Tala stood before heavily reinforced doors at the far end of a fake swamp within her first ether hold.

Her feet squelched in muck as she shifted back and forth, considering the barrier to her path.

-Oh! Could we reduce our downward gravity enough to make the surface area enhancements on our feet sufficient to hold us up?-

Tala blinked several times. Well…rust me to slag. That would have been a useful idea about ten minutes ago.

Alat conveyed a shrug. -Just thought of it.-

Tala almost put her face in her hands in resignation, but then she saw how filthy she was.

“Yeah… We’ll try that next time.”

Now, the big doors.

Well, let’s try the easy way, first. She walked up and pushed.

The gates didn’t open.

With a shrug, she drew Flow, and cut upward between the doors.

She felt the slightest resistance, followed by loud thuds.

When Tala pushed again, the doors slid open, though it still took some effort to get them to move.

She stepped up onto the smooth, clean stone, and briefly aspect mirrored her clothing’s self-cleaning onto herself.

With a few bounces as she moved forward, all the sludge fell free.

As she landed from the final bounce, she cut back behind herself and to the right, cleaving a not-zombie in half, shoulder to hip.

Its steps had been utterly silent, and without her mirrored perspective, she’d likely not have noticed it until it was fully upon her.

The thing had been charging at her from behind, coming through the gates she’d opened. One last nasty thing from the swamp. Unless more spawn on their own…

She had no idea where the creatures actually came from. They seemed physical, while also seeming too magical to be real.

-That makes no sense, but yeah, I agree. I don’t think these could ever exit, but that tracks, considering they stayed in.-

Yeah. I suppose the holds that send out creatures make more ‘real’ ones? Somehow?

-Maybe we’ll find out further in.-

As she scanned the room around her, it was obvious that the fighting was far from over.

She was flanked by the two halves of a crossbar that had held the doors against her.

Beyond them, near the edges of reality, assuming it hadn’t changed shape or size past the wall, statues lined the periphery of the space.

The smallest appeared to be little more than half her height, while the largest was close to twice as tall as she was.

They were made of a variety of materials, everything from simple granite to steel, from clay to wood.

As she looked around, every one of the statues began to move.

In addition to the mobile statues, pale bipedal creatures were scattered throughout the space.

They looked vaguely human, but their features were… wrong.

Their skin was too pale, their features not quite where Tala expected them to be.

They moved on silent feet, shifting towards the edges of the space.

Tala sighed.

Her mage-sight gave no good information. Everything looked uniformly the same color, orange.

The specific magic of the creatures, of the place in general, was a nonsensical jumble to her eyes, so she put that sight from her mind.

It was time to get to work.

Crossing most of the space was laughably easy.

The statues were mostly harder substances, which cracked and crumbled under hits from her tungsten rod and sphere.

Her discs deflected attacks and warded off opponents, helping to stagger them and keep her from being overrun.

The pale creatures hung back, seemingly hesitant to engage.

Wise of them, I suppose.

Then, one of the big metal statues reached her.

The first was half again her height and had four arms.

Flow removed two in quick succession. Tala ducked under a third, but the fourth caught her in the chest.

The defenses on her elk-leathers flared, protecting her from the blow with ease, but even so, she was flung backward and out of the building.

-Reduce weight!-

Tala did so even as she skipped across the surface of the rancid sludge.

She was able to catch the surface with a hand as she flew, flipping up and landing on her feet.

She left her gravity fairly high, so she could still move, bent low, and sprinted back across the surface of the not-gravy. Each step sunk a few inches into the muck as she pushed off, but no more.

This is way, WAY easier.

The all-pervasive power in the air, combined with the odd linkage that everything seemed to share, meant that to try to target anything, she’d have to overcome the magical weight of everything. At least, that’s how it felt the few times she’d tried.

With all her strength, she built up speed, covering the remaining distance in great leaping strides.

She passed through the open archway, and the hall passed in a flash before she slammed into the metal statue glaive first, breaking the offending thing in two.

Gotcha. A smug smile pulled at Tala’s lips.

As the two halves fell away, though, another fist used the pieces as cover to slam into her from the side.

A second giant statue, this one granite, had joined the fight.

Tala slammed into the side of the combat hall before she’d even registered being struck, and the edge of reality was sufficiently hard for her to break bones against.

She slumped to the ground with a groan, her skeletal system snapping back into place, and back together, before healing with audible pops and cracks.

In her moment of lowered capacity, the first of the pale creatures lunged at her. It had been near where she had landed to begin with, so it covered the distance between them quickly.

Tala’s tungsten rod moved to smack it aside, but the metal passed straight through the being.

What the rust?

Its outstretched hand landed on her, and she felt a titanic PULL on her magic.

Her body was completely drained in less than a second of contact.

What?

For the first time in Tala’s life, she was utterly without magic.

Her gate was still there, trying to refill her, but every iota of power that came through was immediately ripped from her with a feeling reminiscent of her fingernails being pulled.

It had bypassed her authority?

What?

It had ignored her aura.

How?

She couldn’t regain control over her own power.

Slag, slag, slag!

Tala felt like her whole body was freezing in panic.

Why didn’t we re-apply the iron paint? It might have helped, here!

She felt weak, her body seeming unusually heavy, despite her reduced gravity. She was feeling the inertia of her increased mass more than anything.

Get AWAY!

Flow swept out, only in the form of a knife, because she couldn’t power any other form.

Blessedly, it still had magic, as it was connected directly to her gate, and no drain at her gate could break or weaken that connection.

Still, the strike moved more slowly than Tala could remember ever swinging the blade, but the creature seemed reluctant to break contact, so Tala succeeded in cutting through the beast’s thin neck, decapitating it..

That, apparently, caused a destabilization of the power that it had just stolen. There was a forceful detonation and Tala was tossed away once again.

Blessedly, even as she bounced across the stone floor, her gate gushed power back into her.

-What the rust was that? Did you black out?-

Tala paled. Did you… did you go offline?

-No, of course not…- Alat hesitated. -What the rust… yes. There was no power in you, all your scripts dropped into starvation mode, they would have burned through their metals and sputtered out entirely in another few seconds… including me.-

Yeah, I’m not letting that happen.

She flipped to her feet, turned, and exhaled a cone of disintegration at two more of the leeching creatures, obliterating them entirely.

Tala was still panicking, just a bit. To help calm herself down, she was rambling a bit within her own head, Don’t let the white ones touch me. Expand my view; don’t let any of these use the others to make attacks of opportunity.

It was a brutal fight after that.

While her bloodstars could mirror Flow’s offensive magic, they lacked the size to sufficiently harm her enemies.

Unfortunately, the white magic-leeches were able to ignore anything less than an instantly lethal blow, and the discs did nothing to slow them.

The pale creatures seemed to be able to pass through anything besides magical attacks as if it weren’t there. The result was that Tala often found the things hiding inside the statues she killed with her hand, feet, or tungsten. The leech-things used every opportunity to get close.

A few even managed to grab at her feet and legs from under the floor.

Blessedly, Flow’s cutting edge was magical in nature, else she’d have had very little recourse.

What felt like hours later, Tala stood, panting, in the center of the space, surrounded by ruined statues.

The floor had great chunks cut out of it, and many deep gouges were partially filled with the fine powder that was all that remained after ending-tree power washed over an enemy or section of stone.

Her inscriptions felt raw and strained.

Any arcane would have died after the first touch from one of the pale-leech-men. She’d sustained at least half a dozen full drains and slain close to two dozen of the horrid things.

-I don’t like the feeling of winking out repeatedly.-

It isn’t pleasant out here, either.

Alat shuddered. -It feels almost like you entering dreamless sleep, but there is something so much worse in the experience.-

Like there’s nothing assuring you that you’ll ever wake up, and each time you do awaken, you realize that it might not have happened.

-Exactly, yes.-

They shuddered together.

“I hate you just a bit, Pallaun.” Surely, not every ether hold could be like this. Were the laughably weak not-zombies at the beginning meant to lull her into a false sense of security?

-Or, did the hold learn from how you fought them, and create obstacles based on what you did?-

I’d hope that Pallaun would have told us something like that, but no. These would have been more effective against other Eskau. If anything, these were still easy for me, relatively speaking.

-Agreed, any other arcane would have had no margin for error.-

It’s worse than that. They wouldn’t have had any knowledge that it would have been an error.

Alat hesitated. -Wait, we’re forgetting the protian weapon. An Eskau could have pulled some power from their weapon. It wouldn’t have been the same as you having your gate, but they wouldn’t have been as helpless as most Arcanes.-

Ah, right. That would balance things a bit.

Her breath was once again under control, and she realized that she was stalling, staring at the archway that led out of the far side of the room.

A heavy green curtain hung blocking it, and the fabric swayed in the breeze ever so slightly.

What horrors await us deeper in?

-Maybe the visage of an easily recognizable, but strangely twisted version of a mad-mage is behind this curtain? That would be refreshingly simple.-

Yeah. I’d just need to kill the evil Mage, and we could go home. Her mind hitched at that for just a moment. She couldn’t go home, not yet.

Not now, Tala. Focus.

She gilded herself and cautiously moved aside the curtain, finding a massive mirror.

What?

Tala took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. She looked tired, her hair in disarray. Much of it had been cut or torn at various points and had regrown outside her tight braid.

Alat was laughing in the back of Tala’s mind.

What?

-It doesn’t matter.- Alat gained control of her mirth. -There has to be more, we haven’t found the core.-

Right.

Tala hesitated, looking at her reflection.

In truth, she hardly recognized herself.

Even though she could almost constantly see herself, if she wished via the mirrored perspective in her orbiting bloodstars, she rarely did so. Her view was aimed outward, as it should be in such a hostile environment. And that’s not even considering this ether hold.

That said, she took the time to look, and she looked different.

It wasn’t the dust and debris that clung to her skin and hair. I could really use a bath when I’m done here.

It wasn’t the House of Blood insignia on her clothing. I have no idea if they can see into here or not.

It wasn’t even the broken and obliterated enemies around and behind her. I demolished all who came against me.

No. Her stance was different, the way she carried herself, and the quality behind her eyes.

She looked like the predator that she had become.

I doubt anyone would try to accost me in a back alley these days.

-Likely not, no.-

Am I changing too much, Alat?

-What do you mean?-

I… I feel like I’ve had to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done so easily before… before Tali.

-We’re in a pretty difficult situation, and you’re making the best of it.-

That wasn’t very satisfying to hear.

Alat sighed internally. -You are quicker to violence, but you are facing those more capable of harming you. Your solutions are more… permanent, but your recent trials require decisive action. You are making different choices because you are in different circumstances. Do not judge yourself too harshly.-

After a moment, Tala found herself nodding. Though, her reflection still seemed on the edge of violence. I am about to face an unknown enemy. Readiness for violence is wise.

-That’s my Tala. Let’s see what awaits!-

Tala reached out and pushed, putting her strength behind it.

There was a cracking sound, like a lock breaking, and the entire mirror swung away from her.

Beyond, a large circular room awaited her.

The floor was truly level, seeming to simply be the edge of reality rather than any material.

-Nothing is ever true level.-

What are you talking about?

-There are always imperfections.-

Oh…I mean, sure? I guess so.

Overhead, a half-sphere of the same material completed the space.

At the center, a single figure sat on a throne.

Should I be concerned that that throne looks an awful lot like mine in Kit?

-Probably just a coincidence.-

Your sarcasm is reassuring.

The figure looked to be one of the pale creatures, but it wielded a sword that was as black as the void.

It looked like a two-dimensional cut-out of a sword, except that the dimensions seemed to shift as the blade rose and fell, tapping against the creature’s hand.

Can it talk?

-How am I supposed to know?-

“Can you speak?”

The beast shook its head almost ruefully as an arrogant smile spread across its face. “Blah, blah. Blah blah!”

-What the rust?-

What the rust?

The thing continued, seemingly giving a speech with the single, nonsense word.

-Why would it be trying to give the impression of speech?-

Tala grimaced. “Because bad guys always monologue in stories.”

-…yeah, that tracks. What is with this place?-

Pallaun will tell us when we get out. She’d insist upon it.

Nevertheless, Tala wasn’t about to let a villain monologue, real or false.

She charged forward, closing the distance in three bounding steps.

Flow met the void-sword and was turned aside.

Tala rolled with the motion of her weapon, striking again from a new angle, but the second attack was spoiled as well.

Each of the two blocks had been the smallest of movements, causing her strikes to just miss.

Still, she used the minor distraction to whip the rod through her opponent’s chest.

The tungsten passed harmlessly through the rusting thing, and she did not want to risk the tungsten or discs in a clash against that sword.

She let her momentum carry her past the throne rather than stopping to slug things out.

So, blade against blade, eh? No other tools.

-Well, if it touches you, that would be bad.-

Fine, so its blade and touch vs Flow. I can work with that.

The pale figure stood, uncaring of its doll-like nakedness.

A distorted mouth opened too wide, and it screamed at her, clearly incensed.

Tala stepped back under the force of the scream.

Once it finished, she shook her head to clear it. “Did you really want to monologue that much?”

“BLAH, BLAH!!!”

This is ridiculous. I’d be laughing if the thing weren’t so creepy. She would bet gold that it could drain her dry with a single touch, too.

No telling what that sword will do if it cuts me.

She loosened her shoulders and gave a small smile. Well, this did turn out to be a challenge after all.

-Pallaun does seem the type to enjoy this sort of thing.-

Tala closed more deliberately, never fully engaging.

Neither of them were able to land a meaningful hit on the other. Even so, after three more quick exchanges, Tala was grimacing. I can’t win in a contest of skill.

-Tali?-

Not fully, no. I think… Tala reached back, trying to pull on Tali’s experience instinctually.

Her gaze firmed, and she lunged backward.

Flow morphed into a glaive, and she threw it with all her strength.

Her opponent almost seemed to sigh in disappointment, flicking its sword up to knock the glaive aside.

When the void blade was about to hit her weapon, Tala altered its form.

Flow became a knife, and the deflecting sword passed just in front of it.

White eyes showed an instant of shock before the blade buried itself in the pale forehead.

-Huh. That was much easier than fighting blade to blade.-

Truer words.

The creature dissolved, just like its weaker brethren had, but the sword remained behind.

“Yeah, I’m taking that.”

She bent down, and as she grabbed the hilt, she felt a deep hunger from the weapon. It wanted power, and Tala couldn’t possibly supply it with all the power it needed. Strangely, there was almost no physical sensation from the weapon in her hand, just a somehow tangible ravenousness.

Hmmm… We’ll see what Thron has to say about this.

-Or Pallaun.-

The obsidian Eskau might want it for himself, but that didn’t quite align with what she knew of the man.

“So… the throne is the core?”

-That’s what it looks like, from the way the magic flows.-

Tala took a moment to examine the zeme herself and concurred.

“Well, Kit,”—Tala pulled the pouch off her waist. A small smile tugged at her lips as she looked at one of her longest-held tools—“are you hungry?”

The pouch did not respond.