The city authorities grudgingly accepted the need to redo the shrine on the grounds that it wasn't personalized enough to work. Elly wasn't supposed to be directly involved in planning or designing such a place, so that it wouldn't be an act of self-worship, but Ruyo loudly reminded people of Elly's personal feats and made sure the carvers spoke with Zol and Magus and Roland, who'd been there for some. The Witch Hunter guards weren't pleased at the delay, but that just made it better.

Ruyo hung around with the Inheritors. Being at their island base still reminded her uncomfortably of the time they kidnapped Nusina and of the group's other crimes, but she kept telling herself the evildoers among them were dead or imprisoned now. Working with them paid off by getting her to learn more enchantment skill. When she showed off the bit of shapeshifting and healing she'd been working on, that seemed to inspire them. Several of them had scars from steam burns, so she was able to help with those.

Their basement lab was a pre-collapse ruin. Long ago it was a practice range for working with or maybe fighting elementals. The floor was tilted and repurposed, packed with attempts at a steam-driven machine. Nusina's focus here was on getting that working along with other bits of technology she barely remembered, like bicycles.

In one side of the lab, an alarmingly enthusiastic young woman had a blackboard chart. At one end of a line, it showed a set of basic elementals. Then Ruyo's icy "Quills" and the destructive blazing cats she'd fought. Then the nameless underwater guardian, then Pir, and Nusina. The lady said, "You could be doing more with elementals."

"So you see them as a smooth progression from the basic ball to a smart spirit?"

"Somewhat. The elementals are independent enough that they must have some kind of mind, even if it's like an insect's. They can attack or follow without constant control. Sorry to say, but your Quills are weak compared to the Firecat type or the earth and air versions we've tried. So you should be able to make something stronger, or smarter."

"Are the cats stronger? Because I've killed some. They don't like baths."

The woman held up her hands in front of her. "Peace, Lady. I mean this as a suggestion."

Ruyo huffed. "There may be something to this. How about better compatibility with a body? The procedure for granting people rapid healing has been slow and dangerous."

"Ah... we have ideas. Give us time to think about that."

"You're nervous. What is it?"

The lady fidgeted, glancing back at her diagram. "It'd just provoke you."

"Well now I really want to know what it is."

"No, Lady of Waters. I'm not going to go over my ideas if I feel like you're an inch away from shoving ten gallons of water down my lungs."

Ruyo glared at her, then sighed and turned aside. "Were you personally involved in all this? The kidnapping, the killing, the burning?"

"Some of us had a small role. I thought you'd made peace with us."

"I'm trying to. Your group did some terrible things."

"Are you confident that Starshore's government never did? Or Averell's? We're doing the best we can to behave ourselves now, and a few of our best minds have paid the price. Do you want us as allies or not?"

Ruyo still simmered. It hurt that this woman had a point. For all the wrong they'd done, they were at most the third worst evil she knew of, after Zovvah and the nation of Khyber. She counted silently to ten. "I am going to try to put all that behind me. Forgive my attitude. I should be friendly to anybody looking to help. There'll be no smiting."

The Inheritor looked her over with a grim expression, and nodded. "All right. In that case I can tell you... the spirit-containing cages are a clue toward giving you better control over your summoned elementals."

Ruyo had to will herself to keep calm about those damn things, the ones they'd used to imprison Nusina and Pir. "I saw two versions of those. Literal cages, and rune drawings on a floor that could be turned on and off."

With a little more confidence in not getting eviscerated and drowned, the woman went on. "Right. They ignore ordinary humans, but affect beings with an elemental spirit. You've mentioned that your shrines have a sort of spirit reflection. Think of it this way." She drew a side view of a room with a strangely sloped ceiling. "Imagine someone walking around in a building like this, while wearing a tall hat. Someone with no hat can go anywhere, but those with hats will bang into it and get stuck. If the layout is strange enough, it could even form a maze invisible to most people."

Ruyo snorted at the image. "Then an elemental is like a floating hat?"

"Yes. No body beneath it, until it pushes into normal reality as your companion can do. We think normal objects wouldn't impede their movement, except that the standard 'ceiling' happens to keep them from passing through most solid objects and living bodies."

Despite the memory of how the Inheritors had used cages before, the theory had her interest. "In that case, stabilizing an elemental could involve moving the ceiling. Creating an object that helps anchor them in a tool, or making a human body temporarily easier to enter."

"That's what I'm thinking. It was the Witch Hunters who originally gave us the idea, with some spirit-trapping techniques they'd worked on."

The Witch Hunters had some kind of grand enchantment acting as a very large trap for a god. A similar design would probably work on Ruyo, too. "The grey crystal material I have at Wellspring has spirit disrupting properties. Though it also acts as a focus or storage device."

"Do you have any more of that?" asked the lady, her eyes lighting up.

"The Mages' Guild here has a small spare piece. They should be sharing resources with you."

Another of the researchers overheard and wandered closer. "They're still jealous of us being a separate magic-using organization."

Ruyo nodded. "I ran into resentment from the local mason-mages too. Taught them a slightly better scaffolding technique." She explained the wood-reinforced ice trick.

"We're largely water mages here, because of you, with some skill with earth and air through study. Few of us had the talent by birth and, well..."

"Your best mages were those guys. Yeah." The executed criminals.

It was probably time to actively help this group expand, maybe watering down what bad influence there still was in them. Ruyo took a breath. "There's a young secretary at the Guild who'd probably like to meet you; he wants to do research. Also, you might want to study Miras, my local priest, because his family is supposedly vulnerable to spirits. Buy him a drink and a hat, maybe."

#

Nusina was uneasy about the talk of cages, too, but more enthusiastic about the other uses of the theory behind them. They talked while Ruyo sped across the harbor's surface without a boat. "I kind of want a hat now."

"Go for it! But anyway, if possession physically changed Miras, that tells me it's not that hard for a spirit to make minor physical changes that affect the 'ceiling'. Spirit gets into a normal human, human transforms, spirit sticks there. Same for the possessed gator chief. That one looked mostly normal except for recolored scales."

"And that diagram you were talking about wasn't complete. It has gods on the top end of the scale."

Ruyo drifted onward, buoyed by her constant waves and floating just above them. "Right. Didn't want to give her that idea."

They chatted about the repair work they'd hastily done to keep the gator-man's spirit from evaporating. "I don't think I'm ready to try creating intelligent spirits," Ruyo said. "It's a big responsibility too. But the healing power would probably be safer if I let people change slightly during the procedure."

Nusina said, "I don't like to think about this aspect, but we spirits are kind of parasitic. We draw on the mana of humans -- and gods. So, putting a spirit into someone will hinder his magic power. Not the quality of the spells available, but the pool of mana available at any given time."

Ruyo spotted a dolphin and created a big wake for it to ride, showing off. "We worked out that the drain is related to the spirit's complexity, so a minor one shouldn't be a big problem. If we're getting people 'possessed' on purpose it should be with weak, passive spirits that won't fight for control."

"Call it something else then!"

"Spirit bonding. Hey, how about the ruins in this harbor? We haven't been down here yet."

"I have. Sadly, there isn't much left after the disaster, time and tide. And over the years the city's sent mages exploring. You can go look, if you want."

She was proud of her home city, but felt little connection to the one that had been here long ago. "I'll leave that for another day."

#

Elly's shrine got some slightly more complex artwork, done by painting this time. Ruyo got to see it before Elly herself: simple depictions of a girl in black and violet. She was leaping at the burning-hot shark monster while wielding a shadowy blade, and discovering books in a high-tech room of abstract gadgets. The artist had done a decent job of drawing her face and making her look impressive.

Elly formally accepted the place. She stepped out blushing at the sight of the art, and thanked the politicians and other onlookers. That crowd went in to offer their prayers.

"It feels weird," Elly said, speaking quietly from outside the mine. "I can sense that they don't know what they're doing, and they expect me to repay them but aren't sure how."

Ruyo nodded. "So now you have active, basic shrines at Brotherhood, Averell, Wellspring and Starshore, with one in Sor's Hill ready to activate when you pass by. Feeling sturdy yet?" Ruyo grinned and shook her gently.

Elly laughed. "A lot better. Not even sore anymore from the wound."

Nusina said, "Then you've started progress toward having a divine body."

Ruyo snorted; Elly only blushed more. Ruyo said, "That means faster healing, more toughness in general, and more magic endurance."

Elly cracked her knuckles. "Maybe I can start being useful. I owe basic night magic to a few people today, and then I'm going to sleep."

"Don't you have more important things to... oh."

The Night Goddess grinned. "Can you summon me a couple of blankets for important magic research? I'm gonna make the guards hang around in the mine while I appear to do absolutely nothing."

Ruyo warned the guards quietly that Elly wasn't really slacking off, but they did look suitably annoyed. Ruyo left Elly to her studies, watched the lucky Inheritor and a few other people play with their beginner night magic, then sent an update to Averell and the other interested parties.

Her own church had its extended wing completed. One long arched vault of a hall ran along the side of the original building, with smaller vaults off of that. The extra housing space was mostly just bare cells with wooden doors and low concrete sleeping platforms. A skylight in the new hall supplemented the temple's faint rippling glow and the residents' own spells. A good lock protected the whole private wing. Miras had a double-width room with its own lock. She said, "A bit prison-like, but it'll be nicer once I buy furniture and make bedding. Maybe I can add a purifying enchantment to the bathroom here."

Nusina said, "Good practice for you. You have water-cleaning spells already, so try like this..."

So she set that up at a minimal ongoing cost. Then she re-established the enchantment making it unnaturally sturdy -- or was about to.

Nusina said silently, "Let me search for spying first."

"Spying!"

"Like at Averell."

Ruyo was hurt by the thought that her own hometown might be sneakily listening and watching while she was in her official home. Nusina studied the place and reported, "Yes, there's a thing subtly hidden in your conference room like the drain at Averell. Not sure how it works. I'm actually impressed it functions at all in a place with a strong elemental leaning."

"Break it. I don't care if they know."

"Have a look first." Nusina led her from the altar to the conference chamber, where a glass skylight pierced the concrete ceiling. The spirit had to point out where the surface wasn't quite smooth. On studying the magical side of this building it stood out more clearly: an air-focused enchantment that had cleverly tapped into the mana flow that prayers generated.

"So they've reinvented theotechnology, and they're using it to listen in."

"It's crude compared to Wellspring, but that's the idea."

She tried to appreciate the design from what little she understood of it. "I'm still going to break it."

"Better idea: slowly shift its aspect toward water. Make it seem like it just failed from overexposure to the wrong element."

Ruyo found that doing that wouldn't interfere with stabilizing the temple's structure. So she began a tiny power leak that'd ruin the spy device in a week. With a grim smile she headed back to the altar and resumed fabricating more iron to sell. The temple's air-cooling enchantment began fully working again. "You can bring the gang back here to move into the apartments and have a bit more privacy than at the inn. Miras will be glad to have a better place."

Nusina bobbed. "I'll get them. What's next?"

"I was going to ask you, and Elly. My goal lately has been to keep Averell from throttling us, then to get Elly up and running. She needs more experience before we can try dealing with Brotherhood's problem, and we don't know enough yet."