Dima stood on grass with trembling legs, looking down as if it would make everything above her blissfully nonexistent. Shaking from the certainty she’d just made the worst decision of her life... after finally accepting that most of what happened since flirting with then nad, then supposedly male Qatrand er Yecine... had lead to the strange but often pleasant last few years. The woman just wasn’t sure that ’often’ made up for all of the terrifying and paranoia inducing monts anything about the Goltbred heiress seed to ’gift’ her.
’Intentionally trapped for months. Dinsional bubble that seems impossible. Strangling essence levels. That sky is PURPLE! What was I thinking? What was Klaytei thinking by begging to do this? What is-’
"Father!"
Elua’s sixteen year old voice cut through the spiral of thoughts. The brunette was a bit taller than the branch manager rembered, and her hair was grown out just a touch more, but the cultivator still moved with the sa unsettlingly speedy grace. Rushing past the two extras who had been sent on this ’mission’, all to embrace Ondua with a violent burst of air in all direction as she smashed an Air Cushion technique against her own hasty montum.
And sothing about her mint eyes and face was just as disturbing as her cultivator flight capabilities. When the Goltbred Patriarch let his eldest daughter down and she turned to look at Dima, there was actual displeasure on her face and a sigh that was *not sweet* at all. And it didn’t flip back to sugary and saccharine with a sudden sentence as the two relatives walked off down the path... it just remained a bit pouty and silent - she even turned and stuck her tongue out like a kid while making a ’blegh’ sound!
"...What in the world was that?"
Throughout the experience, the sigilist could feel the *grudgingly* respected prodigy of the Coiled Serpent’s emotions like they were worn plainly on her sleeve. Strong and true, transient waves that were not held tight and hidden underneath. That ant there was no sense of paranoia that sothing was ’off’ any longer. Because the facade that often scrambled her Clarity, even before the other spiritualist would have done so to obfuscate her intentions, was simply no more.
"Aleck. Welco back. You may return to working as my assistant right away."
A slightly disheveled figure stepped out from behind a tree and spoke to the other new visitor. He had been wandering for around a week through the ’illusory maze’ that the ancient cultivator was setting up around this ingress point of the Exclave, where the realmshard seed to drop everyone. Attempting to decode puzzling paths on the fly using his Parallel Astralism had been a fool’s errand that Elua had only smiled and told him to have fun with.
Dima thought he looked like he had forgotten hair and beard trimming was a thing, though his dirtied clothes were still those of foreign nobility. He was the man who’d caused all this in the first place, if what the Goltbred personal servant had been told was accurate. Aleck had actually seen him clean and prim before, but yet he didn’t find anything ’off’ when looking at the man. It was exactly as he expected him to look, after being trapped in the wilds by himself.
"Madrigil... No. No thank you."
The woman watched the guildless cultivator shift the barrel of goods chained to his back before following the path, behind the giggles and laughs of a parent and child catching up with each other. Dima barely registered a small continued argunt between the two n near her. For her gaze had locked onto a bit of movent along the very impressive roadways under construction.
A whole stone block, easily a few hundred pounds, rely glided along the half-finished road... as far as she could tell. No pullies, no waterway, no other cultivator around lifting it up. Eventually she saw it land into a pile of other perfect shaped stones as the small platform underneath of it tilted - and imdiately began its flight back to the quarry area. Then another unknown *thing* was called to action and manipulated the gathered pile into a nice new row on the pre-prepared ground.
’You’re kidding . This is so sort of joke, right?’
Her professional instincts scread about the illogic of it all despite coming quickly to the possibility of ’autonomous function’ as had been expressed in the histories. But that seed impossible, as rituals were known to require constant essence infusion that simply could not be t with any current knowledge on the continent. While so essence convergence points were known, the technology to harvest and store from them at any kind of scale were lost.
Then again, the artifact which the forr Yecine showed off for them to use to even get to this place was scrawled with all kinds of sigilwork that she couldn’t identify. It only made sense that the location it took them to might have more advanced mysteries.
"How many are there?"
When she saw more of the stone carriers round a bend of a hill, she gave up trying to understand and just accepted they existed. Not that it made her voice any less strangled sounding when it ca out, even though she didn’t expect an answer at all. Especially not from suddenly right beside her.
"The constructs? Dozens upon dozens, at least. I stopped counting after the first thirty were made. They’re interesting for a while, but almost everywhere once you get closer to the main construction sites."
Made, she noted he said, and Dima imdiately latched onto the brunette as the source. Even while backing away from the too close man, her mind refused to agree that so many hundreds of interconnected sigil arrays - as she could imagine were needed - could be replicated at that scale by a single person. Claiming it was just the prodigy doing her thing would not suffice. By her estimation, it would need thousands of man-hours in the design phase alone for each type!
"Hm. One mont."
Madrigil rushed forward when one passed close enough that the exiled noble could make use of a trick he had been shown by the ancient mind in the small body. With a raised hand, a lance of spirit tipped with one of his tinier Parallel fragnts shot toward the tal and etched crystal thing, as it hovered over the ground after dropping its load. The fragnt helped stabilize the connection back to him, allowing his normally closely-bound spirit to work as a much longer range essence field transfer structure.
And he yanked the automaton toward them carelessly, all so that a fellow sigilist could examine the fine work. The Coiled Serpent insignia on her belt was plenty enough for the academic who usually avoided these guests as much as possible, to take an instant liking to this one.
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