taint the whole of her power in the face of the clarity of the next world.
Because thats what this place was, the next world.
It was entirely forged of magic.
The zeme was so complex that it was hard to see the vague shapes of objects in the power, everything she could perceive was seemingly entirely composed of pure magic.
As stunning as it was, if she hadnt moved back to the valley, Tala had no doubt that she would have died in seconds. Blessedly, as soon as she was back in the valley, the pure power was instantly aspected to match her, becoming hers and refilling the reserves of power that had been burned away.
Nope! Not dealing with that as I am. Iron covered her entirely, thickening as much as she could make it.
Her elk-leathers and Flow guzzled power as they tried to recover from their own damage, sustained in those bare fractions of a second, and Tala did her best to cover it all in iron.
Her bloodstars perspectivesfloating a short distance away from the fountwere not changing. So with her eyes closed, she couldnt see the changing enviroments, or she shouldnt have been able to.
From the outside, from the perspectives mirrored to her bloodstars, she didnt appear to be moving, though different magics were washing over her, seeming to be spilling out of the fount clutched and sealed between her hands and within her metal and void-magics.
Thats a frustrating result.
-Which shouldnt be happening-
From the inside, she could still see, even with her eyes sealed behind iron. She had no ready explanation as to how, but she could.
In the Doman-Imithe, the grinning creature didnt seem to move, even as it also somehow seemed to be fighting to keep the fount where it was.
In the next world, the fount seemed to be in the form of the Mage, now standing and looking at her with fond pity? Gratitude? Anger?
She had no idea. He was basically a three-dimensional outline, and she wasnt great at reading people at the best of times.
This was not among the best of times.
In the valley, flames wreathed the whole area, now a nearly constant deluge seemingly spewing forth.
It only pauses when I can perceive the valley first hand. Is the seal on the fount somehow rotating, along with my perception?
Throughout, she stubbornly held onto the round gate, hands locked in place by void-magic-filled metal.
Her iron was beginning to warm and bend under the heat in Zeme, even under the white-steel, and the oddly pure power of the next world was somehow beginning to affect the iron as well.
Her soul-bound items were beginning to recover, hidden away in their pockets, but Tala had only barely gotten them fully sealed in iron, and theyd each endured at least a half-dozen cycles exposed.
I am so glad that Kit is up on that hill. She would have survived, but that would have been a power-drain that I dont need right now.
The only thing that was spared were her white-steel gloves.
Why are the gloves fine?
She forced her focus onto them and saw the obvious, void-magic.
That wasnt surprising, but what was surprising was that they seemed to take longer in transit, transitioning between the three locations, and in between it almost seemed to pause before being dragged onward.
The perception of that one fact was so odd and counter to reality as she knew it that Tala felt her mind fuzz for a brief moment before she was able to reclaim her own thoughts.
The gloves are pausing, in the void?
-It is the buffer between worlds, right? It absorbs the disruptive aspects. Well, it absorbs everything it can, really.-
Void it is!
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Chapter 309: Void It Is!
Tala contemplated the Mage in the valley below even as his own magics altered him, transforming him into a fount by unknown processes.
Was it worth it? The price for magic?
One answer came back quickly, as uncharitable as it was.
That is the price for mediocre magic. That is the price for failing to advance.
She knew that wasnt true even as she thought it.
Mistress Odera, until quite recently, could have matched or beaten Tala, in almost every metric of magical skill, despite having a handicap in her level of advancement.
No, becoming a fount was not a failure in effort.
Some just didnt have the capacity to advance further, and even so, they had tried; they had aided humanity in their own ways.
Their efforts were fruitful, sometimes nearly doubling the Mages life and allowing them to contribute that much more, that much longer.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the first flickers in reality, a precursor to what was to come.
The information that Alat had been able to get from the Archive gave them some markers to watch for, so that they could at least have a rough understanding of where they were in the process at any given time.
Tell Master Simon that its about to happen.
-Hes ready.-
Tala quickly set Kit beside herself. The pouch opened briefly, and six small spheres rolled out.
Then, Kit grew upward until she formed a wall with a window in it. Through that window, Tala could see Master Simon and Mistress Petra sitting, prepared to watch from within the safety of the sanctum.
As Kit morphed, Tala picked up the spheres and carefully threw them with enough force to imbed them in the ground surrounding the Mage down below.
They were observation artifacts, feeding information to Master Simons Archive slate and through Talas connection to the Archive itself.
All of that took less than a handful of seconds. Thus, Tala was still able to give her full attention to the valley as a pulse of power reached outward, reality itself seemingly being bent and twisted to her voidsight.
To her magesight, the man was finally, fully saturated with power.
Even her mundane sight could see a fiery glow beneath the Mages skin.
His cells. His body was being stuffed with power, far beyond their safe capacity, in order to?
And then it hit her, and all the pieces came into place.
Somehow, the nothing was enacting either an attraction or a containment to allow the magic within the mans body to reach insane levels.
As she considered it, the magic had likely wiped the mans mindutterly erasing his personhoodif something else hadnt done that first.
Is that what allows him to be taken over?
-Whatever eliminates his personage likely does, yes. Whether its magical density? I dont think so; they dont have that much power when they leave, at least not according to the research we have access to.-
Maybe something else then. But it wouldnt be detectable if it was focused around their mind, and contained by some means with nothingness.
-Thats not really the best name for something, given that nothing literally isnt something.-
Do you have a better suggestion?
-no.-
Alright, then. We can ask Master Grediv if theres a better name for it when we see him.
As they had watched, the Mage had built up power to the point where his entire being matched the magic suffusion of the next world.
Tala leaned forward unnecessarily, witnessing the edges of the mans gate fade away. Rather than closing, the through-put increased manyfold.
There was a silent impact that rippled outward through reality to her voidsight.
Even her magesight didnt detect anything but an increase of power, and her mundane sight hadnt seen anything at all.
The restriction on magical power that had been acting on the man was obliterated, and his power radiated outward on the heels of the ripple in reality, flickers of flame scorching the ground across the whole valley.
The soil directly where the man had been kneeling was almost liquified by the heat.
Tala watched as the sketch vanished to ash and then into nothingness before the initial burst of heat.
-Yeah, were authorized to close a flame fount of this flavor.- Alats voice faded as she noticed what Tala was staring at. Her focus had been on communicating with Mistress Ingrit, so she hadnt seen it immediately. -What the rust?-
Talas eyes, her voidsight, was locked on the fount.
There was no reason it should have remained.
A gate without a body or other containment should simply slip into the next world. Even the arcanes knew this, being careful to have artifacts prepared to contain and harvest founts. But this natural fount had no vessel. Instead, tendrils of nothingness looped around it, holding it as it clearly tried to move on.
Tala knew that she couldnt be the first to have seen these, or at least seen evidence of it.
Moreover, she was sure that nothing of the kind had existed in the founts held by arcanes within housings of various kinds. It would have been obvious in the extreme.
Unless its only something thats visible, or that happens at all, right at the time of formation?
It was likely a result of it being exposed or having naturally occurred. Even then, it might fade with time.
Regardless, likely because of her experiences in the Doman-Imithe, the tendrils took on a very specific look as her conscious mind struggled to interpret what she saw.
The fount was gripped by an eight-fingered hand, quite obviously from a creature like those shed seen before. Very likely it was the one that shed seen echoes of just earlier, when looking closely at the Mage.
Its not trying to get in. This Mage is specifically at the point where reality is the strongest
-To destroy Zeme? Is that its goal?-
Maybe? That doesnt make sense though right? What would it gain?
-We have no idea what the true nature of these things is. How can we even begin to guess on their motivations?-
Yeah
Talas voidsight was showing her a struggle, like saltwater and fresh fighting at the mouth of a river, the two forces were pushing on each other, each gaining supremacy for a short moment before waning.
The white metal receded everywhere else, to allow her full focus to orient on the task before her.
The fount flickered back to the size of a small ball, and Tala lunged forward, closing her void-coated hands around it.
At the same instant, she caused the white metal to flow over the fount, fully encasing it with metal and void-magics, simultaneously locking her hands together.
The power fought to try to escape, but it couldnt.
She outweighed the departed Magemagically speakingmany, many times over.
You know, I most likely out weighed him physically, too.
-Focus, Tala.-
Right!
Additionally, the void was specifically suited for the containment and consumption of well everything else.
The mans power, his flame, was pouring into her elk-leathers, but it wasnt nearly of sufficient quantity to cause any sort of substantive change.
But her mind was not focused on that, not really.
As soon as her hands had wrapped around the fount, she had been faced with something across from her, something that was seemingly also holding onto the fount and only visible to her voidsight.
As soon as she noticed the figure from the Doman-Imithe, the world began to flicker between three places.
What? This is not how the instructions described the dispersal of a fount.
Her three forms of vision showed her the valley in which the Mage had knelt.
Then her surroundings changed to a place that was clearly in the Doman-Imithe.
The threads of reality called to her voidsight, and while, blessedly, she couldnt see any other too-smiley creatures, the distorted and entirely alien landscape could only exist within the Doman-Imithe.
Trees grew out of one another, holding up the ground which she was somehow hanging from.
The leaves each had a single nostril which gave off the sense of desperately trying to catch a whiff of the scent of prey.
The bark of the trees looked more like diseased, encrusted blisters than anything resembling wood.
Even in the Doman-Imithe, this place was twisted to the extreme.
It looks like one of the floating cages I saw when I first entered with Thron.
Before she could do more than barely register what she was seeing, her environment changed again, and she was slammed by a tidal wave of magical power that, blessedly, crashed against her iron covering and was rebuffed, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately, even in the brief instant of exposure, the magical power flooded through breaches in her iron covering, mainly her eyes, ears, and nose. As it entered, it began burning everything it came in contact with.
Her every cell was anathema to the pure power that flooded into her, even the magic within her body was being seared away, the impurity of her unique aspects enough to taint the whole of her power in the face of the clarity of the next world.
Because thats what this place was, the next world.
It was entirely forged of magic.
The zeme was so complex that it was hard to see the vague shapes of objects in the power, everything she could perceive was seemingly entirely composed of pure magic.
As stunning as it was, if she hadnt moved back to the valley, Tala had no doubt that she would have died in seconds. Blessedly, as soon as she was back in the valley, the pure power was instantly aspected to match her, becoming hers and refilling the reserves of power that had been burned away.
Nope! Not dealing with that as I am. Iron covered her entirely, thickening as much as she could make it.
Her elk-leathers and Flow guzzled power as they tried to recover from their own damage, sustained in those bare fractions of a second, and Tala did her best to cover it all in iron.
Her bloodstars perspectivesfloating a short distance away from the fountwere not changing. So with her eyes closed, she couldnt see the changing enviroments, or she shouldnt have been able to.
From the outside, from the perspectives mirrored to her bloodstars, she didnt appear to be moving, though different magics were washing over her, seeming to be spilling out of the fount clutched and sealed between her hands and within her metal and void-magics.
Thats a frustrating result.
-Which shouldnt be happening-
From the inside, she could still see, even with her eyes sealed behind iron. She had no ready explanation as to how, but she could.
In the Doman-Imithe, the grinning creature didnt seem to move, even as it also somehow seemed to be fighting to keep the fount where it was.
In the next world, the fount seemed to be in the form of the Mage, now standing and looking at her with fond pity? Gratitude? Anger?
She had no idea. He was basically a three-dimensional outline, and she wasnt great at reading people at the best of times.
This was not among the best of times.
In the valley, flames wreathed the whole area, now a nearly constant deluge seemingly spewing forth.
It only pauses when I can perceive the valley first hand. Is the seal on the fount somehow rotating, along with my perception?
Throughout, she stubbornly held onto the round gate, hands locked in place by void-magic-filled metal.
Her iron was beginning to warm and bend under the heat in Zeme, even under the white-steel, and the oddly pure power of the next world was somehow beginning to affect the iron as well.
Her soul-bound items were beginning to recover, hidden away in their pockets, but Tala had only barely gotten them fully sealed in iron, and theyd each endured at least a half-dozen cycles exposed.
I am so glad that Kit is up on that hill. She would have survived, but that would have been a power-drain that I dont need right now.
The only thing that was spared were her white-steel gloves.
Why are the gloves fine?
She forced her focus onto them and saw the obvious, void-magic.
That wasnt surprising, but what was surprising was that they seemed to take longer in transit, transitioning between the three locations, and in between it almost seemed to pause before being dragged onward.
The perception of that one fact was so odd and counter to reality as she knew it that Tala felt her mind fuzz for a brief moment before she was able to reclaim her own thoughts.
The gloves are pausing, in the void?
-It is the buffer between worlds, right? It absorbs the disruptive aspects. Well, it absorbs everything it can, really.-
Void it is!
Chapter 309: Void It Is!Tala contemplated the Mage in the valley below even as his own magics altered him, transforming him into a fount by unknown processes.Was it worth it? The price for magic?One answer came back quickly, as uncharitable as it was.That is the price for mediocre magic. That is the price for failing to advance.She knew that wasnt true even as she thought it.Mistress Odera, until quite recently, could have matched or beaten Tala, in almost every metric of magical skill, despite having a handicap in her level of advancement.No, becoming a fount was not a failure in effort.Some just didnt have the capacity to advance further, and even so, they had tried; they had aided humanity in their own ways.Their efforts were fruitful, sometimes nearly doubling the Mages life and allowing them to contribute that much more, that much longer.Her thoughts were interrupted by the first flickers in reality, a precursor to what was to come.The information that Alat had been able to get from the Archive gave them some markers to watch for, so that they could at least have a rough understanding of where they were in the process at any given time.Tell Master Simon that its about to happen.-Hes ready.-Tala quickly set Kit beside herself. The pouch opened briefly, and six small spheres rolled out.Then, Kit grew upward until she formed a wall with a window in it. Through that window, Tala could see Master Simon and Mistress Petra sitting, prepared to watch from within the safety of the sanctum.As Kit morphed, Tala picked up the spheres and carefully threw them with enough force to imbed them in the ground surrounding the Mage down below.They were observation artifacts, feeding information to Master Simons Archive slate and through Talas connection to the Archive itself.All of that took less than a handful of seconds. Thus, Tala was still able to give her full attention to the valley as a pulse of power reached outward, reality itself seemingly being bent and twisted to her voidsight.To her magesight, the man was finally, fully saturated with power.Even her mundane sight could see a fiery glow beneath the Mages skin.His cells. His body was being stuffed with power, far beyond their safe capacity, in order to?And then it hit her, and all the pieces came into place.Somehow, the nothing was enacting either an attraction or a containment to allow the magic within the mans body to reach insane levels.As she considered it, the magic had likely wiped the mans mindutterly erasing his personhoodif something else hadnt done that first.Is that what allows him to be taken over?-Whatever eliminates his personage likely does, yes. Whether its magical density? I dont think so; they dont have that much power when they leave, at least not according to the research we have access to.-Maybe something else then. But it wouldnt be detectable if it was focused around their mind, and contained by some means with nothingness.-Thats not really the best name for something, given that nothing literally isnt something.-Do you have a better suggestion?-no.-Alright, then. We can ask Master Grediv if theres a better name for it when we see him.As they had watched, the Mage had built up power to the point where his entire being matched the magic suffusion of the next world.Tala leaned forward unnecessarily, witnessing the edges of the mans gate fade away. Rather than closing, the through-put increased manyfold.There was a silent impact that rippled outward through reality to her voidsight.Even her magesight didnt detect anything but an increase of power, and her mundane sight hadnt seen anything at all.The restriction on magical power that had been acting on the man was obliterated, and his power radiated outward on the heels of the ripple in reality, flickers of flame scorching the ground across the whole valley.The soil directly where the man had been kneeling was almost liquified by the heat.Tala watched as the sketch vanished to ash and then into nothingness before the initial burst of heat.-Yeah, were authorized to close a flame fount of this flavor.- Alats voice faded as she noticed what Tala was staring at. Her focus had been on communicating with Mistress Ingrit, so she hadnt seen it immediately. -What the rust?-Talas eyes, her voidsight, was locked on the fount.There was no reason it should have remained.A gate without a body or other containment should simply slip into the next world. Even the arcanes knew this, being careful to have artifacts prepared to contain and harvest founts. But this natural fount had no vessel. Instead, tendrils of nothingness looped around it, holding it as it clearly tried to move on.Tala knew that she couldnt be the first to have seen these, or at least seen evidence of it.Moreover, she was sure that nothing of the kind had existed in the founts held by arcanes within housings of various kinds. It would have been obvious in the extreme.Unless its only something thats visible, or that happens at all, right at the time of formation?It was likely a result of it being exposed or having naturally occurred. Even then, it might fade with time.Regardless, likely because of her experiences in the Doman-Imithe, the tendrils took on a very specific look as her conscious mind struggled to interpret what she saw.The fount was gripped by an eight-fingered hand, quite obviously from a creature like those shed seen before. Very likely it was the one that shed seen echoes of just earlier, when looking closely at the Mage.Its not trying to get in. This Mage is specifically at the point where reality is the strongest-To destroy Zeme? Is that its goal?-Maybe? That doesnt make sense though right? What would it gain?-We have no idea what the true nature of these things is. How can we even begin to guess on their motivations?-YeahTalas voidsight was showing her a struggle, like saltwater and fresh fighting at the mouth of a river, the two forces were pushing on each other, each gaining supremacy for a short moment before waning.The white metal receded everywhere else, to allow her full focus to orient on the task before her.The fount flickered back to the size of a small ball, and Tala lunged forward, closing her void-coated hands around it.At the same instant, she caused the white metal to flow over the fount, fully encasing it with metal and void-magics, simultaneously locking her hands together.The power fought to try to escape, but it couldnt.She outweighed the departed Magemagically speakingmany, many times over.You know, I most likely out weighed him physically, too.-Focus, Tala.-Right!Additionally, the void was specifically suited for the containment and consumption of well everything else.The mans power, his flame, was pouring into her elk-leathers, but it wasnt nearly of sufficient quantity to cause any sort of substantive change.But her mind was not focused on that, not really.As soon as her hands had wrapped around the fount, she had been faced with something across from her, something that was seemingly also holding onto the fount and only visible to her voidsight.As soon as she noticed the figure from the Doman-Imithe, the world began to flicker between three places.What? This is not how the instructions described the dispersal of a fount.Her three forms of vision showed her the valley in which the Mage had knelt.Then her surroundings changed to a place that was clearly in the Doman-Imithe.The threads of reality called to her voidsight, and while, blessedly, she couldnt see any other too-smiley creatures, the distorted and entirely alien landscape could only exist within the Doman-Imithe.Trees grew out of one another, holding up the ground which she was somehow hanging from.The leaves each had a single nostril which gave off the sense of desperately trying to catch a whiff of the scent of prey.The bark of the trees looked more like diseased, encrusted blisters than anything resembling wood.Even in the Doman-Imithe, this place was twisted to the extreme.It looks like one of the floating cages I saw when I first entered with Thron.Before she could do more than barely register what she was seeing, her environment changed again, and she was slammed by a tidal wave of magical power that, blessedly, crashed against her iron covering and was rebuffed, at least temporarily.Unfortunately, even in the brief instant of exposure, the magical power flooded through breaches in her iron covering, mainly her eyes, ears, and nose. As it entered, it began burning everything it came in contact with.Her every cell was anathema to the pure power that flooded into her, even the magic within her body was being seared away, the impurity of her unique aspects enough to taint the whole of her power in the face of the clarity of the next world.Because thats what this place was, the next world.It was entirely forged of magic.The zeme was so complex that it was hard to see the vague shapes of objects in the power, everything she could perceive was seemingly entirely composed of pure magic.As stunning as it was, if she hadnt moved back to the valley, Tala had no doubt that she would have died in seconds. Blessedly, as soon as she was back in the valley, the pure power was instantly aspected to match her, becoming hers and refilling the reserves of power that had been burned away.Nope! Not dealing with that as I am. Iron covered her entirely, thickening as much as she could make it.Her elk-leathers and Flow guzzled power as they tried to recover from their own damage, sustained in those bare fractions of a second, and Tala did her best to cover it all in iron.Her bloodstars perspectivesfloating a short distance away from the fountwere not changing. So with her eyes closed, she couldnt see the changing enviroments, or she shouldnt have been able to.From the outside, from the perspectives mirrored to her bloodstars, she didnt appear to be moving, though different magics were washing over her, seeming to be spilling out of the fount clutched and sealed between her hands and within her metal and void-magics.Thats a frustrating result.-Which shouldnt be happening-From the inside, she could still see, even with her eyes sealed behind iron. She had no ready explanation as to how, but she could.In the Doman-Imithe, the grinning creature didnt seem to move, even as it also somehow seemed to be fighting to keep the fount where it was.In the next world, the fount seemed to be in the form of the Mage, now standing and looking at her with fond pity? Gratitude? Anger?She had no idea. He was basically a three-dimensional outline, and she wasnt great at reading people at the best of times.This was not among the best of times.In the valley, flames wreathed the whole area, now a nearly constant deluge seemingly spewing forth.It only pauses when I can perceive the valley first hand. Is the seal on the fount somehow rotating, along with my perception?Throughout, she stubbornly held onto the round gate, hands locked in place by void-magic-filled metal.Her iron was beginning to warm and bend under the heat in Zeme, even under the white-steel, and the oddly pure power of the next world was somehow beginning to affect the iron as well.Her soul-bound items were beginning to recover, hidden away in their pockets, but Tala had only barely gotten them fully sealed in iron, and theyd each endured at least a half-dozen cycles exposed.I am so glad that Kit is up on that hill. She would have survived, but that would have been a power-drain that I dont need right now.The only thing that was spared were her white-steel gloves.Why are the gloves fine?She forced her focus onto them and saw the obvious, void-magic.That wasnt surprising, but what was surprising was that they seemed to take longer in transit, transitioning between the three locations, and in between it almost seemed to pause before being dragged onward.The perception of that one fact was so odd and counter to reality as she knew it that Tala felt her mind fuzz for a brief moment before she was able to reclaim her own thoughts.The gloves are pausing, in the void?-It is the buffer between worlds, right? It absorbs the disruptive aspects. Well, it absorbs everything it can, really.-Void it is!
