Katrin and Errod seemed to be in good spirits. Physically they were in better shape than I was; the bounty hunters had been unnecessarily rough with them and had made some comments about possibly killing them and taking the "dead or alive" bounty, but hadn''t actually hurt them badly and once they''d been thrown in the jail they were treated well enough.


    I retrieved Mister Creepy from Errod and re-attached him to his little mount, and then dug my magic diving helmet out of the wagon and was about to go for a swim when one of the men working on the barge Hugh had hired suggested I might not want to get eaten by eels.


    "Damn it. I still haven''t gotten to try this thing. How big are the eels?"


    At this, Katrin pulled me aside and started pacing around. "I''m... I''m really glad that you helped us get free," she said with the ''but'' looming ahead almost visibly. I decided to cut to the chase, since I already knew the speech I was about to get.


    "Yeah, I know, it was reckless and stupid and you''d be sad if I died and think of all the paperwork that..." no, that part was wrong. Wait, what was I remembering? Katrin raised an eyebrow, but could tell I was thinking about something and didn''t interrupt.


    "Uh. Sorry, just... something I was remembering. Something about... bears? Anyway, look, I know it was dumb. But I knew Shitheel would be fast enough. And... I mean, yeah. Things could have gone wrong, and almost did, but we have people after us. Multiple people. Nothing is going to be actually safe for a while, I think."


    Katrin sighed and nodded, but didn''t look entirely satisfied. "Callie, it''s just that... well, I think maybe you got into this habit of being so reckless because you were used to it all just working out. But there''s a good chance that it always worked out for you because you were using probability magic, and you don''t have that right now. Not really."


    "I know. I mean I don''t think that''s it, or not all of it. I do think it''s mostly that I''m an idiot. But I know I don''t have that safety net anymore - although I guess I have a shit ton of fated stuff tied to me, so maybe that''ll keep me alive. I mean I know that fate isn''t a guarantee but with this many things... and I can see that look you''re giving me. Okay. I won''t test that theory."


    Hugh stepped out of nowhere, having been somehow hiding behind a barrel that wasn''t large enough to conceal him. "It is an interesting theory, yes? Calliope Smith, this is the first I have heard you are bound by fate and using probability magic. I have been neglecting my promised daily guesses about your origin, yes?"


    I sighed, and ignored Hugh so I could speak to Katrin in English. "He''s a fucking menace, I swear. I feel like I should probably just say as little as possible to him, but he already knows I''m from somewhere strange - if he knew Earth existed he''d guess it in a heartbeat."


    "Are you just going to ignore him and talk to me? That seems more suspicious."


    "Oh you want suspicious?" I gestured like I was cutting my throat. "I mean, I can fuck with him all day." I did a little sideways head nod at nothing in particular.


    Katrin sighed. "I suppose it''s as good a way to pass the time as any," she said, "but it might work better if we let him ''accidentally'' overhear things instead."


    Hugh, meanwhile, was just smiling. He knew I didn''t know jack shit about this world or magic in general, he''d seen my Earth clothes, but... that was about it, right? He hadn''t met Connie, didn''t know about my bonus Dumines, and so far as I could tell Hammersmith had kept him in the dark about why she wanted me. I wasn''t going to address the fate stuff or the probability thing - he knew I had a divination ability since I''d disclosed it while planning out how to get away from the bounty hunters, but he didn''t know the specific gifts involved so he probably thought I had Spatial and Perception, and now maybe Probability.


    I turned to face him. "Your daily guesses aren''t retroactive," I said, "you have one for today if you''d like to use it, but that''s all."


    He stroked his mustache. "You are from the moon."


    "Nope! I''ve been wondering about that though, are there people that live there?"


    He shrugged. "In legend, but it is notoriously difficult to get there even in stories. Most tales are... unlikely to be true."


    "Huh. Well listen, I appreciate you helping out - even though you''re just trying to collect me for Hammersmith - but can you not spy on me? Just as a favor, since we''re buddies."


    He arched an eyebrow, and held up a finger. "Lord Protector Hammersmith." He raised another finger. "I did not come for you, I was sent to ensure the safety of one Katrin Runelighter." He raised a third. "People will be trying to spy on you, Calliope Smith. Best you treat me as practice for detecting them, yes?"


    "Wait, what do you mean you came here for Katrin?"


    Hugh just waggled his eyebrows and walked away. I turned to Katrin, but she was retreating in the other direction - blushing furiously. What the fuck?


    When I caught up to her, she tried to change the subject. "So you said you can scry on yourself now? That''s an interesting choice."


    I leaned on the railing and watched the river passing by. We were going against the current, but while the Nubasarri was very wide it was super sluggish. "I kinda panicked about you maybe abandoning me, and decided I had to retroactively spy on you to make sure you weren''t just leaving me in the woods alone like my mom did."


    Katrin just stared for a moment. "Oh. Okay. Well, uh. Okay, sure. I would appreciate it if you didn''t spy on me again but... I know that was... it''s fine." She didn''t look like she thought it was fine.


    "Yeah, sorry. I didn''t... anyway, I won''t spy on you again. I wouldn''t want to ruin any of your secrets."


    She blushed again. "Well. It''s nothing like... I may have sent Lute a letter, when I was grabbing the glove Errod commissioned. And I know, I know, we were fleeing from the scene of a murder but... I didn''t say where we were going; in fact I lied about which way we were headed and also said you weren''t with us. But somehow he found out where we were -"


    "Stalker." I said.


    "- probably because he found out that the bounty hunters had found us -"


    "Would still have required him to be stalking you."


    "- and he sent Hugh with a letter to warn me. Us."


    I groaned. "Katrin, I know he was flirting with you, but he was also clearly trying to pump us for information. He''s just a government snitch."


    She looked indignant. "We set off an alarm, and were very suspicious. It was perfectly reasonable to ask some questions and try to get to know us. And you didn''t spend time with him like I did, we talked about all that and he''s... he''s very nice. And I think he was just worried about me, and while he hasn''t said so I think it''s likely he''s the reason you were able to leave Erathik at all - so you could maybe give him a chance."


    Huh. She probably had a point. I didn''t trust him, and I didn''t get why Katrin swooned over him, but if he really had been spying on us the whole time we wouldn''t have been able to be on our own for... what, fifty days? Yeah. We''d left Erathik on the eighteenth of the sixth, as they said here, and it was now the thirty-third of the seventh. We were coming up on the end of summer. Brinkmar would be aligned in seventy-five days, on the first of the tenth, and it would take a few days for us to get to a city with a teleportation circle we could use to get handed over to Hammersmith. I''d avoided my incarceration for longer than I thought I''d be able to, but not as long as I would have preferred.


    "I don''t want to be locked up for two months," I said, totally forgetting that I''d been in the middle of giving Katrin shit about Lute. Katrin was fine with the change of subject, though.


    "It may not be so bad. And if you can use your scrying ability to see the past, you could spend that time checking on all the blurry memories."


    She was right, of course, I''d just been too busy to think about it. There was no time like the present though - I would have preferred to sit in the wagon, which was parked on the barge''s deck, but I wasn''t sure how much mana I was going to use experimenting and mana didn''t really flow indoors well, so I had Katrin make a well for me to sit in out in the open. Once I was in my memory palace I went to the most recent obscured memory - right before Sunshine House. There was a car that dropped me off, but the make and model kept shifting and the driver''s face was somehow blocked from view no matter what angle I tried. I reached out, trying to use divination to recall the scene, but after a moment I had to admit it wasn''t working. I hadn''t used any mana, it was like I just... couldn''t get a grip on it.


    On a whim I tried to grab onto that partial memory that had surfaced about being more careful and... paperwork... and bears. I couldn''t get that either, but something was different. Where the other was totally insubstantial, this one felt more like it was slippery; it was for sure there in a way the other wasn''t, but that didn''t mean it was accessible. Okay, time to rigorously test. Me right after waking up in this world, in the hospital? Not a problem, and not even noticeably more mana than I''d used looking at a more recent memory. Just before I left Earth, at the Desert Oasis apartments? Slippery. Another foggy memory? Couldn''t even touch it. Further back, when I was a kid? Slippery.


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    That seemed to narrow things down. I couldn''t easily grab anything from Earth, but couldn''t even try on the ones that were scrambled. My divination trick relied on using the planar membrane that permeated everything as a way of "seeing" the world, specifically where it overlapped with my lutore. But Earth wasn''t a plane, so the membrane... didn''t exist? But I''d seen signs that places from Earth could be in Nusos, so there must still be some interaction. There had to be a way.


    The other part, slippery versus totally untouchable, was probably based on the fact that I didn''t have a clear idea what or when I was even trying to scry on. I tried to look at myself right after arriving in this world, when I was in a coma. It was difficult at first, but after a moment I got something to click and found myself standing over my unconscious body as they tried to clean me up. A mildly humiliating memory to be sure, but I set that aside to think about the implications. What had the feeling been, when it finally worked?


    There were paths I was following, almost like the fate threads. A timeline, connecting my thoughts and body to the past. Except... oh. That line was interrupted, wasn''t it? Connie had re-written the world, restored it from a save file in a manner of speaking, using some strange device from Brinkmar. Was I even me? Or just a copy? But then, if it was the device that had been meant to return Jake Ross to Earth in the books, like Connie thought, how had that worked? I popped back into the real world, and grabbed Connie''s journal - ignoring Katrin''s questions for the moment.


    I had neglected the journal, only looking at the part with the contract for the Duminere, but now I skimmed through trying to find anything about how she had restored the world. I wasn''t sure there was anything in there about it at all, since she wouldn''t have felt the need to document it once she was back and Ulren''s lab was blown away. I found details about Kraiklin''s crew since they had been the ones to find the Duminere in the original timeline; that probably would have been handy for planning purposes before the big chase, although I hadn''t known it was them until the last minute anyway. Huh, the cousin he''d mentioned was with them on that trip too. He''d said something about that cousin before, in Good Charl - some sort of minor noble from somewhere.


    I also found a list of Halenvar''s strike team leaders, though some of them were dead now. One of them had a name that sounded familiar, but which I couldn''t place - Cyra? She''d been found dead at some monument in Spinehollow, wherever that was, in the original timeline. There was a cryptic note about Katrin and Errod, and I wondered if Connie thought that was who had killed them - not that it mattered anymore. Likewise, the list of cities and dates where Halenvar attacked were either in the past or would never happen, although one had an asterisk and a page number...


    And bingo, that was - somewhat randomly - a relevant note. They''d attacked and destroyed a place called Storm''s Keep and stolen an old religious artifact called Yesrin''s Loom. Yesrin was... that was a god, one that Errod had said his family worshiped. Made itself human, hated it, and left a week later or something. The notes went on, but they were spotty - Connie already knew what she was talking about and hadn''t wanted to write everything in detail anyway, so I had to just try my best to fill in the blanks. There was reference to some giant device in Brinkmar that it had been part of, and as I frantically flipped around from reference to reference it seemed likely this was what Connie had used as the basis for her re-making the world.


    I wasn''t sure what Halenvar had wanted with it, but I did know I''d heard that Elrebar dick talk about a loom and say... hmm. I went back and scryed on the memory, to be certain. There Elrebar was, hammering away at Errod as the robed guy tried to get his attention. "No prophesy is guaranteed," he said, "the Loom was used and the world yet stands. We have killed a dozen that touched it, and the gods didn''t show up to complain."


    Huh. The Loom was used and the world yet stands. She''d used it to save the world, but it sounded more like he was thinking it should have destroyed it. Hell, maybe it had. After all, Ulren had been fucking with it, and he for sure wanted the world gone so he could go back in time for... some reason. If I even understood correctly. But also, hadn''t Elrebar been after Katrin''s spellbook? Why would he be talking about Connie using this Loom thing? I was missing something. I stepped back into the real world and flipped through the journal some more, enough to find notes about what Halenvar was looking for in the sealed vaults.


    There were three of them. The first was an entry that said "device eliminates planar boundry / used for terraforming??? (Lenderatze?) / used as weapon? (Azaraze or Botara?)". I was pretty sure that was the doomsday device, but to be certain I went back to that day when I was hiding in the Cheese Cave while Connie argued with Hammersmith and almost immediately heard the comment I''d been looking for. "But this time there''s not going to be a planar collapse, we''re not all going to be sucked into Azaraze." Yeah. And Azaraze was the plane where... hmm. It was an entropic void, I thought, but I couldn''t remember when Cyne and I had talked about that and so I didn''t want to go looking. I could confirm it later. Botara would be the one Katrin said the sun was a hole into, it was kinda the opposite of Azaraze - all light and heat and energy. And then Lenderatze was... that was the one Katrin said could restore nature, that they used to clean out the waste pits. So that all checked out.


    The second said "Unknown / Demon??? / ''Tindelus''?" which rang a bell. I didn''t need to pull the memory up, that one was mentioned by Telen. He said that Halenvar was thinking of releasing Tindelus, and it sounded like it would be an act of desperation. Not great. The third and final entry made it very clear it was what Halenvar was actually there for, and then said "guarantees Halenvar lasts forever somehow? Unclear. Weapon? Couldn''t have been that great if Empire fell." So none mentioned anything about Yesrin''s Loom, but it was a good reminder that I had been stupid for not reading the journal sooner. I just hadn''t wanted to think about...


    I realized, belatedly, that I''d just scryed on a memory of Connie without even thinking about it and had been fine. That was something.


    So now the big question, did any of that stuff matter? Notes about what was in the vaults in Brinkmar were interesting but ultimately shouldn''t matter, since without Ulren they either wouldn''t be able to get into the vaults at all or wouldn''t be able to use the devices. Knowing that the Loom was related was interesting and meant those dudes were likely not just after Katrin, but it wasn''t actionable. And it didn''t answer my original question about what it meant for me that I''d been re-made by it. Although...


    "Katrin. Errod said you guys worshiped Yesrin, right? Do you know what Yesrin''s Loom is?"


    Her brow furrowed as she thought about it. "No, I don''t think so. Although... there was a meditation we said sometimes that had a line, ''Yesrin wove herself into the world''. That''s the closest I can think of."


    "Okay. So my mostly-unfounded theory, for now, is that there was a device in Brinkmar that either belonged to Yesrin or was named after her - I guess it doesn''t matter which - that was part of the device that brought Jake Ross to this world and maybe sent him home. And that''s what Connie used, at least in part, to restore everything when the world ended. She mentioned runes and stuff, she for sure didn''t just pull a lever or something. But I think that because of that I can''t reach past my arrival here to look at earlier memories, because... I didn''t exist. Which is a fucked up thing to think about."


    Katrin frowned. "But... that can''t be right. You told me that when Connie rewound time you remembered it, right? So you must be linked to your past self, you must still in some way be the same person. However it worked, either Connie copied herself into the past or she recreated it so perfectly that everything was still fundamentally the same. Think about the fate threads, all the spells in the world, the Dumineres, the demigods, the planes, all of it. So much of that would have been broken. I think... I think I''m still the same me, and you''re still the same you. There was just two of you for a while. Even if, in a sense, Connie remade me and this boat and the river we''re on all the way down to the foundations of reality it must be linked."


    I closed my eyes, and tried to feel for that missing memory again. Katrin was right, there had to be a link. Some unbroken thread that connected the new world to the old, this world to Earth, me now to me then. It would just feel... different. I meditated on it, trying to probe at it with... what? My mind? My lutore? Magic? Probably all of the above. If there was no overlap between my lutore and the planar membrane while on Earth, then maybe I could do it just focused on my lutore. My abilities did what I''d made them for, no more and no less - they were inscribed onto my lutore like a tattoo - but in the same way that you could in theory saw a tree down with an unpowered chainsaw there could be some sort of brute force solution.


    I dropped into my memory palace, and tried to find a better memory. I wanted something I couldn''t remember clearly so I could be sure if it worked, since I couldn''t assume I''d be able to get the full clarity of scrying without the planar membrane, but it also had to be one that was a distinct point in time. The soup kitchen stuff, for example, was all kind of a general category rather than any specific event and so I couldn''t find anything to latch onto. Me stabbing some foster parents to death in their bed was probably just a dream.


    Unfortunately, as I searched for one to play with I ran into that scarred figment of my imagination. "You got Katrin and Errod back without dying," she said.


    "Yup. Sure did. Do you need something?"


    "I am disappointed."


    "That I didn''t die, you mean?"


    "Yes."


    I walked away, not really feeling like that deserved a response, and she followed along behind. The accent was almost entirely gone now, just like the broken English had vanished. I was still worried that she was some sort of mental parasite, but she did feel familiar, like she''d been in my dreams before the memory palace.


    "You are looking for a memory?" She asked, sounding strangely non-hostile.


    "Yeah."


    "I can help."


    "You want me dead though."


    She sighed. "Yes, but that cannot happen here so... what memory is it you want?"


    I stopped in the middle of a rather depressing park in Arizona that I had for some reason ended up in by picking a random door. "I shouldn''t be talking to you. I still think you''re going to turn out to be some sort of evil mind slug."


    "You are the evil one, and I promise I am not a slug."


    "Fine. Sure. Fuck it, you''re all up in my brain either way. I, uh. I don''t know. I have some divination magic, and I can use it to see places from my memory more clearly. But I''m having trouble with it, so I wanted to test it on... probably some stuff from when I was sixteen."


    She grabbed my shoulder, roughly, and stared at me with an intense expression on her face that I couldn''t quite figure out. "No. You should... you should use it on your earliest memory of your bedroom."


    "Uh. I''m actually thinking it should be one that''s right up against the really blurry memories. And anyway, I know what my bedroom at mom''s house looked like - there''s a copy of it in here, you''ve seen it."


    She shook her head, almost frantic. "No, no. Before you ruined it. Before you wrote on the walls and tore the sheets and broke all your toys."


    I groaned. "Is there some terrible dark secret I''m supposed to realize or something?"


    "No just... to remember."


    I pulled her hand off my shoulder. "I don''t think I want to remember that house any better than I already do, honestly. And I especially don''t need to remember a bunch of fucking baby toys."


    She shoved me away, face distorting in anger. "Fine. Maybe you should do it a few months later, see what you did with that cat. And the man you killed."


    "Okay, crazy pants. Simmer down. I didn''t do anything to a cat other than kidnap it, and I for sure didn''t murder anyone when I was five."


    "Fuck you." And she stormed away. Cool.


    I reached for another door, but stopped with my hand on the knob. That bitch was going to sneak up and stab me in the kidney or something. Fuck. I dropped back out to the real world, and waved Katrin away. I could try another time, I''d have probably seventy days of sitting on my ass in a secure facility to entertain myself. Although...


    "Katrin, wait. If Hugh was just here to deliver a letter to you, and if he doesn''t know where I''m from still... is it possible he''ll just let us go on our way? We could pick a new spot, do some more training, hit some more towns and stuff. He knows Hammersmith has a bounty on me, but if he doesn''t know why and he let us go before then I don''t see why we couldn''t convince him to do it again. We just need to watch for him spying on us, and be careful what we say."


    Katrin seemed to be considering our odds, but before she could chime in Errod hurried over to us. He looked nervous. "I was practicing with Hugh, and he kept chatting with me, and... I may have said too much."


    God damn it.