I got basically everything I wanted from Hammersmith.


    She slipped a clause in that said, essentially, that if she disagreed that I had any useful information she could back out on a lot of her end of things - she looked shocked when I agreed to it, but I knew it would be a binding deal and I was confident that she didn''t know about Ulren yet. Once I''d agreed to having that clause in she was more willing to cede to my demands, and sure enough when the deal was done and I told her about my fight with Ulren - not just that he was alive, but details about what he could do - she was completely surprised and spent ages drilling me for anything I could recall.


    I told her a bit more as well, just the basics of the time since I''d last seen her. She already knew how we''d gotten out of Theramas, and of course she''d heard about us finding the lost Duminere and that we''d delivered evidence of killing Telen to Erathik. She also knew that Telen had been killed by Connie''s temporal device, because they''d found and inspected the place where it happened and the time-aligned mana was still lingering and making it dangerous to be around. It was apparently bordering on a war crime, and we got off on a short tangent about a time when someone weaponized the radioactive slag created by failed alchemical experiments which was actually really interesting.


    Even knowing as much as she did Hammersmith had a lot of questions about the specifics, most of which I was happy enough to answer - but I made sure to avoid any mention of Errod''s glove, and made it very clear that I wouldn''t be discussing what gifts I picked up. This also made the story after that point tricky, since I couldn''t reference some of what I did or knew, but I managed to get through it.


    One interesting minor hiccup was when she asked about us leaving Erathik. I told her that we just left through the gates with no problem, and caught Hugh squinting at me like he was trying to look right through me. I remembered that he''d been convinced I had somehow done something clever, and this was probably the first he was learning that it had instead been some strange failure of security on their end. If it turned out that had been Lute doing us a favor and I got him in trouble Katrin would probably be pissed, but frankly I didn''t feel any particular loyalty to him and my ability to refuse information was limited under the deal we''d made - talking about how we got past an order to detain us was too relevant to Hammersmith''s terms.


    If she was surprised by hearing I''d just waltzed out she didn''t say anything, and just jotted down some notes which was a sure sign she was interested - there was already a clerk writing everything down, so her notes were probably more about what she wanted to personally investigate later. She had raised an eyebrow when I got to the part about delivering Elba back home, and scribbled more notes when I said the university was studying the other kids. I hadn''t planned on getting into that, but some things just slipped out as I was asked to elaborate on parts of the story.


    I did also end up having to mention the strange attack from that teleporting mage and Elrebar... Iron Fist? Whoever he was. Unfortunately Hammersmith''s follow-up questions led to me repeating his comment about Yesrin''s Loom, which meant talking about Ulren''s mention of it, and at that point I realized I''d fucked up. The contract wasn''t going to let me not answer her follow up questions about Ulren, and I really didn''t want to tell Hammersmith that the world was maybe going to end at the Grand Alignment.


    On the one hand, maybe she could fix it. That would be great. On the other hand, no fucking way would she let me run around loose with that kind of information, not when it could cause a panic - and especially not when the only proposed way to fix it so far was to have someone follow through on Ulren''s plot and destroy the world in order to travel back in time and start over from an earlier point. That was a plan that could only possibly work for a handful of people, and so you wanted to be extra super sure you were one of them.


    Sentortzi, at least, seemed to think that it would be me specifically that went back and was fine with just getting some of his memories hand-delivered. But Hammersmith? She would want to hand pick the top people from the Empire and possibly, given the Endless Empire''s obsession with him, go all the way back to meet the Clockmaker just like Ulren wanted to. Hugh, being from Erathik, would want the opposite - they had been thrilled when the Old Empire collapsed. If I said anything in front of him, I was genuinely worried that Hammersmith would have him killed. I did buy that she had a sense of honor, that she was (in most situations) a pretty decent person despite my personal complaints about her - but the end of the world, where only one group could choose how to restore it? She''d have to be crazy to let Hugh undermine that.


    The best I could do at talking around it was still too straightforward for my tastes: "Ulren is going to try to destroy the world again so he can complete his plan of going back in time, and he tampered with some research at the Grand University in Sentortzi to make it look like stopping him would end the world. This may appear convincing enough to gain him some support, both because he''s an expert in temporal shit and knows how to say things the right way whether or not they''re true, and also because anyone that can detect something strange happened when the world was saved the last time - which Sentortzi himself confirmed some people could do - might feel that lends legitimacy to his claims."


    They would want to look into it themselves, and most likely they''d contact Sentortzi about it. My best hope was that he would still be counting on me doing it, if anyone, and would discourage any course of action that would see Hammersmith trying to send herself and her closest friends back. I was still uncertain about what the rules were for him tampering in politics - it seemed like he had leeway to act in his own self interest though, and I felt like he could probably bullshit around any restriction in this case. Fingers crossed. My own deal with Sentortzi was excluded from the conversation, because I had managed to falsely imply that I was under a contract to not discuss it.


    Thankfully, at least for the time being, Hammersmith''s main takeaway was that she needed to anticipate an attack on Storm''s Keep - where Yesrin''s Loom and one of the last remaining gates into Brinkmar were located. This reminded me to ask a question that had been bothering me. "Okay, so I know this all started with Halenvar trying to destroy all the gates into Brinkmar that they didn''t control. But... if they''re already there, can''t they just destroy them from the other side?"


    She hesitated a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "You''ll need to be briefed on some of this regardless, since we may run into a situation where you have to enter Brinkmar with us. We''ll talk more about it when that time comes, but the short answer is that while gates have a preferred arrival point in Brinkmar, if a gate is destroyed or if the magic detects that the environment is too dangerous it just shunts the portal to a backup location - which is generally not known to Halenvar."


    "Okay, so if they destroy it on their end they just make your attack unpredictable, whereas if they destroy it on your end that''s one less gate they have to surround with soldiers and traps. But they''ve already gotten enough that it''s not good news, right? You have... what, three? Oh, unless Theramas being knocked out was a misdirect? But no, you wouldn''t want to do that because you want them to spread as thin as possible. Unless you really think they''ll fall for it and leave it undefended, but surely they''ll... wait. I was about to say that they wouldn''t believe that, but then it also wouldn''t matter if you said it was destroyed because they''d be protecting it regardless." I was going in circles.


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    Hammersmith smiled. "Intelligence and counter-intelligence is a complicated beast. Don''t overthink it. We have several gates to choose from, and we will make the decision at the last moment based on a number of factors."


    "Okay, so then wouldn''t it be better to launch an attack from two locations at once? Because when Theramas got attacked it sure seemed like you only came to rescue me once Connie was at risk, but I would think having us both there would have been a pretty important thing."


    The smile slipped. "I don''t think that''s a fair description of events, but either way it''s beyond the scope of this meeting."


    After that, things were... businesslike... for the rest of the interview. If she was surprised to find that the wild mage was the human Calliope Smith or that I''d put her on the list of people that the Empire was to leave alone - in case they wanted to come after her for working with Halenvar and attacking Theramas - then she didn''t show it. I didn''t really get the impression that Hammersmith cared about the list at all, which kinda made sense - sure, Mila had busted us out and the hired mercenaries had helped us avoid an Empire checkpoint and stuff, but if it wasn''t immediately in her way it was water under the bridge. She was there to win the battle ahead of her, and that was all that mattered.


    In return, I did get the practice room I''d asked for.  I had to get glared at by Barick, Hammersmith''s one exception to my demand about being mentally probed or watched with special senses.  He had some ridiculously specialized broad-sweep ability to tell if people were planning shit, and was normally used to walk through crowds of people so he could identify any lurking assassins or troublemakers.  He was going to be sitting in the hallway between my room and the practice room pretty much all the time, and he didn''t look thrilled about it.


    As we walked down the stone hallway, I was already making plans - the kind Barick couldn''t object to and therefore supposedly wouldn''t detect at all.  Actual training could suck it, I was going to hide in my mind palace and read books in a gorgeous clearing in the woods - or the memory of one, anyway. I''d wander the streets of Erathik, or snoop on things I''d been near with my divination thing. It would be like I wasn''t locked up at all. Well, almost. We reached the practice room and sure enough it was a lot like the rest of the rooms in this facility - red stone walls, no windows or other interesting features.


    There were wrestling mats on the floor, some unfamiliar things that looked like exercise equipment, and some training dummies. There was also a strange pod that looked like a tanning bed. "Hey Hugh," I asked as the door closed behind us, "what''s that thing?"


    "That is a healing device, even better than the one you had installed in your wagon. It will come in very handy, yes?"


    "Why would it come in -" but I didn''t get any further, because Hugh launched me across the room right into the stone wall. My priority was to practice all my abilities as much as possible so I could build potential and pick up a few more tricks before the big day, but it quickly became clear that Hugh''s priority was beating the shit out of me - which made some of that harder. The healing pod thingy meant that Hugh didn''t need to hold back, which at least did lend itself to training one of the abilities I was working on.


    Some things had to be unlocked via your Dumine, but other things were just gradual improvements and expansions of your existing abilities that you got through practice. When I''d started going into my mind palace it was easy to startle me out, but the more I used it the better I''d gotten at selectively tuning out the world - and especially after the torture session I''d found I could shut down any transmission of pain from my body in all but the most extreme of cases. So as I sparred with Hugh, I managed to catch him off guard by continuing to attack after he''d broken something so badly I should have been curled up on the floor.


    There were two other times I surprised Hugh - once when I finally pulled off a wrestling move Sige had showed me and slammed him face-first into my knee, and once when I got frustrated and nearly bit his nose off. I thought he''d be pissed about that one, but he actually seemed to approve. Hugh saw absolutely no point in fighting honorably - he clarified when I joked about it that he did have limits, not approving of torture and refusing to sacrifice innocents or his allies, but when it came to ending a fight he''d do it in the most efficient way available even if that meant nut shots and biting. Despite fighting dirty I never fully won though, and even when I got something past him I found that he never fell for the same move twice.


    When I''d run too low on mana to keep up divination, I''d switch to viewing the threads just to maximize my use of mana in the hopes it would speed up my development. At first I thought it was silly, since all the threads just vanished a few inches away, but I started to notice that we weren''t alone. The longer we practiced, the more little spirits seeped out of the walls - they were like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, or maybe the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. Just little pudgy white humanoid shapes, with tiny black dots for eyes and mouths that were invisible until their whole head hinged open like a shitty cartoon character.


    They seemed to want to get close to Hugh and I, and also to the healing pod - although something was clearly forming a barrier around it. I wondered if they were feeding off of the little bits of extra mana left over from us using our abilities, though it was my understanding that using Imperial magic meant almost nothing would be leaking into the environment. I''d been under the impression that spirits were normally the same "realness" of matter as the rest of the plane they were on - so the ones in Ematse where my mind palace was located seemed totally solid, but if they came to the prime plane they''d be insubstantial. Likewise, the creatures we''d fought in Nusos were technically spirits since they were made of ephemeral matter, but Nusos was made of stuff that was very close to being actual permanent matter so the difference was minor.


    That meant that either I was wrong, and you could have ghostlike spirits on a plane that was otherwise pretty solid, or the plane I was on was all ephemeral matter - I''d assumed that the stone walls of the facility we were in were part of the plane, that it was basically carved out of native stone, but that wasn''t necessarily the case. I did feel confident it was a plane I hadn''t been to before - after using divination to look back at my time in Nusos and Xeyul and my very brief visit to Itzele I could feel something different about each of them, a subtle atmosphere or vibe. Cyne had told me about it, getting a handle on that feeling was vital for opening the way into a particular plane which meant most people needed help to get to each one the first time.


    Not that it would matter any time soon; even if I had prioritized physically crossing over to another plane, the whole facility was surely warded against it. I could send my mind to my domain in Ematse and then pilot it around, but my body wasn''t going anywhere. Even that was a bit more mana-intensive than it should have been, although it was going to be very much worth it. It was the seventeenth of the eighth and I''d be able to open the way to Brinkmar on the first of the tenth, which meant I had fifty-eight days to get through.


    Being able to take a quick break and walk around through the woods or down the streets of Erathik would be wonderful, assuming Hugh would let me rest long enough to do anything like that. Surely he would have to let up at some point - he''d smacked the shit out of me all day with no signs of stopping, but he couldn''t do that every day for almost sixty days. Right?


    "Oh fuck," I muttered to myself, realizing he could absolutely do just that. "Hugh. Hugh. Listen, when I complained about being bored yesterday and you attacked me, that was a good distraction. And this thing today, that was fine too even though I think you were a little too excited about breaking my leg. After that meeting with Hammersmith - stop, I''m not saying the whole thing - after that meeting I think the physical exertion was good for me. And I do want to be better at fighting, really. But... you know that there''s other shit I want to practice, right?"


    Hugh smiled extra big. "Of course! And it is up to you if you wish to learn to practice these other things while evading my attacks, or defeat me to earn a reprieve, yes?"


    "Have you trained people before, Hugh?"


    "I have."


    "They didn''t like you much, did they?"


    "They did not," he said, and his smile became somehow... feral. "But they were very, very hard to kill when I was done with them."


    Ugh. Fine. I had fifty-eight days to learn how to read a book while my body kept fighting Hugh, apparently.