Naida couldn’t sleep, and rose early to soak. 

A profound frustration took hold of her as she contemplated the incident in Buena Suerte. The night-scholars were still engaged at this hour, so she appreciated the solitude. In the silence of the chambers she went over her observations in restless perpetuity. Naida pulled apart the melding memories, she would need a valuable recollection from here on in. A creature in exclusive servitude to her father had travelled far to cause destruction and death. It received neither command nor rebuke from the demigod woman. Naida’s mind returned to the sight of the demolished Dominion, its deeply cracked headstone conveying some ambiguous emotion. Only in death did she recognize the creature. 

Is that you, Reighleif? 

When Naida was sure she’d collected every fragment of information from the Buena Suertans, she used the forgotten marketplace portal-door to return with exponential speed to her fathers Workshop; their family home and place of supreme solitude for her ever-stormy father to tinker. He was away, and the kin-child raged. Naida upended a Calphic-mitigation stand, and the waxy sheets slid across the floor. She formed in her mind an aggressive aggregate of Calphic forms and pushed the queue into the portal-door she emerged from. She traveled once more, and stormed into the Grand Artificers office at d’Epheron. Impatience and nausea mingled as she inquired the college scholars of her father’s whereabouts. Daedalus was away from the college, and instruction continued in His absence. 

Naida felt like she would soon go crazy. This Artificer College’s foundations should shake when known. Reighleif had emerged from its immemorial absence half-way across the country and rampaged a backwater village! The Dominion were undying, touched by god-hands and thought invincible until an untrained Suertan youth destroyed it. Naida would return to speak with Andres Huff when she was ready. 

Naida remained at the college and plundered the offices for Dominion whereabouts. In the newer annexes with the rolodex that responded to the skylight, she found those that hadn’t been recalled behind the castle walls operated throughout Khatru in lopsided west coast attendance. (Naida recalled the horror in which the Suertans reacted to the hulking creature) 

Her questing of information revealed nothing, but heartened her as nothing of the fiasco had reached the ears  she feared. Why was it there? Was it some unseen emission? Some Calphic respiration that brought out one of the old ones? Drawn to those people and their great secret. She didn’t know the Dominion like Dad did. He’d return and they’d talk.His fuse was short these days but she could contend with that. No Artificers.

She sat at the window transcribing something, long still before dawn. Her thoughts festered. She saw a group of hooded scholars crossing the yards. She finished her line while tracking them with rune-touched eyes as they entered Jaqqui Hall. Disappointment yawned inside her. She entertained letting them have their secret meeting until paranoia won out, she slapped down her pen. 

Naida stepped into the enormous lift-chamber as it descended, the instants of moonlight flittered by as she collected herself and organized the layers of her robes. The lift settled into its position and she could hear them from down the hall. She strode past the purple junior-class banners. Naida heard a loud bang from inside the auditorium, then a cry of surprise from a gaggle of colleagues who recognized her as she passed. The men who usually announced her presence were absent, so Naida hefted open the doors and entered the massive auditorium. 

“You hide this assembly from my father, why?” She called on the room and let the panic take them. She kept herself despite the realization that she’d pursued the tail for almost the entire Artificer monster. Daedalus’ intellect and cunning manifest, and her colleagues. Her presence inspired a din of shock and embarrassment, the different garbs of the Artificer professions played against the auditorium’s stone walls. Naida was descended on by four robed Calphic Scholars, the four-pointed red caps distinguished them. They talked bullshit at her, dismissing this amassing of Calphic thought as an honest call for bulletin.

“Your bulletin given in the bowels of the underclass chambers?” The kin-child said, her eyes were quizzical as she scanned the galleries of socializing scholars. Naida distrusted them immensely, and measured a joke on a page-girl sent to wake her at this hour. There were few Senior scholars, appearing amid the busybodies was a fair man draped in the red robes. 

“Your Kindness,” the Senior said severely. 

They were seated as were the lesser scholars. The Senior measured their conversation. “You interfere with the Scholars work,” he said which Naida found nebulous. A cup of caffeinating tea was placed in Naidas hand as she traced with her eyes the liquid embellishments carved into the stone along the chamber walls.

“Share with me,” Naida said. 

The scholar was very severe, and acted like something in those robes was poking him. 

“We’ve intuited the Dominion Reighleif,” He intoned, and Naidas brow did not change. 

“I know this, in the east.” She acquiesced, and the Seniors eyes widened. Two woman eavesdropping made gestures indicating miraculous knowledge. Their hair was tied in cloth indicating their commitment to the Calphic team. The Senior drew a sucking breath through his teeth. Naida wasn’t a Scholar, she thought them lacking in empathy, acting on suspended conscience in the name of preserving their Masters holy image. This man did not answer to her and nor her him. But, she was his prelate and superior in the grand scheme of this College. 

“Perhaps the Lady Artificer will share how she knows such virgin information?” He said.

“My networks aren’t your concern scholar,” She rebuked. “The Dominion and its whereabouts are hardly a concern for Scholars.” 

“Naida, you are misplaced. The Dominion Reighleifs return is disturbing and worthy of the full attention of this College!” The Senior Scholars retort was a whip crack. 

Play the field. 

“What exactly has your ‘fork’ received?” She asked quickly, referring to the structures emplaced to snoop for the College. As Naida understood it, the emplacements were essentially ‘tuning-forks’ for Calphic exertions. The Senior organized his robes after working himself up. 

“Source disruption, Your Kindness. Again, quite disturbing,” he said haughty-like. 

“Reighleif is old, perhaps the old man has lost its mind,” she said holding her cup in a swaggering motion.

“Blaspheme,” he snaps, “disturbing further that the disruption originated in Buena Suerte.” He said sharply, and there it was. A cold bar ran Naidas spine. 

“How could villagers disrupt Source?” she said quickly. The Senior was dark with severity. 

“This College has entertained every accuse for their activity, we cannot allow dissent any longer,” he said insinuating Naidas great fear. 

”Reighleif was the aggressor, I know this first-hand,” she said, unafraid of admission.

“Naida, your capacity for drivel…” The Senior scholar looked like he wanted to spit. “Unmitigated Calphic visible from Halos, and you’d blame a Dominion before those cowboys!” The Senior cried, poorly maintained derision painting him. 

The treachery in question: the village had been incubating in Calphic thought for some time now, and the artisan craftsmen guild taught trade secrets to their pupils. Naida knew this, and quietly used her influence to steer attention away from the village. Truth be told, she admired their progress away from the stifling presence of this Artificer College. Until now she thought the dealings of enchant in the village were too primitive to be noticed. Now a Dominion’s death signal-boosted the Suertans supposed sins. 

“Reighleif was compromised,” Naida said, thoughts twitched with worry now. 

“Who compromised it?” Asked the scholar directly. Naida blanched, what was she to say? The Source disrupted because it was destroyed. She didn’t know how Andres did what he did, she still worked to reveal that truth. She remained silent and the surrounding scholars puffed themselves in infuriating satisfaction.

 A staccato sound from the guards instruments, then Daedalus banged open the double doors into the mingling congregation.

“Somebody is telling me good news, quickly!” Roared Daedalus, mighty and storming like a thunderhead. A simpering liaison trailed after him apologizing for the lack of ceremony, followed by an entourage of red-robed members of the Calphic Scholar team. Daedalus smacked a scattering puff of sheets against the chest of a scholar and strode to the front. 

Teaching assistants quick on the uptake barked at their classes. Daedalus tore the clasp from his throat and threw his cloak onto the seat behind the lectern. The clasp that was something else rose several hands into the air, it sent out a Calphic ping as it did. The dormant units stationed at the far wings responded to the clasp and stirred. 

Then Daedalus noticed Naida standing amid the turbulence of mortals, and the kin-god was paused. The advisers who came for him told him that Naida was away from the castle? Daedalus found his daughter a hard one to read but she looked like her mother looking at him like that. She wore the alumnus robes. A feeling of absurdity flushed through the ancient kin-god, he looked away and plucked the clasp out of the air. 

Naida was spooked by the emergence of the Dominion from their perfect crevices in the walls. The Calphic ilks made way for the massive creatures as one trudged up the congested marble-speckled stairs to the teaching fixtures impacted in the far wall of the room. A second Dominion on the northern side of the auditorium stomped down to the teaching fixture at Daedalus’ feet: a solid fragment of monolith meant for teaching fundamental Calphic roots. The Dominion plucked it up from the place in the floor. The Dominion from the top of the stairs came down with the fixture Daedalus requested: a large prism with the chiseled map of Khatru and it’s prefectures. Pristine and adorned, these Dominion were show-ponies compared to wind-worn Reighleif. Though the one with the map brought down the prism with a bit of a crash. The Dominion, finished with their duty, returned amiably to their crevice in the wall. 

The Senior and the lesser scholars disengaged Naida to meet Daedalus in an ingratiating laurel. The Calphic Scholars possessed his attention with that report and were his advisers for this assembly. Members of the AoA bunched together in the wings discussing the Dominion situation among themselves; and staff of the College, preoccupied perpetually with the goings on with the school sat in the second story orchestra allowing the Calphic team to knock themselves out. 

Naida approached the massive fixture across from her father, who was glowering. The Senior initiated a quick dispersal of waxy Calphic sheets denoting the erratic Dominion emissions in front of Daedalus. He snapped something to the adviser at his left, the adviser must have responded with something reasonably satisfying. He waved the other parties away, allotting time for the Scholar team to give their bulletin.  

“Your gaggle is positive it came from there?” Daedalus barked. 

“Yes Grand Artificer, we believe the Dominion is confined to the depot village. Southeastern high desert, farther east than New Rivermouth City,” The Senior looked at Naida as he informed Daedalus. An adviser managing the tokens placed the exact location of Andres’ village. 

“Help me understand, Reighleif acts deaf to all forms of my return etch, and now he responds to a fork?” He snapped. Like hemishi and their pets, Daedalus assigned identity at will. Genderless, conscience-less Reighleif was a ‘he’ and ‘acted’ deaf. 

“Yes my Lord, we have reports that we believe will disturb you,”  Naida’s eyes drew across the sheets lying in collage opposite to her. So this was the frequency of a Dominion’s death? It dawned on the kin-child that while her father was briefed that Reighleif lived and was found in Buena Suerte, the Calphic team had elected to save informing Daedalus about the disruption until this moment. Naida hoped she could adequately communicate her discomfort in nonverbals. 

“What do you make of this?” Asked Daedalus, perceiving his daughter from across the slab.

“Where were you?” she said bluntly. Her father was at once put out. 

“Naida, I pursue my own day. As I recall you weren’t around either,” the way which the god-family addressed each other often times puzzled the stuffy college-types. 

“I was in Buena Suerte dealing with this,” Her fathered looked perturbed as did the Artificers. The Senior went on. 

“Two distinct spikes come that indicate tampering with the Dominions Source, !” He cried, quoting Artificer law, albeit combining rhetoric from a different bylaw that forbade students from using Calphic phrasing outside of session. 

Daedalus poured over the report and the moment extended. Naida was tachycardic. She watched some realization come to her father rune-touched eyes. 

“Your Eminence,” the Senior attempted.

“Be silent, Scholar,” growled Daedalus, and a sizzling tension entered the air as the kin-god rifled through the sheets. He slapped them down in disgust.

“Jockeying dandy-fools, Reighleif is dead!” He roared, rising to full towering height. A gasping swill erupted from the Artificers.

“My Lord, I-I don’t understand…thats not possible!” The Senior appeared to be choking, and bent to review the sheets. Daedalus gestured boldly, activating his clasp and from its perfect crevice one of the Dominion ambled. 

“Become educated fool.” 

A swell of reminiscence came to Naida and from the outstretched hand a fetid beam of Calphic energy connected with the Dominions chest, and it came undone. The Dominion collapsed in a rockslide that forced artificers out of their seats as the larger boulders crashed down into the peanut galleries of the assembly. The acrid stench of unmitigated Calphic from the undone Source putrified the air. Naida had swung to meet where the bolt connected with, then returned to her father who glowered at his terrible demonstration. They met eyes and Daedalus perceived something. 

“H-how?” Bleated a scholar. 

“Your tuning-fork reveals their frequency of Source-death. While this College pageants for attention, my Reighleif dies alone in that shallow latrine in the ground!” Bellowed Daedalus, savaging Andres’ home and maintaining a glare directed at Naida. Naida stood.

“The villagers aren’t responsible for this. We’ll go together and see,” Naida started, appealing to some thing inside the kin-gods chill heart. 

“Your Eminence, the Lady Artificer willingly conceals the villages crimes!” Cried an adviser.

The time for subtly was over. 

“Dad, something was wrong with Reighleif, it was out of its mind. Your people want to perform an unprovoked Procession on an innocent village!” Naida pleaded. Her father looked ancient then, broad shoulder bowed under an ever-stony countenance. 

“What maze do you weave, daughter?” He intoned. The room was still as he continued, “Reighleifs stones were broken upon the ground, stones that your mother touched in her ever-grace, and you stand with the village?” Daedalus’ voice was a tectonic rumble. Naida found herself struck, a resentment for her father and these Artificers and herself pooled in her stomach. She was rooted to the spot. The Grand Artificer argued for a moment longer with the Calphic team, who insisted a detachment be sent to perform a scouting report. Daedalus ordered the tuning sheets burned and strode from the room, boiling with contempt as his clasp that was not a clasp whisked from its resting place to his neck.

“Procession will await my orders, I will turn that dust-slum upside down.”