Chapter 205: Jane’s Lord
The woman with black hair and the two chairs made of darkness. Shadow, who had told him to call her that.
He thought about the way Randy had phrased it. The way he had said she without specifying who she was, and the way his expression had carried something specific when he said it, the kind of specific that did not come from professional familiarity.
"I don’t know." Neil said, which was the honest answer about whether she had come through the settlement specifically, because he did not know her movements beyond the single encounter on his path home.
Randy looked at him sideways.
Then he sighed, a short and genuine sound, and looked back at the sky.
"Right." He said. "Of course you don’t."
They talked for a few minutes, nothing consequential, the easy back and forth that Randy used to fill space when he was thinking about something he was not going to discuss directly, and Neil participated in it without pushing on the parts that were clearly not open for pushing.
Eventually Randy wandered off in the direction of the settlement’s central hall with the unhurried movement of someone who had somewhere to be and was not going to hurry about getting there regardless.
Neil watched him go for a moment.
Then he turned toward the settlement interior and walked in the direction Nemo was guiding him, toward the second Order Diamond class domain that was apparently closer to his own than he had expected anything useful to be.
He stopped when he saw it.
The domain was directly beside his own.
Not nearby, not a short distance away, but immediately adjacent, the boundary of the unfamiliar domain running parallel to the wooden wall of his own with a gap between them that was perhaps fifteen metres at its widest point. He stood at the edge of the space between them and looked from one to the other and back again, and his expression was the one that appeared when reality had delivered something he had not been prepared for.
’Nemo.’ He said.
"You did ask for the closest one." She replied, and if Nemo was capable of something like dry amusement she was expressing it.
Neil stood there for another moment.
The domain beside his was smaller than his own, simpler in its visible structure, with two buildings of modest construction visible above the boundary line and a barrier that was functional but not elaborately maintained. Second Order, Diamond class, clearly occupied. He could feel the presence of subjects inside it, not many, and the domain core’s energy was distinct and clean at exactly the tier he needed.
He was still working out how he wanted to approach this when the door of the adjacent domain opened.
Jane walked out.
She saw him immediately, the way people saw things when they had been thinking about those things, and her face did something quick and unguarded before she managed anything more composed, and then she walked toward him at a pace that was slightly faster than casual and she was still moving when she reached him and she hugged him before he had finished processing that she was going to.
Neil stood with his arms slightly out, because the hug had arrived before he had made any decision about a hug, and then he settled and let her have the moment.
She stepped back after a moment, not embarrassed exactly but aware of what she had done and making no attempt to apologise for it.
"Is this your domain." He said. Not an accusation, just the obvious question.
"It just got teleported here." She said. "I talked to Randy about the location and he talked to my father." She paused, and something in her expression acknowledged the complexity of that statement given everything that had happened with her father recently. "He did not cause problems this time. So I brought it here."
Neil looked at the domain beside his own, then back at her, then at the domain again.
He was quiet for a moment.
Because the core he needed was inside that domain, and taking it was not something you did to someone’s domain when the someone in question was standing in front of you and had just brought the domain to be beside yours specifically.
He thought about the Lord of Lords skill.
He had acquired it some time ago and had not yet found the specific conditions that made it the right tool for a specific situation, because a skill that merged domains and turned another lord into a sub-lord was not something you deployed casually. The conditions had to be right and the consent had to be genuine and the relationship between the lords involved had to be one where the arrangement made sense in both directions.
He looked at Jane.
He thought about the core he needed. He thought about the evolution waiting on the other side of acquiring it. He thought about the lost elven kingdom and what was going to be required of him there. He thought about Lord of Lords and what it actually offered, which was not just access to the domain core but the integration of the domain itself, its subjects, its abilities, Jane’s own skill as a lord, all of it becoming part of his domain in a way that made everything larger and more capable than either domain was individually.
He thought about the resentment that was still there, honest and acknowledged, sitting in him the way things sat when you had been genuinely hurt by something and had chosen not to pretend otherwise. He had chosen not to pretend, which meant the resentment was real, and he was not going to perform a forgiveness he had not actually arrived at.
But the recording had shown him the truth of what had happened between them, and Ileana had made her decision about Jane with the clear eyes of someone who had thought about it properly and not the impulsive generosity of someone avoiding difficulty, and the resentment he carried existed alongside the understanding that she had not been operating freely when things had gone wrong.
Those two things could both be true.
"I need to talk to you about something." He said.
Jane looked at him with the attentive stillness she had when she was taking something seriously.
He explained Lord of Lords. He told her what it did, how it worked, what it would mean for her domain and her subjects and her position relative to his.
He told her that it required her genuine internal agreement to activate, that he could not do it without that agreement, and that the result would be her becoming a sub-lord under him with her domain and everything in it becoming part of his.
He told her plainly that part of his reason for considering it was the domain core.
Jane listened to all of it without interrupting, which was something she had always been able to do, the ability to hear the whole of something before responding to any part of it.
When he finished she was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: "Yes."
Just that, without qualification or condition, the same way she had always made decisions that she had actually made rather than decisions she was being steered toward.
Neil looked at her for a moment.
"You understand what it means." He said.
"I understand what it means." She confirmed. "I would rather be a part of your domain than be beside it." She paused. "And I would rather you had what you needed."
Neil nodded once.
He activated Lord of Lords.
The effect was immediate and visible and produced reactions on both sides of the boundary line.
Both domains lit with a glow that was different from their usual barrier luminescence, something warmer and more structural, the energy of the skill moving through the boundary systems of both domains simultaneously.
Neil felt it in his chest, a sensation like two separate things finding an alignment they had been geometrically close to already.
Jane straightened slightly where she stood, her eyes brightening with the same glow for a moment, the internal agreement she had given registering in the skill’s mechanism.
Inside his domain, Bob’s voice rose immediately.
"What’s happening to the wall?!"
The wooden walls of his domain, the ones Bob and Rob had repaired and maintained and taken considerable personal pride in, opened at a specific section along the boundary with Jane’s domain, not breaking but parting deliberately, the wood recognising the command of the skill and responding to it.
Jane’s two buildings, modest and functional, lifted slightly and were drawn through the opening and into the interior of his domain, settling into position with a solidity that suggested permanent placement rather than temporary arrangement.
Then the walls closed.
The boundary between the two domains ceased to exist.
Neil stood in the space where the gap between them had been and looked at the result, which was his domain, larger than it had been this morning, with two new buildings in it and a familiar luminescence running through the combined barrier system that was stronger than either barrier had been individually.
Magnar came through the now-open gate with the unconcerned ease of a familiar who had no particular feelings about spatial rearrangements as long as his master was at the centre of them, looked at the new buildings, and continued toward his preferred position near the campfire pit.
Inside the combined domain, on the former Jane’s-domain side, a single subject stood looking at the changes with an expression of complete bewilderment.
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