"Yeah, I wouldn't inflict my presence on you for that long... Though that brings up something, you know, I don't always feel like it's me doing the work. There's something inside me, or connected to me, have you noticed the mania, the focus? I don't entirely feel normal, when I'm like that. So is it really me doing it, or am I just wielding some tool I don't really understand?"

"I did notice. It got a little unnerving when you stayed like that for hours at a stretch, I admit. But... maybe I'm just used to it, but magic is much less understood than that. You would explain yourself, and I don't understand the explanations but it's clear that you do. That's a lot better than I expect for the amount of power you have to wield."

"Mm... Well, if one happens to have power, one had better find a good use for it, I s'pose. I think I'll be ready to leave tomorrow morning, where might I find Fatebinder Kohl do you think?"

"Ask at the Spire? Or look for bigger towns and listen for rumors, I can't imagine his next trick is going to be quiet after the last one."

She sighs.

"...By the horns. The spire. Thank you one last time for letting me stay. Use that plow well, yeah?"

She takes it easy for the remainder of the day. She'll be off at sunrise.

"I will. It was a pleasure, Waltana." And, with a slightly sad look leaking into her eyes, "You take care of yourself, girl."

At the crack of dawn the next morning, Waltana will start walking towards the spire, pack on back, boots on feet, and spear on shoulder.

The trail from Essa's homestead to the proper road is short, and soon she's on the proper road (for values of 'proper' which include being packed earth with substantial ruts, no paving or even gravel), which in a winding way heads north and west to Ascension Hall and the Mountain Spire. (This is the opposite way she'd turn to go into town, but she knows where she's headed.)

A minute or two after the turning, she passes a small, mismatched group of warriors headed the opposite way. There's a dark-skinned man leading them wearing heavy armor, mostly iron, with a spear and shield strapped to his back and a sword sheathed at his waist. His helm is a distinctive yellow bronze with black stripes and a ruff of green feathers.

A woman is one step behind him, looking around like she's scouting the path. She's in leather armor painted with blood-red patterns, with a line of brighter red feathers tied into her thin strip of hair, two vicious-looking swords on her belt.

She's absolutely furious, in a cold way, and you can tell in a second of meeting her gaze. Not that she holds her eyes on Walta for long; she glances over the soft pale skin of someone who is just starting to get a proper tan from working outside and, despite the spear, dismisses her as a non-threat, probably a merchant.

The two behind them have white hair, though the woman looks too young for it. She's younger than Essa, though probably by less than a decade, and most of her clothes look like they were assembled from blue-dyed sailcloth and heavy ship's sheets ropes. She has a knife on her belt, but the thing she grasps like a weapon is her spear-staff, a dark rod of wood with a white point flanked by a pair of crescents. It sparkles with a faint purple-white buzz even when she's not focused on it. Her expression is slightly but grimly displeased.

The man, however, looks to have earned his white hair honestly. He is dressed like a librarian, at first glance, though an old-fashioned one with rough robes rather than patched tweed. At second glance, that robe is reinforced with boiled leather, there are three colors of tattoos on what shows of his arms and some on the legs, his walking-stick has a faint brown glow at its curved head, the pen at his side is actually a knife, and his eyes rest on Walta for longer and his body language tenses slightly when he does.

Notable things about this traveler: Pale and thin and walking with an uncertain gait, like one who isn't used to outside work or fighting, or hasn't eaten well for much of her life. Looking around in something like wonder at all this frankly ordinary wilderness and the spire in the distance. Holding her spear like she barely knows how to use it, but also respecting it and holding it more carefully than the average recruit. No shield, for some reason.

And her equipment...

Clothes in a foreign design with very careful stitching. The boots are black and strangely textured, with rubber soles, synthetic coverings, and steel fasteners. Her long pants are thick and rubbery, her leather belt seems to have a number of small iron tools attached to it, and several iron rings hanging off it besides. A greatcoat with steel buttons and a shiny symbol pinned to the collar, but it's no armor. A pair of heavy goggles made of leather and glass and bronze. Leather messenger bag along with a large, boxy backpack that clanks slightly as she walks. Steel buttons on the bag and pack. Steel belt buckle. Painted steel canteen. And the spear is all steel, just wrapped with more of the rubbery cloth her pants are made of, with a rubber cord attached near the base that leads into her backpack.

She stops in surprise and watches them as they approach for a moment. Then asks, "...Would you happen to be the Fatebinder Kohl, the Peacebinder?"

Well, that gets them to stop and look at her. And notice all the ways in which she's out of place.

"I am," Kohl says, "Though most people around here call me 'Lord of the Mountain Spire', now. I don't recognize the heraldry," he says, gesturing to her collar, "Who, or whose, are you?"

She had a strategy for this. Or well, not a strategy, just a guess that being fully open would be best, the standards of what can and cannot be known be damned.

"Waltana Hampson, of the Bristol Shipbuilders and Ironworkers Union. Bristol being outside of Kyros's domain entirely, so far as I can surmise. Having found myself here to my surprise, I thought I would seek out the most reasonable sounding person in the Tiers- You."

"I try," he says, a little wryly, "and sometimes even succeed. You look foreign enough, and I know nothing of Bristol." He looks over to the older man, who shakes his head. "Nor does Lantry. What brings you to Vendrien's Well?"

"Some whim of magic? I did not choose to come here. I don't really see any way I could have gotten here. And yet, here I am." She shrugs and grimaces. "We play the game with the cards that we are dealt."

"So we all do," he says, and both of the older ones nod sympathetically. "Why were you selecting someone to seek out?"

"For now, pragmatism and hoping for the best. I'm a foreigner, not sworn to Kyros - yet, perhaps - not sworn to anyone here. I don't know the area. I don't know the history. This place is foreign and terrifying, frankly."

She - slowly, so as not to alarm them - holds her spear out to the side and depresses the switch for a few seconds. A crackling arc dances up the spear, a Jacob's Ladder. She rests it against her shoulder again, after.

"Making things like this, requires resources. Much as I would be tempted to find some unclaimed patch of woods and try to drudge out a field and a hut, that seems like a terrible and boring life, frankly. And while that feels like a safer option than seeking someone reliable to work for, I suspect it would not actually be so. The final plan to cross my mind, leaving this place for somewhere else- Where would I even go?"

"I know the feeling," he says while she's hoisting the spear. After she demonstrates...

"What magic is that? The Forge-Bound say weapons can't be made magic straight from the forge."

"It's not magic. Not from what I understand magic to be, at least. I'm magic, I think, to make something like this. I know how to make things."

"Lantry?", he says, skeptically.

The old man nods eagerly, and sketches a large sigil in the air, the lines shimmering slightly and then brighter once he finishes the pattern. "Would you mind pressing whatever that was that make that crackle again, young lady?" He's pulled a piece of parchment from his pack, and is already scratching shorthand onto it.

She holds down the switch. 

"What is lightning, exactly? The fury of a storm? The separation between sky and earth? Sparks of it can accumulate on wool, too. When you truly know what lightning is, you can make it do your bidding."

"Remarkable," he mutters, tracing some lines along a quick sketch of the spear, "Her claim seems accurate. Magic is reacting, but largely in the way it reacts to flowing water, not so much like the Spire. You don't seem to be actively magic either", he says as well, this time directed toward her, "Though I think I would like to see if that changes next time you're creating something of this sophistication. Did you make the iron as well?"

"Don't be so pushy, ink-thief," says the older woman, familiarly and not affectionately, "Those are her secrets, not yours."