Jennifer Jones
Stories
4
Chapters
1,292
Words
687.3 K
Comments
0
Reading
2 d, 9 h
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Tala looked up at the wall of the cell antechamber, barely illuminated by flickering flames. The light was reflecting from where their assigned Paragon was working. “What There was a creature depicted on the wall, faded and seemingly translucent by intention as well as time. The effect was likely meant to depict the beast as insubstantial, or an illusion, or something like that. But that wasn’t what had her confused. “It looks like a hydra, but with eyes instead of heads, and someone has been…-
211 •
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Tala held the figment of Alat for nearly five minutes, before the alternate interface pulled back. “You know, I’m not real.” Tala smiled kindly, “I know this body isn’t real. You, however, are.” “Fine, but my point is that you just hugged nothing for a long time.” She huffed a laugh. “And yet, it helped.” Alat glanced away. “Yeah, I suppose it did.” “We have a bit more time.” Alat shook her head. “No. I’m… I’m okay.” Still, she didn’t meet Tala’s…
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211 •
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Tala looked skeptically at the small golden bar resting in the palm of her hand. “Are you sure?” Mistress Cerna chuckled. “Either you can give it back when we’re done, or it simply costs a couple ounces to learn something interesting.” Tala wasn’t really sure if it would be worth it to her, at least not at the moment, but Mistress Cerna’s priorities were different, and that was alright. “If you say so.” Tala pressed the two-ounce rectangle of gold to her elk leather sleeve, willing the…
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211 •
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Tala walked back up to Artia’s shop as the woman was finishing the closing of her stall. Artia noticed her, glancing up with a smile, “Mistress Tala, welcome back.” Tala returned the smile, feeling genuine warmth for the woman who had helped her acquire both Flow and Kit. “Thank you, Artia. Can I help you bring all this in?” The shopkeeper glanced around, then shrugged and nodded, “Thank you, dear. That’s very kind of you.” Tala’s smile grew just a bit in return, and she helped the…
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211 •
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Tala actually felt a little bit nervous as she and Master Grediv stood and moved toward the center of the underground room, beneath the Alefast Archon Complex. She pulled her iron back from where she had made it into a chair for herself, reabsorbing it, and ensuring that Master Grediv glanced at his chair after he stood, and it vanished with a sweep of dimensional magic. And just like that, they were ready. “Mistress Tala, do you have a particular place that you’d like to go?” “Nowhere…
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211 •
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Tala only had to wait some five minutes before Adrill and Brandon came back up from the former’s workshop in the family’s basement. “Mistress Tala! Good to see you.” The older man gave her a chaste hug, before pulling back and beaming at her, “Your gift has allowed me to forward my research so much further. Thank you.” When last she’d seen him, she’d given a goodly quantity of endingberries for use in his research, mainly to protect him when he was doing more dangerous work. Tala had…
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211 •
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Tala bent over, her metal pulling away from her exterior as she fell to her knees, her mouth and nose filling with blood. Some of her iron had been taken, along with an unhealthy amount of power, leaving her feeling wrung dry and incomplete. Mistress Vanga was by her side in an instant. “Mistress Tala? What’s going on?” Clear liquid dripped free of Tala as the iron was stripped away to let the remainder fall free. Master Abali’s voice reached her as she continued to twitch and jerk, barely…
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211 •
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Tala continued to feel sweat pouring off of her as she strained to keep the iron containment in place around Sole. Well… that wasn’t quite accurate, but she was sweating much more than she usually did. Alat had sent a message through the Archive to her unit detailing the situation, and she’d received back instructions to hold, and call for back-up at need. That made good sense. Fewer variables meant that fewer things could go wrong, assuming she kept things under control. Master Clevnis was in…
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211 •
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Tala once again felt like the world around her slowed, even as Sole’s last words were still fading from her ears, “I don’t think I like you.” It felt as if uncounted small things had rippled through the edge of her aura at once, prompting her to focus more minutely with her voidsight. That unique perception showed her the miniscule reality nodes of a flight of projectiles, all targeting her. A hair behind the forest of pinprick attacks, something passed through her aura, sliding down the cliff…
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211 •
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Tala’s aura was a manifold shield, wrapped around the opening cell door before them. Her metals almost seemed to bleed through her skin, coating her all at once, even as she released her suppression of her through-spike. She was already wearing her armor. While she always left the iron that lined her inscriptions in the dimensions of magic, she had found being fully coated to be inconvenient when around other people. Master Abali’s working progressed steadily, the twisted doorframe seeming to…
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