Jennifer Jones
Stories
4
Chapters
1,292
Words
687.3 K
Comments
0
Reading
2 d, 9 h
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Tala and Rane stood in the mid-morning spring sunshine, sharing a look after master Lisa had invited them inside. This side street wasn’t crowded by any means, but there were other pedestrians around. Thankfully nothing that had happened was visibly odd from a mundane perspective. Tala smiled up at Rane before turning back and speaking to master Lisa. “Thank you, we’d love to come in.” The two crossed the short distance to come through the door and let the man close the entrance behind them.…-
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Tala sat beside Rane in the Bandfast food court that Lyn had brought her to oh so long ago on her first day in the city. Lyn and Kannis were with them as well, and the four were taking up one end of one of the long tables arranged in the center of the space, chatting, eating, and catching up on what had happened during their time apart. Kannis was apparently progressing incredibly well, to the point that Lyn was beginning to talk of the young woman becoming a Mage in truth. Lyn even wanted to have Kannis…
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211 •
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Tala finished the explanation surrounding her breath weapon experiments just about the time that Master Clevnis, Mistress Cerna, and she arrived at the meeting place for their unit before their duty-shift. Terry was asleep on Tala’s shoulder by that point. The two unit leaders had listened thoughtfully to the full explanation, but when Tala indicated that she’d finished, Mistress Cerna spoke up almost immediately. “So… why are you using it as a breath weapon? Couldn’t you easily have it come out…
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211 •
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Tala Instead, Tala did as requested as she was swarmed by Constructionist assistants, poking and prodding her even through her armor. Because, yes, these were the armor experts that Master Grediv had arranged to help her improve her armor’s utility. Off to the side, they’d had her create plates of material in the same manner and of the same composition as her armor with the hexagons of iron and white steel for unit testing before they could assess the best way to utilize the ablative…
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211 •
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Tala looked at the zoomed-in maps of her various inscriptions floating in the air of the room, the other notes and visual aids from their discussion having been shifted to the far-flung corners of the room. Her keystone was… actually incredibly standard, except that hers was built so that it never closed off her gate for any reason. That was actually the case for most advanced Mages but not all. “Keystones, while incredibly important, aren’t actually that complex or customizable compared to other…
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211 •
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Tala’s ablative armor worked incredibly well in defending against projectile attacks, but it just couldn’t hold up to more sustained forces. Truthfully, though, did she really need it to? She could survive most hits from things of her advancement with her bare flesh, repairing what damage did come. The armor was meant to mitigate that need, though, and it was useful in that regard. Rane cleared his throat. “Well, is that actually needed anymore? I know it’s been irritating for you to refill your…
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211 •
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Tala began outlining all that she was currently working on, and all that she had at her disposal at the moment. - As a place to start, Tala explained to Master Grediv and Rane that she was studying the caravan guards’ anti-magic arrows, using them as a template to learn the specific effects to better counter opponents—rather than just treating them all the same. More than anything, this came out of her desire to have varied approaches to varied opponents. She was good at what she did, but when she…
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211 •
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Tala held Talax, swaddled and sleeping, happily filled with his mother’s milk. Kedva and Brandon stood off to one side, Mistress Vanga and Anna waited in the center of the room, next to the little baby’s bassinet. Rane had asked to be present for curiosity’s sake, and he was off to the side with Master Simon and Adrill. The former was there to continue his data collection on the rebirth of gateless humans into magic. The latter both as an assistant to the former and as grandfather to the little…
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211 •
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Tala, Rane, Terry, and their unit flew back toward Alefast. The fount had still been twisting and reshaping when the maintenance process was complete, showing that the Sovereign’s final interference was still underway. Thus, while Tala It might be overly cautious, but no one had actually objected when it was decided to take the safe route and leave the fount be until the next maintenance cycle. They left There wasn’t any fear that anything would break free, but they still wanted to be able to…
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211 •
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Tala held her aura firm as close to the fount as possible, forcing it to manifest the copies of its original host closer and closer to itself. Mistress Cerna was backing Tala up with a spellform designed to facilitate and augment both her own willpower and Tala’s aura sovereignty over the specific area in which the fount stood. As her aura didn’t directly affect the fount—because it couldn’t—and it also didn’t harm the copies, the fount seemed unaware of the inhibition, or at least unable to…
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