"Not telling anyone we're in this city is tricky, because otherwise it would be hard for them to aim a reply. But Audacious Anchor of Stability is a fairly large city, so that might not be giving too much away?" they respond.

<Fair enough. If whoever's picked up Mountain decides they want to take me too, though, you should get ready to get the hell out of here as quickly as you can. If you think you can manage that, then I say let's go ahead.>

"Er. I mean, the only way into or out of the city is on a train. Unless you develop high-level teleportation or flight techniques, I guess. But I'm pretty familiar with the city, and I think I could probably sneak away onto a train pretty easily if we needed to. I already have a go bag prepped, so I could probably be on the next train at any point."

They shake their head and key the radio.

"If you're working with Mountain, contact us on this frequency at the Audacious Anchor of Stability as soon as possible," they say, repeating the message twice for redundancy.

"I can run to the East side and try to radio the Needles as well? We can take a train East and search in person, but the trip is about 6 hours one way, so it might be best to do that tomorrow after school lets out for the weekend."

<Teleportation will be a trick, especially if it's not a place that you've brought me before, but flight should be easy. And yeah, waiting until your absence won't be quite so conspicuous seems reasonable. I think Needles is going to take a while to find a wielder in the first place, they're a bit more...selective than me or Mountain, and even once they do find someone I don't think they'll get into too much trouble that quickly. Needles cares a lot about helping people, so they're usually pretty careful to not fuck around unless they're sure it'll do more good than bad.>

"Wait, wait, what? You can let people fly?" they exclaim. They realize their voice was a little loud and lower it to a less conspicuous volume. "That's amazing! How does that work? What else can you do?"

<Yeah! It's been a hot minute since someone used to fly, and I might need some practice before I'm used to how 'gravity' works here, once that's sorted you should be able to fly with me easy. As for what else I can do, it's kind of hard to narrow down! I'm proud to say I'm probably the most versatile of the three of us. If you can think of something involves 'connecting' things, even on a pretty abstract level, we can probably figure out how to do it with me.>

"That's incredible. That's ..." they trail off.

"So I know that artifacts have a single 'aspect' around which their magic is built. Like, the Chain's aspect is indestructibility -- it can't be broken. But 'connection' is such a broad thing."

They shake their head.

"I guess it makes sense if these things take some time to learn to do with your help. Would you be willing to tell me more about good introductory uses while I run us over to the other end of the city to message the Needles?"

<Sure!>

And indeed, as Scour crosses the cityscape, Gold will explain all the lowest hanging fruit among its functionalities. The really easy stuff is anything that uses Gold for things you might use a normal rope for, like how it helped anchor Scour earlier. Tying physical things together, lassoing stuff, brachiating, setting up pully systems, all sort of stuff. For that, Scour basically just needs to think about what they want Gold to do and then flick them like a whip and Gold will handle the rest. Flying, and scrying like Gold did earlier to find Mountain and Needles, and drawing on other sorts of more abstract connections to 'attract' things without a physical connection requires both some experimentation and practice to account for local variables, as well as some additional effort put into bringing Gold and Scour into closer alignment. They'll align naturally over time just from being close, and especially when Scour is actively using Gold for stuff, but alignment is itself a kind of connection, between it and its wielder, and thus Gold can help speed it along if that becomes necessary.

They laugh, ducking under an awning and into an alley to cut between two close-built houses.

"That is so broken! That you can speed up the connection that you need in order to become more locally powerful, I mean."

They shake their head, stepping out onto the borderwalk behind the guardwall.

"Next you'll tell me that you can connect me directly to the sun and let me siphon magic out of it," they say, setting the radio up on the wall and aiming it towards the next city over.

<That might not be impossible, actually! I could probably at least connect you to space that's higher up and transmit the magic from there down here, though that'll still need to wait for me to get more familiar with how magic here works.>

They fumble the radio microphone, quickly grabbing it before it can hit the cobbles.

"That would, uh," they begin. "That would be huge, if you could do that. Please let me know if I can help you figure out anything you need to know for that."

They key the radio and transmit a similar message for the Needles, and then pack things back up into their backpack.

"I mentioned I have school tomorrow, but I have time for training this evening. We could spend the time before dinner practicing and see how much progress we can make on flight, maybe? Does that sound alright?"

A thread pulls loose of the knot and waggles circularly for a moment. <Eeh. That sort of circumnavigating local limitations to grow in power really quickly was the sort of thing that really got the Dark Ones' attention, or at least that's the feeling I got while we were still with Master. We can work on it, but until we're more confident the Dark Ones aren't an issue here we should be careful about having make any really impossible progress, if that makes sense?>

The thread slides back into the knot. <As for working on flight, that seems pretty reasonable! It might be good to start with brachiation, though, unless you're already familiar with moving three-dimensionally.>

"That makes sense! I've done, like, falling drills. But that's not really the same thing," they say, weaving through the evening traffic back towards the center of the city.

"The training room is a little narrow, but it has exposed beams that would probably be good for brachiation. Our old one was bigger, but we had to settle for a smaller apartment when we moved here so that my parents could start preparing to go up-chain. They want to go up once I'm good enough to live on my own."

<Fair enough. That should be good to get started with at least. Given you've got falling drills, the first thing we should focus on is adjusting your instincts so that your first reaction during a fall is to throw out a thread to catch yourself. After that, we can work on swinging and adjusting length to build momentum. Then once you can reliably move quickly, we can move outside and see about navigating the city.>

"Okay! You said that for basic things I should throw you like a lasso -- do you think it makes sense to practice that with my off hand, so that I can keep my spear in my main hand, vice versa, or ambidextrously? Since you're handling some of the, like, holding onto things I don't know how much manual dexterity is important versus the utility of keeping a hand free," they remark.

<Doing it with your off-hand makes sense if you want to keep a hold on something else, I can handle the details as long as you provide the intent, though once I get a feel for how you hold stuff I can act as extra hands when you need it. Hm...we should also see if attaching me to your spear, to let you manipulate it after you throw it, turns out to be useful.>

"Oh, that would be neat! Maybe that would be useful for grappling, or impaling people," they suggest, turning into a less busy street and ascending a narrow set of stairs. "I normally use a melee spear with a shortbow for ranged attacks, but I have practiced with throwing spears too."

They let themself into the apartment, leaving their shoes by the door. They head down two flights of stairs to leave the radio in their room, and then run back up to the training room.

It's a large room, six meters by ten meters, with a four meter high ceiling. The floor is covered with worn mats, and the walls are painted with a landscape scene. They are marred by the occasional hole. Four training dummies sit at the opposite end of the room.

Scour lifts their training spear from the rack by the door. It is a little bit taller than they are, and balanced remarkably well for a training weapon.

"Do you want to try wrapping around my spear and then feeling as I go through some of my normal forms, and then we can experiment with you pulling it back to me, or helping with leverage, and stuff like that?"

<That or or figuring out brachiation, whichever you think will be more useful!>

They waver indecisively between weapons practice and working towards being able to fly. It's not as though they're much good with a spear anyways, not compared to their mother. But that's just a reason to be diligent.

Eventually the appeal of flight wins out, and they set the spear back in its rack.

They take a stance at one end of the room, and throw the Golden Cord up towards one of the beams. A quick pull has them swinging through the air, and then stumbling awkwardly as they come back to the ground at the wrong angle.

A few more attempts leave them with smoother landings, though, and they start experimenting with letting go and attaching to another beam in midair.

"So, is flying with you the same, uh, kind of motion?" they ask after a few minutes. "Like, does it also involve picking out places to attach to and then swinging around them? Or is this mostly useful for training, like, balance and landings and maneuvering?"

<It depends on how we develop it, and how long you're willing to take. If we have a few days, I could figure out a system that would basically like you float around like you're weightless, but the easiest system for me to implement will be something that's basically like brachiating except you'll be swinging off the sky— or the Sun, I suppose. Getting good at finding specific spots won't necessarily be directly necessary for flying, but it'll be useful to develop instincts too keep an eye out for good anchor points anyway, since it translates fairly well to doing more exotic, esoteric stuff with me later on. The balancing, landing, and maneuvering are all important too.>

"Okay, cool!"

They continue their practice, slowly working up to more elaborate maneuvers and making reasonable progress. Eventually, Scour stops their practice at the sound of the street door opening.

"Oh -- that will be Mother home for dinner. I should go get cleaned up. Are you comfortable hiding under my sleeve for dinner? I don't really want to explain you to my parents."

<Sure!> And Gold will go ahead and snake their way under Scour's sleeves on its own. Their threads are impossibly smooth, flattens out against their arm, and matches Scour's body temperature after only an instant of adjustment. Once Gold is stationary it's difficult even for Scour to tell it's there without confirming it visually.

Scour quickly washes up before making their way to the living room. Their father brings out a tray of shish kabobs made with turkey, peppers, squash, and carrot in a savory glaze and sets them on the table, next to a pot of rice.

Scour gives noncommittal answers to questions about their day in between bites.

"Yes, Mother. I was doing movement drills when you got home," they affirm. "I was hoping to go out and get some more exercise after dinner, actually."

When Scour has been sufficiently interrogated, they sit sipping their kefir while their mother tells their father about her day. Their father nods along. When their mother has reached a stopping point in her rant about grain import tariffs, they ask to be excused and hurry back downstairs to their room.

The roll up their sleeve to address the Golden Cord.

"Okay -- I think I got enough practice in to not completely embarrass myself if we try things on the streets, and I agree that I need more varied terrain to practice on. But I'm not sure what ... scale we should be avoiding attention on, I guess? Like, brachiating around will be pretty noticeable, but it won't attract that much attention compared to flying. Should I go out in disguise, do you think?"

<You know, I can hear you just fine with your sleeve down. It's fine now but if we are planning to be subtle about it we don't need to be obvious about communicating.> There's a pause, and Scour can feel Gold shift a little bit. <Yeah, I think we're aligned enough now that you should be able to talk to me just by kind of thinking at me, at least as long as we're touching. And a disguise sounds like a good idea! I can be a mask if you need one, and I can try and bulk up under your clothes a bit to make you look like you have a different build. That'd let me give you some padding, too, if you do ever fall or get into a fight.>

Scour experiences a brief flash of discomfort at the thought of the Golden Cord wrapping under their clothes like that, but pushes it away with the ease of long practice.

"Padding is definitely a good idea," they reply. "Uh ..."<Let me see what I have that will make a good disguise. Am I doing this right?>

They dig through their closet, and pull out a tight tunic and pants for an underlayer, and then a looser robe for an overlayer. From the box of winter clothes under their bed, they remove a shapeless hat, which just fits over their ears and hair if they pin it.

<And yeah -- I don't exactly have a mask, so that sounds good.>