[Phantasmal Guide]. I’m glad, as the spell takes hold, that she vocalized it; when it wraps around me like a blanket, soft pressure on key places of my hands, legs, arms, and black, I’m calm enough to let it, and to not kill her. Its hands move mine, as we step up a few centimeters - three or so inches, I think to myself - onto the slightly-raised dais that makes up the main area. She dips deep, a courtesy that means the smooth curve of her spine and her hair is all I can see of her, and I let the Guide bring me into the shallowest of bows, reaching down to raise her up.

It’s beyond easy to dance with Zidanya. She mostly keeps her distance, as distance when dancing goes; it’s not out of shyness, but to draw my eye, to emphasize when she does bring our bodies together.

We dance, and we talk. Mostly, we dance and she talks, and I listen, and keep my mana just below its maximum; no sense in wasting the opportunity. Some of it goes into the ambient mana of the space, but some of it... no sense taking the risk.

“- the red dyes come primarily from the Nave of Hearts, in the Heharai lands bordering Hyther. That group there? They’re making a statement.” The dance brings us around, and I let the Phantom Guide wrap my hands around her waist and lift, turning to the left. Her legs are perpendicular for a moment, horizontal leg hooked to let the foot rest gently above my waist, and I’m cleanly facing the group she’s talking about.

“Islanders. Piracy?” The Guide makes it the most natural thing to bring her down and let her circle me, hands twined and held high. “You said the bronze-purple cloth is Ionderai. Does that mean they’re making a point of being…” I can’t find the right phrase.

“Privateers, according to them, licensed and in perfect compliance with the Stillness.”

The Stillness is a disturbing word for a grotesque state of affairs. It’s a compact, near as I can tell, between the different major polities of the Cadorian continent of Iavshet; we’ll fuck with each other, but we won’t go for the throat. Nobody wins, which means nobody loses. Noble lines don’t get extinguished, land doesn’t get permanently taken, productive resources don’t get undermined or destroyed.

Everyone agrees to suppress any slave revolts and return criminals to their jurisdiction, which makes my stomach churn for its familiarity. Between that and the fact that neither the people killed nor the shipping counts as productive resources, it all really undermines the argument that this is a humane approach, or a laudable one.

Well, nearly everyone. Everyone important; barbarians don’t count. So Zidanya’s got that going for her, or not against her.

“- which makes them immune to direct challenges for their conduct.” I lose track of the exact rationales she’s describing for the immunity. It doesn’t matter. She steps in, one hand on my shoulder and the other on the small of my back, and my hands go around her waist, not needing any prompting; we’ve danced this set before. It’ll take us across to another arm of the spiral and one notch further in towards the center. “Why are you telling me this?”

“For which value of this?”

I don’t give her a verbal answer for a bit. Instead, flowing with the people across the narrow space between the two spirals, I step in and turn slightly, inviting a move that is familiar enough from a lifetime ago that I can fake it. The Guide’s touch fades as she lets her hands slide forward and down, leaning back and gripping me firmly around the waist; my feet leave the ground, my back supported by her front, and we pause for two beats as our right hands extend and clasp, and my right foot touches the back of her right knee. My feet land on the ground again and she raises my right hand over my head, bringing me around to face her, taking hold of my left hand with our wrists crossed.

There are a lot of values of this that I’m asking about. It’s not the first little test she’s responded with in lieu of an answer. “There’s a calamity coming. Why are you helping me?”

If it’s not the answer she’s looking, it’s not so far from it as to perturb her. She pulls me in, in parallel with the rest of the spiral; our hands twine around each other’s for a moment, her breasts pressed against my chest with our hands crushed in between, her lips close enough to mine that I can feel the tickle of her breath. “How long has it been? Centuries?”

The moment is a frieze. “Millenia.” I’m acutely aware of every millimeter of where our bodies are pressed up against each other, aware of how it’s felt to move with her, follow her lead and touch. I’m acutely aware of every piece of information she’s given me, of the speed at which she identified who and what I am. None of that is why I tell her the truth. “More than two, less than three.”

The frieze ends, and I don’t feel the Guide again. Instead, she pulls me in and forwards and lets go of my hands. I take a half step in, and she deftly guides me into position; one of my hands on her upper back and one around her waist, one of her hands on my shoulder and the other at the small of my back, my right foot between her feet and her right foot between mine. I don’t need the Phantasmal Guide’s pressure to follow her lead, and she moves me inwards towards the center of the spiral, controlling the line of my body and the position of my feet with cues too subtle for me to consciously follow.

We dance. For measure on measure, for minutes, we dance, and she doesn’t say anything. I’m sunk into the moment and into the heat, floating on feet that don’t feel like they’re touching the ground; I’m in the thrall of the way every bit of my body feels when it touches hers, drinking in the smell and sight of her.

The taste, too, when she kisses me, and we’re dancing on, and everything is the moment, but I don’t forget where I am, or who I am, or what my plans for the night are.

“Bind me, before you leave.” Her voice is throaty and low when she finally speaks again. She’s taken us out of the spiral and we’re drifting out towards the buffet tables where we started. “Bring me out of the Temple.”

“You’re going to have to explain a few things.” The heat is starting to fade, leaving a bone-deep contentment as its embers, leaving a loose relaxation and joy.

“Swear it.” Her eyes lock mine, and I feel the Phantasmal Guide again. It nudges me into her, our bodies pressed against each other; I’m unable to break her gaze. “Promise it.”

There’s an edge to her voice. “My oath before the Void that devours,” I say softly, serenely. “What do I need, in order to bind you?”

“My name. Your will and word, and a declaration. Taveda Zidanya Medah.”

“Zidanya Medah,” I repeat after her, slowly. Taveda was a title, I can tell, and I don’t know how I can tell. There’s an icon I don’t recognize at the bottom right of my vision, all curves and swirls, and another starting to blink. “Taveda Zidanya Medah. Be bound, may you be bound by my will and my mana.” The words are flowing out of me without my brain being in the way, there’s something external supplying them. “Be bound, by your choice. Be bound, may we be bound up together. I need to know how, Zidanya.” My words are my own again, and I ask the question.

“You just did it. What do you mean, you need to know -”

“How you knew.” We’re stopped, up against one of the pavilion’s supports. I’m leaning on it, left shoulder and left hip pressed against the stone. “An imprint shouldn’t know an Outsider. Shouldn’t know she’s in a Temple.” The words are flowing out of me, but I’m not particularly paying attention to them. “How did you know?”

“Does it matter?”

My mana is starting to drain out of me into something, and that’s where my attention is. Twenty six. It’s not her, my mana isn’t draining into her exactly; it’s draining into a convolved space, something that feels like me and feels like her at the same time. It’s mesmerizing; her eyes, I can’t look away from her eyes, even without the iron pressure of the Guide, but her eyes are nothing compared to watching the flow of the mana.

“Your paint.” My voice is a breath of wonderment. “Your paint is glyphwork. It’s a living rune, transposed onto your body.”

“You’re close.” Her voice is impressed, impressed in a way that seems reluctant.

“That’s right, it’s not just your paint.” Twenty two mana. Her hand twines with mine. A force I can’t hope to fight, gentle as a feather, moves my other hand to her back, and she steps in so there’s no space between us, like she’s trying to press every millimeter of her body against mine. Twenty mana. The Guide shifts me just so, her leg moves just so. “It’s all of you. Head to toe. Your hair, your paint, your clothes. Everywhere you’ve been.” The mana drain is accelerating. Fifteen mana. “Our dance. A four-dimensional rune?”

“You’re amazing.” Her fingers trace a line across my neck, leaving green in their wake, leaving fire in their wake. They work their way up my jaw, and to my lips, and I feel the bobble in the convolved rune, like she’s diverted from the pattern to indulge herself in that, specifically. Fourteen mana. “How long did you know?”

“Among other things? Everyone else blended into the background.” The words come easy, now that they’re irrelevant. “Even the Ranger boy.” My toes wiggle freely, and so do my fingers. There’s not all that much I can do with that, but there’s enough. One orb pops. Strength.

“A Skill?”

Ten mana. “Just a sense of the flow.” I don’t want to think about what will happen when I hit zero mana, what will feed the spell after I bottom out. The convolved space between us isn’t anywhere near full; it’s the fullness of her imprint, it’s the depth of her Self, to fill it all the way up. More mana than I have, more mana than I’ve had this whole time in the Temple; it’s a life’s worth of mana for a woman who might have lived centuries. Nine mana.

“How long?”

“The bubble. The shell.” The alignment is as good as it’s going to get, for the rune; the Guide has me locked in place, and she’s moving soft and slow, pulsing with the drain of the mana flow. It’s a heartbeat I’ve seen before writ macroscopic, and I drink in every millimeter of her, every writhing bit of paint on her body that moves with her motions, keeping the alignment perfect. “It wasn’t for the nobles; I can’t imagine them ever heeding my words the slightest. Why would they care about some barbarian’s opinion?” Five mana. “Is this how you want it to end?”

It doesn’t stop her, but it brings her eyes up to mine again. I can’t tell if it’s out of sympathy, respect, or because she’s worried about the spell failing at the last moment, but her gaze is there for me to fall into again, and I’m smiling. “Is there a way you’d rather?”

“I can finish binding you. Bring you out of the Temple.” I want to smile at her naturally, but even that’s denied me. Three mana. “As I swore. Walk the true sky again, Zidanya.” At least I’m smiling.

“You can’t break my bonds, Adam.” When did I - oh right, the announcer.

One mana. With the smallest act of will, I dismiss the motes holding the three attack orbs together. I can’t hurt her, it’s like the option hasn’t ever existed, but there’s six more points of mana that flows back into me from the logic bits, and action is momentum. I’m on the clock, now. I’ve been on the clock since we stepped onto the dance floor. I convert the logic from other three orbs I don’t need, and most of that mana goes to immediate use, but I keep enough to have time to talk, since there’s still a chance. “Who was the Ranger boy?”

“My husband, when I first met him, in part. The Temple has only the smallest fragment of his Self; he’s six young men, that boy.”

I almost lose my concentration. I can’t afford to, so I don’t. “I’m asking you a second time. Work with me. Let me bind you as I swore, and bring you out of the Temple.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

I don’t have a good answer for her question, and it’s in the wrong tense, anyway. “I wanted to win,” I say, which is true. “You remind me of someone, and I want to beat the system because she beat me, and the system beat me.” I could have asked for her death, and they would have given it to me, I don’t say, because I couldn’t have, there’s never been a me who would have considered himself the same person as anyone who could do that. That wouldn’t have been winning, just lashing out. “I’m asking you a third time. Zidanya.” I don’t use her full name, I’m not constraining her, if my guess as to what name-magic even does in this place is right. Life or death, hers to choose, and I can’t say too much because she has to choose. “We can both win.”

The moment lasts forever, or maybe the moment lasts a heartbeat, and she answers.