Millennial Mage

Tala and Rane met with Master Kalfeir and Mistress Cae one last time, the night before they were going to leave Astraya behind, striking out to finally find Howlton.

After the formalities of greetings and bows were exchanged, Mistress Cae gestured for them to sit once more in the seating area, the view out the front being especially wonderous with the sun setting over the trees far to the right.

Once the drink selections were made, Tala spoke first, “Thank you for the hospitality of your fair town.”

Mistress Cae waved that off. “Think nothing of it. We are always happy to host competent Mages.”

Master Kalfeir snorted. “You didn’t seem to have trouble finding sport to fill your time.”

Tala chuckled. “The little scuffle wasn’t a problem, was it?”

He shook his head, then gestured to his wife. She gave a more complete answer. “No, but we have received multiple requests for more information about Irondale, and you in particular, among other things.”

“Oh? The House of the Awakening Woods is that interested? I’d thought I would be a passing curiosity.” Tala tapped her lips a couple of times in thought.

“Well, yes, but it wasn’t just them. There are interested parties of all sorts. Some are simple information brokers, and they are able to tell that you will definitely be a person of interest in the coming years. They are most likely trying to get a jump on the market, as it were.”

Mistress Cae shook her head. “He hasn’t actually been seen by anyone but a few functionaries and servants, and we ensure that they don’t spread information without our say so.” She gave a light laugh at that. “He’s essentially unknown.”

Rane shook his head, taking on a mock serious cast. “I’ll just have to suffer in anonymity, the dutiful husband behind his famous wife.”

Master Kalfier barked a laugh at that, causing both women to regard him with raised eyebrows.

He coughed and took another pull from his drink, muttering to himself in a manner that he likely knew everyone would hear. “I thought it was funny.”

Rane grinned but didn’t take the joke further.

With the social ice thoroughly broken, the four of them chatted for the next few hours about little, inconsequential things.

Tala found that she didn’t have a lot that she wanted to ask the two about advancement, given they were of the same rank and each approaching Reforging from different angles. She almost asked them about children, but the lack of any mention of them made the answer seem obvious, and the topic still held a lot of… unhappiness for Tala.

She wasn’t ready to discuss it with strangers, even interesting, friendly strangers that she hoped to stay connected with.

As they were nearing the end of their time together, Tala inquired about Primacy Noc, the fox-kin—though she left off the title. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or not when Mistress Cae laughed. “He’s a dear, with his word-games, and he and his seem to mean well. He has an enclave around here somewhere, I imagine that you found it?”

“I did.”

“Well, good. I imagine that he enjoyed the visit. He doesn’t seem like one to get out much, and it’s good for him to have company, but it always seemed like he wasn’t particularly interested in that company being us.” She indicated herself and Master Kalfier.

“Oh?” Tala was genuinely curious for the woman’s take on the situation as well as the fox-kin himself.

“Oh, yes. He seems very… racially focused whenever we talk. I think being exposed to more humans of power will help keep him in a good mindset too.”

She grunted at that. “The place did seem rather insular.” Tala looked toward Rane and Master Kalfier. “I don’t think either of our husbands could have comfortably come along for the exchange. The fox-kin definitely build with their species in mind.”

That actually reminded Tala that she’d never had that issue in Primacy Lisa’s constructions. Did he just take advantage of greater space, or was he being purposely accommodating? She didn’t know but if it was the second, it made her think better of him. It spoke well when a person made life easier for others when they didn’t have to.

Her focus was pulled back as Mistress Cae began to speak again.

“Interesting. I’d assumed it would be thus.” She gestured around them. “But I suppose we do the same, so is it any wonder?” She grinned. “Rather speciesist of us to build on our own scale.”

Tala laughed. “Indeed.”

At one point during the visit, Rane and Master Kalfier got up and moved over next to the forward ‘glass,’ looking out and chatting. They also seemed to be discussing the clear material itself.

Maybe it’s more refined elemental fleece?

-Maybe? If so, it must be from a different breed of cloud elemental, or something else entirely. The magical signature is different.-

I noticed that, yeah. I just figured it was a different herd of the creatures, or that different processing methods were used.

-That could be, I suppose.-

While the husbands were off on their own, Mistress Cae and Tala chatted about various processes for brewing coffee. They didn’t end up agreeing on which one was the best, but they both had fun debating the pros and cons of various methodologies.

One of the main sticking points was that Tala was far more a fan of quantity where Mistress Cae didn’t mind a process ending up with a small amount of a higher quality beverage.

The discussion had been fun, but Tala wasn’t surprised when they ended up disagreeing. Such was almost always the case between two people who didn’t define their terms before starting.

There wasn’t much to the meeting beyond that, and soon enough, Tala and Rane were back in the sanctum with Terry and Lyn, Alat piloting one of the fliers and navigating an efficient path through the center of the wandering plains, toward the south.

Lyn seemed very happy as she finally commanded Tala’s attention. “Are you ready to learn what we were able to secure for Ironhold?”

Tala was surprised at the giddiness of the woman. “Yes. Let’s hear it.”

“Hold Tenders.” Lyn waited expectantly, as if those two words, together, were supposed to mean something incredible.

Instead, the phrase just brought a frown to Tala’s face. “Someone who takes care of a hold?”

“Well, that could be what I’m referring to… sort of? That’s where the magics and technologies originated. Apparently some very old holds—generally not well maintained—start to degrade, and these Hold Tenders were used as platforms to help stitch them back together.”

“What do you mean?”

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“Well, the magics, when used to their fullest, allow for a properly keyed vessel to move from a hold to the superficial and back.”

Tala stared at her. “What? Why wouldn’t I have heard about such a thing?”

She was utterly confused. In the cycling cities, anyone who worked with holds had been pinged by Mistress Ingrit for advancements exactly like this, but they’d gotten nothing. As an Eskau of a Major House, she should have at least been aware of the existence of such things if the arcanes of that region knew of them.

It made no sense for such to exist if she hadn’t heard of it… unless it wasn’t wide spread?

Lyn chuckled, unaware of how deep Tala’s confusion ran. “Apparently, the issues it addresses just don’t happen in the House lands. Their holds are cared for, combined, or abandoned to fade away.”

Tala grunted at that. “That’s… fair.”

“Exactly. The hold equivalents in the cycling cities are all bound storage items, gaining stability and longevity from their bound owner. They don’t suffer from these weaknesses either. Here though? In the wandering wilds? Sometimes they can’t maintain them as well as needed, so over generations, they need to be able to service the holds. More than that, though, holds in the moving settlements are more exposed. It’s somewhat rare, but sometimes one of the towns or villages is destroyed and that would have condemned everyone in the holds without mitigations put in place.”

She nodded at that. They had a similar issue, which Lyn was aware of. That was likely the source of her excitement.

“These use a subset of the magic to be ‘buoyant’ toward the superficial, only held in place by a whisper and a wish.”

Tala gave a half smile at the expression, but she didn’t comment.

“So, if the hold needs to be evacuated, they load up these tenders and release them. It’s not a comfortable trip, but in the end, they ‘surface’ on the superficial and they can make their way from there.”

“So, they come out into the remnants of a battlefield on which their town was destroyed?”

Lyn shook her head. “No, they generally wait a few days. In the worst case, this can have allowed the unmoored holds to drift some, but that can be a boon in this case, as they come out farther from the danger that should have passed regardless.”

Tala was about to inquire further, when she finally understood what Lyn had been saying. “Wait… so we got some?”

“Yup. I heard mention of them in Sunnyvale, but apparently theirs require far more specific magics to ensure that the evacuees end up on the surface rather than up in the sky—where they would drop to their deaths—and they had no extras, nor any desire to allow our researchers to dig through them.”

“But in Astraya?”

“In Astraya, they had two extra. They have a workshop that buys the materials, crafts them, and then sells them to other mobile settlements. They are hardly the only such shop, but they do enough work that they had those on hand, ready to sell.”

Tala grinned. “That’s amazing. So, we can shift the requirement from the silver for teleportation scripts to enough to finance a spot on a tender?”

“We can have that as an option. Though, I’m not sure if it will be any cheaper in the long run. It is another possibility, though.”

“That is good, yeah.”

In the end, they’d ‘lost’ three families to immigration to Astraya, the fourteen people in the young families seemed rather excited by the more agrarian life offered in the Astrayan holds.

Honestly, Tala had been surprised that they’d been welcomed so easily, but apparently more hands were almost always welcome as it was hard—if rewarding—work.

On their end, Ironhold had accepted more than a hundred new people across twelve young families, and a few singles who felt that they’d find their place in life in a place other than where they grew up.

As such, there were tearful goodbyes, but as they had nothing to do with Tala, she had only seen them in passing and from the outside.

On a more personal side, her siblings were going to be visiting in the next week or so.

Tala was honestly surprised at how excited she was to see everyone. If everything went as they’d planned they’d be able to come out and investigate Howlton with Tala during their visit.

That would be exciting for all involved.

Alat’s chosen path around the great circle of the wandering plains with the flier was long and the travel on the slow side, but even with her staying well below resonance levels to allow for thorough searches of the surroundings by the four other fliers, it only took a couple of days to reach the region in which Tala had first found Howlton.

The thumping was no longer in evidence, and Lyn was finally able to find word on the village through the communication network.

They knew that the town wouldn’t be at this location, but Tala had wanted to check in on the potential cell, too, and it seemed a reasonable stop either way.

Howlton had apparently moved toward the east, heading toward the Mountain Kingdom to have their holds serviced, and for similar other needs. They seemingly did so a bit less than every decade or so, and it just happened to be that time.

Lyn had been able to connect obliquely through a chain of communications through other towns they came near enough to chat with.

Greater Pareshti sent his regrets for missing Mistress Tala and expressed his gratefulness that she’d survived her ‘little problem.’

That had gotten a laugh out of Tala, but it made sense. They couldn’t be anything but circumspect with so many intermediaries.

There had been one intermediary who had requested a clarification on Tala’s name a few times before passing the message on, which was apparently unusual but not unheard of. It did make sense to verify the right information was being passed along after all, and that one had apparently been at an extreme range when the connection was established.

Regardless, Tala found herself sitting on the open plains, feeling… disappointed.

Lyn was sitting with her, looking at the midsummer light, dancing across the tall grasses.

She had the communicator with her as she’d been trying to arrange a few last trading stops before they headed back to the cycling cities.

“Am I being silly, Lyn?”

“Hmm?”

“I feel… I feel vaguely disappointed. I expected to have a grand adventure to distract me.”

Lyn laughed at that. “Oh, yes, and instead you visited the Lunar Hunt, advanced to Paragon, fought a Baba Yaga, flew in a flying town, bandied words with a Primacy—that’s still an odd title…—and traded with the wandering settlements. That sounds like a truly boring trip.”

Tala was laughing by the end. “Fine, fine. It does sound rather adventurous when you put it like that. It just felt like living to me.”

Lyn snorted. “Your life is filled with adventure, Tala. So, yes. This adventure was just ‘old hat’ to you, even if each experience was new, and enough excitement for most people’s whole life.”

“So, what was the point of this?”

“Well… do you want my honest answer?”

Tala chuckled. “I do prefer that, yes.”

“You were not in a good place when we left. I didn’t know what was wrong, then, but now that I do, I understand. You had the floor shattered beneath you. You needed to be away, and this honeymoon was a good way of doing that.”

Tala grunted.

“You have come to a place of peace with your situation, even if it does turn out to be ‘temporary’ on the scale of your life, it is true for now. You’ve processed that, and you’ve also gotten used to being married.”

That brought a contented smile to Tala’s face. “I have.”

“Are you still glad that you did it?”

She barked a laugh. “Oh, absolutely. It wasn’t the path I thought my life would take—at least not this young—but I am glad for it. It’s funny, with Rane having his own things to do, he’s still as much a ‘home body’ as always. I think his years in the wilds made him appreciate just being in a place more than I do, and his insights that lead to his advancement to Paragon are trickling outward in good ways. He has so much going on that I’m a part of but not central to. I love that. I love how he is growing, that I can support that, and how he supports my growing too.”

Lyn was beaming at Tala, the smile so broad it was almost goofy.

Tala frowned, confused. “What is it?”

“I asked if you were glad that you got married, and you almost immediately started talking about your husband.”

“I’m… sorry?”

Lyn shook her head. “No, don’t be sorry. I think it’s a good thing. If your thoughts about your marriage were only to do with you… I think that wouldn’t be very good.”

Tala’s smile returned. “I can see that.” She glanced to Lyn. “What of you? Ron is an interesting fellow, isn’t he?”

Lyn smiled. “He’s interesting, but I’m not sure we’ll go down that road. I’m still figuring all this out—working for you—but maybe in a decade or two?” She nodded. “I could see myself with him.” She narrowed her eyes then. “Though that might require me to Refine, given you’re currently granting him effective immortality.”

Tala shrugged. “The sacrifices we make.”

Lyn chuckled. “I’m still not interested in the process, but I have centuries yet. Time may change my mind.”

The conversation lapsed at that point, and the two friends sat in silence for a long moment before the communication device in Lyn’s lap pinged.

“Oh, one moment.” She manipulated it, reading the signals coming from it. After a moment, she frowned. “That’s odd. They’re requesting that we verify that we’re receiving clearly.”

Tala shrugged. “Is that really odd? I thought there could be connection issues.”

Lyn sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I’m still getting used to this.” She chuckled. “Not that I’ll need it for much longer.”

She worked the controls again.

“There, I’ve verified that the connection is stable and replied letting them know that fact…” Her eyes widened, and her head jerked up, meeting Tala’s confused gaze.

“Lyn? What is it?”

Lyn swallowed. “Only one word came through.”

Tala felt her whole body tensing up, and she didn’t even know why yet. “What was it?”

Lyn swallowed again. “The message was just, ‘Tali?’”

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