Tala gave a slight bow, once more, but this time, it was to give her a moment to think. When she straightened, she was still no closer to having a coherent response. She was still feeling quite overwrought by all that had happened.

Elnea’s grin shifted to a more companionable smile. “It can be overwhelming, so many things changing at once, then to see yourself as others do?” She shook her head. “You are holding up surprisingly well.” She leaned closer and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “I wept, at my raising.”

Terry appeared on Tala’s shoulder, giving Elnea a pointed, hostile look, before he settled down and closed his eyes in mock sleep. The Archon pulled back, though not seemingly in fear.

Lyn and Rane were working their way towards her, but Grediv reached Tala and Elnea first. “Mistress Elnea! You cannot dominate the time of this guest of honor as well.”

Elnea gave Grediv a long-suffering look. “I tolerated your intrusions because your…pupil was being evaluated as well, but you did not tell me you had such a strong hand in this one’s advancements.”

Grediv shrugged. “I’ve told all I did. I gave her access to no forbidden knowledge. I didn’t even inform her about the Ways. That would have been a breach for any Archon, who wasn’t her master.” He gave Tala a subtle wink. “The only contribution I claim is doing my utmost to prevent her from killing herself or becoming a lich.”

Tala cleared her throat. “Ok. I’m an Archon, now. Explain how I could have become a lich.”

Elnea gave Grediv an irritated look.

“I don’t want to become one; I want to avoid it.”

Grediv grinned. “The biggest danger of that passed, with your elevation to Archon. Mages, in general, are in danger of all sorts of horrors, mostly volitional, until their body is bound to their soul…” Elnea was giving him a very unkind glare, so he tapered off. “But you can read about those in the library, if you so wish. Or purchase the volumes yourself, but I imagine someone will be kind enough to gift you the basic texts.” He gave her another, less subtle wink.

Tala smiled in return. Grediv had, in fact, given her such a set, though most of the volumes were sealed against her, until she was of sufficient stature to warrant the information. I wonder if I’ll be able to read all of them, now, or just some? She was excited to check, but it was hardly the time.

Elnea cleared her throat. “Certain information remains restricted by level of advancement.”

Tala sighed. “Do I, at least, get to know how I am supposed to advance?”

“Of course.”

Tala blinked at that, surprised. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Moving from being a Bound to a Fused is a simple matter of fusing your body and soul together, inseparably. To be clear, you are not making them one; that is impossible as they are now.”

That’s not foreshadowing or anything. “Ok, that explains the name. How do I do that?”

Elnea smiled broadly. “That you must learn for yourself.”

Tala returned a flat look. Seriously, woman?

Grediv interjected. “You, Mistress Tala, have a leg up on most new Bound. What you’ve accomplished with-” Elnea was glaring at him once more, so he seemed to change what he’d been about to say, “-your items, proves you’ve some insight.”

My items, eh? She contemplated that, glancing down at herself. Then, she started to smile. Right! I fused my elk-leathers into a single item. It’s probably something like that. “I see. Thank you, Master Grediv.” She hesitated. “Wait… you never told me how one becomes a lich?”

Elnea shook her head. “Too late, it seems; your fellow new Archons are here.”

Rane and Lyn finally got close to her through the now milling and conversing crowd. This seemed to be as much a social event for Archons as for the raising of new members.

Tala glared at Elnea, but then something moving around the perimeter of the room caught her attention.

Are those trays of food? It appeared that servants had come in while Tala was distracted, filling the three large tables with a banquet’s worth of food.

“Tala!” Lyn wrapped Tala in a fierce embrace. “I knew you’d be fine.”

Elnea gave them an odd look, likely from Lyn’s lack of an honorific.

“Lyn. Or should I say Mistress Lyn Clerkson, Diamond Archon?” Elnea looked back and forth between them, then shook her head in resigned exasperation.

Lyn grinned. “You could, but don’t. That’s a mouthful.”

Tala laughed.

Rane hung back, just a bit, until Tala turned towards him. At that point, he smiled, and gave a bow and extended his hand. “Congratulations, Mistress Tala.” Something looks different about him…

Tala reached towards him, taking his offered hand. “Thank you, and congratulations to you, too, Master Rane Gredial, Sapphire Archon.”

He rolled his eyes. “None of that, Mistress.”

It’s his scars. His scars are faded, somehow. She decided not to point it out, for now. It wasn’t a huge change, but it was noticeable. She put on a mock serious tone. “As you wish, Master.”

Lyn snorted a laugh. “Come on! This banquet is for all of us. Apparently, they didn’t want to bring out all this food for any one of us, alone.”

Tala glanced towards Elnea and Grediv, but they seemed to be having a heated argument, though Tala couldn’t hear even a flicker of sound from it. From the brief glimpses Tala had gotten of the woman’s power and spell-lines, Elnea was a Material Guide, specializing in sound. Rare specialty. That didn’t explain the mental image of Tala, which had been projected, but Tala supposed every Mage did have their secrets.

She shrugged, returning her attention to her companions. “Food sounds great.” She hesitated then, turning back to fully face Lyn. “I am so, so sorry about the finger, Lyn. I was going to explain, but other things kept coming up, then Master Rane said we couldn’t talk about our star formation.” She gave a pained smile. “I had to get it out and cutting off the fingertip was the only thing I could think to do.”

The woman gave her a long look, then sighed. “That does explain it.” Lyn nodded once. “You’re still buying me a new rug, though.”

“…I suppose that’s fair…” Her nose caught a whiff of the dishes now laid out around the room. “Now, let’s get to the food. I’m starving.”

The other two grinned jovially, clearly not surprised by the revelation.

As they moved towards the food, many gave them hearty congratulations. Though, all tallied, many more intercepted the other two, individually, than Tala, herself.

For Tala, some asked if she’d be interested in collaborations, or in other opportunities; all of those, she gave noncommittal answers, which amounted to: ‘Too much going on right now. Reach out later, please?’

Everyone seemed to take that well, even seeming to have expected something of the sort.

She didn’t listen closely enough to know exactly what was said to the other two, but from context, and what she did catch, it all seemed to be in the same vein.

When Tala finally broke through the crowd, she gaped at the sheer quantity and variety of food. And everything is finger or bite sized.

One whole table, the one they’d reached first, was covered in little sandwiches. The type of bread varied, as did the fillings and addenda, which made the permutations staggering. And there seemed to be hundreds of each, available.

As a contrast to the ocean of food, the plates were barely bigger than her hand, spread wide. What the slag is this? She took a small stack.

As they filled their laughably small plates with food, Rane leaned over. “I can’t believe you were ready to fight off a room full of Archons.”

She quirked a smiled his way. “Did you bow to their command?” She was currently balancing one fully mounded plate, while preparing the second for cargo.

“Well, no, but my protests were verbal.”

Lyn leaned around the big man. “He demanded his ‘master’ intervene. He said that he would be a fool to obey such a command.”

Tala hesitated. “Oh…that idea never crossed my mind.”

Rane grinned, and Lyn rolled her eyes before remarking, “Of course it didn’t, Tala. You are a woman of action, however ill-advised.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They reached the end of the first table, Tala straining her dexterity to the limit with four fully loaded plates in each hand. Then, she beheld the central table.

Instead of sitting on beds of ice, like those used to help keep the little sandwiches cool, these trays were heavy metal, over burners of some kind, clearly meant to keep this food hot. The first item available looked like bacon, but much thicker and not fully crisped. The little sign near the sizzling platter said it was pork-belly.

Oh, I need some of you. She was frowning down at the food, including the plates in her hands, then smiled. Right! With deft movements, she set her plates down, opened Kit wide, and lowered the full dishes into the pouch, one after another. “There.” Just as quickly, she overfilled another plate with the pork-belly and slipped it into Kit as well. She looked up to see Lyn and Rane giving her odd looks. “What?”

Lyn looked at the pouch, then back up at Tala. “Won’t that get everything greasy in there, and covered in crumbs and sauce?”

Rane took a more direct approach, “Isn’t it a bit rude to pack out food?”

Tala shook her head. “No, Kit manages the separation of items perfectly, and no, it isn’t rude. This food is for us. I’m not going to say ‘No’ to that. Besides, I’ll still probably eat most of it, here. I just don’t want to have to take dozens of trips to the serving table. That would be rude.” She thought for a moment. “Hmm… how long will this go on?”

It was Rane who responded. “You just want to know how long you’ll have access to this food.”

Tala opened her mouth to object, then stopped. “Yeah, that’s true. So?”

Rane sighed. “Likely a couple hours. I think there’s some sort of closing…something to wrap up the event, after socializing.”

She nodded, smiling towards the two other new Archons. “Alright then. It would be a shame if we didn’t get all we could out of our banquet.”

Rane and Lyn looked at each other, then shrugged. Lyn gave a little laugh, and Rane snorted a chuckle. “Sounds fair.” Thus, the three began to work over the tables in earnest, piling plates high with food before passing them to Tala and, through her, to Kit.

Every so often, one or more of them had to pause their great work to talk to Archons who approached; they were the guests of honor, after all. Even so, it didn’t really take from their newfound mission.

Lyn grinned with what seemed to be barely contained glee the first time she saw a servant refresh one of the platters of food. The supply might just be functionally infinite.

No one noticed, seemed to mind, or cared enough to say anything.

As it turned out, Rane had been correct, and the festivities lasted for two hours, or as close as Tala could reckon.

Tala was not a social person, and in the end, the food, as plentiful and free as it was, was not worth enduring more socializing.

After only half an hour, Tala had tried to slip out for the first time, but each time she’d tried, there were suddenly a lot more people interested in talking with her, and in truth, she was still not quite desperate enough to be as rude as would have been required to break free.

Thus, she inevitably drifted back to the food. At least there’s coffee.

She’d filled both her coffee jugs, immediately, and was nursing a tankard of the stuff. The tankard had been taken from the side-table where kegs of beer and ale were tapped.

The attendant in charge of coffee now visibly twitched whenever Tala walked by, and if Tala was being honest, she moved through that part of the room more often than strictly necessary.

Maturity is a process, not a destination, after all.

Near the beginning of the time, Master Himmal had approached Tala for a quick conversation.

“Congratulations, Mistress Tala. I am so glad that we of the Wainwrights’ Guild get to work so closely with you.”

Tala smiled, bowing to the much older looking man. And he’s probably much older than he appears, too. “Thank you, Master Himmal, and thank you for your support and encouragement.”

He waved her off, with a smile. “Think nothing of it. I did want to let you know that we’ve finished modifying the main wagon for your increased weight, not that I understand the purpose of that. There should be no issue with you riding on the roof or sleeping within your portion of the designated cargo-slot.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.” She hesitated. “You know, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask, but keep forgetting.”

“Oh?”

“Why not simply give the wagons a higher power storage capacity, so that you only needed dimensional mages at the start of each journey?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “What do you know of the Arcane Chaos Theory?”

“I would say that I know nothing but the name.”

He smiled at that. “That makes sense. Few outside of the unified Constructionist Guilds need to know of it. The underpinning is this: The more power contained in a reservoir, the less stable it is. This is actually the basis on which we know that a Mage’s power, drawn through their gate, is not finite.”

“Really? Did anyone ever believe that?”

“Oh, yes. It used to be a popular theory that we each only had so much power. So, if you drew more deeply, you were shortening your own life.”

“But that’s nonsense.”

He shrugged. “I’ll make no play at justifying the debunked theories of our ancestors. But it applies here, too. If we were to double the power capacity of the cargo-slots, we would get at most another hour out of the spell-form. Triple? Maybe another half-hour beyond that.”

“So, why aren’t bigger cargo-slots out of power much faster?”

He smiled. “Ahh, that is an excellent question. Simple: Magic, applied, only dissipates as it’s used, and the reservoir’s rate of decay is directly correlated with the spell it is meant to supply.”

She blinked, and shook her head, trying to process that. “Wait, so if I’m understanding correctly, then no spell-form could last longer than a day or so.”

“Without an external source of power, yes.” He shrugged. “It is a fundamental truth behind magic. Any item that doesn’t need such regular influx is simply getting its power in some other way. As an example: harvests, used as a power source, are not reservoirs and don’t suffer from this limit as a result. Well, they don’t suffer in the same way.”

Tala opened her mouth, but Master Himmal held up a hand.

“We are delving at a very surface level into deep theory, and if we continue, I fear I will need to dominate your entire afternoon, and still, we’ll have barely begun. If you wish to learn more about crafting theory, I am happy to take the time, but not here, not now.” He smiled.

Tala hesitantly nodded, then smiled. “Thank you. I just might take you up on that.”

“I hope that you do.” He patted her shoulder, the one opposite where Terry rested. “I’ll not take more of your time, but it was a pleasure to see you, Mistress.”

“And you, Master Himmal.”

As he turned to go, he hesitated, leaning back towards her and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “You know, if you ask one of the staff members, they’ll make up carry-out containers of any food you’d like to request.”

Tala’s eyes widened, but Master Himmal left, before she could respond, a small smile obvious on his face. That’s genius!

She immediately sought out staff members. First, she asked what would be done with the leftover food, when the event ended, and she was horrified to learn that it would most likely be thrown out. Madness, utter madness!

She put an end to that immediately, requesting that they pack it all up for her to take. The poor young woman that she’d accosted didn’t really know how to process the request, but after they’d found a more senior staff member, Tala was assured that no edible food would be thrown away. It rusting better not be.

Lyn and Rane worked the room much more readily than she did. As much as their initial enthusiasm for raiding the food table had delighted Tala, she’d known it wouldn’t last, not in the face of so many people focusing in on the three of them.

In Lyn’s case, Tala had expected the networking, glad-handing, and jovial relationship building. She is basically a recruiter and face for the Caravanners, after all.

Rane’s acumen, however, was startling. True, most of the positive interactions that Tala witnessed from afar seemed to stem from him almost visibly restraining himself from speaking, but it still seemed unexpectedly successful. Several of the Archons who came up to him were younger looking women. All gorgeous, of course. If his blushing countenance was any indication, they seemed to be asking him to break his word…or something, Tala had no idea, and they never seemed to talk to Rane, while she was within earshot. Even so, the interactions never seemed to go anywhere.

As she thought about the afternoon in general, she realized that Rane, in his words, was often similar to her in her actions. The restraint he was demonstrating bore contemplation. Maybe, I could be a little less rash in my actions?

She thought about it for a full thirty seconds. Nah. I’ll get good progress, or I’ll die. Still, she would continue to avoid things she knew, for a fact, were deadly. At least those that would be deadly to me.

Even so, she knew that she would try to contemplate her actions and their repercussions more deeply. At least more than I have, previously.

If she kept that up, every day, she just might make significant improvement. One can hope.

She startled her current accoster by pulling a fully loaded plate out of her belt pouch and beginning to eat. I’m running low.

“So… as I was saying, if you’d be willing to allow a detailed examination of your blood, along with one of your Archon stars…”

The conversations, well-wishes, and opportunities were decidedly blurring together.

“Congratulations!”

“I can’t believe you drew a soul-bound weapon. Fantastic!”

“Once your current contracts run out, we’d love to have you…”

“Your talents are wasted with the Caravanner’s Guild. Let me buy out your indenture. You’d be much better served…”

“Your companion is unlike any terror bird I’ve come across. Would you be willing to...”

Tala was not interested in joining someone else’s research, nor subjecting herself or Terry to such. She was happy with her current contract and the terms. The work would be lucrative and leave time for her to pursue her own projects on the trips, even if the role as Mage Protector would take more effort than she’d put forward, before. Plus, I’ve seen three cities and the Academy. I want to see the others, and my work in the caravans will allow that.

After almost two hours, she was about to bolt for it, rust manners, when Holly found her.

“Blood Archon, eh?”

Tala turned at the familiar voice and smiled. “Yes, Mistress Holly. I hope I still managed to surprise you, despite your earlier exposure to my form of Archon star.”

Holly gave a nod and smiled. “Decidedly. I do almost wish I could have seen you continue to resist the entirety of the council, attending here.” She sighed, dejectedly. “It would have been a wonderful look into what those inscriptions are truly capable of.”

Tala cleared her throat. “Well, I, for one, am glad that you aren’t all inhuman monsters, bent on subjugating anyone of potential power.”

Holly hesitated, then shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Tala rolled her eyes but huffed a laugh. “Thank you, again.”

“Hmm?”

“You have elevated my inscriptions to a level that I feel reasonably in my element here, among so many magical power-houses.”

Holly snorted. “Dear, aside from the two Head Archons, most of us are weaker members of the local council. Those of real weight don’t concern themselves with new Archons.” She leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. “And, if we’re being honest, the really powerful ones don’t have interest in dealing with the others, at all, so the Heads aren’t the best, either.”

“Ouch, but I suppose that’s fair.”

Holly patted her arm. “You’ll get there, dear. Just keep from killing yourself, and you’ll do fine.” She turned, her mind clearly already elsewhere. “Now, where did I see those raspberry mousse cups?”

Wait, there’s dessert, too? How had she missed the presence of a dessert table? That was unacceptable. I’m getting distracted by unimportant things.