《Leftover Apocalypse》


 PROLOGUE: Gotta Watch Out For Those Syntax Errors

    Six weeks before the collapse of the Empire


    When the Clockmaker spoke it was in the language of magic itself, and so if there had been anyone left alive in the room to hear him they would have instantly understood across any possible language barriers that what he had said was "Interesting," but what it had meant on deeper layers was "well, shit".


    Stepping carefully around droplets of blood suspended in the air, he passed the main lever of his masterpiece and placed a hand gently on the casing for its central decision engine. Lenses flickered into and out of phase with reality in front of him, allowing the Clockmaker to examine the various parts despite many of them being invisible or sealed behind alchemical metals, and as one particular lens snapped into place his breath caught. The spools on either side of the room had been emptied, and a tangled knotted mess covered the entire middle portion of his device.


    If the Clockmaker had known the term "plot armor" he would have muttered it as an epithet, but as that phrase wouldn''t be invented for almost 1500 years he just sighed. He had the right tools to cut the invisible threads away, but that would be dangerous without examining every inch first.


    The regulating spirits were gone, somehow, but the decision engine was still working. Disconnected, powerless, but working. When he had pulled the lever, it should have begun the slow and careful process of finding a path through which the Empire could last forever in peace and order. The Clockmaker would have validated the results, and locked them in. He''d estimated it would take an hour or so. Instead, all of the inscribed gears that were meant to indicate its progress showed impossible results.


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    Paths searched was still at one, as if it had barely begun - or succeeded on its first try, which seemed unlikely especially given the fact that his daughter was the imprint for one of the regulating spirits and they had... differing ideas... about what the future should look like. Paths forged, which should be zero since he had never fully engaged the engine - and in fact should never be more than one regardless - was well over seven thousand. And finally, the most baffling discrepancy, the date for the furthest out it had received a confirmation of vital criteria was 720 days past the last possible date the machine should be able to reach.


    That last one wasn''t a limitation of the machine but of the laws of reality, and hadn''t clicked over to that date until after the Clockmaker had tried to shut the machine down. The moment he''d pulled the emergency cutoff there had been one, final, path forged into the future that seemed to break everything. That was when the three assassins had appeared.


    The Clockmaker turned and looked at two corpses, one of which was still hanging in the air in multiple pieces. The closest intruder had somehow been keeping the temporal defenses from freezing everything until his death, so unlike the crumpled form in the corner he had yet to hit the floor. Lenses clicked in and out of place in front of the Clockmaker again, but there wasn''t much to see now that the attackers had been killed. He would have to capture the third one alive - assuming he could find her. She had vanished a split second before she would have been frozen in time, and as the Clockmaker looked back at the device he knew that hadn''t been just dumb luck.


    He allowed time to resume and the body parts thudded to the ground as alarms finally went off. For a moment his facade threatened to fall, but he managed to remain calm and prevent his eye from twitching, his heart from racing. He kept the panic at bay. It was fine. Everything was fine. He could fix it. His empire would last forever. There would be order.

 CHAPTER 001: About as Bad as a Day Can Get

    "I''ll make you a deal," I said - keeping my voice as calm as I could while scanning the desk in front of me for a weapon, "I''ll fill out an application right now, and I''ll - hang on, hang on - I''ll show you my bank account so you can see that I had the money until yesterday. And I''ll call my job, right, and you can confirm with my boss that I''m still employed."


    My eyes skimmed over the scissors and looked for something else. No letter openers or anything, but there was some sort of shitty award that was lumpy and pointy and looked solid enough. I knew I didn''t really need to have a weapon, knew that it couldn''t possibly help in this situation anyway, but I always felt better if violence was at least an option. One of my many state-assigned therapists had labeled me as having a "maladaptive stress response" according to the files I found on her laptop, alongside a whole list of terms that she or one of the others before her had considered.


    Reactive Attachment Disorder and Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder had appeared in my older files, with the former being (so far as I could tell) the go-to diagnosis for kids in foster care and the latter being what they say when you''re too young to officially call you bipolar. Later stuff shifted towards Borderline Personality Disorder which I wasn''t crazy about not because it didn''t seem accurate - I pride myself on being self aware - but because the name made it sound like I only almost had a personality.


    More recently I''d been trying to police my thoughts more, as part of an ongoing project to be a somewhat decent human being and also not end up in jail for things like stealing my therapist''s laptop or bludgeoning the manager of the Desert Oasis Apartments to death with some stupid award from his desk. He wasn''t making it easy though.


    "Miss, uh, Smith? You''re more than welcome to fill out an application, but -" he started, his voice quickly fading into indistinct murmurs in my head as I felt my heart pounding harder. I wanted to smack the condescending look off his face. I made a fist so tight that the house-shaped keychain in my hand - a keychain that I knew wouldn''t be getting a key any time soon - threatened to cut into the skin of my palm.


    He stood and started to circle around the desk, still blabbing on and looking like a smarmy asshole. Something about three to five weeks, it didn''t matter. I knew I couldn''t actually hit him, but for a moment I vividly pictured him just tripping - if he did it one more step closer he''d be in the perfect spot to pitch forward and hit the corner of the next desk, it would serve him right for...


    I abruptly shoved my chair back and stood, waving him away. Serve him right for what? Having a kinda punchable face? I was doing it again. This wasn''t his fault. This was Adrian''s fault. The manager looked alarmed by my sudden movement, and I had the thought that maybe he knew how punchable his face was - and now here''s this crazy teenager freaking out. And yeah, I was freaking out. I could hear the manic edge in my voice, I just couldn''t stop it. "Okay, okay, I get it. Shut up for a second," I said, trying to figure out what to do next.


    Calling Adrian again wouldn''t help. He hadn''t answered his phone when I called after work and found an empty parking spot where his shitty van should be waiting to pick me up. He didn''t answer when I called several times while making my way to the apartment complex on foot, nearly getting sun stroke in the summer heat. And now that it had been made clear that neither Adrian nor his girlfriend had applied for an apartment it seemed pretty obvious that he was never going to take a call from me again.


    "Miss. I''m going to have to ask you to leave," the punchable manager said, probably offended by being told to shut up. He picked up my backpack and held it out, and something snapped. I spun and stormed out the door and across the parking lot. Running away again, like always. I hopped over the low wall at the edge of the property and ducked around the back of the Circle K where I could see a big twisted mesquite tree looming over the dumpsters, super easy to climb up since the trunk was nearly horizontal. Big trees have always had a calming effect on me, which was unfortunate given the fact I was in Phoenix, Arizona where they were in relatively short supply.


    I pulled out my phone and texted Adrian again, just a simple promise that I was going to find and kill him - I didn''t have the energy to use any flowery language - and then played a shitty Tetris clone I''d coded until it did the thing where it gave me the left-hand squiggle block over and over and I had to turn it off. By then my battery was getting low, and it was time to make an uncomfortable phone call.


    "Hey, it''s Callie. Calliope Smith. Listen, the apartment uh... the apartment isn''t ready so I need to stay at the group home tonight. No, I know. Yeah I know I''m an adult now, but it''s not like I fucked this up. I worked my ass off to get that rent money, and... No, I get it, rules are rules, but I''m not thirty or something. It''s literally my eighteenth birthday today. I was there this morning. Well do you think you could help me talk to the apartment manager? I tried but I... no I know, but I''m not saying it''s your job. I''m asking, just, for a favor. Please. Okay, fuck you too." I hung up and wiped my face since I was back to crying. Of course. It had been stupidly optimistic of me to call that douche, she barely even helped when she was legally obligated to. Bill had been the only good one, and I couldn''t call him.


    I reluctantly headed back to the apartment office, already trying to think of somewhere in the neighborhood to stay. There was a strip mall nearby with almost every spot vacant, probably I could find one I could break into. There was also a neighborhood within walking distance that would have some foreclosed properties, they practically never had alarms. I reached the door and pulled, and almost yanked myself into it. It was locked. I glanced at my phone, and... yeah, they had just closed. Cupping my hands on the glass to see inside better, I scanned along the desks looking for my backpack. Thirteen hours ago I had loaded my meager belongings into Adrian''s van, everything but what was in my backpack, and I wasn''t going to leave without it.


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    Logically, I knew it I could just go crash somewhere and get my bag in the morning. My life wasn''t totally blown up yet. I''d slept in abandoned buildings plenty of times, and while I might get in a little trouble at work if I couldn''t find a way to shower I could hold out until I got another paycheck and then... well, I couldn''t get an apartment. Not by myself, not with the prices in Phoenix. And as an adult, I couldn''t fall back on the group home. There were programs to help with shit like this, but most of them expired when I turned eighteen and I hadn''t thought that I needed them - plus my case manager had made it pretty clear that she was only going to help me with them if I forced her every step of the way when we talked about it a year ago.


    I felt a deep rage building. I''d done everything right this time. I''d stopped breaking into places, and being mean to people - mostly - and I''d stopped running away. I''d gone to most of my therapy appointments, and I had graduated high school even if my grades had been shit.


    And it didn''t matter.


    My lock picks were in the backpack, but that wasn''t a problem. I knew the secret to getting a door like this unlocked without proper tools. It was simple, really. A child could do it. I leaned down and picked up the universal lock pick from the landscaping next to the office door, hefted it in my hand. Two voices screamed over each other in my head, one telling me I couldn''t risk going to jail and the other just wanting to burn it all down. I looked at the large river rock and imagined how good it would feel to smash it right through the door. I could just reach through and unlock it, grab my bag and anything else valuable I could see, and then run. The manager almost certainly didn''t remember my name.


    I sighed, and let my head thump against the glass. It wasn''t worth it. I still had my job, and I could be homeless for a little while as I saved up. Someone out there would need a roommate, and I could maybe get a second job somewhere with food I could take at the end of the night, and even if it would be shitty I still really didn''t want to rush into the gutter. Be the main character of your story, someone had told me once. I could fix this, somehow. I''d come too far not to. The cool glass felt good on my head, and I just closed my eyes and tried to calm myself down and make a plan.


    I was startled back to the world by that loud WHOOP WHOOP sound the cops make their car do when they want to get your attention but don''t feel like actually kicking the siren on. I sighed again, and turned around to see that, sure enough, some cops had pulled into the parking lot. One was already getting out of the car.


    "Keep your hands where I can see them!"


    I wasn''t sure what they were expecting. Did they think I was an escaped fugitive? Did they see a teenage girl and just jump right to assuming I was... I looked down at the rock still in my hand. I let it drop, and held my arms a little out at my sides. "Hey officer, my roommate was supposed to leave our spare key under this rock and..."


    Normally I was good at talking my way out of stuff, but as he started to pepper me with questions - with the hostile suspicion that seemed to be the default for most police I''d dealt with - it was clear this wasn''t going to go well. Any other day, I would have maybe shown them my ID and said something about it being the worst birthday ever in order to make sure they saw what day it was and hopefully had some sympathy.


    But instead, I hesitated and stumbled and basically made it very clear I didn''t really know anyone at the apartment complex at which point the questions got worse. "No sir, I''m not on any drugs. No I wasn''t going to do anything with the rock - what? No, I was checking for a key because - I''m trying to tell you - I''m not arguing, I''m trying to explain." My head was suddenly pounding, and I was feeling lightheaded. I knew that if they put me in that car I was fucked. Any chance at keeping my job would be gone, and without a home it would be next to impossible to get another one. I''d be in the downward spiral, with no support system I could use to pull myself out.


    So I ran.


    I vaulted over the fence into the pool area, the yelling of police behind me. I heard a crash as the one that was already out of the car biffed it trying to follow me, and felt a surge of hope as I scrambled over the next fence into the complex. After only fifty feet or so I caught a glimpse of the other cop, rushing around the side to intercept, and I veered the other way. The headache was getting worse and my vision was swimming, I couldn''t decide if I was having some sort of panic attack or what. I felt pins and needles all over and there was this stretched feeling, as if I was attached to an invisible rubber band that had been pulled tight.


    I reached the parking lot, ran up the back of a car, and pulled myself onto the covered parking - planning on jumping over the wall into whatever property was next door on that side - but as I leapt I seemed to slow down in mid-air and everything went dim. The world was completely silent and I felt... weightless. Honestly it was lovely, and I had the thought that I should pass out more often. I couldn''t feel my body... but I had this need to... reach out...


    I was still flying over the wall, falling. But I was also on a snowy mountainside, or maybe floating over it somehow. And I was in a strange room surrounded by gears and bright glowing lights like neon signs, though I couldn''t see the actual source of the light. And I was standing in a forest clearing, surrounded by huge boulders covered in strange writing. Everything was frozen in place, overlapping. And then the universe seemed to pick one and I slammed down into the snow.


    There was a piercing, horrible pain in my head - I''d never felt anything this terrible. My skull literally felt like it was going to explode. My ears were transmitting only a sharp ringing sound along with more pain, and I was dimly aware of blood running down the sides of my head as well as gushing out of my nose. Did someone stab me in the ears? Had I been shot? Did the police shoot me in the head and then... wait... why was there snow? My vision was blurry, and before I could decide what was real and what wasn''t everything went black.

 CHAPTER 002: Process of Elimination

    I woke up slowly from a nightmare about my whole left side withering away until it was skeletal, and tried to piece things together. I felt totally wiped out, that whole-body exhaustion that you get sometimes when you''ve been sick, but otherwise I felt alright. My left side was fine, and my face didn''t feel like it was covered in blood.


    "Testing? Oh thank fuck, I can hear." So yeah, the thing with my eardrums rupturing and blood gushing out of every opening in my head was probably a dream too. No surprise there, since it had also involved me being on a snowy mountaintop.


    It didn''t look like I was in a hospital, or even a group home. The room was extremely small, barely big enough for the bed, but it had this super rustic look like a cabin - plain plaster walls, rough wooden beams for a ceiling. Sitting up took a lot of effort, and I pulled the curtains aside to look outside. Snow, more snow, and some enormous mountain peaks. So, pretty much the furthest from Phoenix you can get.


    I''m not the most mentally or emotionally stable person, and my mom... well. But as far as I knew elaborate hallucinations weren''t part of my family history. Likewise, it didn''t seem like it could be a dream - it was too real, too intense. I pressed a hand against the glass of the window and that feeling of extreme cold... yeah, not a dream. This led me to a more complicated explanation.


    With no home, and since the hardware store had probably fired me after being late to work due to the cops, I had given up on my attempts to be a responsible adult. Going back to my previous habits of shoplifting, breaking and entering, and panhandling had gotten me enough money to travel all the way to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado where I had suffered a head injury and lost my memory of the last few months.


    That''s when I saw the back of my hand, and more specifically the scrawled "STM801" that was still there. That, I knew, was the stock number for a hook to hang power tools on and I had written it there after caving to a customer''s demands to check the back room. It hadn''t been in the back room. It''s pretty much never in the back room. But the point is that it was written in regular ballpoint pen, not even permanent marker, and it was still there clear as day. I hadn''t lost even a week, let alone months, unless I had been very careful to not wash my hand that whole time.


    My revised theory was that I had - despite having no money - made my way onto an airplane which had struck a whole flock of Canadian geese. The engine had exploded, tearing a hole in the side of the plane and sucking me out into the void. I''d fallen to the ground below, surviving only because I landed in the snow. A few feet of snow. With no serious injuries at all. It wasn''t a great theory.


    I was wearing some sort of nightgown rather than my clothes and the lack of shoes in particular meant I wasn''t going to be making a break for it so I gave up and called out.


    "Hello? Is someone there?"


    There was immediately a rustling sound from somewhere outside the room, and a young guy in an orange vest opened the door. He had a funny look to him, like when you mess with the sliders too much during character generation in a video game; too-large ears, too-tiny eyes, a super wide mouth. He was smiling though, so that was reassuring. I opened my mouth to ask him what was going on but then I just... couldn''t. I was too embarrassed to admit I had no idea where I was. Instead I settled for "Uh, was I injured?" which is pretty weak, but as it turned out it didn''t matter because he didn''t speak a word of English.


    Instead he answered in some language I''d never heard, and then when I shook my head he tried another - this one with an almost musical quality to it although he stumbled a little, like me trying to speak Spanish - and that was it. Two languages, neither of which I recognized. This was another blow against my already shaky Rocky Mountains theory. Now, if anything, Europe seemed more likely - but that would be even more money, more time, and I''d have needed a passport.


    The man returned with a tray of food and carefully positioned it on my lap before propping me up with a pillow. There were some sort of sausages, and something halfway between a cracker and a slice of bread, and some squares of something that I decided were probably cheese. My stomach rumbled loudly, and the guy laughed. I was on edge, still expecting to be arrested or committed or something, but I was also extremely hungry and the odd-faced guy seemed harmless enough. I thanked him, and he said something in response in that strange language before leaving my tiny room.


    I started with the sausage, biting a big chunk off the end. It was mildly spicy but also sweet, and I couldn''t place the flavor. It was good though, so I ate the rest and started poking at the cheese. I had a tickle in my throat, or some phlegm or something that just wouldn''t budge. I put down the cheese and tried a sip of water to wash whatever it was down, but I ended up sputtering and could barely swallow any of it. I''ll admit it took me way longer than it should have to realize my throat was swelling shut. By the time I did it was too late. I couldn''t breathe, couldn''t call out for help, and I was still too weak to stand. Thankfully the guy from before must have heard the tray clattering to the ground as I flailed around.


    He barged in, said something to me in that language again, and then turned around and ran back out, yelling. After that, the next thing I could remember was waking up in the same bed but even more tired and so hungry I felt like I was going to die. A peek out the window showed early morning light, meaning I''d lost another day. After reluctantly calling out again, a woman - with those same odd features - came in and offered me some water and a piece of that cracker bread stuff before long. No meat and cheese for me I guess. I nibbled on the bread and once it was clear my throat wasn''t going to swell shut she nodded and left. A few hours later I was throwing up uncontrollably despite there not being much of anything in my stomach. Just heaving and retching, so hard I thought I was going to crack my spine. Also I''m pretty sure I shit myself, which I hadn''t done since the first time I got drunk. Don''t let twelve year olds get at a bottle of strawberry schnapps.


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    The woman came running back in and held me down, and I felt something very warm wash over me before passing out yet again. So. Wake up, appear somewhere strange bleeding from every orifice. Wake up, throat swells shut. Wake up, my body starts trying to puke my actual organs out. It''s no surprise that when I came to again I was very nervous about what would happen next and seriously considering the possibility that I was in hell.


    I''d come close to dying before, four times I could think of. I ran out into traffic when I was five, chasing after a kitten. Then there was a thing when I was eight that I don''t like to think about. Then when I was twelve Sarah Harkin almost drowned me because she was convinced I put something in her shampoo to make her hair fall out. That was a close one. And then at fifteen I fell off a building because I''d been watching parkour videos online and... well, I was an idiot. Something else nagged at my memory, something about spilling bleach and accidentally inhaling it? But regardless, those were all spaced out over many years. So nearly dying several times in a row was stressing me out.


    The next time they fed me it was just some sort of broth, and they sat and watched me for longer afterwards before deciding it was going to stay down. It wasn''t super filling and I felt like my body was going to actually eat itself, but understandably they made me wait a while to get another bowl. Meanwhile I started trying to play charades. I introduced myself and learned the broth woman was named Letta, and then ran into a string of failures. The universal sign for ''phone''? Nothing. Pretending to type on a keyboard? Nothing. Trying to ask where we were? If Letta understood then her answer wasn''t anything I recognized. I did eventually get her to bring my clothes back after some particularly expressive gestures, but while my phone was still in my jeans it was dead and I''d left my charger in my backpack.


    In fact, I quickly realized, the tiny room I was in didn''t even have outlets. I could tell there was electricity because there was a funny-looking light bulb set into the ceiling although I didn''t see a light switch. I decided it was on a timer. When they finally let me out of the room to wander the following morning, I found there were no outlets in the common area either. In fact the whole place was infuriatingly rustic - I''d already been forced to use a porcelain... bedpan? Chamber pot? Whatever it was. But now, up and walking around, I found that the "real" bathroom wasn''t much better than an indoor outhouse. If it hadn''t been for the lights, I would have said I''d been sucked back in time. And to make those even stranger, when I pointed at them trying desperately to convey "hey where are your electrical outlets and do you maybe have a phone charger" through nothing but gestures Letta just reached up and plucked one of the lightbulb things off the wall.


    It was just a frosted glass sphere. I didn''t see any seams, even though I was sure there had to be batteries inside. But at least that confirmed that there really were no outlets. We were off the grid, and they didn''t even have a phone or computer for an emergency. This of course sent my brain reeling down a side path, deciding I''d been taken in by some sort of doomsday cult. I had some very uncharitable thoughts about the odd facial features and inbreeding. I''m not proud.


    The common area had some chairs, a board game that looked like chess but with hexagons rather than squares, and a few books that all seemed to be hand lettered. I put another tick in the "time travel" column, despite the fancy lights and physical impossibility of it. There were six of the little rooms like the one I''d woken up in however many days ago it was - I''d lost track, between the lack of clocks and my near-death experiences. Two of the doors were shut, the rest were open revealing stripped beds.


    There was also a kitchen, which Letta wouldn''t allow me near - she did a pretty good job miming choking to death, which was a fair point. Lord knows what part of those sausages I was allergic to. Other than that there was just a door leading to a covered walkway, which I was likewise signaled away from - this time with less choking and more stern looks. Staff only, presumably, since it was clear Letta and the other three I''d seen didn''t live in this building. I was tempted to sneak over there, but it was too cold to seriously consider it even though I had my shoes back.


    The other closed bedrooms had no such barrier, so as soon as Letta was off in the kitchen I poked into them. The first had an old man sleeping in it, with the same features as the rest. The other had a grizzled-looking woman with deep olive skin, whose legs stopped just below her knees. She yelled at me, and while I obviously didn''t speak the language I felt pretty sure it translated to something deeply unpleasant. I started to apologize but ended up a bit distracted by the translucent winged spider that crawled out of the wall beside her.


    The wall didn''t have a hole in it, the basketball-sized monstrosity had just kind of... phased through. It didn''t seem to be bothering the woman, who was now gesturing at me - much like the words I was pretty sure I got the gist of what that hand motion was trying to convey. The thought that I was either losing my mind or watching a demon prepare to eat someone had me teetering on the edge of a panic attack. My mind was racing - was it a hologram somehow? Should I be getting help? It didn''t seem like she needed help, if anything it seemed like it was maybe a pet? At this point she threw a cup at me using her non-gesturing hand, pegging me directly in the forehead.


    If I''d been thinking clearly I wouldn''t have charged out the door into the pre-dawn wilderness, but oh well. I made it maybe a hundred feet before tripping on something and rolling over onto my back as if I was getting ready to make snow angels. The cold air was burning my lungs, shocking me out of my budding panic attack and clearing my vision. I took a deep breath despite the pain, and resolved to think things through logically and calm down. Surely, this was some stupid trick with... mirrors, and... something.


    I rolled over onto my side to stand up, and in doing so got my first good look at the moon since I arrived. It was nearly full, with just a sliver left in darkness as the sun began to rise opposite it. It was almost fuzzy around the edges and there were pinpoints of light on the dark area, but most importantly on the light side... well, it''s pretty hard not to notice those oceans.


    So maybe not Europe either.

 CHAPTER 003: Friendship May Be Magic, But in a More Literal Sense These Lights Actually Are Magic

    "Exit. Help. Administrator. Menu. Settings." Nope.


    I''d decided pretty quickly that there was no point in worrying about being crazy or in a coma or something - if my brain was that good at making up a realistic world then there wouldn''t be anything to do about it. Only slightly more actionable was the idea that I had been abducted by aliens and put into a simulation, or that my brain had been frozen and then revived in the distant future into something like in the Matrix. Still, yelling out keywords had seemed like it was worth a shot.


    I climbed up on the bed and pulled the light off the ceiling, and really looked at it. I wasn''t sure how I was supposed to tell the difference between magic and technology - it was just a plain white sphere that was glowing. I''d read some fantasy books growing up, but I was far from an expert. My mom had a bunch of books about fairies that she didn''t like me reading, though I snuck them into my room a few times. I read the third book in the Wheel of Time series, a kinda pervy book by Piers Anthony, something with Shannara in the name, and the first two Harry Potter books. I''d always had to make do with whatever books were around so I didn''t get to finish any of the series stuff except for the Jake Ross books because I found? Stole? A boxed set from somewhere. I got really into those ones.


    Even if I had read more fantasy, it didn''t seem likely some random author''s daydream would have too much in common with an actual real magical world. I tried to decide if I should be excited or terrified. There could be anything in this place. Monsters. Demons. Undead wizards leading armies of the damned. And that... sounded fine. "Fuck Earth," I said, and I meant it. There weren''t many people I would miss, and worst case scenario I''d end up with a crappy job in a shop and some dingy little apartment which would be more than what I had on Earth anyway.


    Okay, yeah, worst case scenario was actually that magic could slowly rot my soul away before I was eaten one limb at a time by some sort of ghost bat spider thing like I''d seen in that woman''s room. But it seemed like a risk worth taking, especially since the people I''d met so far had healed me despite the fact that I didn''t speak the language and had no insurance. Still, they probably wouldn''t let me squat at this place forever and presumably they had some form of money so I would need to get that. Next step would be to learn the language which was the most daunting part. And then? Learn magic. Any kind of magic.


    The following day was spent brainstorming, trying to think of an actual plan. I fantasized about using my advanced Earth knowledge to revolutionize the world and become ridiculously wealthy, but of course I didn''t actually know anything. Even if the level of technology was low relative to Earth - and I had almost no idea of the specifics yet - there wasn''t really anything I had to offer. It''s not as if I knew how computers worked or any kind of engineering. The only real idea I had was that my cell phone could probably be sold to a collector - a mysterious object from another dimension had to be worth something, unless people from Earth were just dropping in all the time.


    And so of course while I was eating lunch the next day I was interrupted by someone speaking English.


    "Calliope Smith, don''t stab me or run away. Okay?" I had the sudden urge to stab whoever it was and run away. The speaker was in the common area, looking into my room. He was an older dude with a huge handlebar mustache and a gold nose ring. I had the immediate impression that despite his hair being mostly gray he could kick my ass. He smiled when he saw the shocked look on my face. "You understand me, yes? Good. I have a letter for you, and then you will come with me. But first, Calliope Smith, you must tell me the name of your first hound, yes?"


    "My only hound. Bullfrog." He hadn''t really been my dog, I kinda stole him from my neighbor. I managed to keep him hidden in my room for almost a whole week.


    He nodded, satisfied, and handed me a letter. It was was sealed with wax that glowed faintly and had been imprinted with a signet ring or something - the image was of a hammer surrounded by flames. As I broke the seal the glow vanished. The letter was, thankfully, also in English - although the handwriting was almost as bad as mine with the same awful block lettering.


    Callie,


    1. The guy handing you this letter should be Hugh. Cool mustache,


    likes mushrooms. I requested him specifically and promise he''s cool.


    I''d love to explain who I am, but that will have to wait until I can


    do it in person. For now just know I''m the person that''s going to


    make sure you get to have fun and use magic.


    2. If anyone asks, Hugh included, you''re fifteen years old and from


    a small village called Arizona, deep in Calnon. It''s surrounded by


    chaotic magical storms so people there avoid using any magic but


    something went wrong and you don''t know what. This should somewhat


    explain your total ignorance about magic for the time being.


    3. I know right now only half of this at best makes sense. Sorry.


    There are some bad people that may be looking for you, so please


    just stick with Hugh for now and don''t mention Earth. If you get


    into trouble or get lost it''s not worth it. I promise you''ll have


    a chance later to sneak off and explore. Watch out for monsters


    and be careful! I will be waiting for you in the fortress on the


    hill in Theremas. Once you''re there and safe we can find someone to


    explain things and honestly they''ll be so grateful to you they''ll


    make a statue of you or at least set you up with a place to live.


    This is going to be an easy gig that gets you magic and cash.


    I can''t say more here but it''s all going to be great. Trust Hugh.


    Be careful. This will hopefully be a simple journey. Have fun,


    but not too much. Keep the bracelet on; removing it will mean that


    your allergies kill you, also as a bonus it''ll stop your period.


    Hugh and the other people he''s working with will find you quickly


    I hope, I know you''re probably losing your mind stuck in the clinic.


    Hang in there. This is going to be awesome, I can''t wait to see you.


    -- Me


    I read it twice, and then read the third paragraph again. I wasn''t sure about the bracelet, but more importantly the wording of that last section was bothering me. Hugh cleared his throat after a moment to get my attention.


    "Reach out your arm." He fiddled with a bracelet on his left arm, muttering to himself. "The latch... why make it so hard to see? Itxore pulite izen baher do, sopusetzan dot."


    The switch from English to whatever the other language was came suddenly, and then he had the bracelet free. He reached out and snapped it onto my arm, where it seemed to constrict just slightly until it was snug against my skin which was... pretty fucking unsettling. It was a fairly plain bracelet, made out of some dull silver metal - it had the look and feel of pewter, but was as light as aluminum. It was wide but not absurdly so, and had a fine line etched along the edges that made little geometric patterns.


    "It''s a very nice piece, yes?" the man said, although... that wasn''t quite right. Was that English or not?


    "Is this... is this a magic bracelet?" I could feel the words forming all wrong. The wrong order, the wrong number of syllables, the wrong inflection. What I''d actually said was "Heo el de ... heo askomotorraku megikue el de?" That seemed to answer my question.


    Hugh saw the look on my face and let out a single laugh almost like the bark of a dog, then shook his head. "Your first magic item?"


    I wasn''t sure how much to say, but it seemed ridiculous to pretend I knew much of anything and I was going to want at least some answers. "We avoided magic where I''m from. Is this kind of item common?"


    "Translation bands, they are not too rare. But as you can hear, this one is very good at its job. The cheaper ones, they translate each word by itself which makes everything sound like nonsense. The masterwork ones - which this appears to be - they translate the meaning of the whole, yes? I suspect it will even convert idioms, and that is no small feat. In addition, this one is for travel - it prevents allergies and some illness. Good for going to new countries with unfamiliar water, yes?"


    Hugh had a mischievous look to him, and I was sure he was curious about me. Sure enough, he started to try and get more information almost immediately. "The language is not one I''m familiar with, it felt strange to speak it. Possibly moreso because the vulgar... ah, I mean Imperial isn''t my native language either. When a translation band is made it requires at least one person who is fluent in each of the languages, I assume that means one of the people who made this is also from... where did you say?"


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    "Uh, Arizona. It''s a little village, in Calnon. I suppose it''s possible someone else from there made the bracelet, I don''t really know. The letter didn''t say."


    "A relative, maybe?"


    The last line popped into my head. I can''t wait to see you. My mom hadn''t been excited to see me since I was five. Uncle Roy wouldn''t be excited to see me either, though he at least had the decency to feel bad about it. That was the whole list. "No, not a relative. You don''t know them?"


    "No, I was given the letter and bracelet by Lord Protector Hammersmith but she was passing it along from another." that last name translated oddly, I noticed. There had to be some complex logic going on, deciding when it should translate compound words and proper nouns and... I decided I was extremely glad I''d ended up with the expensive version.


    Hugh handed me a gigantic fur coat and some serious boots then told me to get dressed and meet him outside. I felt a panic welling up, and began thinking about whether or not I could get past Hugh and make a run for it. Instead I smiled and shooed him out, and then took a moment to decompress. It was the same problem as the backpack, back in the apartment office. The memory of someone showing up, and me being uprooted from somewhere and moved to somewhere else with nothing but whatever belongings I could quickly shove into a black plastic trash bag. My mom''s house, that foster home, my mom''s house, my uncle Roy''s hotel, my mom''s house, another foster home, another group home, my mom''s house, some more group homes, Universal Servicing Systems, and then some more group homes until I aged out - some of which I can barely seem to remember, they made so little an impression on me.


    Most of those times I didn''t flip out, and likewise despite the striking similarity of my current situation to a case worker showing up and telling me out of nowhere to grab my shit and get in the car I knew I would be fine in a few minutes. I was used to it. The apartment complex thing had been a bit worse because I fucked up and made real plans, I thought I had something of my own that would be semi-permanent. A place where I would be able to own things without them getting stolen or left behind or whatever. And then suddenly with no warning I was being told that I had to take just what was in my backpack and get out.


    But in this case I''d been thinking of this rustic little mountain retreat as temporary the whole time, and I already didn''t have anything with me. I wasn''t losing anything. The urge to run away faded quickly, helped along by the total impracticality of it, and I got dressed and ready to go. I was just rattled enough that I forgot to fake being a polite and empathetic person, and so I failed to take advantage of my newfound grasp on the language to thank the kind people that had saved my life multiple times and even probably had to wipe my ass after the water took me out. I did at least fold up the nightgown nicely and make the bed and - after a moment''s hesitation - put the light sphere thing I had been about to steal back on the wall.


    My years in Phoenix had thinned my blood or something and so I felt like I was going to get frostbite on the way to the wagon even with the boots and coat, but the inside was nice and warm somehow. It was an Oregon Trail style thing, though it was hitched to an animal that looked more like those mammoth-y critters from Star Wars. Banthas? Something like that, anyway. The canvas wasn''t thick, and there were gaps that let little gusts of freezing air in, but whatever magical wonder was at play kept it so cozy that I could even pull the flap aside and watch out the back as we traveled away from the... whatever that place was.


    "Hugh? Was that a hospital, or what?"


    We''d been moving for maybe an hour, and I''d been too lost in thought to try and start up a conversation. Hugh had finally scrambled back into the wagon from his seat at the front just a few minutes prior, clearly trusting in the beast to keep going the right way. "They service three different villages near here, yes. These little mountain settlements are too small to have healers, so the Free States establish clinics nearby, somewhere the mana is strong. You''re lucky to have appeared so close - something went terribly wrong with the spell that brought you here. Speaking of, you must be hungry and eating is safe now. Take this."


    He handed me what looked like a small loaf of bread, but when I bit in there was a savory filling. Unfamiliar meat, some kind of gravy, and a stringy crunchy vegetable. I began to devour it, pausing just long enough to mumble a question around a bite.


    "Are spells usually dangerous like that?"


    He shook his head, still clearly amused by my lack of knowledge. "Do you have clocks in Arizona?"


    "I - yeah. They''re not magic though."


    "Any famous clockmakers?" he asked, and I hesitated before answering.


    "I know what you''re doing. There''s some famous clockmaker from Calnon or something, someone I couldn''t possibly not know. Or like, clockmaker is a term for asshole there, or it''s the name of the capitol. Right?"


    Hugh laughed and winked at me. "You''ve caught me. However... you are still admitting you don''t know the answer, yes?"


    "I''ll make you a deal. You answer my stupid questions about magic, and I''ll tell you about where I came from."


    He nodded, still smiling. "Magic is when you force the mana that flows through the world to manifest in some way, yes? In your case, by the nature of teleporting someone a great distance against their will, it would be done by way of language, giving it instructions - a spell. Ages ago, there were as many languages as there were towns but now there are... mostly two. Some spells are dangerous because the language is imprecise. Intent is part of it and is often enough, but it would be possible to make fire shoot forth from my hand but forget to ensure it knows not to burn my hand as it appears, yes?"


    "So whatever spell teleported me wasn''t cast right?"


    Hugh''s face scrunched up, and he made a gesture that I somehow knew meant "kinda".


    "Possibly... Imperial magic is usually foolproof, but complicated or unique spells can still have errors. Wild magic - the older language that remains - is less structured and might just leave some of the protections out. But it is also possible that the spell was interfered with somehow. I think it must be either that, or some extreme variable the spell was not able to account for."


    The letter had said people might be after me, but the person that wrote it must have already known I was injured. So if it was deliberate interference, wouldn''t they know that too? It was possible someone used a spell meant for someone else and snagged me by mistake, and the magic wasn''t prepared to deal with someone coming from another planet.


    "Teleportation is risky if you are not using an established safe spell. You must move the air out of the way as you arrive - even air takes up space, yes? You must do complex math because - you may not know this, but the world is actually a spinning ball."


    "Yeah, I don''t know magic but I know a lot of that stuff. The basics, anyway."


    "Good, good. I did not want to assume, yes? I have the benefit of an extensive education, mostly against my will as a child. Most know that the world is round, but know little beyond that. So. Do you know why this is such a problem?"


    "Uh. Because if you do it wrong you might end up floating off in space instead?"


    "Hah! Yes, certainly, though setting the point of arrival should be easy to do with intent. No, the danger is this: picture the wheel of a cart. If you are at the top, you may be traveling down and to the right. But from the bottom you would be going up and to the left. And the part at the middle of the wheel spins slower than the outside, no? So if you were to move from one spot to another in an instant, what would become of you?"


    "I''d... fly off into the sky? Or down into the ground maybe."


    "But you did not. The air was moved out of your way, and your motion was adjusted properly. From speaking with the healers I would say only one part of the spell failed, which is related to the thickness of the air. The air at the top of mountains is thinner, more spread out, yes? The air inside of you was thicker, and tried to spread out to match its environment much like mana does."


    Which means when I felt like my head was going to explode and my eardrums were rupturing? That''s exactly what was happening.


    "Why didn''t I die? I was bleeding everywhere, shouldn''t the blood vessels in my brain have ruptured and killed me?"


    Hugh looked impressed. "She knows not only science, but medicine as well! Excellent. This is why I think the spell was most likely cast correctly, and then failed in its execution. It protected the most vital parts first, but was unable to finish the adjustment. Normally if something is too difficult the spell will fail to cast at all, but if it struggles to complete and runs out of mana... " he shrugged.


    "And can you do magic?"


    Hugh hesitated, and then shrugged off his coat and unlaced the front of his shirt, pulling it way off to one side to reveal his armpit. There was a strange hexagonal metal plate there, just over an inch across. It was a strange pattern of gold and sliver, and it seemed to be set just slightly into his skin. "This is bound to me, and allows me to do specific kinds of magic. Without it I could cast individual spells, with practice, but it is much much harder, yes? It takes dedication, study, much work. And I... am a lazy man at heart."


    He paused to smile, and I had to remind myself to smile back. "So... the encoded spells and the things like in your armpit -"


    "My Dumine."


    "- your Dumine, sure - those have all that stuff to keep you safe built in?"


    "Correct! They are not quite spells, more a simulated natural ability. They are limited in scope, but flexible in application and require no use of language. But, yes, they are safe. Mostly. It cannot keep you from being stupid, yes? So to go back my previous example, you would not burn your hands but could always light your own pants on fire by being careless. And now... tell me where you are from, Calliope Smith."


    Fiddling with the bracelet, I managed to pop the latch. "I''m from a whole other planet called Earth, and we have zero magic there, and I''ve got no fucking clue how I got here but it''s clear that you guys aren''t familiar with it at all and obviously same goes in the other direction or we for sure would have invaded by now."


    Hugh said something back, but I hadn''t gotten the bracelet latched back on yet. From the tone and his facial expression I was pretty sure it was something like "Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?"


    I was just starting to feel nervous that I had misjudged and made him actually angry when he couldn''t hold it anymore and barked out a laugh. Tension relieved, I leaned back and got comfortable. Something about the rocking of the wagon and the mix of cold and warm air and the furs and finally having real food in my stomach... I was falling asleep fast. Hugh chuckled as he caught me nodding off, and pulled his coat back on so he could climb out to the driver''s seat again. "You have won this fight, Calliope Smith. But we will have plenty of time to talk. It will be a long journey, and a very boring one. Nothing happens on these mountain paths."


    So of course, I woke up to the wagon being attacked.

 CHAPTER 004: Stabbing, Mauling, and Some Sonic the Hedgehog Porn

    The entire wagon shook, and then the canvas was ripped free and that little bubble of warm air was instantly obliterated. I thought, for a moment, that it was just an accident - that a gust of wind had torn the top off the wagon and we''d be able to chase it down and reattach it. Then I saw the impossible monsters that were flying overhead.


    Picture a cross between a bat and a grizzly bear and you''ll have it basically right. There were six of them, large enough to carry two people on each although one had only a single rider. Fun fact, that thing about bumblebees not being able to fly according to the laws of physics is bullshit, it was just that it''s a little too complicated to scribble out on the back of a napkin. But these guys? There was no way it should be possible for anything that size and with that much muscle to flap around through the sky.


    "Segozertze," Hugh muttered, "and almost a dozen soldiers. Hmm. I will fight to the death Calliope Smith, but you should not feel required to do the same, yes? If they allow your surrender feel free to accept. For now, under the wagon."


    Feeling pretty proud of myself for not freezing in place I dove off into the snow, planning on rolling skillfully under the wagon in one graceful motion but instead slipping on an icy patch and needing to scramble on all fours. As I did, I heard screaming and looked up just in time to see two of the riders plummet past. They''d attacked us on a curving path around a cliff, presumably to leave us nowhere to run, but that meant that it was at least sixty feet down for those poor bastards. Two more went screaming into the void, though it wasn''t clear how Hugh was doing it.


    The others landed, two blocking the path in each direction. I could see crossbow bolts flying towards the cart, but I couldn''t see if they were hitting. Then one of the beasts charged, using its wings like front legs, and flipped the cart right off of me - sending it over the edge. I didn''t see Hugh anywhere. The harness to the big wooly critter pulling the wagon had snapped, and the poor thing couldn''t decide what to do. Rock wall on one side, cliff on another, and nasty-looking predators the other two ways. One of those hideous bat-bear things stalked closer, sniffing at me - its riders had dismounted and were looking over the cliffside, but two of the others were watching me from a distance with crossbows pointing directly at me. Not taking any chances. They were wearing leather armor, all the same and with some sort of stylized lizard skull emblem. They also looked kinda nervous, not like I would expect from armed soldiers.


    "Sir, the old man... we don''t see his body."


    The one that was riding by himself waved a hand dismissively. "I''ll check for him once I''m done. You, bring me that girl."


    The monster - a segozertze if I''d heard Hugh right, though that was a bit of a mouthful - backed away as someone hauled on its harness. They stalked past it and pulled me to my feet, at which point I did something a bit impulsive. I pulled the trigger on his crossbow. If he hadn''t wanted to shoot himself in the foot, he wouldn''t have left the damn thing loaded.


    The soldier howled and let me go, and I charged for one of the two looking over the ledge for Hugh. He was mid-turn when I reached him, which is a really bad position for keeping your balance. Over the edge he went. The other one grabbed me by both arms, which people have tried to do in the past. It never ends well for them. I broke his nose with my forehead - another fun fact, if you do it just right it barely hurts your head at all - and then pulled one arm out of my coat leaving him holding an empty sleeve on that side. His other hand tightened, but I grabbed his knife right out of its sheath and started stabbing.


    Like I said, I have a maladaptive stress response. Most of the time that means running away from perfectly normal stuff rather than dealing with it, but it also means being a little over-eager to choose violence. I rarely had a good reason to actually go through with it back on Earth, but when you''re squatting in an old K-Mart and some creepy guy tries to grab you? That is a stabbing situation and yes, I have stabbed people before. Three times. Never fatally. Even once I was trying to be an upstanding citizen I kept a knife on me, though it was in my backpack because despite working at a hardware store my boss wouldn''t let me carry a knife around on my belt. I even offered to swap it out for a brand we sold, but no.


    At any rate, after a few good stabs I was able to pull my other arm free leaving me totally unprotected from the elements. And while I was now armed and had eliminated two threats, the one with the crossbow bolt in his foot was already lunging for me and the two with crossbows next to the leader could pretty easily murder me at any time. I decided to fix that part first, by stepping back into the shadow of the guy I''d just used as a pincushion. He was in no shape to properly grab me, but he made for a great human shield. The one with the injured foot was hesitating, he''d dropped his crossbow and didn''t seem eager to get into a knife fight with me.


    There was also one standing behind the nearest bat-thing, as well as the bat-things themselves: two on either side, and two in the air - although having lost their riders those ones seemed content to just circle the area. The guy behind me weakly grabbed my shoulders and I let him, not wanting to lose my cover.


    "Segoz! Kill!"


    Well, fuck. The nearest monster lunged forward, leading with its mouth. I ducked under the arm of the man holding me, who kind of pitched forward into the bat''s jaws by mistake. The thing pulled back, seeming to know it had screwed up, but the guy''s arm was wrecked. I was also now totally exposed to the crossbows, and both of them fired.


    The crossbow bolts seemed to lose all momentum instantly, and dropped pathetically at my feet.


    Before I could ponder this the beast was lunging for me again, and the only thing I could think to do was to fall on my ass. It was a reflex, and not a terrible one since it kept me from being mauled - but it left me with essentially zero options as the thing prepared to rip my throat out. I figured I had one shot; if I swung the knife at just the right moment it was possible I could hurt it a little while it murdered me. Not a big consolation.


    Hugh''s arm swung up from the edge of the cliff and grabbed a wing, and somehow yanked the beast over the side as he climbed up as if it was nothing. Hugh brushed himself off and nodded. "Not bad at all," he said as he looked around. He looked like he was going to follow that up with some other comment, but the bear-bats charged.


    I stumbled to my feet but they weren''t headed for me, they were clearly dead set on murdering Hugh. Rather than running like a reasonable person would I found myself staring - shouldn''t they be kicking up big divots of snow as they gallop? It seemed like they were barely denting the snow somehow. The first one arrived at its destination only to meet Hugh''s fist coming the other way, and against all logic this grizzly-sized ball of muscle went flying backwards fifteen feet. The pack animal that had been pulling our wagon saw its opening and charged back the way we had come, weaving past everyone towards freedom.


    The other batbear turned to look at the thing, and since it was exposed I jumped onto it and scrambled into the saddle on its back. It stopped and began to flail around in an attempt to claw at me, but its arms weren''t built right for that and the saddle blocked the head from turning all the way around - probably by design, in case they got mad at their rider. Not having any better ideas I began stabbing it in the neck, at which point it launched into the air and landed on its back, crushing me.


    When it first hit it didn''t really hurt at all. The enormous thing weighed practically nothing. And then... it got heavier. And heavier. And heavier. The shape of the saddle and the gear strapped on behind it protected me at first, and I just kept stabbing whatever I could reach, but then I felt the saddle bending and heard some leather straps snapping and something gave. The now outrageous weight of the monster pressed down on me, and I lost feeling in my arms and legs. The remains of the saddle was pressed against my chest and for the moment it was just excruciatingly painful but I knew it would only be a matter of seconds before it slipped the rest of the way and shattered my ribcage.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    And then it got lighter. Not a lot, but enough - and it stopped struggling as well. I was just barely able to slide out from under it, and I realized some of that carving must have done enough damage that it passed out. Why would it get lighter when it passed out? The knife was gone, but all three of the remaining soldiers were attacking Hugh as well as two of the segozertze. The leader was still sitting on his, and one that had lost its riders was still just circling aimlessly. There was still no sign of the one Hugh had yanked off the side of the cliff, and I was hopeful that it had hurt a wing or something badly enough it wouldn''t be back.


    And speaking of rejoining the fight... For the moment the path was clear, and I didn''t have a weapon anyway. I''d already contributed far more than I could reasonably be expected to, and I felt like I''d been hit by a bus. Part of me was yelling that if I was a good person I''d never abandon Hugh but the rest of me didn''t really give a shit; if I had been a good person I probably also wouldn''t have shoved a guy off a cliff and stabbed the fuck out of another one so easily, and I''d be dead. So it didn''t really seem like I owed anything to my hypothetical more empathetic self.


    So I ran.


    I wasn''t sure how far I would make it, since I''d lost my coat and was already winded. Realistically either I''d be caught right away, or escape and freeze to death. But frankly freezing to death seemed like a better deal than being torn limb from limb by a monster so that was plan A until a better option presented itself. I turned a corner quickly and was out of sight of everything, but it was another four or five hundred feet before I would get to where the path hit level ground and allowed me to actually get off the road. Before I got to that point, one of those fucking things landed right in front of me. It alighted on the snow without sinking in, and then all at once dropped down a foot like it had just remembered gravity existed.


    I got ready to dodge, but when it snapped forward I wasn''t nearly fast enough. It caught the collar of my work shirt, and flipped me down to the ground. One of its front claws pressed against my stomach with an implied threat of disembowelment, and I sat very still. Boots came closer, and the leader came into view.


    "You have made this very difficult, girl."


    "Good. Fuck you."


    "Let me look at you... hmm. Was it you, at Ulren''s laboratory? Were you the one who caused so much destruction?"


    "It wasn''t me, I was at your mom''s house. I did cause a lot of destruction though, if you know what I mean. Broke the fucking bed."


    A boot slammed into my ribs. Shit, that had been a steel toe hadn''t it?


    "How did you obscure your mind? What has made you so hard to track? Are you even the right one?"


    He leaned down and touched my forehead and I felt a pressure on my thoughts. "Where were you... before that... before... wait. What am I seeing?"


    It wasn''t that he was pulling things out of my brain, it was like he was doing a search and I was handing him information. So much for not letting anyone know about Earth. He yanked the monster aside and hauled me to my feet, then everything went fuzzy. He was in my brain again, pressing harder. "You''re not the one I''m looking for, but who are you? What are you?"


    I could feel him trying to demand images from my mind, and knew I was going to provide them. I wanted to imagine him doing something embarrassing but I could tell I would only be able to show him things I''d really seen.


    So I thought of the most bizarre shit I could. I wasn''t sure if it would work, but I gave him images of the Teletubbies, of various movie aliens, of Don''t Hug Me I''m Scared, of Transformers movies, of some extremely fucked up Rule 34 shit, and a whole highlights reel of slasher films. I could feel him still reaching, and his confusion was flowing over. He couldn''t tell what was real and what wasn''t. I sent him traffic jams larger than he could comprehend, Godzilla fighting King Kong, goatse, roller coasters, a crowded water park, and the video from The Ring.


    Finally he couldn''t handle it anymore and he let me go, both mentally and physically. I''d love to say that I took that opportunity to kick him in the balls and make a run for it, but we''d been standing there for a while without my fur coat and I was already so fucking tired. I just stumbled back a few steps and glared at him. He looked baffled, and a little scared. If nothing else, I figured I''d probably convinced him to keep me alive for further questioning. Maybe I could escape later.


    Instead, an absurdly evil-looking dude in black plate mail armor walked up and smacked him on the back of the head hard enough to knock him face first into the snow.


    "Your mission was to locate the girl and report back. Why did you engage?" He sounded super pissed.


    "General Telen, I... there were only two of them and we had the element of surprise..."


    "What you had, tracker, was an escort of new recruits. Those men have had barely any training, they weren''t ready for combat. They were there to help you intimidate the locals and deal with any wild animals that attacked you! None of them even have a Dumine, why in Kertzale would you take them into a fight with people who - at a minimum - reduced a secure laboratory to a glowing crater that ages anyone to death if they so much as look at it?"


    The tracker stood up, and tried to look like he still had some dignity. "If your men are not properly trained, then -"


    "They are trained to FOLLOW ORDERS! That''s more than you can do, clearly. Well I hope you''re happy, most of them are dead and worse we''ve lost three segozertze - four if the one with the injured wing can''t be healed in time." He turned to look at me, though I couldn''t see his face through the helmet. "Is this her?"


    "This is... she is a decoy of some sort."


    "So we don''t even have the one we were after. Kill her, and then track the man she was with."


    "He got away?"


    "One of the survivors thinks he''s dead at the bottom of the cliff somewhere, but we''re not seeing him and to hear them tell the story he vanished off the cliff once before and returned. His Dumine has at least velocity and force attunement, possibly even a third. Finish the girl and get to it, I don''t want to risk him escaping."


    "General, she is... her mind shows as human but I believe it''s been tampered with, presumably related to this interference. The images in her head..."


    "So she''s not human? What is she, a Sahrger? A Klunlesh?"


    "Sahrger have been known to copy others, it could even explain the interference if she were younger and the original were still alive, but the Empire wouldn''t use one. And it wouldn''t explain what I saw. There... may be something else. Edited memories, and some possibility of a colony of Granch."


    Clearly he had no idea what to think of the clips reel I''d shown him. I mean, what context could he possibly have to make sense of the Spiderverse movies?


    "Strange," Telen replied, "but not worth wasting a jar on. Kill her and follow me, and be sure to have your mind inspected for infection when we return." and with that General Telen clearly considered the issue resolved. He stormed away back down the road.


    "I''m not a... a whatever you said. If you kill me, you''ll never know. There''s so much I could show you."


    He looked like he was considering it, then he pulled out a knife and stabbed me. It happened too quickly, or maybe it just felt that way because I was going numb from the cold. I fell down, and sat there like an idiot watching myself bleed.


    "Once I''m done tracking down your companion, if you''re still alive, I''ll come back with better protection and find you and pull the secrets from that little head of yours. But sadly, I don''t think you''ll make it. Consider this slow death your payment for some of the more disturbing images you sent me."


    "... at least... I didn''t show you... your mom''s... orgasm face."


    He looked like he was considering stabbing me again, but he just turned to walk away.


    "Goodbye, little girl."


    "Goodbye... asshole. Do me... a favor... and fucking choke to death, okay?"


    I felt a wave of cold ripple through me as he walked away. With the last of my strength I pulled myself over to the meager shelter of a tree on the side of the path and then waited to die.

 CHAPTER 005: Creature Comforts

    My earliest memory is of being cold and hungry in the woods when I was five years old. It''s a cherished memory for me - not because of how miserable I was of course, but because of how the memory ends. There I was, naked and dirty and miserable, and I saw my mom come running towards me through the trees. She was crying, and smiling, and reaching out to me. She was just so happy to see me.


    A year later she left me in those same woods and drove off without me, which is a way less pleasant memory. We had a complicated relationship. But that first memory, that wasn''t complicated at all. I felt bad, she came to make me feel better. I was lost and alone, she held me and took me home. I guess it''s no surprise my brain replayed that scene as I got all delirious under a tree.


    It had been, what? Twenty minutes? Something like that, probably even less though it was hard to say how long that douchebag was rifling through my memories. Certainly the fight itself had happened really quickly. So yeah, maybe twenty minutes before I''d been in a nice warm wagon learning about magic and ready to have a cool adventure in a new world. And just like that, attacked by monsters and assholes and left to bleed out or freeze to death on the side of the road.


    I felt pretty good about the fight I''d put up, though, and there was some slight consolation to dying in another dimension - surely not many people could say they''d done that, it was like if you sign up for a mission to Mars or something and don''t make it back to Earth. Dying on Mars is cooler than living on Earth is anyway, so you''ve kinda won. That didn''t make me feel much better but you have to take what you can get when you''ve been stabbed.


    I closed my eyes. I was pretty sure I''d stopped the bleeding, at least on the outside, but with the cold it wouldn''t matter. I could hear, as if from a great distance, something crunching snow as it came closer. One of the bearbat things? Some soldiers? I couldn''t even bring myself to care. And then something huge slammed down right in front of me. I cracked my eyes open and saw nothing but a wall of wooly brown fur as it tipped towards me and enveloped me.


    It sighed, and sort of snuggled in - smooshing me against the tree and the rock wall. It smelled like wet dog. It was almost completely blocking the light and was nearly smothering me, but as my body pushed past the outer layer of fur I could feel this thing was super warm so it seemed like a minor upgrade. I could feel a leather harness, which finally clued me in to what was going on - I might have realized it sooner if I hadn''t been on the brink of death. "You''re the bantha guy, aren''t you? Couldn''t decide where to go, huh? Jesus, that''s good timing. Good boy. Or girl. Whatever. I''m going to name you Mr. Snuffleupagus, okay?"


    After maybe forty-five minutes I was feeling a little more alert and a lot warmer, but was getting nervous because I''d managed to essentially glue my hand to my side with my own blood and was worried that if I moved it I''d break the seal and bleed out. I was also uncertain how much actual damage had been done internally - surely getting stabbed would cut important stuff on the inside and not just conveniently stop at the skin, right? Did your internal organs have nerves? Would you be able to feel if your intestines or whatever had been perforated? What organs were even in that spot? Using my free hand, I grabbed Snuffy''s harness and hauled myself up so I could look for something to use as a bandage.


    I was extremely woozy. I didn''t think I had lost all that much blood, but clearly it had been enough. Plus I''d been living off of broth for days. Snuffy chose that moment to stand, probably assuming I was going to lead him somewhere. I kept him close to the rock wall so that he would act as a wind break and keep me from freezing right away, and headed down the path. I figured by now the soldiers would have flown off, and I was hoping to find Hugh. It was tempting to go back the other way and try to make it to the hospital, but I didn''t really think I would make it - before the attack I''d been napping for who knows how long, and even before that we''d covered a fair amount of ground.


    When we reached the scene of the fight, Snuffy had to be slowly coaxed along. There were two dead segozertze, the one I had stabbed and another whose head looked like it had been twisted all the way around. There was also a wing that didn''t seem to belong to either of them. I tried to picture Hugh ripping a bear''s arm off but even with magic that seemed insane. Three soldiers were laid on the side of the road, and they''d been stripped of some equipment. I didn''t see weapons, armor, or boots. Likewise, the batbear with the unscrewed head was missing its saddle, but the other still had one - probably because it was totally crushed underneath it.


    I retrieved my heavy fur coat and managed to get it mostly on without taking my hand from my side, then reached under the upside-down monster to pull at the saddle. There had been something on the back, some supplies. Maybe something was left. After a moment I realized that in my condition it just wasn''t happening, so I decided to bite the bullet and check the soldiers. Big dead monsters were okay, in fact the deadness of them was something of a relief. But dead humans... I''d never touched a dead person before and I certainly hadn''t gone through their pockets.


    I had to remind myself that they were obviously evil and were actively trying to kill me. Also that they may have even succeeded in killing me, since I was in bad shape and stranded in the middle of nowhere. They didn''t have a lot. I wasn''t planning on taking their clothes, and they didn''t have any weapons. Each was clutching a little triangular bit of bright yellow metal - not gold, more like anodized aluminum. I left those, as they seemed like they were either meant to identify them somehow or were a funeral rites thing.


    One had a necklace that the looters must have missed, just a simple leather cord with a blue crystal hanging from it. That was it. After a moment I had an idea and pulled their belts off - not an easy task when you''re trying to keep one hand very still against your side. The belts were decent quality, nice thick leather with buckles a lot like the ones I was used to. I strung them together with some difficulty, very pleased with my increasing skill at only using one hand, and then looped one end around the ruined saddle and the other around part of Snuffy''s harness.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Convincing Snuffy to pull was easy, because he didn''t really want to be too close to those things anyway. The belt chain held just long enough to pull the saddle free, then popped apart in the middle. I felt extremely smart. Sure enough there was a huge saddlebag-like thing so I dragged it closer to Snuffy, got him to sit down, and snuggled in close to warm up while I searched my loot. I was a little surprised they''d taken the boots and weapons but left all this, although with half their mounts dead they were probably running out of room and this had been... pretty inaccessible.


    I had a bedroll, two canteens, a bag with some jerky and super dense granola bar looking things, a thick cloak, a big bundle of canvas that I suspected was a tent, a little box filled with some miscellaneous clutter like candles and thread, a bundle that looked like cooking supplies, and a first aid kit. Jackpot on that, at least. In addition to this, the saddle sliding out had also revealed the knife I''d lost under there.


    The first aid kit wasn''t up to my standards. There were bandages, and three little jars of different colored goops, and what I was pretty sure was a kit to make a splint. The kit had a symbol I read as ''sandetzae'' on it which I was sure meant ''healing'', but there weren''t any instructions for the jars. Anyway, I couldn''t put it off any longer.


    Convincing Snuffy to stay down, I went over to the corpse pile and cut off the legs from one guy''s pants to use as rags. Getting all of my things positioned, I slid down to sit with Snuffy again and got one of my rags wet so I could lift my shirt the rest of the way up and gently clean around the wound to get my other hand free. The water, of course, was absolutely freezing. Still, it stayed liquid and managed to do the trick - when I pulled my hand off it was still bleeding but didn''t start gushing like I''d feared, and the cut looked smaller than I''d been expecting - in retrospect if it had been as big as I was imagining I would have been dead.


    Once the worst of the blood was wiped away from the sides and I could tell where the cut started and ended, I decided to experiment with the jars. Each had a single symbol which looked like the right language but meant nothing to me. I knew I could read words and presumably numbers - the yellow triangle things the dead guys were holding all had a symbol that I knew meant 108 - but either the jars were labeled something like "A, B, C" and the bracelet didn''t cover the alphabet, or the symbols were too obscure to get translated. I cleaned off a smaller cut I''d gotten while being crushed, and poked at it deliberately until it started bleeding again. Time to experiment.


    The green goop tingled a little, but had no other noticeable effect. The black goop burned like a son of a bitch and sealed the cut shut with a gray scab after seeming to boil my blood. It was absolute agony. And then the brown goop made the skin it touched numb. So that was maybe the wrong order. I decided all three were probably needed, and that the right order had to be green, brown, black. I took a deep breath and went to work. The green goop seemed to dissolve the crusted-on blood which was cool, but caused me to start bleeding more. I quickly smeared the brown on, and then before I could change my mind slapped the black stuff on and pinched the skin together as best I could.


    My hand was totally numb from scooping the brown goop out in such a clumsy way, and worse it seemed I had missed a spot on my wound because I felt like I was being stabbed all over again, this time with a hot poker. But then it was over. And I felt way, way better. I was still worried about internal damage, but I decided to be optimistic. After dozing off accidentally for a bit in the armpit of my trunkless mammoth, I hauled myself up and managed to strap the saddlebags to Snuffy. I got my coat situated, threw the cloak on for good measure since it had a hood, and got onto Snuffy''s back.


    How long had I been asleep? I had no way of knowing. My sense for the passage of time had gotten all messed up by the terror of my impending death, and it was overcast so I couldn''t even try estimating based on the position of the sun. I kept wanting to check my phone to see the time - the idea of not having a cell phone ever again was going to take a while to adjust to. I checked my wound, feeling certain I had pulled it open while getting onto Snuffy, but it seemed okay. Just a big gnarly gray scar like I had sealed it with some sort of caulk.


    We reached the bottom of the cliff without further incident. Snuffy, left to his own devices, seemed to want to follow whatever the most obvious road was and while I would have much rather had some tree cover in case the bat things returned he wasn''t easy to steer. I insisted on it once it started to get dark, however, and dragged him a good two hundred feet into the woods before making camp. I''d eaten a surprising amount of the rations already, and downed all of the water. I spent some time stuffing the cleanest-looking snow I could find into the canteens and then basically shoving them into Snuffy''s armpit to melt, and then made camp - by which I mean I draped the tent over Snuffy and crawled underneath since I couldn''t figure out how to make it stand up.


    I slept okay there, having gotten used to the smell, but eventually I woke up needing to pee. I stumbled through the dark woods looking for a good spot to go, my bruised or broken ribs radiating pain as I imagined all the monsters that were surely lurking in every pool of shadows. Quickly finding a log I could perch on while cursing the cold, I took care of business and then stood to head back and realized I was all turned around.


    Every freezing gust of wind rustled branches that my imagination turned into bat-bear things out of the corner of my eyes. I was looking for my own footprints that I knew must be right there, but without any kind of flashlight I was pretty useless. And then I heard something. It was less a single noise and more the quiet murmuring of lots of noises blurring together. I carefully crept up to the top of a hill, and not far away at the bottom there were rows of tents just like the one I''d failed to set up - along with more gigantic bat monsters. I pulled back into the shadows and watched until I saw the patrol circling around - they didn''t seem to be watching too carefully.


    My eyes skimmed over the tents, trying to guess at the numbers - there were fifteen normal tents, and I could see boots sticking out of both ends of one of the closer ones. So thirty people, at least. Realistically a few more, though it was possible some of the tents only had one person. Six were sitting around a campfire, two were standing guard at a larger tent, and six were split between two patrols.


    Not that it really mattered; anything more than maybe two people would be enough to kill me even if I got lucky again. The only one I really wanted to find was that tracker guy, since he said he''d be looking for me. Would he have his own, larger tent? He seemed like he was important. I also wanted to keep an eye out for General Telen since he seemed terrifying.


    Instead I found Hugh. He was sneaking towards the camp from the far side for some reason, popping out of the shadows just after the patrol passed his location. It took me a moment to realize what he was doing - he almost certainly was trying to rescue me. And if I yelled to let him know I wasn''t captured, we''d both be dead. Great.

 CHAPTER 006: Chapter... ten?

    Clearly, the correct thing to do would be nothing at all. Hugh could obviously take care of himself, whereas I had pretty much nothing to offer in this situation. Sure, I''m good at sneaking into places... if you mean an abandoned building or an employees only area or something. Sprinting across a snowy field into a camp filled with soldiers isn''t the same thing, and if I got caught I would only make the situation worse.


    On the other hand, I did want to do something about that tracker. Also that little voice in my head that reminds me to not be a sociopath was yelling that a compassionate person would be worried about Hugh especially since he was probably doing whatever he was doing for me, although that voice wasn''t really enough to make me want to charge into certain death.


    I spent a few minutes trying to figure out a path that could realistically get me all the way to the camp without being totally exposed and without leaving an obvious set of tracks that would give me away as soon as the next patrol came by, but by the time I''d figured it out and slowly gotten into position it was too late. Hugh had long since vanished into the camp and anything I did would just increase the risk of him getting caught - all I could do was wait and hope that he got out safely. He would probably scout around, realize I wasn''t there, and sneak back out.


    An alarm went up in the camp, and one of the soldiers briefly flew twenty feet into the air.


    The nearest patrol charged towards the camp, leaving me an opening - and like an idiot I took it. Following the path I''d picked out I went from tree to tree, certain each time I had to run any distance out in the open that I''d be seen and filled with crossbow bolts. When I reached the tents I pulled my stolen cloak tight around me - since it had been taken from another of these soldiers I at least blended in a little, though I had to assume that if any of them actually looked at my face it would all be over.


    I circled around a little, trying to get close enough to potentially help Hugh while also not shoving right into the thick of things. I had the knife clutched in my hand so tight my fingers were going numb and could feel my heart trying to beat right out of my chest. And then, when I got close enough, Hugh wasn''t even there. I''d pictured him valiantly fighting, possibly to the death as he''d said before, but instead he''d... taken off. Of course he had. Fighting to the death obviously wouldn''t be plan A, and especially if he''d already decided I wasn''t there why not just fuck off?


    The soldiers were losing their damn minds about it. Some had run off after him into the woods, and one in a stupid hat - presumably someone higher ranking - was yelling at the rest and trying to get things organized. "Don''t just run after him, you imbeciles! Groups three and four, to your mounts! Paringtal search pattern! Group two, wide circle in case he tries to sneak back around! You! Are you on perimeter duty? Who told you to stop patrolling? Get back out there this instant! You''re all disgraceful!"


    One of the regular-looking soldiers stayed rather than scrambling into action. "Sir, should I contact General Telen?"


    Stupid hat seemed to genuinely consider this, then shook his head. "No. The General said he only needed to be called back in an emergency, and the threat is over. We already knew this one was unaccounted for, so being aware that he''s still in the area is an improvement if anything. Either he gets away and nothing has changed, or we capture him and have good news to report. Until then, I don''t see the point in having the General come all the way back," he sighed, the kind of deep and powerful sigh of someone who hates their job but can''t quit, "Once everyone returns, get them moving - we''re breaking camp and leaving at first light."


    I ducked back between the tents before they could see me eavesdropping. So scary platemail guy was gone, and for whatever reason the tracker guy hadn''t been able to find Hugh and either hadn''t known I was alive or hadn''t said anything about it. That was all good news. Was the tracker still around, or had he left with Telen? Seemed like a shame not to try and find that out while I was already in the camp, plus I wanted to see if they would catch Hugh - but the camp simply wasn''t big enough for me to just stand around without being caught.


    I didn''t want to hide in a random person''s tent in case they came back, and the important-looking tent had guards - but there was another larger one that looked like it was probably a supply tent so I prepared to do the only breaking and entering trick that could possibly apply here. The Walk. It''s pretty easy to do The Walk, but lots of people knowing the secret hasn''t ever kept it from working for me; you don''t run, but you go just a little fast and look straight ahead. You walk with purpose, and if possible with a clipboard in your hands although I wasn''t sure they even had clipboards on this planet. If you do The Walk right, you can blow right past people into somewhere you''re not supposed to be and they barely even notice. Sure enough nobody looked too close or tried to stop me, and I strode confidently into the supply tent.


    They had bread, actual loaves of fluffy sourdough-like bread, and it smelled amazing. I had missed carbs so much. After shoving way too much into my mouth, I grabbed a little sack of some sort of root vegetable that was hanging up and dumped its contents into a basket so I could go shopping. I stole some loaves of bread, a little pot of honey, and a big block of cheese. There was a hard sausage thing too, which I took after a moment of hesitation - I was sure the bracelet would keep me from dying but I couldn''t totally forget the feeling of my throat swelling shut. There were also some sort of packed lunches, maybe to give people when they went out on patrol, all wrapped in some kind of wax paper. I took all of them.


    When someone finally came towards my hiding spot I ducked out the back, and almost ran right into a few soldiers standing there gossiping. I froze, then pivoted and snuck away towards the edge of the camp. The patrol was back and they looked way more attentive than they had before - what was worse, a band of bright red had appeared between the trees as the sun began to creep up. Visibility was better every second, and they''d be breaking camp soon.


    There was something stacked under a tree, some bags of supplies or unused tents. I hurried over to see if it was something I could use to hide in or steal or whatever, and found that it was... bodies. Some soldiers, presumably killed by Hugh. And... the tracker. It seemed possible that that''s why Hugh had caused a commotion; I wondered if maybe he''d seen an opportunity to take out the tracker and just gone for it. But did that eliminate the threat? I wasn''t sure how he had been tracking me. Did he have a lock of my hair or something? I still wasn''t thrilled about looting dead bodies, but...


    I tried to be quick and clinical about it. I stole anything that I thought might be important or magic - two rings, a fancy belt buckle, an ornate dagger. As I was checking for secret pockets inside his shirt my hand brushed against something - it was a little metal hexagon, just like the one Hugh had showed me in his armpit. This one was in a different spot, but it was clearly the same thing. I pried at it with a fingernail and with practically no resistance it peeled up leaving a shiny patch of skin almost like scar tissue.


    I buttoned his shirt back up, and threw everything into my sack. The bats were returning and I couldn''t get a good look - hoping nobody was watching too closely, I jumped up and just barely managed to grab the lowest branch of the tree - almost falling right back down as my ribs reminded me of the condition they were in. I scrambled up as high as I could without shaking the whole thing around and drawing attention to it, and then climbed out towards the edge of the branch to watch.


    I didn''t see Hugh as they all got down from their mounts, though that didn''t mean they hadn''t found him and killed him. On the other hand, as far as I could tell all of them came back and it seemed unlikely he wouldn''t have taken at least one out with him. Once up in the tree I didn''t see a good way to get down without risking being seen and I was hopeful that they would pack up and leave without ever noticing me, so I just made myself comfortable. I''ve always liked hanging out in trees anyway.


    As the packing seemed to be nearing completion, two soldiers came over to the bodies right below me and began pulling off the tracker''s clothes. Leaning over to look at them would have been too risky, but I could hear their conversation fairly well:


    "I''m not seeing it. You don''t think he was one of those people that hides it in their ass, do you?"


    "Probably. But you lost, so you get to be the one to find out."


    "I fucking hate you, Karl. Fine, help me turn him over at least."


    After a moment, I heard what I was pretty sure was someone kicking a mound of snow in frustration. "It''s not here. His Dumine is gone."


    "Maybe General Telen took it after killing him?"


    "You''re going to get us both in trouble with talk like that, Karl. General Telen said that Elbren''s death was an accident."


    "Seems like a pretty big coincidence, especially considering how angry he seemed at Elbren getting so many of us killed."


    "I''m not saying I''d be mad if he did choke this asshole to death. I''m just saying... if he says it was an accident, then it was an accident. After all, if he wanted to murder Elberen it''s not like anyone would have questioned it."


    "Yeah, I guess. So what are you going to tell Leedan?"


    "Oh, no. I had to check between Elbren''s ass cheeks. Telling Leedan we couldn''t find it is your job." They walked away still arguing.


    So it hadn''t been Hugh that killed the tracker. Interesting. I was bracing myself for someone to second guess the soldiers and come to check, and then to realize his belt buckle and rings were missing, and then... well, looking up in the tree seemed unlikely but anything that delayed their departure would be bad for me. But when someone did finally come over they just just tucked another one of those yellow metal things into each corpse''s hand and left.


    Within another half an hour the last of them flew away. Oddly the only thing I''d seen them remove from the guarded tent was what looked like a rolled-up carpet. It made me wish I had gotten a peek inside. Getting down from the tree rattled my ribs again and finding my camp was a little tricky, but I eventually did it. Snuffy was still there, and someone was leaning against his side.


    "Hey Hugh. I brought breakfast."


    <hr>


    It could have been the fact that I was finally eating a good meal, or it could have been that I was still exhausted from physical exertion and blood loss, or it could have just been that I was careless. Whatever the reason, I couldn''t be bothered to worry about whether or not I should tell Hugh the truth.


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there."And obviously it''s not like I could have helped you fight them, not at that point, but I had worked myself up so much that when I saw the opening I just ran. I evesdropped on them a little, stole some food, and then hid up a tree until they left."


    "I saw you climb the tree," he said, "I had already found your little camp and followed your tracks. You understand how stupid you are, yes?"


    I shoved another mouthful of bread and cheese into my face and then mumbled around it. "Yeah, I guess. I have impulse control issues, doing stupid shit that could get me killed is pretty normal for me."


    "Ah," Hugh said, "understood. No need to worry then."


    "Wait, really?"


    He shrugged. "You know the problem, that is all I can ask. Whether you manage to change it or not is up to you. I will keep you safe from others as we travel, but if you want to get yourself killed that is your business, yes? Now, speaking of business. Did you learn anything while eavesdropping?"


    I considered. It wasn''t a lot. "Uh. Most of it doesn''t matter. You know, they''re leaving at dawn, they didn''t know where you were, shit like that. General Telen had already left and maybe killed the tracker but said it was an accident, he might have done it because he was mad - the tracker wasn''t supposed to attack us since the soldiers were all untrained, he was just supposed to report back."


    "We''re fortunate he did attack, if he had left things to Telen it would not have gone so well, yes?"


    "Well either way I''m glad he''s dead. Fucker stabbed me." I lifted my shirt, and Hugh raised an eyebrow.


    "You used the healing salve meant for the Segozertze, didn''t you?"


    "Oh. Maybe. It was all I found. Do you have something else I should use?"


    "I do, although in this case the only difference is an ugly scar which you can always have removed later if you wish. Although some prefer dramatic scars, yes? Do you need other healing?"


    I told him about my ribs and he gently prodded at them before declaring them to be safe to heal - bones apparently could heal crooked and cause problems, especially if it was a rib poking at your lungs or something. He went to dig through a backpack that he had presumably salvaged from the wagon while we were separated. "Is there anything else you learned, Calliope Smith?"


    "Someone''s lab - Ulren, I think the name was - got destroyed and they thought it was me but then decided it wasn''t, something about things aging to death which sounds pretty intense. Oh and they think you have velocity and force magic and maybe something else? Oh! Speaking of! I kinda stole the tracker guy''s Dumine, can you... like... is there a way I can attach it to myself?"


    "Sadly, Calliope Smith, it does not work that way. We would need to get you to a Duminere, a special ancient place that grants magical skill. They are closely guarded, although access is given to those that have enough money or political connections. Otherwise you must enter a contract to use your abilities to serve your country - this is the path I took.


    "My Dumine gives me control over two types of magic. As I was in the military, I had to pick from an approved list that would be useful in combat. Others become healers, or help to grow food. In my case I can, yes, manipulate force and velocity. It lends extra strength to my attacks beyond what my actual muscles could ever provide, as well as some little tricks you may have noticed. I knocked some of the riders off as they approached, although force attacks at long range are difficult for me, and I stole the velocity from some crossbow bolts meant for your pretty little head. When combat is expected most soldiers have charms for that purpose, but I have more control over it."


    He handed me a flask and told me to take a swig, and I felt that same warm feeling as when the healer at the hospital touched me while I was puking my guts out. Immediately my ribs felt better, as well as a number of other little aches and pains I had tuned out. "Holy shit that''s great," I said, watching sadly as he took it back. "Wow. Doesn''t taste too bad, either. Okay, so... go into a Duminere, get a Dumine, and it gives you - you said you have two types, how many can you have? Do important people get more?"


    "Many who enter the Duminere receive nothing from their Dumine at all, others gain only one attunement - those in the empire call them ''gifts'' - and some lucky few get three. Having two or three is very beneficial because their abilities can be combined in interesting ways."


    When he said ''gifts'' it was dripping with disdain, but I decided I''d save that question for later. I turned the Dumine in my hand, looking at the strange pattern of silver and gold. "It''s just random how many you''ll get?"


    "Maybe random, maybe not. We do not know how it decides. The attunements are older than the Dumineres, those sites were places of power since the dawn of time. The gods themselves may have made them, for all we know. But whatever the rules, for every two hundred and sixteen people about one hundred eighty get nothing, thirty get one, five get two, and one gets three. Maybe a little better, I am just approximating, yes?"


    "Wait. Sorry. Something might have gone wrong with the translation there. The numbers felt... off. Did you say one thousand, five hundred, fifty, five, and then one? Okay don''t answer that. They felt wrong coming out of my mouth too. Let''s try... Tell me if I say any of these out of order, okay?"


    Hugh nodded, still looking like this was some sort of joke. "Certainly."


    "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven..."


    He held out a hand to stop me. "Why do you count that way?"


    "What way?"


    Hugh gestured at my outstretched finger. "You counted each finger individually up to ten, and then started over."


    "That''s... how you count on your fingers."


    "By why? If you count that way you would only be able to count to ten, yes?"


    "That''s how many fingers I have. Also why does ten feel like fourteen to me? But I can say fourteen, so. Shit."


    Amusement now battled with bafflement for control of Hugh''s face. "One, two, three, four, five, six," as he raised a finger on his second hand, he folded all the rest back down and then started on the first hand again. "Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven," and then once again folded the fingers back down, raised a second on his other hand, and said "twelve."


    "Wait. You''re counting to five on one hand, and then the fingers on your other hand are showing how many sets of six there are?"


    "Of course. Or, you could do it the way they count in Markonti." He used his thumb to tap the knuckles on his fingers, which took him up to twelve on one hand.


    "Oh god. Thirty feels like fifty when I say it because it''s five sets of six and nothing left over. Five zero. Jesus. You guys don''t count in tens, you count in sixes which means your sixes are tens. Fuck that''s going to bug me."


    "So is the translator working?"


    I had to think about it for a moment. "... Yes? Yeah, it''s actually working really well. It''s just that I can feel the difference between what I''m saying and what the words really mean and it''s throwing me off. We count by tens where I come from, and I never considered that people could have totally different ways of doing it. It felt weird that you would pick two hundred and sixteen as an example because for me that''s a... just a really random amount. But for you it''s a nice round number, isn''t it? Huh. Okay, well. If I can get used to monsters and magic I can get used to counting by sixes. Oh! Speaking of monsters and magic! Those bat things - can they use magic? They shouldn''t be able to fly, and then one of them got super heavy while trying to crush me to death."


    He nodded, and explained while he began packing up the tent. "Yes, many creatures can naturally use magic in some specific way. The segozertze can control their substance."


    I mumbled the word back, and could feel that it meant something like... "Substance like... how substantial they are?"


    Hugh nodded. "It is like weight, or... possibly density? But also not those. I will use those words for you, since you are new to magic. They are light when they need to fly, heavy when they need to attack, yes? People can learn this too, in the Duminere. If they swing their arm while it is light and increase its density as it approaches its target they can hit harder than I can. I still prefer Force, but it does look like fun when they run over the surface of water."


    "So... okay. Is there a word for evolution? Whoa. Shit." That had come out as a nasty compound word. "Sorry, that was a mouthful. If there''s a simpler way to say that the bracelet doesn''t know it. How did that come out?" I tried to un-compound the word, and after some muttering to myself got ''the change in inherited traits among a population of creatures''.


    Hugh nodded. "It is something that is studied by some, primarily those that raise animals for a living - although I believe some scholars study it in regards to wild animals as well."


    "Okay. So... I''m not sure of the details, but sometimes animals will develop some ability or physical trait and it''s really useful, so they have more babies because they live longer or whatever, and then the babies pass that on to their babies, and so on. That''s probably an over-simplistic way to say it but... good enough. If that''s the way that it works with magic though, wouldn''t everything have magic? What could be more useful than magic?"


    He chuckled as he helped me up onto Snuffy''s back. "Well, I am not an expert in this. But I can think of one argument against it; creatures that rely on magic - monsters, rather than beasts - they must have mana to survive. Some live in high mana areas, others are predators that must eat things with high mana such as humans or other monsters. They cannot live on non-magical animals and plants. This limits them severely, and it means having magic brings them danger from stronger monsters, yes? Humans and our cousins can gain mana from our lutore, but few monsters have that connection to draw from."


    There were too many questions to ask all of them. What was a lutore? Did I have one? How did mana work? Why did some areas have more of it? "Man, I just want to learn magic so badly. I was really hoping I could attach that guy''s Dumine to myself. So is this just trash then? Why did they even want it?"


    "It is quite valuable, actually. The Dumine can be melted down and used in the creation of powerful magic items. In addition to this, depending on how well developed the Dumine is it may hold a large amount of mana that could be accessed in certain circumstances. The owner of a Dumine could even use that energy in an emergency, although it is normally only done when on the verge of death because it resets your progress."


    "So you have to improve the Dumine over time by... what, feeding it mana?"


    Hugh shrugged. "They say being in a high mana environment helps. Killing monsters of certain sorts. Practicing with your abilities. Regardless it takes time, yes? And the Dumine grows in different ways for everyone; you can feel it branching out, sense a maze of possibilities. I took the path of a brute, but I could have trained up my Force ability to make shields instead. I could have possibly even used it to fly."


    "You picked hitting things really hard over flying?"


    He laughed, and then was silent for a moment as he coaxed Snuffy back onto the road. "Flying with Force is very difficult and I wanted immediate results, yes? I am impatient, and lazy. I learned to fight, I learned to hit very hard, and eventually I learned to shove things from a distance and stop arrows. Always the things that were most useful to me in the moment, never the more subtle skills that would take time to master."


    "I''m not complaining. You wrecked those guys."


    "You did not do so badly yourself, yes? By my estimation you killed a segozertze and two soldiers, and injured another badly enough that he was no threat. For someone who clearly has no actual combat training that is excellent work."


    "Yeah I... sometimes have ended up in dangerous places, and I spent some time on my own in bad parts of some big cities."


    "Ah! Yes, a wonderful way to gain experience. I myself was in a gang when I was younger, every time I could get away from my tutors."


    "You had private tutors but were still in a street gang?"


    Hugh shrugged again, and smiled back at me. "Yes, well. My parents dreamed that I would work in the royal court and eventually I did - as a member of the royal guard. They had something in mind with less murder, but if I have to choose between killing people and politics I know which I find more distasteful, yes?"


    Snuffy lumbered around a corner, and whatever I had been planning to say next died in my throat. The world seemed to drop off ahead of us, and I could see for what felt like a hundred miles. A whole new amazing alien world waiting to be explored, but most importantly I could finally see the end of the snow.

 CHAPTER 007: You Only Live Twice

    I slept pretty much the whole day, though not deeply - we kept taking breaks, or I would start to slip off Snuffy''s back, or I''d need to sneak off to relieve myself. At some point I remembered to show Hugh the loot I''d taken from the tracker in the hopes he would tell me they were ridiculously powerful magic items, but he said he wasn''t sure. It seemed his particular magical skills were useless in identifying that sort of thing.


    I covertly held each item and tried to mentally will them to do something in case they were magic, but nothing happened. Much to my chagrin Hugh somehow noticed what I was doing.


    "Even if that ring is more than decoration, you may not be able to use it. It could be specifically to help magically track things which you cannot do, or you may not have the strength to activate it yet. Your personal pool of mana grows with time and use - like muscles, yes?"


    He couldn''t explain in more detail, and didn''t seem sure if the translator was using mana or powered in some other way. He implied that regardless there was some limit to how many magic gadgets someone could make use of but when pressed admitted he didn''t really know or care about the rules - it was clear from how he talked that he had more than one on him, though he wouldn''t say what. I kept staring at the gold ring in his nose and wondering, but if it was magic I couldn''t tell.


    What Hugh did know more about was mushrooms. When we finally got to the point where everything wasn''t covered in snow he made frequent trips into the woods to search for any disgusting fungus he could find. He tried to teach me the difference between Bloody Death mushrooms and Wine Drop mushrooms, but even with both right in front of me I couldn''t tell what he was talking about. I guess they''re both delicious but you can only eat Bloody Death mushrooms once.


    He found three other edible types and a few more poisonous ones he wanted to show me - it seemed mushrooms were a pretty common treat in the woods. I hate mushrooms. Still, I''d already had a scare where I thought I was going to be out in the wilderness all by myself with no food and we weren''t to civilization yet so I tried to pay attention just in case. When he cooked them up for dinner I tried them and they were better than I had expected although that wasn''t exactly saying much - even good mushrooms taste pretty much like the ground to me. I finished off the last of the sausage and more of the bread - we''d peeled open some of the packed meals for lunch and they were okay but seemed like they would keep longer than some of the other food so they were being saved for last.


    Snuffy''s food was more of a concern since his special bales of feed had been strapped to the side of the wagon when it went over the cliff, but late in the day we came across a field of some sort of squash-like stuff that he absolutely devastated. Hugh was skeptical that they were edible for humans, but seemed to trust that Snuffy would know his own limits.


    We camped for the night in a little field at the edge of a drop off, and once the sun was down Hugh pointed out lights in the distance. "That is Yallowsben, where I was dropped off after being given the letter for you. We will reach it tomorrow, and will sell the pack animal for something more suited to the plains since they have no teleportation center. Do you have riding experience?"


    "Yeah, I''ve spent time riding horses." It was part of some foster care outreach thing, therapeutic horse riding or whatever. I never went through a horse phase like a lot of girls, but it was still pretty cool.


    "Horses? Are you royalty, that we can spend all of our money on fragile creatures like horses? No. We will be buying moskar."


    "That didn''t translate. What is a moskar?"


    "Moskar are riding mounts. Two legs? Tail? Feathered lizards."


    "Velociraptors?"


    "I don''t know that word."


    "Oh my god if we''re riding dinosaurs I''m going to be so excited."


    "You are a very strange woman, Calliope Smith."


    I had another nightmare that night, where my mother asked me about my day and I told her I''d shoved a man off a cliff and stabbed another to death. She nodded and said she was glad to know she''d always been right about me being a monster and then pinned me down and cut my head off with her grandmother''s antique scissors. The dream somehow didn''t end when my head was cut off, and I had to watch my headless body lay there while my mom did the dishes in the kitchen. Given how often I had nightmares it barely should have registered, but I woke up feeling hollow and like I was on the verge of tears.


    As we got moving again, probably assuming I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the way he had cheerfully answered my questions so far, Hugh started once again trying to get more information out of me about where I was from. My lack of knowledge was probably driving him nuts - I''d asked about magic and monsters in a way that even a child probably wouldn''t need to in this world. I had been planning for this though, and while my cover story was pretty flimsy it was the best I''d be able to do without knowing more about the world.


    "Well my parents were convinced the world was going to end," I said, remembering the short time where I''d been concerned the hospital I''d woken up at was some sort of prepper compound, "and so most of the time I was stuck on our property and not allowed to go out. I''d escape sometimes and usually get into trouble and then they would haul me back. So I only ever learned things they decided I should know about, and they really hated magic."


    Hugh nodded, looking thoughtful. "That may explain why I was sent to get you, in part. Did your parents explain how they thought the world might end?"


    "They were pretty vague, sorry. There were chaotic magical storms around where we lived," I said, remembering what the letter had suggested I use as a story, "and it had something to do with those. Like they would destroy everything eventually, but we''d be safe if we avoided magic."


    "And yet you seem so eager to learn magic, yes?"


    "Well yeah. Like I said I escaped and got to talk to some other people sometimes and. I dunno. I just feel pretty confident my parents were crazy. Sorry if you were hoping I had some sort of important information."


    "It does little to explain why soldiers from Halenvar were looking for you, yes?"


    "Well. I don''t know obviously, but maybe whatever spell snagged me was meant for someone else or... or that spell and another one sort of interfered with each other, or something like that. Either way, they said I wasn''t the person they were looking for. Although... as long as we''re on that topic, why did - Hammersmith?"


    "Lord Protector Hammersmith, yes."


    "Why did Hammersmith know where I was?"


    Hugh seemed to be considering how much to tell me. "The grand alignment is in less than a year and a half, and will likely cause many problems. So the various governments of this continent have created a group to share information and prevent the worst issues, and Lord Protector Hammersmith is the highest ranking individual in that organization - although she does not have true authority over members from other nations, like myself. Still, I did not see fit to question her when I was given this task and so unfortunately I have little I can share with you."


    More random fantasy trope bullshit. Grand Alignment sounded like a planetary alignment kind of thing, which got me thinking about the moon again, which just made me think about how much I didn''t know. It was a little scary, and very exciting. Feeling a little overwhelmed by it all and once again worrying about what I could say without ruing my flimsy cover story, I kept quiet the rest of the way to Yallowsben.


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    There were farms around the city, kind of. They didn''t have fields, just huge towers made of some kind of scaffolding overgrown with plants. Each tower had ten-foot walls around them, though it wasn''t clear if that was to keep out people or animals. It looked like the same crop on every tower, and while I didn''t recognize it from the produce aisle back home it didn''t look particularly alien either. The trees had looked pretty normal too, although in both cases it''s not like I knew enough about botany to say if the same species existed on Earth.


    Much like the crop tower things, Yallowsben itself was also surrounded by walls - mostly made from huge logs although some sections were stone. It was a patchwork, and looked like they''d expanded the city multiple times in random directions using whatever materials were handy. The architectural style was unfamiliar - multiple levels of roofs that stuck way out reminded me of Japanese buildings a little, but the style of the windows and doors and the general shapes of the buildings didn''t mesh with that.


    There was a gate, with very bored-looking guards - they weren''t in uniform but they had matching polearms and helmets. The helmets were basically metal bowls, but the polearms were more like really fancy-looking axes and nearly eight feet tall. I couldn''t picture swinging something that long around in any useful way, it seemed like it would be super awkward. They both stared at me as we walked past but didn''t say anything. I had to assume I looked a little strange to them in the same way everyone here looked a little strange to me - the various ethnicities that I was familiar with didn''t exist here, and vice versa.


    "Do they have a Duminere here?" I knew Hugh had said it wasn''t as easy as just walking in and getting magical powers, but I still wanted to see where it happened and - if I was being honest with myself - I imagined that I would somehow find a way to slip inside.


    "No, no. There are thought to be only thirty-six of them in the whole world, and we only know of the locations of twenty-nine of them. This place would be a hundred times larger if there were a Duminere. Theramas - the city we are headed towards - has one, although it is located underneath a fortress."


    "Okay. Well then is there... a magic item shop, or something?"


    "There may be some magic items for sale in the city. Most likely some simple ones, maybe heating devices for those traveling up the mountain. But first, Calliope Smith, you will get a bath. You are covered in dirt and a significant amount of your own blood."


    Right, that also might have had something to do with why the guards stared at me.


    When we arrived at the inn, I created a bit of a stir and earned a funny look from Hugh because I nearly fell over laughing and couldn''t explain why. It wasn''t actually funny - maybe ''funny'' in the ''odd'' meaning of the word, but certainly not in a way that should leave me giggling and barely hanging on to Snuffy''s harness as I lean against his side. I may have just been a little punchy from everything.


    "Why is the name of the inn amusing to you?"


    "It''s not... the name isn''t funny, not the actual name part." I said while trying to compose myself.


    "But I''m sure I heard you mutter ''the name'' between bouts of laughter, yes?"


    "It''s not the specific name, it''s... the whole thing. The look of it, and the sign, and - yeah, the name, ''the Hawk and Hen'' is just... oh, and look through the window at the bar and that... that innkeeper right out of central casting."


    "That last phrase didn''t translate well, I think."


    "It''s just that this is such a total stereotypical inn. It''s exactly like all the ones in the games and stories where I''m from."


    "Inns are the same everywhere."


    "Sure, I guess, but to have this one thing match so exactly on a whole different..." I stopped myself before saying ''world'' but the damage was done. Hugh raised an eyebrow, and began stroking his mustache. "... continent?"


    He nodded, smiling extra wide. "Yes, on Calnon where they have - just recently, I assume, started counting by ten?" He leaned in closer. "You are from another plane, yes? Which one?"


    I hesitated, and then couldn''t resist asking. "What are my options?"


    Hugh narrowed his eyes at me. "You don''t know anything about the other planes either, do you? No. Because even then, you would know these things, yes? Unless. Hmm. You must be from one of the lost colonies from the old Empire."


    "Shit. I wasn''t supposed to say anything but... yeah."


    "I made that up, there is no such thing."


    "Mother fucker."


    Hugh grinned. "I was lying again, there may be some lost colonies - though I personally find it unlikely after all this time. But regardless, if that were the solution you would have known who the Clockmaker was."


    So I''d been right about that being a trap. Not surprising. I wasn''t sure how much I could trust the letter, but the part about not telling people I was from Earth seemed like a good common sense plan until I could find out more. I wanted to trust Hugh - or maybe ''trust Hugh, but not too much'' - if my hunch was right, and he seemed like he was happy to just treat this as a game so... "I''ll make you a deal. You can guess once a day, and I''ll tell you if you get it right."


    "That is acceptable." He started to think about what to ask before I told him the ''lost colony'' thing counted as his guess for the day, at which point he scowled and told me to wait with Snuffy while he went inside to pay for a room.


    When he returned I hesitated, looking at the wooly beast and trying to decide if it was fucked up that I didn''t care we were selling it after it saved my life. Thankfully the usual navel-gazing over my lack of empathy was interrupted by Hugh telling me that a bath was being drawn for me in the room and it was getting cold. Fuck introspection, I wanted a bath. I went ahead and hugged Snuffy''s leg before heading in, though.


    There were two copper tubs in the room, one round and small and one huge oval one that someone was still pouring hot water into when I arrived - they offered to stay and bathe me which creeped me right the fuck out, but they didn''t seem surprised or offended when I declined.


    I pulled a folding privacy panel thing across in front of the tub in case Hugh returned, and then peeled off my frankly disgusting clothes and used a pitcher to pour some water over myself while standing in the smaller, empty tub. I wasn''t sure this was the right procedure but whatever. I scrubbed a little and got about thirty pounds of dirt, blood, and Snuffy sweat off of me before deciding I couldn''t wait any longer and stepping into the big bathtub.


    I was glad I''d gotten a few layers off before the soaking part, because I didn''t want to spend time in a disgusting soup of my own filth. The clean - well, relatively clean - water was almost painfully hot and absolutely amazing, and I could feel knots unwinding from deep in my back. I hadn''t bathed properly for at least a week, maybe longer, and I wanted to just lay there and never get out. There was also a strange sensation, as if taking a bath here was somehow washing away my last connection to Earth. I found myself staring at the back of my hand where that stock number had been, though of course it was more symbolic than just losing a scribbled number.


    I wasn''t in some isolated mountain retreat, the danger of being followed and attacked was past, and I had reached a real city with real hot water. I was going to get new clothes, and I was going to begin to blend in with the people here which meant I could even ditch Hugh if I decided to. I was for sure considering it. This bath, more than anything else so far, was where I felt like a new part of my life was beginning. No, not a new part. A new life entirely.


    I fell asleep there in the tub, and had a dream. I''d just gotten out of the bath, or maybe it had been a shower in the dream, and I was wrapped in a fluffy towel. I was younger, I think sixteen, and I was filled with the same cautious optimism that waking me had felt about starting a new life. This dream life involved a nice little bedroom with yellow walls and an old television on the dresser. I was reading Jake Ross and the Sword of Destiny, the nice hardcover one from the boxed set - now lost somewhere, at a group home I couldn''t even remember the name of.


    The perspective changed, and I was watching myself through the window. Or, no. Not myself. The person on the bed wrapped in a towel was wearing a mask of my face. It didn''t even have proper eye holes, so I wasn''t sure how she was reading the book. I pulled out a knife, and began to wedge it under the window to pop it open. How dare she? How dare she take my face?


    I woke up gasping and flailing, and splashed a few gallons of water onto the floor. I hadn''t been ready for the strange but pleasant dream to turn so suddenly hostile. The water had gotten cool and wasn''t so soothing anymore, so I gave everything one last scrub and even fiddled with the latch on my bracelet until I figured out how to remove it and clean underneath. I wrapped myself in the towel - far scratchier than I was used to - and stepped out from around the privacy divider to find some clothes, some colored triangles of metal like the ones the corpses had been clutching, and a note:


    "Do not leave the room. When you ignore this, be careful. Don''t get lost. Don''t insult anyone. Be back by second bell." I wasn''t sure what second bell was, but I was confident I''d figure it out. I felt just the slightest bit nervous but I''d explored several different cities in my day and as foreign as this place was I was sure I could walk around a little without getting into trouble.


    Right?

 CHAPTER 008: Dinner, Shopping, Headaches, and Rock Music

    The new clothes that Hugh had left for me turned out to be basically a big square of fabric about as wide as my outstretched arms. On closer inspection, it seemed like it was one long rectangle that had been folded over onto itself and stitched up the opposite side, then one of the open ends had been threaded with ribbons at eight spots leaving multiple gaps.


    That left one end of the square wide open, which I decided meant it was the bottom. If that was the bottom then my head went at the ribbon end, presumably through the middle of the seven holes. Sure enough, that let my hands stick out of small holes at the tops of the mostly-closed sides and after putting a belt around my waist it started to seem like actual clothing in an ancient Greek kind of way.


    I''d used one of the soldier''s belts rather than the flimsy string that had come with the dress, because it had a loop for the knife and would be easier to attach a pouch to without snapping or falling down - this was probably a fashion faux pas but the big furry boots were already going to keep me from being a clothing model. I walked around the room to test the feel of it and then did my best to look at my reflection in the tub and in the wavy glass of the window since there wasn''t a mirror. The "sleeves" that hung down and bunched up under my arms were going to take a little getting used to and I felt like I wasn''t wearing real clothes, but overall I was impressed and couldn''t think of a reason that Earth clothes weren''t just big squares of fabric since it seemed way simpler.


    There didn''t appear to be a way to lock the door from the outside, though there was a little footlocker next to each of the beds with individual keys on top. The keys... did not inspire confidence. Assuming the locks worked like they did on Earth - and the shape of the key implied they did - I could probably pick it with a stick or something. I thought about hiding my stuff elsewhere in the room and letting the locked chest be a decoy, but after a moment I realized I couldn''t be bothered. I shoved everything I wasn''t taking with me into the chest and locked it, then shoved the key and the triangular coins into one of the leather pouches I''d taken and tied it to my belt before heading out for my first alone time in an alien city.


    It was early evening, and there were more people milling around than there had been when we arrived. I saw a lot of people wearing the wrap things like I was as well as a lot in loose pants, but most interesting to me was that neither seemed to be gendered. I was also a bit relieved to see that I was wearing it right, and that furry boots and a big leather belt were far from the strangest accessories. It did seem like some people were more dressed-up than others, with makeup or jewelry or embroidered patterns, but even the fanciest-looking person I saw was still wearing workmanlike (and filthy) boots despite his golden chains and immaculate eyeshadow.


    I didn''t see street signs so I made sure to look for some landmarks before I headed out, and then it was time to gawk like a kid in a candy store - everything was fascinating for me. Either it was different from Earth (why was some of the wood purple? Was it stained, or was there some type of tree here that was just naturally that color?) or it was the same (that''s clearly a hot dog cart, that is literally exactly a hot dog cart!) and both options were equally exciting. There were a lot of odors, most of them unpleasant, but my nose kept guiding me towards anything that smelled like meat cooking.


    I hadn''t eaten lunch so it was tempting to just grab the first thing I saw, but I''m skeptical enough of Earth hot dogs and anyway I was still shying away from sausages after that allergic reaction. Instead I saw someone walking by eating something that looked like egg noodles, beef strips, and broccoli tops but was presumably not actually any of those things and I headed in the direction they were coming from.


    There was a sign that was clearly a menu, and between that and eavesdropping it was clear I could pick from "red" or "white" which I assumed was the meat, and then "leaf", "bud", or "root", and then one of three words I couldn''t translate but suspected were sauces. There was also a picture of a green triangle, and then a dark blue triangle over a bowl. As I watched, someone returned an empty bowl and got a blue coin handed back to them. Okay, so that was a deposit.


    Looking at the coins, I had some in those colors. The numbers seemed to increase in a rainbow pattern - the dark blue had the symbol for three, a sort of turquoise one had six, green was eighteen, yellow-green was thirty-six, and I already knew yellow was a hundred and eight. They weren''t pointy since the tips were cut off, which I guess means they were technically hexagons but with three very short sides, and the long sides all had something going on. One had a thin ridge, one had a slot, and the last one had some bumps which seemed to correspond to how much it was worth - the smallest I had was the dark blue which had two bumps, implying there was a purple one worth... one, probably. The slot and ridge hooked into each other, meaning I could either snap six of the coins together into a hexagon with a hole in the center, or flip every second one over and have them form a long stick.


    Buying the food went fine. The meat was a little odd, with a way stronger taste in a not entirely pleasant way - was this what people meant when they said meat tasted ''gamey''? It wasn''t bad though, and the sauce was delicious. The noodles were thick and a little doughy but good, and the veggies - I''d chosen buds - were a lot like broccoli. I wandered as I ate, looking at different shops. Some of the items on offer were totally unrecognizable but the majority were the expected things - furniture, fabric, food.


    I found a store that was some sort of shared space between a seamstress, a shoe maker, and a leatherworker. The actual craftspeople had their own areas and signs that seemed to indicate they were individual businesses, but there was a single salesperson in the middle that I haggled with to get a whole outfit. It was a little tricky since I didn''t know anything about the economy, but I did my best based on what I''d learned about the cost of fantasy Panda Express and just kinda went on instinct for the rest. In the end I managed to secure two pairs of pants, three shirts, a lighter cloak, some wooly socks, some moccasin style shoes, and a messenger bag. It left me with only a turquoise and two dark blue coins, twelve whatever-they''re-called, but I was pretty sure that was what Hugh had intended it to be spent on anyway.


    While they were measuring me, I heard a bell chime six times. Hugh had said to be back by second bell so hearing six either meant I was very late, or I was confused about what it meant. They finished measuring and told me to return in two bells but no later because they were closing for the night at that point. Had Hugh maybe meant the second bell after I left? That would mean I was going to be a whole bell late if I waited until after picking up my order. I decided the safe thing would be to go look for Hugh at the inn before heading back to get my clothes.


    I took a wrong turn, and then another one. I was sure I''d find my way back to the inn eventually so I wasn''t worried, but I was annoyed to find myself looking at a dead end. I circled around as best I could and was almost certain I was getting back on track when I saw a shop selling strange vials of liquid. Was it magic potions, or just massage oils? I went to step inside, and hesitated. Something about it reminded me of my mom''s bedroom although I couldn''t say what.


    I wasn''t allowed in that bedroom.


    She had declared it off limits one day, just after my sixth birthday. I woke up afraid in the middle of the night after some nightmare where I was locked in a cage surrounded by aliens, and I went to get in bed with her but stopped at the doorway. She had said I wasn''t allowed, and she had told me to be good. That meant I had to stay out. Had to. I reached out, but felt like I couldn''t bring myself to step inside. Not. Allowed. Finally my fear of the aliens in my nightmare did force me to go in, but the stress of worrying that I had broken some rule and was going to make her mad gave me a splitting headache that stayed with me the rest of the day.


    Even in later years when I was happily stealing things and breaking into everything from grocery stores to people''s houses I refused to go into my mom''s room because for whatever reason that was where I drew the line. And now this store, something about it, was making me think of my mom''s bedroom. It wasn''t the first time - Bill''s last day as a case worker he had picked me up from the group home and told me that he''d gone out of his way to find me the perfect foster home. Somewhere I could be treated as an actual daughter and have my own room and everything. He was so sure it would work out, and seemed pretty pleased with himself.


    We got there, and I couldn''t do it. I couldn''t go inside. Later, after some therapy, I decided it was that I must have been freaked out by thinking that this person would be sort of like a mother to me and that got all tangled up with my mom and that last fateful road trip to Arizona. But at the time all I knew is that I couldn''t go inside that adorable little house. Bill asked if I was okay, he asked what was wrong, and all I could say was that I wasn''t allowed to. He said it was fine and took me to this creepy little diner where he bought me a milkshake, but then he quit the next day and I think that was the last time I saw him. I had ruined the last good case worker.


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    I ran away after that and ended up living at Universal Servicing Systems which was honestly pretty badass, so maybe everything worked out like it should have. I went back to that diner for a free milkshake every year on my birthday but never saw Bill there. I''d been planning to head over there after getting the key to my new apartment, but... yeah.


    I came out of my reverie to see that the shopkeeper had noticed me standing at the doorway and was giving me an extremely strange look. Determined, I stepped inside and smiled. Whatever it was that was giving me memories of my mom''s room was subtle, maybe a smell or a decoration or whatever. I felt jittery, and could feel the headache starting. I''m such a neurotic mess. Presumably if there was magic that could dig through my memories like that tracker had done there was also something that could, I don''t know, untangle whatever flawed memory made me so upset about my mom''s bedroom that going into some random potion shop could give me a headache more than twelve years later. Something to think about for sure.


    The liquids were, in fact, magic potions - but I couldn''t afford them and the headache was getting too bad for me to want to stay and chat about them. I mumbled some pleasantries and left, now still lost and also with a splitting migraine to boot. Maybe that was why I ended up taking yet another wrong turn right into a dark alleyway. I could have turned around, but although the alley was narrow and pitch black and super creepy I could also see a much wider and busier street at the far end. It looked like where I needed to be, and it''s not like I was afraid of the dark or anything. I''d gone through plenty of dark, grimy alleyways in my time.


    I made it almost exactly halfway before someone stepped out in front of me. I turned, and there was another behind me. They''d been just waiting for someone to walk down the alley, apparently, and there was no clear way out of this.


    "Take off that belt and throw it to me, child. No need to pull the knife out first."


    I dropped my now-empty bowl from dinner and took off the belt, throwing it to land right at his feet. It didn''t seem like I had a lot of options. He didn''t even move to pick it up, just kept looking at me. "The bracelet too."


    "I''ll die without it," I said, and resisting the urge to call him a cockweasel I added, "Please."


    "I doubt you will die as quickly as if you refuse to give it to me," the shadow said. "Better to take the risk and hope for a miracle - if nothing else it may mean you get to say farewell to your loved ones."


    I could feel the urge to stab a bitch building, which was a useless impulse considering I''d already thrown away my knife. My heart was beating too hard, and the sound of the city around me took on a muffled quality. I had to do something or I''d just freeze up until they walked over and stabbed me. I certainly couldn''t get into a fistfight with them; they were just silhouettes but they were big ones and the chances that it was all a bluff and the figure in front of me was two kids in a trenchcoat was slim. I''d spent a lot of time doing stupid parkour shit a few years back but I was out of practice, it was too dark, and I wasn''t wearing the right clothes for it. So I screamed. It was a full on horror movie piercing scream, and then as they charged towards me to silence me I tried to dive past the one that had been talking. I almost made it.


    He grabbed my dress, but some of the ribbons on top burst and I squirted partway out like toothpaste from a tube. He got another hand on me, more firmly, but I''d pulled an arm out and just barely snagged the belt I had thrown to him. He flipped me over and hauled me closer but I swung the knife - still in its loop on the belt - and sliced his jacket open as he dodged back. I could see him better now, with the light of the main street shining on him instead of against his back. He was, indeed, huge - and he looked like he was no stranger to fighting.


    He had all the advantages; he was bigger, probably a better fighter, and I was laying on my back halfway out of my dress through the top which meant only one useable arm and no good way to stand. So I did the only thing I could think of and scooted backwards on my ass down the alleyway. It didn''t work super well, because with the dress no longer on right it was free to trail behind me a bit so after the first few kicks my heel kept getting tangled on the bottom of the dress which obviously couldn''t give me any leverage. He advanced once more, looking annoyed.


    "Unhand her, scoundrel!"


    The command came from behind me, and the man hesitated. I took that opportunity to haul up the dress with my knife hand so it wasn''t in the way of my feet, and then I scooted further back. I''m pretty sure it made me the record holder for ''least dignified way to travel'', especially considering my left boob was hanging all the way out - it would have been embarrassing if I hadn''t been in a life or death situation. The owner of the voice stepped forward to stand next to me as I slid back. I couldn''t get a good look but he seemed significantly smaller than the other guy - though he did have a sword rather than a knife. Now that I felt like there was a chance I was going to get out of this I took a second to wriggle back into the dress as best I could.


    My attacker tilted his head, like a confused dog. "What do you think you''re playing at, kid? You a friend of this foreigner?"


    Sword guy glanced down at me as I finally got my arms positioned correctly and began to stand up. "No. No, but... I will not allow innocent people to be... uh, assaulted." He didn''t sound very convincing. I knew right away these guys weren''t going to be scared off by him. The second thug had caught up and was eyeballing the newcomer.


    The second silhouette stepped closer, pointing. "Hey, I know you. You''re Errod, aren''t you? The Runelighter kid?"


    Sword guy shifted nervously. "Uh. No?"


    "Yes you are. Kej, this is the kid whose dad fucked up and burned down the spice store."


    The first thug, Kej apparently, let out a low whistle. "That was quite the scene. They ship your dad off to Tarmestal?"


    "That''s... look, just let her go and we''ll part ways."


    "Nnnnnno, I don''t think so. But I feel bad for you, so I''ll make you a deal. If you turn around right now, I''ll let you go just like you never pointed a sword at me. That''s a very kind offer."


    I slid the belt back on. They didn''t make a move towards me, which meant they felt pretty sure they could still catch me if I ran. I didn''t see crossbows or whatever. Maybe they had throwing knives? Maybe they were just really fast? Maybe I looked slow? The kid with the sword - and he was a kid, probably only a year or so younger than me but looking like he hadn''t even started getting peach fuzz on his face - turned his head a little and whispered.


    "Run. I''ll buy you a few minutes."


    His voice was shaking. Unlike the thugs, he wasn''t at all confident. He probably wouldn''t even buy me five seconds, let alone minutes. That stupid fucking voice in my head that tells me what non-sociopaths would do immediately clamped down on my plans to take him up on the offer and bolt.


    "Errod, right? These guys are going to kill you. Let''s both run. Okay?"


    "I... should..."


    "You should run. Really." I grabbed his belt and pulled him a step backwards, which seemed to break the spell. We ran. I was faster than Errod, but the thugs were faster than us both. Kej grabbed my arm, and when I tried to swing the knife at him he just grabbed that wrist too and headbutted me. It was the exact move I''d used on other people so many times, and while I saw it coming and made sure he hit the hardest part of my head rather than breaking my nose it still stunned me. I dropped the knife, and he kicked it away.


    Errod, meanwhile, had turned to face the other thug and swung his sword in a big, slow, clumsy arc. The thug stepped aside, and then literally grabbed the sword by the blade and twisted it out of Errod''s hand. Like taking candy from a baby. A fist to the face followed that up while Errod still looked confused at what had happened, and he nearly fell over. I grabbed the only weapon I could think of out of my pouch, that being the little wooden spork I''d eaten dinner with. It wasn''t even particularly pointy.


    I heard something, far away. My name. "HUGH!" I yelled, and then I was being hauled up by my hair and flipped around so he could hold my back to his chest while he slit my throat. I felt cold, so cold, as I flailed and kicked; it was all happening in slow motion, and the knife began to glide up towards my neck as his leg suddenly jerked and he stumbled. I had just the tiniest bit of slack, and I used it to stab him with the spork. There was no way it could do any real damage but it must have hurt or at least surprised him because he let go for a second. As he finished stumbling back he winced, and I realized he''d been standing in a puddle and his foot had twisted out from under him. What were the odds of a sprained ankle saving me at the last second?


    I ran again, and this time he couldn''t keep up. I reached the end of the alley and burst out into the street shouting for Hugh, who was already jogging towards me. "Calliope! You screamed, yes?"


    "Save the kid!" I yelled, and slumped exhausted against a lamp post. The sounds of fighting in the alley were brief - I didn''t even watch, I had no doubt Hugh would be the victor. Sure enough he returned with Errod in tow a moment later.


    "Calliope," Hugh said while shaking his head in disappointment, "You told me you were experienced with cities, and then I find you in a dark alley?"


    I was trying to decide if I should apologize to Hugh or tell him to fuck off, but instead I just stared at the embroidered emblem on Errod''s vest.


    It was the logo for Van Halen.

 CHAPTER 009: Im Starting a Trope Collection

    Hugh went back into the alley to grab Errod''s sword, my knife, and - after asking if I was serious - my discarded wooden bowl. I was getting the deposit back on that thing. I re-tied the ribbons that had come loose to prevent any embarrassing incidents, taking my time so that I could think about the Van Halen logo. It couldn''t be a coincidence. The stylized VH with wings was pretty distinctive. I''d seen a letter here that looked like a V though, and couldn''t rule out there being one that looked like an H especially since it was a pretty simple shape. Errod was just standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously.


    Hugh returned, looking mildly annoyed in a very middle school teacher kind of way. "There, I have retrieved your knife and bowl and," he said turning to Errod, "your garbage sword. This is a disgraceful waste of metal."


    Errod ignored the insult to his weapon and tried to peer into the dark alley. "Are they...?"


    "Dead? No," Hugh''s tone made it clear that he would have rather finished things, "I have no legal authority here and did not wish to get tangled up in local politics. They are badly injured and will not be bothering anyone until they see a healer, yes?"


    Errod nodded but looked sick. "I have to go. They know where I live, and my sister is there."


    I couldn''t let him go without asking him about the logo. "Wait! Wait. We''ll go with you in case they''re headed there too."


    Hugh raised an eyebrow. "We will? Calliope, I don''t think they will be headed far without functioning knees. This young man will be fine, and we should be getting back to the inn soon."


    Errod smiled, though it was painfully fake. "It''s fine. I''ll be okay." He was not going to be okay. He began to run away down the street. I looked at Hugh, and at Errod, and then sprinted after him and grabbed his arm.


    "Go get your sister or whatever, but then meet me at the Hawk and Hen. We''re leaving first thing in the morning."


    Hugh was already walking by the time I returned, so I hurried alongside him. "Hugh, did you recognize that symbol on his vest?"


    "No. I only glanced, however. It means something to you?"


    "Yeah. It''s... I''m pretty certain it''s from... the same place as me. Damn it. Well, I''m sure it wasn''t just in this one place. The odds that I would run into the only person that knows about Van Halen would be just insane, right?"


    Hugh twirled one end of his mustache as he stopped to look around at an intersection. "Indeed. I don''t know what Van Halen is, but if you are correct that this is not common knowledge? Randomly stumbling across the only person that knows about something important to you might be coincidence, but might also imply someone is using probability magic, yes?"


    I couldn''t think of why anyone would do that. "Is that one of the things you can get from a Dumine, or would it need to be wild magic?"


    Hugh slowed to let me walk alongside him. "It could be either, but as I think about it I would say a coincidence is more likely. Unless they were following you or the boy - which would seem silly if they just wanted you to briefly cross paths - it would need to be done as a curse, yes?" Seeing the question coming, he added, "A probability effect that lingers on you. But that would mean they would have needed to do so days ago, as the tracker certainly did not have the correct abilities."


    "Okay. Yeah. Could it be part of the spell that brought me here?"


    He shook his head almost immediately. "No. Perhaps if it was crafted into an item? But it is unlikely. The best explanation is that you were wrong about what you saw, or wrong about how uncommon it was. If you ignore the less convoluted paths, you may end up saying it is fate, or races from other planes using their natural probability magic on you, or the gods interfering, yes?"


    "You were going to tell me about other planes!" And now other races, with natural magic? The list of things I wanted to know just kept growing.


    "I never agreed to that. Come, Calliope Smith. It is almost second bell. The shops will be closing."


    After getting my deposit back for the bowl and spork, I led Hugh to the shop I''d been at - we found it just as two bells rang out. As far as I could tell from Hugh''s explanation the bells went up to six and then started over - I must have missed the single bell while I was lost. That means rather than AM and PM there were four groups of time in the day, though it was still twenty-four hours.


    Hugh approved of my purchases. He''d spent the time getting some supplies to replace what was lost in the wagon and determining where to get the best mounts, though he said we wouldn''t be buying them until the morning. He''d gotten me some toiletries, and added some ugly and uncomfortable-looking underwear to my order after confirming I didn''t have any. We headed back up to the room, I convinced Hugh to pay for yet another bath since I''d rolled around in a filthy alley, and then Hugh taught me a card game and we gambled for some strange nuts he''d purchased.


    In the morning we packed and headed out before the sun was up. I was disappointed that we were leaving my first fantasy city without me having really gotten a good look at it - there was probably a lifetime of information to learn about this new world and I''d absorbed practically nothing from my time in Yallowsben. We walked down the street a ways before taking a turn towards what seemed to be a whole neighborhood of stables and small fenced-in yards, dirty straw littering the street and a distinctive smell of animal droppings everywhere.


    I was eager to get a look at whatever we were going to be riding, but Hugh put a hand on my shoulder and moved to step behind me as he turned to look the way we had come. He was standing in a defensive pose like he was expecting trouble, and while I was in much better clothes for fighting my head still hurt from the thug smashing his massive forehead into it the night before and I was really hoping Hugh was just being paranoid. After a moment I could hear the sound of running getting closer, and then Errod and what I can only describe as a female version of Errod came bounding around the corner. They were loaded down with large backpacks and looked relieved to see us.


    "There you are! We missed you at the inn. We''re ready."


    Hugh and I stared at them, then looked at each other, then turned to stare some more.


    Errod''s grin faltered, and his sister glared at him. "Errod, you said we were invited."


    "We were! I said I had to check on you, and she said to get you and meet them at the inn because we were leaving at dawn."


    "She said we meaning all of us, or we meaning the two of them?"


    "Well. I don''t. She for sure said... uh..."


    The girl sighed like she wanted to die of embarrassment. She turned to us and tried to smile, but looked emotionally drained more than anything. "Sorry. Just a misunderstanding. We will... we''ll be going now. Good to meet you. Almost meet you. Whatever."


    I was an only child, and despite occasionally getting along with some other kids in the group homes I never really felt a connection with anyone. I''m bad at bonding with people, that''s a whole thing with me. But I always loved stories about siblings off on their own, or siblings running off on an adventure together, or siblings saving each other from danger. I wanted a sister or brother to be in foster care with me, or to hold my hand when mom yet again managed to leave me at the mall - I even made up a fake sister named Constance for a while. And while I couldn''t always muster up actual empathy, the... narrative of it... was compelling. Two siblings, clearly eager to get out of town, looking so pathetic - and I kept picturing the thugs from the night before coming after them. "Hugh. Hugh, can we?"


    His eyebrows went all the way up. "Can we pick up strays in each town we pass?"


    "Just this once. Just the two."


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "Calliope, this will cut into our budget. The mounts, the food, the food for the mounts. And for what? They would do just as well to sort things out here, or bargain with a merchant to travel with them to the next town."


    "I''m sure they... hang on. Hey! Errod, and... Errod''s sister! What can you do? As a part of a team?"


    Errod straightened up and pulled his sword out with a flourish. "I can fight, to defend you from wild animals and highwaymen!"


    "No, you can''t." I''d heard an echo. I glanced over at his sister and realized we''d both said that at the same time. She''d caught it too, and grinned.


    "I''m Katrin. I..." she looked around and, apparently uncomfortable with the number of people watching, came closer before whispering, "I''m teaching myself magic, and can already cast fairly well."


    "Hugh. Hugh. Hugh. Yes."


    "Calliope..."


    I grabbed him by the vest and stared into his eyes. "She can teach me magic, Hugh."


    Katrin sidled up next to us, nodding. "I can."


    Hugh groaned, and went to procure four mounts.


    Moskar turned out to be, if not velociraptors, then still something dinosaur-adjacent. They had heads like battering rams, totally flat plates of bone facing forward, but the rest of them was sleek with brown scales that seamlessly transitioned to feathers on the tail and tiny arms. They were as big as a large horse, but they laid all the way down to let you get on which made it easy to deal with. And they were fast - extremely fast. My eyes were watering as we hurtled across the hills, and while I knew how to deal with a galloping horse the rhythm of these things were completely different which meant it took a bit to get used to.


    Errod had the most trouble, bouncing around in a way that I''m sure lowered his chances of ever having children and twice almost falling off his mount entirely. Katrin and I stayed on without issue, but by the time we stopped for lunch we had covered far more ground than a horse would have been able to and both of us were walking a little funny. Only Hugh seemed immune to being saddle sore. Of course, in addition to this new misery I was still dealing with injuries to my head from the night before which meant that the ride had just checked off the final area on my body that hadn''t been in pain yet since my arrival. I did my best to stretch and pace around, but after a moment gave up and collapsed onto the grass.


    "Errod. C''mere." He stumbled over, and sat next to me as I stared up at the clouds. "Errod, there was a symbol on your vest, a..." I realized I didn''t really know how to describe the shape to him, since what I really wanted to say is that it was a V and an H but those letters wouldn''t mean anything to him and it was too grassy to draw it in the dirt easily. Plus I''d have to sit up, and that seemed like a lot of work. "Well you know, that symbol. The two things, with the lines coming out at the top on each side? That thing?"


    "Oh! Oh, that''s my great grandfather''s. Or, it was. I mean that he had a vest like that, and when it was too worn to be repaired my dad had a new one made. The emblem is for the knights that served under the Savior of Brinkmar."


    I couldn''t have heard that right. "Wait. Shit. Brinkmar?"


    "Yes?"


    "Did he get adopted into the royal family?"


    "The Savior? Yeah."


    "Had to fight an evil wizard, stop a demon?"


    Errod hesitated. "Well. Yes? When I heard the story, from my grandfather, he said there was no demon. Some people say that Tantek was going to summon the same demon that caused the collapse of the old empire, but then others say that''s not even real and something else caused the collapse."


    "Huh... okay. So then... he defeated the wizard, this Tantek guy, and then left back to where he came from?"


    "Um. Maybe?"


    Katrin came over and sat on the other side of me. "You''ve gotten him started on this again. No. The so-called Savior of Brinkmar went to fight Tantek, but then either died or ran away instead. The curses that were supposed to be broken by Tantek''s death weren''t, and the whole plane was evacuated. Nobody has gone back there for at least fifty years."


    Errod scowled at his sister. "Grandpa says that there was a conspiracy, and the Savior is coming back some day to fix everything."


    Katrin just shrugged. "Doesn''t seem likely. Anyway, why did you want to know?"


    See I''m from an entire other planet without magic and... "No reason. The symbol looked familiar. Turns out I read about it, years ago."


    The Jake Ross trilogy. Kid gets sucked into a fantasy world, is the chosen one of prophesy that has to destroy the evil wizard Thanatos. He stays for years, having all sorts of adventures and learning to wield the sword of destiny, and then finally defeats the wizard somehow - I didn''t remember the third book very well - and returns home only to find himself magically returned to his youth having only been gone a few hours. When I found out that part was basically a ripoff of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe I felt betrayed.


    But now... maybe it wasn''t just a story. Being yanked into a fantasy world was clearly a thing that happens. There would have to be some difference in how time passes, but that would actually line up with the Van Halen thing - if Errod''s great-grandfather had known this guy it must have been too far back for Van Halen to have been a band yet. So time had to be moving differently on Earth, or something.


    I got up, feeling all the sore bits of my body protest, and wandered towards Hugh. Was I a chosen one? Did I want to be a chosen one? Bill had once told me to be the main character of my story, but he had meant just that I needed to take control of my life in general. He for sure wouldn''t have approved of magic and riding dinosaurs and being chosen one or whatever. Still, the advice kinda applied. I needed to not just run from one event to another.


    What was I even doing? Why was I doing it? "Hugh. I need you to... I need to know what''s going on in the world. Who were those soldiers? What''s the grand alignment?"


    He was watching the moskar drink at the stream, which they did in an extremely undignified way. They''d dunk their whole giant flat-faced head in the water, then point it straight up in the air to let it all drain down their throats. It looked absurd.


    "I will answer the last part first, yes? The grand alignment is when the a large number of planes are very close together. In this case, all but two of the thirty-six. It means there are... effects... from the various other planes interacting with this one, as well as much more mana being available. It presents the opportunity for great works of magic that would not be possible at other times, yes?"


    He waved at a fly that was attempting to land on his mustache. It remained persistent for a moment, and then dropped out of the air abruptly. "There. Filthy things. Where were we... the soldiers, yes? I have no ideas as to why they came for you. They work for the kingdom of Halenvar, there is a war going on right now because their ruler is planning something for the grand alignment and does not care who he has to step on to prepare for it. It will be over soon, even his own people are tired of him - he is a religious fanatic. But the war has been difficult and has taken a great toll on the people. The town we just left, for example, would normally have had many more guards patrolling. The crime gets worse as all the best guards are taken for fighting in the war. Also, those with Dumines are most valuable and are taken first but are also the first targeted in combat which means the numbers of those with magic continue to decrease."


    Okay, evil kingdom planning evil scheme for big magically significant day. Still pretty standard fantasy shit. "What about General Telen?"


    "He is important. Very, very important. The last powerful military leader at Halenvar''s disposal. If he were to die, the war would immediately be over."


    "So what does it mean that he came in person and ordered that tracker to kill me?"


    Hugh nodded. "You are lucky he didn''t do it himself, he would have been sure it was done right. It is not so strange to see him, however. His Dumine grants him the ability to teleport, and he is very skilled at it. Many troops have devices that help him go to them even if they would otherwise be too far, which means he is always where he needs to be and always escapes when things are going wrong. Do not concern yourself about it. He believes you dead, and the tracker is gone as well. Everything will be fine, and soon we will be at Theramas where you will be completely safe, yes?"


    I wanted to be safe, of course. I''d been trying to avoid my old patterns of sneaking around, breaking into places, getting into fights. The only thing that had kept me from becoming a responsible adult was a lack of money, and my mysterious benefactor had promised me plenty of that. I could be safe, and learn a little magic, and just... live happily ever after.


    But I''d heard that one before.


    You''re back with your mom now, everything is going to be okay. She didn''t mean to leave you at that gas station, everything is going to be okay. This foster parent is looking to adopt, and they''re going to love you. You''ll get your own room that''s just yours, for as long as you want. Oh I found you a great place, no more group homes ever again. Hey Callie, I got a sweet apartment lined up with my girlfriend and I just need you to lend me the first month''s rent. Right.


    Maybe I should just embrace it. A life of adventure, of travel, of fighting and exploring and not having a real home. Isn''t that what my whole existence has been preparing me for? Am I not main character material? Okay, so I have some sociopathic tendencies. I have those under control. I almost always remember to be a good person even when I don''t actually give a shit about it. If nothing else, I can fake being the hero when I need to. I looked around at my little group, trying to put it into familiar fantasy terms. A level one wizard, a level... zero? Negative one? Fighter, a level fifteen magical barbarian if that was even a thing, and then... a rogue. A sneak-attacking, lock picking, lying rogue. Nobody said the main character had to be a knight or whatever. Fuck it.


    "Hugh? I''m going to start learning magic from Katrin if I can. And I''m going to need you to start teaching me how to fight, for real."


    I''m not going to assume anything is going to work out or be safe. I don''t really want to be a chosen one or whatever, but if I am? Let''s do it. It''s hero time, even if I''m still not sure what the plot is.

 CHAPTER 010: Best Foot Forward

    Hugh was peeling a potato-like thing as the sky faded, gazing off at the distant mountains where the sun had just ducked behind a peak. He seemed to be lost in thought, totally unaware of the sword swinging at his head. At the last possible second he reached up and blocked not with his knife but with the potato, casually deflecting Errod''s sword so that it narrowly missed his shoulder. He then turned in a flash and stepped on the blade as it continued downwards, causing it to twist and pull out of Errod''s hands - now standing on the sword, Hugh slowly pointed the knife at his opponent''s neck.


    "I told you to choose your time wisely. You had all night to pick your time of attack, and you come at me while I am armed and alert?"


    "You! But!" Errod sputtered, "You didn''t even use the knife, you... if you can do that with a root then you always count as armed."


    "Yes! Excellent, a good lesson for you, yes? Your enemy is always armed. But you had not learned this lesson, and still attacked me while I held a knife."


    Errod collapsed to the ground and threw up his hands. "You were distracted, watching the sunset."


    Hugh shrugged. "You had all night. I would be even more distracted while I sleep, no? That is when Calliope plans on attacking me."


    He was completely correct on that one. I had decided right away that the best way to succeed in Hugh''s challenge was to just sneak up while he was asleep and kick him as hard as I could. The potato move had me reconsidering - it must have been force magic, but it was a reminder that he could do things I wouldn''t be able to plan for.


    Errod looked despondent. "I can''t attack someone in their sleep. I''m destined to be a knight of Brinkmar."


    "I am a... partially retired... member of the royal guard of the kingdom of Erathik," Hugh said, handing Errod''s sword back. "It is a very important, very honorable position. But there is no honor in killing people. The honor is in protecting. So you protect people however you can, and if that means stabbing the other man to death in his sleep then that is what you do. If you are so busy treating your enemies with respect that they are able to take advantage of you and murder the people you were trying to save, then you have lost. It is as simple as that, yes?"


    Errod shrugged, clearly unconvinced, though he hadn''t seemed bothered by attacking someone from behind. I wasn''t sure what specific rules of chivalry he was trying to follow.


    "What do you mean, you''re destined to be a knight of Brinkmar?" Who had written the Jake Ross books? The name on the cover was Marjorie West - had she been here? Did she know the real Jake Ross? It wasn''t exactly an urgent mystery, since whatever had gone down had happened a long time ago, but it did imply there was a way to get back to Earth and that others might have made the trip before. Not that I particularly wanted to go back.


    Errod finally replied, while gazing wistfully off into the distance, "I mean that I''ve seen a vision of the future where I am wearing the mystic armor of a knight of Brinkmar, and am the greatest swordsman the land has ever known."


    Katrin snorted. "He had a dream a month ago and has been insufferable ever since."


    "It wasn''t just a dream! And look, here we are traveling with a member of Erathik''s royal guard who has volunteered to teach me to fight!"


    Hugh snorted too, as he went back to peeling the potato thing. I was tempted to attack him right away, on the theory that he wouldn''t think I would be dumb enough to do that, but I decided to wait.


    I had until we started riding again to injure him - he didn''t want any shenanigans that might hurt our mounts. Those anvil-headed dinos were amazing, apparently due to having a lump of crystalized mana in their crops that fueled some natural magical super-endurance. We were already past Ulthus - we hadn''t stopped there, which was a disappointment. We''d seen it in the distance for just a moment at one point, a dark blob on a hill with one ridiculously tall tower sticking up. I was eager to get another shot at exploring a city in this new world, but that would have to wait for Handoleren.


    Errod excused himself and wandered off to practice his sword forms, something he always did away from Hugh so that he didn''t have to listen to the snickering. Hugh was training us, a little each day, but he said he wouldn''t teach Errod anything about using the sword until he had more of the fundamentals down. We practiced standing right, so that we couldn''t easily be knocked down. We practiced dodging, and standing up quickly, and falling down - I''d never thought about the right and wrong way to fall when someone knocks you over. Hugh said that I had a lot of natural talent but also a lot of bad habits, and warned me that it would be a long time before I could hope to attack someone who really knew what they were doing.


    Errod, on the other hand, didn''t have any specific bad habits and was eager to learn everything but had so little natural ability that Hugh had to take frequent breaks as he barely resisted screaming in frustration. They also kept arguing about Errod using a sword at all - Hugh insisted a spear would be a much better choice, but Errod wouldn''t budge because in his vision or dream or whatever he''d been using a sword.


    I''d have happily traded talent with Errod if it had meant I would be able to use magic. I was beginning to think I just didn''t have the knack. Katrin had tried writing a spell down but had quickly realized she couldn''t for some reason and had eventually - very reluctantly - pulled an enormous book out of her pack. It had a thick metal cover and the inside was covered in these strange tiny hexagonal tiles with different symbols on them, and on the pages... "I can''t read this. It''s just gobbledygook."


    "I didn''t recognize that word. Is it from Arizona?" I''d given Katrin and Errod the baseline cover story which was, apparently, plausible enough to avoid the most awkward questions.


    "Kind of, but it just means that it''s nonsense. I can''t do this."


    The language in Katrin''s book of spells was some sort of angular runic script that - according to her - you should just be able to understand magically after getting into the right mindset and concentrating on it. "We''ll keep trying. You might be forcing it too hard? I''m not sure. I taught myself so I don''t really know a lot about this."


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    I closed the book - I''d been staring at the page for half an hour and it was starting to make me angry. I decided I needed to remind myself why I gave a shit. "Show me the light thing again."


    Katrin smiled and closed her eyes. I could see her lips moving, just slightly, though she had insisted she wasn''t saying anything. After a moment a ball of white light appeared in the air between us - it was about an inch across, but very bright. It was that cold light like an LED or something, and she could mentally control it in order to move it around.


    "Ugh, I''m so jealous. I want to do magic so badly. Look at that!" It was clear Katrin had overstated her abilities and felt self-conscious about it, but all I could think was holy shit, that''s real magic!


    "It will just take time. I''m sure you''ll be able to learn it eventually. I can feel it." She was being extra reassuring like I was a little kid with hurt feelings, even though she my age. What that age was, I wasn''t so sure - I''d have to get some scratch paper and do actual math at some point. Seconds, minutes, hours, and days were suspiciously similar to Earth measurements - enough so that I had assumed everything would be. But while talking to Katrin she''d mentioned that she was turning fifteen soon and I knew she had to be at least a few years older than that.


    I''d pulled Hugh aside and he''d confirmed that there while there were still the familiar twelve months in a year, each of them had exactly thirty-six days which meant a full year was more than two months longer here than on Earth. I couldn''t figure out why that one thing would be different when everything else seemed the same. At any rate, it meant I was just over fifteen which matched what the letter had told me to say.


    There was no official age where you counted as an adult, but at the very most it would be fourteen (which some back-of-the-napkin style math told me was something like sixteen and a half Earth years) so it didn''t really matter to me. I was an adult either way. It did mean yet another thing on top of the base-six counting to confuse me around numbers.


    I opened the book again, and tried just looking at it without really thinking. I went back to my project of whittling down a stick into a essentially a toothpick, and let my mind drift.


    "I''ve got a relative in Theramas," I lied, "and they have some influence. So I think I''ll be able to get into a Duminere before long. But I wanted to learn magic like this, too."


    Katrin looked up, eyes wide. "Do you think you could get me in?"


    "You already have a spellbook, and you can do the light thing and that fire starting thing and the shield one. What are you so excited about?"


    "I keep forgetting you don''t know how this works. Well." She straightened up, going back into teacher mode. "Everyone has some sort of magical potential. Some more than others. Some races on the other planes have specific magical talents, but normal humans like us can use spells which are... they''re harder, but much more flexible. Wild magic is a little easier to learn from what I''ve heard, but it''s way more dangerous and it''s actually outlawed most places. Proper magic, Imperial magic, the kind the Clockmaker created, is much better but it''s extremely hard to do which is why you shouldn''t beat yourself up for struggling - especially when you''ve barely started trying.


    "If you go into a Duminere, you get a Dumine whether you want to or not - you can''t leave without one, even though for some people it doesn''t give them a gift at all. This locks you out of using your mana for other things which means you can''t do wild magic, and other races can''t use their natural abilities anymore. Except!" she leaned closer, excited. "One of the thirty-six individual gifts your Dumine can grant is increased ability at understanding magic. That means you get way better at it, learn spells faster, all sorts of things."


    "Okay. But you could also go in and get nothing, right?"


    She nodded, and made the little light do figure-eights in front of her. "Yeah, most people get a dud. It''s like a Dumine, but it''s just silver and it doesn''t give you any gifts. It won''t help with magic at all, and it will mean I have to stick with Imperial magic and can''t try to use wild magic, but that''s fine. And they say it has other benefits, that you recover mana faster and even heal a little faster. And anyway... people talk, and it seems like how many gifts you get has at least some correlation to your natural ability. I was able to read this book the very first time I looked at it, and learned spells without any help. That has to mean something, right?"


    What Katrin hadn''t said is that the same logic implied I would just get a dud.


    I was planning on sinking into a funk, but right then Errod started screaming. We all jumped up and ran to where he had been practicing his forms, and there he was in the fetal position with blood everywhere. He was clutching one of his shoes, and his sword was thrown off to one side. Hugh ran past and began scouting for enemies, while Katrin crouched down to calm Errod. I ran and grabbed my stolen first aid kit, and by the time I got back Katrin had figured out what happened.


    She told me, I did a great job not laughing, and then I called Hugh back and told him we weren''t under attack. "He was practicing some kind of lunge, and he stumbled. He uh... planted his sword right down on his foot and lost a toe."


    "Ah," Hugh said, then paused. "The large toe?"


    "No," Katrin chimed in from the ground next to her brother, "the one next to that."


    He relaxed. "Good. Then it should not cause him trouble once it is healed, yes?"


    "Can we heal it back on? I just have that goo, but you have that flask right?"


    "With a healer, yes. A potion? We could try holding it in place and hoping, but it does not always work."


    "It doesn''t matter," Errod muttered, "she took the toe anyway."


    We all just stared for a moment in silence. Katrin finally spoke up, and if Errod heard the concern in her voice he didn''t acknowledge it. "Errod, uh... it''s just us here. Nobody took your toe. You cut it off yourself."


    "No, I did but... she popped out from behind that bush and grabbed my toe when I pulled my shoe off and it fell out. She was wearing a plain wooden mask and holding a staff, and... oh god, she''s going to use the toe to curse me."


    Hugh met my eyes and shook his head. There hadn''t been anyone there. I decided it was just blood loss or shock or something, but I''d be lying if I said I slept well that night - and we never did find the missing toe.


    In the morning there was another foot injury, this one much less serious. Hugh pulled his shoes on and stamped them down as always - then screamed out a word that my bracelet didn''t translate but which made Katrin blush so hard I thought she would give herself a sunburn. Hugh pulled his left shoe back off and reached inside, retrieving the tiny sharpened spike I''d been whittling the day before.


    "You told me to injure you," I said.


    "In combat, Calliope."


    "If you are so busy treating your enemies with respect that they are able to take advantage of you..."


    He scowled at me, but I think he was faking it.

 CHAPTER 011: Just So Many Bad Ideas

    Despite the minor injuries I received each day from training with Hugh, by the time we reached Handoleren I was feeling better than I had since leaving the hospital. My head had long since stopped hurting, and I''d gotten used to riding the moskar so I wasn''t completely saddle sore.


    The city had a much more intentional look than Yallowsben, with stone walls rising up in a perfect hexagon. A shorter but still intimidating wall of logs standing on end circled farmland, this time with some actual fields in addition to a number of the strange vertical farms. We rode past what looked a lot like corn on one side, and gorgeous rippling fields of purple wheat on the other.


    Once again, we were able to enter without any kind of paperwork or anything. The guards looked a little more alert and a little better equipped but paid us no more attention. The architecture was similar to Yallowsben with the pagoda-like layered roofs, but overall the place was cleaner and the streets were laid out in a more organized way. Between that and the nice walls, it felt like Yallowsben had grown over time and Handoleren had been built all at once.


    The inn that Hugh chose was clearly one he already knew, because he took us directly there despite it being hidden way back in a dead end against one of the outer walls. It was slightly crooked, with the third floor looking particularly unsafe, but it was strung with paper lanterns and a cheerful tune drifted from the open front door. It was the first time I''d heard music since arriving, and it made me think once again about the massive library of songs stuck forever on my dead phone.


    The sign on the inn showed a smiling cartoony boar, with an axe in its back. It didn''t seem bothered, but there was a huge pool of blood under it. Katrin gave the sign a funny look, but it wasn''t like I was going to question Hugh. Someone came out and helped us get the moskar stabled and then we went in and Hugh argued with the innkeeper for a few minutes in a language my bracelet didn''t translate - but I noticed the innkeeper had a gold nose ring just like Hugh''s, so I assumed it was whatever they spoke in Erathik. Argument or not there was a friendly undercurrent, like that time I watched Bill go back and forth with an old woman at the grocery store over whether or not he could pay for her food since she had left her purse at home. When would that have been? Why had I been at the grocery store with my case worker? It didn''t matter anymore.


    After a moment they smiled and shook hands, and Hugh led us upstairs to the third floor. From the inside it didn''t seem as precarious as it had from out front, although I could still tell that the floor had a distinct lean. Our room was large but had only two beds, and Hugh made it clear he expected to get one of them. Errod volunteered to sleep on the floor, and it didn''t even occur to me to suggest otherwise - the beds looked extremely comfortable.


    "Hugh. You told me that Lord Protector Hammersmith gave you the letter and the bracelet and told you about my dog. What else did she give you?"


    He pulled his boots off and sighed. "What are you getting at, Calliope Smith?"


    "Did she give you money for my clothes? Or was that your money? Do I owe you?"


    "Ah. You do not need to worry, yes? I have money enough, and can be reimbursed for any reasonable expenses."


    "I was hoping you''d say that."


    Hugh sighed again, deeply, and closed his eyes as he laid back on the bed. "And so the true motives are revealed. Reasonable expenses, Calliope. And we have already picked up two stray children that are costing us money."


    "Katrin says there''s someone that can measure my mana capacity. Please."


    "I can tell you for free. Your capacity is low, because you have not used magic. Over time, you will use more and it will increase. Paying to have it tested now is a waste of money."


    "I need to. Hugh. Come on. I''ll even pay you back, once I have money. The letter said they''d be giving me money when I got there, but that''s days from now. I need to know so I can figure out if it''s even possible for me to cast spells. What if people from... Arizona... don''t even have mana? It''s getting in the way of my training."


    Hugh had some very condescending things to say about the quality of training I could expect from someone so young and who could only reliably cast three spells, but he liked Katrin and respected people wanting to improve themselves and so in the end with the help of my puppy-dog eyes I was able to secure some coin. Katrin and I headed out into the city and she found the right part of the market without difficulty, but I almost wished she''d had trouble because I realized when the time came that I was dreading it. What if it was all bad news?


    The proprietor was an old woman with elaborate ornaments in her silver hair, intertwined rings with all sorts of stars and birds dangling from them. She sat me down and took my head in her hands, and I felt a warmth flowing through me. "You have been doing magic?"


    "Trying," I said. "I haven''t managed to cast a spell yet."


    The woman frowned. "Hmm. There is strain here, the type caused by using more mana than you can handle. Be careful, you could do permanent damage."


    Katrin looked thoughtful, but I was pretty sure it was just whatever had happened when I was pulled from Earth. Even if it hadn''t been my doing, surely that would have been traumatic to my system somehow. I certainly hadn''t cast any spells. "But you do think I can cast spells?"


    "Very few humans have so little that they cannot cast at all, and even they can increase their ability over time. I can tell you''re not a husk." she made a small gesture, so fast it seemed like it was subconscious. The bracelet didn''t tell me anything, but it seemed like someone making a cross or spitting after mentioning something bad.


    She opened a wooden chest and pulled out what looked like an enormous vertebra carved with runes like the ones from Katrin''s book. "There is no perfect way to measure mana. When you become more experienced and can feel its flow, you will be able to estimate it. But for convenience¡¯s sake, we do sometimes try to put numbers on it." Placing the vertebra on a small table next to me, she reached into the center and twisted something. "This will cast a specific spell, and since it is cast only through these shielded runes it will use a consistent amount of mana. By timing how long it lasts you can track your progression."


    Once again she held my head in her hands, and I felt that warmth increase until it was an uncomfortable heat, then back off again. "There. We have found your natural limit. It feels promising. Place your hand here¡­ good, and then begin sending your mana into it," she said, and then seeing the look on my face gave me a little extra prompt, "You should feel it pulling at you, trying to access your mana. You need only let it in."


    I''ve never been the sort to meditate, but for magic there was nothing I wouldn''t try. I closed my eyes and tried to feel what she was describing. I could smell some kind of incense, and even though she''d taken her hands away I could faintly sense where they had been touching my head. I could feel my clothes brushing against my skin as I breathed in and out, and hear sounds of the city outside. And... there was something else. It was like when you were in a pool and you stood near the water intake for the filter. A slight... current. As I mentally probed at it, it felt like putting my hand on the end of a vacuum cleaner hose. Something gave way.


    I opened my eyes, and a glowing cube of light was hovering in the air next to me. It rotated slowly and seemed to glimmer like a star. I knew that I wasn''t really casting a spell, just letting some magical device borrow my energy - but it was still my energy, and it was still doing something magic. That was already amazing. It didn''t last long, though. The cube winked out, and the woman moved my hand and lifted the vertebra away, tilting it at an angle and squinting at the center - it looked hollow to me, but whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her.


    "Almost seven seconds. Quite good, for someone who claims not to know spells yet. Your lutore - the knot where your mind, body, and soul connect - feeds mana into your core and expands outwards into an aura that grows larger over time. It does this by its connection to Ematse, for your mind, and Erima, for your soul. While almost everyone has a mind and soul by the time they turn four, the connections to their corresponding planes don''t always form right away and can prevent growth. For a small additional fee, I can ensure this connection is in place and judge how long it will be before you hit your wall - before the growth of your capacity reaches its current limit."


    Katrin had mentioned this, somewhat. Even with magic being a thing I wasn''t sure about all this talk of minds and souls as distinct things, but the idea was that they would somehow have territory on other planes and as that territory grew so did your potential. Much like working out, though, regardless of your potential if you didn''t put in the work you wouldn''t have the muscles. Realistically, according to Katrin, it didn''t matter because it would grow so slowly that it would take decades to show any real difference - the domains of my mind and soul would grow very slowly. She''d recommended against paying for it unless I''d been unable to do anything at all, which might indicate my soul and mind weren''t tethered to the planes at all.


    Still, I had Hugh''s money. And I was curious. The woman put her hands on my head again, and -


    My vision swam. There were too many overlapping scenes. The bedroom with yellow walls that I had dreamt about. A clearing in a forest, with a huge hairy guy in a Halenvar uniform watching me. A conference room or something, maps and papers spread out on the huge table under a clearly magical light. A swirling cloud made of teeny multicolor points of light in the darkness.


    Everything snapped back to normal, but I was so scrambled I missed the beginning of what the woman was saying. "... but the layers of your aura seemed wrong. I could sense what must be your third layer, but not the first or second. And then another gap... it''s very unusual. I won''t charge you for this part of my services, of course. But regardless, I can assure you your mind and soul are tethered and your capacity is... within a normal range, though I cannot say more."


    After thanking the woman and paying her, we headed back towards the main gate so that we could find the inn. Katrin was hoping that powering that spell had kick-started something inside me, and was eager to make me practice while also warning me that the test probably drained all of my mana for now. I was in high spirits despite the strangeness of it, but something caught my eye that made me hesitate.


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    "Katrin I... want some time alone for a bit. Let me wander, I''ll be back in an hour. Okay?"


    If she suspected something I couldn''t tell. She just smiled and hurried off, and I turned to follow the men I''d spotted. They were accompanied by guards, and one was holding a rolled-up carpet or something. I''d seen it before. When the soldiers in that camp had packed up, it was the only thing they''d taken out of the big tent. Were these two the same that had been keeping guard at that tent? They weren''t in uniform anymore, and I hadn''t gotten a good enough look at them to be sure.


    I was still a little shaky on the specific politics, but I knew that Handoleren was part of the Free States, a coalition of city-states in a long blob across the continent that cut between the Endless Empire (where we were headed) and Halenvar (the bat-riding assholes). There didn''t seem to be any actual borders, it was all about which cities belonged to who - governments would patrol the roads between cities they controlled but the land in-between governments was largely ignored unless someone started trouble. But Halenvar had started a lot of it, and the Free States weren''t happy. They for sure wouldn''t be working with Halenvar.


    Therefore, it was nothing. It was just a rug. I was new to this world, and for all I knew this type of rug was a normal thing that everyone had. It could be a religious item, or some common magical device. There was no reason to believe it was the same one from that camp. I was being silly. But it couldn''t hurt to follow them for a minute.


    They arrived at a very nice building that was set apart from the ones around it by long skinny flower beds overflowing with orange blossoms, and headed inside. I circled around and tried to decide if there was an easy way to get a peek inside. I didn''t want to get arrested or anything, especially since it was probably nothing, but I also refused to walk away. The flower beds meant the sides were too exposed, and when I checked the back there was a guard lounging against the only door. It was a narrow alley, with no garden on this side, so I couldn''t hang around without being obvious. Instead I hurried past and to the next street, where I got a closer look at the building whose rear shared that alley.


    It was a shop, with stairs leading up to the second floor blocked by a sign that said "private residence". I could see, looking up, that it led to a balcony landing with a door leading inside. It was perfect. I slipped past and up the stairs without any difficulty since nobody seemed to be paying attention, and then at the balcony I stepped over onto the roof. The buildings were close in the back, and the alley was narrow - it wouldn''t be a big jump. It seemed a bit too obvious; in a city with big overhanging roofs surely the guards would be trained to look for this kind of approach.


    I carefully walked to the edge, making sure my shadow wasn''t going to give me away. The windows in the building I was headed towards all had curtains except for one, and that one looked dark and empty. The biggest risk seemed to be the sound it would make when I landed - it was hard to say how loud it would be to the guard below. To be safe I went as far to the side as possible and pulled my boots off. After one last glance around, I ran a few steps and launched myself across the gap.


    It was a perfect landing, and as far as I could tell a quiet one. I stalked up to that one dark window and peeked in, and found it to be an empty room with just a desk and chair. I climbed in, pulled my boots back on, and then cautiously listened at the door. When I was satisfied there was nobody there, I opened it and snuck out into the hall, feeling increasingly stupid. This was not the first time I had done something impulsive for no good reason.


    Once, I had become convinced the staff at my group home were using the kids as drug mules to smuggle heroin across state lines. When we were told someone had been relocated or gone back to their parents it just meant they''d gotten caught and possibly killed. They found me in the office after I pried the filing cabinet open with a hammer and scattered papers everywhere while looking for "a pattern". In my defense, I was eleven and had been reading some age-inappropriate books.


    Now I was eighteen and I was doing something that was, if anything, dumber. I didn''t know the laws; it was possible that breaking and entering was punished by death. I was risking execution to see why some people had a carpet I was pretty sure I''d seen before. Thinking of it that way, I very nearly turned and headed back the way I had come. But I didn''t. I was going to head downstairs, but I heard someone coming up and had to scramble to get out of sight. The first room I picked had the carpet.


    It was all rolled out, and was covered in runes. It was also the only thing in the room other than a huge potted plant, and I wasn''t sure if the people that had been coming up the stairs were about to walk in. I ran to the potted plant and squeezed behind it, certain that I would be in plain view from the doorway but without any better options for a hiding spot. I pulled the hood of my cloak up and contorted myself to be as squished down as possible just as the door opened.


    The two that had been carrying the carpet before came in, and then stood at attention. That was it, they just... stood there. The windowless room was lit by an oil lamp, and I was thankful for the extra shadows. I waited, desperately hoping they would leave or at least say something interesting, and I could feel my muscles seizing up. It felt like an hour, though I had to admit it was probably only ten or fifteen minutes before something happened.


    General Telen, in his sinister plate mail armor, appeared in the center of the carpet.


    The soldiers saluted, and then one opened the door and headed out. Telen followed, and the other rolled the carpet up and brought up the rear - closing the door behind him. I unfolded noisily, shoving against the potted plant and generally being as un-stealthy as I''ve ever been. I had pins and needles all over and a full-on cramp in one leg from staying in that position too long, and it took me at least a minute to stand up. I went to slide the potted plant back into position and heard something through the wall.


    There was a gap at the very top of the wall, where the ceiling beams were. The beams continued from one room to the next, but the wall itself stopped when it hit them. That meant that between each beam there was a small opening. Steady light shone through, in contrast to the flickering light of the oil lamp in the room I was in. Probably a magic light, like they''d had at the hospital. I stood on the pot and hopped up, grabbing the top of the wall and pulling myself a little higher - I still couldn''t see, but I could actually make out words now.


    "- appreciate your discretion in this matter." I didn''t recognize the voice.


    "Yes," Telen said, "I understand how precarious your position is. With your soldiers occupied, and increased taxation to support the war... I know that your people are not pleased."


    "The Endless Empire spreads propaganda, hoping that we will switch allegiance. But any fool knows they are taxing their own people just as badly. What they are not suggesting, General, is that we transfer allegiance to your mad king."


    There was a pause, and a clink as if someone had put a cup down on a saucer.


    "And yet you meet with me," Telen said. He sounded friendly, like this was a normal conversation for him. "A risky move. Halenvar is an old and proud kingdom, but you are of course correct - none are looking to align with us. The king is not mad, as you think, but I did not come here to convince you of that. I came to appeal to you as an individual."


    "Everything I do, I do for Handoleren."


    My arms were going numb - it was the same problem as hiding behind the potted plant, I just couldn''t keep it up for long without my muscles getting wrecked.


    "Yes, yes, of course. I respect that, Gerand. I do. But you will not be the governor of this city much longer, one way or another. Halenvar will rule this continent after the Alignment, despite this week''s... events. And if by some miracle we should fail, the toll will still be too great. The people will blame you for the ones that don''t come home again. For the Empire soldiers you''re forced to allow passage through your city. For a hundred little things. And that is without the Empire making a move on this city. There is no path forward that keeps you in power."


    The other voice - the governor, apparently, tried to match Telen''s calm. "Oh, I don''t know about that. My problems would all go away if the war ended."


    "Ah, is that why you poisoned my tea? I must say, it''s an interesting flavor."


    "I don''t know what you mean," the governor said, his already shaky job at sounding relaxed noticeably cracking, "You are a guest, and I would never -"


    "Oh, stop." Telen laughed, "It''s fine, I assumed you would try to kill me. You''re a smart man, and you saw an opportunity. I''m not angry. But I will get what I came for. The sigil sequence for the teleportation room in Patic Keep. I know you know it."


    "I can''t."


    "You can."


    "I won''t, then," the governor said, some resolve finally creeping into his voice.


    There was silence for a moment, and the sound of a spoon clinking against a tea cup. Finally Telen spoke, still sounding unbothered. "In addition to the two soldiers that you''re aware of, I also have the loyalty of one of your guards. As we speak, they are rounding up everyone in this building. In a moment I''m going to order the young man just outside this door to give the signal, and they''ll begin killing everyone. One at a time. I hear your oldest daughter just accepted a position as scribe under your guidance. What a pity."


    I dropped down as quietly as I could, massaging my arms. They hadn''t looked in the room - was that because they weren''t really rounding everyone up, or because they assumed it was still empty? He said someone was just outside, that would mean they''d have been watching the hallway and would have good reason to think nobody was in this room. It also meant that I couldn''t leave. There was no window in this room to climb out of to safety. Only the one door. No magic, no chance of fighting my way out. I would have to just wait and hide until they were done murdering everyone.


    I looked up at the oil lantern hanging in the middle of the ceiling. I had a very, very stupid idea.


    I didn''t want to kill myself or give away my position, so after carefully sliding the potted plant over to the far wall I began pouring the lamp oil through the gap at the top. I wasn''t sure what room was on the other side, but I didn''t hear anyone in there and from the quality of the light I was sure there was a window. The plan, if it could be called that, was to start a fire such that smoke would billow out and alert people. If the citizens rushed to help it might disrupt the plan to murder everyone, and then they would hopefully get the fire put out before I burned to death. At the very least I could make a run for it once the fire was going.


    The fire lit right away, but I couldn''t see how fast it was spreading. Some of the smoke was channeled by the ceiling beams right into the room with me, but there was a slight angle towards the center of the building which meant a lot of it headed elsewhere. I heard a soft ¡°whumph¡± sound, and flames jumped into view in a spot further along the wall - something very flammable had just lit. A lot of smoke was starting to get in, and the paint on the wall was turning black. I heard boots stomping past in the hallway, and then the flames leapt up again ¨C presumably due to a door being thrown open.


    "The sigils, Gerand!" Telen''s voice was coming from the room I''d lit on fire, and he was yelling over the crackling flames.


    "Never!"


    "Careful," Telen said, "the edges of your clothes are looking singed." The governor demanded to be put down, his voice cracking in his panic. "No. I''m going to hold you here, like roasting a sausage over a campfire. This stunt likely saved your people for now, but if you don''t tell me what I want to know I will hunt down your children. Not just your oldest daughter. I will kill all of them, Gerand. How old is Sela now? Is she two, yet?"


    I needed magic. I needed to know how to fight. I needed to be able to do something useful. The world had always been a scary place, so I didn''t care about the asshole in armor that looked like it was right out of a cheap fantasy movie. In fact, in a lot of ways it was an upgrade - on Earth the things that made my life harder were a lot of normal people with shitty attitudes, or the government as a whole, or apathy. Having a clearly evil guy was an improvement because it meant you could just stab him.


    Except I couldn''t.


    Yet.


    The heat was too much, and the smoke was getting there too. I slipped out the door, and when I looked to see if Telen was watching I saw he wasn''t there at all. A man - governor Gerand, presumably - was laying on the floor in the hallway. Without his head. I ran into another room, climbed out the window, and dropped down from the edge of the roof. Some people tried to stop me, but I slipped between them and sprinted off into the crowd.

 CHAPTER 012: Windmills of Your Mind

    Telen must have been standing in the hallway, holding Gerand through the open doorway. But he was gone now, leaving only the headless corpse. Everything drifted in reverse.


    I was listening to them yell over the crackling flames, and the smoke was getting to be too much.


    "The sigils, Gerand!" Telen''s voice was coming from the room I''d lit on fire, or the hallway just outside.


    "Never!" Gerand''s voice was quieter, harder to hear. He demanded to be put down, and Telen said he was going to roast him over a campfire like a marshmallow.


    No. That wasn''t right. "I''m going to hold you here, like roasting a sausage over a campfire." That was it. The memory continued. "I will kill all of them, Gerand. How old is Sela now? Is she two, yet?" I stumbled down from the potted plant, desperate to get away from the smoke. Dropping down a few feet helped, and I gasped at the relatively clean air. I was frustrated, angry, powerless. I reached for the door...


    "How old is Sela now? Is she two, yet?" I stumbled down from the potted plant, and the whole room seemed to dim. The heat radiating off the wall, the smell of the smoke, the soreness of my arms - everything faded to the background. Could I still hear them talking? Maybe. A muffled sound of voices, but no distinct words. I reached for the door. Was that chocolate milkshake I tasted? Everything drifted in reverse.


    I heard someone coming up and had to scramble to get out of sight. The room I picked was the one with the carpet, though it had been rolled out revealing the runes. I was still worried people were coming and there was no window, no furniture other than an enormous potted plant. I headed towards the plant...


    The carpet was rolled out there in the center of the room, covered in those runes. I turned away from it to look for a hiding spot. I walked in and looked down at the carpet, rolled out in front of me. I could see the runes clearly. I started to look up, and looked down at the carpet as I walked into the room. The memory began to loop so quickly that it was a single frozen moment in time, just me staring down at the carpet. I hung there, forever, caught in a single endless moment. And then like a soap bubble it just... popped.


    I gasped and sat up, looking around the room. Hugh was talking to a woman in a very expensive-looking outfit, and there were guards at the door, but I could tell we were still at the Bloody Boar. Slowly my mind began to realign and I got my bearings again. The pinched-face man sitting next to me turned towards the woman.


    "Shail, I have finished. Unfortunately the young lady did not hear Gerand''s final moments and so we cannot confirm whether or not he revealed the sigil sequence. She did, however, get a good look at Telen''s sequence which I have written down for you. I don''t know if he will re-use this same one, but it''s worth a try. Other than that, I can only say that her description of events was accurate."


    If I hadn''t been trying to keep Earth a secret, I would have asked the guy to take me back to a memory of eating a three meat pizza. In fact, the idea of taking memory magic when I had the chance was really tempting if it meant I could re-live just the good parts of Earth at will. Pinched-face guy shot me a funny look - sympathy? Pity? And then pulled that woman away from Hugh. Yeah, no. Whatever this was about I needed to hear it. I hurried behind the privacy screen as if I was going to use the chamber pot, and then dropped to the floor and wiggled under the bed. From there I was exposed for a moment as I scooted across the narrow gap before Hugh''s bed, but then I was underneath and close enough to hear what was being said.


    "- only what I was told to, but I didn''t need to pry to see the... inconsistency. I don''t know if it''s trauma or state secrets or something else, but I''d like the chance to do a more thorough examination."


    "No, I''m sorry." the woman replied, "She''s under the protection of the Endless Empire, if she knows something they want kept secret we can''t risk angering them right now. The war will be over soon, and we want things to go back to the old quiet trade agreement. They could sweep up half our cities as they march troops home if they really wanted to."


    Pinched-face guy sounded annoyed. "She needs professional intervention. There''s maintenance that needs to -"


    "No. That''s final. Now... wait, where did she go?"


    I waited a moment while they walked towards where I had been sitting, then came out the other side of the bed and quickly laid down on it. It would be suspicious as hell, but I''d rather be suspicious while sitting calmly in a bed than get caught wiggling out from under one. Sure enough, I got some narrowed eyes glaring at me but they ended up not saying anything about it. So he''d seen some inconsistencies, had he? Probably got a look at Earth for a second, or felt my brain thinking in an Earthy way or something. I''d been remembering other times I broke into places; could he pick up on memories of memories? Either way, it sounded like he thought I was crazy or something. Fair enough.


    Another guard came into the room, and after some meaningful glances and nods he cleared his throat and began speaking. "All of the staff are accounted for. One of the clerks was killed prior to the fire starting when he attempted to raise the alarm, and all of the guards were killed."


    "All of them?" I asked. The guard looked at me and then at the important-looking woman whose name I still hadn''t caught. Started with an ¡®S¡¯, whatever it was. She nodded.


    "Yes, miss. All of them. One of them may have assisted in the attack, though it''s not clear if he was willing or being coerced. In any case, his body was found in the main entry. There was no sign of anyone else, and the only person seen leaving was a young woman who jumped from the second story roof." He again glanced at me, and then the other woman. She nodded again. "One of the clerks is writing up the full details including names, how long they had worked for the city, and anything else that could be relevant. I''d like to allow them to go home, they''ve been through a lot and they all vouch for each other."


    The woman nodded. "Yes, of course. As soon as we have the list of names you can release them."


    And with that, they all filed out - Hugh included. I considered trying to quietly follow them and listen in more, but I was exhausted and smelled like smoke so instead I ordered a bath. At the Bloody Boar they didn''t lug tubs into the rooms, so instead the proprietor - the one with the same nose ring and slightly odd way of speaking as Hugh - led me to a room with two big copper tubs and an actual faucet. The water came out smelling a little like rotten eggs, but it wasn''t bad once I got used to it and it was at least nice and hot. I was just getting in when the door opened and I had to scramble to cover myself.


    "It''s only me!" Katrin chirped, and started getting undressed. I wasn''t sure how to react, so I just hurried and got in my tub. She climbed into the one next to me a moment later and sighed as she sank in as far as possible. "Oh, that''s wonderful. Thank you for ordering baths."


    "Yeah. No problem." I almost made a comment about not realizing I wouldn''t be alone, but I bit my tongue. I liked Katrin, and I didn''t really mind sharing the room. It wasn''t as if I was particularly prudish or anything, I had just been caught off guard.


    "While you were arranging the bath I tried to check in with Hugh, but he was busy. The little bit I overheard sounded like he''s going to need to go to the battlefield for some reason. I''m not sure why he would need to go in person. I guess something went really well for us and Halenvar is panicking? But I don''t really know what that means in practical terms."


    Seeing an actual battlefield sounded more depressing than exciting. Still, I tried for a moment to psych myself up for it before realizing Hugh wouldn''t take me out of the way and put me in danger. "Wait, so is he going to have us just stay here? Or go on our own?"


    Katrin frowned. "Lady Harlowe was saying something about an escort, I assume that''s for us. Well, for you."


    This is a good thing, the voice in my head told me. And it was right. I''d been getting too attached. I''d been treating Hugh like a friend or something, and he was just a babysitter. A case worker. He was just someone that had been paid to deliver me somewhere. And yeah, he seemed like an okay guy - but in the end it was a job. He was another person that was going to drop me off somewhere and tell me I''d be safe there and then leave. Now the new person would introduce themselves, and either act like I was a nuisance or try to pretend to be friendly with me. Either way one of us would feel exhausted by the whole thing.


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    "Yeah, fuck that," I said, "I''m sneaking out in the morning. I''ll find my own way."


    "And are you going to abandon me, like you did this afternoon?" The closest I''d heard Katrin come to angry was being mildly snarky with her brother, and even then it was obviously affectionate. But this sounded... bitter.


    "Wait, what? When did I abandon you?" And since when was that a problem if I did? But I bit my tongue on that part.


    "You saw the men from Halenvar, and you didn''t tell me what was going on. You just left."


    "That¡¯s..." I sighed. A little too loudly. "I didn''t even know if they were really what I thought they were."


    "And you didn''t ask me. Maybe I would have known."


    "Yeah? And if you''d known, would you have let me sneak in there?"


    Katrin hesitated at that one. "I don''t know. Maybe. At the very least I could have run for Hugh while you snuck in, and you wouldn''t have had to light the building on fire and almost burn to death or get skewered by that monster! I could have kept watch, or caused a distraction, or if you had been caught I could have told someone where you were. I could have helped!"


    I''d been enjoying Katrin''s company the last few days, but I didn''t tend to make efforts to learn more about people. I hadn''t asked about her childhood, or what happened to her parents, or anything like that. I only knew the little tidbits she had volunteered, or the things that were obvious. She loved her brother but felt like she had to be the grown-up one sometimes when he got wrapped up in his obsessions. She wanted to be the best mage in the world someday. She was not just willing but actually excited to leave her home behind and travel with some strangers. She liked mushrooms almost as much as Hugh, and seemed to really enjoy trying to help me learn magic.


    Considering the fact that I''d barely talked to anyone else for days that wasn''t a lot. That''s the kind of stuff I could have learned the first afternoon. "Listen. I... I''m not great at this. I don''t have friends. I have people that I don''t hate, and that I can work with to get something done. Even then, they usually end up fucking me over or something. I just... you know, you said you knew magic and I wanted to learn and... I don''t know. I wasn''t thinking of this as being friends. You wanted to get out of that town because of those guys, and that happened because Errod was trying... badly but heroically... to help me, and presumably it''s dangerous to just head out on foot over that kind of distance. But you''re here now, so. I mean, you can stay here."


    Katrin had her eyes closed, and despite her sounding annoyed a moment before she looked completely calm. "Well that''s not true. I have a very good memory, you know. When we showed up and I realized my brother had completely misinterpreted whatever you said to him the night before, I apologized for the misunderstanding and said we were going to leave. You stopped us. You wanted us to come, and I hadn''t mentioned magic yet."


    She was right. Part of me insisted it was just that I had wanted to learn more about the Van Halen logo, but I could remember being particularly emotional that morning and getting all wispy thinking about siblings going on an adventure and... fine. Sure. "So what, you want to come with me? Hugh won''t be around to train Errod, and I don''t think I''m going to be able to get you into the Duminere at Theramas. I don''t even really know who it is that sent for me."


    That got her attention. She sat up, eyes wide, and just stared at me like I''d grown another head. "You don''t know? How could you not know? Didn''t you say it was an influential relative?"


    Fuck it. "I lied. Like I said, I don''t do the friend thing very well. But I mean... either you''re coming with me just for the hell of it or we''re probably never going to see each other again after this so... yeah, I don''t have any clue who it is. They sent a letter, and the bracelet translator thing, and Hugh. And the letter was just signed ''me'' so that doesn''t help."


    She looked absolutely incredulous. "And you just went with him? Just like that? Doesn''t that feel kind of insane?"


    "Katrin, that letter was maybe the fifth most insane thing I was dealing with at the time. I''d just been teleported from... somewhere ridiculously far away, and I don''t know how or why. I''d almost died, from the teleport and allergies and something in the water my body wasn''t ready for. I''d never dealt with magic or monsters in my whole life, not once."


    Okay, that was all true. But now... now I was in a warm bath talking to someone that seemingly wanted to be my actual friend and I wasn''t in danger of dying and I''d accepted that I was somehow in the world from the Jake Ross books. I could take a minute. "I guess the letter is pretty strange, and there''s one part that I think might - just might - be contradicting the rest. I suppose I don''t need to even go there, not really. But if it''s legit then I''d be passing up money and probably an invite to the Duminere. That''s what it''s implying, anyway."


    "Well, what do you want to do? Errod is... he''s probably delusional, he''s never going to be the greatest swordsman in the world or whatever. But he knows what he wants, and he''s going for it. I''m probably not going to be the best spellcaster without some kind of help, which is why I''m willing to risk locking myself out of wild magic if I get into a Duminere and I''m stuck with a dud. You... I''m not clear on. You want magic, I know that. And you kept training with Hugh, like you wanted to be able to fight. But what''s the goal? Do you need whoever wrote the letter to get there?"


    "I want to survive, mainly. This place is so different from Arizona and I need to have some way to get by. Money and magic is what the letter promised, and that would do it. But as far as actual goals? What I want to do? I read these books telling the story of the same guy Errod was talking about, the ''savior of Brinkmar'', though it sounds like they weren''t super accurate. And I... I''m not going to be that guy, because sometimes I don''t even care about people at all and sometimes I even... I know you heard me mention Hugh and I having a run-in with Halenvar soldiers, but I didn''t mention that I killed two of them, and at my age and not being a soldier or anything I know my mom would say it''s fucked up that it didn''t bother me. But it didn''t. And thinking about that, and those books, and then me being there with Telen telling that guy he was going to hunt down his kids?


    "I''m not the hero type like Errod but if I can find villains, or monsters, or something like that... if it''s obvious enough then I don''t need to actually care, right? It doesn''t matter if I can''t feel the right feelings sometimes because being a good person would just mean stopping the monsters. That''s what this place is going to do for me. That''s the opportunity. If you kill the villain, you''re the hero. Period. Nobody even needs to know that you''re not capable of..." Oversharing, Calliope. "Anyway, I want to help people in a way that doesn''t mean I have to do... difficult social stuff. I get bored helping people in normal everyday ways, if I remember to do it at all. But I could kill someone like Telen. And I guess, whatever else needs to be done. I could kill monsters or whatever, be a sort of bounty hunter but try to pick jobs that make people like me."


    I glanced over at Katrin, and she was just looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. She didn''t seem to be bothered by my rambling. After a minute she just said "Okay".


    That''s it? I mention I want to kill people because it''s too hard to be a good person in normal ways and that''s all she says? "Sorry, what do you mean by ''okay''?"


    "I mean... Okay. Let''s stick together for now. You do the ugly parts, the breaking into places and stabbing people and other questionable but justified things, and Errod can do the parts where you have to talk to people and care about their feelings, and I can make sure the two of you don''t get yourselves killed. Like a team."


    "Why? We don''t even know each other very well, we''ve known each other a few days and I just told you I''m bad at giving a shit about people - yourself included."


    "Sure. But killing monsters is supposed to help you build your mana reserves, and I get a good vibe from you, and I''d rather hang out with someone that does the right thing even though they don''t really care than someone that just assumes everything they do is the right thing by virtue of them wanting to do it."


    We sat in silence for a few minutes. "I''ve been lying to you about Arizona. But. It''s strange and you''re going to think I''m crazy so I''d rather ease you into it. It''s... pretty fucking wild shit."


    Katrin smiled, and closed her eyes again. "Okay. We can keep some secrets for now."


    As expected, Hugh made vague references to something he urgently needed to do in response to the security breach and the new - surprisingly positive - developments in the war with Halenvar. He introduced me to my new keeper, and made it clear I was supposed to listen to him and stay with him. I was no longer going to Theramas, I was being picked up by soldiers from the Empire that would be rushing there by the next morning.


    I awkwardly shook Hugh''s hand, and watched as he rode away on his moskar. The new keeper was a bored-looking young man named Thonas which was frankly a stupid name, and it turned out that it was a fitting one because Thonas was about as smart as a bag of hammers. It took us less than five minutes to ditch him, sending him off across the city for red gallasberries which we not only didn''t need but which I had made up on the spot.


    "Okay, we weren''t supposed to be leaving until tomorrow so we need to convince the stablehand to get our moskar ready without them telling anyone - assuming Hugh didn''t already sell them. Do you think Thonas already talked to the stablehand?"


    Errod shrugged. "Probably not, but Hugh might have. Does he know you well enough to suspect you would run off? If so, he might have deliberately told them not to let you go."


    That sounded pretty plausible. I was nervous, but when we turned the corner our moskar were already out - saddled and waiting. There was a note pinned to the bag on mine, and I wasn''t totally surprised when I saw its contents:


    "Be good. -Hugh"

 CHAPTER 013: One Question Answered, Twelve More Raised

    "No it''s like..." of course there wasn''t a word for it. "It''s a fruit, very sweet but also very acidic."


    Errod continued to idly dig through his bag to disguise the fact that he was really watching for Milanata Hurst to leave her workshop. "And it goes well with the sauce and cheese?"


    "Well that''s the debate," I said, swirling a hand in the fountain, "I like it with ham. Oh that translated, good. If you have ham you have bacon."


    "Of course we have bacon. If we find the right ingredients can you make me pizza?"


    "Maybe. I always bought it from somewhere. And ''tomato'' isn''t translating, so I''m not hopeful for the sauce. Okay, your turn."


    Katrin wandered by, making her seventh loop around the block, and flashed a thumbs-up. Still no guards or anything. There were a lot of guards in Theramas, and they looked like they took their jobs seriously.


    Errod got a wistful look on his face. "Well speaking of sauces¡­ a merchant came from a city on the ocean when we were little, and they had this amazing stuff. It''s just like... fish and salt and some spices and you put it in a barrel for three months until the fish turns into goo, and you strain out the bones and things. And it''s so good. We bought like four bottles of it, and when we were down to the last one we made it last for like a year."


    "That sounds absolutely vile." I felt sure we didn''t do anything like that on Earth.


    Theramas was gorgeous. The buildings weren''t anything too impressive - mostly two or three stories, they were all very square and made from some kind of pale green stone. But the wide streets all had these willowy trees with leaves that were shiny on one side so that even a gentle breeze would set them sparkling, and the alleyways were clean and hung with colorful flags - I''d assumed there was some kind of festival, but it seemed the flags were just a normal part of the city''s decorations. There was no rhyme or reason to the shape, size, or color of the flags as far as I could tell; there had been one little side street that had a hundred tiny square blue flags of various shades, and another that had a few large triangular flags of jarring reds and greens.


    There were public fountains where I saw people just hanging out doing laundry, and a huge marketplace of tents every bit as colorful as the flags. There was also one square that had a colossal orrery with one huge jagged rocky chunk in the center and thirty-six colorful rings orbiting it at artistic angles. Katrin had said it was showing the alignment of the planes - apparently depending on the day some varying number of planes were in alignment with the world and with each other, each having its own cycle.


    The smallest ring was for the regular world where we already were and acted as a clock, and then the next plane was aligned every second day. The slowest was aligned in whatever metaphysical way once every one thousand two hundred eighty-three and one-third years - and that was the local year that took four hundred and thirty-two days. That had only happened a few times in recorded history, of course, but one was coming up in a few years and was apparently what made this count as the "Grand Alignment" Hugh had mentioned. Only two planes wouldn''t be lined up.


    I hadn''t bothered trying to get too much more information about the planes out of Katrin, but it was on my to-do list for if we ever got to a library or something. For now we were low on funds, having spent what little Hugh left us with the moskar to stable them. We could sell them, but that would trap us in the city and I wasn''t sure yet if I wanted that. Instead the plan was to try and follow a hunch I had, and then make my decision based on where that did or didn''t lead.


    The fort I was supposed to be heading to was up on a hill just as the letter promised, though I couldn''t see much more than the walls and one tower sticking up. There were other hills, however, and so after getting past the guards at the gate - makeup smeared on my face to darken it and my hair tucked away just in case they had a drawing of me or something - the first thing I had done was ask if one was called "monster''s hill". It was. Fucking bingo.


    I''d noticed it right away when I read the letter, but it was hard to be sure if I was right. The last paragraph had started with "I know right now only half of this at best makes sense" and while I thought it might not be anything it certainly seemed possible that reading every second line was providing me with alternate instructions:


    "I know right now only half of this at best makes sense. Sorry. Just stick with Hugh for now and don''t mention Earth. If you get a chance later to sneak off and explore, watch out for monsters hill in Theramas. Once you''re there and safe we can find someone to make a statue of you or at least set you up with a place to live. I can''t say more here but it''s all going to be great. Trust Hugh. But not too much. Keep the bracelet on; removing it will mean that Hugh and the other people he''s working with will find you quickly. Hang in there. This is going to be awesome, I can''t wait to see you."


    Monster''s Hill being a real thing virtually guaranteed I was right, as those two words had been on different lines. More specifically it was the name of a street that ran up one of the hills, and ten minutes of after finding it we''d ended up at a little square with a fountain. One of the shops was a studio for a sculptor named Milanata Hurst, and statues were on display out front. In the window there was a sign advertising a room for rent. It couldn''t be a coincidence.


    Errod was of the opinion that since the message had been hidden there was no need for another layer of security and I should just go in and ask Hurst what was going on, breaking and entering being against his poorly-defined code of knightly morals. Katrin sided with me, however, once I pointed out that just because there was a secret message that didn''t mean these guys were better. Hell, it was possible Lord Protector Hammersmith was fantastic and Hurst was a serial killer who slipped a secret message in so she could get a chance to kill me before I could get to the safety of the fort.


    So we waited, and talked about favorite foods, and eventually Milanata left her workshop. She was a pleasant-looking woman, some gray snaking through her black curls and dried bits of clay or something speckled over her clothes. She was smiling to herself and humming, and turned around three times before finally getting on her way - once to take off her apron, once to retrieve a bag, and once to close and lock the door.


    The lock didn''t worry me at all, since I''d already gotten a look at the locks in this world. I was pretty sure I could pick any of them within seconds if I had had lock picks, and without the proper tools it would still be a matter of minutes. I''d whittled down some sticks while we traveled, and absurd as it seemed I was sure that was all I would need. We waited another moment to make sure she wasn''t coming right back, and then I walked to the door and took a closer look. There was no lock. "Oh are you kidding me? Come on."


    Or maybe there was a lock, but I couldn''t figure it out. The door looked like it opened outwards, but the stone of the doorway blocked it in one spot. It didn''t look like that stone could slide or anything though. There were windows, but going that way would be too obvious to anyone walking by. Instead... well, there''s a reason doors normally open inward. Working as quickly as I could to loosen them, I popped the hinge pins and swung the door open the wrong way - it almost fell down, but I was able to slip through and push it back into place.


    There were pots, and vases, and even some statues along the back wall. I had assumed that she would just focus on one thing, mass produce them or something, but as I looked around I saw examples of virtually everything. Even the simplest of the pots was somehow just... pleasing to look at. Something about the way it curved, and the little lip around the top. It was the kind of thing that looks plain but also looks like something you''d see in a rich person''s house. And the statues...


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    As I approached, I thought I was seeing things. They were hyper-realistic, with clothing that seemed to hang there like real fabric and bodies so perfectly formed I thought I could see muscles under the skin. And one of them was of me, or some idealized version of me anyway. I had this smirk on my face, and a wicked-looking dagger in my hand, and for whatever reason a flower in the other. I was wearing my jeans from Earth, but my shirt was some strange style I''d never seen and I was wearing ridiculously cool boots. I vowed immediately to find those boots in real life.


    I wasn''t sure what to make of it. Had she been magically spying on me? Was it some sort of voodoo doll? Was I some kind of hero of prophesy? I didn''t know enough about magic yet, it seemed possible that there were a million explanations - dreams, remote viewing, some intuition-based thing, looking into the future. It could be anything. With great effort I pulled my eyes away and started searching through the workshop. I was hoping for paperwork, or a secret chest with a book labeled ''Master Plan''.


    I found receipts for stone, and a shopping list, and when I finally located a book hidden away under some plates it was a romance novel. I was sure there had to be something else, and that''s when I realized there would need to be a whole other workshop somewhere. I wasn''t totally clear on what you used to make pots and sculptures and all the other things around the room, but I wasn''t finding any tools. There was a lot of stone, some clay, and finished products, but no... pottery wheel or kiln or chisels. Was this a storage room rather than an actual workshop?


    Before I had a chance to figure it out, I heard Errod screaming in pain outside. It was a little over the top, but bad acting was probably safer than being too subtle in cases like this. I headed for the back window, and found that contrary to my assumptions there was no latch. It couldn''t open, even from the inside. I went to the next window, and the next. They were all the same. If Errod was already making a fuss, the front door would be in plain view of whoever he was distracting - and I didn''t want to run past because I couldn''t trust Errod to keep up and it would be too obvious we were together. I watched the door, trying to decide if it was better to just hope the danger passed, or hide, or risk busting out a window. And then I heard a noise, and turned to see Milanata Hurst standing behind me despite the door never opening.


    She didn¡¯t even seem to notice me at first, just putting down her bag and scratching at an itch. When she finally realized I was standing there she jumped straight up in the air. "Callie! You terrified me! What are you doing here? I thought you were locked in a room with the Lord Protector making secret plans and things."


    It wasn''t surprising she recognized me, I''d already seen the statue. So, she assumed I''d gone to Hammersmith already. But what kind of plans would I be making? "No, I''m out getting lunch." The excuse sounded incredibly weak to me, but Milanata just nodded.


    "Well, it''s nice to see you. Oh, did you come for the letter? Callie, I''m sorry, I forget what I''m supposed to ask before I give it to you. I''m terrible. I don''t know why anyone would trust me with this kind of thing."


    It sounded like there was supposed to be another verification question, like when Hugh asked me about the name of my dog. "It''s fine, you can just give it to me."


    "You want it now?"


    "Yes please."


    She walked over to the statue of me, and casually pulled the chest open. It had been a finished, stone statue but suddenly the area around where she had touched it looked wet and soft. Digging around for a moment, she pulled out a scroll sealed with wax and handed it to me before turning back and sealing up the statue, leaving it totally unmarred and solid once more. That would explain the lack of tools, at least.


    "Perfect, thank you."


    "No problem, dear. Can I get you a drink?"


    "Sure, some water would be lovely."


    As soon as she walked away I tore the scroll open and unrolled it. It was written in English, other than the first line which said "Hammersmith: Milanata doesn''t know shit, leave her alone." Huh. The rest was clearly for me.


    "Good job reading the letter right. I was under some pressure writing it and it was the best I could do. I wasn''t even sure I was going to be able to get this letter in place before you got here, so you very well might have arrived at Mila''s shop and not know why. We''re flying by the seat of our pants here.


    If all goes well, I will be eating lunch at the Cheese Cave most days in the private dining room. Meet me there at first bell (that''s an hour after noon, not sure what you''ve figured out yet). I''m still not able to put much in writing but I can tell you in person.


    If things have gone very wrong and you think I can''t get to you, there''s a bag of money and some supplies hidden inside a fake rock I had Mila make. Go out the North gate, walk like a mile down the road until you see a dead tree. It''s ten paces East of that, you should be able to tell which one it is so just smash it open. If there hasn''t been an emergency and you''re thinking of just grabbing the money and running, remember that if you actually don''t trust me it could be that rock is filled with poison gas or something. So either you don''t trust me and you should leave it alone, or you do trust me and you should just come see me.


    Mila doesn''t really know what''s going on, so you won''t be able to learn anything from her. That being said, if you''re going to stay in Theramas she''s a great landlord and will probably give you a good deal. I don''t think they''ll be looking for you too hard, just leave the bracelet on because it has an anti-scrying enchantment that will work if the two of us are close enough to each other.


    Come see me. You''ll get to have a cool adventure to find a lost treasure vault and we''ll get rich and powerful without having to do what the Empire or anyone else says. It''s going to be awesome, unless you''re reading this more than six months after you arrived in which case that expedition might have already left.


    --Me."


    I rolled the scroll back up and tucked it away just as Milanata returned with water. "Thanks," I said. "Was there anything else other than the letter?"


    She looked at me like I was crazy. "No, dear. That was it. Is that alright? Did I do okay?"


    "I... yeah. Yeah, you did great." She seemed uncertain, and I decided that the letter was probably telling the truth when it said she didn''t know what was going on. I told her to have a great day and she told me to not be a stranger and stop by again soon, and I headed out. I awkwardly fixed the door, which amazingly Mila didn''t comment on.


    Errod was pacing. "Are you okay? I acted like I''d twisted my ankle, but then I didn''t see you come out and..."


    Katrin came running from the alley. "I whistled to Errod when I saw her coming, but then she looked confused like she''d walked up to the wrong side of the building by mistake and she just... she just opened the wall."


    "That''s so fucking cool. Anyway it was fine, there was a letter and it said to meet whoever it is a place called the Cheese Cave. There''s a map sketched here. Sixth bell chimed before we even found Monster''s Hill, right? It''s got to be close to first bell now." As we walked I told them about the fake rock, and made them promise to carefully check it out if I didn''t come back. First bell rung before Mila''s studio was even out of sight, and on top of that the map was shitty. We did eventually eventually arrive at the Cheese Cave, which appropriately enough was a restaurant in a basement. I said my goodbyes just in case, and headed inside.


    It was one of those rare days where I felt somewhat balanced, not overly emotional or devoid of feeling. I was nervous, and excited, and a hundred other things - but also was just muted enough to keep it all hidden. As I approached the host he did a double take, and then hurried into a side room. An older woman came out a moment later, and winked at me. "Follow me, please."


    We headed past some tables down a short hallway, and then she pulled open a massive and ancient-looking door made from six inch thick planks of wood. Passing through what was surely the restaurant''s namesake, I stared at the shelves stacked with cheese wheels. At the end of the room, set into the rough stone walls, there was a smaller door that the woman opened and gestured me towards. I couldn''t see much because of the angle, but it was clearly a little private dining room and I could hear the clink of silverware on a plate. Taking a deep breath, I stepped inside as the woman closed the door behind me.


    I was already inside though, sitting at the table. Myself, but... cooler, and with longer hair. She grinned, the same smirk I''d seen on the statue, and spoke to me in English. "Man, have I been eager to see the look on my face for this. Come on, younger me. Have a seat, this is going to get weird."

 CHAPTER 014: Realitys First Draft

    "Most of the food on this side of the Endless Empire is like... appetizer platters," the older version of me said, still looking deeply amused at my shock and discomfort. "And that''s great, but this place has some really good steak and stuff, so it''s nice for variety. I know you''re holding a knife under the table. I''m not going to hurt you or anything, and also... not to be a dick about it but if we got in a fight you''d be fucked."


    I kept my hand on the knife. "How do I know that you''re me, and not... hmm. I guess a shape-shifting mind reader is a bit much."


    She leaned closer, looking excited. "Oh no, that''s totally a thing. Shape-shifters are the Klunlesh, real fuckers. One tried to take my place once, I think. But in this case, it would be someone using enhancement magic like a plastic surgeon, because the Klunlesh can''t read your mind without murdering you in the process. So one person would be the mind reader, and the other would mold their features to look like us. It would probably work, but that''s not what''s happening here."


    "That wasn''t very reassuring."


    She grinned. "I know. Sorry. It''s just really cool to see me like this. Man, I am jealous as fuck right now. I''ve had a... just a really bad time. I didn''t have that bracelet, so I didn''t speak the language and had to be terrified of eating anything. They eventually got someone out to fix that and then I ran away, made it down to Yallowsben on my own. But even without the allergies I was getting sick all the time.


    "Medical care is free in theory, they make people agree to some number of years of service as healers or whatever other job if they get magic from the Dumineres - you know about that, right? Good. But I wasn''t a citizen and also Yallowsben just kinda sucks. Anyway, I made it to here and got a room with Mila that I shared with some friends I''d made. But... they got murdered, and the guards found me standing over their bodies covered in blood which obviously didn''t look good.


    "Got put on trial, obviously, and they pulled out this guy that could magically force you to tell the truth which I was all in favor of except they started asking more questions than they needed to. Like, this is simple. Did you kill those guys? Do you know who did? No? Okay great, have a good day, sorry your roommates got gutted because they ran into some spies. Uh. I didn''t know the spy part at the time. I mean I''m only kinda sure now."


    There was a knock on the door, and the woman from before brought in a plate for me with a huge steak and some of the broccoli-like vegetables. The second the door shut I tried to get a word in, since older me - if that''s who she was - hadn''t really stopped to take a breath. "Okay so. Wait. What the fuck is going on. There''s time travel now?"


    "I''m getting to that. There''s... there are magical contracts here. And I''m not allowed to talk about much, that''s why I couldn''t put anything in the letter. But in person... I''m..." she took a deep breath and stared ahead, not really looking at me but sort of through me, "I''m just talking to myself. There''s nobody in this room that isn''t me. So that''s fine, that doesn''t break the terms of the contract, see?"


    Well that seemed like a very obscure loophole.


    She focused back on me, and smiled. "Anyway, I''m starting with the easy stuff that isn''t really restricted. Some of the other parts might be hard for me to say. And I guess none of this part matters, since it''s not going to happen the same way for you - it''s already different, obviously. Anyway. They asked - at the trial, I mean - where I was from and I said Arizona. And they asked where that was, and I was trying to beat around the bush so I just said... shit I skipped part. This is fucking wild. Brinkmar, from the Jake Ross books, is absolutely a real place. I''ve even..." She hesitated and closed her eyes, clearly having to force the words out. "I''ve been there. Briefly."


    I felt a wave of jealousy wash over me. "Oh man. I have to go. I heard it was real - and by the way, what the hell? How is that possible? How does the timing work out if... wait, is this a time travel thing?"


    She looked uncomfortable. "Maybe? Officially time travel isn''t possible. And what I did, it was... different. It''s complicated. I can travel back in time though, a teeny bit, and even that''s not supposed to work. But when it comes to Brinkmar there''s something... ugh. Contract shit. I can say it, it just feels... bad. And it''s not the point right now. Let me back up, and do the less sensitive stuff first.


    "So they ask where Arizona is, and still trying to avoid mentioning Earth too specifically I tell them it''s in the same country the ''savior of Brinkmar'' came from. Not the best way to avoid awkward follow-up questions, but it''s better than diving right into Earth stuff - or so I thought. But it turns out that the Eternal Empire is very interested in getting into Brinkmar, and now they want to talk to me.


    "Hammersmith is heading up this multi-nation task force to deal with problems related to the Grand Alignment - you''ve heard about it? Good. Okay so in about seven hundred days there''s going to be a huge natural disaster along with a bunch of crazy magic users doing big arcane shit they otherwise would never be able to pull off. And not surprisingly, some of them are fascist assholes or mad scientists or people trying to become demigods. Oh hey, I''ve met a demigod, I''m scheduled to go see him again tomorrow which is... Sorry, I shouldn''t have said that, I know that just raises other questions. Back to the thing.


    "At any rate, Halenvar is supposed to be part of this task force but it becomes clear they''re using the resources to pull their own bullshit, and when they get called out they start attacking other countries to steal or destroy some ancient magic stuff. And one of the main targets is any of the old gateways into Brinkmar."


    I waved to stop her. "Wait. You need a gateway to get into Brinkmar?"


    "Oh! Yeah, sorry. It''s not here. Brinkmar is another plane, it''s this little side dimension that''s just a big island floating on a sea of mercury. Well, not mercury, but that''s kinda what it looks like. The other planes all have their own weird things, different laws of physics and shit. Some are easier to get to than others, and Brinkmar is locked down magically. Even with the gateways they need someone special to open them, but Halenvar has that because they were Brinkmar''s main ally before it went to shit like thirteen hundred years ago."


    I was still a little unclear on the timeline for Brinkmar stuff, but I let it slide for now.


    "Anyway," she continued, "they drag me to a gateway and it lights up. Presumably this is because I''m from the same place as Jake Ross, who I suppose is a real person from Earth. I couldn''t open it, because in addition to needing an authorized person you need to wait for the plane to be in alignment. So they made me sign a contract, and I demanded to get to stay in Theramas rather than getting locked in a secure facility somewhere and made them promise to let me go no questions asked and pay me a bunch of money once I got them into Brinkmar. And it... kinda worked. It didn''t go as well as I''d hoped. But the good news is that Hammersmith is all about respecting promises and shit, and after I showed up here again half dead - I''m getting to that - I was able to negotiate some allowances based on the old contract. I didn''t manage to convince them that they had to let me go, but they paid me and they agreed to let me stay here even though honestly they should absolutely be hiding me in a secret base on another plane or something."


    Something felt off about my doppelganger. She was a little manic, and her eyes were getting watery for some reason. She''d seemed so cool and collected when I walked in, but I was starting to wonder if this older version of me was barely hanging on. "Okay," I said, "I''ve got the part leading up to Hammersmith and I know you end up back here but it''s only sort of time travel. But also you can time travel some, even though it''s impossible. It feels like I''m missing a pretty big part in the middle. Oh! And! Did you destroy a secret laboratory? Uh. Some guy named Ulren?"


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    "Yes! Holy shit, how did you know that part?" She leaned back, looking at me as if I was the strange one. "That''s one of the main things I was struggling to tell you, what the hell?"


    "You said in the letter people might be looking for me. Well guess what? Hugh and I got attacked, I had to get stabby. And the tracker guy mentioned Ulren''s lab when he was interrogating me, right before Telen told him to kill me. Man, I really want to hurt that motherfucker. Not the tracker, he''s dead. Telen. The second time I ran into him he was threatening to kill a toddler."


    "Wait. Stop, back that up. You ''ran into'' Telen twice and you''re not dead?"


    "Well, the tracker did a deliberately shitty job killing me so he could... I dunno. I think it was fifty-fifty wanting me to die slowly and wanting me to live so he could poke at my brain more. And then the other time Telen was in the next room and I was just eavesdropping, he never actually saw me. I mean we were briefly in the same room, because when he teleported in I was hiding behind a potted plant, but... hey, you okay?"


    My doppelganger nodded, eyes wide. "Yeah. Sorry I almost got you killed? Don''t... don''t be in the same city as that guy again if you can avoid it, okay?"


    "That''s going to make it hard to stab him in the eye," I said, and then saw the look on her face. "Kidding! Jesus. You''re... what, two years older than me and you''re going to give me the talk about being safe? Anyway, since I already know about the lab can you... elaborate?"


    "Probably. Some. Eat your food though, it''s getting cold. And it''s really fucking good." She leaned in again, grinning. "It''s dinosaur."


    "Oh shit, yeah, I rode on one! I have one, in the stable!"


    "A moskar? Yeah, same basic idea. Not quite the same animal though, moskar count as monsters technically because they can use mana to run way further without stopping than a normal critter would. This is a cousin, but it doesn''t have magic so it would be categorized as a beast."


    I took a bite. It was heaven. "Oh my god. This is so much better than the meat I''ve been eating. I don''t even know what animal it is, they just label it as red or white. Or gray, at one place, but I didn''t try that."


    She was smiling in a bad way. Like I was the butt of a joke. Oh no. No. What had I been eating?


    "Do I want to know?" I asked, and she just snickered. "Jesus. Okay, let me have it."


    "Red, white, and gray meat - gray is like seafood, by the way - isn''t an animal. Or... it kind of is? They''re just... big meat things with no brains. Like magically engineered animals that just sit there and spasm all day, there''s no eyes or legs or anything. Just twitching lumps that you carve bits off of and cook."


    "Wait so... okay that''s..." Huh. I was having some very complicated feelings. "That''s super strange and gross and horrible but also... probably better? Right? I mean, from an animal rights kinda view, not that I ever really cared. I mean if there''s no brain it can''t be in pain really so... Hmm."


    "Yeah, it''s a strange one. Hugh is the one who told me about it, while I was literally slung over his shoulder trying to bite him. He was dragging me back one of the times I escaped, I think he really enjoyed our little fights. You mentioned him, is he here somewhere? When did you ditch him?"


    "Hugh, yeah. He saved my life a few times, seemed pretty cool. He had to bail at Handoleren after the governor got beheaded by Telen. But he left us the moskar when he wasn''t supposed to, so really rather than us ditching him he helped us ditch his replacement."


    "I knew Hugh was a fucking softie, but he must have really liked you. I''m glad I could get them to send him. He''s technically retired and technically doesn''t answer to anyone in this place since he''s actually from the kingdom of Erathik which is up on the other side of the Free states. Anyway, it''s my fault he had to leave. Also, I guess, that the governor got beheaded? I brought back intel from... let''s just call it the old timeline. It''s been a little less than three weeks - sorry, that''s fantasyland time, six days a week here - and already the shit I''ve told them has completely changed the war. Halenvar is royally fucked, they''re getting thrashed. But they''re still going to need my help to get into Brinkmar and clear out Gilbrecht Halenvar and the troops he has there.


    "He''s a fucking nut. Just an absolute batshit crazy fucker. He... hmm. Yeah. I can say this. No details, I''ll give you those later. The contract is... uncomfortable... with this whole situation, but you already know some and like I said I''m kinda just talking to myself. It''s hard because I''m also trying to break the contract in another way, and the logic conflicts some. Anyway. Short version, Halenvar is fucking with leftover magic stuff from the Old Empire, the one that took over almost the whole known world for ages. But this shit is locked up in vaults in Brinkmar reserved for super dangerous world-ending stuff, which is why the queen of Brinkmar never used them probably. It''s possible these were also what Thanatos - er, Tantek really, they changed his name for the Jake Ross books - was fucking with.


    "But also, maybe, there''s a religious angle? Like there''s this one cult that thinks existence was a mistake, and some people think he''s into that shit? I don''t know about that. I think he really just wanted to take over and got help from them out of convenience. But he also got help from that Ulren guy, who made a thing to bust into the vaults. And then Ulren also started playing with the doomsday devices because he was a classic mad scientist. A lot of this stuff I only know the basics, when I ended up working for the task force thing, sorta-kinda against my will, I was more involved in the Ulren part and in trying to convince them that time travel was possible - or at least that Ulren thought it was."


    She sighed. "There''s too much. I''ll... try and tell you more detail tomorrow. No, the next day. Tomorrow is my demigod meeting. Maybe I can get away for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow or... Anyway. Some people went to stop Halenvar, and I went with another team to stop Ulren, and I guess that first team fucked up or something and the world kinda sorta ended and I kinda sorta fixed it? I think I was supposed to go back in time, like all these coincidences were lining up to... anyway. I did it but not how I think the universe expected me to. I know I sound crazy, and I think I am a little crazy, but I also think I''m right. I''ve been having memory problems, even before almost getting aged to death - I''ll get to that later - and so maybe I''m imagining things and the universe wasn''t trying to make me fuck with time. But there are forces, semi-intelligent forces, that try to keep this world working. And it''s possible some of them were messing with me, maybe to help keep the world from ending. Or to cause it, fuck, I don''t know."


    That sense that she was on the edge was back. Like she was on drugs, or sleep deprived and manic, or... something. I wanted to give her a break from this topic, but I had one question that really needed asking. "Is the world going to end again?"


    "No! No. I fixed that. I mean, not the part where I actually fixed the world, that''s... a whole thing. I mean that Ulren, this new timeline''s version of Ulren, is dead. And he hadn''t made the device that would get Halenvar into the place they keep the doomsday shit, and the war is about to end really early because of all the intel I brought back, and I''ll still let the task force guys into Brinkmar when it comes into alignment so they can clean the place out. It''s fine. End of the world averted. No leftover problems or loose ends.


    "Hammersmith is trying to keep me here, and I need to figure that out. This has sucked for me. I got magic, but had to get it with strings attached and then they made me train in a really miserable way and I''ve been stuck in Theramas practically the whole time. But she doesn''t have her claws in you. You haven''t agreed to shit. That means you get to have what I didn''t - you get to just relax and go on an adventure and enjoy being in a world of magic and stuff. One of the things I haven''t told anyone is that there''s a Duminere that was found in my timeline that''s lost still at this point. If we can get there first you can get magic with no strings attached, whichever abilities you want. I have the notes from the expedition, and we can start planning right away - just us and some guides and stuff."


    She still looked mildly... off. But it sounded like she''d been stuck with a lot of extremely tense shit and a lot of responsibility, and that''s not really how I thrive. Plus she hadn''t had the bracelet and had been stuck in one place butting heads with authority figures which is guaranteed to make me lose my shit. "Okay. Cool. Good. But uh... I made some friends? I guess? And they''re not really experienced but if possible I''d like to bring them along if that''s okay."


    My doppelganger arched an eyebrow at me. "Wow, yeah. You work fast, we aren''t the friend type normally and you''ve been traveling this whole time."


    "Hah. Yeah, well Errod and Katrin are -"


    She flailed, and the chair tipped over backwards with her in it. I heard her head smack against the stone floor, but she shot up to her feet with remarkable speed. "Who? Shit, they''re here? They''re alive? Oh my god! Go! Go take Errod''s shitty sword away before he stabs himself! Holy fuck! I have to go in a minute anyway, Hammersmith''s goons are going to come to collect me if I take too long but just... you hold on to those two, and for the love of god don''t let them get murdered in an alley this time!"

 CHAPTER 015: Stress Fractures

    I told Errod and Katrin we were staying for a while, but couldn''t bring myself to try and explain the details yet - especially in public. We headed back to the stables to sell the moskar, since at this point if anything went wrong it was likely I would just get snatched up by Hammersmith anyway, and then started the hike back to Mila''s studio.


    "It''s fine. You can stop looking at me like that." The world might have ended, briefly, I don''t have details. It probably won''t end again. You guys were also murdered, but that probably won''t happen again either. How do I know? Oh, haha, yeah it''s just my paradox clone from the future or something. No big deal.


    Katrin''s face scrunched up. "It''s just that you look sort of... stunned. Like when Errod walked in on our neighbors having sex when he was seven."


    Errod shuddered. "I ran out so fast, but then kept trying to think back and count the legs and..."


    "It''s not that specific kind of shocking. Do you have fortune tellers here? People that look into the future?"


    "Yes," Katrin said hesitantly, "but they''re not particularly reliable if you ask them anything about yourself. Or if you ask about something too far in the future."


    "There''s certain things they seem confident on," Errod added, "and then other things they''ll tell you it''s impossible to know, but they''re bad at explaining what the difference is between them. One was passing through Yallowsben right after I had my vision of the future and Katrin paid them to tell me I was crazy -"


    "Not crazy!" she interjected, "Just... incorrect."


    "...And they tried to read my future and then just handed the money back and left. So that didn''t really help with our argument. Katrin took it to mean they just didn''t want to hurt my feelings, and I took it to mean they saw something so important they didn''t want to risk changing it by telling me."


    I paused for a moment to give my legs a break - Phoenix was extremely flat, and the hills here were getting to me - and thought about how to word this part. "Okay. So. Imagine a fortune teller told you that some horrible stuff was going to happen, like had been basically certain, but now it''s changed and so everything should be fine. But the stuff was extremely bad, and very specific, so you still don''t feel great about it."


    Errod put one hand on my shoulder and the other on his sword, brow creasing in genuine concern. "Callie, I''m so sorry. I can imagine that might be disturbing. But you''re fine, we won''t let anything happen to you."


    As if I thought Errod could protect me from anything. "Yeah that''s sweet and all, but it was actually about you guys." I started walking again. I noticed after a moment they weren''t with me anymore, but just as I was about to stop I heard the sound of feet on cobblestones and they caught up. It was their turn to look sort of stunned, and the rest of the trip was made in silence.


    Mila seemed excited about us renting the room above her studio, although getting the details hammered out was a bit difficult. At first it seemed she had forgotten we hadn''t given her any money yet - which Errod ruined for us by reminding her - and then she couldn''t find the key. Eventually that was located in a bowl of nuts, but she took the whole bowl out of the studio and around to the stairs and then had to hand it off to Katrin to dig through it again. She seemed surprised to see the apartment was furnished, which made us all worried that someone was already renting it and she''d just forgotten, but after a moment she recalled taking the furniture in trade for decorating the front of someone''s building.


    Discussion of the rent turned into a job interview somehow, and it was agreed that until they found other work Katrin and Errod would help Mila haul her artwork to clients. When I realized she was talking about delivering via some merchant teleportation network I was extremely jealous, but I didn''t believe for a moment that Hammersmith wouldn''t have people watching for me - technically older me - to escape. I''d realized that while sneaking into the city in disguise had worked, sneaking out would probably require a lot more effort.


    "Well that''s it then," Mila chirped, "I''ll get out of your way and let you settle in. Do you like pastries? I always get a dozen for breakfast, it''s more than I need but I tend to put them down somewhere after only taking a bite, and it''s just easier to have a whole tray. I can bring you some in the morning. Oh! I forgot to ever get lunch! I was heading out, and then forgot to bring that little stone frog I''d made for Kel, and when I came back you were in my studio and I must have just gotten distracted. I''d forget to breathe if I hadn''t made such a habit of it. Don''t worry though dear, I remember the plan."


    "Which plan?" I asked, but Mila just winked and said "exactly!" and turned to leave. Katrin got her attention and handed her the bowl of nuts back.


    "Oh! These are my favorite! Thank you dear, you shouldn''t have! Oh, and I almost forgot. Here''s the key! I have some extra copies in one of the floor tiles I think, but it may take me a while to find them. When I get around to it I''ll bring you up two more." She handed me the key and left, and I found myself staring at it through building tears.


    I fumbled my pouch out and dug through, finding one of the few things I''d brought with me from Earth - a little house-shaped keychain. It was a few weeks late, but I was finally getting my apartment. There was a loopy-bit at the end of the key that I could just barely get the keychain ring around, and I looked at it with pride. Mr. Bagmaw, a regular at the hardware store I''d been working at, had given it to me when he heard I was getting an apartment. He was a nice old guy, always working on some random project. I didn''t know him well enough to miss him, exactly, but it was a reminder that Earth wasn''t all shitty.


    "God, it''s going to be so nice to have a toilet. I mean, I''ve had to go without plenty of times but traveling on moskar for days without a good -" and then I was dragged into the middle of the apartment, presumably to be as far from windows and potential prying ears as possible. Katrin and Errod were staring at me, a little too intensely.


    "Okay! Yeah, I get it. Um. So, I met my mysterious benefactor and she has... knowledge of the future. Because she''s from there. The future. She''s. She''s me but two years older, or she''s a shape-shifter playing a trick on me. I''ve been thinking of questions I can ask to confirm, but the thing is if she''s not me she already must be a mind reader or something so it''s hard. And you guys are still just staring at me.


    "Uh... yeah, so she was involved in trying to stop some people from fucking around with dangerous magic during the Grand Alignment, and I guess something went wrong and the world almost ended and instead she landed back here? But she has assured me that the world won''t end that way again because she killed one of the key guys - like, killed him here in our time, which is why Halenvar soldiers attacked me by the way - and so we''re safe. Also, speaking of safe, there is no reason to believe you two will be... murdered in an alley. This time around. Yay?"


    They started to ask questions at the same time. Did I know why they were murdered, or by who? Was time travel a thing people could do? Had she mentioned something called the Lever of Ages? That last question started a bit of a fight, because Katrin dismissed it as just a story and Errod pointed out that lacking any non-story things to go off of it couldn''t hurt to ask.


    "I have to agree with Errod on that one, until I met you guys I thought Brinkmar was just a story. But no, she didn''t mention that. She did say she could time travel a tiny bit but we didn''t get around to what that meant, and she also said the other thing wasn''t technically time travel for some reason. Also, no she didn''t say who killed you but I guess she suspects it was some spies of some sort? It was a lot, and I was late to the meeting, and she was really eager for me to go back to you guys and hug you and take away Errod''s sword. I didn''t tell her he cut off his toe, but I don''t think she would be surprised."


    Errod started to protest, and then stopped. "Wait. Wouldn''t she know about that already? You said this was you from the future."


    "Oh. Yeah, but not me-me. This one never got a letter, so she didn''t do things the same way or at the same time."


    Katrin raised an eyebrow. "But she still met us? You only met Errod because you went into a specific alley at a specific time, and even then you both might have died if Hugh hadn''t shown up. But she wouldn''t have been there, and Hugh wouldn''t have been there, so... how would she have known us?"


    It was a fair question. "I assume for the same reason - it wasn''t the mugging that really got us together, it was me seeing the symbol on Errod''s vest. It''s not that crazy. Yallowsben isn''t a huge city, she could have just bumped into him. Plus, it sounds like she would have been in pretty rough shape and Errod is too nice to not help people in need. Anyway, she''s under some magical contract that''s making it hard to go into detail, I guess she''s trying to break it by convincing herself I count as her but it''s still... chafing. As I was leaving she yelled at me to try meeting her at sixth bell this evening, but she may or may not be there. We can make a list of questions. If I don''t see her tonight I probably won''t see her tomorrow, she''s... going to see a demigod?"


    This turned out to be the equivalent of saying you were going to meet a billionaire on Earth. Not something most people ever do, but also not some mind-blowing event. The translation was a little questionable as there were apparently gods - I filed that away as a thing to worry about later - and demigods had nothing to do with them. They were just... ridiculously powerful people. Normally, there was a practical limit to how much you could do. You could be the magical equivalent of an Olympic athlete, but you''d still be human.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Over thousands of years, however, there had been a number of people that had done something exceedingly clever or risky and become more than human. They''d turned into a spirit thing, or a golem, or a hive mind, or just made themselves invulnerable to everything. While Katrin didn''t know details, she was under the impression it always required some special circumstances that were just as likely to get you killed, which was the main reason everyone didn''t just run out and become immortal. The Grand Alignment was of course going to be a prime opportunity for people that had some sort of plan.


    "So are these guys in charge of everything? Why haven''t I heard more about them? Unless - oh, the Clockmaker was one, right?"


    Errod shook his head, but Katrin shrugged. "Probably not? The stories say he kept himself human, but with all his magical devices it wasn''t a matter of power. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that there''s some sort of council of demigods and once you qualify you either have to join or the Hunter eats you - although that''s also what parents say will happen if you don''t eat your vegetables. Either way, the Clockmaker supposedly made sure he just barely didn''t qualify. They probably also like that he made the Dumineres, since having a Dumine limits what kind of magic you can use. I assume that limited the competition."


    "Oh, speaking of!" I said, eager to share the good news, "We''re for sure going to get you guys into a Duminere, and you won''t even need to promise to work for the Empire or anything. She knows where one is that''s been lost, so we''re just going to go there."


    Errod''s face paled. "Callie, that''s... the reason the Free States or the Coastal Alliance exist is because you can''t form a nation without access to a Duminere, so they had to cooperate. The other cities get to send a certain number of citizens, and the city with the Duminere can call on them to help protect them. Because otherwise, the Empire or Erathik or Markonti - some other larger nation - would immediately swoop in and take it. This is... extremely dangerous knowledge."


    "But extremely valuable, right? I don''t think she''s planning on trying to keep it for herself. In the letter she didn''t specifically say it was a Duminere - probably didn''t want to put that in writing - but she said we''d be rich. So I assume after using it we''re going to sell its location to someone. Magic, and shitloads of money. We''ll be set. And if it''s the kind of money you''re implying it will be, you guys can get a cut for coming along and you''ll be rich too. We''ll have won at life and just be able to relax forever... I mean, assuming she''s right that the world isn''t going to end."


    Katrin sat down to make a list of questions I needed to ask while Errod and I went shopping. The apartment had just one bedroom with two beds, and they were fully enclosed boxes you climbed into and then slid shut. We used a little of the money left over from the moskar to get a third so nobody would need to get awkwardly close, as well as some cooking supplies and some food. After a short nap to test the new bed, it was time to try and see my doppelganger again for dinner.


    The host was distracted when I entered, so I just slipped past and headed to the private dining room. It wasn''t until I was in the cheese room with all the shelves, about to open the door, that I realized someone else might be in there. I hesitated, and then heard my own voice - sounding angry - coming from behind as the door I''d come through a moment before swung open. I ducked between the shelves and crouched on the bottom of one where there wasn''t currently any cheese.


    "We don''t need to talk," my doppelganger snapped over her shoulder, "I get it. You don''t want me to leave the fort more than once a day. I''ll do it this time, but for the record I''m staying there as a courtesy. The contract says I can leave."


    "Are you meeting someone here?" a voice asked. She sounded calm, authoritative. I couldn''t get a good look, but I counted eight boots.


    "I''m getting dinner. I figured going to the same place I get lunch would make you happy, since Bert and Ernie already know where it is. But fuck it, if you want to get me takeout I''ll go back to the fort and sit in my cell." She sounded... petulant. It was honestly a little embarrassing.


    "Your cell? Calliope," the woman sighed, "your room is quite nice. I could move you to that conference room you seem to like, but I assumed you''d prefer having windows. You could even take my room, if that''s what you want, but I can''t just have you.... one moment, you''ve got me being careless again. Rylan, will you make sure this is a private conversation?"


    There was a pause, and then a man said "Nobody else in this chamber, or the private dining room beyond. I''ve been blocking any eavesdropping since we entered." That was interesting news. Whatever the guy was doing, he didn''t seem to be able to detect me. Doppel-me had said the bracelet would keep me from being watched if we were near each other, but I wasn''t clear on how it worked.


    "Very good," the woman said. "Betrad, you can stand guard outside. Thank you." She paused and waited for one pair of boots to leave, and then spoke again. "I''m doing my best to keep the promises that were made to you, but they were not made by me. Not really. They were made by some other version of me that has since been utterly destroyed. Right now we still need you, and for the sake of the whole world that means limiting your freedom. I know how you hate this. I do. And I know that you have already done much for the cause. But in four and a half months Brinkmar will be in alignment and we can end this."


    My older self stepped into view, and I could see her eyes were red. She was clenching her fists so tightly she had to be close to drawing blood with her fingernails. A moment later the other speaker stepped up and I almost gasped and gave myself away when I saw her metallic silver skin. Also, frankly, even without that I probably would have been a little floored by her, since she was maybe the most intimidating woman I''d ever seen. She - Hammersmith, I assumed - was broad-shouldered and had the kind of muscles I''d only seen in movies. She was wearing a uniform that was clearly tailored to her specifically, and a thin cape - both were a deep, vibrant blue fabric with silver trim. She looked like a super hero, and I suspected that she could have put Hugh through a wall just as easily as he had launched those normal soldiers.


    Doppel-me turned to face her. "What do you think I''m going to do? Run away? You''ve made sure I''ll die if I do that, since you won''t let me wear the rig outside. Is holding my life over my head not enough of a threat?"


    Hammersmith said, a bit condescendingly, "That device is dangerous and you know it, especially since you''ve insisted on modifying it. We don''t keep it in the fortress to control you, we keep it there so there''s no risk of you killing everyone in this restaurant by mistake. And we keep you in the fortress so you''re not assassinated. We captured the tracker Halenvar sent after you, and according to the report I received another died after almost killing your... sister... but we know there was a third that''s unaccounted for. For all we know they''ve since captured and killed your twin, since we can''t seem to locate her. Are you not worried about that?"


    "You don''t give a shit about her, don''t pretend that you do. And you know that Halenvar is already fucked. You just want into Brinkmar so you can take its treasures for yourself, maybe control the crossroads, maybe get your hands on whatever it is Halenvar is after that he thinks will let him take over the continent."


    "You seem certain the threat has passed, but with the world on the line I don''t think we can afford to take chances. Is there pressure to secure Brinkmar for the Empire? Of course there is."


    There was a tiny squeak from the other person - Rylan, she''d said - who clearly didn''t expect her to admit that part.


    "But my priority has nothing to do with that," she continued, "I''m going there to stop Halenvar and make sure whatever old devices the Clockmaker left behind are securely locked up. If I hear so much as an idle musing from the other two Counselors about using the things in those vaults I''ll destroy every gateway into Brinkmar myself. I might do that anyway, just to be safe."


    Doppel-me just glared at her, fists still clenched.


    "Oh Calliope," Hammersmith said, "I can read your thoughts, they''re plastered all over your face. So paranoid. I''m not going to have you killed. It''s unlikely you would be able to open the gateway if you were being coerced, and I know you would never do it willingly after your obligation was fulfilled. I''ll destroy the gateways if I think that''s best, but even if I don''t then at most I would ask for a binding promise from you not to go back to Brinkmar. I know you hate being told what to do, but I''ve been more than fair. You wanted me to emergency transport a specific High Guardsman of Erathik to the middle of nowhere, and I did it. You wanted to be allowed to stay in Theramas and be able to wander the streets with limited supervision, I did it. You wanted compensation for a job that - at the time - I had no reason to believe ever happened, and which required me to believe some ridiculous claims, and I paid you.


    "We restored you to health when your organs repeatedly failed. We agreed to honor a contract some other version of me made in a past that has been undone. We took a risk and moved troops based on intelligence you provided that could have easily been some sort of trap implanted by Halenvar. I''ve even made promises about keeping all of this secret, including where you''re from. And you have been an immature, spiteful, selfish child about it. Why did you even help the first time around, if you care so little?"


    "Because I had to," came the reply. "I joined your stupid task force and studied and argued until you''d let me go in the Duminere so I could prove I wasn''t crazy about Ulren, and I had to fight you every step of the way even though I was fucking right! And I could care less about you or your shitty country, pretending you''re still the same empire the Clockmaker founded just like Halenvar and Markonti and all the others do. I only did it because I was going to die too. But this time there''s not going to be a planar collapse, we''re not all going to be sucked into Azaraze."


    "I''m glad you''re so confident," Hammersmith said. "What do you want to do, just run off and hope Halenvar isn''t coming after you? Hope they don''t find some other way to trigger the end of the world?"


    The other me was looking downright rabid. "What I want right now is to cut your throat."


    "You can surely try," Hammersmith said, and in a flash a dagger was swinging at her. I hadn''t even seen my double pull it out. The blade slammed into her neck, and barely caused her metallic skin to indent - it certainly didn''t look like it was in any danger of cutting her. "Do you feel better now? Did that help? I need you to keep it together. Four and half months isn''t that long. Come on."


    Hammersmith walked away, and doppel-me picked up a wheel of cheese and threw it. I heard a calm "Kel, make sure we pay the proprietor for that cheese" as they left, totally unconcerned by the tantrum. And it was a tantrum. I''ve always been basically immune to second-hand embarrassment, but nothing is quite the same as watching yourself flip out. The worst part is, I didn''t even agree with myself.


    I knew I would hate having to be under Hammersmith''s control. And I knew I was almost incapable of being stuck in one place for that long - not just the four months or whatever, but the time she''d been with them in the old timeline. Probably all told it was well over a year, I hadn''t stayed in one place for that long since I was seven - between being abandoned places, foster care, group homes, and running away repeatedly. So yeah, it wasn''t shocking that I was losing my shit. Still, it was painful to watch because... if the whole world ended didn''t we need to play it safe?


    But then, I had my whole life ahead of me. And it sounded like that might not be the case for my double.

 CHAPTER 016: Stranger Danger

    The next day Errod and Katrin were helping Mila take a gorgeous statue of a fish to someone in a city called Storm''s Anchor via the merchant-run teleportation circle. In theory any city could set one up, but you needed to coordinate between cities and have someone with the right magical skills. The government also required permits, and enforced them by way of runes all throughout the walls of the city that prevented the use of certain magic unless you knew the right runic sequence, like a password.


    Yallowsben presumably hadn''t had any such protections since its walls were patchwork and shoddy, but Theramas had been built properly and would also have a second layer on the walls around the fort so someone already in the city couldn''t teleport right into the fortress and bypass security. They also prevented a number of other things although Katrin hadn''t seemed to be confident on what. Passage into other planes, probably, and maybe some types of scrying although when Mila overheard us talking she said that sort of thing was tricky - there were a hundred ways to do it and you couldn''t prevent all of them, plus the stronger the connection the more likely they could punch through. So while you could stop someone from just randomly spying on people, if they had some pre-existing magical connection to a specific person the runes didn''t do shit.


    I helped them get the little cart down Monster''s Hill, which was terrifying - I kept imagining the heavy statue barreling down the street, knocking people aside like bowling pins. When we got closer to the merchant''s guild and its teleportation circle I said goodbye and wandered along the river that cut through Theramas, trying to distract myself from how jealous I felt. Errod and Katrin had tried to be calm about it, but neither had teleported before or seen the ocean so it was going to be an exciting day for them while I just wandered the long way back to the apartment and immediately got bored.


    I found myself reaching for my phone - I''d only done that a few times since arriving - and instead lounged around the apartment for a bit. I could feel my anxiety building. They weren''t coming back. They had tricked me, told me we were friends, and now they''d teleported somewhere and I was on my own. I knew why I was having the thoughts - thanks mom - but that didn''t make them go away. I remembered all the times I watched her tail lights vanish down the road knowing I''d been left behind, wondering if she would change her mind and come back or if I''d have to try and find my own way home, not sure if someone would call CPS as I trudged down the highway.


    I got up and gathered some things, but I deliberately left most of my stuff behind as a reminder to myself that I was not going to run away - that I could trust that my belongings would be there waiting for me and that this was, at least for now, a safe home. Heading to the main market square, I wandered and looked for the right kind of business. I didn''t want anything too respectable, but I didn''t want to go into a dangerous area either. Mildly shady was the target.


    Eventually I found what I wanted, a little side street that immediately made me want to keep a hand on my money pouch but which had enough people that I wasn''t worried I would mysteriously vanish. There were no city guards, unlike the main market, and where most of Theramas was clean, bright, and open this was a cramped little maze of worn tents and leaning kiosks, the buildings all just hollow shells made to be cleared out when the merchant wasn''t there to supervise. The lack of city guards didn''t mean there wasn''t protection; many of the shops had someone conspicuously leaning against a pillar sharpening a blade.


    I was impressed that even in what was clearly the "bad" part of the merchant district everyone looked healthy and mostly clean. I didn''t see anyone that was missing limbs or starving. Some people''s clothes were a bit old and had noticeable patches, but there''s a hell of a difference between patches and holes. Clearly the city was taking care of its citizens. Most of those citizens had dark hair and almost yellow skin, with very sharp cheekbones that contrasted strangely with their somewhat bulbous noses - as with everyone I''d seen it didn''t match any ethnicity on Earth - but Theramas had a wide variety of people and even being obviously foreign I suspected I didn''t stick out too badly. I even saw someone walk by with blue skin at one point, though I didn''t get a good enough look to guess at whether or not it was natural.


    I found what I was looking for and went up to the counter, looking at the cluttered shelves of fascinating junk behind them. I didn''t even know what half of it was. The proprietor mumbled a greeting, but didn''t look up from her book.


    "Hey. You''re buying?" I asked. She gestured to the counter, still fully engrossed in her reading, so I dumped my treasure out. Two rings, a fancy belt buckle, an ornate dagger, a Dumine, and a blue crystal on a leather cord. I was keeping the more utilitarian stuff, like the tent and cooking kit and canteens.


    The woman continued to ignore me for a moment, and then sighed and tucked a bookmark into place and finally deigned to examine what I was offering. She frowned when she saw the Dumine, and got an ornate silver rod out from under the counter. "Hold this," she said, and I hesitated. "I have to ask if you killed the person this is from, and once I''m doing that I should probably ask if you did anything illegal to get the rest of this stuff while I''m at it. Now that I''ve seen it I can''t let you go without at least asking that first part."


    Of course. What had I been thinking? I took hold of the rod. Presumably it was a lie detector thing, but I knew for important things they used an actual person which implied a device would be easier to trick. Even so, I wanted to keep it simple and as truthful as I could. "I heard his death was an accident, as far as I know that''s correct. He wasn''t a citizen of the Empire, and he didn''t die in the Empire. I didn''t get any of this stuff from within the Empire, in fact, and to the best of my knowledge I didn''t break any laws." After all, out between cities were there even laws? And it seemed like they just left bodies laying out in the wilderness, plus they were technically invaders since we had been in Free States territory. Hoping my ignorance would be enough, I let go of the rod as soon as I finished talking.


    The proprietor narrowed her eyes at me, then shrugged and put the rod away. "Okay. Let''s see what you''ve brought me, foreign girl." She pulled out a tray covered in tools, and laid them all out on the counter. She then slotted a thumb-sized metal stick into the side of the tray, and dumped the rings, belt buckle, and dagger on there. A faint glow appeared around one of the rings and the dagger, and she set them aside. For the other ring and the belt buckle, she took a jeweler''s loupe and examined them closely.


    "Okay. These two aren''t magic, and they''re not alchemical metals either. I can check the purity of the gold but from how soft the ring is I''d say it''s almost certainly completely pure and the stones appear to be diamond. I can still give you something for it, but there''s not a big market for cheap costume jewelry. The buckle is electrum with a little more than average copper, so that''s worth a bit more." She fished out two of the little triangular coins, an orange and a lime green. "The Dumine and the stabilized mana crystal have set prices around here in case you didn''t already know, so obviously I''ll give you that rate." She put the crystal in what looked like a scale and squinted at a number, then slid it and the Dumine closer to her and tossed down a yellow coin followed - reluctantly - by a red.


    I was a little thrown off by the idea that pure gold and diamonds weren''t valuable, but it was clear that they wanted alchemical metals and magic stuff. For all I knew people could just make gold with magic, and maybe the alloy was more valuable because they were harder to make? I considered trying to haggle, acting like I would take them elsewhere, but I wanted to see what she said about the magic items first. The coins she''d already set on the counter were worth about a thousand ''pins'', which was fifty-six bowls of Fantasyland Panda Express in Yallowsben or almost three months rent - though I got the impression our rent was cheap for what we were getting. She used a few of the other devices to examine the dagger and other ring, in a few cases taking that same thumb-sized metal stick and slotting it into them. I started to suspect it was a kind of battery. Finally she put everything down and looked at me with one eyebrow raised.


    "Listen. I don''t know who you got these from but if it was the same person that had the Dumine I''m glad he''s dead. I can''t sell either of these as-is. The ring is fully illegal in Theramas, if I''m reading it right it''s for helping someone with thought magic to push past mental resistances. You don''t need that on a willing target. The dagger is just made to cause more pain than it should, which isn''t illegal but it''s not something I''m likely to be able to sell easily. The good news is neither are made from volatile materials, so I can melt them down without having to pay someone to deal with the slag. Let''s say... two red and a yellow."


    That would be two hundred thirty-four pins. I was still trying to figure out the economy, but that felt disappointing for magic items. Then again, maybe magic stuff just wasn''t a big deal. I''d have to shop around more before deciding, get a better handle on pricing and see what materials are valuable - I couldn''t keep thinking of everything in terms of bowls of food. I shook my head, reaching out to grab my stuff, but the woman stopped me. She sighed, picked up the rod she''d made me hold, and said "The Clockmaker is my uncle."


    The end glowed red.


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    "This book I''m reading is absolute trash," she said, and the glow vanished. "I live on the moon," and the light was back. "This is a fair price all things considered, and if you go shopping around with a Dumine and a torture knife and an illegal mind-reading ring you''re probably going to end up getting hauled in to the city guards'' holding cells for questioning."


    No glow.


    She put the rod down, and shrugged. "Take it elsewhere if you want though, nothing here is getting my nipples hard. It just seemed like you could use the warning - call it my good deed for the day."


    "That''s really the best you can do?"


    "Of course not," the woman said as she picked up her book, "But it''s the best I''m going to do, and if you can find anyone that will do better by more than a couple blues I''ll be shocked." She started reading again as she waited for me to decide.


    "You could ask about trade," a voice said, and I almost jumped out of my skin. A man was standing just a few feet from me, hands held behind his back, a look of oblivious innocence on his face that would give even Errod a run for his money. "She''ll probably make you a deal on some of the items she''s had for a while, assuming there''s anything you want."


    "Thanks for the unsolicited advice, random stranger. I think I can handle this." Except, god damn it, checking out what she would trade was a thing I had been considering. And now if I said anything it would look like it was his idea, and I hated that for some reason.


    "Sorry," he said, "I didn''t mean to imply otherwise. But I''ll bet you lunch that I could pick out something you''d like."


    "Are you asking me out? Like no matter who wins one of us owes the other lunch now?"


    "I only said lunch, you could demand I get you takeaway. The deal wouldn''t specify we sit down somewhere and make eyes at each other."


    He was attractive, and not much older than me, but I generally wasn''t interested in dating anyone at the best of times and certainly not while I was in such a strange situation. Still. A free lunch was good, since really I should be using the money I was getting here to buy food anyway. The money from selling the moskar would only last so long, and I didn''t want to try and get a job yet. "Fine. You get one attempt."


    He walked around the shop, looking over the counter at the overloaded shelves and occasionally asking the proprietor questions. The place reminded me of the pawn shop I used to get food money from - I had some fond memories of dragging stolen office equipment down there when I was living at Universal Servicing Systems. Lunch-bet guy, who hadn''t bothered introducing himself, finally saw something that excited him and spent a moment whispering back and forth with the woman behind the counter.


    She took away a red, put down a yellow and an orange, and slapped down a pair of shoes on the counter. They looked like black leather moccasins, although oddly there was a dark metal cap on them - steel toe moccasins were a ridiculous concept. I thought about the change in coins for a moment, trying to get a rough idea of value in my mind, and then finally asked what the shoes were.


    "You have to try them on," the man said with a grin, and the woman rolled her eyes but nodded. I yanked off my boots and slid the shoes on, and then after some excited gestures from lunch bet I walked around the shop. Something was wrong. I walked a little more, stepping heavily. I didn''t hear anything. The sole was soft leather so that was to be expected to some extent, but the floors in the shop were wood and there had been hollow thumping and creaking before. I stomped as hard as I could, and heard a very faint footstep. Huh.


    "Oh mother fucker," I said, realizing that I had lost, "they''re perfect."


    I let Lunch Bet, as I was thinking of him, follow me back out into the twisting marketplace. I didn''t love that he knew I had a decent amount of cash on me, and had no intention of giving him an opportunity to steal it. Still, a bet was a bet and I really liked the shoes. "What''s with the metal toes?" I muttered, and he somehow heard me over the general din of people shopping.


    "Leather is a terrible material for magic items. That''s some kind of alchemical metal, something cheap probably, given the deal you got. Still, it looks like the leather is treated properly so it should last basically forever if you don''t do something stupid to it. No capacitor I''m sure, but I doubt the mana draw is bad."


    Hmm. Well, he was helpful anyway. I still wanted to ditch him, just on principle. I looked around for somewhere cheap and easy I could buy him lunch, and started walking towards the odd smells. "So what''s your name? Unless you want me to just keep calling you Lunch Bet."


    "That''s not bad as far as nicknames go," he said, "but I''ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Where''re you from?"


    The smell of cooking meat was mixed with another less pleasant smell, but I continued to follow it anyway. "Zoey," I said, for some reason picking the name of a bully from high school, "I''m from... all over, really. Most recently Storm Anchor. I brought a bunch of materials to an old friend in Ulthus and rather than paying me with money he dumped that garbage on me. Never doing business with that asshole again, that''s for sure. What about you?"


    "Is Ulthus nice? I''ve never been there, even though it''s fairly close."


    "It''s fine," I said as I tried to remember anything Hugh had mentioned. I''d only seen it from a distance. "The tower is neat. So you want me to stick with Lunch Bet?"


    He laughed. "You can call me Bet for short. I see we''re heading to the exotic animals section. Planning on eating some monster meat, hoping it will increase your mana or something?"


    From his tone I could tell it was teasing, and I remembered Katrin sounding skeptical when she talked about the things people would try to either increase their mana or train up their Dumine faster. Presumably eating monster meat wasn''t a method people took seriously. I remembered sitting in the Long Haul Hotel and watching infomercials all day, some of which were so ridiculously implausible that even as a nine year old I called bullshit.


    We arrived at a cul-de-sac where cages lined the walls, and I miserably failed at my attempts to not stare at the various creatures. A lot of them looked plausibly like Earth animals, albeit not ones I recognized specifically. But then there was the winged snake, and the thing that looked like a tiny three-headed deer, and the bipedal bright green porcupine guy. There were a few related businesses all clumped together, one clearly buying and selling the animals and one just offering mounted trophies, while another appeared to be dealing in random body parts that I assumed had some - real or imagined - medical or magical value.


    There was also a little cantina place, the pale green stone stained with grease and smoke residue. It looked like an absolute dive, but in my experience those places often had the best food. Well. The best or the worst, really, with little in-between. Still, I was willing to take the risk.


    The food on offer looked a lot like taquitos and were filled with more fat than meat, but they tasted amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed eating them while half-listening to Bet. He was telling me a joke about someone trying to cook some animal I''d never heard of and having trouble at every step, and I was increasingly convinced it was one of those jokes where the whole point was to drag it out for as long as possible and then have a really dumb punchline. I used the time instead to people watch.


    There was one interesting guy in particular that was arguing with someone at one of the shops right next to the doorway we were seated by. I had a clear shot to watch him, though I couldn''t make out what he was saying - he was gesturing to whatever he''d put on the counter and shaking his head, and it was causing the huge tangle of trophies or charms or whatever they were on his belt to shake around. There were strange horns or teeth, some tiny skulls, a glass vial with an eyeball in it. Honestly it looked super badass, but also a bit like a Halloween costume that was trying a little too hard.


    Finally the man seemed satisfied and stepped away from the counter, then slid some glasses on - it had earpieces but only one lens, and that was thick green glass. He carefully examined some of the critters in cages, sighed, and then turned to leave - and stopped, staring at me. Slowly, he reached down into a doctor''s bag and fished around before pulling out a large dagger made of some dull gray metal - it could have just been cheap steel, or iron, but I found myself wondering if it was instead some alchemical metal that didn''t exist on Earth - was it a magic knife? What would it do if it cut me? He began walking closer, very slowly - as if I couldn''t see him if he didn''t go too fast.


    I stood, almost knocking the table over, and grabbed a few of the taquito things as I moved towards the far exit - the cantina was at the edge of the cul-de-sac by an alley, meaning I could duck out that way and get a head start. Bet jumped up, looking at me quizzically and then almost immediately clocking the guy with the knife. "Hello friend!" he said cheerfully, stepping into the man''s path - and then sliding sideways to stay there as the stranger tried to go around. "I believe it''s illegal to wield a weapon in public like that, so -"


    "I know where you''re from!" the man yelled, pointing at me with the dagger. Bet grabbed the outstretched arm and deftly twisted, and I heard the clatter of a dagger hitting the ground as I bolted down the alley and found the fastest way back to a main street. I didn''t stop running, taking multiple turns and going in a circuitous route to make sure nobody could possibly be following me. After some time, as I got to a spot where I could easily head back to Monster''s Hill, I paused in a shop where I could watch the square I''d just passed through. Five minutes later, the man hadn''t appeared. I''d lost him.


    I walked out of the shop, turned towards Monster''s Hill, and there waiting for me was Bet. He smiled and waved like nothing was wrong, like it wasn''t at all strange that he was there after I spent twenty minutes weaving through the city. I slowly took a step backwards. He held up his hands in an "I surrender" gesture.


    "Listen, Calliope - "


    I ran, and this time I didn''t go back to Monster''s Hill until it was dark.

 CHAPTER 017: Illegal Loopholes

    I walked into the private room of the Cheese Cave, relieved to see it was just me and my double. She was leaned way back in her chair, legs up on the table, and she was wearing a silky blue and gold dress with her hair all done up. I''d never really worn anything fancy, and I was caught off guard by how good I could look. "Holy shit. You better not be hitting on me, because I am... surprisingly a teeny bit into it, but it also feels kinda fucked up."


    She winked at me, then laughed. "No, they made me wear this to go to my demigod appointment and I figured it was silly to only wear it in a basement. It''s not like I can wear it when we go on our expedition either so... ta-dah! So, you... wait. What''s wrong. That''s our ''I fucked up'' face."


    I sat down, biting my lip. "Um. I fucked up. I guess. I don''t know, maybe I should have just stayed in the apartment. I''ve tried not to look too much like... well, you, but that only works from a distance anyway since we''re clearly not from around here and kinda stand out. I don''t know if it was that or if they scryed on me or what, but I got made. Someone I ran into yesterday, I didn''t think much of it, he just seemed like some guy, but then this other asshole - unrelated - said he knew I was from Earth and -"


    "Wait. He mentioned Earth? Seriously?"


    I thought back. "Not by name? But he focused right in on me and said he knew where I was from. Is Earth something people know about here?"


    "Not so far as I can tell," she said, "I ended up with some access to miscellaneous strange news stories in the old timeline, I was digging through them for the Grand Alignment task force and helping to look for anything they might need to keep an eye on. And there was one mention of something that sounded like they knew about Earth and wanted to visit to sample plants of all things, can you imagine? But they were in Steel Tooth which was right on the border of Halenvar''s territory and got burned down during the war. I don''t remember when, it''s possible it hasn''t happened yet. But either way that was an outlier, I don''t think people in general know about it." As before, her slightly manic energy had her giving much more answer than I needed.


    "Well anyway, he looked like he wanted to stab me and the other guy, the one that seemed like he wanted to hang out or take me on a date or something - he got in the asshole''s way and I ran. But then a few miles later there he was waiting for me - the nicer one, not the asshole - and he called me Calliope."


    "I assume that''s not the name you used?" she asked.


    "No, I told him I was Zoey."


    "Ugh, why her? The one that called us goat licker? What did that even mean? When did we say anything that remotely involved goats around her?"


    "Right? But if we''d asked it would have just made it worse."


    She sighed. "Okay. Uh. Was he a kinda handsome, kinda charming guy? About my age, little scar under his ear?"


    "Sounds right. I don''t know if I''m remembering the scar for real or just because you said it. But he was telling this really long bad joke," I started, only to have her almost fall down as she righted her chair to point at me.


    "Yes! The cooking one that goes on for an hour and then at the end it turns out the animal is still alive and biting him? Ugh. Okay, that''s Bert - as opposed to Ernie. Those two fuckers are my handlers, and also bodyguards for Hammersmith. Their actual names are Betrad and Kern. Bert is... eh. He''s not an asshole like Kern at least." She looked up at the ceiling, thoughtful. "He must have tried to track me for some reason? They keep tabs on me when I''m here for lunch, because they''ve learned it''s not worth the trouble caused by trying to stand right at my side. Really they hover like one street over. Normally that bracelet should keep you from being detected by shunting everything to me - It''s not a trick they saw coming because nobody but us could possibly use it - but with me off in Sentortzi if he checked it would have pinged off of you. I just don''t know why he even did that.


    "Too late to worry about it. Okay. So at this point, assume they''re watching you. There''s no chance he didn''t figure out where you''re staying. It''s fine. I was looking forward to talking to you about how Dumineres work and what kinds of powers you can get and stuff and if they haven''t interrupted us yet I don''t see why we can''t still do some of that. That way when I get Hammersmith to let you into the one here you know what deals it''s worth taking - hopefully for helping her with my secret project I can''t tell you about they''ll let you in for free, but she''s a stickler for rules so you might have to sign up for a few years of service or something."


    Okay, it was clear she didn''t want to talk about the lost Duminere right now, or anything she supposedly was bound by her contract for. I was surprised she was worried considering we were speaking English, but for all I knew someone had copied the bracelet somehow before sending it off or they had some other magic that would translate things. "Yeah, I was going to ask what the easiest jobs she''d be likely to let me have are. I assume there are some more in demand than others?"


    She looked relieved that I had gotten the message. "They always want healers, for obvious reasons, and one of the gifts - they call them gifts most places, just not in Erathik where Hugh is from because those guys never liked the Old Empire - one of the gifts is good for healing and for growing crops which they like too. Generally anything that makes or changes matter is good shit, and if you get three - which I assume you will because I did - you could make alchemical metals which means if there''s nothing better to do you can literally make money."


    I''d figured that the money was alchemical metal, it made at least as much sense as coins made from gold. As she was talking, she pulled a folded-up tarp out of a bag and started writing on it. I decided not to call attention to it. "Okay so speaking of. What did you get?"


    "I had to get Comprehension, which most people think of as the thing that lets you learn magic better but really is about language and understanding in general. Magic is all about shared understanding, in fact the most important thing is what''s called the Common Local Understanding. So you know how a biscuit in the United States and a biscuit in England are two different things? If I wanted to I could make a spell that specifically targets biscuits. But if I tried to cast it in England, well, it would target cookies. The new kind of magic - new being thousands of years old - has some sort of guiding entity that helps with that shit so there''s no linguistic drift, but it still has to rely on what people mean by things. Anyway. Comprehension lets you vibe with all that better, learn languages faster, read and write runes, all sorts of good stuff.


    "So I''m fluent now, and even technically can do some magic with runes - I haven''t practiced spellcasting other than learning one spell to light fires so it does work in theory. That bracelet uses Comprehension too, since it''s a language thing. Lots of overlap between that and Thought which I don''t have. Actually that brings me to the next bit. So each of the gifts... picture them as points in space, with an atmosphere around them. Sometimes they call them nodes, because there''s other ways to get them that aren''t the gifts themselves. If you want to build out an ability, it has to be within that atmosphere because... space. I dunno, go with it. And if it''s in an area of overlap between two of them you can have support from both sides so it''s better.


    "So you tie your ability to one or more of your gifts, and as you develop it you can stretch things a little further, building off of the abilities you already have. Your own body - or actually your core, your ''lutore'' they call it - is always a sort of node too, and there are things that are vital to your gift that you can easily define. So you can focus on making an ability generally stronger, or cheaper in terms of mana, but that takes a lot of your development. Instead, if you want it to be powerful faster, you can also use those nodes to limit it. So if I make it so I can only use probability to do stuff that effects time somehow, that''s going to be automatically a stronger thing. Someone with Planar magic could do stuff specific to a certain plane, someone with Force magic could focus on a specific shape they want to make the force, but there''s limits to it. I can''t just say ''this power only works on grass'' because I would need to define grass using the common local understanding and I don''t have a way to do that.


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "There''s a gift for that, though. You can add more nodes with Affinity, that''s what Hammersmith did. She''s got an affinity to this alchemical metal that''s like... basically it''s adamantium. That plus her other gifts, Transmutation which lets her change and shape matter and Enhancement which lets you change people''s bodies, means she''s made her skin into armor which normally wouldn''t be possible." She paused, looking over what she''d written on the tarp that was now spread over the table. It was runes, but I had no idea what they did. After a moment she continued writing and talking. "Gifts like Affinity seem like a waste because they don''t do a lot by themselves, but the fact is since you''re best off mainly tying everything to one or two core abilities it''s okay to use one of your gifts on something like that if you get more than one.


    "Anyway, back to me. I had to get the Comprehension one because I was still bad at speaking the language and I also needed to learn runes to read some stuff we''d gotten that I''m not allowed to talk about. I told you about the task force, the Grand Alignment, all that shit. Obviously a ton of what they have to look into is about various spells or people trying to make dangerous artifacts, and either one involves runes and stuff. So one of these things... uh... what can I say here? You know I''m you. You know I''m older than you. So. Yeah. Anyway, I took Temporal too, and Probability. Both of which were mentioned, in the thing. By the guy. That we can''t discuss." She winked.


    Unless I''d totally misunderstood that would be Ulren, the guy that was helping Halenvar get into some old vaults of dangerous stuff which somehow led to the end of the world. Briefly. "So you can time travel now?"


    "I wish! I mean. Kind of. Yes. But very little, and it uses way too much mana. Probability is cool for lots of stuff in theory, but I took it just to help build out my time travel thing - don''t ask me why it helps, it''s hard to describe - so there''s not a lot else I can do with it. Little things, sometimes, if I have time to work on them. And honestly as cool as it is, I hate that all my potential is tied up in the Temporal stuff and I''m still this one trick pony. I had to do it to convince them though, and they put me in this really nasty training course to get my Dumine developed really fast and it was fucking miserable. I should have been able to control gravity, or go to other planes, or make illusions. Ugh. I can burn out my Dumine and start over, you just use up all your mana and then force it and it... spends itself, sort of. But even then, it''s still the same gifts. Comprehension, Probability, Temporal. Not terrible I guess but it''s not what I wanted. I shouldn''t have had to do this."


    "I''m sorry."


    "It''s fine," she said, "Let''s just... take a break from this and eat for a minute."


    And then she threw the tarp over my head. "Okay, they shouldn''t be able to hear us in here. That wasn''t bullshit, I don''t like the powers I had to take, but this is still cool, right? Great news, I got into a fight with Hammersmith the night before last when we were maybe going to meet for dinner -"


    "I heard, I was hiding in the cheese."


    "Fuck, that''s embarrassing. Cool that it worked and they couldn''t sense you though. Anyway! She said the agreement wasn''t with her. She made a distinction between this Empire, and the one that was destroyed. Remember I said it was still hard to talk to you because I was trying to break the contract in conflicting ways? One was insisting that it''s all the same and so you''re me and I can talk to you, the other was the opposite - that the contract was with a nation that doesn''t exist anymore because it was destroyed. And I was leaning on the one before, but now that she''s said it herself I think I can force it the other way and get out of it entirely. And Hammersmith will think the contract is still solid, but I can already feel it, it''s still there but all... loose. Before I couldn''t take any hostile action, but I stabbed her in the neck! I mean, she gave me permission kinda and I knew it wouldn''t work, but it''s a start. I have to be careful for now, but if the time comes I can actually put my plan into effect."


    "You have a plan?"


    "Even with the soundproofing, it''s best you don''t know the plan. But yes. It''s... insane. You''ll love it. Okay, listen, I cut these pages out of a book about the shit you can get from a Dumine, sorry I couldn''t bring you the whole book but it''s a start. Read that, and don''t worry about Bert and Ernie for now. It''ll be fine. Trust the plan."


    She swept the tarp off, folded it up, and handed it to me while making chewing noises. I tucked it into my bag along with the pages she''d shoved at me. "Hey. Who gets to be Calliope? I''ve been calling you my doppelganger, or my paradox twin, or older Callie. I guess since you''re the original it would be you, and I would need a new name? Or?"


    "Nah. I... this world is yours. You''re the one that belongs here, you keep the name. I''ll figure something out."


    She looked sad when she said that, and I thought again about her and Hammersmith implying she was dying when they were talking the other day. Neither of us had brought it up here.


    "Well it''ll be nice to have a big sister, I guess. We always wanted a sister."


    She grinned. "We made one up, back... when? Was it when mom left us at the Walmart and we slept in there overnight?"


    "Yeah," I said, grinning at the memory even though at the time I''d been scared. That was the first time I slept in a random building, the first of many. "And then we used to tell people she was in foster care too, just at a different house. Oh, yeah, my sister Constance is at a foster home and they''re building on a new bedroom for me so I''ll be leaving soon."


    "Oh, sure, I have a sister," she added, "Connie ran away when CPS came for us though, she''s living in the woods in a treehouse with the fairies."


    "Constance is in witness protection, actually, which is why she''s not here right now. But after the trial she''ll be back - assuming the mob doesn''t send another hit man."


    She laughed. "Oh god, the witness protection thing! I still think some of the other kids bought it."


    I got up to leave, making sure the tarp was fully tucked away. "Well. Um. Assuming they hold up the deal they made with you and are happy enough just having guards watching me, I''ll see you tomorrow. Thanks, Connie."


    We walked out together, and were met at the door by a guard that sneered at us like we were something he''d scraped off his shoe. Connie, as I was already starting to think of her, sneered right back. "Ugh," she groaned, "it''s Ernie. What happened to waiting down the street, you prick?"


    "That was before you tried to sneak your freak clone in here," he said. "But Betrad found your little secret this morning, and now we''re keeping you right where we can see you."


    This morning? Huh. That discrepancy was worth noting.


    "Well you can see me from further away, where I can''t smell you. Gods, wash those pants once a year for me, would you?"


    Ernie got right up in her face. "First of all, that''s not my name. You''ll refer to me as Guardsman Kern, or I''ll make sure you don''t get to leave the fort ever again. You think you''re so special, but you''re not in charge of me. Do you understand? You''re not in the army, you''re not a noble, and you''re not an emissary. So you had best stop looking down your nose at me, because I''m the one in charge here and you''ll do what I say because I''m the one that gets to decide what is and isn''t a security risk and I think your whole existence is one big security risk, do you understand? Do you?"


    Connie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then slashed Ernie''s throat wide open with my knife, which she''d expertly snatched from my belt. His eyes bulged. One hand clamped over his neck while the other reached for his sword, but she grabbed his wrist and headbutted him, breaking his nose with a crunch. He stumbled backwards, fell down, and turned to crawl away while trying desperately to call out... and then he was standing in front of her.


    "Yes, Kern," Connie said, "I understand."


    There was no blood. Nobody was injured. More than that, nobody was reacting to what had just happened - I seemed to be the only person aware of the brutal attack. I turned away to hide the look on my face while subtly confirming my knife was still in my belt, and then muttered my goodbyes and hurried down the street - Betrad, Bert, Lunch Bet, whoever he was stepped into view as I walked but let me get ahead by twenty feet or so.


    I caught myself wiping my face where hot blood had sprayed across it a moment before, though of course it was clean. Had that been Connie rewinding time? She''d said she could time travel ''very little''. How far had she rewound? The slash, the headbutt, him crawling away... it felt like so much, but it probably hadn''t actually been more than five seconds.


    I''d killed those soldiers in battle, but to just slash someone''s throat as they were standing in front of you... although... he was fine, right? And she''d said she was testing the limits of the contract, presumably that was part of that test. It was no big deal. No harm was done. But as I remembered the look of joy on her face I was forced to consider the other option, the one that had been lurking in the back of my head for a while. It could just be that I was a monster like mom had always told me.

 BONUS: A Primer On Known Gifts

    Each of the below gifts are discussed in more detail in their own chapters later in this book; the below is intended only as a basic reference for new students. Chapter forty also discusses in more depth the importance of the foundational gifts of society as defined by Rupin Heldorn, those being Fabrication, Growth, and Planar (first order) as well as Transmutation, Comprehension, and Alchemy (second order).


    Options are presented throughout this work with their most common names within the Endless Empire at the time of this writing, despite their somewhat inconsistent naming convention. Gifts are listed in the standard order as seen in a Duminere - for other classifications and names see chapter three.


    Some common synergies are mentioned below and more are discussed in chapter thirty-nine, but Rem Gloven''s revolutionary text Complimentary Interactions of Gifts should be consulted for a deeper discussion if a copy can be obtained, as I consider it to be outside the scope of this work.


    HEX 1 FACET 1: Fabrication - Allows for the creation of ephemeral matter, as well as the strengthening and solidifying of ephemeral matter. With enough mana this can result in the conversion of ephemeral matter into permanent physical matter. By itself this ability cannot create alchemical materials, and the creation of highly reactive matter can be both difficult and dangerous.


    HEX 1 FACET 2: Negation - Facilitates or increases the decay of matter and energy. This works best on pure energy and is therefore frequently used to defend against magical attacks based on heat, light, or electricity. It can also degrade ephemeral matter quickly and can even break down physical matter, although this process is generally slower and more mana intensive that simply destroying or removing it in other ways. When combined with other gifts it can allow the negation of associated forces, typically Mana for a general anti-magic effect.


    HEX 1 FACET 3: Transmutation - Allows the user to change matter into other forms. Most often used to remove impurities from metal or water, it can also allow for the molding and shaping of normally solid materials as well as the total conversion of one material into another. Without Fabrication or Affinity, users typically require a sample of the new material as a seed.


    HEX 1 FACET 4: Growth - Encourages the growth of living things. This is most often used as a means of rapid crop growth, but is also useful as a way to heal injuries. It is typically not able to deal with natural defects or many toxins and may struggle with certain illnesses, but can in most cases heal injuries that would never recover without the aid of magic such as damage to the spine. Growth can be powered by life-attuned mana from its target, making it very cost efficient. For more discussion of synergies see Healing below.


    HEX 1 FACET 5: Enhancement - Allows the alteration of living things. This is easiest when applied to the user''s own body, but can be applied to willing or mindless targets as well. Use on unwilling targets is possible but extremely difficult and reverts quickly. Even when used on willing humanoids or monsters the changes will not be permanent by default, as the body will always try to revert to match its internal concept of self. This can be overcome with repeated applications or by use in conjunction with certain Spirit and Thought abilities.


    HEX 1 FACET 6: Refinement (6th Facet Requirements of Transmutation and Probability) - Facilitates the strengthening, combining, and repair of materials. Without Refinement even talented Transmuters can have a difficult time making non-homogeneous materials. Refinement can be used to improve, repair, or potentially sabotage materials even when the user has a limited understanding of what would need to be done, due to the probability aspect and its inherent link to the Common Local Understanding.


    HEX 2 FACET 1: Spatial - Manipulates distance and direction. This gift is somewhat uncommon, as many of its applications can be achieved by other more versatile gifts, but has several unique benefits including the ability to teleport short distances even if the intervening space is obstructed. When paired with Focus its range and power are greatly multiplied. It can also be used to bend space in other ways, such as creating a room with doors on opposite sides that nonetheless lead into each other.


    HEX 2 FACET 2: Temporal - Manipulates the flow of time. While this gift has limited versatility, the benefits of increasing or decreasing time around the user are substantial in many situations. With enough dedication to development the user can eventually create an area where time is going so slowly as to be considered completely still. This gift is often paired with Perception to allow senses to function into the past or (to a limited extent) the future, and can be useful to synchronize the passage of time across planes that otherwise experience them differently.


    HEX 2 FACET 3: Probability - Allows the creation of an ongoing effect that increases or decreases the likelihood of a specific event. More than any other gift this links to the Common Local Understanding and other intelligent forces behind the functioning of reality, which means that the user does not need to specify or understand exactly how such odds would best be changed. This does mean that unintended side effects are possible. This ability is considered invaluable for the creation of many devices or alchemical compounds that otherwise have a high likelihood of failure, and is frequently used when navigating certain planes. It has synergy with a number of other gifts including Spatial or Focus for range, and Temporal for increased accuracy and effectiveness.


    HEX 2 FACET 4: Gravity - Creates or negates gravitational pull. Sponsored users tend to apply this gift to construction and repair of buildings, but it is also used in transportation and warfare. Where Force is generally applied to a specific target, Gravity affects larger areas without needing to combine it with Focus. For the same reason its precision is limited, but with development can generally be applied to areas as small as a single person.


    HEX 2 FACET 5: Planar - Planar manipulation acts by thinning or aligning the barriers between planes. This is primarily done towards one of two ends - crossing over into another plane, or allowing the rules of reality from one plane to impose on another. While the variety of effects this can create are impressive, properly warded cities prevent the use of most planar magic except in designated areas. Generally this gift is valued for its roles in transportation, access to resources, and waste management. A more detailed breakdown of uses by plane can be found in the corresponding chapter.


    HEX 2 FACET 6: Summoning (6th Facet Requirements of Planar and Spirit) - Allows the user to directly pull known spirits from other planes to their location. This is a far more efficient and reliable process than anything that has been documented without the aid of the Summoning gift, and removes the need to either sustain spirits when not in use or take time to travel to other planes repeatedly to obtain new ones.


    HEX 3 FACET 1: Thought - Grants a number of potential abilities related to thoughts and memories. Generally this requires direct contact with the target, unless combined with Focus. Most commonly used to view memories, detect lies, or even compel targets to speak only the truth. Due to the nature of the mind, its power can be enhanced with Spirit or Planar gifts depending on the intended use. This can also be used to defend against mental attacks from those using Thought or Influence gifts, or to a lesser extent physical entry to the user''s domain in Ematse.


    HEX 3 FACET 2: Influence - Applies feelings or ideas to others nearby. This can be used to manipulate emotions, cause confusion, induce euphoria, or other similar effects. With development or in combination with Thought the ideas transmitted can be more complex. While there are therapeutic and recreational uses, thieves have been known to use Influence to avert attention by transmitting the feeling that there is nothing of interest happening and con artists have artificially created a feeling of trust; due to this, an increasing number of cities and individuals have been warding against this type of gift.


    HEX 3 FACET 3: Perception - Allows the enhancement of senses, including the incorporation of other gifts into existing senses. Rarely taken as a solitary gift, as it has limited uses by itself. The most powerful and sought after trackers combine Perception with Affinity and one of Focus, Spatial, Temporal, Planar, or Thought in order to perceive and follow targets. Without Affinity the same effect can be achieved, but may have far more restrictions. Many gifts allow for a certain amount of perception of the things that they control, such as mana or gravity, but this gift can make that understanding far more intuitive and precise as well as allowing the user to perceive these aspects even when generated or controlled by others.


    HEX 3 FACET 4: Spirit - Grants the user the ability to interact with ethereal beings including the attendant spirits of humans. With the right development this can be used to heal certain mental afflictions, especially those caused by damage to the Mind or Soul as opposed to those originating in the physical brain. Other users acquire useful spirits from other planes, though this is best done when combined with Binding so that they can passively draw on the user''s mana for easier maintenance. Those with the Spirit gift are also called on to calm ghosts and escort them to Necropolis.


    HEX 3 FACET 5: Life - Allows the creation and manipulation of Life mana. While there are many ways to alter the alignment of mana, those with the Life gift can do so quickly and efficiently. Regardless of other development, this increases the natural generation of life mana by the user''s core resulting in slightly increased healing. The Life gift can also be used to heal living things in a way very similar to the Growth gift, albeit with more limitations and less direct control as the healing is directed subconsciously by the target. More unique is the ability to flood objects with Life mana to grant them a degree of animation; while this works best with organic materials, especially formerly sentient bodies, with enough mana and development it can grant a semblance of life to even stone or metal. This includes a degree of flexibility that is normally impossible without Transmutation. The ability of these constructs to understand and follow directions is limited without either Thought or a combination of Spirit and Binding - the latter used to tie a spirit into the construct. Because of this, Life is rarely if ever taken as a standalone gift.


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    HEX 3 FACET 6: Command (6th Facet Requirements of Binding and Influence) - Allows the user to issue orders that others find difficult or impossible to refuse, and create binding magical contracts. Orders given to unwilling creatures are significantly easier to resist - while some question the utility of giving orders to willing subjects, it can be invaluable in combat situations where subjects may be willing but afraid or confused. With the right development this also allows commands to be given to creatures that do not understand the language the user speaks, including animals and spirits. Binding contracts are vital to the proper functioning of society, allowing criminals to be restricted without fully removing their freedom and forming agreements with other heads of state or merchants without needing to fully trust them. Unlike commands, there is thankfully no known method of forcing a contract against someone''s will or understanding.


    HEX 4 FACET 1: Affinity - Creates additional artificial nodes for gift development. While a full discussion of nodes and their role in gift development is outside the scope of this work, a basic primer is included in the chapter for this gift. Nodes must be focused on a concept recognized by the Common Local Understanding, and generally increase in development potential as they narrow in scope. Thus, focusing an Affinity on metal will not allow as much developmental potential as an Affinity with copper, iron, etc. As with the other facets on the top half of hex 4, this gift is not considered usable on its own.


    HEX 4 FACET 2: Focus - Allows greater flexibility and range for other gifts. This can result in targeting other creatures at range with abilities that would typically require physical contact, extremely fine control of gifts in small areas including those that may require specialized lenses or Perception to even see, or expansion of gifts to a large area that would normally effect only a single target. As with the other facets on the top half of hex 4, this gift is not considered usable on its own.


    HEX 4 FACET 3: Binding - Allows the user to sustain otherwise instant effects, or cause effects that would otherwise need ongoing attention to be sustained automatically. This gift can attach effects to creatures or objects, with further development increasing the rate of passive mana absorption or allowing more mana to be fed into the binding initially, thereby extending its duration. In conjunction with other skills, this can be made permanent as part of crafting an enchanted item. As with the other facets on the top half of hex 4, this gift is not considered usable on its own, although technically it can be used to bind the effects of others under certain circumstances.


    HEX 4 FACET 4: Mana - Enhances the user''s sense of mana, and allows direct manipulation of it. This is used to rapidly collect and absorb mana from the ambient flow, crystalized mana, capacitors, or even willing creatures. In addition, this can be reversed to charge capacitors and magic items or lend mana to others directly. Alignment of mana can be detected, although changing the alignment of mana may not be possible without the Alchemy gift (see discussion in the corresponding chapters).


    HEX 4 FACET 5: Comprehension - Often thought of purely in terms of learning the language of magic, this gift can apply to greater understanding of language in general including advanced mathematical formulas, ciphers, or other structured systems. That being said its main benefit is full understanding of the language of magic, both in its spellcasting form and rune form. This allows the user to understand and use structured magic more intuitively, and even write spellcasting formulas in a way that convey their full scope to others. While older and more dangerous "wild" forms of magical languages can be understood with the right development of this gift, Dumines block the use of these languages which would prevent this from being used for anything other than research.


    HEX 4 FACET 6: Vibration (6th Facet Requirements of Focus and Velocity) - Creates and controls very small scale linear movements of all matter in a given area, including air. While this can be used to some extent with only Focus and Velocity, the decreased demands on attention and development granted by Vibration permits the user to perform feats not otherwise practical. This gift can create and amplify sounds, find resonant frequencies of materials in order to destroy them, and increase or decrease heat much like those with the Radiance gift.


    HEX 5 FACET 1: Charge - Creates energy fields that can be used to generate lightning or attract some metals. A popular choice for combat purposes, this gift provides both defensive and offensive capabilities. Electrical attacks are easily scaled from a minor nuisance or warning up to catastrophic damage. Concentrated use of these fields can in some cases create an ongoing "magnetic" effect even once all mana is removed, and recent study of these materials have led to those with Refinement being able to reproduce the effect. While these fields interact best with metals, they can have other interesting uses that are discussed more in in the corresponding chapter.


    HEX 5 FACET 2: Radiance - Creates or moves light and heat. The manipulation and creation appears to be the primary ability and therefore is the simplest to develop, with heat as a byproduct and the reduction or movement of heat taking more effort. This gift is often used to bent or separate light into different colors, and can be used by an experienced wielder to make an area entirely invisible by bending light around it. With the proper development this ability can be triggered inside objects, and has proven invaluable for careful triggering of certain chemical reactions in certain industries. While most of its simpler utilitarian applications (general lighting, cooking, etc.) are better left to inexpensive and easily produced runic devices, there are always needs for careful and controlled use of these skills.


    HEX 5 FACET 3: Substance - Infuses real or ephemeral matter with the same facsimile of density used by ephemeral matter. This can cause items to become heavier, more buoyant, or incredibly hard. Theoretically it can also make objects more fragile, but in practice this only works on ephemeral matter. Useful for defense and offense in similar ways to Force, and utility in similar ways to Gravity, this differs primarily in its target as (unless paired with Focus) it always applies to a distinct physical object rather than an area or point in space.


    HEX 5 FACET 4: Velocity - Allows the manipulation of the speed op an object, both in magnitude and direction. Despite the more obvious risks implied by careless use of other gifts, Velocity is known to cause the highest number of injuries and accidental deaths with new practitioners as the innate protection against moving faster than the physical body can safely withstand are subtle and easy to override. Thus many users focus development on inanimate objects, in order to launch or deflect projectiles. This gift can also, in a similar way to focused application of Substance, lend extra impact to tools or weapons. For those that carefully develop this gift to use on their own movements, it can lead to incredible feats of athleticism and allow users to safely fall from almost any height.


    HEX 5 FACET 5: Force - Creates invisible and temporary physical barriers at range, primarily useful as a defensive measure. Some degree of movement can be imparted on these magical structures, allowing them to be used as blunt weapons. Force synergizes greatly with other gifts in ways that are all technically possible with Force alone but not easily developed; Focus allows for dexterous manipulation of objects, Substance greatly increases the strength of the barriers, and Velocity can increase the movement in order to deal enormous damage in combat.


    HEX 5 FACET 6: Ablation (6th Facet Requirements of Fabrication and Radiance) - Considered to be of limited use outside of warfare, this gift allows the creation of highly energetic matter that can cause massive destruction and is difficult to guard against. Where Radiance can create heat, Ablation creates actual flames by generating fuel simultaneously - something that is extremely difficult to do without this gift even for those with both Radiance and Fabrication - and a portion of the energy created can cause these burning particles to be launched in a stream. Velocity-based protection charms are designed to act on single targets such as arrows, and Negation-based charms are designed to weaken pure energy. Unless the protections are extremely powerful, both types will be immediately overwhelmed by an Ablation attack. Development of this ability can change the properties of the matter created to increase its temperature, cause it to stick to surfaces, or impart more kinetic energy.


    HEX 6 FACET 1: Healing (6th Hex Requirements of either Growth or Enhancement, and Life) - The only gift with a variable requirement, the Healing gift enhances either Growth or Enhancement to allow for much more powerful and comprehensive healing. Depending on the specific development path that is pursued the user can accomplish almost any feat that broadly falls under the category of healing. This gift has also been used to guide the development of new life, leading to the creation of most modern food sources.


    HEX 6 FACET 2: Alchemy (6th Hex Requirements of Transmutation and Mana) - Allows the infusion of mana into materials, typically to create alchemical metals and potions. Mana crystals can be molded and liquefied with this gift, and mana alignment can be adjusted with the proper development. This gift is required for the creation of currency and more durable and powerful magical devices.


    HEX 6 FACET 3: Containment (6th Hex Requirements of Spatial and Force) - Creates easily sustained pockets of space, useful for storage and imprisonment. While this can be accomplished with Spatial manipulation only, the Containment gift drastically increases the stability and lowers the cost. This allows the user to develop in other ways that far exceed what would be practical without it.


    HEX 6 FACET 4: Illusion (6th Hex Requirements of Radiance and Influence) - Combines the creation of light with a projection of an idea. The most important effects of this are the ability to ensure the light is perceived as a perfect representation of whatever is intended independent of its actual artistic quality, and the drastic extension of the range for Influence, as it impacts any intelligent creature that can clearly view the created light even at a distance. Primarily used for entertainment, but has utility applications discussed more in its chapter.


    HEX 6 FACET 5: Unknown (6th Hex Requirements of Probability, Temporal, and Binding) - While this gift cannot be selected due to requiring three others, it is possible to cause it to illuminate as an option. The most accepted theory is that it deals with Fate or Destiny as a force, which is known to be possible via wild magic and famously wielded to great effect by Poicelria at the start of the 7th age. This and other theories are discussed in the corresponding chapter.


    HEX 6 FACET 6: Unknown (6th Hex / 6th Facet Requirements unknown) - Unlike the 5th facet above, no combination of gifts causes this facet to illuminate. As such, there can be no useful speculation on the specific domain of this gift although the corresponding chapter does discuss some theories about why it cannot be selected.

 CHAPTER 018: A Calm Before the Storm

    Betrad showed up the next morning with breakfast and bad news.


    "Lord Protector Hammersmith wanted further meetings between you and your... sister... to be at the fortress, as she doesn''t like you both being out in the city together. Calliope... or... hmm."


    I took what appeared to be a big steamed dumpling filled with eggs and cheese out of the basket he was holding, and decided it looked good enough that I would help him out. "Constance, or Connie. You can call me Calliope."


    "Ah, that will help. Thanks. Constance pointed out, fairly, that when you were thought to be dead she was still allowed out and so clearly it''s not any more of a risk now. She then continued to say, I believe somewhat unfairly, that she didn''t trust any part of the leadership or military of the Endless Empire enough to have you step foot in the fortress."


    I took a break from blowing on the surprisingly hot filling of the dumpling and looked at Bert. "But wait. If that was the problem it''s not like you couldn''t just capture me and drag me in there, right?"


    "As I said, somewhat unfair. I didn''t point that out though, because I think it wouldn''t have gone over well and I didn''t want to get punched in the nose."


    For a moment I felt Kern''s blood splashing on my face again. Punched in the nose would be far from the worst possible outcome. "Okay, so... lunch or no lunch today?"


    "As yet undecided. I suspect we''ll come up with some sort of agreement. Until then, Kern is with her and I''m with you. I can make myself scarce, but please don''t try to sneak out the window or run all over the city like you did the other day, I know I managed to look calm and impressive but if I''m being honest that was exhausting."


    Katrin and Errod joined us briefly and introduced themselves, and then Bert left and presumably lurked somewhere across the street. We''d taken turns looking at the pages Connie had slipped me and while I was undecided Katrin and Errod had pretty firm plans. Katrin wanted Comprehension first, to be better at magic, and then Mana if she got two, so she could recharge herself faster. If she lucked out and got three she''d abandon her whole plan and go with Alchemy instead because apparently it was just that valuable. Errod wanted Velocity if he got one, Perception if he got a second, and Gravity if he hit the jackpot and got three.


    Mila had another job for them, a huge turtle statue this time. They left for the merchant''s teleportation building and I stayed back, not wanting a repeat of the other day, and was sure to let Bert see me sending the others off and returning so he wouldn''t feel the need to come up to the apartment and check on me.. When I started to get bored and anxious and think that this time, surely, they''d be ditching me and not returning I started to regret it though, as any company would have helped.


    After all the time I''d spent on my own over the years - the vast majority of my life, really - it was ridiculous that I could still worry about being abandoned. I hardly even knew Katrin and Errod, really, and surely we would part ways once we got to the Duminere. Or hell, sooner - at the moment I didn''t see any way we''d be able to even go looking for it. Connie had implied in the letter that someone else would get there first if we didn''t leave within six months of my arrival, and I doubted that Hammersmith would let us go the second the gateway to Brinkmar was open.


    If we could trust her to let us go at all.


    I had the sudden urge to just make a run for it. Sneak past Bert, get out of the city somehow, grab that hollow rock full of money that Connie had had Mila stash. No worries about getting pinned down by the Empire, no anxiety about being abandoned by Katrin and Errod. No need to worry about watching some version of myself go crazy and die, or whatever her deal was. She would understand. Hell, she would approve. I stepped out onto the landing, idly planning. Just in case.


    And then, even though they hadn''t been gone more than an hour, I saw Errod and Katrin trudging up the road. "What happened?" I called out as they started up the stairs, "There''s no way you''re done with the delivery yet."


    "You''ve met Mila," Katrin said, "she got there and they said she didn''t have anything scheduled, and then she realized the client wasn''t expecting her today. She didn''t want to try and get it up the hill again, so she tucked it in a storage place she has on that side of town - I have to assume she has it because she''s done this before. She''s a bit of a mess."


    I managed to convince myself that I hadn''t just been thinking about fleeing the city. We tried practicing magic again but I still couldn''t get it, and I attempted to practice fighting with Errod but Katrin was worried we''d smash up the apartment. "I wish my phone worked," I moaned, "or that we had a television. I want to make some popcorn and watch a movie or... wait. Movie. Katrin! What do you think ''movie'' means?" Unlike most of my complaint, the word ''movie'' had translated into something.


    "It''s a show, like a play? But it''s imprinted onto a metal plate, and there''s no sound. Sometimes merchants have some, to draw in a crowd. I''ve heard larger cities have special places you can go to to watch them, there might be one here if that''s what you wanted."


    Ah. Well that was neat, but... not the same. "It''s not completely wrong or anything, but where I come from they''re better. We have sound, and... I don''t know, I''m assuming way better production value."


    "I don''t know what you mean by that," she said, "but... didn''t you say you never used magic before coming here?"


    Oh, right. Well... in for a penny, in for a pound. "Okay, you two took the news that Connie was me from the future shockingly well, and now that I know a little more about what''s going on I don''t see any reason not to tell you the rest. I''m not from here at all. Like, not just another continent or another plane. I''m from another planet entirely."


    Katrin looked confused, and Errod nodded very seriously - the way people do when a little kid is telling them something stupid that is nonetheless important to them. "Sorry," Katrin said, "another... planet? I don''t understand. The only other planet on this plane is the moon, and most of the other planes don''t have planets at all I think."


    "Okay so wait, this counts as a plane then? I wasn''t clear on that. And you''re sure there''s only... hmm." The stars had looked strange and sparse because there was no Milky Way, but I hadn''t stopped to think about whether or not there were other planets. "There''s nothing else you know of orbiting the sun?"


    Katrin looked frustrated. "The moon and sun go around the world, but the sun isn''t a planet. It''s just a hole into Botara. Only the world and the moon are planets, and there''s just the two."


    I was about to tell her she was wrong, but... was she? How the hell would I know? Surely the sun being a hole that light just spilled out of would be a noticeable change, right? There would be something about the shadows, or the way day and night worked, or... something? And what were the stars, then? I didn''t want to just dismiss Katrin as being uneducated when in this place I was the one who didn''t know anything. And I already knew there could be different laws of physics, so even if I had been an expert on that stuff it wouldn''t necessarily help - and I''d barely graduated from high school. Hugh had talked about the world spinning, so that would imply I was right although... motion was all relative right?


    I was officially too uninformed and uneducated to think about this. Before I could try to explain how I thought things worked or what I''d been picturing, the door burst open and "Ernie" strode in. He looked at each of us, one at a time, sucking his teeth. "Had to make sure you were all in one place. Security check."


    In the immediate shock of seeing his throat slit I hadn''t really considered how much I disliked him. "Here we are, dickweed. Mission accomplished. Now fuck off, and knock next time."


    "I''m staying right here," he said, "I know what you''re like. I tell you there''s a security check and it''s just going to make you want to go out there and make things worse. So I''m going to stand right here, and you''re going to deal with it and behave like a good girl."


    Katrin put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey. It''s fine. We weren''t going out anyway."


    Yeah, sure, we had been planning on staying in. But now that I had to stay I felt a deep need to get the hell out of there. I wanted to hurt him. Not like Connie did, especially since I couldn''t reverse it. I wanted... I wanted him to have an accident. Something I couldn''t be blamed for, but something that hurt and was hopefully also humiliating. That would be ideal. "You know what," I said, "why don''t you -"


    I was interrupted by Bert shoving past him, and immediately sensing the tension. "Hey folks. Errod, Katrin, Callie. Kern, who I am sure is being completely professional and not deliberately antagonizing these nice people that we''re supposed to be protecting."


    "Hey Betrad," I said, "What''s going on? Did they just want an excuse to send Kern somewhere so they wouldn''t have to see that rat scrotum he calls a face, or is something actually wrong?"


    Ernie sputtered, but Bert answered before he could go off. "Probably a drill. They''re a little paranoid, that''s all. Things are going well right now, but that means Halenvar is desperate. You know what happened to the governor in Handoleren, that was... not something our intelligence indicated would happen and while it''s unlikely they would risk attacking Theramas we can''t take any chances."


    Ernie scowled. "You shouldn''t be talking about things like that. They''re not even citizens, let alone military."


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "I''m not telling them anything that''s a secret," he replied. "Come on Kern, let''s give these guys a little space. You can patrol around the building, I''ll post up out on the stairs."


    "I want eyes on them at all times," he said, "If you want to patrol around the building feel free, but I''m staying right here."


    I walked over to Bert and spoke quietly, "I appreciate the thought. You might as well go, if he''s not going to give us some space then having two of you here won''t help. No offense or anything."


    He nodded, then replied in barely a whisper. "If I''m going to be going on a walk around the building anyway, I could always keep an eye on you down there. Stretch your legs, get some fresh air?"


    I was about to say yes, and then that little voice chimed in. Would it be rude to leave Katrin and Errod with this asshole? I was bad at that sort of question. If I did it and it turned out they were annoyed I''d bailed on them I probably wouldn''t notice unless they flat out told me. Also, what if he just followed me and harassed me outside, or had a big stinky fit about me going in the first place. The whole thing sounded exhausting. "Nah, I''m fine. I''m going to just hide in my room or something."


    He left, and only after he was gone did I start to wonder if he had been hitting on me. He''d basically asked me to go on a walk with him, right? It wasn''t something I had a lot of experience with, and I didn''t know how I felt about it. My first thought was actually that if he was I should go for it just in case I could get him to help us escape at some point - the little voice said I wasn''t supposed to manipulate people''s feelings to get what I wanted, but it was mostly drowned out by my fear of being trapped.


    The next day I decided to try and get a better feel for the situation. I''d slept in until almost lunchtime, so I headed out to buy something from the market - they had some places that were basically fast food, and I''d been meaning to try the one that served deep fried skewers of something that from Katrin''s description sounded like a gigantic duck. I made a point of waving Betrad over so he wouldn''t bother trying to give me space.


    "Sorry again about the other day," he said, "there was a genuine security concern of some sort. Connie was very upset, but the upside is that I am going to be escorting her to your apartment later and Kern will not be joining us."


    I shrugged and told him it was fine, then half listened as he made small talk. I felt fairly sure Bert would give us some space, but not completely certain. The private room at the Cheese Cave probably had some protection - I assumed that was why Connie had picked it - but she''d still made that tarp to throw over us once she knew I''d been noticed. Was there a good way to protect the apartment? If not, we wouldn''t be able to make any plans. I had really been hoping to find out more about the expedition to the Duminere.


    I ordered two skewers when we arrived, and a side of whatever the hell the other thing they offered was - some sort of greasy-looking balls of dough - but when I went to pay Betrad reached past me and handed some coins across the counter. So he was for sure hitting on me, right? I hadn''t ever been really into dating. I tried it some, off and on, but most of the time I found myself faking it. I''d tried to convince myself I was attached, and maybe even had been a tiny bit, but most days I''d have to pretend I cared and in general people weren''t understanding of that when they caught on.


    Betrad said he should probably hang back to better keep an eye on things from a distance, and alarm bells went off in my head. I''d missed something while I was thinking. I tried to mentally rewind the conversation, unsure what had changed. Betrad had said something about his parents, I said that the skewers were delicious, and he got all quiet. What, specifically, had he said?


    Oh. He said that his parents had died in a fire when he was young, and I had responded by commenting on the flavor of the skewers. Right. People expect you to feel bad for them when family members die, Callie. Fuck. "Betrad, wait. Sorry. I''m... I''m sorry to hear that, about your parents. I just never know what to say about sad stuff, and my own relationship with my mom was bad, and... anyway. Sorry."


    He didn''t look convinced, but it was at least a start. I wasn''t devoid of emotions or anything, I''d felt all the normal things you would expect when stuff happened to me, but I didn''t tend to feel them on other people''s behalf. And when you combine that with me being kind of a piece of shit when I was younger... it was pretty bad. At some point, for reasons I wasn''t even sure of, I had decided to try harder - but that didn''t mean I was ever going to be good at it. Trying could make me better about saying "gosh that sucks, I''m sorry that happened to you" but it couldn''t make me actually feel sad just because someone else was, and it wouldn''t change that sometimes when I said something nice I was actually just feeling... bored.


    I would only ever be good or nice on purpose, and I had to hope that was enough.


    When Connie came over she - as expected - didn''t want to talk about anything sensitive. Well, not sensitive in terms of our future plans. Sensitive as in embarrassing? That was for sure on the table, and pretty quickly she had us all joining in. Katrin told a very uncharitably accurate account of the excitement in Handoleren, and I was forced to admit that my decision to sneak into a building just because I saw a familiar rug was possibly hasty and not sufficiently justified. This was followed by the recent time Errod cut off his own toe, the alternate timeline event where Errod cut off his own pinky finger, the time when Katrin was six and told a nobleman he smelled bad, and an unfortunate number of stories about myself because somehow Connie and I tried to one-up each other even though we were, by definition, mocking ourselves.


    Connie continued to feel a little shaky though. She laughed a little too hard or too long, her eyes seemed to go dead when anyone mentioned our babysitters or Hammersmith, and she would bounce back and forth from being manic to staring sullenly at the door. It didn''t ruin the evening, but it was noticeable. And then she knocked her drink over and just stared at the puddle for a moment before absolutely losing her shit, throwing a chair across the room and flinging a plate of cheese and - when Kern ran in to see what was going on - stabbing him in the eye with a fork even as he ran her through with his sword in return.


    She caught her cup before it could fall. Everything was fine.


    I excused myself to the bathroom and just sat for a moment to make sure I didn''t react to her... outburst. When I felt ready I washed my face and headed back out, wordlessly taking Connie by the hand and pulling her over to the window and out onto the roof so we could talk with at least a little bit of privacy - there was nothing to do about her fear that someone was listening in, and when I discretely showed her I still had the tarp she waved me off and said she''d have to re-do it.


    I asked her if she was okay, and she didn''t reply. It was tempting to say something more but I just waited, watching the moon with its blur of water and vegetation. Was there a way to get up there? Connie took her time deciding to talk, and when she did her voice was a little shaky. "Sometimes I worry about whether or not this is really happening, and... I wanted to warn you that something made me get worse. I don''t know if it''ll happen to you. We''re different, and I think the stress has been worse for me than it will be for you.


    "That''s why I want to get you out of here on an adventure," she said, "It''s been an extra two years for me - Earth years I mean. Most of that has been with me sick, or locked up, or training. And then knowing that the world might end even though nobody else thought it would, and planning for if I was right and everything might get destroyed. Being attacked, a few times. Watching people die trying to protect me. And my memories... have you been having strange dreams?"


    I shrugged as best I could while laying on my back. "Not that strange. Maybe a little. I mean, there''s always nightmares."


    "Yeah, there''s always those. But I don''t mean those, not mainly. I mean... dreams about other lives I never lived. Lots of them involve just living out in the woods, I think it''s like... I don''t know, like what could have happened if mom never found us after we got lost when we were five."


    "Or if she never came back for us after ditching us on one of the later camping trips?" Standing at the campsite, watching the tail lights disappear over a hill. Again.


    "Yeah, maybe. And then I have these dreams, or memories, about Bill. Remember him? We barely knew him, he was just another case worker, but I have these dreams like... what if he had been my foster dad instead? And they''re both impossible, you can''t really just grow up in the woods and there''s no way Bill would have taken a random one of his kids home with him. They''re crazy. But... they feel real, and it makes me worry that this isn''t real either."


    I snuggled in close to her and kept looking up at that moon overhead. "It''s all real. The good shit and the bad. Don''t worry about the dreams, they''re just garbage. Dreams don''t mean anything."


    "I''m dying," she said. Just out of nowhere.


    "I know," I replied, "I heard. Kind of. I don''t understand why. What can''t they fix with magic?"


    Once again she took a moment to answer. "Mana is just... magical energy. Standard fantasy stuff from Earth got it basically right, you know? But it''s possible to imprint an intent on it, or a... focus. Picture if you wanted to make a... I don''t know, a tomato, out of clay. You could use normal brown or gray clay and then paint it, but if you already had bright red clay it would be easier, right? It''s not a perfect metaphor but that''s the idea."


    I nodded. "The pages you gave me, about magic. They mentioned aligning mana, or something."


    "Right, that. It''s really important for making potions, and you can use it some when making alchemical metals too. Humans naturally have a layer of mana that''s aligned with... life force, basically, and without it there''d be problems. I don''t think other types show up in nature much, which is good because if it''s not the generic type it''s way harder to use for anything it''s not already aligned with. But Ulren, he had all this crystalized mana that was aligned with manipulating time. It''s dangerous to do shit like that - if you do it wrong when you could end up with this magically radioactive slag, kinda. So if you were trying to make something that changed stone into metal, maybe now it''s changing anything around it into something else. Not even the right stuff.


    "Same with wild magic - that''s one of the reasons it''s banned in a lot of places. If you''re not really good at it you can leave this magical residue of mana that''s still trying to do... something... even though it''s not part of a spell anymore. Picture a fire - if it burns cleanly there''s no smoke, but if not you can end up with a big sooty black cloud. The continent I said you should pretend to be from? There were so many magical wars there it''s practically unlivable. And so when I killed Ulren and blew up his lab all that mana was released and it all wanted to do something with time but it was undirected and... I got hit with it. My whole left side was all wrinkled and sagging and fucked up. It''s amazing I wasn''t dead, it should have killed me."


    I remembered what Telen had said - ''a glowing crater that ages anyone to death if they so much as look at it''. I also had a tickle of a memory, a nightmare I''d had right after arriving. My left side, aging away to nothing. Huh.


    Connie took a deep, shaky breath. "He - Ulren - had a thing, this ridiculous mad science harness thing that let him fuck with time. It''s powered by that same time-aligned mana, and I stole it. And any time I''m not with you I have it on, and I''ve rigged it to make sure it''s keeping me stable. But when I''m not wearing it, time starts to try and kill me again. A little bit. And they can fix me, they can repair my organs again and again as they fail, and make my skin look normal, and whatever else. But they haven''t been able to remove the underlying effect. They should have been able to. Either they''re lying and they want to keep me sick and dependent on them, or... I don''t know. That slag, the shit left over when an alchemist fucks up? Sometimes they just seal it in a barrel and throw it into this one plane that''s basically an entropic void. It''s the only way to dispose of it."


    "We''ll fix it," I said. "We''re going to be rich and famous, remember? At that point it''ll be no problem."


    She was quiet, and after a moment I could tell she had fallen asleep. I wondered, briefly, what she might be dreaming about - but decided that I probably was better off not knowing.

 CHAPTER 019: A Nice Relaxing Morning

    The nightmares were predictable, mostly just Connie with great-grandma''s scissors. Stalking towards me and calling me a monster, killing everyone in the house one by one, getting arrested and dragged away for execution by one of my old case workers. There were a few that made less sense, like the one where she was watching me from a tree outside the window and yelling that I stole her life or the part where I was trying to stop her from going into a secret door in what looked like a shed or basement or something.


    When I woke up I felt fine, despite the nightmares. So an alternate timeline version of myself sometimes attacked people and then reversed time so it hadn''t happened? There was literally no harm done. It was a stress relief thing, clearly. Although the admittedly fucked-up nature of the stress relief made me think of mom, which is probably why the scissors had been in the dream. It was partly that she probably would have expected me to kill people, and partly that she had her own inappropriate form of stress relief, which she sometimes called "hide and seek" when I was little. There wasn''t a lot of seeking involved.


    The first time we played our little game was on my sixth birthday. She took me to the woods, and I was scared because mom was crying but I thought there was at least a chance she was crying out of happiness - hadn''t she been crying while she laughed and smiled and hugged me and told me she would never let me go again? Hadn''t that been right there in those same woods? She told me to go and find a blue flower, and not come back until I had one. She said she''d wait right there.


    And then when I walked away she ran back to the car and drove off.


    We played the game at the mall, at the grocery store, at the park. At first I would wait for her, and she would sometimes come back crying and drive me home again but it wasn''t like that first time where she was happy to see me. She just looked more sad than ever. Sometimes she wouldn''t come back at all, and eventually a police officer would collect me.


    I went to my first foster home because of that game, but when I was dropped off with my garbage bag of clothes I had this idea that I should pretend to be a normal happy kid and I overdid it. I was all smiles and calling them mom and dad right away and it freaked them out, setting the tone for my time there. It didn''t matter, I wasn''t at that house too long. The state of New Jersey sent me back home and my mom was better, for a while. Or she pretended to be better. I decided later that playing that game was a sort of emergency stress relief valve for her, which is why after forcing herself to not abandon me for months she finally snapped. In retrospect, it was a lot like what Connie had done.


    I was eight, still much too small to fight back. She pinned me against a wall while ranting and raving, waving around the antique pair of scissors that had belonged to my great grandmother. They weren''t pretty or valuable but it was the only thing that we had left of my mom''s family so it normally had a place of honor on the wall in my mom''s room along with some old plates and photographs of me when I was little. The scissors had always worried me because my mom slammed her door sometimes and I was convinced that sooner or later they would fall from their spot and stab right down into her head.


    "You''re a monster," she said as she raised the open blades of the scissors to my neck, "and I should slit your throat right now. I shouldn''t have to put up with this! I shouldn''t have to look at you, every day! Every day that... that face! It''s not fair!"


    She pressed the scissors into my skin as she spoke, harder and harder. The blood running down and staining my shirt was hot, but I felt suddenly cold as I sensed the yawning abyss of death looming before me. Then the phone rang.


    She stepped back and stared at the phone which had only rang the once, then looked down at the scissors in her hand and at my bleeding throat and just shook her head. She picked up the phone to confirm there was nobody there, then walked across the living room to her bedroom where she carefully hung the scissors back in their spot where they could hang over my head like a warning if I dared to enter. For good measure she made eye contact with me and said, again, "Don''t come in to my room. Ever." and slammed the door. In that moment, I was mainly just worried that the scissors would fall on her.


    The cut got infected, or I had an allergic reaction, or something. God knows what might have been on those old rust-spotted blades. That meant that even though I cleaned it up myself and threw away the bloody shirt someone eventually noticed and despite - or possibly because of - my fantastical story about tripping while running in the kitchen and knocking down the knife block as I fell, I ended up in foster care again.


    That was the only time she attacked me, and the two times she abandoned me after that she didn''t try and pretend she was forgetting me. When she dropped me off at the Long Haul Hotel she let me know what she was doing and halfheartedly told me to be good for my uncle Roy. When we went on that big exciting road trip to Arizona - the happiest I''d seen my mom since I was little - she explained the whole thing to me over lunch before we reached Phoenix.


    The next day Connie seemed normal enough, and we spent most of our visit trying to get me to cast a spell. It didn''t go great. Connie could do it, somewhat, though she had focused on written runes so it wasn''t her strong suit. "The rune stuff is better anyway, assuming you have prep time. Both ways are better than wild magic I guess, but being able to write shit out like a program means you can get way more specific. It''s actually a lot like XCog+ in terms of the syntax, although you have to have Comprehension if you want to be able to make full use of the runes since there''s some that look identical but have different meanings."


    I felt a headache forming. "Wait. But if it''s a written rune, how can two identical ones mean different things? Also what''s XCog+?"


    "Oh shit! Katrin, I just remembered your book has rune thingies inside the cover! I never got to look at those after I got my Dumine because the guys that stabbed you stole it. Can you grab it?" She paused a moment as she mentally backed up, and then turned to me. "XCog+? We learned it, kinda, from that programming book? I forget where, might have been at one of the desks at Universal Servicing Systems. How do I remember that if you don''t? Anyway, the other thing - it''s like... I can write an uppercase ''i'' and a lowercase ''l'' in a way that they look the same, right? But I know which one I meant. Well, magic uses intent and the Common Local Understanding thing we talked about and a bunch of other witchy shit, so it remembers which one is which, but if some random person who didn''t write it wants to read it properly and doesn''t have Comprehension they''re probably fucked."


    Katrin returned with her spellbook, and Connie spent fifteen minutes poking at it before there was a sudden loud click and the teeny hexagonal tiles built into the cover popped up slightly. Touching one caused the others to sink back down, and Connie started sort of dragging them around - the others would shift out of the way to make room. "Hah! Yes! This is super fancy, it''s practically a touchscreen! I''ve seen shit like this before, but it was always these big gears built into wands or staves or whatever. Okay check it out. Katrin, I want you to do the light spell, while you''re holding the book. Cast it through the book, if that makes sense. And don''t do anything special other than that."


    Katrin took the book and concentrated, her free hand fluttering around and her lips twitching even though as always she insisted she wasn''t saying anything. A tiny white ball of light appeared, but she cursed and let it vanish. A few more times the same thing happened, and then we all gasped as a green light snapped into existence. Connie was cackling, and took the book away to fiddle with the tiles again. Handing it back, Katrin cast again and - first try this time - got a red light.


    Connie beamed. "You can set variables. Oooh, what''s your shield spell look like?"


    Katrin''s eyes went wide. "It''s a sphere, it appears right in front of my hand. You can change it?"


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    "Sure! A sphere is kinda dumb unless it''s big enough to cover you or something. Uh. Hang on. Try... now."


    Katrin took the book back, and cast again. The shield was almost invisible, but I could just barely see it was flat and square. It was also significantly larger, presumably because it wasn''t wasting space being more three-dimensional. After that Errod and I were totally forgotten, but I enjoyed watching Connie teach Katrin as much as she could about the little rune tiles. I got lost quickly, but Katrin seemed to be doing an okay job memorizing them. It seemed like there was a pretty serious limit on its usefulness, as it took Katrin a while to find the right tiles and get them into place - and sometimes she got it wrong and the spell wouldn''t cast.


    The next morning I had brunch with Errod, Katrin, and Betrad while we waited for Connie to be free to visit - there were more planes than normal aligned so even though Brinkmar wasn''t one of them they were testing... something. Top secret shit that probably wouldn''t amount to anything. Betrad was supposed to be keeping an eye on us in the meantime, and I''d decided it would be easier if we just invited him to sit at the table.


    We were on a balcony at the edge of the river, and the meal was mostly a series of little eggroll-things stuffed with all sorts of different ingredients. It was like a whole meal made out of appetizers. I couldn''t figure out how everyone knew which ones were witch, and it mattered because some of them went with certain sauces and others didn''t. Three times I got some very unpleasant mixes before I gave up and just tried to mimic whatever Katrin did.


    I was worried about Connie, and desperate to find out more about how we were going to find a lost Duminere, and dreading the idea that something would go wrong with the attempt to get into Brinkmar and force us to stay not just the four-and-a-bit months until it was aligned next but until the one after that, which would be a total of more than nine fantasyland months or eleven Earth months. Give or take. If Connie was already unhinged from being trapped and worrying about dying there was no way she''d make it that long. She needed to get out, stretch her legs.


    Bert gently blocked my hand as I reached to dip one of the rolls without paying attention, and redirected me to a different sauce. I was a bad judge, but I decided it meant he was still feeling flirty. "What was the security thing the other day? Can you tell us?"


    He waved an eggroll around vaguely as he tried to choose his words. "Eh. It was... there was some indication that the protective wards might have been damaged. But they tested everything, and it''s all working. They had someone go over the whole thing, in case someone had added something, and they tested everything you can think of. It''s all solid. But it was reasonable to be on high alert while they tested it."


    We chatted for a little longer, being careful not to mention Earth or the expedition or really anything else interesting around Bert. Finally they took away the empty plates and we stood to leave - and I saw her. She was standing on a rooftop across the river, wearing a plain wooden mask and holding a staff. Her clothes were strange animal skins, and what I could see of her hair was green. She was staring right at me.


    "We have to get to the fort," I said, "Something is wrong."


    Everyone turned towards me and then immediately swiveled to face where I was looking. I had this one moment where I was completely certain they wouldn''t be able to see her, but they sprung into action as if sensing the same menace I did. Bert pulled me to the other side of him and started marching us towards the stairs, Katrin began muttering under her breath as she tried to remember her spells, and Errod drew his sword. He whispered to me as we reached the street, "She''s got the same mask as the one that stole my toe. Not the same person, though. You think she came for the rest? Or for parts from you and Katrin?" It was a strange and disturbing thought.


    We hurried along the streets until we reached the fort, but pulled up short across the square. There were soldiers gathering, and they weren''t from Theramas. I wasn''t sure how they''d gotten into the city undetected, but it didn''t look like there were nearly enough of them to assault the fortress. The two in the front threw off their cloaks, and I saw that one of them was Telen. The other was shirtless, in contrast to Telen''s full plate, and incredibly hairy. I''d seen him somewhere, but I couldn''t think of where.


    "People of Theramas," Telen said, "stand aside and we will show you mercy. We know that you seek to enter the land of Brinkmar, but that plane is and has always been the property of Halenvar by right of the duties given by the now deceased royal family of Brinkmar, heirs to the Clockwork Empire. King Halenvar has the sole claim to that land, and entering is forbidden. You will not succeed, but unfortunately even the attempt must be punished. Send out the woman you call Calliope Smith, and we will withdraw with no violence. This is your only warning."


    Bert grabbed me and tried to haul me away into the nearest building. "Callie, we can''t let you be seen."


    I tried to push against his arm. "It''s not me they want. They want Connie. We need to help her somehow."


    "She''s in a heavily guarded fortress," he said, calm and with a carefully gentle tone. "She has all the help she needs. We''re the ones that are in trouble here." He unclipped a pin from his shirt, in the shape of a shield, and clipped it onto my cloak.


    He was right. He was totally right, and if I insisted on charging in again like I had when I''d seen the rug I would just get Katrin and Errod killed. I didn''t mind running to save my life, but I hated feeling like I was abandoning Connie. I nodded, and the four of us turned to sneak away. The woman in the mask was standing there.


    She swung the staff at us, and the end of it burst into flames - as did my cloak, and a table off to the side in front of a shop. I pulled out my knife and lunged, barely slicing the hand holding the staff. She didn''t drop it, and I wasn''t even sure I''d hit hard enough for her to feel it in the heat of battle. Bert swung his own sword, and the masked woman gestured at him - knocking him backwards but also throwing her in the opposite direction. She rolled to her feet and swung the staff again, this time with no sign of magic but with a precise strike that clipped the underside of Katrin''s jaw and sent her sprawling to the ground.


    I threw my knife and was unlucky enough to have it hit hilt-first, but it still seemed to stun her for an instant - I hauled Katrin backwards and pulled my second knife out - I''d managed to find places for four of them before it started to feel silly. Errod yanked off my still-burning cloak as Bert grabbed me again, pulling towards another street. He wasn''t even looking at the masked woman anymore, and I saw why as soon as I turned. The soldiers in front of the fort had noticed us.


    Katrin was thankfully back on her feet so we ran, but they were already moving to intercept us. The masked woman was blocking the path directly away, and the soldiers were circling around in a pincer that would close on us soon. "Up!" I yelled, and ran up the stairs into a building. Most of the structures in Theramas were only two or three stories, so it only took a moment to get to the roof. I was looking for some route we could take, some clever path that would let us dive into the river and escape or swing from one of the countless strings of colorful flags and get away. There was nothing.


    Theramas'' soldiers were swarming out of the fort from small doors in the wall, and archers were shooting from above. Telen and the shirtless one were still standing there, in the middle of the square - unconcerned. Arrows slammed down around them but never hit them directly, and they seemed to be having a calm discussion about what to do next. The shirtless one began walking towards the fort and as he did he... changed. He grew, and distorted, and by the time he reached the walls he was an enormous hulking beast. He leapt and clawed his way up the walls despite the storm of arrows slamming into him and sticking in his hide.


    Telen began walking towards us down in the square, and as I continued to scan for a way out I saw the masked woman on the closest rooftop. Still staring right at me. No other roof was close enough to possibly jump to and we couldn''t go back down; not only were soldiers coming up after us but Betrad had barricaded the door to the stairs as best he could. Telen was coming, though, and he could teleport which meant even if the door held we were fucked. "Sorry. Sorry. Shit, why did I think going up would help?"


    Errod put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked over to see him clipping the shield pin onto his own shirt. He''d pulled my cloak off a moment ago, he must have saved the pin before throwing away the burnt garment. "It was worth a shot," he said. "Across the rooftops, right? It could still work. Just... try to get Katrin out."


    And before I registered what he''d just said, Errod ran and jumped towards the roof with the woman on it. She was ready for him, but as she swung her staff like a baseball bat to keep him from landing right a flash of blue surrounded him for an instant. The shield pin had triggered. He landed, a bit precarious, and pulled out his sword - swinging it at her head in the same motion. She deflected with her staff, and Errod''s blade bit into the wood. With a sudden movement she twisted and pulled and he lost his grip on the weapon, watching impotently as it flew off to the side. The woman''s hand glowed green as energy gathered for some kind of attack, and Errod smiled.


    She clearly didn''t see it coming. Errod just tipped backwards off the roof of the third story building, clutching a dangling bit of her leather shirt in his hand. She jerked abruptly off of the roof after him, screaming as the green light flared and exploded while still in her hand.

 CHAPTER 020: Smash and Grab

    Katrin howled, and I grabbed her to keep her from running to the edge. "No! No, he did it on purpose! He''s got a plan, just run! He wants you to run!"


    She flailed at me, ineffectually. "I can''t!"


    "You can''t help him from here either!" I yelled, forcing her to look at me. "Jump, he cleared the way. Then we can come back for him. I won''t leave without you, and Betrad won''t leave without me. You need to do this."


    She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and maybe a little hatred. But she ran. She leapt at the edge and just barely made it, then turned to look down as I hurried after her. "They''re not there! Where did they go?"


    Betrad landed right behind me, and we both grabbed Katrin and forced her to come with us. This roof was closer to the river but still not next to it, and the only building we could possibly jump to was just one story so we''d be likely to get hurt when we landed. I was willing to risk it, but Betrad apparently wasn''t because he hauled me down the steps towards the street. They were on the outside of the building, and we were spotted before we got all the way down, but at least we had a chance.


    We circled around buildings, looking for anywhere to hide - but with the soldiers so close behind there was no good opportunity. While the streets themselves had cleared out somewhat, people were still watching from the upper floors of buildings and shouting insults at the invaders. I had hoped that people would charge out and fight alongside us to defend their city, but it didn''t look like that was going to happen. Presumably at least a few people were fighting back, but so close to the fortress they probably assumed it would be cleaned up by actual trained soldiers.


    Halenvar troops popped out of an alley just one street down from us, and we stumbled to a halt. For a moment, nobody moved. The ones behind us slowed to a crawl, the ones ahead of us waited. They knew they had us, and were being cautious. One started to float slightly, and another''s hair stood on end as electricity began to crackle over his sword. Of course. A small strike team going behind enemy lines, they wouldn''t send just normal soldiers. At least some of these people would have magic.


    Katrin stepped in front of me, and I could see the terror in her eyes. Her jaw was set, though, and her hands were frantically sliding little the little hexagonal tiles in the cover of her spellbook "Not a sphere... height of... where''s the zero? Ah! Callie, I''ve... I''ve got an idea. But it''s going to use all my mana and it might not work and... I don''t know."


    "I don''t have a plan," I muttered, "So give it a shot I guess. Which side?"


    She nodded towards the newer group of soldiers, and I turned to face the others. There was the lightning guy, and some sort of visual distortion around another one although I didn''t know what that meant. Heat? A force shield? Light magic?


    I felt something happen next to me, and Katrin let out a breath. "C-C-Callie... I did it." Her teeth were chattering and she was clutching her arms. "Charge the others. We need them to run at us."


    Betrad nodded and then yelled as he began to sprint forward. I was just a few steps behind. Lightning arced towards us and slammed directly into Betrad''s sword, but it didn''t slow him down at all for some reason. There were four of them in front of us and five behind, which meant we were outnumbered three to one even if you didn''t take into consideration the fact that two of us were untrained. I was sure the end was here, and we were all about to die. Any second now.


    Someone screamed behind us, and then another. And another. I turned and saw something horrific - one of the soldiers was stumbling back with his arm removed at the elbow, and another was clutching his chest. A third was slumped forward, propped up impossibly on nothing but air. Catching myself, I spun to face the people in front of me rather than wasting time trying to figure out what had happened.


    Betrad was a whirlwind, blocking strikes and swinging out faster than I would have thought possible. He was hit with another lightning strike, and again it did nothing. That was the last thing the lightning guy ever did, and he joined another soldier in the gutter. Now it was two on one, though Betrad was looking exhausted. I threw my knife at the one with the strange distortion around him and this time hit blade first, but there was a blue flicker and the knife bounced away.


    A wordless battle cry sounded behind me, and I turned to see Errod running towards the ones behind us. He was trailing a long string of those colorful flags that were everywhere in Theramas, presumably having gotten all tangled up in them after falling off the roof, and there was a fair amount of blood on the lower half of his face as if he''d gotten the mother of all nosebleeds. Whatever spell Katrin had cast - considering she only knew a few it had to have been the shield - must have failed because the soldier that had been hanging in the air had dropped. The two that looked injured but not dead had collapsed on the side of the road and were trying to bandage their wounds, but the two that were still up casually turned to face Errod who was holding, of all things, a plank of wood. I sprinted towards them, knowing that if he reached them before I did they would kill him easily. I''d seen Errod fight, and his bravery in no way made up for his lack of skill.


    My feet slammed down on the cobblestones in total silence, the vibration magic preventing any sound. At the last second one of them turned towards me, somehow sensing me as I reached him, but it was too late. I hit him knife-first and bowled him over, both of us ending up on the ground. The other turned to swing at me, but immediately had to redirect to knock Errod''s plank aside. In a mirror of my own maneuver, Errod tackled the soldier and rolled clumsily into a rain barrel. I pulled my knife free and slammed it down into the one Errod had hit with every ounce of my weight, feeling the thin blade pierce his leather armor. He turned, pulling the knife out of my hand, but before he could do anything else Katrin''s boot swung into his face.


    Errod and I quickly stood, unsure as to which soldiers were still a threat. We turned towards the other group, hoping Betrad had had time to clear them out - but instead saw General Telen standing there. Betrad was impaled on his blade. Telen causally tilted the sword downwards and the body slid off the end, crumpling into a heap.


    "No," I whispered. "No, fuck. Fuck."


    Katrin whispered next to me. "Callie, run. Let''s go."


    One of the injured soldiers right next to us tried to lunge for me, jarring me out of my momentary paralysis. Katrin was right. There was nothing anyone could do for Betrad, and we only had a second before this group killed us, injured or not. We ran, and made it maybe twenty feet before Telen appeared in front of us. There was an alley between us but we''d have to charge towards him, and behind us the few remaining solders were limping into formation to block our way back.


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    Telen hesitated at the sound of footsteps, and Connie came bursting out of the alley. She stood there between us and Telen, knives out like she was going to take him on all by herself. That stupid bitch. She could have stayed in the fort. She could have run. Telen looked at her, then at me. "Interesting. Just how many of you are there?"


    Before he could get an answer, Hammersmith leapt from the roof above him. He vanished before she hit, appearing a split second later behind Connie with his sword already swinging. The world seemed to slow down, and I watched as Telen''s blade sliced cleanly through Errod and Katrin in one horrible arc. Blood flew everywhere as Connie turned to look behind her with eyes wide in terror. She shifted her grip on the knives, but didn''t swing - instead she seemed to be sizing him up, examining him up close. Telen didn''t attack her or me, and Hammersmith was only inching closer - presumably looking for some perfect moment.


    "And now," he said, looking at Connie, "you will come with me."


    I stepped backwards, trying to think. They were dead. Just like that. What could I do? How could I possibly...


    Hammersmith leapt from the roof above General Telen. He vanished, appearing behind Connie who had already thrust her long dagger backwards - his sword faltered as he howled in anguish, and it barely clipped Errod. The knife looked like it was somehow melded into Telen''s plate mail armor, and by looking at it at least two inches would also be in his flesh. He turned and grabbed Connie by the throat, lifting her from the ground effortlessly. "You will -"


    But whatever he thought she would do, Hammersmith had other plans. She was there impossibly fast, and crushed his wrist in her hand. Telen dropped Connie and pulled away, swinging his sword at Hammersmith who let it strike her in the neck so that she could get right up to Telen and slam her fists on either side of his helm. The blade that had cut right through both of my friends without stopping failed to sever Hammersmith''s head from her body, whereas the sides of Telen''s helmet dented dramatically inwards with the force of her blow. He managed to kick Hammersmith hard enough to make her take a step back, and then he vanished - I spun wildly looking for where he would appear, but there was no sign of him.


    "Let''s go," Hammersmith said, "back to the fort immediately." There was a line of blood on her neck, but as I watched metal coated over it. The other enemy soldiers were running, clearly not wanting to take on anyone that made Telen retreat. I broke from the group and sprinted to Betrad''s body, but when I reached it I could see I was too late - his eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. Some tiny motion or sound caused me to look to my right, and I saw the masked woman perched in a second story window. One hand was clutched to her chest and wrapped in a bandage, but the other was crackling with red lightning. She reached out, pointing at me, and I felt my blood run with ice as I stared at the spell that was about to take my life.


    The window exploded with lightning, but it was aimless. The woman shrieked as it struck her, the building behind me, the dead soldiers. I took cover inside the nearest doorway and a moment later Hammersmith stepped in beside me.


    Shielding me with her body, she scanned every window. "Seems clear now. What happened?"


    "A spellcaster," I said, unsure what information was important. "Uh. She lost her staff, and hurt her hand, and I think that made it so she couldn''t aim properly."


    Hammersmith looked thoughtful. "Not a spellcaster, then. A wild mage. It''s unreliable, dangerous. We''ll keep an eye out."


    She yelled orders to some of her men that had only just arrived, and then got us moving. Remembering Connie''s desire for me to stay out of the fortress, I started trying to come up with an argument for going back to the apartment despite the attack. The attack had been desperate, and had failed. Surely they wouldn''t have the resources to keep throwing at Theramas. And while obviously it was tragic and horrible it hadn''t been... oh.


    There were so many bodies. Almost all were from the Empire, with only a few in Halenvar uniforms. It wasn''t just that, there was... well, gore. Someone was smeared all down the wall of the fort. Others were in pieces. The hairy guy, the one that had grown so huge and started to climb the wall, was nowhere to be seen. I heard Katrin throwing up somewhere behind me, but Hammersmith didn''t even slow down or make an effort to go around the bodies - she just stepped over them, dragging Connie along as Kern dragged me.


    "Calliope - Constance, whatever - I cannot begin to tell you how stupid, how insane that was," she said, "You put everyone''s lives at risk."


    Connie rolled her eyes. "I had to save my sister."


    "You have to save all of us," Hammersmith countered, "I can''t allow this to happen again."


    I looked over at Connie, and she looked back and nodded. She''d stretched Hammersmith''s promise too far - she was going to be kept under guard at the fortress all the time now. Same for me. Logically I knew my feeble attempts at coming up with a reason to get to stay at the apartment were not just bad but embarrassing, and I should be glad to be in the fort; this attack showed that Halenvar was after us specifically, and would take serious risks to get to us. Locked up in the fortress we would be safe. My mind flashed to Betrad, impaled on that sword. What if it was safer for everyone else to not be near me? It wasn''t a rational thought - it was more that despite everything I was still trying to justify an escape, and I knew Connie was doing the same.


    Bill had sat me down at one point, to talk to me about running away. He''d asked why I did it, and he was so infuriatingly genuine about it that I even really tried to answer. But like so many things in my fucked up brain I wasn''t entirely sure. Maybe I didn''t like being told what to do, and wanted to be in control. Maybe it was some stupid emotional thing and I was trying to reject others before they could reject me. But probably, even if it was a little of those other things, I just thought it was fun and I had shitty impulse control.


    He''d given me his card, and just said "this whole system stinks, I know. But it''s dangerous to run around on the streets, sleep in abandoned buildings, eat out of dumpsters. You''re too clever for me, Calliope, even if I were there with you the whole time. I could never stop you from running off and doing something stupid. So the best I can do is ask you to think about it, do some risk assessment first, and to be willing to call me if you get into trouble. That''s my personal cell phone on the back - I don''t care if it''s one in the morning or if they''ve reassigned me or whatever, if you call I''ll come and get you. I''d rather you just stay put at the group home, but I''ll settle for a promise that you''ll call if you need it."


    I had thought about calling him, when I was in the police station after Universal Servicing Systems. I almost did. Instead I waited it out, and eventually someone came and took me to... whatever shitty group home was after that. Somewhere forgettable. I had the insane thought for a moment that I should call him and ask him to take me away from Hammersmith, then wondered if there was anywhere on this world where my cell phone would magically get service if I somehow got it working. Almost certainly not.


    But one part of Bill''s talk did still apply. If I was going to sneak away and go on an adventure, I needed to acknowledge that it was a stupid and bad idea and I needed to do some risk assessment. In that moment I was sore, cold, tired, and emotionally drained. Katrin was out of mana after making what was, in retrospect, probably a razor-thin shield strong enough for those soldiers to cut themselves apart on. Connie would be out of mana too, given that she''d said rewinding time used basically everything she had. Errod had probably completely used up the charge on Betrad''s shield pin when he fell off the roof, in addition to losing his sword. That last part possibly made Errod safer, if I was honest, but otherwise it was a bad situation. Whatever we decided to do next, right now was the worst possible moment to run away.


    Knowing that didn''t make it easier to hear the door slam shut behind us.

 CHAPTER 021: A Rock Solid Plan

    "This is all part of the plan," Connie said. She looked relaxed, her feet up on the table and a paper airplane in her hand.


    "It was your plan for General Telen and some guy that can turn into King Kong to sneak deep behind enemy lines with sixty troops and assault the fortress looking for you - and I guess also to try and destroy one of the few remaining gateways to Brinkmar - and then for us to come close enough to dying that Hammersmith decides we should be kept under lock and key for our own good until Brinkmar is in alignment and you can take the army across?"


    She paused, airplane poised for throwing, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "...No," she conceded, "not all of that. Also if they decide those Halenvar goons fucked the gateway up enough that it''s not usable Hammersmith will for sure not let us stay in this city which would be very bad. But... this last part, where we''re locked up in a windowless basement room? That was part of the plan."


    The paper airplane soared across the room and managed to wedge itself into the gap between the door frame and the top of the door itself. Connie threw both hands in the air in a victory pose. "See, I complimented this room in front of Hammersmith once or twice. Not enough to be weird. It''s nice and cool down here, and the walls have that neat wavy pattern, and it''s quiet. I''ve moved meetings down here a couple of times, and when I was acting like I was considering letting them move you into the fort rather than the apartment I muttered something about how maybe the two of us could stay in here, since it''s nice and spacious. And then, just to be safe, I made sure I was close to Hammersmith when she made her decision to keep us down here."


    I stopped pacing and stared at her. What was that supposed to mean? She waggled her eyebrows at me, closed her eyes, and threw another paper airplane. It landed on top of the first one.


    I didn''t want to give her the satisfaction, but that throw should have been impossible. "What the fuck?"


    "Probability magic, my friend," she said, folding another paper airplane. "I''m not great at it, I couldn''t power it up because as I have bitterly mentioned before I was forced to focus almost entirely on my little rewind trick. But I had to get it to the point where I could at least use it outside of combat, for stuff where I could calmly visualize it. It seemed like it might be important if the end of the world was on the line. So I was close to Hammersmith, and I just... put the vibes out there."


    I stared at her in horror. "You mind controlled Hammersmith?"


    "Pfft. No. Even someone with actual thought magic would have trouble with her. I provided the teeniest tiniest little nudge to a previously existing possibility. Very low power stuff. Probability magic is strange, you don''t get to tell it how to work. You just ask for a result, and give it some juice, and hope that it''s enough. It''s about visualization. I couldn''t make something impossible happen, or convince Hammersmith to just let us go entirely. But if she was possibly already going to remember how much I liked this room, and possibly going to think about how it''s nice and secure what with the lack of windows... well... a nudge is all you need. If you want to see something really funny, we should go back to Earth and hit Vegas."


    "No shit," I said. "Wait, how does anyone gamble in this world?"


    "Games of skill, partly. Or they put a lock on your Dumine. Also there are gambling places that only let you in if you''ve got a dud, and that leads to people making fake duds and gluing them on or whatever. If you want a good fake it''s expensive, I looked into it."


    I reached up and pulled the paper airplanes down. "Wait. Shit. You did it again." She''d been getting me off topic for hours. After the fight we''d been separated and questioned and then given time to wash up and sleep. In the morning, we were moved down to the basement and given a long speech about how we weren''t prisoners, were totally free and able to go anywhere and do anything we wanted, and also would need to stay put for ''a while'' until they figured out how so many enemy troops made it to us.


    As soon as that was over and we were alone I''d tried to talk to Connie about escape plans - I didn''t actually think it was a good idea, but I was certain that she would be on the verge of mental collapse and planning an escape would make her feel better. But when I tried to sketch out some ideas of how we might get past the guards she stole my paper for airplanes and told me not to worry about it. It had been at least three hours (with a recent break for lunch), and every single time I''d gotten her close to talking about whatever she had planned - because there was no way she was actually just fine with this - she turned the conversation around somehow.


    "I did nothing. You keep distracting yourself. It''s not my fault if every offhand comment I make causes you to lose your train of thought. Besides, it''s good for you to think about potential application of magic powers before we get to the Duminere. I''d skip the probability stuff though, I''ve already got that. We don''t need duplicates."


    "They all seem so powerful," I said. I''d looked at the list Connie had given me a hundred times and was no closer to picking what I wanted. "That guy became an enormous monster, how did he do that?"


    She shrugged, adjusting the flaps on her airplane. "Enhancement and fabrication, I think. Enhancement to modify your body, Fabrication to make matter - it''s not really real unless you spend a ton of mana, but he can probably get it pretty close and then it just... dissolves later? Or something? He probably has a third, I dunno. I forget his name, he''s one of the big strike team leaders for Halenvar."


    She paused to throw the airplane, which did a perfect loop right back to her hand. "There''s one that''s been off the radar for a few months and is probably in Brinkmar, one that just got killed because of my amazing future knowledge fucking their battle plans, and one on the front lines. Oh, and Telen. Anyway they call the big guy Behemoth, which... eh. I feel like there''s got to be a more creative name to give him. He got away, him and Telen both. Oh, and the witch."


    "Yeah, and what the fuck was up with her? Why was she using wild magic, and why did she steal Errod''s toe?"


    "Okay first of all, wild magic is badass. It''s just super dangerous and unpredictable. But the language is more flexible, more conversational as opposed to being like a programming language, so you can make up spells on the fly way easier. You just... also fuck it up easier. I guess in the old days, like three thousand years ago or something before the Clockmaker, there were a hundred languages. Anyone could just make one up and teach it to enough people that the Common Local Understanding would recognize it and bam, instant magic. But then if they didn''t agree on what a word meant, or what was possible, or whatever... it''s a mess."


    "Wait," I said, "any language would work? So all those Harry Potter fans..."


    "Oh absolutely! If they''d had mana and were all hanging out together back before the Clockmaker locked shit down those spells one hundred percent would have worked. That many people that all agreed about what the words were and what it was supposed to do? No problem. But! The Imperial language, the Clockmaker one, it''s objectively better in a lot of ways. Sorry you can''t read the spells right, the complex ones are like those fucking... magic eye pictures, I could never get those things to work."


    I almost said ''yeah, me either'' before realizing what a dumb statement that would be.


    "But speaking of the witch," she continued, "I listened in on part of what Errod said and he was pretty clear that it wasn''t the one that took his toe. He said the hair was different, the staff was wood rather than metal, the height was different, and he was even sure the skin tone wasn''t right. That''s a lot of differences."


    "Sure, but what are the odds two crazy masked magic users were following us?"


    She raised an eyebrow. "Not as bad as you''d think. I''ve killed like... four? Yeah, four people with masks. Two were fanatics that were guarding the portal to Brinkmar, one was a Klunlesh or something which was fucked up because when I pulled the mask off it was my own face looking back at me, and then one of them was an assassin that was trying to kill Hammersmith. The other Hammersmith, of course. These were all in the old timeline."


    "How would you even kill her?" I muttered, remembering her fighting Telen, "She''s unstoppable."


    Connie gave me a funny look. "Oh come on. We''re more creative than that. She can choke on something, she can be cooked to death or electrocuted or poisoned or teleported into a hostile dimension or any number of things. That''s why she normally keeps... uh... well, she normally keeps some other soldiers around her. All she can do is fight and not have to wear armor."


    "What were you about to say?"


    "Nothing," she said, unconvincingly.


    "I''ll shave half your head in your sleep."


    Connie sighed. "She... normally keeps someone nearby to act as a lightning rod. Someone with entropy magic, to drain attacks that could otherwise kill her."


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    "Okay. So why didn''t you want to just say... oh."


    I pictured it again, Betrad''s body sliding down off of the blade. He''d been hit by lightning at least twice, and whatever that distortion was around the other soldier had stopped when he got up close. I hadn''t known him that well, but he had seemed nice. "I feel bad for not feeling worse. Like I''m very coldly logically sad about Bert, but I''m not... sad-sad. Katrin was bawling. What''s wrong with us? Okay, now I actually want you to do the thing where you derail my train of thought. Give it your best shot."


    "Okay." Connie considered for a moment. "Did I tell you what happened to my phone? Hah, I knew that would get your attention. So I got some money, and I was desperate to get the phone working again. All it needed was a charge, right? Well we''re not stupid, so right away I knew that shoving electricity into it wouldn''t solve anything; there''s voltages and shit you have to get right, and obviously we have no clue how that would work. So I take it to this guy, he''s super expensive but he gives me a discount just because he wants to see what the fuck the cell phone even is.


    "He''s got Reinforcement magic, and his husband has Temporal and Perception. Their whole thing is that they swear they can return anything to its prior state. Like, you''ve got a painting and it gets something spilled on it that strips the paint? Normal repairs can''t do anything for that. But these guys can get the original painting back for you. So I think, okay, the battery is a chemical thing and maybe they can return it to a time when it was charged. Makes sense, right? They get to work, and then they both look really confused, and then the back of the phone pops right off. The battery falls out, and it''s swollen up like a balloon and the one guy is flipping out, he has no idea why his powers have failed him.


    "He starts to apologize, and then it explodes. Like actually explodes. The guy screams, we all make a run for it, and a minute later we''re watching his whole shop burn down. They weren''t as pissed as you''d think, they were crazy rich and anyway some of the stuff wasn''t that badly burnt and obviously they were just the guys you''d call to fix even the burnt stuff. But the one dude wouldn''t even look at me, just kept muttering that he shouldn''t have tampered with a device made by demons."


    "Well I still have mine, so if you think of a better idea we could try one more time. God, I really miss that stupid phone sometimes. This place has magic and dinosaurs and whatever but a couple times now I''ve just... I don''t know, I''ve wanted to sit back and play that shitty Tetris knock-off we made, or listen to music or whatever. When we''re rich I''m going to buy magic devices that just do dumb entertaining stuff."


    "I could code up some stuff, maybe. I''m not great with the runic shit, but with enough time and maybe resetting my Dumine I could be a magic item programmer. I''ve been tweaking my rig," she said, gesturing to the terrifying device sitting on the bed.


    It was made from black metal with leather straps, and looked like some sort of vaguely kinky steampunk mad scientist gear. The part that went on Connie''s back had cylinders which contained very powerful time-aligned mana crystals, and then there were chains that lead to cuffs for her wrists and thighs and allowed the device''s effects to better hit her whole body evenly. In theory it could help her speed up and slow down time, but in practice she''d modified it to keep her stable - thereby holding off the seemingly incurable wasting sickness that kept trying to kill her.


    "Sure," I said, "but also we''ll be filthy rich so if we need to you can just hire people, be their patron or whatever. No real responsibilities, just traveling the world and... I was talking to Katrin and Errod about maybe being a, like, mercenary or something - but for good shit. Like a bounty hunter, monster hunter, hero for hire kinda thing. It''s stupid, I know."


    She smiled. "There''s a mercenary company that makes people sign magic contracts that say they won''t be evil, basically. You could work for them. They''re in Good Charl, we''re going there to hire people to help us get to the Duminere - although I don''t know we''ll use that company."


    "I wouldn''t want to sign a magic contract," I said. "But as I keep reminding you, we''ll be rich. So I could do it pro bono, they''ll be all ''oh how can I repay you'' and I''ll just dramatically ride off into the sunset. And then maybe I''ll come back to whatever little shit town some day, and people will remember me and buy me a drink or something. Best of both worlds. No attachment, no acting like I care about people, but you still get to be a good guy. It''s the social equivalent of the cool uncle."


    "We didn''t have a cool uncle," Connie said, "We had uncle Roy."


    "Hey, he never made us go to school that whole time. That was pretty cool." Child Protective Services hadn''t thought so. "Anyway, that''s a possible plan. Unless everyone sucks, although so far most people have been pretty nice."


    Connie went around the room collecting paper airplanes, then perched on the chest by the bed so she could start throwing them at my head. "I didn''t travel much. I guess they''re okay. Way less racism and sexism and homophobia and shit here, probably because it''s hard to get upset about skin color or gender stuff when you can change them whenever you want."


    "Wait. Oh, shit. Right. Enhancement?"


    "Yeah. The fast and dirty way of doing it means it also reverts after a while, so rich people - or people that can do that stuff themselves - sometimes alter themselves just for fun, or to be artsy. For the most part nobody gives a shit. I considered doing a short term sex change at one point when I had run away and was trying to hide - I thought it might make it harder for them to find me - but I didn''t actually go through with it. Anyway, less sexism and racism unless you''re talking about people from other planes. There''s some tension there, in a few cases. Oh, and like the whole country of Markonti are kinda awful, but nobody goes there. They basically got shut out from global politics because everyone agreed that they''re assholes."


    I caught an airplane and threw it back. "What about Halenvar?"


    She reached out for it, but it took a nose dive at the last second. "Bah. Um... yeah, they''re awful and we''re at war with them and everything but as a nation they''re not terrible. Like the king is the absolute worst, he''s evil and a religious fanatic and is willing to risk destroying the universe but he''s never taken much of a hands-on approach with the day to day shit and some of the people a few steps down the ladder from him are pretty decent so... yeah, overall it''s not a bad place. Once he''s dead and the war is over they''ll probably sign some treaty right away and people will act like it all never happened. Of course they also won''t ever know about the destroying the universe part."


    "I guess as long as Telen gets what''s coming to him. Man, you were so close."


    She shook her head. "Nah, that was as much damage as I was ever going to do. When you teleport, it clears a path for you - moves air out of the way and stuff - and if there''s something in the way that you can''t move it just won''t teleport you at all. But there''s a split second between vanishing and reappearing for whatever reason, and if something ends up in the way right at the perfect moment you''re in trouble. But the thing is, I''m not that fast and so even with rewinding time after seeing where he''d appear I barely was able to get part of my dagger into position. With his armor, and the padding they wear under it? Most likely I got an inch or so in there."


    "That''s what she said. Er, he said? Whatever. Anyway, that still clearly hurt him. If you''d gotten the knife a little deeper, or aimed for the head..."


    "Maybe. It was a tough shot, I don''t think I would have gotten the head. Look, we''ll get him eventually. He... well, a version of him... killed some people I really liked. I would happily trade my life for his. But chances are it won''t have anything to do with me, it''ll be Hammersmith or some random soldier or he''ll slip in the shower and crack his skull on something. We''ll hear about it a month later, it''ll be totally anticlimactic but we won''t care because we''ll be off on an adventure."


    I crumpled the last paper airplane into a ball and threw it at her head. She didn''t bother dodging. "And how will we be on an adventure when we''re being kept locked in a basement?"


    Connie looked at the clock on the wall. It was similar to the ones I was used to in principle, though not in form; the numbers only went to six rather than twelve, and the whole face rotated instead of having hands. It was about fifteen minutes to noon. "Ugh. Fine. Timing is off anyway. So, you know the walls around cities - and this fort - have runes woven into them, right?"


    "Yeah," I said, "to keep people from teleporting past them or coming in from other planes or whatever."


    "To stop them from doing all sorts of things, it varies from place to place. Also, for the outer walls, to keep mana out."


    "Don''t they want mana?"


    "They do, but if you don''t have a barrier the people suck it all up and not only drain the whole countryside but attract monsters. Having a barrier means there''s basically no mana at all in the city which makes it unattractive to monsters, and plenty of mana outside the city which means you can - in moderation - use it for other stuff. Having really good walls with all the layered runes is a big deal for a city - places with shitty walls all eventually have problems.


    "But learning how to write runes is relatively easy," she said, "since you can technically do it without even going to a Duminere. It''s harder, and most people can''t activate the runes themselves, but it would still be easy to slip an extra character in, or just break them. And that would be bad."


    I nodded along. "Sure, Betrad -" sliding off the end of the sword, dead eyes staring up at the sky "- said something yesterday before the attack, there was some indication they might have been messed with. Wait. What did you do? Also, did it work? Because he said they tested everything."


    "You can''t just go in there and change things, because yeah - they''d notice. In fact, they made it so you need a special sequence like a password in order to mess with things or it would immediately be apparent. Think of a checksum. And they change the runes a little every few months, and change the sequence. So even if you knew it, pretty soon it would be outdated. And obviously they keep them extremely secret."


    She looked far too pleased with herself. How would she have... oh. "Do they keep the old outdated ones secret?"


    Connie sarcastically clapped for me. "Good job. No, they do not. And so if you already suspect you might be... let''s call it going back in time although that''s not quite what I did... in addition to researching the expedition that found a lost Duminere you could memorize some old sequences. And some other things."


    I got up and started pacing. I was excited, but also... was it even a good idea to leave? Who was I kidding, I''d been locked up for less than twenty-four hours and I was feeling the pressure. "Okay so how... what do we do? How does this help? You did something a few days ago, and then you wanted us in this specific room... but I''m not seeing what you would have done. Did you make it so we can teleport out somehow?"


    "That''s way beyond my ability. But - oh! Finally! Good timing though. Callie, step back from the middle of the floor. Guess what happens when you carefully move some runes to make an area that''s not protected from Transmutation?"


    As if on cue, the floor opened up. Milanata Hurst, the world''s most absent-minded landlord, looked up from the hole. "Oh! I forgot there were two of you! Sorry I''m late dears, I couldn''t get the nose right on my latest project and it was going to kill me if I left it like that - especially if I get caught and executed for treason. Anyway, are you both ready to go?"

 CHAPTER 022: You Son of a Bitch, Im In

    I collapsed out of the stone turtle, trying to disentangle myself from Connie while simultaneously stretching out my cramping limbs. We were both swearing at the stiffness and muscle soreness and - at least in my case - an uncomfortably full bladder, but after just a few seconds the cursing turned to laughing which faded into giggles and a few pained hisses as we worked the pins and needles out.


    "Sorry it took so long," Mila said, "there was a backlog at the teleportation circle because of the attack yesterday. But we''re here now, and I think I did a pretty good job closing up the floor behind us so even if they''ve noticed you''re gone they may not have worked out how just yet."


    Connie finally stood and reached back down to help me up. "I doubt they''ve noticed yet. Even if the runes I put on the inside of your statue kept them from finding us right away they probably would have had someone stop any teleports out of the city just in case. Anyway, now that we''re here we should have a little time. Good Charl is probably the most... independent... city in the Free States, they''re not going to let the Empire just sweep in here."


    Good Charl was one of the two cities in the Free States to have a Duminere, but they had a much more permissive attitude towards it. You didn''t have to be a citizen to get inside, and the contracts they made people agree to just said you had to come to the defense of the Free States if another nation tried something. Instead, they sold tickets. This had led to the city being a hub for mercenary companies that would pay for entry if you signed on for a certain number of years, which meant that in the end it was actually very similar to the arrangement in other nations - just with a middle-man.


    There were still benefits. If you were the type that liked to travel, or if you wanted to experiment with a non-standard set of gifts rather than going with the safe options most countries encouraged it was worth signing up to do odd jobs. It was, of course, what Connie had been planning to do before she ended up stuck in Theramas and if she hadn''t known about the lost Duminere it was probably what I would have tried for as well. In a way it was the closest thing to the fantasy trope of an Adventurer''s Guild - all these people with magical superpowers, doing odd jobs as caravan guards and bounty hunters and even construction projects, depending on their abilities.


    We needed to hire a few people to help us get to the lost Duminere. The only ability that we would for sure need was Planar travel, to get us into Nusos. From what I understood Nusos was a plane made up of all the rooms and buildings in the world - or fake echoes of them - all mashed together. The Duminere was supposedly only able to be accessed from Nusos for some reason, and also needed a key which had been buried with some old dead king in the Necropolis.


    The Necropolis was where everyone on the continent was laid to rest. Some places had crypts for short term storage, but sooner or later every possible corpse was shipped to the Necropolis. The bodies of the Halenvar soldiers that had been abandoned after my run-in with them had needed to be left behind for practical reasons, but this explained why they''d all been left clutching coins - it was payment for whoever hauled them away. I suspected that in practice wild animals would just drag the bodies off, but maybe it was one of those things where you could get away with just doing enough to say you''d tried.


    In the center of the Necropolis was some sort of pit bodies were thrown into, Connie said she''d been told it was bottomless which seemed impossible but also... it would have to be, right? The population of this world was clearly way lower than Earth but even so it would have surely filled up at some point otherwise. The sides of the pit were lined all the way down to eternity with mausoleums and filled with actual no-shit zombies, and our goal was pretty far down. "It''s fine," Connie had said, "I know almost exactly where it is so we can just hurry down there, grab the key, and then duck out into Nusos and head to our destination. It''ll be quick. And, of course, we''ll make sure some of the people we hire can handle zombies."


    So that was what we needed - someone with Planar magic, and some people that could help us fight off undead hoards. There were layers of bureaucracy we needed to deal with, several of which could have been skipped if Connie was both rich and willing to tell everyone about the Duminere. Instead we had to meet with a government agent that worked with the mercenary companies to be vetted, while Errod and Katrin headed off to help deliver the stone turtle which Mila apparently really did have a buyer for - that would presumably help her avoid extra scrutiny if they looked into her after realizing we were gone.


    "Do you think they''re coming back?" I asked, watching them vanish into the crowd. Katrin had been unusually quiet, and I''d seen Errod huddled up with her talking too quietly for me to hear what they were saying. We''d barely spoken two words to each other since being separated after the battle.


    "Eh," Connie said, "Who knows. They''re whispering about something. And it could be that getting in an actual fight and then helping with a jailbreak was too much for them. It''s fine. We''ve got each other, either way. I''m not going to ditch you like mom did."


    Good Charl was... eclectic. It seemed like every building was a different style, although the city as a whole still felt well-organized. The streets were mostly straight and while some were nearly blocked off by kiosks and tents in the market district they were overall pretty clean. The walls were huge and made entirely with metal, which was apparently a big flex. It''s just that there was no cohesive architectural vision, unlike the other places I''d seen. There was a building made from logs that appeared to still have living branches right next to a featureless gray stone cube, a towering building with the tiered rooftops like I''d seen in Handoleren across from a long, low structure that looked like it was carved from a single giant red stone.


    The whole place felt like a mall, somehow. Even outside the market district it seemed like everything was a business, with all the residences tiny and tucked away in the far corners of the city. There were advertisements, the first I''d seen in this world, and while I didn''t see a single city guard almost every building had its own armed security. Judging from the hawkers healing wasn''t free here - probably a consequence of all the Duminere slots getting sold to mercenary companies - but there were lots of people offering it. Connie dragged me into one and haggled for a while before someone sat me down in a chair.


    "We''re getting rid of those allergies and things for good," she said, "and doing a general wellness tweak. Boosts your immune system, fixes some stuff that probably accumulated from general shitty diet, stuff like that. I know we just were talking about Enhancement stuff and how it wears off unless you have it maintained for a while or renew it a bunch of times, but even some bigger changes can stick if they really mesh with your... I dunno, it''s a thing with your mind and soul and stuff. Something about your mental model of what you look like. So for example, if I had done the gender swap thing I mentioned it would flip back over time, but if I really internally pictured myself as male it probably wouldn''t. In this case you don''t have a firm picture of your immune system, and your body will be able to feel that it''s healthier, so it''ll accept it right away."


    She had to explain it in English, because they''d made me take the bracelet off in case it interfered in some way. The process was fairly quick and felt a lot like when I had been healed - there was a warm feeling that swept through me a few times and then something a little more... forceful... seemed like it was probing at my insides. It was a little creepy, but not that bad. I still put the bracelet back on since I needed the translation ability, but it was good to know that if I lost it I wouldn''t be totally fucked.


    The initial meeting to be vetted went well enough. The representative from Good Charl went over the protections in place - lots of wards on the walls and a magical contract of secrecy on the rep - and even so Connie didn''t tell them everything. In order to get the best type of certificate, one saying there was high confidence that the people we hired would get paid what we were promising, Connie would have needed to allow someone to validate her memories. That wasn''t happening. So instead the best they would say is that we were honestly certain about it, which would hopefully be enough.


    The first group we asked to meet with were some people that the original expedition had apparently hired. Since they were the exact people we knew had gotten the job done in the original timeline it seemed worth looking into, but right away I wanted to punch the one that was doing the negotiating - his name was Kraiklin, and he just had this super slimy vibe to him.


    "Yeah, we do a little of everything. Guarding and escort jobs, bounties, whatever you need," he said, idly tracing the edge of a dagger strapped to his chest. I couldn''t tell if he was looking us up and down to size us up or ogle us or what. "We''re a four person team, but I can negotiate for more or less if you need. We offer gravity manipulation, spacial distortion, planar travel, and of course force shields for protection and containment. "


    He continued on, bragging a little and describing a few of their exploits. Kraiklin also asked a few questions about the job, but Connie kept the details vague. After a bit, she asked me what I thought. When I''d been fucking with Hugh and telling him about Earth in English I''d been sure to take the bracelet off, but since then I''d had plenty of practice talking to Connie and could just make sure I didn''t let it translate. "Not sure what it is about this guy but I don''t trust him," I said.


    "Yeah, seconded. Hang on, let me try something," she said, and then pulled out what I was pretty sure was a flask and slouched in her seat. She took a swig and offered it to Kraiklin. He waved her off, but pulled out a little box full of powder and sniffed a pinch before offering to Connie.


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    She took some, although from my point of view I could see the powder fall down the front of her shirt as she pretended to sniff it. "I think we can work together," she said, "We can work out the plan, get supplies, whatever. I''ll let you tell me how you want to handle the details, I''m easy. I''m sure you don''t want me trying to tell you how to do your job the whole time." Connie cocked an eyebrow at him and smiled. "What''s the worst client you''ve ever had to work for?"


    He took the bait and ran with it. I hadn''t expected him to be particularly professional, but once he got going it took barely any encouragement from Connie for him to start bragging about being a piece of shit. Juvenile stuff, too - the kind of things I did when I was younger. He proudly told us that he had deliberately taken the hardest route somewhere on a job just to make the client miserable because she was "too good for him" which seemed like an awfully low bar. He had slipped bugs into another client''s tent - and not just any bugs, from context it was clear they were something like giant ticks. After Connie joked about having once cut another woman''s ponytail off - I cringed as I remembered the look on Josie''s face, that thing had been all the way down her back and must have taken years to grow - he confided in us that he had befouled an over-demanding client''s food with bodily fluids.


    "Only one of my clients has ever actually complained," he said, "Formally, that is. But my cousin is practically a noble, he''s got lots of connections and big plans. So he got it taken care of."


    "Nice, nice. Well," Connie said as she stood, "I think we''ve hit it off. We''ve got to go get the down payment ready, and then we can discuss the details of the plan. How about you meet us at our inn, there''s a nice restaurant and we''ll buy you all dinner, get to meet the whole crew."


    "Sounds perfect," he said, now for sure blatantly ogling us. "What inn are you staying at?"


    "It''s called the Wild Goose, it''s on the East side. I forget the street, but I''m sure you''ll find it. Seventh bell okay?"


    Once we were clear, jabbed her in the side. "The Wild Goose? Really?"


    "Well, I was going to call it the Red Herring, but herring isn''t a fish here and throwing a foreign word in didn''t seem right. Okay, it''s about time for our other meeting. I don''t know if you heard me scheduling it with the coordinator from the city, but it''ll be mercenaries from multiple agencies all applying at once. I could have canceled it if that guy had been cool. Anyway, we''ll swing past the meeting spot and see if the others want to join first."


    They didn''t. Katrin was still being weirdly quiet, and Errod clearly wanted to stay with her. Mila... was Mila. Presumably she was going to be heading back to Theramas, but for the moment the three of them just told us what hotel we were actually staying at and headed off.


    We got set up in what was basically a big conference room, and the most bizarre assortment of characters I had ever seen in one place shuffled in. Maybe they would have been outdone by a comic book convention, but only in terms of spandex. Two of them were clearly not even human, one unnaturally pale with stretched-out proportions and looking like he was dressed up as a vampire for Halloween and the other looking more like a giant Muppet.


    That one was shirtless and fully orange, and had climbed the wall to dangle from a rafter. He was oddly wide and blocky, including having a somewhat square head, and his ears were so tiny they were barely there which added to the Muppet vibe. It also didn''t help that his teeth were too big and he was covered in orange fuzz, too fine to be fur but too thick to be human body hair. I leaned over to Connie, "It looks like someone gave Gritty a haircut."


    She snorted. "Yeah and sent him to the gym. Yikes. What about that one," she said, pointing at a woman who had what appeared to be the ghost of Mr. Potato Head on her shoulder. It was slightly translucent, and had these almost cartoony arms and legs attached to a... well, a lump with eyes. The eyes swiveled to look at me, and its meatball-potato body squished around until there was a tiny version of me in its place - well, kind of. It was a sort of... chibi thing? It could have been cute, almost, but something about it was super creepy instead. Thankfully after a moment it switched to copying someone else, usually going back to being a lump in-between.


    "Are there strange spirit things in Nusos I can adopt? I want some fucked up little Pokemon thing. Maybe I''ll take Spirit magic, so long as they don''t turn into me and watch me while I sleep."


    The meeting started with the city representative giving a quick report, basically what we''d already been told they would say. We were promising a large payout - we knew about how much we could promise based on the copy of the contract selling the location of the Duminere to Erathik which Connie had aquired in the other timeline - and were telling the truth about feeling extremely confident. It was worded in a way that made it very clear we could still be wrong or even delusional, and two of them walked out right away.


    The others had questions, some badly worded and shouted out at random, but after a moment it became clear one of them had a very detailed list he was working off of and the others mostly let him do it. He was tall and thin, and sitting up extremely straight in his chair while he read out of a notebook. He had glasses, which seemed to be rare in this world, and hair so short and with such tight little curls I thought it was a knit cap at first. He had introduced himself as Cyne Steley.


    He asked about what planes we''d been to before, how sure we were that we wouldn''t need to go anywhere but the Necropolis and Nusos, how familiar we were with the dangers of those two places, and a number of follow up questions that very carefully probed for more information without asking us to give up details we clearly didn''t intend to. The guy just radiated competence. Finally he cleared his throat and looked over his notebook, satisfied. "I have only one more question," he said, "is it possible others are hunting you?"


    The question caught me off guard - was that just a random guess? Did he know somehow? But Connie was unphased. "We didn''t steal the information we''re working off of," she said, "but for unrelated reasons we''d like to travel discreetly. I did some contract work for the alliance in the current war, and may have upset some people."


    Cyne nodded, satisfied. "I would recommend choosing only from those of us that have had firsthand experience in Nusos, though that should be most if not all of the people in this room. Furthermore, I have been to the Necropolis and traveled roughly ninety levels down. I am a generalist rather than specializing in a particular plane which will not be relevant if things go to plan but grants flexibility if your needs change, and I have Growth on my Dumine which I can combine with a connection to Heregie to be a competent healer. That being said, I am a pacifist and will not participate in combat."


    Connie waved dismissively. "Yeah that should be fine, hopefully we can make it to the Necropolis without needing to deal with anyone."


    "I can arrange to get us to the Necropolis with a guarantee of safe travel," he said, "but I want to be clear that my pacifism extends to fighting the undead."


    There was some snickering from a few of the remaining mercenaries. A girl by the door caught my eye, not because she was one of the ones laughing but because she had such a calculating look on her face as she watched Cyne. She was a little on the short side, with deep olive skin and unnaturally metallic golden hair that hung in curls to her shoulders. She was wearing a silk dress, a fancier version of the kind Hugh had gotten me when we reached Yallowsben, and despite everyone else having a bit of dust and mud the dress was immaculate. She slipped out the door before I could point her out to Connie.


    "They''re just corpses stuffed with life mana," someone was saying, "there''s nothing to them."


    "Nevertheless," Cyne said, "while I feel I would excel at this job I will not raise a hand in violence."


    "Hey. Twin chicks!" a voice said. It was the Muppet guy. "Oh, uh, name is Sige Laleah. Listen, I have the solution for you. You guys want to hire one of us, right, and then from what I heard you''re looking at probably two more for combat to deal with the zombies or any fucking monsters in Nusos that try something. So you should hire this fucking Cyne guy, I''ve heard good shit. He knows what he''s fucking talking about."


    "You don''t want us to hire you?" Connie asked.


    Sige grinned, with his Muppet teeth. "Yeah see, that''s the thing. I''m your backup. I can beat a zombie to pieces, no problem. I''ve done it a bunch of times, or... Well, actually it was wights in Kertzale but it''s the same principle, like. Those fuckers fight the same way and they die the same way, you know?" Several people around the room looked impressed when he mentioned Kertzale.


    He dropped down from the beam he''d been dangling from the whole meeting, and pointed at Cyne. "You take this guy, he''s your main fucker for transport. You want the best for that, even if he won''t swat a fly off your ass because all life is sacred or some shit. Then you take someone really good at killing zombies, that''s your big combat spend. And then you get me, right, and I''m maybe not the top of either category but but I''m pretty fucking good and I can do both. So if, y''know, the worst happens? You''ve got redundancy."


    We talked to a few of them, but in the end we agreed that Sige probably had a point. Everyone but Sige and Cyne cleared out, and a few minutes later the room was packed with people applying to be our muscle. Some of them were enormous, others had bizarre weapons I couldn''t even really understand how you would use without hitting yourself. One guy had what absolutely appeared to be a rifle, but the base of the barrel was made up of gears.


    Connie was about to start talking when the girl in the dress that I had seen leave earlier walked back in. "My name is Aestrid Aldfeld," she announced, "and I''ll fight the rest of these losers for this job."


    A groan rippled through the room, and almost everyone got up and left. A few lingered, clearly unfamiliar with her and eyeballing the spotless silk dress and perfect curls. Most of those seemed to decide they would trust the crowd and left too - obviously magic meant you couldn''t easily judge by stuff like that - but one faked her out and swung at the last second, his hand suddenly covered in a metal gauntlet as it impacted her face at what must have been eighty miles an hour.


    The sound of his fingers breaking within the gauntlet as it slammed to a stop against her nose seemed to echo in my head as the rest of the room went silent, only to be filled a moment later by moaning as the man cradled his hand. He stood there watching blood drip from the damaged gauntlet, and then shuffled out of the room.


    Aestrid, totally unbothered, turned to look at us. "Well. I think you have your team, then."

 CHAPTER 023: The Best Laid Plans

    The next day was all frantic planning and gathering of supplies. Cyne was apparently an expert on the Necropolis for religious reasons, but I didn''t know details because religion was something I had been avoiding thinking too much about so far. The fact that magic was real meant gods might be real, and souls, and some objectively "correct" morality, and... it was a lot to think about. At any rate, for now what it meant was that Cyne had connections who ran the corpse caravans to the Necropolis and there was a very strict cultural taboo against attacking those caravans.


    This meant that we should be able to just waltz right past any Halenvar or Empire soldiers and they wouldn''t be allowed to stop us, although of course they could follow us right up to the Necropolis which wouldn''t be ideal. The city itself was a neutral zone with the same cultural taboo, although interestingly nobody cared if you fought zombies in the central pit. I would have thought that would be more of an issue - isn''t that desecration of corpses or something? But apparently not. Either way, I''d take guaranteed safety even if it meant they were hard to ditch once we got there.


    I tried to grab the others to help with shopping, but Katrin was still being weird. She was sitting with her spellbook, looking frustrated as she mumbled about non-lethal options. It was clear she was trying to learn a spell that was past her ability, and I didn''t really get the sudden rush. She''d be going to the Duminere soon enough and - hopefully - would be able to pick up the Comprehension gift that would allow her to read the spellbook properly.


    She almost emerged from her funk for a second when Errod mentioned he needed a new sword - he''d never recovered his after the battle. She muttered "oh no, our ancestral blade has been lost and our family line is ruined" under her breath and the sarcasm was palpable, but she dove right back in to her research. It was one of the only things I''d heard her say since we arrived. I tried asking her about the joke, since Hugh had made a similar mocking comment about Errod''s shitty sword being an ancestral blade, but she just shrugged and kept reading her spellbook - or failing to read it, anyway.


    I decided she was pissed at me and left.


    The supply shopping went fine, and we got a wagon too - pulled by some things that looked like very wide, long-haired donkeys. Much like the one Hugh had when he first picked me up, the wagon had a canvas arch over it - but this one was a bit flimsier, just barely enough to keep most rain off. Connie got Errod a new sword, and also paid someone to recharge his shield brooch. She had money and a notebook crammed full of future information - it was the stuff Mila had stashed in a fake rock outside of Theramas, I was amazed it hadn''t been left behind - but that money was going to go quickly so we focused on getting cheap food that could last the whole way. I wanted throwing knives, but the only ones I found that seemed like they weren''t shit were too expensive and anyway they''d be lousy against zombies.


    Everything seemed to be coming along nicely, until Sige knocked on our door at the inn. "Hey guys! Hope you don''t mind me barging in, I called Cyne and Aestrid too so they''ll be here in a minute. Yeah, so, uh, we''re leaving tonight it turns out! Surprise! You''ve got soldiers from Halenvar asking around, I talked to one of them and they offered a pretty generous bounty. Don''t worry, all three of us work for Mama Carnage and she wouldn''t let us fuck you guys over. Not that I would anyway. Uh."


    We didn''t have to scramble much to get our shit together, but even so Cyne and Aestrid were there before we finished. Both looked completely relaxed, like moving up the schedule by two days was no big deal. Cyne took a seat and pulled out his little book, flipping through pages.


    "Sadly, the caravan isn''t here yet and there would be no good way to meet up with them on the road," he said, "Furthermore, I have been informed that soldiers from the Endless Empire have created a checkpoint at the Heregie terminal we were going to use."


    Heregie was another plane, one apparently made of living tissue. It sounded gross as fuck but also kinda cool. Distance traveled there translated to something like six times further when you popped back into the prime plane, so there were some established routes that you could use to get to different places and we had been planning on doing that to reach the Necropolis.


    "Could we go around?" Connie asked, and Sige shook his head.


    "Naw, that''s a fucking mess. Even if we found a good route the wagon could take it''s all twisted and shit in there. And compasses don''t work because there''s... no North? Or no... whatever compasses do."


    Cyne nodded. "Most planes have no magnetic North. And as Sige says, navigation is very difficult in Heregie which is why I recommend only using established routes. Getting lost can be dangerous, and even if you avoid the parasites staying there too long can risk infection."


    "Itzele is too easy, if they''re watching Heregie you''d better fucking believe they''ll have someone cross over and watch the roads there as well," Sige added, "We''re not equipped right for Hudai, that would be a shitstorm. Wrong day for the trickier ones. Nine months before Arrapidae is open, that''s the only one that''s really perfect for travel."


    "My immediate concern," Cyne said, "Is how we would leave Good Charl at all. They must be watching the gates closely. Once we''re outside we do have some options, although I agree that some of the best planes to travel through won''t be useful to us."


    "I assume we can''t go through Nusos?" I asked. It was, after all, the plane we were already planning on using later in the trip.


    "Sadly not. The wards around the city prevent planar travel except in certain locations, like the Heregie terminal. And once we leave the city - if we can - Nusos can''t be entered without multiple rooms to walk through. If I had specialized in it a single door might suffice, but as it is we''ll need to get to a settlement to cross over. Not only does that still require us to get out of Good Charl unseen, but we would need to leave the wagon behind."


    Right. The wagon was for the longer trip to the Necropolis. We''d want those supplies for the journey there and down, although by design most could be carried in the big packs we''d bought since the wagon wouldn''t be going into the bottomless zombie pit. It just meant that if we had to ditch the wagon now, we''d need to make sure our method of travel was way faster.


    Sige looked nervous. "Okay so I can get us out, but... you gotta fucking promise not to talk about it."


    An hour later we were in the bad part of town sneaking down alleyways. Mila, Cyne, and Aestrid had left to go get the wagon, which we were supposedly going to meet on the outside of the city. We got to a dead end, and I started to seriously worry that Sige had lured us there to collect the bounty. Instead he made us all hold hands.


    "You said you''ve never been to another plane, right? Well. Here we fucking go!"


    Things seemed to get... darker. The walls around us were suddenly cracked and peeling, the street lamp was rusted and fallen over - although for a moment the flame itself was still there, hovering in the air. The sky was black, all the stars having vanished. "Welcome to Itzele," Sige said, "It''s like a shitty version of the material plane. Now uh. We''re not supposed to be able to get here while inside the city, and the people that pay good money to make sure this spot works would be pretty upset if you run your mouths about it. Got it?"


    We nodded, and he stepped through a hole in the wall that hadn''t been there before we crossed over. On the other side there were some bouncers and what I could immediately tell was a club of some sort, probably also a casino. I could only imagine what would be illegal in a place like Good Charl - surely with what I''d seen around town normal gambling wouldn''t require a hidden place like this, and I knew for a fact prostitution wasn''t illegal in the city. Sige didn''t seem like the type to be cool with human trafficking, but I could absolutely picture him being fine with smuggling or pit fighting so that''s what I was betting on.


    Sadly, we didn''t get to find out. He had an argument with the bouncers - a quiet one, but lots of big upset body language - and finally one of them seemed to give in and ushered us not through the main door but a smaller side door that led to a tunnel. After a few minutes we were outside the city walls, where I could see that the black sky of Itzele had a red glow all around the horizon. The trees all looked dead or dying, the metal wall was pitted and covered in some sort of corrosion. Classic shadowy mirror dimension shit.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Sige snuck away for a moment before returning, and then led us the other way until we reached a copse of blighted trees. "There was a group of soldiers there, not sure why the Free States are allowing this shit. Fucking ridiculous. I think these ones were Empire, not Halenvar. Anyway, this should be far enough away and the wagon will be here somewhere."


    We held hands again, and life started to creep back into things. The stars returned, and with them the wagon faded into view. We scrambled in and covered ourselves as it got moving. We got some rest without incident, but as the sun rose Connie returned from scouting ahead with the expected bad news. There was a checkpoint. The wagon couldn''t make it into Itzele, and a lot of the other planes were still off the table for the same reasons we''d discussed before.


    Mila looked up from a rock she was slowly turning into a tiny model of a house. "Can''t we go through the jungle? You''re a U''rmun aren''t you?"


    Sige looked embarrassed. "Naw. Uh. Doesn''t work that way. It''s like how humans with Dumines can''t use wild magic, right? Other races lose any natural magic they had if they get one, though if you take the right ones to re-create the same powers you have a little more natural skill at it. But uh... fucking assholes back in my town decided that if you leave and get a Dumine you''re banished - not that I could navigate that fucking jungle anyway without spatial magic."


    This wasn''t news to me - well, the banishment part was but not the rest. I''d asked Katrin and Mila quietly, away from the rest of the group, because I had been pretty sure Sige was a different species but wasn''t totally certain he wasn''t just a human that had gotten someone with enhancement magic to make him look like that. It seemed a lot of the planes had humanoids that were probably distant relatives of humans but had lived in that one plane so long they had adapted in strange ways.


    Sige came from Uihene, which was a giant jungle filled with ruins and murderous plants. But it had some sort of strange spatial magic going on, so you could walk in a straight line and end up right back where you started. The U''rmun grew up in this and had natural magic that let them navigate the jungle - or prevent others from doing so. They rarely left, so Sige was a bit of an anomaly. Since people didn''t often come across U''rmun, or for that matter most of the people that were native to other planes, I had been warned to take any information about them with a grain of salt.


    Aestrid walked over to join in the conversation, still wearing a silk dress like the one I''d first seen her in. It had rained briefly before sunrise while she was walking alongside the wagon and she hadn''t gotten a single drop on her, so clearly she did have armor of a sort - presumably a force field. "We can fight our way through, though I suppose that would offend Cyne''s delicate sensibilities. Speaking of, Cyne, I think I saw the wagon roll over an ant earlier and since you were sitting up front wouldn''t that make you responsible for its death? I saw some thorn bushes back there if you want to flog yourself."


    Cyne nodded at her and smiled, not rising to the taunt. Connie clearly decided it was worth nipping in the bud, though. "Aestrid, please remember that Cyne is the harder one to replace if you all can''t get along. Okay? Anyway, starting a fight at a checkpoint will tell everyone involved where we are even if we get away. We would need to, I don''t know, trip the checkpoint but then go somewhere in a totally different direction to throw them off - and I''m guessing we don''t want to spend that kind of time and energy."


    Aestrid didn''t seem phased by the comment about her being replaceable. "Fine, okay, I agree that pushing through the checkpoint could be bad. So I think we''re back to the planar travel idea, especially since there are two qualified people here - three if Katrin knows anything but I''m guessing she doesn''t. What if we wait until we''re close to the checkpoint so we don''t have to be in Heregie long? Is it navigable for a few miles? Or could we split up again like we did to get out of the city?"


    Cyne looked back at his chart. "I think both are a concern, if they''re this persistent. I wish I had known sooner just how important you must be, I wasn''t anticipating them being so... thorough. Eliminating the planes that would be too immediately dangerous or hard to navigate, as well as the ones that either the Empire or Halenvar might be watching, my next preferred option has a price for passing through which would need to be paid by Connie and Callie. Xeyul."


    Sige shook his head, looking less like he was disagreeing and more that he was just surprised to hear Cyne suggest it. Mila looked up from her stone house and said "I know Errod and Katrin are old enough to be setting out on their own but they''re still young, would they be safe? Sahrger steal children, you know."


    Cyne nodded. "Dealing with the Sahrger is risky, but only to the leader of the group so long as you specify safe travel for all of us. Xeyul is fairly easy to reach, and could allow us to travel directly to the necropolis thereby avoiding checkpoints and throwing anyone that may be tracking you off of our trail. I have charms I can offer, with the cost being added to my normal fee if any are discharged."


    Connie pulled me aside and switched to English. "Okay so this is not a bad plan, but... Sahrger... well, picture fairy folk and you''re not going to be far off. They live in these beautiful palaces made from living trees, and spend all day holding parties and things. They''re simultaneously chaotic and all about rules, so they''ll do whatever they want on a whim but then turn around and say that since you used the wrong fork at dinner you have to be their slave for a year and a day or whatever. Rules are a game to them, they make up rules for each other to follow. As guests we''d be exempt from the worst of it, but we would have to ask for passage very carefully. It''s like the old jokes about wording a wish from a genie wrong and having your head turned into an orange or something."


    "What kind of cost is Cyne talking about? Is it just that we have to be good guests and offer them a housewarming gift or something?"


    "We should absolutely do that, yeah, but that''s not the real cost. They''re really good at curses. If they say ''I hope you trip and fall down the stairs tomorrow'' then you''ll probably do exactly that. There are ways to unravel curses before they can trigger, that would be the charms Cyne is talking about, but it''s possible they would... I don''t know... require us to let them put a curse on us as part of the price of passage? The point is, when we ask for safe passage we would want to really think about not only how we say it but the precise wording of how they reply - they like to slip little things in there. There are stories about them stealing people''s names or firstborn or whatever, but I don''t think that actually happens. I don''t know. Probably not as a random curse anyway."


    I was trying to work on myself, ever since Katrin talked to me in the bath that night. It had been stupid to run off and burn a building down, and if I kept acting like that I was going to get myself killed. Back on Earth it had been running away to live in abandoned buildings or shoplifting things I didn''t need or - that one time - living in someone''s attic for a week without them knowing. Here things were different. I wasn''t risking getting thrown back into the group home, or even having to run away from some scary guy on the street. There were monsters, and magic users, and all sorts of things I didn''t understand. But at the same time, I felt healthier and more alive than I ever had even with people trying to kill me - some part of me was desperate for this kind of adventure.


    I decided to resist my impulsive nature and do the mature thing. "I''ll do it if everyone else agrees, unanimously, but that''s it. Otherwise we should do something where the risks are more... calculated. Send some of them through the checkpoint in the wagon, and have a couple of us sneak through the shadow world or whatever since that checkpoint will probably be a bit more sparse, and then hope we don''t run into more. They can''t be watching everywhere all the time."


    We headed back to the rest of the group, and let them know our decision. Katrin smiled at me, probably aware that my initial impulse had been to run off to fairy land. I had dreamed of traveling to a magical world of fairies when I was little, though granted these ones sounded like dicks. To be fair, most older fairy stories involved them being things you didn''t want to mess with. Little sociopaths that you left out milk for not as a gift but in the way you might pay a mobster for ''insurance''. Still, seeing a land of the fey would be a big checkmark on my bucket list.


    We all packed up and got moving again, and after about fifteen minutes Aestrid climbed up onto the seat next to me and Katrin. "Hello ladies. Tell me, do any of you have ranged weapons?"


    "I''ve been working on a spell to safely disable people but I haven''t cast it successfully yet and I think the effective range is probably sixty feet. Errod just got a bow, but I suspect he''s not a good shot."


    "That''s what I thought. And Sige is a wrestler, of all things. Well. Just wanted you to know there''s a Segozertze circling above us. Almost certainly a spy from Halenvar. Do with that knowledge what you will."


    She slid into the back of the cart and laid down, getting comfortable among the bags like she was planning on taking a nap. I looked straight up, and sure enough. One of those fucking bat-bear things.


    "If Telen comes himself, we''re fucked. I don''t think he can teleport right to us, I think he needs one of those rug things if it''s somewhere he''s not familiar with, but... you know, probably there was more than one of those guys. They wouldn''t just be circling for no reason."


    Katrin sighed, flipping through her spellbook. "Most likely there was another that left for reinforcements who knows how long ago. And they might have a teleportation receiver for Telen. I can try to find a spell to... deal with it... but even if it works it won''t change that they found us."


    "Well I tried. I tried to do the more normal, respectable plan. But it looks like we''re going to make a deal with the fair folk."

 CHAPTER 024: A Minor Detour

    I was surprised at how well everyone was taking the change in plans, as well as the fact that we were being hunted by both the Endless Empire and Halenvar. Katrin and Errod were worried that we would say the wrong thing once we petitioned the Sahrger and end up cursed, and Mila was so scatterbrained that it was hard to say if she was worried about any part of it - she kept losing whatever project she was working on while we traveled and then digging through her bag until she forgot why. I still wasn''t sure why she was coming along, I''d assumed she would head back to Theramas.


    The three mercenaries, though, seemed to be completely fine with everything. Sige looked almost eager for a fight, Aestrid was napping, and Cyne had just nodded and begun looking for a good place to cross over. Sige had been the only one to comment on it at all. "Lost some money on you guys, we were betting on if it was Halenvar or the Alliance that you''d pissed off - or if you''d lied and it was something else - and Aestrid fucking guessed it was both. Well. I think she was being sarcastic. But a bet''s a bet. Anyway, if I''m reading this right you want me to choke out the Empire fuckers but let them live, and put down any Halenvar troops in a more permanent way. Right?"


    We''d pulled the wagon off the road to a clearing surrounded by trees where Cyne said it felt like there was more mana. Connie assured me that I would get a slight feel for that eventually, that I was in fact already feeling it to some extent and just not recognizing it. If she was right I couldn''t tell. The problem with mana in general seemed to be that it was as hard to predict as the weather, and was easily depleted. There were some natural ley lines or something, but even those shifted or could be drained.


    That led to magic users traveling the countryside or going into deep forests or trackless deserts looking for high mana areas to train in, and those spots were the ones that were also filled with monsters. Between the monsters and wars, a lot of people who got Dumines immediately got themselves killed and that led to a big divide - you had the cautious types that worked in cities and you had the crazy ones that had honed their skills and survived. The two groups didn''t always get along. Mila seemed to fit right in with the mercenaries, though.


    The Halenvar soldier was still circling overhead, too high for anyone to attack; with the segozertze able to reduce its density it could remain aloft all day without landing. I asked Katrin about readying that razor-thin shield thing she''d done back in Theramas, hoping she could either project it high enough or cast it in front of the monster if it dived towards us, but she got all squirrely and said she had a new spell she''d been working on. I was exhausted with her acting all strange, but I also hated the very thought of having that conversation and we had more urgent things to worry about anyway.


    Cyne was pacing around the clearing, nodding to himself. After a few minutes of this he seemed satisfied and had us bring the wagon in close.


    "So is this going to be like when Sige took me into Itzele?"


    "No," Cyne said, "All the planes are different, though some are stranger than others. Do you understand how planar alignment works?"


    "I saw a big orrery thing in Theramas, but... no."


    "There''s no physical representation that will quite be correct, but I know that particular device and it''s as good a place as any to start. The rocky bit at the center represents the dead void that supposedly inspired the creation of this world, that''s not important. The first ring functions as a clock but also stands for this plane, sometimes called the material world due to a misconception that matter isn''t real on the other planes - that''s true for some of them, but by no means all. The center arrow that indicates the time also can be imagined to extend past the other rings, and when it would cross the labeled spot on the other rings it means that plane is aligned with this one.


    "The planes were created by the gods, in order to make this world. Some stabilized or created the mana we use, some balanced physical laws, some we have no idea. Since they were all made to flow into this primary plane, the more planes that are aligned the more ambient mana is available. For some, this is the only noticeable effect. For others you can only cross back and forth on those days, or might need to use a prohibitive amount of mana when not aligned.


    "For a few, the alignment means effects or creatures can spontaneously cross over without anything guiding it. Itzele has a cycle of only two days, so it is in alignment every other day. Quebristun, on the other hand, only comes into alignment every five hundred and fifty-four thousand, four hundred days - that''s more than one thousand two hundred and eighty-three years."


    And those years, I had to remind myself, were longer than Earth years which meant by my normal frame of reference it would be more like fifteen hundred years.


    "When someone with Planar magic manually aligns the planes," Cyne continued, "we do it in a smaller way. There is a membrane that keeps the planes apart, and we force it to thin. Some do this to allow different laws to come though - make the gravity of another plane apply here, for example. Rarely some will use it to just look through into other planes. Sige and myself instead thin it so we can cross over. There aren''t any useful planes aligned today, sadly, but I can split the cost with Sige and this clearing has a little more ambient mana than the rest of the area.


    "The similarity of the environment to that of Xeyul will help as well. That is especially true of Nusos because of its nature, you will see that when we cross over after you retrieve whatever you''re looking for in the necropolis. But the difference is that Nusos requires man-made structures, and Xeyul requires the doorway to be framed by plants or fungi."


    "Wait, a literal door?"


    He smiled and shook his head. "No, not a physical door or doorway. A gateway, just an opening in the air. But in terms of cost, it is similar for a small gateway or one large enough to accommodate the wagon. There is a plane that manifests a physical door, but we won''t be going there. The Queen of Candles wouldn''t be helpful to visit."


    The what of what? "Okay I want to hear more about her later, but first... Sige gave you a funny look when you suggested Xeyul, like he was surprised. There''s no... I don''t know. There''s nothing we should know that you haven''t told us?"


    "I suspect he assumed I would refuse to deal with the Sahrger. They are cruel, they have no regard for the lives of others. They have a concept of social obligations, and I suspect they care for their children or parents in a way - but if so it''s the way you might care about a treasured possession rather than a living person. They are deeply incompatible with my personal beliefs. But the guidelines I live by are for me alone; I have never tried to force others to do the same. Besides, if I had ignored this option you would have just tried to sneak past the checkpoint and in all likelihood people would have died. There is never a path without pain, so we seek only to limit that which we cause directly."


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Cyne''s whole religious thing still didn''t make a lot of sense to me. He wouldn''t hurt anyone or eat meat or whatever, but he didn''t object to us hunting as we traveled or fighting if we needed to. He wouldn''t even fight undead which everyone else agreed were essentially like magical programs rather than people, but he didn''t bat an eye when I was talking to Katrin about the pros and cons of taking life magic - surely creating these constructs only to have them fight or even just wear out over time would be a moral issue to him? With everything that was going on I didn''t have the energy to get into it, but eventually I wanted to get some more details on what exactly his rules were.


    Meanwhile Errod had gotten the wagon lined up so we could go through as soon as the gateway opened, and I could hear Katrin getting Mila into the back of it - for the third time. "Sorry dear, I saw an interesting rock I wanted to use and we weren''t moving yet..."


    Sige hollered that he was ready, and stood about fifteen feet from Cyne by another large tree. Cyne ran over and adjusting Sige slightly, and while I caught Sige rolling his eyes he didn''t argue. I was watching, eager to see what it looked like when the portal opened, and so I didn''t see the segozertze diving towards us.


    Cyne threw himself to the side as a line of grass blackened and shriveled where he had been standing. There''d been no visible beam, just an invisible ray of heat that had slashed across the ground. Somehow, the soldier must have realized we were planning to escape.


    Everyone scrambled for cover except for Katrin, who leapt into the middle of the clearing and closed her eyes, reaching out with her hands and seeming to weave something invisible in the air. Just as the creature dove again a tiny ribbon of red light shot up out of the ground and rocketed towards the segozertze, wrapping around one of its back legs. Katrin made a yanking motion, and... nothing happened.


    "Um. Hang on." The ribbon pulled tight as the thing veered away, spooked by the attack. As soon as all the slack was gone Katrin lurched and grunted despite not being visibly attached to the thing, and the beast faltered in the air - flapping frantically and then settling into a tight circle above us like it was a kite Katrin was flying.


    She pulled again, and again, and looking up we could see it was having some effect but she just couldn''t do very much - Katrin was reeling it in, slowly, but any fantasy of the attack slamming it down to the earth was gone. Worse, Katrin was shaking like she was shivering in a cold wind. "I''ve got it. It''s fine," she said, though nobody had asked. I was regretting not bringing anyone with ranged expertise. We''d picked a pacifist, a wrestler, and someone who focused on standing in one spot and letting people hit her. There had been some with gravity magic, and at least two that summoned spirits that - well, I wasn''t sure if they could fly or how high. Then again, the main focus of this expedition had been the parts where we would be underground so range hadn''t been high on our list of priorities.


    An arrow from Errod''s bow flew through a random point in space, and I heard a clatter and then swearing as he accidentally kicked over the quiver with the rest of the arrows. I reached out and tried to pull on the ribbon to help despite the fact that Katrin wasn''t directly touching it when she made the yanking gesture, but my hand went right through. Katrin was still working, and the thing did seem to be getting closer - but I wasn''t sure it would be fast enough. Suddenly the monster dove towards us again, and its rider pointed at Katrin. She fell backwards, flailing, and for an instant I thought she had been hit with something before I realized she had just been caught off guard by the sudden slack on her spell.


    There was a rippling line in the air that swept past where she had been standing and almost hit me, heat instantly giving me a sunburn on my outstretched arm. Katrin hauled at the magic she had somehow managed to keep running and I saw the red ribbon pull taut again - the monstrosity tried to pull back up but found its leash significantly shorter, and jerked to a stop mid-air. Its rider nearly fell off, and in the process must have singed a wing with his heat attack because the thing howled in pain.


    They were still a good forty feet up, and Katrin had gone pale. It didn''t look like we were going to accomplish anything, although at least the segozertze was flying erratically now and preventing its rider from getting a clear shot at us. Katrin kept reeling it in, gaining a few feet at a time. The wagon suddenly burst into flames, and Errod dropped his bow and started detaching the canvass to keep the rest of it from igniting. Sige grabbed the bow and fired off an arrow, getting closer than Errod but still missing, while Aestrid - who I had thought might still be sleeping before I noticed her - just stared at the bat-thing with a thoughtful expression. Finally she seemed to come to a decision, and ran towards the road. "I''m sorry," she yelled back, "I can''t let them get the map!"


    Connie and I shared a glance. "Map?" she mouthed silently, mirroring my thoughts. The segozertze swooped again, and Katrin yelped as the ribbon vanished. We all leapt back as a beam of heat swept across the clearing. "Run!" I yelled at Aestrid, not really sure of her plan but hoping she had one. And if she wasn''t trying to lure it in, well then she was just abandoning us and I didn''t mind if it attacked her anyway. It took the bait, and possibly because of the mention of a map the rider didn''t try to burn her alive. Instead it lunged down to claw at her, and wrapped one meaty paw around Aestrid''s arm before attempting to haul her into the air - and failing.


    She lifted her legs and fell to the ground, taking the whole thing with with her. The rider tried to target her with his heat ray but she kept herself directly under the bear-like body. The segozertze bit at Aestrid again and again, clearly doing nothing, and the rider jumped down from his saddle but as he tried to point at Aestrid the beast suddenly launched into the air with her as if they both weighed nothing at all. Now if he aimed at her he would be hitting his mount as well, so he finally turned to face the rest of us - too late.


    Sige had been barreling towards the fight and reached the soldier just as the man''s arm lifted to attack. Sige had him in an instant, twisting the arm backwards and spinning the shocked soldier around to face away from him with a huge orange forearm clamped across his neck. For a moment the air all around him began to shimmer with heat, and then he slumped down, unconscious.


    The segozertze came crashing down nearby, its back snapping as it landed. Aestrid was perched on it, her silk dress spotless and just a few hairs out of place. "Well. That was fun. Did you kill the soldier?"


    "Naw, knocked him the fuck out though. I could do it now, but I think that might cross the line for Cyne."


    Aestrid glanced back towards the clearing. "Of course. Well I don''t want to hold him the whole time and we probably shouldn''t let him go. We could kill him now, before Cyne comes back from the trees if you think -"


    "No." It was Errod, of all people, walking up from the damaged wagon. "We don''t kill captured enemies. Just... I don''t know, bring him with us. He won''t be able to get back on his own anyway."


    Sige and Aestrid looked at me, and I nodded. I didn''t really feel concerned about the idea of killing the guy that tried to burn us alive, but I had promised to try and be a good person - or at least fake it - even when I didn''t feel it. Wait, was that right? Who had I promised? A memory flitted out of my reach, like a dream once you wake up. I felt like there was something on the tip of my tongue, but...


    "Sige! Let''s go, I''m still ready." Cyne called, and Sige ran off with the unconscious man over his shoulder. Errod and Aestrid pulled the supplies off of the dead segozertze and I headed back to the wagon. As I reached them, a shimmering filled the air between Cyne and Sige and the space between the two large trees they were standing at just... changed. It was like they had perched a giant mirror there, reflecting some other landscape behind me. There were still trees but they were a different kind, wider and with more empty space between them. The light was different, the reddish-gold you get just as the sun begins to set even though it was early in the day here. And there were fireflies - purple, rather than the normal green. I hadn''t seen fireflies for years, they didn''t have anything like that in Phoenix.


    The wagons rolled through, then Cyne and Sige followed. After one quick glance back and a headcount the gateway snapped shut, leaving us in an alien landscape.

 CHAPTER 025: Self Reflection

    Some girls did the princess thing when they were little, and I might have had a bit of that phase for a while, but mainly for me it was fairies. My mom had some books on fairies she didn''t like me looking at, probably because most of them were not about the Disney version of the fair folk - I didn''t even catch most of the racism and antisemitism a lot of the ''authentic'' fairy tales were built on since I was a kid, but I understood and was fascinated with the violence of it. One book in particular was my favorite, and unlike most books I got my grubby little hands on I didn''t tear out the pages or scribble in it because it was too special. I would just skim through and look at the pictures while hiding under my bed and pretended to be traveling through a tunnel to fairy land where I would grow giant butterfly wings and live in a hollow tree.


    When I was little we would still go camping sometimes and my mom would always tell me to go search for the fairies in the woods to keep me busy - and it worked every time. I''d spend hours calling to them, trying to sneak up on them, examining each tree stump and mushroom in case I found a tiny door. But I had to be careful, because if I wandered too far from camp mom would pack up the car and drive away. Once she even skipped the packing part and left the tent, which came in handy since it rained that night. The camping trips stopped once child protective services was on her case, and my fascination with magic and fairies faded as I got older and realized that it wasn''t real.


    Except now, apparently, magic and fairies were absolutely real.


    I tried not to think about my mom most of the time, not after that last carefully planned abandonment in Arizona, but I found myself wishing I could tell her that fairies were real so I could see the look on her face. It was probably the only interest we had in common. Of course these weren''t quite the fair folk as I had imagined them, but they had enough in common from what Cyne told me as he rested and regained mana that I felt like there had to be some connection.


    The Sahrger disliked iron, for example, although it wasn''t clear if it actually harmed them or was just against some social rule of theirs since in some cases they could touch it and in others they would flinch back like it had burned them. Cyne said there were a few theories, including the idea that intent was the important thing - that iron harmed them only if you willed it to.


    "Okay but... that doesn''t seem like wild magic or Imperial magic, and it doesn''t seem like it''s part of the different laws of physics that other planes have. So... what the fuck?"


    I''d been expecting Cyne or Katrin to reply, but Aestrid of all people was the one that answered. "There are layers, everything is built on something else. Wild magic works because Imperial magic relied on it for some things when it was new. Other old languages, other types of wild magic, are fully gone now but the Clockmaker couldn''t get rid of that last bit because it would be like fixing up your house and trying to replace the foundation. Likewise, there''s a layer below the wild magic but it hardly comes up. True names, ancestral blades and other inheritance magic, and the Sahrger hating iron. It''s why some families in Markonti can take the shortcut through the mountain, and others can''t. Just old inherited stuff you get from your parents."


    The other odd thing with the Sahrger was the question of wild magic. None of the people from other planes that had natural magic could do anything else - it seemed to work the same way as getting a Dumine - which for the Sahrger should have meant they could just do curses or closely related things. But there were rumors of all sorts of other magic feats, most involving them tricking people into seeing things. I couldn''t help but think of similar stories from Earth - they fit just well enough that it seemed like it couldn''t be a coincidence.


    I wasn''t sure what to think about that. Clearly there was some connection between this world and Earth or I wouldn''t have been transported here, but I refused to believe that people on Earth could use magic and were just keeping it secret. That meant the most likely explanation was that there was no ambient mana on Earth at all, or even a negative amount that somehow leeched mana away from people - Connie had told me there were beings called the Uldrati that could drain mana and keep people from using magic, so it was plausible that something could be doing that to Earth as a whole. Of course, anything seems plausible when you don''t really know how magic works. At some point I knew I would need to talk to an actual scholar if I wanted to really figure anything out.


    For the moment, I felt like I knew as much as I was going to. I went to help Sige set up a makeshift cover for the wagon now that the top had been pulled off and left to burn. It wasn''t great, but would provide a little protection if it rained. As we finished up I heard voices raise for a moment before quieting again, and could see that there was some sort of... if not an argument then a heated discussion.


    I hopped down and intercepted Errod, who was coming from that direction. "Hey, what are Connie and Aestrid talking about?"


    He looked over his shoulder at them, and then at me. "They''re arguing about what to do with the Halenvar soldier. The current plans are either to release him and let him fend for himself, or present him as a gift to the Sahrger."


    In a way handing him to the Sahrger would make more sense. I didn''t care what happened to him, and we needed to give them something, and... then they would... what? Keep him as a pet? "That''s... no. That''s basically selling him into slavery. And these are the kinds of people that torture animals for fun, it''s... ugh. I don''t care what Aestrid''s logic is, I have to draw the line somewhere."


    Errod nodded, looking relieved. "I agree. But despite being from Markonti where I understand some form of slavery is legal, it wasn''t Aestrid arguing for that. She was okay with the idea of killing him right away, but she considers this to be different."


    "Yeah that''s fair. Um. Connie is... she''s just trying to be practical about it." I could feel myself trying to back up and switch my opinion to match. Was letting him go any better? He was in their territory. Surely they''d find him anyway at some point, right? But... it was different. I''d been trying so hard over the years to make these rules for myself, and while I hadn''t expected selling people to the fey to come up that was for sure not a thing I could do and still tell myself I wasn''t the monster mom thought I was.


    "It''s okay," Errod said, "Constance is... something changed in the years that separate you."


    I tried to keep my face blank, while I pictured her knife slashing across Ernie''s throat and spraying blood across my face. "What do you mean?"


    "Well, I know we still don''t actually... I mean we''re not close, not yet, but just from some of what you''ve said I can tell that you haven''t always had things easy. And Katrin, she didn''t say much because she said it was between the two of you, but she did say... don''t be mad at her, but she said that you sometimes found it hard to be... nice."


    I looked around to make sure nobody was too close. "I just don''t feel bad just because other people do. I can be sad for my own sake, and I can play the part and act sad for other people to be polite, but..."


    He waved me off. "It''s fine. It''s like bravery. If you''re not scared of doing something, you''re not being brave by doing it. If you don''t genuinely feel compelled to do the right thing and do it anyway, you''re making that extra choice to be a good person. It''s... honestly, it''s more impressive. And I expect that sometimes you can''t manage, and that''s okay too. Katrin and I don''t take it personally."


    I suddenly had a dim memory, someone putting a hand on my shoulder and saying "if you don''t mean it that day, you don''t have to say it" and me feeling just so warm and... I couldn''t place it. Probably just a dream, or I was accidentally inserting myself into a half-remembered scene from a movie.


    Errod shuffled his feet awkwardly, then rested a hand on his sword like he was subconsciously expecting a fight. "But watching the two of you together, I can see the difference. You''re... healthier. You have your moments where you seem like you''re in a shadow or something but... we all have that. Katrin and I have lost people, our father was shipped off to Tarmestal - it''s a sort of prison, it''s likely to be a death sentence - but Connie... she looks like she''s about to break.


    "I want to be a knight of Brinkmar, and that means living up to the ideals of the Savior of Brinkmar. And he said that fighting is something you have to do sometimes, but it''s more important to remember why you fight and to try to help people before it becomes about just killing and... I don''t remember the actual quote, it was better than this. But what I''m saying is that if she needs help, I want to do something. And I think what she needs is to talk to someone, a healer. I know she has a lot of memories that could get her... kidnapped or something... if everyone knows about them. But we can deal with that together. I''d rather she be healthy and need me to fight people to keep her safe than be in danger from herself - I can''t... I can''t solve that with a sword."


    And a tiny part of me, despite Errod''s lovely and heartfelt speech, wanted to add "you can''t solve anything with a sword, other than maybe a surplus of toes". Thankfully, I resisted. "I appreciate it, I do. I think she just needs to be done with all this end of the world stuff, you know? We''ll go on this adventure, and it''ll perk her right up. You''ll see."


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    He nodded, but he clearly wasn''t convinced. "Trauma is a battle scar, Calliope. It''s a wound that didn''t heal right on its own. She''s years older than you, years that haven''t treated her well, and you already have some scars. If time and some adventure was going to solve it... well. Just think about it. And not just for her."


    Oh good, another shrink. Although... I didn''t like the idea of anyone poking around in my brain, but magic therapy might actually work for me. Hmm. "I''ll think about it. For now, let me go and put my vote in for not being slave traders." He started to leave, and I called after him. "Errod? After this, once we''re powered up? We could maybe do an adventure you choose. Maybe a jailbreak?"


    He smiled, but he looked sad. "It''s... more complicated than that. But maybe."


    I headed over to the two of them, and saw that the discussion had stalled for the moment. "Aestrid, you think we should send him off into the woods and let him fend for himself? You''ve got my vote. Leave him a little knife and some trail rations too, tell him where he is, and tell him we''re going to start hunting him in fifteen minutes so he''d better put some distance between us."


    Connie threw up her hands in exasperation. "Fine. Could have killed two birds with one stone here," - the translation was only slightly different for that one, it was arrow rather than stone - "but instead we''re giving our enemy a chance to attack us or to make a deal and get home so he can tell everyone where we went."


    Aestrid smiled at me, looking for the first time like she might actually like me a little, and then walked off to where Sige was guarding our captive. Connie pulled me aside deeper into the woods until we had some privacy, and then switched to English for good measure.


    "Listen. I''m not stupid, or at least not any stupider than you are. I saw that look, you think I''m some kind of monster. You''re looking at me like mom used to."


    "I''m not going to sell someone into slavery, Connie."


    "So you''re doing your forced morality thing, fine. But you act like your arbitrary moral rules are objectively right, like fitting into this one narrow definition of good person means you''re doing things right. But the rules don''t have to be the same here, it''s a whole different world with different cultures and different morals," she said, gesturing around us, "Plus, you''ve killed people now. You''ll do it again before this is all over, it''s virtually guaranteed. We''re not killing this guy, even though frankly it would be justified. Instead he would be held onto by the fair folk for a while until they got bored of him or forgot about him or whatever at which point he could maybe escape or something."


    "You''re right," I said, and Connie stopped just as she was about to launch into her next point. "I don''t really give a shit about that guy. If Sige had broken his neck I wouldn''t have minded at all. But he didn''t, because Cyne and Errod and probably Katrin - and maybe Mila if she noticed - would have been pissed. And now that that decision is made, he''s our responsibility and we''re not going to give a human being away as a housewarming gift. Because even though there''s no objective morality, even though my rules are arbitrary, I have to decide that some things are wrong and some things are right."


    "Like volunteering at soup kitchens every weekend?"


    "Exactly, you don''t do it because you give a shit or because you enjoy it, you do it because it''s a thing you should do."


    Connie arched an eyebrow. "You''ve never volunteered at a soup kitchen, not once."


    "Of course we did, we..."


    It was every Saturday, right? Even if I locked my bedroom and pretended to be sick, we would go and... no. I hadn''t had a bedroom of my own, because I was in high school but the last time I lived with my mom was when I was twelve. I shared a room in all the group homes. Plus, how would I do anything every Saturday when I was constantly running away and sleeping on the street? I''d eaten at a soup kitchen before, was I getting confused with... no, I was for sure serving. Right?


    "Let me guess," Connie said, "as soon as I mentioned serving people at a soup kitchen you remembered doing it. Every weekend, probably on Saturdays, and you hated it at first but eventually came around and started to feel like it was a rewarding and good thing to do."


    I nodded.


    "It''s not a real memory. It didn''t even exist a minute ago. We''re broken, Callie. Maybe just totally insane, or maybe something is oozing in because of all the shit that happened on my timeline. I warned you about this, I''ve been remembering things that didn''t happen. Things from lives I didn''t live. Just little bits, little flashes. Stabbing some people to death in their sleep, I think they were abusive foster parents or something. Meeting with an adoption case worker and actually being excited about it. Being chased through secret tunnels by some creepy old dude. Growing up by myself in the woods. Random shit. Shit that not only didn''t happen, but couldn''t plausibly have happened."


    She sighed, and leaned back to look up through the branches of the trees around us. "And when you feel like you''re supposed to be a good person, like you had some moment of character growth and vowed to do the right thing and help people even when you weren''t capable of actual empathy? That''s always part of the fake memories, Callie. Think about it next time you have a burst of moral outrage. Trace it back. It''s a lie, it''s a dream, it''s... it''s bullshit. Just be yourself, don''t worry about that nagging little voice. And I''m not saying you should go out of your way to hurt people - obviously not. I care about you, and Errod, and Katrin, and Mila. I wouldn''t want anything bad to happen to any of you. But for people like that soldier? You don''t care if we give him to the Sahrger, so don''t pretend you do."


    She stood up, stretching, and started to walk away before turning back. "Just don''t give me that look, okay? You want to override me on something, fine. It''s not a big deal that we let him go, I think the odds of him causing us more trouble are slim. So fine, fuck it. But don''t look at me like I''m some monster. I''m you, without a false memory making up rules."


    I felt shaken, but managed to take a few deep breaths and tried to examine my memories. There really wasn''t anywhere that the soup kitchen memories would fit, plus they were indistinct - my memory was usually pretty good, and yet this was all jumbled and lacking detail. But I''d been trying to be a good person for a long time, hadn''t I? It was hard to say. At the very least I had long ago learned to fake caring about people, but that wasn''t the same thing. I could remember helping that older woman that lived across from my last group home carry groceries from her car just because it seemed like the right thing to do. Unless that was a fake memory too.


    Or even if it wasn''t, it could be that things were slipping into my head back on Earth. Magic had reached me there to transport me away, it could have also tampered with my head. Or it could be that it had nothing to do with magic at all, and I was just crazy. Like mother like daughter, although as far as I knew her memories hadn''t been the issue. Or had they? Could that have explained why she kept trying to leave me places?


    Katrin and Errod were lurking nearby looking concerned, so I waved them over. "Okay listen. I still don''t really feel right talking to you guys about this sort of shit and I''d rather lie to you and then hope it goes away. But you''ve been nice about the whole thing where my brain doesn''t work right, so... I may be having some false memories."


    Errod raised an eyebrow. "Is Earth a false memory? Are you actually just from this world like everyone else?"


    "Fuck. No? No. I mean there''s a whole language, and more than that. Details, a whole society and crazy shit like internet memes and... that''s not fake. But there''s some chunk of my life that has... overlapping memories? I think? Some time two or three years ago, though if Connie is to be believed it will get worse and I''ll have other parts that are like that too. Or I already do, but I can''t tell because they seem real."


    Errod looked disappointed, presumably because he thought all of Earth being a fever dream would make things simpler. "Well, if you want we can just... remember for you. The big things, I mean. You can tell us whatever seems important from your life, and then later on if you think your memory has changed you can tell us again and we''ll let you know. It won''t work for everything since there''s no way you could tell us your whole life story, but it''s a start."


    "Yeah. That... that could work. Not now though, I''m just realizing the Sahrger could be listening in or something. But once we get out of here and back on the road, maybe. Thanks. You guys are great." Something was bothering me. Looking at Errod and Katrin, there was something I was forgetting, or something more I should say. Oh. He''d said ''Katrin and I don''t take it personally'' when he was talking about my lack of empathy. Had I missed something?


    "Aw, shit. Fuck. Katrin, I''m sorry. I just realized you''ve been dealing with something since... I don''t know, since the battle in Theramas? And I''ve just been ignoring it and thinking you''re being weird without... are you okay?"


    She smiled, and opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Suddenly her eyes watered up, and she started crying. "They ran into my shield and just cut themselves almost in half, and I could feel it through the magic. I saw one pick up his own arm. And then Betrad was stabbed, and. I. It''s fine. I''ll be fine."


    Well, fuck. I thought she was thinking about ditching me or was pissed or something. Because it''s all about me. No wonder she had been trying to find a non-lethal spell - and I suggested she use the shield one to slice the Halenvar guy in half. I pulled her into a hug, and gave her a minute to compose herself. I still didn''t really feel what I was sure I was supposed to. I was holding her, and whispering that it was okay and I was sorry, and really inside I was wondering how long I would need to stand there like that. Thirty seconds? A whole minute? Longer?


    But I latched onto Errod''s words. "If you don''t genuinely feel compelled to do the right thing and do it anyway, you''re making that extra choice to be a good person." I had to hold onto that thought. I had to be better than mom thought I was.


    I was saved by the wagon beginning to move. Errod scrambled up and reached an arm down to pull Katrin up behind him, and Connie wrangled Mila who had started to wander off into the woods. Aestrid stayed behind for a moment as we got moving, watching through the trees at the place where the Halenvar soldier had vanished into the woods in case he turned back around. I asked Cyne what we needed to do next and he sighed.


    "Now we just travel and wait for the Sahrger to find us and take us to the local noble family," Cyne said, "Cross your fingers it''s one that likes humans."

 CHAPTER 026: On Being Normal

    There weren''t a lot of options when it came time to decide which way to go, because while the land was surprisingly flat for the middle of a forest it still had frequent gullies and boulders and sections where the trees were too close together. At first it felt like we had been fortunate to find a path, but after about two hours of travel I could feel myself becoming paranoid. There was always a route the wagon could take, and while it didn''t look at all like a road it might as well have been. At every turn, one path we could follow between the trees - or if there were multiple paths, they all regrouped before too long in the next clearing, like kindergartners being herded back into a line.


    I stood up on the wagon and started looking around, seeing all the subtle ways that we were being steered - a fallen log, a thick patch of brambles, a small but steep incline. Forty or sixty feet apart from each other to give the illusion of choice, but nonetheless guiding us.


    "You noticed the invisible walls?" It was Aestrid, looking calm as usual. I nodded and carefully climbed down off the wagon to walk next to her. She was still wearing that silk dress - I wasn''t sure how she kept it from being damaged as we traveled while still having mana left in case of combat. Did it just use that little energy to keep a weak field up all the time? Did she somehow just protect the parts that were about to get muddy? Did she regenerate mana really quickly? I still didn''t have a good feel for how much mana was normal to have or to use.


    "Yeah. Should I be worried?"


    She shrugged, keeping that same calm look on her face but glancing towards the trees. "Cyne doesn''t seem upset, and he''s the only one that''s been here before. Anyway, this is what we want - isn''t it? To be led somewhere?"


    "I guess. I don''t like it though. It implies they could force us to enter this plane at a particular place, and if they could do that they could have had us show up in a... a walled courtyard or something. Instead they have us trek for a few miles through the forest and they steer us but try to be all sneaky about it? What''s the point?"


    Aestrid smiled, and we walked in silence for a moment before she finally spoke. "If I understand them correctly, it''s likely all part of some game. Probably even us noticing it and having this conversation is some of the fun for them. Not sure what that means for the upcoming negotiations."


    By the time it got dark everyone but Mila had noticed, and there was some discussion of deliberately veering from the planned path - but as Aestrid had said, this was in fact what we had wanted. Surely following the subtle trail would take us to someone we could bargain with soon enough. Katrin practiced her magic, and I made a brief attempt to join in but I''d become discouraged at it already and was pinning all my hopes on the Duminere.


    It felt silly and immature to give up on learning magic spells so quickly, but I felt like something should have clicked. Instead I just patrolled around the camp, checking on everyone. Errod was putting up a tent for Aestrid while she lounged nearby not helping - I''d noticed him making excuses to hang out near her and it looked like she''d decided to just make the most of it. Mila was pulling a particularly pretty rock out of the dirt to add it to whatever it was she was making. Sige was doing one-handed pull-ups on a tree branch. Cyne was reading, but looked like he was about to nod off. And Connie was presumably up in the back of the wagon. I hadn''t spoken to her since she told me my memories were playing tricks on me.


    I climbed up and peeked into the wagon and confirmed she was there, getting a brief nod before she went back to tinkering with her temporal stabilization rig. I leaned against a bag of oatmeal - slightly strange fantasyland oatmeal, of course - and watched her work for a while as my mind drifted. I''d learned a little, working at the hardware store, but the main things I knew how to do with my hands involved breaking and entering. What Connie was doing looked more like soldering, as she focused on barely-visible runes covering every inch of the device and prodded at them with a little metal stylus.


    She hadn''t developed her runic abilities beyond the bare minimum, so the smallest of the runes were still about the size of a dime; from what I''d been told, the really skillful practitioners could write code so small you could barely see it which meant they could cram way more function into a small device. I''d asked some questions and tried to learn how to write runes, but much like spellcasting until something clicked it was really hard. Connie said she hadn''t pulled it off before getting it from the Duminere, so I hadn''t felt particularly motivated to try.


    She stopped, sighed, and fidgeted with the stylus for a moment. "Hey, uh. About earlier. I''m... I''m sorry."


    I smiled at her. "No. You''re not."


    "... No, I''m not. But probably I will be tomorrow so I''m getting a head start. I feel very judged by you. It''s not your fault. But on top of mom abandoning us all those times and dealing with the foster care system and... whatever else... I have all this trauma and shit from my time here. And in a petty, tantrum-y kind of way I gave in and let myself just be an asshole a lot of the time.


    "So now you''re here and I wanted... I wanted you here to be the better version of me, the one that doesn''t have to do that shit and has more freedom and gets to just be the main character of some cheesy fantasy story or something. But part of you being that younger happier better version is that I can feel you looking at me and seeing that I''m fucked up and knowing that I''ve killed a lot of people including, arguably, the whole universe since I maybe was supposed to... fix it in a different way."


    She spun the stylus in her hand and idly scraped at the tip of it with a fingernail. "I was relieved. I was happy when the world ended, because I didn''t care that literally everyone had just died so long as I got to have another shot. Also, it was proof that I was right. Anyway... I don''t know, I guess... I get to know that I''m a piece of shit, but you''re not allowed to think that. Or something."


    I scooted over and leaned against her. "You know, this is nice. How often did we get to do this? We were never close with anyone in the group homes. Like, touchy close."


    "Yeah, we weren''t the hugging type I guess. But this is nice. Mom gave up on the snuggling pretty early on, and then... shit, I don''t know. That first foster home I guess a little until we scared them, and then there was that one kid for like a week at the second group home that wanted to hold our hand all the time. And then Bill was pretty affectionate once we settled in."


    What? "He was always nice but..."


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    "Right. No, sorry, one of the wrong memories. Like I said, a bunch of those are about Bill for some reason. Sometimes I wonder if we knew him at all. If he was real at all."


    "He must have been real. I''m sure I can remember him, and I remember remembering him. Like, memories of memories and stuff."


    Connie sat up to put the rig off to one side, then snuggled back in and laid her head on my shoulder. "Yeah but... you know the Jake Ross books? Of course you do, we talked about them before. You remember he gave you those, right?"


    "Sure," I said, although some part of me wondered if I remembered it before she said it, "I... complained about not having anything to read and so he gave me a boxed set of the books."


    "That''s not... quite what I remember. But close enough. Anyway, did he just have them with him?"


    "Yeah, I guess. He... I think he went and got them out of his car or something? He..." a memory ticked at the back of my mind, "he had them for some charity raffle or something."


    "Okay, and when was this?"


    "When? It was... I don''t know, not that long ago. I know I lost them in the move to Sunshine House and that''s where we aged out of so it must have been from a few years before that at the most since we lost everything a few times."


    "Okay but that would put it after Universal Servicing Systems, right?"


    "I guess, since we left everything behind there."


    "Right, but then the last time you saw Bill was...?"


    Right before I ran away and lived in the abandoned Universal Servicing Systems office for the better part of a year. "Um. Okay so... wait. The books are real, they have to be. I remember too much about them, I''m not creative enough to have made those up. I don''t remember the third book very well, but I think I only read that one once. Still, they were for sure real."


    "Let''s say they were. But also, isn''t it strange that the one fantasy series you''ve read all the way through is the one that is real and that you have access to here? You read some other fantasy, bits and pieces, but you don''t see any of those showing up do you? And... shit, I didn''t mean to get you freaking out on this or anything."


    "No, it''s a good question."


    She sighed. "It''s... maybe it''s some form of intuition, or maybe it''s some powerful being trying to help you adjust to this place, or maybe it''s just a coincidence. It doesn''t matter. You were being sweet and snuggling up to me and I went right back to fucking with your head. I don''t know what''s wrong with me. Let''s just focus on this adventure, get you some magic powers, and then if you really want to pick apart your memories of Earth we can. Until then I''ll shut up about it."


    Obviously Connie telling me to not worry about it wasn''t going to do anything, but I''d already gotten all worked up about my memories being off just an hour or so ago and couldn''t work myself into a full existential crisis. I was dimly aware that there was a lot of processing that I was putting off and pushing into the back of my head and all of that would need dealing with eventually. Mainly I was fine with making that a problem for future Calliope, but...


    "Do you think I should pick thought magic to do something about these memories? Or... I mean, I could get professional help if it''s a bad idea to fuck around in your own head."


    "Eh. Snag thought magic if you want, but don''t feel like you have to. You''re fine. You''re strange, and your head is all busted up inside for some reason, but... so what? Mila can''t go five minutes without getting distracted and it takes her a dozen tries to get out the door because she forgets shit all the time. When I lived with her in the other timeline, with my Errod and Katrin? What a trip. She would just leave things laying around, forget where they were, and then while looking for them she''d find something else instead and get distracted by it. So if she wanted to find a piece of chalk it could take her literally all day because she couldn''t stay on track.


    "But when it mattered, she remembered my instructions and risked her freedom to come and rescue us and look, we''re out! So what if her brain is fucked up? Who cares? And everyone has something. Errod is a sweetheart and he''ll - a little too eagerly - sacrifice himself to save your life, but he''s genuinely convinced that he''s destined to be the greatest swordsman ever which is absolutely insane. Dude had a strange dream and just decided to believe it, one hundred percent. Katrin acts all mature even though she''s like a year younger than us. Or... something like that. I hate doing the age conversion here. Anyway she acts all mature because she''s been the mom in that family for years, but there''s some shit going on with her too. She''s a calm surface over a batshit insane interior.


    "And these new guys, holy shit. I can''t say exactly what their deals are yet, but they all seem a bit off. Sige seems fairly normal other than the fratboy vibe but he''d be considered extremely strange by his people''s standards. We''ve got Cyne with his ridiculous religious beliefs that won''t even let him kill a zombie, and Aestrid acting like the cool kid in high school for no fucking reason - and I mean Jesus, you''re tromping through the woods, why are you flexing by wearing silk dresses? Get over yourself. But then, you know, she happily wrecked that bat thing in a super badass way so whatever. I don''t know.


    "I guess I''m saying if you want to try and fuck around in your head and fix yourself that''s fine, it''s as good a reason to get a power as anything and it''s not like thought magic is useless. But there''s no amount of fixing that will make you normal, because people aren''t normal. So if there''s a power you want more, get that one. Also, if you do get thought magic don''t... don''t do the plastic surgery addiction thing and keep tweaking your brain more and more until it''s completely inhuman."


    Connie sat up and went back to working on her temporal stabilizer thing, but deliberately positioned herself so her leg was pressed against mine. I watched her work for a moment, and then surprising even myself I blurted out a confession. "I can remember when you rewind time. I saw..." I saw you murder someone just because you were frustrated and then reverse it. "... when Telen killed Errod and Katrin, the version before you stabbed him."


    She dropped the stylus and stared at me, eyes wide. "That''s... not supposed to be possible. Okay so... not to call you a liar or anything, but purple elevator dishwasher stork."


    "What? What is that supposed to -"


    Connie turned to look at me, still holding her stylus.


    "Did you just reverse time?"


    "Maybe. What were we just saying?"


    Ah. Okay. "You said purple elevator dishwasher stork."


    "Holy shit. Holy shit! What does this even mean? Are we sharing a soul or something? Can we learn telepathy? Are there other strange magic interactions we can exploit? If you get some ability that only works on yourself, will it work on me too? Or... oh, fuck. What if you can''t get magic at all? What if the Duminere says you already got one? Shit. We need to think about this. Assuming this hasn''t fucked you over entirely it could be really good, there might be some strange thing that we can do with this. I mean...


    "Look, honestly I''m not counting on living a lot longer," she gestured to the canister filled with temporal mana, "so I wouldn''t want to plan your build around it or whatever. But also... I mean, there has to be something cool we can do with this, I just don''t know what. Maybe with enchantment, I know there''s something where it''s more powerful if you can only attach effects to yourself so if I count as you maybe that could let us... oh, or with things like gravity? I think you can make some of the area of effect stuff ignore you, but that would mean it could ignore both of us. I don''t think this is going to be anything that flat out breaks magic, but... we''ll have to really sit down and go through each ability and brainstorm."


    Instead, Sige''s head popped into view at the back of the wagon. "Fucking Sahrger are here. You guys are on, try not to fuck up and get us enslaved or some shit."

 CHAPTER 027: Trojan Potholes

    I don''t know what I''d expected, exactly, but the forest hadn''t been quite as enchanted as I had hoped. It was just... a forest. There were little purple fireflies, and all sorts of mushrooms - none of which I recognized from Hugh''s lecture as we''d traveled off the mountain - and some strange orange deer, but overall it felt really familiar.


    The Sahrger, likewise, turned out to look depressingly close to wiry, pale, humans - though there was something feral about them, some subtle thing about the way they walked or the angles of their faces or the fact that their teeth seemed just a bit too pointy. They wore odd, mismatched clothes of different styles and colors and made no effort to consistently cover anything; one of them might have three different layers covering their torso but nothing on their lower half at all, or have some sort of thick winter coat that only covered their left side, or have an enormous hat and gigantic boots but no shirt.


    There were four escorting us along but we also began to see more through the trees, watching us. In most cases I couldn''t be certain which were men and which were women - they were all about five feet tall and had very similar builds. The only one I saw with prominent breasts was also carrying a baby, so it seemed possible they were all flat-chested unless they were breast feeding. The only ones that really looked different were the handful of shorter ones, which had faces like those Shar Pei dogs. The wrinkles were so deep and so numerous that in some cases I couldn''t see their eyes.


    There were humans, too - they were mostly quite young, and stood silently with faces downcast. I felt... rage... somewhere deep inside of me, but it wasn''t like a real emotion. It was like I was remembering something, or imagining it. There was a sudden, vivid mental image of stabbing someone as they slept; it was just a flash, but along with it came an incredibly dim memory of stalking from room to room in a strangely shaped house killing... a foster family? No. I shook my head, and focused on the path ahead of me. Connie had said something about that memory, just another of the out of place images that seemed to be from an impossible other life, but as far as I was aware it was the first time I''d had one like that. The others had been more mundane, and usually involved Bill somehow.


    It had soured my mood. I was already nervous about making a deal with the Sahrger, but had been trying to keep positive and enjoy the fact that I was literally walking through a fairy village. Now every quaint treehouse home and strange flower just made me feel that same odd fury, this memory belonging to someone else that had gotten mixed in with mine somehow like an unfamiliar pair of jeans you come across after using the machines in a laundromat. I had to force myself to look back up at my surroundings despite the unpleasant sensation, trying to keep an eye on the wagon which was supposedly being taken to the same place as us along a wider path.


    There wasn''t a town, exactly, just a series of deer trails and random homes built in and around the trees. I didn''t see any shops, or wells, or carts. But there were more of the houses, and closer together, and after a moment we reached a large clearing where the stump of a tree as large as a house stood. I hadn''t seen any others that large, just this one single stump incongruously sitting there. Stairs were carved into the side, spiraling up to the flattened top where I could already see Sahrger standing.


    The first Sahrger who had come to us and was acting as our main guide had introduced themselves as Follows the Sunlight. They hadn''t said much else, and now they gestured for us to wait as they climbed the steps up the stump and spoke quietly with the ones gathered there. A moment later they returned, and signaled to some others behind us. Those ones signaled to still more, and after a second the wagon rolled into view in a clearing next to the stump. The three mercenaries and Mila were all on foot, with Katrin and Errod in the wagon - Errod looking annoyed. Probably they''d told him to stay there in case trouble started and he was annoyed at being babysat. I assumed Mila had been told to stay too and had just wandered down.


    Follows the Sunlight returned and pointed up the steps. "The Lady will receive you now. She is attended by Sees Past Walls, Last Bud of Autumn, and Hidden Crevice." I was pretty pleased with myself for not laughing at ''Hidden Crevice'', what a fucking unfortunate name. Connie squeezed my hand before we were forced into single file to get up the side.


    At the top were three thrones carved from the wood of the stump, all still attached to it. The center one was the largest, and the only one currently occupied - the Sahrger perched on it was draped in some strange translucent golden material and white furs, with jewelry made from some sort of reddish wire covering their arms and legs. They were gesturing as they spoke, too quietly for me to hear, and some of the shorter wrinkly ones were nodding along from a raised platform behind the throne. Otherwise it was just a collection of Sahrger around the edge of the stump, leaving a large space in the center that we were ushered to.


    Our request was fairly straightforward, and I wasn''t worried about wording it properly. I''d discussed it with Connie and practiced in my head the whole way over. The challenging part would be accounting for whatever they demanded in return, and that was Connie''s job. She suspected it would be more about servitude or favors than physical valuables, but there were rumors of them stealing people''s names or children or memories. If they did decide to ask for material goods the only thing that would be catastrophic would be if the deal hinged on giving up Connie''s time mana - anything else could be replaced, even the notebook with details on the journey ahead.


    "If mom could see this, right?"


    Connie grinned. "Yeah. Crazy how some of the books got stuff right. Of course, that''s not super reassuring considering some of the shit in there. Um. Okay listen, I know we kinda skimmed past the specific possibilities, but worst case scenario if we can''t both get out of here I''ll be the one to stay. I don''t think that''ll happen, people have used this plane to get places before and from what I''ve heard and what Cyne said it doesn''t seem like an issue. But just... if it is, I don''t want you to argue with me. Okay?"


    "I''m not making a deal that leaves you behind."


    "Right. But we''re talking worst case scenario."


    I nodded, but I had no intention of letting them keep anyone. Especially Connie.


    Still not looking at us, probably as a show of disrespect, the Sahrger on the throne raised their voice and began to speak in a more formal way. "Petitioners, you have come to this place seeking favor from your betters. Why should you be heard by the court?"


    Connie stepped forward, pulling something from her bag. "We come bearing gifts for the court, in appreciation for its time and hospitality."


    It was a sculpture, a stone with moss and mushrooms covering it - which were also made from stone. Mila had made it as we traveled, coaxing natural coloring from the different minerals until she had formed something truly breathtaking. Multiple kinds of rock she''d been collecting as we went had been melded together, and the end result simultaneously told your brain it was looking at stone and at actual mushrooms, creating a moment of disconnect.


    The Sahrger looked up at us, finally, and raised an eyebrow at the offering. "Your gift is accepted. Now, tell me..." they stopped, and the delicate string of beads in their hand fell to the ground with a clatter. A murmur rose among the rest of the Sahrger as they realized something was wrong, and Connie spared a very confused backwards glance at me. Was it the gift? Was it too good? Or offensive somehow? They straightened up in the throne, then bowed their head - causing more murmurs.


    "Honored guests. You have been far from home. Please... excuse my rudeness." That last part sounded as if it pained them. Connie looked back at me again and shrugged - this wasn''t what she had expected either. Not certain of how to proceed, I stepped forward and did my best to ask for our favor.


    "We thank you for your audience. We would like to request safe passage for ourselves, our companions, our beasts of burden, and all of our supplies to the Necropolis as soon as possible, so that we can continue our journey in good health and free from obstruction."


    We''d agreed that that wording would get most of the important bits in there, without anything sounding like an accusation - if I had said "don''t hurt us" there was the risk it would be taken as insulting. There was a pause, and then the Sahrger looked up. "And if we transport you and your party to the Necropolis as you have requested... you would consider all debts between us to be fulfilled?"


    It felt like a trick, but I couldn''t see what it might be. The only ''debt'' that had even been implied was some sort of rudeness, and I would have forgiven that without thinking anyway. I wasn''t even sure what had been rude about it - they had mentioned us being far from home, so maybe they could tell we were from Earth and there was some established protocol for that they had bungled? Either way, I didn''t know enough to try and leverage it for a bigger favor and so it seemed safest to just agree. Connie shrugged, then nodded at me. She couldn''t see the trap either - if there was one. "Yes, we would."


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    The look of relief was only there for a split second, but in that brief moment it was clear as day. They had been worried we wouldn''t take that deal, for whatever reason. I hated the idea that I was leaving money on the table, so to speak, but I would have to just be happy that we were getting off easier than expected.


    "We are sad to see you depart again so soon, but we of course wish to honor your request to be on your way as soon as possible. You may wait next to the traveling hill if it pleases you, my people will bring you refreshments - consider this a part of our bargain, with no obligations." They took the gift Connie was still holding out and then bowed, deeply, before stepping back towards the group of ancient wrinkled Sahrger. "I will go and oversee the preparations myself. It has been an honor to host you this day, and I look forward to speaking with you more when you return."


    And with that, they were gone. The others were still murmuring, but one gestured for us to follow them and led us back down the stairs and down a path to a small hill surrounded by a perfectly circular ring of mushrooms. Off to one side human servants were setting up tables and bringing a variety of treats - little balls of some sort, each basket of them a slightly different variety. Honestly it looked like a selection of donut holes. There was also wine, and some kind of extremely thin-sliced meat that appeared to be raw.


    "Is it safe to eat things here?"


    Connie bit her lower lip and squinted at the food as it was laid out for us. "I don''t want to be rude by refusing it. And it seemed like they were eager to help us. For some reason. On the other hand, once we leave we agreed all debts between us would be fulfilled so maybe there''s some sort of loophole where... I don''t know, they could do something to us right now and we wouldn''t be able to demand they make it right because then the debt is getting wiped away by the existing agreement? Something like that?"


    We both tried to think of any pitfalls as the tables were arranged, but once the Sahrger stepped away we had to make a decision. I decided to just go for it and take a bite, since it seemed like any harm would be limited by the agreement anyway and I didn''t want to risk angering them when we were so close to getting out. I picked one that was covered in some kind of powder, and popped the whole thing in my mouth. It was unbelievable. Literally the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. I followed it up with some of the wine, which was equally mind-blowing, and then pulled Connie close and spoke - in English, as we''d been in the habit of.


    "Okay holy shit. That''s so good. That''s... fuck. Do you remember the thing, where if you eat faerie food you can''t eat anything else anymore? What if that''s me now? What if by comparison now everything tastes like ashes or something? Fuck. I don''t even know if I''d be sorry."


    Figuring the damage was done I continued to graze, and Connie opted to keep away from the buffet in case it was doing anything to me since we wouldn''t want to both be compromised - but she didn''t look thrilled about it. The wagon was pulled up about twenty minutes later, and by that time I was not only feeling full but was realizing that I was more than slightly buzzed. I blamed the wine at first, but as I listened to Connie reassure the others and make sure they were prepped to travel I had to admit this wasn''t an issue of alcohol. I was high.


    "Connie. Connie. This is drug food. They''re pot brownies. Pot donut holes. Pot holes. Hah! Don''t drive the wagon into them, right? Potholes?"


    Connie''s eyes went wide. "Oh god. You''re out of your mind right now, aren''t you?"


    "No, I''m okay. I''m just buzzed. And full. And kinda hungry too still. But mostly the other thing. Hey. You''re really pretty, you know that? I think you''re prettier than me, that''s not fair."


    "We look literally identical. We''re the same person."


    "No but. You''re pretty."


    "You''re high."


    "Okay," I said.


    "Okay?"


    "Yeah, okay. I''ll be high. I mean I am. But I mean I''ll sit here and be high, like I''ll shut up about you being prettier and stuff. And just... yeah. You get people ready while I do that."


    Connie looked concerned, and maybe a little amused, and very pretty. I felt warm. I knew I should get on the wagon and not talk to anyone, but I remembered I might have cursed myself to never enjoy human food again and so I wandered to one of the human servants that stood next to the table staring at her feet.


    "Hey can we take this with us? The baskets of... you don''t have a word for donut holes I bet. Yeah that sounded wrong. I''ll invent them later and we''ll make up a word, but my bracelet still won''t know it I guess. Can''t make a new bracelet every time I make up a word, that would be a lot of work I bet. And money."


    I looked at the girl. She was like... ten or eleven, maybe? Or older and malnourished. "Do they pay you? Can you buy bracelets for yourself? Not magic ones, you don''t need this, but like... are you stuck here? You wanna come with us?"


    She looked at me, mildly horrified, and then side-eyed the nearest Sahrger as if checking to see if they''d heard what I said.


    "No it''s okay, I''m high but it''s not making me dumb. The one on the throne said if they send us where we want to go we''re all even, right? So my sister - she''s actually me, not my sister, but that''s... it''s kind of a secret. So don''t talk about that. She was worried about the potholes - hah, that translates just fine! Okay that''s the new word for these, just like the holes in the road except delicious instead of muddy okay?"


    She nodded, still looking nervous. There had been something else I was going to say to her.


    "Potholes... sister... right! Fuck! Right, so you get your human friends and you load this stuff on the wagon, okay? Road snacks. Always good. And then you do that when we''re about to leave, as we''re leaving, and then you come with us. Maybe you sneak in with the snacks or whatever. And then they can''t be mad, because we''re even. It''s what my sister said but the opposite. The prankster becomes the pranked. Very sneaky. That''s her over there, she''s pretty right? I''m going to look like that in a few years maybe. Fingers crossed. Okay get your friends and everyone take a basket or a jug of wine or a... table thing. Centerpiece. Thing. This is a good plan, it''s not the potholes talking I promise."


    I had only taken two steps away when Connie grabbed me by the arm. "What are you doing talking to them? Get in the wagon, we''re going. Don''t mess this up by telling them all they''re pretty or whatever."


    "Some of them are, though. Right? Not the child slaves, the Sahrger. You see it. I could dig on having a fairy husband. Or wife. I''m not picky, and I don''t think I can tell the difference anyway. I''m not normally turned on by people, do you think it''s the drug holes or do you think fairies are just my type? Oh! Also by the way, I made a plan."


    She sighed as she helped me into the wagon. "Okay, what''s your plan?"


    "Gonna bring some fairy food in case I can''t eat people food anymore. But then I thought, wait, they might not do takeout and maybe they''ll be mad. But then I thought they can''t be mad just like you said we couldn''t be mad. So then I thought in for a penny in for a pound, right? And there are a bunch of servants so if they all grab a tray, then..."


    "Yeah. Great. If they bring you food in a doggy bag in time then fine, but we need to hurry as soon as the portal opens so we don''t fuck this up. And by we, I mean you."


    "Okay but they''re inside the doggy bag. It''s Trojan snacks."


    "What?"


    "The other part of the plan."


    "You''re high, and you''re not making sense. Lay down."


    I laid down, and the wagon started moving. The rocking back and forth and the tilt as we went up the small hill felt like they sent little ripples through my body, and I closed my eyes to better enjoy the sensation. I wasn''t sure if it had been the wine, or the donut hole things - and if it was the latter I wasn''t sure which variety. But I was already determined to find out, assuming we did get to take some with us. Someone yelled something, angry and in a language that sounded familiar but wasn''t one I knew. They sounded really upset.


    Bodies flopped onto me, and the wagon was moving faster - rocking and bumping as the screaming and yelling increased. One of the voices was Sige, who said "JUST GO!", and one of the voices was Connie swearing, but most were Sahrger. They seemed mad, which was rude - I was being all mellow laying in the back of the wagon with my eyes closed, and the yelling was harshing the whole vibe.


    The wagon stopped a moment later, and after whoever was on me scrambled off someone flicked my knee really hard. I cracked one eye, and saw it was Connie. Behind her I could see a gray sky and some tall stone towers - clearly we weren''t in fairy land anymore. "Trojan snacks? Seriously?"


    I gave her a thumbs-up. "It''s a good plan, and you''re still pretty. Are we doing it? The snack plan?"


    "Well you didn''t leave us much choice, did you? They brought the food over right as we were leaving and just jumped on."


    I nodded, and closed my eyes again. "Yeah, that was the plan. I told you."


    "You absolutely did not."


    "Well I''m telling you now," I said, and then sat up and opened my eyes again. Wait. Shit. "Wait, did they really bring the food or did they just bring themselves?"


    "They brought the food too."


    Oh thank god. "Fuck yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay I''m going to take a nap, tell me when we''re at the Necropolis."


    "We''re at the Necropolis."


    "Well circle the block a few times so I can take a nap, okay?"


    And with that, everything faded into darkness.

 CHAPTER 028: Hilberts Graveyard

    When Connie first told me about the Necropolis, I was pissed off. I was trying to get an understanding of how magic worked, and it seemed like for everything other than the Necropolis magic was a power harnessed by living creatures, not by the land itself. And then out of nowhere there''s this city where it''s constantly sinking into a bottomless pit? I was infuriated. Was the pit actually bottomless? Seemed like. How fast did the city sink? Fast - well, fast in terms of a city sinking. It was multiple feet a year, and more importantly this had been the case since literally before recorded history. The problem should be obvious, which is that no matter what was going on underground it just couldn''t have been stable with them throwing building after building on top of this sinkhole. Just stacked on top of each other, miles deep without collapsing? Ridiculous.


    And they hadn''t collapsed, for sure - people sometimes delved into the pit, going down and looking for things to steal. I had intended to ask more about why it wouldn''t all be picked clean right away, or why people were okay with grave robbing after a certain amount of time, or... just the rules in general. But I''d gotten hung up on the engineering side of things, which I had at least as many questions about.


    The city was almost perfectly circular, and laid out in rings. The outer ring was shops at the six gates and then houses in-between, nothing too alarming there. Next came a thin ring where the only buildings allowed were ones that dealt with the dead - some temples, embalmers, specialized shops. And then after that was the actual Necropolis, a large area constantly being built up with shrines and mausoleums and organized stacks of bones.


    There were thirty-six gods but only a handful were actually worshiped, and yet there were dozens of different religions - some didn''t worship gods at all, and some shared the same gods but had totally different practices. Each had its own rules about how to respect the dead and what rituals to do when preparing them which made the Necropolis a fascinating place to walk through; some bodies would be on open display right next to a sort of sarcophagus which was, in turn, next to a building literally made from bones.


    But the most interesting thing about the Necropolis was the huge hole in the very center.


    You couldn''t see as far down as I''d hoped, because lower levels weren''t always lined up in quite the same way and so after a few hundred feet your view was obstructed - except, presumably, from directly overhead. But it was still an amazing sight, floor after floor precariously perched on each other and filled to bursting with the dead of the world. Bodies were shipped in from thousands of miles away, the rich transported in huge processions while poor folks were carted in by the wagonload all tangled together. Depending on how they had died and how far they had to travel it was likely they''d been mummified in some way, and others had been interred in their homeland and were only removed and brought to the Necropolis once they''d been reduced to bones by time. You could be buried in your home town in the short term, but eventually everyone headed to the same place.


    Some were taken to a (sadly very thoroughly guarded) walkway over that pit and dropped straight down, presumably with a prayer although it still seemed odd to kinda chuck someone into a hole like that. But most were given a final resting place in a mausoleum or something on that inner ring, which just kept sinking year after year. As it got lower, they would build a new "floor" on top of it, though with all the different structures these floors were added on all at different times and heights. At the edge of the pit you could see that it was a mess of ramps and stairs, with little crawlspaces created by awkward joinings and some passages that were only three feet high right next to others with a clearance of fifteen feet or more.


    My drug induced haze had lasted several hours so I''d missed us getting set up at a house and had fallen asleep for a bit. When I woke up I immediately wanted to go see the pit, and Cyne had volunteered to take me which meant it came with an educational lecture. "We discussed the way that Planar magic works already, so you know that there is a membrane of sorts that separates the planes and can be thinned to allow alternate laws of reality to bleed through or pierced in order to travel between them."


    I nodded, and he continued. "While it is exceedingly difficult and usually temporary, it is possible to bind two planes together. There have been various organizations throughout history that have tried to do so for different reasons, and of course some artificers that have made devices to do so. I know that several permanent doors into Nusos have been created, for example, though it is advised against - there are native creatures that can cause problems even though they cannot live long on the primary plane, and Nusos is easy enough to gain access to that a permanent portal is frivolous."


    I immediately wanted a magic door to another plane. "So... why do they do it?"


    "Novelty, mostly. More money than sense. The same would be true for permanent passages into Itzele," he said, and it took me a moment to remember that was the shadowy reflection world that we''d briefly dipped into while sneaking out of Good Charl, "but that one has also had some created. Most often the tension fluctuations as the plane comes into and out of alignment eventually break it free. But the Necropolis is a large and permanent portal to the land of the dead - the thirty-fifth plane.


    "It is only aligned with the land of the living every one thousand one hundred and fifty-five years, but more importantly it only is part of the Grand Alignment twice in the eighteen cycles which means it last happened eleven thousand, five hundred and forty-nine years ago. Give or take. We don''t know anything at all about what happened the last time, or if this place even existed then. In six hundred and eighty-seven days a lot of people will be watching very closely to see what happens. Personally I''m torn between wanting to be right here at the Passage, and running as far as I can in the other direction."


    "Will it be dangerous?" I had talked to Connie about the mostly-averted end of the world, but I kept forgetting that there would be other things happening on that day. She''d mainly mentioned human plots that the task force was dealing with, but there had been mention of other problems inherent to the planes lining up.


    "It will be a very dangerous event, one way or another. All but two planes will be in alignment, which will mean some very powerful magic can happen that day. In addition to this, some of the planes are extremely dangerous; monsters always escape into the world from Besetie when it aligns even outside of the Grand Alignment, so I can only assume it will be far more this time. I personally wonder... I wonder if this overlap will end. It could be that the center of this city will soon be a smooth, empty field. What will we do with our dead then? But I get ahead of myself. We will cross that bridge when we come to it."


    Cyne was silent, just looking at the pit while I was lost in thought - he probably assumed it was something deep, pondering on the alignment of the planes and our uncertain future and the potential loss of this culturally important site. Really I was thinking about how his version of "we''ll cross that bridge when we come to it" was closer to "we''ll pluck that bird when we catch it", but the bracelet had translated it over for some reason as if I couldn''t infer what was being said. After a moment of trying to think about the best way to ask for more information without showing off how ignorant I was, I gave up and just asked. After all, I was paying him.


    "You already know I don''t know a lot about the planes, but I''m also totally ignorant about... religion, and what happens when we die, and... all that shit. And I don''t get what all this means. If we were to go down that hole and just keep going, would we get to... the afterlife? Or?"


    "It''s unclear. Your lutore is the core of you, the point where your mind and soul are bound to your body and the thing that gifts from a Duminere are inscribed upon. When your body dies, the balance is upset and your mind and body snap together and merge. This bit that remains either lingers on the primary plane as a ghost, or is pulled into the land of the dead. All attempts to go there physically have failed - I belong to a monastery that is dedicated to that purpose, and I myself have tried on several occasions - it is why I originally sought out planar magic. We make pilgrimages to the Necropolis to get more of a feel for the plane, in an attempt to learn better how to cross over.


    "Unfortunately, the bottomless pit is all transition - a portal where you never reach the other end. Picture a hallway that just keeps going, and in theory at the far side your destination is waiting but in practice you never arrive. It is likely this was not the intention, though we no longer know who created it. We assume they meant to have a direct portal and something went wrong. It could be that on the day of the Grand Alignment the distance will finally close and we would be able to reach to the other side and have so many questions answered. Are the spirits of the dead still there? Have they degraded and returned to this world as energy, as some suspect? Have they given up their memories and been reborn into Enimondoa as simplistic spirits?"


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I felt like I was still missing something. "Okay so. Wait. You throw bodies into the pit... because of ghosts? Is that why it''s filled with zombies? I thought - everyone said the zombies were just mindless constructs of magic, they didn''t say they were actual ghosts of dead people."


    "I apologize, I got off-topic. Yes, we inter our dead here in case any have lingering ghosts that were not able to find their way to the other side. We believe that, not being truly attached to their bodies, they will be able to use the transition in a way the living cannot. The animated dead, however, are largely unrelated. There is a well of life-aligned mana inside the pit, specifically aligned with animation as opposed to healing or growing. The bodies, being organic structures that have been alive before, are particularly susceptible."


    "So everyone on this continent decided that the best place to put your bodies is somewhere that they''ll spontaneously rise from the dead? Sorry. I''m not trying to be disrespectful, it''s just... that seems like a recipe for disaster."


    Cyne smiled. "I suppose so. But they rarely animate anywhere close to the surface. As you go further down... well. We should discuss that with the whole party, I know everyone is eager to learn more about the next step of the plan."


    We headed back, and as we approached Cyne shifted the topic to the kids we''d picked up. I missed the first part of what he said because I was watching someone walk by wearing a huge headdress made of finger bones, but it sounded like he was very tactfully saying he was pissed.


    "I thought of all people - well, aside from Errod maybe - you''d be the one most supportive of freeing those poor children. You''re a pacifist, but you''re okay with slavery?"


    Sige saw us coming and held the door open, and sarcastically shook his head in disappointment. "Cyne wants kids to be slaves, huh? I always fucking suspected he was that kind of guy. Shameful."


    Cyne sighed, sat at the table, and rubbed his temples. "I think you''ve misunderstood. I was merely saying that the execution of your plan was... inelegant, and might have caused us quite a bit of trouble - and further, that it may still cause me a great deal of professional inconvenience if they hold it against me. I make my living transporting people through the planes, and you have increased the risk of entering Xeyul."


    I tried to think of a tactful way to say ''sorry not sorry''. "I apologize for any inconvenience I''ve caused you earlier today and in the future. But also, if I had to do it again I would."


    Aestrid, lounging on a lumpy thing that maybe technically counted as a couch, looked thoughtfully up at the rafters. "My uncle had slaves. We lived in Markonti, and it''s legal there. When I was young, I was quite smitten with one of them... Ualrak. He told me in his homeland he was a prince, and said if he could earn his freedom he would marry me and take me to live in the palace with him. Of course, when I removed his collar he beat me unconscious and tied me up in the basement, then went upstairs and murdered my uncle so he could free the rest of the slaves. At the time I felt quite betrayed, but I''m old enough now to just be grateful he left me alive and didn''t light the house on fire or anything. I''d have done much worse, in his position." She sighed, and continued gazing off at nothing. "They never did catch him. I''m sure he was lying about being a prince, but I wonder if he''s single?"


    Everyone was silent for a moment, and then Sige decided to change the subject. "Okay, well we got out of that fucking mess and those assholes from Halenvar shouldn''t be able to find us too fast. And they can''t do anything while we''re in Necropolis anyway. So what''s the plan from here?"


    They already knew the answer to that, but I suspected Sige was hoping I''d drop some more detailed information than Connie had - she was being secretive to ensure nobody could race ahead of us to claim our prize. Still, there was no harm in answering at this point. "Connie has a specific crypt we''re looking for. It''s deep, so getting there might take a while. She has the location, but not a clear route. We''ll need to get supplies and plan on camping down there a few nights, but assuming Mila hasn''t gotten distracted and wandered right out of the city we''ll be able to make a path almost straight down. Once we get what we need, the next step is to go through Nusos to our final destination."


    Cyne shook his head. "Unless it''s another life or death situation, we shouldn''t risk going into Nusos while deep in the Necropolis. It can take some time to get from one type of environment to another, and if we start out somewhere so filled with thoughts of death and decay we''ll be immediately beset by the local creatures. It would be much safer to come back up and go to another city."


    "Sure, fine. I guess it doesn''t matter. Would have been nice to not need to hike back up and everything, but... ah, shit. I guess we couldn''t have anyway because of the stowaways."


    Katrin, Errod, and the recently-liberated kids from fairyland were in the next room. It was the only other room in the rental house, which was barely nicer than a barn - it was intended to give a whole extended family somewhere to crash when transporting the body of a loved one. I could hear Errod trying to play with the kids, but they were all pretty shell-shocked and quiet.


    Connie was out and about somewhere, leaving me to the question of our new... wards? Refugees? They were young, the oldest at most twelve years old in Earth years and completely disoriented. They couldn''t just be sent off on their own. Aestrid, who was coming up with all sorts of odd comments and asides, even suggested bringing them down with us into the deeper levels of Necropolis - but that got shut down fast, by literally everyone else.


    "More fucking people means more food and water," Sige said, "and that''s more to carry. Plus they''re fucking children, I don''t want them getting killed down there."


    I sighed, wishing for the hundredth time that doing the right thing was the same as doing the easy thing. "He''s right. We can''t take the wagon down there, so we have to plan on everyone carrying their own supplies. More people won''t help. But... maybe Connie can spare some money to keep them set up here, and... well, I don''t know. We''ll figure something out."


    Once I''d confirmed that we wouldn''t be able to start on getting permission to head down into the pit until the following morning I dismissed Cyne, who wanted to visit a temple of some sort dedicated to someone named Sithlan. Getting caught up on the religious beliefs of this world was on my to-do list, and slowly rising to the top as I ran out of excuses not to. "Well, assuming Errod can keep an eye on the kids we rescued from the Sahrger I''m going to go practice magic with Katrin. Let me know if you need anything, and I''ll give an update tomorrow morning at the latest."


    Aestrid waved vaguely in my direction. "Yes, good. I''m fine thank you. I have plenty to eat."


    "Okay? Sige, you look like you want to talk. You alright?"


    He nodded, and pulled me aside. I still wasn''t used to the fact that I was hanging out with... not quite an alien, but for sure not a homo sapiens. The fine orange curls on his wrist tickled my arm as he guided me to the corner. "Not my fucking business, right? But you''re new to this stuff so just a tip. You want to practice magic that''s fine, but don''t let Katrin help you. She''s going to hurt herself."


    "Wait, what?"


    "I saw her after she tried that tether trick. She was shaking like she''d gone skinny dipping in a blizzard. She overextended, burned some of her life force as mana. She needs to take a few days off."


    I remembered the woman we''d gone to to measure my mana capacity back in Handoleren. She''d mentioned that using more mana than you could handle was bad, and when she had charged me up to full I had felt oddly warm. It made sense that Katrin chattering and shivering after she had cast the spell was related.


    "She was like that before, after she cast a spell that made a... well, a very thin force field. She saved us from some soldiers that were charging us, but I remember she was shaking afterwards."


    "How long ago?"


    "Um. Eight days? I think?"


    "Fuck. That''s even worse. Twice so close together is bad news, at least until you have a Dumine - they make it easier to train up your lutore to its full capacity. You want my advice, you''ll take that fucking book away from her and not give it back until she''s laid off the magic for at least a week to be safe. No fucking point in her doing permanent damage."


    "It could have partly been nerves or something. Sometimes in life and death kinds of situations you can feel really cold." He raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged. It wasn''t that, and we both knew it. She had been casting spells both times, ones she had openly admitted were beyond her skill level. "Fine. Yeah. I don''t think she''ll want me to take it away, but I''ll make her promise on pain of death to chill. Pretty sure she''s only been practicing the simple stuff lately though, so maybe she already knows."


    "She shouldn''t even do simple stuff for a bit. And like every asshole that finds a spellbook she''s fucking obsessed, so good luck getting her to stop without taking the book away."


    I hated to admit it, but he was probably right. "Okay. Well, thanks for the heads-up. I really appreciate it. I figured it was going to be something about Aestrid acting funny."


    "Naw, she''s just been eating all that Sahrger food you brought back."


    Oh, you fucking bitch. "Aestrid? I swear to god I''m going to find a way to kill you."


    "I''m un-kill... invulnerable... to your tiny weak fists," she said, around a mouthful of fairy food. "And anyway, it would make Errod sad. He''s like a newly weaned hound, it''s adorable." She started to make little howling sounds, which quickly devolved into giggling.


    "Please tell me I wasn''t this bad earlier?" I said to Sige. He just laughed and walked away.

 CHAPTER 029: More Things Calliope Doesnt Understand

    The next day was spent with Connie working to get a permit to go down into the depths of the Necropolis, something that was looking like it would have been almost impossible without Cyne having gone through the process before. There were also apparently only a small number of people who were cleared to lower people down - we certainly didn''t want to have to start at the very top - although that at least sounded like it would resolve itself as soon as we had the permit.


    Sige and Aestrid took turns hanging around for protection but they were clearly half-assing it, as confident as everyone else that no harm could possibly befall us while we were here. I still hadn''t gotten a very clear explanation why. I''d heard Telen threaten a toddler, I had trouble believing that he wouldn''t try to have me kidnapped or killed just because of some cultural taboo. There was only so much I could do if nobody else was worried though, and we hadn''t seen any sign of anyone from Halenvar or the Endless Empire.


    "Well maybe that''s why Cyne likes it here," I said, "since he''s a pacifist and stuff. You know, even he said that the zombies are just randomly animated and not the souls of dead people or whatever. I don''t get why he would have a problem with smashing them."


    Katrin was staring at the little movable tiles in the cover of her spellbook, copying the glyphs into a notebook. "I don''t know," she said, "I never thought it made sense. I''ve met one other person with the same beliefs, but we didn''t talk about it much - he ran a stall where I bought vegetables, so we just made the normal small talk. I don''t think the plants were grown in low mana environments so they must have had a little life mana in them, and he was okay harvesting and selling those. So it can''t just be about that."


    "He mentioned life mana, said that the pit is filled with life mana but specifically for animating things. Just, naturally. I talked to Connie about that some, so I basically get the idea. Easier to use for that purpose, harder to use for anything else. She was telling me about it because of her thingy, the device she wears filled with crystalized bird-destroying temporal mana."


    Katrin nodded and kept writing, but then stopped and looked at me in confusion a few seconds later. "Bird-destroying?"


    "Yeah, she said when she messed up the lab she stole it from a bunch of canisters like it failed and turned the whole place into a radioactive crater. Shit, that didn''t translate well. Radiation is like... a frequency of light that you can''t see but fucks up your body and... man, I don''t know how to explain it. It doesn''t matter, it wasn''t literally radioactive I don''t think. It was just... too much time mana I guess, and she said a bird flew in and just turned to dust."


    Katrin shook her head, eyes wide. "That''s... terrifying. But that''s a really extreme case, and it''s rare for people to have that much crystalized mana because it''s a pain to make. They usually use mana capacitors instead, I don''t know if you''ve seen them - they''re magic items that just power other magic items. Anyway, you can use crystalized mana for that and they sometimes do, but it''s hard to get anything past a certain mana grade. Back before Brinkmar fell that was the main export, actually. They had some way to create these super dense mana crystals, after the collapse it caused a bunch of wars when nobody could get them anymore."


    "Huh. And yeah, I think I saw one of those capacitor things when I sold some stuff I''d found and got these silent shoes. The shopkeeper was using it, swapped it between a few different magic gadgets to power them. Strange that Ulren didn''t use something like that, if crystalized mana is so dangerous."


    "Life mana isn''t so bad," Katrin said, "There''s a little of it everywhere. Your lutore turns a trickle of your mana into it all the time to keep you healthier, and even non-magical animals and plants tend to have some. It''s harmless, it''ll just make things grow slightly faster most of the time, because other life-adjacent stuff like animating things would be way harder and more specific."


    "Is that life mana what you burned up when you used too much energy casting spells?"


    Katrin completely ignored me. "It can be very interesting, if you focus on learning to do it. It''s easiest with organic material, which is why zombies and plant creatures are the most common example, but you can do it with anything. It typically gains a little bit of... flexibility? You would think that would need a different type of magic entirely, but if you shove enough life mana into a steel rod it might start wiggling around like a snake. That won''t happen in the pit - or if it does it would be deeper than anyone has ever gone and lived to return. For us it will just be the zombies."


    "So... how smart are they, if it''s just random mana animating them? How do they even know how to walk?"


    Katrin got that look on her face that said "I want to lecture you on this but I''m worried I''m wrong about it". She had that look a lot when we talked about this sort of thing.


    "There are ways to make them intelligent, but that doesn''t have anything to do with life mana - or not by itself. Normally if a person animates them they''re sort of... given a set of rules? Enough to seem intelligent, but they don''t actually understand what they''re doing. I think. But in this case, I suppose it would be based on the Common Local Understanding."


    "Okay, so they''re like NPCs in a video game - which of course means nothing to you - and these ones are just running on basic instincts provided by the collective consciousness. Fuck, I miss video games. I wish my phone worked, I have some old emulator games on there, and a Tetris knock-off I made when I was trying to learn to code, and a bunch of pictures. I want you to see where I''m from. Oh! Shit!"


    Katrin jumped up and spun around, looking everywhere. "Is there a bug? Or?"


    "No, shit, sorry. I just got excited. Okay so once you''re all... recovered, or whatever, and you can practice spells again -"


    "I''m fine now, it wasn''t that bad."


    "In a week, when you''re all recovered and can practice spells again..."


    "Yes mom."


    "Hey I don''t actually give a shit, but Sige is going to physically steal your spellbook if you don''t take it easy. Anyway! When you can, you should look for something that would access my mind and let me... I don''t know, project my memories to someone else or something."


    Katrin opened the spell book and began to flip through. "Maybe. To be honest, I think even if something like that is in here there''s no chance I would be able to use that sort of spell without either getting the Comprehension gift in a Duminere or spending years practicing with this book. The parts I''ve been able to understand are fairly basic applications of light, and heat, and force. The tether one was way harder, and I almost didn''t get it to cast at all."


    She hesitated, still turning pages but clearly not really looking at the book. "And really, it may be best to have a professional look at your memories considering what Connie told you."


    "Yeah. Maybe. Man, now I''m thinking about Earth and I really want a chocolate milkshake. I can''t even imagine what to compare one to, I guess I need to learn more about the food here. Here, what''s this?" I held up one of the little leaves from the salad I''d been half-heartedly munching on.


    "You''ve had that before. That''s kinat, it''s in everything. We had it last night, too, but a different kind. The little ball things?"


    It didn''t look anything like what I''d eaten the night before. "Seriously? That''s the same plant?"


    "Oh sure, it just depends on how you grow it I think, or... like, different breeds. Any time you eat a vegetable, it''s probably kinat. Do they not have something like that where you''re from?"


    I thought about it, but I''d never really paid any attention to farming. "I don''t think so. We don''t just do variations on the same thing, we have tons of different plants. Like broccoli, or kale, or cabbage, or brussels sprouts, or cauliflower, or... I don''t know. Some of it is pretty similar to here. The animals, too - I saw a cat the other day, it looked exactly like the cats on Earth. There must have been some point where things just freely crossed over, I think."


    "Would you ever want to go back?"


    "If I could be sure I would be able to end up back here, I think I''d go back to go shopping. I''d snag a solar charger for my phone, and some other stuff you can''t get here."


    I''d actually made a whole shopping list in my head, especially when we were camped out somewhere uncomfortable. Jeans, underwear, and socks. A laptop, and some solar panels. A bunch of camping gear, if I was going to be traveling in the wilderness. Maybe a gun - couldn''t hurt, right?


    "You mention the ''phone'' a lot, I''ve started to recognize that word."


    "Oh, have I showed it to you? I actually have it with me, there was nowhere good to lock up my stuff and the stowaway kids were getting comfortable enough to snoop through our shit. Hang on."


    I dug it out, and unwrapped it from its protective scrap of leather - I was unlikely to ever get it charged, but it seemed wrong to let it get smashed or something - and I handed it over to Katrin. She stared at it, slowly turning it over in her hands. I took it back and popped the case off so she could get a better look, but she was more interested in the case itself.


    "What is this made out of?"


    "Uh. It''s a kind of plastic, it''s made from... oil? Kind of? I don''t know. This kind is... well I know it''s called TPU but those are just letters in my language and I don''t remember what they stand for and even if I did it would probably be some fancy chemical name that would be meaningless to you. The point is, there are a bunch of kinds of plastic and some are hard and some are flexible like this is. Some are brittle, some are super strong, some you can''t see through. We use plastic for everything on Earth. There''s actually some inside me, probably - just teeny little bits, because it doesn''t break down all the way and it gets into the dirt and water and then we eat it. But it''s probably fine. Hopefully."


    She stared at me in horror. "But the druids would... no, wait. You said no magic? So how do you get rid of your waste pits?"


    "Like, landfills? Or? We bury our trash, mainly."


    "But then it''s still there, just underground?"


    "Wait. Hang on. How do you deal with your... waste pits?"


    "There are druids that come about once a year," she said, though I was sure ''druid'' was a totally inaccurate translation, "and they align the waste pits with Lenderatze. And we rotate around the city, which areas are used for farming or foraging or waste, so the land has time to recover."


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "Okay but back up, Lenderatze is another plane?"


    "Yes, it naturally breaks down man-made materials and... it''s dangerous if you do it wrong, but I''ve seen it turn a waste pit full of broken things and trash into a dense grove - a deer even jumped out." She turned back to looking at my phone as she continued, "It took three of them to do it, and they can only do it when the plane is aligned which is every three and a third months - that''s why they only come once a year, they have to rush to several different cities each alignment."


    Holy shit, this planar stuff just got stranger and stranger. "Okay but still, you guys have a magical ''fix the environment'' thing? Fuck, that is so unfair. Earth just gets worse and worse as shit builds up. Thank god I''m here now. Yeah, I''m done with that place."


    Katrin was still examining the phone and its case in disbelief. I had talked to her about Earth a few times but not in a lot of detail, and I guess she hadn''t really thought about the technology much. Unless it wasn''t just that... hang on... "Katrin? Did you... not believe me about Earth before now?"


    She looked up, eyes wide with guilt. "No! I did! Mostly. I just... this is... this is really from somewhere totally different, isn''t it?"


    "Holy shit, you actually just thought I was crazy."


    "Your sister even said you were crazy, actually. And you even made it pretty clear that you think you''re crazy."


    "No, I''m lacking in affective empathy and impulse control. And maybe now have false memories. But I''m. I''m not..." I''m not my mom. "I''m not crazy. And do you even believe Connie is me from a dead future?"


    "I... wasn''t sure. But I do think she is now. There are little things, a mole, the specific set of your eyes, that would never be the same even with identical twins unless you paid someone to make you match - and if you''d done that she wouldn''t look slightly older. Plus it explains why the Empire and Halenvar are so interested in the two of you. But... no, I don''t just believe things without considering the alternatives. I go with them, provisionally, because I wouldn''t want to be rude and call you a liar and then be wrong - I wouldn''t want to do it if I was right, even, because either way I believed that you believed it."


    "And it''s the phone that did it, even though I can''t turn it on?"


    "It''s... this material is so strange, and the design of your... phone... is just... It''s more foreign than anything I''ve ever touched. I don''t know how to explain it. A whole other world is... it''s a big thing to think about. And you really don''t want to go back?"


    "Other than the shopping thing? Nah. This world is fucked up and there''s monsters and shit, but on Earth it''s... well like I said there''s no magic, and without the chance of learning magic it feels like the people in charge just make it harder and harder for everyone else to catch up to them, you know? Like if poor people could spontaneously learn to control the flow of time I think it would really mix things up. Not that it matters to me right now, since I cannot read this fucking book. I wish my bracelet worked for it."


    Katrin looked thoughtful as she reached over and snagged a few more leaves out of my salad bowl and popped them in her mouth. "Well," she said around the half-chewed food, "could be it''s making it harder? Fundamentally it''s a translation issue, and your bracelet is trying to translate everything but in a different way. Maybe it''s trying to translate the book and failing - it might actually be easier with the bracelet off."


    It seemed worth a try, so I fiddled with the nearly invisible latch until the bracelet came free and set it aside. I flipped to the page Katrin had marked as being one of the simplest spells - basically the arcane equivalent of a lighter - and stared until I went cross-eyed.


    "Anything?" Katrin asked.


    "No, this is garbage."


    Katrin punched me. I turned to look at her and she was staring at me, eyes wide. "Ouch! What the fuck?"


    "I asked if you saw anything and you said ''no, this is garbage''," she said, enunciating the last few words super clearly for some reason.


    "Right, it..."


    Wait. I looked down at the bracelet. Then back up to Katrin. She had asked in Imperial and I had just... answered. How was the bracelet still working when I wasn''t wearing it? Had it seeped in over time? I''d only been in this world for a month, but the bracelet did leave me sort of aware of how the words were coming out and so it made sense that I would learn somewhat as I went.


    "Holy shit," I said in English, and then "Uh... gurutz sentoe." yeah, that was right. Katrin giggled, and then launched into a whole excited rant that I was catching about every third word of. I waved at her to stop. "Wait. Too much. Too fast. I''m still... shit. I''m still... bad."


    That just made her laugh harder.


    Soon it was time for me to swap siblings and hang with Errod - I''d promised him that I wouldn''t leave him alone with our refugees, but I had to admit I''d been avoiding them as much as possible. They kept treating me like some sort of savior, but all I could see was a bunch of homeless kids and it was dredging up some memories that I really preferred to keep down.


    "I had nightmares about them last night. They were all kids I knew from the group homes, and I had somehow adopted them but then fucked up and they got taken away. Put back into foster care, just dragging trash bags of clothes behind them. Fuck. I don''t want to be responsible for a bunch of kids, I can barely take care of myself. I''m not even nineteen."


    Errod smirked. "You''re not anywhere near nineteen. You need to remember to convert your years over."


    "Ugh. Fuck these strange long months and long years and base six counting and... I don''t know, I think your inches are shorter than mine but I can''t really tell because I was never good at eyeballing that anyway. Fine. Sure. I''m not even sixteen years old. Better?"


    "Yes. Look, I''m not trying to be a jerk," he said, as if Errod had ever tried to be a jerk in his life, "You don''t want to raise any suspicion by getting your own age wrong."


    "But giving me shit is part of it, right?"


    He seemed to genuinely consider that for a moment. "It''s a perk, yes."


    "Okay but it turns out I''m not done complaining. Because not only am I almost sixteen rather than almost nineteen, in base six that''s almost thirty-one - no wait," I said, realizing that thanks to the bracelet''s inconsistent reading of my intent it had come out as saying that nineteen in base-six was nineteen, "Thirty. One. Ugh, there. The point is, I''m either a few years younger than I should be or way older. I hate it. Base ten is better, you guys are hitting triple digits by the time you hit thirty-six."


    "But that makes sense. Thirty-six is a very important number. It''s the number of planes, the number of days in a month, the number of different types of gifts you can get in the Duminere. Well, if you count the ones you can''t actually select."


    "Fine. Whatever. It''s still stupid." I think we both knew that I was just being cranky because I had started talking about foster care. Things got uncomfortably quiet, and I was just staring at the kids across the room. There were five of them - three girls and two boys. They were uncertain of their ages, and when I had asked their names two of them just burst into tears because they couldn''t remember - though Errod said they''d worked past that.


    "My daddy is a blacksmith," one had volunteered, "I see him sometimes when I''m sleeping. Hammering, and there''s sparks. And I see my mommy sometimes too. In my dreams she braids my hair, and... and sometimes I do bad things. Very bad things. But she still braids my hair, every night."


    They all had similar stories. It was impossible to say if the dreams were actual memories or just escapist fantasies, and only one remembered the name of a town. Errod had looked it up at a sort of cartographer''s guild, and it was nowhere near us. Still, it was close to a big city - Sentortzi - so someone could presumably take her as soon as we were done finding the lost Duminere. Connie said she had enough money to keep them in our current place until we got back up out of the pit, and then we figured they would just come with us through Nusos which was supposedly not too dangerous as long as everyone stayed together. At that point they could even get a chance to go into the Duminere potentially, so if any actually got gifts then even if we had to just turn them over to some kind of orphanage they would be able to find apprentice work somewhere that their skills would be useful.


    "How long do you think they were there? With the Sargher?"


    Errod watched them, huddled together across the room playing some sort of game with little sticks in a pile. "I think a long time. I''ve heard that they stole children, but I was never sure it was true. To have five of them in that one spot, though - it must be fairly common. It makes me want to go back and... well."


    "Maybe some day. I don''t think we''re in any position to take on all of fairyland right now."


    "Elba over there, she seems pretty sure she was just four years old. She''s the most certain of them, and I''d say she''s probably eight and a half now."


    "And that''s your stupid long years."


    Errod rolled his eyes. "It''s... yes, it''s normal years that everyone in this whole world and the planes beyond use like normal people."


    "Like stupid people that can''t just have a normal year."


    "And how long are your years?"


    I hesitated. I already knew this wouldn''t go well. "Okay so... it''s about three hundred and sixty-five days, but really it''s three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days which means every four years we need to tack an extra day on."


    "So your months are... what, thirty and... thirty and a half days? A little less? That doesn''t work."


    "Some months are thirty days, some are thirty-one, and one of them is twenty-eight. That''s the one we tack the extra day onto every fourth year."


    "That''s ridiculous."


    "It''s... okay yes, it''s a little ridiculous, but that''s what makes it normal! It''s not normal for everything to fit so neatly into multiples of six. That''s strange."


    "Why?"


    "The universe is random and meaningless and... I don''t know, it just isn''t that tidy."


    "Sounds like your world is the stupid one."


    I didn''t really have a rebuttal to that. It was, in fact, the stupid one. Of course everything fit into multiples of six, because magic was real and the gods were real - apparently - and the whole crazy system had been actually really designed rather than being random. I''d been a pretty staunch atheist on Earth and as eager as I was to accept magic and fairies and whatever else it still felt strange and wrong to acknowledge what that meant on a more cosmic scale.


    "Do you... are you religious, Errod? I haven''t seen you go to church or anything."


    He looked uncomfortable, and I was about to apologize for asking when he spoke up. "I was. I am. I just haven''t gone since my father was taken away. You''ve made enough comments about religion that I know none of it is the same for you. Here, we... we know the gods are real and you can even feel their presence in certain situations. Cyne has spoken to one, actually."


    "He''s... wait, really? Like, just talked to one? And they talked back?"


    Errod waggled his head in a ''kinda'' gesture. "They aren''t good at talking to us, we''re too far below them. Some are better at it than others, or maybe just try harder. For the most part you don''t actually want them to notice you. Most of the gods are... well, they''re not evil. They aren''t. But... it would be like a mouse trying to get the attention of a herogant."


    The word mouse had translated fine, but I wasn''t sure what the fuck a herogant was. From context it had to be something big and probably dangerous, and I didn''t want to interrupt him so I just settled for picturing a hippopotamus. "It wouldn''t understand, and might step on it without even noticing. You can go to special places where certain gods'' attention naturally rests, and maybe they carefully communicate with you. But people who try to force communication with gods, especially ones that don''t normally respond? They almost always end up dead or insane."


    So the gods were eldritch horrors. Great. "Doesn''t seem like there''s any point in worshiping them then, right? Or does that... does that keep them from stepping on you?"


    "It''s not like that. The main one we worship, the one that my family used to attend church for, is Yesrin. It''s the only god that took human form and walked among us, to better understand the world."


    "We''ve got one kinda like that on Earth. Became human, taught some people, got killed."


    "Yesrin didn''t come to teach, but to learn. It... it hated it. It said that existence as a human was horrible agony and a confusing nightmare of emotions. It shed its body after only six days."


    "Big mood."


    "What?"


    "Nothing. Continue."


    "Um. Well, Yesrin felt bad for us, and promised to listen and try to care for us. And... I mean, people disagree on what is and isn''t a legitimate intervention but sometimes things do happen. And if nothing else, you know that Yesrin understands how hard life can be when it''s bad."


    I had to admit, that did make some sense. A god that for sure exists and will listen and say "yeah, that''s rough buddy" sounded like it could be comforting even if no miracles were forthcoming.


    "Okay, but I know there are tons of churches and some of them worship other gods. If Yesrin is the only one to actually make an appearance, what''s the point of the others?"


    "You''d have to ask them. I... never really tried to learn about other religions honestly. You have whatever shrine your family set up, and just sort of worship how they do and don''t think about it much."


    "Well, at least that''s basically the same on both of our worlds."

 CHAPTER 030: The Easiest of All Things After It, and the Hardest of All Things Before It

    "Motherfucker."


    I looked over at Connie and winced. Her arm was shriveled and ridiculously wrinkled, as bad as those little shar pei-looking old Sahrger. "What happened? Are you okay?"


    She started squinting at the chain that led to that arm from her time mana device, and then sighed. "I''m an idiot, is all. I was trying to increase the efficiency and I... well, it''s the equivalent of leaving out a comma or something. I can fix it, it''ll only take a minute."


    I felt less than reassured. "And your arm is going to be okay?"


    "Yeah. It''ll take a few days to recover all the way, but that''s what my whole left side looked like at first. At least it''s just the arm, I can wear long sleeves and gloves and... ugh. What a pain. It''s degrading the time mana, you know. Just a little. It''s like having money in a savings account, I''m mostly living off of interest but lately I''ve been spending too much and the more that happens the less interest there is the next time which means the problem just gets bigger. It''s exponential, I... I''m not good enough at math, and I don''t know how to precisely measure the mana anyway. But I think I''ve got less than a year before I drain this thing entirely."


    "We''re going to be rich though. Once we find the Duminere we can get you whatever you need, get the very best people on it."


    She nodded, but didn''t look convinced. "Yeah. I have a translated copy of the contract the people in the original timeline made, it''s pretty nice. Should be set for life at that point so... maybe we''ll be able to fix it. I just don''t want to get my - or your - hopes up. Hammersmith supposedly had the best people she could get work on it, and she''s like a third of the president of the Empire. There are two other Lord Whatevers that do other shit. The... Lord Arbiter, I think would be the best translation, and the Lord... Adjutant? It''s a reference to the fact that they insist the Clockmaker is actually still the Emperor even though he''s obviously dead.


    "Anyway. If a third of the ruling body of the Eternal Empire couldn''t get me fixed this fucked up mana pattern really has imprinted onto my body. It''s possible I could do some extreme experimental procedure they weren''t willing to risk, and if nothing else I should be able to get some more time mana once we''re rich. Either way, I can probably at least get us past the big day - once that''s over, well, I feel like I''ll have done my job."


    I didn''t really like it when she talked about her impending death so casually. "Listen, I know brooding and wearing all black and whatever isn''t going to change this fucked up... temporal... mana corruption... whatever. But if you''re not going to be hopeful about fixing it you could at least be angry. This thing where you calmly accept your fate is creeping me out."


    "Eh. It''s my own fault. I''ll sound crazy if I try to explain it, like actual tin foil hat giant corkboard conspiracy theorist kind of crazy, but I think I was supposed to go back in time when the world ended - I think there very easily could have been some time loop bullshit going on though, and I... didn''t want to. Because what if I had already gone back in time? There''s... forces... in this world. Intelligent forces, even if they''re not intelligent like people are. And they try to fix things, try to keep things working right. You know?


    "The Clockmaker bound a copy of himself to one, somehow. That''s how Imperial magic has been so consistent over time when wild magic would shift around as language changed. I''m not going to get into it, it''s a whole big thing and I don''t know enough to explain it right. But my point is there''s something that keeps time working the way it should. I see it, in little ways, when I rewind time - it does something, at the edges of where I effect. It makes sure the new version still lines up, still works. And if I was going to time travel for real, not just thirty seconds'' worth, what if it decided the most stable thing would be a time loop where nothing ever really changes? Where, at the end, I always go back in time and make it start over? And then the new me shows up, and the old one presumably dies, and it just goes around and around? Perfectly stable, forever.


    "And that''s what Ulren''s device was meant for, actual real time travel. But I... well. Basically, everything had been collapsed into a single plane of pure entropy and utterly obliterated except for the lab, and while technically all the things that influence magic also reach through time it was essentially a blank slate. Just... me. And you know how we''ve talked a bunch about how magic is defined and controlled by what people mean, what they think? Well if you''re the only one in all of existence, it''s all based on you. It''s not that simple, of course, and I''m not smart enough to just will shit into being or something so I still had to use Imperial magic as an underlying language. But I realized I didn''t need to get things perfectly right, not really, because there were no such things as typos or - " she looked at her wrinkled arm, "- or missing commas if it was all founded on my own intent. So I used a function from this device Ulren had been studying, a bit that looked for where something departed or arrived at a point in time and copied it.


    "I think... I think it was the thing that was supposed to send Jake Ross back at the end of the books, put him back on Earth in his original young body. Ulren had salvaged all sorts of shit from Brinkmar. Anyway, I just tweaked it so it would look at when I arrived here in this world and... copy it all to the present, not just my body but the whole world. So you can think of it like me going back in time, I guess, but it''s not a loop because I made sure we were both here. I didn''t start the game over, I loaded an old save file. Or something. But I have to wonder if I fucked up, if those forces that make time work out right are pissed at me for actually changing shit. Because if I put on that tin foil hat and think about a few things I saw, some things that don''t make sense, I wonder if I was supposed to actually time travel and die some other way and this is all a paradox. And now time is, literally, killing me."


    I didn''t know what to say to all that, and before I could think of anything she was already past me, pulling on her gloves and checking bags. I decided it would just have to go on the ever-growing pile of things to think about later, once we were done with the Necropolis and finding the lost Duminere and maybe even after letting the soldiers into Brinkmar. I sighed, and finished getting dressed.


    We were heading out early to the pit at the center of the Necropolis, and had packed up bags the night before. We each had huge coils of rope, lots of food and water, and some magic lights a lot like the ones I had seen in the hospital right after I arrived. There was also an extra stack of food we were leaving behind for the rescued kids, which was enough to feed them for a few days until we returned.


    That little voice in my head pinged - the one that warned me when I was being a sociopath or something. "Hey. Is this fucked up?"


    "Is what fucked up?" Connie seemed to think her rig was fixed, but was still struggling with making sure it was sitting nicely under her shirt. She''d been leaving it on most of the time anyway, but would for sure have to have it in place going forward if there was any chance it would undo the damage to her arm.


    "Well these five kids, they''re... I mean the oldest is like twelve and they''ve been through a lot and now we''re parking them in a motel room and leaving them with a bunch of ramen and beef jerky and telling them to just... wait here? That seems like it''s not right."


    She stopped and tilted her head like she was thinking. "Maybe? It''s fine. We lived in a literal hotel room for the better part of a year by ourselves, remember?"


    That was true. Uncle Roy had owned an extended stay hotel, and I''d been dumped there by my mom at one point which was an upgrade from her normal routine of leaving me in the woods or the changing room in the Walmart.


    The Long Haul Hotel hadn''t been a bad place to live. The rooms all had little kitchens like they were almost apartments, and as a nine year old that was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Uncle Roy hadn''t known what to do with me and thought that I could probably mostly fend for myself because he didn''t have any children of his own and hadn''t understood how competent some kids can seem while also being completely stupid and helpless in other ways. He stuck me in room 217 and blocked the television from ordering porn, and promptly forgot about me.


    The hotel served breakfast every day and dinner on Monday through Thursday, so as long as I planned ahead I could make it through most of the time without needing to bother uncle Roy. Breakfast was the usual options, many of which reheated nicely for lunch, and while the dinners weren''t very good by restaurant standards I had been accustomed to making do with whatever wasn''t too moldy when I lived with my mother and so it seemed practically gourmet. The only time that I would bring myself to my uncle''s attention was on Friday afternoons right before he left for the weekend, when I would have almost exactly this conversation:


    "Uncle Roy!"


    "Oh, hey kid. Uh. Yeah, forgot about you for a minute there. You¡­ doing okay? Got everything you need?"


    "Sure thing. Can I have some pizza money? There''s no dinner tonight."


    "Right, yeah. Of course."


    And he would dig out a twenty or two from his wallet and hand it over, looking very nervous and extremely guilty. He knew this wasn''t how you were supposed to take care of a kid, and he knew it couldn''t go on forever, but he also didn''t know what else to do and felt like it was going well enough at the moment. I''d try to ration out the money and live off leftovers from breakfast and dinner as much as possible, and overall was pleased with the arrangement. If I left my dirty clothes in a bag they would get cleaned and returned by the staff, and most of my essentials were taken care of.


    Once I had figured out a routine I managed to saved up quite a stash of the leftover pizza money, and made some pretty big plans that were interrupted by a cop that caught me throwing steak knives at a homemade target out behind the Big & Tall store in the strip mall. He wanted to know why I was playing with knives instead of being in school, and that led to Uncle Roy having to admit he had basically just forgotten that I would need to be enrolled at some point. And so I left room 217 and went back to my mom with only a few days in the custody of child protective services in-between - but that stash of money got left behind, just like the gear I kept in Universal Servicing Systems or the nice boxed set of the Jake Ross books that I left... somewhere.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "I guess my concern is... just because we did it and we''re okay doesn''t mean it''s okay for other kids. You know? Like, maybe our childhood was shitty and bad and we should make sure theirs is better."


    Connie sighed as she checked the straps on her backpack. "Yeah, and we are. We spontaneously busted them out of slavery or indentured servitude or whatever that was, and by the end of this they''ll have no-strings-attached Dumines. Or duds I guess, statistically. But the point is, if you want to arrange for them to get therapy or something you can do that later. For now, unless you want to stay behind they''ll have to be on their own for a few days. Less than a week."


    And the problem was, I didn''t actually give a shit. I''d worked pretty hard to not get attached to these kids over the last couple days - I''d even avoided learning their names - and I really wanted to delve down into a bottomless pit of swarming undead despite that also sounding like a sort of terrifying thing to do. I was only voicing these concerns because after years of training myself to check if I was being a dick I couldn''t really turn it off even though Connie had pointed out that was probably due to some sort of strange false memory anyway. "Yeah. Okay, let''s just go."


    But I could feel it. That hypothetical better version of me, watching and disapproving. Bill would have been disappointed. He was always so unerringly... good.


    The others were all ready and waiting, each with their own pack. Sige was once again hanging from the rafters upside down, Aestrid was leaning against nothing at all, and Cyne was flipping through his little notebook. Mila was digging through her backpack for something but couldn''t seem to remember what, and Katrin was trying to figure out the best way to strap her spellbook to the pack while still keeping it readily available. The only one that seemed like he wasn''t ready was Errod.


    He shuffled his feet. "I''m worried about the kids we rescued."


    Connie rolled her eyes so hard I thought she would sprain something, shot me a look I couldn''t quite interpret, and then stormed off to help Mila get her bag re-packed.


    I walked over to stand with him, and then glanced over at the kids. They were all huddled in the next room, watching us prepare through the doorway. "Just about leaving them alone?"


    "Yes. I want... I want to be with you and Katrin, to protect you -" I kept a straight face and nodded. I deserved an Oscar. "- but I also feel like someone should be here with them. This is a strange city, and they''ve been in Xeyul for most of their lives. If they were to get lost, or... I don''t know. I try to live by the ideals of the knights of Brinkmar, and I don''t think the Savior of Brinkmar would leave children alone if they were as... ill-prepared as these."


    This was perfect. This was the solution to everything. "I was thinking the same thing, but... well, I have to go since Connie and I are technically in charge. You stay here, babysit, make sure everything works out. We''ll be back in a few days. Not everyone needs to be with us for this part anyway."


    Errod looked conflicted. "Are you sure? I worry about... well, I''ve heard the animated corpses in the Necropolis are very aggressive."


    "Sure, but most of what gets buried in there is sealed in tombs or it''s just loose piles of bones, right? There''s no way we''ll run into many undead at once, I''m sure we can handle it. And hell, Cyne has been down there before and he isn''t worried even though he can''t fight. Plus, worst case scenario, we have Aestrid and Sige with us to help fight if we do run into some aggressive zombies. It''s literally what we''re paying them for."


    He looked over at Aestrid, and I felt certain he had been hoping to show off in front of her down there. But she was too old for him, and in any case he was more likely to hurt himself than to successfully kill anything. He''d injured himself again while practicing the day after we arrived in the Necropolis - nothing as bad as the toe incident, but still an indication he hadn''t improved much in the last few weeks.


    I could see he was on the fence, and I selfishly wanted to force him to babysit so I wouldn''t have to feel guilty about the kids being alone - so I just took the choice away from him. "Hey guys, Errod has volunteered to stay back and watch our refugees."


    Sige dropped down and patted Errod on the back and said that was "a good fucking plan", and Mila asked if she should stay too before being reminded that her abilities would almost certainly be needed to help us navigate through to our goal. It was only as we were leaving that I had a twinge of guilt - or maybe just felt like I should feel guilty - and wondered if I should apologize for forcing Errod into that position instead of talking it through with him and possibly being the one to sit it out. But I didn''t turn around.


    Because of the cycle of the planes, the days of the month that typically had enough planes aligned to matter were the first, the thirteenth, and the twenty-fifth. That was almost certainly why I had appeared on the first of the month - a particularly beefy one, from an alignment standpoint - and it was why Hammersmith''s recent attempt to strongarm her way into Brinkmar happened on the 25th of the month. We didn''t have anything we needed to do that would require extra mana from a planar alignment, but lots of other people did which meant if we didn''t get assistance going down into the pit today we''d have to wait. Tomorrow was the first, and everyone that we would get assistance from was booked.


    Even the assistance we were getting was minimal. The cost for getting a lift down the pit increased rapidly the deeper you went, and they could charge whatever they wanted since only a few people had permission to operate a ferry. Mila could make us a hole if we wanted to start from the top, but while the pit was saturated with mana it wasn''t neutrally aligned which meant everyone would be recharging at about the same rate they did in a city - which is to say pretty slowly. Also, the temptation to skip a day''s worth of travel in ten minutes was just too great.


    When we arrived, it was... underwhelming. Considering the cost I was expecting some sort of luxury elevator with drinks and comfortable seats, but it was just a sort of wicker basket - it looked like the gondola under a hot air balloon, without the balloon. We filed in, barely fitting especially because of the backpacks, and two very squat men grabbed onto handles on the outside. For a moment nothing happened, and then we just... drifted into the air. I felt strangely light, though I wasn''t totally weightless - it seemed like they were probably combining two effects somehow, both making it light and then lifting it up. As it moved the gravity continued to adjust and even pointed sideways for a moment, which made my stomach turn. I had to close my eyes until we stopped moving, because part of me felt like we were going to tumble out into the sky and fall forever.


    And then the decent began.


    From inside the pit, it seemed larger. Up above at the edge, the angle had prevented me from getting a good feel of it - but now that we were being swallowed and leaving the surface behind I could see there was a good twenty feet on all sides of us. Our lights cast strange shadows - especially with the almost random arrangement of pillars, walls, and monuments. I couldn''t be sure at any given moment if the shapes I saw moving were just those shadows shifting, or actual creatures. There was an odd smell, more earthy than a smell of rot, and the air was clammy as it wafted up from the depths. The circle of light above us began to look distant and small, and I became aware of other lights deep in galleries and tunnels.


    None were particularly bright, and no two looked alike. There was a dim blue glow down one passage, and a tuft of luminescent green moss along a pillar, and a tiny flickering flame somehow still burning on a torch that looked to be at least fifty years old. Little traces of magic, scattered around like it was no big deal. I could feel my heart beating faster, simultaneously dreading the idea of seeing a zombie and hoping one would step out of the shadows and reach towards our passing vessel. Safely out of reach, of course.


    We alighted on a sort of balcony, at an area with a high ceiling. One of the men handed Connie a wooden ball. "Break this stem off, see, and it''ll float upwards glowing. We see it, we''ll do our best to come down for you - but you do that, you had better be ready to pay us the emergency rates. Plus even then there''s a limit to how far down we''ll go. Otherwise, it''s your responsibility to find your way back up.


    "I''m not sure how you got a permit, but I know you''re new to this so listen close. You show respect, and you make sure you don''t disturb any graves that might be still in the resting period. We''ve taken you down far enough that some here might be, but if you''re looking for treasure it''ll be with the richer folk and they get buried faster which means they''re newer which means they''re not fair game yet. You''ll want to go quite a ways further down, because the top couple levels of the safe zone are picked clean I''m sure.


    "Now my uncle, he''s a reanimator and the assistants he makes are gentle as a well-fed baby but some asshole a couple hundred years ago put some down here under instruction to kill any grave robbers and the theory goes those instructions have sort of propagated through all the other ones down here since they didn''t have any orders of their own. That means they can be very hostile, so you''ll want to avoid them as best you can. Don''t let too many surround you, that''s the most important part. We''ve lost a lot of people down here, five already this year although four of them were part of the same group. That last one, his friends survived and they told a very familiar tale - he got more than a dozen of the things on him at once, and while he was a match for any two zombies he could get knocked down like anyone else and that was that."


    The other one cleared his throat, and the man that had been speaking startled. "Oh. Right. Well, no time to chat. Good luck I suppose." They grabbed onto the gondola again, still not riding inside, and shot back up the shaft far faster than we had come down. Just like that, we were alone with no clear way back up.


    Connie seemed to snap out of some distant thought suddenly. "Okay. Cool. Um. I have some directions here, but it will take a while. We''ll want to go mostly downwards, we can look for stairs or holes to conserve mana, but Mila if you''re all full we can also just have you pull the floor open. Sige, you''re the acrobatic type - if you see good opportunities to rappel down the pit, that''s what the ropes are for. That being said, we would want to be certain whatever we hook to is sturdy and I think most of us have never done anything like that so it''s... not my main plan."


    She nervously looked down into the pit, but I''d already checked - you couldn''t see far at all. "Yeah, not something I''m eager to try. But like I said, you see a really good opportunity where it''s going to be faster to set up the ropes and tie everyone in safely and stuff than it would be to just find some stairs, you say so. Any normal magic is likely to be burned out, and thankfully that includes most security wards. But once we get really deep, if you see something that''s clearly magic it might be an artifact so let''s bag it."


    Katrin saw the look of confusion on my face and leaned in. "Artifacts are... well, it''s like when we talked about demigods. Think normal magic items, but just particularly well made or done in some special way or something. It doesn''t necessarily mean the items themselves are better, but chances are if an artificer went to that trouble they didn''t do it for a toy or something."


    Connie seemed to be going down a mental checklist, and then nodded to herself. "Okay, that''s it. Let''s move out. Uh. Anyone have a guess as to which way we should go?"


    I thought I heard a faint chuckle from somewhere further down the pit, but it was probably my imagination.

 CHAPTER 031: Let Us Tarry For a While, and We Shall Be In Her Company

    The temptation to have Mila just tunnel down was intense. We started off searching for stairs or ramps or just places where nobody ever built a floor, and to be fair we found them on most levels without too much difficulty - but it was never as simple as I wanted. We would find a perfectly made flight of stairs, but it would end at a wall. There would be a hole, but it would go down too far - vanishing into darkness with nowhere stable to tie off a rope. We''d come across a place where the ground was just the roof of the section below and allowed us to climb down, but it would lead to an alley so narrow that we had to take off our backpacks and slide along sideways with no guarantee it would lead anywhere good.


    I saw my first zombie just a few levels down from where we started, thankfully not up close. We were skirting along the edge of the pit - as we often did since it tended to have a clear walkway at the rim and we all needed frequent breaks from the claustrophobia - and the zombie was staring at us from the far side. It watched us with cloudy eyes, then turned and looked from side to side as if attempting to determine a route. There was a mausoleum that went right to the edge on one side of it and a collapsed bit of walkway on the other, so it ended up turning back to just watch us pass. I was worried that it would raise an alarm somehow, since the warning about getting surrounded implied they would swarm under the right circumstances, but it just stared.


    The second zombie I didn''t see at all. It lunged out at Sige, who was taking a turn in the lead, and he simply flipped it over his head into the abyss without breaking stride. It was gone before I had any idea it had been there. Likewise, later in the day Aestrid was attacked by three of the things and she just let them gnaw on her force field while she stood there, immovable and inviolable and preventing them from reaching the rest of us. Connie pulled out a weapon she''d bought back on the surface, a short stick with a hook-shaped blade, and leaned past Aestrid to hack at the things'' heads until they collapsed. Cyne looked away, but was smart enough to not comment.


    There were a few others, normally one at a time and easy to handle. At any given time Sige and Aestrid were at the front and back with the rest of us safely in the middle - Connie didn''t really need to point the way, just to occasionally check the dates on a plaque. We''d been dropped off about forty levels down, and by Connie''s reckoning we would need to go down another hundred and twenty - but in reality since the "levels" were overlapping tangles of arbitrary height that was an extremely rough estimate.


    I didn''t mind the idea of going down that far, since at worst that would take us maybe two days - but the idea of climbing up the whole way was starting to make me nervous. By the end of the first day we were exhausted but had found a tomb labeled with the year 123,340. That was base six of course, but it meant we were almost exactly halfway to the year 122,301 which is what we were searching for. In regular old base ten that would be the year 10,909 which was six hundred and thirty-nine years ago, and apparently that was long enough for people to have lost a ridiculously important magic-granting building somehow.


    I assumed I would have trouble sleeping in what was practically the underworld, but Mila sealed us into a room and we all piled into a heap together and it was... pretty comfy. Back on Earth I can''t remember the last time I would have fallen asleep touching someone else. Movie night with Bill, or... no. That didn''t happen. I had to remind myself to keep it together. It was like Connie had said, these memories weren''t just fake they were absurd. Why would I be snuggled up on a couch with my case worker? And we certainly wouldn''t be watching Lord of the Rings, he hated fantasy. No, wait. Did I know that about him? Why would I? Were my fake memories conflicting with each other now? I put the whole bizarre situation on the list of things to worry about later, and went to sleep.


    The next day was when things started to go wrong.


    We had barely gotten anywhere when Sige was attacked again. These ones were basically just skeletons, somehow held together by nothing but a few old tendons and magical energy. He popped the head off one like it was nothing, swung another to the ground, but then the third clamped its jaws down on his arm and while he was dealing with that situation the one on the floor began to attack his legs. We were in a tight passageway with no easy way to change marching order - Connie tried to reach past with her hook thing to help, but Sige kept moving around in a way that Connie clearly was worried would result in her slicing his arm open. The whole thing was over in probably a minute or less, but being stuck helpless in a tight hallway while I listened to someone be attacked by skeletons was... upsetting.


    "Fucking biters! Man. Sorry, not used to fighting motherfuckers that don''t have pressure points or vital organs or muscles. Tried a fucking joint lock on that one and the whole joint just broke, fucker kept attacking me. Shit. I''ll do better next time." I liked Sige a lot, but I was starting to question the wisdom of bringing a wrestler to deal with undead hoards. As soon as we got to a place where we could spread out a little Cyne fussed over Sige''s wounds and I watched closely as they knit together and scabbed over - they didn''t look fully healed, but had the appearance of an injury from several days ago. "Ah fuck, that always makes me sleepy. Thanks though, wouldn''t want it to get fucking infected down here."


    "It may regardless. I washed them out as best I could and the creatures you fought were old which is preferable, but I can''t guarantee anything. If I had talent with life magic I could have combined it with the regrowth, but... well, it should suffice."


    "Yeah, it''s great. Don''t fucking sweat it. I''m good, let''s just keep going."


    After that we found something promising - Katrin noticed subtle chalk marks, and after a few false starts we determined which ones indicated a passage down. They had to have been left by another delving group, and probably fairly recently. That sped things up for a while, until we reached a stretch with no markings we could find. We ended up turned around and deep into the outer ring, when I heard a noise in the darkness. It was like something right out of an old horror movie, that classic groan. It might as well have said "braiiiins".


    "I heard something," I whispered, though it sounded too loud in the stillness of the crypts. "That way."


    Aestrid nodded and took a few steps in the direction I''d pointed, holding her light out. "Are you sure? I don''t see anything."


    "It was faint, but... yeah. I''m sure."


    She took a few steps closer, her light now revealing a large open space ahead with colossal shapes that had to be mausoleums but were the size of office buildings. I couldn''t see the ceiling. "What the fuck? Why are they so big? How? Wouldn''t this be outside the sinking part of the pit?"


    She didn''t reply. Entranced, Aestrid walked closer until we could see that it was a whole street leading off into the darkness. Finally she turned around. "Well. I''m tempted to take a break and look into these. It''s certainly not what we''re here for, however. Does anyone want to take lunch, maybe crack one of these things open to see what''s so important? We could..."


    She turned, and then looked back at us with panic in her eyes. I hadn''t seen that expression on Aestrid before - she was always so calm, so collected. I spun instantly, and yelled for the others to run. They didn''t need to be told twice, though Sige deliberately hung back until I passed him. Behind us there was an increasing sound, a horrible soft thudding like cuts of steak drizzling down out of the sky. I spared a glance and saw Aestrid was still in the back, running wildly - for the first time I saw her hair all messed up as it flew from its careful arrangement.


    The stark lights were casting our own shadows behind us but at the edges I could see hands, feet, faces - all flashing into view just dimly as they flailed and then falling back into blackness. It was impossible to guess at how many there were chasing her; with just bits and pieces coming into view at any given moment it left far too much for comfort up to my imagination. My mind filled the endless darkness in with no room to breathe, hundreds of thousands of zombies just out of sight.


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    Katrin was panting. "I can... do the force line. Like... during the attack."


    I''d specifically told her to have that ready in case of undead horde, but if anything went wrong she could catch Aestrid on it, or lose her meager lead on the zombies, or just strain herself so badly that she did actual permanent damage. "Not yet. Keep running!"


    She did, but we were already tired and hadn''t exactly trained for this. Sige was in amazing shape, and nobody was terrible, but most of us just weren''t able to sprint for long and I was particularly concerned for Mila. My biggest fear, however, was the idea that at any moment we could hit a dead end.


    Sige scooped up some loose stones that had fallen from their places, and effortlessly hucked them into the crowd of zombies. I heard a cascading sound of thudding bodies, presumably meaning they''d started tripping over each other, and when I glanced back next Aestrid had a slightly larger lead on them. Just as I thought I was going to collapse we reached a large stone door and everyone piled through - I stumbled past the opening and Connie snagged my sleeve just in time to keep me from taking a step out into the void; we''d come all the way back to the bottomless pit, and there was just a narrow ledge with no railing between the door and a fatal drop.


    I moved out of the way but managed to turn in time to see Aestrid overcome - for a moment. A ripple of pure force flew out from her, knocking them back and cracking the stones by her feet. In the momentary bubble of safety she scrambled through and we pulled the stone door shut behind her. Mila swiped her hand across to smear the stone together with the doorway, sealing it shut.


    "Well. That happened." I looked around and saw Connie was doing the same thing as me - counting heads just in case. Of course everyone was there, we would have noticed if anyone in the group had fallen behind.


    "I''ve changed my mind," Aestrid said as she fixed her hair, "I think we should pick a different spot to stop for lunch - this isn''t where I want to die, there''s not even a couch. Callie, thank you for having Errod stay behind - I suspect he would have challenged those things to a duel on my behalf."


    It was disturbingly plausible. We picked a direction and started walking, leaving the creatures still clawing and hammering at the sealed door behind us. Before long we happened across another chalk mark and picked up that trail again, and after taking a long break to recover from our run we made good progress for the next hour before another horror arose.


    Sige spotted it first, and came to a halt silently with a hand up to signal trouble. After a moment he whispered back at Connie, who in turn told me. "Light up ahead, moving. Could be another animated body with a light on it for some reason, could be a monster - though they''re rare down here for whatever reason - and could be another delving group."


    I nodded. "Fingers crossed it''s that last one."


    "Yeah, so long as they know we''re not headed for the same area as them there shouldn''t be trouble."


    Sige turned around and frantically gestured for us to reverse course - we tried to do so as quietly as possible, but I was the only one with silencing shoes so there was a lot of scuffing and grumbling as we hurried back to a nearby room.


    Sige''s normal grin was a tight line. "Okay, I got a look and there''s a motherfucking ghost up there."


    Aestrid groaned. "The one thing I''m useless against. And if they''re hostile they don''t give up until you''re dead - they''re completely relentless."


    I leaned in to Connie and whispered in her ear. "So ghosts are for sure real? What does that mean? Do we all turn into ghosts? Is there a hell?"


    She sighed and waved dismissively at me. "Okay well, let''s just go find another way around. Sorry guys. I didn''t think we''d come across any ghosts, even if someone was buried angry somehow you''d think we were deep enough that they''d have had time to descend into the plane of the dead."


    "They would," Cyne said, "which means this is someone that died more recently. Down here."


    "Right. Duh. Okay, so I guess I was right when I said the light might be another delving group," Connie said, "But I don''t see it coming for us, so like I said we just find another way."


    "Shame," Sige mumbled, "we were making good fucking progress following those chalk marks."


    I arched an eyebrow at him. "Sure, but since it now seems likely those chalk marks lead toward some corpses it might not actually be the safest route, yeah?"


    And that seemed to end any conversation about it.


    Ten minutes later we were another level down and pausing to drink water when Connie pulled me aside. "Sorry. I forget this is all new for you. I know there''s a difference between hearing ghosts mentioned and being told there''s one actually floating nearby. Uh. Ghosts are real. Ta-dah!"


    "Cyne mentioned some stuff about ghosts the other day, he said your mind and soul... snap together into a ghost when your body dies?"


    She nodded. "Yeah, basically. I guess everyone has actual very real spirit things tethered to them, though honestly I have my suspicions that they''re more like parasites than actually... us. Maybe that''s just me being a skeptic from Earth and still reluctant to believe in souls and shit. Anyway, sometimes they''re physically here with you but intangible - especially if certain wards are forcing it - and other times they''re off on other planes. And when you die they... I guess snap together is as good a way to put it as any, yeah.


    "Anyway especially if people die in an area with a shit ton of mana - or while they were holding a shit ton of mana - the ghosts can actually do things instead of just being invisible intangible blobs. Sometimes they''re really faint and kinda whisper at people, sometimes they throw stuff around, and sometimes they get all angry and try to murder everyone. It''s... not really a full person. Like, our brains still are there for a reason - unless you have the right magic to fully back yourself up into your mind or whatever which some people do to prevent dementia and head trauma and shit. Anyway. Ghosts are normally more like an echo of some sort, just some loose memories and stuff."


    I looked around, as if I was going to find the ghost right behind me or something. "So that one up there might just ask us for directions or whatever, or might try to fling us into the pit, and if it''s the latter Sige and Aestrid are useless. Cool. This would have been good to talk about before now so Katrin could prepare... I don''t even know. A mana drain attack? Is that a thing?"


    Connie just shrugged.


    "Okay, thanks for letting me know. Hey. Wait. Can you... if souls and shit are real can you use magic to like... transfer your soul into a golem or something?"


    Connie hesitated and took another swig of her water. "Uh. Yeah, probably. I think that one demigod guy I met with did something like that, you should see him. Although I don''t know for sure, there could have been a brain under there somewhere. Anyway you could use... Spirit or Thought magic, I guess - or both maybe - and then Binding probably. But I assume there would be some side effects. Also once you did that to someone they presumably wouldn''t be able to use magic anymore, and they would probably need some source of mana. Maybe if they were really small and organic. Like, a squirrel skeleton or something."


    "Well that''s no fun, I want an unstoppable robot body or nothing."


    "I''ll meet you halfway, tiny robotic squirrel."


    "Deal."


    We continued to circle around, having a little trouble finding a good access point to the next floor. We''d used the ropes a few times but it had almost always been simpler to just explore, since the spots where we could go down far enough to be worth all the setup were also the most dangerous areas for inexperienced climbers. I saw a hole off to the side and went over to peek down, but when I did I was immediately distracted by a light coming from above.


    I scrambled back, nearly tripping, as the ghost drifted down from the level above us. It was a woman, maybe in her thirties. Her clothes seemed to fade in and out of existence but her body was almost solid, creating a somewhat inappropriate appearance. She had to be from another delving team, based on the bits of gear I could make out as they flickered into view. Connie rushed over but skidded to a stop a few feet away - what was she supposed to do? We had just finished talking about the fact that we were powerless to harm this sort of thing.


    The ghost looked at each us, one at a time, and then turned back to me. It was hard to say, with her spectral form, but I had a sudden impression that her eyes were watering up as if she were about to cry. Her mouth moved, forming a single word, but I couldn''t hear anything.


    "I can''t... I can''t hear what you''re saying."


    She shook her head, and looked at everyone again. There was no doubt anymore, she was upset and on the verge of tears. She mouthed the word again, and I made a decision. Carefully, ignoring a hissed warning from Connie, I stepped closer. The ghost leaned in, cold light bathing my face, and this time I could just barely make out the whisper coming from her.


    "Run."


    But I knew from Cyne''s scream behind me that it was already too late for that.

 CHAPTER 032: Surely Now Our Troubles Are Well Behind Us

    I was frozen. I had the option of running towards the screaming - remembering the churning army of undead from just a few hours earlier made that seem unwise - or the option of charging away from the sound and into the darkness by myself. Before, I''d been in the middle of the pack and could just follow the group - but now I was ahead and off to one side where I would have to pick a direction and risk becoming separated from everyone or running into even more trouble. So for a moment I did nothing.


    The others were moving, their lights darting around and making a million shadows. I couldn''t see the threat or even guess at how many there were, but I could see that someone - presumably Cyne since I had heard him scream - was on the floor. I pulled out my knife, though I wasn''t sure it would do much especially since nothing I''d seen down here had any kind of vital organs they cared about.


    Something darted towards Mila and she swung a fist, resulting in a deeply disturbing sound like a baseball bat slamming into a side of beef - whatever she had hit ducked away from her, and on impulse I covered my light and stepped into an alcove I''d spotted nearby. The ghost vanished into the ceiling, dropping the light level further, and I saw something that was glowing a dim, pulsating red stride past me in the darkness right before a huge hand clamped around my neck.


    Light bloomed around me, and I realized that the terrifying face in front of me was Sige. His normal friendly grin reappeared instantly as he released my throat, but I knew I''d never think of him as a Muppet again after seeing that look of murder in his eyes. "Fuck, sorry kiddo. Thought you were someone else."


    "Uh. Something passed me. Red glow."


    He glanced in the direction I was looking, but clearly didn''t see anything. "Yeah, that''s the fucker. Shit. Well... come on, huddle up for now. Can''t be spread out."


    I followed him back to the others, and we formed a perimeter around Cyne who was coughing up blood. "I''m alright," he managed to say between coughing fits, "though if we could... take a break..."


    Nobody was eager to remain in that hall for the obvious reason, so Sige lifted Cyne up and we hurried down a few random passages until we found somewhere Mila could seal a door behind us. Cyne slowly recovered, and finally was able to sit up and drink some water.


    "He stabbed me through the heart and one of my lungs, I have... quite a lot of blood loose in my body, and I suspect I will continue to cough for some time. Had he left the blade in place, or waved it around, I would be dead. Thankfully it was very thin, and he removed it instantly. Still... I need to rest and ensure my heart has healed properly before I risk straining it, and the healing has taken a toll on me in terms of exhaustion. Before I sleep, is anyone else injured?"


    Everyone looked around at each other, shrugging. I nodded at Mila. "You okay? I saw whatever it was come at you."


    She looked surprised, and then seemed to mentally catch up to the conversation. "Oh! Oh, yes, I wasn''t sure what was going on but he seemed aggressive so I hit him. I hope that was okay, I wasn''t sure if I had missed something."


    Connie suppressed a grin, and Aestrid looked at Mila quizzically. "What did you hit him with? Do you even have a weapon?"


    "Oh, no dear. I just sort of - " and she swiped a hand in a wide arc. As her fingers hit the stone wall they just scooped a lump out like it was mud, leaving a sizeable hunk of solid rock melded to her hand like a gauntlet.


    Aestrid looked mildly stunned. "That''s... well. Quite handy."


    Mila gently put the stone back, smoothing it over so you could hardly tell she''d touched the wall in the first place. "You make do with what you have, my mother always said. So, who was that man?"


    I, meanwhile, hadn''t even been sure it was a man. A few had gotten a glimpse and the consensus seemed to be that he was human, not a corpse, had a long thin dagger, and was wearing some sort of odd thing on his chest that was glowing red in the center. That was about all that anyone could say.


    "Well, the ghost is friendly. She tried to tell us to run right before the attack."


    "Could be a victim of his," Aestrid suggested.


    There was a general rumbling of agreement, but it didn''t seem like something we could act on so after a moment we all just settled down to let Cyne sleep off his injury. I''d lost all sense of time since we''d been underground for more than twenty-four hours, which actually made it easier to fall asleep - I was tired enough from hiking down the pit and running from zombies that the only barrier would have been that part of your brain that yells it''s not time yet.


    I dreamed I was hiding from some people that were chasing me. I think they were the Sahrger - presumably I was thinking about how mad they probably were that I took those kids, but in the dream I was a kid myself. I was hiding in the catacombs but it was made of wood, and I was plotting how I would get back to my mother. Then something shifted, and I was dreaming about the Long Haul Hotel except it, too, was the Necropolis. Most of the guests were zombies, but they were just waiting in line at the buffet so it wasn''t a particularly scary dream. Uncle Roy was there, alive and looking unfazed by the legions of undead, and he offered me a twenty dollar bill to buy some pizza.


    "Aw thanks Uncle Roy! They don''t have pizza where I live now. Although the food is pretty good overall, lots of good sauces and spices and things. And dinosaur, which is really good."


    "That''s nice, kid," Uncle Roy said, as awkward in the dream as he''d been in real life. "Uh. You have everything else you need?"


    "Sure thing."


    "Good, good. You uh, you got somewhere to stay? I know your mom... you know she means well, but..."


    I watched the zombies trying to shovel scrambled eggs onto a plate, with most of it going onto the floor. "It''s fine. I''m staying with some friends. We''re in a sort of giant underground crypt right now but that''s temporary."


    "That''s good. Well. Take care of yourself."


    By then the sun was rising, and the light hit my eyes though I tried to sleep in a little longer. It was probably another thirty seconds or so before some little part of my brain reminded me there was no sun where I was sleeping, and I cracked an eye to look. It was the ghost. She was a few inches off the ground, and a bit more translucent than she had been.


    "Hey there. Can I... help?"


    She shook her head.


    "Do you need something?"


    She seemed to consider this, like she wasn''t sure how to answer. I saw some movement and caught Sige very carefully waking up Aestrid.


    "Are you... is there something you want me to do?"


    She nodded, hesitantly, and then gestured to the door.


    "Yeah, okay. Sure. Is it okay if we take a minute to wake up?"


    The ghost drifted through the door without comment.


    Everyone was up within minutes. Cyne had a sort of watch, and he said we''d slept for three hours. He was feeling rested enough to travel a bit more, and so we all gathered our bags while Connie tried to sound like she had a plan. "Okay. We''re... going to follow a ghost for a minute here. Just on the off chance it helps us deal with or avoid that guy that tried to kill us. Sige in the front, Aestrid in the back. Cyne, stick to the middle since you''re our only healer and make sure people stay clumped around you so we don''t get picked off one by one. If she goes up more than two floors we''re bailing, if she goes down... well that''s the way we were going anyway."


    Mila unsealed the door and Aestrid stepped out first, scanning for any movement. She gave the signal and the rest of us came out to the small courtyard area where the ghost was still waiting - it started drifting away without even looking at us as soon as everyone was outside the room.


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    We were on high alert, but by the very nature of the Necropolis there was no way to be safe. There could be undead anywhere, and there was no way to guess if the path you were taking would lead to a dead end or an ambush. While the whole bizarre structure seemed to be - had to be - magically sturdy, there were plenty of random holes and cracks and dangerously leaning pillars. And of course there was, in the center, a massive bottomless pit. It was a nightmare from a strategic standpoint; the best we could do was stay together and keep our eyes open.


    Eventually the ghost led us down a hallway made entirely of bones - it wasn''t the first section like that by far, but with my nerves so wound up I kept picturing the walls themselves coming to life as some sort of massive building-sized bone golem and I had to really concentrate to stay calm. We reached our final destination just one floor up, probably close to where Sige had originally spotted the ghost. There was a room, somewhat hidden in a sort of corner, and inside was a disturbing sight.


    I had tuned out the corpses, which hadn''t been hard since most were reduced to bones or nicely tucked away. The zombies were a bit more grisly, but they were either mummified or very old so they weren''t exactly... drippy. Plus we''d run into relatively few of those apart from the one gigantic horde, and anyway my brain had somehow partitioned "zombies" into its own category separate from "dead humans". But this room... this room had dead humans in it. Two were in sleeping bags, and one was sprawled on the floor by the door - there was a knife in that one''s back, as if it had been sprinting for the exit but hadn''t made it.


    "Four sleeping bags," Aestrid said casually. "That guy that lowered us down here said they lost a group of four, didn''t he?"


    They weren''t recent except in comparison to the rest of the bodies this deep in the Necropolis, but despite the state of decay I could tell by the hair that our ghost belonged to the corpse at the door. "I''m so sorry. The... the fourth one. Did he do this?"


    Sige shook his head, then saw the ghost was nodding and did a double-take. "Fucking what? But these bodies are at least a couple months old, if that son of a bitch is the one that attacked us what the fuck has he been eating?"


    Connie gestured at a mummified body in an alcove and said to me - in English - "Egyptian-style beef jerky?"


    "Gross," I said, then turned to Sige. "He''d need water too, and... I don''t know. Maybe magic? Could he use fabrication or transmutation magic to keep himself fed? Or some kind of healing magic to somehow keep himself healthy without food?"


    "Fucking unlikely, but anything is possible. Normally you can only do that short term, or somewhere with lots of fucking mana." He hesitated, and then just shrugged. "Could be, though."


    The ghost shook her head, and pointed to another spot on the wall. Connie and I came in close and there was some sort of box built into the area between two pillars. It opened downwards, so I lifted the lid up to see what it had looked like closed. "Well shit, that''s camouflaged. I wouldn''t have known it was there." I let the lid drop down again, and Connie held her light up to the inside. It was shallow but wide, and had an indentation with an odd shape.


    "Like a... what, a heart with spider legs. I''ve got nothing."


    Connie nodded. "Yeah. Some sort of treasure, presumably. Something important the people here wanted to be buried with."


    "No." We looked over, and it was Mila of all people. She looked as distracted as ever, and didn''t seem like she was going to elaborate.


    "Mila? You um. You know what this is?"


    She looked startled, like she''d already forgotten that she had said anything. "Oh! No, sorry, didn''t mean to interrupt. I don''t know what the thing inside was, but anyone can see it wasn''t treasure. That would be on display, or with whoever here was most important. And the outside of the box was made to blend in, but someone like me could have just sealed it shut for real. Or at least someone could have locked it. But they didn''t, it just flopped open - see? No latch. Which means it wasn''t treasure, it was a trap."


    Connie stared. "Shit, Mila. Yeah. Fuck, no offense or anything but sometimes I forget how sharp you are."


    She patted Connie on the cheek. "Oh that''s fine, I do too."


    The ghost was crying again. "So this thing... it jumped out and got your friend, and then... he killed you?"


    She nodded.


    "Alright. Well. We''ll... take care of it. Okay?"


    And the ghost just sighed - this awful, shuddering, heartbreaking sigh that I could feel rather than hear - and blurred as it lost form and drifted downwards and through a wall - angling right towards the pit. Everyone was silent for a moment, but when the spectral light was completely gone I could hear a few of them finally releasing a held breath.


    Sige very quietly mumbled something, and after everyone stared at him he reluctantly said it again louder. "That was kinda fucking useless, wasn''t it?"


    "Dude. We were helping a ghost."


    "Yeah, fucking great. Not saying that''s a bad thing just that... fuck, we''re kinda busy, aren''t we? And I didn''t need to know who this fucker is or even that some old device took him over. Could have used a ghost fighting on our side maybe, or some secret weapon against him. If that''s all we got this was a waste, and I wish we''d just focused on putting more distance between us and this asshole. In fact, now that we''ve poked around in the room that thing was protecting he''s probably that much more eager to fucking kill us. I... shit, I''m glad the ghost got to do its thing. I am. But now can we fucking go?"


    We searched the backpacks and took some supplies. There wasn''t much of interest, but some extra non-magical light sources for emergencies were good to have and there were some miscellaneous tools that looked valuable. A small crate was labeled as containing explosives, but if it actually had they''d already been used or lost because it was empty. I wasn''t sure blowing things up in a crumbling underground city was a great idea but I was still sad - I''d never gotten a chance to set off the massive bomb I made when I was a kid, instead just getting yelled at for ruining a whole box of fireworks. I still maintain it would have worked.


    Our procession headed downwards once more, but after only fifteen minutes our attacker struck again. It happened in a flash - he swung out from nowhere on a rope, and stabbed at Aestrid''s head right as I turned back to make sure she was still behind us. The thin blade slammed into her temple, a precision killing blow, and snapped off the hilt. Aestrid didn''t even flinch - she spun like lightning and her fist impacted his head with ridiculous force, twisting it around to face nearly backwards with a sickening crunch. The body stumbled back, revealing the thing that had been concealed in the crypt which was, in fact, a heart with spider legs. The center glowed with a pulsing red light, and the spindly legs were made from some pale metal and dug in between his ribs. With a crackling noise his head rotated back to its original position, and he smiled - appearing to be completely unhurt. Aestrid shifted into a strange stance that I hadn''t seen her use before, clearly ready to fight - but the thing just ran off into the darkness.


    We didn''t want to keep getting sniped at, but the hope was that getting far enough from its home crypt would cause it to forget about us or at least leave us alone for a time - and if the alternative was sitting and waiting for it, how long would we wait? Everyone agreed it was best to keep moving. At least we knew it wasn''t able to harm Aestrid, so as long as she was careful we would be mostly safe.


    With the mid-day nap and the strong incentive to keep moving, we made excellent progress. We had to be hundreds and hundreds of feet below ground, and the darkness had started to feel almost heavy somehow - but the dates were getting closer. We knew we would need to stop and sleep for the night soon, but our final destination was tantalizingly close and so we gave in to temptation and allowed Mila to fold the floor down into rough ramps for the next few levels rather than exploring and looking for proper stairs or pre-existing holes. Finally, the dates on the monuments began to match our target.


    Connie consulted her notebook again. "Okay. Uh. Help me out, who knows which way is North? Okay thanks. Right. So... North as far as we can, and we''re looking for red stone."


    It took another hour, and I at least was regretting not stopping to sleep. But finally Katrin saw some red pillars, just at the edge before we hit solid stone. Following them, we came to a simple metal door engraved with a language I didn''t recognize. Connie frowned at it. "Okay. We can''t fuck up the walls in here, I need something from them. I think. Can you guys bust the door open... gently?"


    Everyone took a turn looking, even me - I remembered how crappy some of the locks I''d seen were and had this brief fantasy of picking the lock with only the random items I happened to have on me. But those hopes were immediately dashed - there was no lock, or at least not one I could see.


    There was a clicking sound, off in the darkness. We all turned at once, but with the echoes it wasn''t easy to say what direction it was coming from. There was one thing clear about it - it was getting louder. As the clicking sound slowly increased in volume I became more and more certain that it wasn''t just one thing. There was a stutter, like multiple feet hitting the ground almost - but not quite - in unison.


    "It''s coming from that way," Aestrid said as she pointed down the tunnel we''d come from.


    "No, listen. It''s down there," Connie said while pointing a totally different direction.


    "Motherfucking shitsuckers," Sige offered, "it''s both. Mila, fuck up the stone around the door. I''m taking the whole thing off."


    She started working at the seams around the door, and the second she stepped away Sige grabbed the edges and yanked. After three tries it popped free, just as the first of the skeletal warriors came into view. They were armed and armored, and they were in fact coming from multiple directions.


    We scrambled inside, and Sige pulled the door back into place behind us as best he could. Mila smeared some stone around it in a somewhat sloppy way, and then slumped back looking exhausted. "I''m spent. I''m out of mana, kids. Should get a little back if we''re safe to sleep here, but it''ll still be the long way to get back up."


    "And... is it safe to sleep here?" Katrin asked.


    We looked around at the room we had entered. No zombies, no skeletons, no skittering hearts on spider legs. Just a huge, empty cube with bizarrely tiled walls and a polished crystal sarcophagus in the center.


    "This is it," Connie said. "We''ve made it."

 CHAPTER 033: Its All Uphill From Here

    We waited for a while to see if the skeletons would start hammering on the door, though I couldn''t say how long precisely - being underground with just our lanterns to illuminate the catacombs for two days had done something strange to my perception of time. Katrin seemed to be hardest hit by it, but she recovered rapidly - or faked it - whenever we were in an enclosed space that could be fully lit.


    "I guess the shadows are getting to me," she admitted, "ever since we had to run from that big group of zombies. It''s fine. I can handle it, I''m not losing my mind or anything. I''m just... I''m tired of this."


    The others were keeping it to themselves if they were bothered, though for the three mercenaries it would probably be embarrassing to admit to their employer that they were feeling spooked. At any rate, the skeletons never started beating on the door. Connie had seemed sure - based on the notebook she kept referring to - that there were no working traps or curses or anything in this room, so I took a few moments to walk around and examine what few things there were to see.


    The center of the cube-shaped room was dominated by a transparent crystal that, rather than being a carved coffin as it first appeared, was actually a solid piece of stone with a perfectly-preserved body inside. I had to admit it was an incredibly classy way to display a body. The man on display was on the older side, with skin that wasn''t just olive but actually had an almost greenish tint to it - something I''d never seen on Earth. As with everyone I met, I couldn''t quite map any of his features to any ethnicity I was familiar with either.


    "Well he''s dressed nice, and that''s a fancy sarcophagus, but I''m not seeing any treasure that''s easy to take," Aestrid observed.


    "No treasure here," Connie said as she slipped the notebook away again, "he kept that somewhere else. But the key is here. I don''t... actually know what it looks like. But it''s a key of some sort, and it''s hidden on the wall."


    The walls were covered in colorful tiles, each a different pattern or image. Along the edges they had little tabs and slots, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, although they weren''t actually connected - the tabs didn''t tend to line up, and were just set into some sort of grout. "So one of these tiles is a key, and you have no idea which one?"


    "Right. I''m working off of limited information."


    I started examining the tiles, but there were just so many. "Do you have a picture of what the key fits into? You know, so we can figure out how many little tab things it should have?"


    Connie winced. "No. Sorry. The..." she leaned in close to me and switched to English, "the people that did this in my timeline, they figured it out. And they didn''t have a picture either. So it''s got to be something we can figure out."


    "Okay. Fine. Uh... I guess there''s too many to just take all of them, huh?"


    Sige laughed. "I''m not carrying a whole fucking tomb''s worth of walls all the way back up there. I''m not even looking forward to carrying myself."


    Mila nodded from her spot on the ground, where she appeared to be rapidly falling asleep. "Yes, can''t we get out some other way? The darkness is unpleasant, I don''t want two more days of it - more, I suppose, since going up is going to be harder on my knees. I''ll have to take twice as many breaks, and I''m sure I''m not the only one."


    Aestrid nodded. "My knees are fine but there are probably a hundred skeletons outside, and that possessed delver, and gods know what else. We have two people with dimensional magic, surely we can take some sort of shortcut to the surface."


    Sige shook his head. "Don''t fucking look at me. I''m best at Itzele, and I don''t want to see what it fucking looks like for the Necropolis - that''s if it even exists down here. Most likely it''s just solid fucking rock. And I can do others, but it''s fucking hard because we''re in an overlap zone already so chances are I''d fuck it up. Cyne is a little better at it, but that fucking look on his face says he feels the same way."


    "I do. For planes that map directly to locations on the material world, it would be disaster. Some of the others can be reached, but the ones we would be most likely to succeed with would also be the ones that would gain us nothing. I suppose the best option would be Nusos, since that''s where we''re going after this regardless - but we would just be exchanging one set of monsters in dark tunnels for another."


    Connie seemed to be considering it - either she''d forgotten about Errod and the kids or just didn''t care at this point. "If we''re going to have to travel through that anyway, better once than twice - right?"


    Cyne shook his head. "Nusos is an ever-changing arrangement of rooms and hallways. It''s influenced by buildings in the material world, so you''ll see familiar architectural styles as well as furniture or decorations. It''s easiest to enter at places that are similar to other spots, that have lots of walls and doors close together, or that have a somewhat maze-like feel. So entering from here in the Necropolis would be trivial, though we would need to wander the passageways somewhat.


    "The problem is that once inside Nusos it takes time and concentration to change your surroundings, which means we would still be in catacombs. The most powerful monsters in Nusos feed on fear, so stumbling around in dark tunnels of the dead is not suggested. Instead, if we enter Nusos from somewhere more relaxed and pleasant - some small town that doesn''t have wards up to prevent planar travel - our journey will be much safer."


    "Well. Hang on, actually." Sige was squinting at Connie. "You haven''t told us much about where the fuck we''re going. Nusos... I mean Cyne knows more than I fucking do but I''ve gone through it a few times and it''s all about how similar the places are. You just fucking walk, and think about where you want to be, and eventually you get there. So I agree I don''t want to wander in the Nusos version of this place but it all fucking comes down to the question of how long, right? Figure three fucking days to go back up since it was two to get down, maybe even four if you won''t spring for the ride out."


    "But the creatures in this kind of area in Nusos are particularly dangerous - "


    "Right, fucking sure. It''s worth taking longer to avoid it... if that would mean we avoid it. But Connie here hasn''t described where we''re going, has she? If our fucking destination looks a lot like where we already are, then not only would travel time be way fucking less but it''s through an area we''d have to go through anyway."


    Everyone looked at Connie. "Fair point. Okay. So... I do not know where we''re going. It''s similar to here in the sense that it''s underground, though not nearly so deep. Uh."


    Cyne opened to a new page in his notebook. "What about the architectural style?"


    "Probably no similarity to the majority of the Necropolis, though that''s all different styles anyway. Made by the same people as this tomb. It''s... uh... it''s within the current territory of the kingdom of Erathik, but it''s from a smaller kingdom that sprung up after the collapse of the old Empire and then got wiped out by some people who got wiped out by some people who got absorbed into Erathik. I just have some notes but the... the key is supposed to help us get there."


    Cyne frowned. "Well, we''ll need something more specific if we want to get there through Nusos. Vague descriptions won''t be enough to find a distinct real-world location. We could come out into any number of similar places otherwise. If you don''t know something unique we can concentrate on, there''s no point in entering Nusos at all."


    I hated that I had nothing to contribute. I was just listening to the others talk, and it was sounding more and more like Connie had overestimated her ability to follow these clues from the other timeline to the lost Duminere. That hurt, because I recognized the part of myself that would have done the same. I paced around the room, trailing my fingers along the tiles. They were about eight inches to a side, an estimate I made entirely based on my memory of how wide a sheet of paper was on Earth. Some had fanciful patterns, some were mostly plain, and some just had a few lines. They were all brightly colored, making this tomb look ridiculous. If the key was supposed to help...


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I got a few looks when I started crawling around on my hands and knees, and even more when I hauled myself up onto the sarcophagus to get a better look at the top of the wall. "Sige! Gimme a lift, right there."


    Without asking questions he helped me climb up onto his hand and then shoulder, and using my knife carefully I pried a tile loose. I rotated it, and smiled. "Hey! We need to know what our destination looks like to get there through Nusos, right? Well, I just found a door."


    It was a tiny door, set into the middle of the tile - but the closer I looked the more certain I was that it was what we needed. I climbed down off of Sige, and Katrin counted and measured the tabs on the sides.


    "We need more. It''ll be a whole room. This is going to take forever."


    The search began, picking the left side of the door tile as a random starting point. Every time we found a tile that looked about right I would hold them together to confirm, and in the end we had pried out seven more tiles - all of which potentially fit, with no way to say which one was right. Then we started on the next piece - the ''ceiling'' of the little box we were making - and the tabs on that one had to match not only the door tile but at least one of the others we had found. It took more than an hour, but at the end we had assembled a tiny room out of six tiles.


    Katrin didn''t seem happy. "I don''t know. They all fit, and I don''t see any others that would, but visually... it''s a mess. None of the colors line up at all."


    Cyne smiled, turning the cube in his hands and removing one side at a time to get a look at the interior from different angles. "No, that''s perfect. They must have intended the room to be accessed through Nusos, but didn''t want anyone stumbling in by mistake. If you know exactly what to picture you can find it, but if you don''t you would never be holding the right image in your mind. Before we go into Nusos, we should all study this carefully."


    "So... are we doing that from down here?" I asked, "Or heading back up?" Katrin squeezed my hand, and I knew if they made the choice to go from here she was going to expect me to argue.


    "I would still recommend going back to the surface," Cyne said, "A room this colorful, with a different purpose and design than the catacombs... it would take a significant amount of travel from here, and as I said some very powerful creatures would be working against us to keep us lost and afraid."


    "Good," Katrin chimed in, "Because I know my brother and I''m worried he would come down here looking for us if we don''t return in the next few days."


    It was well past time that we go to bed according to Cyne''s watch, so everyone got comfortable. I had to pee, but while we had obviously been forced to defile the Necropolis as we traveled I drew the line at both pissing in an actual tomb and doing it so close to where we were sleeping. Unfortunately the possibility of armed skeletons meant I couldn''t find a spot out in the halls, so I had to hold it. On the plus side, Cyne said he could afford to give us each a quick pass of healing on our feet to deal with any blisters or soreness, so we would be extra fresh in the morning.


    As always, I had some fucked up dreams - but this time they were so jumbled I couldn''t remember anything apart from being lost in a dark maze of twisty little passages, all alike. No surprise there. I woke up only mildly stiff and having successfully held my bladder, and helped everyone get packed back up. We had the normal meal of cheese, jerky, and these heavily seasoned dense breadstick things - they weren''t bad at all, but I was getting sick of the whole routine.


    "Katrin, hurry up. I have to piss so bad and we still might need to wait for Aestrid and Sige to kill some skeleton things."


    She nodded, but continued to move slowly. "Sorry. I''m just not looking forward to this. Going all the way back up, in the dark. It''s fine. I''m fine."


    Sige literally kicked the door free from the surrounding frame, which hadn''t ever been properly sealed up after we entered. It slammed into something with a terrible crunching sound, and there was a clatter of metal as a skeleton dropped its sword. Sige stepped back and Aestrid climbed up onto the door which was now at a forty-five degree angle, then she grinned and the door abruptly slammed down onto the ground as if she weighed a ton. Some that hadn''t been crushed moved forward to grab her before she could stand, but Sige stepped back in and punched one so hard its skull detached before grabbing another by its armor and flinging it into the darkness.


    Aestrid hopped to her feet and stepped out, allowing herself to be surrounded, and then casually began to cut the straps on the things'' breastplates so they would fall loose. A few tried instead to go after Sige, but he was faster than them and just kept knocking them down; he wasn''t doing a ton of damage, but they simply couldn''t land a hit on him and after a few tumbles the ancient bones were starting to break.


    Only one got past and tried to come inside, while Sige was distracted by a skeleton that he clearly thought was already dead until it sliced fairly deeply into his left calf - it was basically the same mistake he''d made a few days prior. While he dealt with it, the other took a stab at Connie but got her hooked stick right in its face; she actually caught the hook inside its mouth and pulled it forward so that it fell down, and then stood on its back and wrenched with all her might until its skull popped free. Sige and Aestrid cleaned up the rest, and Cyne fixed Sige''s leg while I stood there awkwardly with Katrin and Mila.


    "Well shit, I didn''t do anything."


    Katrin nodded. "I keep pulling the spellbook out, getting all ready, but then... Sige and Aestrid always have it under control."


    "I mean I guess that''s what we''re paying them for. And I don''t want to get hurt, and I didn''t pack the right kind of weapons for undead things. But... I don''t know, I feel silly just standing here."


    Mila tuned into the conversation for a moment and smiled at me. "Oh, dears. You know, when I was your age I didn''t have my sculpture shop yet so I had to make money other ways. And there were days it was quite intense, I remember once I found a fellow''s ear stuck in my boot and couldn''t even begin to guess whose it was. And I can tell you, I much prefer my quiet life and my statues and... oh, did I ask someone to water the plants before I left? Oh, bother."


    Neither of us had anything to say in response to that.


    We headed back up, doing our best to retrace our steps so that we would save time. If we could take the same route back up and skip the exploration part, it would make up for the extra effort of going up so many flights of stairs. Having been stuck in the middle of the marching order the whole time I had no idea which turns we had made, but thankfully some of the others had been paying attention and we very rapidly found our way back to Mila''s ramps and made excellent progress. As expected it was harder going uphill, but Cyne''s healing of our feet had done wonders and the upside to being on the return trip was that we had less water to haul around which had been the heaviest thing in our packs by far.


    As we neared the area where the man with the spider-thing had attacked us we did our best to move silently and be on alert. My moccasins ensured I didn''t make a sound, but in the stillness of the Necropolis a group of seven people shuffling along was pretty noticeable even with them doing their best. Still, there was no sign of him and soon we had made it past. That meant we soon reached a spot where we could no longer retrace our steps, however.


    "They''re still there, can you hear them?" Aestrid asked. "Clawing at the door. Good luck boys, your fingers will wear away before that stone does."


    We were on the narrow, cracked ledge at the edge of the pit where Mila had sealed the zombie horde in just as Aestrid escaped. Going back the way we came was one hundred percent not an option. Connie sighed, looking out across the pit - but our lights didn''t reach the far end.


    "Well," she said, "we could just explore for a bit I suppose. There''s bound to be other ways up, though I''m a little worried that we''ll also find another passage into the area with the horde."


    Sige was looking up at a nearby hole. "Some of those fucking chalk marks. Looks like... shit, practically a fucking ladder. We could all just fucking climb, skip the next four or five floors. Yesrin''s tits, I wish we''d seen this on the way down."


    Connie looked too, and seemed to consider. "It''s pretty tempting. You have low standards for ladders, though. I think we need the rope for this one, although those notches will be great for footholds as we climb."


    Sige grinned. "I can climb up and tie off a fucking rope. No problem. Give me six minutes or so, no big deal."


    "No. No, I don''t want you to go alone. Shit, but I don''t want to make everyone climb up there."


    "Well it''s too fucking good to pass up. I can bring someone with me?"


    Connie looked over at us. "Yeah. Not Aestrid, we need one of the fighters to stay back. And not the weaker climbers. Um. You know what, screw it. I''ll come."


    They headed up while the rest of us took a breather. Katrin and Mila watched in one direction, while Aestrid stood guard by the sealed door - leaving me and Cyne milling around in-between. I was still feeling odd about not contributing, but I couldn''t argue against it either; I was only good at fighting people who were unprepared or untrained and I had no magic. Plus, I was worried enough about Connie being off away from the group that I wasn''t really in a ''bring on the zombies'' kind of mindset. I paced back and forth, silently, trying to count the minutes. It hadn''t been long, but it felt like forever.


    And then the explosion happened.

 CHAPTER 034: Lights in the Darkness

    I''d been facing the right way to see it happen, but by the time I realized what was going on it was over. A form had swung down from the ledge above - glowing crystal heart plainly visible - and threw something towards Aestrid. There was a split second of relief as I saw it was going to miss, but he wasn''t aiming at her; he was aiming at the door Mila had sealed on our way down, to hold back the countless feral undead.


    The explosion made me stumble back and cover my eyes, and when I looked up with spots still swimming in my vision I saw Aestrid already being swarmed by zombies. They poured out of the doorway like a flood, and with the pit so close the only thing that wave could break against was Aestrid. She had taken a step back and was far, far too close to that crumbling edge - her powers were protecting her from the surge of bodies but as they piled onto her the ones behind continued to push - more and more were forced off the side but as they did they grabbed at Aestrid and at each other; quickly there was a clump of living corpses hanging from her out into the void.


    Cyne backed away as some of the zombies made it past - some by climbing over Aestrid who was now barely visible - and began to charge at us. Katrin pushed past me and began casting, and right as the first one reached her it bounced off of an invisible wall. It was immediately crushed against that wall by the next layer of walking dead, and I could see Katrin grimace with effort.


    "No. No! I didn''t do it right, there''s no edge! I can hold them back but I don''t know for how long!"


    Mila had an oddly focused look like she was using all of her willpower to keep her head together and make a plan, but it didn''t matter. There was a barely audible cry of "Shit!" and the clump - including Aestrid, somewhere at its center - tumbled into the bottomless pit. That was it. No scream, no flash of desperate magic. Just a single curse and then silence.


    There was only one hope. I abandoned the others and began to climb up after Connie. "Connie! Rewind!" I yelled as I went, moving as fast as I could. "Connie! Rewind, now!"


    The hole was, as Sige had said, a great shortcut - but it wasn''t easy to climb up. There was a pillar with handholds carved into it, then the side of a mausoleum - but at a different angle which meant you had to stop and reposition yourself. Once a rope was in place it would be trivial, but scrambling up without climbing gear while in a panic was a tall order. I was maybe forty feet up with my throat going raw from screaming when it happened.


    I stumbled, and flailed my arms as the wall vanished leaving me holding nothing... and also safely on the ground. I spun around, and sure enough Aestrid was still standing on the narrow walkway by the zombie door.


    "Aestrid, run! Now, to me!"


    To her credit, she only hesitated for a split second - but then the bomb was flying through the air again. It wasn''t happening the same way; I was certain we were ahead of schedule, though I couldn''t say by how much, and of course Aestrid was in a different place. The bomb still hit right where it needed to, however, and the zombies still swarmed out at her.


    With the new positioning they couldn''t get on multiple sides of her, and she was less staggered by the explosion. Slightly better prepared, Aestrid was able to totally block the walkway and keep the rest of us safe - but there was no way she would be able to do anything about the man with the glowing heart, who had vanished the second he threw the bomb.


    A rope dropped down from the shaft - of course, Connie would be in a hurry to come and find out what went wrong. Meanwhile, Cyne was backing into a corner to prevent being snuck up on and stabbed again and Katrin had her spellbook out and looked like she was just trying to find a way to do something that wouldn''t hit Aestrid. Mila and I were scanning around us, waiting for the next attack.


    "Good reflexes, dear." Mila said, "I didn''t see him at all until after you yelled."


    "Neither did I."


    "Oh. Well that''s even more impressive. Do you expect he''ll attack again, or wait for us to relax?"


    "I don''t know. Do you think he has more bombs?"


    Cyne looked at least as shaken as when he''d been stabbed through the heart. "The empty box we found could hold six," he said, "so it''s unlikely he has more than five remaining. Small comfort, I suppose."


    I wasn''t sure what to do. If we clumped together, we might just get blown up. If we spread out, we''d be picked off one by one. I spared a glance at Aestrid, and saw that the zombies were starting to climb over her and each other - even with the minorly improved starting position the sheer number of them was impossible to deal with. "Everyone back up!" she yelled, and let off a pulse of force again.


    Just as it had when she had used that method before, it flung the zombies back - sending at least seven or eight into the void. But unlike the floor in the last hall she''d used it in, this walkway didn''t just crack - it shattered. Aestrid flung a hand out to catch herself, but managed only to grab the leg of a zombie she had launched off of her back. It slid with her out of sight into the bottomless pit. I could only stare - she was gone for the second time in the span of a minute. This time she had been in a different spot and kept the zombies at bay, and the collapse of the walkway had made it impossible for them to reach us which meant we had a moment to stand there in shock.


    Something crashed behind me, and I spun to see Connie and Sige in a heap - the rope had been cut as they climbed down. "Are you okay?" I yelled, trying to help her up. "Fuck! You have to be okay!"


    Connie winced, and looked at me with unfocused eyes. "What? I think I hit my head."


    "You have to rewind again. Right now."


    She blinked, unevenly. "I already did."


    I made her look at me while simultaneously shoving Sige''s leg off of her. "I know, you need to do it again."


    "I''m... shit, Callie. I''m out of mana. You know I can only do that once."


    Sige finally managed to get up without kicking Connie in the face, and pulled her up behind him.


    "Aestrid is gone, Connie. She fell in the pit, you need to rewind."


    She glanced in the direction of the pit, but still seemed confused. "Someone cut the rope. Are we under attack?"


    "Yes, stop asking stupid questions and rewind!"


    She finally seemed to focus on me. "I''d have to burn out my Dumine to do that. All that work, gone. What if it''s you I need to save next time, and instead I''ve got a blank Dumine?"


    We were burning time with this argument. "So use that time mana!"


    She shook her head, and then swayed as if doing so had made her dizzy. "I can''t. I could maybe, with a little trickle, but in the time it took to get enough of a charge it would be too late anyway. And if I released it too fast it could kill all of us. It''s volatile shit."


    "So just do the Dumine thing! Hurry! We can train it back up together!"


    "No."


    I staggered back. I scanned the group for support, but Sige and Mila were looking at me with pity - there was no trace of anger, no sign that they were going to argue with Connie. This was how the job worked, this is what the risks were, and nobody could ask someone to burn out their Dumine. Wordlessly, we began to trek deeper into the Necropolis - it was clear our current location wasn''t safe, nor was the shaft that led up.


    We hurried, taking almost random turns, until finally Sige waved us all into a tight side tunnel that was nearly invisible from the wider path we had been on. We slowed down, attempting to be stealthy, and when we came to a dead end Mila climbed on Connie''s shoulders to make a crack in the ceiling we could climb through. She spared the mana to seal it shut behind us, and we picked a new direction.


    Not long after that, Connie stumbled and nearly collapsed. Cyne rushed forward and examined her, and as he pressed a hand against her head she jerked and accidentally elbowed him in the face before looking around like she''d just woken up. "Shit. Sorry. That healing felt... very strange. Sorry. I feel better, though. I think I had a concussion. Fuck, I''m tired. We need to stop and rest."


    Cyne waved off her concern about his face, and we picked out a mausoleum to sleep in. Still, almost nobody talked. I was supposed to do things right. I''d been trying to do things right, to prove I wasn''t what my mother said I was. Or at least, that I didn''t have to be. And what could be a more simple rule to follow than this? Someone is dying, you can save them, you do that. My favorite morality, the really simple kind. But Connie had decided the time it would take to re-train her Dumine was more important, even though at the end of that time Aestrid would still be dead and - I shuddered at the thought - possibly still falling. That mental image sent me into a mini panic attack, but I doubted that anyone even noticed - they were all getting bedded down, and I was slumped in a corner already with my hyperventilating muffled by the sleeve of my jacket.


    The panic attack might have actually helped, because at some point my brain just overloaded and I passed out. There were nightmares, obviously, but I was used to that. I hadn''t gone a whole week without a nightmare or two in my whole life - it was only a few years ago I had even found out that wasn''t normal. In this case it was simple, Aestrid kept dying every time I turned around and then I would turn back time to rewind it and she''d do it again. Sometimes I saw her die, sometimes I''d just look back and she would be a zombie - once she shrugged, as if to say "yeah, I don''t know where the other half of my face went either". It normally would have been almost funny, but that''s the thing with nightmares; your brain can just label them as scary and they are.


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    When I woke up, my head was clearer. The shock and anger at Aestrid''s death had dulled enough that I could think about the situation and ask some important questions - how differently would it have gone, a third time? The bomb would get thrown as soon as she started to run, that seemed clear. And once thrown, the zombies would swarm. I could have told her not to use that force wave thing, but she must have known there was a risk involved; she used it because she was covered by zombies and they were getting past her. And Connie was right about potentially needing her Dumine. This wasn''t going to be the last dangerous thing we did - even if you didn''t count the immediate danger involved with getting out of the Necropolis. The reality of that, the fact that we would need to climb all the way up with one less fighter, hit me in the gut. Aestrid had been the one watching our backs.


    The others were waking up too, and getting bags together. I pulled out some jerky and chewed on it while I thought about the problem. There was no way I was going to take up the rear, and Mila would get distracted and fall behind. Cyne would just get killed, and we needed him to get into Nusos - or did we? Sige could do that part too, even if he had a bit less experience with it. Maybe Sige in back though, since this guy had attacked the rear of the group both times and Sige was most likely to be able to take him out. Then Mila at the front, she could fight in a pinch - she''d shown that - and couldn''t wander off if she was in the lead. No, wait. She could wander off and take us all with her. Bah.


    I stood and pulled my pack on, still eating. Katrin came over and hugged me for some reason - maybe the darkness was still getting to her. I patted her arm and she hesitantly stepped back before looking at me. "You okay?" she asked.


    "Yeah," I replied, "just trying to figure out the new marching order. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass, I had taken it for granted how easy it was before to just put one fighter at each end. Anyway, I''m thinking Sige at the back, but then the front is giving me trouble."


    "No. I mean... Aestrid just died."


    "I know. Did I say Aestrid instead of Sige? Sige at the back."


    She sighed. "That''s not what I mean, Callie. I mean I was asking if you were okay because you just watched someone die."


    I mentally retraced my steps. Ah, that was why she had hugged me. But I wasn''t mad anymore, Connie was clearly right about not reversing time again so... but that was wrong. It shouldn''t just be about whether or not Connie had been logically correct. That was just my stupid fucked up brain doing its thing. I should be sad, and maybe still frustrated, and... got it. "I''m sorry. I''m just trying to hold it together and if I start thinking about her I''ll be a wreck all day."


    She shook her head and walked away. Had I still not said the right thing? No, that had been the right script - but she knew too much about how I thought and must have realized I was lying which made it worse. I wasn''t sure how to fix this. This was why I normally didn''t tell people about my... empathy issues.


    A memory surfaced, one of the loose ones that didn''t seem to be real. It was simultaneously vivid and frustratingly vague. "I love you too," I had said, because that was how you replied when someone told you they loved you - and you have to use the right lines or they''ll know you''re a monster. "No you don''t," the other person had replied, "not today."


    I remembered freezing up, ready to be called a sociopath or get kicked out onto the street. I needed him to believe me. I needed him to let me stay. A hand came down on my shoulder, and that voice spoke again. "If you don''t mean it that day, you don''t have to say it. Maybe you''ll mean it tomorrow, maybe you won''t, and it doesn''t matter. I''m saying it because I mean it, and I''ll mean it whether or not you have those emotions that day - or ever." and there was this warm feeling in my chest, even though I wasn''t... huh.


    I snapped out of the fuzzy memory and saw that everyone was filing out of the mausoleum. I grabbed Katrin and pulled her into a hug, whispering into her ear. "I''m a little dead inside today, and I don''t like how people treat me when they realize I''m... broken. I probably really will be a wreck about Aestrid again later, tomorrow or the next day. But I need you to know that even though I don''t... I don''t love anyone but maybe myself today, I would still do anything for you and Connie and Errod. And when I do feel like I love anything, I love you guys. I''ve only known you for like a month and you''re the best friend I''ve ever had. Please don''t be mad at me."


    "I''m not mad," she said, breath warm on my ear, "it just caught me off guard. It''s fine. It''s part of you. We''re okay." And she squeezed back. I couldn''t tell if it was my imagination or if I could feel it again like in the memory - some tiny warm speck of emotion I couldn''t put a finger on. Either way, I felt some tension release - some subconscious anxiety that Katrin would call me a monster like mom used to had lifted from my shoulders.


    We started climbing again. As I had expected Connie put Sige in the back, and she solved the issue of who would take lead by doing it herself. We went slowly at first, expecting an ambush, but of course that didn''t happen until we had started to relax. We had been forced back to the edge of the pit after almost having to deal with another large group, this time a pack of about twenty zombies that we thankfully saw in time and avoided. That seemed to confirm the pattern of bigger clusters of undead further away from the pit, and we felt we had gone far enough to have lost the possessed delver so we made our way back to the center.


    If the attack had come right away, we would have been ready for it - but of course it was another hour before anything happened and we were just hoping for a place to rest when I saw the bomb coming. It was a speck of red light, and I focused on it in the darkness thinking it might be the crystal heart on the delver''s chest - but if it had been it would have been far away, so I didn''t yell at first. When I saw it was moving, I still couldn''t tell size or distance well with everything so black all around it and so for a split second I actually thought it was some sort of ember or firefly moving around; we''d seen very few magical lights in the depths but as we got higher up they would presumably be more common since the newer magic items wouldn''t have had time to fail. The idea that the light was the fuse of a bomb flying towards me didn''t really register until it was far too late to do anything but dive away. I think I yelled "bomb" but I wasn''t really certain.


    The explosion came just as I hit the ground, and I felt something score across my outstretched arm and another fragment of stone slam into my upper thigh. Thankfully most of my back was covered by the backpack. I scrambled up and groped for a wall, my ears ringing, and tried to get my bearings. Sige was gone, which I took to be a good sign - he had been behind me, so it seemed unlikely he had been hurt worse than me - and if he was already gone he was presumably in hot pursuit. The ground where the bomb had gone off was mostly still intact but badly cracked, and out of paranoia I decided to go around. That image of Aestrid dropping off into the darkness - twice - would probably stay with me for a long time.


    The small mausoleum I tried to circle around backed right up to one of those long stretches of walls where it was made entirely out of artfully stacked bones, so I turned back around and tried another path. I had my light mostly covered, just moving my hand every few steps to get a glimpse at the path ahead before proceeding in darkness. Somewhere in the distance I heard yelling, but I couldn''t make out words. There was a searing green light for just a moment, and I crossed my fingers that Katrin had just unleashed some spell that took the delver''s face off. After that, it was quiet.


    I was turned around, but too afraid of drawing attention to call out or even just keep my light uncovered. I heard a low, rattling moan nearby. Great. Walking faster, glad for my silent shoes, I did my best to follow the slight breeze I had sometimes been able to detect coming from the direction of the pit. Just as the edge came into sight, I felt a blade slip into my side. I tried to say something, or even just scream, but it only came out as a sort of ''hurk'' noise. Stabbed, again. Son of a bitch.


    He was right up close, as if savoring my last moments, and so I threw my head back as hard as I could and was rewarded with a loud crunch. He stepped back and I ran forward, the blade doing more damage on its way out. I knew I had to get to the pit, to a place where I could call for help. When I got there, however, it was a dead end.


    There was a crumbling railing at the edge of the yawning void, but the path in either direction only went for ten feet or so before being obstructed. I ducked to the right since there was a door visible, but I couldn''t slide it open and I could feel myself getting weaker as blood soaked down my side. It wasn''t as warm as I would have expected. I hammered on the door, and heard a groan from inside. Shit. I stumbled a few more feet to the dead end and collapsed. I was out of ideas, and didn''t even think I would have the opportunity to bleed to death. Sure enough, a second later the possessed delver came around the corner with its crystal heart now exposed and glowing once more. Not only could I see some damage around its nose from my backwards headbutt, there was also a hideous dark bruise encircling its neck from the previous encounter where it had been twisted around. That was reassuring, at least - it couldn''t be killed easily, but it didn''t fully heal.


    I felt dizzy, and suspected I was in shock. The thing raised a short sword, and for the first time I heard it speak. "Any last words, little one?"


    "Yeah," I mumbled. "Do me a favor and do a swan dive into that pit for me."


    Staring down my death, I felt a wave of cold ripple through me. This was it. He began to thrust, and then the door I had been banging on a moment before popped loose and crashed into his shoulder. He stumbled and was flattened against the railing as a zombie began to climb through the doorway over him. He pushed back, lifting the stone slab like it was nearly weightless, but then the railing behind him gave way and the delver, the door, and the zombie all vanished from sight.


    Unlike Aestrid, he screamed the whole way down.


    I pressed a hand against my wound and took a deep breath. I was still shivering from the near death experience, and worrying it would be an actual-death experience soon. But out of nowhere some fuzzy orange arms lifted me up and Sige began hurrying through the darkness. I hadn''t even seen him walk up to me. "You sprung a fucking leak, kid."


    "He got me. But he''s... gone. He fell."


    "Well, I hope it was worth it," Sige said, somehow managing to keep from jostling me much despite sprinting though the darkness. "Fuck. I told you to be careful with overspending mana, didn''t I? Fucking kids never listen, have to go and strain themselves."


    Maybe it was the blood loss, but I felt like I had missed part of the conversation. "Wait, is she okay?"


    "Who?"


    "Katrin. You said she overdid it again. I saw the flash."


    Sige sighed. "No clue what the flash was. I was talking about you, dumbass."


    "No, I can''t do magic. I don''t know any."


    "Yeah, and you''re shivering like a fucking nudist in a snowstorm why exactly?"


    Oh, that. "No, that''s just... I get cold sometimes when I think I''m going to die. That''s normal. Also maybe blood loss?"


    "Okay, whatever you say." Sige muttered, sarcasm dripping from every word.


    But obviously I hadn''t done any magic. After all, nothing happened. He just fell. Cyne fixed me up good as new, leaving me utterly exhausted. We all agreed it was best to find somewhere to rest for a while - Mila had been hurt too, and Katrin was emotionally worn out from thinking I was dead for a few minutes. As we headed down the hall, something was bothering me. Something sounded wrong. It took me a moment to realize my boots weren''t silent anymore for some reason - I really hoped they weren''t broken.

 CHAPTER 035: Safe Havens

    We ended up using the emergency beacon and paying for a lift out once we were back to where we started. There was no real question - we''d had several other minor incidents, everyone was out of mana, and morale was rock bottom. I suspect it would have been that way even if Aestrid hadn''t died, just from the increasing distress of trekking day after day through darkness, but with the added toll of constantly coming up one short on a headcount before adjusting I think there would have been a mutiny if Connie had insisted on climbing the rest of the way. We''d just have to make sure nothing else cost us any money until the job was done, which in theory was possible.


    The sun was low in the sky, and I sat and waited for it to go down enjoying every last second of actual daylight before I headed back to the outer ring of the city. I''d asked Katrin to break the news about Aestrid to her brother, and had handed off my backpack to Sige - I just wanted to wander around where there were people and lights and open sky.


    I purchased a meat pie of some sort from a street vendor and ate it so fast I burned myself, then bought a second one and savored it. He also had a pitcher of pale pink juice that tasted vaguely tropical and which I promptly forgot the name of. After that, the next stop in my quest to avoid going back to our rented house was locating a bathhouse with some mostly-private nooks. The one I selected even had a laundry service, so by the time I was finished scrubbing the top few layers of grime off and then soaking for a while I had something clean to change into. I''d been a little worried about handing over my irreplaceable jeans, but if they''d seemed odd at least they hadn''t been interesting enough to steal.


    Even in the city the stars were brighter than anything I''d seen on Earth other than the camping trips, and those had stopped when I was still pretty young. I kept almost bumping into things because I was too busy watching the sky. No big or little dippers, no Orion''s belt. Those were basically the stars visible in Phoenix, but even if I had known every constellation there was no question that the whole sky was different - not even counting that ridiculous moon with its oceans and forests - or, well, green stuff anyway. The moon wasn''t visible at the moment, though, other than as a faint glow blocked by buildings.


    There was a dense streak of stars all across the sky, not like the MIlky Way but still a distinct band. In fact, the further away you got from that line the less stars there were until it was unnaturally sparse. There were, maybe, some other bands at different angles now that I was looking - much thinner and fainter but odd... hmm. I climbed up onto a low wall and leaned against one of the decorative flourishes that stuck up, so I could better stargaze. Was one band of stars moving sideways? It was slow, but... maybe some of them were rings around the planet, and others weren''t. That would possibly explain it. I resolved to keep a closer eye on the stars - I could ask someone, but this didn''t seem important and it would feel good to figure it out myself.


    Eventually I had to start thinking about some things I''d been avoiding, starting with - had I used magic? The woman we paid to measure my capacity had thought so, and Sige certainly believed I had. But I hadn''t noticed anything, so... maybe I had just spent mana on nothing at all? That seemed possible. It would have to have been wild magic, which would mean a high failure rate. Maybe I''d just sort of flailed wildly with raw magic and accomplished nothing.


    But if - just hypothetically - me telling that thing to dive into the pit had somehow caused the accident that sent him to his death... could I kill people by yelling at them? What if I was just angry at someone, and without thinking I cursed them somehow? It seemed both terrifying and ridiculous. And, I had to admit, a little cool. If it really did only happen right when I was on the verge of death that would mean it wasn''t so bad. Chances are it would always be against a person that was actively trying to murder me, though it did seem like there would be the chance of some misunderstanding or collateral damage.


    What kind of magic would that be, to make something happen? It wasn''t mind control, he hadn''t jumped. So... probability? I could ask Connie how that worked, she had... oh. She had it. And I could remember when she rewound time. Was I... using her Dumine, somehow? That couldn''t be right. Could it? It had to be attached to work, Connie had mentioned people avoided getting them on their arms or legs for fear they''d be cut off. But it was attached to Connie, and Connie was somehow metaphysically attached to me so... maybe.


    I hopped down and ran for a minute, then slowed and tried to compose myself while still looking for our rental house. I still wasn''t ready to talk about Aestrid, especially with Errod since he had obviously had a bit of a crush on her, so I snuck in quietly and located Connie - with a few glares and signals from across the room, I crudely communicated that I needed her outside and snuck away again. She came out looking worried.


    "You okay? We were about to send a search party."


    "Yeah, I''m fine. I''m good. Listen, Sige thinks - I think - that maybe I did magic."


    She raised an eyebrow at me and grinned. "What, you manage to cast a spell? All that practice with Katrin has paid off, I guess. I studied with Katrin - my timeline''s Katrin - but I could never get it to click."


    "No. I think, maybe, that I used your Dumine? Somehow? I think it was a probability thing."


    Connie shook her head. "I... doubt that. You remembering when I rewind is strange, but actually accessing my Dumine would be on a whole other level. You can''t see it, right?"


    "See it?"


    "The... interface. It''s not words or anything, not like when you first get one, but there''s a sort of feeling of symbols you can''t quite see, and a hexagon, and... blue. You can call it up it if you try, and you have to sort of focus on it when you try to learn something new. It''s how you can tell if what you want is possible, and if you''re developed enough to do it yet."


    I closed my eyes and concentrated, but just saw the back side of my eyelids. "Uh. No. Nothing like that for sure."


    "So I''d say the more likely thing, if it wasn''t a spell you learned from Katrin''s book, would be wild magic. It''s not really normal to do that by accident either though, there''s still a sort of language to it. The only other option would be that just like other planes people from Earth have natural magic, but that would be pretty silly. How would we even develop it? Earth doesn''t have mana."


    I had to think about that one. I still thought a connection to Connie was the most plausible answer, but was it possible people from Earth - or some percentage of them - had magic and just didn''t know it? Billions of people could theoretically have access to magic and just lack the mana to do anything about it. If so it was good that I''d only recently entered a world with mana, since as a kid if I had discovered that ability I would have murdered half the people I met. Not only did I have some dim memories of just being a total asshole, with some of the mean girls in the group homes and the ones that made my life miserable in school there would have been an absolute trail of corpses.


    I chuckled at the thought of all my bullies dropping dead and leaving me confused. Yeah, whatever the change was now I clearly hadn''t been able to do anything on Earth. Zoey would have had a heart attack by the third time she called me "goat licker". Hell, even the time Sarah Harkin tried to drown me I didn''t do anything to her - I would have put a whammy on that bitch for sure... I sat up and nearly fell off the wall I''d perched on. "Oh fuck. Fuck. What the fuck."


    Connie looked around like we were about to be attacked by zombies. "What?"


    "Okay, so Sige said me being cold was because I used too much mana, and I said it was just a fear response thing."


    "Yeah, I mean. I can think of a few times. God, remember when we fell off that building trying to learn parkour?"


    "Yeah, sure. But... is he right? Is that cold the same kind of cold you feel when you use too much mana?"


    Connie looked almost annoyed. "It''s... I mean, cold is cold. I guess it''s similar. I haven''t felt it in a long time, so it''s hard to compare. I think all this time running around nearly getting killed has given me some callouses."


    "How long? Since you felt that, I mean? Is it maybe since you got your Dumine? Because once you have a Dumine your capacity starts going up faster, right?"


    "Shit Callie," she said, "I don''t know if I''ve felt it since then. I don''t almost die often enough to think about it. I guess if you - we - were doing wild magic when we were on the verge of death after getting here we might have written it off as just being that. I''d say it''s possible but very unlikely - but if so, what would it have done?"


    I paced around for a moment, and then decided to get right to the point. "It''s not just Sige. The lady that Katrin and I paid to check my mana capacity said I had used too much some time recently. And there... there have been some close calls, where things just sort of worked out. Like. I don''t know," I struggled to think of an example, "Like when I met Errod, the guy was going to kill me and then I remember feeling like there was ice in my veins and right then he stepped into a puddle and slipped. And this last time... I told that possessed guy to jump in the pit and then I was super cold and something knocked him in there."


    "Right, okay. Could be a coincidence, could be wild magic. Probably isn''t you somehow using my Dumine but who the fuck knows. We already talked about that, what''s your point?"


    "What if I didn''t just confuse it with feeling cold because I was scared? What if that''s always what that feeling was? What if we''ve been using magic for a long time?"


    "That''s... Callie, that is a ridiculous question."


    "Do you remember Sarah Harkin?"


    "The bitch that literally tried to drown me? Yes. And see, she didn''t have an aneurysm or anything. I one hundred percent would have burst a blood vessel in her brain if I could go all Carrie."


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    "We couldn''t, because we were out of mana."


    "Callie. My younger dumber self. Sweetheart. There is no mana on Earth. No magic."


    "Why did she try to drown us?"


    Connie hesitated. "Sarah''s hair fell out and she thought we put something in her shampoo."


    "And she thought it was us because...?"


    "Because I said something like... ''I hope your fucking hair falls out you skanky bitch'' I believe. Someone must have overheard, and then put some Nair or some shit in her conditioner."


    "So we said we wanted her hair to fall out, and then it fell out. Right?"


    "That''s... Callie, there''s no magic on Earth."


    "You don''t know that, though! Also you''re me, you should be agreeing with me."


    Connie laughed, and I tried to glare but then laughed instead, and it was a few minutes before we could speak clearly again. Connie took a deep breath, and I could see my ''let''s play a game'' look on her face. "Okay Callie. Let''s say it was magic somehow. Let''s say that - uh, Sarah was right after mom found her little legal loophole so we were in Phoenix - let''s say that there''s some source of mana in Phoenix, Arizona of all places and we got all charged up and then also somehow managed to do a perfect curse without training in wild magic. Fine. So what?"


    "So what? Seriously?"


    "In the end, it doesn''t matter. Soon you''ll have your own Dumine, and you were never going back to Earth anyway - right?"


    "Right. Sure. It would just... I don''t know, it seems like it means something. You know when we were little, and we''d make up stories about how we were special and... I don''t know, our father was a secret agent who was going to come and bust us out of the group home as soon as he was done his mission, or we had a sister that was waiting in our secret fort in the woods for us, or we were actually a princess because our mom was next in line to the throne of wherever but we''d been kidnapped and... whatever stupid shit. I think... well, the idea that we might have actually been special, that we might have done something magical back on Earth has me all wound up. I guess you''re not as excited because you can already like... go back in time or whatever."


    She leaned against the wall with a sigh. "I guess. And also... you know I went through some bullshit that was worse that what you''ve done so far - I guess not worse than the fucking Necropolis stuff, but I mean on a normal day to day basis. And at the end, when I realized I might be going back in time, I got all wrapped up in the idea that you would get to have the more perfect version of that adventure. You could skip the hardcore training, and being scared and alone, and not being able to eat anything, and the loyalty oath. And I''ve built that image up in my head so now... you talk about Earth, I''m worried you''re going to go back and just be normal."


    I pulled her in for a hug and we just stood there a moment. "I''m not going back. There''s nothing for me there, except for underwear with elastic waistbands and hot chips. I do miss those. But anyway you''re right, it probably was just a coincidence. If you could do magic on Earth, we''d know about it."


    "Yeah, all that secret world of magic shit is fun to read about but no way could you keep actual magic from everyone. But I guess... if everyone from Earth can potentially do magic and we were just... better at it? Maybe that''s why we ended up here. Maybe anyone who starts to actually be able to do shit gets yanked into Fantasyland, you know? So there you go, you''re special because you just happened to cross some threshold of squeezing some magic from the teeny bit of mana that must be floating around Phoenix, Arizona. Funny, to hear everyone talk you''d think it would have been Sedona."


    I almost said something about a ridiculous theory, something semi-formed in my head about the temporal aspect of her Dumine letting us use the probability part before she actually had it. But even if time travel was real that seemed needlessly complicated, so I let it go.


    Connie started walking back towards the house, and waved for me to follow. "Speaking of magic, you need to start seriously thinking about what you''re going to take when we reach the Duminere - it''s coming up soon. Tomorrow we hang out here, get all rested up, and then we''ll head to whatever little shitty town is nearby that we think doesn''t have wards preventing travel to and from Nusos. There''s only a couple to choose from. Probably a few days'' travel, and then going through Nusos should take most of a day from what I''ve heard. That means you''ll have magic - actual magic - in less than a week. Say, the tenth or eleventh of the month probably." She''d said ''tenth'' after a slight pause, probably converting back to base-10.


    "Okay yeah, let''s talk about it. Is Errod okay?"


    "He''s... taking it as well as I would have expected. I think he feels bad for not being there, and he tried to convince us that we needed to mount a rescue expedition until Katrin had a talk with him."


    "Sorry I bailed for that talk, I should have helped."


    "Fuck, I''m just mad you thought of it first. I sure as hell didn''t want to be there for it. What do we know about being emotional support? I just... patted his arm awkwardly, it was awful."


    "Well, I should get it over with. Fingers crossed I don''t fuck this up."


    Being aware of the situation ahead of time meant I wasn''t going to mangle the social script too egregiously, but that didn''t mean I was actually good at comforting anyone. Thankfully it turned out not to matter - I found Errod and gave him a hug, then caught myself off guard by randomly crying - not bawling or anything, but pretty noticeably leaking - and that seemed to be the right thing to do because he just nodded and we went to our beds.


    As was pretty typical I had some fucked up dreams, most of which involved me being back down in the Necropolis while everyone in the group slipped and fell off into the pit one by one. At the end of the dream I realized it was happening because I was looking at them, and therefore my fault. So that wasn''t great. The one memorable outlier was a dream where I was sitting at a table in a cute little kitchen, doing homework with Bill.


    "It''s about the mana levels on Earth," I said, "but I can''t figure out how to get the answer."


    Bill nodded, and pushed down on the table - it dented inwards as if it was made of rubber, which didn''t seem odd to me at all in the dream. "It''s all just gravity. See, when there''s only one source it bends everything. So other stuff, well, it kinda rolls in towards the biggest or most powerful thing."


    "I guess that explains Greg''s collection," I said.


    Bill looked sad. "Yeah. Well. Speaking of, kiddo, I think it''s time to put you back."


    We got up and walked down some stairs that hadn''t been there before, and found ourselves in the Necropolis which now had flickering fluorescent lights. He pulled on a mausoleum door that rolled up into the ceiling with a metallic rattle, and inside there were shelves stretching off into the distance - each with a mummified body on it. I knew, as soon as I looked, that they were all kids that had thought they were going to be heroes and go on fun magical adventures like in a book. They all had magic items laying on them - swords, amulets, rings. One for each. There was a shelf with no body on it, just a little golden brooch - it was laying there upside down, and I could see there was blood on the pin. I picked it up, sighed, and climbed onto the shelf.


    When I woke up in the morning, I decided to pay the others back for my disappearing act the night before and volunteered to spend all day with the refugee kids while Errod and Katrin and Connie wandered the city. I just kinda ignored them at first, but after a few hours I''d finally learned their names and we were getting to know each other. Of course, being stuck finally spending real time with the kids rather than just trying to read the spellbook or throwing things at Errod while they were off on the other side of the room was getting me all worked up. How could it not?


    Roran and Tig, the two boys, had obtained knives from somewhere while I was gone and were whittling sticks down to little pointy nubs for no apparent purpose. Elba was braiding Lilan''s hair, and Yasna was brushing mine. The somewhat traditionally gendered choice of activities was a temporary coincidence; Tig had been braiding flower crowns earlier - the flowers almost certainly stolen from a memorial for the dead - and Elba had been practicing throwing forks at a target she''d made across the room before the others complained about the noise.


    "And we''re going to get magic?" Yasna asked for the fifth time.


    "If you''re lucky. And then we''ll make sure you''re somewhere nice, and have some people try to find your parents. But don''t... don''t get your hopes up, okay?"


    "You said you went back to your mom after you were taken away though, right?"


    The others stopped what they were doing and listened intently. I''d made some comments, and they were fascinated with the idea that I had also spent time in strange places with other kids. I''d tried to make it clear that what happened to me and what they had gone through had practically nothing in common, but it they kept wanting to hear more.


    "Well. My mom... she had something wrong with her head. She thought that I was..." I felt the scissors pressed up against my neck again. Nope. Not getting into that. "She wasn''t taking care of me like she should. So I wasn''t... I wasn''t kidnapped like you were, though I guess at the time I felt like I had been. And a few of the people I had to stay with were bad, though not as bad as the Sahrger. But yeah, they sent me back to my mom and said she should try again."


    She''d been scared of getting in trouble, and for some reason didn''t want to get officially stripped of parental rights, but still didn''t want me around. So she had sent me to live with her brother at the Long Haul Hotel, and when I got sent back to her after that she tried for a while before kicking me out right before my eleventh birthday - so it was back into foster care, first at a foster home and then shortly after a group home since the foster parents didn''t appreciate me stealing the car. For a barely eleven year old kid I maintain I did a damn good job driving. But then it was back to mom again, and she did so much better for a while. Until that manic day where she announced the road trip to Arizona.


    She didn''t lie to me about it, she didn''t try to hide anything. She was abandoning me again, but this time it would be legal and therefore final. And honestly, it was the best time I''d had with her since I turned six. We stopped at little roadside tourist traps. She got me ice cream along with my lunch when we got food, and didn''t get mad when some dripped on the seat. I was twelve by then, and smart enough to know things hadn''t magically been fixed, but assumed that my mom''s plan was just to ditch me on the opposite side of the country so that they couldn''t send me back somehow. Instead, just before we reached Phoenix we stopped for lunch and she walked me through it.


    There had been some well-meaning politicians that were concerned over new mothers abandoning their babies just after being born, in dumpsters or wherever. So they made a law, one that pretty much every state had a version of - they called them "safe haven" laws - that said if you dropped your kid off at a hospital or some other designated places you didn''t have to worry about child abandonment charges or anything. No questions asked, you give up the kid and you don''t get in trouble. In most states this specified an age, but for whatever reason the one that had just passed in Arizona merely said "child" which meant at twelve I could still be left on the fire department steps. They changed the wording after that, but I never saw my mom again.


    I didn''t think I could explain all that to our little refugees, so I settled for just telling them that even if things didn''t work out quite how they imagined, somehow it would all be okay eventually. I even mostly believed it.


    "But I remember where my parents are," Elba said, "I remember the town. So I can go back, right?"


    I thought of all the things that could go wrong. Her parents could have died, or moved, or might think she had been somehow tainted by her time with the Sahrger - I wasn''t sure what sort of superstitions people had. "We''ll do our best. Now get as much sleep as you can tonight. Tomorrow we have a lot of ground to cover, and the day after that you get to go to another plane."


    They all looked excited, but for the first time I wasn''t eager for this next leg of the journey. Something felt off, like dark clouds on the horizon. I couldn''t shake the thought that Aestrid wouldn''t be the only one missing by the time we reached the Duminere.

 CHAPTER 036: It Was Probably Something She Ate

    "Please tell me you didn''t promise these kids they would learn magic."


    We were sitting around a campfire, somewhere Southeast of the Necropolis. Cyne looked like I had given him a migraine.


    "I''m going to be able to get them access to a Duminere for sure, it''s fine." We were back to eating the jerky, because with the extra kids and the emergency lift out of the pit Connie was out of cash. Mila had offered to chip in the money from the statue she''d delivered in Good Charl to cover any additional expenses, but the rest of the journey was supposed to be basically free - assuming we didn''t run into any other problems that delayed us much.


    "Calliope, I know you come from an area with little exposure to Dumineres, but surely you at least know the basics of how they work." He sat down near me, rubbing his temples. "I''d gathered that you expect to gain access to a Duminere as a result of this journey - presumably in return for recovering some valuable cultural artifact - but even if that happens, and even if you can get the children access as well, the vast majority of people that enter a Dumine come away with a blank. A dud. Whatever term you want to use. It is most likely that none of these children will learn any kind of magic."


    I nodded, thinking. I''d mentioned that to the kids, technically, but it was clear they were all expecting to learn magic and that was... probably mostly my fault. I''d slipped into telling them all the options, and gotten distracted by talking possible builds. The kids were surprisingly practical for the most part, but there was a lively discussion about the possible uses of Affinity, specifically the reasons one might choose to have an affinity with Roran''s nose.


    I could worry about something going wrong with me due to my link to Connie, and I could picture people getting duds in theory - it felt like Errod getting one would be right in line with his disastrous lack of progress towards becoming a master swordsman - but with the kids it just seemed right. I realized I probably just... really wanted to give them something to look forward to. It was bad logic, and I knew it, but while I was happy to call out bad logic in others it was harder with my own shitty choices.


    "You''re right. I fucked up. But they will, absolutely, have access to a Duminere. So how about this. You and Sige and Connie talk to them about how the Duminere works - I probably did a rotten job other than rattling off a list of possible gifts - and as part of that I''ll be the bad guy and make it super clear that the most likely option by far is a dud."


    "I am talented at knowing when I hear a falsehood and I must say, your confidence in securing this reward is reassuring. I will see if Mister Laleah is willing to educate the rescued children with me, but I have a request to make. If you cannot locate their parents, when this is over I''d like to take them with me to the Sithlan House in Twelve Towers. I was raised there, after my parents passed away, and can vouch for them."


    Hadn''t he said he came from a monastery? I didn''t know how I felt about that sort of thing. Although, Cyne seemed okay and anyway if they were pacifists they at least were unlikely to beat the kids. "Let''s say Yasna there gets frustrated and stabs one of the adults with a fork. What happens?"


    "They would give her blunted forks, and talk to her to determine the root of her anger."


    "And if Tig sneaks out to hunt squirrels and eat them?"


    "It would be frowned upon, but the monks at the Sithlan House do not believe in forcing beliefs - or in corporal punishment. He would be subjected to some disapproving looks, but little more."


    "I guess that sounds as good as anything. Yeah, no problem." And of course it was, actually, going to be a problem - I could already feel it. I was going to have to hand these kids over to what was essentially an orphanage, and that was going to trigger all sorts of feelings and I was probably going to freak out. But that was a while away, and there were randomly some days I was more able to ignore my trauma so I could cross my fingers for that.


    Katrin and Errod and I joined the kids, and it was only a little awkward. Being lectured at by Cyne in particular with Sige and Connie chiming in or disagreeing from time to time made it feel like we were... I don''t know, on some sort of field trip. I certainly didn''t feel like I was an adult on an important and exciting quest across an alien land.


    Cyne''s descriptions of the different gifts were a bit dry and technical, but Sige was of course the exact opposite. So Cyne would say something like "Fabrication converts mana to physical matter, as guided by either a template or a mental image maintained by the user. By default this form is what we call ephemeral matter which is unstable and will begin to lose coherence once the flow of mana has ceased, but with modifications to the ability through the development of the Dumine one can extend this time or even make the effect permanent. As some other planes contain ephemeral matter that degrades quickly when returned to the prime plane, fabrication is useful for importing foreign materials by granting them a more permanent form. It can also be used alongside gifts that borrow matter from elsewhere, such as growth, to enhance them and extend their normal limits."


    And then Sige would say "Fucking good money in making some kinds of metal, no fucking joke. I knew a guy that used it to make this slippery shit too, not a fucking person alive that could stand on that stuff - just fucking falling all over each other, absolutely fucking hilarious. Good for combat and for parties, am I right?"


    Sige was way more positive about the ones like affinity that weren''t particularly useful on their own. "Naw, affinity and binding and shit are fucking amazing. Yeah, sure, they''d be garbage by themselves - but you put just a little of your training into them and you can get so fucking much more out of your main ability. It''s a fucking... a force multiplier, you know? It''s not three plus three, it''s three times three. But just, like, in some limited way. And you can build it up however you want - I don''t know how it works exactly but it seems like you can pick practically anything when it comes to affinity. Materials, creatures, emotions - there was this fucking guy, had affinity with spiders and... Influence, I think? Long fucking story, but nobody messed with that guy more than once."


    "Yes. Well." Cyne looked like he wasn''t sure how to follow that one. "Let''s remember that as Calliope has mentioned it''s only roughly every one in six people that get a Dumine at all, and most of them receive only one gift. So you most likely will not need to worry about finding interesting combinations. Having one gift is only slightly less powerful than having two; there is a limited amount a Dumine can be built up regardless of how many gifts it grants - so for example, while my own abilities are more diverse because I have chosen to learn both healing and planar travel, I will never be as powerful at either of those as someone that has focused on a single specialty - even if they only have the one gift.


    "Your capacity to learn more abilities or expand on the ones you already have will grow with practice, but also with age - as the domains of your mind and soul grow so too does your lutore, which is where the Dumine inscribes abilities. The difference over a normal lifetime is small, and the Dumine caps it at a certain size, but as you are particularly young it will still be somewhat noticeable as you grow into adulthood. Normally you would be older, and would be limited in your options by the agreement made when entering the Duminere. Miss Smith''s promise of unrestricted choice is... unusual... but not unheard of. Still, I would suggest that the most common gifts such as growth and transmutation are common for a reason, and you should at least consider what would be a guaranteed benefit to your community."


    Roran was not particularly concerned about serving his community. He wanted to summon spirits, and in particular wanted to know if he could bind them to tools to make them do all his chores for him. Tig was asking questions about the radiance gift, but again rather than anything practical it seemed like he was just a bit of a pyromaniac. Some had questions about thought magic which was complicated, but the mood took a turn when I realized what they were really asking was "can I erase my memories of being with the Sahrger".


    Katrin made it clear her top priority was Comprehension for spellcasting which I knew, but she was still torn when it came to potential secondary options - Mana had good synergy, as did Thought, but she also wasn''t sure she wanted to go for the obvious choices. Errod was still certain he was destined to be the greatest fighter ever known although he had been better about keeping it to himself - especially around anyone that had seen him attempt to fight, or knew how he had lost his toe - and so he was only considering ones that would help with that. Perception, Density, and Velocity were his current front-runners. Katrin was trying to politely talk him out of Velocity, as it had a steep learning curve and she was pretty convinced he was going to injure or kill himself.


    I had this sudden terrible mental image of all of them getting duds - statistically it was likely enough. And there was still some concern about the possibility that I might not be able to get one at all, since whatever guiding force was behind magic clearly counted Connie and I as the same person for some purposes - whether or not I was somehow using her Dumine. But I set those thoughts aside since it seemed like a night for being hopeful. Eventually everyone curled up in or under the wagon and went to sleep, other than Sige who was on watch.


    "Connie," I murmured at her as I began to drift off, "how close are we?"


    "There''s a town we''ll reach tomorrow, if it''s not warded I think we can go into Nusos from there. Most small towns aren''t warded against planar travel I think, so odds are good. But Cyne says we have to wait until we get there and look around."


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Have you been to Nusos?"


    "Nah. Besetie for training reasons, and Brinkmar for... you know, world saving reasons. And Biltagiretzae which is just like, a storage unit."


    I took a moment to make sure I was speaking in English - the bracelet would translate automatically if I let it, and being half asleep already I didn''t want to slip. "I still think it''s strange we have so little to offer this world. Earth has all this advanced technology and... I don''t know, these guys mostly have it figured out. Earlier Tig said electricity seemed useless unless you were fighting someone and I wanted to say no, electricity is so useful, but... is it? I mean, the only thing I personally know how to make is a light bulb and as far as I can tell making a magic light isn''t a big deal."


    "It would still be useful in a big city where things are already competing for the low ambient mana, but... yeah, probably not worth it if that was all you were using it for. And you''d have to run the generator, and that would also be best done with magic - I think a flywheel would be really easy with runes, but surely they''ve already done that. Do you know why the Clockmaker was called the Clockmaker?"


    "Uh. He... made clocks?"


    "Yup. Before he took over the world, when everything was different languages of wild magic, he made clocks. Supposedly, anyway - it was thousands of years ago. He made totally mundane non-magical clocks, and nobody knew he had developed his own magical language. And then he somehow... the details are probably bullshit... but he somehow got to Quebristun, the plane with the longest cycle. It''s the one that makes it count as the Grand Alignment, and you basically can''t get there except on that day which is every, like... I forget in years and don''t want to do math, but it''s every fifteen thousand four hundred months. These months, the thirty-six day ones. So a long fucking time.


    "And he got in there, and the story goes that there''s this spot where the most powerful magic user would sit and they''d fight over it because whoever is there? Their magic language automatically is way stronger. Somehow. Something something common local understanding. I don''t know. And the Clockmaker goes up there with this gift, a clock obviously, and secretly it''s got all these runes in it and as soon as he gets in there - and they all think he can''t do magic, right - it supplants the other guy''s language and starts working.


    "And he locked that shit down, magically made a... copy of himself? Or split out his soul from his body? I don''t know. And even today, part of him or a copy of him is parked there and making sure the language stays the same and stays dominant. But my point, which I have totally gotten away from, is that the written version of his language - the runes and stuff - work with machines. He made clockwork stuff where as gears turned different runes would come into alignment and do different things. Like you can turn dials and have stuff trigger. It''s tricky to do right, but if you get good at it? Holy shit.


    "Katrin''s book is like that, you''ve seen how the little tile things can move. It''s actually... honestly it''s probably ridiculously valuable. I have no idea where she got it, I asked and she got all squirrely. That''s probably why they got murdered in my timeline, the wrong people saw it and decided to just take it or maybe... I''m already way off topic here but remind me to tell you about the report I read, and the monument in Spinehollow. You wouldn''t have believed me before, but now that we''ve been traveling with Mila... anyway.


    "So all the way back to what we were saying. Earth technology is possible, but at some point you''d still be better off using runes in fancy clockwork devices. You just need someone really talented, and you need a mana source. Back in the day that would have been these battery things from Brinkmar, but the place they were made got sabotaged by the baddie from the Jake Ross books. The real one, I mean. If we get a chance, once we''ve fixed shit, that would be a good thing to look into. Go in there, find a battery that still works. I could build us a mecha or a power plant or... I don''t know, make a whole fucking amusement park."


    She was starting to mumble, and was clearly falling asleep. I snuggled in, and let myself pass out. For once I didn''t have any dreams I remembered, but I woke up with that impending doom feeling I''d had back before we left the Necropolis. Even knowing it was probably just paranoia combined with the horror of watching Aestrid die I was on edge, but as the day went on and nothing happened I relaxed. Finally I got a much needed distraction later in the day when I saw a massive structure reaching across the landscape. It was enormous, arches upon arches that stretched as far as I could see.


    "What the fuck is that?"


    Sige laughed. "It''s an aqueduct. Fucking huge, right? Goes from some big fucking lake all the way to Rentat. Must have been a fucking bitch to build, though it''s way lower to the ground for most of the way."


    I''d seen some pictures of old Roman aqueducts and this was remarkably similar which made sense - arches are used for a reason, and it''s not like you''re going to get crazy and experimental with something as straightforward as an aqueduct - but it was still surreal as we approached and then traveled under it. I''d been in Phoenix since I was twelve, and even the oldest buildings I saw there were mostly under a hundred years old and totally unimpressive.


    Our little refugees were equally interested, having seen no construction that didn''t involve a treehouse for the past however many years. They were dealing with their ordeal pretty well as far as I could tell, though they were still having nightmares and Lilan insisted there was a Sahrger watching her "over there" - she was consistent about the direction, though she got confused if we asked her for any details and there was for sure nobody following us. We reached the town of Zistarne in the late afternoon, and rented a room that was - rather than something like a hotel room - just a big open room with some blankets piled on the floor. Still, it meant we didn''t have to worry about bugs as much.


    Cyne was unhappy - he said it was possible to get to Nusos from almost anywhere, but the more people you were trying to transport the trickier it was for some reason. Cyne by himself could maybe just open a random door on the first try - and he did in fact try that, just in case - but with all of us nearby he had to find the ideal setup. It should be indoors. There should be room to walk from one room to another, preferably in a continuous path rather than one that forced you to turn and go back out the way you came. The building should be one that wasn''t too unique, and the windows should be covered.


    The town of Zistarne was mostly small houses with only a few rooms, so Cyne was worried it would be a huge pain. Nusos wouldn''t be aligned for five more days though, and we weren''t waiting that long. It would be possible regardless, it might just take some time and some extra mana. Connie was thinking about selling the wagon, since we''d decided even if the next town was better it wasn''t worth the extra travel time, but it was already late and so Mila just paid for a room so we could have actual beds and try for Nusos in the morning.


    Right before turned in we got some arguably good news, which was that Zistarne was built on the ruins of a larger, older city and therefore had a stretch of road underground with connections to some disused sewers and some old basements and storage areas. Cyne said we could take a look in the morning but it was possible it would work for getting us in.


    There was no night life, no interesting shops, nothing in particular to do - and we were out of money anyway. So I went to bed early, wishing I had something to read. "Now that I know at least some of it was real I want to read the Jake Ross books again."


    "No shit," Callie replied, without bothering to open her eyes. "I tried to get some of the details from this world out of Errod but he''s... pretty spotty. Could hit a proper library at some point, once all the urgent stuff is over. But you can go see Brinkmar yourself, especially once the war is officially over. One of us has to, to get the soldiers in so they can clean up Halenvar''s last holdout guys and make sure they don''t get into that vault with the doomsday thingy. But then after that? So far as I know at that point we''ll be the only ones able to get in and out. I mean the place is cursed and shit, but either we can fix it or just not stick around too long at a time. We can treat it as our own personal clubhouse, maybe find one of those batteries we were talking about last night or just dick around in the palace."


    I drifted off with that exciting thought in my head, and my dreams were actually pleasant for most of the night. But then... there was a familiar feeling. I could see the room we were in, but I wasn''t there - someone else had taken my place, and was wearing a mask of my face. The others didn''t know it wasn''t really me. I hurried away, out of the town, and up into the hills. There, hidden away, I found four cloaked figures trekking along avoiding the road. They looked up as I approached and I could see who it was - Telen in his ever-present plate armor, the Behemoth now shrunken back down almost to a normal human size, and two other Halanvar soldiers.


    "You''ve found them?" Telen asked me. "Good. We can strike while they still sleep."


    I sat bolt upright. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I shook Connie awake, then threw one of my shoes at Errod. "We have to get up. We have to go. They''re coming."


    Sige sat up, still blinking. "Who''s fucking coming?"


    "General Telen, the Behemoth, two others. They''re in the hills, maybe fifteen minutes out. Less if he teleports them."


    Sige was up instantly, as the others were still looking around unsure of why they had been awakened. "Okay cool. Behemoth, huh? Always wanted to fight that guy. Sure he can be the size of a fucking house and heals faster than you can hurt him and is super fucking strong and everything but... I don''t know, I''m pretty sure I can take him."


    Connie had a hand on my shoulder. "How do you know this?"


    "I... don''t know. I had a dream, but I''m just... I''m certain it was real. Is real."


    She looked annoyed. "We can''t see the future. I think it was probably just a dream."


    Cyne stamped his boots on, shaking his head. "Regardless, I think we should not settle for ''probably'' in this case. I see no harm in being cautious."


    Connie sighed, but then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Better safe than sorry. Everyone up. If they''re actually that close we can''t take the wagon out of town so... into Nusos?"


    "I suppose. Hopefully this storage area in the ruins beneath the town will suffice."


    The kids looked nervous, and had their whittling knives out in shaky hands. We hadn''t truly unpacked so it didn''t take long to get moving. Cyne, Errod, Katrin, and the kids all headed to the wagon to grab some supplies while Connie, Mila, and I went to break into the ruins. Mila made short work of the door by popping the hinges out of the surrounding stone, and we hurried down the stairs.


    There was, as promised, a long hall with some side passages and little wooden doors. From Cyne''s description of how we would enter Nusos this looked fairly promising. We left Mila down there to look for the best place to walk back and forth, and headed up to find the others - just in time to see General Telen striding through the town gates.

 CHAPTER 037: The Cross-Dimensional Piggyback Choke

    For the better part of a year I lived in an abandoned office building. I''m still not totally clear on what Universal Servicing Systems did, but I do know that they left the place in a hurry - it was like they just locked the doors one day (about four years prior to me finding it, according to the desk calendars) and never came back. There was still electricity. There was a working vending machine, albeit filled with expired food, which I bought things out of using change I gathered from desk drawers. Someone had left a blanket, and a travel pillow, and there was even a janitorial closet with what was practically a shower. Probably it had been meant for filling buckets or cleaning something but it meant I could get clean with hand soap and also wash my clothes, putting the spare set in the stairwell to dry.


    It was my little slice of abandoned office heaven. I ate a lot of expired snacks, a few pizzas when I found money somewhere in the building, and even occasionally had some fast food when Tony - a friendly drug dealer that I would sometimes chat with from a safe distance - would buy extra for me. But I did occasionally need to make some money for food, and panhandling was risky because not only was I fourteen but I looked my age which meant the police would try to pick me up. Instead, I made an arrangement with a shady pawn shop and started selling things from Universal Servicing Systems when I got hungry. The guy behind the counter - Carl - offered me terrible rates and I was always nervous I''d get caught hauling things to and from the shop, but sometimes I just really needed to hit the store.


    And my nemesis was Paul. Paul wasn''t his real name, I never learned that. Paul was a security guard, not for Universal Servicing Systems but for two of the three properties that bordered it. And because of his route, and because there were only so many good places to easily get over the fence when I was coming and going (especially if I was lugging office equipment with me), Paul was always on my ass.


    I don''t think he ever really knew that I was living in the Universal Servicing Systems building, or if he did he never managed to convince anyone to root me out of there. Instead he would just lie in wait, and if he caught me cutting through one of his properties he would lunge out and try to grab my wrist. I pride myself on being sneaky, but Paul was a fucking ghost. He was overweight and when he tried to chase me he''d run out of breath almost immediately, but Paul the security guard could practically turn invisible when he stood still and he was lightning fast with that grab.


    Every time I snuck through my heart would be pounding. There was something about that arm shooting out of the shadows like a striking rattlesnake - though without the courtesy of the rattle. And it was worse, somehow, because I knew it was coming - and because sometimes it didn''t. Sometimes he wasn''t there at all, or he was on the far side of the building from the route I had chosen. It was probably really only every fifth time that he made a grab for me, but those times where I got past without incident paradoxically made me more nervous the next time. He only got me twice - the first time I bit him and slipped free, and the second time he was wearing leather work gloves. Those were a solid two weeks apart, but he hadn''t let his guard down.


    It wasn''t a trip to the pawn shop that got me, that second time - I had found a password on a sticky note, and discovered that the computers still worked even though they no longer had a network connection. On the computer I logged into I found yet more passwords stored - this was all totally against the Universal Servicing Systems data security policies according to the employee manual I found and browsed through - and within a day I had access to twelve computers with mostly boring information on them but also a few juicy hints at private lives.


    A scanned court document for a speeding ticket, some custody paperwork, a love letter. It was very exciting to me. One of the computers, belonging to Eleanor Lewis, had a note on it about having a spare key for the lockbox in the hide-a-key by her front door, and I felt like there was some slim chance it would still be there. Eleanor''s address was located on the receptionist''s computer, and I prepared to go on a quest. "You''re going to get caught," Tony said when I told him, and I rolled my eyes at him and hopped the fence and immediately got caught.


    Paul had been this lurking figure for more than six months, sometimes an exhilarating game and more often a nerve-wracking gauntlet. But in an instant, it was over. He got me. And I realized, as he handed me off to the police, that he was always going to get me eventually - there was no possible world where I could have avoided him forever. I suppose it''s not surprising that I had a little flashback to that moment as we hid from General Telen. He was going to find us, clearly. He had marched into an enemy city to get us. His soldiers had found us on the way to the Necropolis. We had ditched him by going through another plane of existence, but nope! Still found us, within a few days of us getting back on the road. He was as inevitable as Paul the security guard, but when he finally caught us it would be a sword through my chest rather than a hand on my wrist.


    I was crouching behind a rain barrel, watching Telen. He hadn''t seen me, and was just standing in the middle of the town square with the Behemoth and... chatting. There was no sign of the others. I''d thought about ducking back down into the ruins under the city, but I had been worried about getting trapped down there in a dead end and had been hoping I could somehow check on everyone else and make sure they were hiding. I still wanted to do that, but without knowing the position of the soldiers Telen had brought with him I was terrified to go anywhere. Connie was across the street from me, flattened up against a wall. She raised an eyebrow, and held up two fingers.


    I''d trained for a few days with Hugh, and Sige had showed me some wrestling moves that I had not in any way mastered, and Connie had given me some pointers on knife fighting. I was confident that I could, nine out of ten times, defeat an unarmed opponent about the same size and weight as me. I had beaten armed soldiers, and people way bigger than me, but I still felt like that was largely due to me getting some lucky shots in. Add to that the fact that these people were far from average soldiers, and it seemed clear I had no chance whatsoever in a fight. The two of them walked out of sight and I hurried over to Connie - thankfully my shoes were working once more, leaving my movement silent.


    "Telen and Behemoth just went that way. Haven''t seen the others, they could be anywhere."


    Connie glared at me. "How did you know?"


    "I told you, it was a dream. I don''t know, okay?" Our whispers felt much too loud. "Do we try to circle around to help Sige and the others? Go down to check on Mila? Run, and hope to regroup later?"


    She looked... exhausted. Not just physically, though of course I''d bounced her out of bed after only a few hours of sleep - she was still rumpled from trying to put on her traveling clothes without taking off her temporal device first - she also just looked emotionally drained. "I want to stay, they kick me out. I want to run away, they drag me back. It''s a bad fucking joke. I... I want you to run. I''ll stick around, buy some time."


    Connie straightened up, stretched, and gripped her hooked weapon tightly. "Yeah. This is fine. You go, straight that way I guess, and then... lay low for a while. If they get me, then maybe they''ll decide they''re done. I''m the one they really want anyway, I''m the one that blew up their lab and gave all that intel to Hammersmith and... they should leave you alone, maybe. Oh don''t look at me like that. I''ll try to get away or kill them or whatever, and I''ll rewind if I need to - hell, I''ll burn out my Dumine to rewind again if it comes to that, which would mean they''d need to kill me three times in a row to make it stick. But these guys... they can probably do that. I fucked up, okay? I should have stayed in Theramas with Hammersmith, let her stick me in a cage until this really was over. But you know how it is. We can''t do that. We can''t stay put." She put her bag down, and tucked it behind a broken crate. "Once they leave, you can come back for this if you make it away. It''s got my notebook, and the model of the room we found in the Necropolis."


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    I just nodded. There wasn''t anything to say. We both took a deep breath - in unison just by coincidence - and went our separate ways. And then, obviously, I circled around and followed her. Had I fallen and landed on my head at some point in the alternate timeline? How did any version of me think I was going to just run off and let my... paradox twin or whatever you want to call her get murdered? Really she should have forbidden me from running away, based on most of my life so far that would have had me on the road immediately out of spite and blind defiance. Instead, I darted from one house to another watching for the soldiers.


    I found one - not Telen or the Behemoth - looming over the rescued kids with a sword. Errod was staring at the man with absolute fury in his eyes, but the way they were standing made the situation clear; if Errod made a move, the soldier would slash down into the kids. My heart started pounding. This guy wasn''t one of the fresh recruits I''d fought with Hugh, he had magic at a minimum and possibly also magic equipment. If he hadn''t already been on guard maybe my boots would have let me charge and get enough of an attack in that I could deal with him, but with him poised to strike... I hid, watching.


    "I see how it is," Errod said, "you''re too much of a coward to face me and have to use children as a shield."


    The soldier stifled a yawn. "Eh, either way I''d be killing a child. Pressuring you to surrender is doing you a favor - there''s a chance the General will let you live. Drop the sword, come sit with the other children, and I promise I won''t slit your throat unless the General orders it."


    Errod slumped, and dropped his sword. He marched forward, and at the last second spun with a long knife in his hand - he had concealed it somehow, but his form was awful and I could see the attack coming from a mile away. The soldier grabbed him by the wrist practically without looking and twisted until the knife fell, then laughed as he sheathed his sword.


    "You''re terrible at this, do you know that? The way you were holding that sword, I was more worried you would hurt yourself than do anything at all to me. But now, well, you''re going to get hurt anyway. I think I''ll take an eye - how does that sound?"


    He reached under his cloak, presumably for a knife, and I charged. I made it about halfway to him before the whole world spun and I found myself hanging in the air. I was weightless, and no matter how I flailed around I wasn''t able to move my body closer to the buildings. There was nothing to grab onto, no way to get down.


    "Ah, I thought that might do it! When you first snuck up I assumed you would charge right away, but when you stopped... well, I was curious what it would take to override your caution."


    He gestured in an offhand way, and Errod floated up into the air as well. He still hadn''t bothered to turn and look at me. "Okay little boy, you float there and try not to hurt yourself. You can keep your eye for now, understand? You''re not who we''re here for anyway."


    Errod looked shocked and confused - clearly he hadn''t thought the man could dismiss him so easily. I thought about throwing my knife, but it wasn''t really made for that. I tried to think if I had anything else I could use, something I''d forgotten about that could somehow save me. Finally the soldier turned and examined me. "Well. You''re one of the two the witch told us about. Telen will be pleased. Are you the one that destroyed Ulren''s laboratory, or the one that killed Elbren?"


    "Neither. Or... I don''t know who Elbren is, I guess I killed a couple of you pricks."


    He nodded, and smiled. "It was cleverly done, but you won''t do the same to me. I have... protections. He tilted his head strangely and spoke into his shoulder as if it was a radio. "I have the secondary target contained. South side."


    "Well," Errod said, "this hasn''t worked like I hoped it would. I''m sorry. I really thought I could save someone."


    "It''s fine. You tried. Let''s just hope that they''ll let the kids go. I''m really sorry that I got you into this mess, Errod. You should have stayed at home."


    "We couldn''t. We had to leave, and anyway - we wanted an adventure, and to get Dumines, and... we chose this, Callie."


    The soldier clapped. "Very touching. I''m very nearly crying, it''s adorable. Now tell me, where is -"


    But he didn''t finish, because Sige materialized out of the shadows behind him and those big orange Muppet hands of his wrapped around the soldier''s head before giving it a sharp twist that somehow rotated it about a hundred and twenty degrees. We dropped, slamming into the ground so hard the air was knocked out of my lungs for a moment.


    I sat up, gasping, and stared at Sige as he lowered the soldier to the ground. He hadn''t come from anywhere. There were some shadows but they hadn''t been anywhere near large enough for Sige to hide in, and he never would have been able to get to them without being seen in the first place. Had he just somehow snuck up on someone from another plane? He looked at me and winked.


    Errod grabbed his sword and tried to sheathe it but missed and sliced his belt off. Cursing, he pulled the sheath and belt off and threw them aside and started searching for his knife, which it turned out Elba had palmed after the soldier knocked it from Errod''s grasp. I gave her a respectful nod before getting Errod''s attention. "Go. Take the kids to safety. Just hide somewhere, break into a house if you need to. Sige, we have to find Connie."


    "No!"


    I looked over, surprised at the tiny but angry outburst. It was Tig. "You came to rescue us! We should stay together!"


    Of course I hadn''t specifically come to rescue the kids, but I wasn''t about to tell Tig that. "There are more of these guys, Tig. Stay with Errod, stay safe."


    The kids all looked at each other, and muttered something in a language that sounded strangely familiar but which the bracelet didn''t translate. I could tell they were up to something, I had seen that look in the mirror too many times. How had I found so many people as crazy as I was? Connie made sense, she was me, and obviously the mercenaries were mercenaries. But Errod? Katrin? And now these kids? How was I attracting all the people with such disregard for their own safety?


    Still, they followed Errod - and not a second too soon. The Behemoth was walking towards us. He was shirtless, and the rictus grin on his face made him look like some sort of feral animal pretending to be a human. Sige laughed.


    "Aww, is this him? This is the guy everyone is so fucking afraid of? Gotta be fucking kidding me. You got an older sister you could send over, little guy?"


    And it started. Just like in Theramas, the Behemoth began to distort. His arms stretched, his back unfolded somehow, there was a terrible cracking and popping noise as he continued to grow. Sige darted in close, and while the Behemoth tried to swipe at him it seemed like his coordination was off while he was in the middle of a growth spurt - the arm moved awkwardly and even jerked some as another joint popped and expanded.


    Sige was on his back in an instant, putting him into some sort of headlock - but it was clear that couldn''t last. The Behemoth was still growing, and there was simply no way Sige would be able to hang on once he was full size. I tried to help, running close and slicing with my dagger, but a knee slammed into me and sent me rolling back with a cracked rib - and when I looked, the cut I had made was already gone.


    Sige just laughed again. "Naw, stay back kid. Just getting comfy up here..." and then the Behemoth''s eyes went wide. He reached back, trying to dislodge Sige, but it was too late - with an almost comical popping sound, they vanished leaving nothing behind. All I could do was stare at the empty spot where the two had been, waiting and hoping Sige would re-appear. But after thirty seconds or so I had to admit there was a chance he wasn''t returning - so I did the only thing I could and headed further into the town looking for Connie.

 CHAPTER 038: Sucker Punch

    "We may have been overconfident," Telen said.


    It was strange, I had been thinking of him as this faceless horror movie monster - just an empty evil suit of armor - but there was a weariness in his voice like he had just missed his bus after a hard day at work. The other soldier I''d seen in my dream stood next to him, flanked by two glowing shapes reminiscent of ghostly bacteria. They were moving, seemingly examining the objects around them by extending little pseudopods to poke at rocks or tap on the walls. It was kinda cute, but considering the circumstances I was sure they would be trying to kill me shortly. More immediately I was concerned by the sight of Katrin and Cyne, unmoving, slumped against a wall. It had taken me a while to be sure they were breathing.


    "Sir?" the soldier said, "Do you think they''ve escaped?"


    "From what you''ve pulled out of these two, no. They''re still here. But we have allowed ourselves to be spread too thin - they were supposed to be in one place, sleeping, easy for us to surround and subdue. Even with most of them being weak or untrained, I don''t like getting separated like this. The mightiest warrior can be killed by a lucky farmer if he lacks proper support. That witch has been useful, but she is... overeager."


    The soldier stood up straighter suddenly, eyes staring into the distance. "Found something, sir. South side, a little West of here. The spirit will mark the spot from above if you want to check it out. Could just be residents, it''s hard for them to exclude the people that live here - but I think it''s worth checking out."


    Telen nodded. "Very well. Good work Karstadt, let''s see if I can bring you more of them to question." And Telen vanished.


    I was about thirty feet away, crouching against some sort of raised garden bed along the side of a house. The only thing I really had going for me was my stealth, and while I wasn''t so crazy that I was going to charge motherfucking Telen in that full plate armor I was just crazy enough to want to be close; after all, if Connie or Sige or even Mila tried something I needed to be able to help.


    I''d promised Katrin that I would avoid blindly rushing into danger after that admittedly ridiculous stunt where I snuck into a building by myself and then lit it on fire while still inside, but in this case I genuinely didn''t think running away was an option - and seeing Katrin laying there made me more certain than ever. I was ashamed to admit that if it had just been Cyne I would probably not feel the same way. What can I say, I''m not a great person.


    The two glowing blobs milled around, and one of them jerked suddenly as it drifted past a low wall - it retracted its pseudopod from a hole and held a mouse there, straining and squirming. There was a tiny crunching sound, and the mouse was still. A moment later the spirit dropped it and poked at it a few times before continuing. That wasn''t super reassuring. Would it have a harder time with something as big as me? Was there a reason they weren''t just using these things to kill everyone in the town and sort through the bodies later? With Telen gone for the moment I considered attacking the solder - if he would just turn around, I could charge him and have a decent chance of catching him by surprise and hopefully once he died the spirits would disperse. But he - infuriatingly - kept his back to the building and continued to glance all around him like an actual competent member of the military in the middle of a mission. It was totally inconsiderate of him.


    Soon any chance at attack was lost, as Telen came down one of the side streets with Errod over his shoulder and hauling Mila behind him - she was wrapped in some sort of metal band and blood was pouring down her face. Poor Mila staggered as she walked, almost falling - Telen casually hauled her up and practically threw her, then followed up by chucking Errod. They both landed on the ground next to Katrin and Cyne, who didn''t stir. Telen took a moment to carefully break off the rock that had embedded itself halfway through the slit in his helmet, sighing again.


    "While I would rather have our primary objective secured, this operation is full of small surprises. First we find Cyra''s prize - even if we still don''t know what happened to her - and now we have the Demon of Tarmestal."


    I didn''t know who Cyra was, what her prize was, or what Tarmestal was - although that one sounded very familiar. Something Errod had said, I thought, but Errod wasn''t the demon of anything. Mila was the obvious alternative based on the context and she had been surprising me this trip, but even so I wasn''t sure I was ready to believe she qualified for that kind of title. Either way, it was a question for later.


    Telen nudged Errod with his foot. "The boy was trying to protect some younger children. There were too many to bother restraining them and I didn''t want to try and herd them back here."


    "Did you kill them?" The soldier only sounded curious, not horrified at the idea.


    "Not yet, though I told them I would if they moved. If we find the ones we''re looking for we can kill everyone else, otherwise we should question them first. Have you seen Henden or Tist?"


    "No, sir."


    "Then we must assume the worst." he leaned to speak into his shoulder, as I''d seen the other soldier do. "Rigela, do you see anyone leaving the city? Very good. No, stay up there."


    I increased my count from two remaining enemies to at least three. That wasn''t counting the spirit things, which I didn''t have a guess for - clearly he had a few out in the city on patrol, so going with this world''s numerological obsession I decided there were probably six. And me with no magic and only a few knives. I had to hope Sige would return, and that Connie would have some plan she was working on - where the hell was she? - because I knew I was out of my depth.


    The soldier, Karstadt apparently, placed his hand on Errod. "Tist is dead," he said, "killed by the U''rmun. But this one left before the Behemoth arrived so I can''t say what happened to him. These people are disorganized, scattered. They split up and lost track of each other immediately, they have no plan."


    "See if he knows what happened to Cyra, and see what his thoughts are on the two we''re looking for."


    The man closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. "Given Cyra''s power it may just be that he doesn''t remember clearly, but I''m not finding anything. For the targets... as with the girl, he thinks they are somehow the same person. Ridiculous. He doesn''t know how temporal magic works."


    "Perhaps," Telen said, "But there is something going on - we are losing the war, Karstadt, and it is because our enemies have information it should be impossible for them to have obtained. Tell no one of this. And... if you find the ones we seek, try to take them alive. I need to send a report back to the king, let him know what we have found. It may bring him some comfort, as it is I suspect he is considering releasing Tindelus."


    Karstadt''s whole face went pale for a moment. The name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn''t place it. Maybe something from the Jake Ross books? Not Jake Ross and the Forgotten Throne, for sure, and I didn''t think it was in Jake Ross and the Sword of Destiny. The third book, Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown... I remembered very little of. I''d lost my nice boxed set somewhere and unlike the other books I''d only gotten to read it the once. Whatever Tindelus was, it was enough to scare someone that was casually hanging out with Telen and the Behemoth.


    I quietly crept away while Telen stood with his head bowed - presumably sending his report somehow. It seemed like the best chance for me to get away, and I still wanted to find Connie and update her on what I had learned. The implied presence of someone watching from above meant I wanted to stay under the eaves of buildings as much as possible, but there was just too much space between houses for that to mean much.


    I headed back towards where we had left Mila, figuring the kids might be there if Telen had found Errod and her together. I hurried down the musty stairs into the ruins and started checking the rooms, but I hadn''t gone far before Connie smacked me on the back of the head. I felt humiliated - I hadn''t heard her coming.


    "Fuck! Oh, fuck you! Shit! Don''t fucking do that! I could have stabbed you!"


    Connie arched an eyebrow. "Unlikely. I thought I told you to get the hell out of here?"


    "And I thought you were going to fight those dickwads and buy me some time. What have you been doing? I tried to follow you but got sidetracked, and now you''re back here where we started?"


    She shrugged, and started walking further down the hall as she peeked into various rooms. "Yeah, I was following the Behemoth for a minute but then someone took a pot shot at me and I had to scramble. Then I had to go somewhere that they wouldn''t be searching for me."


    "Well, Sige took out some guy with gravity powers and yanked the Behemoth into another plane I think, but he didn''t come back from that last one. I don''t know if he''s dead or just out of mana and trapped. Telen has Katrin, Errod, Cyne, and Mila. The kids should be around here somewhere. There''s a guy with some spirit things, at least three but I''m assuming more. There''s also someone that''s watching from above, maybe on one of those fucking bat-bears or maybe just flying somehow, I don''t know. And the spirit guy can read minds some too, so he knows all about us. Telen is pretty interested, he''s sending a report to the king."


    "That''s almost all bad news," Connie said, "but good job learning all that I guess. I don''t think any of that accounts for whoever was after me, so that''s four people and then however many spirits. Against the two of us."


    "Oh, and if they catch us they''ll probably kill everyone else. If they don''t, they''ll... I guess interrogate everyone else and then kill them once they know everything."


    "Great. Cool. Fucking wonderful. Is that all?"


    "Also I think I have a broken rib, right here. Hurts when I breathe or move," I said, and then on further reflection added, "or also if I do neither of those things."


    "Well, good job killing that one spirit thingy at least. You looked super badass."


    What. "No, I saw some spirit things but I haven''t killed shit. Just... snuck around and got briefly captured."


    "Oh. Well, I didn''t get a great look. And yeah, I guess now that I''m thinking about it she had throwing knives which is very much our style but we haven''t gotten any for you yet. So. Okay, that''s good news I guess. Some chick that''s about our build is killing some of them. Probably a random local, and probably she''ll get killed pretty quickly or go back to hiding in her house, but I''ll take it. Come on, let''s see what we''re working with so I can decide if I''m going with my bad plan, or my worse plan."


    The ruins were mostly straightforward, with one big central hall and rooms on either side, but there were a few side paths and some of the rooms connected in odd ways. Some lights had been set into nooks in the walls, tiny flickering things that were no better than candles. Mila''s bag was laying in a side room, and we stood around it silently for a minute.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "So," I said, "Do you think we can do it? Can we get everyone out of this?"


    Connie sighed and leaned against the wall. "Probably not. Sorry. I really do have a plan though, and if it works we might be able to take Telen out. With him gone, and with the Behemoth gone? Well, that''s much better odds - and deprived of leadership the others might even turn tail. They worship that dude, knowing we could kill him might destroy morale. Or... or it could make them decide to do everything they can trying to avenge him. But fuck it, better than nothing."


    "Okay. Wow. What''s the plan?"


    She hesitated a moment. "You''ll see. But I need to get close, and I need you to stay back in case I need a distraction. Let''s find a good place - somewhere with multiple exits.


    We went back to one of the side rooms that had connections to other parts of the ruins and glanced it over. I pestered Connie for details of the plan, but she refused to reveal her secret weapon which made me more than a little nervous - frankly, I didn''t always trust my own clever ideas. Just as we were stepping out into the main hall again, Connie reached back and put a hand on my chest to stop me.


    "Well hello, General Telen," she said in an overly chipper tone, "And... oh, fuck. You? Shit, I forgot I hadn''t killed you yet."


    I stepped back some, and Connie walked forward. I could see her there in the flickering light, looking towards the entrance.


    "Calliope Smith, I presume?" Telen said, his voice echoing in the darkness, "Or is it Constance?"


    "It''s either, thanks. So, you''ve got me. But I''ll make you a deal. Halenvar is losing the war at this point, it''s inevitable, but you could still have a future somewhere."


    "A future," he said thoughtfully, "Yes, interesting choice of words. But I''m afraid this is where I kill you, Miss Smith."


    "Oh come now. Surely I''m more valuable alive?"


    "Yes, yes. All that information that you should have no way of knowing. All the details you''ve fed to Hammersmith for the Alliance. But it seems some of your intel is outdated, Miss Smith. You see, I''ve just spoken to Gilbrect Halenvar and he said -" Telen appeared in view suddenly, sword already stabbing towards Connie''s stomach; it plunged in and came bursting out her back, sending blood across the room, "- that he doesn''t need you alive after all. He just wants your head in one piece."


    I stumbled, disoriented, as Connie and I stepped towards the entrance of the room.


    "Fuck, that hurt. Shit. Okay cool, cool, plan B time. I uh. I have no time to do the plan A version, and also I don''t think it would work anyway if he''s that eager to stab me."


    Good, that plan sucked. "Well let''s run! Come on!"


    "Nope. No. Sorry, Callie. We haven''t found any other exit, remember? No, it''s go time. Head that way, get as close to the entrance as the side passage allows. I''ll deal with Telen and then when they charge towards me to see what happened you can slip out behind them."


    "Who was with him? The spirit guy?"


    "No, someone I killed in the other timeline. It''s fine. A Klunlesh I think, that''s not important right now. Callie. I... I know this is some real narcissist shit but I love you. Okay? And I... I''m okay. With this. Things are going to be better with Telen gone, alright? You''ll get magic, and the war will be over, and... you''re golden."


    I flipped her off with both hands. "Oh shut up. You''re not going to die, stop with the farewell speech thing. I''m not letting you do something stupid."


    "Oh, dummy. I''m not asking permission." And she punched me, right in my cracked rib. I gasped, and she shoved me towards one of the doorways - I caught myself on it but hit the rib again and the pain was so intense I forgot to breathe for a moment. Through a fog of agony I heard Connie say, "Well hello, General Telen. And your little friend."


    I straightened up and took a few careful breaths. Stepping out into the room to try and stop Connie didn''t seem productive, as it would probably just get both of us killed. So the logical move seemed to be going towards the entrance of the ruins via the side tunnels like she had told me to, but then attacking from behind before Connie set whatever idiotic plan she had into motion.


    I hurried along, knowing that I only had seconds before Telen would stab her again - it was possible she could drag the banter out more the second time around, but probably not by a lot. I came to a doorway that looked back into the room but I couldn''t see Telen - not without him seeing me as well. Instead I flattened up against the wall next to the doorway and looked over at Connie, to see if I could tell what she was doing and maybe interrupt it.


    She was smiling, and had just said something about Hammersmith I didn''t quite catch. Her weapon was on the floor by her feet, so that wasn''t part of the plan. One of her hands was partially behind her back, but I had trouble imagining what she could have back there that would threaten Telen. There was something, though, dangling from her wrist... It was one of the chains from her time mana device. She was doing something with it, and I froze in horror as I realized what her plan was. Telen appeared next to her, slamming his blade through her again. She smiled, all teeth, and a searing green light filled my vision.


    When it cleared, I was in a boring-looking room with a sofa, a bookshelf - it was clearly on Earth.


    "Did it work?" Connie asked. She was sitting on the couch, pointing a remote control at the television on the wall - which didn''t show any sign of turning on. She was blurry around the edges, or... no, there was some strange effect where any part of her that moved was translucent and left a copy of itself behind for a moment. She lowered the arm with the remote but it was still there, and then followed at a delay before they melded back together.


    "I don''t... wait, what?"


    "I''m assuming it worked. Fuck, I hope you were out of range."


    "Yeah," I said as I carefully sat down next to her, "I think I was. Where are we, exactly?"


    "Bill''s house," she said, "See? No fiction on the bookshelf. What a stick in the mud."


    "So this is from the fake memories?"


    She tossed the remote down, and sighed. "Yeah, I guess. Feels good here though."


    I hesitated, but had to ask. "Are you dead?"


    "I don''t know. I guess? That''s if I even can die - I mean we''ve got the same soul, right? Who fucking knows how that shit works. Anyway, the important thing is I took that motherfucker out with me. He''s got this fancy entropic armor to shield him from lightning and fire and whatever, and he can teleport around, but what do you fucking do if someone ages you a thousand years all at once, huh? Get fucked, Telen."


    She got up and walked into the kitchen, all ghostly as half of her lagged behind. Now that they were apart, I could see something was wrong with one of them. It looked... different. Like an entirely different person. The kitchen was somehow also a diner, in that way that dreams mash up various locations - one of those places with tons of chrome and the red vinyl seats. "Let''s find the memories of something delicious, huh? I''m craving a chocolate milkshake for some reason."


    Was this happening? If so, was there still a way to fix things? "You can''t be dead. You have to rewind time."


    "Too late!" She hiked her pants down and showed me her hip, and I could see there was no Dumine there. "And anyway, the whole point was to kill that guy. Why would I reverse it? Shit, I''m not even sure you''re real. You''re probably just my brain making up stuff as I die. I''d test you, tell you to say something only you would know, but with us being the same person that''s a little tricky. Plus even if you did I''d have to confirm it somehow... hmm."


    "This is serious! You can''t... this can''t be happening."


    "That''s what I''m saying. You can''t be here, so this must not be real, so you must be a figment of my imagination as I die. That, or there''s something fucked up going on because we''re kinda the same person which would actually be super cool. Like how you can remember stuff when I rewound time. This could be some related shenanigans, which might mean I can haunt your ass. But probably not."


    There was a sound, like a distant note from a bell that just kept growing and deepening as it went on. I could tell that it had been there before, somewhere beyond hearing, but it was rapidly getting harder to ignore. Light began to stream through the curtains, getting brighter and brighter.


    "What''s happening?"


    "How the hell should I know? I''ve never died before. Also I just dumped a shit ton of unfocused temporal mana into the middle of that room, no telling what kind of shit that might do. I mean, in addition to killing me and Telen."


    The sound was so loud and deep now I could feel it in my bones, and the light coming through the windows was unbearable. I ran over to Connie and hugged her as tight as I could.


    "Don''t go."


    "It''s okay."


    The whole house was shaking. The windows shattered, light pouring through like a tidal wave. Connie seemed totally unbothered.


    "DON''T GO!"


    "It''s okay. It''s all just... okay."


    The light began to fade as I took a step back and shielded my face. I heard Telen''s armor collapse to the ground and looked, but my eyes were still recovering. I thought I saw someone standing there for just a moment and was sure it was Connie, sure that at the edges of the silhouette I could make out the temporal rig she''d been wearing, but as I blinked and squinted there was just a puff of dust rising at the spot where the two had stood. Not only had I not gone anywhere, it was clear that no time had passed at all since the flash started - certainly not enough to have a conversation with anyone.


    Forgetting the plan entirely I ran forward to get a closer look just in case she was somehow okay, but a crackling whip of electricity wrapped around me before flinging me into one of the stone walls. I saw someone walk past me - the wild mage with the wooden mask. She stopped a few feet short of where Connie and Telen had been standing and held a hand up as if feeling the temperature of the air. Then she backed up and turned to look at me, tilting her head.


    "Fuck you, lady," I said, toughness badly hindered by my position laying in a heap, "Your boss is dead. If you stick around, you''re next."


    She laughed, and came closer. Her hands crackled with lightning. I rolled over onto my hands and knees, trying to look like I couldn''t move any faster and not make it obvious that I was preparing to stand as quickly as possible. With one hand I grabbed at the dust around me and as her footsteps got close enough I flung it as I tried to lurch to my feet.


    At least a little of the dust must have made its way through the eye holes of her stupid mask - she stepped back and shielded her face, and then as I threw myself forward and swung my knife at her she unleashed the lightning. I felt my blade connect, but weakly - and I fell twitching to the floor. I rolled over to face her, realizing as I did that I had lost my knife, and saw that I''d come extremely close to killing her. There was a red line right across her throat but it was shallow; she clamped one hand to it, but her body language didn''t seem particularly concerned.


    I was exhausted, physically and mentally. There was no way I could sit up, let alone stand again. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel some spell rip through me, but instead heard footsteps pounding on the ground coming closer and then felt a body slam into mine followed by another, and another. I found the strength to open my eyes, and saw all five of our little refugees clustered around me - whittling knives in shaking hands. The wild mage shook her head, and for the first time I heard her speak - her voice was a bit distorted from the pressure she was exerting on the wound, but her words were clear enough.


    "You don''t need to protect her, children," she rasped, "She can''t hurt you anymore."


    Elba shook her head. "She didn''t hurt us. She saved us from the Sahrger. She''s going to help us find our parents."


    "No, child. She lied to you. You''re not free from the Sahrger, can''t you see? She will never help you, never let you go back to your family. Not so long as she is alive. Move aside."


    I reached out and grabbed Elba''s hand and pushed it down, pointing the knife towards the ground. "Kids. Go. Cyne will take care of you, he has a place. And they''ll help you find your parents. It''s okay."


    Tig spit at the wild mage. "No! You brought us back to our plane, and you said you were going to help us get magic, and... and... no! You can''t have her!"


    The wild mage looked at the kids, and then at me, and then back at the kids. "I don''t understand. Why would you... no. It doesn''t matter. You have to die."


    She reached out to point at me again, and I could see the energy gathering in her palm. The mage grabbed Tig roughly and tossed him aside, then tried to do the same with Yasna but found that she was gripping my pants with her other hand. Roran tried to tackle the masked woman, and while he didn''t do a great job it forced her to step back.


    Thankfully, whatever her deal was the wild mage seemed to draw the line at hurting children and refused to attack while they were in her way. She tried to line up a shot past them but I rolled, just barely enough, and the blast cracked the stone where my head had been. Then she stopped and turned towards the entrance, sighed, and wrestled the kids off of her as she ran away deeper into the ruins. Sige came bursting in a second later, one arm dangling limply and matted with blood.


    "What the fuck happened down here?" he asked, staring at the spot I had been trying to avoid looking at - the pile of armor, bits of ruined equipment, and dust - the only things that remained of Telen and Constance.

 CHAPTER 039: A Bad Break

    "What the fuck happened down here?" Sige asked, staring past me at the place where Connie and Telen had stood only a minute earlier. Not waiting for an answer he hauled me to my feet, and I winced at the pain.


    "Connie killed Telen. She''s..." I saw the dust in the basement corridor stirring in some small draft, imagined inhaling it as it drifted by... The lights seemed to dim, and I felt myself getting dizzy. No. No, she had a plan. That wouldn''t have been the plan. Hadn''t I spoken to her, somehow? Hadn''t I seen someone still standing for a split second afterwards? She''s fine. "... going to be back soon. There''s more, a wild mage and someone up in the air, and a guy with some spirit things - he has the others captured."


    Sige looked from me to the pile of debris and back again, concerned. Then he turned towards the kids. "Okay guys, you stay here and hide. Keep away from the... the armor and stuff. Callie why don''t you... uh..."


    "I''ll come with you. I can show you where he is." My voice sounded flat, distant. The room was still swimming slightly, and darkness kept creeping in around the edges like I was staring at the world from the end of a tunnel. I stumbled to the stairs and up into the fresh night air, and led Sige towards the other soldier.


    Sige told me to stay put and snuck around the side, but I only waited a moment to start walking again. "Karstadt!" I called - that''s what Telen had referred to him as, right? "Telen is dead. Why don''t you report to him, like a good soldier?"


    He pulled out a sword and gestured with his other hand, sending two of the spirit things towards me. He looked nervous. Good. I reached down deep inside myself, and felt something. Was it a connection to Connie''s Dumine, wherever she was? Or something older? There was a faint glimmer of memory, some flicker of a car swerving and my mother screaming at me. As I began to speak it felt like my voice was coming from somewhere else and I knew that there was power woven into every word.


    "I hope you have an aneurysm and die, right now."


    My blood turned to ice. I was colder than I''d ever been, like the warmth had somehow been sucked from my body and could never return. I stumbled, but forced myself to stay upright and watch the soldier as his eyes widened in horror. He knew. Then there was a flash from something around his neck, and he put a hand over it reflexively before looking down at the pendant and sighing in relief. The spirits hit me and everything went dark.


    I came to some time later. It was night, and I was in the back of the wagon. There were others clustered around me, sleeping, but their body heat wasn''t helping - I was sweating a little, but deep down I was still cold like my heart had frozen solid. I drifted off again. The next time I woke I was in an actual bed. Katrin and Cyne were arguing about something but while the individual words were clear my brain couldn''t assemble them into anything meaningful. Katrin noticed that my eyes were open and came over, tried to talk to me slowly and gently as if she wasn''t the younger one. I didn''t respond.


    At some point I ate. At another point I used the bathroom. People were around me, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Twice they guided my back inside to the bed when I was just staring at the stars. Finally, what could have been hours or days later, I was being led back outside to the wagon and I realized I''d spoken.


    "Is Connie back yet? She didn''t tell me her whole plan. Is she back?"


    The looks of pity that passed between them told me what I already feared was true, but there was still some tiny spark of hope burning until Mila reached her hand out - there was Connie''s Dumine, and Mila had formed some stone around the edge so a leather cord could be strung through. I took it and put it on, then silently let them lead me the rest of the way to the wagon where I curled up and fell asleep.


    And when I woke up next, I was fine. A switch had flipped, and the whole world seemed muted and dull. I stretched, climbed down and waved off the concerned questions while I relieved myself off in the trees - I had to pause a moment to pull a thorn out of my foot because I hadn''t seen my shoes, but it didn''t hurt much as I trudged back and went to the fire to see what was for breakfast. Errod cautiously approached as if I might shatter.


    "Are you okay, Callie?"


    "Yeah. I''m fine. You know how it is, I''ll probably be a wreck again tomorrow but... man, Connie said she lost emotions completely at some point and right now I''m so looking forward to that. They keep you from thinking clearly, they waste your time, they... it''s a mess. Good riddance."


    Errod frowned. "Don''t say that."


    "See, but if you didn''t have empathy you wouldn''t care if anyone else had it either. It''s not actually a requirement. Have you heard of the golden rule? Do to others what you would want them to do to you. I''m sure you have it here, tons of different cultures on Earth came up with it independently."


    "Yeah. Yeah, we have something like that."


    "The thing is, I can still follow that rule even if it''s just me being pragmatic, right? I don''t want people to steal from me, so I''ll respect property. I don''t want people to hurt me, so I won''t hurt them. But I don''t have to like them, or feel emotional about it. And look at the alternative - how long was I a blubbering mess?"


    He shrugged. "Not actually that long. We left town and found some little farm, stayed there for the rest of the night. Then we traveled all day. By the end of today we should be at the next town, and then we were going to decide if the uh... well, if the plan is still on."


    "Of course it is," I said, rolling my eyes, "What, we''re going to go this far and then stop? Fuck that. We... oh, shit. Shit shit shit. We have to go back. Connie''s bag, with the map and everything. It''s hidden back in that town."


    Sige''s voice came booming from the other side of the wagon. "Naw, got that."


    Cyne had - very carefully, and using a long pole - sifted through the debris and located all the items that had survived. When he didn''t find the map, he sent everyone searching - Katrin tried to ask me about it and while I couldn''t remember the conversation I apparently confirmed it was hidden somewhere. I was in no shape to elaborate, but they''d found the bag after promising the kids a reward. Cyne handed it over, and I poked through to confirm everything was there. There was the disassembled ''key'' to the room we were going to, Connie''s journal, some miscellaneous items of less importance like a hairbrush and mirror, and a strange greenish metal coin - actually round, unlike all the currency I''d seen.


    I flipped through the journal and had a sneaking suspicion the bookmark had been moved; last I saw Connie looking at it right before bed there was a diagram of some kind on the page, but the marker was now in a section with just text. It was always possible I was mistaken, or that Connie had flipped through it after that without me seeing, or even that the bookmark had just fallen out by mistake and been shoved back in - but it seemed most likely that somebody got curious and tried to read it. Bad news for them, the whole thing was in English.


    One by one everyone gathered around the fire and Errod served up the bowls of mush he''d been cooking - it was something between oatmeal and snot in consistency, but it had a pleasant sweetness to it that made the texture worth tolerating. I could see that Katrin and Mila were shooting looks at me and then each other, some mixture of pity and concern, but Cyne was businesslike as usual and Sige just had that ridiculously wide square-toothed Muppet grin.


    "Okay," he said, "so now that everyone''s up we''ve got some fucking loot to sort through. Callie, you''ll be pleased to know I took out the fucker that put the whammy on you - thanks for that fucking top notch distraction. Saw someone flying off hanging from a big round thing, never got a great look at them, and the kiddos said they saw a fucking caster with a mask who Errod tells me is someone you''ve run into before but uh, no sign of her. So probably those two ran for it, if they''d planned on fucking with us they wouldn''t have waited this long.


    "We got Dumines from the three assholes that we took out, those should be worth selling. Got Telen''s armor which is worth a fucking pile of cash, not only am I pretty sure it''s lurto azine - that alloy is fucking hard to make - but also there''s multiple bounties on him and between the armor and his Dumine we should be able to collect. The sword is presumably either his fucking ancestral blade or Halenvar''s if he''s the bearer, and either way you can just feel it''s got some power. Speaking of blades, I heard you complain about not having the right kind of knives - found some throwing knives laying around, looks like someone was flinging them during that fight though I''m not sure who.


    "Most of the other shit looks like it''s broken in one way or another. Several of them were uh... tingly... and likewise we had to warn the mayor that the whole hallway down there needed to be sealed shut. If anyone asks we blamed it on Telen, because technically it''s a war crime. Your sister''s metal harness thing was completely fucking melted, not surprisingly. The only other thing that looks okay is a device that - if it''s what I think it is - was made to specifically enhance Telen''s teleporting. Pretty fucking useless for anyone else, but there''s always the chance we can sell it somewhere.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "Let''s see. Both of the normal dudes we killed had anti-enchantment charms, the one on the spirit guy was burned out but the fucking gravity guy''s charm is still good if anyone wants it. Spirit guy also had a glove that''s magic, not sure what it does but it doesn''t fit me and it doesn''t have the look of a combat thing so I''ll pass on it. Gravity guy had a belt, pretty basic design I''ve seen before because of some of the fighting competitions I''ve been in - it''s like an anti-slip thing to give you better traction, it fucking glues you to the ground a teeny bit. I guess it makes sense for gravity stuff, that ability is fucking notorious for accidentally hitting yourself.


    "They all had communication devices but I smashed those, we only had the one end so they weren''t useful anyway and I wasn''t sure if they could use them to fucking listen in on us. Oh and then some money. Zistarne is under a Free States charter, which means Halenvar military shit makes them fair game, which means the money and loot from the guys I killed goes to me and the shit from Telen goes to... uh, goes to you. But I''m fine with you tossing it in for now and figuring out cuts when the fucking job is done."


    Cyne cleared his throat. "On that topic... I have high hopes for the town ahead, and based on the view from the next hill I would expect us to reach it in just a few hours - had the road been in better shape we could have slept there last night. That means we can proceed into Nusos today if it is acceptable for everyone else."


    All eyes turned to me. "Perfect, no point in delaying. In fact if we''re being tracked by Halenvar it''s best if we get off this plane as quickly as possible. Let''s see if we can sell the wagon and, I don''t know, if they have a bath house or something it could be nice to get cleaned up before the final leg of the journey. But then yeah, let''s get moving."


    I went to wash my bowl but Errod took it - for a moment I wasn''t sure why and then I remembered. Right, they were all going to treat me like I was fragile for a while... though I wasn''t sure why not washing my own bowl would help.


    I made it maybe ten feet before Cyne stopped me. "I''m very sorry for your loss." The platitude translated almost exactly, unlike a lot of the sayings which had to be sort of coaxed into a familiar form by the bracelet. I nodded and mumbled something, and then Cyne nodded back, and I could tell something was awkward - I just wasn''t sure what.


    "Do you... is there something else you wanted to say?"


    "Miss Smith. Calliope. I have lost several people that were close to me, over the years. And while each of us deals with that in our own way, even the strongest minds are... injured... by that kind of event. I am not judging you for being largely comatose over the past day, but if you have a relapse... we discussed, early on, that I would be authorized to give orders while we were traveling through Nusos. I would like that authority to be extended - right after the attack you were unable to lead us to the location of the model, and had we not found it before someone else the entire job would have been over. I would like to be informed of the details that have been kept from us, and I would like it if you told the others that I am second in command for the remainder of the job in case you find yourself... compromised. I only ask this with your best interests in mind."


    "Katrin is second, but she''ll defer to you anyway if it comes to that. As for the details..." Connie had kept it secret. Did it matter, at this point? She''d wanted to make sure none of the mercenaries betrayed us, and that they didn''t spread rumors. But I wasn''t particularly concerned about betrayal now that we''d been working together, and there would be no way for anyone to find out and beat us there now, right? Unless Cyne got a message out before taking us to Nusos and then... what? Deliberately ran us in circles? No, he''d need to get the key - or a copy of it - to someone as well, and the town we were about to stop in was not only essentially random but by necessity was too small to have planar wards up which also meant getting word to people from there would be next to impossible. Hell, they''d find out soon regardless - and they''d already not turned us over for the bounty.


    "Yeah. Okay. So, before I tell you this I need you to know I have a contract written up that... I can''t tell you how I know this, but I can guarantee the terms of this contract will be accepted by the kingdom of Erathik. The contract will make us all rich, I''ll probably put something in there for the kids but regardless this is going to be the most profitable job you''ve ever done as long as I get to handle it."


    He smiled. "Miss Smith, even if I were the type to betray my employer - and I am most certainly not - we all work for Mama Carnage, who has us under a binding oath. I would be incapable of doing anything to harm or steal from you except under the most extreme circumstances - if you, for example, were to try to kill the children I could intervene and break the contract, but even then I would not be free to discuss where we were going. You have nothing to worry about."


    I resisted to make a joke about how him intervening would be a stern lecture while he watched me do whatever I wanted. I was pretty proud of my restraint. "Yeah. Okay, well. We''re going to a treasure vault owned by a king and he kept it such a secret that when the kingdom fell and Erathik absorbed it they never found the place, probably weren''t even sure it existed."


    "So you''re expecting to find artifacts that still hold their power?"


    My understanding was that artifacts were just magic items that were made in some special difficult way or using exotic materials or something - probably more powerful, but only because people rarely wanted to go to that much trouble to make something simple. Whether or not it was real or would qualify, I kept picturing the Sword of Destiny from the Jake Ross books - assuming it wasn''t bullshit, Jake had cleaved through a castle wall in a single swing in Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown.


    "Well we do hope to find some good artifacts, yeah. But that''s not all that is hidden in the vault. There is... there''s a Duminere down there."


    Cyne went pale. "Any kingdom would... they would kill for exclusive access to an otherwise unknown Duminere. You said this is in Erathik, but... with it hidden, its location could be sold to anyone - anywhere - and so long as they were careful they could maintain control over it. Hmm. Yes. I see why you were reluctant to tell me, though at some point I would have found out regardless. This is... what are the terms?"


    "I don''t have the energy to go through the whole contract with you right now, but it''s a lot of money and a certain number of free passes per year with no strings attached so you can send family or friends through - or sell them to make more money. There''s a little more, full citizen status in Erathik and a monthly stipend in case someone blows all their money on something stupid. Some clauses about what happens if we die, too. It''s very solid. It was written by some of the best lawyers on the continent." In another timeline, for a different group of explorers that originally found the place. Which meant I already knew the terms were acceptable, though I was prepared for Erathik to feel the need to haggle some anyway. Cyne nodded to himself, still thinking through the ramifications, and I headed over to the wagon.


    "Hey, where are my shoes?" I''d flipped over all the blankets and looked in the bags. No sign of the silent moccasins, and I wanted to spend some time walking alongside the wagon to stretch my legs. Sige came over, still with that grin, and clapped me on the shoulder so hard that I nearly fell over.


    "Not a chance, boss. They don''t have a capacitor which means they''re pulling your mana, and you nearly fucking killed yourself the other day. You hired me to protect you, so the shoes are off limits. If I could''ve found the latch on that fucking bracelet I''d have taken it too."


    "I... fine. Sure. I feel okay though."


    "Naw, that''s bullshit. You just think you feel okay because now you don''t feel like you''re fucking dying. But the injury is there, guaranteed. You ever broke a bone? That''s your lutore right now, the whole core of you is cracked. Take it easy. You never practiced, growing up?"


    I shook my head.


    "Yeah. I get it. My people, we can bend space. That''s our thing. You turn left, but you end up going straight anyway. Thing is, I was never great at it and I never liked it for some reason. Never practiced, always wanted to travel off-plane instead. We talked about hitting a Duminere, you and your friends and the kids. If you can swing it that''s fucking great, but keep in mind it''s a risk. Humans, well, they aren''t much worse off if they get a dud. They lose out on wild magic, and it''ll take them a little longer to learn to cast spells - but they''ll still be just as strong at the ones they can learn. The other races like us? We''re fucked. We lose our innate powers, so getting a dud... shit, it''s bad."


    "I''m human, Sige."


    He winked. "You don''t want to tell me what plane you''re from, that''s fine. That''s your business. But you''re not from this world - not with whatever you''re flinging around. Now I''ll be honest, I can''t think of any race that has prophetic dreams, but it wasn''t wild magic and it wasn''t a spell so that narrows things right the fuck down, doesn''t it? And maybe there''s something I don''t know, some fucking hidden village in a distant corner of one of the planes everyone thinks is uninhabitable or... I don''t know, some combination of parentage from two different planes that gives you future sight and whatever you did to that fucking spider heart guy.


    "And I guess if it''s something obscure like that you might want to keep it close, not have everyone up in your personal shit. So that''s fine. I''m not asking. I mean, Cyne probably knows if anyone does since he''s the fucking expert on that shit, but he seems like he wouldn''t say anything either so.... Anyway, just think hard before you walk into that Duminere, you can''t take that back."


    He walked away, whistling. I hadn''t factored my dream into things yet, but Sige did have a point - and my previous thoughts about being linked to Connie''s Dumine seemed shaky since I had felt myself use whatever power it was after she was...


    If it was just that people from Earth had innate magic like people from other planes, even if it wasn''t all of us or even if we usually never built up enough mana to use it, that would check out. I couldn''t learn magic from the spellbook. I''d for sure done... something... magical. It seemed straightforward enough.


    So was it worth trying to develop those powers rather than going to the Duminere? It seemed like I was virtually guaranteed to get three different categories of magic since Connie had, and I was hard pressed to think of anything any conceivable natural magic could do that some combination of three gifts couldn''t replicate anyway. So... the Duminere still seemed like the right call. But it was something to think about.

 CHAPTER 040: The Great Indoors

    The town of Halganfast was perfect. Not just for getting to Nusos, although Cyne assured us that the design of the inn would make that trivial, but just in the sense that it was a ridiculously idyllic little city. There was a ring of orchards around it, four or five different types of trees in neat rows, and then a densely packed inner town made from what appeared to be a similar pale stone to Theramas. The rooftops, however, were made from moss-covered thatch and reached all the way to the ground on the sides so that it looked like each building was just an oddly pointed hill.


    To complete the image quite a few of them had a family of goats perched on top, oblivious to the steep slope - they seemed to wander the town freely, although they had metal collars with symbols that indicated who each one belonged to. As we wandered the town I got a good close look at some of them and so far as I could tell they were identical to Earth goats - though I had to admit I''d never studied one close enough to say for sure.


    It had taken us a little longer than expected to get there and I still had some things on my to-do list, so when I found out we were going to need to pay the inn to use it for our entry into Nusos anyway I made the executive decision to spend the night and cross over in the morning. I requisitioned the money we''d taken from the dead Halenvar soldiers and got everyone baths, and then set out to buy some new non-magical boots.


    The smell of the leather when I entered the cobbler''s shop knocked me back a step - I''d always loved the smell in moderation, but this was strong enough that it was definitely unpleasant. Still, the shop was clean and organized, if a bit cramped. There were racks of shoes that had been partially made, but unlike what I was used to from Earth it was assumed all the customers would want them custom fitted. When I explained that we were only passing through and asked how quickly he could be done, the cobbler got a very serious look on his face and explained that he could do a rush job but didn''t want me blaming poor workmanship if it wasn''t up to my standards. With how somber he was I suddenly had an image of some crazy fantasy version of Yelp reviews or something.


    He took my measurements and got to work, and I headed for the door before something stopped me. Something about getting new shoes. The memory surfaced easily and clearly enough that I was certain it was one of the real ones despite involving Bill. It was the day we met. I had been picked up by the cops for being on the loose during school hours - they thankfully hadn''t realized my pockets were full of stolen candy - and after ignoring my very detailed story about being home schooled and doing some project mapping the neighborhood they radioed back and forth until they''d determined where my group home was. I hadn''t been there in a few days, but as soon as I was back Bill showed up to see me.


    Bill had walked into that group home and asked for me and when I came over to him he actually shook my hand and handed over a business card. I was thirteen and had already gone through a lot of case workers, so I just laughed and tossed the card aside. I couldn''t take him seriously. He was just... too much of a boy scout. He wasn''t quite condescending, he didn''t talk down to me like some case workers had, but it still had the sound of a character on a badly-written television show. I figured it would be about fifteen minutes before the smiling "good to meetcha, pal" act fell apart, but instead he just kept it up the whole time I knew him - more than a year. And that first time, he actually sat with me despite my attitude and seemed to listen.


    When I told him I hated my therapist and didn''t want to go, he said "Yeah, I saw you have Mr. Allan. He tries his best, but I think he''s in the wrong line of work. I can get you moved, no promises that the next one will be better but, well, with therapists you have to just keep trying until you find a good one."


    That was it, he just casually and fairly politely said "yeah that dude sucks at his job, let''s fix this" and then - strangest of all - he followed through and patiently forced them to change my therapist three times over the next year until I got one that was actually pretty great. But it was the end of that first meeting that really made an impression.


    I got up to leave, and he called me back with a frown on his face. He was so polite, so proper, that I assumed he was annoyed at me for... I don''t know, not saying goodbye in the right way or something. Instead he said, "Calliope, do you mind if I take a look at your foot for a minute?"


    And he poked at my shoe, and frowned more, and called Mrs. Carol over. "Mrs. Carol, Calliope''s case file says she''s been at this group home for three weeks - is that correct?"


    "Well she was brought here that long ago, yes, but she hasn''t spent a full three weeks here. She keeps sneaking out."


    "Yes, I saw that. But my question is... what happened to her shoes?"


    Mrs. Carol looked at my shoes, confused, and then looked back at Bill. "She''s wearing them."


    "Okay. I see. Well, listen, those shoes are at least a size too small and are about to come apart on the sides. I''m just disappointed, I had hoped in three weeks you would have had time to get her some proper footwear. I know you''re busy though, I know you do a lot of hard work here. But I just worry that long term it could be doing some real damage."


    "Well we... um. I can check if..." and I knew the end of the sentence, she was going to check and see if any girls had left behind a slightly larger pair of shoes - that''s always how it worked, you got the leftover used up ones that fit, or the nicer donated ones that didn''t. But Bill cut her off.


    "Hey, no rush. I''m not trying to put you in a tough spot. I''m sure you''re working on it. Oh and you know, just a thought, I recall this group home is franchised through Shadespring and they have a policy about life skills outings, right? Where you take everyone to the mall or the grocery store? That''s a policy at the corporate level, so I''m sure you''re doing that."


    Mrs. Carol looked nervous.


    "Well here''s my idea," he continued, "I know Calliope has an ISP in place for her behavioral issues and it includes some community interaction goals. I''m sure you''re keeping up on those hours, but it seems to me you could kill two birds with one stone - maybe take all the kids to the shoe store and let them go shopping."


    I could see her mind spinning. My Individualized Service Plan had been signed off on by someone ages ago and had never come up since, nor did this group home ever take us anywhere - surely she didn''t want to get in trouble for skipping anything, but on the other hand the cost of shoes for everyone would be outrageous. Looking back, I suspect Mrs. Carol had probably been skimming money. She muttered something, and Bill just kept smiling.


    "Well, I should get going. Hey, Calliope, it was good to meet you. You know, I''m going to be in the area the day after tomorrow - maybe I''ll stop by and say hi."


    And he did, and he complimented me on my nice new shoes. It was a little thing, and it wasn''t like the other shoes even made my toes hurt that badly, but it had been a long time since anyone had done anything like that for me. I had a lot of adults telling me they were on my side, but they said it while sighing - "Calliope, I''m on your side here but you need to stop..." whatever. Running away. Stealing. Throwing knives at the walls. They rarely if ever made me believe they were on my side in any way that mattered.


    And Bill, well, not only had he pulled an "I''m not angry I''m just disappointed" on the person running the group home, but he had actually come back just to follow up on it. That was incredible - case workers showed up once a month, because that was how often they were required to do so. I guess even that didn''t used to be the rule but they lost a few kids. So typically they''d come breezing in near the end of the month, ask you how you were doing, pat you on the head, and bolt. I didn''t really even hold that against them, it''s not like I wanted to have that meeting more than once a month either - and to the extent that I understood anything at thirteen I knew they were overworked and underpaid. But still, he had come twice in one week just to make sure I had new shoes.


    That was the sort of thing you remembered.


    As I always did when I thought of Bill, I took a moment to check myself. Was I forgetting to be a decent person? Was I holding up my end of the social contract? Was I, in short, being an asshole? Hmm. Had I thanked the cobbler? No. I did that, and he smiled. Yeah, that had been the right thing to do - but there was something else that tiny voice was yelling at me. What would Bill do? Oh. Right.


    "Hey. Uh. If I bring five kids in here, can you throw some shoes together for them? They don''t need to be fancy, just... they should have proper shoes."


    He kept it simple for our little refugees, giving them some nice sandals. He had existing platforms made from something a lot like cork, so he just needed to trim the leather pads that went on top and attach everything - it was a huge improvement over their current footwear, which were basically just long strips of leather wrapped around in a complicated way. Those had been good enough so far but were probably hell to march in, and since we couldn''t bring the wagon into Nusos the sandals would probably save us from needing to take a lot of extra breaks. Part of me wanted to roll my eyes at the fact that the nice thing to do was also the pragmatic thing - again - but I settled for just making a mental note that the little voice in my head continued to be worth listening to.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I snuck out that night and climbed the roof of the inn so I could see what the appeal was for the goats, and man, it was actually pretty great. I stared up at that crazy moon for a while, and was even joined by some hooved friends at one point although they kept their distance. I finally had to clumsily scoot my way down when I felt myself drifting off to sleep, since I didn''t want to roll all the way down and hurt myself if I actually passed out up there. The bed was only slightly more comfortable since it was stuffed with straw, but I''d slept on much worse.


    After a night of watching Connie crumble to dust and bones in my hands over and over, I woke up excited to be visiting yet another plane. I was used to nightmares and actually felt fairly rested, so I only took a few minutes to stop staring at the ceiling and hyperventilating. Mini panic attack over, I had a light breakfast and joined the others in the common area to get started - Cyne had me pay the staff to stay out of sight, so it was just the ten of us.


    "We are about to enter Nusos," Cyne said, "so I need you all to understand what to expect. We will be traveling through various hallways and rooms, and at each turn our goal is to end up somewhere more similar to our final destination. This similarity can be in appearance, or it can be more about the feel of the place. We may need to back up at some point and try a different approach. I will tell you what to picture, and you must hold those thoughts in your mind. If your mind wanders it may slow us down, and if you picture a different location entirely it can prevent us from ever reaching our goal. You''ve all studied the key as we traveled, but if you need to look at it again we will have it out to pass back and forth."


    He lined us all up, and pulled out a rope that he had tied a number of loops into. Each of us stuck a hand through a loop - except Sige, who stood off to one side nodding approvingly.


    "This rope will keep us together," Cyne continued, "In an emergency you may drop the rope, but otherwise please keep one hand through your loop at all times. The most important thing about Nusos is to not be split up. Never lose sight of the rest of the group. Especially never close a door between you and the others, because when you open it again it will lead somewhere else.


    "If you start seeing specific rooms that you recognize from the material plane, please alert me. If you see any small white rectangular plaques on the walls, alert me. Do not waste time grabbing any valuable items we pass, as without fabrication magic they will become insubstantial and fade away over a day or so once we have returned to the material plane.


    "Finally... there are monsters in Nusos. I will do my best to avoid them, and with a group as large as ours most will stay away, but it is always possible a powerful creature will attack us. If the attack is obvious, Sige will - I am sure - deal with them quickly. But some creatures in Nusos attack the mind. They feed off of fear, and bend the world like a bad dream to prevent you from escaping. If you detect anything out of place, or suddenly feel like you are in a nightmare, let me know. Some make the mistake of being embarrassed to say anything, or telling themselves they''re being foolish. Always, always err on the side of telling me."


    He made each person agree individually, and then nodded curtly and began walking. We followed, tromping up the stairs into the upper hall with its rows of doors to the individual rooms. At the end of the hall there was another staircase that led down to the kitchen, and we cut through that back to the common room and began our circuit again. That was it, just this endless loop up the stairs, down the hall, down into the kitchen, repeat. I waited for something to happen, but after our third loop I kinda zoned out. I was worried.


    The kids were with us, Connie was gone, Aestrid was gone. Cyne wouldn''t fight to save his own life. Errod would be most likely to injure himself or one of us. On the other hand, Mila was a space cadet but I''d seen her fight and she was ruthless when she needed to be. And I already knew Sige was worth his weight in gold. Katrin and I... well, we could at least help.


    I was distracted by a faint smell of bleach, and shook myself out of my musings to look around as I walked. Something was off. What was bothering me? "Katrin. Hey. Shouldn''t we... shouldn''t we have hit the stairs down by now? It''s not that long of a building."


    "Did you just now notice? Callie, I think we''ve been in Nusos for at least five minutes."


    There hadn''t been a clear transition, but she had to be right. The spacing of the doors had changed, and if I hadn''t already noticed we hadn''t reached stairs it became even more obvious as Cyne made a turn at an intersection that certainly hadn''t been there a moment ago. We eventually came to a rest at a common room not unlike the one we had started in in the material world, although I noted there were no windows.


    "Pull up a seat, everyone," Cyne said, "as you have no doubt realized we are in fact in Nusos. Congratulations. For our first attempt, I want you all thinking about the following qualities - the room is old, and hasn''t been used in a very long time. The room is underground, but not a natural cave. The room is large, and built like a palace. Keep those things in mind as we travel. You can try to imagine the exact room as well, but it''s unlikely to help when we''re this far out. I''m going to give you five minutes to rest here before we get moving again, remember to drink some water."


    Sige, as the only person not strung to the rest of the group, was wandering around and poking at things. "Been a while since I''ve been here. My people, we''re not big on being closed in - we have houses but they''re all just one big fucking room and they have windows all the way around, usually without glass or anything so you can just let the breeze pass through. Growing up with that made it hard for me to wrap my head around this place. Wild. Just one fucking endless house."


    But of course it wasn''t a house. It wasn''t really a building of any sort, and as we traveled that became more and more obvious. We hit a string of bedrooms, one after another, and while most of them looked fairly normal I started to see some anomalies. There was a bed that was made of wood - not just the frame, but the mattress and sheets as well. There was a room filled with chairs. There was a door with another, smaller door set into it.


    We passed through a kitchen where the food looked good as new and ready to eat, although Cyne said it would be unable to actually nourish us and might cause health issues if we ate too much of it. Then not ten minutes later we entered another kitchen, where the food was ancient and dried out.


    "Are the rooms... do they only exist when we get to them, or were they already there?"


    Cyne was looking from one door to another, trying to decide which way to go, but he spared me a moment for an answer. "That''s an excellent question, and so far as I have been able to determine the answer is both. Rooms are created, based on real rooms on the material plane, but once created they linger - though they will still move around. So some rooms, particularly those with lit lanterns or fresh food, are probably actually new."


    As we walked, I started to see a trend - the rooms were getting bigger, and had stone walls more often. We went down stairs several times, though in one case we immediately backtracked.


    "Wrong kind of basement," Cyne said, "and I don''t want the children to start thinking about anything too scary."


    We took a few more breaks, one of which was in what appeared to be a ballroom where the lights we carried barely reached the ceiling. Despite all the room, Katrin kept right by my side.


    "I''ve lost all track of time," she said, "and this place is reminding me too much of the Necropolis. I''m worried I''ll start picturing it and we''ll just end up back there."


    "Well, a copy of it."


    "No, I mean really back there. You can just sort of... fall out of Nusos I think. Can you imagine? Ending up back there, alone?"


    For the hundredth time, the image of Aestrid tipping backwards into the void flashed in front of my eyes. "Okay well... let''s not think about it too much. Focus on the room we''re actually looking for. I''m still hoping we don''t have to sleep here."


    But when we got moving again, the thought had been put in my head. And it did, after all, have a lot in common with the Necropolis - darkness, odd architecture, an endless series of little halls and rooms. Plus we were supposed to be thinking of somewhere stone, underground, old... After Cyne backtracked a fourth time I left my spot in line to tell him.


    "Cyne, I''m sorry. Katrin and I are having trouble not thinking of the Necropolis."


    He nodded. "I suspected as much. It is... understandable. Having a larger group like this keeps some of the creatures here away, but the mixed mental imagery means we travel slower. One person, with a clear mental image, can travel incredibly efficiently in Nusos. Instead we''re dealing with mostly people new to the plane, and some of them are children that were raised in trees. It is... far from ideal. I think we should focus on thinking of somewhere comforting and cheerful so we can find somewhere pleasant to sleep. We can try again in the morning."


    With our new instructions our surroundings improved quickly - the hallways widened, the rooms showed signs of cozy family life. Everyone seemed relieved to be told to just picture somewhere nice to camp for the night. I was, without thinking about it, mainly picturing Universal Servicing Systems with its empty rows of cubicles and reassuring knickknacks on desks - when I realized what I was doing I tried to switch to something that Nusos would be able to actually find, like a nice common room of an inn, but again my mind drifted and I started picturing the Long Haul Hotel. I was shaken out of my reverie by Cyne announcing that he''d found a room we could use, and was about to walk through the doorway when I felt myself release the loop of rope.


    "Callie?" Errod called, "Why did you stop? You have to stay with the group."


    "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Can you just come here for a second?"


    Everyone else had dropped the rope upon entering the room we were going to sleep in, so Errod handed one end to Sige and asked him to hold it before returning to me and forcing me to take a loop again. "What is it?"


    "Do you see that, all the way down that hallway?"


    It was probably seventy-five feet away, with most of the hallway between me and it being hidden in darkness. But I could see it glowing there on the ceiling, and even that far away I swore that I could hear it buzzing.


    "Uh. Some kind of... magic light? I''m not sure. It could be dangerous - come on Callie, let''s just get back to the others."


    "Yeah. You''re probably right." And I let Errod lead me away from that flickering cold light - the fluorescent panel that barely illuminated a metal door below it, on which was stenciled the English words EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

 CHAPTER 041: Two Teenage Protagonists Walk Into a Bar...

    "I just feel like an idiot for screwing that up," I said, "it''s always something dumb. All I had to do was stay put."


    Errod shrugged, looking around as if he had heard something that confused him, and then stared at me for a moment before managing to pick up the thread of the conversation. "Right. Well, look, don''t beat yourself up about it. We''re fine, and there''s no permanent harm done."


    He had to speak up to be heard over the general commotion in the crowded common room, and was just looking annoyed at the people that kept jostling him when he was distracted by a mug being placed down in front of each of us.


    "Finally," I said, "I''m dying of thirst."


    Errod dipped a fingertip in his and sneered. "It''s warm."


    "Oh you big baby, it''s fine. Drink up." I went to take a swig, but Errod pulled the mug out of my hand.


    "Don''t be gross, Calliope. Any establishment this size must have an ice box, they can give us cold drinks."


    He took the mugs over to the bar and signaled the barkeep. I glanced over at the musicians that were playing on a raised platform off to one side - the song wasn''t great, and to make things worse it was in a language I didn''t know. Errod returned with two new pewter mugs, drops of condensation glistening on the sides. I took one, feeling the cold metal under my fingers.


    "You have to be kidding me," Errod said, and took it right out of my hand. "Even the the drops on the mug are warm."


    "Errod, it''s... look, I''m thirsty and if you keep sending drinks back the bartender is going to spit in them."


    But he had already put them back on the bar. He sat down at our table, rubbing his temples. "I''m just cranky, I guess. I''m in a bad mood, and I have a headache."


    I felt a flash of anger. We both knew why he was in a bad mood, so him mentioning it was just him passive-aggressively reminding me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was Errod. He didn''t do passive aggressive. "It''s my fault," I forced myself to say, "I dragged you into this, and got us separated from the group."


    He shook his head. "It''s my fault too, I... grabbed the wrong rope, I think? Anyway, we just need to get back to the others."


    A server with a little wooden tray walked up with some new drinks. "Oh those look delicious! Come on Errod, third time''s the charm."


    He reached for one, but at the last second his arm jerked and knocked the tray out of the server''s hand, dumping the drinks everywhere.


    "Jesus, Errod! What the fuck!"


    "I''m sorry. I just... sorry. I''m not feeling great. Can we go somewhere quieter?"


    It was getting pretty noisy, the crowd laughing and murmuring in that language I couldn''t understand. The band was playing louder as well, still the same discordant tune. "Yeah. We can''t get back into Nusos from somewhere this crowded anyway. Let''s get that drink before we leave though, I''m still so thirsty."


    As if on cue, a hand reached out of the crowd holding a drink. It was right there, I could practically just lean forward and sip it. Errod pushed the hand out of the way so he could see me, as well as another hand that was holding a drink out to him. "I don''t... I don''t like the drinks here," he said, "Do we even know where we are?"


    I wasn''t certain. We''d gotten separated from the group, somehow, and then we''d fallen out of Nusos at some point and then had - presumably - decided to get a drink and plan. Another hand placed a drink in front of me alongside the other two, and Errod slammed a knife down into the attached wrist before it could pull away.


    "Errod! What the actual fuck!"


    He looked as surprised as I did, as if he hadn''t meant to pin this poor person''s hand to the table with a knife. There was blood seeping out, and as I looked at it I had the sudden thought that it looked cold and refreshing, like the drinks. And I was so thirsty. Oh, shit. I looked up into Errod''s eyes and he stared back at me, then we both slowly looked around at the crowd of... they were people, right? I fumbled, pulling out one of my new throwing knives, and we both started swinging.


    I couldn''t have said what it was, exactly. Something just snapped. I punched, and headbutted, and that sweaty mass of bar patrons continued to press in on me - still offering drinks. Nobody screamed, or even really fought back, but it felt like I was being smothered. I slashed and stabbed wildly, and while there was no shortage of targets I didn''t feel like I was doing much of anything. There was still just this wall of flesh, bodies closing in from all sides as some still offered me mugs. When I hit the hands it felt different, and I started aiming at arms exclusively which somehow made a difference - the crowd started to pull back as I hacked, and some of them started to press against the walls or even filter out the doors.


    Errod was laying about himself with his sword, looking as clumsy as ever but benefiting from the target rich environment. I was feeling overwhelmed by it all, it was too... too noisy. The band was still playing and singing that awful song, and without thinking I threw my knife at the lead singer.


    The room was suddenly silent, and nearly empty. The thing on stage, pale orange flesh with dark red veins, writhed noiselessly while its tentacles that had surrounded the two of us retracted. It tried to move away, but the knife had hit something vital that was just gushing ichor and after a moment it collapsed in a heap. Everywhere the tentacles were giving final spasms, and red liquid was spilling out of the cup-like tips.


    "Hey," I said, "were we just surrounded by people?"


    Errod nodded, panting. "Yeah. Well, no, obviously not. But yeah."


    "And if I had tried to drink from that mug, was that actually going to be... tentacle juice?"


    Errod looked like he wanted to throw up. "Yeah. Um. Now I really do need a drink. An actual drink."


    "Why didn''t it just force feed us?"


    He shook his head. "I don''t know. I''ve heard stories about monsters and some... you have to agree, to be at least somewhat willing."


    "Oh my god," I said, grabbing Errod and squeezing his shoulder, "You... you saved my life, for sure. I was so angry at you for stopping me, I didn''t understand why you wouldn''t let me just have a damn drink."


    "I... didn''t understand either. It was just wrong. It was warm, for one thing."


    I sat down, hands shaking. "Mine wasn''t. I could feel it, nice and cold. Temperature was for sure something that thing could make us imagine, so if you thought it was warm that was... you. Some part of you, fighting it."


    Errod carefully collected my knife from the thing''s corpse, and sat down next to me. "So... we''re still in Nusos. We... oh, no."


    Oh no was right.


    The memories came back all at once - they''d never been completely gone, just somewhat muddled. I''d woken up early that morning and told Sige to take a turn sleeping, because there was this awful ache in my chest that wouldn''t let me go back to bed. I couldn''t say where, exactly, the sensation was coming from - if I tried to visualize it I found myself picturing a sort of hollow sphere where my chest was, and the pain felt like cracks around the edges. It wasn''t even really pain in the traditional sense, just a throbbing sense of... wrongness. And so I sat up, watching everyone else sleep, until I finally couldn''t wait any longer.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Katrin. Hey."


    She''d cracked one eye, and then sat up very slowly. "Why are you whispering at me?"


    I gestured to the other side of the room and Katrin slowly nodded, still not fully awake. When she stood it woke Errod, who wordlessly joined us while looking totally lost.


    "Guys, I saw something when we were just stopping here."


    Errod nodded and stifled a yawn. "The glowing thing."


    "Right," I whispered, "That was a light from Earth. I''m certain of it. And the door underneath had words on it in my language."


    Katrin sat up straighter, the fog of sleep vanishing. "We can get to rooms from Earth here?"


    "I guess? I don''t know if they''re always here or if this place just plucked it out of my brain or what. But if they''re as real as the other rooms here, I might even be able to find a phone charger. I know you can''t take matter out of Nusos, but if I could charge my phone here maybe... I don''t know."


    Errod looked worried. "Cyne said we should tell him if we saw anything odd. But we can''t tell him about Earth, right?"


    "Right," I said, still not sure what the consequences would be if people started trying to cross back and forth between worlds. Best to not talk too much about it, although the Eternal Empire already knew. "I don''t know, I guess we have to ignore it for now. But I really want to get a closer look."


    "It''s a bad idea," Errod said, "either we''d have to let the others see or we''d have to split up. Either one has problems."


    I looked over at the sleeping forms of the rest of the group. We were in some sort of stone-walled basement, crates and shelves full of supplies scattered around. We''d chosen it as our stopping point for the evening because it wasn''t too far off track from the vibe we were looking for and there had been a big pile of soft furs in one corner that we were able to use as bedding. Everyone looked very comfortable, surely they''d stay asleep if we weren''t gone long.


    "Well. We could look at the hallway where it was before. That''s just right outside, and we know the rope reaches."


    Katrin looked skeptical. "Cyne says everything moves around, though. It''s been hours, that same hallway won''t be there."


    "Sure, but he also said it''s based on what you expect to see and what you''re picturing. So since I can clearly visualize it, there''s a good chance it''ll be there again - or something similar, anyway."


    She gave me a kind of sour look, and then slumped a little in defeat. "Maybe. But we''re not getting out of sight of this room."


    So I concentrated, and opened the door - it led to a hallway that didn''t look particularly Earth-like, but there was an intersection up ahead. Katrin stayed at the room we''d slept in and maintained line of sight to Errod, who in turn kept a hand on my arm and watched behind us so he could see Katrin at all times. With this foolproof arrangement keeping us from being separated, I walked down to the intersection. There, further down the hall, was a door that I knew instantly belonged to a room on Earth. There was no writing on it, but the door was just... door-shaped. Every door I''d seen since arriving on this world had been a slightly different height, width, or even shape - but this thing was the standard American door in every way.


    "I can''t reach it without going around the corner. But I have to look inside."


    Errod shook his head. "I don''t know, Callie."


    "It''s so close. I''ll be in sight the whole time, you can kinda stand at an angle and watch me and Katrin both so we can''t get split up."


    Errod clearly didn''t approve, but he was curious too. After a moment he sighed, and pulled me back towards the room we''d come from long enough to run inside and emerge with a rope. Handing one end to Katrin, we both went around the corner. It wasn''t quite long enough, as it turned out. I told Errod to just stand there holding the rope and watching me, but he was worried about monsters so he hooked the rope to a peg that was sticking out of the wall to get his hands free and draw his sword, then rested one hand on the rope - ready to lunge towards me if something attacked.


    "Just in case," he said nervously. "Okay, open it and take a quick look. But regardless of what you see, you come right back."


    "Absolutely. Just a peek, and then back to the rope."


    I strode forward, and threw open the door. It was a bit of an anticlimax, revealing a totally empty room - no furniture, no other doors, nothing. But then again... not really nothing. There was, on the far wall, a little white rectangle. An outlet. It was strange, with the holes in a configuration I''d never seen before. Maybe it was from some other country, or maybe it was just an impossible shape caused by the glitches I''d seen in other spaces we passed through - but it was still absolutely a power outlet. Satisfied, I walked back to Errod and gave a thumbs up. He let out a held breath, put his sword away, and we both took the rope.


    It was attached to the wall.


    Errod had loosely looped it over a peg, but that peg was now a metal ring and the rope was tied securely to it. The other side of the ring had another, similar rope which extended along the wall to another ring - this continued all along the wall, like some sort of decorative rope railing. It most certainly did not lead back to the room we had been in, where Katrin was hopefully still waiting for us. Errod was just staring, like his brain had shut down.


    "I... hung it right here. I only looked away for a moment."


    "Errod," I asked, "was that a rope from our gear that we brought from the material plane, or was that some rope from the storage room here in Nusos?"


    Errod didn''t answer. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was just opening and closing silently as if he was unable to speak.


    "Great. Okay, well. It''s fine. It''s okay. We know what room they''re in, and it was close. Just picture that room - it should be easy, we slept all night in there. We''ll be back in no time."


    Which at some point led to us being in a gore-soaked tavern surrounded by feebly twitching tentacles.


    We didn''t leave right away - the thing was dead, and rushing off into the maze of endless rooms and hallways might just mean running into another one. "We need to decide where we''re going," I said, "since at this point I think we''ve lost that room we slept in."


    "I think we should keep trying for it. They''ll be waiting for us there, don''t you think?"


    "Maybe. Probably. Yeah, they won''t want to leave without us. But Errod... the longer we walk around without finding it the less sure I am that I''m even remembering what it looked like right." I let my head thump down onto the table. "I''m starting to feel like I can never just go from one place to another without something going wrong. Try to get an apartment, end up chased by the police. Try to get down off the mountain, giant bat bear monsters attack. Then those guys in the alley where we met, then Telen killing that governor, then Theramas being attacked, then... it''s just been one thing after another. This was supposed to be the easier part of the trip. A quick stroll through Nusos, probably not even a full day, and then we''d be out. Instead... well. If we can''t find the others we might be here for a while."


    "Forever, I would assume."


    "Well no, Katrin seemed sure you could get out of Nusos without planar magic - even by accident. I assume we can do it on purpose if we try hard enough. When we were talking about the schedule Cyne said Nusos would be aligned soon. We didn''t want to wait, but with the delay from -" Connie dying, Connie is dead "- uh, switching towns after that attack, it''s almost time. I think tomorrow?"


    "So we try to find them today, and if we don''t find them then tomorrow we try to find the vault?"


    "Right. And if we can''t find that either, well, before the end of the day is over we''ll just try to get out wherever we can. I guess that might mean we end up halfway around the world or something, but... one step at a time."


    Errod stood up and looked at the oozing tentacles all around us. "Do you have any way to tell what time it is, so we know when the planes are aligned?"


    "None whatsoever."


    He wiped one last bit of ichor off his sword and nodded. "Okay. Let''s get going."


    I imagined not only what I could remember of the room we''d slept in, but also the people - I wasn''t sure if that was how Nusos worked, but it didn''t seem like it would hurt to try. If they were still there waiting for us, picturing the room with them in it could conceivably help.


    Of course, by a similar line of logic thinking about the hideous tentacle monster thing would draw us towards one which wasn''t reassuring, and trying hard to not think about it was useless. Focusing on our destination was exhausting, to the point that we had to take breaks just to allow our brains to unwind and think about other things before we started walking again. Still, it seemed like it was easier to get somewhere with just the two of us.


    "Okay this is close," Errod said, "This is really close. The walls were stone though, these are some sort of plaster."


    I looked around, trying to overlay them in my mind. "Yeah, you''re right. And there was a fireplace."


    "Yes, on that wall," Errod said, gesturing with his sword, "But the size is right, and the floor is the same."


    "Okay. Yeah, let''s do this. Ready to be super confident?"


    He smiled. "We''re about to walk into the room we''ve been looking for."


    I forced myself to return the smile. Happy thoughts. "No doubts. That door absolutely, positively, will open to where we wanted to go."


    Joining hands, we opened the door - and it led to the room we had slept in the night before. One of the backpacks was even still there with food and water, but otherwise the room was empty.


    "Well shit. They left without us."

 CHAPTER 042: Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

    There was a note from Katrin. It said they''d waited fourteen hours before needing to leave due to some vague risk involved with sleeping in the same room twice, but that timeline didn''t seem possible - even accounting for some lost time with the tentacle monster I couldn''t come up with any way it could have been even half that long. We''d taken some breaks, and I had drifted off at one point, but it''s not like we would have both slept for five hours or more without realizing it.


    Errod read it again, and sighed. "Is the note fake? Like, created by this place?"


    "I don''t think so?" I said, hesitantly. "I don''t know enough about how Nusos works but I didn''t really get the feeling that was a thing it could do."


    "Maybe we really were gone that long. I''m hungry enough, that''s for sure."


    I couldn''t argue with that. We dug into the backpack and ate about two meals'' worth of food, then sat for a bit to think - though there wasn''t much to think about. The note said they were continuing on to the vault in case we were headed that way, and to head back to Good Charl and check in with Mama Carnage if we ended up exiting Nusos elsewhere. It also confirmed my suspicions, that Nusos was about to be aligned with the material plane.


    "Fuck. What if the alignment is already over? We lost time, somehow, and we don''t know how how much - we know that the others waited fourteen hours, but they could have left that note a year ago."


    Errod couldn''t think of anything more reassuring to say than "I think it probably wasn''t long" but it didn''t matter. There was no way to be sure, so all we could do was head to the vault and hope for the best. I''d spent a lot of time staring at the key so I felt pretty good about my ability to remember it, and Errod said he was at least fairly sure he could picture it. It would need to be good enough.


    We headed out, keeping close together, and I found that much to my surprise I was in good spirits. We had some food and water, we''d succeeded in finding the room we were looking for once, and the others were okay. "This is going to be alright. We can do this."


    Errod put on a smile that was maybe a little shaky, but nodded. "Of course we can. I was hoping to wait until after the Duminere to start adventuring, but... well, as silly as it was, I felt bad that I didn''t get to go into the Necropolis with you. I''m not stupid, I know it was awful and dangerous and I was lucky to be able to stay safe up on the surface. I''m not trying to suggest that I could have..." he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, "that I could have saved Aestrid. But I wanted to prove myself. Everyone laughs at me, they see how clumsy I am and they tell me to put down the sword before I hurt myself. And yes, fine, I know. I cut off my own toe, and I''ve cut my hand a few times, and I... cut my belt off twice."


    "Twice? I only saw the once!"


    "Well I didn''t exactly brag to everyone about it. But yes, twice. The thing is... it''s like I said, I''m not stupid. I know I''m bad at this. I just... I feel so certain, Callie. The vision I had... I was fighting five men at once, while wearing armor with the crest of the knights of Brinkmar. It was so real, so... right. And when I woke up I found out that everything had gone wrong. My father had been arrested, and we''d been robbed, and... the only thing that made me feel like it was all going to be okay was knowing that the gods had shown me there was something important in my future. That I have a destiny. Hopefully when we reach the Duminere I can learn to fight, but even if I get a dud I''m not changing my mind."


    I stopped Errod. "Hey. You saved my life in that alley when we met, just by showing up. And you took out that wild mage by pulling her off a roof which was just... I mean seriously, that was so badass. And you tackled some guys in that fight, and - shit, Errod! Just however many hours ago you stopped me from drinking tentacle juice! That was all you!"


    "You killed the thing."


    "Sure, fine. But killing it wasn''t the hard part. I was totally without any hesitation going to drink the tentacle juice. You''re a hero, like ten times over."


    "I don''t think it was that many," he said, waving me off.


    "I was rounding. Where I''m from we round to ten, remember?"


    "Such a stupid way to count. Utterly ridiculous."


    I tried to glare at him, but it was clear he was deliberately trying to provoke me. "Okay, okay. Let''s... re-center ourselves and get going. You have it in your head?"


    He stood at attention, closed his eyes, and nodded crisply. "With absolute confidence. Two rooms away, at the most."


    We started walking, and almost immediately ran into another monster.


    We''d ducked through a few rooms quickly, and were just about to open another door when I heard someone calling for help. We were in what felt like a church, rows of pews and a high ceiling with all sorts of decorative stonework, and the voice was coming from a nook that I couldn''t quite see. I hesitated, hand hovering near the doorknob, but Errod of course was already charging towards the voice so I had no choice but to follow.


    There was a girl in the nook, maybe eight years old, being pulled into a hole in the wall by some sort of vine or root around her waist - her legs had already vanished into the opening and her arms stretched out, wildly grasping for us as tears filled her eyes.


    "Jesus!" I yelled, trying to to decided if it was safe to approach.


    "Help me!" the girl called, flailing around as she struggled.


    Errod started to move forward again, having been taken aback at first by the sight, but I grabbed his shoulder. "Okay. Shit. What does the rest of that thing look like? Did it reach out of the wall?"


    Presumably not too thrilled with our lack of immediate action, she called out again. "Help me!"


    "I''m trying, I need to know so I don''t just get us both stuck."


    Errod looked nervous. "Callie, we need to do something."


    "Help me!" She yelled for a third time.


    "I... oh. Say literally anything other than help me."


    "Help me!"


    I sighed, and pulled Errod further back. "Yeah, that''s what I thought. Okay."


    "Help me!" the girl screamed, in exactly - precisely - the same way as the other times. I squinted at the thing in front of me. It was pretty convincing, other than the limited vocabulary, but now that I was looking close there were some tells. The eyes weren''t quite right, and the tears weren''t tears; the drops just dangled there impossibly from her face without ever falling.


    "Well I guess we can just keep going?"


    Errod shook his head. "No, Callie, we can''t just leave this thing to kill the next person that comes along." He took a deep breath and lunged forward, swinging his sword right at the girl''s head - while Errod''s form always left something to be desired, this thing didn''t even try to dodge and the blade sliced across cleanly. Suddenly there was a screech and the girl opened up right where the vines were - they peeled away as she split at the waist, revealing a huge mouth.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Yeah cool, I wasn''t quite traumatized enough yet so that''s perfect," I said, "Thank you for that."


    The vines reached out but we both stepped back, and the whole thing started to awkwardly climb down from the wall. There was more of it, inside the wall, and as it slithered out I could see it looked like some giant grub or the back end of a queen termite. I took a chance at throwing a knife and it hit just off center, missing the big black vein but causing pus-like goo to flow out of the cut.


    The thing shrieked again and recoiled, leaving an opening for Errod to swing - this one hit the vein, and thinner black liquid mixed with the white. It stopped, reversed, and tried to climb back up to its hole.


    "Oh, changed your mind? Don''t want to play anymore?"


    This position just left it more exposed, however, and now I could see that at the base of the false girl''s back (which didn''t look at all right from behind, clearly this wasn''t an angle I was supposed to view it at) there was a pulsing clump of some sort. If this had been a video game, it would be flashing red. I took my time, because it was having trouble getting the girl bits into the hole, and threw another knife. It hit a little sloppily but it didn''t matter; as soon as the lump was cut a spaghetti-like tangle spilled out and the beast immediately collapsed. "Help... me..." it said, and then the ichor from the previous wounds stopped flowing, and the whole thing just kind of deflated.


    "Well that was fucked up."


    Errod looked like he was going to reply, but then just shrugged. He wiped his sword clean on some tapestries, I retrieved my knives, and we were back on our way. We came across what I suspected was another monster a bit later, but in that case we avoided it - there was a shining golden tiara laying in the middle of a room and it looked way, way too much like bait in a trap. We shared a look and just closed the door and took a different route.


    It seemed like it should be possible to navigate to anywhere in just a few rooms theoretically, and I suspected that someone who specialized in this plane could cross the whole continent in fifteen minutes as long as nobody else was with them slowing them down with conflicting mental images. I considered trying to use whatever strange natural magic I had to help us get there, since it seemed to be related to probability, but even thinking about it made me feel funny. That strange ache, with the feeling like something in me was cracked, had been growing over time. I couldn''t be certain, but I suspected it was me regaining mana after damaging my lutore by over-spending.


    Your lutore was supposed to grow in two ways - its potential would increase very slightly over time, meaning old people had a bit more mana available than kids, but also if you weren''t using it it wouldn''t be at its full potential anyway.  It was like building a muscle, right now regardless of how strong I might be capable of being I was the magical equivalent of a couch potato - and I had just tried to lift a car.  In return I''d strained my lutore and burned though the reserve of life mana it used at the innermost level where it connected to my body.  Until it recovered I would not only have that strange ache but I''d even heal a little bit slower from injuries - probably not enough to notice.  Getting a Dumine would solve both problems, as it shored up all your connections and strengthened your lutore.  I''d develop it faster too, meaning I would be less likely to strain it in the future as long as I didn''t do anything too stupid.


    At any rate, I wouldn''t be experimenting with magic in my current condition.  We continued on, eventually taking another break once we were somewhere that looked about right - aside from the colorful walls.  "Well this is promising," Errod said, "this definitely has the feel of a royal vault. Or the entry to one anyway, which is what we''re going for."


    "Yeah, I think we''re almost there. I wish I could remember the exact patterns at our destination, but I have a pretty good overall vibe."


    "It was strange enough that we shouldn''t have trouble. I can''t imagine there could be too many rooms with those odd patterns on the walls. If Cyne is right that''s the point, in fact - make the room unique enough and you can''t find it through Nusos without picturing it exactly."


    "Yeah, or maybe stumbling across by accident - but if you did that you wouldn''t know it was part of the royal vaults anyway and probably wouldn''t try to break in.  I assume all the other rooms in the vault are warded to keep people from getting in at all."


    We drank the last of our water, took turns facing the other way while the other one relieved themselves in a convenient corner, and then optimistically stepped through the next door. And there it was. "Oh, shit. It really was the next room. Man, now I wish we''d just kept going instead of taking a break."


    Errod got a thoughtful look. "If we had, it might not have been here. It could be that we needed to take that break, I wasn''t feeling confident when my feet were hurting."


    "Yeah, could be. Okay. Well, nobody is here waiting for us. Could be we beat them here, or it could be they''re on the other side. Though... I just figured someone, Sige maybe, would hang around on the Nusos side and keep an eye out."


    Errod shrugged. "So do we wait?"


    "No... I mean, I''m not even certain of how to get out, so I figure we should try. If it works then we did it, if it doesn''t then... well, then we''re keeping ourselves occupied while we wait."


    Going off of the general feeling of Nusos, I decided it would be best to just kind of walk around while being as certain as possible that we were actually in the real world. We held hands, to make sure that if it worked it worked for both of us, and after a while also closed our eyes in case that helped somehow.


    "Anything?" I asked, opening my eyes and looking around.


    "I don''t think so. I don''t see the others, anyway. Should we check the doors?"


    I opened the door we had come from and it led to a five-foot nook, basically a closet. I wasn''t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. I went to the only other door, and it was the same way. "Uh. We''re trapped. That... wait, that doesn''t make sense for either place. If we''re still in Nusos we should see hallways or rooms, and if we''re in the real world we should see the vault. Right?"


    "Callie, do you hear that?" There was a faint hissing sound from somewhere.


    I stepped into the nook in front of me and looked up, and could just barely see a distortion in the air. I jumped back, slammed the door shut, then ran back to the other door and shut that too. "Fuck! Fuck! There''s poison gas!"


    I didn''t know it was poison gas of course, not for sure, but it seemed likely to be something bad. If not poisonous then... explosive, or something. I pulled off my dress and rolled it up, trying to stop up the gap under the door, but there was no way I''d be able to do more than slightly slow it. I saw Errod take my cue and pull his tunic off, wedging it along the base of the other door.


    "Okay so. Um. New theory, the specific exact patterns on the walls actually are important because there are decoy rooms to trap thieves."


    Errod''s face went pale. "That... sounds like a very clever idea. Can we get back into Nusos? The planes are supposed to be aligned, right?"


    "I think it''s easier to get out than in. Even if we could, we''d... we''d need to go through doors to do that. So that would mean standing right under the flow of the gas and closing ourselves in there with it, then repeatedly trying to come back into this room until we got into Nusos."


    Errod held his breath and opened the nearest door, then shut it without going through and stopped up the bottom again. To be safe he took a few steps away before letting out his breath. "They thought of that. It doesn''t look like you can open those doors from the other side."


    "Oh. Fuck, right. Thank you for checking that before we locked ourselves in the poison closet. Honestly it probably wouldn''t have worked anyway, I''m sure there''s a reason Cyne brought us in by walking in circles for a while. Okay. The gas was falling down, and this is a decent sized room. So we should have a few minutes, right? Just don''t lay down."


    It presumably wouldn''t have to actually fill the room, though, since that would be a terrible design for a trap. Errod began banging on walls with the hilt of his sword, and I started feeling along for secret passages - it was a longshot, but I had nothing better to do. I was searching for seams, or odd cracks, or something in the patterns. Nothing. I looked up, wondering if there was somewhere we could climb to get away from the gas, and...


    "Errod! I think I found something, give me a boost!" He held his hands out, intertwined, and I stepped onto them and then onto his shoulder. There. I jammed my non-throwing knife into a crack, seriously damaging the blade, and then hammered on it for a moment until a small section of stone popped away. "Hah! It''s too small to get through, but... yeah, there''s a ton of them. I think they''re arrow slits so guards can shoot down into the room."


    "No door though."


    "No. But just keep holding me up and I can call for help. Maybe the others are here somewhere."


    When I was young, I found that I could do a full on horror movie scream. My mother was not amused, but then again, she never liked me anyway. So I didn''t bother starting with anything quieter, and just let out my most shrill, ear-shattering shriek. I waited a second, and did it again. Then again. After that it was starting to give me a sore throat, and I switched to just calling out.


    "Callie, I can''t hold you up much longer."


    "Oh don''t be a baby, I''m not that heavy."


    "I know. I think... it''s the gas. I''m having trouble with... I''m. I don''t like this."


    Sore throat or not, I started screaming again. I could feel Errod wavering, like his feet were about to go out from under him. Suddenly fingers nearly hit me in the eye as they popped through the arrow slit and pulled it open, distorting it until it was just barely big enough to pull me through. Another set of arms, orange and hairy, roughly grabbed me and hauled me into a narrow hallway where I could see Mila working on widening the opening a bit more.


    "Hey, you''re fucking late." Sige said.

 CHAPTER 043: Calliope Smith and the Forgotten Vault

    "There''s one on this side, too," Mila called as she swung a secret door open.


    We were in the entry room for the vault - the real one - and Errod was looking more alert every minute which made me hopeful there was no real damage done by the gas. The rest of the group, minus Cyne who had been waiting for us on the Nusos end, had heard my screaming right away but had taken a moment to locate the concealed passage that led to the arrow slits.


    "What''s on the other side? Another decoy room?" A rhetorical question I guess, since I could see Mila hadn''t gone in yet. I carefully walked past her, and down a short hallway I found that yes, there was another line of closed arrow slits that led to a decoy room. Unlike the side I''d come in through, however, there was another hall leading off to what seemed like a sort of ancient break room for guards. "Hey they have a toilet in here! And... some kind of card game? Some spare weapons. Nothing amazing."


    Sige came in and began to poke around, and I opened some small cabinets - something that had probably been food six hundred years ago was in one, but the other had something very odd. It was a bunch of tiles in the wall with loops of leather tied to them. Cautiously I pulled on one strip - despite its age the leather held and the tile began to slide out, revealing itself to be a long stone pole in the wall. "What the hell is this?"


    Sige came over, and immediately grabbed my wrist. "Shit. Don''t fucking touch anything else. Um. Guys! Everyone in here. Fucking now, please." The rest of the group came in, looking concerned, and Sige let go of my hand. "Okay, Callie has helpfully found some rune poles. Does anyone here know how to read runes?"


    Connie knew. Shit. I reached into my shirt and felt her Dumine there against my skin, and wished there was some way to get her back. I''d had that strange dreamlike vision as she died and every night since had hoped I would be able to talk to her again, but when she did show up in my dreams it wasn''t the same.


    "Okay, lesson time." Sige said, looking a little excited. "If you haven''t seen rune poles before, the way they work is you write out a magic spell with runes, they way you normally would, but then part of it is written across this stick. It''s stone here but it can be whatever. You can just write it across the pole, or you can have different runes at different points on the pole. If you pull the stick out, or insert it rotated to a different side, it changes which runes align. Or none align, which could also do something."


    It sounded like a slightly less complicated version of the clockwork rune devices Connie had mentioned.


    "These ones probably ran dry ages ago," Sige continued, "but I didn''t want to fuck with them until we were all out of the main entrance - probably one of them turns some traps on and off, and one of them unlocks the door, shit like that."


    Mila, who seemed for once to have been actually paying attention, chimed in. "Well there were runes in the walls that I found while widening that opening to get poor Errod out, I couldn''t read them but any place like this would have included wards against transfiguration. So I assume everything is dead."


    That was what Connie had been banking on, but ever since the Necropolis I hadn''t been sure. That spider construct thing that attached to the delver and took him over had been pretty low down and therefore fairly old, so presumably normal runes and magic items would have run out of charge. Since it had worked just fine, clearly there was some way to design things to last - or to hold a charge until disturbed. I pointed that out to the others and they spent a few minutes bickering about the likelihood that anything was still active.


    The spider heart thingy from the Necropolis was an artifact of some kind and probably ridiculously valuable; Sige admitted he had really been hoping we could defeat the possessed delver in a way that would let us keep and later sell the device. For runes, which was the more likely problem here, it sounded like some could last nearly forever because they were so simple and those ones could then be used to trigger other more complicated devices to start pulling energy from a mana capacitor. But unless things were done just right the stored mana would either degrade over time or grow crystals and trigger the runes by mistake, so most of the time nobody bothered making devices last longer than a dozen years or so without maintenance.


    In other words, any complicated runes that were more actively triggered were probably dead. Some of the more important wards against things like planar travel might still be up since that was a really simple one, and in fact they''d already located some important runes. The door everyone else had come in through from Nusos now led to a small chamber with a teleportation circle - another way of arriving, though it was covered by a metal grate with runes that were disabling it, and even if the grate hadn''t been there without knowing the exact rune sequence we couldn''t have used it.


    That meant the other door led to the vault, but it was sealed fast. Once Cyne had returned Mila tried to go around by digging into the stone, but found that bars of metal were woven through walls and as it turned out she wasn''t great with anything but stone and clay. Instead, she carved away enough by the door that Sige could lever one of the old weapons from the guard room into the hinges and break them.


    I braced myself for an explosion, or a rampaging golem, or something - but the door clattered to the ground without triggering any kind of defenses I could see. Cyne and the kids stayed in the guard area, figuring any traps wouldn''t be designed to hurt people there, and the rest of us advanced down the stairs that the door revealed. Immediately the architectural style changed - clearly the crazy patterns of the vault entry room were just to make it easy to find from Nusos. I had one of those stray memories hit - something about going down stairs, into a vault of treasures... and something about a collection of spoons? The more I tried to think about it the foggier the memory became.


    We reached another door and dealt with that, this time triggering some sort of trap that feebly pushed some spikes from the ceiling. They only came out about three feet and the ceiling was well over ten feet high, so other than startling me half to death it wasn''t particularly intimidating. We all took extra care leaving that room, in case the floor did something as well and was just delayed rather than broken. Once the initial reflex fear had worn off I was actually, secretly, really excited about the spikes. It was such a classic dungeon trap! I imagined myself saying "so there I was, in an ancient vault of the lost kingdom, and we set off a spike trap..." and it just tickled me pink for some reason.


    Lights flickered on in the ceiling, though it was clear that much like the spike trap this wasn''t working as intended; several of the little opalescent orbs stayed dark, and one of the ones that lit up was markedly dimmer than the rest. It was enough to illuminate a larger door with a complicated hexagonal symbol over it at the end of the hall that I felt sure would be the Duminere, but I was so nervous about going inside that I let Sige and Mila bust into each room along the side walls as we passed them.


    After the first one none were even locked, and it quickly became apparent why - they were empty. One had a few old coins - identical to the ones still in use hundreds of years later - laying in the corners as if to imply there used to be more that were scooped up sloppily. One had a number of display cases - all smashed - with just a couple damaged items remaining. One had hooks all around the walls that looked like they were meant to hold swords, and a pedestal in the center that must have been for something incredibly important but now held only an old leather glove - Errod took it, excited at the idea that it might be magic, but if it had been it didn''t seem to be anymore.


    Sige was getting visibly agitated, the normal grin gone entirely and his body language making him seem restless. He kicked open the last of the side doors and found another room with smashed display cases - the only item still remaining was a weapon that was arguably a sword but looked more like a cricket bat lined with razor blades. Sige reached towards it and then immediately yanked his hand back, shaking it and rubbing it like he was massaging out a cramp. Then he kicked one of the display stands, knocking it over in a crash of broken stone and glass.


    "Damn it! Fuck!" He turned to look at me, and I took an involuntary step back. "Calliope... they cleaned this place out. It''s empty. I know this kind of job is never guaranteed but... kid, we were told there would be something good here. So far we''ve got some broken shit, an old glove, and someone''s ancestral blade that feels like it''ll probably kill anyone that picks it up unless they''re from the right family."


    He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. "Boss, I have... some debts. I''m trying to stay calm here, I know you weren''t trying to fuck me over, but if this is all we''ve got here we''re going to need to talk about revising the contract... Maybe if you give me and Cyne the bounty on Telen - oh and Mila, I don''t know what your deal is - "


    Mila looked up from examining the carvings on the door frame, "Hmm? Oh, I was just along because Calliope or Constance or whoever she was asked so nicely."


    "Fine, well - wait." The building mix of panic and rage on Sige''s face was replaced with confusion. "But then... you mean you''re old friends, or?"


    "Oh, no. She showed up one day, bought some things from my shop, and we had a lovely lunch together. And then she paid me to hold onto a letter to give to her later, though that turned out to be her sister here, and later she gave me instructions for how to break her out of the fortress in Theramas in case Lord Protector Hammersmith locked her up. We never signed an actual contract though, I just assumed she would make sure I got my fair share."


    Sige''s mouth dropped open. He started to say something two or three times before he managed to actually form words. "You... broke into the fortress in Theramas to... to fucking... you stole a prisoner from Lord Fucking Protector Hammersmith? Because she asked nicely and bought some motherfucking decorative frog statue from you?"


    Mila shrugged. "I don''t think it was a frog, but otherwise I suppose that''s right."


    I was with Sige, honestly - Connie had told me that she lived with Mila for a while and they''d been close, and while I had known that was in the original timeline I just sort of assumed they had also spent a lot of time together in this one. Mila was... wild.


    Before Sige could wrap his brain around that and get back into panic mode, I held up a hand. "Hang on. You''re getting paid, I promise. The thing we''re here for is too big to move. I actually already told Cyne, I guess it makes sense he didn''t pass it on - he seems like the type to keep stuff secret unless given permission. We''re here because... no, you know what? I want to see the look on your face. Come on, let''s open that last door."


    He squinted suspiciously at me, but his body language was already way more relaxed. Mila did an extra thorough examination of the last door before she and Sige broke it open, tsking over some particularly difficult latch. Finally the door gave and we could see inside - there was a massive natural cavern, and in the center of it was a faintly glowing geodesic dome made from some kind of blue crystal.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    The side facing us had a large doorway filled by a gently rippling mirrored surface like a vertical pool of mercury, and I could feel something - like a sound just out of the range of hearing - thrumming in my chest. Sige pushed past me, eyes wide, and then slowly turned back to stare at me. The look on his face was every bit as good as I''d hoped.


    "Okay," I said, "Let''s bring the others."


    Sige and Mila went to get Cyne and the kids, and I walked slowly up to the shimmering entrance. I gently reached a hand out, and as I made contact the wall of silver it hardened - the ripples vanished, and my hand thudded into it like a solid panel of metal.


    "Oh, no. Oh no no no. Fuck."


    I took a step back, and Katrin gave me a nervous glance before hurrying over. "Maybe it''s locked?" she asked, gesturing to some sort of braided metal cord dangling next to the entrance. She extended her own hand, the tips of her fingers entering the mirrored doorway like it wasn''t even there. She pulled her hand back and looked at me with pity in her eyes.


    "Oh, Callie. I''m so sorry. Is it..." she looked around, and continued in a barely audible whisper, "is it just that Connie already went in? But you''re different people, and she went in in the other timeline, and..."


    "It''s fine." I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. "It''s okay. I knew this might happen. I''ll just... Sige thinks I already have something, I can just develop that." If it wasn''t just me hijacking Connie''s Dumine. If it was, that probably wouldn''t work either. I shrugged, not sure what else to say. I''d been planning, thinking of the combinations I could get. All the possibilities.


    When Cyne returned with the kids, he took that braided cord and ran it under his shirt - presumably to his Dumine. After a moment he pulled it out and detached it from the Duminere as well, then handed it to me. "This allows you to restrict options in the Duminere. There are some newer ones made by certain artificers who know the secret, but this appears to be an original from the old Empire and is quite valuable. Currently no options are restricted."


    I put the cord in my bag while Cyne gathered the kids and went over how the Duminere worked. "When you enter the Duminere, the doorway will seal behind you. No one else can enter while you are inside, and you cannot leave until you have affixed your Dumine. Approach the pedestal, and touch the golden hexagon to begin the process. You will see the Duminere''s greeting, and then six smaller hexagons will appear in the air in front of you - they''re not really physical objects, just constructs of light.


    "Most, if not all of you, will see that the hexagons are dull silver and there is seemingly nothing you can do with them. This means that like the majority of people you cannot receive a gift, but you will still need to be given a Dumine to leave. If you are lucky enough to receive one or more gifts, the hexagons will instead appear to be gold and will have glowing lines extending from them to dots of light - these are the places you touch to select a gift. You can feel, to some extent, what each one can do by touching it gently. To take it as your gift you need only to think that you want it, and the dot of light will change color.


    "Once you are done, you can touch the hexagon on the pedestal again and think about being ready - this will cause the images in front of you to vanish and your Dumine will appear. Once you take it from the air, the walls will change color and you will be able to affix it to your body. Most people choose to put their Dumine in a place that will be covered up by clothes. Do keep in mind that once the Dumine touches your skin at a place large enough to fit it, it will sink in and can not be moved except by specially trained enhancers. When the Dumine is in place, the walls will change color once more and you can leave the Duminere. Your Dumine will take time to build enough potential to do anything impressive, but you will be able to meditate and visualize your Dumine in your mind to feel the different ways that you might be able to grow your skills."


    Katrin and Errod sat with me as I tried to keep from crying, and we let the kids go in first. To my surprise, Tig came out grinning ear to ear and announced he had gotten a gift - specifically gravity, which was unexpected since he had been talking about getting something a little more... destructive. When Lilan came out and said she''d picked dimensional magic so she could never be trapped with the Sahrger again we all shared a look - two in a row getting gifts was statistically unlikely - and then Yasna emerged and said she''d taken both fabrication and crafting so she could work in her father''s blacksmith shop.


    Elba got reinforcement, and at that point it was just Roran - while he didn''t want to say what he''d picked he did show off his Dumine and it had the little angular patterns of gold and silver, not just the silver of a dud. Mila was the first to say anything about it out loud, though we''d all clearly been thinking it. "Is there something special about this Duminere?"


    Cyne shook his head, but he didn''t look certain. "All of the known Dumineres work in the same way, with the same likelihood. Possibly it''s something about the children?"


    "Yeah," I said, "that could make sense. Maybe the Sahrger could sense the potential in them, it could be that was one of the reasons they took the kids in the first place. I mean there''s one way to find out... Katrin and Errod still need to go."


    Errod stood up, took a deep breath, and walked right into the mirrored entrance like it was a brick wall. He stumbled back, already bleeding slightly from the nose, and then tripped over his own foot and went down in a heap. Katrin ran over to him and helped him up, then cautiously walked over and again extended her fingers through the opening without any problem.


    "Why is it keeping Errod and Callie out? Callie, even if this was something about you and..." She looked at me, then at Cyne and Sige, realizing she couldn''t finish the sentence, "... well, it wouldn''t apply to Errod, right? Why can''t he go in?"


    Cyne had Errod try again, just a hand this time, and it was clear the Duminere wasn''t going to allow it. "Hmm. Fascinating. You have never entered a Duminere before?"


    "No."


    Cyne flipped his notebook open and turned some pages. "When we were going over health information in case healing was needed, you told me that you do not have a Tahikk implant."


    "I don''t. I''ve only even heard of them once or twice, I come from the wrong side of the continent."


    "In that case... hmm. I''m going to need to ask you to take off your clothes. You as well, miss Smith."


    "I already had my dress off earlier, we used it to stop up the gas coming under the door. Errod would have seen anything strange unless it was in my underwear, and I''m not taking that off in front of you anyway."


    "He may have been incapable of noticing what I''m looking for," Cyne said, "though I suppose Sige and Milanata would have seen it. Hmm. Start with your boots, then, but I''m afraid if that does not reveal anything someone will have to inspect the rest of you."


    Meanwhile, Errod had pulled off his tunic and struggled out of his pants. The awful underwear on this world left very little to the imagination since they were only meant to cover the most important bits, and I would have happily traded them for the worst underwear I''d ever owned on Earth - I only had the one pair I''d arrived in, and I was saving it in case I could get someone with Fabrication to somehow reproduce elastic. At any rate, I could say with confidence that there was nothing on Errod''s very exposed lower half - which made it extra confusing when everyone gasped and started examining his upper thigh.


    "What? What are you all looking at?"


    Cyne turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. "Miss Smith... there is a large parasite attached to Errod''s leg. If you can''t see it, then you must have one as well. They work slowly, dulling your mind while they attach themselves. You wouldn''t have noticed it happening, except that you might have stayed in one place longer than intended."


    "We... we lost time. When we found the note you left we were confused, we were sure it hadn''t been that long."


    "Ah. Yes, well, that was probably the reason then. They exist in larval and adult forms in Nusos, but for some reason only pupate on the material plane. So they attach to travelers and ride back on them, feeding as they go. If left too long, you eventually die from them taking too much of your blood and nutrients. But in this case, it won''t have had time to do any real harm."


    He pulled off my boots, and when the second one came free it felt... wrong. Like something had been holding it in place. Cyne winced and prodded at my leg, and after a moment went off to talk to Sige. They spoke quietly at first, and then the volume began to increase. After a moment Sige yelled "You''ve got to be fucking kidding me!" and stormed over, pulling out a knife. He took my leg, still muttering to himself.


    "Fucking religious nut, wants to find some fucking harmless way to pull off a mind-altering fucking parasite."


    He dug the knife in and instantly I could see the parasite. It was a huge leech-like creature wrapped around my leg with little hair-thin tentacles digging into the flesh. I looked over and now I could see the one on Errod as well, stuck on his upper thigh and being carefully removed by Katrin. The removal process didn''t really hurt, although my leg bled quite a bit - presumably the things had done something to keep me from feeling that part of my leg properly although unlike my inability to see them it hadn''t ended with their deaths.


    Cyne came over and gave us some quick healing, and then I gestured for Errod to try the Duminere again. He passed through without incident.


    "So then, you''ll be able to as well - right?" Katrin asked. I wasn''t sure. It was at least possible now. Errod wasn''t in for long, and when he came out he looked resigned. He shook his head, and came to sit with us.


    "A dud," he said, "but that''s okay. It just means doing things the hard way, more training and more... it''s fine. It''s my destiny, it will happen somehow."


    Katrin seemed hesitant to go in but Errod insisted and so she stepped inside. She didn''t take long either, and when she came out I was sure for a moment she''d gotten a dud as well - until I realized she was just trying to not look too excited for Errod''s sake.


    "Comprehension, I assume?" We''d really wrecked the curve when it came to gifts.


    She nodded, barely managing not to smile from ear to ear. "Yes. And Mana - I got two. With those two combined, I should be able to cast every spell in my book soon and even start writing my own."


    "Good," Errod said, "then maybe we can get rid of the damned thing and not have to worry about..." he trailed off and looked at me nervously. Katrin was pale, and avoiding my eyes.


    "Wait. What''s going on?"


    Katrin took a deep, shuddering breath. "Um. There''s... there''s a reason we were planning to leave Yallowsben, even before Errod angered those men that were attacking you. It''s about the spellbook, we... we can talk about it later."


    I''d never asked. It just hadn''t occurred to me. I was in a fantasy world, and someone had a spellbook. That checks out. But as Connie had said, it was probably extremely valuable - and everything that I knew about Errod and Katrin told me they had almost nothing to their name. Little memories started to come back - the way Katrin had come close and whispered when she first told me she had a spellbook. Connie''s speculation on the book being involved with why they were both murdered in the original timeline. The way they had been so eager to join up with me, to follow me into danger for the chance to travel and gain some magic. I had been so wrapped up in my own issues, so sure I was the protagonist of the story, that I hadn''t stopped to question any of it.


    Here''s why they''ve stuck around, a voice in my head whispered. They were using me, and would leave now that they had what they wanted. Like Adrian, who had suckered me into thinking he was going to let me move in with him and his girlfriend only to steal everything from me. Katrin and Errod hadn''t gone that far, of course - they may not have actually liked me or wanted to be friends, it might have all been for their own reasons, but they at least had always held up their end of things. They''d been nice to me, and helped me, and... saved my life multiple times. Hmm. It was possible I was being a bit harsh, and quick to frame them as villains. I could still feel it, that part of me trying to prepare for betrayal and abandonment - and mentally justify leaving first, running off as soon as we were out of here.


    I took a deep breath. This was stupid, and anyway it wasn''t the time. We would stick together, or not. And if we didn''t it wouldn''t mean anything. I held that thought as tight as I could, forced myself to believe it for now, and then smiled at them. "Don''t worry about it. I never asked, but I kinda figured something was going on. Like you said, we can talk about it later. Or not at all. Although..." I glanced around again to make sure nobody was close enough to hear us, "If this is what got you killed in the other timeline you should maybe tell me whatever you can so I can help keep an eye out."


    I stood up quickly, before they could reply. It was time. Maybe it still wouldn''t work, maybe somehow the Duminere remembered Connie. But it''s not like I was going to just leave without finding out for sure. I walked forward, bare feet cold on the stone floor, trying to be confident as I reached the silvery doorway - and passed through it like it was nothing but fog.


    I was inside.

 CHAPTER 044: More Magic

    The interior of the Duminere was smaller than the outside - I hadn''t walked far, so I had to assume that rather than having thick walls the inside was just one room near the front of the geodesic dome and something else was taking up the rest of the space. That being said, the walls were the same shape and same blue crystal as the outside with no sign of any other doors. I took a moment anyway, just poking around and looking for seams or runes or... well, anything interesting. You could only go into a Duminere once, after all.


    In the center of the chamber there was a pedestal, made of some silvery metal like the floor. Other than a golden hexagon there were no other markings, and likewise my search of the walls had turned up nothing of note. It felt silly to even be searching for anything; I was already standing in a room that could grant me magic powers. Or... different magic powers. Too late to think about that. Still, something was bothering me about the room and it took me another moment of looking around to figure out why it looked even more empty and plain than it should. There were no shadows. I lifted my bare feet and when I still didn''t see any hint of shadow under them I cupped my hands over my eyes... and could see just fine. It was some sort of impossible magic ambient lighting. Huh.


    I resolved not to ask anyone about it. It just felt right that this place would have some inscrutable magic effect to it. Satisfied that I''d figured out what I was subconsciously bugged by, I walked over to the pedestal and placed my hand on the golden hexagon. Immediately, words appeared in the air in English:


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%" border="1">


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    <tr>


    <td style="width: 99.0385%">


    Oath: Disabled. No valid oath detected. No conflicting oath detected.


    Restrictions: None. All gifts may be chosen. Standard maximum allotment.


    Badges: Disabled. Temporary badges may still be affixed as desired.


    Imperial Override in effect, current duration exceeds guidelines.


    Young (Primary, 2 Unclaimed), Unbroken Thread: Security threat level overridden by security access level. Access granted.


    Initiating: Lutore Scouring successful, minor damage detected. Potential meets or exceeds maximum Dumine capacity, growth restriction not enabled. Erima link already established. Ematse link already established. Biltagiretzae link initiated, connection not enabled.


    WELCOME, CITIZEN OF THE EMPIRE. CHOOSE YOUR GIFTS, THAT YOU MAY SERVE YOUR COMMUNITY.


    </td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    The words vanished after I''d barely had time to skim them, leaving me wondering if I had imagined them. It being in English was a little strange but not that shocking, since I assumed it was made to somehow display in a language the user knew. On that note, had it seemed kinda... computer-y... just because it was trying to be relatable to me, or was that how it appeared for everyone? Of course, if the goal was to be understandable it left a lot to be desired.


    The oath thing I felt like I could guess, most nations still required a magically binding oath to use their Dumineres so it made sense that there had been some sort of official Imperial oath. Restrictions were, likewise, self-explanatory. Badges though? No clue. The Imperial Override thing probably related to the fall of the old Empire, and I had to assume the nonsense line that came next was related to the override. For the last bit... some I could kind of guess at. Lutore scouring would maybe be getting rid of existing natural magic? And then Erima and Ematse were the planes I''d been told your mind and soul were connected to. Biltagiretzae was a mouthful, but probably another plane. I''d spent time chatting with Sige and Cyne about the planes but that one wasn''t ringing a bell - I''d heard the name at some point, but I couldn''t remember what it was. I could look it up later, but either way it said there was no connection. I had a ridiculous moment where I wished my phone was working so I could Google all this stuff before realizing what I''d thought and feeling extremely silly.


    A blue hexagon, the same shade as that message a moment before, appeared in the air. It pulsed with light, and six more hexagons spiraled out of it, these ones glowing golden. Lines extended from the gold ones to little points of light, although I saw that the bottom facet of each - as well as the entire bottom hexagon - was dull silver and had no lines. Presumably those were the ones with prerequisites, but I pulled out the crumpled pages Connie had given me back in Theramas to have the Primer on Known Gifts ready. Before anything else, I had a probably doomed experiment to perform.


    Hex six, facet five required three others and was therefore impossible to select - but Connie had had two of them and so if there was some strange entanglement I might be able to snag it. Clutching Connie''s Dumine tightly, I found Binding and touched the point of light. I got a vague feeling of being able to tie things together or make them persist without my attention, and as I acknowledged that feeling the point of light shifted from gold to bright blue. Looking down, the bottom hex still didn''t have anything available. Just to test, I also located Probability and Temporal and selected them and sure enough a facet on that last hex turned gold - but with no point of light I could select. In fact, all the points of light had vanished.


    Well, it had been worth a shot. Getting something nobody else had would have been cool, but I also would have been worried that it would be broken since I didn''t actually have Connie''s Dumine implanted. If nothing else, I''d just confirmed I could get three gifts. I de-selected everything and tucked Connie''s Dumine back into my dress. It was time to make my choices for real. I could feel my heart racing.


    I''d considered almost everything at one point or another, but thankfully I had narrowed things down during the trip. I knew that no matter what I selected there would be some point when I would second guess myself and imagine having some other gifts, and certainly I was in a stranger position than most; generally you had years to plan with the help of your family, and then your options were limited by the government anyway. For me, I just had one that felt like a requirement - once it had become clear I was having false memories, I knew I should take Thought. Figuring out what was wrong with my brain was important but even when I had solved that - assuming I could - it was a cool ability, and might let me enjoy or even share memories of Earth. If it hadn''t already been high on the list it would have needed to jump up there after the trip through Nusos, because frankly I was not okay with what Errod and I had been through. Nusos was amazing and I would love to explore more, but I needed to have protection against mind control. I touched the light, totally certain of my decision.


    Speaking of exploring Nusos... I''d been fascinated with the planes since I''d learned about them, and as fucked up as the monsters were I wanted to see more. Sige mostly dealt with Itzele - that shadowy mirror dimension we''d briefly used to get out of Good Charl - and one called Kertzale which I wasn''t super interested in. It was, if I understood right, filled with these natural nodes that would trap you forever and the whole plane was hard to get out of unless (like Sige) you made that your specialty. It was where he''d dumped the Behemoth, though he hadn''t managed to get him into one of the nodes. But Cyne? Cyne had been to a huge number of the planes, and he''d been more than willing to chat with me about them. The Warren sounded like some sort of dungeon from a video game. Inuizlorrareto - another mouthful - was a bunch of floating islands and you could just naturally fly by choosing to ignore gravity. Enimondoa was a world of spirit creatures that sounded like some psychedelic fairy land. Plus... honestly, I knew myself. I wanted an ability that would let me travel.


    With Planar magic selected, I had one more to go. While I had been tempted to pick something unrelated to get some more diverse utility, with limited development on a Dumine it was generally best to get things that would work together. Thought and Planar had some synergy due to the mind''s link to Ematse, for example, though I''d have to be careful how I developed my abilities if I wanted to make use of that. Fabrication was an obvious choice, since I could take matter from the more ephemeral planes and make it real. Fabrication was also a reliable source of income. But... I didn''t want it. It just wasn''t my thing. Maybe if I could make things instantly, pulling fully-formed objects from my imagination... but that would take a ridiculous amount of mana and development, and realistically I''d be more likely to focus on Planar magic. And anyway, I was going to be rich. I didn''t need income, and could pay a fabricator to make ephemeral matter real if I really wanted to.


    Instead, I had decided on Spirit. It paired with Thought in a few ways, and when it came to Planar magic - well, that''s where spirits were from. I would, eventually, be able to probably tame or control spirit creatures. I couldn''t count on Katrin and Errod sticking around - or if they did, I had to admit to myself that I couldn''t promise I wouldn''t ditch them - and it would be dangerous to explore the planes by myself. It would be way better if I could also have either Summoning or Binding, but I''d have to ditch Thought for that. It was still a very versatile ability, and I could just imagine myself exploring the planes with some sort of fucked up spirit monster at my side. I could also look into getting a magic item made that would take the place of Binding maybe, so a spirit could be tied to me as a semi-permanent pet at the cost of some of my mana or... there was something Cyne had said about binding them to you in a way that would change you, though that sounded fucked up and risky.


    The rest of the lights went out - obviously I couldn''t go for a fourth. I hesitated for a moment. Was I making the right choice? Was I going too tame with it? Should I take Gravity and Force and Radiance and try to fly to the moon? Or Radiance and Influence so I could take Illusion? Hell, did I even trust myself to take Influence? Should I take Perception and Temporal and Spatial so I could scry on anyone, anywhere, any time? What about using Life and Thought to make golems - could I animate my phone and make it work again? There was a way to make golems with Spirit but, again, that would require Binding. Was Spirit worth it without Binding?


    Deep breaths. I''d already considered all of this. In a pinch, I could use Planar magic to bring altered laws of physics to me so long as wards weren''t locking me down, which meant it could take the place of Gravity and who knows what else. Granted, if I went that route it probably wouldn''t be good for actual travel - but I''d have the option. Thought, Planar, and Spirit all had synergy with each other. It was a good plan. I touched the pedestal again and held the thought that I was ready, and the six golden hexagons swirled back into the blue one in the center. The color faded from it as it seemed to become more solid, and after a moment it was clearly a Dumine. It was just silver at first, but after a moment angular golden shapes scrawled over it resulting in the strange patterns I was used to. There was a final flicker of blue light, and it was done. The Dumine hung impossibly in the air in front of me, waiting to be taken. No going back now.


    As soon as I pinched it between my fingers the walls turned purple and then almost maroon, and a searing pain shot through my chest. I dropped the Dumine and heard it give a little metallic ping as it hit the floor, but I couldn''t look for it because it felt like something was burrowing into me, this horrible burning pain radiating into my sternum. I stumbled, stepping on something and almost slipping, and desperately fought to reach under my shirt and get rid of whatever was trying to kill me. I was expecting blood, and imagining some other parasite like the one that had been on my leg tearing into me - but instead I felt the cool metal of Connie''s Dumine at the center of that white-hot pain.


    The stone ring around the edge, as well as the leather cord strung through it, had partially merged with my skin as it sunk in and seemed to be the source of my agony. I was in panic mode, unable to think clearly. I pulled at the leather cord but that made it worse. I began pacing in circles like a feral animal, needing to do something but not knowing what - all I knew was that I had to make the pain stop. I could feel the Dumine, somehow, and frantically latched onto that sensation in the hopes it could help. I could sense it, and as I shut my eyes and concentrated a field of blue with a single hexagon on it flickered into place - and then shuddered and vanished. Something was very wrong. It returned, but it was different somehow. Hollow. Another flicker, and I could see that there were two, with this impossible gap between them that held something I couldn''t conceive.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Why was there more than one? Had the new one attached as well, or was this something else? Hadn''t I dropped the other one? In any case, I knew which side was Connie''s - the feeling of this branching path of possibilities was there for both, but one of them was full to the brim. I could feel it writing something onto the very core of me, blazing symbols forming in that mind-bending chasm between the fields of blue. It felt like it was going to kill me. I tried to seize control but my mental focus kept falling into that dizzying gap. Finally I got a grip on Connie''s Dumine in my head, not able to understand or control it properly but just barely hanging on through the pain and the shaking and flickering of the interface. I tried to focus, thought with all of my might that I just needed to do something - to fix this, to make it so this wasn''t happening. That bright line flared, and the pain was gone.


    I stood there, slightly dizzy and disoriented. The walls were back to being blue, and for some reason the hexagons were back in the air over the pedestal. I reached for the leather cord around my neck and pulled it out from under my dress, but the little ring of stone was empty. Connie''s Dumine was gone. With trembling hands I reached under my shirt and there it was, flush against my skin right where it had been hanging. But how had it finally broken free of the necklace? And why had the pedestal activated again? A chill ran through me suddenly, and I closed my eyes to concentrate. The fields of blue were more steady now, but no easier to grasp and still with that strange space between them. Both were hollow now, empty of energy. What had Connie said? That she could burn the mana out of it in an emergency to go back in time again?


    I looked back up at the display, at the hexagons hovering there. I''d gone back to before I finished my selection. I staggered back, feeling something odd about my left foot. Collapsing to the ground in an undignified way, still staring up at the hexagons, I gingerly reached one hand down and felt underneath my heel. There, sure enough, was the other Dumine which I had stepped on after dropping it. So... You weren''t supposed to be able to pull any shenanigans in a Duminere, but I had just gotten two instead of one - and, unless I was mistaken, was about to get a third. Had it happened before? Were there others that were running around with multiple Dumines?


    I knew magic items, spells, and wild magic didn''t work in the Duminere. Dumines could work in theory, but you couldn''t go in if you already had a Dumine and you couldn''t attach someone else''s Dumine to yourself - except of course I had done exactly that. Or had I? After all, it wasn''t really someone else''s - it was mine. A different me, from a dead timeline, but still essentially me. It made sense that the Duminere got confused, it was the same basic thing I had been worried would prevent me from entering. And surely nobody else had been able to go back in time within a Duminere, because to level up the temporal magic enough you had to train for ages; even if you could somehow manage it without leaving it would take far too long to make rewinding a possibility since you''d only go back thirty seconds or so. My situation was, almost certainly, unique. I couldn''t help it - I started laughing.


    Finally I stood up, testing my left foot - the Dumine had sunk in lower there, at a glance I was guessing because it ignored the callouses on my heel and went in enough to line up with the living skin. That meant that it didn''t click when I walked, but it did feel a little funny and was hard to ignore - like a missing tooth that you can''t help but poke at with your tongue. Hoping that I would get used to it, or that it at least would be less noticeable with shoes on, I walked over to the pedestal and took a look. All of the hexes were dark, preventing me from selecting anything - Thought was still selected, but the mote of light had turned red rather than blue. I touched thought and it de-selected without me even consciously asking it to, and immediately the rest of the hexes lit up gold again. It seemed like I had triggered an error since you weren''t supposed to be able to select the same thing twice. What would have happened if I had chosen one that Connie had on her Dumine? Both would have implanted without the Duminere having the opportunity to give the error, so... Hmm. Well, there was no way to tell now.


    I felt giddy. I was nervous, excited, and confused all at once. I hadn''t planned for this. Or... well, in a way I had. I''d planned on trying Binding first, to see if it combined with Connie''s selections somehow, and now that seemed way more likely to work. I selected it and was immediately rewarded with that mystery ability lighting up - so it didn''t need them to be on the same Dumine. Touching the new gift gently, I tried to figure out what it was - I sensed something, an ability to manipulate events, or to impart significance to them maybe? I already knew that curses were essentially Probability and Binding. So what was temporal adding? It felt like it was somehow... broader? Like it applied to the world in some bigger way. I picked up the pages I''d dropped, and read the description. "The most accepted theory is that it deals with Fate or Destiny as a force, which is known to be possible via wild magic and famously wielded to great effect by Poicelria at the start of the 7th age."


    I had the opportunity to take a gift nobody else could get, and I had planned on taking it if possible just based on that. But I couldn''t help thinking about what Connie had said to me about her worry over having not time traveled in the traditional way. The idea that fate had been out to get her, that she had broken some planned destiny and would be trapped and killed by it. Still. If that was the case, wouldn''t it be better to be the one in control? If fate was real, didn''t I want to be holding the reins?


    "If you''re alive," I said to the empty room, "If you can understand and you''re not just some mindless force... and if you... if you killed my sister, if you killed that version of me? I''m going to destroy you with your own power. You hear that? Fuck destiny. Fuck fate. I''m going to take this, and I''m going to do whatever I want with it. And if you get in my way, I''m going to kill you in whatever way you can die. That''s a promise."


    I knew it was silly. Was I really threatening a force of nature? One that I wasn''t sure even existed? But it made me feel better. I took a deep breath, and looked back at the hexagons. I actually still had one last selection to make. Binding would already make Spirit better, so that was taken care of. The mystery option by definition had synergy with Probability and Temporal since they were prerequisites, and Comprehension had synergy with Thought. There wasn''t a single obvious choice that would link everything together. Summoning was an option, but as cool as I thought Spirit could potentially be I was thinking of it as a secondary power.


    "Okay. Okay. Last one. Choose wisely. Keep it together." As a quick experiment I got rid of my current selections and tried as many combinations as I could, but nothing I did got the final mystery option to light up. Shame, that could have been interesting. I re-selected Binding and the other one. I thought for another moment, but in the end what made my decision was the realization that I didn''t want to let anyone know I had more gifts than you were supposed to be able to get and several of them would already be obvious once I started using them. I would, therefore, benefit most from one that could potentially be used in a more subtle way.


    I considered Affinity or Focus, but I wanted something a little more active than that. Perception? It was super versatile, and I didn''t have to let anyone know I was using it. It could probably pair with Temporal to see a little into the past or maybe even future, and possibly with Planar to look into other planes or something. I could maybe learn to see - or taste, or whatever - things that normal humans couldn''t. Hell, with Thought I might be able to hear people''s internal monologue. Plus I already knew a lot of spirit things could be hard to see, so it had synergy with that as well.


    I was sure the others would be wondering what was taking me so long, but I wasn''t going to rush. I touched each of the options that remained, considering them in turn. None of them were bad, but even as greedy as I could be I was very aware that I was picking a ninth gift when most got none at all. I didn''t need to agonize over what I couldn''t take. This was all icing. "Fuck it," I said, and selected Perception. It really did seem useful. Everything else went dim, and after one more moment of pacing around I hurried back to the pedestal and slapped my hand down on the hexagon to tell it I was ready before I could change my mind.


    The new Dumine appeared, just like the other had. I was nervous to take it, partly because of the excruciating pain it had caused me a few minutes before (knowing why that happened and that it would not happen again did nothing to reassure the primitive part of my brain that was rebelling) and partly because I had this nagging sense I was breaking something, that I was tampering with things I couldn''t understand and which could possibly kill me. After all, maybe nobody had three Dumines for a very good reason. Maybe it would put too much strain on my lutore and I would die in agony. But then, I already had two - so if cheating the system was going to get me killed I was already taking a risk. Also I wasn''t even sure I could leave without implanting this one anyway, and if I could... would this one just be sitting here when the next person came in?


    I plucked the Dumine out of the air and the walls once again shifted to maroon, indicating it was time to apply the thing to my body. I''d been planning on putting it in the same place Connie had had hers, on my right hip, but I was worried that if circumstances ever caused me to be largely undressed it would be too easy to see two of the Dumines at once. Who knows what people would do if they realized I had somehow gotten more than one - they would pull my mind apart to get that secret, not that it would do them much good.


    I considered a few locations. My armpit, even all the way up, was still a bit risky considering the popularity of sleeveless clothes here. Likewise my inner thigh felt like it could still come into view a little too easily. Back when I was first traveling down off the mountain and snuck into that Halenvar camp, I''d heard the soldiers talking about checking for a Dumine between the tracker''s ass cheeks. I considered it, and it seemed like the best option for keeping it out of sight, but something about it just bothered me. Inside my mouth probably wouldn''t work and even if it did it would potentially be bad, and while I could put it on my other heel for symmetry Connie had suggested that having them on your extremities was risky because you could have a hand or foot lopped off and lose your abilities. Where else would be covered?


    The back of my head seemed like an option - at the lowest part of my skull, where I could make sure my hair would always be covering it up. I could just avoid cutting my hair too short, or wearing it up. And with it only being an inch across, I could probably save some hair next time I did cut it and make a sort of... toupee for it, to hide it better. Thinking about that raised another concern - the existing hair in that spot. I kept remembering the pain of the necklace trying to merge into my skin and thinking of what could be the worst ingrown hair imaginable... but you had little hairs almost everywhere, and the one on my foot had dealt with the calluses in its way without issue. Presumably as long as it was a part of my body it would be fine. I played with my hair for a bit, to make sure I was going to put the Dumine in the right spot, and then very carefully pressed it into place. There was a slight tug as if I had snagged a hair on something but that was it, and then it was flush with my skin.


    The walls turned back to blue, and I ruffled my hair and patted the back of my head to make sure the Dumine was covered - it seemed good, but I did note some loose locks of hair falling free to the ground after somehow being severed by the Dumine implanting. I scooped them up, figuring I could start on the toupee plan as soon as I found glue, and crammed them into my coin pouch. I closed my eyes and concentrated and there was that gut-twisting hole with illegible squiggles in its depths. It reminded me of a Magic Eye image where you had to disjoint your vision just right to see a 3D object and instead I would always get a headache as shapes began to form only to dissolve back into the pattern. I hated those things.


    I could feel the Dumines, all three of them, interfaces floating out of view. I had a sudden memory of playing a video game on an old console I''d gotten from the pawn shop where I sold off stuff from Universal Servicing Systems. Something about the video out was flaky, and if I didn''t hold the console at just the right angle with my foot while I played everything would shift and wrap back around to the other side of the screen. Between games, I''d see the menu screen split in two with the center lost in the edges of the monitor. I had that thought again, about breaking things. If anything it was even harder to get a mental hold on them than when there had been two. If they were going to work at all it might be a challenge, but I had been able to burn out Connie''s Dumine and so surely I would figure out how to build these ones up. It might be... a little tricky... but I was determined.


    I''d have plenty of time to work on it - my whole life was ahead of me. I took a deep breath, and walked out of the Duminere - despite my fears, no alarms went off and I passed through the barrier as if it wasn''t there. I gave Katrin and Errod a thumbs up, then reached back as I left and touched the mirror gateway again - feeling it turn solid and prevent me from going back in. It was done.

 CHAPTER 045: Its All Over But the Paperwork

    We''d done one last pass through the vault looking for loot, taken that grate off the teleportation circle and copied down the runes so there would be a more direct route to the Duminere, and then hurried through Nusos again to get back to the surface. That trip had been way faster, because we weren''t picky about where we exited from.


    Cyne had most of us do our best to think about nothing in particular - or at the least nothing related to architecture - and then he and Sige and Mila who all knew what the style was in Erathik just got us to the right type of building and concentrated on trying to leave. We ended up coming out in someone''s house, and were attacked by a woman with a broom - she had the same gold nose ring that Hugh had worn, and was yelling at us in a language my bracelet didn''t translate.


    We''d made it to Radagan, which was thankfully not too far from the capitol of Erathik which was also called Erathik. "The capitol and the kingdom are the same," Cyne lectured, "as it was their only remaining city for almost an entire grand cycle. The Clockmaker was busy fighting to subdue the other planes, and the Erathi people had made sure every city that fell cost the Clockmaker as much as possible. Eventually, he agreed to a peace treaty - he would leave them their capitol and never set foot inside, and in return they would do whatever he asked."


    "That sounds a lot like being conquered," I said.


    Cyne nodded. "There was a split between those that wanted to keep fighting despite the impossible odds, and those that wanted to take the deal and bide their time. The Erathi king finally resorted to fundamentally changing the nature of the government - he married his son off to Gwendil, one of the leaders of the other faction, and when he stepped down from the throne Gwendil became the first primarch of Erathik.


    "The tradition has been kept ever since, with first child of the royal family marrying someone qualified from the general public or another political faction. That person becomes the primarch, and has the first voice in all decisions. Thus the royal line is unbroken, but the rulership continually renews its link to the common people."


    "Okay so... there''s a king and queen, but whichever one is the actual child of the previous king and queen isn''t the one in charge?"


    "Correct. There was little point in marrying into other influential families during the Clockmaker''s reign regardless, unless they were going to marry the Clockmaker''s daughter - and the people of Erathi would have never agreed to that even if it had been an option. Once the Old Empire fell at the beginning of this grand cycle, they quickly acted to expand and grow their territory. At that point some second or third children were, I believe, married off to make alliances - but the tradition of the primarch has held firm. I suspect you''ll be meeting the current primarch, given the value of what this expedition has uncovered."


    That brought up the next problem I''d have to face. It was time to get locked away until Brinkmar was aligned. Hammersmith would be pissed, surely, but in the end she seemed pretty goal-oriented and I didn''t anticipate more than a lecture. I''d sat through plenty of those in my life. That was totally irresponsible, she would say, don''t you ever think about other people? What if you had both died and we were left with no way into Brinkmar...


    Some part of me squirmed at the thought, because the hypothetical Hammersmith I was listening to did, kinda, have a point. Connie had assured me the world couldn''t end again - Ulren was dead, his lab destroyed, and the war going ridiculously badly for Halenvar. They needed to get into some sort of weapons storage or hazardous equipment room or something that was sealed with the full might of the Clockmaker from back when Brinkmar had been his... summer palace? Research facility? Planar outpost? I wasn''t clear. But regardless, they should have no way to get at the doomsday device.


    But was it worth risking?


    With Telen dead and the Behemoth trapped on another plane - one that was apparently ridiculously hard to get out of unless you''d specialized in it as Sige had - it didn''t seem likely that anyone else was coming for me. What I wanted, even though I knew it was a terrible idea, was to go off somewhere with Errod and Katrin and train up my Dumine. Dumines, plural. That was the other problem - if I got snagged by Hammersmith, would she find out I had three Dumines? What would she do about it?


    I could tell her it couldn''t be done again, and she would - presumably - believe me. But what if word spread, and other people all wanted a turn examining me? I wasn''t going to be turned into a lab rat. Plus, if I wanted to explain it I''d have to tell them about the world ending and Connie resetting things and... it was a whole mess. I could try to make a deal where I was allowed some freedom, but that bridge was almost certainly burned after our escape. They''d be putting me in a deep hole and sealing it shut until the day came. I felt itchy all over at the very thought.


    We camped for the night in a field off the side of the road. We all had bedrolls and the weather was pleasant, plus it was what I''d done for however many days while traveling to Theramas. I spent some time just watching the sun set and trying to picture where we were - Erathik was at the Northern end of the continent, which was also closer to the equator. Halenvar was to the East, and the Free States were on the other side of a huge mountain range I could just make out to the South. The peak I''d arrived in this world on was somewhere in that range.


    When I went to set up my bedroll, I found it already rolled out with Katrin and Errod whispering over it. Katrin jumped a little as she heard me coming. "Callie! Perfect. We were just talking... you know they''re probably going to be looking for you, right? In Erathik, I mean. Since they''re allied with the Empire in the war."


    "Yeah, I know. It''s fine. What are you guys planning to do when they lock me up?" They could go practically anywhere, do anything. They''d be citizens of Erathik due to the terms of the contract, but they also didn''t speak the language. Maybe they''d just pick a city somewhere?


    "Well it''s hard," Katrin said, "because we don''t know if they''re going to keep you in Erathik or send you to the Empire."


    "They won''t put you back in Theramas," Errod said, "the gate to Brinkmar that was there was damaged in the attack. Unless they were just spreading that rumor to trick Halenvar, but... even then, they won''t keep you in the same city. I don''t know where the other gates are, and I know Halenvar destroyed some of them when the war started. Or, destroying them was partly what started the war? Whichever order it happened in."


    Katrin nodded. "I think you should convince them to let you stay in Erathik. That way we''ll already be there with you, and won''t have to track you down or something. I hope they don''t want to do some sort of high security thing, I want to be able to wander the city."


    "Wait," I said, "you lost me. Why would they lock you guys up?"


    "Well hopefully they wouldn''t," she said, "but there''s a decent chance they''ll want to limit how many people are coming and going for security reasons -"


    "Or move you around, or hide you on another plane..." Errod interjected.


    "- right, and so we''d have to just get locked up too or lose track of you entirely. But it''s hard to plan anything without knowing. There''s the option of trying to run, of course, but I don''t think it''s safe to have anyone else handle the Duminere contract for you - and once you''re in there I can''t imagine you could get away easily."


    I felt... funny. "Why are you guys even... you don''t want to get stuck with me. You''re going to be loaded, and Katrin you can learn how to read your spellbook properly now, and... why would you worry about me?"


    Katrin rolled her eyes, but it seemed affectionate. Errod put a hand on my shoulder and opened his mouth to speak a few times before hesitantly saying, "Callie... every time we left the apartment without you, you looked surprised when we came back. And when we were late getting back one time you packed all your things. I don''t... I don''t know exactly what happened to you, but between that and the look Connie got whenever she talked about having to stay somewhere against her will... we don''t want you to do this alone. Okay?"


    "We''re your friends whether you like it or not," Katrin added, "so just get used to it. Is this about my spellbook? I really will tell you about it, I just... it never seemed like the time, and you had all your own stuff going on."


    Something was wrong, my throat felt like it had a rock wedged in it and the corners of my eyes were tingling. I felt to make sure my bracelet was still on in case I was having an allergic reaction, before remembering I''d had an enhancer fix that permanently. "I just... I''m not good at having friends and I figured you were with me to get Dumines and... I don''t know."


    "Calliope," Errod said softly, "I absolutely have ulterior motives here. I very much wanted a Dumine. And I still firmly believe that I''m destined to become a knight of Brinkmar, and you''re heading there so staying with you feels like the right thing to do. But that doesn''t mean I don''t also like you, and want to be your friend. And you''ll use us, I''m sure, for... protection, and advice, and learning about this world that''s still new to you."


    I felt tears starting to drip down my cheeks. "And you''ll use me for applying pressure when you cut something off while trying to protect me."


    Errod sighed. "Probably, yes."


    Katrin pulled our bedrolls closer, with me in the middle, and we tucked in all squished together. That strange dense band of stars was overhead, and for a little bit I just stared at it and let my mind go blank. Then, on some random wild impulse, I took Katrin''s hand and tucked it into the front of my dress to rest on my Dumine. Then I pulled it out, and slid it under my hair. When her fingers touched that second Dumine there was a sudden silence as her breathing stopped.


    I heard Errod shifting around to look, though I wasn''t sure how much he could see with the sun fully down and the small campfire throwing off more shadows than it did light. I repeated the process with him and then, still without saying anything, pulled my foot up and tugged my sock off before putting their hands on that Dumine, too. Then I tucked my foot back into the bedroll, and whispered as quietly as I could. "I think I broke something."


    Katrin said, calmly, "Calliope can I wear your bracelet for a second?" and then once it was latched on screamed at me in English. "What the fuck! How would you even? I knew you took a little longer than normal in there, but I didn''t think you were getting three Dumines! We''re going to have to cover them up somehow. Wait. Was the one on your chest Connie''s? It was hanging there, right? On the necklace? But why would there be three?


    "Okay so you make your choices, you go to implant it and the one touching your chest implants too. But then... you... wait, did you use her ability to go back in time? It would have needed to inscribe it on your Lutore, but maybe since the Dumine was already developed it just did that as part of the implantation? And then you could have, I don''t know, maybe you burned it out to go back and went far enough back you hadn''t started yet and could make a third?"Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    "Holy shit. That''s almost exactly right. You''re really smart, you know that?"


    "Well. Thank you. Oh, what are we going to do? We can''t let anyone know. You, me, and Errod. That''s it."


    Errod nodded seriously, even though he couldn''t possibly understand English. He had probably just heard his name and decided to nod along. I told Katrin my plan to cover the one on the back of my head, but beyond that I didn''t have a lot of ideas yet. It was something we''d just have to figure out, and be careful in the meantime.


    When we arrived at the city of Erathik, late on the fifteenth day of the month, any plans for subtlety were thrown out the window. We walked through the gates and an alarm went off, setting the guards off like we''d kicked a hornet nest. They seemed confused, and it took almost an hour for one of them to explain that they weren''t actually sure what the alarm was for. They asked if we had anything dangerous with us, and I got to watch their reactions as we explained we had Telen''s armor and sword.


    Once we let them examine our things a bit more the consensus was that rather than Telen''s gear the sword - or bladed club, maybe - that we''d found in the vault was the more concerning item. Nobody liked the feel of that thing. To be certain, we had to wait for another half hour until an expert arrived - to my surprise he was about my age.


    "Call me Lute," he said, and shook everyone''s hands - even the kids. He took it a step further, in fact, and after looking us all over knelt in front of Tig. "You are the one in charge here, yes?"


    I could appreciate that he was being cute, but I was exhausted and nervous and we''d been waiting for an hour and a half while surrounded by guards so I wasn''t in a great mood. I was about to interrupt him and tell him to get to business when I caught Katrin... well, swooning. Huh. I''d never been a great judge of who other people would find attractive, and especially coming from another planet with so many little differences in culture and history and, hell, facial features... well, it shouldn''t have surprised me that I hadn''t pegged Lute as good looking.


    Not that he was ugly, just... the look on Katrin''s face was a bit much. Or was she just that charmed by him playing with the kids? Regardless, I backed off for a second to observe the interaction and after just a moment more he straightened up and invited myself, Katrin, and Errod into the guardhouse. He asked one of the guards to make tea, and chatted casually with everyone. Or... not actually casually. He was interrogating us, clumsily.


    "Your accent reminds me of a friend from the Southwestern end of the Free States," he said, "but you have a bit of the look of one from central Halenvar to you." Just a comment. Not even a question, and making reference to a friend in a way that somehow said this was all just a chat, that he was your friend too. And Katrin answered, of course, and after no time at all had not only told him that their family was from Yallowsben but also - after another encouraging comment from Lute - that they traced their lineage back to Brinkmar.


    "Ah, of course! That would explain it, I know most refugees from Brinkmar ended up in Halenvar, yes? And you, Calliope, you cannot hide that grammar," he said, squinting at me playfully as if I''d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, "I always know when someone learned the vulgar tongue from a translation band - ah, sorry, that is what we teasingly call Imperial in Erathik. I pride myself on being a student of languages, perhaps I know your native tongue?"


    He was an amateur at this but not terrible. Just a bit obvious. What he lacked in subtlety he made up for in charisma, at least as far as Katrin was concerned. Maybe he would have been able to do better if he hadn''t immediately set off my alarms - he was one of those guys that could made a hobby of pulling introverts out of their shells or something, and as someone that was a loner weirdo in public school I instantly had walls up. Errod seemed a bit bristly as well, probably because he''d noticed Katrin''s reaction to Lute. That at least seemed to confirm he wasn''t using magic to loosen Katrin up, since it would surely do at least something to Errod and I.


    "Oh, it''s a local dialect from a little outpost in Calnon. I''m sure you wouldn''t have heard it. But listen, we really need to get in to talk to someone, we have important business we need to finish up. Is this going to be much longer?"


    Katrin seemed to snap out of it, and looked a little embarrassed. "Thank you so much for the tea, of course," she said, "but we do have some sensitive business and we''ve come from Radagan on foot."


    Lute put on a look of ''shocked and apologetic'' as if offended by his own behavior. It was only a little over the top. "My apologies! Of course. I did hear that you reportedly have proof that your party eliminated General Telen of Halenvar - that would be welcome news here, yes? Of course I can help arrange a meeting with someone, I currently have an internship at the Nokarash. Er, the... bureaucracy? ''The Hall of Desks'' would be the literal translation. Also, I''ve determined the likely cause of the alarm, and it''s nothing to be concerned about."


    I had a few things to process there. I wasn''t surprised that he''d heard about Telen, he''d supposedly already been on his way by the time we''d talked to anyone about it but someone could have intercepted him or magically radioed him or something. But he hadn''t seemed to do anything since arriving that would tell him about the alarm, and despite getting Katrin to chat with him over tea she hadn''t said anything all that interesting. Finally, I was somehow caught off guard by him using the words ''internship'' and ''bureaucracy'' because even though it was translation magic and not actually English they just didn''t feel like they belonged in a fantasy world.


    The only catch was one I expected, which was that before we could talk to the important people they wanted us to get in front of someone who could make sure we were telling the truth and promise that we weren''t spies for anyone, weren''t planning any harm to Erathik or its people, and weren''t trying to take over the city on behalf of the Clockmaker - an old traditional question, apparently.


    After that it was mostly just paperwork. Literal paperwork - I''d never thought about the possibility of a fantasy adventure ending with several days of poring over contracts with lawyers, but of course it wasn''t as simple as me scribbling down a copy of the contract out of Connie''s notebook and waltzing off into the sunset. I knew nothing about the laws of the kingdom of Erathik and the translation band they''d tried didn''t stack with mine so I had been assigned a lawyer - but because I''m a fucking mess this triggered some sort of minor anxiety attack.


    Thankfully I was self-aware enough to stop and think about why my heart was beating faster and why I suddenly wanted to just skip the whole thing and run away, and no big surprise it was all tied in with my childhood bullshit. In the foster care system you get assigned a guardian ad litem - basically just a lawyer that argues on your behalf in court since obviously if you''re in the system they can''t make that your parents'' job.


    Mine had been... fine. The first one, before my mom ditched me in Arizona, had smelled like cigarettes and was always drinking coffee and then sneering at the cup as if it tasted funny. Whenever she looked at me or at the case file in front of her she would sigh and then gaze out the window as if she was contemplating just running off and joining a convent. In retrospect I don''t think she had anything against me - when I was grabbed for shoplifting or trespassing that wasn''t something she made a big deal out of. I suspect, though she would never have said this to a ten year old, she was just annoyed the state hadn''t severed my mom''s parental rights so they could focus their efforts on getting me adopted by someone that wouldn''t abandon their kid in the hardware section of Sears.


    I''d had a guardian ad litem in Arizona too, the same one from the time I was twelve until I left the system, but I didn''t see her much. After the very brief arguments over whether a twelve year old could be abandoned without repercussions under the safe haven law there wasn''t a lot to go to court about. I usually avoided getting caught when I was up to no good, and on the occasions where I did end up in the police station I typically just got sent back to the group home, or switched to a group home for "children with special behavioral needs", or Bill talked the police into letting me go.


    Or... no, when was that? After Universal Servicing Systems? That couldn''t be right, that was after Bill quit.


    Either way, I''d spoken to her maybe once a year. It was odd to think that even with neither of my assigned lawyers being around too much or causing me any trouble I was feeling anxious because of the parallel. Stupid trauma. Stupid broken brain. Once I got past that it turned out the lawyers in the kingdom of Erathik were ridiculously nice and helpful, and when I handed over the first draft of the contract they descended on it and began arguing with each other excitedly like it was a game.


    My lawyer slipped into his native tongue as he got further into the document so after a few minutes I couldn''t understand anything being said between them, but I was exhausted by the past couple weeks anyway so even if he had somehow spoken English I doubt I could have really paid attention. He would occasionally turn back to me and go over some minor edit, mostly things which seemed like errors Connie and I had introduced - someone had translated the original contract into Imperial, then Connie had translated it to English, then I had translated it back to Imperial, and now we were trying to get it back into Erathi.


    So it wasn''t a shock that some parts were a bit... muddled. "This line," my lawyer said with a smile, "as written it would make you property of the kingdom, yes? We will change it, the context implies you mean to say you will be a citizen."


    They all spoke with the same accent as Hugh, and most had those gold nose rings. I had finally started to hear the "yes?" at the end of sentences as being the same thing we joked about Canadians doing back on Earth. It was just the Erathi version of "eh?". This revelation somehow shifted my perception of them somewhat, and made everything feel just a little more casual. The lawyers were very patient, and didn''t seem bothered by me wanting to optimistically include Aestrid despite also admitting she was dead, or asking to include some provisions for the rescued kids but then not knowing anything but their first names.


    That part turned out not to matter much, as they had a way of using a Dumine as a signature. It also meant I could avoid the questions about where I''d come from, as using my Dumine - the one on my chest - as identification was something that would perfectly identify me. Or, that was the idea. In reality, I could presumably establish two other identities by using my other Dumines - not that I could imagine any reason I''d want to.


    Lute was still kind of hanging around, and I was aware that he''d been spending time with Katrin while I was tied up with the lawyers. I wasn''t sure how to feel about that. He seemed nice enough, but I couldn''t get past the thought that he was hiding something or acting as a spy. Or hell, maybe he wanted some of the money.


    "I think he''s probably fine," Errod said reluctantly, almost like he would have rather had a reason to dislike Lute, "and anyway he won''t be coming with us."


    We were re-packing our things in nicer, newer bags Errod had bought. The lawyers had been nice enough to give us an advance on the money so we could live comfortably while the contract and details got sorted out.


    "He''d better not try to come along. Can you imagine?" I was about to follow up with a devastating impression, but I was distracted by something leather at the bottom of one of the bags.  I tugged on it and a large glove popped free of the mess.  "Hey Errod, is this that glove you found down in the vault?"


    He looked up from his own bag and nodded. "Oh. Yes, I tried it on when I found it and it didn''t seem to do anything. Cyne and Mila both looked as well, they said it''s probably just an old glove left behind by whoever cleaned out the place. But... I don''t know, I guess I just kept it to remember the journey by."


    I slid it on. It was well made, and comfortable - though a little bit large on me. It looked like it was designed to fit fairly snugly, and it extended down onto my forearm. If it was old, it had held up remarkably well. I pulled it off again and thought I felt a slight static-y stickiness, but wasn''t sure if it was jist my imagination.


    I examined the inside, and didn''t see any sign of runes or anything. It didn''t look like some sort of special material, though I obviously didn''t know enough to identify the type of leather. So. No runes, no special material, and no obvious magical effect. If it was a magic item or even an artifact, it was subtle indeed.


    I tossed it over to Errod so he could pack it, and he slid it on for a moment as well. "Shame we didn''t find the matching one. It''s got the correct grip for sword fighting, but it''s a left glove and I''m right handed. I suppose it''s silly to keep it." He sighed, and went to pull it off but then stopped.


    "Is something wrong?"


    Errod tugged at the fingers again, then looked at me with his lips in a tight line. "No. It''s fine. I think I might leave the glove on for now though."


    I put down my bag and raised an eyebrow at him. "Errod. What''s going on?"


    He sighed, and held up his left hand. The glove, formerly plain, now had delicate gold stitching in a vine pattern around the cuff. "It um... it won''t come off."


    Great.

 CHAPTER 046: Loose Ends

    Eventually it was over. We signed the contracts, handed over the rune sequence for the teleportation circle, and I even took a quick trip down to the Duminere with some officials. It was my first time using a teleportation circle when I wasn''t crammed into a stone turtle sculpture and could actually see what was happening, but of course I didn''t learn anything since from my perspective it was just three people in uniforms speaking to each other in a language I didn''t know and then... bam. Done. It felt somewhat similar to when I had left Earth - there was a moment where I felt weightless, a flash of disorientation, and everything had changed around me. This time my head didn''t try to explode, which was obviously an upgrade.


    They''d brought someone with us that had no Dumine so they could go inside and get one, thereby confirming it was the real deal - he got a dud but it was still enough to prove that I wasn''t pulling some elaborate con. The other person along for the inspection had some ability to sense where we actually were, which was important because if it hadn''t been within the kingdom''s territory everything would have gotten way trickier - they didn''t have hard borders, but if it had been in an ambiguous spot they would have needed to prepare for a challenge since they would be founding a new city over the spot to cement their control. I found myself wondering if I would have been able to insist on getting to name the city as part of the contract, but it was too late for that.


    When everyone was satisfied we came back, signed even more documents, and then they handed each of us some papers covered in official seals, a case of money, and a small box with a gold nose ring. Katrin, Errod, and myself opened a safe deposit box under the ''hall of desks'' to keep most of the documents in and I threw my phone in there while I was at it - I didn''t have any way to charge it at the moment, and with all the messes I kept getting in it didn''t seem safe to carry it with me.


    The money was the same brightly colored wedges of metal as everywhere else, and they were clipped to each other to form little hexagonal plates that fit into a cylindrical locking case. I''d been thinking of the light blue ones - worth six pins - as being roughly equivalent to a dollar. But these were all dark red ones which I''d never encountered before, with each wedge being worth one thousand two hundred ninety-six pins each - an even ten thousand in base six. That meant each hexagon formed of six coins was worth seven thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-six pins. And we each had a big stack of them.


    It was a truly ridiculous amount of money, and that was just our walking-around cash. We also had bank accounts with even more in them, and those accounts would continue to get a stipend deposited every month. I was going to buy so much shit. While I''d given myself the largest share by far, nobody was coming away from this unhappy. Even the kids had an account they could collect on when they were adults - I didn''t want someone else spending their money.


    There was still more to do, dealing with Telen''s gear and the entropic sword-club from the vault, but our hired mercenaries didn''t need to be around for that and so we all gathered to say our goodbyes. Mila would be leaving the capitol but not going very far, instead visiting some of the nearby cities to shop around for a place to re-open her business - she spoke Erathik and the contract had given her an extra source of income here.


    "Also, I might be a wanted criminal in the Endless Empire now," she said with a sigh.


    Katrin winced, and it took me a second to realize I should probably say something since her criminal status was kind of my fault. I didn''t actually feel bad, but that little voice reminded me that it didn''t hurt to say something. "Sorry about that, Mila."


    She just smiled. "Oh it''s fine dear, it happens. I came close to being banned from the Patic empire, and there''s a life sentence waiting for me in Halenvar that probably isn''t helped by us collecting that bounty on Telen. Oh, and I suppose the government of Markonti still wants to execute me! Haven''t thought about that vacation in ages. But I have a few places left, you know, and people do forget eventually; the kingdom of Romatna had a coup about twelve years ago and I feel confident they won''t try to arrest me anymore. Nobody keeps track after most of the government is beheaded."


    Errod''s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. "And you... just run a sculpture business."


    "Is that bad?"


    "No," Katrin said, "I just think that most people who make statues and vases and things aren''t wanted in multiple countries."


    Milanata seemed to consider that for a moment, but then got distracted when she realized she wasn''t sure where her bag was. Thankfully we located it - already on her back - and then it was time to say goodbye which took several attempts as she kept turning back around for something else she''d forgotten.


    I awkwardly offered to buy Sige and Cyne lunch, but the job was over and both were eager to get moving - Cyne was taking most of the kids to the city of Twelve Towers to get them settled at the monastery or whatever it was until they could try to locate their parents, and Sige had some gambling debts he was extremely eager to pay off. I did get a big hug from him before he left, and a promise that if I could find him he''d gladly sign on to any other jobs I wanted done.


    Cyne would be taking the kids through Heregie, the living plane. It was how we had originally planned on departing from Good Charl, and much like in that case there was an established road between Erathik and Twelve Towers. I walked them to the planar station but didn''t try to go in, still feeling like until I was actually stopped by the guards I could pretend they were just going to let me go. I thanked Cyne and said goodbye no problem, and then looked down at the kids and felt like I was going to pass out.


    I was sending them to what was basically an orphanage, all with their meager belongings in little backpacks. I was firmly in the role of Child Protective Services here - well, not really, I had rescued them from kidnappers and gotten them access to magic and set up a trust fund and... none of that mattered. I was handing them off to their case worker and washing my hands of them and I wanted to throw up.


    I tried to say something to them but it came out as a jumbled mess of tears and snot and I finally had to force myself to smile and wave. I turned and walked away before they were even through the archway into the station, hurrying towards our hotel and pretending I couldn''t hear Tig trying to call to me. Katrin and Errod didn''t try to catch me, which I was grateful for - even moreso since they had Elba with them. I''d convinced them to take her back to her family, since she was the only one who still knew the name of her town, and they had in turn optimistically planned the trip as if I''d be able to come along.


    They''d be going South through a mountain pass into the Free States and to the city of Sentortzi, which was the closest big city to Elba''s family. It was also one of the best places in the world to purchase magic items, so if I somehow made it that far I''d also be going on a shopping spree. Then if I''d been detained in Erathik Katrin and Errod would head back, and if we were all together we would instead go to somewhere off in the wilderness where the mana was high and camp out, killing monsters and meditating to try and build up our Dumines.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    There was one silver lining to the most likely scenario where I was stuck under guard, which was that I wouldn''t have to worry about the possibility that Elba''s parents had moved away or died. I couldn''t imagine a conversation I was less qualified for. And what would we do with her after that? We would need to find a way to get her to Twelve Towers, or... keep a kid with us while we trained in the wilderness?


    Elba was about ten years old, in Earth years, and reminded me a lot of some of the kids I''d known in foster care. She was cheerful enough, and would play games with the others and joke around and seem like a typical kid - and then she would sit there muttering to herself about Sahrger and running her thumb across the blade of her knife, staring off into the distance. She would probably need some therapy, but I wasn''t exactly going to be the one to throw stones there. I liked her well enough, but... I didn''t want her with us long term.


    We did a little shopping around the city, and I liked the Erathi people more with every passing second. There was music everywhere, which was a welcome change from Theramas even if I couldn''t understand the words, and the food was almost as good - although it seemed like it all had this bitter green veggie in it that I wasn''t crazy about. I also was having a little trouble adjusting to the casual public nudity - nothing obscene, but shirts were clearly considered optional and we passed a sort of huge complicated fountain that was being used by a whole crowd to do their laundry where a few folks had just stripped down entirely.


    On a similar note, there was also a lot of... touching. I got a lot of cheek kisses, and a lot of hugs, and even some affectionate slaps on the ass. Much like the nudity it didn''t seem sexual, and while the ass-slaps in particular might have normally had me stabbing someone it was so clearly just a cultural norm that I couldn''t be offended and instead just slapped them right back. It also helped that it didn''t seem to be gendered; if it had only been men touching me I would have gotten completely different vibes, but everyone was all over everyone else. Hugh had been more reserved, but then again he would be used to behaving himself around various other cultures. I had to wonder if at home he was goosing people and kissing everyone on the cheeks all the time.


    More important than the people, however, were the dinosaurs. They were everywhere, mostly moskar like the ones we''d ridden after Yallowsben but also some other varieties. They were all the same basic velociraptor-y shape, but that was like comparing a pony and a buffalo. Some were beasts of burden, some were riding mounts, and some were clearly pets, with little decorative harnesses on them.


    We spent the next day and a half wandering the streets and going to various appointments. We had to talk to some officials about Telen and come to an agreement about his armor, sword, and Dumine. We had to figure out what to do with that fucking sword-club from the vault - Mila had needed to make a stone box for it and we''d knocked it in with Errod''s sword, because reaching too close to it without some kind of barrier made your fingers go numb. That was going to be auctioned off, which was more paperwork and more meetings.


    Katrin continued to find reasons to hang around Lute - advice on how to deal with the auction house since we weren''t planning on sticking around until the auction, questions about the bank accounts, all pretty transparent excuses - so I tried to do some shopping while Errod hung out with Elba. Unfortunately, at the very first place I stopped I once again got that old feeling. It was just like I remember from being a little kid and thinking about my mom''s room, about how she''d told me I wasn''t allowed in. Or that one foster home Bill had tried to set up for me before he quit, or the little potion shop right before I met Errod. I wasn''t sure what about these places reminded me so strongly of fearing my mom''s disapproval, but I didn''t want to give myself a migraine so I just gave up.


    "You okay?" Errod asked, still fidgeting with his glove.


    "Yeah. Something was bugging me, but it''s fine. It''s... I have all this fucked up shit, and most of it I even know where it comes from but that doesn''t help. Like... you guys called me out on getting strange whenever you go somewhere without me, and I know that''s silly and I know I only have a problem with it because my mom used to abandon me places - don''t ask - but knowing does absolutely nothing. I''m still going to keep having a problem with it.


    "Same thing with me always wanting to run away, or half the times I do something stupid and impulsive. And sometimes... I don''t know, sometimes there''s a place that reminds me of my mom''s room for some reason, maybe it''s a smell or something, and I just... feel like I''m not allowed in there. And it''s stupid, and it''s not fair that knowing why I have all these issues doesn''t ever help me not have them."


    Errod sighed. "I''m sorry. There are people you could talk to about it, people who have developed magic specifically to help change behaviors and things. I know you''re hesitant to let anyone else see your memories though."


    "Yeah, still not sure how many people know about Earth. I need to go through Connie''s notebook and see if I can figure out what all Hammersmith agreed to, but I doubt she kept it a secret. I guess she won''t do anything until after the war though, so... huh. You know what I just realized? I''ve only been here for sixty days - give or take. That''s nuts."


    Errod smiled, and finally stopped poking at this glove. "It does feel like longer - and I''ve known you even less than that. We left Yallowsben - what, two weeks after you arrived? Or as you would say, two ridiculous too-short weeks."


    "A week should be seven days, not six."


    "You have to know how stupid that sounds. You said you use tens like we use sixes. How does seven come into it? Shouldn''t your weeks be either five or ten days?"


    "I can''t spend all my time explaining why the Earth method is better. Anyway. What I''m saying is, I''ve only been here for sixty days and I''ve visited multiple planes and learned magic - well, gained the ability to learn magic - and made enough money that I could just retire."


    "But instead," Errod said with a grin, "you''re going to try to evade the authorities again and travel around with us until you''re forced to go to a plane that''s been cursed and abandoned, where you will end a war and possibly save the world. Not too bad."


    We had purchased two vardo wagons that were charming as fuck and made me feel as if I was some sort of mysterious fortune teller at a carnival. They were like extremely cramped mobile homes, with two narrow beds - one of them folded out from the wall over the other - and a little desk thing and cupboards and a washbasin and... I loved it. It made me deliriously happy. Each was pulled by two moskar, though these were a bit slower and stronger than the ones we''d ridden before. They had the same flat bony faces as if they had evolved to ram people, and the same beneficial ability to eat practically any plant they came across.


    The plan was for me to share my wagon with Elba, and have Katrin and Errod split the other. Of course what I actually expected was that Errod would soon have his own wagon and I''d be under protective custody, but whatever. Katrin was late getting to us and looked... flustered... but I decided I wasn''t going to ask about it. Probably Lute had kissed her or something, and while I was willing to smile and nod along if she wanted to share I wasn''t going to go out of my way to hear about it.


    We got on the road and approached the main gate of Erathik, where there was a bit of a traffic jam. It appeared the guards were being a little more... thorough... than usual. Great. I stayed hidden in the back of my wagon, peeking out ahead through one of the little windows, and watched us get closer and closer to the checkpoint.


    Just before we arrived, all the guards walked away in a clump. It looked like they were escorting someone, but I couldn''t get a good look and they quickly disappeared down a side street. And that was it. The remaining guards seemed to be in a hurry to clear the jam, and barely said anything to Katrin and Errod before letting them pass. I waited almost fifteen minutes before coming out just to be safe, but the road was clear and there was no sign of pursuit.


    "I''m not complaining," I said to Katrin, "but what the fuck just happened?"

 INTERLUDE: Obscurus Opus

    Conlins Colrath looked over everything again as he made a neat stack on his desk.  To anyone else, it would look like nothing coherent - just a random assortment of notes and excerpts copied out of books with some small things in common, but no clear thread to follow.  There were equations for calculating planar membrane density, descriptions of the first dragon and theories on its creation, contemporary accounts of the events surrounding the last Great Alignment, and studies measuring the influence of Lenderatze over the centuries.


    But he knew what he had found.  He knew what it all meant.  Last onto the pile went a firsthand account from an artificer who had once worked on a device created by the Clockmaker himself and had detailed certain bizarre modifications someone had made to it.  Nonsensical changes, parameters that should have rendered it useless.  There was no indication of where that device had ended up, unfortunately, but the chaos after the Grand Alignment had buried entire kingdoms.


    Conlins looked out through the diamond pane of his window at the bustling city of Trallanar, with its white towers that housed the world''s greatest researchers and the enormous crystal sphere that marked the entrance to the Crossroads facility.  He was going to miss this place - Brinkmar had been his home for most of his life.  He sighed, and closed the curtains before gathering up the stack of documents and stuffing everything into a satchel.


    If he were to take everything to the queen, he knew, it would be enough for him to explain what he had found.  Would she know that this was something the throne had been eagerly searching for, back in the days following the change of rulers?  Or would it be forgotten?  Either way, Conlins would not be the one who got to see the secret it protected.  The queen would thank him, surely, and reward him handsomely - she was not unkind - but he wanted more.  He wanted to be there, in person, when the way was opened.


    And so he went to the bathroom on the third floor.


    There was a small window there that, unlike the others in the building, could be cracked open for ventilation.  Some quirk of history had allowed this minor breach in security, but the window looked out only onto a narrow strip of rooftop and anyone approaching the tower would be spotted.  Any magic used near the wall would be detected.  Certainly, none who knew of the window - other than Conlins - would have taken the time to calculate the trajectory a satchel would follow if it slid off the roof... and realized that for a brief moment it would pass through the air far enough from any wards for space to be twisted around it, delivering it past the walls.


    The satchel barely fit, and there was no way for him to watch it fall and see if his attempt was successful.  He could feel his heart pounding.  If someone else found it, would they be able to figure out what it all meant?  Surely not.  Except... they would be able to trace it back to him, if they tried hard enough.  Putting the thought out of his head, he hurried out of the bathroom and back to his desk.  He sat there, eyes glued to the clock, fingers drumming incessantly on the polished armrests of his chair.


    When it was finally time to leave he barely managed to walk at a normal pace.  He reached the security counter, felt the enhanced eyes of the guards sweep over him, and did his best to stay calm as he sauntered past.  He paused only to remind the front desk clerk that he had scheduled a few days off, and would need any messages held.


    He had an excuse to hurry somewhat, as the rain was scheduled to start in just five minutes; the Clockmaker hadn''t been a fan of chaotic weather.  The first rumble of thunder rolled across the sky just as Conlins passed the old monastery, and as the drops started to fall he ducked into an alleyway under a small awning - and waited a moment to be sure he wasn''t being followed. Just as he was beginning to relax, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.  "Gotcha!", a deep voice said.  Conlins screamed.


    "You big baby," Nach said, before grabbing Conlins and pulling him through a twist in space.  They stepped out into a basement, where three other people were waiting.  It was supposed to be two.  "I recovered the package," Nach reassured him, "and our last contractor is here.  We''re good to go."


    Conlins recognized Tiller, who he''d hired at the same time as Nach.  The man was built like a furnace, squat and wide and looking like if you punched him your hand might break.  But the old lady and the bandage-wrapped woman at her side were a mystery.  The old lady, he presumed, was the one that Nach had picked to get them out of Brinkmar.  She had a golden nose ring, which if he recalled correctly was an old tradition that was gaining traction again for people from Erathik.  She was dressed strangely though, with layered shawls adding significantly to her mass.  She was, it appeared, knitting a new one as she sat there.  She hadn''t reacted to Nach and Conlins appearing.


    If she was the planar expert, that would make the thin woman wrapped head to toe in bandages... some sort of bodyguard?  She had two swords, though one was wrapped up just like the rest of her.  Conlins wondered how well she would be able to wield a weapon considering how bulky the bandages on her hands looked, but it wasn''t a big concern.  Tiller, and to a lesser extent Nach, would be providing the muscle.  A strip of the woman''s skin was visible around her eyes, and her tightly curling hair was teased up into a massive sphere - Conlins thought it made her look a bit like the puff reeds that grew on the riverbanks.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    "I see you brought your own... protection.  I hope you understand I won''t be paying for their service."


    The old woman continued knitting for a moment, and then just as Conlins opened his mouth to repeat himself she spoke up.  "Oh of course, dear.  Kika is practically family, and she just needs to... oh, see the world.  Get some work under her belt.  You know how it is.  She won''t be any trouble.  Now I understand you want me to get you out of Brinkmar without the queen knowing, yes?"


    Conlins hesitated, but Nach stepped in.  "The boss here is new to clandestine shit, so the plan is to keep things simple.  The Queen''s Blade is on death''s door, probably going to kick it any day now.  Nobody seems to know who is even going to take the position next, so for now I think security will be as light as it ever is.  You get us out of here first, and then the boss will let you know next steps.  Might be two or three other planes we need to stop at, or some travel through somewhere to get to a new location on Prime.  Sound good?"


    The old woman cackled. "Sounds familiar, dear.  The vast majority of the jobs I''ve done could be summed up the same way.  Well then.  I can get you out of Brinkmar without alerting anyone, but I know a researcher when I see one.  Does our generous employer have a badge issued by the queen, perhaps?  Because those can be tracked."


    Conlins reached under his shirt to his Dumine and twisted the badge off of it, feeling his lutore burn away the now-unapproved abilities.  He''d never removed it before, since re-attuning to a badge could take weeks.  He wasn''t sure what all would change.  He tried to visualize his Dumine and saw nothing but a field of blue with a hexagon - minorly inconvenient, but not a problem.  Next, he held out a hand and tried to pull a book from his Pocket, and... he could feel his connection, but couldn''t seem to access it. Almost like when he was at work and the wards were preventing it, but... not quite.


    "It''s off, I''ll... leave it here, I suppose." Conlins wasn''t happy.  If he just left it in a random basement and someone found it, at best they would think he had been murdered and at worst he would get questioned under suspicion of selling his badge to someone.  He did his best to hide it under some detritus in the corner, very aware of the eyes on him.


    "Good," the old woman said, "now we can truly get to business, yes?"  She put away her knitting, and looked at everyone in turn.  "This is the bargain - I will escort you to your destination safely, and return you to the Prime plane after.  You, in turn, will show me respect and listen to my advice - though I would not require you to actually take my advice, yes?"


    Conlins nodded and stuttered out an agreement, and Tiller grumbled out what was probably a yes. Nach smirked and didn''t answer right away.  "Talk of bargains always gets my legs itching.  You''re not a Sahrger, are you?"


    "A Sahrger? Hah!  Sure, I''m the Black Duchess herself!  Azaraze''s exit, maybe I''m the Queen of Candles too - Kika here can be the Queen''s Blade, unless you''d rather be the Clockmaker''s heir dear?  No?  Well don''t say I didn''t offer."


    Nach rolled his eyes. "Fine.  If you were a Sahrger I doubt you''d have the balls to say you''re the Black Duchess, and the actual Black Duchess is too busy with starting trouble for other Sahrger to take odd jobs on Brinkmar.  I''ll listen to your advice, if you listen to mine."


    Her eyes seemed to twinkle as she grinned.  "We have a deal, then."  She reached out an arm and her bodyguard took it to help her up, though Conlins didn''t think it looked like she needed the help.  She walked towards a closet door, and then hesitated a moment and turned to her bodyguard.


    "Kika, dear.  This is your last chance to change your mind.  I can promise you''ll make it back here in one piece, but promises can be a tricky thing - when I took your grandmother to the moon it got her killed, despite my best efforts."


    Kika stood up straighter.  "She never held that against you.  She still doesn''t.  This will be good for me, the whole family agrees."


    Conlins and Nach shared a look.  Were they talking in code?  Nobody could get to the moon, and while there were a few ways you could theoretically talk to someone after they died it wasn''t common.  "Where did you find her?" Conlins whispered.


    Nach shrugged.  "Honestly?  I just got a list of names and picked one at random."


    Conlins was about to reply, but whatever he was about to say was forgotten when the old woman threw open the closet door and sunlight streamed in to the little basement.  Air began blowing past them through the doorway, taking all sorts of loose items with it.  Wherever the woman had opened a door to, there was a pressure differential.


    "That... that''s not possible," Conlins muttered, "You can only enter and exit Brinkmar through established portals."


    The old woman cackled again.  "There''s no better way to get away undetected then, is there?"


    He couldn''t argue with that logic.  Tiller heaved his bulk up and walked through the doorway without showing any concern - Conlins suspected he wasn''t educated enough to understand how unusual this all was - but Nach was pale and muttering a prayer as he followed.  Conlins was the last to pass through, and with every step he took towards that doorway he felt panic increasing.  What was he doing?  It was treason, plain and simple - he''d never broken a single law, and he was skipping right to treason?


    But as he reached the threshold he didn''t stop.  He was going to find it.  He was going to recover whatever was hidden on the thirty-seventh plane.

 INTERLUDE: A Correspondence

    I had to throw the forms you sent away, I''ve been under a lot of scrutiny by my shrink. I''ve had to remove all incongruous items from the property lest I blow my cover, and the forms just weren''t worth keeping. It''s just the two of us working on this project. We don''t need to turn it into a bureaucracy.


    You wanted an update on my... composure... and I''ve gone back and forth about whether it''s better to lie or risk coming off as petty. So just know I say this not to open old wounds, but because you asked: I''ve been having dreams that it''s the shrink I murdered instead of your mother, but it''s still you standing there telling me to do it. It''s not great for my admittedly shaky mental health.


    Nor is high school.


    That one I can at least do something about - I''m expecting to take the GED test in a few weeks, and then I can head to college. In the meantime, the indignity of our public education system is something I''ll just have to endure. Still, I seem to have served a purpose here as I''ve located an object of interest.


    As I said, I threw the forms away so you just get the plain text version:


    Earlier this week, the school held an assembly to unearth a time capsule buried fifty years ago. Most items were both unremarkable and badly damaged, but there was a "football trophy" made from a chalice mounted to a block of wood. The chalice was clearly made from alchemical metals (I''ll resist speculating on the exact alloy, I know you''ll want to test it regardless) and had arcane symbols around the rim, something older than Imperial magic.


    I was able to break into the principal''s office and steal it without being noticed, but it''s not secure at my house - the shrink has already come close to stumbling across captured items a few times and I wonder if our prisoner''s unconscious will is trying to force me to go on the run in the hope I will end up leaving Earth. I can''t see how that would work, but it has to try something.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Only two days later I located a second item, this one a necklace that I pulled out of a clogged floor drain at the McDonald''s I''m working at - or was working at, as I have now tendered my resignation. I''m applying at the water park next, where I will no doubt find a magical trident in the wave pool. I wish we could risk handing the prisoner off to you for a while, I''d love to be on overwatch duty for a change and let you be the one out there collecting trinkets.


    The necklace was snagged by my manager before I could hide it, and breaking into the office after hours revealed nothing. I suspect he''s cleaned it up and given it to his girlfriend, and have found out where she lives. Hopefully I can get it without causing any alarm or injury. I doubt she''s the one it''s looking for, so we probably don''t have to worry about any breaches in the meantime.


    Now that business and personal updates are out of the way: fuck you, you ridiculous hypocrite. I saw the book. I know you had to obtain that publisher to derail the Shattered Crown, but what possible purpose does it serve to put something so close to High Imperial out there? I understand how the contract allowed it, but what of common sense? Why take the risk?


    I''m out here collecting every stray artifact and creature I can and you''re putting more anomalous writing onto the market? I had to kill a fire-breathing weasel during my fourteenth birthday party without any of the actual teenagers seeing anything. Last year you made me steal an artifact from the museum during a school trip - I don''t care if the prisoner is protecting me, it absolutely could have landed me in jail.


    All this work, all this sacrifice, and you sit there playing with computers and making forms. If you haven''t already, pull the book off the market and destroy every copy the way you did with the shrink''s book. This is non-negotiable. I don''t care if this body is sixteen, I am an adult and you will treat me as one. We are partners, and the contract was built around the idea of minimizing risk of the prisoner finding any other host.


    If it''s always going to be under my care anyway, and if you''re going to publish how-to manuals on magic, then it seems you''re more damaging than helpful. Do I need to remind you that your life is at stake? I may have promised not to kill you deliberately, but accidents happen - and those accidents are more and more likely as other players enter the field.


    Pull the book, and come to pick up the necklace and chalice.

 CHAPTER 047: Application Layer DDoS

    I was in a bit of a catch-22 with my Dumines.


    There was something happening in that non-euclidean space between the blue panels I was supposed to be seeing, and I was sure that if I could understand it I could proceed. Well, good news, I had both Perception and Comprehension so that should be easy... if I didn''t need to understand it in order to unlock the ability to understand it. It was more frustrating than if it had just been clearly impossible.


    I was sitting on the little bench at the front of my adorable fortune teller vardo wagon, which for reasons I couldn''t begin to think of wasn''t the same end as the door to the inside. It was my only complaint - I should have been able to go in and out at the front rather than the back, so I could keep an eye on the moskar. Well, on Shitheel. I''d originally named our moskar Sneezy, Dopey, Sleepy, and Grumpy - but it was quickly apparent that Shitheel''s attitude went well beyond merely being grumpy and bordered on actual evil. Thankfully he was fairly content to walk along the road for the most part, but when he decided it was time to stop there was no arguing and any attempts to wash him down, adjust or remove his harness, or convince him to do anything when he was on break was a battle of wills I was so far losing miserably.


    Katrin was riding with me so we could talk about the Dumine issue, leaving Errod to drive his wagon - driving in this case being just sitting there since there were no forks in the road and even Shitheel understood the idea of going forward. Elba was in her usual spot, perched on top of Katrin and Errod''s wagon with some colored chalk - far enough away that she couldn''t eavesdrop on us, close enough for us to notice if she fell off or something.


    There was also a third wagon of very similar design, but that belonged to Granny. We had passed or been passed by a lot of other travelers on the road, but Granny had ended up camping at the same spot as us early on and we''d just quietly turned into a mini caravan after she had dealt with an unwelcome visitor. "Oh what a shame," she''d said over his screams, "the hooked end of my knitting needle seems to have become wrapped around a tendon, yes? Oh no, don''t squirm darling. It is so much more painful if the tendon detaches."


    She''d suggested that she could remove the hooked needle if he dropped some of the extra weight from his satchel, and he produced the brand new - and very fancy - shaving and toiletry kit Errod had purchased in Erathik. I dumped the rest of the satchel out, and while nothing else looked like it was ours I collected it all just in case. Call it a processing fee. Granny had carefully removed the hook and offered to bandage the injury, but the man ran off instead. I decided right then and there that I wanted to be her when I grew up.


    "Your last name isn''t Hurst, is it?" I asked - mostly joking - when I realized this was our second traveling companion that seemed like a random harmless woman but then kicked someone''s ass. Granny was older than Mila though, and there was no intention to travel with us on any adventures - she was just "coincidentally" keeping pace with us, probably because she could tell we were young and inexperienced. With some people that might have felt condescending or made me want to ditch them on principle, but Granny seemed cool.  Also, she had started teaching me how to knit - or the fantasyland equivalent, anyway. I wasn''t sure about the difference between what I was doing and things like knitting and crochet on Earth.


    As much as I liked her, I didn''t want to be spending time practicing knitting - I wanted to be learning magic. And that was something I couldn''t talk about around strangers, given my unique situation. "Okay, tell me again. You only see blue and a hexagon, but you feel... what, exactly?"


    Katrin very deliberately didn''t roll her eyes. I had learned how to notice that sort of thing on her. "It''s like the feeling when you were selecting gifts in the Duminere," she said patiently, "just these vague impressions of what I can and can''t do. It''s like ideas are coming to me out of nowhere, though I suppose they''re from some external thing. They say the Clockmaker made a copy of his mind and it lives in Quebristun, so maybe that''s where the information comes from."


    Connie had said something about that story, but it seemed like there were a ton of conflicting legends around the Clockmaker. "Okay. So... does selecting something feel like it did in the Duminere? Like, exactly?"


    Katrin had already managed to build onto her Dumine. You had to gather potential, which obviously I jumped to thinking of in video game terms even though that wasn''t really accurate. It wasn''t experience points or skill points or anything, it was something to do with strengthening your lutore - that thing formed by the junction of your mind, soul, and body. Nobody agreed on the best way to do it. It just happened over time, but also it happened faster for older people by a little bit and was maybe increased by spending time in high mana areas or by eating certain expensive concoctions or by killing (and maybe eating?) monsters. It wasn''t clear how much was bullshit.


    Katrin had so far only made it so she could understand the writing in her spellbook on a deeper level using Comprehension. She said there was another layer to the complex runes, some sort of actual ideas encoded in there - plus some runes looked the same but weren''t, in a way that sounded similar to when you couldn''t tell if something was an uppercase ''i'' or a lowercase ''l''. She was suddenly able to cast way more of the spells, although most were still beyond her for the moment. If she kept it up she would not only be able to understand more of them, but would be able to cast them faster and make little tweaks - and eventually make up her own new spells on the fly if needed.


    "I wouldn''t say it''s exactly the same," she replied, "but it''s at least similar. There''s that same sort of... feeling of confirmation, of thinking ''yes, that''s what I want''. And before that you can feel that there''s other options, that if you change your mind something else might be possible. I overreached at first, and I could feel that what I wanted was an option in theory but I wasn''t ready for it."


    I closed my eyes again. There it was, that gap with... something... on or in it. I focused on the idea of perceiving it, of comprehending it, of being able to really understand what was happening in there. And it moved. Not only that but... had the blue changed, somehow, for just a second? I could only see it at all in the corner of my vision - well, not vision really since it was all in my head but... close enough. I tried again, and there was something. A feeling. "Okay, hang on. I''m getting something. Gimme a minute."


    The movement I could sense was slippery, somehow.  It wanted to change.  Okay, that I could deal with.  Katrin had said she got the vibe that what she had wanted wasn''t something she had enough potential yet.  There would also have to be a similar error - for lack of a better word - when it was something you simply couldn''t do at all.  Were there other kinds, other restrictions?  Possibly.  Regardless, the first step would have to be "listening" for more information.  It was possible I just needed practice, rather than magic.  And so that''s what I did.


    I zoned out while knitting with Granny, thinking of different abilities and staring into that dizzying void.  I continually popped in and out of meditation as I lay in my little bed at night trying to fall asleep.  I challenged Elba to distract me and attempted to stay focused in on those impossible fuzzy movements in my mind, trying to completely tune out everything else - that one went badly, as Elba resorted to sucking on her finger and shoving it in my ear almost immediately.  Nobody could meditate through that.


    Meanwhile, the weather was getting cooler as we approached the mountains.  Erathik was at the Northwest corner of the continent, but we were in the Southern hemisphere so that was close to the equator.  Any further North than the actual city of Erathik and you started to hit some very hot jungles and then, once you got far enough away from the mountains, a huge sandy desert.  The impression I was getting was that the differences in climate across the continent were more extreme than I was used to, but the variation from the seasons was less.  We were right in the middle of summer - two thirds of the way through the sixth month - so I wouldn''t get to confirm that for quite a while.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    As we passed through the mountains it got downright cold at times when the wind picked up, which was still a fun novelty for me - I''d lived in Arizona for too long, where even the middle of winter was pretty mild.  I remembered it snowing a few times when I was younger and living in New Jersey, and one time when I was in the snow somewhere else... it felt like one of those out of place memories, something impossible.  Just this flash of being somewhere cold, some city that didn''t look familiar at all.  And... a castle?  Still Earth, though.  It had to be something out of a movie or a television show, or - though I hated to entertain the possibility - just a completely fabricated memory.


    When we were in the very middle of the pass, with the wagons pulled close together to give the moskar shelter from the wind and Elba tossing and turning in the bunk above me, I finally cracked my Dumine problem.  It was such a small change, but suddenly I knew I was going to be okay.  Unable to sleep, I''d been concentrating again on different abilities I might unlock and feeling for that push of ideas, or confirmation, or denial.  Anything, really.  And I had the thought that the Dumine was supposed to be doing something to my lutore, to the core of me, and I focused on that.  I wanted to see magic, see what I could do, see the things that could be a part of me - and specifically how they lined up with my lutore.


    You could always, I had been told, focus things on your lutore.  It was how you differentiated between abilities that targeted yourself, or the area around you, from ones that targeted someone else.  But when I felt something shifting, branching out, growing like roots... there was a jarring shift at the last second.  It was what I''d detected a few times before, that feeling like it was wiggling free of my mental grasp, and so I forced it back.  I held the idea as hard as I could in my head, and finally felt something in return.


    If I had to put it into words, it would be "you''re not allowed to do that, do this instead".  I let it flicker over, and forced it back.  Forced it again, let it go back.  Over and over, trying to get a feel for what was happening.  I could sense it, not through the Dumines but through something deeper - something inside me.  Even after the howling winds died down and Elba stopped flipping over and mumbling I just lay there, fidgeting with my core and trying to detect where this was in relation to the rest of me.  I remembered the feeling when I had damaged my lutore by using mana I didn''t have, that cracked feeling - but what was cracked, and where?


    And then I felt the layers.  Just for a second.  That was what was shifting, my attention was being shunted from one layer of my lutore to another.  Was the Dumine forbidding me from interacting with certain layers?  I wasn''t even sure how many there were - probably six or thirty-six if it held to the same rules as the rest of the world - but I did recall that woman we''d payed to confirm I could use magic had said she couldn''t detect the layers properly.  She''d found the third layer but not the first two, and then there was something else - a gap where another layer would be, maybe?


    I wasn''t sure if that meant something was broken about me and that was causing this error, or if the Dumine always kept people from messing with that part of the lutore and the other thing was unrelated.  It just had to go on the big list of things to research someday.  In the meantime, I tried brute force for a bit.  No luck.  Then I tried really thinking about the difference between what I was trying to do and what it was suggesting, and after a while got another flicker of information.  It was incomplete, but enough to tell me the two had very little in common.  What I wanted was to look at my lutore itself, and what the Dumine wanted was to show me things within a certain layer - an area of effect around me.


    I switched tactics, and focused on the idea of seeing all the layers, every part of my Lutore.  Not just the bits I was forbidden from, or the bits it wanted to let me mess with, but everything as if it was one unit.  I kept feeling like it was working, saw those vague shapes moving, and then they would snap away.  I pulled harder, flexing imaginary muscles, and pictured melding all the layers of my lutore into one thing, one concept, one indivisible shell.  The layers were an illusion, surely - they were all part of an aura surrounding me, why couldn''t it be a gradient rather than distinct bands?


    I began to feel strained; before, I''d felt like my lutore was cracked or injured.  This, instead, felt like it was being twisted and molded.  I pictured a partially-inflated balloon, being twisted into different shapes.  I felt an opening, but right as I tried to accept the power something jumped and I felt potential flowing away, lines that had been twisting now burning into place.  I''d unlocked something, but not what I wanted.  I didn''t let up, forcing it harder.


    I realized then what had happened - one of the Dumines had been failing, and another had taken over.  Okay.  I tried again, feeling for that shift.  Over the next hour I started to get a feel for the three Dumines, started to be able to detect which one was doing the heavy lifting.  Of course it wasn''t really the Dumine itself, not entirely - it was something working through the Dumines.  But that thing, whatever it was, didn''t seem to be all that smart.  It was an automated process, or based on instinct, or something like that.  And if I pushed hard on one of the Dumines, really got its attention, I could switch to another all at once and there was a sort of delay.


    Another hour, and I was able to rapidly cycle through them.  Head, foot, chest.  Head, foot, chest.  Head, foot, chest.  They were responding faster and faster, matching my own improvement.  Eventually they even started to activate just ahead of my attention hitting them.  I''d start to move my request from my head to my foot, and the foot Dumine was already starting to reply.  I kept the cycle up, faster and faster.  All I had to do was hold what I wanted, that illegal pattern, there in my mind.  Before it could be forced into a new shape I slammed it against the next one - head, foot, chest, head, foot, chest, head, foot, chest, head, chest.


    Whatever dumb program, or spirit, or magical algorithm was controlling things tripped over itself.  I''d skipped the foot Dumine, and it had tried to respond anyway.  The chest tried too, and... it was hard to put into words.  My understanding was still shaky, my intuition over what it was trying to say to me foggy at best, but it felt like I''d forced two Dumines to try and access the same thing at the same time and they''d blocked each other.  The request slipped through.  My lutore rippled as something bound the layers together, and right on the heels of that success I pushed through and demanded the ability to perceive and comprehend what was happening to my lutore.  Deprived for the moment of the layers it was used to and still dealing with the conflict of now three Dumines all trying to reserve access, that request clicked into place as well.


    The gap between those blue fields was abruptly in focus.  The lines were four-dimensional and made my head hurt, but I could see them and they... made sense, somehow.  Not fully, but just enough.  I could see that some points were burned deep into my core, like anchor points permanently welded to my lutore.  From there, strings and webs reached out across everything.  The anchors were my gifts.  Perception, Comprehension, Temporal, Probability, Planar, Spirit, Thought, Binding, and... Fate, I guess.  I thought about being able to travel to other planes, and glowing lines appeared - they were less solid than the ones that were already there, and flickered as they changed configuration.


    It was anchored to one node in particular, which I knew somehow was Planar, but also touched on Probability and Binding.  Interesting.  I could feel the information Katrin had described now, but in a different way than I expected - it didn''t feel at all like it had in the Duminere, more like I was overhearing a distant voice from the end of a long hallway.  This was only one of many possible ways I could breach the membrane between planes, but it didn''t matter - I was out of potential.  I''d spent it all on... hmm.


    I dismissed the glowing lines, and looked closer at the ones that were already bound in place.  The first one, the one that was an accident, was anchored on Perception but touched literally all of them - I wasn''t sure what that would let me perceive, but I set it aside for the moment.  The second was Spirit, Planar, Binding, and a little touch of Fate.  Why would all of those be involved in linking the different layers of my Lutore?  Planar in particular seemed out of place.  The last was, not surprisingly, mostly Perception and Comprehension but with entanglements to the other ability.


    I opened my eyes, and the normal three-dimensional world felt wrong for a moment.  I climbed out of bed, full of anxious energy.  Most of what I had done was just fixing a problem caused by my extra Dumines, so there wasn''t anything I could think of that I could actually do with it.  Nothing flashy, anyway.  But there was that first, accidental, ability I''d unlocked... surely that did something?  I wasn''t sure how to activate it, so I just thought about it and blinked and -


    There were lines in the air, threads reaching out of my chest.  Most vanished just inches away from my skin, but some passed right through the walls of the wagon.  I turned, and they stayed where they were - they seemed to be tethered to something, somewhere else.  I had a ton of them, and once I thought to look I could see that Elba had one too.  I wanted to run to the other wagon and wake Katrin up, but I realized I wouldn''t be able to show her anyway.  Also, I was realizing, it was about to be morning and I''d stayed up all night wrestling with my brain.  I was exhausted.


    I tucked myself back in, and felt sleep closing in around me.  I blinked again, watching the threads glimmering in the air.  I wasn''t sure what I was doing, exactly, but it was magic.  And I''d be learning a whole lot more now that I was in control.

 CHAPTER 048: Method of Loci

    The next week I was the happiest I''d been in as long as I could remember.


    I spent my days riding on the wagon, knitting, and occasionally going out with Katrin and Errod to hunt these delicious little chubby rodents that lived in the woods while Granny kept an eye on Elba. When Shitheel insisted we take a break, I would spar with Errod as Katrin taught Elba to read. Then, in the evenings, we''d head off of the road and into the hills a little in the hopes of getting a slightly better ambient mana level and try to come up with games to play around the campfire. I''d cap off the night meditating and trying to understand what was going on behind my Dumines, and planning on what I''d learn once I''d built up more potential.


    It was cozy, and I could feel myself slowly moving past the more traumatic bits of my time since arriving from Earth - although I had still avoided reading through Connie''s journal apart from what I''d needed to in order to get the contracts written. Best of all, since I was traveling and wasn''t being told what to do by anyone I was getting all the benefits of a found family experience without triggering my weird "must run away and live in an abandoned factory" impulse.


    That being said, when we were finally at the edge of the Free States and it was time for Granny to turn her wagon down another road I wasn''t that sad. She was a lot of fun, and it was great to have her as a babysitter for Elba, but we had several secrets we didn''t want to discuss around her. She gave us all quick hugs and overly sloppy smooches on each cheek, and then unceremoniously headed off over the foothills. I didn''t find the knitting needles in my wagon until I went to bed that night - they were her better set, not the extras she had been having me use, and I may have cried a tiny bit. For no reason.


    We were also trying our best to keep from talking about Earth or my extra Dumines around Elba, but she didn''t really seem to care about us sending her off to play while we talked. She almost certainly knew something was up, but I doubted her time with the Sahrger encouraged her to snoop on the adults. While she was running around smacking things with sticks, we talked about topics like the strange threads I could see coming from my chest - and not just mine.


    There were a few in particular that seemed notable. While we all had at least two or three that tapered off into nothingness almost immediately, Errod had two that went from his chest to his glove and then, after passing through it, vanished a couple inches after. Katrin had one going to her spellbook, and that one didn''t continue past it - it just ended in the spine of the book. Also, the three of us all had at least one going to each other. Also interesting was the one we passed that was stretched across the road, not connected to anything we could see - although my range seemed to be limited, with them all stopping abruptly about twenty feet away from me.


    Elba had two of the ones that disappeared barely past her clothes and one that extended to the edge of my range. I, on the other hand, had more than the others combined which made me nervous for some reason. I kept telling myself that when we reached Sentortzi I would see it was a totally normal amount of weird threads to have coming out of me, and that some people had twice as much. I was trying to keep my mana from topping off - another plausible but unconfirmed tip on developing your Dumine faster - so I stared at the threads and thought about them a lot.


    "Okay so what if you gather them over time, and that''s why Elba only has three," I said after making sure Elba was too far to eavesdrop, "and that also explains why I have the most, although the three of us are close to the same age so... maybe there''s more of them on Earth?"


    "It seems like a needlessly complicated theory," Katrin said, "and as far as you could see Granny didn''t have any at all. Not that we have a lot of plausible explanations."


    It was common enough to develop the ability to see magic that was otherwise invisible - Katrin had just learned to see mana to some extent using her own Dumine - but it wouldn''t make sense for us to all have active spells on us that were otherwise undetectable, weren''t using a noticeable amount of mana, and never seemed to expire. Errod suggested that they might be spirit anchors, but Katrin shot him down because not only should that just require two for most people - one for the mind, one for the soul - it didn''t make sense that we were all also linked to each other. He looked discouraged, and I found myself worrying I would have to have some sort of talk with him.


    First he got a dud in the Duminere, then his sister got two gifts, and then to top it off he had to deal with the knowledge that without at all deserving it I''d come away with nine. And he seemed genuinely happy for me which, first of all, made me feel like a bit of an asshole because I knew I''d be salty as hell in his position - but also what if he was just pushing it down and one day he was going to snap? He had to listen to Katrin and I learn all this cool shit, and the only thing we''d included him in was some doomed attempts to remove his stupid glove. That hadn''t even gone well; both of us pulling as hard as we could did nothing aside from briefly popping his wrist out of place, and when I tried to make an exploratory cut on the edge my blade couldn''t even scratch the strange leather.


    If Errod was getting quietly upset about all this injustice, I should probably talk to him and let him get it off his chest. But that would be an awkward conversation, and I didn''t want to. And anyway, he was probably just a genuinely chill nice person. He had been about everything else up to now... Unless, of course, all that stuff was also down there building up pressure. But probably not. Probably it was fine. I really didn''t want to have that conversation.


    "When we do our big shopping spree in fantasy New York we need to get a stationary kit or a notebook or something so I can make a proper list of all these thread thingies and... I don''t know, be more scientific about this."


    Errod raised an eyebrow. "New York is Sentortzi?"


    Katrin didn''t wait for me to answer. "You said some were thicker than others, right? You still can''t see any other differences?"


    "Yes, Sentortzi. New York is a big city from Earth. Uh... yeah, I don''t know if there''s anything else different. I don''t think so but... ugh, I keep trying to grab them and pull them closer to my eyes even though I know my hand will go right through. Hang on, I''m gonna make this weird."


    I leaned in closer to Katrin''s chest than was really appropriate, and tried to scrutinize the threads. Was there something different? I switched back and forth between her and Errod, and thankfully neither of them seemed bothered by me being all up in their personal space. I already knew some disappeared right away instead of making it the full twenty feet and some were thicker. Was there a texture? Not that I could see. What else? Some... were moving. "Is it possible that all the ones that don''t disappear are connected to someone else, and that''s why I can kinda see some moving? Like, if I''m tethered to... uh... Sige, or Mila, or Hugh. They could be walking around somewhere, and that would make the line jiggle even if I''m standing still."


    She nodded. "It''s possible. It doesn''t explain the ones that only reach a few inches, unless those are left over from people who have died or... no, that doesn''t make sense. I also don''t see why I''ve got one going to the spellbook."


    "Gosh Katrin, you''re so good at telling me all the reasons my ideas are bad. Shame you can''t add something constructive." I knew it was mean as I said it. She was trying to help. But there were days I just really wasn''t good at social interactions, and my frustration at not understanding what I was looking at had combined with my impatience around building up enough potential for my next unlock. "Sorry," I muttered.


    She sighed, looking tired but not angry. "Are you?"


    "I..." - a flicker of memory, Bill telling me I didn''t need to lie to him - "I''m not, no. But I know I should be. And probably I will be, in a few minutes. I think I''m hitting my wall on this one. And it''s fine, I should be able to get other abilities now so it''s fine if this one is just seeing strange threads that don''t mean anything."


    "Except it''s not," she said.


    "Except it''s not," I agreed. I remembered carefully peeling the sticker off of a Rubic''s Cube so I could get at the screw underneath and loosen it. I''d popped the pieces off, reassembled them, and then put the sticker back in its place. I could have learned how to do it right - I knew there was a formula you could follow - but I was annoyed and took the brute force approach. I couldn''t even do that here; there was nothing to take apart, no colors to... huh.


    I meditated, and saw the non-euclidean squiggles twisting off into infinity while also somehow being inscribed on my lutore. I formed a thought in my head as clearly as possible, then focused on the ability that let me see the threads. I''d been saving up potential to work on either Thought or Planar, but this would be cheap - probably - and it was driving me nuts. The ability was attached to all my gifts, so all I had to do was differentiate them and see what happened.


    I opened my eyes and blinked to re-activate my view of the threads... and they were in colors. "Hah! Okay, I did a thing. Um. It doesn''t help a lot yet, but some of the threads are different colors. They''re... it''s hard to describe, probably because they''re not even really there. I mean, I think I''m seeing colors that don''t exist to some extent, and a lot of them are sort of a mix... but... you know how when you mix red and blue you get purple? Imagine if instead you got something that''s simultaneously red and blue, and also kinda purple... but not the same purple. It''s possible I could spend more potential on it to get a better view, but I don''t want to do that right now."


    "So you don''t know what the colors mean?" Katrin asked.


    "The intention was to use it to figure out which of my gifts they most closely corresponded to, but I can''t tell which color is which and a lot of them seem like they''re different colors depending on how I look at them. One of them is this blend of like four or five different colors - hell, could be more - while others change color just at the end. Like, the ones that disappear? Whatever they start as, they fade into either green or purple as they taper off. Or both, which is a color I cannot even begin to describe."


    "Okay," she said, "Let me try casting something and you can see if... well, if you can see it at all, and then if so whether or not the colors match."


    Katrin looked through her spellbook, but there was still a lot she either couldn''t read or couldn''t safely cast. She couldn''t find anything that manipulated probability, the planar ones were seemingly incomplete as if she needed to fill in variables herself, and the temporal ones used a ton of mana. Ones that seemed like perception, comprehension, or thought were all inwardly-focused which wasn''t ideal for this experiment, and the few relating to spirits would need one as a target.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The other thing was, of course, that the spells didn''t exactly follow the gifts from a Duminere. Much like the abilities I''d unlocked touched on more than one gift, the spells didn''t have to fall into those categories. Still, it seemed like most that she could cast were direct applications of power; fire, electricity, force, light. There was a healing one she''d figured out after I burned myself making dinner one night, but it was... not delicate. It hurt like hell and left a scar, meaning it was only good as an emergency measure and wouldn''t replace going to a proper healer.


    She finally just cycled through a bunch of spells until she ran out of mana. For most I saw... almost nothing. There was something there as she cast, some vague impression in the air that I couldn''t quite make out. I caught the color red sneaking in some, but it was so brief and so faint I couldn''t be certain. And then she made the tether thing, the one she''d used back before we went to Xeyul when we were being attacked by that Halenvar soldier. She wrapped the tether around a tree, and under the actual color of the visible effect I could see... white? It was one of the most common colors I saw in our threads, though it was often mixed with other shades.


    "Also," I said as I squinted at it - as if squinting would help when it wasn''t really even normal vision - "it''s a flatter white. The ones attached to us are more... silvery... and have hints of turquoise that you can see from the right angles. They''re... opalescent. This is just white, maybe mixed with some colors I can''t see."


    She smiled. "Okay, you wouldn''t be able to see Force or most of the other things this is adjacent to, which means the white is probably Binding. Probably. If they really are all different things, we''ll need to revisit some of the ideas I dismissed - we can make a list of each one by color and see what the different shades have in common. I''ll keep looking for better spells to test with, and maybe you can try on your end too - have you decided if you''re working on Thought or Planar first?"


    The answer was mainly Thought, but kinda both.


    I wanted to - eventually - get a better look at my memories and maybe try to clear out any false or corrupted ones. To do that, I''d first need to decide how I was accessing my memories. While I could do some sort of meditation, or see them in my dreams, or any number of other methods... I was pretty sure the best plan was to rely on offsite storage. The mind, so far as I''d been able to gather, was a spirit that was bound to you naturally when you were little. Before you had a Dumine it might just be smooshed up inside your lutore, but either as a result of meditation or through the Dumine itself it would eventually get projected out to a domain in Ematse, a little personal bubble unique to you.


    If I could perceive that realm, I should also be able to do mind-based stuff easier there. It was also private, and since it would align with multiple gifts it should use less potential than doing it other ways. When the time came, just two days later, I spent a whole afternoon tweaking the ability in my mind until I was certain I had it right. The Dumine seemed to be helping me, suggesting different paths to my desired goal and optimizing for minimal expenditure of potential along with whatever else I wanted to emphasize.


    Whatever I''d done to understand the information being transmitted from - or through - my Dumines had led to me seeing under the hood a bit, so I could tell how much it was leaning on each of my gifts in a way that sounded very different from what Katrin was experiencing. This one made use of a wide mix, more gifts than a normal person could even have. Planar, Spirit, and Thought were the main ones which made sense - I was reaching into another plane via a spirit linked to my thoughts. But there was also a touch of Perception and Comprehension; I got the feeling that they were somewhat optional, just there to make the connection smoother and easier to use.


    For the Planar aspect, I had a decision to make. Since it was better to keep your abilities aligned so they built off of each other I wanted to think about how I was going to use Planar magic later on. My two options were piercing through to another plane to travel there, or pulling the laws of... well, not physics really, but the magic equivalent... over to me. Originally I''d planned on using it more to travel, but that was less relevant to my current goal and besides... the more I thought about it the cooler it would be to apply alternate rules of reality to the world around me.


    As we''d traveled to Erathik I''d gotten a crash course from Cyne and, to a lesser extent, Sige. So I knew gravity was different on a lot of the other planes, as was how fast time moved. Those would already be interesting, but the niche uses that came from things unique to a single plane got... strange. There was the "break down manmade stuff and trash and replace them with nature" thing Katrin had told me about, but also Sige had talked about entropic effects and Cyne had described a plane where you could just fly by thinking about it.


    Much like Katrin''s spellcasting, the extra versatility would be counterbalanced by other limitations - I''d never have the kind of fine control over these things that someone might if it was their whole ability. If you had Gravity as one of your gifts you could do all sorts of shit with it, while I would just be able to make the gravity match what it was on some specific plane. Even then it might be limited within cities due to the wards that kept people from crossing over, and some would be nearly impossible when they weren''t in alignment. I kept waffling on it, and wondering if it would be better to borrow Katrin''s spellbook and unlock Comprehension for those kinds of effects instead.


    In the end I decided it didn''t matter too much yet. After all, it wasn''t the main way this ability was working anyway - mostly it was just me sending my awareness to another plane, and that was facilitated by me already having an attached spirit - my "mind" - there. So I put the Planar emphasis on pulling the membrane between worlds closer, having it overlap the awareness I''d already linked to my lutore. That was maybe best suited to pulling effects to me rather than stepping over to other planes, but it would work for both to some extent - and having it layered on my lutore would make it more resistant to wards and stuff since that was a part of me.


    I told Katrin and Errod to wish my luck, unlocked the ability, and immediately tried to activate it.


    The sounds of the fire and distant insects and the wind through leaves just faded away, and I opened my eyes while also keeping them shut. I was in a room - it looked like one from Earth, and it felt familiar although I didn''t recognize it. A little bedroom, with yellow walls and an old CRT television on the dresser. There was a small desk up against the window with the nice boxed set of the Jake Ross books that I''d owned at some point, although when I picked up the books and flipped through they were blank aside from a message in the front cover in such ridiculously swoopy cursive that I couldn''t read it.


    There was a residential street from Earth visible through the window, although as I looked at it things kept shifting around; it was like an AI-generated video, where everything kept morphing into something else. After only a moment of looking around it resembled Theramas more than anywhere on Earth. It was mildly disorienting, so I stepped away and sat down on the bed instead. An involuntary gasp escaped me. "Oh my god."


    "What is it?" The voice was faint, like it was coming from another room. I dimly felt hands on me, and I realized Katrin had heard my outburst in the real world and was worried.


    "It''s fine. It''s okay. It''s just that I had forgotten how nice beds with actual springs are. It''s so comfortable."


    "You''re on a bed?" The voice was maybe a little clearer, a little closer.


    "Yeah. I''m in a room, from Earth, and... that''s it. Hang on, let me try the door. Nope, just fog. Okay, so this ability lets me be in a room in my brain I guess. Alright, let go of me and stop talking for a minute. I promise I''m safe."


    I lay down on the bed and just relaxed for a moment. There was a little crack in the ceiling and it looked so familiar, like maybe my brain had pulled that detail from an actual memory of a room I used to have. But then why make up the rest of the place? This clearly wasn''t a group home, not with only the one bed, and it wasn''t from my mom''s house or one of the foster homes. It was possibly from a television show, or just made up. Speaking of television... I got up and turned the TV set on, but it only showed static. Bah.


    I spent a few minutes poking around; the desk and dresser drawers were all empty apart from a little gold brooch, and the only thing in the closet was a slightly disturbing statue of someone - me, maybe - curled into a tight ball. I closed the closet door so I didn''t have to look at it. I was wearing Earth clothes, just regular jeans and a shirt from one of the high schools I had attended - the one they made you wear for P.E., although this one was strangely misprinted. I checked for my Dumines but they seemed to not exist here.


    Out of things to look at, I flopped on the bed again. I stared up at the crack for another moment, enjoying the comfort of the bed, and then finally did my best to open my eyes for real. "Whoa. That''s disorienting. I was laying down, but actually sitting up."


    Errod looked nervous. "You''re okay?"


    "Yeah. Yeah, it was... boring, but interesting. When I was listening to Katrin the whole place felt a little like I was just imagining it, but as long as I was tuning out the real world it felt totally real. Not just how it looked, but the feel of the sheets on the bed and the temperature and... everything. If I can make that bigger, maybe add a food truck and a water slide? That''s going to be nice."


    And possibly best of all, it didn''t feel like it had used much mana. Later, once I built up more potential, the plan was to use that space to access my memories and possibly even change them. It was tempting to snip out or edit a few of the worse ones... "I need to unlock something to get you in there with me, you can start seeing Earth stuff. I have a sudden urge for a chocolate milkshake, I can try to make one for you too."


    That night when I went to bed Elba''s tossing and turning was making the whole wagon creak, so I ducked into the bedroom to pass some time until she was asleep. It was the same, and after a moment I realized that the drawer I had left open hours earlier was still in the same position. I''d assumed that the room would reset, or change each time like it was a dream - if it stayed, that could actually be useful. Could I write things down, and refer to them later? Could I find a way to add more rooms, more furniture? Of course, the downside was that if everything remembered what I''d done I would eventually have to clean my imaginary bedroom.


    I spent half an hour trying to create things, but no matter how I concentrated nothing happened. Eventually I collapsed on the bed to think, and after a while I started to feel funny. It was a little like being high, this disconnected floating feeling. I had to concentrate to hang on to the room, and when I sat up it felt like the walls behind me were drifting off into space - although if I spun around to check they were as sturdy as always. A flickering light caught my eye and I realized that the view out the window was shifting around way more than it had before; looking out, I could see landscape blowing past like distant clouds. There were other things, closer to me - the wagon, a Circle K, the river that ran through Theramas, the park near my mom''s house.


    I had to have fallen asleep.


    I walked over and opened the door, and rather than the formless fog I had seen before it was like a hurricane was outside; I could feel myself being pulled into the dream, out of my bubble, but I held on to the doorframe and after a moment things seemed to calm down. I watched the swirling landscape outside, and very carefully and clearly imagined what I wanted. I waited, thinking, and after a moment I heard a bicycle horn honking.


    He came into view a moment later, an old Hispanic man named Jesus on a strange bike - or trike, I suppose - with two wheels in the front on either side of a big box filled with bottles and coolers. It looked like it had been made in his garage, rather than bought from anywhere. "Elote?" he asked, and got out a little cardboard tray before I even had a chance to answer.


    "Yeah," I said, "the works."


    He sprung into action, pulling out a steaming ear of corn and smothering it in mayonnaise, lime juice, crumbles of white cheese, and chili powder. Then he placed it in the tray and handed it through the doorway. I thanked him and closed the door before he could ask for payment, and sat down on the bed. The elote was still there, in my hands. And it smelled delicious. I took a bite and it tasted just like I remembered - well, obviously it did.


    "Okay," I said to myself, "This could be something. I could start to like it in here."

 CHAPTER 049: Were All Mad Here

    Errod swung at what appeared to be empty space, and bushes shook as the invisible creature jumped out of the way. I hurled a throwing knife to his left and heard a yowl like an angry housecat, then only had a moment to register that the handle of the knife - impossibly floating in the air - was charging straight for me. I slashed wildly and connected, but something sliced across my shoulder at the same time. The moskar were going wild as they grew increasingly panicked at their inability to locate the danger they could sense nearby; one almost hit Katrin with its head which forced her to jump aside, interrupting her spell.


    Errod swung at the one I was fighting and actually hit it for once, catching it in the back as far as I could tell. They seemed to be the size of cheetahs, and there were somewhere between two and four of them - the invisibility made it tricky to count, especially when they refused to stay still. An arc of electricity shot out from Katrin''s hand and hit another of the beasts, causing it to very briefly become visible - it had pitch black fur, and for some reason two tails - but then the thing flickered out of sight again. The one in front of me circled the wagons to get away from us, but then I saw that knife handle barreling towards Katrin.


    "Kat, shield!" I yelled, and there were two thuds as the beasts both slammed into her magical barrier at the same time. It was one of the spells she had been able to do when we first met, but since she''d gotten her Dumine she could - thankfully - cast it much faster. Katrin was progressing rapidly for the spells she could actually practice, and I was starting to wonder just how terrifying the more advanced spells in that book were. If these fuckers weren''t invisible they would have already been fried to a crisp, but instead I was just worried she''d run out of mana from missing so many times.


    Errod swung wildly and clipped one of them - I was almost certain there was just the two, now - but the hit seemed like it was barely more than a scratch since only the very tip of his blade appeared to snag on the air. I repositioned to throw another knife so I wouldn''t hit Katrin, but missed entirely. Forget concerns for Katrin''s mana, I''d already lost several knives to the underbrush and didn''t really want to try headbutting these things. I also wasn''t looking forward to searching for my knives once this was over.


    "What''s going on? Can I come out?" Elba called from inside the wagon. All three of us yelled "NO!" simultaneously.


    I pulled another throwing knife - still the nice ones Sige had found after the fight at Zistarne - but the cats had retreated and started their stupid routine again. They would circle around something and approach once we''d lost track of where they were, over and over and over. I''d always been told that wild animals would back off quickly if they thought they were going to get hurt, but the half-dozen nicks and cuts hadn''t managed to convince them we weren''t worth it and I was worried that their confidence was well earned; a few really good hits from them could for sure kill us, for all that we were hanging in there so far.


    Katrin gestured and a little flame leapt up thirty feet away, bringing a teeny yelp from one of the things - it clearly wasn''t enough to really hurt it but it confirmed our suspicions of where it was and I threw another knife instantly. I hit, and it attempted to run away but slammed into a tree instead in its panic - giving Errod a chance to leap through the air and land with his sword point down. It looked cool, which wasn''t something I could say about Errod often, but he somehow missed the creature even as his body slammed into it. This time the fumble wasn''t really his fault; I could only assume the sword had gone between the monster''s legs.


    Errod twisted and screamed as he clutched at something, and I realized it was biting into his shoulder - I sprinted to him as he held the beast''s jaws against himself so it couldn''t escape. Getting into melee just like I''d been thinking I didn''t want to, I slammed a knife sideways into its neck. Almost immediately it was visible and motionless apart from some twitching, and Errod pulled the fangs out of his shoulder.


    "You okay?"


    "Help me up," he said, which I took as a no. "Where''s the other?"


    I hauled him to his feet and scanned around. Katrin was searching too, but spared a second to look at me and shrug. No sign of it. Errod tried to move his right arm and winced - he passed the sword to his other hand and began walking towards the wagons cautiously. Katrin caused another tiny flame to flare up but missed this time, and a moment later I threw one of my knives at a leaf that I thought I saw moving - accomplishing nothing apart from losing another knife.


    "The other might have left," I said, "especially if it doesn''t want to risk hunting alone."


    "Were there just the two?" Katrin asked, walking closer to us cautiously.


    "I wasn''t sure at first, but it seems like only two ever attacked at once. I think it just seemed like more because of the hit and run tactics. Errod, is that arm okay? It bit into your shoulder pretty deep."


    I heard a door creak at the back of the wagon. "Now can I come out?" Elba asked, and we all heard the rustle in the underbrush - coming from behind the wagons, far closer to Elba than we were. Time seemed to slow as we all scrambled to get around the wagon. I could see, vaguely, where the cat thing was coming from as it ran - and I wasn''t going to make it in time. I threw a knife, but could tell instantly that it was far too high to hit. Errod was ahead, just slightly, but with his dominant arm injured and his unquestionable lack of skill that didn''t seem to offer any hope; instead I turned to Katrin, but as I watched in horror she was tail-whipped by Shitheel the moskar and sprawled forward into the dirt.


    I spun back the other way, knowing I was about to see Elba snatched from the back of the wagon and dragged into the woods, but instead Errod''s sword flew through the air more swiftly and unerringly than my specially-made throwing knives ever had, despite it not being remotely balanced for that kind of stunt. It impacted the creature and knocked it into the visible spectrum as the beast was bowled over, and as Errod arrived he tackled another one that I hadn''t even realized was there.


    It scrambled out from under him, briefly flickering into sight, and turned to run back away from the wagons. I don''t know if it was retreating or just trying to make us lose track of it so it could attack again, but it wouldn''t get the chance. Katrin, still on the ground, let loose another bolt of lightning that stunned it just as I arrived and began stabbing. I was in full fight or flight mode and my brain had bet everything on ''fight'', so I found myself still panic-swinging for a moment after it had dropped the invisibility and ceased moving. Everyone was still and staring, and for a few heartbeats it was silent - then Elba began to cry.


    I stood, shaky from the adrenaline, and my first impulse was to storm off away from the crying so I could get myself together. I needed her to shut up. I glanced to Katrin, hoping she would deal with it, but she was frantically flipping through her spellbook. Right. The healing spell. Shit. I went to Elba and tried to channel Bill, since he was one of the only adults that had done jack shit to comfort me. I didn''t do a great job, but it seemed like mainly she just needed someone to sit next to her.


    While I was doing that Katrin found the right page, and looked back and forth between Errod and I - she probably hadn''t gotten a good look at who got more hurt in all the confusion. "If you don''t have enough mana, I can wait. It did a lot more to my clothes than to me, as long as I clean it out and bandage it nicely I think it''s okay. Errod needs it for sure, though."


    He didn''t argue which meant it was pretty serious, and Katrin got to work. He winced but kept from crying out, which I knew from my one time being healed with that spell after a cooking accident was no small feat. After a moment he flexed his arm and nodded. "It feels stiff, but I think it''s okay. At some point we may need to have a full healer deal with all the scar tissue and whatever other lingering damage that spell can''t fix."


    "Yeah, when it''s a joint like that." The spell was clearly for emergency battlefield medic shit - painful, and it left scars, but great at making sure you wouldn''t bleed to death. "But hey, nice work there killer! I can''t believe you threw your sword and actually hit, especially with your off hand!"If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Neither can I. I just... well. I got lucky."


    "Call it what you want, you saved Elba for sure. And you hit a few other times, too. I think all that training is finally sinking in, right?"


    He smiled, but something about him looked unhappy, or like he felt sick. "Yes. I suppose it''s about time." Probably he was just still being overly critical of himself. He began dragging the three bodies off to where they wouldn''t spook the moskar while I patched myself up. Katrin came over to sit by me and watch me clean the wound.


    "You don''t need to try and stitch it or anything, I''ll have enough mana to heal it in a little bit."


    "Yeah, thanks. I just don''t want it to get infected in the meantime, or have you heal a scrap of my shirt into me."


    Elba''s home town was still a week away at a minimum given the pace we were setting, longer if we ended up staying a few days in Sentortzi which was - to hear Katrin tell it - the best city in the world. She''d never actually been there, but they had a university for sure and almost certainly multiple magic item shops so staying there a while was for sure on the table. Errod had suggested skipping it for now and swinging past later once Elba was home, but he got outvoted.  The only other concern was that despite being part of the Free States the city was very important politically and so it was always possible that Hammersmith or someone would teleport in and snatch us up.  I wasn''t too worried - the anti-divination measures we''d taken were simple blanket wards and yet we''d been left unmolested so far.  They couldn''t be trying too hard to find us, for whatever reason.


    "Have you been able to level up mana more? If we buy a bunch of magic items we could use someone that can charge them easily."


    Katrin rolled her eyes. She was used to the ''leveling up'' talk by now, and even some of the more obscure video game references I''d started making. "What about you, how long do you think until you can check on your memories?"


    "If I do it in the same way as my little mind palace, lucid dream, secret fort... thing.... it shouldn''t be too expensive." I had other upgrades I was already thinking about for that, like bringing other people in to have private conversations or share memories - and of course some level of mental defenses like maybe forcing anyone that tried to get into my head to land in a pre-made jail cell or something instead. The down side was that it wasn''t flashy or exciting, and it didn''t help me fight monsters.


    "I can see you thinking. You''re not going to do it, are you?"


    "Well, I can''t do anything significant right now anyway. But... I don''t know, yes my memories are important but I could be fucking with gravity and flying! I could be learning to step into other planes, so people can''t find us!"


    "I just worry about you, and I know you''re probably scared but..."


    "Shouldn''t I be?" I said, a little more aggressively than I intended. "Sorry. But... my options are that I''m crazy, or someone has been fucking with my mind. I don''t like either of those, and right now I..." I could pretend it was fine. I could just not open Pandora''s Box. If I was like mom, worse than mom, I could just not find out until I went so crazy I convinced myself that I was sane.


    I checked on Elba again and, seeing that she was mildly traumatized but physically unharmed, tasked her with finding all my lost knives so she would have something to keep her brain occupied. I also made sure the moskar weren''t still panicking - only Sneezy was still acting paranoid, and I''d already found that he had a spot on the side of his neck that he always wanted scratched so I dedicated a few minutes to that activity until he seemed calm.


    Elba found all but one knife, which was honestly better than I expected. We got back on the road, and I had Errod keep my wagon moving while I ducked into my dream space. After a lot of work over the past couple nights I''d managed to expand it somewhat, though I hadn''t been able to just freeform mold it into a palace made of diamonds or whatever. Instead I''d tacked on room 217 from the Long Haul Hotel - after all the mental strain trying to do other things I was caught off guard by how easily that one clicked into place, so I tried following it up with my childhood bedroom which likewise popped into existence with minimal effort.


    Since both had been places I considered to be mine, I suspected I could add Universal Servicing Systems - but that was a much larger space, and my initial attempt had failed. Room 217 was pretty sparse, as it had been in the real world - standard hotel room bed, a little kitchenette, generic art on the walls. I''d nuked the bathroom, because I needed a door to use to add the entry to my old bedroom and anyway it''s not like I could actually relieve myself in my mind - trying might even cause an accident in the real world.


    The bedroom from my mom''s house was a trip. It brought up a lot of feelings but I couldn''t even say which ones - my chest felt tight, and I got all antsy and nervous, and suddenly felt like I needed a nap. But I powered through and looked around, finding that while most of the drawers were empty a couple of trinkets from my childhood remained. A headless Barbie doll, the collar from the dog I kidnapped - Bullfrog was the name I called him but the collar had a tag that said "Sparkles" - and a stuffed unicorn I''d stolen from some kid at the park. Some dim memory nagged at me and I squeezed the unicorn, feeling something hard inside. That would be the steak knife I had kept with me when I was little, just in case something needed stabbing. Other than those items the room itself was a strong memory - the furniture, the filthy bedsheets, the scribbled-on walls, the corner where I''d peeled up the carpet in the hopes of burrowing a secret basement.


    Attaching these two additional rooms had taken a few days of getting the feel for this place, though it hadn''t required me to invest additional potential into my Dumine. Creating items had been harder, and so far I''d only succeeded when I was grabbing something from outside the rooms while I was dreaming. The downside to this was that my dreams were hard to fully control without further investment and if I leaned too far out I''d fall into them, losing all lucidity. I wasn''t in there to experiment with making items this time anyway - since it had been almost a week, it was time to check on an ongoing experiment. "Errod?"


    "I''m here," he said, sounding like he was a mile away.


    "Okay, can you tell Katrin to get out her notes? I''m going to read off the numbers she gave me."


    I went back into that first room, the one that didn''t seem to correspond to anywhere I''d actually lived, and opened the top drawer of the desk to reveal a carefully folded piece of paper. I hadn''t looked at it in five days, and had no conscious idea what was on it other than remembering that it was a big long string of numbers.


    "She''s ready when you are," Errod said, and I started to list them off. When I was done I popped back out into the real world, and saw Katrin grinning.


    "It was all correct. Every last number."


    "Fuck yeah. Okay. Next we need to find a way to... I don''t know, automatically copy things. Like, imagine if I could look at a book and turn the pages and have it duplicate into a book in my head? I could have a whole reference library!"


    "Well we don''t know the limits. Presumably - especially since it was such a simple ability to unlock - it can''t just endlessly store information." She was trying to keep me from getting too excited, but it was undermined by how clearly excited she was.


    "That''s fair. Fine. But if I can copy books that might be worth spending extra potential on, especially if we could use Nusos to find an Earth library."


    Errod looked skeptical. "Remember that a lot of things were... well, they were skewed somehow. I saw a sign from what looked like a butcher shop and it had the first three letters for the word ''meat'' repeated over and over. The sign was like three feet long, it never finished the word. So even if it''s possible to find a library you might not end up with readable books."


    I went back to practicing as we traveled, popping in and out of my mind palace and toggling my view of those threads on and off. We reached a town in the late afternoon, a cozy little place with thatch rooftops and a surprisingly large building off at one end. The palisade walls had a gate, but no guards - after a moment of hesitation we just opened it ourselves and closed it again behind us. There was a small crowd of people on a sort of outside patio, relaxing and drinking out of huge wooden mugs. A few had glanced over as we came in, but didn''t seem bothered by it.


    "That large building is a meat farm," Errod said, "from the size they probably have a dozen in there."


    I had forgotten that much of the meat the average person ate was cut from magically engineered brainless meat-mounds. I was curious about how they were kept - were there vats of liquid? Did they just lay on the ground? Hang from the ceiling? I was about to ask Errod when I realized he was already heading over to the people at the bar. I decided I''d rather he do the social stuff, so I sat back on the edge of the wagon''s bench.


    He came back with a wry grin, shaking his head. "Turn the wagons around, we have to go back."


    "What''s wrong? They hate strangers or something?"


    He sighed, but was still smiling. "Quite the opposite, they greeted me warmly and they all told me how lucky we are to have not stopped on the road. Seems there''s a pack of three jezerlae - invisible cats - that have been attacking people. There''s a very generous bounty on them if we can kill them and bring back the heads."


    I laughed, and started coaxing the moskar to turn around. "You uh... you remember where you dumped the bodies, right?"

 CHAPTER 050: Questionable Financial Decisions

    We didn''t end up actually collecting the bounty on the cat things - or not in cash, anyway. Smaller towns didn''t use coins between locals, instead having some sort of treasurer they''d go to if needed for travelers or merchants. Since we were still feeling so secure with our funds from the Duminere deal, we instead collected on the bounty in community credit which in this case took the form of partying for a whole day with the people of the town.


    We got treated like heroes, and woke up with hangovers - not from the alcohol, which was very mild, but from some sort of recreational drug called Hudai blossoms which someone in town grew themselves. Katrin assured me it was totally normal and not addictive, all while looking deeply amused at the idea anyone would have a problem with it. "It''s a party," she said, "do you not have parties on Earth?"


    "I mean, yeah. And this kind of thing absolutely is involved sometimes. But... I don''t know, normally people just drink alcohol. Especially with like... kids around, or when it''s more public. Most drugs aren''t really socially acceptable in the same way."


    She looked at me like I was crazy. "Alcohol is fine in moderation, I suppose, but if you''re looking to get more than very slightly tipsy it''s a terrible way to go about it. No wonder you were so out of it after eating the food in Xeyul."


    I tried to protest that the fey food was both unexpected and extremely potent, but I didn''t actually care. I also didn''t have any moral objections to celebrating by getting wasted, and with it being a cultural norm and them having people who used magic to engineer plants it made sense it would be fairly safe. Anyway, I couldn''t argue about the alcohol part - that incident when I was twelve turned me off of it pretty hard.


    Everyone was still a little fuzzy when the time came to get back on the road, but a few townsfolk made a point of stumbling over and seeing us off with some fresh hot rolls stuffed with bacon and eggs. Thankfully it was very filling, because when we finally stopped for lunch it turned out Elba had left our best cookpot behind. I got a strange vibe from her about it despite her claiming to be sorry, so I ended up stewing over it trying to decide if I''d said something to her while stoned that had made her want to ditch the pot as some sort of revenge. I hadn''t been all that out of control though, just giggly and so relaxed I kept sliding out of chairs and onto the ground. I chalked it up to a random mistake, but Elba started to have more of those as we traveled; over the course of the next five days she had an increasingly frustrating string of "accidents" that lost or destroyed more of our equipment.


    Otherwise the journey was uneventful, with only one attack from a monster - even that was a bit anticlimactic since the monkey-like creature had been slammed brutally against a tree by Shitheel''s battering-ram head the second it arrived. The wretched thing had been maimed so badly before we reached it that killing the creature had been a matter of mercy rather than combat. Errod had seen one before - caged by a trapper - and he said they had the ability to make people go into seizures with just a touch. If it had tried that move on Shitheel during that one brief moment they were in contact it didn''t take.


    On a logical level, I was thrilled that Shitheel had directed his aggression in a productive way for once and of course wouldn''t have wanted to deal with a rampaging seizure-monkey. But I also realized that some little part of me was disappointed because with the last few weeks being so relaxed I was starting to get back into my "holy shit I''m in a fantasy world" mode, and killing monsters was supposed to be part of that. I didn''t want to potentially get eaten by a dragon, but I did want to be able to say I fought a dragon and won.


    At any rate, I knew I would be regretting my desire to fight monsters soon enough - supposedly the deeper into the wilderness you went the more you would come across, and once Elba was dropped off we expected to head into seriously dangerous territory to speed up our training. I would probably end up wishing we were back on a nice road between cities where things like seizure monkeys or invisible cat things were noteworthy rather than a daily occurrence by the end of the first week camping out.


    Katrin and I spent a lot of time trying to do a doomed science experiment; the two of us both had Comprehension as a gift, and were trying to as perfectly as possible call up the same exact ability. There was no way we could confirm it was the same, of course, but the hope was that it would give us some common point of comparison for how much potential things cost and therefore how much we were building it up. This was all because Katrin suspected I was building potential a bit faster than I should be, and it was frustrating her that there was no way to tell.


    Even if she was right - and I was starting to think she was - we didn''t have a guess as to why. There were just too many variables; was it because I was from a low-mana world, or something else about Earth, or because I had three Dumines, or...? Regardless, I''d decided to let it build up for a while. Nothing I wanted was urgent, and I needed to see what magic items we could obtain in case that changed my choices.


    The weather was getting hot, and when we finally got close enough to see the walls of Sentortzi there was a heat shimmer in the air. The farmlands surrounding the city were of a type I''d seen before, with the plants growing on huge vertical scaffolding towers, but I barely spared any of it a glance because I was busy squinting at the city proper in the distance. "Are those skyscrapers? Is that - holy fuck is that an airship? Guys. Guys. We talked about skipping this city? Really?"


    Errod shrugged. "Well we''re trying to get a kidnapped little girl home to her family, so..."


    I flapped a hand at him dismissively. "Right. Yes. Very important. But this is an actual huge city with at least two airships flying over it. And that little girl lost or ruined half our shit. Besides, it''s not that far out of our way."


    He smiled, clearly not actually bothered by the detour. "I suppose with no magic airships must be almost impossible on Earth."


    "Hah! No, we have shitloads of them. Faster, too."


    Errod''s brow scrunched up. "You''ve said you can''t manipulate gravity, and you can''t tap into the alternate laws of the other planes... oh, I heard some use a different sort of air that makes things float? That''s not magic, right? But you need people with the Fabrication gift to make that sort of air I thought..."


    "Yeah, that''s like... helium, or hydrogen. You can get it without magic... somehow? I think I kinda know how to make hydrogen from water in theory, but I don''t know about helium. Anyway, we don''t normally use those for airships anymore. Now most of them... hang on."


    I hopped down off the bench and into the wagon so I could grab a souvenir that had ridden around in my things since our escape from Theramas - a wrinkled paper airplane. I did my best to straighten it out and threw it towards Errod.  It went towards him well enough, but then pulled a sudden nose dive into the ground at his feet. "Like that, kind of. Just wings that are shaped right to fly, and then rather than a hand pushing it you use... uh... well you know how lamp oil can kind of explode if it gets sprayed into the air?"


    Errod winced, and looked at his feet. "Yes. I''m familiar."


    "Well, we use explosions to push the airships along. And if you build it right, and you have something way more volatile than lamp oil, then you can get even really big heavy airships to fly without magic."


    "You fly... with explosions. That sounds insane."


    "Man, it would blow your mind to hear about how many explosion-powered vehicles are zipping around all the time on Earth. The cars alone... that''s a whole thing we can get into another time. For now... why the fuck haven''t I seen airships here before? I mean, unless you count the little basket thing that took us down into the Necropolis, which I absolutely don''t."


    "They''re expensive to use, and just generally not needed. People fly with magic all the time, but they do it for just themselves and a handful of others. For larger groups you have teleportation circles if it''s an emergency, and if it''s not an emergency you can take a shortcut through one of the other planes or... why not ride an animal? Airships are mainly only used to carry freight over difficult areas - we''re right between the mountains we just passed through and the Tundren Ridge, where the land drops off very steeply into some canyons before leveling off. So probably they''re using the airships to get down to... well I''m not sure what city is closest. But it''s just for those short trips, between the two places so they don''t need to take narrow, winding roads up and down each way. You haven''t seen airships because most of the roads we''ve traveled are along nice wide valleys where you can use boats or wagons without any difficulty."


    Katrin chimed in. "There are other airships, for military use or for certain special cases. Back before Brinkmar fell they were more common for general travel, but without the mana batteries they exported it''s not worth it. In legends the Twelve Families of Enimondoa used spirit barges, which were airships pulled by gigantic creatures that could fly between planes."


    "Well we''re rich now, and I want a private jet. I''m going to see what they cost, and if it''s too much I''ll go hunt down one of those spirit monsters or... I don''t know, tie some balloons to Shitheel and see if those pathetic little arms can flap us somewhere."


    But as we got closer to the city the airships became less impressive and I could see Errod was right; they were just barges, basically floating platforms stacked with crates. It was still badass, but a far cry from the standard steampunk fantasy airships I''d been briefly hoping for. The sky scrapers came into clearer view as well, but those remained at least as amazing as at first sight. The bulk of them looked to be around twelve stories high, and many had little bridges connecting them. So sure, maybe not really "sky scrapers" but considering most of the structures I''d seen since arriving were three or four stories at most it was extremely cool to see a big cluster of towers like that.


    The majority were topped with polished copper domes or pyramids, but they otherwise weren''t uniform - it wasn''t like the crazy mismatched buildings of Good Charl, but there was still a large variety of materials and styles on display. Heading down the hill and past the farms took another hour, but then we were standing before the massive city walls. There were guards, sort of, but they seemed to be focused primarily on directing traffic - it was clear they weren''t expecting to have to fight anyone, and in fact the city gates had been open so long that plants had grown up around them. If anyone was even remotely concerned with fortifying the city it wasn''t anyone important.


    Katrin got directions to somewhere we could park the wagons, and we paid some attendants to feed and wash down the moskar. I whispered a plan to her and while she rolled her eyes some she did it: waving her hands and causing small lights to appear in the air, she did a mock magical ritual over the wagons before telling me - in earshot of the stable hands - that the wagons were "secured". I figured it would make them less likely to root through our things, though the most valuable items were extremely well hidden.


    Katrin dragged me back to where Errod was standing when she saw me starting to wander off. "Even if we decide to stay longer, we should try to get the important things done right away. Errod, I''ve made a list of supplies we''ll need. Can you take Elba with you for that while Katrin and I do some shopping for magic items? Get her lunch too, it''s almost time. We''ll meet back at the wagons to make sure everything is put away properly, and then get a hotel for the night. Tomorrow we can hopefully spend some time at the university library, and depending on what we decide at that point we can either travel in the afternoon, or stay another night and leave first thing in the morning. If we need to find you sooner, Callie can follow the thread that leads to you. You know which one it is? Good."


    I felt a teeny twinge of rebellion, some random urge to resist Katrin taking charge. After dismissing the thought, it took another moment to look back and realize how dumb that was - I didn''t want to be in charge. I wanted to go magic item shopping, which is what she said we''d be doing. She was literally just taking care of the talking and organizing bit, which I hated. We headed out into the crowd - while it wasn''t all that dense, the people were moving with more purpose than I''d seen in Theramas, or Good Charl, or Erathik. The Necropolis had been the only other place I saw this many people actually We got the last few details sorted, and headed out. Katrin complained about the mana some as we walked - now that she could sense it, the sudden drop as we walked through the gates had caught her off guard.


    "I know it''s just from so many people living together, but I thought it would feel more like the road did."


    "That much worse?"


    "There''s none. Not a single speck of ambient mana. If the walls weren''t warded they probably would have drained the countryside for miles around, too. Thankfully we''ll still regenerate some from our connection to the other planes via our minds and souls, but it''ll be significantly slower so we shouldn''t use any if we don''t need to."


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    So of course I immediately used some mana. It wasn''t like I needed to hold onto it - I didn''t have any abilities that would matter in an emergency anyway - and I just had to know how the threads looked in a densely packed city. Would I even be able to follow one to Errod with so many things competing for attention? But instead, when I turned it on there was practically nothing. "What the actual fuck?"


    "What''s wrong?"


    "There''s no threads. Well, that''s a lie. It''s hard to see the little ones that disappear right away, and I do see a few of them right now. But the longer ones, like the threads connecting us and Errod? Nothing. Okay wait, that guy had one. But... that''s it. Why the fuck do I have so many of these things, and nobody else has any? You have some, and Errod, even Elba has one - and in this whole crowd, I''m just... every now and then as we walk I catch a glimpse of one either on a person or just... strung across the street. But it''s barely any."


    I''d been too busy partying to didn''t check in that last town, I should have but we were partying and... hmm." we were still walking, weaving through the crowd and headed towards the part of town we''d been told would have magic items shops. "Maybe I need to know them better? But no, because some people do have them. Plus I saw some just... in the sky, or stretching across our path from somewhere. So that''s not it."


    "Well, we can try to access the university library tomorrow morning. I''m not sure how much they''ll charge, but it probably won''t be too bad. There has to be something there that can tell us more."


    A movement caught my eye, but it happened too fast to be sure what it was.  I stopped dead, almost causing someone to bump into me - they cursed at me and I flipped them off, which didn''t mean anything here although I decided they''d be able to guess.  Katrin took a moment to realize I wasn''t with her, but I didn''t say anything.  I was too busy looking around.  It wasn''t a person, and it was close.  I''d been looking around for more threads, and... wait."


    "Callie?" Katrin said as she hurried back to me, "Are you okay?  Why did you stop?"


    I hadn''t made a list, yet.  That was on me.  But... I was pretty sure.  "Uh.  I think a new thread just attached itself to me."


    When I was younger, before I had needed to actually worry about the details of going out on my own and being an adult, I had wanted to be the main character of a story. I''d read various sci-fi and fantasy novels - often random installments from a series I hadn''t had the chance to read the other books from - and I would think about how I wanted to be the hero going on amazing adventures and saving the world and whatever else. And I''d been thinking of this whole situation that way to some extent because when you get sucked into an actual fantasy world it''s hard not to do that.


    But I didn''t mean it literally.


    I meant it like in the "be the main character of your life" spiel that Bill had given me. This thing where only me and my companions had these mysterious lines? That felt like the bad kind of main character shit. ''Oh no I''m the only kid with purple hair'' kind of stuff, where you had to worry that there would just be more and more problems coming for you. The thing about being the main character of the story in real life is that it means someone is writing that story - and you don''t know they have your best interests in mind. Shit, I didn''t know how to even be sure of the genre. Fantasy, yeah, but it could be horror too.


    I took a deep breath and started walking again, for the moment just focusing on not bumping into people or getting pick pocketed. I was being silly, I knew. There were a ton of reasons I might have more threads than anyone else, and once I established what they all were it would make sense.  Plus, if I could learn to see them I could learn to... cut them off, or something.  Probably.  Either way, the main character talk was absurd. It was nothing.  What would that even mean?


    We headed off to take care of the magic item shopping, but much to my dismay the first thing we did was get the wagons upgraded which wasn''t particularly exciting and also required rush custom work which meant spending a small fortune.  We had to choose between dropping a large chunk of our cash, or having them work with the bank in Erathik.  Talking to the bank could alert them to our whereabouts, but it seemed like if they were really looking for us they would have caught up to us on the road already - more likely Hammersmith had for some reason not asked Erathik to grab us, or she had but they didn''t want to.  So we took the risk and had them call a banker over - we''d be leaving the city soon regardless.


    The verification that we had money to spare went fine, but the banker also got some unexpected news.  "There has been an incident, at the auction house. You had an item there, and the proceeds were to be sent to your account?"


    "The... sword club thing, yeah."


    He looked around at the empty room, and then again at the little device on the table that was supposed to prevent scrying around us.  "That item was, unfortunately, stolen from the auction house during an attack. Several people were killed. Per the terms of your contract, they have requested a government lawyer to negotiate on your behalf to resolve the question of reimbursement."


    "Fuck. Wow. Uh, okay. I mean I guess that''s..." That was fine, right?  We''d get paid either way.  It was possible it would have blown up at auction and gone for a fortune, but I was already set for money.  I was about to tell him that was fine and I didn''t care, but then I got nervous.  I wasn''t used to financial questions beyond "hey did you pay for that, I saw you put that in your pocket".


    Fuck it.  Yeah.  It was okay.  I thought back to the way we''d skipped the bounty and partied instead, and how mad I''d been at rich people back on Earth.  This was a way I could get all the credit for being a good person without really giving up anything I cared about.  "Can you send a message back? Tell my lawyer to... shit, I guess just... just whatever amount we get from the auction house, give it to the families of whoever died. If that''s a thing they can do."  Calliope Smith, famed philanthropist.


    "I''ll send that message, right away," the banker said, "otherwise your accounts are in order, and I can arrange payment to these merchants as needed."


    First things first, we needed a better healing option. The tradeoff was between portability, mana cost, and healing ability. Katrin had made a choice already and went through the motions of getting my approval - she''d gone for the best healing ability with terrible portability, which is why we were talking about it in relation to the wagons.  The device would take the place of one of the beds, which was fine since we''d only need three once Elba was back with her family.  It had a sort of antennae to collect mana, and a large capacitor.  Katrin could charge magic items, but the times we would be most likely to need a healing bed thing would be after running into trouble in which case she might already be out of mana - or be the one injured.


    Then there were plates that could be attached to the wagons to make them lighter and therefore easier to get over rough terrain, and a water purifier, and temperature controls, and some other little quality of life upgrades like better lights and shock absorbers and... the wagons were going to be so fucking nice.  It was a good thing, too, because the plan was to just live in them for the foreseeable future.  While she oversaw that, I scouted out the other magic item shops which fell into three broad categories.


    The first was places that sold common mass produced stuff.  I took note of where some of those were, when it looked like they would have things we needed, but I wasn''t super interested.  I''d have time to hit them with Katrin, and anyway they felt too much like going into a store on Earth.  There were a few that caught my eye as being interesting, like the place that sold "templates and prototypes", these strange little plaques or totems or whatever that people with Fabrication could use to create items.  Hold the little tablet thingy for a nice mahogany chair, and you could perfectly make a nice mahogany chair - otherwise, most people with fabrication would be better off just making a lump of material and then having a proper craftsman make the thing.  There was also a shop with barometers, not just for air pressure but for all sorts of special purposes including some that only applied to specific planes.


    The second type of magic item shop was where you went to get things made to order.  They were all by appointment only, and the ones that were open at all felt like art galleries run by arms dealers.  They clearly thought I couldn''t afford them, but really what we were lacking in was time rather than money.  I''d love to sit down with an artificer and custom design an item, but that would have to wait.


    The final category of magic item store was the best hands down.  They seemed like an antique store crashed into a pawn shop, and were where you found all the unique made to order stuff that nobody wanted anymore.  Maybe the buyer had backed out, or it had turned out differently than planned, or they were just done with it.  I examined every item in three different shops, asking way too many questions, before finally remembering that I was supposed to just be figuring out which shops were worth looking in.  I hurried back to Katrin, who was just watching the wagons get worked on.


    "Errod dropped off the first of the supplies, it''s going well."  She was looking down at a nice new notebook and making a list, so she hadn''t seen me yet.  "I don''t suppose you saw anyone selling high quality healing potions, did you?  Apparently there''s some sort of city-wide shortage.  If you..." She trailed off as she finally looked up.


    "Yes?" I said, the sound echoing around my head.


    "What.  Is.  That."


    I grinned from ear to ear.  "It''s a diving helmet!"


    Katrin carefully put her pen down and closed the notebook.  "Do we need a diving helmet?"


    What a stupid fucking question.  Was she blind?  "It''s! Look at it! It''s totally one of those fishbowl helmets from old sci-fi stories!"


    "You know that I didn''t understand that."


    "Anyway I already bought it.  And some hover shoes."


    She looked like she was quickly developing a headache.  "You''re going to kill yourself with those things."


    "Oh absolutely," I agreed, "I''m for sure going to break my tailbone within like... thirty seconds. But won''t that be hilarious? And that''s not the best part!"


    An enormous spider climbed into view behind my shoulder - it was too big to fit all the way on there - and Katrin''s jaw went slack.  "Oh gods. Please don''t. I''m begging you."


    "Who doesn''t want a remote-controlled spider? Plus it can control other stuff, like if we find a really stupid bird or something. Oh, a fish! Fish are dumb, right? And it can swim alongside me as I explore the ocean with my diving helmet!"


    The remote controlled spider was a huge lobotomized spider with an extremely expensive magical device attached to it. On the spider end, the device was a metal disc about as big around as a baseball. It stuck to the spider and melded with its body, and kept it healthy by borrowing life mana from the person touching the other half of the device, which you could strap to yourself. It even clicked together, so you could wear the huge spider like a backpack or something while it wasn''t in use. And then whenever you wanted you could remote control it and drive it around and - to some extent - even see through its eyes. You couldn''t attach it to something smart or it would fight you for control and probably win, and you couldn''t attach it to something large or the drain of life mana would be too much. But having a spider or crab or whatever I could pilot around was just the right level of fucked up to be really fascinating to me. I had already named the spider Mister Creepy.


    The three of us - I was counting our new lobotomized mascot - hit the town and got some more practical items.  Expensive cooking gear, some anti-scrying devices that were way better than the pathetic ones we''d snagged in Erathik, some kind of fire extinguisher things that Katrin insisted we had to have in the wagons, and some combat gear.  Katrin and I both got fancy long jackets - they looked like normal if slightly shimmery fabric, but were actually woven alchemical metal.  Mine was a little longer than hers and black, while Katrin went for a sort of sage green.  Not only did they look fantastic, they were virtually immune to damage. The floppy nature of the fabric meant I could still get my ass kicked, but it would be bludgeoning rather than getting sliced to ribbons and that seemed like an important upgrade.


    I also checked out weapons and found my exact throwing knives.  They were expensive, and apparently could be charged with mana in order to make them lurch forward; the idea was that if someone was wearing a shield charm like the one Errod had they would sense the loss of momentum and re-lauch themselves midair.  If they didn''t trigger, they would also go off upon penetrating skin.  Mine had obviously been depleted when Sige found them, and we hadn''t known to get them charged up.  Now even happier with my knives I turned my attention towards finding the coolest thing I could but was vetoed by Katrin who insisted that Errod would want to pick out his own sword.   I let it go, even though I knew that he wouldn''t pick out one as awesome as what I had in mind - a wicked-looking black blade that used spatial magic to teleport a chunk of whoever it hit a foot to the left. It was outrageously expensive, would need to be recharged every time, and probably would constitute a war crime. But oh man, so cool.


    Eventually we met back up with Errod and Elba at the wagons.  Elba at least approved of Mister Creepy, but it seemed to freak out the banker who had returned to sign off on final payment for the installation of everything into the wagons.  "Ah, and they acknowledged your request about the money from the auction settlement," he said, "The proceeds will be split between the families of the four - I''m sorry, three - people killed in the attack."


    "Wait, was it three or four?"


    "Ah, yes. Well. There were four deaths, but one was believed to be assisting the criminals."


    "Believed to be, or was for sure? What even happened?"


    "The man who was killed picked the locks and bypassed security for the auction house, and allowed two heavily armed and armored persons inside. They stole several items, including the war hammer, and killed the guards that responded to the alarm. The one that picked the locks reportedly panicked and ran, and was killed as well."


    "By the guards or the armored guys?"


    "I''m not certain, the report was rather... sparse."


    I wasn''t sure what ''Calliope Smith, Famed Philanthropist and Not a Monster Like Mom Always Said'' would do here.  "Huh. Okay. Well, whatever. Include that guy''s family too."


    "I - excuse me?"  The banker looked like I had just told him to shove a moskar up his asshole.


    "I said include that guy''s family. Some dude breaks in, freaks out when people start getting killed? And he wasn''t geared up like the others? Probably some poor asshole just trying to get by. Shit. I''ve broken into places. I''ve stolen things. He probably had someone that cared about him, and now he''s dead. So cut him in."


    "I... I don''t know that that''s..."


    Oh, we''re telling me what I can and can''t do now?  "Is it my money?"


    He hesitated.  "Well yes. Yes of course."


    "Yes? Not ''yes, but...'' or anything?"


    "No. It''s your money. I apologize, it wasn''t my place to question your choices."  And the little banker packed up, very quickly, and left.

 CHAPTER 051: Even the Buddy System Cant Protect You Now

    Errod showed off some of his purchases over dinner, which was from a place that was the closest yet to Earth fast food; almost-hamburgers wrapped in paper. They weren''t quite as good as an actual burger, mainly because of the bread being too thick and crunchy, but they weren''t bad. I''d made the mistake of not watching Elba while he and Katrin got the food, and she''d once again had a mysterious "accident" that got mud on my blanket despite it never leaving the wagon and there being no mud on her shoes. I just rolled my eyes and did my best to clean it.


    I''d been nearly holding my breath waiting to see what kind of magic sword Errod had, but it turned out he hadn''t gotten one - instead he had purchased a totally mundane weapon with no magic powers whatsoever. "The magic swords I looked at were... well, some were cruel," he said, "and some used too much mana - don''t say it, I know Katrin will be able to recharge things but it''s not that simple. One I looked at didn''t have a limiter and pulled from your personal mana, so you could theoretically kill yourself by hitting someone else with it. And then some were too flashy, and some were... well they were made by people that probably make great necklaces but didn''t know how to make a weapon."


    "And how would you know? You''re a blacksmith now?"


    Errod looked embarrassed. "No, I... I don''t know. They didn''t feel right."


    "Fine. So you spent your money on a boring non-magic sword, and what else?"


    He looked like he wanted to argue about the sword being boring which probably meant it was a very well-made weapon, but he thought better of it and just answered the question. "Well, I already have that shield brooch which I keep forgetting to get recharged. But on top of that I got a very nice chain mail shirt with entropic powers so I''m less likely to die if someone throws a lightning bolt at me. I thought about doing more, since you''ve made it clear the goal is to spend all of our money as quickly as possible..."


    "We literally can''t run out of money," I interjected, "because even if I drain the bank - which I haven''t done - there''s the stipend. Like, forever."


    "Well I couldn''t think of anything good that doesn''t need to be custom-made anyway," he continued, "other than maybe having an enhancer give me night vision or make me double jointed or something and... well, once you start spending money on that sort of thing you tend to end up looking like some sort of monster. It''s maybe a little addictive. Anyway, the point is I saved some money for when you get us into trouble and we have to buy our way out or something. Oh and while you were getting your ridiculous spider thing -"


    "Mister Creepy." I was actually kind of enjoying him giving me shit about my purchases, but he was absolutely going to put some respect on Mister Creepy''s name.


    " - I got the mundane supplies and had a leatherworker take measurements so I could get a matching glove for this thing. If it''s going to be stuck on my hand I might as well have a pair of them."


    "We could look for someone to take it off."


    "Yes. Well." He sighed and attempted to pace around, but inside the wagon there wasn''t room for proper pacing. There was barely more room than you needed to turn in place. "I considered it, but it''s an extra expense and I didn''t know who to go to so... it''s fine. I don''t think it''s dangerous."


    It seemed reckless, but I had to admit there was a part of me - a pretty big part - that would have wanted to do the same in the hopes it would turn out to be some sort of massively powerful artifact. "Do you know what it does yet?"


    "Ah. No, not exactly. Maybe nothing. Um. I have to go and check on our supplies, make sure everything is packed. I know Katrin wanted to go to the university tomorrow before we left the city, and then we really should get back on the road so we can get Elba home."


    That reminded me, I wanted to talk to him about Elba while Katrin was taking her to the bathroom. "Hey, did she give you any trouble? She smeared mud on my blanket."


    He shrugged. "Nothing too bad. She hid my boots."


    "She was fine for so long, did the dishes and went right to bed when we asked. I don''t know what''s going on with her. I feel like it started right after she almost got eaten by those cat things, but for the life of me I can''t think of why that would make her start fucking with us."


    "Who knows. People are complicated, even when they''re little. I got some games and things, maybe we can keep her busy with those for the last few days until we get to her village. In fact, being so close is probably the issue - I''m sure she''s just nervous and... well, I don''t know why losing or ruining things would make that better."


    When I was seven I had told my mom I wanted presents for Christmas - something that hadn''t happened the previous year - and she had just stared at me for a minute and then put on a Christmas song. "I''m gettin'' nuthin'' for Christmas... mommy and daddy are mad...." for a few minutes I took it as a good sign. Holiday music! Maybe we''d put up a tree and stockings and I''d get a dog or cat so I didn''t have to steal them from the neighbors. Then I realized she''d just put the song on repeat and thought about what song she''d chosen. "I''m gettin'' nuthin'' for Christmas, ''cause I aint been nuthin'' but bad..." it kept singing, and when mom finally came back out of her room she just went out to get herself some dinner somewhere. I left it running, waiting for her, but I fell asleep and didn''t wake up until three in the morning. She was back in her room, with the door locked.


    Anyway, that must have been on my mind because I had a nightmare where I was my mom, and Elba was me. She asked for dinner and I told her dinner was for kids that didn''t ruin my blanket with mud, and then I just watched her smash windows by swinging the toaster around like a morning star while that fucking song played. The scene finally ended when I threw her back to the Sahrger and woke up crying.  I''d gone for almost a week without nightmares, so I figured I was due.


    In the morning we headed to the university and let Katrin talk to several people in increasingly frustrated tones until finally they allowed us to pay for the privilege of walking around in the library. It was worth it. I was very tempted to steal some books - they wouldn''t let us actually check any out - but I didn''t want to get banned or anything and I didn''t want to assume there wasn''t some terrifying demonic library policeman thing. The whole place was a work of art, with three huge stories of dark wooden shelves polished to a nearly mirror shine. The floors were some sort of swirly blue stone, and a massive golden seal was set into the center of the main room - I was sure I''d seen the symbol before but couldn''t tell where.


    Magically accessing my memories was high on the to-do list but I wasn''t there yet, so trying to look up the seal would have to wait. All I could do was see threads hanging in the air, and pop into... my mind, or Ematse, or whatever it was. Although... it seemed possible I could copy the seal into my mind palace to look at later. I concentrated and closed my eyes, but something felt off. There was resistance of some sort, and when I pushed I felt strangely lightheaded. I opened my eyes and rather than my mind I was still looking at the library - but I couldn''t move. I tried to look around, and somehow my vision started to pivot without my head turning; a sense of vertigo overwhelmed me and suddenly my eyes snapped open again - my real eyes this time. Huh.


    Something had stopped me from doing it right, or something was broken. Curious, I tried pulling up my view of the threads instead but that worked as it should. I walked around a bit and found several very thin lines that criss-crossed the room, plus one that was attached to the librarian and pointed back into the restricted part of the library. I could see my own threads as well, going to Errod and Katrin and gods knew where else. Including that new one that had appeared after we entered the city, which was... moving.


    I''d seen them move before, a little, but this one was moving enough that its other end had to either be very close, or going ridiculously fast. Close seemed more likely. "Errod, c''mere. Katrin said I wasn''t allowed to run off and do anything crazy without an escort, so you have to come with me."


    "We''re in a library, what are you doing that''s dangerous?"


    "I''m following one of those thread things. It''s probably fine, but... well, you know me. Could lead me to a monster or the Behemoth or a killer cyborg or something."


    "A killer what?"


    "Nothing. Let''s go."


    I followed the thread to a wall, and then circled around until I found a door to go through. That resulted in a dead end, so I had to go back out through the library and then try a different door which also didn''t get me anywhere. Errod seemed amused. "Well this is quite the adventure."


    "Shut up. It goes right through the walls, okay? It just follows the most direct path, so it''s hard to figure out how to get from here to there."


    "Should we leave the library?"


    "I... don''t know. It seems like it has to be close. But yeah, I guess let''s go outside and get another perspective."


    We headed out, and sure enough the line pointed back to the building - but from the outside I could see that there were other entrances that were closer to where the thread was going, so we picked the one that looked the most heavily used under the assumption it wouldn''t be a door we''d be arrested for walking through. Sure enough it just led to a plain and rather dim hallway, which circled around the building with various offices and storage rooms lining it.


    I stopped in front of a door with YANIPLISS stenciled on it and nodded at Errod. Taking a deep breath I knocked on the door... and the thread snapped. There was a jingling sound like a little bell from inside the office, and then a loud cursing and a noise like someone had just slammed into a shelf and knocked every last item off.


    "Don''t go!" yelled a slightly muffled voice, "I''m coming! Wait!"


    There was another crash and a few more swear words, and then the door opened to reveal a tall thin man with a blank Dumine in the center of his forehead - the first time I''d seen someone place a Dumine so visibly. He looked at me, then at Errod, then at me again.


    "Shit," he said, "I didn''t think there would be two of you. Which one knocked? It''s very important. You? No. You? Okay just say something. This is my life''s work, here."


    I wasn''t ready for this level of urgency, nor did I want to get tangled up in any shenanigans. "Um. We might have the wrong door."


    "From your perspective?" The man mused, "Quite possibly. But from my perspective, you''re exactly where you should be. I''ve been waiting for you. Please, please. Come in so we can talk. I''m professor Harmid Yanipliss, and I spent every bit of money and goodwill I had to my name on a device that one of you just triggered by knocking on my door. So come in. Really."The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    We shared a look and both shrugged at the same time, which made me giggle a little. Errod gestured for the professor to lead the way and we went in, finding a fairly small office in much better shape than I had been prepared for; the crashing noises had been caused by a single piece of furniture tipping over and its drawers sliding out, and the actual mess was minimal. Harmid took a moment to right it and push a few of the drawers back in - one had fallen all the way out and he just kicked it under a chair - and then he sat behind the desk and stared at us with wide eyes.


    "It''s very exciting to meet you. I''ve been waiting for almost twenty years, and of course there wasn''t a guarantee it would work at all. Do you know what I''m referring to?"


    "Should we?" Errod asked.


    "Probably not, but I can''t be certain. What do you know about fate? Destiny? The machinations of the gods?"


    I kicked Errod under the desk in case he was thinking about saying he was destined to become the world''s greatest swordsman, or even mention that we followed a mysterious thread here. "I know what all those words mean." I said.


    He looked disappointed. "Ah. Well, that isn''t a great start."


    Errod nodded sympathetically. "I''m sorry. Maybe if you told us what the door-knocking device is?"


    "Was. It''s ruined now. Don''t worry, it''s not something I''m mad about or want to charge you for or anything; it was a spell, bound into a complex runelike matrix. It was supposed to ring a bell when someone knocked on my door who could teach me about fate magic - or more specifically, organized and reproducible fate magic. Currently it can only be done with wild magic, since there are no known spells or runes for it in High Imperial."


    He sat up a little straighter, and I got the impression he was settling into a speech he''d given many times. "Fate magic is similar to probability magic, but it exists on another layer of the magical substrate of the world. That makes it very hard to detect, measure, or manipulate in any way - to the point that many do not believe it exists. It ensures certain events happen, by manipulating not just a small area but the entire web of planes."


    "So it just takes away free will?"


    He waggled his head a little in a gesture I took as ''kinda but not really''. "I''ve found that most people who talk about free will have never bothered to define it, so it''s hard to answer that question. How would you define free will? How would you know if you did or didn''t have it?"


    I wasn''t ready for a pop quiz. "It''s... being able to do what you want, without other people forcing you."


    "So someone in prison has no free will?"


    "They do, I guess. But... hmm. I guess I think of it like responsibility? Like if you could say - fairly - that something was someone''s fault then you''re saying they had free will. Kinda. Wait, maybe that''s backwards - you need to have free will to be responsible for something. Am I defining this in a circle?"


    "A bit, I think. Try this. If I offer a bowl of candied berries and a bowl of overcooked kinat to a child, do they have free will even though I know exactly which bowl they''re going to pick?"


    "Depends. Did you overcook the kinat on purpose just to make sure they wouldn''t go for it?"


    He laughed. "Excellent question! I think we can set aside the semantics of free will, you don''t want to get into a discussion about how professional philosophers define it. I would say that for our purposes, fate is the thing that overcooks the kinat. It nudges, when an event was already likely. So from your point of view you believe you are not being influenced, and you continue to act in ways that you might have anyway, but some particular goal is achieved."


    "Like a bell ringing."


    He sighed. "Like a person that is supposed to be able to teach me about fate, knocking on my door. The bell simply detected when the spell had ended. But it seems neither of you have anything to teach me, so I have to ask myself what went wrong. Do you know something without knowing it? Can you teach me, but not yet? Maybe this very conversation will spur you on to research it. Hmm. Since I wanted to cast the net wide, I wasn''t very specific about exactly what you would be able to teach me - I had hoped it would be clear as soon as you arrived. I pictured another scholar knocking on my door, maybe one who had read my book and wanted to compare notes." He squinted at each of us. "And then again, it is possible the spell simply failed. The problem with a field of magic you can''t detect or interact with is that you also can''t be certain it''s doing what you want it to. The person that cast it might have slipped up, and you two could be here because you can teach me about... I don''t know, how to tie a better knot."


    He leaned back, deep in thought. I waited a moment but it didn''t seem like he was going to say anything else, and so I tried to get the conversation going again. "Hey, so if you can get a wild mage to make a fate magic thing can you just make it your fate to become fabulously wealthy?"


    He nodded. "You can. In theory. The magic is tricky, and expensive, and you can''t be sure it worked. Even if you do become rich it will seem like something that was going to happen anyway, so you might suspect the spell was a waste of time. Plus there''s no guarantee - some things simply aren''t going to happen. But I think the biggest reason it isn''t used more is that you have no control over the exact manner in which it happens... if you ask for money, you don''t know that you''ll be able to keep it or use it. It could also be that you get some money but in a way you wouldn''t have wanted - compensation from your loved one being wrongfully executed, for example. But still, the magic is used. Prophesies, strict requirements on magic items, and of course it''s naturally occurring as well; I''ve been working on some experiments with time manipulation, and minor paradoxes are self-correcting."


    I thought about what Connie had said about the universe trying to keep time stable, but decided I wasn''t going to get into that with someone I didn''t know. "So this semi-sentient force is out there manipulating everything to happen a particular way?"


    Harmid stood and retrieved something that looked like a sugar bowl from the top of a cabinet. "Some things, yes." He removed the lid and placed the bowl on the desk before sitting again. "These are crystalized honey treats, they''re quite delicious. Feel free." He popped one in his mouth and chewed for a moment, holding up a finger when I tried to speak. Finally he finished and smiled at us. "Several things just happened, and could have happened another way. I could have dropped the bowl, we could have all taken one at the same time, I could have let you speak while I was chewing - or you could have ignored my gesture and spoken regardless - and had you spoken I could have tried to reply with my mouth full. Chances are, nothing about what I just did was at all impacted by fate. But if fate had been trying to achieve something and one of those changes would have moved it closer? Well, then it might have given events a little push."


    "So what does it want?"


    "Sometimes just to keep the world running properly, as with the discrepancies after time manipulation. Otherwise, whatever the magic is telling it to. There''s a magical hammer in Uldgarted that can only be picked up by the rightful heir to the platinum throne, for example, and so that fate magic is - if we understand correctly - reaching out to find that person all the time. And since the royal family was obliterated hundreds of years ago and the platinum throne destroyed, it will seek them forever."


    Errod looked thoughtful. "Could you just make a new platinum throne?"


    "An excellent question. In this case someone tried, I believe, but without knowing the exact way it was defined they haven''t been successful. It''s the ''rightful'' part of ''rightful heir'' that''s probably causing trouble; depending on how they defined that it''s easily possible that it can never be achieved. Fate magic doesn''t guarantee something will happen, just works towards it. But in another case, you could absolutely do something to become a valid target. People have tried it with various prophesies, and have succeeded at times. But from what we can tell - which is admittedly shaky - once fate magic has latched onto you it''s unlikely to just switch to someone else even if they''re a better match now. That''s why historically if someone is the presumed chosen of a beneficial prophesy they''re often assassinated - you arrange an alternate person favorable to your cause that would meet the criteria and then kill the current one and hope for the best."


    It was obvious that at least some of the threads I was seeing were part of this fate magic, which I''d already known was a possibility. But much like telling people about Earth I wasn''t so sure it was a good idea to spout off and draw attention to myself. What if they vivisected me? Or, okay, probably not that - but they might lock me up for research or force me to do fate magic for them. And if they dug into my brain to find out how I knew about it that could lead to all sorts of things. Would they start traveling to Earth? Would people from Earth come here? What if it led to a war? Although... surely someone already knew about Earth - right? Most people obviously didn''t, but we were at a university with a huge library. Maybe it would be beneficial to have a friend at this place.


    "Well do you have any books on fate magic I could borrow? Maybe it would jog something in my memory and I could help you out."


    He sat up a little straighter. "So it was you that knocked?"


    Aw, shit. "I wasn''t going to tell you that."


    He smiled. "I have a copy of possibly the finest book on fate magic that has ever been written, by a scholar of unparalleled talent and intelligence. You can keep it, but... let''s be honest. You know something you''re not telling me. I would never force someone to share information against their will, but I believe that the exchange of knowledge is one of the greatest goods in this world."


    "And if that knowledge is dangerous? Or sharing it is?"


    Harmid nodded. "That question has come up many times, and I don''t think there''s a single answer. All we can do is our best, and hope that we make the right choices. At the very least, I can tell you that my interest is not driven by greed or ambition. I just want to know how the world works, and fate magic is closer to the underpinning of the universe." He reached into the desk and pulled out a fairly thick book, sliding it over to me. "So. Read it, think on it, and please - come back to see me. If what you know is dangerous, we can talk through it together and hopefully find a way to prevent that danger."


    We thanked him and headed out to find Katrin, whispering back and forth about the conversation.


    "Are you thinking about telling him?" Errod asked.


    "Kinda? At some point I need to figure this stuff out. I think I need to put some mental defenses in place first, and then... if these lines are fate magic, that means I can learn to make them and cause all sorts of things to happen. Potentially."


    "Right, assuming you do it correctly. It doesn''t really explain why we all have the lines already though, does it? Unless it works backwards somehow?"


    "Some might be unrelated, that ability touches all my gifts. But... " I thought about the color of the thread that had snapped. Silvery white, with hints of turquoise - that was what a lot of them looked like. "Hmm. Okay, so... mental defenses, but then I could learn to read the threads and see what they''re attached to - or what they want."


    "That seems like a good idea, if any of them are bad we could - "


    "- shove it right up your ass!" a voice yelled, with no buildup or any sign of the first half of the sentence. We both turned to look and there, in the middle of the courtyard that was squeezed between the side of the library and some sort of amphitheater, stood a thin hooded figure and a huge man in armor - both spattered with what appeared to be tar and holding a short staff between them. It was a little under five feet long and thin, and covered thickly with whatever that black oozing gunk was. The larger figure released it, and turned to look around like he wasn''t sure of what he was seeing.


    "What the hell are you doing?" the cloaked one yelled - obviously the same voice as the prior outburst - "We have to be precise about this! How does this help?"


    "This is it," the other said, "this is where she... ah. And there she is." He was looking right at me.


    "That''s not how this works! She''s already read the book," they said with an offhand gesture at the large book I was carrying. I hadn''t read it of course, not in the two minutes since it had been given to me, but if the dude in the armor wanted to stop me it didn''t seem like telling him that would help much.


    "Errod, we should maybe run."


    We both turned and began to hurry away but the mystery man charged. He was huge, though it wasn''t clear how much of that was muscle and how much was the padding and armor. It was plate, but looked less thorough than Telen''s armor; there were large gaps where I could see chain mail or leather peeking through, and he had no helmet which meant we could see his ridiculously bushy mustache and angry scowl.


    "Stop, both of you!" the man bellowed.


    We didn''t. I grabbed Errod by the wrist and dragged him along, bursting through a doorway into a vacant lecture hall and then out the back into a sort of garden. Who puts a little garden behind a classroom? There were other doors, so we picked one and of course got a gardening closet. I could hear feet thudding closer and pulled the door shut behind us rather than try to make it to another exit.


    "You cannot hide," the voice said, "and you cannot escape your sins. Either of you. You think you can protect your sister, Errod? Your death at my hand is already assured. And she will be close behind you."


    I leaned close to Errod to whisper to him, "Hey buddy, just a hunch but this choad may be looking for your sister rather than me. Which means the book I''m holding is probably not the one he''s concerned about. Where, exactly, is her fucking spellbook from?"


    Errod sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut. "I wish I knew."

 CHAPTER 052: A Friend Will Help You Move...

    I''ve been chased around by people who were mad at me for stealing things before, but this was different for a few reasons. First, this guy seemed like he wanted to actually murder me rather than have me arrested. And second - probably the most novel part of the whole thing to be honest - in this case I actually hadn''t stolen anything. It was a relief to be facing a problem that didn''t seem to be my fault; not counting a few monsters it seemed like everything that had threatened us so far had been at least partly my doing.


    I looked around for a way to escape or set a trap, but there wasn''t much hope of either. There were some gardening tools, which not surprisingly looked pretty similar to what I''d seen on Earth, and some sacks of something - plant food or whatever. The gardening closet was big enough that we could move around without elbowing each other, but not really big enough to fight properly in - although that could work to my advantage, since it seemed like I did best when I could charge right up and headbutt someone.


    The door burst open, and the beefy dude was standing there scowling at us. "Thieves. Destroyers. Murderers. Make your peace," he said, "and know that this is a mercy - better to die here than to be thrown into the cursed crossroads."


    "Wow, okay." I said, "That was oddly specific. Listen, we don''t know who you are or what''s going on so how about we just knock off the murder talk and sort things out?"


    "Ah. Now you want to talk. Of course."


    Errod sighed, and I saw him reach down with his left hand to loosen his sword in its scabbard. "Sir, I don''t want anyone to die here today. We don''t need to do this. We can pay you for whatever you believe we stole, and part ways peacefully. We were about to leave the city - I assure you, you''ll never see us again."


    "It''s too late to save your skin, child."


    "I wasn''t talking about me," Errod said, "though I certainly don''t want to die."


    "Your concern for your sister would be admirable under other circumstances, but I am afraid she must die with you."


    "I wasn''t talking about her either. Please reconsider."


    The man laughed, a sort of rough bark that shook his ridiculous mustache. "You imply I should be afraid I might lose in a fight with you?"


    "No. If you lose to me I would show you mercy. What you should fear is killing me, because unfortunately if you do that my sisters will fucking murder you. I''d much rather we just work something out. I''ve never met you, and I have to say I''m not really sure how I''ve wronged you. But there must be a better way than the two of us trying to kill each other in a dirty supply room."


    The man laughed again. "I suppose you haven''t met me. Odd to consider. My name," he said, "Is Elrebar Iron-hand. And I know for a fact I can defeat the two of you without breaking a sweat."


    The hooded one, who must have been following behind and had finally entered the garden, cleared their throat. "Actually, you moron, you need my help to kill them. And I''m not going to right now, because it will. Not. Work. You want to stop the world from ending? Fine. Me too. But you can''t kill them right now. You''ll throw this kid into a maelstrom of death when the time comes, and not a moment sooner."


    What.


    Elrebar didn''t even turn around. "You''re over-thinking this. No prophesy is guaranteed; 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."


    I shot a look at Errod, but he was busy staring at this Iron-Hand douche. I didn''t like the fact that someone was mentioning a prophesy right after I learned that fate magic was a thing - it felt too much like we were in some badly-plotted story. If it was a coincidence then fine, but if we were being manipulated by fate magic I was going to be extremely cranky.


    "Well either way," the hooded one said, "I can''t hang on much longer. We have to go back."


    "You go. I''ll kill these two, then I''ll take the long way. Maybe I''ll stop at the keep and shore up defenses so we don''t have another incident."


    "You can''t - ugh! You''re insufferable. We came together, we need to leave together. The strain is too much otherwise."


    I leaned close to Errod. "Stall them," I whispered. It sounded like whatever teleportation spell they''d used wanted to yo-yo them back for some reason, and it was possible if we held out for a few more minutes they''d be forced to leave. Unfortunately, this meathead wasn''t going to wait long to start swinging.


    "Fine. Hang on another moment while I take care of this."


    Errod nodded and drew his sword with his right hand, then reached over with his left and adjusted his wrist somewhat as if he was fixing his grip. It gave the impression he was trying to match some drawing of a proper stance out of a book, and wasn''t exactly helping him to look like a worthy opponent. Elrebar drew his own sword, and it crackled with black lightning - it had a sort of fishhook thing going on at the tip, overall looking very much like some high level loot you''d see in an MMO rather than a real sword someone would ever be holding. Regardless, it looked very dangerous especially compared to Errod''s simple blade.


    "Elrebar, I ask again that you let us pay you for whatever you believe we -"


    Elrebar lunged forward and Errod stepped back, immediately tripping. Oh, Errod. I hurled a throwing knife and watched as that hooked blade flicked it out of the air effortlessly. Errod flung a handful of manure up at Elrebar''s face with his left hand while stabbing with his right, and managed to get the point of his sword into the man''s calf through a gap in the armor.


    "You little shit!" Elrebar roared, wiping at his eyes as he retreated a step. Errod started to scramble up, but he wasn''t fast enough; while he was still in a very vulnerable position that crackling blade swung at his head. Errod caught the blade in his hand, grunting in pain as the force of the blow against the indestructible glove undoubtedly broke some bones. Twisting the point away so the man couldn''t thrust it forward into him, Errod stabbed into Elrebar''s now exposed armpit, bypassing the armor - the angle was wrong to kill him but it looked like it would at the very least fuck up the man''s left arm. He retaliated by headbutting Errod brutally; a spray of blood flew across the floor and Errod collapsed again.


    I charged in, gripping one of my newly charged daggers, and tried to stab him in his stupid mustache. I would have preferred to throw it, but the precision with which he''d deflected my other shot implied some magical assistance; probably he had some specialized ability that was meant to protect him from projectiles. I leapt up and grabbed the top edge of his breastplate while swinging towards his neck with my other hand, but he dropped his sword and snatched my wrist. The point of the knife had stopped just an inch from his jugular - so close, but I couldn''t move that hand at all.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    He kicked Errod, sending him flying, and squeezed my wrist so hard I could feel the bones rubbing together. "Rest assured, you do the entire world a great service by dying here."


    I could hear Errod standing up, but he wouldn''t want to attack while I was in danger. I considered letting go with my other hand, but I was a good foot off the ground and with my wrist already in pain I didn''t want to dangle from it. He could pull me off at any time - I got the impression he was enjoying having me so close but helpless to do anything. He whispered, his breath hot on my face. "I had been planning on beheading you cleanly, but now I think I may crush your throat instead and let you die slowly. Was it worth it, child? Trying to stab me like a coward?"


    He squeezed again and something in my wrist cracked. I was going to drop the knife, not that it would do any good to me anyway. Unless... I was just barely able to position my thumb, and scooted the knife closer to him - it had no momentum of course, but the very tip of it just barely nicked his skin. The force enchantment triggered. It lurched forward another four inches in an instant, and Elrebar flung me aside to claw it out of his neck. He was bleeding, badly, but charged towards me as his sword flew up into his hand from the ground.


    Errod was close behind in the cramped space and stabbed again, but it glanced off the armor and Elrebar spun with his sword - the blade hit Errod in the chest and knocked him back, lightning discharging across him. Errod''s new chainmail held and seemed to prevent enough of the damage from the electricity, so he stabbed Elrebar again - it hit at a joint where there were no metal plates, but I suspected it had been stopped by the layers underneath. I threw another knife, which he yet again flicked away, and even worse he didn''t seem to be at all slowed by his injuries - I was assuming magic was involved because as far as I could tell the neck wound had already stopped bleeding. Between the armor and whatever was patching him up I wasn''t sure what we could do. It was Telen all over again, without some big trick we could throw ourselves at him all day - and he only needed to be lucky the once.


    Elrebar hammered on Errod, who just barely kept his sword up. It wasn''t elegant, or graceful, or anything like the swordfights I''d seen in movies. He was using his sword like a club, and it was working. The man had a huge strength advantage and while he also presumably had more skill he didn''t need it. He''d just beat Errod into a paste. I grabbed a rack of gardening tools and tipped it, spilling everything onto both of them - a rake got all tangled up in his arm for just a second, and during that time I slipped past him and shoved another throwing knife down the back of his armor. I felt the enchantment trigger as it broke skin - with all the padding under the armor I knew it was more luck than anything else that let me find actual flesh and it probably hadn''t been more than a shallow gash, but all I wanted was a distraction.


    He screamed and threw me off, but of course he couldn''t reach into his armor to get the knife out; his gauntlets were too thick, and he probably didn''t have the flexibility to get to that part of his back anyway. Could he heal with a knife still in his lung? Errod struck again, but rather than stabbing he hooked his sword under the cool but impractical fishhook embellishment on the end of Elrebar''s blade and whipped it right out of the man''s hands. I spun to glance at the hooded one, but they were backed against the far wall of the garden with both hands up. I considered demanding that they drop the staff, but it didn''t seem like staves were particularly important to spellcasting anyway and all that mattered at the moment was that it was still just the three of us in the fight.


    "Hey Elrebar Lead-Foot or whatever! I''m running away and I have that book you wanted in my backpack!"


    Amazingly, it worked. It would have made more sense for him to focus on killing Errod while he was cornered, but he turned and ran at me. Maybe he was worried about the implied time limit on the return teleportation, or maybe he was just sure that he could kill me and return before Errod would have a chance to get anywhere. Either way, it bought me a moment. He held a hand back as he charged and his sword once again returned to him, though hilariously Errod was holding on with his gloved hand and slowing it down as he was dragged along. If my wrist hadn''t been badly injured I would have wanted to take the opportunity to throw a knife while Elrebar was unarmed, but I didn''t think there was much chance of hitting even if he''d been standing still with his eyes closed.


    Instead, at the last second, I reversed and dove at his feet and between his legs. I didn''t make it all the way, but I had never meant to - I just wanted to wrap around one of his legs and force him to lean over, because it meant he couldn''t pay attention to Errod and I at the same time. He leaned down to grab me and got a sword strike to his back which sadly didn''t make it through the armor. He turned to grab his sword that was still trying to reach him, but Errod slammed into him and with me on his leg he went over onto the ground. It was the least dignified swordfight I could have ever imagined.


    Errod stabbed again and again, and as he did I saw an opening. If we were going to be brawling and rolling around on the ground anyway, well... fuck it. I stabbed up at a gap in his armor with yet another force-enchanted knife and felt it tear through his pants and then slam up into his crotch. He howled and kicked me free, breaking at least one rib, and I looked up just in time to see him swing on Errod again. He''d recovered his sword, somehow, and time seemed to slow as I watched it arc towards Errod''s unprotected head. At the last second, lightning fast, Errod swung with his left arm and slapped the side of the blade to deflect it just slightly so that the edge passed over his head rather than slashing through his face. At the same time he stabbed with his sword and it drove deep into Elrebar''s throat.


    Lightning crackled from the sword into Errod''s head as it passed by and his eyes rolled up. Errod collapsed onto Elrebar, and everything was silent for a moment.


    "Well," the hooded figure mumbled, "I did warn him." And then he vanished.


    I scrambled over to Errod to check on him and while he seemed to be breathing it was ragged and his heart was racing. "Hey buddy. Wake up, okay? Come on. It was just a little lightning to the brain, shake it off."


    "Step back, please," a voice said from the entrance to the garden. It was professor Harmid Yanipliss. He sounded calm and authoritative, not at all like I would expect from a random teacher that had walked in on a murder scene. I reluctantly backed away up against a planter filled with some sort of purple vines, and Harmid leaned down over Errod.


    "Well. I don''t like showing off, the whole point of putting the decoy on my forehead was so people would underestimate me, but I did want to build some trust with you so..."


    White light enveloped Errod and he gasped, sitting up instantly and flailing around for his sword. I felt a spasm in my side as some of the writhing light brushed against me and partially healed my ribs - it had to be wild magic. Harmid''s Dumine was a fake.


    "Calm down, young man. You''re healed, and it looks like the fight is over. Are you willing to speak with the authorities?"


    Errod nodded, but I gripped his shoulder. "Errod, no. We can''t. We don''t know what just happened, and I don''t want to get tied up in something else so fast. Plus that one guy got away, and if he comes back when we''re unarmed in a cell... it''s a bad idea. On top of that, Hammersmith might be looking for us -"


    "Lord Protector Hammersmith?" Harmid asked, looking impressed.


    Aw, shit. "I wasn''t going to tell you that."


    Errod stood up and sighed as he looked around. "I... yes. You''re probably right. Would the savior of Brinkmar run away to protect his friends, or stay to be true to the rule of law?"


    "If I know my history," Harmid said, "he would run away to protect his friends and then the Queen would retroactively spin it so that it sounded like he was upholding the rule of law. Fascinating, the differences between the official accounts and the eyewitnesses." He sighed. "If you two need to get out of here, I can... hmm. I''ve never had to deal with a dead body before. I suppose I''ll just buy you some time and then report it - I can leave some of the details out. But you have to promise me you''ll come back and see me. I still think there''s something you''re supposed to teach me."


    "I... yeah. I will. Thank you. Um. Watch the door, will you? We need to get our things."


    I found all my knives, though digging the one out from Elrebar''s back was difficult. Errod cleaned off his sword and we retrieved the items we''d dropped before the fight started - Errod''s backpack, and the book Harmid had given me. For the first time I opened it, and looked at the title page. "The Paradox of Fate, by... professor Harmid Yanipliss. Oh, you''ve got to be kidding me."


    "What''s wrong?" Errod asked.


    "Nothing. Just remembering what he said when he gave me the book. The finest text on fate, written by the most talented and intelligent..." I sighed. Well, it might still be true, even if he had a questionable sense of humor. "Whatever. Let''s find Katrin and get the fuck out of this city."

 CHAPTER 053: Destinys Extended Family

    "You shouldn''t have risked going to pick it up," Errod said as he admired the glove on his right hand, "but... I''m glad to have it." It was a nearly perfect match, so he no longer looked like he was making an eccentric fashion statement.


    "It''s fine," Katrin replied as she dug through her bag, "I knew you would take a bit to get the wagons ready and moving, and I needed to get the map for our training spot, and it wasn''t even out of the way since I was dropping something off."


    Errod cocked his head. "What were you dropping off?"


    "And anyway," Katrin continued, "If you''re going to criticize someone, yell at Calliope."


    I was not prepared to be part of the conversation. "Whoa! What did I do?"


    "Well Callie," she said with mock patience, "when you''re concerned about being arrested for murder it''s probably best to not steal things from the body."


    Ah. That. "Okay first of all, it wasn''t on the body - it was laying nearby. Second, it''s a cool-looking sword with lightning powers. Third, it flies to your hand when you reach for it. That''s awesome. But... okay, sure. Point taken. And for the record, that last thing I said would kinda be a pun in English but the translation ruins it. Anyway, if we''re talking about who to criticize I think we should discuss how Errod was giving me shit for spending too much and then he put in a rush order for his glove."


    "If I hadn''t, when was I going to pick it up? We''re talking about being out in the wilderness for potentially months. Assuming we don''t get arrested, or hunted down by whoever those people were, or swept up by Lord Protector Hammersmith."


    Katrin looked nervous. "We have much better protection from scrying now, so long as we''re near the wagons, but no protection is perfect. They could push past with enough power, or by having a strong connection to us - blood and hair, or... I don''t know. Lord Protector Hammersmith would have found us already if she could - or if she wanted to enough - but I''m worried about this new attack. You said he mentioned a prophesy?"


    I paused in my efforts to fix Dopey''s harness, which had been twisted when we put it on in a rush before fleeing the city. I realized with how fast everything had happened I wasn''t certain of exactly what our attackers had said. "Yeah, but they were a bit light on the details. The one for sure mentioned saving the world, and they both kinda sorta referenced throwing Errod into an evil vortex of cursed... something."


    "The cursed crossroads," Errod corrected, "and the other said I would be thrown into a maelstrom of death ''when the time comes''."


    "I dunno man, sounds like an evil vortex to me. Anyway they said that, and implied it was a prophesy, and the one guy seemed upset about you reading the spellbook I think. They disagreed about if he could kill Errod before it was time for the prophesy; the robed guy said no, and the sword guy said yes because... people had used a loom and everything was fine? It''s... I don''t know, it''s a lot of random garbage to me. Errod thinks he''s destined to be the world''s greatest sword fighter, I''m from another planet nobody seems to know about, we''re some of the only people that are aware the whole world ended a few months back and just kinda reset, we''re literally the only three that know I actually broke the whole Duminere system and ended up with three Dumines, we have way more of those stupid fate string things attached to us than anyone else I''ve seen, and now some dude attacked us while saying there was a prophesy or something and he wants to chuck your brother into a curse pit - presumably somehow related to you getting that book. Oh! Oh! And the guy that caused the end of the world is still at large in a side dimension that only I can get into and that somehow is also the setting for a series of books I read back on Earth. Can''t forget that. Did I miss anything?"


    There was a moment of silence, and then Errod chimed in. "Your memories are inconsistent, and until you got your Dumines you could see the future in dreams and curse people. And that wild mage is after you, and a similarly-masked one stole my toe. Honestly, I think some of those could even count as multiple items - the fact that you''re from Earth is strange, but we also don''t know how you got from there to here. Just as an example."


    He was right, we could expand the list as much as we wanted. "Okay I swear, if one more random plot point drops in my lap I''m going to scream. In the meantime, I am absolutely not going to start worrying about this loom thing."


    Katrin made some glowing orbs and started them spinning in a complicated pattern. Before getting her Dumine she''d only been able to manage the one, and hadn''t been able to do that kind of acrobatics with it - now she seemed to do it as a form of nervous fidgeting. "I''m sorry, Callie. I didn''t want to add more to your plate."


    "Nah, I didn''t mean it that way. You guys have just rolled with all sorts of nonsense coming from me. It''s not... how do I put this? I''m fine with you guys being the cause of some of the drama. Fuck, that''s actually great news - it''s good to know it''s not all my fault. It''s just that it seems crazy to have these guys show up out of nowhere and imply that there might be even more stuff we still don''t know about when there was already so much. City guards, or some random dude yelling about you being a thief? Sure. Great. People appearing out of nowhere covered in tar or some shit and screaming about throwing Errod into maelstroms and world-ending looms and... fuck, that''s a lot."


    Short break over, we started to goad the moskar back onto the road. Katrin sat on the bench next to me, while Elba scrambled up to the curved roof of the other wagon with practiced ease. I could tell Katrin was thinking about saying something, but I just acted oblivious for the five minutes it took for her to start talking. "About the book," she started, quietly enough that the others wouldn''t hear, "I... don''t have very satisfying answers."


    I kept silent and just nodded. It didn''t feel like me pushing would help. She hesitated another moment, and then continued. "A few months back, our father was involved in something. When we talk about it we say it was just an accident, a misunderstanding, but... it couldn''t have been. The short version is that he burned a spice shop down, and when they cleared the wreckage there were bodies inside. We don''t know who, and my father wouldn''t say. He knew how to make fire and how to activate runes, just basic Imperial magic he learned without a Dumine, and he would go around at night and light the lanterns - magic and chemical ones both. But this happened just before dawn, closer to the time when he would have been putting them out instead. It would have been almost impossible for him to light a building on fire by mistake when trying to light a lamp, but when he was putting them out? It''s ridiculous.


    "I was awoken by the alarms for the fire brigade, and when I got there with my bucket - it was only one street over - I found father being hauled away. Errod must have gotten there just ahead of me, he was still waking up and seemed confused and... he insisted he had been sleepwalking, and had had a vision that he would become a knight of Brinkmar. He''d... he''d dreamed that he saved our father by fighting off three men at once. He''d never even touched anything bigger than a carving knife, but the next day while I was trying to figure out how we would get by without father he spent the last of our money on a sword."


    "A shitty sword," I added unnecessarily. "And again, this is the guy that gave me trouble about my spending habits? I''m surprised you didn''t kill him."


    She shook her head. "You don''t understand. I was devastated, I''d just watched my father being taken away for murder and arson and he wasn''t even defending himself. He just said everything would be okay, and that I had to take care of Errod. I wondered at the time if somehow... if somehow the fire was Errod''s fault, while he was sleepwalking. Don''t tell him I said that. Oh, gods. I shouldn''t have said it out loud, even. Errod didn''t have a hint of soot on him, his clothes weren''t out of place, it''s... It was my father. He even confessed to it, though he wouldn''t talk about whose corpses were in the remains of the shop. The owners of the shop insisted it should have been empty, they''d been in the apartment upstairs and had heard yelling and things breaking but had snuck out the back and run for the watch."


    "They didn''t do the thing where they use magic to make him tell the truth or look at his memories?"


    "Yallowsben doesn''t have anyone that can do that, and he''d already confessed to enough. The bodies weren''t of anyone local or they would have maybe pressed harder to find out. At any rate, I couldn''t be mad at Errod. He was... hopeful. I was barely hanging on, and he had purpose - I couldn''t take that away from him. All of this is... it''s not what I wanted to tell you, not really. The point is, when I dragged Errod back to the apartment I also grabbed my father''s lamplighter bag that was laying on the ground. It had his tools and things in it, or it normally would have - but instead when I got back and looked inside I found the spellbook. There were other things out of place. The old chest under his bed - which I''d never seen the inside of - was open, and there was a trail of blood leading out the door. I don''t know what he was involved in, or where he got the spellbook. I don''t know who the dead people were, or if my father killed them somehow, or if there were more of them.


    "Errod was acting erratically, trying to find someone to save as if that could bring our father back. I wasn''t any better, I was spending time digging into the spellbook hoping that I would find answers in there. Errod lost his job because of everything that was going on and couldn''t get another one since there were so many rumors about what our father had been up to. I still had my job, but that was just enough to cover our quota to keep our citizen''s rights - in Yallowsben that meant we were guaranteed enough food to keep us alive and free healing once a year but not much else. So I decided we had to leave, somehow. We were stuck with people talking behind our backs, all these people we''d known our whole lives who were supposed to be our community, our support. Most people live with at least a dozen aunts and cousins and... we didn''t have that. Even if there was no chance of whatever my father had been involved in coming back to bite us it just didn''t feel like home anymore.


    "It was too dangerous to go on our own, and we didn''t have a lot to offer to merchants to tag along. I was looking into it, but I wasn''t hopeful. And then... you showed up. Errod came running home saying we had a chance to get out of town, that he''d helped save someone who was being attacked by Kej and Lowan and they were leaving first thing in the morning. And after I got the full story out of him, well. Those two were going to kill us if we stayed, and I''d wanted to leave anyway. So now you know the rest of the story on why we were so eager to join up with some strange foreigners. And if you''d kept things to yourself we would have maybe parted ways at Theramas or something, who knows? But instead you talked to Errod about Brinkmar, and you got into that mess in Handoleren and I realized I was in the middle of something - and that both of you were going to get yourselves killed without me."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Sometimes, when people were nice to me, I would try to figure out what their motivations were. It wasn''t that I didn''t believe some people were just friendly, it was that it made me feel better to know what was in it for them, or what might make them change their mind. I knew my own reasons - I''d mainly been curious about the Van Halen logo, but I also wanted to learn magic and on top of that I''d had that fascination with stories of siblings having adventures together. Hell, that was where the name Connie had come from, that phase where I''d pretended to have a secret sister. But I''d had some trouble deciding what the deal was with Katrin.


    Initially, I knew the two of them wanted to get out of town to avoid those guys who had tried to mug me. Once we were on the road I''d decided Katrin just wanted to stay with me because she wanted to get to use a Duminere, and after that I figured it had something to do with the spellbook. But now? Now I was thinking it was the very last thing she just dropped. She might not even realize it herself, but it was all Handoleren. Her dad did something unexplained and crazy and burned a building down, and then I ran off without telling her what I was doing and lit a building on fire. And she decided she had to stick with me just in case she could... what, fix it this time around? Plus the parallels with Errod, she basically already admitted she thought I was crazy at first too and we were both impulsively inserting ourselves into situations that would be better handled by alerting the watch or something.


    Katrin leaned her head against me and continued talking. "And now I think things are crazy enough that we''re well and truly stuck with each other. So I guess... I guess it''s okay that this part is probably my fault. And it is; I could have left the book behind, or told someone about it, or... something. I guess even with the book and with Errod thinking he''s destined to be a knight of Brinkmar we''re not exactly even. Maybe I''ll go out and start more trouble somehow just to catch up."


    I was about to make a joke, and then hesitated. Was it a joke? "Katrin. What if he''s actually destined to be a knight of Brinkmar? Hell, what if this is all about Errod?"


    Katrin sat up and glared at me. "Don''t you dare, what an awful thought to put in my head!"


    "Before I even got here, he had a vision that he would be a knight of Brinkmar. And then - coincidentally - he runs into the one person that can get him there? Come on. And he''s getting better, a bit, or at least he hasn''t hurt himself since we left Erathik, and now that other guy said there was a prophesy about him! Oh my god. I''m not the main character after all."


    I suddenly remembered talking to Tony - the friendly drug dealer that was always on the corner near Universal Servicing Systems - about something. The memory fell apart as I tried to grasp at it, like when you wake from a dream. Something where he was telling me I was the comic relief.


    Katrin snapped me out of my reverie by grabbing my chin and turning my head to face her. "Please do not encourage him. Brinkmar was abandoned for good reason, my great grandfather didn''t just move away - he evacuated, with everyone else. They sealed the gates behind them, and every expedition that went there after came back horribly ill if they came back at all. Tantek wanted to destroy Brinkmar, and he did. And being a knight of a fallen kingdom doesn''t mean anything - who are you swearing allegiance to? What are you protecting? A cursed land that will kill anyone that lives there?"


    "A cursed land? So, the kind of place that might contain some cursed crossroads, maybe a maelstrom of death or two?"


    And something incredible happened. Katrin was struck completely dumb. Her eyes flicked back and forth as if she was frantically trying to think of a retort, and her mouth even opened a few times - but she was totally unable to form a meaningful reply. I felt bad for her. "Look, it''s fine. I''ll figure out how to read these fate things and we''ll go from there. It''ll probably be trivial to learn to just... I don''t know, cut them entirely or attach them to something else. And anyway, that asshole also said Errod''s death at his hands was a guaranteed thing and he''s super fucking dead now while Errod is doing great. So it''s bullshit regardless. When it''s time for me to open the way to Brinkmar, they''re probably not even going to let me in - let alone say I can bring friends with me. It''s a military operation, not a picnic. Don''t get me wrong, I''d go in a heartbeat even if it is cursed, but there''s no way that''ll happen."


    I didn''t mention that there was no way Brinkmar was as cursed as she thought it was, or Gilbrecht Halenvar couldn''t have been squatting there so long. She nodded, but still looked like she was worried. "Okay. Just... keep an eye out. I can''t count on my father ever getting back from Tarmestal, he''s going to be there so long and they say accidents happen all the time and... Errod is the only family I have."


    I smirked. "Well, not according to Errod. He called me his sister back when that guy was threatening us, said his ''sisters'' would beat that asshole to death if Errod died. He just lumped me in there because the guy already thought I was you, but I''m going to give him shit about it."


    Katrin looked thoughtful. "If you ever wanted to, you could be. Calliope Runelighter has a nice ring to it."


    "I know you''re not suggesting I marry Errod."


    She laughed - no, that was a full-on cackle. "No! Oh, I can''t even imagine it. And don''t look at me either, you''re not my type. I don''t know how it works on Earth, but - well, you talked a little about adoption and ''foster care'' and things like that, so I know people can change families."


    "Oh. Yeah, I mean... people marry into families, or they get adopted as kids. But I''m an adult, and I don''t plan on marrying anyone."


    "Those are the most common reasons here too, but it''s not strange to join yourself to another family as an adult. I knew someone with four families once, he changed his last name every week."


    "Seems like that would be a nightmare from a legal perspective."


    "It''s not about that, it''s... you don''t have true names on Earth, do you?" she asked, and then gazed off into the distance as she thought. "I suppose not, with no magic. So... before High Imperial there were a thousand different languages of magic. We''ve talked about that, about wild magic and the downsides to it - the way that sometimes it leaves lingering effects or doesn''t work the way you want. But before that, before people put language to it, magic was just intent and tradition and shared belief. That''s how the language works, too, and of course that kind of magic superseded most of the older things since language is better at lasting over time. But some traditions were so strong, or so foundational to society, that they stuck around. Things like the Sahrger hating iron is one example I think we''ve talked about, but connections we make and the names that go with them are the strongest. True names, ancestral blades, things like that."


    "So there''s some sort of declaration or ritual that just makes you part of a family, and the... what, the gods or the universe or magic itself just knows it?"


    "Essentially, yes. There are different ones in different cultures, but they all work the same way - an invitation is extended, through words or an offering of something significant to the family."


    Huh. Of course, she was joking about the offer to join her family. She had to be, we''d only known each other for a few months - not that I was interested anyway, I didn''t need to tie myself to anyone and get a bunch of stupid social obligations dumped on me. I''d tried out being part of a family a few times, and it wasn''t all it was cracked up to be. Shitheel hissed at a bird and watched it fly away, out over the winding road that stretched off over the hills. I found myself feeling strange. There was a tightness in my chest, a lump in my throat.


    By the sundered throne, by the name of the twelve kingdoms... I bind my blood and yours...


    It was something from the Jake Ross books, when he was adopted by the queen of Brinkmar. I couldn''t remember it exactly, and I wasn''t sure why I was suddenly feeling like I was on the verge of a panic attack. There was some memory, of me crying and someone trying to hand me a business card? Everything was so... fuzzy. These stupid imaginary memories needed to go. That was going to be my top priority when we started training. In the meantime, I decided to change the subject a little.


    "Okay, speaking of things that are significant to a family. This is, like, the millionth time someone has mentioned ancestral blades and I still have no idea what they are. Hugh called Errod''s shitty sword an ancestral blade to make fun of it, and everyone seemed to think the strange sword-thing we found in the vault was one."


    Katrin shifted into her teacher voice. "In the distant past, great warriors would find that weapons they cared for and treated as special would sometimes gain magical properties - it could be something as simple as always being supernaturally sharp, or as dramatic as shooting out lightning. As they were passed down and legends grew about them they became more and more powerful, and they were so important to how powerful families and rulers work that they''ve continued to exist even as magic has been tamed by language."


    "So I could just believe really hard and give my knives magic powers?"


    "No. Well, not easily. Maybe over a long enough time you could, if you were immortal - some demigods have weapons like that. But really it would need to be passed on to your child, and their child, and so on."


    "I didn''t think most weapons lasted that long."


    "If they''re made out of the right alchemical metals they can last forever, but that''s not really important. You can repair or re-forge it, and as long as everyone knows it''s the same weapon then... it is. Even if every part was replaced over time - it''s like a family that way. A family line might have any number of times where it changes through marriage, or passes down through step-children and adopted children, but it''s all the same family. In fact, for families with ancestral blades sometimes people join the family by being entrusted with it; being in the family allows you to wield it, but the inverse is also true."


    "Wait so... hang on. If I pick up the wrong knife I might be joining someone''s family?"


    "Now you''re being silly. I refuse to believe you think it works that way. Like any invitation it has to be offered and accepted. But if some powerful family chooses you as their champion, then by definition you''re part of the family. You can''t just use someone else''s ancestral blade without permission - that''s why that sword we found felt like it was going to kill you if you tried to pick it up. Not all of them are that powerful, or that dramatic, but you get the idea."


    "Then why was the auction house interested? And why did someone bother stealing it? If you can''t use it without being in the family, and that one was from some guy who died hundreds of years ago - presumably without heirs or the vault wouldn''t have been lost - what was the point of it?"


    "Well it''s still a valuable historical artifact. An ancestral blade has to be special, so you can''t really have more than one in the family. That means it''s impossible to have very many of them around, especially powerful ones. Old, powerful families have a lot of members but only the one blade. So owning one, even one you can''t actually use, is still something people can brag about."


    "I wonder if the Sword of Destiny was an ancestral blade?"


    "The what?"


    "Oh, it''s from the Jake Ross books. The second book is actually called Jake Ross and the Sword of Destiny. I guess it would have belonged to the queen of Brinkmar, if so."


    Katrin didn''t know, so I switched wagons and asked Errod.


    "Well, the first queen of Brinkmar was rumored to have the Clockmaker''s blade, but she was never seen wielding it. The Savior of Brinkmar had an ancestral blade, and my grandfather said it was given to him by the queen - that would be the original queen''s daughter, they lived a very long time - but he couldn''t say if it was the same one. If it was, it would prove the first queen of Brinkmar was the Clockmaker''s heir... but that seems unlikely, since she presumably would have claimed the title."


    None of that rang a bell from Earth. "Man, you and me are going to have to compare notes about Brinkmar. I wish I had a copy of the Jake Ross books."


    "Me too. I''ll do my best, but I''m no historian. I wish we hadn''t needed to leave Sentortzi in such a rush, we could have gotten some books. It would be good to be as prepared as possible before we go there, I need to be ready for anything."


    Which brought the whole thing all the way back around to how the conversation started - the fact that if it wasn''t all some ridiculous misunderstanding or delusion, Errod was destined to either become a knight of Brinkmar or die horribly there - maybe both.

 CHAPTER 054: The Other Shoe

    We were just a day or so away from Elba''s village, and had settled far off the road for the evening. Errod was supervising the kid as she searched for twigs to get the fire going - Katrin could light even a wet log on fire at this point with her magic but for cooking purposes the campfire turned out better if you made it the old fashioned way - and I was pacing back and forth staring at nothing like a crazy person.


    "Callie?" Katrin said, gently, "Are you okay?"


    "I''m an idiot, and I''m just realizing that."


    She laughed, and snagged my wrist so I would stop marching back and forth. "You''re not an idiot. What''s wrong?"


    What was wrong was that I''d been in this world for months, and I''d been so busy bouncing from one place to another and chalking everything odd I saw to it being some strange fantasy world that I hadn''t really made any effort to learn anything. "I don''t know. I should have put off this trip and just... just spent time with little kids learning about the world. Do you have kindergarten here? No, that translated funny. But you see? I don''t know! I don''t know anything! I should know more by now!"


    My moment of revelation had come as a result of Katrin making a very smart suggestion. She''d pointed out that since we knew I had been picking up a bit of the language anyway it might be good to have her wear the translation band while we were out in the wilderness. It worked both ways, so I could practice speaking common without magical assistance with Errod while Katrin chatted with me in English - and then we would have a secret language we could use. I told her that was fine, since I''d had my allergies removed anyway, and told her it would also keep her from having her period.


    And Katrin said, offhand, "oh it''s not my time of the year anyway". Of the year. Had people on this world always only had one period per year? Did everyone get adjusted at some point by Enhancement magic? Or maybe in the distant past they''d all had an adjustment that was designed to be passed on to their kids. None of that was the point, though - the point was that I knew so little about the most basic ways the world worked and sooner or later I would need to stop just shrugging and saying "well, it''s a wacky fantasy world!" as if that meant anything.


    "What do you want to know?" Katrin asked, and I gestured vaguely all around me.


    "I don''t know! That''s the thing! Look, I have - had, before the bracelet - my period every twenty-eight days."


    "Ugh. That seems silly. It''s not like you need to get pregnant with so little notice. Why did you have that... or, no. Is that everyone on Earth?"


    "Yeah. I mean basically, anyway. But that''s the thing, I live here now and I didn''t even know that wasn''t the normal way it worked! I don''t know what I don''t know. Like... Sentortzi has taller buildings than I''ve seen anywhere else. Why? The same materials and stuff are available to everyone, right? I know big groups of people drain the mana around them, but Sentortzi has wards that prevent that, so it shouldn''t be an issue, right? I guess... I''ve been so wrapped up in my preconceived ideas of what a world with magic would look like based on Earth stories that I didn''t stop to question much.


    "General technology, too. It makes sense you never developed the internet or whatever, but now that I''m thinking about it you should have... I don''t know, some post-Industrial Revolution stuff. And yes, I know you don''t know what that is. Oh! Okay, here''s another - it''s a little strange you don''t have photography. We had photographs ages ago and it''s all just chemistry stuff that I''m sure you could do. Or radio, we''ve had that for a long time I think - though I guess that one has some magic equivalents that might distract people from figuring it out. But it''s ridiculously strange you don''t have assembly lines and mass transit. If you can make magic items that just turn endlessly you could have all sorts of stuff."


    I finally wound down and collapsed onto the log we''d made the fire pit next to. I took a deep breath, and continued a little slower and calmer. "And I don''t know politics; I can name a bunch of countries or alliances at this point, but I don''t know what''s different about them or how it works to move from one to another or... just, how anything works or how many countries there are or... man, we talk about things being on this side or the other side of the continent but I don''t actually know how many continents there are. You know? Just this basic shit that I would have learned in third grade on Earth - I''m not going to explain what third grade is, don''t worry about that part. I guess I''m just realizing this place is my home now, and I''ve been just focused on magic and stories and quests to the point I''ve totally neglected the boring but important stuff."


    Katrin put a hand on my shoulder. "It''s fine. We''re going to have lots of time to ourselves. We can take turns, I''ll tell you things about this world and you tell me things about Earth. We''ve done that somewhat already, we just need to be more... methodical about it. And some of that stuff... well, I don''t really know the answer either because I just take it for granted. Cities aren''t larger because that''s just how big cities are. But you wanted to stop back at the university in Sentortzi after our training time, so we''ll make a list of things and we''ll just look them all up."


    "Ugh, you''re doing it again. That thing where you''re more mature and patient than me even though you''re younger. It''s infuriating."


    "I''ll work on it. Maybe later I''ll throw something at you, or have a temper tantrum about you getting a bigger bowl of soup than me."


    Errod returned with Elba, and they got the fire set up. I had already gotten the soup pot filled with ingredients and clean water, so it was just a matter of waiting for things to heat up. While we did that Elba showed off a stone that she''d used Transmutation magic on, moving all the different mineral components into distinct bands.


    "Very cool, kiddo. You know I don''t think I ever asked, why did you pick reinforcement? It''s a good one, lots of great uses, but I guess it''s just not one that I had expected any of you to take."


    She shrugged. "I remember... I remember my daddy complaining about metal not being pure. I''m going to help him make things."


    "I thought it was Yasna whose father was a blacksmith."


    Elba nodded. "Tig''s mom, too."


    "Wait, seriously? Why... I mean that can''t be a coincidence."


    Elba just shrugged. "Maybe it was all of us. Roran wouldn''t talk about what he remembered, or what he saw when the Sahrger made him imagine his family."


    "Back up. They did what?"


    "The Sahrger made us... think... about being home. I saw my parents. And I saw like I was there, being mean to them. I poured out daddy''s oil barrel everywhere. Threw his best hammer in the well and blamed it on the man that brings the milk."


    "Sounds about right," I muttered, but immediately regretted it. She had heard me, and looked down at her feet like she was ashamed. "I mean. Shit. Um, here, let''s not talk about that. Let''s check on the soup together, okay? You can stir while I toss in some more spices."


    I got her up and helping, but even though she''d literally just been looking embarrassed about being called out for wrecking stuff she "accidentally" dropped the whole salt cellar into the pot.


    "Fuckfuckfuckfuck," I sputtered as I tried frantically to fish it out without tipping it over. At the last second it flipped off the spoon and every last bit of already ruined salt poured out into the soup. "God damn it!" I yelled, and spun to face Elba. She flinched, little shoulders hunching up, but on her face there was an expression I didn''t expect - relief?


    Oh. Oh, no.


    In an instant my anger drained away and I was a kid again. I remembered provoking my mom, making things worse if she was already mad at me, so that she would blow up and scream because it was better than the silence. I remembered Cheryl, the abusive staff member at my second group home, and how she would get nervous about being caught after she hit kids - which just meant it was some sort of sick silver lining, you''d be gasping on the floor and think hey, cool, now she''ll be nice to me for a day or so and maybe even bribe me with something.


    "Elba. The Sahrger... they beat the shit out of you when you didn''t do something the way you wanted. Didn''t they?"


    She shrugged, a casual gesture that said ''yeah, sure, so what?''


    "And you were really good for us at first, and then... yeah. Then you screwed up and came out of the wagon and almost got eaten by an invisible cat thing. And we didn''t yell at you or break a finger or anything. Shit."


    Errod put a hand on my arm. "Um, Callie? You''re not suggesting we should have... hurt her?"


    "No. No, of course not. But she thought we should have. She''s learned that, for years. So since then she''s just been... waiting for it. She wants to get it over with. Is that right?"


    Elba tried to shrug again, but then she just started bawling and nodded her head.


    "Fuck me. Elba we''re... we''re not them. I''m not a Sahrger. I would never hurt you. You don''t need to push, to find out where the line is. There''s no line. There''s nothing you can do that will make me hurt you." It could go unsaid that I''d pictured it a few times. That didn''t count. "And if I tried? I mean I wouldn''t, ever, but if I did? Errod would kick my ass. In a heartbeat."


    She sniffled, then looked at Errod. "Could he?"


    Errod started laughing, and swept Elba up in a hug. "Maybe not, but Katrin would be on my side."


    "Elba, you don''t need to..." and a memory hit me, but it was foggy as if it had been a hundred years ago. I was in that room, the one from my memory palace that I was sure I''d never seen in real life, and someone was squeezing me in a hug. I was pressed into their shoulder, and they were saying... what was it? ''Callie, you don''t need to push me away. There''s nothing you could do that would make me abandon you...''Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Katrin nudged me with an elbow. "You okay?"


    "Yeah. Yeah. Just... another one of those memories that don''t fit, I''ve been having a lot of them this week. We can talk about it later. Let''s finish talking to the kid for now, it''s nothing urgent. Hey, Elba? Listen." Errod sat down, still holding her, and we circled around. "I don''t know anything about your parents. Probably sometimes they''ll get mad, and... you know, people screw up and say things that... um. Well, you''ll argue and you''ll hurt each others'' feelings and they''ll punish you - but if they hurt you, actually hurt you... well, we''re going to come back and check on you. Okay? And when we do you can let us know how it''s going and we''ll just... we''ll take care of it. You hear?"


    She nodded, and sniffled. "Sorry. About the soup."


    "We can flush out some of the water, the soup will be okay - and we can borrow some salt from your parents tomorrow. But let''s not do it again. Deal?"


    "I''ll get water," Elba said, seeming to will herself to stop crying. She hurried off, and I felt some sort of pressure lift off of me. That conversation had drained me somehow, maybe it had hit too close to home in some ways.


    Katrin watched Elba go, and then turned to me. "Callie, we need to talk about this."


    "She''ll be fine. Or did you mean my memory thing? It was nothing big, just a snippet of something."


    "No. I mean... before she dumped the salt in, she said the Sahrger made her imagine her parents. Some of the other kids mentioned having visions of their families too, I didn''t think much of it but... is it possible they were being used as spies?"


    "Spies? Who would they be spying on? Some random blacksmiths?"


    "No, on... well, think about it. If Elba saw herself doing things, maybe they... maybe they put someone there in her place. There could be a Sahrger disguised as Elba waiting for us in that town."


    "Shit. Do you think - I mean, if you''re right - do you think they can communicate with it now that we have Elba? What if it knows what we did, stealing the children back?"


    "I don''t know. But let''s get moving first thing in the morning tomorrow, and when we get there... we should keep Elba in the wagon until we get it figured out."


    We didn''t talk about it again, especially since Elba was right underfoot the rest of the evening and as soon as we woke in the morning. It seemed like she was trying to make up for all her pranks, being as helpful as possible to the point that she was actually just getting in the way. But we got on the road without incident, and shortly after lunch the village came into view. It was roughly circular, with palisade walls all around. At a glance, from the last hill before we went down into the valley, I guessed they had maybe a thousand people living there.


    Elba wasn''t thrilled to hear she was going to have to wait in the wagon, but after our heart to heart the night before she was once more eager to please - this time not just out of fear. We asked the first person we saw for directions to the blacksmith, and when we got a hundred or so feet away we parked and Errod took up a position by the door where he could grab Elba if she ran out while also keeping an eye on us as we approached the smithy. There was a large man sitting out front, carving something out of wood rather than working at the forge but still looking very much like a stereotypical blacksmith.


    He looked up once we were almost to him and smiled, placing his knife and the wooden shaft he''d been working on down and offering a hand. "Greetings! Fel Batlen, at your service."


    "Hi! Um. Do you have a daughter named Elba?"


    Immediately his face fell, and his shoulders slumped. "What has she done this time? I''m so sorry, I don''t deal in coin but if she broke something or stole from you I can try to make it right."


    "No! Nothing like that. This is... well. This is awkward. Is Elba here?"


    Fel''s eyes narrowed. "She''s in the house, I believe. What is this about?"


    "Right. Okay. So the thing is... don''t freak out, okay? We were passing through Xeyul and encountered the Sahrger and they had a little girl enslaved who said her name was Elba."


    He shook his head. "No. No, no, no. It couldn''t... I would know. I... oh, gods. Oh, gods, no."


    "It''s okay, we got her - she''s with us, in our wagon back there. But we didn''t want to bring her closer until we could... uh... well, can we see the... shit, there''s no good way to have this conversation. Can you call the other Elba out? We just need to see if it''s... her."


    He looked like he was in shock. Eyes unfocused, he nodded slightly and took a few steps towards the house that was right by the semi-enclosed blacksmith shop.


    "Elba? Dear?" he called, his voice cracking, "come... come out please."


    And Elba came out. It was the same child, unmistakably, but also clearly different. Her hair was longer and in a beautiful braid, her cheeks were plump and rosy instead of the somewhat sunken face our version had, and she was - for whatever reason - a few inches taller. She looked at us quizzically, and then at her father. Or, not her father. He, in turn, looked at me. I nodded.


    "Elba. These people say they have a girl with them that goes by your same name. They found her in the lands of the Sahrger."


    The other Elba ran.


    Fel just stood completely still in shock for a moment, then charged after her like an angry bull. "Creature!" he yelled, "Stop! How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!"


    I hurried after him, and saw that not-Elba was heading not just into a copse of trees as I had assumed, but towards a small ring of mushrooms - just like the one we had left Xeyul through. She was almost there when the fairy-ring burst into flames, mushrooms instantly turning to ash. I spun to look at Katrin but she looked as surprised as I was, so I tried to scan around for the source of the magic - it didn''t take me long. There, leaning out from behind Elba''s house, was a figure with wild green hair and a wooden mask covering her face. The mage that had been hunting us.


    I put my hands up, and took a few steps towards her - behind me I heard a squawk as Fel snatched not-Elba. "Listen. I know you want to kill me, but this is not the time. You stopped before, when there were kids in the way. Well, one of them is with us in our wagon, and we just want to give her back to her family. Alright? These people have gone through enough, they don''t need their house being burnt down in a fight. So just... fuck off. Okay? We can do this another time. Let them have their reunion. Got it?"


    She tilted her head practically sideways, examining me. And then, slowly, she backed away without a word. She stopped at the corner of a nearby building, under the low eaves, and crossed her arms. Katrin came up alongside me and stared, then looked at me questioningly. "Do we... should I attack her?"


    "No. No, I mean... if she''s not attacking... Fuck, I really don''t want her to just come out of the shadows later. But I meant what I said. Let''s plan for the worst, but I think she''s at least going to let us get out of the town first."


    There was yelling, and I turned to see a woman I presumed to be Elba''s mother arguing with Fel. She didn''t understand why he had "Elba" by the wrists and was dragging her back towards the forge. Katrin waved to Errod, and he disappeared around the back of the wagon to get the real one.


    I walked over to him. "What will... what will you do with her?"


    "It," he said. "And I... I don''t know. We should... should kill it but..." he shook his head. "I can''t. Not looking like my Elba, still. How long? You vicious little creature, how long have you been in my home?"


    Not-Elba stopped struggling, and looked up at Fel with tears in her eyes. "Daddy. Please. It''s me. These people are crazy, they''re... aw, fuck," she said as she spotted the real Elba approaching with Errod. "Fine. How long have I been here? Most of my life, you miserable sack of shit. I hated every minute of it. Your stupid, ugly wife crying herself to sleep was the only thing that made it bearable. I was going to leave soon, you know. We don''t stay past our twelfth birthday. But now... what, you''ll kill me? Chain me in iron? My family will come for me, human. They will curse this whole town - your crops will wither, your livestock will become sick, and within a year this land will be empty except for the corpses. Or. You could let me go. Let me go back to my family and break the bond I have with your daughter. Once that is done, I swear my family will leave yours alone."


    Katrin narrowed her eyes at not-Elba. "And how, precisely, would you break that bond?"


    "I can''t tell you that. There are some secrets I will not share with humans."


    Katrin sighed. "That probably means the bond would be broken by her killing Elba. And she said she would leave your family alone after that, not before, so it wouldn''t be breaking her word."


    "Rat-fucker."


    "That''s not a denial. Callie, get the anti-curse charm we pulled off the soldier in Zistarne. Fel... I suppose get some iron, if that will even work. I presume that''s why they put you with a blacksmith, isn''t it? To build up some resistance? I know it''s about intent... an iron knife on the doorframe keeps the Sahrger out, because you want it to. So what were you after? Someone who loves iron? Someone that would surround you with iron devoid of harmful intent?"


    "A clever rat-fucker, at least. Something like that. You''re smart. My family could teach you things, things you could never learn here. Magical secrets. Rituals of binding. Ways to scry across worlds. Paths to the places of power, where the ancient rune-stones still stand. Free me, and I will grant you knowledge."


    As she spoke, Fel dragged her into the smithy and up to the forge. She struggled as she maintained eye contact with Katrin, but Fel''s massive hands were more than strong enough. Meanwhile Elba''s mother - whose name I still hadn''t gotten in the confusion - had rushed up to her and crushed her daughter in a hug before falling to the ground, the two of them in a heap crying while Errod stood by awkwardly. I ran to him and asked for the charm, which he handed me, and then turned as I heard screaming. Not-Elba was being wrapped in iron chains, and her skin was already turning red at their touch. I walked closer and looked at Fel, snapping on my view of the threads - something blue and white was tying itself around him, but I dropped the necklace over his head and it broke away into wisps of mana. I blinked away the threads, not wanting to be distracted, but resolved to check everyone over after we''d left.


    "I won''t kill her," Fel said, "I can''t. Even knowing what she is. Nor can we keep her like this, in agony. I''ll... I''ll send to the university, see if they know what to do. And in the meantime, well. There''s an old storage shed, we can surround it with iron spikes. Bar the doors and windows. I have enough metal here, and can add more as I get it. She won''t be going anywhere, but maybe we can make her comfortable enough inside. You hear that, creature? I''m giving you a chance for mercy. What''s your name? And if my daughter''s name leaves your mouth just know it will be the last word you speak."


    Not-Elba hesitated, then grimaced as she shifted in her chains. "Fine. My name is Moss In Bloom. And I will... I will take imprisonment over death, so long as it removes me from your horrible stench."


    By now others were gathering, and Errod was doing his best to explain. Some men came and hauled Moss In Bloom away, but Fel still didn''t go to his daughter. "I should have known," he said, "I should have known somehow. I could have... gone looking for her. Loaded up with iron and taken her back, years ago. She''ll never forgive me."


    "Fel. I... you would have died. And then where would you be? Elba is okay. She''s going to need some help, and maybe she''ll never get entirely over it. But she loves you, and I know she doesn''t blame you for any of this. Just be patient with her. Oh, and. Uh. Look, the Sahrger weren''t exactly subtle with punishments, so you can''t hit her. Ever. I mean you shouldn''t hit kids regardless, but for her it would be... it would take her back there, in her head. So you hit her and... well, I promised her I''d kick your teeth in."


    He was looming over me, a solid two feet taller and three times as wide, and he just nodded. There was a look in his eyes that said he believed me.


    "Good. Okay. Just had to put that out there. Um. Well, I guess we''ll say our goodbyes and let you start to... figure this mess out. But before we do, just one quick thing - do you have a bag of salt we could borrow?"

 CHAPTER 055: Memory Self Storage

    "Is everything okay?" Katrin''s voice asked, crackling through a cheap speaker set into the wall.


    "Yeah," I replied, "I''m just getting my bearings."


    The generic hallway could have been from any cheap hotel in America. Bland wallpaper, mass-produced artwork, and patterned orange carpet that had been ugly to start with but now had a noticeably darker stripe down the center from too many years of foot traffic and not enough cleaning. The doors were all numbered, most with something in the 1800s to indicate we were on the eighteenth floor. The outlier was the door behind me, which said 217 and would lead into the replica of my old room at uncle Roy''s hotel.


    The original made-up room of my mind palace was still there, and it still connected into room 217 - but now it was coming in through the closet. The bathroom door still led to my childhood bedroom, which left the main entrance that I''d used to connect to this long hallway of doors. The actual Long Haul Hotel was only three floors, so I was taking the eighteen to be a reference to my age - and since this was all in my mind, I presumed my hunches about what things meant should be pretty reliable. I could see an elevator at the far end of the hall, right next to an ice machine, so I could test that theory easily enough by heading down.


    I began to walk along the hallway, noticing flickering light coming from under some of the doors. The numbers didn''t go in order and didn''t stay the same if I looked away and then back, so I figured it couldn''t matter too much which door I opened. "Okay Katrin, I''m going to try going into my memories."


    "I''m here if you need me," the speaker squawked, and I felt a distant phantom sensation of pressure on my hand.


    I picked a door at random and opened it, and could see the little apartment we''d so briefly lived in when we were in Theramas. I was in the memory as well, which was a bit trippy, so in a way there were three of me as I watched Connie and I attempt to re-create Solitaire with a very unfamiliar deck of cards.


    "No," she said, "that doesn''t work because there are five suits."


    "Well one of them could be wild, I guess? Or would that make it too easy?"


    "Wild just for the color you mean? Hmm. Or you could have to do all three?"


    "That would be too hard. What about just not having two of the same color in a row?"


    They didn''t seem to notice me. I peeked into the bedroom and Katrin was making her bed - but of course I couldn''t know that, right? I''d been on the other side of the room playing cards, so the real me wouldn''t have been able to see into the bedroom. That meant that these memories were... approximated. I was filling in the blanks. "Okay, good news is it''s working. Bad news is it''s not totally right - I guess memories probably never are. Someone told me once that you can''t remember something without also changing the memory, but that''s what I need here. So... what do you think, maybe use Temporal magic to reach back and recover the original form of my memories?"


    "I''m not sure." Katrin''s voice said - this time seeming to come from the open window as if she were out on the street. "The idea is sound, but the cost might be prohibitive if you''re trying to restore all fifteen years of memories at once and doing them one at a time instead might not be sufficient if you can''t figure out why some are wrong. Also they may still be flawed, tinged by your perspective. Ideally to fix that you''d need... Spatial magic? I suppose? Combine that with Temporal and Perception and I could picture you perfectly recreating a scene."


    I ignored my normal annoyance at being reminded that I was still thinking in terms of Earth years. I really needed to get used to the idea that years were four hundred and thirty-two days long here, making me fifteen. I was getting better at using "round" numbers like sixty-six or a hundred and seventy-four when estimating though. "Yeah, it''s hard to see my Dumine while I''m doing this but I''ll check it when I come back. That must sound strange when I''m sitting right next to you, huh?"


    We were at our camp that Katrin had located for us, a small abandoned town that had been absorbed by the wilderness. Despite still being on the Southern side of the mountain range from Erathik, we''d traveled to the Northeast along the very impressive Nubasarri river after leaving Sentortzi and it was once again a bit jungle-y and quite warm. I didn''t even recognize it as a town when we arrived, it was so covered in vegetation - but Katrin said there was still a slight dip in mana levels even after however-many years, and by the end of the first week we''d uncovered the walls and a few buildings that were still usable.


    The walls were repaired - badly - as we uncovered them, mainly just hacking away crawling vines and filling in holes as best we could. It was good enough to keep most of the larger monsters from attacking us when we were trying to relax, and it meant we could let the moskar loose to graze which formed another layer of security; if anything climbed over the walls to eat us, Shitheel would hammer them into paste. Sneezy, Dopey, and Sleepy could join in if there was anything left by the time they got there. Despite how much work it was to get the walls shored up, clear a space for the garden, dig out a latrine, and a hundred other little things I had enjoyed it. Having the ruined town lurking there under the foliage was a godsend for all the little ways it saved us effort, but most importantly when we were done it looked far more impressive than anything we could have done from scratch.


    "I need to do the divination... scrying... remote viewing thingy just right, I don''t know how it''ll even work if I need to wipe out my Dumine and start over since I have three of them. I think Temporal and Thought should be enough? It''ll probably throw some Perception or Comprehension in there, it seems to prefer doing that - I think it makes it easier to process information. But Temporal and Thought should be the main ones. And if I''m targeting myself as opposed to being able to do it to other people that should be easier, you can''t have a much stronger connection to something than it being you. But you''re right about the Spatial thing, I would love for it to actually let me see shit I missed the first time around. Could also be nice if I could have it active when we get into fights, maybe get a spider-sense and know if people were going to attack me."


    "Spider sense? Is that a thing spiders can do?"


    "Earth thing. I mean... no, not even on Earth, but... never mind."


    She laughed. "Okay. So are you seeing anything... tampered with?"


    "No, but I''m in a pretty recent one. I think I need to go back to Earth. Hang on."


    I walked back out into the Long Haul Hotel and got into the elevator. The buttons inside were labeled from one to eighteen, along with a basement button and the usual "close doors" kind of things. I pushed the button for fourteen, and the elevator hummed for a moment before the doors slid open to reveal what looked like the exact same hallway. I walked up to a random door and opened it and there I was, back in Universal Servicing Systems.


    "That''s not good enough," fourteen-year-old me said into a phone that was - like all of them - totally disconnected, "Carl, if you want to get the trip to Cabo this year you''re going to need to get those sales numbers up." I lifted a mug that said ''World''s Greatest Aunt'' but stopped right before it reached my lips. "WHAT? What do you mean, nobody is buying? It''s a zombie apocalypse and we''re a gun company! Who isn''t buying? Carl, you just... no, no I hadn''t seen the news today. A cure? Oh that''s terrible, Carl. Shit. I need to talk to the boss. Oh, and I need to make sure nobody cures my ex-wife, I like her better as a shambling undead."


    I was a little embarrassed to be seeing myself do one of my stupid imaginary conversations, but it was neat to be back in that place. The odd smell, the rows of abandoned cubicles, the flickering fluorescent lights. For just a split-second something changed, and the whole place looked like a war zone with desks having been thrown through the air and a massive hole in one wall - but then it all snapped back to normal. Probably just triggered by the zombie apocalypse talk.


    I took a little stress toy thing off one of the desks, and headed back to the hallway to try another memory. The stress toy came with me without any incident, which meant I''d be able to drag all sorts of things back into my rooms - creating items out of thin air had been giving me some trouble, so that was good news. I wandered some Earth streets, popped into a Circle K and got a soda. It was... strange. This whole world, that I''d lived in for eighteen years, and now I was never going back.


    The music faded from the little ceiling speakers of the Circle K as Katrin butted back in. "Find anything strange?"


    "No. Haven''t looked much yet though, just poking around. Be less eager."


    "Sorry. I''m worried for some reason."


    "That''s sweet, but it''s fine. Look, I''ll try to find one of those memories for you just... hang on."


    I headed back to the elevator with my Big Gulp, and punched the button for sixteen. That was - to the best of my ability to guess - where the anomalous soup kitchen memories should be. When the doors opened, the hallway was empty. No doors. Well, shit... what did that even mean? I did my best to explain to Katrin as I walked down the hall, trailing my fingers along the wallpaper. After a moment I headed back to the elevator and ducked down to fifteen, where the doors looked okay as the elevator opened but... they stopped before the hallway did.


    "Shit, there''s a bunch missing from the previous year too. I guess... I guess I''ll just try the last door?" It opened to a police station.


    I was handcuffed to a chair. The cops were, presumably, trying to contact Child Protective Services to find out where the hell I was supposed to be - but my case manager was on vacation and I''d run away from the group home so long ago that I had long since been removed from their list. There was nobody else to call. I knew Bill''s number, but he had quit CPS the year before and the only other phone numbers I knew were mom''s and uncle Roy''s. They weren''t even in the same state, and it''s not like mom would help me out even if she was.


    There was nothing to do but sit back and wait for them to send me to another group home. Let''s see, after this it was... just some group home. But which one? Or ones. I''d moved a few times, right? I must have. I never stay in the same place for long. The police station had grown... fuzzy, somehow. Indistinct. Someone came to get me, someone whose face was just a blur, and we left together. I followed along and we drove somewhere, ending up at a group home that kept changing whenever I looked too closely at any of the details. The faces were all still indistinct, and I tasted chocolate for some reason. Something cold, like ice cream or a shake.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I walked back into the hallway. "Man, I wish you knew what an AI-generated video was. Because the memory I was just in looked a lot like that. I''m pretty sure that was my brain actively filling in holes in my memory as I tried to look at them."


    I headed back to the sixteenth floor with its total lack of doors, and felt along the walls. "Okay, Katrin? I''m going to try something strange, so be on standby. It should be fine. Probably." I''d been bad at creating things, but as I stared at the wallpaper I told myself I knew exactly what was behind me on the opposite wall. I turned and found - as I had known I would - a fire axe in a case. I took it and took a deep breath. "Okay, crazy thing begins now."


    I started chopping, hacking a hole in the drywall and then widening it by kicking chunks away. There was another hallway on the other side of the hole. I ducked through, and found myself in a different place entirely. Dimly flickering fluorescent lights, concrete floors, peeling paint on brick walls - except the one spot where I''d broken through, which was just drywall. There were doors, kind of, but they weren''t from a hotel room - they were roll-up metal doors like you might see on a garage or...


    "I''m in a self-storage place?"


    "I don''t know what that is." Katrin''s voice was echoing from somewhere, but I couldn''t put a finger on it.


    "Uh. It''s a big building with individual rooms people can rent out to keep their extra shit in. I don''t remember being at one in person before, but I''ve seen them in movies and stuff."


    Most of the units had padlocks on them, and even with the fire axe I couldn''t get them off. A few had been left unlocked though, so I located one and rolled the door up. It was my high school - the first one, not the one I graduated from. I''d gone there until I moved to Sunshine House - the group home I''d aged out of - which had been on the other side of the city and therefore required me to switch schools for my senior year. There was a law, McSomething Veto? Something that could have somehow let me stay at the same school. But the commute would have sucked, and I didn''t really have friends anyway.


    The memory was crisp, no blurred out faces or shifting scenery. Same for the handful of other doors I found without padlocks, all of which led to high school. I tried to force it, concentrated on seeing the group home before rolling up the door, but all that got me was a blurry room of blurry faces. The voices were messed up too, like they were speaking from under a pile of blankets. One of the people was me, clearly, but I had no guesses for the others. Huh. No unscrambled scenes of the group home.


    I tried for another half an hour before my mana was too low to continue, and I only found two other memories that weren''t blurred. One was of me working in a McDonald''s, which I vaguely remembered - it was my first job when I was sixteen, but I didn''t think I''d worked there long and for some reason I didn''t remember a lot about it - and one where I was just hanging out in a park, eating a burrito. None of the memories had anything notable in them, just regular everyday stuff - in fact, I wasn''t certain they were distinct memories. It was possible they were just conglomerated fragments, the way so many day to day things meld together over time.


    I opened my eyes back in the real world. "Okay, so there''s a whole year of my life where I can''t remember anything about the group home I lived at. I don''t know how I didn''t notice before, but it''s everything; I don''t know the name, the address, any of the staff or other kids, nothing. I''ve got some shit from work and school, bland memories of just... existing... but if I force it to show me the group home it''s all blurry. Remember when we talked about going down a list and checking my memories more methodically? I think it''s time. Soon, I mean. Right now, I want to go kill something."


    Hunting monsters was supposedly good for developing our Dumines, and anyway it was nice to have fresh meat. Technically any animal that had natural magic was a ''monster'', and any that didn''t were ''beasts'' - but it turned out there were things in-between. The moskar, for example, had a crop where they''d store any mana crystals they found - it was the only way they could get mana for some reason, but they could naturally convert the energy into energy. Katrin had bought some little mana capacitors that could serve the same purpose, and whenever she heard them horking one up she''d recharge it and feed it to them again. It was... interesting.


    There were also plants that used mana, and bugs, and mold - it was a whole food chain that was mostly parallel with the one I was used to. Big monsters ate smaller monsters, the smaller monsters ate each other or monster bugs, and the monster bugs ate monster plants. Humans got mana via their link to spirits on other planes - our ''minds'' and ''souls'' - but despite the method being different, it still made us look very tasty to the larger monstrous predators. Unlike normal animals they were way less likely to give up if you hurt them, and some had nasty tricks up their sleeves.


    There were two really dangerous types near our camp. Tixmin were like gorillas crossed with lions - semi-bipedal with somewhat feline features and vicious retractable claws. They seemed to manipulate velocity in short bursts, launching themselves or projectiles at ridiculous speeds. That would be bad enough if they were small, but they were six and a half to seven feet tall and built like linebackers. They''d hoot if you got too close to their territory, and if you ignored it and kept going the next warning would be a medium-sized tree flying towards your head at a hundred miles an hour. I''d learned that the hard way - if it had hit me directly or if we hadn''t had the healing platform installed in the wagon I would have been fucked. Since then, we''d just been avoiding them and they were so far returning the favor - we passed close to a hunting party at one point, and rather than attacking they hooted again so we would know to turn around. For wild monsters, that seemed pretty chill of them.


    The other type of monster in the area was... not so chill. Razil were these things that... well, they were giant reptilian rat creatures. They hunted in packs, and they didn''t give a shit if you killed half of them - the other half would just keep coming. They could make more, in their horrible nests. That was the other time one of us almost died since we arrived at the camp - Katrin slipped on some rotting leaves and slid right down an entrance to a razil nest we hadn''t seen. She''d managed to slam a shield into place, but with twenty of them hammering on it she couldn''t hold it for long. We''d just barely dragged her out before it failed, and then had to run like hell as the whole nest tried to chase us.


    But now the tables were turned. The razil I was spying on somehow hadn''t noticed us - they were fixated on something up ahead. Errod looked concerned, and began trying to sneak around to get a look which I was just certain would result in him making enough noise that we''d have the razil all over us in a heartbeat. I braced for combat as he mis-stepped and a large stick snapped under his foot, but still the razil just sat there. What the fuck? Were they hypnotized or something?


    "Hah!" Katrin said, way too loud, "it worked!"


    I glared at her, ready to strangle her for being so loud, when I realized she had to be talking about the razil. "Did you do something to them?" I whispered.


    "No. I made a barrier between us and them that works a lot like your silent shoes. They can''t hear us, and we can''t hear them - which is an added perk, because I hate that clicking noise they make."


    Errod returned. "They''re about to ambush a tixmin. Juvenile, I don''t know why it''s out here on its own."


    I shrugged. "Well, even a young tixmin should be able to wreck a few of those things, so we can just let them fight it out and then pick off the ones that are left."


    Errod frowned.


    "Oh come on. They''re monsters! The whole appeal of monsters is people don''t give me that look when I talk about killing them! Don''t ruin this for me."


    He gestured, and we crept closer until we could see the tixmin walking closer, oblivious to the danger. "Katrin," he said, "drop the sound barrier."


    She looked at me apologetically but I thought she was probably on his side. With a gesture it was done, and I could hear a subtle shift in the sounds of the jungle. And then... Errod started hooting. It wasn''t hard to do the tixmin hooting sound, and it had seemed clear from the little bit we''d observed that the seriousness of the threat was communicated through the frequency of the hoots - one was a warning, a slow hoot-hoot-hoot was saying something was wrong but not a problem yet, and so on. Errod did the tixmin equivalent of panicked screaming, hoothoothoothoothoothoothoot!


    The young tixmin instinctively dove for cover behind a tree while simultaneously grabbing a large rock - it clocked Errod first, and then a split second later saw the pack of razil. They, in turn, were spinning around to look at us expecting to see another tixmin - they hesitated a moment when they realized we weren''t giant gorilla-cats, and during that moment of hesitation a rock blasted one of them into the afterlife.


    And then it was chaos.


    Errod was hacking away, his form noticeably improved from a few months before but still a bit clumsy. Thankfully, the razil weren''t really used to dealing with swords and would try to bite his blade if he missed. Katrin was mainly on shield duty, but blasted the creatures with lightning when she saw a good opening. I threw a couple knives, but they closed fast enough that I had to switch to the shitty spear I''d been practicing with. I''d rather use the cool lightning sword we took off that Elrebar guy, but it was a bit big for me and I couldn''t get it to do anything. No lightning, no flying to my hand, nothing. There was a thread attached to it, that was dangling loose - finding a way to attach that to myself was somewhere on my to-do list.


    Our biggest advantage was that razil were dogshit at pack tactics. They could plan some, clearly, but as soon as the fight started they would just swarm with no thought to flanking or tag-teaming or whatever. That meant that they split themselves four ways, leaving a manageable number for most of us. The tixmin was in the worst position, but as far as I was concerned that was just another perk. I skewered one, kicked another since I didn''t have time to wiggle my spear free, and then fell back and stabbed another as it tried to bite me. They couldn''t get through my jacket, but the bites could still crack bones and leave me looking like I was made entirely out of bruises.


    I saw another blast of lightning, far too close to Katrin - she was supposed to hang back and let Errod and I aggro as many as possible but there were more than we''d seen at first and it had been inevitable that some would get up to her. Katrin''s own jacket would stop most of the bites, but it didn''t cover all of her and it wouldn''t take a lot to kill her. I made the decision to turn my back on the ones I was engaged with, and just ran for Katrin.


    I''d started heading to her before I could see her clearly - we''d been separated by twenty feet or so almost immediately and she''d ended up on the other side of some trees from me - but it was only a few steps to get to a good vantage point. She wasn''t in as much trouble as I''d worried she was - there were only three still mobile in close range to her, and as I watched she slammed her spellbook down on one of them with a horrible cracking sound. The book was made out of some sort of alchemical metal, and the corner did at least as much damage to the little monster''s skull as my spear would have. I booted another one away from her before diving onto the third and driving my knife into its eye.


    After that the ones that I''d left behind me caught up, but Errod was behind them and after another few frantic moments we had it under control. The only thing we still had to do was finish them - the little fuckers could heal from anything short of full decapitation, which to be fair probably explained the chaotic swarming tactics. When we reached the tixmin it was down and bleeding badly, but surrounded by twitching bodies. It had held its own surprisingly well for its size, only five feet tall.


    Katrin approached cautiously, and it gave a single feeble warning hoot.


    "Oh, this is a bad idea," I said as I realized what was about to happen, "This isn''t going to feel good, and it''s going to kick our asses. I can''t believe you ever gave me shit about being impulsive, you hypocritical bitch."


    She did it anyway.


    As the healing magic swept through the tixmin it howled - Katrin''s battlefield medic spell was not particularly subtle and it let you feel every little fiber of muscle and skin trying to re-stitch itself. We backed off, preparing to fight - which would just mean causing more injuries than she''d healed - but the tixmin barely staggered to its feet before the snarl fell from its face and it poked curiously at the new scars. Then it gave another little hoot - this one quiet, as if to say ''okay fine but watch yourself'' - and then yawned and stumbled into the trees towards its territory.


    I didn''t let out my held breath until it was a good fifty feet away.

 CHAPTER 056: Group Projects

    "Next on the list is Harlan''s Hardware," Katrin''s voice said over the hotel speakers. We''d been at this for two days and I was thrilled to be so close to finishing; the job at Harlan''s had been pretty recent. I went to the door that felt right, and opened it - and there it was, the familiar smell of the hardware store. It wasn''t a particularly big one, just a little spot in a strip mall between a carniceria and a nail shop. In this memory I was chatting with Mr. Bagmaw, who was one of the only regulars I could remember. He was retired, I think, and always trying to keep himself busy with various projects.


    "What do you think for the frame, Calliope? Wood or PVC?"


    I sighed, but couldn''t keep from smiling at him. Old Mr. Bagmaw always put me in a good mood. "Mr. Bags," I said, "I will tell you for the fortieth time. I know how to use the register, and I know basically what sh- stuff... is in which aisle. But I don''t actually know how to build or repair anything."


    He looked at me very seriously. "You almost said shit. To a customer."


    I felt this reflex start to kick in; apologize before the customer gets angry and you snap at them. You can''t get fired again, not so close to getting booted out of the group home, you have to - for once - keep a job. But then I caught the twinkle in Mr. Bagmaw''s eyes. "You must be mistaken, Mr. Bags. I would never swear in front of a customer. That would be super fucking unprofessional."


    He laughed, and patted me on the shoulder. "You''re a good kid, and don''t let any of the bastards out there tell you otherwise. You remind me of my daughter. She was a good kid, too." And just like that, the twinkle was gone. He sighed, with a bit of a shudder to it, and then plastered a now-fake smile on and shuffled off to get some PVC pipe.


    I watched him go, as well as watching the memory of myself shake it off and go back to cleaning up the impulse-buy gauntlet that led up to the registers. That was one memory down, but Katrin had insisted on checking two from each place. I ducked back into the hotel hallway and back in through another door. This time I was in the back room eating a sandwich and trying to play on my phone with my other hand. Rob, one of my coworkers, popped his head in and told me I had five minutes left.


    "I know what time it is, Rob. You don''t need to ruin my break by doing a countdown."


    He frowned like I was being totally unreasonable and left. I played for a moment more before cursing and throwing my phone down - it had done the left-hand squiggle block glitch again, where it got fixated on that one piece and wouldn''t send anything else. I kept telling myself I''d take a look at the code and try to fix it, but I never got around to it. I''d downloaded it from my old cloud student account at one point, but when I tried to compile it the whole screen filled with errors and I didn''t even have the energy to dig through them since it implied I hadn''t kept the right version anyway; the left-squiggle-happy version had compiled just fine, and had even worked without issue for a while.


    Memory-me finished her sandwich and stood up, but then hesitated. Ah, right. I had decided not to come back out one second before my break was over. Fuck Rob. Satisfied, I stepped out of the memory and let Katrin know. "Okay, two clear memories of Harlan''s. I saw Mr. Bagmaw and Rob."


    "Got it, both those names were on the list." She was speaking English, which meant she''d put the bracelet back on. We''d been trading it around, and both Errod and Katrin had been making great progress. Errod was actually outpacing Katrin on it, leading to Katrin deciding that she could spare some potential to unlock some extra ability with languages in general, rather than just with High Imperial to cast spells. Even then, it only let her catch up - not exceed him. I would have thought Errod would be excited to have something he was finally best at, but I guess learning languages wasn''t exciting to him - he had been kinda moody the last few weeks.


    "We have to be basically done, right?"


    "Only one left, actually. I maybe should have warned you that I added it to the list, but... I think we need to check the Desert Oasis apartments."


    "Oh right! No, that''s fine. It''s a good call, I should have thought of it myself."


    One scene change later I watched myself stumble in to the apartment office, exhausted and already cranky. I''d had to walk from work since Adrian hadn''t showed up like he promised, and it was a hundred and twelve degrees outside. "Can you tell me what apartment Adrian Klein is in? He just moved in today."


    Nobody had moved in that day, they told me. I insisted that of course he had, and maybe it was under his girlfriend''s name - Tiffany... something. They assured me that even if I could remember her last name it wouldn''t change the fact that nobody had moved in that day, and while they couldn''t give out people''s apartment numbers they could tell me there was no Adrian Klein in their system.


    "But I... I gave him the money this morning. First and last month''s rent, and the security deposit, and..."


    I didn''t really want to listen to this disaster unfold again. Man, I had been so excited to have my own apartment, even if it did mean sharing a space with Adrian and his shitty girlfriend. I''d had that stupid keychain all ready to receive its key, and then I was going to go get my free birthday milkshake at that weird little diner with the pissy waiter, like I had the year before. Yeah, I wasn''t going to stick around in this memory any longer. I grabbed my backpack away from memory-me - hah, finally got it back - and took a quick look around before shifting my focus so I could talk with my actual mouth. "Katrin? Preliminary glance looks fine, it feels like a real memory. I''m going to try to skip ahead and see what happened when I disappeared."


    I wasn''t sure if I could fast-forward within a memory; I''d been leaving and then opening a new door from the hotel hallway each time, but that seemed like a crutch. There was no real reason I had to do that, right? I concentrated, I squeezed my eyes shut, I walked in circles - nothing. That didn''t mean I couldn''t do it, just that I couldn''t do it yet - while you needed to spend potential to gain new abilities, good old practice could still make them improve in little ways. It was already easier to pop in and out of my memory palace than it had been initially, and while my most recent attempt to walk around in the real world had resulted in me falling down, that still meant I''d been moving my body. In another few weeks I''d probably be skipping through memories while running laps.


    I was about to leave when I was startled by memory-me jerking back from the desk and standing up rather abruptly. I couldn''t remember why I''d done that, it was like I''d been bitten or something. Huh. I reported it to Katrin, because I''d promised I would tell her if I saw anything remotely strange, and then it was back to the Long Haul Hotel only to spin around and pop back to the Desert Oasis apartments just in time to see me start running from the cops.


    Honestly, I was impressed with myself. I followed easily, at first crediting the fact that I was in the best shape I''d ever been in before remembering that this wasn''t even my real body. There I went, up the back of a car and onto the covered parking before taking a wild leap... and then something flickered... and then I was in the air, a few feet over a snowy landscape. I slammed down, blood already pouring out of my ears and nose, and collapsed backwards into the snow - I was still watching my unmoving body, but I knew that nothing else was going to happen.


    "Uh. Okay. That was strange."


    "What happened?" Katrin''s voice was distant, almost lost in the icy wind.


    "There was a part that I''d... I guess I''d mostly forgotten about it. I mean everything was so strange, and... I don''t know. It went by really fast, it was something between here and Earth."


    "Can you slow it down somehow?"


    I''d just failed to fast-forward, but somehow the idea of pausing seemed easier to visualize. I stepped out and then back in without switching doors, watched the chase unfold again, and then as the moment approached I focused on slowing things down. Much to my relief, it seemed to be working. As I launched into the air it was like I was drifting through syrup, and then right as the flicker hit I clamped down on it and the memory froze. "Oh motherfucker. This is going to give me a headache."


    "What is it?"


    "It''s... it''s like four different things, all overlapping. Jesus this is strange. It''s the parking lot, and the mountainside I ended up on, and then... what are the others?" It was hard to pick the images apart - it felt like one of those magic eye pictures where you have to look just right to get a 3D image to pop out, except it was four different competing ones. "The woods, in a clearing with some huge boulders covered in runes. Uh. And somewhere with... this awful green glow, and a lot of gears and stuff. Like a factory or something, very steampunk. Sorry, bad reference for you. I don''t know how to describe it."


    "Somewhere on Earth, or somewhere here?"


    "Here, I think. Just something about it. No wires, just tubes and stuff. And that glow looks familiar. Why does it look so familiar? Oh, shit. Shit. I know what I''m seeing."


    It was Ulren''s laboratory. That was the green glow, it was the crystalized time mana that he had huge containers of. I was seeing it because... because that''s where Connie had been? It must be. Something about the fact that we were the same person gave me this one tiny moment of seeing through her eyes. But then what was the Stonehenge-style place? "Okay the gears and stuff I think are Ulren''s sorta-kinda time machine, so best guess for the other is... it''s got to be whatever brought me here, right? I mean, something did. And this place looks pretty fucking magic."


    "Could be. It''s as good a guess as any. Do you see anyone there?"


    "Uh... no? No, but it happened too fast to turn my head or anything so they could just be out of view. Plus, y''know, it''s possible these memories are totally inaccurate. Well, put it on the list I guess. It''s not a priority, but at some point once Hammersmith is off our backs about getting her into Brinkmar and we''ve dealt with the guys that attacked us in Sentortzi, and... whatever else... we can try to figure out where that place was. I don''t need to go back to Earth, but I should probably find out if it was just random bullshit or if I was... I don''t know, if I was targeted specifically for some reason."


    I headed back to my mind palace and dumped all the little trinkets and things I''d snagged from the memories I''d been poking through. "Okay, waking up." I opened my eyes and flinched at the sunlight, then realized my legs had fallen asleep and carefully stretched them out and tried to wiggle my toes.


    Katrin stood up, and began pacing. "Well that seems to confirm it," she said, "the blurry area only covers a little over a year. It starts when you''re heading to a new group home, and ends when you arrive at a different one. While it''s possible that time period covers multiple group homes it would make the most sense if it was just the one. So I think the best theory we have for now is that there''s something that happened at that group home you want to forget."


    I was a little caught off-guard by that. "Wait, you''re saying you think this was me?"


    "Well... I assume so, yes. There''s no magic on Earth, and even if there were why would someone edit out your memories from a group home? Probably something traumatic happened, and the blurry memories are all you''ll let yourself see."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Okay. I''m not saying I agree, but let''s go with it. That doesn''t really explain the extra stuff, right? The extra memories of... I don''t know, working at soup kitchens and trying to be a better person. Or... or of living in the woods. Or stabbing some people to death in their sleep."


    "That last one, hopefully, was just a nightmare. You haven''t seen any gaps where those things would have fit, unless they were during that year. But you don''t think they were from then, do you?"


    "No. Well, some of them maybe. Not the stranger ones, I think those are older."


    Katrin nodded. "So probably the ones about living in the woods are from when you used to go camping - I still can''t believe that''s just a thing people do on Earth, sleeping on the ground for fun - and the ones about stabbing people to death must have been from when you were in foster care. You did say the memory felt like they were abusive foster parents, right?"


    "Yeah. That was the vibe. But I can''t picture the house or anything."


    "It doesn''t matter. If you had really stabbed your foster parents to death there would have been fallout from that, there''s no way you could just forget it. It was a nightmare."


    She had a point there. "And the soup kitchen thing?"


    "That part might have been real," she conceded, "but even so it was probably heavily edited. You remember living in a house, maybe with Bill, but he was gone from your life by then. So it''s possible you replaced whatever traumatic situation you were in at the group home with someone that felt... parental. And you don''t have a lot of good examples of that."


    "I guess Bill did fit, he had big dad energy and he abandoned me. So." That wasn''t fair. It was a job, and he quit. He was allowed to quit. And he tried to set me up with a place to live before he left, it wasn''t his fault that I had an episode and wouldn''t even go inside. Either way, it didn''t matter anymore. That stuff was my old life. And whatever had made that year all blurred out - well, the parts at the group home - was ancient history. "Well, I guess I can''t argue."


    "You could," Katrin said, "if you could make the memories more accurate. But in the meantime, while you try to decide the best way to do that, you could... let me into your head."


    Ah. This again. She''d tried to lay out the reasons it was a good idea several times, but in the end I just didn''t want her to accidentally see some fucked up memory of me biting the other kids or lighting anyone''s braid on fire or whatever. I told her I''d think about it, and then went off to mess with Errod instead. He''d bought a game along with our supplies, it was a little like chess but with hexagons rather than squares and only one of each type of piece aside from the pawns. They were clearly meant to represent people with different magic powers, although I wasn''t really certain what some would be in the real world. The teleporting guy, sure. The one that could capture two pieces at a time if they were in a straight line could be lightning or something. But what was the one that had a second indestructible piece it could move around the board?


    "Are you playing Tactics against yourself? I guess I''ll play the winner."


    He sighed, and scooped the pieces off the board. "I feel like I''m losing even against myself. Let''s play tag instead."


    Tag was our other game, which started as Errod just riding the moskar around one at a time to keep them used to following directions. Then I''d tried to do it at the same time and we''d gotten competitive and... now it was turning into a full sport, where we chased each other through the ruined town trying to slap each other. Katrin had even started joining us, which meant that Sneezy, Dopey, and Sleepy all got to participate. Shitheel got upset at being left out, but he also got upset if I tried to put the harness on him, or ride him, or basically anything else.


    Today, I''d had enough of his attitude. Yes, he was bigger than me. Yes, he could easily kill me. Yes, that would bring him nothing but joy and he''d never feel an ounce of regret. But he cared about the other three moskar, and he cared very much about his right to eat first. So I walked over with the harness, waited for him to hiss and spit at me, and then offered it to Sleepy instead and when she stepped forward I pulled out a whole razil leg and gave it to her. He jerked his head almost straight up and glared at me with one eye, furious. Wasn''t he the head moskar? Not that he wanted a treat from me, the stinky human. But he wanted to be offered the treat so he could snub it, and then Sleepy could eat if if she wanted.


    I walked away, then came back with the harness again. He hissed, I offered it to Sneezy. She came forward, she got a razil leg. When I went to do it for a third time, I guess the idea that even Dopey would get food before him was too much to bear and he stalked towards me, hatred burning in his eyes. I grabbed him by the edge of his head plate and whispered to him. "You''re going to learn who is in charge around here, you little shit. Or I''m going to eat you." and then when he pulled away I just shrugged and walked towards Dopey again. Shitheel let out a furious shriek, and grabbed the harness from me with his jaws.


    It went on like that for another ten minutes, but he finally let me saddle and ride him. He still was pretending he didn''t want to play tag with us, just sulking and snapping at me - right up until Errod ran past on Sneezy and smacked me on the back of the head. And then Shitheel was pissed. I don''t think he was being protective of me, I think he was just being competitive. Either way, we flew through the ruins faster than I''d ever gone before - leaping over rubble and bushes, ducking under old doorways and nearly knocking me off, then launching from the shadows so he could snap at the other moskar while I leaned out and slapped Katrin or Errod. When we were done he almost forgot to hiss at me.


    Errod, still panting, pulled me aside. "You know you have to let Katrin see Earth, right?"


    "I don''t have to do shit. It''s my brain and my memories." I saw a dark look pass over Errod''s face - I''d been seeing that more and more often from both of them. My gut instinct was to snap and hiss like Shitheel, but I managed to resist. "I don''t mean it like that, I actually do want to show you guys everything. But... I don''t know. I don''t know what the rush is, and right now I feel useless. We''re fighting monsters, and all I can do is throw knives. If they didn''t magically shove themselves deeper when they hit I don''t think I''d even be doing any real damage. I know I didn''t end up picking the most combat-oriented gifts, but I''ve been thinking of things I could use my potential on that would actually help."


    He waved at me dismissively. "You''re doing great, your reflexes are amazing and you''ve taken out at least as many monsters as I have, probably more. Sure, you have to rely on your armor a lot which isn''t ideal - but we know that works on these things. Meanwhile... well, I know it''s not your strong suit but do try to put yourself in Katrin''s shoes. If she had come to Earth, what would you have given to be able to see her memories of this world?"


    I hated how good a point that was.


    I made sure the moskar were fed and cleaned while Errod did the nightly check of the walls, and then I sat down and meditated on my Dumines. There was that strange gulf full of squiggles, still hard to look at and harder to understand despite me spending potential on it. I started giving it prompts - I wanted to let others into my mind. Specifically, I wanted to invite their mind - the actual tethered spirit thing - into my domain in Ematse, which was the plane where our minds naturally ended up. I was pretty sure that was how my current power was working; I was shifting my consciousness from my body into my mind. This also explained the odd moment when I''d failed to do it in the library at Sentortzi and had found myself looking around at the library instead of my mind palace; I knew some wards kept people from accessing other planes, to the extent that they would force your mind and soul back into your body. It had given me some ideas, that I wasn''t quite ready to implement.


    So: grab people''s minds, and shift them into my own domain rather than the one they were used to. Did I have enough potential to make it involuntary? That could be a very useful skill, although it would be a bad idea to do it before I had mental protections in place - I probably should have done those already, but I was too eager to get abilities that were fun. The best ones would be the Planar things, but I couldn''t pull physics over from planes I couldn''t feel. Right now that meant I was limited to Nusos and Xeyul, both of which I could remember the feel of even though I hadn''t been to Xeyul since getting my gifts. I couldn''t feel Itzele, probably because I hadn''t been there as long as the others. Anyway, none of those were the ones I wanted to pull physics from anyway.


    I was distracting myself.


    I could leave open the possibility of making the connection involuntary, maybe make it the difference between yanking someone into a room and gently tugging on their shirt but letting them walk for themselves. And what was the connection? The current ability worked largely by thinning the planar membrane where it overlapped with my lutore, my aura, my core, whatever I wanted to call it. But that didn''t seem like it would help much with external people. I thought of how some of the threads connected to Errod''s glove but then continued on and faded away, and imagined making my lutore do that - hooking onto someone else''s thread for their mind and looping it through me. Not stealing it, just making a slight connection.


    As I walked myself down this meandering path, the squiggles shifted and moved in response. They even seemed to be suggesting slight changes at times, like they were trying to find me the best possible way to design the ability and link it in with my others. Before long it felt about right, and I locked it in.


    "Okay you two, come over here. It''s time. Um. Hold my hands, I guess, in case that helps. Get comfortable, your legs are probably going to fall asleep."


    I dropped into my memory palace. I kicked a few things under the bed and straightened up, and then imagined reaching out for the threads of the people around me and pulling. I felt something, and then my mana dropped and the room exploded with bodies. Katrin and Errod were there, so that was good, but there were also two more of me - three if you counted the glowing big-eyed elfin version of me that looked like she was carved from amber - and a ton of people I didn''t know. Other than Katrin and one of the extra Calliopes they were all wearing football jerseys.


    "Ah! No! Out, out out! Shit!" As I panic-yelled, Errod and Katrin snapped out of existence. The random people all scrambled like cockroaches when the light comes on, and then one of them yanked a door open that hadn''t been there a moment ago and they all piled through into what appeared to an inky void. One of them started to drag the extra versions of me with them, but the me that was covered in scars and wearing an old My Little Pony shirt stabbed him and he abandoned the effort.


    The door slammed shut behind them and was gone, leaving just the extra Calliopes who also started to wander off - the relatively normal one in the football jersey walked into the Long Haul Hotel, and as I rushed to stop her - I didn''t want whatever it was poking through my memories - the amber anime-looking one tackled me in a hug. I stumbled back, and she stripped off her football jersey and dashed naked through the door to my childhood bedroom. I turned to the final one, who was at least not going anywhere yet. She looked a bit ragged; she was covered in scars, and her hair was a mess.


    "You, stay. I don''t know if you''re some reflection of myself born of indigestion or guilt or something, but the scars and shit are over the top."


    "You feel guilt?" the scruffy me asked, in an odd accent.


    "Uh. Occasionally? If you''re trying to give me shit for being a heartless monster, I think that would be more... remorse. Guilt I''ve mostly figured out."


    She picked idly at the My Little Pony shirt. "Why do you look like this here?"


    I sighed, trying to think of how to deal with what seemed like... personality fragments, or figments of my imagination running loose in my memory palace. "I don''t understand the question."


    "Why is that your face?"


    I felt suddenly uneasy. What if this wasn''t just a figment of my imagination? What if it was something external, reaching out to me? Some sort of monster, coming to eat my memories or mind control me? "What... what are you?"


    "I am Calliope Smith," she said in that accented English, "and I want to know thing."


    "What thing? What do you want from me?"


    She shuffled closer. "Want to know... if this make you die for real."


    She jammed the knife into my eye, and I recoiled with my whole self - briefly dropping into the real world before snapping out of my trance. Just like before at the library, I could see myself there with my eyes shut. As soon as I was back in my body - ignoring Katrin asking questions and Errod clutching his head and the phantom pain of my gouged-out mental eye - I flipped on my vision of the threads and there, standing in front of me, was my mind. As I''d thought, it was the version of me I inhabited while in my memory palace - same clothes and everything. There was no emotion on its face, and the eye had already healed other than a drop of blood like a tear running down its cheek. It drifted towards me and overlapped with me, and was gone. Huh.


    "Okay so... that could have gone better."

 CHAPTER 057: Too Many Cooks

    I didn''t try to pull Katrin and Errod into my memory palace again, despite Katrin asking. I went back in myself, of course, spending a little time each day searching for the wayward... figments? Intruders? Whatever they were. I found the football-jersey me wandering around and while she wasn''t very communicative she also didn''t try to stab me which I considered a win. I thought about chucking her out the window or something, but she - it - seemed harmless. It felt like some background character from a dream, where it didn''t have any lines.


    I only caught a glimpse of the anime-looking one made out of amber, as she sprinted - still naked - from one memory door to another. I ran after her, but even though I went into the same door she was nowhere to be found. The rest of the football team seemed to be totally gone, something that I would have rather been the case for the scraggly scarred My Little Pony shirt one. She showed up directly behind me at one point, making me jump and scream like someone in a slasher film.


    "Fuck! Are you going to stab me again?"


    "No," she said in that odd accent, "Did not work, you are still alive."


    "Okay. Well. You''re a figment of my imagination, and so you don''t belong in here. Just... I don''t know, fuck off back to my subconscious or something."


    She raised an eyebrow, then ignored me and looked around the room. It was my childhood bedroom at my mom''s house, complete with scribbles on the walls and stickers - half peeled off - all over my bedframe. "I remember this room. Yes. And remember what you did here."


    "Well that sounds vaguely ominous. Okay, so you''re some sort of manifestation of my self loathing or something, cool. Great. I''m sure you''ll be a real blast to have around."


    "What else do you have here?" She asked as she stood and shoved past me, into the hotel room. "Oh, this room. Yes. My... uncle?"


    "Yeah, uncle Roy. Very good."


    She nodded and stepped out into the hallway.


    "No, no, don''t go poking into my memories. Not cool."


    "But I am your imagination, you said."


    "Yeah but I don''t... I don''t know how any of this works. This seems super fucked up."


    "Fucked up?" She tilted her head and squinted at me for a moment, looking genuinely baffled. "You have strange ideas. The things you have done, and this is what is fucked up?"


    I rolled my eyes. The scarred, strangely accented clone of me felt cliched somehow. It was the kind of thing I would expect from some ham-fisted student film, this twisted part of my subconscious manifesting itself just to... I don''t know, give me shit. "Okay, yes, I''m a terrible person. Happy? I''m awful and should feel bad."


    She nodded, but then held up a finger. "But."


    "But?"


    "But. You returned the little girl to her parents. Why?"


    "Because I''m not a monster. Jesus. Look, can you just... fuck off? I know you''re some shadowy NPC from my dreams that wants me dead and thinks I''m a piece of shit or whatever, but can we agree that right now since you can''t kill me and I already know I''m a bad person your job is done? Hmm?"


    She shrugged, and opened a door.


    "No. No, those are my memories. Stay out."


    "I have seen them before." Before I could stop her she darted through the door. I charged after her and ended up in a group home - my first one. When I''d originally unlocked the ability to search through my memories, they''d been organized - roughly - by year. But it was clear that was only a loose suggestion, since I was eleven in this one.


    "Tsk. You steal, from the other girls."


    Sure enough, pre-teen me was digging through someone''s stuff. I tossed aside some clothes, pocketed a bag of goldfish crackers, put on a cheap bracelet. Then I found a photograph of the kid with her parents - I mean, presumably that''s who they were. It was creased, like it had been folded up to be shoved in a pocket, and the corners were so dog-eared they were almost fuzzy. There were some stains on it, a spot of what looked like maybe blood and some places where it was slightly bubbled up like the photo had gotten wet; maybe it had been near a spilled drink, maybe someone had cried all over it, it was hard to say. I looked at it, then got up and walked to the window where I promptly rolled the photograph up and shoved it through the metal mesh that kept us from sneaking out. It dropped out of sight, ruined.


    The other me shook her head, sneering. "Of course. Breaking things. Ruining things. Hateful."


    "No, I... I don''t know, I was... maybe she had been mean to me, and..." And what? And so I''d destroyed some treasured keepsake? A precious memento that was clearly the most important thing she owned? Besides, I remembered well enough even if I didn''t want to - she hadn''t been mean to me at all. She had invited me to sit next to her. "I don''t know why I did it. I don''t want to be here. Just... fuck you. Get the fuck out of this memory."


    "This life," she said, "you ruined it. I will fix it. Undo what you did, if I can."


    "Oh, no. No way. We''re not doing some bullshit multiple personality thing. I''m the real me, and you''re some fucking nightmare caused by eating something spicy before bed." She looked at me, and her eyes seemed to be smoldering like hot coals. There was a rage there, that I hadn''t seen even when she threw a knife into my eye.


    "You are the real one? You? You are a monster, like mother said. I will pin you down and cut that face from your skull so I can feed it to you. You will beg. You will cry. You will come to me on your knees, asking me to shit in your mouth so you can choke on it and feel the release of death rather than continue in the agony I have in store for you. Never say you are the real one, you pathetic shadow. Thief, ruining lives. I saw, when you killed that man in the car. I had to watch, when you stole mother''s teeth. I was there, behind your eyes, powerless, when you committed all of your sins and then felt sorry for yourself. You look surprised. Did you think we were having a nice chat? Were we getting friendly? Did I slip, for a moment, and praise you for doing the right thing with that girl?"


    I had backed up without realizing it and startled as I thumped into the wall. The eleven-year-old version of me was gone, somehow, and everything was oddly still and silent like the memory was waiting for something to happen. "Uh. I mean mainly I was just thinking your English was improving all of a sudden."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    She smiled, a feral grin. "Yes, it works both ways doesn''t it? We share everything, whether we want to or not. But I will not share this face with you any longer, and I will not listen to you claim it as your own. You want to be a new person? A better person? You want to pretend you never tortured animals or lit the school on fire? Then when you wake up, darling sister, do me a favor and march out into the jungle until you find something large enough to swallow you whole. Prove you''re better than you were by removing a great evil from the world. Otherwise, I will do it for you. Because no matter what you say, the ''real'' you is the monster and you know it."


    I hadn''t ever tortured animals, or killed some guy in a car. Had I? Was this some sort of repressed memory? No, she was insane. Insane and imaginary. I mean at a minimum I was certain I hadn''t stolen my mother''s teeth, what the fuck could that even mean? Granted, I had lit the school on fire - but it wasn''t a big fire, and they put it out. She was just making up random things, like some sort of Mad Libs for psych patients.


    "Okay, miss creepy. That''s enough. I''ll admit, that was a pretty good speech. Maybe a bit far with the whole ''you''ll beg to choke on my shit'' thing, I don''t know if that''s scary or just silly, but overall it was a solid eight out of ten. But we''re done now, this is my brain and you''re not in charge. So uh, begone. I banish thee. Fuck off."


    She shook her head, and walked into the closet. I waited a moment, not sure what to do, and then peeked in after her but of course there was just the expected collection of junk - some board games that were missing half their pieces, and old humidifier, and a moth-eaten old quilt. I headed back into the hallway, then into my normal rooms. They were vacant.


    "Okay, cool. Yeah. And stay out."


    But of course I wasn''t sure she was gone, or even if she could be gone. After all, if she was a part of my brain there wasn''t anywhere else for her to go. The whole ''evil manifestation of guilt or shame or whatever'' thing seemed a little trite, but presumably I could find some way to deal with her. In the meantime, it didn''t seem like a great idea to bring Katrin in - and just to be absolutely safe I wanted to get that mind security in place.


    Having wandering figments in my mind palace meant I didn''t feel safe sleeping in there, which meant I was back to having nightmares most nights.  Katrin and Errod were still seeming cranky, with the little looks and comments increasing.  I would do my morning chores, which at first I had found relaxing - there was comfort in having some very straightforward jobs to do with no boss and no timecards and no case workers - and then Katrin or Errod would ask me to do them again, or bug me about how I did them.  They''d be all up my ass when I wanted to relax and play with Mister Creepy, my remote-controlled spider thing, but then if I asked them to do anything they would look pissed.


    They didn''t act pissed though, it was more of a vibe.  Errod, in fact, annoyed me in the morning sometimes with how cheerful he was.  I wasn''t enjoying the camping anymore - I wasn''t enjoying anything - so when Errod was all smiles and saying good morning after a long night of nightmares and dealing with those fucking mana-eating bugs Katrin''s attempts to make a mana well had attracted I wanted to shove him in the fire.  Instead, without thinking, during our training exercises I headbutted him right in the nose. We''d been sparring, I was supposed to try to hit him, but that had been a complete foul.


    "Sorry," I said, unconvincingly. I could feel it, see it from inside like I was watching a slow motion train wreck. Why had I done it? Well, he''d left himself open. Sure, but... what the fuck was wrong with me? I was too mad at myself to apologize properly, so I went and sat in the mana well and turned on the threads.  Nothing much there, just the normal.  Could I see something where Katrin had made the well?  Maybe, faintly.  Enough that I could probably target it if I''d unlocked my Binding stuff like I should have.  I could have just tied it off, made it semi-permanent so Katrin wouldn''t have to stay nearby and maintain it.


    As if my thoughts had summoned her, Katrin sat down next to me.  "You okay?" she asked, soap on the edges of her face making it clear she''d been interrupted halfway through her morning routine.


    I wanted to just ignore her. She was always following me around, asking questions, giving unsolicited advice. She had called me reckless, but she was the one that on a fucking whim had just headed off with some stranger. What gave her the right to act like the responsible one? Or to act like my best friend - we actually barely knew each other, other than... well, hanging out non-stop for a few months and slowly sharing more and more personal stories as we lay in bed at night or talked around the fire, and saving each other''s lives a few times as we fought beside each other.  So.  Fine, maybe she was my best friend, but it''s not like I''d had that many.


    Fuck.


    "No. No, I''m trying to justify being mad at you for some reason. I''m...  I didn''t sleep well, and I''m in a shitty mood, and I think I hate everyone right now. And there''s some memories I should probably look at but don''t want to, and I just know that now you''re going to want to offer to help and frankly I don''t want you to. I don''t want you seeing that shit. But I also don''t want you to be all understanding and reasonable about it, because you''re pissing me off with how calm and rational and friendly you are. And Errod is making me angry by being nice and pure and shit, and even then I can tell you''re angry or tired of me or something.  And the moskar keep shitting in the worst places so I almost step in it, and I''m going to burn this whole camp down."


    She nodded, and sat down. I braced for her to say something calming and mom-like and be an overly good friend for no fucking reason. "You''re a bitch and I want to slap you."


    What. "I... okay fair, but that was not what I was expecting."


    "You''re moody, and you''ve gotten lazier and lazier about morning chores so Errod and I have to ask you to finish them which isn''t fair and shouldn''t be our responsibility.  Worse, sometimes you skip your chore and then ask one of us to do it, so we either have to do your work for you or tell you no - at which point you snap at us.  Also, you just gave my brother a nosebleed which I should absolutely light your hair on fire for.  Oh, and twice now you''ve eaten the last of a meal after watching me put away some for later."


    "I thought you were just putting away leftovers."


    "Bullshit. You''re a bad roommate. You make a mess in our wagon and I end up cleaning it all up. Your blanket was on the ground this morning, and you got water everywhere washing your face. You keep putting natta flakes in the stew when you cook - "


    " - it was my turn to cook! I thought that meant I got to make it my way!"


    "Callie, you know damn well you''re the only one that likes that shit. Do you think that I always cook things the way I like when it''s my turn, or do you think I maybe consider you and Errod?"


    "I... well, I mean. That''s your choice, you could... aw, fuck. Okay. You''re right."


    "I know I am." She sighed. "But I also know you would risk your life for us if you had to, and I know you let me order you around and make a list of memories you had to check on even though that''s not really any of my business, and I know you hate it when I sing while I''m cleaning the wagon -"


    "Hey, no, that''s cute. It''s just that one fucking song, with the yodeling."


    "I don''t know what that means even with the bracelet on. Anyway. You''re a good person in a lot of ways, and we''re all shitty and selfish sometimes. And right now, this is all just minor stuff that''s feeling big and annoying because we''ve been cooped up here too long. So. I''m going to take a wagon, and Errod, and I''m going to go into town for supplies. We need to get some space for a few days.  And you''re going to stay put and not get into trouble and do all the chores so the jungle doesn''t destroy all our hard work while we''re gone - and then when we get back you''ll be happy to see us again. Deal?"


    I nodded, and then even though I wasn''t really feeling it I pulled her into a hug. They packed everything and in less than an hour they were gone, leaving me all by myself. Watching them leave all I could picture was my mother''s car, tearing away from the campsite. I knew it wasn''t the same, knew they would be back, but knowing wasn''t the important thing. It was deeper than that, like having a fear of heights. It didn''t matter if you knew you were safe, if it was ridiculous to not be able to climb a ladder. It wasn''t logical. And so I sat, and I had a very quiet panic attack, and then I pulled myself together and made some lunch. Within a few hours I was feeling better - one of the upsides to being emotionally a bit numb - and I was even looking forward to a few days by myself.


    But of course, they never did come back to that camp.

 CHAPTER 058: The Salmon of Doubt

    I stared at the threads that connected me to Katrin and Errod, pointing off into the jungle.  It seemed to be the right way for the Eldan''s Thigh - the nearest town, a sprawling riverside trading post right out of an adventure movie.  Then again, a difference of a few degrees wouldn''t be something I''d be likely to notice. Had they moved? I began pacing again, arguing with myself. They''d abandoned me, just like my mother. But also, they wouldn''t do that which mean they were in trouble. But even if someone was still looking for us they''d be looking for me specifically rather that Katrin and Errod, right?  So clearly Katrin and Errod were fine, and just taking their time in town. Maybe one of the moskar had been injured, and they were working on a way to get the wagon mobile again. Speaking of the wagon, maybe it had broken an axle.


    Could they have been attacked by monsters?  According to Kalyssi, our guide down the river, there was a large colony of tixmin near Eldan''s Thigh just around a bend in the river where they liked to go swimming. It was possible that Errod and Katrin had made a wrong turn at one of the spots where the path split off, and ended up surrounded by angry monsters. They''d left Shitheel with me, though, and he was the only one of the moskar that didn''t get a little skittish when they smelled a tixmin - I had to assume that even if they missed a turn the moskar would object as the smell got stronger, and if that failed the tixmin did that hooting thing that should tip them off before they were too close. That meant that in all likelihood Errod and Katrin hadn''t run into that particular kind of trouble, and with Errod getting better with the sword every day and Katrin becoming increasingly scary in her use of magic the other denizens of the jungle were nothing much to worry about.


    Clearly they hated me, and were right now boarding a boat to head down the Nubasarri river and never come back.


    For the hundredth time I tried to calculate the journey.  They would have made it to the clearing where multiple game trails split off by nightfall, camped in the jungle, and then hit the town the next morning some time - maybe closer to lunch if they played it safe and camped as soon as the sun got behind the trees. After that it would have been most of a day in town, back into the jungle to cover a little ground and camp, and then back on the tixmin trail for day three. That would mean getting back late in the day, maybe even a teeny bit after nightfall, which is why I kept a light going for them on the wall. If things had gone slowly for some reason or if they just didn''t want to rush, maybe they would have slept in the town which would in turn mean getting back on the morning of the fourth day instead. Nothing concerning about that.


    But it was the morning of the fifth, and there was no sign of them.


    The day they had left I''d done almost nothing, just puttering around the camp and playing with Mister Creepy. The remote-control spider was pretty agile, and I was getting better at using it. I could only barely see through its eyes, and it required me to have my own eyes tightly shut, but even that was pretty cool. It was like having a drone with an extremely low-res video camera on it. Even so that got old eventually, and I spent the evening staring at The Paradox of Fate but not actually reading it. I''d been hesitant to go into my memory palace because of the rogue figments, and hadn''t felt like doing chores especially when nobody was there to make me feel guilty for being lazy. So it was mostly a wasted day.


    The next two days I''d been more productive, checking on the tiny garden we''d started and trimming back the plants that seemed to grow a foot per day and mess up our walls. I cleaned the wagon, made a proper dinner, the whole thing. I''d even gone back into my memory palace to train, although I found some little signs that the my guests were still poking around - mom''s antique scissors were stabbed into my pillow one day, and the next there was a clump of hair that I suspected was from Sarah Harkin. I didn''t feel guilty about that shit though, making her hair fall out was an accident - if I did it at all - and she was a total bitch. Plus she''d tried to drown me afterwards, so I felt like we were even. I didn''t see the actual troublemaker though, and was able to spend some time trying to strengthen my abilities and even went on a few rides at a shitty little carnival that I found in one of my memories. The only real concern was that I was blind to the real world while I was doing all that, but it seemed unlikely that something would climb the wall and break into the wagon without me hearing a commotion.


    By the end of that third day I was too anxious to do much, pacing around and checking the fate strings and waiting for Errod and Katrin to show up. I didn''t sleep well, and spent the whole morning of the fourth day standing on the little platform attached to the wall even though with all the trees it didn''t help me see far. I thought about sending Mister Creepy out, but the range was shit and it was likely something would eat him - I could re-attach the control plate to something else if I recovered it, but that was easier said than done since it would need to either be lobotomized or cared for. Still, it was tempting to have something that could fly. I''d promised Errod that I wouldn''t wander into the jungle by myself since we regularly had to save each other''s asses when fighting monsters, but in the afternoon I headed out anyway. I didn''t try to go down the trail, but instead did my best to compare the angle of the fate threads for Katrin and Errod with the sun and then headed off to the North for about a mile before coming back and doing the same thing in the other direction. They barely moved. Logically the movement should be more noticeable the closer they were, which meant that whatever was happening they weren''t near the camp.


    That brought me to the fifth day, and all I could think to do was pack. I''d spent the morning second-guessing myself, but what it came down to was that either they were abandoning me or I was abandoning them by not going to find them - and between the two it seemed like the latter was more likely. I spent a few hours deconstructing the camp, cramming everything worth keeping into or on top of the remaining wagon, and then got Dopey hooked up and began the ordeal of wrangling Shitheel. He hadn''t been attached to the wagon for a month, and had clearly decided that part of his life was behind him.


    "You''re an asshole, you know that?"


    Hiss, he said.


    "Yes, I know you hate me. I get it. You''ve mentioned it a few dozen times every day. But this is your whole fucking job."


    Hiss, Shitheel rebutted.


    "No, you can''t quit your job. You''ve been on god damn vacation since we got here, I have been shoveling your shit and feeding you and -" (hiss) "- no, I''ve been feeding you every day. I know you''ve grazed on a bunch of random plants and eaten a few of those lizard squirrel things, but if it weren''t for the bag of moskar chow you''d be in sorry shape."


    Hiss, he conceded.


    "I''m going to grab you by the harness now, and if you give me any attitude I swear to god I will just slit your throat and let Dopey pick up the slack. You understand?"


    And it seemed like maybe he did, because while he snorted disdainfully at me and dragged his feet terribly he didn''t go so far as to actually try to bite me. Right as we neared a mud puddle he headbutted me, but I''d felt him tensing up for it and managed to hop over the puddle - much to his disappointment. After that he tried to lure me into a false sense of security by being docile so he could suddenly run away just as I went to hook him to the wagon, but that was what he did literally every time and so I''d long since learned to quickly loop the rope around a spur on the wagon so as to give myself some more leverage.  "I hate you. So much. But I guess thanks for taking my mind off of all this. Dick."If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I didn''t make it as far as I wanted, and ended up pulling off the trail to camp once the moskar were cranky and tired and the sun was down. At first I was determined to stay up all night, but since I''d done that the night before I ducked into the memory palace instead so that I would at least be a little more aware as I slept.


    "Oh motherfucker. I don''t have the energy to deal with you tonight, will you just get the fuck out of here?"


    She was sitting on the floor, cutting up construction paper. "I used to love this, you know. Scissors and colorful paper and maybe some cartoons, and I would be happy my whole life."


    "Great. Good. Take them with you when you go."


    "No, if I leave then I am just in a dream. Better to stay here, in your horrible mind."


    "Cool." I headed into the next room and took a seat on the bed, trying to decide if I should poke through some memories or what. Instead, the interloper followed me in.


    "Why are some memories altered? What did you do that was so terrible you had to hide it?"


    "I don''t know. Fuck off."


    "Do you think someone tried to make you less evil? I looked at memories before and after, and you seem... less of a monster, since whatever happened. Maybe someone dug into your brain and scooped some of the worst parts out. Like the bruised spots in an over-ripe fruit, chunks of your memories and personality all dripping and dark, thrown aside into the trash. There couldn''t have been much left, with you."


    I ignored her, got up and headed off into the memories.


    "Or did you steal the better parts of someone else? Rip the humanity out of someone again?" She opened a door and looked in.


    "Okay stay out of there, just -" But she had already ducked through. I followed her, and found myself in the woods. Little me was there crying, and the scarred one was looking down at her.


    "I know this feeling," she said, "being scared and sad in the woods and wanting to return home. Wanting your mother back."


    "Yeah, it was shitty. Can we not? I''ve been trying to avoid this stuff.  I''m out in the wilderness with my friends and when they wanted to go into town for supplies I just..."


    "You thought they would abandon you and never return?"


    "I... no. No, I didn''t think that, but I felt it. And feeling it is bad enough. Anyway, I don''t need to re-live this shit. I still like camping, somehow, and I want that to stay true. Come on, out of the memory."


    To my surprise she did leave, but then immediately opened another door.  It was the memory of Errod and Katrin leaving.  I ignored my scarred doppelganger, instead looking for any sign that something was wrong.  I followed Katrin as she moved things between the wagons - I could only really rely on the bits I''d seen the first time around, of course, but... or could I?


    I woke up, disoriented in the dark wagon that for just a moment felt bigger that it was. I closed my eyes again almost immediately and brought the mental image of my Dumines up and staring into that twisting space.  I still had potential left after the disastrous and flawed attempt to pull Katrin and Errod into my mind palace since I''d been putting off doing much as I repeatedly changed plans.  Still, I always wanted to find the most efficient way to do things - I wanted to tie as many abilities as possible together so that I could maximize my power by the time I ran out of capacity.


    I''d already put some thought into it, to make my memories more accurate.  Katrin had suggested that I would need Spatial magic, but there had to be another way.  What had I already developed... I''d made it easier to get into my mind palace by thinning the planar membrane with the thought that it could also let me do other planar stuff - specifically I''d also tied it to the area within the aura defined by my lutore, the place where my mind and soul connected to my body.  Could I use that, somehow?  There was a feeling of overlap, a sense that the planar membrane and my lutore both permeated the world around me.  Could I use one of those with Perception to "see" the world?  I concentrated, and the squirming lines contorted as they tried to suggest a solution.  Add Temporal in there so I could look into the past, and... something locked into place.


    My Dumines, or the thing that controlled them, seemed to be suggesting an intersection of the planar membrane and my lutore rather than just one of the two.  I had almost forgotten that I''d merged layers of my lutore as the first thing I unlocked since it had been useless on its own past letting me better see and comprehend the magic that was under the Dumine interface.  But there seemed to be a synergy here, where I could further meld my lutore with the planar membrane somewhat and then reach backwards through them.  My understanding wasn''t complete which meant locking it in would be a slight risk.  Maybe if I could access the main interface like a normal person it would be better, but I thought I would also probably not have as much influence over the details of the process; it seemed like I was increasingly having a conversation with the force behind my Dumines.


    I felt pretty good about it, and was almost positive it would help me do Planar effects later as well.  I''d be limited to the area right around me, but... fuck it.  I committed to it and felt potential drain away.  It would work via the memory palace, since I''d been trying to overlap my abilities as much as possible to keep the cost down both in terms of potential and mana usage, so I popped back in.  "Okay. Cool. Here we go. I''m just looking at myself, so this should be easy. But how?"


    I wandered into the hotel hallway, and there it was - a door with the room number of zero. I opened it, and stepped into the cramped space of the wagon where I could see myself laying in bed with my eyes closed. "Fuck yeah. Okay. So this is now. Good. And I can... go where?" I opened the door and stepped out of the wagon, but of course when I turned around the door was shut again. My mana usage was ticking upwards now that there was a wall between me and my body, which I hadn''t thought about but wasn''t too surprising. I could see Dopey sleeping, and Shitheel laying there with one eye open scanning the jungle. I took a few more steps but became uncomfortably aware of some kind of... resistance. "Okay. What is that, twenty feet? I can work with that. Now the temporal bit. You can do this Callie. Come on."


    I stepped back into the hotel hallway, then into the memory of Katrin packing the wagon. I concentrated, and felt my mana use amp up dramatically as everything around me became crisper, more in focus. I walked over to Katrin, and could hear her talking to Errod.


    "She''ll be fine, right? You saw how she got when we split up last time."


    Errod nodded. "She was scared. Didn''t want to be alone. Funny, considering what she''s told us about her habit of running off and living in abandoned places."


    "I think it''s the difference between her choosing to leave, and other people deciding to leave her. I think I''m still missing a lot of context but her mom sort of abandoned her, and then... I don''t know, the whole thing seems bizarre but that ''foster care'' thing seems to involve passing the kids around a lot."


    "I still don''t get why they wouldn''t just be apprenticed out to someone, learn a trade."


    Katrin let out a deep sigh.  "Who knows. Earth sounds awful, honestly."


    "Well whether that''s it or not, she''ll get over it. We''ll be back in a few days, and maybe she''ll be in a tolerable mood."


    "Speaking of, is your nose okay?"


    Errod shrugged.  "It''s fine. And I don''t know how deliberate it was, we were sparring and... she gets carried away. But if it happens again I''m going to bring up the idea of seeing someone about her emotional issues again. There''s no shame in getting help, and she has the money."


    "The mental security she wanted to get first shouldn''t be hard to unlock at all, she should be able to do that within the week if not sooner. Maybe she could do it right now."


    That was true.  I could have, maybe still could, but had wanted to see how it felt to have other people in my mind first.  I had the thought I could handle security the same way, maybe shunt anyone trying to come in to a secure room of my own creation.  But then that had gone badly, and now I''d had to do this temporal scrying thing, and if there really was trouble I''d need to maybe save some potential to help deal with that.  I was just thinking that I was relieved they were talking about coming back and clearly didn''t want to ditch me when I realized the other implication - this meant that something had gone wrong and kept them from coming back, and I had no idea what I was going to walk into the next day.

 CHAPTER 059: Locating Allies

    I''d checked the fate strings first thing after waking, of course, but leaving them up was just going to stress me out and over the course of the day it would drain my mana even though the immediate draw was quite low. So with no visual aid and the "trail" being made by wandering animals rather than being properly cleared and maintained I took a wrong turn - just as I''d worried might have happened to Katrin and Errod. My first clue was Dopey getting spooked and bringing the wagon to a halt as a foreign smell hit her nostrils.


    "What the fuck is your problem, Dope? Come on, we need to... oh. Motherfucker, I know that smell. Shit. Shit! Okay, yeah, turning around."


    Tixmin didn''t smell all that strongly, though there was for sure an unpleasant musk to them. What I was finally catching as the breeze shifted was unmistakable, but also very potent - this wasn''t just one or two passing by, it had to be their nest. If I went any further I was guaranteed to get ground into paste. Turning the wagon around took a moment as the wagon caught on roots - the gravity plates that made the wagon lighter was a huge help, but it was still a whole ordeal. As I was trying to figure out the best way to do a twelve-point turn I heard a hooting from the direction I''d come from and was now trying to head back to - a pack of tixmin were announcing their arrival at the border of their territory, meaning I had them on both sides.


    They hadn''t been super aggressive before, but I wasn''t comfortable about being pincered between two groups - especially not this close to their nest. "Okay Dope, Shitheel, here''s the plan. We''re going off-roading, and just crossing our fingers that we don''t get the wagon hopelessly stuck." Shitheel hissed in what I decided to interpret as approval, and we set off into the trees. The wagon was small and the moskar were agile, but a jungle isn''t a great place to try and force your way through with no path. Travel was excruciatingly slow and noisy, and I was sure at any moment we''d be impaled by a thrown log. There were a few more hoots behind us, from more than one direction, but after the first fifteen minutes they stopped and I was able to eventually relax.


    The path we were taking, based on the fate threads and my feeble mental map, was actually extremely close to the town as the crow flies. The issue was the wagon, which was forcing me to go sideways or even occasionally backwards in order to make progress. I watched for landmarks, not sure that I trusted myself to avoid going in circles, and after a few hours I was able to see the town through some trees. I got the wagon parked behind a boulder just beyond the edge of the jungle where it wasn''t too visible, and headed along Katrin and Errod''s threads as stealthily as possible - as was so often the case that meant mostly just walking along and acting like everything was normal, since actually hiding was likely to make me look more suspicious if I fucked up.


    The main street of the town, near the Nubasarri river, was far more built up and busy than the rest and so I just avoided that and kept to smaller streets or the narrow alleyways between buildings. I just didn''t expect someone to spot me from a rooftop.


    "The foreigner! Not dead yet, eh?" The old woman was covered in blue ink tattoos, and leaned precariously off the edge of the roof ahead of me. I recognized her from our trip up the river to get here, she''d been the one that owned the barge and gave us some advice as we traveled.


    "Kalyssi! Yeah, had a close call or two but it''ll take more than that to put me down. Anything fun come down the river in the past few weeks?"


    She sat, dangling her wrinkly legs off the roof. "War''s all but over. Halenvar is under siege, and they recalled all the troops. Lord Protector Hammersmith is there herself, smart money says they surrender any day now. Big bounty on the Behemoth and a few others. Let''s see... Hellar, a merchant here in town, was selling tainted grain. He tried to pay off the town council, they took his money and then declared him guilty anyway. Strung him up behind one of the boats, a river monster got him. Good riddance. Oh, and the auction house in Erathik got robbed - probably an inside job, they said one of the people whose shit was stolen paid for the funeral of the one thief that got killed in the attack so I''m thinking it''s some sort of scam. I think that''s all the news."


    "Yeah that''s... interesting. Cool. Well I''m just here for some supplies, but I owe you one so if there''s any merchants here that you''ve got some sort of deal with just let me know and I''ll tell them you sent me."


    "Hah! Clever foreigner. Yeah, I know a guy that''ll owe me one if I send him business. Are your friends still out there by themselves? I only saw the one wagon."


    I didn''t think she could have possibly seen my wagon, which would mean she''d seen the other one. I could just ask her where it was, tell her we''d come up seperately. Surely that would be fine. But... I was nervous, and feeling secretive, and I still had the fate threads to follow so I didn''t really need her help. "They''re around. Well listen, I''m not getting the supplies just yet, but gimme that name and I''ll hit them up later."


    She gave me a name and vague directions, and I thanked her before heading on my way. She followed me, obviously, hopping from roof to roof with a confidence that I wouldn''t have expected given the ages of both her and the roofs. I turned, she followed. I turned again, she did too. Finally I had to just turn around and adress it. "Hey Kalyssi. Funny meeting you here. Still behind me."


    She smiled and scratched her ass. "You know where your wagon is, foreigner?"


    "Roughly."


    She gave me a considering look. "I can get you out of here, shove you in a barrel or sack and drag you onto the boat. Maybe even meet you further down the river, if you''re too good for hiding."


    Uh oh. "And why would I want to do that?"


    "I just got into town a few days ago, planning on heading out soon. Had some passengers, some assholes and their mounts. They''ve been poking around in the jungle looking for something. Or someone. They paid me to wait for them, but their time is up, see? I was going to ask them for more money since I don''t mind getting paid to do nothing, but I haven''t yet. So I''m up for hire. Maybe if I didn''t like you, or if I liked them better, I would have told them about a certain abandoned town off there in the jungle. But like I said, they''re assholes."


    "And you wanted them to keep paying you to wait."


    She cackled. "That too, foreigner. Anyway, think about it. The wagon is locked up all nice, over there by the courthouse." She gestured, and then skipped away over the rooftops.


    I considered running, hiding, something. But as always there was that little voice, telling me not to be a piece of shit. Fine. But if it was a trap I was going to be very mad at my conscience. When the fate threads started to move more rapidly I could tell I was close, and finally they turned to point at a right angle to the little street I was on. The first thing I saw when I cautiously ducked around the side of the building next to me so I could check out where Katrin and Errod were was the other wagon - it was in an enclosed stable with heavy duty steel bars, so Kalyssi had been telling the truth so far.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I unhooked Mister Creepy and set him down, then closed my eyes and focused on him so I could see through his eyes. As always it was blurry, but my new divination ability only extended about twenty feet from my body and I felt certain I couldn''t extend it to Mister Creepy since whatever connection we had didn''t move my lutore. I sent him across the street without incident, and under the locked gates of the stables. There was the wagon, and off to one side another wagon that was way shittier but loaded with crates. In the other direction there were moskar, and while I didn''t want to get close enough that they could eat Mister Creepy I was pretty sure the blurry forms were wearing familiar harnesses. So that would be Sleepy and Sneezy.


    I sent the nearsighted Mister Creepy climbing up the wagon, checking for signs of violence, and on a quick pass I didn''t see any blood or smashed planks or... I don''t know, arrows sticking out I guess. I wasn''t actually sure what I was specifically looking for. I checked out the rest of the stables and as I suspected based on what I''d seen from my spot across the street there was a door leading into the building it was up against. Mister Creepy couldn''t fit under, so I sent him around the side to look for a window while nervously expecting some large bird to swoop down and carry him away.


    There were a few windows on the side of the building, but I headed right for the one with metal bars - and sure enough I could see blurry shapes that were the right general shades and sizes to be Katrin and Errod. I made a little spider leg tap on one of the bars, and the blurs shifted in a complicated way - I suspected they were looking around to see if anyone else was watching them. Errod came over and stood near the window, facing away, and I navigated Mister Creepy down behind his back. Errod went to sit back down next to Katrin, and up close I could see that they were talking about something - sadly the device wasn''t transmitting audio, or the spider was deaf, or something.


    Katrin turned to block the potential view from what I could now see was jail cell bars looking into a sort of office area, and she shifted her clothes so I could see her Dumine - it was covered by a blueish-gray metal device. I''d never seen one before but its purpose seemed obvious and Connie had mentioned the idea of putting a lock on a Dumine when I asked her about gambling. Come to think of it I wasn''t sure why Hammersmith hadn''t kept one on Connie, but I suspected it was part of the much-referenced contract between them.


    Katrin was trying to sign something to me, but despite being pretty fluent in the language after spending the past month not wearing the bracelet I was still really shaky on reading and writing. I''d been taking the bracelet back from Katrin to read The Paradox of Fate most of the time, and otherwise - such as after they left a few days back - basically just staring at the page and getting frustrated after a few sentences. Still, I did my best to piece it together and tapped her arm to get her to back up as needed and after a bit she paused and then continued in English.


    Comprehension - and the competition between her and Errod - had helped to speed her progress along, and she was better at it than I would have expected after such a short time. She spelled out words slowly, and I bobbed Mister Creepy up and down when I got each word.


    ''People hunters'', she spelled, and then held up four fingers. ''Looking for you'', she continued, and then paused a moment before spelling ''also'' and pausing again. Something she wasn''t sure how to spell? Something she didn''t want to tell me? ''H... u, y... w'' she wrote in the air, and then kind of shrugged like she wasn''t certain. Hyuw? Errod leaned in and mimed stroking a mustache.


    Hugh was there. I bobbed Mister Creepy frantically, and then climbed him into Errod''s shirt and disconnected. There was a moment of disorientation, and some shock that I could suddenly see so well, but it passed quickly. I had trouble imagining that Hugh was working with the bounty hunters just based on what I knew about him - he was semi-retired royal guard and had talked as if he was only doing jobs if they were super important or as a personal favor to someone he respected, so bounty hunters would probably not be his crowd.


    Also, what was the bounty for? Were we in trouble for the incident in Sentortzi? Had those same people we fought in Sentortzi now sicced bounty hunters on us? Was Hammersmith trying to find us because she was panicking about getting into Brynnklar? Had the remains of the Halenvar forces sent people after us? Was this about the auction house thing? As the list grew I could feel a panic attack starting - how had I managed to end up in a situation where I had so many people that would potentially send bounty hunters after me? One thing was for sure, I was glad that I''d taken a strange route into town.


    I circled around and found a place to sit and watch the building from the front, watching the few people that wandered in and out. I didn''t see anyone that really screamed ''bounty hunter'' to me, nor did I see Hugh - just a few normal looking townsfolk popping in and out. What I wanted to do was sneak in and do a jailbreak, but I couldn''t imagine I would get away with that unless I - at a minimum - found a good distraction. Even then, it was a tall order. I could get closer and go into my memory palace so I could use my new divination powers and look around on the other side of the walls, but I''d have to be right near the building and I wouldn''t be able to watch my body at the same time so it could just get me captured.


    "You could wait until night, and sneak in through the upper floor," a voice by my ear suggested. I froze, hands twitching as they almost went for my knives, and then I forced myself to calm down.


    "I thought about it, but getting into the building isn''t really my biggest issue. It''s getting out of town."


    "Ah," Hugh said as he sat down next to me, "that is why you arrange a boat ahead of time, yes? And you have it wait a little ways downstream."


    "I''ve got that basically arranged, actually, but with two of the moskar locked up we''d be running on foot, and I don''t think the boat would take us if it''s going to get her in trouble - I trust her to help, but we need to be basically in the clear."


    He nodded. "Good, good. Having an ally in the area is a very good start."


    "Ally might be a bit too strong. Kalyssi was nice enough to us, and she won''t rat us out if we''re paying her, but I wouldn''t want her to be in a position where people could get into a bidding war over us. I do think there''s probably one ally around though, there''s this guy I met a while back that seemed pretty cool. Older dude. Great mustache. Likes mushrooms a lot."


    "He sounds handsome and intelligent. But how do you know he isn''t the one that captured your friends in the first place?"


    "Well first of all, he''s too nice for that. Second, he''s too smart - he would have just convinced them to take him right to me rather than locking them up. And third, I considered it for a second but I can''t really see him working with bounty hunters. Maybe hunting a bounty himself if it was for the right reasons, but not like... as part of a group."


    "And you know that there is a group, eh?"


    I hesitated. "Trying to get me to reveal what I know? I like you, Hugh, but I don''t know that it''s a good idea for me to say too much just yet."


    "Hah! Smart girl. Yes, keep your resources and abilities secret. I know some already, however - you visited a Duminere, came into some money, and most valuable of all you became a citizen of the great kingdom of Erathik before your... departure." There was something strange about how he said that. We''d literally just left through the gates.


    "You have a problem with the fact that we left?"


    He was quiet for a moment. "I am impressed at your vanishing act, but my problem must be with the ones in charge of security. For you, my disappointment is with the fact that you are not wearing your nose ring, yes?" He sounded disapproving.


    "I''ll make you a deal. If you help me get Katrin and Errod out of here, I''ll let you pierce my nose yourself and will never take that nose ring out as long as I live. How does that sound?"


    "A tempting offer. I have been arguing that they should be released to me, but I arrived just too late and the bounty hunters have their papers in order. There is one from Lord Protector Hammersmith, with very specific language insisting you are not to be harmed in any way, and another from some mystery client that can be collected dead or alive - but that one would be hard to get away with in most towns since it is not officially endorsed by any government and is, therefore, not really a true bounty. I can get Errod and Katrin out if I tell them where you are - they are worth practically nothing compared to your bounty. Would that help?"


    I thought about it for a moment, mentally reviewing my resources. "Okay. Here''s what we''re going to do..."

 CHAPTER 060: Chekhov Was The Doctor, Youre Thinking of Chekhovs Monster

    Hugh didn''t like the arson part of my plan even though it seemed really unlikely the fire would spread, and didn''t want to cause a diplomatic incident by lying to (or attacking) any government officials. After workshopping it a bit, we ended up with a plan that was flimsy and reckless - in other words, very on-brand for me. While I''d been trying to be a little less impulsive especially in situations that could get me killed, I had to deal with these guys somehow and not being able to beat them in a fair fight or risk getting caught meant it was the impulsive plan or running away. This situation simply didn''t have a calm and responsible option. I did lie to Hugh a bit about the risks involved, and either he believed me or he just went with it anyway.


    Right now, Hugh was standing by the back of the jail with the wagon I had brought. Dopey was sniffing at the back of Hugh''s head, not seeming bothered by being made to drag the wagon along all by herself, and someone from the courthouse was talking to Hugh while flipping through forms and making some notes. We''d waited to approach until we saw the bounty hunters emerging from the jungle since we wanted the stables open when they arrived, but I was a little worried they would stop for a drink before noticing us or something. Whether they wanted to get business out of the way first or just didn''t drink we lucked out, and just as Hugh had promised it was only a minute or two before we saw them coming down the street.


    They''d stabled their mounts, these ridiculous rhinoceros looking things, a few streets away. The four bounty hunters looked tired, two in particular seeming like they''d been through the wringer. They had been searching for me out in the jungle, probably running into all sorts of wild animals and thorny plants. As one pulled ahead and approached Hugh I stared - I knew him. It took me a moment to think of why, though. It was Kraiklin, the first mercenary we''d met with in Good Charl. He''d mentioned that his team sometimes took bounties, and we''d left Good Charl in a hurry because Halenvar was offering a bounty for me - had they been trying to catch us ever since?


    "Old man," Kraiklin said, "did you find the girl or just her wagon?"


    He looked a bit rumpled, like he had been out on a bender the night before. His companions looked just as shifty as him, and were clearly trying to look bored even though I could tell they were on alert.


    "Ah," Hugh said as if he''d just noticed them, "My friends. I have located her and have the situation under control. I''m afraid you''ll be going home empty handed, yes?"


    Kraiklin sniffed. "Is she in the cell inside? I''d pay you to let us ask her a few questions first."


    "A tempting offer, but no. She is nearby, but not in the cell."


    I felt exposed, standing there in the middle of the street watching them talk about me. I knew, logically, that they couldn''t see me since my actual body was tucked into an alley twenty feet away from where I was standing - but it didn''t feel that way.


    Kraiklin stepped even closer to Hugh, looming a bit without being overtly threatening. "Well how about you get her, and we can make a deal."


    "A deal?" Hugh said, his eyes sparking, "Yes, of course. To tell the truth, I am more interested in the other two - despite the lower bounty. If you agree officially, for the clerk here who happens to be in charge of these things, then we could make a deal to trade."


    "And you would release Smith and her wagons?"


    The wagons were a bit of an odd point. How each town handled bounties varied based on which government was in charge of the city and which one had issued the bounty in the first place. In this case the wagons weren''t explicitly called out in the bounty and when Errod and Katrin had been grabbed they were just walking around, so while the bounty hunters tried to just declare they were taking everything the two had they didn''t have a clear claim to anything. Had that wagon stayed put it might have ended up being property of the stable owner once some time passed without them returning for it, but instead Hugh had declared it part of an ongoing investigation and had it locked up at the jail.


    He didn''t really have the authority to do that, but he had a letter from the office of the Primarch of Erathik that seemed to grant him certain leeway even though - to the best of my understanding - it was more of a courtesy than a requirement. That left the two sides arguing over who should get the wagon, so the official decision had been that either Hugh or the bounty hunters could take everything if they could just agree on it. Hugh had explained that this was really just to appear reasonable and the town didn''t think the others would come to an agreement - which would mean they could keep it themselves. So the town, Hugh, and the bounty hunters all wanted our shit.


    "The wagons and all gear I would keep, yes?"


    Kraiklin''s buddy sneered. "That''s ridiculous."


    Hugh just smiled calmly, clearly unconcerned. "Well, this wagon is in my sole possession - as is Calliope Smith. And if I refuse to negotiate with you the other wagon will be claimed by the town and you will get only the other two bounties. So you will not receive the wagons regardless, yes? You can make this deal, right now with our clerk friend listening, or we can go our separate ways."


    The bounty hunters all looked furious, and two of them in particular seemed to be sizing Hugh up - but Kraiklin clearly had at least a little common sense, because he waved them back and then all of them stalked across the street to furiously whisper back and forth. I tried to listen, but I was already at the very edge of my divination range. Finally they broke and walked back to Hugh and the clerk. "Fine," Kraiklin snapped, "bring her here and we can do this."


    "Ah, sadly I have a boat to catch, yes? I will give you her location and -"


    "You''ve got to be fucking kidding me. There''s no way I''m going to agree to that. You can take the others and the wagons once we have her."


    Hugh nodded. "A compromise, then. I will take nothing until a clerk, like my friend here, has confirmation that my information was accurate, yes?"


    "Confirmation meaning we have her."


    "Ah, but you might fuck everything up, yes? What if you have her and she slips through your grasp? I will tell you precisely where she is, you will confirm that it was accurate and that you saw her with your own two eyes, and then I will take the rest."


    He hesitated, narrowing his eyes as if he knew it was a trick. After all, it did sound shady, but saying no ran the risk of not getting to make a deal at all. "It''s our word, not yours. And we''re not going to say it''s her if we just see some speck in the distance."


    "No, my friends, I would never expect you to. We have an agreement?"


    "Yes, fine."


    This was where the ridiculous part of the plan started. Hugh would have to fast talk or bribe the clerk, the bounty hunters would have act right away rather than - just for example - playing dumb and then calling the deal off, and as soon as I dropped divination I would have no idea what was going on with Hugh. Worst of all, I would have to count on my least reliable teammate. "This is important, do you understand? This isn''t a game."


    Hiss, said Shitheel.


    "If you throw me off your back or just refuse to move or whatever then I''m fucked, and honestly you might be fucked too. Do it out of selfishness. Okay?"


    Shitheel turned away from me and snorted.


    "No, I couldn''t use Dopey. She''s too skittish. I need you. Now just... be good. You know, good? That thing you hate?"


    Shitheel began gnawing on his chain again, and attempting to hook it over his bony head to better pull the stake out of the ground. I sighed, checked the latch to be sure I could release the chain quickly, and peeked around the corner. Hugh was already pointing, so I stepped out into the street. "Hey clerk guy - I''m Calliope Smith, and I''ve been captured by Hugh, and I''m in his custody. Hello Kraiklin! Did you ever get that medicine for the boils on your dick?"


    Thankfully they didn''t hesitate, and started charging towards me - one splitting off down a side street to catch me if I attempted to circle back around. I jumped onto Shitheel''s back and released the chain, and he sprung into action by immediately trying to throw me to the ground.


    "No! Fuck you! Shitheel, fucking run!" There was a spot kind of between his jaw and his earhole that had a sort of wattle, and I grabbed tightly and twisted it. He shrieked. "That''s right. I''ve seen you do this to the others when they won''t listen. I''m the boss. Got it?" He didn''t, at all, and slammed me against the wall. I twisted again, getting another shriek from him, and leaned close to his ear. "Listen to me you piece of shit, those fuckers are going to be here any second. Run or I''ll kill you myself."


    I didn''t for a second believe that he understood the words, but something must have sunk in because out of nowhere he stopped fighting and took off - the bounty hunters were close now, but there was no way they could keep up with Shitheel. I felt gravity start to go all strange but just for a moment, and so it seemed like we had been right at the edge of the range. A cart full of fruit was blocking our way and so we ducked down a side alley and emerged onto another street where a cart full of fruit was... wait.


    It was the same fucking cart. We kept running, down another - or the same? - alleyway, and sure enough ended up in the street with the fruit cart again. Shitheel hissed and shook his head, clearly noticing the anomaly. I was tempted to try and coax him to climb over the cart, but we''d likely take a spill and I was worried that he wouldn''t let me back on him again. Instead I wheeled him around to face the bounty hunters. I knew it was risky, but the one that was doing the spatial manipulation had to be close and I didn''t want to just let him box us into a loop. "Remember tag, Shitheel? Let''s get ''em."


    I only saw the one bounty hunter, which seemed like a good thing but actually just made me nervous. Where were the others? What were they doing? If they were keeping Hugh from loading Errod and Katrin onto a boat we were in trouble, and if they were coming up from behind me somehow that wasn''t great either. Regardless, I aimed Shitheel right at him and thankfully the dumbass screamed in anger and swung a club at us. If he''d cowered or dodged, Shitheel probably would have just scared him since - for all his aggression and stubbornness - he wasn''t actually a mean animal.


    But with that club swinging, Shitheel paused only a moment to turn his bony head and take the first hit in a way that couldn''t injure him and then I felt his muscles bunching up underneath me and he shot forward like a piston. That battering ram head slammed into the bounty hunter and sent him flying, and I pulled hard on the reins to get Shitheel turned around again so we could keep running. "Good boy. Fuck those guys."


    We made it to the edge of town and stopped for a moment by that same boulder I''d parked the wagon behind earlier. I needed Shitheel to have a moment to rest, and I also wanted to be sure we were being pursued so that Hugh could do his part. With my adrenaline pumping the flight through the town felt like it had taken half an hour or more, but I knew it had been less than six minutes; there was no way Hugh had had time to get onto the boat yet. Still, the first part of the plan had essentially worked so far as I could tell.


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    I waited, jittering with nervousness and feeling that energy seeping into Shitheel who began to pace anxiously, and finally I saw the bounty hunters approaching in the distance - they''d gone to retrieve their mounts. Good. They spotted me and burst into a gallop, and the one Shitheel had hit immediately slowed while clutching his chest. Yeah, bouncing up and down in a saddle probably hurt like hell for him, there was no way he didn''t have broken ribs. None of the others looked injured, which meant they hadn''t tried anything on Hugh.


    I let them get a little closer and then spurred Shitheel into action, directing him off into the jungle. The rhino things were a little bigger and clumsier than Shitheel, but narrower and more agile than an Earth rhinoceros. That meant I could pretty easily stay ahead, but could keep them close without it looking too suspicious. I watched for landmarks I''d seen that morning, weaving among the trees and occasionally turning to watch my pursuers. One was gone, leaving his mount behind, but I hadn''t seen where he had gotten to.


    It had been maybe twelve minutes since I had started running and I was almost out of space to work in before I had to trigger the next part of the plan, so I just crossed my fingers that Hugh had been able to get the clerk moving quickly. The boat had already been prepped ahead of time and wasn''t far from the jail, so it all came down to how well he could talk his way past any paperwork.


    I felt gravity start to go wonky again and Shitheel instinctively bit the tree next to him and dug in his claws, but I could tell we were going to go flying upwards. Gravity was pulling me upwards but weakly, which meant that Shitheel didn''t just immediately get yanked free from the tree and go tumbling into the sky. My perspective was shifting so I seemed to be hanging from a dinosaur over an endless drop, and I felt a seed of panic growing inside me. I was about to turn and look at my pursuers when I remembered that one was missing, and if he had gravity manipulation... I scanned the trees around us instead, and sure enough the fucker was up in one of them.


    I wanted to throw a knife, but was suddenly unsure of how to aim it - ''down'' was above me, but only for a few feet in either direction probably. With the distance he was at I would normally make some subtle adjustment for gravity, right? The thing was, it was all instinctive at this point - I''d learned over time by practicing, but I couldn''t afford to take a practice shot this time because I had to catch him by surprise. I suddenly regretted not having leveled up probability magic. I knew I couldn''t just wait around though, so I released my legs - dangling upwards by one hand on Shitheel''s harness - and threw my knife as hard as I could.


    It didn''t hit where I wanted, barely clipping his upper arm. Thankfully the dumbass was wearing an armored vest that left his limbs unprotected and so when the force enchantment triggered the knife went all the way out the other side - not the most damaging injury, but plenty startling enough to fuck up his concentration. We crashed down, Shitheel almost falling on me, and I scrambled onto his back before he could recover and decide he didn''t want a rider anymore.


    He ran off eagerly through the trees, clearly understanding at this point that we were being pursued. I knew I had to start the last part of the plan now, whether or not I''d bought Hugh enough time. They were just too close to me. I burst through out of the underbrush and was finally on a nice clear trail, giving me a chance to get some distance between me and the bounty hunters. I could hear them emerging from the jungle just a few seconds later, but they were too late, even if they didn''t know it yet.


    Shitheel''s nostrils flared but he kept running, the only one of our four moskar that I knew would be brave enough to do so. Would the bounty hunter''s mounts refuse to follow, or would they ignore the smell that now filled the air? I was hoping for the latter, since if they stopped chasing me now it was likely I''d be killed. I spared a glance backwards and two of the mounts were in hot pursuit. One had two riders, the gravity guy''s mount apparently having fallen behind, and the one with spatial magic was nowhere to be seen. Good enough.


    There was a warning hoot from up ahead, and then some more from behind - my unwitting reinforcements had noticed us. In response, I started hooting as well, more frantically. If I was right about what I''d seen when Errod did it, that would be enough for them to start off focusing on the others - although it didn''t mean they wouldn''t also try to kill me for cutting through their territory. The first tixmin lunged out from ahead of me, but the cat-faced giant gorilla started off with a threat rather than attacking - it beat its chest and bared its fangs at me, but didn''t act fast enough to get in Shitheel''s way.


    Sure enough, as another jumped down from a tree ahead it looked from me to the bounty hunters, and between me calling out a warning and the others being a larger group it erred on the side of hurling a fucking boulder at the rhinos. The stink was suddenly overwhelming, and I saw the main tixmin camp - nest? den? whatever - off to our right as Shitheel ran faster than I had ever seen an animal move. He hissed at the beasts as we passed them, like a driver flipping someone off on the highway, and then we were back in the trees as the sounds of violence erupted behind us.


    I looked back and saw one of the gigantic monsters chasing, but a juvenile - its scars looking awful familiar - tugged its arm and redirected it towards the bounty hunters who would now be much closer to where the children were playing. Trusting Shitheel to keep running, I twisted all the way around to see if I could tell what was going on, and caught a glimpse of the gravity one flying up above the canopy trying to dodge huge rocks and entire trees; he''d have his hands full just trying to get his friends out of there, and I was already getting way ahead of him.


    I angled towards the Nubasarri river and found a clearing on the banks, then slid off of Shitheel and stood there panting. Shitheel looked around nervously, and then began drinking while keeping one eye on the jungle. I gave him some neck scritches as I told him - probably for the first time ever - that he was the best and had done an amazing job. I stepped away and onto a rocky outcrop that gave a better view of the river and could see a boat approaching. I hadn''t seen Kalyssi''s boat from the front, so I just crossed my fingers it was her and that Hugh had gotten everyone aboard.


    "That was a neat trick," a voice said from the edge of the trees. I spun around, reaching for a knife, but almost immediately I felt the air pressure increase and saw a strange distortion in front of me. I''d been sealed in a force cage. It was Kraiklin, and he was pretty banged up - one arm was hanging limp, and there was blood dripping out of his pant leg.


    "Where are your friends? Shouldn''t you be off helping them?"


    "Oh, we weren''t really friends," he said, voice muffled somewhat by the wall of force between us, "and this way I get to keep the whole bounty for myself. My cousin has some questions for you, but if you won''t answer them there''s good news - Halenvar will accept your corpse."


    "I don''t know or care who your cousin is, and Halenvar is done, dude. They lost. Who do you think is going to pay you? Are you going to just walk through the Endless Empire''s army with my body and... what, head to the prison where they''re keeping the king?"


    "No, little one. The king isn''t the one that put out the bounty. That was the Behemoth, and he''s not locked up. He wants you as a trophy."


    "Eh, he''s just pissed that my friends kicked his ass and killed Telen. But hey, if you think you''ll fare better than Halenvar''s two best soldiers I guess you can try your luck. Maybe my friends will let you live, who knows?"


    There was a tiny flicker of surprise or concern on his face, but it passed quickly. I wasn''t even sure if he believed me, although the fact that the Behemoth had essentially put a hit out on me must lend a little credibility. Too late I realized it might have been better to appeal to his greed and try to pay him off, something I wasn''t used to being able to do. Anyway, it didn''t seem likely it would have worked with him looking so eager to kill me. He pulled out a sword and placed the tip against the force cage, then smiled wickedly. "I''m going to -"


    "Oh god, seriously? You''re going to do the whole speech about enjoying this and watching me bleed out slowly, aren''t you? For fucks sake. Grow up."


    He looked confused, and paused for a moment. "You should be a bit more concerned about what''s about to happen."


    "Sure, but I know a few things you don''t. First of all, I was stabbed and left to bleed out a few months ago and yeah, it sucked, but honestly compared to some of the menstrual cramps I''ve had it''s like... eh. And second, you''re about to get your ass kicked because you weren''t paying attention to what was behind you."


    He rolled his eyes, probably assuming I was making shit up. Of course I''d seen Shitheel take notice of the sword when he pulled it out, and watched as he had gotten into his defensive position - defensive being ''aggressive but not quite yet'' when it came to Shitheel. In a perfect world Kraiklin would have gotten rammed to death right as he rolled his eyes, but instead Shitheel was still just sitting there coiled to attack. Thankfully the bounty hunter did finally turn to look and - upon seeing Shitheel looking hostile - made the absolute worst decision and took a swing.


    The sword cut surprisingly deep into that bony plate on the front of Shitheel''s head, and the bounty hunter threw a force shield up to handle the counterattack - but when Shitheel slammed into it the bounty hunter grunted as if struck and looked surprised. Inspired, I began hitting the walls around me as hard as I could in case it weakened him or drained extra mana, though I suspected there was some threshold I needed to cross to do anything.


    The bounty hunter swung again at Shitheel but missed, and then had to use another shield to keep from being crushed in return. I felt something, the air pressure going back to normal along with an increase in the sounds around me - he''d opened up the wall somewhere to spare some mana. The barrier was still there, clearly, but it seemed to stop at my shins. If I had a little more room I could have gotten down on my hands and knees and maybe squeezed free, but there wasn''t really enough space to work with. Still, I did my best to scrunch down so I could reach under the gap, not that it did me any good. I couldn''t throw a knife like that, and couldn''t reach anything. Worse, after a moment the cage shrank from above so I couldn''t even stand back up. Well, shit.


    Shitheel shrieked as he was slashed again, and backed away nervously.


    "Okay, let''s just deal with you - maybe your pet will back off once you''re dead." Kraiklin marched over to me and raised his sword, and I felt another gap appear in the force wall that would allow him to run me through. I thought there was maybe a chance I could stab him in the hand once it was closer, but since it would only be closer as a result of the sword being inside me that didn''t seem like it would help much - I was wearing my bulletproof jacket but I''d never tested it, and with me trapped he could probably just reposition the opening until he found a more vulnerable bit of me. Thankfully he had to dodge, as Shitheel miraculously took offense to the threat and charged once more.


    The gap stayed open, and I wiggled around to get an arm out. The angle was terrible, but with him retreating a few steps from Shitheel''s onslaught and me finally having a way to move my whole arm I took a chance and threw a knife. It was a ridiculously bad shot and barely hit him, nearly going between his legs and missing entirely. Instead it hit his left calf and caused him to stumble, at which point he barely threw a shield up in time to stop Shitheel''s head and didn''t see the follow-up kick coming. He howled in pain, and the barrier around me vanished.


    He stabbed into Shitheel, who shrieked and pulled back, but before he could stand or even get into position to swing again I was on top of him - I pushed his sword arm away and headbutted him, feeling his nose break. It was a perfect shot which meant the pain to my forehead was minimal, and I followed it up with a throat punch. I''d been warned never to hit anyone in the throat in a fight since it was way too easy to kill someone by mistake, but considering the fact that this guy wanted to murder me I wasn''t super concerned.


    He threw me off and scrambled back like a crab, gurgling from either the bloody nose or a damaged windpipe. Shitheel seemed to be badly hurt from that last stab but was eager to finish things, and the bounty hunter clearly couldn''t force cage us both - so he put a wall up around himself and ran into the jungle. I wondered if there was any chance he could escape the tixmin in his condition. It seemed... unlikely. Even if he did, I had to hope he was humiliated and scared enough he wouldn''t want to fuck with me again.


    I breathed a sigh of relief as the boat came into view and pulled close to the shore, Katrin and Errod waving from the deck. Shitheel was, for once, perfectly docile as we loaded him up - although he fought like hell when we tried to get him onto the healing platform that we had laboriously dragged out of the wagon, damaging the door in the process. Hugh had to pin him down, but after the healing started to kick in Shitheel seemed to get the message and stayed put just barely long enough to get the stab wound in his side mostly healed. He didn''t let us do it properly, but at least he wouldn''t bleed to death or get an infection.


    "Well," Hugh said, "the plan did not go so well as you hoped, but also not as bad as I feared. You did not end up where you indicated, I was supposed to meet you further upstream to assist if needed."


    "Oh. Well, I guess my geography was off. It''s fine."


    Hugh frowned. "I should not have allowed this. I underestimated their strength."


    "It''s fine, Hugh."


    "You are always seemingly on the verge of getting yourself killed, yes?"


    "I know, I know. But I always live."


    "So far. Not forever."


    "Well, it all worked out this time. I''m fine, and I didn''t even get stabbed."


    Hugh smiled, the look predatory and sinister. "Not so fast - the stabbing is yet to come, yes?"


    I took an involuntary step back. "Excuse me?"


    "You made a promise, Calliope Smith. Stand still." And Hugh held up my golden nose ring. Oh, right.

 CHAPTER 061: Cross-Referencing

    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.

 CHAPTER 062: So Maybe It Wasnt Something She Ate

    Hugh wasn''t amused.


    Errod hadn''t said much, but Hugh now knew - roughly - why Hammersmith wanted me. Before, he''d been under the impression that the entire interest in me was about the fact that I was from somewhere strange. The Grand Alignment Task Force had a broad interest in anything odd going on that could conceivably turn into a bigger problem when the Grand Alignment actually hit, and so it was well within normal expectations to want to talk to someone that had mysteriously arrived from some distant land, but also I clearly wasn''t trying to become a demigod or take over anywhere or do some huge dangerous magical experiment. And so, as Hugh thought, if I wasn''t willing and wasn''t a risk then why shouldn''t I be allowed to fuck off somewhere?


    It wasn''t that he thought I should, and it certainly wasn''t that he didn''t respect Hammersmith - hell, he clearly worshiped her - it was just that he believed people should have the right to make their own choices whenever reasonable. This was, of course, why Connie had insisted it be him that come to get me. But now that he knew I was absolutely vital to getting into Brinkmar to not only end the war but stop Halenvar from doing whatever dangerous shit they had planned (he didn''t know the world had briefly ended, thank god) he wasn''t about to set me free no matter how nicely I asked.


    I was frustrated with Errod, but I knew that it wasn''t really his fault. And anyway, the main thing I wanted kept secret was my extra Dumines which I wasn''t sure would be possible in the long term; Hammersmith would almost certainly have someone give me the once-over and find them. Second to that was the existence of Earth, but Hammersmith already knew that and so the risk of having some magical empire try to invade or, worse, cause a nation from Earth to invade Fantasyland was already out there. Keeping Erathik in the dark was of questionable benefit, I didn''t have the first guess if it would mean a race to Earth or pressure for them to have some sort of treaty saying they would both leave it alone.


    Hugh tried to - gently - give me shit for not telling him, but I wasn''t going to let that stand. "To be fair, I didn''t know until after we split up. And why didn''t Hammersmith tell you?"


    "I am only a retired royal guard," he said, "and she may have had valid reasons to keep this information from me."


    "Bullshit. You didn''t correct me just now. I said Hammersmith, and you always correct me with her full title. You''re distracted, and probably pissed. She should have told you, or someone above you should have told you, or something. Admit it."


    He scowled. "Very perceptive, Calliope Smith. Yes, I am bothered. But that is a matter for me to discuss with other people, yes? With you, my concern is your careless risk-taking. You should have stayed with Lord Protector Hammersmith, and not run off to find the Duminere or trekked off into the jungle to train and fight monsters."


    "Again, bullshit. Hammersmith was supposed to keep me safe? I got attacked by Telen and the Behemoth under her watch, and then were able to waltz right out of the fortress afterwards."


    "Yes, you seem to be good at vanishing from secure locations."


    That was the second time he''d made a comment like that, and I was certain now that he thought I''d done some clever escape from Erathik as opposed to just leaving through the city gates. It did lend some credence to Katrin''s suggestion that Lute might have done something to get us out of there but I couldn''t probe more without tipping Hugh off and either getting Lute in trouble - which I didn''t want to do if he really had helped us - or making it clear I was clueless.


    "Anyway, we killed Telen - you''re welcome - and hucked the Behemoth into another plane. And then we made your nation way stronger by finding that Duminere - you''re welcome again - and we''re still doing just fine. I can handle myself." I didn''t mention that I, personally, hadn''t really done any of that shit. Connie had stolen the location of the Duminere from the other timeline and blown up Telen with time mana, and Sige had neutralized the Behemoth. I''d mainly just followed along and tried to avoid dying. I had for sure taken care of those bounty hunters, but mentioning that wouldn''t go over well since he was pissed that I was risking myself and that was a ridiculously risky maneuver.


    "Not my nation, our nation." Hugh said, and tapped my nose ring. "And the fact that it has all worked out well is good, but you could not have known that beforehand. No, I will have to escort you to the nearest city with a teleportation circle, and from there to... hmm. I suppose still Lord Protector Hammersmith, although I will be discussing matters with the Primarch, yes?"


    I considered ditching Hugh somehow, but in addition to not being sure I could pull that off I also ran into a problem with Errod. He didn''t openly agree with Hugh, but as soon as we were alone he nervously broke the news that he was not down to try any shenanigans.


    "I felt nervous about even leaving Theramas, but the situation moved too quickly. And then we were on the road, and I did, somewhat selfishly, want us to make it to the Duminere. When we were able to leave Erathik so easily I convinced myself that meant they''d figured something out and didn''t need you anymore, and besides... I''d seen how hard it was on Connie to be stuck in one place and I didn''t want that for you. But now we know that there are still bounties on you, and it''s only two months, and if there''s any chance that the whole world is at stake - I know you think that''s solved but I mean any chance at all - we need to make sure you get the way to Brinkmar open. My only remaining concern is them seeing your other Dumines, but I had some thoughts about how to deal with those."


    Katrin tilted her head. "We''d talked about covering two of them up, we could try to convince Hugh to let us get that done - under the guise of shopping for supplies of course - before we head to wherever Lord Protector Hammersmith wants you."


    "I had that thought, but I believe it would actually be better to cover them with false Dumines, maybe even get a few extra. As soon as someone realizes you have multiple, if they pry you can have them test one of the fakes first. It would look like you''re just paranoid and don''t want anyone to know which one is real, and since it''s known that nobody can have more than one as soon as they confirm whichever one you want to designate as the ''real'' one they''ll stop looking at the rest."


    That... was not a terrible idea. I wasn''t totally sold on it, but it was worth thinking about. I wasn''t ready to give Errod any credit though, because even if his reasons were good I was annoyed he wasn''t on my side about avoiding responsibility. It was hypocritical of me, of course, since when Connie had been the one saying we should escape Theramas I had the exact same thoughts as Errod; the stakes really were too high, and it really was a more than reasonable price to pay. But that was then, before I had these extra secrets and when I didn''t have to deal with the panic caused by knowing that the end of my freedom was so close. And so, despite knowing full well that I was wrong, I snarked at Errod.


    "You just want me to let you into Brinkmar because you think you''re going to be a knight of a cursed wasteland."


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    He looked... disappointed. "Callie. You know that''s not it. If it helps, if it convinces you, I''ll gladly agree to stay away - honestly I doubt Lord Protector Hammersmith would let me through the portal regardless."


    "Ugh. Fine. Fuck it, fine, I''ll go like a good little girl. But I''m going to bitch about it the whole way."


    We''d debarked from the barge and were once more traveling via wagons, with Hugh riding a moskar of a slightly different variety to ours - its head was more like an axe than a hammer. He slept in Errod''s wagon the two nights it rained, and outside otherwise. That meant Katrin and I still had plenty of privacy to talk about secret shit, like the fate lines. I hadn''t made as much progress with The Paradox of Fate as I would have liked to, partly because I was lazy but also because it was super dry and kept referencing other books or making assumptions about how much I already knew.


    It had left me with mixed feelings about developing that power.


    Based on the information available about messing with fate using wild magic, I was expecting it to have a huge up-front mana cost but then linger indefinitely for free which was actually pretty cool. The issue was that - unless doing it via a Dumine changed things - imprinting your intent onto it was a shaky prospect at best and even if you got it right you had no control over the execution. Let''s say I wanted to kill the Behemoth, and since he heals so quickly I fated one of my knives to end his life.


    The ideal outcome would be that next time I ran into him I would have a super lucky shot that would drive the knife directly into his brain, killing him before he could regenerate. But for that to happen, I''d have to be in a fight with him. So now fate would be drawing him to me, when I''d actually rather avoid him. When we did fight, there''d actually be no guarantee I would hit him at all. He could kill me and then ten years later just happen to die by that same knife, thrown by someone else. Or, hell, he could kill me and keep it as a souvenir and then ask his great grandkid to use it to put him out of his misery at the ripe age of a hundred and thirty.


    The book had a whole huge chapter on stories of fate gone wrong, monkey paw shit where people tried to use fate and had it bite them in the ass. Wish for money, you get a settlement for the wrongful death of your only child. Ask for power, you accidentally devastate your whole town because you didn''t get the ability to actually control that power. It could also fail in sillier ways, like finding a single coin on the ground fulfilling your fate of finding riches, or it could just... fail. Fate made things more likely, it tried to manipulate the world to achieve a result, but sometimes that simply wasn''t enough. I could fate myself to go to the moon, but if the moon was inaccessible my fate wouldn''t change that.


    Even the Clockmaker was rumored to have fucked up with fate, though as with most stories there was no guarantee it was true. There were as many tales explaining the fall of the Old Empire as there were stars in the sky, but one claimed that he tried to harness fate and it caused his downfall instead. The only person that had truly mastered it was some chick named Poicelria, who had lived like four thousand years ago; her palace was still largely intact and run by a guru that claimed to be her descendant, but reading between the lines I didn''t think professor Yanipliss had been impressed. Still, it was on the list. Poicelria must have been important, she''d been mentioned in that primer on the gifts Dumines could grant that Connie had given me.


    I''d want to develop it eventually despite the risk, but I wanted to do it right. Fate would work best with things that were already random, so it would be trivial to make a coin come up tails or something. But again, all indications were that I wouldn''t be able to do it on the fly - for that, I''d probably be better served by regular old Probability magic. Longer-term stuff was probably the better use for it - the classic health, wealth, and happiness thing. That could be nice, but it wasn''t urgent. Instead, I was thinking that my first foray into that branch of magic would have to be reading the fate lines, or maybe manipulating them somehow.


    Of course not everything I was seeing was a fate thread, but it did seem like despite the different colors anything with that particular opalescent sheen was fate-adjacent. From cycling through spells with Katrin I was pretty sure black was Perception, red was Comprehension, and white was Binding. Further, the two threads almost everyone had coming off of them were yellow-orange and orange-yellow - I was incapable of explaining to Katrin what the difference was - so while I didn''t know which was which that would be Thought and Spirit.


    Some of the fate threads were kinda turquoise, so I was tempted to say green was Temporal, but again I couldn''t say why some were simultaneously two colors and others were a blend or somehow layered or... it was all slightly different. And some threads turned kinda green or purple at the ends, but was that the same green? And was the purple just purple, or was it red and blue? I kinda wanted my money back on the color thing, honestly.


    But if nothing else, that silvery opalescent property did seem to indicate a sort of... permanency. If I could learn to just tap into that, maybe I could take that property of fate magic and apply it to Binding in general - Katrin already wanted me to learn how to make her mana wells last without her paying attention to them, but if I did it this way could I make it last forever? That would be immensely valuable. Likewise, people did things to bind spirits to them all the time and while it could be made permanent it had been implied there was some ongoing drain on your mana - could I circumvent that?


    I looked at all the threads coming off me, and tried to categorize them. One in particular had a lot of colors to it, more than any of the others. Black, red, orange, yellow, and white - and it, too, had that shimmer to it. I suspected there was even more going on than I could see, since there were twenty-seven gifts I hadn''t taken and therefore hadn''t linked that ability to. If one was made with fate magic and, I don''t know, Force... would I just see the opalescent shimmer without any actual color? Or would that be invisible to me?


    I ran my hand through the extra colorful one, trying to guess what it was. Could I feel it at all? Perception was in there, after all. I closed my eyes, and visualized it. Was it my imagination, or was there something there? A connection, or a feeling of motion? I imagined grabbing it and feeling it in my hands, and it was like I could sense a phantom tingle. It felt like when you grabbed a metal pipe and could feel the water rushing through it, but somehow I was sure whatever was going on there was something going both directions.


    I tried to zoom in somehow, to focus on whatever that rushing sensation was, and without opening my eyes I could see.


    I was standing in the woods, but it wasn''t anywhere near where our wagons actually were. The trees weren''t the same type, the smell wasn''t the same, and it was colder. I couldn''t control my body which should have scared me but it felt... familiar, somehow. I could feel strange clothing against my skin, and my breath was blowing back onto my face as if I was... oh. I was wearing a mask. I watched as I ground up some sort of vegetable and added it to a pot of water, and then mid-stride I stopped dead and stood very still. A hoarse voice whispered from my mouth.


    "This connection is for me to spy on you, not the other way around. I wonder, do you know whose eyes you are looking out from? You stumble around, so stupid. So careless. Do you know anything at all? No matter. It is time for you to leave." The wild mage stepped back to the cookpot, bubbling over the fire, and stuck her knife just under it into the flames. I felt something about the connection change, and when I tried to break away nothing happened; she was holding me there, in her body. I was using mana and hadn''t been at full, so in theory the connection would fail on its own eventually - unless she could somehow force it to use up my life mana as well.


    Slowly the wild mage pulled the knife out and pressed it against the skin of her arm. It was agony. I was sure that I was thrashing around like an animal in a trap, but at the same time my body was calmly burning itself without flinching. I could feel, distantly, someone shaking my actual body by the shoulders. A slap on the face. Water splashing on me. They were trying to wake me up.


    "I will come to you, when it is time for you to die," that scratchy voice whispered, "until then you will not spy on me. Do you understand?"


    And I was back in the camp, collapsed on the ground and gasping for air.

 CHAPTER 063: Cant See The Jigsaw For The Pieces

    What I thought of as divination or scrying could be done without any kind of connection, but if so it was trivial to stop with the right wards. I wasn''t clear on how exactly people used blood or hair or whatever, but the point was to have a solid connection to your target. The better the connection, the harder it would be to stop it. I''d linked my own ability to my lutore, which basically meant I was targeting myself using my whole person as a focus; I suspected I''d be able to power through most wards that way, but the tradeoff is that I could only see... me.


    The wild mage had tethered me with a fate thread, or a fate-adjacent one anyway - it had that silvery opalescence. That meant it was permanent, and invisible to anyone but me so far as I knew. It was a really good trick, and I was already planning on stealing it at some point so I could check on Katrin and Errod in an emergency. Hell, if I could learn to make new threads I could tag things and then check on them whenever I wanted. Maybe even make bugs I could plant places. As cool as that was, I didn''t want anyone else doing it to me.


    I was staring into the gap between my Dumines, willing that guide to give me a solution. The issue was that breaking fate threads was not something it would offer. That didn''t mean it was impossible, exactly - my communication with my Dumines was odd, and it was possible I was asking for the wrong thing or just couldn''t do it without getting other abilities first. Could I move it on to something else? Maybe. I had a little potential, but not much - I''d been planning on using it to get mental defenses but had been distracted by everything else going on.


    That was a thought. If I couldn''t sever the thread, could I just prevent it from functioning? Hell, I''d already managed to use it to turn things around and spy on the wild mage. Surely I could block it off. Some fiddling around and prodding led me to a modification on the first abilities I''d bought, the strange binding of the layers that made up my lutore and the comprehension of the fourth-dimensional squiggles under my Dumine interface. That eye-watering pattern was the magic inscribed onto my Dumine, and if the threads attached there too it wasn''t a big change to let me have a greater understanding of those as well. I couldn''t tell if it was going to do what I wanted, and I could see red in the corners of my vision as if the normal rules of the Dumines that I was bypassing would be preventing this purchase. Hmm.


    In the end, the fact that I couldn''t easily un-do it made me set that plan aside for the time being. I could practice whatever had let me use it to see the wild mage, and maybe just manually keep a metaphorical eye on the thread - although that would take dedicated attention in a way I couldn''t keep up all the time. Frustrated, I gave up and called the others into my wagon. They had been concerned about my flailing, but I''d wanted to take some time to process before trying to explain what was going on - especially since I wasn''t sure how much to tell Hugh.


    "Okay, the short version is there''s a... spell, of sorts, that is almost impossible to detect and is allowing a wild mage who wants me dead to spy on me. I turned it around to see her instead, and she held me there somehow and burned herself to punish me because she''s... a bit dramatic, I guess. If I focus on it I can - I think - guarantee she''s not watching us right now, but I don''t know how well I can detect it passively."


    "Before we discuss anything else," Katrin said, "how likely is it that this has some connection to that figment of your imagination that''s been running around in your head? They both seem to want to kill you, and both are - in a sense - spying on you. If they''re the same person, or working together, then that may change how we approach this."


    Hugh''s eyebrows climbed even higher than they had been, but he kept his mouth shut.


    "I''m remaining paranoid about that, but I still think it''s most likely that the person I''ve seen running around in my head is part of my subconscious - I''m sure I''ve seen her before in dreams, and she spoke English, and... I don''t know. It''s still possible it''s the wild mage disguising herself as a figment of my imagination, or some totally separate thing. I guess it would partly depend on how the spell works, and we don''t know that."


    Katrin looked annoyed. "If I could see it being cast maybe I would know, although with wild magic... at any rate, it''s well beyond my ability to tell you details about the spell, if it''s possible at all."


    Hugh looked like he was about to say something, so I waited. It took him a moment to finally decide where to start. "When did she put this spell on you?"


    "Well, in retrospect I think I accidentally used it to spy on her a while back when we fought Telen and the Behemoth," I answered, "because I remember seeing her right outside our window while we were sleeping. So it''s possible she cast it right then so she could keep tabs on us if we got away? For sure no later than that."


    Katrin shook her head. "Earlier. They were just arriving, and one of the only things we know about spellcasting with..." She paused and looked at Hugh, then at me. I shrugged and she continued. "With fate magic... is that it''s not easy. She couldn''t have just run up and cast that sort of thing through the window at you on the fly."


    "Right, true. So then... not while we were traveling, but we stayed at the Necropolis for a bit. I don''t think that''s likely at all. Before that... not during the attack at Theramas obviously, but maybe while they scouted out the location? While we were in the apartment? I would think Hammersmith -"


    "Lord Protector Hammersmith," Hugh corrected.


    "- Lord Hammerpants would have had some sort of shit in place that would have alerted her to that kind of big magic targeting us. She doesn''t strike me as the type to think a few bodyguards will do the trick. But it had to be then, because before that I was traveling with Hugh and you guys and before that I''d just arrived and was up in the mountains nearly dying every time I ate anything."


    Hugh shrugged. "Could it have been part of the spell that brought you here?"


    I looked at Katrin and raised an eyebrow, and she frowned as she tried to think about it. "I don''t know. It seems like that would be... needlessly complicated, wouldn''t it? Bring you into this... continent... but also link to you with fate magic to spy on you? I feel like those would be two different spells."


    "Okay, wait, you''re on to something there. Why would she want to spy on me at all? She''s attacked us, right? And when she did, she certainly seemed to be planning on killing me. She held off when there were kids in the way, but I don''t think that was for my benefit. But if we''re saying that this fucking spell is super tricky and probably needed all sorts of mana or multiple casters or whatever, then... why not just kill me when she cast it? Like, there are a thousand ways to just murder someone with magic, right?"


    Hugh tapped his nose ring in what was obviously some common gesture. I''d seen some people in Erathik do it, and whatever the specific meaning it seemed to be positive. "The spell must do something other than spying, yes? A way to spy remotely that lasts seemingly forever is valuable, but she would not have tried to kill you unless this was discovered. Better to keep you there as an asset, especially since she would have known Lord Protector Hammersmith still wanted your assistance."


    "What else would it do, that she doesn''t need it to do anymore? Maybe it really was just for spying, and when I tapped into it back in Zistarne she decided I knew about it. I mean I probably should have figured it out, or at least questioned my sudden divination more, and she can''t be watching us all the time so she could have missed the parts where we talked about not knowing what that was. Or she heard, and thought it was deliberate misinformation. So maybe she thought the jig was up and it was time to kill me. Though... I mean, she did seem like she was going to kill me in that first fight too. Fuck. I don''t know. There''s too much going on. Hugh, you''re the actual adult here. Tell me what to do."


    Hugh smiled as he looked around the wagon. "You won''t like the answer, Calliope Smith. What you should do is lock yourself in here, yes? We would not tell you where we are going, and therefore this woman would not know either. If your vision of her was through her eyes, then the reverse should be true which means so long as you cannot see outside the wagon she is powerless. Is our safety worth your boredom?"


    And I wanted to say no. That sounded fucking awful, and it would be for at least a week - maybe longer. How would I go to the bathroom - would I need to be led out with my eyes shut? And the wagons were so small! But he''d worded it that way on purpose, the old bastard. If I said no, I''d be acknowledging that I valued my own comfort over the lives of my friends. This was the same conversation I''d had with Errod, about handing myself to Hammersmith.


    "Of course I can stay in the wagon," I said, internally screaming.


    He nodded. "Then I will work on getting us safely to a city, at which point we are best served by arranging teleportation to Lord Protector Hammersmith. There is one other option, of course, but it is hard to plan for."


    "What''s that?"


    "It is simple, yes? We lure the wild mage in and we kill her."


    And so began several days of torment. It wasn''t actually as bad as I''d feared; I was in my own wagon that I loved, and I could feel us moving which helped somehow. On top of that, being able to go into my memory palace meant I at least had the illusion of freedom - although it was bad for me to just lay in one place all day which meant I had to frequently get up and stretch. It was a bit of a challenge to exercise in that tiny space, but I''d managed to turn it into a game.


    "Okay," I said from my spot on Katrin''s bunk, "no spilling the water this time."


    My body sat up on its bed, swiveled, and reached out to grab the wooden mug full of water on the counter - my aim was off a bit, but it sort of rolled into my palm and I closed my fingers around it successfully. I could feel it, just barely, a phantom sensation against my imaginary skin. Now to stand up and do my little routine.


    The first few times I''d tried walking my body around while meditating it was a disaster, because there was a disconnect between my mental perspective and the orientation of my actual body. I banged into things, tripped, and even punched myself at one point. I could do it by meditating really shallowly, but that prevented me from having divination going in any useful way. The goal was to be able to control myself smoothly in third person like I was playing a video game, so that I could keep my divination up all the time - or at least until I ran out of mana.


    If I stayed close to my body and didn''t - for example - peek through a nearby wall then I could keep it up for a long time, and at the moment I couldn''t peek through the wall anyway since it would defeat the whole purpose of keeping me locked in the wagon. Hugh had even hung up a blanket outside the door so that Katrin could come and go without accidentally giving me a peek, though just to be paranoid she also always knocked so I would close my eyes. I wondered, sometimes, where we were going - but my knowledge of geography was still pretty sparse despite some tutoring from Errod, and anyway Hugh would be taking us along an odd route and to an unexpected city to guarantee we wouldn''t be ambushed by the wild mage. So much for going back to Sentortzi.


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    I watched, feeling disconnected from my body, as it did some stretches without spilling any water. I was getting pretty good, and when I could eventually get the hell out of the wagon I was even thinking of trying to spar with Errod while using divination. It would be like a real life fighting game. It should also be good for party tricks, since it meant I could do things with my eyes closed. Eventually I decided I had successfully prevented myself from getting bed sores and directed my body back to the bed to lay down once more.


    "Okay. Enough cramped wagon time. Holodeck, end program."


    The wagon flickered out of existence, and I was in an empty hotel room. Huh, I hadn''t thought that would actually work. I took a moment to gauge my mana - at maybe a fifth of my maximum which would last for a long time if I didn''t do anything fancy - and then headed out into the hotel to poke around. I was still chipping away at some memories with Divination, like digging a tunnel through a mountain. Sooner or later I''d find something that had been obscured by the foggy or overwritten memories. If it didn''t take so much mana to do, or take so long to recover my mana in the wagon, I would have been done already.


    I hadn''t seen the scar-faced me for a while, in fact not since she yelled at me and stormed off. I couldn''t decide if that was evidence for or against her being an avatar of the wild mage, but in any case I was still working on figuring out how to build mental defenses in a way that would also apply to someone that was tethered to my lutore.


    I wandered into Universal Servicing Systems where I had lived for so long, and sat at the reception desk to read the Paradox of Fate for a while. It felt like I was really there, fourteen or fifteen years old and living on my own in an abandoned office, pawning the office equipment and scrounging in desk drawers for coins I could put in the vending machine. And then it happened again - for just a second all the desks were scattered and flipped over like a hurricane had passed through and there was a perfectly circular hole in one wall. I''d seen that glitch once before, but it had been right before I found that a year''s worth of memories were missing and I''d been new to poking around in my brain so I hadn''t worried about it much. But... well, that didn''t look great. Was it a memory? A dream? Whatever it was, I didn''t seem to have more than that split second glimpse.


    Too many loose ends, not enough resolutions. I tried to get back into reading, but now I was all distracted. I wanted to do something, anything that might actually let me figure out what was going on, but I was stuck hiding in a fucking wagon while I was taken to protective custody with Hammershit. There was really only one thing I could do, which would be to spy on the wild mage. She''d burned the shit out of me last time but only by actually burning herself, and so in a way that was a win for me, right? Plus the pain had faded pretty quickly, and the terror of the situation would be lessened by me knowing that at the worst I''d be kicked out as soon as I ran out of mana. And anyway, if I didn''t try it how would I learn to resist it? I''d been trying to improve my understanding and control over that thread, but there was just so little feedback.


    I knew that Katrin would be annoyed if she found out, and I would have to tell her eventually - especially if I learned something. But I suspected Hugh would be okay with it, since I was gathering intel and only really risking some discomfort probably. Boredom shouldn''t be the driving factor for big decisions, I know, but once I had started thinking about it I genuinely began to believe it was a good idea. So I took a deep breath and went in.


    She was in a town I didn''t recognize, and people were giving her strange looks. I could see bits of her dark green hair blowing into view as the wind caught it, but otherwise all I saw of her was the edges of the eye holes on the mask. Unlike my divination trick that I used on my own body, I seemed to be stuck viewing the world from her perspective so unless she looked in a mirror or something I wasn''t going to see her clearly. On my list of things to use divination on was some time she was nearby so I could look under the mask, but the thought of getting a better view of Connie''s death made me feel sick so I would need to do either the attack at Theramas or that brief encounter when we dropped off Elba.


    Elba... wait.


    I broke the connection successfully, immediately dropping into the real world. How had I not thought about it? How had I missed it? I hammered on the door and called for Katrin, who came in a moment later being careful to keep the blanket blocking my view.


    "Do you remember what Moss In Bloom, the Sahrger that had taken Elba''s place, said? She said her family could teach us things if we let her go, magic shit. She mentioned rituals of binding, scrying across worlds, and places of magic power where ''ancient rune-stones'' are. But when I came here, in that moment when I was teleported to this world, I saw those huge stones covered in runes."


    Katrin nodded thoughtfully, but I was pacing in excitement - not that I could pace far inside the wagon. "Rituals of binding? Scrying across worlds? The Sahrger must have had something to do with bringing me here and with the connection the wild mage was using - presumably she''s not a Sahrger herself, since she kept Moss In Bloom from escaping, but that could have been some sort of misdirection."


    Katrin''s face went pale. "Callie. We need to be careful. That other version of you, that''s the wild mage. She''s in your mind."


    "I... don''t know about that. She''d have to be changing how she... oh, no. A shape changer. A Klunlesh. Fuck, I remember now! Connie even told me, but then she died and I went catatonic and... mother fucker. I hadn''t seen her yet, I didn''t know she was there, but when Connie went out and confronted Telen there was someone else there that I didn''t see and when she reset time I asked. She said it was a Klunlesh she had killed in the other timeline. Shit. Oh, I''m so stupid. There''s just so much that''s been happening to me and it''s all so crazy that it''s hard to... to index all this shit. Fuck, she mentioned it before when I told her about the wild mage too. We were talking about people in masks and she said it, she said she killed a Klunlesh in a mask."


    Katrin took my hand, looking like she was sick to her stomach. "Callie. When we were talking about how you met Errod, the night you were attacked. You said you were already in a bad mood and had a headache because something reminded you of your mother. Right? I... need you to go to your memories, and look at your house. I know you don''t like revisiting that place but it''s important."


    She looked so serious. I nodded, and and dropped into my memory palace. I could still feel Katrin''s hand in mine, squeezing tightly as if for support - but it wasn''t a big deal. I had bad memories there, sure, but she was acting like this was some Earth-shattering shit. I walked silently through the hotel hallways until I came to a door that felt right, and there I was. Katrin had me go to my mother''s room, and then - strangely hesitant - asked me to describe the doorway.


    I looked at the familiar sight, totally unremarkable for a house from Earth. "Uh. It''s a door, just a regular door like all the others. There''s a light switch next to it - I guess you don''t know what that is - some scuff marks from shoes hitting the door by mistake, my great grandmother''s scissors on the wall over it..."


    "Describe them please?" She asked, sounding almost scared.


    "They''re just some old antique scissors, not even anything fancy. Just some old slightly rusty scissors."


    "Callie... you were right. This is about the Sahrger. But not the Klunlesh."


    Still standing in the memory of my mother''s house, I felt my brow furrow in confusion back in the wagon. "But Connie said -"


    "Connie was wrong. Klunlesh can''t use wild magic. Remember? Only humans can."


    Right, of course. "Okay, well. Maybe there was someone else with Telen? Or there was..."


    "Callie," Katrin said, "why are there iron scissors hanging over your mother''s door?"


    "Like I said, they belonged to my great grandmother."


    Katrin''s voice was quivering. "Callie, I''m so sorry. Iron blades are... used to keep Sahrger out of places."


    My first thought was that it made sense; my mom had always been into fairies, so it wasn''t a shock if that''s what she had meant - although a horseshoe was a little more traditional for over a doorway on Earth. And then, like being slowly dipped into ice water, the meaning of what Katrin was saying began to sink in. Mom had forbidden me from entering her room, and when I tried I... I physically had trouble doing it and got a terrible headache if I forced it.


    "So... no, that doesn''t... things are different on Earth, or... the wild mage did something."


    "The wild mage is seeing through your eyes, Callie. Just like Elba said she did with the..." Katrin stopped, unable to finish the sentence. Just like Elba said she did with the Sahrger that had taken her place. Elba had had a thread too, hadn''t she? What colors had it been?


    "No. Because I... I''m human." A human that could curse people, like the Sahrger. A human that frequently finds herself incapable of feeling empathy, like the Sahrger. What had the children we rescued had in common? Their parents had been blacksmiths. Well, my father was dead and my mother was an accountant but maybe it was harder to see things on Earth. Maybe they just saw my last name.


    Without wanting it to happen, my mother appeared in the memory pinning little eight-year-old me to the wall with those scissors at my neck. "You''re a monster," she said, "and I should slit your throat right now. I shouldn''t have to put up with this! I shouldn''t have to look at you, every day! Every day that... that face! It''s not fair!"


    She had known. She would have done it if the phone hadn''t suddenly rang, that little trick of probability magic I''d done to save my life without being consciously aware of it. The cut had been so shallow, but it had turned red and burned so badly that someone had called CPS and I''d ended up going to a foster home. I''d handled iron plenty of other times, but Katrin had said it when Elba was returned to her family: it required intent.


    The memory of my mother vanished, and I stormed out into the Long Haul Hotel. My heart was racing, and I could feel Katrin squeezing my hand even tighter than before but I just tuned it out. I burst through door after door, flaring divination to get a better look. The little potion shop I''d tried to go in before meeting Errod? An iron knife. The rune crafter shop I tried to go into in Erathik? Iron knife. I''d never actually gone through the door of that foster house Bill found for me the day before he quit, but probably there''d been a horseshoe or something.


    And the people that had known! The monster hunter in Theramas that had come at me with an iron blade? Or the barely disguised look of panic on the face of the Sahrger we''d negotiated with in Xeyul! "You have been far from home," she''d said, "please... excuse my rudeness." Hah. Yeah, what''s the social debt for leaving someone on another planet and never coming back for them? No wonder they''d been in a rush to call things even. Mother had known. The Sahrger had known. The wild mage had of course known - I opened another door and was in those tunnels, with her standing over me. Elba was pleading for my life.


    "She didn''t hurt us. She saved us from the Sahrger. She''s going to help us find our parents."


    The wild mage was clutching her bleeding throat, voice hoarse. "No, child. She lied to you. You''re not free from the Sahrger, can''t you see?"


    If I hadn''t cut her throat like those scissors cut me, would her voice have been clearer? Would I have recognized it as my own? Or... no, not my own. It was never mine. I wasn''t Calliope Smith. I felt a panic attack coming on, and at the same time sensed that thread, as if the panic was drawing on it somehow. Connie had told me that she lost her emotions entirely at some point, and they never came back. Was it when she killed the wild mage? Was everything human about me stolen? Just... siphoned off of some kidnapped child? Connie had said that...


    Oh no. Connie. My made up sister. "Oh, sure, I have a sister. Connie ran away when CPS came for us though, she''s living in the woods in a tree house with the fairies." Even I had known, or some tiny part of me had. I forced myself back into my body, shaking.


    "Katrin, we can''t kill her. I don''t. I can''t... I always imagined going on some adventure, being the main character of a story like Jake Ross, killing monsters and, and... Oh god, I''m the villain. I''ve always been the villain. She just wants to go home."

 CHAPTER 064: Contingecy Plans

    Almost immediately after Katrin left I got so tangled up in my own head that I went from horrified to angry. Fuck that masked bitch. She tried to kill me. It wasn''t my fault; I was a victim and she responded by trying to murder me. And what, now I was just supposed to give her my name? Also, what if it was all some sort of crazy trick? What if they''d put some kind of glamour on me so it seemed like I was a Sahrger? That was ridiculous, of course, everything made so much more sense this way, but... well, it didn''t seem fair that I had to be the one apologizing when it felt like my whole life had just been torn apart.


    I settled for leaving some notes in the memory palace, just in case she was still lurking around in there. Nothing too eloquent, but a brief message saying I knew who she was now and wanted to talk. I felt like I could maybe reach out and try to invite her in through the tether - hell, that had presumably been what happened when I tried to pull Katrin and Errod in, although it didn''t really explain the football team - but I wasn''t ready to do that just yet. There was no point in forcing a confrontation when I was still likely to tell her to go fuck herself. I knew that wasn''t right, and that I would need to apologize and try to make peace, but I wasn''t there yet.


    There was a knock at the door, and then it opened and Errod carefully leaned on the cabinet in the cramped space. He had an eyebrow arched all the way to his hairline, and a weary grin on his face. "Katrin says there''s something very serious we need to discuss. Are you going to try and change my mind again about going to Lord Protector Hammersmith?"


    "I... maybe? But that''s secondary to the actual... uh... thing. Errod, you know that I''ve had a lot of strange things about me, that we''ve... well, we''ve chalked it up to me being from Earth."


    This was hard. Errod was a good guy, much better than I was, but what would that mean? I was about to admit to being an accomplice in a kidnapping and identity theft scheme. I was confirming that it wasn''t just hyperbole and that I really was an actual sociopathic monster, and was in all likelihood feeding off of the soul of a real human - some poor abused girl who had tried to kill him which (for extra fun) meant that it was my fault he''d been attacked. I was silent for a moment, and then gave up and blurted it out.


    "Errod, I''m a Sahrger. A changeling. I''m not even really Calliope Smith."


    Errod looked shocked, but... there had been a delay. Had he just taken a second to process what I had said? Or did that look of surprise seem a little too... put on? "Oh," he said, "that''s... got to be very hard for you, to be just finding that out." He wasn''t a fantastic actor.


    "She told you already? I specifically asked her to let me -"


    He held a hand out to stop me. "No. Callie, no. Katrin didn''t say anything to me."


    "Oh please, I can tell you''re faking the surprise."


    He sighed, and slumped a little. "Don''t be mad."


    "I''m not I guess, but she..."


    "No, no. Don''t be mad at me. I... Callie, I''ve known for a long time."


    I wasn''t sure what I wanted to say to that, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was "You fucking what?"


    He held up his hands, defensively. "Callie, it''s just... it bothered me that those Sahrger granted us passage as if they owed you something instead of the other way around. And then those kids, they... well, it all sounded a little familiar, and then you said you had some innate magic, and... It all sort of added up. You didn''t see it because you had total faith in your own identity, and Katrin didn''t see it because she''s too clever, I think. She digs into the details and comes up with theories but sometimes she doesn''t take a step back and look at the bigger picture."


    "Why didn''t you say anything?"


    He sighed again, deeper this time, and then did an awkward little spin as he tried to pace around and found himself immediately out of space in the little wagon. "Well, honestly, I wasn''t completely certain. And it seemed like the sort of thing you''d want to figure out on your own. And... I don''t know, I figured there had to be a reason Connie didn''t tell you."


    Hang on. "Wait, she knew?"


    "She... she''d have to, right? Lord Protector Hammersmith would have told her, wouldn''t she?"


    "Hammersmith might not have known. What? Why are you giving me that look? It''s because I''m being an idiot again, isn''t it? Fuck. No, ah shit, you''re right. Someone shows up with these crazy stories and military intel, obviously Hammersmith took a good long look at her. Also - oh fuck - she said when she showed up she was all wrinkly and strange on one side from the time thing. She would have looked exactly like those super old Sahrger we saw, I even had that thought when her arm reverted that one time. Motherfucker. And wait, now that we''re talking about it... that guy, the one that looked at my memories after the burning building incident? He said some shit, I didn''t understand it at the time but..."


    He''d seen the edits on my memories. How could he not? It was a whole year plastered over with generic bullshit, it would probably be visible from space. But if he''d seen it that easily, and Hammersmith had obviously checked Connie out, then she knew that too. But Connie clearly hadn''t known about the memory edits or the Sahrger thing, which meant Hammersmith had kept all of it from her. From me.


    "Okay, new plan. Shit. I''m not going anywhere near Hammersmith. Fuck it. I know, I know, we''ll still need to get into Brinkmar - but I''m not spending more time than absolutely necessary with her and I''m certainly not putting myself into her custody. She''ll have people ready to try and bust in on the day, we can show up at the last second and let them in. I''ll still help save the world or whatever, I''m not a monster - well, okay, I kind of am, but..."


    Errod laughed.


    "Yeah, ha ha. But I mean, I''m literally a monster like my mom always said."


    "That''s - that''s awful. But Callie, don''t you understand? You keep talking about how bad you are at being a human, and how terrible you are. But you''re wonderful. Maybe you''re not the best person in the world, but Calliope? You are hands down the nicest, friendliest, most moral Sahrger that has ever lived. Give yourself some credit."


    "I... huh." I wanted to argue, but... well, he wasn''t wrong.


    He grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the bunk into a hug. "And frankly, you''ve always been too hard on yourself. You''ve consistently done the right thing, and while you may have been a bit... annoying... to live with for weeks at a time with no break, that''s most people." He released me and stepped back so he could look me in the eye. "You''ve implied that you''ve done bad things, and maybe you have, but I suspect that was years ago at this point. Let it go. And if you need to remind yourself to be good sometimes, well, I wish more people would be that active about monitoring themselves. It seems like most people just assume they''re good and don''t even consider it, which - trust me - leads to much worse behavior."


    I wasn''t sure what to say to that, so I just shrugged and kinda mumbled something.


    Errod seemed satisfied with that. "Anyway, this is a bit of a relief actually. I don''t know if you''ve already put this bit together, but you mentioned the wild mage has a connection to you and it''s been bothering me - do you think it''s possible that she''s..." he hesitated, probably stopping himself from saying ''the real Callie'', "the human one?"


    "Oh, she for sure is. She absolutely has to be."


    He nodded. "I was going to have to say something if Hugh did think of a way to lure her in and attack her. I mean, if she won''t listen and give you a chance I''ll stand by you but... I''d really rather not fight her if we can find another way. Can we? Have you thought of anything?"


    "I''m thinking. We know the default way is to just kill one or the other, which has clearly been the wild mage''s plan so far."


    "Until you mentioned the connection I just assumed she would be imprisoned somewhere. Did they let her go? Did she escape? Was the one who stole my toe another human that had been raised in Xeyul, since the mask looked so similar?"


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    "Oh! Shit, I can go back and use divination to see if someone actually stole your toe!"


    "Of course someone stole my toe. I told you they did."


    "Yeah, but... I mean, someone just jumps out of the bushes and takes your toe and vanishes? It always sounded sort of..."


    "Callie, you''re from another world that - somehow - nobody knows about. You''re a Sahrger that thinks she''s human and who has met a time traveling copy of herself. You have three Dumines. But if I say someone in a mask stole my toe, you''re going to look at me like I''m crazy and say it''s not believable?"


    "Fuck. Yeah, I can''t really argue with that. You''re absolutely right, and I''m sorry I ever doubted you. And we really will try to see who took your toe later, although a few other things are obviously going to take priority for now. I think... Professor Yanipliss doesn''t know how to cut fate threads probably. But in his book there was some stuff, I think we should make a detour to go see the guru that lives at Poicelria''s place on top of... whatever mountain it was. I can look it up. It''s that, threaten a Sahrger until they talk, or try to contact a god. And I don''t have a lot of faith in those last two."


    Errod winced. "Hugh isn''t going to like the new plan."


    "He''s a hard one for me to get a handle on. He let us go before, and he let me almost get myself killed doing my plan with the bounty hunters. But then he talks about Hammersmith like she''s the second coming - uh, Earth religious reference, sorry. Do we try to sneak away? Do we tell him everything? Something in-between?"


    "At a minimum we would have to promise him we''d be back to open the portal to Brinkmar. You know where it is?"


    "There''s one at the capitol of the Eternal Empire, but according to the notebook Connie left me that wasn''t the preferred route because of where it enters Brinkmar. Supposedly the Theramas one was damaged in the attack but I don''t know how badly or if it can be fixed. And there was one that was destroyed in the original timeline but not here because of how the war went... the notebook was a bit unclear on where that was, some fortress. Oh, and there''s obviously one in Halenvar so if the siege is over they might go through that. Since we can''t be sure, I''d say we just get to Theramas on time and they can teleport us from there."


    "So, we tell him we''re leaving and that we''ll be back to open the way for the army. Then... we offer him the option of coming with us? That way he can be sure we''re safe."


    I nodded. "I''d be happy to have him along, honestly. He''s a powerhouse. Although... huh. He''s maybe too strong? What if he just knocks us all out and drags us there?"


    Errod made a face like he was considering it, but pretty quickly shook his head. "I don''t think that''s going to happen. His skills are better at killing - or badly injuring - and what he would want is us healthy but incapacitated. I can''t imagine him being able to easily do that to all of us for long enough to get us anywhere."


    It was a fair point. Errod and I could be tied up, but I couldn''t be blindfolded due to the divination and Katrin''s spellcasting was very difficult to prevent. Hugh wouldn''t want to smash our skulls in, which is what his powers were actually best at - he''d said it himself, he went the path of a brute. Getting us tied up and keeping us that way would be difficult for him. Of course he could lay a trap, get word to Hammersmith somehow and have us surrounded at the next stop. We''d have to be careful about watching him any time he had a chance to communicate with anyone.


    Errod called Katrin and Hugh in, and while it was ridiculously cramped we did all manage to fit in the wagon in such a way we could make eye contact with each other.


    "Hugh. We need to talk."


    He smiled. "Ah. You do not wish to go to Lord Protector Hammersmith, yes?"


    "Got it in one. Yeah. Look, I know you want to do what''s right but we''ve realized that she hasn''t been honest with us. And you trust her, I get it, but she has kept important knowledge from us and I don''t think it''s a good idea for us to put ourselves in her power. Also, we''ve realized that the wild mage is... well, she''s not good news but she''s maybe a bit misunderstood so we think there''s maybe a way to stop her without anyone else dying and from an ethical standpoint we need to try that. But we can''t do anything while we''re locked up somewhere."


    "I see. And you all feel this way, despite the danger in delaying the attack on Halenvar''s forces?"


    Katrin nodded, but Errod just wrinkled his brow in thought. There was a long pause and I almost yelled at him but... well, I didn''t want him to make the decision out of pressure. Finally he looked at Hugh and gave one firm nod, and Hugh shrugged.


    "Well then, there is nothing I can do. Calliope Smith, you are certain about this?"


    "Hugh, I''m not abandoning the plan. I''ll be where Hammersmith needs me, with time to spare. I''ll open the way for the army, and we''ll clear Halenvar out of there no problem. There''s just a detour we need to take."


    He arched an eyebrow. "And am I your prisoner now?"


    "No! No, you can leave if you want. Or you can come with us, if that would make you feel better. But if you come with us we can''t let you tell anyone where we are."


    Hugh looked annoyed. "Fine. I can feel it in you, Calliope Smith. Something great and powerful. It is why I have trusted you before, yes? But this power, this potential, it does not come with wisdom. Being destined for something great is not the same as being destined for something good, yes?"


    And with that, he stormed out of the wagon.


    I caught Katrin up on the plan, and she agreed that the guru was as good a place to start as any. The conversation was a little awkward, unfortunately, as we all kept tripping over the name issue. Calling my nemesis "the wild mage" felt clumsy, but I wasn''t ready to just call her Calliope - that was my fucking name, even if it was stolen. Connie had seemed fine with being, well, Connie - but she''d already decided that she was dying and was focused on sort of passing the torch to me. In this case, I was generously agreeing to give the person who had repeatedly tried to murder me a chance. It wasn''t the same.


    The big problem was that I suspected hearing me call myself Calliope would send the wild mage into a murderous tantrum, thereby undermining any attempts to solve the situation without bloodshed. And part of me, I had to admit, would prefer that; I could say I tried, but still not have to really deal with it. It would be so much cleaner. Stupid morals. Who the fuck had put all that shit in my head? Why had I started caring about being a halfway decent person?


    "We can''t tell Hugh where we''re going ahead of time," Katrin said, "or he can set an ambush. But none of us know the best way to get to Poicelria''s castle from here. We''re not particularly far from Sentortzi, which would let us talk to Professor Yanipliss or get better maps or both, but would also give Hugh all the time he needed to have us arrested and shipped off to Hammersmith even if we''re not wanted for murder there. I can get directions from someone else as we travel, I suppose - I''ll look up the name of the mountain in The Paradox of Fate."


    I reached for the book. "I can do it, I remember what chapter it''s in."


    Katrin laid a hand on my arm to stop me, and slipped the book away from me. "Sorry. I know you''re pretty sure you''re keeping her from watching right now, but we should keep risk to a minimum. If she''s listening now we''ve probably already said too much, honestly, but starting now there''s no talk about our destination or any of our plans. You... focus on shoring up your defenses and learning how to control that connection."


    "Agreed," Errod said, "Sorry Callie. I know you don''t want to be stuck in here, but even if you talk to her we can''t trust her too easily. She''s dealing with a very personal vendetta and it may not be something she can let go of easily. Better to find a solution first, even if she says she''ll work with us."


    They left, and I was alone with my thoughts again. Hugh had taken it as well as could be expected, and Errod and Katrin were still treating me the same way as before. Other than being cooped up in the wagon things were actually going okay. I could feel my mostly-misplaced anger at the wild mage fading as my own anxieties slipped away, but I still ended up mostly staring at the wall rather than thinking about anything productive. Eventually we stopped for the night, and Hugh came in with a bowl of soup for each of us.


    "It is good, that you want to do the right thing," he said. "This is never easy. And since your arrival you have been through so much, all in this short time. I do not want to make your decisions more difficult, yes?"


    "Thanks Hugh. And it''s not just that I hate being locked up, though... I mean I won''t lie, that''s for sure part of it. It really is that this is important."


    We sat there for a moment, slurping our soup. I stared at my bowl, thinking about the taste. "You were on cooking duty tonight," I muttered, "I can tell."


    "Hah! Yes, you know I have a fondness for mushrooms. Clever little things, they grow in such tough conditions. Like people. And like people, they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are delicious, some deadly. Some are both. Like the drowned man''s toes - very beautiful mushroom, grows along the banks of rivers near stagnant pools. It tastes very good, but can easily kill you if you eat too much. Ah, but if you just have a taste? Well then, instead..."


    Hugh was talking about mushrooms again, and that was right. Because I was thinking about mushrooms. And dinner. And Hugh, being the cook. There was a larger thought there, one made out of all those parts, but thinking was... was very hard, for some reason. Focus. Hugh had said something about a deadly mushroom that tasted good?


    "It soups?" I slurred, and Hugh nodded.


    "Yes, Calliope Smith. It is in the soup."


    "Poison. Poison in soups."


    He nodded again. He was smiling, but it looked a little sad somehow. "Just a bit. Katrin and Errod are already asleep. Let yourself relax. It will not do permanent harm, yes?"


    I looked down at the bowl. If I could soup too much of the dinner before bedtime, I''d have to use the other bed. The healing bed. For too much soup. The un-souping bed would take the soup out of the poison. No, the poison out of the Calliope. Then I just needed to not have dinner next time. Right? Did that even make sense? I tried to lift the bowl to my lips, and suddenly it was gone. When had Hugh taken it? He moved too fast, somehow. Or I was moving slow, like the walls. The walls were moving, shifting, melting. It felt like a curtain coming down.


    I was going to be in the wrong bed, and wake up with Hammersoup. Frantically I scrambled for the memory palace, hoping it would let me stay awake, but I fell instead into an endless pit of darkness.

 CHAPTER 065: Oh No, its Just That Theyre Terribly Comfortable

    I slowly became aware of my surroundings, which seemed to be my memory palace as seen through a funhouse mirror. There wasn''t a straight line or a right angle to be seen, and every time I turned my head I felt a spike of disorientation.  "Fuck. Shit. Of course Hugh wouldn''t just attack us. Motherfucking mushrooms. I don''t even like mushrooms! Ugh. Okay, okay, it must be wearing off. He''s probably going to dose me again though, or do something else to me. Have to... what?"


    Trying to wake up seemed dangerous, because if I failed but left the memory palace I might never get back in. I tentatively reached for divination, and thought I could feel it working - I opened the nearest door and could see me, bound, on a bunk in the wagon. I could tell it was moving from the way everything rocked as it hit bumps, but I didn''t see the point in trying to look through the walls since it would use more mana and I couldn''t imagine I''d learn much. The important thing was that Katrin and Errod weren''t in the wagon with me.


    So.  I could let this happen, get dragged to Hammersmith and kept "safe" until it was time to open the way to Brinkmar, or I could do the stupid and risky thing and try talking to the wild mage who could... kill me while I was out?  Well, or get killed by Hugh.  Neither one seemed helpful.  Just in case there was a third option I tried to will my body to move, but as I''d suspected that didn''t work.


    Anything I was going to do would have to be done in my mind.  Maybe I could talk to her and just... feel it out.  I opened myself up, and reached for that thread - I was acting on instinct but I found it almost immediately now that I understood what it was. There was something, some faint echo coming down the line...


    "You called me?"


    She was there, just like the first time I''d seen her - covered in scars, hair a mess, wearing an ill-fitting My Little Pony shirt. Had that been what she was wearing when the Sahrger took her? I only remembered being lost in the woods and mom finding me, nothing before that.


    "What is wrong with this place? Have you been drinking?"


    I shouldn''t give her any information.  "No. I was drugged. Mushrooms, drowned man''s toes."  Whoops.  Okay, the effects were clearly not just visual here.


    She gave a single nod, then turned to examine the slowly undulating walls. "That can kill, if you use too much. A shame you didn''t eat more."


    "Yeah, I know, you want to kill me. I get it. I... listen. Calliope. I..."


    "You call me by my name, now?"


    I felt a shiver go down my spine. I''d known, of course, but it was different to hear it from her. "I didn''t have any clue before. I swear."


    She was fidgeting, poking at random objects as she paced around the room. "Yes. You are very stupid. I have seen your memories, or enough of them. They sent you too far, and you forgot."


    "I guess. I know I went through a thing when I was younger where I kept saying the fairies were going to come and take me away, so maybe some part of me knew? Or maybe it was just because mom kept trying to leave me places. Do you know that? She''d just drive out to the woods and make me get out and tell me it was a game, and then she would drive off. I guess she hoped they''d swap us back or something if she just kept doing it.


    "At first it was the woods, anyway - presumably that''s where it happened, so that makes sense. But later it would be just... everywhere. She''d tell me to try something on in the dressing room at Walmart and take off, or one time she dropped me off at a school bus stop fifty miles from home and told me to just... go to school. I did it, too. I got on the bus with the other kids, and the one teacher whose room I tried to sneak into called me out on it but I just said I was in the wrong place and wandered away. Did PE with some kids, went to an assembly. I''d memorized the bus number, and at the end of the day I went back and waited at that bus stop until it got dark. She came back at about midnight. She did that sometimes, she''d come back - I thought for me, but now I know she was hoping it would be you.


    "But she never told me. I don''t know why. Maybe she knew how crazy it sounded and couldn''t say it out loud, or maybe she thought the Sahrger would do something to you if she didn''t keep up some plausible deniability, like if the game was over they''d... I don''t know. Maybe she just refused to believe I didn''t know. I''m not even sure how she figured it out in the first place."


    She spoke up, finally, face devoid of emotion. "The cat, and the car. She knew then."


    "I still don''t remember what you''re talking about. I know a car almost hit me when I was chasing a cat across the street but... whatever. I''ll put it on the list to check out. It doesn''t matter."


    She walked closer to me, and the air around her rippled. Those mushrooms were still doing a number on me. I staggered back a step and grabbed at the dresser next to me for support but it felt oddly soft.


    "So you understand now," she said, "why you must die?"


    "No, listen. I mean, yeah, I get why, but there''s probably another way. I''m - I know this sounds crazy, but I''m on your side here. I can see lines of fate, and I can see the one the spell is attached to. I assume that''s what you need to break, right? I don''t know what all it does, but -"


    "It steals from me, and in return it lets them see what you are doing and talk to you. But I took control. I reversed it, stole knowledge from you. Just as you reversed the sight and spied on me."


    "Well, I think at some point it also started sending something else. Or maybe it''s normal, but I don''t think so. I''ve felt... more... than I think Sahrger are supposed to. It comes and goes, but I feel guilty or sad or... I don''t know. I think that''s from you. And so maybe I would have just been a monster but you broke something, okay? You broke something, and Bill helped me somehow, and maybe I''ll never be a great person but I''m not a monster now. I''m not. And I can see these fate lines, nobody else can but I can see them, and I think I can learn to break them. So that''s what I''m going to work on, okay? I''m going to find a way we can both live, and then - I don''t know if you want to go home, but I''ll help you do that too if you want. But I need you to not kill me, not yet."


    She raised an eyebrow. "So. You brought me here to plead for your life?"


    "I guess? I don''t know, we just figured out I''m not human and I didn''t tell the guy we''re with details but I told him we needed to help you instead of going where he wanted and he... well, he tricked me and drugged me with mushrooms."


    "So you''re not going to be cutting our connection."


    She was being so fucking difficult, and I was still fighting to think properly.  "No, I am. I am. I just need to get out of here. I guess I hoped you would be willing to trust me, to help me somehow."


    "And if I did? If I let you live, and you were able to break our connection? What would you do with your life?"


    "I don''t want to go back to Earth. If you want to, if you want to go live with mom or whatever, then it''s all yours. I''ll make sure you know our social security number and we can practice normal Earth interactions here in my head, and... whatever you need."


    "I didn''t ask what you can do for me, Sahrger. I asked what you would do for yourself."


    "I need to... I don''t know how much of this you''ve picked up, but I need to help stop Halenvar from destroying literally the whole world. I don''t think it''s a big deal honestly, I think those plans are already kinda fucked up. And then I might need to deal with some people that I think are hunting Katrin and Errod because of a spellbook, and by then I guess I''ll know what the other fate things are and I''ll maybe have to deal with them."


    I stumbled for a moment as the room seemed to tilt, but it settled quickly enough. "Fuck. Sorry. Uh... where was I? Right. After that stuff, the obligation shit? When I''m finally free? I want to be a hero, maybe.  I''m not good at it, at the... the people parts... but if I like fighting and killing things then I''ll kill monsters that are threatening towns, and maybe rescue more kids from the Sahrger, and just... travel. I want to see everything this world has to offer.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "And fuck, maybe I''ll get lazy, and I''ll use divination to see stuff instead or I''ll just hang out in my own brain and be a total loser and do nothing of value with my life, that''s all on the table too. But I won''t... I''m not a monster, or if I am then I don''t want to be. And if cutting our connection makes me lose what little empathy I''ve got, then I''ll get it back. I''ll find someone with the right kind of magic and I''ll pay them to fix it, for real. For good. We can even do it together if you don''t believe me, make it a double date. You can... fuck it, we''ll get those scars fixed and you can pick out a new face for me, one that''s just mine."


    She was staring at me, not saying anything. The silence stretched on, while the occasional ripple spread through the room and threatened to knock me down or pull me out of the memory palace entirely. I was having trouble thinking clearly, and was worried she had responded and I just hadn''t heard her somehow, but before I could ask she finally replied.  "Fine. I still hate you, but... the more I look through your memories the harder it has been. It was easier before, you were this terrible fiend I had built up in my mind. And you acting oblivious just made my anger more powerful - how dare you? How dare you walk around like that face belonged to you? And then to share it with another, taunting me with... "


    She hesitated, and cocked her head to look at me like I was some sort of puzzle. "And do you hate me, now? I helped lead them to her. She killed herself to defeat Telen, I saw it happen. It was very brave. But maybe she wouldn''t have needed to, if I hadn''t used your eyes to lead those men to you. They would have found you eventually, of course, but it might have gone differently. Gone better, for her."


    "I... I don''t know. I hate you a little, maybe, but... I don''t want to unpack all that right now. It''s not that simple, for all I know it would have actually been worse or something and she was... it''s a lot to think about. But I''m willing to hate you for it and still help you, okay?"


    "And your parents, do you hate me for what I did to them?"


    Dad had died before I could even remember, and mom... no, shit, that was the mushrooms fucking me up. She was talking about my actual parents. But I couldn''t remember them at all, and what had she done to... oh. Right. That memory that I could never place. Connie had mentioned it, but I''d seen it for myself the first time I saw a human in Xeyul. I felt a strange echo of rage, and that flash of a memory - stalking through a strangely shaped house, going into the bedroom... Well, that was one mystery solved.


    "You killed them. You stabbed them to death in their sleep."


    "They thought I was weak and foolish. They thought I was a good little slave, a well trained dog. They neglected to count the knives."


    "Good for you."  There wasn''t a lot more to say about that, honestly. I felt... strange... about the realization my actual parents had been murdered, but I wasn''t angry. Fuck them. They were evil, abusive kidnappers and they deserved it. I''d avoided thinking about them in the hours since I had realized what I was, but frankly them being dead made everything easier. What would I have done, if they had been alive? Gone to visit? God, I''d always been so hurt and confused about mom abandoning me places and I''d told myself she was just crazy, but my real parents weren''t crazy and they abandoned me more than she ever had.  Who sends a fucking toddler to another planet?


    There was one thing, though.  "Did they ever talk about me? Did they... do you know my name?"


    The wild mage looked uncomfortable, for the first time. "No. They had me look at what you were doing, and delighted in it when it was something evil. But they called you ''the child'', if they called you anything at all. They had names like... Wind Over A Petal, and First Frost, and Cuts Through Silk. But I do not know what name they gave to you."


    I tried to say that was fine, but I stumbled on my words some. In response to my minor flare of emotions she sighed loudly and rolled her eyes, then crossed her arms in a huff. "Fine."


    "What?"


    "Fine. You win. I accept. I will... see what I can do. I am not close to you, and the Behemoth is tracking you since you left the jungle. He has six men with him, and with you and your friends drugged I do not think the one with the mustache will be able to stop them."


    "Wait, how do you know that?"


    "I helped them, obviously. I still have a message ring linked to his, from the attack on you in that town where the other with my face died. I delayed in telling him where you were while you were training, but when you refused to let me see a true memory of my bedroom I was angry with you and I told him of your location."


    "Mother fucker."


    "Yes. I will send to him again and see if I can delay him, but I believe he was getting close. I was expecting to feel your death soon. Do not make me regret this, monster. Do what you can to free yourself, and I will slow your doom."


    She vanished. How close could he be, if we''d been keeping her from seeing what path the wagons were taking? If even we didn''t know our destination, what were the odds the Behemoth could have followed? But then, there were probably only so many options if he knew where we''d gotten off the boat. Could it be a trap, to make me leave the wagon and give her our position? There was no way to be sure.


    I opened the door back into the divination view, though I remained in the hallway in my mind palace. Sure enough I was still tied up - what had I expected? My gear had been all put away when Hugh drugged me, and while Hugh had politely left my clothes on that didn''t help me much. I tried again to make my body move and was rewarded with the sight of my head flopping to one side. That was it.


    "Okay. Cool. I can wiggle a little bit. I guess that''s good news."


    The television in the bedroom behind me turned on, and through the static I could see a movie playing. "My brains, his steel, and your strength against sixty men, and you think a little head-jiggle is supposed to make me happy?"


    "And now the television works? Sure, why not. Okay. Head is moving, some, so the rest of me can too if I try hard enough. I can do this."


    Encouraging myself only got me so far, however, because I wasn''t sure what "this" I was saying I could do. Flop around? Maybe. But then what? My hands and feet were tied, and I wasn''t sure there was a lot I could do with my mouth. My little bandolier of knives wasn''t on its hook, and while there were some other pieces of equipment around they were both out of reach and unhelpful. Water-breathing helmet? Nope. Hover shoes? Maybe they''d make it easier to crawl around while tied up but that was it. There were more clothes, and a shitty set of lock picks, and Connie''s journal. The only stuff that was actually in reach was what I had taken off earlier and thrown in a heap in the corner just like Katrin was always telling me not to.


    Oh. Jackpot.


    I began screaming at myself to move. Slowly, awkwardly, my body started rocking back and forth and wiggling towards the edge of the bed. Would Hugh be popping in to drug me again soon? I had no idea. It was possible that being in my memory palace was keeping me from being as drugged as I should be - I''d spent a lot of time in there while my body was asleep, so it was possible that practice was paying off, and in theory I was piloting my "mind" which was a spirit that was tethered to me and therefore in theory immune to the effect of mushrooms - but in practice, it was clear my meat brain was still doing a lot of the thinking.  It was also possible that there was no benefit to this at all, and I could wake up if I tried at this point. With the mushrooms still in my system at least somewhat it was hard to tell for certain.


    Finally I collapsed off the bed, landing in a ridiculously awkward position that probably would have hurt like hell if I''d been more aware of my body.  "A little further, come on. Scooch. There you go, get that nose under the laundry."


    After what felt like ages I was in position, and it was time for phase two. I concentrated, and the pile of laundry started flailing around and then stopped.


    "Damn it! Fuck! Okay, you lost it, you knew this might happen. Scooch in more, come on... there. Okay, attempt two."


    The laundry flailed around again, battered from within, and then with a quiet click I succeeded in my goal.


    "Deploying the drone."


    Mister Creepy scurried out from under my clothes on the floor, his armband still pressed against my cheek. Now that I''d wiggled him free from the mount I could get him anywhere in the wagon, which opened up my options significantly. I didn''t think he could gnaw me out of my ropes or anything, but even if Hugh had taken my knives there had to be something sharp I could get to. Just as I was looking around, I felt the wagon slow and stop. Shit.


    I was wearing one of those Greek-looking dresses made from a big folded over sheet tied at the waist - comfortable and simple, god only knows why people on Earth stopped wearing them - and so I had Mister Creepy grab his own control band and shove it into the dress. The trick was that if it left contact with my skin I''d lose him, so I had to slide it along the skin carefully. Just as I tucked it under the rope belt - not nearly tight enough to be actually secure - I heard the clomp of boots outside the door. I rushed Mister Creepy out of the dress and into the corner to hide as Hugh stepped in.


    "Oh, Calliope Smith. You are a fighter, yes?" He hesitated, watching me. Hugh wasn''t going to take any chances, if it looked like there was any remote possibility I was going to pop up and attack him he was going to be ready for it. Finally he risked getting up close and with one swift movement flopped me over into the bed - I lost contact with Mister Creepy for a split second mid-air, but thankfully I landed on it. Hugh checked the ropes, nodded to himself, and then stepped out for only a moment before returning with more ropes and tying me to the bed.


    "That should keep you put, yes? Too soon for more mushrooms unless I want to risk your health and so, my friend, the ropes must suffice."


    I forced myself to wait not only until the wagon was moving again but a few minutes longer, just in case Hugh was paranoid enough to try and lull me into a false sense of security. Then it was Mister Creepy time again, and while waiting I had located the best tool in the wagon - it was actually a tiny blade Katrin had in her grooming kit, something she used on her cuticles or whatever - I''d never tried it. It was sharp enough to cut the ropes and small enough to be used by Mister Creepy, but as I found out my little spider puppet had almost no strength.


    I began sawing away, tiny threads splitting off the much larger and tougher rope. It was going to be a long night.

 CHAPTER 066: A Lively Debate

    My head felt like it had been stuffed with sawdust. I was awake, actually awake, and for the first time could really feel the stiffness of my joints after being tied up and thrown around. I stretched, put on my boots and the strap for Mister Creepy, and then took a second to think about my mana. It was basically gone. The divination trick wasn''t super expensive, but I''d had to keep it up the whole time Mister Creepy was cutting because up-close work with a knife was hard for a spider.


    Hugh had glanced in one other time, but thankfully he hadn''t tugged on any of the ropes and apparently I looked pretty normal from over at the door. I''d thought about trying to wake up and warn him the Behemoth was coming, but I couldn''t imagine he was likely to believe me. How would the Behemoth have found us? Wasn''t it a bit too convenient that as soon as he tied me up I had a pressing reason to be set free? I didn''t actually know when (or if) it was happening anyway.


    Since I hadn''t developed any combat magic - yet, I did have some imminent plans - the only thing I could think to do with my last bit of mana was a little reconnaissance. First, to make sure I didn''t waste time after turning the divination on, I pinged the fate threads so I knew which direction Errod and Katrin were in. It had gotten to the point that I could tell which threads were theirs instantly, but to be safe I stepped back and forth quietly - two pointing in the same direction and close enough to visibly shift could only be them. I took a deep breath and hopped back into my head, immediately using divination and then diving through the wall of the wagon. The clock was running.


    Hugh was smoking a pipe between the wagons as the moskar rested, and he didn''t show any sign of getting up and charging over to stop me. I hopped through the other wagon - the mana usage ticked upwards as I put another wall between my perception and my body - and I could see Errod and Katrin. Katrin was awake, but her hands were practically mummified and her mouth was gagged; Hugh was doing everything he could to make it harder for her to cast spells. Her eyes looked unfocused, so she was probably still feeling a little loopy. Either she''d had more of the mushrooms than I had, or it was just hitting her worse.


    I thought that Errod was asleep at first, but then I saw that he was very subtly working on loosening the knots on his wrist by contorting his left hand around to pick at the ropes. It was awkward as hell, and I didn''t think he was going to be able to pull it off. I didn''t see my knives or Katrin''s spellbook or any of the swords, so either Hugh had dumped them somewhere - which felt unlikely - or he had just stashed everything someplace inconvenient. And that was about all I had time to think about before I had to give up and step back out into the real world.


    Katrin and Errod were still tied up, I had no proper weapons, Hugh was for sure way more of a badass than me, and it was unclear what my end goal was - get away? Tie up Hugh? Force him to have a conversation with us? Regardless, I didn''t see any benefit to sitting around. He would be sure to check on me again before he got the wagons moving or went to sleep or whatever - if he was even planning on sleeping - and so it was vital to just seize the moment. I had just the smallest trickle of mana left, so the best thing to do seemed to be a delivery - I strapped the little knife onto Mister Creepy and went to the window, then threw him like a Frisbee at the other wagon.


    He didn''t hit it of course, since there had been no room for me to wind up properly or even really aim, but he landed fairly close which would limit how much mana I''d need to use. I waited a few minutes to make sure Hugh wasn''t watching, then took control and carefully navigated my spider drone under the wagon, up the wheel, and to the window on the far side. I wasn''t able to use divination obviously, so I just had Mister Creepy''s extremely nearsighted vision to navigate by. I ran him down to Errod and got the handle of the knife to his fingers before closing the connection with the tiniest sliver of mana left. It would have to be good enough, there was no way I would be able to keep watching.


    I grabbed some forks - not nearly sharp enough to be a good weapon but more painful than my bare fists in a fight - and then stashed the control band for Mister Creepy in my bed in the hopes that I could use it again if I got caught. Fingers crossed Errod would think to hide the spider after cutting himself free. The last thing I really wanted before the inevitable confrontation was a way to coordinate with Katrin and Errod, but odds were once they got moving it would be very audible.


    I had the thought, for a moment, that I could just slip away while they caused a distraction for me. Hugh would be kept busy, and I could sneak off in a random direction so that by the time he re-captured the others and got them secured it would be too late. For a good thirty seconds I mulled that plan over - even idly grabbing a water skin and some rations - before some little part of my brain cleared its throat.


    "Do you think," it asked metaphorically, "that maybe abandoning your friends is a shitty thing to do?"


    "Well," I replied to the imaginary conversation, "they''d be fine, probably, and anyway I''m the only one that Hugh is really after. And I could always meet back up with them later by following the fate lines."


    "So then is it possible he''d hold on to them, so he could capture you when you came to rescue them?"


    "I could wait until he decided I wasn''t coming."


    "Ah, so you''d leave them as prisoners for... how long, exactly?"


    I sighed at myself. Okay, yeah, I was maybe not at my best. I left the water and rations in my bag though, because even if I was going to do the right thing and stay with them we might all have to bolt depending on how things went. With that thought in mind, I also packed a few other items like a change of clothes and my money pouch, then I stood by the door to the wagon and felt nervous. I thought I heard something, but it was so quiet I wasn''t sure if it was just my imagination. I carefully stepped over to the window and sure enough, Hugh was very slowly standing. Shit.


    I decided I wanted him to come for me first, since I wasn''t certain the others were free yet and I didn''t want them to get stopped halfway out. But I didn''t want to just throw myself out there, or he''d kick my ass - so the only thing left was to make a little noise. I looked around and suddenly had a terrible, wonderful idea. I wasn''t sure it would work, but once the thought was in my head I had to try. I got a fork into position and smacked it with a wooden mug a few times, the thudding itself surprisingly quiet but the squeak of metal pins shifting probably audible from outside. I hoped Hugh wouldn''t realize what I was specifically doing.


    I heard his soft footsteps on the stair outside and felt the wagon shift just slightly, and braced myself. This trick relied on some rather loose construction standards, and would be a close one for sure even if I pulled it off. As nervous as I was, though, I was grinning in anticipation. Finally the doorknob turned, and braced in the tiny space between the door and cupboard I kicked with all my strength. The door only opened inwards, normally, but with both hinge pins removed the way it was designed the entire door could be knocked out into Hugh''s stupid mustache.


    I heard him grunt in surprise and fall backwards, and then I jumped out of the wagon and landed on the door - smushing Hugh under me before falling awkwardly off and failing to do a cool roll. The door, much to my surprise, launched into the air and out of sight as Hugh popped to his feet like a gymnast in their prime. There was a little blood trickling out of one nostril, but otherwise he looked totally uninjured. Great.


    "Very good, Calliope Smith. But I? I need no door."


    A wall of force slammed into me and threw me backwards, and as I landed my head bounced off the packed dirt. I cursed, and Hugh tsked at me.


    "Do not complain of your pain in front of enemies unless you are lying," he said, "and also toughen up, I did that very gently."


    It certainly hadn''t felt gentle from my end, but having seen what Hugh could do I had to admit to myself he was probably using kid gloves; if he''d wanted to he could have hammered me into the ground like a nail. He walked towards me slowly, and stopped still out of range for me to kick him.


    "If you fight this, I might injure you worse than needed. I would hate for that to happen, even if we could get it healed later. It was a good escape attempt, and you should feel proud of your effort. Now surrender."


    The door to the other wagon swinging open was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.


    "Shit," Hugh said, and jumped backwards just as the air where he''d been standing rippled. "You missed me, Katrin! You need to practice nimble targets, it''s not just the stupid jungle monsters you will be fighting, yes?" He was jumping around, not staying still long enough for her to aim properly. Errod circled around, trying to keep Hugh between the three of us, and I stood and retrieved the fork I''d dropped.


    "Errod, your skills are improving but you''re not ready to fight a retired royal guardsman. That, and you do not have a sword."


    "I know. I was hoping we could talk this out."


    "Certainly, if your sister stops casting spells at me."


    Katrin raised her arms over her head and everyone just... stopped. It wasn''t fake, or tense. All three of them clearly felt confident the fight was on pause. Of course that left me standing there like an idiot - crouching in a shitty fighting stance like the world''s scrawniest linebacker. Wielding a fork. I straightened up, but I didn''t put down the cutlery.


    "I will listen to the terms for your surrender, yes?"


    Errod smiled. "I appreciate that, but I was hoping you''d just apologize for drugging us and let us go."


    "Ah. Those terms are unacceptable, I am afraid. You have concerns about Lord Protector Hammersmith, but she does not have the luxury of telling entitled children military secrets or letting vital assets run wild. She has a war to win, and if I understand correctly you are the only way for her to get troops to where the last of Hallenvar''s forces wait."


    He still didn''t know about the doomsday device. That was something. "Hugh, that whole place is cursed. They can''t live there forever. Just think of it as a siege, so long as Hammersmith holds the points of entry she wins eventually regardless. And we''re going to go help the troops get in, there''s just something we have to do first."


    And I genuinely wasn''t too worried about the doomsday thing. There were three chances to get in there before the end of the world - four if you counted the day of - and it actually seemed unlikely the device would work this time around anyway. They''d been cut off from their supply chain a whole year earlier, that Ulren guy that had helped him build it got blown up by Connie, and the Endless Empire was in way better shape.


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    "And what is it, that is so important?"


    Errod looked at me, I looked at Katrin, and Katrin nodded.


    "Okay, so. The wild mage, that was helping Telen and the Behemoth follow us? She''s on our side now, I talked to her about it. She''s... kind of family? We have the same mother, it''s complicated. She wanted me dead, but it was a misunderstanding and now we''re going to help her end a spell that''s on both of us and get her home."


    Hugh shook his head, a little condescending for my tastes. "Had there been a harmful spell on you, Lord Protector Hammersmith would have -"


    "Nope. No. Because you know what? She knew someone had messed with my memories and didn''t tell me or try to fix it. And she knew that I was... different... and didn''t tell me which has directly led to us getting attacked and my sister getting killed."


    "Your - the wild mage?"


    I sighed, still feeling the headache from the mushrooms. "Different sister. I mean... Neither one was my sister in the normal way, but... Hugh, there''s a lot of crazy shit going on that I don''t want to explain to more people than I need to. For now, if you won''t believe Hammersmith is putting us in danger by keeping secrets trust me that she might also not know about this spell. It''s powerful stuff, old stuff, and it''s tied to fate which nobody can see."


    "But you know it''s there, yes?"


    "Yes. There''s a professor in Sentortzi that''s an expert on fate magic, we talked to him before and that''s why we wanted to go back there."


    "And if she still wants you dead? You''ve now stepped out of the wagon. It is dark, still, and there are few landmarks, but if they are clever enough they might have enough to come after us."


    I sighed. "Okay, so... bad news on that, actually." Katrin and Errod looked at me in confusion, while Hugh just looked annoyed. "It turns out that before we got on the boat the wild mage passed a message along to the Behemoth, and so he''s looking for us. He knows where we got off the boat, and where we were heading, but not where we''re at right now. She says she''ll send him a fake tip to get him off our trail now that I... apologized... but he was probably pretty close to us. Presumably he wasn''t just relying on her intel, so he might have a diviner or someone that can fly or something. Actually now that I mention it, a flying dude for sure got away last time we dealt with them."


    "All the more reason to get you safely to Lord Protector Hammersmith," Hugh said.


    "We can talk about that, but you can''t keep us tied up and drugged. Either we''ll keep escaping, or we''ll be totally helpless in an attack."


    "You are already helpless in an attack, Calliope Smith."


    "Your nose would say otherwise."


    "Hah! So show me - come at me with those forks and we can see what you would do against a more skilled and more powerful opponent."


    "You''re being kind of a dick, Hugh."


    "And the Behemoth would be kind to you, yes? Much like your new friend and long lost relative that has tried to kill you at least twice?"


    I walked towards Hugh, not bothering to get into a fighting stance. I tossed both the forks aside.


    "Oh, it is hand to hand now? You would wrestle me, Calliope Smith?"


    I stuck my hands out, wrists together. "No, dumbass. Tie me up. Keep me prisoner. But let the others be prepared, since they''re not... helpless. Okay? I''m serious, shit is coming. But we both know you can''t trust me not to try something tomorrow once I get antsy, so tie me up and get it over with."


    He stepped closer, eyebrow raised, clearly waiting for me to do something stupid - which was fair. In point of fact I needed him a little closer and even then it would be tricky, but I had some hope. He leaned in to grab me, I threw my head forward to headbutt him, and he launched me twenty feet back with an open palm shove. He must have felt the tug on his belt, because I heard him curse as I landed with his sword in my hand.


    "I knew it was a trick," Hugh said with a smile, "but I made the wrong guess about your goal. You are armed now, Calliope Smith - is it time for us to fight?"


    I laughed. "How stupid do you think I am? There''s a reason I made sure Errod and Katrin were loose before I hit you with that door." And I tossed the sword to Errod, who caught it in his left hand and passed it to his right. "You''re still stronger than us, but Errod has been getting pretty good and Katrin has some nasty spells. And you can''t hurt me, which means you''re at a disadvantage."


    Hugh sighed, and looked at me with pity. "Oh, Calliope. You have forgotten something very important. You purchased a healing device, which is fully charged. That means I only need to prevent myself from killing you, not from harming you."


    "Oh. Right. But you''re actually a big softie, and would never injure your charming friend Calliope. Right?"


    He shook his head sadly, and charged at me full speed. I knew very little about his actual abilities - he could send people twenty feet into the air with a punch, jump very high, slow down arrows. He''d hit me with that wall of force a moment ago. It did seem like his main use of magic was to enhance his natural motion rather than the other stuff so priority one was keeping him from laying a hand on me.


    I ran a few steps and dove for the wagon, but he moved like lightning and grabbed my ankle. With a single swing he threw me twenty feet into the other wagon and I could tell immediately my leg was dislocated and my ribs were - at a minimum - badly fractured. Hugh wasn''t playing around. Lightning struck at his feet as he jumped aside, and he chuckled. "Katrin, are you missing on purpose? That is very sweet, yes?"


    Errod darted in at the last second to stand between me and Hugh as he approached, and much to my surprise he actually swung the sword. Hugh, casually, smacked it aside with such force that Errod nearly dropped it.


    "Remember the potato, Errod," he said, "your enemy is always armed. Katrin, would your aim improve if I broke your brother''s arms?"


    A beam of pure heat slammed into Hugh... and flickered out. "Ah, so the threat alone is enough. Good to know."


    Katrin looked shocked, clearly unsure why her attack had fizzled after barely singeing Hugh''s shirt. I scrambled to my feet as Errod took another swing, which was deflected with Hugh''s bare hands just like the last one. I''d kept a barely measurable amount of mana, and I decided to spend it - for just a second the fate lines snapped into view before vanishing. It had been enough, though - Katrin had one leading from her to a spot at the front of the wagon I''d been in. That would be her spellbook, and presumably the rest of our hidden equipment.


    As soon as I took a step there was an awful crunching pop that I felt through my whole body, but then my leg was thankfully back in its proper spot and I could hobble towards our gear. I heard an explosion behind me as Katrin kept up her attack, but I didn''t have time to look. Thankfully Hugh was still commenting on everything. "Yes, very smart. If your enemy cannot be hit directly, the ground at his feet is often a smart target."


    I lifted the little seat at the front of the wagon and everything was there - Errod''s sword, the lightning sword, the spellbook, my knives. I grabbed my bandolier and immediately flung a knife at Hugh, hitting him in the calf - I''d been aiming for the knee, but that was close enough. He scowled and then punched Errod, presumably to give himself a bit more space so he could deal with the knife. Errod landed awkwardly twenty feet back but didn''t look particularly hurt. Hugh pulled the knife out and flung it towards me at what seemed to be the speed of light - it hit the wagon an inch from me like a bullet, burying itself all the way into the wood. Sweet Jesus.


    A ribbon of energy began to tie Hugh up, but he launched himself directly into Katrin and it dissipated as she was crushed between him and the wagon. He didn''t even pause, zipping over to Errod as he began to stand and yanking the sword away. "This is mine, I believe. Are we nearly finished playing? None of that, Calliope."


    That last comment seemed to be in reference to the other knife I was about to throw, but I did it anyway. It stopped mid-air before reaching Hugh but then did exactly what it was designed to and fired off its force enchantment, causing it to continue on to graze his upper arm as he juked sideways at the last second. He looked like he had some quip he was about to say, but Errod interrupted him.


    "I challenge you," Errod said, "to a duel. Just the two of us."


    "Ah, a duel. With honor, yes? But Errod, you must learn that honor is not for combat. Honor is for your daily life among society. In combat, you win at any cost." Hugh spun and knocked Katrin''s arm aside with a gesture, causing her to shoot lightning harmlessly off into the sky.


    "Is that why you won''t do it? You know I could win one on one?"


    "Hah! Goading your opponent, good. Poke at insecurities, make them do something foolish." He turned and caught the sword I had thrown, then scowled as Errod caught the other one. "You threw him both, eh? That should not have worked."


    Errod swung at Hugh''s legs, forcing him back, and then hopped to his feet. Katrin looked annoyed, probably trying to think of what she could try that wouldn''t fry her brother in such close quarters - she really needed to get her hands on a less destructive spellbook. Hugh and Errod began sword fighting for real, and I circled around behind Hugh to look for the right moment to strike.


    The attacks were speeding up, from both sides, and I could finally see just how far Errod had come in the past few months. Hugh was still better, there was no doubt - he hit harder too, with his force magic assisting - but Errod was genuinely making him pay attention. When Hugh found an opening and stabbed at Errod''s side the blade bounced away, blocked by Katrin''s shield spell. At the same moment I threw another knife and scored a hit on the back of his shoulder, making him stumble.


    "Much better, work as a team!"


    The little teacher-y remarks were getting on my nerves. Was this a game? A test? Or did he just want us to think so, so that we would go easy on him? But then, didn''t we want to go easy on him anyway? It was Hugh, not some monster. Surely neither side wanted to actually... I suddenly had a horrible idea. Still limping slightly, I ran towards Hugh as he danced in circles with Errod, easily parrying most attacks but looking like he was finally having to actually think about it. Katrin continued to shield Errod and even briefly went on the offensive, but Hugh dodged and swung at Errod simultaneously and since she was already casting a spell she couldn''t put a shield up - Errod winced as he took a vicious hit in the upper arm.


    I wasn''t far from them but it was more than just getting close - I had to be right up in the fight to strike at Hugh, without getting in Errod''s way or blocking Katrin''s line of sight. But when I saw my opening, I knew it. Jumping in right as Hugh thrust, I forced him to stab me in the stomach. A little extreme, sure, but it worked exactly as I had planned. Hugh recoiled, shocked, and let his guard down long enough for Errod to swing - he switched to the flat of his blade at the last second, but the edge still sliced Hugh''s cheek a little as it hit. For my part, I''d grabbed his leg as I fell and caused him to almost fall. Off balance, hit in the face with a nice heavy sword, a little injured from other hits, and trying to figure out how to not kill the idiot wrapped around his leg, Hugh was in no position to dodge the spell that came in and bound his torso in shimmering threads of energy. He went down in a heap.


    "Calliope Smith, what do you think that you are doing!" he yelled.


    "Winning, Hugh. You said it yourself, we have healing on hand." Speaking had maybe been a mistake. With the adrenaline and the pain I''d already been in it was surprisingly tolerable to be run through, but talking made me horribly aware that there was a piece of metal all the way through me. It wasn''t a feeling I was going to forget any time soon.


    Hugh sputtered for a second, and then it slowly turned to chuckling. "Hah! Fine, yes. You win, now go heal yourself. I will behave, you made your point. Ridiculous children." he sighed, then looked up at Errod. "You still telegraph your attacks too much. And tell your sister I wasn''t kidding about practicing her aim. Now, the next time you are fighting someone with force magic, you will need to..."


    I missed the rest, as Katrin helped me to the healing bed. She didn''t look amused, but she didn''t scold me. I laid down in the bed and felt energy flowing through me, first an initial burst to seal up anything vital and then the slower waves of mana that would do the more detailed repairs. It would take a little while, and it would hurt the whole time - but damn it, I won. And it was worth losing a little blood.

 CHAPTER 067: An Appointment in Samarra

    The healing bed had a sort of antenna that stuck out the top of the wagon and ran along the side of the roof, which I was almost certain still worked - there''d been some minor damage caused while disconnecting the bed so we could drag it out to heal Shitheel after that incident with the bounty hunters. That odd metal tube had been one of the reasons we''d needed to pay for it to be installed, along with the runic gravity plates that made the wagons lighter.


    I felt absolutely exhausted from the healing - and the whole ordeal of the past half day - but I resisted the urge to sleep and climbed up onto the wagon''s roof to join Katrin who was maintaining a mana well that covered not only her but the antenna. It was important work; between me and Hugh the healing bed''s mana capacitor had to be dangerously low. Katrin had used up her own mana as well, and was trying to recover as quickly as possible so she could recharge my daggers. She nodded at me and I thought she was probably glad for the company but she didn''t say anything.


    I dozed off a little, laying there, but couldn''t go all the way to sleep - unlike the moskar, which were out cold. The sky was growing light which meant Hugh had pushed the beasts all night with minimal breaks - even with their ability to draw on the little mana capacitors in their crops for extra stamina they would need some time before we could get moving again. With nothing super productive I could use my mana for I could pop into my memory palace, but decided I didn''t want to burn any on divination until I was back to full.


    I popped in and sent out a feeler for... I really needed a name to use with her other than Callie, or maybe a name for myself. Either way, she popped in after only a short delay.


    "I am coming closer to you, in case you find a way to sever the link between us. Are you still captured?"


    "No, I think we''ve worked that out. I need to talk to Hugh still and make sure though, because we didn''t actually have a proper conversation. I just made him stab me and he backed off."


    She shook her head, looking disappointed. "I should have held out in our earlier conversation, I had no idea stabbing you was something I could demand."


    "Yeah, don''t get excited."


    "Too late now, in any case. I already threw the Behemoth off your trail. I called, and said I had your location - I told him you were heading towards Sentortzi since I know you had discussed doing so before you began hiding from me."


    "Yeah, that''s fair. I do want to get back there at some point. Might have to wait until everything else is over. I have a different way to get a lead on helping you though, so we''ll be headed that way first. I guess I''ll have to give Hugh some directions, god knows where he''s been taking us the past four or five days."


    "The Behemoth was guessing Granlan. Large enough to have a teleportation service, but not the closest or easiest, since those would be too expected."


    "Well, I guess I''ll find out. I''ll... call you, I guess, when we know more. Thank you."


    She vanished without replying, and shortly after I popped back out myself to watch the sun rise. The wagon creaked a little as Hugh climbed up enough to rest his arms on the roof. "Calliope Smith. I hope that little trick of yours was not too agonizing, though I would be lying if I said I hoped it did not hurt at least a little."


    "Yeah, yeah, kids have to learn not to play with swords. Honestly? It was the ribs, way more than the stabbing."


    "Yes, ribs can be quite the nuisance. Hard to wrap up properly as well, yes?"


    "Don''t remind me. That whole way down the mountain it hurt to breathe too deep. You remember? After we fought those guys with the... ser... sergotze?"


    "Segozertze."


    "Right. Because I had that healing stuff for the stab wound from that guy that... oh, fuck. I killed that guy. Oh shit."


    "The tracker?"


    I had absolutely murdered that man. And good riddance, obviously, but still. What had I said, exactly? ''Do me a favor and fucking choke to death'' I think was the line. Had I felt that wave of cold, from burning more mana than I had available? Probably. I didn''t know what that meant at the time, plus I was already extremely cold and going into shock so... I doubt it would have felt out of place. I''d wondered what killed him when I saw the body, and the soldiers searching for his Dumine argued about if it had been an accident or if Telen had choked him to death so... yeah, probably I made him choke on his dinner. That was terrifying.


    And in theory I could learn to do it again - I had Probability, I had Binding. Hell, if I leveled it up I could even do it with fate magic which would mean those anti-enchantment charms wouldn''t be able to stop it. I could be the world''s deadliest assassin. But that wasn''t what I wanted, not really. If I was going to kill people it was either going to be in self defense or it would be dealing with people that couldn''t be allowed to walk away. In either case, cursing them to die at some future date seemed like it missed the point.


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    I was about to go down a rabbit hole thinking about the other uses for fate magic in particular - try to make a sword that''s destined to behead the monster I''m after, or fate myself to win the lottery or whatever - but I realized Hugh was still just sitting there. "Sorry. It''s been a strange night. Uh, different guy, don''t worry about it."


    He raised an eyebrow, but if I knew Hugh he would just count on finding out later rather than pestering me for details now.


    "Anyway... are you really giving up? You drugged us, tied us up, threw us around like toys, and just because we made you stop beating our asses for a minute you''re just... done?"


    "I have never been one to follow the path others set for me. My parents wanted me in politics, so I joined the military. They wanted me to go into a position of leadership, so I joined the royal guard - still a very prestigious position but... and when they attempted to pressure me to become captain of the royal guard, well, I retired. I respect Lord Protector Hammersmith immensely, but I do not enjoy forcing someone down a particular path. I decided that I would leave it to the gods, try to stop you, and if you escaped? Well. It would mean you were capable enough to be safe."


    "I think I know why you were picked to carry that letter to me, Hugh."


    That eyebrow went up again, but of course I couldn''t answer his implied question. He''d never met Connie, and didn''t know there had been another timeline. Hell, I didn''t even really know what all they had gotten up to - just a handful of extremely vague comments. I shifted and looked out at the sunrise, and thought about what to say. I had to give him something, I owed him some sort of explanation. I just couldn''t tell him anything about the doomsday device.


    "Hammersmith - fine, Lord Protector Hammersmith - would have known about the spell between me and the wild mage, Hugh. And why the spell was there, and about some problems with my memories, and... she should have told me. It''s important shit, about me and my... family."


    He was quiet for a moment while we watched the sun rise. "Well. I see why that would make you hesitant to trust her, yes? Lord Protector Hammersmith will always keep her word, but... she has sworn first and foremost to keep the Endless Empire safe from threats, and that means making choices that may not line up with your morals at times." I thought he was going to segue into why I should trust her anyway, but instead he shook his head and chuckled. "It is possible she made a mistake, this time. I cannot speak to her reasons, but presumably she did not anticipate you being outside her control until you had given her what she wanted."


    "Well I''m still going to give her what she wants. And if you want to come with us you can, although... I don''t want to put you in a shitty position, and I also don''t really want to be worrying that you''re going to drug me again and ship me away."


    "Speaking of taking a gamble and having it held against you..."


    "No, not really. It was smart, and I know you could have kicked my ass way worse. You could have left me my jacket though, that was purely defensive. Would have stopped me from being stabbed."


    "Ah, but getting stabbed was what ended our battle. So you should be thanking me, yes? And it would have done nothing for your ribs."


    "I guess. Anyway. No hard feelings, and we can stick together if you want. You just can''t cook, and you''d have to promise to not contact Hammersmith. I don''t want her changing your mind."


    He nodded, looking thoughtful. "When we arrive at our destination - it should be later today, otherwise I wouldn''t have drugged you yet - I will teleport back and let Lord Protector Hammersmith''s clerks know that you are safe and still plan on meeting her in time to perform your duty."


    "Okay. Oh, can I try to guess where we''re headed? I don''t think we''re being watched anymore, but seriously I''m almost certain the wild mage is on our side now."


    "With the sun up and the nature of the spying being visual it would be too late in any case. It''s no matter, at this point it is unlikely they would be able to catch up. Has your knowledge of geography improved since the conversation we had while disembarking from the boat last week?"


    "No, but I heard a name. Are we going to Granlan?"


    "Ah! A good guess. It is not the most obvious choice, which makes it the most obvious choice. But then, others would expect that of me."


    "So you go to the actual obvious choice instead?"


    He winked. "No, too obvious."


    "Of course."


    "Instead, you go somewhere mildly inconvenient and which has already been eliminated from the search. We are going to Sentortzi, as you first requested."


    He was smiling, probably assuming I would be pleased. "Oh! Cool. Yeah. So when you say that they would be unlikely to catch up, how does that change if they had a few more hours warning? Like, just hypothetically, if I''d told the wild mage to send the Behemoth somewhere else to keep us safe and she picked Sentortzi since she knew we weren''t going there?"


    Hugh continued to smile. "Hah, yes. Yes. That would be... most unfortunate. If you will excuse me, I feel the sudden need to move the wagons to that copse of trees where they will be less visible from the air."


    "Should I call her back, tell her to send the Behemoth back to Granlan?"


    He hesitated halfway down from the roof of the wagon. "You can try. Switching again so soon might tip him off to her change in allegiances, but it could still leave him uncertain."


    I winced. "Sorry."


    "It is possible," he said as he disappeared from view, "that you are cursed. Consider that, Calliope Smith."


    I pulled up the fate vision and looked at all the threads extending from me. It was certainly possible one of them was a curse, but I''d miraculously survived so far. One more time hopefully wouldn''t find the limits of my luck.

 CHAPTER 068: No Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy

    We were talking about how safe or fucked we thought we were, but I spared a second to whisper an aside to Katrin in English. "Watch, he''s going to say we should ditch the wagons again."


    "There are too many variables," Hugh said, "and we know none of the important ones. All we can say is what would increase or decrease our chances, yes? For example, we could abandon the wagons..."


    Hugh really wanted to get rid of the wagons and just ride the moskar. They were tired from not getting a full night''s sleep, and while the gravity plates under the wagons helped a little it was still way more work than just having a rider. But the actual difference in time was fairly small, and I was reluctant to abandon all of our gear and what was, basically, my house. He''d also suggested sending me off ahead on Bashful, the axe-faced moskar Hugh had brought with him. It hadn''t been pulling a wagon and so was better rested, and since I was the main one they were after getting me to safety would presumably make them call off the attack entirely - assaulting the city probably wouldn''t go well for them.


    Finally, Katrin had tried to propose that we just change direction and go somewhere else - the problem was that either they were still far away in which case switching routes would only give them more time to find us, or they were very close and turning around wouldn''t help. In the end we voted, and the winning strategy was to just hurry as much as we could without killing the animals via exhaustion. Chances were good that the Behemoth was nowhere near us, and we''d be to the outskirts of Sentortzi soon.


    We were all geared up again, magic items recharged and Katrin nearly at full mana, and we were taking turns watching the skies for any sign of a spy. I''d pinged the OG Callie to explain the situation and, after she had stopped laughing, she''d said she would see what she could do. It was almost time to follow up on that, but I wasn''t expecting anything - even if they said they''d go back the other way we wouldn''t be able to relax out of fear they''d caught on to the trick.


    "I''m a little under full mana, I could sit in the mana well Katrin is maintaining but it''s not like my stuff is good for combat at this point anyway."


    "You have good instincts," Hugh said, "and I can tell that you have been practicing with Errod. I would not worry about adding magical skill for now. Divination is very valuable, and it will most likely be best for you to focus on one thing in the long run. There is only so much that can be done with your Dumine."


    That would for sure be true if I only had the one Dumine, and was probably true to some extent regardless. Katrin suspected I was building potential faster than I should be but that was hard to pin down, and unless I made the exact same build as someone else in the exact same way it would be hard to say if my overall capacity was higher. Well, that wasn''t entirely true - if I ended up with enough abilities at some point I could probably say with confidence I had crossed that threshold.


    It was a moot point for the moment, especially since I was interfacing with my Dumines in such a strange way. It really sounded like for Katrin it was like a skill tree in a video game - not quite, since it wasn''t firmly pre-defined, but still very much with that vibe. In my case it was like I was workshopping each ability with someone, fine-tuning and tweaking it as part of a conversation. It felt like that was getting me more bang for my buck, but it was totally possible that it was also letting me build abilities in stupid or inefficient ways that other people would be saved from.


    Next I really needed to start working on Fate magic, and I still hadn''t properly put mental security in place - I had the potential for it, but I hadn''t decided if I wanted to try and lock the wild mage out. We were - seemingly - getting along at the moment, and I didn''t want to antagonize her. I''d come up with something I thought I could use, a way to selectively shunt people into a sort of jail cell in my mind palace, but I wanted to make sure I''d be able to create a friend/foe list before committing and I''d been... distracted.


    "Well Hugh, that sounds like good advice and I probably will add on to divination, but there''s a lot going on right now that may force my development. And I really would like to be more combat-ready at some point."


    He nodded. "A common enough problem. You said you have thought and spatial, yes?"


    Right, he would think my divination was through Spatial. "Yeah."


    "Spatial can be very useful in combat, but it takes time to learn properly even once you have the ability. I doubt it will be useful to you any time soon."


    "Not quite what I was thinking."


    "Thought then? I know it is possible to use it offensively, confuse others or... something along those lines. Or your probability magic, perhaps - a very versatile combat option if you can keep your intentions clear."


    "Wrong again. I''ll let you know if it works. It won''t be ready for this fight anyway, assuming there even is a fight."


    I walked away, and then hesitated. Wait. He would have thought I had Spatial, Perception, and Probability. Right? Not Thought. But I''d been talking to the wild mage in my head, so... hmm. He didn''t know I had four, but he must be suspecting that I was lying. I had to sit down at some point and think about which ones I could plausibly insist I had next time it came up, and then I had to keep my fucking story straight. I could admit to the Planar magic, and say I was talking to the wild mage either via some ability of hers or across planes, maybe. I could deny the Probability part, since he only thought that due to an overheard comment. I had options.


    Shitheel was crankier than normal due to missing his beauty sleep and was snapping at Dopey some as they walked, but otherwise the moskar were putting up with the long hours surprisingly well. I only had limited experience with horses from some "horse therapy" for my behavioral issues, but it seemed like moskar were superior in every way. They were durable, ate everything like a goat, and could handle sprints or endurance marches. The only remotely negative things I''d heard about them was an intolerance for cold weather and some sort of problem with the eggs or babies that I didn''t really pay attention to.


    I watched them trotting along for a moment, then sighed and turned to climb back up into the mana well with Katrin and caught something out of the corner of my eye. I didn''t want to stare and reveal I''d seen it, but it was so odd that I was having trouble. I just turned and slid back down onto the bench with Hugh.


    "Hey so... don''t look now, but behind us and to the left there''s a floating guy. It appears he''s hanging from a big spiked ball somehow?"


    He looked like a little kid that had floated away with his novelty morning star shaped balloon, or like some kind of hyper aggressive medieval Mary Poppins. The ball was, at a glance, a little over twice the size of the guy''s head and sure did look like metal. It was a ridiculous way to fly.


    "We cannot afford to assume it is a coincidence, yes? But that is good news in a way, as it means he is most likely the scout and the others will take time to catch up." Hugh squinted ahead at the towers of Sentortzi, now visible up ahead. "Even with the wagons they should be able to make it quickly, although they may need some healing once we arrive. We need only to reach the buffer zone around the outer walls; at that point the guards will have seen us coming and should join in the fight once they realize who is after us. Please tell Katrin to get off the roof, and then get onto... ugh, Bashful. Why must you name the animals, Calliope Smith?"


    I climbed up and whispered to Katrin, and we slid down off the back of the wagon together. She went inside while I pulled on my stupid hover shoes that I''d bought the last time we were in Sentortzi. I''d practiced with them somewhat while camping and, as Katrin predicted, I fell down a whole lot. I grabbed the line that ran from the wagon to Bashful, and without us stopping I scooted out along it - allowing my feet to skim over the grassy plain. It still pulled on the rope of course, which Bashful wasn''t crazy about, but it just encouraged him to meet me halfway. I grabbed his saddle, made it up on only my second try - he was bigger than the others - and then I detached the rope. Almost immediately Hugh made some gesture to Errod and they cracked whips over the other four moskar in unison - we went into a full charge with Shitheel growling in protest.


    We had made a plan, of course, but it was a shaky one. The best case scenario was them blindly charging up behind us all clumped together neatly, which was ridiculously unlikely. Otherwise it would all depend on how they attacked us and how close to the city we were, but in none of the scenarios did I have a lot of ways to contribute. I would throw knives at them and then - if we weren''t winning - run the hell away in the hopes they would ignore the others and just go after me. There was a nagging voice in my head saying I couldn''t do that in case they all got slaughtered because I abandoned them, but that was ridiculous - if the fight was going that badly, me being there wouldn''t be enough to help anyone.


    Still, that voice was a pain - and it meant I would be stressing out, and probably hesitant to stab a guy in the face if needed. There was something I could do, maybe. It was far from a sure thing, but... I closed my eyes, holding tightly to Bashful with my legs, and imagined that fate thread that attached me to the real Calliope Smith. The two of us were tethered with this thing, but we''d broken it over the years. This would have been made with wild magic as opposed to Imperial, which meant that it was less secure - less defined.


    I fumbled with it, feeling it the same way I had when I managed to watch through her eyes. I''d blocked her out, I thought, when I was worried about her spying on me. And I''d felt some flow of emotion bleeding through from her. I just needed to temporarily block it, like kinking a hose. Surely there had to be some way to hold it, or patch it, or just... there. Something clicked, and the whole world felt slightly muted. My panic drained away, my worry for abandoning my friends, any concern over having to kill someone in close combat. I was back to my natural state. There was still a voice there telling me this was wrong, telling me I still needed to be a good person and that I''d regret it later, but that didn''t bother me. I wasn''t going to go kick puppies or whatever, I was just eliminating some distractions so I could follow the plan.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    I opened my eyes, and there was no change - it seemed to be stable, and would probably remain on its own until... probably when I fell asleep? Then again, it was possible I''d done something permanent - I didn''t have the expertise needed to get a good look. It was a problem for later, if at all. I risked a look back and didn''t see balloon boy, but we didn''t slow down. "I lost visual!" I yelled to Hugh, who nodded.


    "I saw him, he dropped back as soon as we sped up - he is for sure with... the Behemoth." He''d hesitated for just a split second there, like he was going to say something else, something with an ''h'' sound at the beginning?


    We almost made it. We were maybe a mile away from the buffer zone around the walls, on a nice hard packed road passing by farmland and scattered buildings. We only needed a minute or two more, but I saw that flying dude zip past us and stop, floating, up ahead and high in the air. He swung the ball he''d been hanging from and it rocketed down towards us far faster than it should have - Errod pulled the reins and the moskar swerved but the ball hit the rear corner of the wagon and plowed right through before hitting the road hard enough to make a crater. The wagon - now missing a huge chunk - wobbled and nearly tipped all the way over, causing the moskar to panic and strain against their harnesses. Errod had come to a full stop.


    I heard thundering steps coming closer, far more audible than I ever would have expected over the rattling of the wagons. Sparing a glance behind me I saw them coming, five men on things that looked like a cross between wolves and boars. They weren''t wearing uniforms, but they rode in formation and the one in the lead was instantly recognizable as the Behemoth. He was huge - though still basically within normal human range - and for a moment it looked like he was wearing a sweater before I remembered just how hairy he was. Ick. They were relatively close, and I had some hope that the plan would work but I didn''t want to count on it - in any case, we''d need to wait for them to catch up to us some and there was a problem with that.


    The moskar might or might not have seen what was coming, but between us suddenly making them run and the sound of something approaching from behind they got the message and picked up speed, Shitheel no longer complaining. If Errod hadn''t fallen behind that would be great, but now Katrin''s wagon was rocketing ahead and she was the one that needed to be in the rear. Meanwhile the flying guy dropped to the ground and grabbed his ball and chain, zipping into the air once more with it so he would be ready to slam us again.


    The pack was getting close to Errod, whose wagon was moving once more but wasn''t up to speed and wasn''t going to get there before trouble hit. Katrin jumped off the back of her wagon, casting a shield spell as she hit the ground and rolling - she scrambled to her feet as quickly as possible and ran towards Errod. I turned as well - clearly this was where we were going to fight - and heard the wagon Hugh was steering begin to slow. I glanced around to see what the battlefield was like and wasn''t particularly inspired, though there was a building conveniently close to the road that we could potentially use for cover in a pinch.


    Katrin reached Errod and jumped on the back of that wagon, then turned to watch behind them as they continued - but it would only be a few more seconds before they reached us now. Katrin cast her spell and flashed three fingers at me - if they didn''t split up, that''s how many she would be hitting. They continued to charge, and then the one furthest to the right panicked and yanked on the reins and everything happened all at once.


    The Behemoth jumped into the air, causing his mount to stumble. The soldier on his right jerked and sprayed blood everywhere, and the mount of the one that had pulled his reins reared up but continued a few steps from the momentum and got caught on something in the air, howling in anguish. The Behemoth landed past the razor-thin force shield and rolled, popping to his feet expertly, and grinned like a madman - behind him the bleeding soldier slowly slid in half, and his mount ran off the side of the road in confusion with the man''s legs and lower torso still hanging on.


    It was the same spell Katrin had cast back in Theramas, though her skill and mana capacity had drastically increased since then - it had left her shaking and in pain before, and this time it appeared she was still ready to fling a few more spells. Sadly, since the Behemoth and one other had somehow seen it coming it probably hadn''t been worth the cost. Still, one soldier was down instantly while another two - including the Behemoth - were slowed down.


    There was a loud clang as the spiked ball landed harmlessly nearby, presumably robbed of its momentum by Hugh, and I readied a knife - I was staring at the Behemoth, but I knew he would heal too quickly for it to be worthwhile. The flyer landed, grabbed the chain on the ball, and as he launched into the air I spun and threw my knife, aiming at the air above him. I wasn''t some sort of expert, but I''d been throwing knives since I was a little kid and had gotten well over a hundred hours of practice while we were camping in the jungle so I wasn''t totally surprised when it hit him right in the armpit. I thought I saw the flicker of magic, probably something intended to stop projectiles, but again the knife''s magic had done its thing.


    He released the chain and fell, then had to roll to the side to avoid the ball that came crashing down next to him.


    We were moving again of course, but the two riders that hadn''t been delayed by Katrin''s razor-thin shield spell were right on top of us. One was keeping a close eye on me but didn''t seem to be attacking just yet, the other had leapt off his mount and was climbing along the top of Hugh''s wagon towards him. I wasn''t too worried about that guy. The one whose wolf-boar thing had reared up into Katrin''s trap was on foot now but unleashed a terrifying red beam that crackled like lightning and blasted a wheel right off of the already damaged wagon - Katrin screamed and fell out the back, and Errod began trying to stop.


    This was the part of the plan where I needed to decide if I was making a run for it. Emotion was shut off, squished down to a little voice that sounded suspiciously like Bill, but I was still hesitating. We weren''t close enough, and splitting off was best as a last resort. That, and I remembered something from the last time I was up close and personal with the Behemoth - he was awkward as shit when he was mid-transformation. He healed too quickly, but I still had some magic daggers and maybe if I could get one through his eye and into his brain before he finished changing I could stop him.


    The one watching me was clearly just waiting for me to do that, so first things first I needed to deal with him. I was waiting for that perfect moment. We were all stopped now, though spread out from each person halting for different reasons and at different speeds, and for a brief moment we were eyeing each other like gunslingers at high noon. Any second... come on...


    With something surprisingly close to a Wilhem scream the one that had been heading for Hugh went flying through the air nearby and I threw my dagger. The man went to block but had been just distracted enough to not realize I wasn''t aiming for him; it hit his mount just under the eye and as it reared back I kicked Bashful into motion and managed to run past him. The Behemoth was changing. His arms were already enormous, and his back was expanding to match - I hopped off Bashful so I could concentrate and aim and skidded for a moment before clicking my heels to turn off the stupid hover effect. I wanted more time, but with everything going on around me I couldn''t exactly wait for a flashing red weak spot.


    I threw one of the force knives and hit him in the face, but it just skidded off and flew away when the charge fired - maybe it was the angle, or maybe his skull was just too thick. I heard a spell going off from where Katrin was laying but couldn''t turn to look, and then that spiked metal ball bounced past with splinters of wood trailing after. I threw another knife, and this time it dug into his neck - it would have been a lethal attack on anyone else, but I''d really needed to puncture this asshole''s brain. There hadn''t been a way to run up close, though, and he was jerking around as he transformed.


    Bashful reared back as it was attacked by the animal I''d stabbed, and I realized too late the rider was gone. I spun, and there he was with his sword out ready to run me through. My hands were empty, and there was no time. Everything seemed to slow to a crawl, and I realized I was instinctively reaching for the probability magic that had saved me so many times - but of course it wasn''t there. At the last second the blade faltered, however, as my attacker pivoted to deflect Errod''s blade.


    I looked back to the Behemoth, but it was too late - he was almost full size already. I was just going to try to help Errod with the other one when I had to leap to the side instead to dodge another blast of that red lightning. I tried to mentally re-assess. There was the Behemoth, the flying guy with the spiky ball, the red lightning guy, the one that got cut in half, the one Hugh had sent flying - I wasn''t sure if he was alive or dead - and the one Errod was now fighting. That was six and we''d been expecting seven, but maybe we just had bad intel. I couldn''t touch the Behemoth, that was for sure, but I had to do something to help.


    I ran directly towards the red lightning dude. I glanced sideways and saw that spiked ball swing through the air only to be caught by a line of energy from Katrin - much to its wielder''s surprise. Hugh was charging at him fist-first so that seemed like it was probably under control. I feinted left and then dodged right, but the bastard ahead of me was waiting for the perfect shot - I needed him to fire and miss so I could have an opening to throw a knife through his smug face.


    And then the Behemoth made it to me. He moved faster than I expected, and a gigantic hand closed around my arms and lifted me into the air - I was being crushed, and couldn''t even really wiggle. I saw a flash of light as Errod''s shield ring triggered. I saw Hugh knock the flyer backwards into his own spiked ball just before being hit with that blast of red lightning. He''d had something that stopped Katrin''s attacks earlier, hadn''t that been recharged? It was unclear, all I knew was that Hugh had been flung backwards and landed in a pile all limp.


    Katrin was trying to get closer to the lightning guy, and lit a bonfire at his feet - but he just danced to the side and blasted at her. I knew she had to be low on mana. She looked up at me and our eyes met for just a moment - Katrin looked tired, helpless. These guys were powerful, and it wasn''t looking good. She nodded at me, though I wasn''t sure exactly what it meant. And then she threw herself at that mage. He blasted one last time and a concave shield appeared in front of her, bouncing the energy back at him. That had to have been why she wanted to get so close, there was no way she could actually aim the deflection. The shield shattered and she collapsed in a heap, but the one that had initiated the attack was rolling on the ground screaming and clutching his eyes.


    Another flash from Errod''s shield ring, and another. That was all of them. The Behemoth laughed. "Good work, most of you anyway. Kendt, you playing with your food?"


    The soldier fighting Errod - Kendt, I guess - grinned and turned to face the Behemoth while still parrying every attack Errod made. Oh god, he really was just toying with Errod. Katrin was down and probably out of mana anyway. Hugh hadn''t gotten back up yet, and maybe couldn''t. I was crushed in the Behemoth''s massive hand. We were well and truly fucked.

 CHAPTER 069: Terms of Surrender

    Kendt, as the Behemoth had called him, was still basically ignoring Errod while parrying every attack. "I was curious, he''s got a very particular style. I can''t place it, it''s like he just picked up little bits from various schools without ever mastering any of them."


    The Behemoth snorted. "Well finish it, and get out the healing potions for Rigela and Pogue."


    "And Geiter?"


    I was swung around as the Behemoth turned to look at the one rolling around screaming. "Sounds like he can get his own potion, though they''re not great at eyes. Guess we''ll have to find out."


    Katrin was moaning slightly, and I couldn''t see Hugh. Kendt turned back to Errod, parried another attack, and then chuckled. "You''re a terrible swordsman, you know that?"


    Errod nodded. "So I''ve heard." He saluted, passing his sword off to his off hand so he could raise some fingers to his forehead. The other man looked surprised and then copied the gesture, but lazily - and then went to stab Errod through the eye. I didn''t want to watch, and even without my emotions turned off I may have flinched somewhat, so I couldn''t really catch what the hell happened. Errod still had both eyes, but Kendt was short one ear.


    "What the fuck! How did you - " Kendt sputtered, and then went into full attack mode. Every swing and thrust was perfectly blocked, as if it was a choreographed dance - but one where both dancers had absolutely baffled expressions for some reason. Errod wasn''t attacking - after that shocking ear removal - just parrying in this incredible minimalist way where he only diverted the other man''s moves by exactly the amount needed.


    "Errod!" I yelled, barely able to breathe, "Just kill him and run! Get out of here!"


    The Behemoth snickered at that like it was a hilarious joke, his stupid inhuman grinning face looming over me. What was Errod waiting for? What was the Behemoth waiting for? Why was everyone just watching this? And then I saw the answer - a shadowy figure materialized behind Errod, stepping out of thin air with a sword ready. I tried to scream, but the Behemoth squeezed and I felt all sorts of things grinding together inside me that weren''t supposed to be touching.


    "There," Errod said quietly. He stepped sideways at the last second, slapping the blade that was coming at him from behind so that it dug into the road - before either man could recover Errod had taken another step backwards and very neatly stabbed both men in the throat; Kendt went down instantly, but the shadowy one stumbled back and then vanished.


    "Well I''ll be damned," the Behemoth said, "the kid was faking it. Huh. Good for you, kid. But your friend here can''t breathe at the moment, and you could stab me all day with that needle of yours and it wouldn''t do you any good. So you''re still kinda fucked."


    A voice came from the wreckage of one of the wagons. "Let her go, Henden."


    The Behemoth recoiled and went pale, like he''d seen a ghost. "Nobody calls me... who the fuck is that?"


    Hugh stood up, dusting himself off. His shirt was smoldering and the skin underneath didn''t look great either, but somehow he was still giving off this vibe that said he was about to kick someone''s ass. The Behemoth looked at him for a moment, tilted his head, and then said something I never expected.


    "Hugh? Is that you, man?"


    "Errod," Hugh said calmly, "Get your sister and head for the city. Now."


    Errod looked up at me, jaw set and eyes burning. He wanted to attack the Behemoth, I could see it. But he flipped his sword around and slid it away, surprisingly smoothly considering he was holding it in his left hand and sheathing it on that same side, then looked down at the handle with his brow furrowed in annoyance or maybe even surprise. With one last glance at me he did run over to Katrin and awkwardly hefted her over his shoulder so he could get her to the moskar that were frantically tugging at the ruined wagons.


    The other side was taking advantage of the lull as well - the one whose eyes had been burned by the backlash of his own attack had stopped screaming and pulled out a potion that looked like radioactive snot, and the flier had pried himself off his spiked ball where Hugh had pinned him and was feebly pawing at his bag. Probably they all had healing potions, which would have been a really fantastic score if we''d won the battle. Instead it was just Hugh and the Behemoth staring at each other while the rest of us waited to see who would die and how.


    The grip on me had loosened somewhat, but I couldn''t move my arm enough to reach a knife and it probably wouldn''t have done me any good regardless. I tried to access Mister Creepy to see if he could squirm out and do something, but I couldn''t get it to work for some reason. Everything in my head was yelling that I needed to find a way to attack, to escape, to... anything! But I had to admit to myself that shutting up and sitting still was the only thing available to me. He could have killed me already, easily - and if I provoked him he still could.


    "So, Hugh. It''s been a while."


    "It has. Please put her down."


    He looked at his hand as if just noticing I was there, then chucked. "She''s who I''m here for, Hugh. Well, mainly. I was also hoping that U''rmun would be here, but that''s more of a personal matter. Fucker managed to drag me to Kertzale, thank the gods he couldn''t get me into one of the cells. You know how hard it is to get out of that plane?"


    Hugh nodded. "I''ve heard stories. But you seem to have made it out quickly enough."


    "Benefits of a long life of service, Hugh. Sometimes the boss gives a shit if you make it home."


    He was chatting in a fairly normal manner, but he still looked absolutely insane. It wasn''t just that he was the size of a small building, it was that his whole face was distorted into this unnatural grin. Hugh seemed calm as well, though I assumed that was just because he didn''t want to try and fight this fucking monster - especially if he had to worry about hurting me while I was in the thing''s fist.


    "Well Henden, it seems that your years of service are at an end. For that boss, at least. Haven''t you heard? The war is over. The last few months have been a series of absolute disasters, and the allied forces of all three neighboring lands are camped on Halenvar''s soil. I hear the people were more than happy to surrender, in fact."


    Stolen novel; please report.


    He snorted. "I''m bound, Hugh. Word of law, right in my soul. I serve Gilbrect Halenvar until the end. Even if he hadn''t made me swear, you know they have bounties out on me. They want to hold everything I do against me - they aren''t soldiers like us, they don''t understand what you need to do to survive. To win. Most of the ones making those choices have never seen a battlefield."


    Hugh looked gobsmacked. "Henden, you... you ate a woman while her family watched."


    He shrugged, which was an interesting experience from my current position. "Eh. It''s psychology, you know that. People acting up, looking like they''re going to try some shit, so you make an example out of one of them to keep the rest in line."


    "You don''t eat people alive."


    "Don''t tell me you''re going soft, Hugh. The goal is to win. How you get there doesn''t matter. And anyway, I probably saved some lives with that stunt. That''s what nobody gets. If I''d been quick about it, it wouldn''t have made as much of an impact. They needed that time to have the message really set in. The first five minutes just made them angry, you know? They might have still tried to fight back, and then we would have had to kill them all. So yeah, they should have thanked me. Fifteen minutes of screaming, and then they all behaved themselves and nobody else died."


    I had to admit there was a certain logic to it, but even with my empathy dialed to zero the idea of what he had done turned my stomach. That little voice that tried to think of what Bill would say or do when I couldn''t be a good person on my own instincts was flat out ranting. There was no way, it yelled, that eating someone over the course of fifteen minutes was the best way to accomplish that goal. He enjoyed that. He must have. I''d been considering telling him what Halenvar was up to - the whole thing with ending the world - but it had been implied he was okay with it and at this point that would make some sense.


    "What would Hesht say about that?" Hugh asked, and the Behemoth recoiled as if struck.


    "Fuck you. He was a deserter, and you probably helped him."


    "Of course I did. And I was there when he died, Henden. You know, they could have saved him? But he needed more than potions or life magic, he needed someone to reshape the cancer out of his body - and he wouldn''t let anyone with that gift touch him. Because of you. I watched your brother die because he couldn''t stand the thought of someone that shared anything in common with you laying hands on him."


    "Then he was worse than a deserter - he was a fucking idiot. I don''t know if you thought that bringing up my brother was going to make me get all misty eyed or what, but I''m still going to kill this one. Fuck, who was holding the jar?"


    "Sir," the flying one said - he was limping towards the Behemoth but looked mostly healed, like the potion had closed up all the big wounds and left the bruising. "I believe Cartek had it."


    "Fuck, right. He was supposed to do it all stealthy if shit went bad. Fuck. I''m not even sure if he''s alive. Okay, thanks Rigela. Geiter, you good?"


    "I''m... mostly blind, sir. I''ll need an actual healer."


    "Ugh, fucking potions. Pogue?"


    The one that had been flying - Rigela apparently, which sounded a bit familiar - glanced over at the mess behind him. "Uh. He''s out. Alive, I think. Fuck, my arm still feels wrong. Bitch put a knife all the way into my shoulder from underneath."


    "Well you can watch her die in a minute, how about that? Hugh, it was interesting to see you again. Tell you what, one last favor since we have history - if you turn and run away right now, I won''t pull your legs off."


    Hugh just stood there, looking annoyed. I wasn''t sure what he could do - the Behemoth was only keeping me alive momentarily in the hopes that shadowy guy - Cartek - would be back with some sort of fucking jar. From the sounds of it they were planning to pop my head off and stick it in a mason jar like some preserves. If Hugh attacked in the meantime they''d probably just kill me right away, and in fact if the jar didn''t show up soon I had to assume they''d rip my head off anyway. Errod and Katrin were actually leaving as far as I could tell, though they''d disappeared from view. Even if they turned around and came back I didn''t think they could help.


    "Sorry Hugh," I said, "you two want to talk about service and loyalty and whatever, but I''m done. I''m out. Behemoth, you''re being toyed with. I''m bait - I''ve been bait this whole time. They fucked with my memories to put fake shit in there and reshaped my face to make me look like this Calliope Smith bitch, and then got you and Telen to run all over the countryside like idiots. Lord Protector Hammersmith is using me to keep you busy, she doesn''t actually need me for anything."


    He hesitated. "You''re just saying that so I won''t kill you."


    "Gosh, how did you figure that out? Did that take a lot of work, putting those pieces together? Congratulations genius, you''ve solved it. But that doesn''t mean I''m not telling the truth."


    "No, I think you''re full of shit. Nice try, though. With or without the jar, my orders were to bring back your head for them to examine."


    "Hah! Good luck, with all the bullshit they shoved in to my memories. You''re going to get a bunch of blurry surreal shit that was designed to be as confusing as possible - and that''s if my head is even in good enough shape to read anything. Keep me alive, and I''ll tell you everything. Kill me, and by the time your boss figures it out it''ll be too late."


    He was still grinning, but now the silence dragged on. He wasn''t sure if I was telling the truth, and someone like this was bound to err on the side of murder. Thankfully, Hugh lunged through the air and tried to smash my head in. There was a split second of confusion as I saw him launching at me fist-first, but the Behemoth reflexively shielded me and slapped Hugh aside and it clicked pretty fast - he was making my story look more legitimate.


    "Don''t let him kill me, I can tell you so much!"


    Hugh''s face contorted in anger. "Traitor!" he yelled, mustache bristling, but he wasn''t the best actor - and I''d seen him actually angry. I could tell the difference. Thankfully the performance had been enough to tip the scales, and the Behemoth stepped away from Hugh without killing me.


    "Fine," the Behemoth said - though he didn''t sound happy about it. "I''ll keep you alive for the time being. But Hugh? You just lost out on my offer. I''m going to need to rip your arms and legs off - and hey, say hello to my brother if you see him at the bottom of the Necropolis."


    He casually reached over and broke both my legs before tossing me aside - everything was a blur from the pain, and I had to pull away into my memory palace to block it out. I was still vaguely aware of my agony - mostly the legs, but I''d hit my head when I landed as well and there was some general soreness from being squeezed - but it was more like alarms going off around me than actually feeling it. I took a deep breath and dropped back into my body to see if I could help somehow - a well placed knife, maybe - but I was face down and it hurt so badly to roll over that I nearly passed out.


    It was worse than the stab wounds, worse than the broken ribs. He''d shattered multiple bones in my legs, and there was no way I could throw a knife straight even if one of the baddies wandered directly in front of me. Desperately I clawed my way back into the memory palace where I could block it all out, and I collapsed on the bed. After a moment sharp spikes of pain told me I was being moved around, and I hesitantly opened my eyes one more time but only saw the rough fur of one of those boar-wolf things. For a second I entertained the thought that Hugh had somehow won and was using this creature because the wagons were fucked, but I could hear voices - the Behemoth and one of the others, I wasn''t sure which.


    I wanted to stop them, to attack somehow, to go back and see what happened to Hugh, but if he was smart he''d have run off and left me behind. There was nothing more I could do but wait for a miracle.

 CHAPTER 070: Look, I Promise I Mentioned It In Chapter Four

    I was thrown to the ground, somewhere in a field. The Behemoth was back to a normal human size, which is to say he was still enormous but within the upper bounds for a human being. I could see someone else was a little ways off, but they were mostly blocked by one of those mounts they''d been riding. The Behemoth leaned over me and tore my bandolier of knives off, tossing them aside. then he roughly pulled at my jacket as well. I suddenly had a horrible thought - they were extremely likely to see the Dumine on my chest, but if he was pulling all my gear off he was going to see the one on the bottom of my foot, too.


    There was only one solution, which was to make sure I pulled my own boots off. I wanted to laugh, the whole thing seemed so absurd - who would have thought that having my shoes taken off could be some sort of dire situation? With both legs in so much pain I knew I had to just do it as quickly as possible, so as the jacket pulled free I quickly leaned forward and hooked my thumb under what passed for a sock around these parts - elastic was something I had been missing since I arrived. The good news was that I''d been wearing my stupid hover shoes, which were basically wooden clogs and would come off pretty easily. The bad news is that would still wrench my mangled leg around.


    I did it quickly and managed to pull the leg back towards me as I did it, covering the awkward movement with my extremely real screams. The Dumine was hidden for the moment, at least. The Behemoth laughed, of course, but then pulled the other shoe off me and unceremoniously wrenched my shirt - but not the bra-like thing I was wearing underneath thankfully - up over my head. He grunted and threw it back in my face, similarly pulled off my pants in a way that hurt more than anything else so far and almost flashed my foot Dumine at him, and then threw those at me too.


    Finally he ripped the gold nose ring out and gave me a once-over for anything he''d missed before gathering up my belongings. I noticed for the first time why I hadn''t gotten a signal from Mister Creepy, and remembered how tightly the Behemoth had crushed me in his gigantic hand - he peeled the flattened spider bits off of the device but didn''t seem to care what it was. If I could somehow get it back I could just attach the spider-end to a new animal, but I still was sad that my stupid lobotomized arachnid got crushed.


    The Behemoth returned a moment later as I was struggling back into the shirt, lifted it back up, and slapped something on my chest - it felt like ice water was flowing through me for a split second and then the sensation passed. Glancing down, I could see the same kind of odd blue-gray device Katrin had stuck to her Dumine in the jail after being caught by those bounty hunters. I got the shirt on, stared at the pants but couldn''t imagine getting them on with my legs in their current condition, and resigned myself to being in my stupid ugly fantasy underpants for a while. They were revealing in the least sexy way possible, like a tiny loincloth with the flaps buttoned together underneath you. Seriously, I needed to get my hands on some elastic.


    My captors seemed content to leave me alone for the moment, so I tried to escape the pain by ducking into my memory palace and felt instead like I was struggling through tar. I could meditate, and I could even feel that there was something just out of reach, but where normally it felt like something snapping into place this time the parts didn''t fit - I was having to force it with all my mental strength. And then, click. I was in.


    "What the fuck was that?" I muttered, but of course I knew. It had to be that device. I''d forgotten to talk to Katrin about it, but the use was clear - you don''t want prisoners blowing shit up with magic. The cold feeling had been similar to when I overspent on mana but not quite the same, and it had faded too fast - in fact I was sure I still had mana, so it was clearly different.


    I concentrated and tried to picture my Dumines and after a moment I could sense two of the three, with the last one being a vague blur. I had enough potential to get the mental security I''d been wanting, and while I was worried the lock on my Dumine would prevent it I just had to do the same trick I''d worked on when I first needed to get past the confusion of having too many - after only a moment I''d managed to talk through one of the two that weren''t bound and pulled up the ability I''d designed: Direct any incoming unapproved visitors to the most secure and fortified spot in my mind palace, which I could design or re-design as needed. Unhindered by the lock, the ability sank into my lutore. That had almost been a disaster.


    Of course they were still going to kill me, but whatever. I slapped together a jail cell in my mind palace, and tried to concentrate on imagining the walls being extra solid. It would have been nice to be able to test it somehow, but... I''d deal with that when the time came.


    With as much care as I was able, I stuffed both legs into one pant leg and wrapped the other around before tying it off. This meant they weren''t flopping around anymore, and it kept my Dumine hidden since my feet didn''t stick out the bottom. But the little bit of effort required to turn me into the world''s saddest mermaid left me completely exhausted, and so I couldn''t even spit in the Behemoth''s face when he came to haul me back to my ride. He shoved a sack over my head, but otherwise treated me with total disregard rather than actual malice; I''d been braced for him to deliberately knock my legs around so that was nice.


    We stopped again at one point and someone shoved something roughly into my mouth - I tried not to swallow it but they were persistent, and in any case it turned out to be something that made my legs go numb. If they''d just said that I would have eaten the damn thing willingly, and I wasn''t sure why they hadn''t given it to me sooner. Meanwhile I kept trying to use magic - I was sure the fate lines thing worked, but I couldn''t see them since there was a bag over my head. That struck me as unfair, since the lines weren''t actual physical objects anyway.


    I kept turning them on and off anyway, since it was taking a second to get a feel for the locked Dumine. After a little bit I had figured out what it needed to feel like though, and could consistently grab for one of the two open ones without stumbling. I tried using divination and while it worked it didn''t tell me anything interesting - what I really needed to do was check what happened to Hugh, but I didn''t want to miss anything important while I was being transported. On the other hand, I also couldn''t keep divination up indefinitely or I''d be all out of mana later when they might leave me alone. Not that I knew how I would get out of this. Could I learn Planar magic on the fly?


    I went back to Good Charl, when Sige had pulled us into Itzele so we could sneak out. That plane was aligned every other day, and he''d said it was an easy one to get to - plus we hadn''t needed to move, things had just... faded over. If I could get a feel for what he''d done, maybe I could copy it. Of course, I''d just used up most of my potential to put mental security into place, which had seemed very important in the moment. Hmm.


    The divination seemed to fail right when I needed it the most, and I realized that I''d designed it in a way that would be awful at what I needed right now - it was mapping the world based on the overlap of my lutore and the planar membrane, so when I was trying to pass through that membrane everything was fucked up. I could look at myself in Itzele and try to feel it, but I couldn''t get a read on the actual transition.


    Making things worse, at some point the numbness wore off and my legs began to hurt more and more. I missed cars that had nice rubber wheels to drive on proper roads. The boar-wolf things were jostling me all over, and my options were to get badly distracted by the pain or completely tune out the real world and just sit in my memory palace with no idea if something important was happening or if they were about it kill me. Also, it was a bit worrying just how fully I''d managed to tune out my body - when I had first started meditating even a little pain would kick me out of it, and now I was forcing myself to stay in to avoid pain. What if that meant that I would sit there unaware while someone was stabbing me to death?


    Finally I fell asleep, although that mainly just meant the scenery outside the window changed from featureless mist to erratically shifting landscapes. I checked my mana - I''d badly drained it trying to learn how to cross into Itzele - and when it seemed like it was full enough and my body had gotten some rest I decided it was time to get to work. First things first, I allowed awareness of the world to creep back in - I was laying on wood and there was no wind, so probably indoors - the quality of the sound felt like the inside of a building too. A quick mental inventory told me I was just as hurt as before but probably not any worse, and the wrap on my legs was still in place. Good.


    Next was to mute the pain again, and retroactively check on Hugh. It would have happened quickly, so it shouldn''t take a lot of my mana. I went to the last moment before the Behemoth tossed me aside, flinched a little at the sound of my legs shattering, and tried to watch the show. The Behemoth darted forward and Hugh stumbled, tripping on something? Hang on. Slowing memories down had been hit or miss, but more reliable than trying to fast forward - and way better than going in reverse, which I''d basically never done right. I slowed everything down and got as close as I could, and there was nothing he could have possibly tripped on. Had someone used magic, or... oh.


    I smiled, and let the scene advance again. Hugh stumbled, not quite falling down, and right as the Behemoth swung at him he dropped the ruse and stepped to the side, punching the Behemoth''s wrist so hard that shock waves rippled through the thing''s colossal body. Then he followed it with an uppercut that actually lifted the Behemoth a little off the ground before darting away - none too soon, as the Behemoth swung right at where Hugh had been standing.


    The blinded one was squinting, trying to follow the fight, but from the looks of it he couldn''t see much at all. He certainly didn''t see Hugh coming. There was a terrible crunch, and he slammed down into the ground in a very final way. The Behemoth was a little caught off-guard, clearly assuming this was going to be a one on one fight, but he recovered quickly and just barely stopped Hugh from finishing off the unconscious one. Hugh retreated, but when he tried to dart back in the Behemoth threw one of the wagon wheels with so much force that it exploded when it hit the ground - thankfully missing Hugh, but peppering him with shrapnel.


    The guy with the spiked ball grabbed the unconscious one and they both flew into the air out of the fight. Hugh charged in and slid at the last second, kicking the Behemoth''s knee so hard it bent back the wrong way - but I noticed the arm that had been so badly hit already looked normal again, so it wasn''t clear if the knee would matter. The Behemoth grabbed Hugh, Hugh smashed his fist, he grabbed with the other hand but Hugh rolled out of the way. Every hit on Hugh was minor, a scrape or a glancing blow, but every hit on the Behemoth was instantly healed.


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    Finally it happened - Hugh took a solid hit, thankfully a punch rather than being grabbed and crushed. It flung him more than ten feet, and he barely stumbled back up afterwards - a far cry from the spry movements I''d seen from him up to that point. He looked at the Behemoth, then up at the two hanging from the spiked ball fifty feet in the air, then towards Sentortzi where I could now see a dust cloud rising - probably city guards rushing out towards the battle. Hugh ran. There was a twinge of something, some tiny sense of betrayal, but it was more out of habit than anything else. I didn''t actually think he was abandoning me, it was clearly the right move under the circumstances. But it still hurt a little bit - old trauma dies slow, I guess.


    I felt a bit better when Hugh started launching huge rocks at the flying guy from a distance, but sadly at that point everyone was retreating. There was nothing more to see. I popped out of the memory into the present moment to survey my surroundings with divination. I was in a basement, and while they had been nice enough to bring my belongings down there was no chance of me reaching any of it - everything was up on a table on the other side of the room, and the formerly unconscious guy was keeping an eye on me. I climbed the stairs, and found the Behemoth gnawing on a bit of jerky - I didn''t want to watch him eat anything now that I knew what he had done - and outside there was some fairly nondescript woods. It didn''t look like the area right by Sentortzi, which made me worry I''d somehow been out for way longer than I thought.


    That was about all I had the mana for - I hadn''t completely used up what I had regained, but I was reaching the point of diminishing returns for divination. Best to save the rest for later if all I was going to see with the rest of my juice was these fuckers sitting around picking their noses. So it was back to the memory palace, and back to pacing around. I was tempted to scry on myself while I turned on the fate threads to see if I could bypass the sack on my head, but it didn''t seem like I would learn anything anyway. The direction Katrin and Errod were in, maybe, but that would only be important if I escaped.


    I dozed off again, at least once, and lost any sense of time. It could have been three hours or half a week for all I knew - I was hungry, thirsty, and had pissed myself at some point - probably back when my legs were all numb. But none of that really told me how long it had been. It had been cloudy, so I wasn''t sure about the exact position of the sun either during the fight or now. I was pretty sure it was the next day that the visitor arrived, but not certain.


    He was nervous. I watched him through divination as he spoke to the Behemoth, and the wiry little guy looked like he was pretty sure he wasn''t going to get out of this building alive. "She''s... unwilling?" he asked, looked disturbed at the question.


    "If she knows what''s good for her, she''ll let you do your thing. I need you to just... get in there, tell me what she knows. Verify her story."


    "Ah. Well, I can view memories if you can give me enough information to locate them, and I can ensure she speaks nothing but the truth." There was an implied ''but please don''t kill me if that''s not enough'' tacked on the end.


    I popped back to my body and started to think as I heard them tromping down the stairs. What I couldn''t do was let them ask me a bunch of yes or no questions. I wasn''t sure if this guy was going to know when I was lying, or if he was going to force me to say only true things - but either way them controlling the conversation would be bad news. The bag was ripped off my head and I did my best to look surprised.


    "Okay," the Behemoth said to the newcomer, " do your thing."


    The new guy gave me an apologetic look, but he crouched down behind me to place his hands on my head and I felt the attack begin. The mental defenses I''d just unlocked were to keep people out of my mind, but they were the bargain basement version of that ability. It''s not that it wasn''t working, it was that the ways in which it protected me were limited. Something settled down over my thoughts like a weighted blanket, and I was powerless to throw it off.


    "Okay," the man said, "she has to tell the truth now."


    Showtime. Before the Behemoth could ask me anything, I began speaking.


    "First of all, I''m not Calliope Smith. I''ve talked to her a few times, but I don''t really know her. The other woman that looked exactly like me, the one that stabbed Telen during the attack in Theramas and later killed him? That also wasn''t Calliope Smith. Our faces, our bodies, were magically changed to look like Calliope Smith - you might remember that your trackers said there was more than one person somehow. While you were chasing the two of us around, the actual Calliope Smith was playing her own game."


    So far, so good. All technically true, and I hadn''t had any trouble saying it. Clearly the magic didn''t care too much about being deceptive, just actual lying. Logically it would need to be based on my own opinion of what I was saying, but I didn''t have time to experiment. While I tried to think of what else I could say I made an attempt to declare that I was made of cheese, but that weight increased and I just couldn''t get the words to form. There was something I could try, but I was worried it was stretching the limits. I gave it a shot anyway. "I told you before that I was just bait."


    Huh, that had felt a little funny to say but it had worked. After all, I had in fact told him that before - even if it had been a lie at the time. The Behemoth looked to the human lie detector, who nodded.


    "Interesting. So it''s a diversion. But then how did you know we would follow you?"


    A fair question, but one I had an answer ready for. "The wild mage - the witch? She''s working with me, and she fed you false information." I paused for a moment, to convince myself that this next part was just some factual statements rather than being connected to the part about false information. "Do you remember when she convinced you to march right up to the fortress in Theramas? Or when she promised you we were all asleep and sitting ducks in Zistarne? Of course, just ten minutes later when you got there we were all awake and scattered around. We trapped you on another plane, we killed Telen. It didn''t go very well for your side."


    His brow furrowed. He was buying it so far, but I had two main things to worry about - one was that he could still at any moment ask me a question that landed me in hot water, and the other was that the guy forcing me to tell the truth could speak up and mention some of the many limitations to this magic.


    "She told me that you were headed to Granlan, but she redirected you to Sentortzi. She didn''t mean for you to actually catch us though. Look, I don''t want to die. I know things about Hammersmith, about Halenvar. I know secrets that people would kill to learn, or to cover up."


    That was certainly true. Hell, if he pulled the pants off my foot he''d learn about one of them. The Behemoth stood and paced for a moment, then looked at the guy still holding my head. "Check her memories."


    "Ah. Yes, of course. If you could narrow things down somewhat, that could... ah..."


    "The first of the fifth. See if she destroyed a laboratory."


    That weight lifted off my brain, and instead I felt a soft sort of probing. "I''ll see what I can do. Um. Hang on. Wait, no. Uh. Just a moment. Sorry, I just... well, that can''t be right. Ah. Yes, I seem to be having some difficulty. Is she trained in thought magic?"


    "She''s got a fucking null badge on her Dumine!"


    "Right, of course. Yes. It''s just that every memory I attempt to view is an empty room. A very odd one. Stone floor, metal walls. Boxes. A display of decorative spoons?"


    That didn''t quite sound like the jail cell I''d designed. What the fuck? In fact, somehow I was suddenly certain it was a self-storage unit. I wasn''t sure why that would be what my brain had chosen, but as long as it was working I didn''t care. The Behemoth glared at me, and I shrugged. "It''s not going to work. You''ll just have to keep me alive."


    "I can, ah, see a bit of her mind as a whole - but when I attempt to focus in on any one part it''s just that room again. But I can see - anyone could, it''s extensive - there has been memory modification done. Years ago, most likely - it needs maintenance and repair."


    "But you can''t see why?"


    "No. Even if I were to try and break it down, without being able to go into the memories in more detail it wouldn''t do any good."


    The Behemoth stood, and sighed. "Fine. We''ll do this the fun way. Pogue!" he yelled, "get your torture kit!"


    Oh goody.


    The already nervous man faltered and took a step back, and I felt that weight come off my brain. "Now, I... um. Torture, uh, is... I was told that this would be a simple matter of ensuring she was telling the truth. I was, I was told... I was promised this was nothing... um..."


    The Behemoth palmed the man''s head like a basketball. He could do that, even at his "normal" size. "Listen, we''re just going to give her some encouragement so she doesn''t waste our time. Your job is the same as before - make sure she''s not lying. You don''t have to lay a hand on her yourself, unless you want to, and then you get to walk right out of here and get paid. But if I think you''re trying something, well, then you won''t be walking ever again. Understood?"


    The man nodded, and put his hand back on my head. I felt the weight settle in again. Hmm. Well, fuck it, time to try something. I''d had a problem with pulling extra people in last time I tried to invite Katrin and Errod into my mind palace. This guy was not only already touching me, but he was actively interfacing with my mind. So if I grabbed on tight, and pulled...


    There was a terrible moment where I felt his mind struggle, but it was like he''d been leaning over a pit and I''d just given him a little shove. I could almost imagine his arms windmilling, already overbalanced and too late to actually save himself, and then his struggle tripped my mental defenses and he was... gone. No, not gone - he was in that storage unit. Where was that? It was in my mind, right? There was a sound, and I felt something moving. Something foreign. Was that him, trying to escape?


    No. It was something else. Something bad. Something that was... hunting him.


    It was there, somehow, in the storage unit with him. I could feel it, hear it, even though I still couldn''t quite put my finger on where that was. But wait, no. I knew where it was. I''d seen the storage units, hadn''t I? That''s what was in the hallway where the memories I was missing should have been. I could feel the man''s mind tugging, wrenching, trying to pull back into his body. And I could also still feel that other thing, whatever it was. Had I created this? My mental defenses were just supposed to trap intruders, right?


    I heard screaming, echoing through the hallways of my mind palace. There was one final yank, and then the screaming was in the real world.


    I turned my focus back to my actual surroundings - I''d slipped back into my mind palace to look around and think - and I saw the little man howling and clawing at his face. The Behemoth was watching, tilting his head like a dog trying to understand a new command, but didn''t look particularly concerned. The man ran at a wall head first and slammed into it with a horrible crack, and then backed up to try again. And again. And again. The Behemoth just coldly observed, until the man was a twitching wreck on the floor.


    "You got Granch in there, kid?" he asked.


    "I guess?" I said, genuinely at a loss. Huh. So... that was a thing to keep in mind.

 CHAPTER 071: On The Other Hand, At Least You Have the Element of Surprise

    I kept telling myself that being tortured wasn''t a big deal. I''d already discovered I could detach myself from the pain, and I was now in a world where virtually any physical trauma could be reversed. The only thing that would be totally catastrophic would be if they cut off my foot, since that Dumine had some fairly important shit going on - if I recalled correctly even that could be re-attached, but the timeline mattered and I didn''t think there was much chance I''d be rushed to an urgent care.


    It helped that Pogue, the one Hugh had brutalized into unconsciousness early in the battle, nearly made me laugh when he tried to be intimidating. It wasn''t his fault - he hadn''t seen Earth entertainment, he couldn''t know how hopelessly cliched he was. He rolled out a leather bundle filled with tools and looked at me like I should be scared, then got annoyed when I reminded him I was still on the floor.


    "I can''t see your toys, Pogue. I can guess what they look like, and if you want to hold them up I''ll make scared faces, but there''s no way I can see the top of the table from down here."


    He did, in fact, decide to put me on a chair and scoot me closer to the table - he tied me in place, and while he pulled the pants off my legs he wasn''t in a position to spot the extra Dumine. I kept having to slip back into my memory palace to escape the blinding agony, but I kept my eyes open so they wouldn''t think I was passing out. I only really needed it when they were moving me. When the actual interrogation started I''d be able to spend a little mana to watch from outside myself, but I didn''t want to burn it all before then.


    Pogue moved my things to another smaller table, not that I would have been able to grab any of it anyway, and then he did the whole stereotypical song and dance where he picked up each needlessly sinister tool and caressed it while staring at me.


    "Yeah, very nice. Is that for cleaning your toenails, or...?" He wasn''t amused. "Okay, sorry. But... listen, you don''t need to torture me. I already said I would tell you everything. Just untie me, I''ll join your side. Cutting off my thumbs is only going to make me want to take this shit to my grave, and that doesn''t help anyone."


    He shot me a look of pity, or something close to it, and put the toenail cleaner-looking thing back down. "You don''t get it, do you? We''re not going to believe you. Your brain has been fucked with, bad enough that people can''t even look at your memories with a lock on your Dumine. You''re damaged beyond repair. We know you were telling the truth before, but with a mind as twisted around as yours? The truth is whatever they planted in you. So far as we know, this whole defection was part of some plan."


    "Okay? Wait, then why torture me at all?"


    "You want us to be buddies, to let you dole out information slowly so we''ll keep you alive. The torture is to get it all at once so we can confirm it if at all possible, and then dispose of you. It''s about getting this over with. Ripping it out of your head would have been better, but second best is getting enough out of you with torture to check with Sentortzi''s information brokers."


    "Huh. So... I''m dead either way and my best bet is to get revenge by keeping my mouth shut so you don''t get anything out of this?"


    He smiled. "You can certainly try, but it''s hard to keep your mouth shut without lips."


    "Well, that''s just going to make it hard for you to understand me. What, are you going to threaten to pull my tongue out next? You''re super bad at this."


    Despite my snark I was, actually, starting to feel panic set in. I was going to have to tell them something, clearly, and I needed to decide what - not the truth since that wouldn''t help, and it needed to be something urgent - more urgent than Hammersmith busting into their secret base - while also being something they needed me alive for. It was a tall order under the best of circumstances, and I didn''t know enough about politics or world history or anything else to come up with a convincing lie... especially one that would stand up to scrutiny from whatever fact checkers they had on speed dial.


    The torture started, and things got... a little hazy. I held out as long as I could before ducking into the memory palace, both to pace myself and to make sure my show of pain was genuine - if they were going to believe me even enough to give me a break while fact checking I couldn''t sit there calmly while they jabbed me. The issue was that I underestimated just how traumatic it would be, and so once I''d formulated a plan and tried to pop back into the real world to "accidentally" let the information slip I found that I couldn''t do it.


    It was like the first time I jumped off the high dive at the public pool. I knew, logically, that this was a thing I wanted to do - but my body just kept stopping me at the edge. Nope, sorry, overruled. It was infuriating, fighting with myself like that. I finally decided that I''d have to risk remote-controlling myself like I''d been practicing, though I wasn''t sure if it would look right. I turned divination on and stepped into room zero, then immediately flinched at what I saw. I was a bloody mess. Worse, with my hair drenched in sweat and my head hanging down against my chest the Dumine on the back of my head was just barely peeking out - just a sliver, but enough that anyone walking behind me would take a closer look.


    I forced myself to lift my head, but I was having trouble. I was tired, and in pain even in the memory palace. My fight or flight instinct was screaming at me, but I couldn''t do either. My control was worse than it had ever been, making me look like some janky marionette when I moved. I wasn''t even looking in the right direction, it was like my body didn''t want to listen to me. I knew I would need to step back in and take direct control, but I still couldn''t force myself to do it so I made one last attempt to speak from within the memory palace.


    My body''s mouth opened, but all that came out was the pathetic wail of a wounded animal. Cool. Pogue had stopped working, and came over to look in my eyes. I thought about trying to headbutt him but doubted I''d be able to score a good hit, and anyway it wouldn''t improve my situation - best to wait in case there was a real chance of escape. He stepped back, seemed to be considering something, and then sighed and dug a healing potion out of his bag. Oh, jackpot.


    Obviously I knew he was only going to heal me so he could torture me more, but it meant that if I somehow managed to get free - or even if I just got a reprieve from the torture - I''d be theoretically capable of running the hell away. I watched as he poured the thick liquid down my throat - he had to hold my mouth shut to make me swallow - and instantly I could see the healing take hold. All the wounds he''d inflicted closed up, and the swollen purple mess of my legs started to look like... okay, still a mess, but a mess that could potentially support my weight. I had no illusions about how healed I was, I''d clearly need to see a professional to get the bones in my legs properly repaired, but hobbling with a limp was better than crawling.


    It was the perfect time to start spilling my guts. It was plausible that I would want to do anything in my power to keep from starting the torture again - hell, it was true - and if he gave me a break while they fact checked I''d have time to plan some more. With a Herculean feat of pure willpower I popped back into my body, and found out very quickly that I was still in a lot of pain - from what I understood healing potions somehow prioritized vital organs, then open wounds, then bones, and finally miscellaneous tissue. That meant I was still ridiculously sore and even had some minor internal bleeding probably, plus as with most healing it made me feel exhausted.


    "No more," I said, and internally cringed at how much I meant it. "It''s another gate. An old way in."


    "A way in where?" he asked, and idly played with a corkscrew-looking thing.


    "To Brinkmar. Hammersmith isn''t coming in the way you think she is. She wanted you to know she was coming so you would be guarding the wrong place while she sneaks in the back way."


    It was a simple enough lie. I''d asked myself what they could care about more than Hammersmith busting in - which was, after all, the reason they wanted to kill me - and the clear answer was "the same thing but worse". Mainly I''d been inspired by our trip to the forgotten Duminere, and so I''d decided to weave that in there too. While I was at it I also mixed in some of the names of places and people I knew from the Jake Ross books, in case that lent any authenticity.


    I already knew entry to Brinkmar required going through specific portals, so the story was essentially that there was a secret entrance that had been constructed by the very powerful and mysterious people that first populated Brinkmar - they were supposed to have made all sorts of crazy shit, so that was plausible. Then it was hidden for emergency use, then forgotten about, then found by the evil wizard Tantek, or Thanatos if you were reading the Jake Ross books. In Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown he''d discovered a secret maze beneath the monastery Thanatos had been using as his base, and if that was real and as impossible to navigate as it was in the books it seemed like a good place to send them.


    If it wasn''t real, well, I would have to hope they couldn''t determine that right away. By way of proof, I told them that while researching to find a way in the team had discovered two other forgotten rooms - the secret vault with the lost Duminere, and a laboratory in Markonti. That last one was made up, but I felt like it made the whole thing a little more believable to throw a less valuable one in there.


    "I know about it because we needed to let Erathik know about the Duminere as part of a deal with them, but we also wanted you to have an excuse to follow Calliope Smith - or who you thought was Calliope Smith - all over the continent to waste your time. I wasn''t supposed to know about the back way into Brinkmar, or even the worthless lab in Markonti, but someone had a bit of a crush on me and after we... said goodbye... he was talkative."


    After that it was just a frantic flood of reasons why they should keep me alive - I still knew important people, I could take the place of one of the other three people pretending to be Calliope Smith, I could point out the real Calliope Smith in a crowd, since she had of course completely changed her appearance - I was proud of that one - and finally I swore up and down that I could guide them through Nusos to the staging area for the attack.


    Pogue dragged me off to a corner and faced me against the wall, then stomped upstairs for a moment. I considered that a massive success. At a minimum it seemed like it had been enough for them to talk about, which meant it was probably enough for them to send off to these information broker people about. So I''d bought some time, but how much? I wasn''t sure. I ducked into the memory palace and called the only person I could.


    "It is exhausting, how you refuse to die," she said, leaning against the wall and frowning. "You convince me to send the Behemoth off somewhere, that fails, I get my hopes up again, but no. Over and over this has happened."


    I leaned against the wall, belatedly noticing there was blood sprayed all over it somehow. Had the wild mage been redecorating, or was the torture coming through somehow? "I know. Sorry. I''ll try harder to die next time, but for now... can you help? I swear I''m working on severing this tie."


    "I''ve told you, the dying will cut that link just fine."


    "Yes. Sure. But there are other kids out there."


    She recoiled as if I''d struck her. "I... fuck you. Damn it. Fine, fine, shit. Fuck."


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    "Thank you."


    She waved me away, turning to shuffle around the room. It seemed like she was pouting. "Too soon for thanks, I am nowhere near you. I can... try to send a message, or... I don''t know."


    "You teleported me here from another world, can you just... zap me out of here?"


    "No. That took months of preparation and was performed at a site of great magical power with fourteen planes aligned. Today, I believe there are three. Regardless, it is impossible."


    "Okay, but I''m not on another world this time. Right?"


    "True. Still, teleportation is difficult, dangerous. And to do it with your location only known through this link?"


    "Also... I know this isn''t the time, but why the fuck did you try it then? Couldn''t you have just blown me up?"


    She sighed. "No. It''s... complicated. I will let your friends know you are alive, if I can." And with that, she vanished.


    I used divination to spy upstairs, though I realized too late I should have done that first. I missed whatever instructions the Behemoth had given, but I heard Rigela say he''d be back ''by lunch tomorrow'' before he headed out the door, so it seemed they were sending him out to check on my story - I''d assumed they would call it in from where they were, clearly they had communication of some sort since they''d used it to talk to the wild mage. But whatever the reason I was glad for it, since it meant I had a little time.


    I meant to back up and look at the earlier conversation, but I drifted off. I was so exhausted that even tied to a chair there was no way I could keep my eyes open. Since I wasn''t in the memory palace I had dreams, most of which were fleeting. The last one I had before waking up started in a storage unit which was somehow also part of the labyrinthine catacombs under Thanatos'' lair. Bill was there, sipping a milkshake, and I grabbed a decorative spoon off the wall so I could snitch some.


    "I''d have gone with Ohio," he said, and I noticed they were each from a different state.


    "Oh. I grabbed New Jersey, it''s where I''m from."


    "Well kiddo, we both know that''s not true."


    "Well not... originally."


    "Hey, it''s fine. Bit of a mess from a legal standpoint though, just think of the paperwork. I''ve been taking care of the wrong kid! Probably for the best that the adoption didn''t pan out, eh?"


    I took a bite of the milkshake, and realized we were in that little 50''s style diner that Bill had taken me to after the failed foster placement - right before he quit. I hadn''t been there since I turned seventeen and went back for a birthday freebie. I''d been planning on going again on my eighteenth to celebrate the new apartment, but... well.


    "I tried to set you up in a nice place and you wouldn''t even go inside," he said, though the real Bill never had that accusing tone to him. He''d just told me everything was okay, that I shouldn''t worry about it. The dream version looked annoyed, or betrayed.


    "It''s not my fault. I think they must have had a horseshoe over the door."


    "Well, I''d forgive you if it was up to me - but the waiter is pretty pissed."


    Bill gestured at the waiter, whose face I couldn''t make out. I just sensed that he hated me, and as I watched he walked slowly closer, this menacing force of nature. The walls began to shake and tear away, revealing something else hidden behind them that I didn''t get a good look at through the smoke that began to swirl around him. I tried to run but I was tied to the chair, and he reached over and grabbed the milkshake, forcing me to drink. It was warm, like that tentacle juice Errod saved me from in Nusos. I could hear Errod telling me to drink it, but I tried to fight anyway, but then... I woke up.


    Errod was force-feeding me a healing potion.


    "There you are! Keep quiet, keep quiet. I''m here to rescue you. It''s going to be okay. Maybe. Hopefully."


    I stood, shaking, embarrassed because at some point during this whole ordeal I''d soiled myself, and surveyed the room. Pogue was on the floor, dead. The tiny window up by the ceiling was open, and Errod''s boot was stuck in it.


    "You lost your boot."


    "I know, it was not my most elegant entrance. The Behemoth and that flying one are upstairs, we were searching for you and I got separated from the others and saw him flying back so I followed." He helped me over to the table, and I began grabbing my gear. "I should have told Katrin or Hugh where I was going, but if I''d gone back I would have lost track of him so it''s just me. But then I almost ran right into them, and the only place to hide was the basement window, and I almost landed on that guy, and... it''s been bad."


    So the Behemoth and Rigela were upstairs, and reinforcements were nearby but didn''t know our location. I pulled on pants and my jacket, hands shaking. I tried hard not to think about how crooked my legs were. I started shoving the few other things into a bag, though my knives were gone. I grabbed one of Pogue''s. Errod helped me, and looked sad when he held up the device from Mister Creepy. "Oh. Sorry about your spider thing."


    "It''s fine. It wasn''t really a pet or anything."


    "Still. We''ll find you a new one."


    It seemed a ridiculous thing for him to say under the circumstances, but it made me feel better. I didn''t need to worry about my missing fingernails or crooked legs, the toes scattered on the floor behind me that hadn''t grown back. I didn''t need to worry about being trapped in a basement with an impossibly hard to kill enemy just above my head, someone who I knew had eaten a woman over a leisurely fifteen minutes. Errod was going to get me out, and we were going to make a new Mister Creepy.


    We stood under the window and looked up while Errod picked the last few bits of spider off the device, and tried to determine if anyone was close enough to see if we climbed out. At a minimum it seemed like we should take the boot out, but any movement in the window at all could get us noticed. Of course it turned out I didn''t need to worry about that, since the Behemoth chose that moment to come down the stairs. He was clapping slowly, sarcastically, and as we stepped back and readied ourselves to fight he laughed.


    "Oh, this is rich. A rescue attempt? How charming. And how do you think it''s going so far? I owe you a beating, boy. You turned a clear victory into a strategic retreat, which meant I couldn''t recover our communication charms. That''s been very inconvenient. You should feel proud of that... but probably not for this. This is a disaster. Look at you, fumbling around. You''ve lost your boot. And your friend here is limping, I can see her legs healed wrong from across the room. I''d bet she can''t run worth a damn, so how far do you think you''d get through these woods? Because I don''t even think you can make the window."


    "Any plans?" Errod whispered to me, and I shook my head. The Behemoth healed too quickly, even if he didn''t have room to get to full size in the basement it didn''t matter. Errod could stab him all day and do nothing.


    "We can stall," I whispered back, "I think he likes to play with his food."


    "No good, not unless I can get a signal to the others."


    The Behemoth clapped, startling me. "Are we quite done whispering? There''s only one thing to discuss, kids. Who will I kill first?"


    Errod took a deep breath, and stepped forward. "I challenge you to a duel."


    The Behemoth stifled a laugh, then nodded. "Oh, of course. Of course. First one to tear off the other''s arms wins?"


    "I can defeat you with one arm tied behind my back," Errod said. He tossed the spider end of the Mister Creepy device down on the table and grabbed a leather strap from the torture tools, then tied it tightly around his left wrist, folding the cuff of his magic glove up and out of the way.


    "Oh, it''s a stunt thing? Or is this some sort of trick where you''re going to... do something with that leather strap?"


    "No," Errod said, but his voice was shaking. I had no idea what he had planned. "I just want to make it a fair fight. Is one hand not good enough? Fine. I''ll skip the sword as well."


    Errod tossed his sword aside. His wrist was turning purple around the strap, and I couldn''t imagine that was part of the plan. Was he just stalling for time? It didn''t seem like the Behemoth''s amusement would buy us much. Sooner or later he would crush Errod''s skull, and now the poor fool didn''t even have a sword.


    "Here, I''ll use this instead," he said, picking up a cleaver-like knife from the torture implements. "Less reach, worse balance. Do you think it''s a fair fight now?"


    The Behemoth raised an eyebrow. "I don''t know what the joke is, but I''m bored by it. Let''s get this over with."


    "Fine," Errod said, and in a flash he slammed the cleaver down on his own wrist. I recoiled, stunned, and saw that the Behemoth was wide-eyed and slack jawed. I was avoiding looking at Errod''s hands - or what was left of them - but I saw that he had dropped the cleaver in favor of his severed hand, thumped it down on the table stump-first, and then threw it at the window. Errod''s left hand smacked into the windowsill and then, much to my amazement, it scrambled for purchase and scurried out into the woods.


    I was staring in absolute shock, and I guess the Behemoth must have been surprised too because he didn''t see Errod lunging at him with the corkscrew-looking thing until it was too late. He howled, eye absolutely ruined, and flung Errod across the room. I kicked Errod''s sword to him and threw Pogue''s knife at the Behemoth, who was already moving to cut off our access to the window. He yanked the corkscrew thing out then pulled the knife free, but we were already switching directions and darting for the stairs. I made it about four steps up before the Behemoth grabbed the supports and yanked the whole wooden staircase out from under me, trapping all of us in the basement for the moment.


    "Going to need another potion," Errod muttered, and I saw that despite his makeshift tourniquet he was bleeding pretty badly. Of course he was. What the fuck had just happened? How was his hand... and then I saw the strap on his arm, and glanced at the table. He was wearing the dock for Mister Creepy, and the spider side - which he''d casually tossed down on the table - was gone. That crazy son of a bitch. It didn''t explain everything, but it meant that as long as Errod stayed alive the severed hand would too.


    The Behemoth was now holding a very large wooden post that had previously been an important structural part of the stairs to the ground floor. His eye was healed but looked a little wrong, and I remembered that the red lightning guy hadn''t had his eyes properly fixed by the potion. Still, the Behemoth''s healing was far more powerful and any lingering issues probably would resolve themselves within moments.


    He batted at us, a bit awkwardly given the tight confines, but it wasn''t like those conditions were any better for us. Errod jumped backwards, and I was forced to drop to the ground at which point that huge post slammed down and nearly crushed my skull as I rolled to the side. Errod ran in and stabbed, but the Behemoth just leaned into it and then punched Errod in the chest, sending him down in a heap.


    "Well," the Behemoth said as he pulled the sword free and tossed it aside, "I don''t know what the fuck that was but people are going to be buying me drinks to hear about it for the rest of my life." He kicked Errod, hard, but there was no response - I was sure he wasn''t dead, but he wasn''t getting back up either. "After I kill your little buddy here, what do I do with you? Your story checks out, the parts we can look up. But I''m still not sure I believe you. Feels like a trap."


    "It''s not! I can help you. Look, I''ll show you. Let me kill this guy myself and then... I''ll do whatever you ask, I''ll lead you to the portal or... I don''t know. Come on!" I wasn''t planning on actually killing Errod, I told myself. I was just hoping a plan would come to me. It was strategic. It wasn''t panic. I wouldn''t do anything he asked. I was stronger than that. Right?


    He scratched his chin, squinting the damaged eye - though it already looked a bit better. "No, no more surprises. We''ll have to figure it out without you."


    The Behemoth stepped forward to smash my skull in. I had almost had hope for a moment there - I''d kept him from killing me back on the road, I''d stalled them with lies and put up with torture... but I wasn''t going to beat the Behemoth in a one on one fight. So I dove under the wreckage of the stairs.


    He pulled them away and I scrambled towards the window. He kicked the table at me and I dropped under it. With the whole basement trashed and the Behemoth being the size of a professional basketball player even in his "normal" form he just wasn''t prepared to deal with someone running away and hiding behind debris. I was still going to lose, there was no doubt about it - but I was going to make him look like an absolute idiot in the meantime.


    It was like when I stole Jana''s scrunchie back at the group home, and then stood on the other side of the dining room table from her. She could have kicked my ass, but I just kept that fucking table between us while she got more and more frustrated. Of course Jana hadn''t been able to snap the whole table in half and throw the pieces at me with enough force to kill me. But you know, otherwise it was pretty similar. Finally my luck ran out, and a thrown chair caught me in the shoulder and sent me spinning. I hit the wall, and the Behemoth stomped over to deliver the finishing blow.


    His hand hit a shield of magical force instead. There was yelling from upstairs, and raised voices outside. The Behemoth struck again, once more his fist bounced away, and then as arrows began slamming into him from the window he growled and jumped up to the door - totally unbothered by the lack of stairs.


    The last thing I saw before passing out was Errod''s hand, prodding gently at his body as if trying to wake him up.

 CHAPTER 072: We Can Rebuild Him; We Have the Technology

    I climbed out of the enormous brass tub and fumbled my crutches into position so I could hobble over to the benches, already feeling the heat from the raised bed of coals at that end of the room. I wrapped myself loosely in a towel and sat there to dry, still sore and aching but feeling much better than I had the day before. Errod was downstairs in surgery, or the magical equivalent, but they''d sent me to get myself cleaned up while I waited my turn.


    We were in some sort of super swanky combination hospital and spa - they''d had an actual shower with hot water and decent water pressure that I had used to get the top layers of blood and grime off, and fancy bathing attendants that I had quickly banished half out of embarrassment and half because I was sure they would insist on being thorough enough that my extra Dumines would be immediately discovered.


    Katrin was off with Errod of course, and Hugh was dealing with the local authorities. I had no doubt Hammersmith would have already heard about the incident, but I was encouraged by a friendly clerk that had asked me a few questions during our return trip including one very interesting one after I made some offhand comment about being swept off somewhere for my ''safety''.


    "Do you want to go?" she''d asked, and I said no. She nodded, was quiet for a moment, and then said "We are the most influential city in the Free States, in no way required to cede to demands from Erathik or the Endless Empire - or Halenvar," she hastily added. "This seems very... political... but I''ll make sure my masters know your position."


    There had been a closer town than Sentortzi, but the soldiers that had rushed out once our fight on the road had been spotted were under orders to escort us all back and they didn''t care much that we were injured - with magical assistance Errod''s stump had been sealed up, and while I was a battered mess it wasn''t technically life threatening. They had been searching for me (and more specifically the Behemoth) and had been pretty close, but probably wouldn''t have made it in time if Errod''s hand hadn''t come running down the path to get help.


    That was a hell of a thing. The Mister Creepy rig would have explained the hand moving independently, but only while in view of Errod and certainly not once he was knocked out. I thought back to all the times I''d watched him practicing, the little ways he''d used that hand to adjust his grip or even tug at a pant leg while changing his stance. There was the time he''d thrown his sword with perfect accuracy to save Elba, or the sudden show of competence at the end of the fight with the Behemoth''s men - both cases where he''d been holding the sword in his off hand, with the glove.


    He''d looked surprised after throwing the sword, but switching it to that hand during the more recent fight had been a deliberate choice - and he absolutely knew what he was doing when he cut it off, nervous though he was. At what point had he been aware that the glove was... what, alive? Taking over his hand? Regardless, it had saved Elba and helped us fight so I was willing to believe it was on our side.


    I tried to get into my memory palace and ended up standing next to my body instead - that meant wards were keeping my mind close to my body and preventing planar travel. That was fine, I''d been intending to use divination anyway. I very carefully didn''t look at myself - I was clean, and partly healed, but there were still a hundred reminders of what that motherfucker Pogue had done to me. I didn''t even get to kill him myself.


    I took a deep breath - not that my mind needed to breathe - then very carefully attempted to fall through the floor. I was so used to using doors and everything, but with the limited range I needed to take a shortcut; at first the ground was infuriatingly solid, but after a minute or two I found the trick. Falling through solid floor was impossible, but imagining that it was some sort of thick mud I could sink into? That worked for whatever reason.


    I dropped down into the room below, and then while keeping an eye on my rapidly depleting mana I stepped into the hallway and listened for voices. I couldn''t go far, the range from my body was roughly twenty feet and I was already at half that vertically. But I was able to get close enough to hear a conversation, which was all I needed.


    "- have patience," the first voice said, though I''d missed the start of the sentence. It was a woman, voice melodic but also extremely confident.


    "I want her out of the city. I don''t know who she is, but with this war going on the Lord Protector may as well be the Clockmaker himself - the other two will let her practically run the Empire until after the Grand Alignment, and I don''t feel like getting on the wrong side of her." This one was a man and had an indescribable vibe that said ''spoiled rich dude'' somehow.


    "She is, above all, a woman of her word; Lord Protector Hammersmith will negotiate rather than using force, and Miss Smith is the perfect bargaining chip at the moment."


    "Just because the Empire wants her?"


    "No. Because from what my clerk told me she''d be willing to request asylum, and we have plausible reasons to delay in handing her over. Preliminary information requests say she''s wanted by Halenvar, has a warrant issued by the kingdom of Erathik for questioning in relation to a theft from the auction house, has a bounty from the Endless Empire for some sort of military secrets, and she matches the description of someone involved in a fight at the University a few months ago. All that confusion means we can hold her as long as it takes for the Lord Protector to offer us some... incentive."


    "Gods! Next you''ll say she''s a war criminal in the Patic empire and a Duchess in Markonti!"


    The woman laughed. "Nothing so far but I''ve authorized additional information probes there, along with the Yannan Islands and the kingdom of Romatna. I still don''t even know where she''s originally from - she has odd features."


    I would feel offended, but I did have odd features compared to everyone else. I was finally starting to learn all the ethnicities here, but there were still times that it would throw me off to see people with what would be a bizarre mix of traits on Earth - some were more jarring to me than others, but I''d long since realized I must look out of place to them as well. I felt a hand on my shoulder and popped back into my body reflexively, almost punching Katrin in the face. "Shit, sorry. I think I''m just jumpy from... um."


    She smiled apologetically, but mainly she looked tired. "In your head, or spying?"


    "Spying - well, eavesdropping. I guess I''m wanted for questioning because I paid the family of that guy that got killed robbing the auction house."


    "Is that going to cause trouble?"


    "Nah. If anything it''s the opposite, they want to keep us in town to leverage Hammersmith for... I don''t know, probably something boring like trade deals or cheaper rates on teleportation or something. Should buy us some time. And I''m pretty positive I threw the Behemoth off my trail, so he shouldn''t be after me anymore even if he hadn''t lost his spy."


    "Well that''s a relief. So we''re not being chased by him or the wild mage anymore, just... what, bounty hunters and the Endless Empire?"


    I didn''t feel like bringing up the guy we''d killed last time we were here, so I let that omission slide. "Yeah, and they want us alive and safe so that''s not too bad. How is Errod?"


    Katrin shook her head. "I feel so stupid. I knew something was up with that glove, but he kept telling me it was fine. I can''t believe he cut his own hand off."


    "To be fair, it was actually very cool - and it gave him a chance to stab the Behemoth in the eye."


    "Well it also ruined that arm. They''re re-stringing his tendons now, but they don''t want to pull the hand off the device without knowing more about it. They said the maker''s mark on it indicated the creator was someone who lives here in the city, so they''re sending for them."


    That made sense, we''d bought it here after all. I got dressed - not in my old clothes, those were getting burned - and pulled on my stupid hover shoes which were only very slightly bloody. I wasn''t sure if turning them on would make it easier to get around, or harder. If my feet could float, but I used the crutches... hmm. Either way, at least the dress was simple to get on without further hurting myself. "I''m telling you, it''s ridiculous we ever stopped just using sheets with a hole in them to make dresses. Fashion on Earth is bullshit, especially for women."


    The shoe question was rendered moot by stairs - nothing in this world was very friendly towards people with disabilities, presumably because most were so temporary. Still, you''d think that a hospital would have some sort of elevator. Instead Katrin had to help me the whole way down, and then I immediately collapsed onto a bench in the lobby to wait.


    "The moskar are fine," Katrin said, "except Bashful who ran off gods know where. The wagons are in bad shape, but they''ve been dragged back here and we should be able to get them repaired - if we want to, anyway. It''s more likely that when the time comes we''ll be teleported directly to Theramas or... wherever."


    She rested a hand on the neatly folded stack of Errod''s clothes and gear - presumably he was wearing something more like my dress at the moment, which at least was better than a hospital gown on Earth. Katrin picked up the glove Errod had had made to match the one stuck on his left hand and idly turned it back and forth, looking at it without seeming to actually be noticing it.


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    I wanted to distract her from herself, and almost offered to try letting her into my memory palace again before I remembered what had happened to that guy the Behemoth had brought in. In theory that shouldn''t be an issue since Katrin would be on the guest list, and it certainly hadn''t done anything to the wild mage, but... better not to mess with it until I got a better idea of what the fuck had happened. I did offer to march around in the university library though, with the idea that I could hopefully use divination to get copies of books later.


    This pulled her out of her head some, and we spent a good hour and a half talking about the logistics of it. Mostly it was questions about how my divination interacted with wards, how much I could store in the memory palace, and other questions like that that I wasn''t really certain on. It was a good distraction though, and I did learn that while this library had something like a card catalog it was in some secret language only librarians knew for reasons Katrin couldn''t explain - that was just how it was done. Our conversation was cut short by the door flying open to reveal a woman nearly as wide as she was tall wearing goggles and a cape - I loved her instantly.


    "Greetings!" she bellowed, looking us up and down. "You folks with the group that did something dangerous with my linked essence discs?"


    "Oh! The - yeah, with the spider?"


    "Right, yes, that''s what the shopkeeper had me put on for demonstration purposes. A good choice, easy to remove the brain and doesn''t use too much life mana. Gets into small spaces. Shit eyesight, though."


    "Yeah, not great past a few feet. But I really liked it. I named it Mister Creepy."


    "Hah! I love it! So what idiotic bullshit did you try with it that got me called to a healer for consultation?"


    "Ah. Well, her brother was trying to save my life and he... cut off his hand and sent it for help."


    She stared at us. Slowly - very slowly - a smile began to form and just kept growing until it stretched all the way across her enormous face. "Brilliant! Yes! No vision, of course. Bit of a waste on that feature. But the connection would be strong, and the life mana would match perfectly so there''d be no loss at all! So what''s the problem? Are they just scared to yank the hand off and re-attach it?"


    "I think so, yeah. They just want to be careful."


    "Yes. Yes. Of course. Oh, this is perfect. This is wonderful. And I brought my tools!"


    I shared a look with Katrin. "Wait. What do you need tools for? I thought you said they could just pull it off."


    "They could, yes. But since I''m here... what''s really needed is some simple adjustments, a better locking mechanism - oh, and the other end would need to graft on in the same way the, uh, the spider end does. Yes. The size should be about right already, so that''s good."


    Katrin waved the glove around to get the woman''s attention, as she was clearly getting caught up in planning... something.


    "Hmm? Yes?"


    "Hi. What are you talking about?"


    "Ah," she said, "Look at that! How wonderful!" and she snatched the glove right out of Katrin''s hand. "What a lovely reproduction! Very well made, though it''s the wrong hand. You can see in the painting that it''s only a left glove; the top of the right hand is visible at the bottom of the canvas and is bare."


    Katrin grabbed the glove back. "I''m sorry, what painting?"


    The woman looked confused. "Oh, I assumed you knew. This is a reproduction of the glove in the famous painting ''The Swordsman'', which hangs in the Artificer''s Guildhall in Kettle Keep."


    "Who is it a painting of?" I asked, and the woman looked confused for just a second before answering.


    "Oh! No, it''s not of a person. Or, it''s of a person but they''re irrelevant. Their face isn''t even in the painting, it''s centered on the glove itself, though of course you can tell some things about the person holding it based on the clothing and the weapon."


    Katrin squeezed my hand, and I knew what she was thinking. This woman was very excitable, and was about to see Errod''s hand complete with the actual glove. There was no way she wouldn''t realize what she was looking at once she found out it was stuck on there, and at that point she might go on a whole rant about it. On the theory that it would be best if we found out as much as we could before then, I decided to ask a bit more. "Uh, Mrs....?"


    "Candecky! Talia Candecky, at your service."


    "Great. I''m Callie, but the way. Uh. Talia, what do you know about the glove? If, just for example, this one was made using the real thing as a reference..."


    "Hah! Doubtful, that painting is extremely old and according to my old mentor - gods keep his spirits - there''d been no sign of it for ages. Could be in a private collection, but more likely it was destroyed or buried with its last owner or something."


    "Okay, but... just in theory."


    She shrugged, and flopped down into a seat next to Katrin - it groaned under the sudden weight but appeared to be holding firm. "Well, then there would be a lot of interested parties."


    "To buy it?"


    "Oh, no. To study it, I suppose, since records about it are spotty, but also I''d say there would be quite a few people that would want to fight over it. One of the only things known about that glove was that it belonged to a series of famous sword fighters, and in most cases ended up being claimed by whoever killed the person that had it before them. It came to be seen as a sort of... well, a badge. A sign that you were the best. But along with that comes challengers who want to murder you, and declare that now they''re the ones that hold the title."


    Katrin was sweating. She reached over and clamped her hand on Talia''s wrist, and looked her directly in the eyes. "I need you to promise me that when they call you in there you won''t make a scene. Please."


    "Of course! Why would I..." she looked down at the glove in Katrin''s other hand, then back up. Katrin nodded. "Oh. Oh. Well! Yes, I see. Fascinating! And you don''t want your - your brother, you said? - you don''t want him being beset by people wanting to make a name for themselves. Ah."


    "You''ll... uh..."


    "Yes! Oh, absolutely! I daresay I''ll get a good close look at it while making the modifications he''ll need for his new situation, and that will be reward enough for my silence. And in a few years nobody will care regardless."


    "New situation? And why won''t anyone care?"


    Talia perked up even more, which I hadn''t thought possible, and clapped her hands together. "Do you know what artifacts are?"


    "No. I mean, kind of. But no. And nobody has been able to explain it very well."


    "Typical. It''s not that complicated, but laymen are useless sometimes. So. There are time-honored and well understood ways to make magical items. Not everything is made with the same methods, but they''re all crafted with some combination of... arguably five techniques. Where you draw the line gets into this whole tedious debate, of course. Artifacts are, put simply, things that are made in some novel way rather than just those normal methods - technically that would include some that are strictly worse, but more often it''s something that was made in some special way that''s hard or impossible to reproduce. Maybe it required help from unfriendly spirits on other planes, or some huge number of people working together, or crazy wild magic that almost never works, or things like that. You can usually tell there''s something odd about them, if you have any experience with creating magical equipment."


    That basically lined up with what I''d been told before. "Okay, but then why won''t anyone care in a few years?"


    "Right. Sorry, forgot where I was going with that one for a moment. So, some of the main things that keep you from just using those unique methods all the time are access to special laws of the universe that are different on other planes, and lack of enough ambient mana. But in about, oh, six hundred days? Well then the Grand Alignment hits, and we''ve got thirty-four of the thirty-six planes aligned! You''d better believe every artificer in the world is planning something crazy. The market for strange and powerful artifacts will be absolutely flooded, it will be fascinating to see what all they make."


    Once again, I had forgotten that even with the doomsday device probably fucked this upcoming alignment was going to be batshit insane and could involve anything from a glorious new age dawning to the collapse of civilization. Assuming we''d successfully dealt with all the shit on our plate I would have to think about building a bunker and stockpiling beef jerky before the big day. I was going to ask a follow-up question, but someone poked their head into the lobby and waved Talia in - she spared a glance back at us and winked as she went inside, and then Katrin and I were alone again.


    "Well she seems cool. I think I want to be her when I grow up."


    "A little too excitable for my taste," Katrin said, "but she was nice enough. I''m a little worried about what she''s doing in there."


    "Don''t look at me, I don''t have the mana to watch her the whole time. Errod will be fine, and then they''ll patch up my legs and whatever else inside me is making me feel like shit, and then we can try to negotiate some time at the university while we plot our escape."


    Katrin switched to English. "Are you worried they''ll notice your... extras?"


    "Oh. Right. I don''t know, I hope not. I don''t know how healing stuff works. They almost saw them while I was captured, and if Hammersmith gets her paws on me she''ll probably give me a once-over and find them. I don''t think I''ll be able to keep them secret forever, unfortunately, but we''ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it." I was trying to sound calm, but inside I couldn''t stop picturing being locked up forever and tortured for the secret of how to get extra Dumines. Even if I told them, would they believe me?


    The next six hours were dreadfully boring, although they had a Tactics set that we played a few games on and someone brought us food eventually. They also offered us a recovery room to sleep in, but Katrin wanted to wait in the lobby and I resisted my desire to abandon her - some social expectations were pretty easy to spot. I did eventually try using divination to spy on the progress, only to find that unlike the other walls this one firmly rebuffed me. Clearly there were different and more thorough wards on that room. Eventually, as we dozed sitting up, Talia walked out laughing with Errod close behind her.


    Katrin nearly dumped me on the floor as she bounced to her feet - I''d been laying my head on her shoulder - and she crushed Errod in a hug. "Oh! I''m so glad you''re okay!" She grabbed his left hand, still in the glove, and then looked him in the eyes. "What took so long? Did they have trouble re-attaching it? Is it... did the glove... it''s you still, or...?"


    He smiled, a little sadly, and then stopped with his mouth halfway open like he had changed his mind about what to say. After a moment he shook his head and said, almost to himself, "No, it''s okay. It''s fine." and then louder, "Sorry to scare you two. I''ll explain later, but what took so long was... well, Miss Candecky and Miss Rutlen - the healer - had a bit of an argument, and I''m afraid Miss Candecky won somehow. It''s all a blur."


    Talia Candecky laughed and elbowed Errod, and by way of explanation he twisted his wrist in a complicated way... and released his hand to climb up onto his shoulder.

 CHAPTER 073: Terms and Conditions May Apply

    The voice I''d overheard while snooping in the healer spa place turned out to be Helma Patak, a... council member? Senator? An important politician of some sort. She talked as if I would already know how it worked, and I hadn''t been in a hurry to show my ignorance.


    "You''ve gotten the attention of some important people, and much of that attention seems to be negative," she''d said, arranging papers in front of her idly just so I''d know she had a whole file on me.


    While she was still talking I turned on Divination - making sure my body stayed looking straight ahead - and tried to grab the papers, but my hands went right through. I stood behind her and could see some though, and it looked like they were all either blank or seemingly random - clearly just there as props. Hah.


    "Well it''s not all bad," I said, "I found a lost Duminere, and we killed Telen."


    "The death of General Telen is certainly considered to be a problem by the king of Halenvar," she replied, but I could tell she was just trying to make me sweat a little.


    "Oh, come on. Gilbrect Halenvar is holed up in a bunker and his country is swarming with soldiers from the Endless Empire and whoever is allied with them at this point which is - as far as I can tell - everyone that matters to this situation.  Including the Free States, which Sentortzi is part of. I''m not going to get arrested by anyone in Halenvar."


    She smiled and leaned forward, "Oh, but that''s not true at all - is it? Because as you''ve said, the Endless Empire is there - and they certainly don''t seem happy with you."


    I felt a tremor start in my hands, but ignored it.  "Hammersmith never got me to promise anything, and never officially arrested me or whatever. If she''s mad at me for leaving, well, she can die mad. And yeah, I heard, the kingdom of Erathik also wants to talk to me. But I didn''t have anything to do with that, it''s a misunderstanding. I was feeling particularly magnanimous that day, and I told them to split my insurance money between the people that died in the robbery and... well."


    "So they mistakenly assumed you wanted to include one of the thieves?"


    "No, they got that right," I said. I didn''t see the big deal, everyone was acting like this was a crazy move. "For all I know he was forced into it; it didn''t sound like he was actually part of the team from the way the guy described them. People fuck up, he already paid with his life. I figured maybe he had kids or a sick mom or whatever who would need it."


    She sat back again and squinted at me. I thought she probably believed me, but I wasn''t sure - nor did it really matter. What mattered was what she wanted to do about it. "Regardless, they are eager to discuss the situation with you. I suspect, given the war and the treaties between the two nations, they would agree to have you sent to the Lord Protector for now and send a representative to interrogate you there."


    I flinched.  "Hey, I just had all my fingers peeled - can we not use the word ''interrogate''? They can ask me some shit, I''ll tell them what I just told you. But we both know that neither of us want me to get handed over to Hammersmith yet."


    That got her attention. "Oh?"


    "I don''t want to do this whole coy act where we hint back and forth. I heard you talking to someone yesterday, you want me to request asylum so you can drag your feet and get Hammersmith to offer you something in return, right?"


    Her nose wrinkled as she put on a performative look of embarrassment.  If the news that I was eavesdropping had caught her off guard she hid it well. "Normally I have that sort of conversation somewhere properly warded, but I thought the risk was low and I needed to calm him down. Ah well. Yes, I''d like you to help me stall somewhat. I don''t think there''s a way you can avoid it entirely, and I''m not stupid enough to give you the chance to just walk away, but I''m sure we can work out something beneficial."


    "Sure. I''ll promise not to leave the city, and -"


    She held up a hand. "Already I need to disappoint you. Your friends can come and go, but I don''t have the resources to monitor you if you have the whole city to wander. We can have you plan any trips within the city in advance, possibly, and many things can be delivered to wherever we put you."


    The shake in my hands started back up.  "See, the thing that makes me not get along with Hammersmith is being all locked up like that. How about this - the university is nice and big, and there''s a wall all around it. What if you find me a place to stay in there? I can visit the library, I saw some places to eat within the walls, and you already have guards around."


    And just like that she agreed to quarantine us to the part of the city we wanted to be in anyway. There was this moment before the other shoe dropped where I had a somewhat premature revelation. It started with me just trying to calm myself down, since the talk about everyone wanting a piece of me was - for some reason - really getting me twitchy in a way it hadn''t in the past.  I reminded myself that on Earth I would have been immediately thrown in jail, not just in this situation but several different times throughout my journey. Earth-Hammersmith would have locked me up rather than letting me rent an apartment from Mila. Earth-Erathik would have quietly had us killed and kept the lost Duminere a secret. Earth-Hugh would have arranged an ambush to get me shipped back before we even got on that boat. Earth-Patak wouldn''t have risked letting me roam the whole university.


    Then it switched to "am I not giving Earth enough credit, or is it a cultural difference? Or is it me, somehow?" I had to admit that I hadn''t personally suffered as many consequences as I deserved on Earth; I''d had some bad shit happen to me, but I''d also broken the law about a million times. I was constantly trespassing and shoplifting until I was sixteen. But there''d for sure been more of a feeling that I was getting lucky, while here even the big authority figures kinda shrugged and said "yeah we''ll trust this random stranger, why wouldn''t we?" to some extent.


    It almost made me feel a bit guilty about the fact that I was planning on immediately betraying that trust and escaping... and then she called in the Oath-taker.


    I''d known this was a thing, but had somehow forgotten. Hammersmith hadn''t just been a push-over, she''d thought Connie was bound by magical oaths. Right. And those had only failed because they were built on the older oaths to an alternate timeline version of the Endless Empire, which had been utterly destroyed. Even then it took Connie a lot of time to convince herself. The ability was tied to the ''Command'' gift, one I hadn''t seriously considered getting and which didn''t factor into any of the hypothetical combat scenarios I''d planned in my head, so I had sort of let it slip my mind.


    I insisted I wanted it to be limited to the immediate situation, and to have a clear expiration on it. The whole idea creeped me the fuck out, and what I really wanted was to avoid it entirely, but I had to admit I preferred the idea of a temporary mental restriction to being chained up in a cell which was almost certainly the only other option - it wasn''t like I had any actual rights. The oath-taker was sadly not a chump, and the very first sentence of the first draft was already worded in a way that told me he wasn''t going to leave loopholes in. I''d lucked out with that mind reader because he''d probably been forced to help the Behemoth under threat of death and wasn''t used to interrogating someone, but this dude was in his element and there was zero chance I was going to sneak some gotcha wording past him.


    We moved a few clauses around and tweaked the wording, but in the end this is what I was left with:


    "I hereby swear to follow the terms of this binding agreement, both in the literal meaning and in the intent as I best understand it.


    "While in Sentortzi I will do my best to follow all laws of the city and obey any reasonable orders from Sentortzi guardsmen. I swear to make no attempt to leave the grounds of the Grand University in Sentortzi, or to passively allow myself to be removed from the grounds of the Grand University in Sentortzi. Should I leave the grounds of the Grand University in Sentortzi for any reason, I will do my best to both return to the grounds of the Grand University in Sentortzi and to alert Sentortzi guardsmen to the incident, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Should I suspect that an attempt is being planned or enacted by any party including myself to remove me from the grounds of the Grand University in Sentortzi, to circumvent or remove this binding oath, or to bring harm to the people or property of Sentortzi, I will do my best to provide Sentortzi guardsmen with this information in detail as quickly and efficiently as possible.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "I will do my best to read an official and accurate copy of this agreement each day within four hours of waking. This agreement will be dissolved automatically one year after being sworn, and can be dissolved or suppressed for up to one hour upon voluntary and uncoerced verbal release from no less than three different Sentortzi guardsmen who are aware of the agreement''s details."


    It wasn''t great news, especially the part where I had to rat myself out for coming up with an idea on how to get out of it. I got some assurances that there was no way for a paradox in the instructions to make my head explode, and then gave up and went through with it. Arguing any longer would be as good as flat out telling them I was going to run the second I figured out how, and refusing entirely would just mean getting locked up and then shipped off - though I considered that, as in many ways it was easier to get out of.


    I finally gave up and read the damn thing, though it took two tries - the first time I didn''t mean it, and it turned out you couldn''t just force or trick someone into a magically binding contract. They didn''t hold that against me though, and in fact the otherwise very serious oath-taker smiled at me when it failed to take hold.


    "This is your first time taking a binding oath?"


    "Yeah."


    "It rarely works the first time. People naturally resist. Don''t worry if it takes several attempts."


    And then it sank into me, like this web slowly settling onto my brain. I didn''t like the feeling, but it faded quickly and I felt pretty normal until we reached the grounds of the university - as I stepped through the gates I had the urge to turn and run, then the urge to find a guard and tell them I wanted to run, a panicked thought that I needed to do whatever it took to get out of this contract if it was going to be that bad, and then the urge to also tell a guard about thinking I wanted to avoid the contract.


    I didn''t actually go to the guards, though, and after a moment my pulse settled. The agreement didn''t say I needed to snitch for idle thoughts. It didn''t say I had to like it, or couldn''t passively think that I wanted out. It meant plans. Actual concrete plans. I opened my eyes and the clerk that had been walking with me was just standing there patiently. "Deep breaths," she said.


    I nodded, and took some deep breaths. It had felt very much like one of my panic attacks. Nearly identical, especially the part where thinking about it made it worse. The clerk patted me on the shoulder. "It won''t happen like that every time, not unless you''re actually trying to fight it."


    "It had better not, that was fucking awful. Thanks though. I see my friends, I guess I can take it from here."


    Katrin and Errod smiled and waved, but I scowled at them and just handed off the written version of the agreement. They took turns reading it, and I caught Errod grimacing.


    I nodded. "It''s bad."


    "It''s... fairly thorough," he said. For a moment he looked like he wanted to reassure me, but either he couldn''t think of anything positive to say or he was worried that it would violate one of the clauses, because he shut his mouth after a second. Katrin showed me to some old stables where our wagons were parked - they''d been partially repaired but still needed a lot of work - and then Errod went out for lunch while I made Katrin the happiest girl on the planet by agreeing to try and stuff the whole library into my brain.


    The wards inside the library were, for sure, more robust than they were in the rest of the city. I was able to use my divination trick to pilot my mind around a twenty-foot radius from my body like normal, but I couldn''t get it to my mind palace. That also meant that just like in the meeting with Patak I couldn''t pick up the books... but it was using less mana. I went back outside and tried again, then as I walked inside I felt a strange pulling sensation and found I was once again unable to touch anything.


    "Okay," I said to Katrin, "I think I''ve got it. What I''m doing normally is I''m going into my mind palace, which is actually my domain in Ematse. Then I''m looking for the place where the boundary between the planes overlaps my lutore, and making it super thin so I can kinda be in both places at once. It''s... kinda making a copy of the real world in Ematse, out of dreamstuff. What''s the term... ephemeral matter? The point is, it''s still there - not here.


    "But because of the wards, it''s forcing my mind to this plane. Since I''m already experienced in piloting it around, it doesn''t snap into my body like it would for most people and I can still spy on shit. But the stuff around me is the actual stuff, real solid matter, and so I can''t interact with it or carry it into my mind palace. I could maybe break that if I thinned the barrier a bit more, either through practice or actually spending potential; I''m not really sure how much you can strengthen abilities just through effort."


    She shrugged. "Nobody is, because it''s different for each situation. There''s probably a limit to how thin you can make that membrane though, especially since the wards would be tightly focused on preventing anything from crossing over. You might have more luck in keeping your mind from being pulled over in the first place, but starting the ability when you''re already in a warded area may just be impossible. Unless... well, if you''re getting an impression of the space through that overlap, can you do it after the fact? That could actually be easier than starting it when you''re there."


    That did seem possible. The whole point was that I wasn''t actively crossing over; I was seeing the world as if I was throwing paint onto something invisible, looking at the planar boundary''s shape as it overlapped the world. If the wards were just keeping that boundary intact, it might still let me do that. I stepped into my memory palace and pulled up the recent past, and... hmm.


    "Okay, it''s working. It''s costing more mana, and it feels like things are... fuzzy? They''re not, but I think maybe some small details are getting filled in the same way things do in my memories if I wasn''t actually looking at them. Still, it''s enough that the books have text and it''s not gibberish so it must be accurate. I think we''re good. So I can spy on my immediate surroundings in warded areas but not move things or, like, flip papers over to read the other side. And I can go back later to do that stuff, once I''m out of the warded area. That''s a pretty minor limitation. Also, even though there''s planar wards over the city as a whole they aren''t stopping me, it''s just buildings that have that added layer."


    Katrin was nodding along. "That would make some sense, our minds and souls are strongly linked to their respective planes. It must take extra energy to keep them from crossing over, and it would also drastically limit your mana regeneration since it''s the link between planes that increases that. They wouldn''t want the whole city to have basically no mana coming in. So we now have a whole library at our disposal, or at least the main public areas. It does mean that if you end up going with Lord Protector Hammersmith - which I think is guaranteed at this point - you''ll be stuck out of your mind palace the whole time. I know you were counting on having access to that to keep yourself entertained."


    Well, fuck. That was terrible news. I added it to the list of things I wanted to figure out - in fact, it would need to go towards the top since I wasn''t sure how long I had.  I could feel it again, that panic setting in and making my hands shake.  What the fuck?  I''d been fine before, or... mostly fine.  I''d never liked the idea of getting stuck somewhere I didn''t want to be, but - to pick one example - when I was so certain I was going to get snagged on our way out of Erathik I hadn''t gotten shaky.


    I distracted myself by focusing on the fact that there were things I wanted to do here anyway, like talking to Professor Yanpliss.  I didn''t want to do that while I was still frazzled from everything though, so instead after eating what Errod brought back - it reminded me of a gyro, tzatziki sauce and all - I just wandered the borders of my territory, following the walls and nodding to the guards who I noticed all kept eyes on me. They''d been told. When I made it back to roughly where I started I found Katrin waiting, reading through what looked like a very dry book about the nature of magic.


    I knew I had important things to look up - the actual history of Brinkmar, more information on Errod''s glove since he was still putting off that conversation, books about the Sahrger in general and changelings in specific, maybe information about the oracle that we had been planning to go to before everything went to hell. Granch, whatever they were. But as with the professor, that all went on the list for the next day. Instead I just sat around people watching, and eventually spotted one I knew.


    "Elba!" I yelled, and then as she turned towards me with a furious glare my brain caught up. Not Elba.


    "Choke on a diseased pile of rat corpses, bitch." There was an iron chain running from her waist to a distracted-looking older man who was writing in a book as he walked.


    "Hi, Moss In Bloom. Good to see you too."


    The man looked up at her, then at me, then at her again. It was clear he had totally filtered out the bit about diseased rat corpses as just part of Moss In Bloom''s normal background chatter. "Ah! Excuse me, how do you know this... ah... person?"


    "I''m the one that brought Elba back to her parents," I said, and then had to clarify since he looked a little blank, "the human girl she''d taken the place of?"


    "Ah, yes. Of course. Did you bring her with you?"


    "What? No."


    "Ah. A shame. I''d hoped her parents had changed their minds and consented to the tests, I''m afraid our progress will be sorely limited without a matched pair."


    I was going to ask about what they were specifically hoping to find out, but Moss In Bloom picked that moment to suggest an extremely detailed course of action I could take with the rest of my gyro and the man got all flustered and dragged her away. I filed it as yet another thing to follow up on - at least it was clear I''d have plenty to do even confined to the university.


    For the time being, there was only one activity I really wanted to work on. I laid down under a shade tree, ducked into my memory palace, and began to plot. For now I was where I wanted to be, and once I was being handed over to Hammersmith - because Katrin was right, there was no doubt that was who had dibs on me - the agreement would be dissolved. The one redeeming part of that stupid contract was that it only covered my time in the city; I was free to plan any escape I wanted so long as it happened a millimeter outside the gates. I was going to be meek, I was going to follow the rules, and I was absolutely going to vanish the second that contract was lifted.

 CHAPTER 074: Expert Consultations

    I piloted my body out of the library so I could go to my meeting with Talia Candecky, annoyed at my total failure. Not at driving my body around remotely, that was going pretty well, but at finding anything I''d wanted to in that fucking maze of books. At least I wasn''t tripping anymore, and probably nobody would notice something was off unless they were really looking closely. It was part of the daily exercises I''d assigned myself, since I had some high priority plans that required me to be as smooth as possible at doing things from a third person perspective, like playing a video game.


    I realized suddenly that my body had kept walking while I looked around for a landmark, and had even swerved to avoid a student that was clearly late for something. Thinking about how cool my pseudo-autopilot was sadly made me stumble to a halt, and then I had some difficulty getting going again - it was like when you thought too much about breathing or what you were doing with your hands when standing around and suddenly you couldn''t figure out how to just be normal. I gave up and switched back to first person view so I wouldn''t get in people''s way standing there - it was for the best, it was possible I would need mana if Talia was available to get started right away.


    We met at a little cafe that surprisingly had no students loitering about - everyone looked like staff or visitors, based on the lack of university sashes that the students wore all the time. I hadn''t bothered learning what the colors and decorations meant, but mentally had started thinking of them by Harry Potter house names - presumably they would be deeply insulted if they somehow found out and knew what a ''Hufflepuff'' was.


    "Calliope, dear!" Talia called from a table in the corner, her enormous frame impossible to miss. "I''m dying to know what you want, I have high hopes after that fascinating project with your friend''s hand."


    "Well to be fair," I said as I sat down, "nobody actually asked you to do that."


    She laughed quite a bit harder than that comment had warranted, and then insisted I order some food before we got down to business. I got a dish that sounded to me like a pot pie or a pasty or something, and once the waiter had left I described what I was looking for. She listened and nodded along, then pulled out a pad of paper and began scribbling.


    "Keeping your mind in Ematse despite wards pulling it away would likely require the device to be there, not with you, and taking physical matter to that plane can be difficult. Not to mention damaging, in some cases, due to the ephemeral matter in Ematse being quite far towards the insubstantial end of things. The other part is very straightforward, dear. Below my level of talent, honestly, but I may humor you regardless. Devices that lower the mana requirements for a specific ability are quite common, but as you guessed they do need to be custom made to reach maximum efficiency."


    Telen had had one for his teleportation, and I was certain that was how Aestrid had kept her shields up somewhat the whole time we were traveling. "I can demonstrate the specific divination trick I do. There''s more I''d like it to include, but I haven''t developed my Dumine enough yet and I don''t think I will before I have to be back on the road again so I''m going to have to settle for whatever you''d be able to do now - if you have availability."


    "Making them is trivial if you have the resources I do, it''s more of a chore for the customer actually. You would need to spend some time wearing a device I''ve made and using the skill in question."


    "That''s fine, I don''t have a lot else going on. Uh. One other question, though. Just a hypothetical. If someone had the ability to see enchantments, like curses or something, would you be able to make... I don''t know, glasses maybe, that would let others see the same thing?"


    We were interrupted by our food arriving, and I was happy to find that I had been basically right about what I''d ordered. There were a few foods Earth really had going for it, but overall the meals were a thousand times better in this world. More spices, more flavors, and - I suspected - plants and animals that had been magically engineered to be extra delicious. I did miss the hot kind of spicy though, it seemed like nobody had any tolerance for capsaicin.


    "What you''re describing is possible, of course. In fact, it can be made entirely with runes which means nearly anyone could make that sort of device with the proper education."


    That reminded me that I wanted to learn more about runes, but I was sure that Talia was wrong when it came to what I really wanted - the Paradox of Fate had been clear that there were no runes for fate magic. "What if you didn''t want to use runes? For whatever reason. Maybe you want to see it exactly like someone else does, and that''s hard to do right?"


    She seemed to be considering as she chewed, and then jotted something else down on her notepad. "Well, yes, that can be done. Similar to the device you''ve asked for, I could get the person in question to use their ability and build the same functionality into an item. It would be more difficult; I don''t have any custom tools for that particular type of thing, and so I would need to do it slowly over multiple sessions. It would be far less expensive and take less time to just use runes, however."


    "And once you''d made them, could you make more with just that first device? Or would you still need the person to stand around using their ability?"


    "Ah, that''s the downside to not using runes, my dear. It''s tricky to perfectly copy an existing magical device, and you typically introduce some minor flaws or accidentally increase the mana usage or... some other negative side effect. It can be done, of course, and any experienced artificer has practiced doing it - but it''s not preferred."


    How much would people pay for glasses that let them see fate lines, especially if I was the only source? Then again, money wasn''t really a concern for me since I already had that stipend from the contract with Erathik and some other easy ways to make money in a pinch. Plus I didn''t really want people to know what I could do, though it could be a good thing to do eventually - if for no other reason than it would let Katrin or Errod find me if I was kidnapped again...


    I sloshed some water over my hand as it started shaking again, and I hid it in my lap while I waited for the tremors to pass.


    I spent the rest of the meal listening to Talia complain about the price of lurto azine - some rare alchemical alloy - and describe an encounter with a client who had gotten one of her devices stuck somewhere it absolutely should not have been. Finally we got up to leave but her workshop was, unfortunately, outside of the university grounds and so I had to bid her farewell at the gates. She said there was a room that was used by students she could reserve for the afternoon, so we made plans to meet in front of the library in two hours.


    That left me with plenty of time to bite the bullet and see Professor Yanipliss about fate magic, though I wasn''t sure what his office hours were. Did he teach classes? That''s what professors did, right? But I hadn''t made much of an attempt to learn how the university actually worked, so it was possible the whole thing was totally different than what I knew from... well, not experience. From television, I guess.


    I found the door with YANIPLISS stenciled on it and knocked, and this time Harmid just yelled for me to come in rather than flailing about in excitement and knocking furniture over. Of course, once he saw it was me a little of that panic came back. There was someone else in his office with him, an older but very fit-looking man that gave off ''evil chancellor'' vibes. Something around the eyes, which wasn''t helped by how he seemed to glare at me. He also seemed to clock that Yanipliss was excited or nervous to see me, but just when I thought he was going to say something the glare vanished and he stood with a smile. There was a clinking sound from under the robes the man was wearing, as if he had chainmail under there or something.


    "Well, Harmid, I don''t want to keep you from your next appointment. Thank you again for handing that request from the... dean... while I was on sabbatical."


    Yanipliss looked relieved, probably he hadn''t wanted to introduce me. "Of course! Not quite my area, but I did my best in your absence."


    "Not at all, you did most of the heavy lifting and your numbers look accurate. I''ll polish a few things up and drop it off, you can be the one to submit it. I wouldn''t want to steal the credit, especially because I''m not officially back yet."


    I ducked aside in the somewhat cramped space to let the man by, but he paused as he was passing me. He looked me up and down, and smirked before leaving. What the fuck? As soon as the door closed, I turned to Yanipliss and tried to ask him about it. "Hey, who''s the sinister -"


    "I''ve aged ten years at least, you know." He slumped into his seat, running a hand through his hair and sighing. "The very next day after we met I found some of the hair at my temples had gone white. Do you anticipate being involved in any murder attempts this time? I''m not judging, but I''d like some warning if I''ll need to explain another body to the authorities."


    "I''m magically sworn to not kill anyone this time actually, so I think you''re in the clear. Thank you again for saving Errod, and for not keeping us there."


    I sat down and grabbed a crystalized honey thing from the bowl he''d offered us last time. He took one as well, and we sat there staring at each other and chewing for a moment.


    "So," he said, "did you read the book?"


    "I''ve... skimmed it. I didn''t grow up around magic, I was raised in a small and very sheltered village and the elders said talking about things like magic or other planes attracted monsters. So it was a bit... high level. But I''m working on it."


    "What was the name of this village, if you don''t mind me asking?"


    Best to stick to the same old cover story. "Arizona."


    "Interesting. Well, I''m thrilled to hear you''ve at least attempted it - I suspect that''s more than most of my students ever did. Are you just passing through, or did you... think of something you wanted to share with me?"


    This was the tricky part, but I''d put a little thought into it. "Have you met Moss In Bloom? The Sahrger that they''re doing some sort of testing on?"


    "I have, in passing - though I didn''t know her name."


    "Well, she had taken the place of a little girl named Elba, who we were traveling with last time I was here. Right after leaving we took her back to her parents, which led to finding out about Moss In Bloom and capturing her."


    "And how did you come to meet Elba?"


    "We took a shortcut through Xeyul, and I sort of kidnapped her and some other kids. Or, uh, reverse kidnapped. Rescued, I guess."


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Are these the ones with the monk?"


    "The what now?"


    It took a moment to sort out, but it seemed that the other kids had been brought from Twelve Towers where Cyne had deposited them to the university on the request of the professor that was holding on to Moss In Bloom. He was hoping to do some kind of tests on them as well, to learn more about how and why the Sahrger took children.


    "Anyway, the point is that I happen to know from comments that Moss In Bloom and Elba made - and from reading what I have of your book - that the connection between them is made with fate magic. So. I just thought you should know."


    "You''re saying that there''s an ongoing connection?"


    "Yeah, it''s used for scrying. The Sahrger make the human kids watch through their counterparts'' eyes and report back. And I don''t know a lot about when it''s initially cast, or how, but it also transfers knowledge somehow and presumably does the thing that makes them look the same - or helps with it, maybe. And I know that''s not a traditional fate thing, so maybe it''s not literally the same, but it''s the same... medium. Like if two unrelated things were both made out of wood, you know? It makes it invisible and permanent, like the book says."


    He nodded, and looked around while shuffling a few items as if trying to locate a specific book in the scattered piles. "That''s certainly possible," he said, "though it hadn''t occurred to me that it would be a continuous connection. The Sahrger are an odd bunch. Not being human, they can''t use wild magic or formal spellcasting - and yet they''re known to make use of magic to do things that aren''t innate skills. I''m not an expert, but I''ve read enough to know that they must have some way of using other magics. That may, in fact, be what they want human children for."


    "Maybe. Yeah. I uh... I met a human that was taken when she was little and escaped, she didn''t say a lot about it but she''s very skilled in wild magic so... could be."


    "Well, I''ll reach out to Professor Gramod and see if I can force my way in. Is that... do you think that''s all you have to teach me?"


    He knew there was more. I could tell. He''d said as much last time we''d seen him, and he''d still let us go despite the dead guy. I was extremely tempted to tell him the rest - okay no, not the rest, but more than I had. "I''m hoping you can cut that connection between the kids and the Sahrger without killing anyone - which, to my understanding, is how it''s typically done. I may... have a fate-based spell connected to me too, and would appreciate it being removed. But as far as me teaching you? I''ll keep thinking, but... well, what were you hoping for?"


    He sighed. "I don''t know. What I want most is to learn how to reconcile fate magic with High Imperial; there are stories about the Clockmaker tinkering with fate near the end of his reign, but no knowledge of any way to do so with the language he created. They say that runes and the corresponding language of High Imperial are inscribed on the walls of an enormous palace in Quebristun - that''s the thirty-sixth plane, whose alignment defines the Grand Alignment every one thousand, two hundred eighty-three and one-third years. Outside of the Grand Alignment it''s nearly impossible to get to Quebristun. I have a trip planned, actually, but even if I get there legends say it''s impossible to get into the palace."


    "Sure, but we both know that you don''t use that kind of magic anyway. So... why do you care?"


    He looked nervously at the closed door, as if worried someone would hear the roundabout reference to him using wild magic. "It''s an academic pursuit, mainly. I know it''s strange. But also, I do know how to use High Imperial - without a Dumine it''s harder, but I happen to be naturally talented with these things. I''m not trying to brag, it''s just a fact. Mainly, though, it just... bothers me. Not only are the rumors of the Clockmaker''s experiments with fate from reliable sources, but there''s the Fate gift from the Dumineres - assuming that''s what it is, although I see no reason to believe otherwise. Given that, why can''t anyone figure it out in High Imperial?"


    I wasn''t going to get a better opening than that to ask about my situation. "I know the one you''re talking about, but it''s impossible to select - right? I mean, has anyone been able to select four gifts? Ever? I know the answer is supposedly no, but it seems like the sort of thing there would at least be legends about."


    "Oh, absolutely. The Clockmaker himself was said to have more than three, though as the architect of the Dumineres that wouldn''t mean much. The Savior of Brinkmar, as well - in fact some said he was the Clockmaker''s secret heir, though that''s ridiculous for several reasons. The first queen of Markonti, who more likely was using some very powerful artifacts. Some others. It''s plausible - after all, those gifts must be there for a reason - but personally I think that it required some special permission from the Clockmaker, or being part of the right family, or maybe there used to be a way to go back in a second time... it could be anything."


    "So for the people that were rumored to have more than three it wasn''t some specific thing? They just got four or five or whatever the same way other people get one or two?"


    "Off the top of my head, yes. Chosen by the gods, or something like that. Destined for greatness. Regardless, the point is that while that mysterious option quite likely has something to do with fate magic - or something similar to fate magic at a minimum - there''s no way to be sure and certainly no way to find out more about it."


    "I suppose it would be pretty powerful."


    "That would depend on the level of control it offered you, but yes. As I believe we''ve discussed - and as you should know if you even skimmed my book - the main drawback to fate magic is the lack of control over exactly what it does, and how it does it. If you had the ability to be certain it was working towards the correct goal or limit its risk of accidental side effects it would be extremely powerful, enough to be worth larger mana requirements. Though... there might be things more powerful than just precision..."


    Harmid flipped open the book he''d pulled out and gestured excitedly to what appeared to be a bulleted list, but it wasn''t in a language I was familiar with. "If you could bypass the requirements of magic items, think of what you could do! There are powerful artifacts out there that can only be wielded by certain people. Ancestral blades may function with the same magic as fate, but even if not there are other things - gateways to hidden vaults or other planes, Poicelria''s airship - if it still works..."


    "Oh! We were going to go see the oracle, guru, whatever you want to call them. But then... uh... well, some more people attacked us."


    He raised an eyebrow. "The same people that attacked you here?"


    "Ah... no. I don''t know if I''m supposed to say who, but also... fuck it, I don''t actually care. It was the Behemoth, the guy from Halenvar?"


    "Congratulations on being alive. Last time you''d said Lord Protector Hammersmith was looking for you, now you say the Behemoth attacked you - and neither seem to be related to the murder attempt I witnessed. I don''t suppose you know who that was?"


    "Not exactly. He did mention something... I don''t know how much I should tell you. But that''s probably mostly unrelated to the other stuff."


    "How many people want you captured or killed?"


    "Honestly it''s mainly those guys. The kingdom of Erathik wants to talk to me but it''s a misunderstanding. I probably shouldn''t have volunteered that, but it doesn''t matter. They know I''m here. But that''s all... it''s fine."


    "Why would Halenvar send one of its best people to attack you, with the war going so badly? Rumors say General Telen is dead as well, so you would think... what are you involved in?"


    I felt my hand start to twitch again. "I should go."


    "Please don''t?"


    "Nah, I''ve said too much already. Check out that thing with Moss In Bloom, see if it helps you at all. If you learn something, or figure out how to break the bond without killing them, I''ll owe you one."


    "Please."


    "It''s a bad idea."


    "It sounds like you''re no stranger to those. Please. This is my life''s work. I let you leave before, and I''ll let you leave again. I''ll even promise to never write a single thing you tell me down - it''s not about publishing a new book or being famous, I will gladly die in obscurity! But I know that there''s something you''re not telling me. You say you have a fate spell attached to you, you have half the continent out to capture or kill you, you''re from some remote part of the world - that part at least makes sense, given your ambiguous ethnicity - and out of all the people who have knocked on my door you''re the one that set off my device. There is something you know, something I''ve waited so long for. Please."


    I wanted to just leave, but for some reason I opened my mouth instead. "If I tell you, and you tell anyone, they''ll lock me in a room somewhere and never let me out. I can''t do that again, I thought it would be okay but it''s... y''know, it is okay. It''s fine. They regrew my toes and fingernails, and my legs bend the right way again, and everything is just like it was. Like it never happened. I''m just being a big baby about it, I don''t know why my fucking hand won''t stop shaking when I think about it or why I''m... sorry. I didn''t mean to say all that. I should go."


    I stood up, trying to wipe tears off my face but instead having to just press my hand against my cheek because it was still shaking too badly. What the fuck was wrong with me? This was so... stupid. I''d almost died how many times in the last few months? I was always fine. I was fine this time, too. Totally back to normal. This was some fluke, or a fucked up nerve connection from shitty healing, or something.


    Harmid started to stand up, but sat back when I flinched away. "Calliope. Please, forget I asked. I would never want to pressure you, or make... whatever you''ve gone through... worse than it is. If there''s anything I can do for you, anything at all, please let me know - and understand I say this with no expectation of anything from you. Your secrets are yours to keep, and I will never tell another soul anything about you that could even hint - even in some indirect way - that you could have anything remarkable to discover."


    "I don''t... I don''t need your pity. It''s fine. I..."


    "It''s not pity, it''s compassion - there''s an important distinction. Humans thrive through cooperation, through supporting one another. It is, arguably, our greatest strength."


    I laughed, though there wasn''t any mirth in it. "I don''t know, the Sahrger seem to be doing well for themselves and they don''t really do the compassion thing."


    "But look what they''ve done instead," he said, "they''ve built a complicated system of social rules. They''ve replaced instinctive cooperation and empathy with a more transaction-based view, but the function is clearly there to keep things from devolving into chaos. They make binding deals, and repay favors, because they recognize the importance of working together and having a stable foundation for society. In the end it''s very similar - humans have to do the same, for many rules. It''s not like we all agree on how to behave, and we certainly don''t all have more kindness than the Sahrger. If you''d met my uncle... well.


    "The point is, the world as we know it could not exist if we all acted alone. We build things together, through mutual support. And if we''re doing it right, that means we can all falter and be caught by someone with better footing. When people are very young, or very old, or injured, or... it''s everyone, eventually. Maybe a handful of demigods can set themselves apart indefinitely, but from what I''ve read even those eventually regret their isolation. If you would benefit from help, let me help you. It''s what all of human existence is there for. It''s quite literally the point of civilization."


    I hesitated, but maybe I could test the waters. There was something he was uniquely suited for helping me with, after all. "My friend Katrin is super smart, but she''s not... worldly. She lived in this shitty little town until a few months ago, you know? And I''m having trouble looking stuff up in the library, I don''t have the background and so many of the books are super thick and don''t have indexes and shit. So... let me give you a list, a secret list that you''ll promise to research super discreetly and not tell anyone about, and then we''ll get together and... exchange info. How does that sound?"


    He smiled in a way that lit his whole face up. "Gladly! I won''t even write anything down."


    "Okay. Uh. I need to know what Granch is, or are. It''s probably related to mental stuff, or Ematse. I want to know anything you have about Yesrin''s Loom. And then... fuck, you really need to keep this secret, but I want to know anything about, like... a place that isn''t any of the planes. As in, totally separate from all of them. And then I guess if you can get me a book on the history of Brinkmar, that would be nice to have. I could probably find that one myself, but if you know of one that''s easy to read and doesn''t require me to cross-reference it with ten other books it would help. Hell, on that note if you have some suggestions for just basic history and science and magic stuff, books that are broad and aimed at new students rather than focusing in on a detailed history of one specific nail in the wall of a castle that fell down a thousand years ago."


    He nodded, snickering. "I know the type you mean, and I understand your frustration. The professors here are all eager to publish their research but it''s often a bit too specific for anyone but themselves. Granch, Yesrin''s Loom - that one I''ve read about before, though I''ll want to refresh my memory - and a plane that isn''t a plane. Not a problem. And the beginner''s sampler of educational materials will be trivial. I can, hopefully, get all of that together by this time tomorrow. If not, it may mean I have clarifying questions I need to ask to narrow things down - so either way I''d like to meet then."


    I got up and awkwardly shook his hand, then headed out. I was nervous about how much I was revealing to him, but if I couldn''t trust the guy that had saved Errod and helped us get away from the scene of a murder I was never going to get my questions answered. I just hoped those answers would be good ones.

 CHAPTER 075: Load Capacity Failure

    "Go ahead dear, I know you said it uses multiple abilities so just start with the simplest part and we''ll work our way up while I calibrate the equipment."


    Talia had put a loose collar around my neck - it didn''t lock, thankfully - and made me hold some strange rods in my hands. She was perched precariously on a stool nearby and had arranged several trays of materials and components in front of her, and currently was examining a thing that reminded me a lot of an old video I''d watched online about a pinwheel calculator - it was a few connected drums made up of a hundred or more gears.


    "This is more for... calibration," she''d said, "but there''s a similar device for combat. You turn the gears to the right configuration to cast a spell and send some mana through it, then twist them again to change it to the next spell you need. Very difficult to learn, of course, and very prone to syntax errors."


    It sounded a lot like the movable runes built into the cover of Katrin''s spell book.


    I meditated, but didn''t turn on divination quite yet which meant I was just standing in my memory palace. I could hear, distantly, the gear segments clicking as Talia rotated them. After maybe fifteen minutes she had me do the next part, so I turned on divination and watched while she did her work. Seeing her adjust the gears - including swapping some out entirely - was impressive even without knowing what precisely she was up to. If I understood things correctly it seemed like she was probably trying to write a program of sorts on the fly, and was using the collar and bars on me to somehow have a... vibe, or something... to compare it to.


    I walked around some, examining the room. It was mostly empty, just a little workshop used by students to do experiments and things. I made my body pace around in case it made a difference, but the only thing Talia commented on was when I popped my head through a wall to peek into the next room.


    "Did you just do something different, dear?"


    "Not fundamentally different, but more... mana intensive."


    "Good, good, wait a moment and then do it again when I tell you. One more moment... just have to... okay, go for it."


    I popped into the next room once more - it was an empty classroom - and then stepped back.


    "Good, good, that''s fine then. As you said, same thing but more drain on your reserves. Don''t do it again in case this takes long enough to run out of mana, but I''ve accounted for it."


    After another fifteen minutes she announced she was almost certain she had it figured out, and had me remove the collar and place the bars down on the workbench.


    "Come here dear, place your hand on this and we''ll lock it in place. This will replicate the effect I''ve plotted out, and if it works then I can build the device for real. The finished product will work more efficiently because I''ll make it out of alchemical materials, and of course it will be more portable - you wouldn''t want to cart this whole rig around, would you?"


    I could feel it right away. Using divination was still draining mana, but it was a noticeable reduction - I''d be able to keep it up for a very long time, assuming I didn''t poke through walls. Speaking of, I ducked out of the room for just a moment and confirmed that that, too, was cheaper - although not by as much. "Talia this is amazing, it''s exactly what I needed."


    "Good, good! If I''m reading this right, you''re... splitting yourself onto two planes, and then imprinting one onto another so you can... spy on yourself?"


    "That''s about it, yeah. Look, you keep telling me not to worry about it when I ask about the price but... at some point we should talk about it in more detail."


    "Oh, of course! Well you know, I''m talented enough that I don''t work on anything that doesn''t catch my fancy - thus the device you so cleverly named Mister Creepy, which while useful isn''t the sort of thing you make for mass consumption."


    "Yeah, I guess the safe bet is just cranking out a bunch of... I don''t know, healing devices or water heaters or something."


    "Quite! But as I''ve mentioned, this particular device is well below my skill level. So do you know why I''ve offered to make it for you?"


    I thought about it. She liked me, I was pretty sure that was because I''d made it clear I loved the Mister Creepy device. But there had to be something else. "Oh! Uh, is it because you''re hoping to get more time with Errod''s glove?"


    "It is! Good job. I do also enjoy your company, dear. Genuinely. But I''d love if you can bring your friend - or at the very least his hand, though ideally they shouldn''t be too far apart for long - down to see me. I was too busy to do more than glance while getting him set up, but it''s a true work of art and I would love to get some actual quality time with it. If you can do that, I''ll only charge you for my actual materials which may allow you to afford better materials; the metals I use can make a big difference."


    "I can''t promise, but I''ll see what I can do. He''s been... pretty closed-lipped about it."


    In fact, Errod was still avoiding talking about the details of how it worked. It clearly had a mind of its own to some extent, and seemed... if not benign then at least not hostile. Errod appeared to still be himself, and the hand wearing the glove had only done things on its own at appropriate moments so far as I was aware. But something was bothering him, something he didn''t really want to discuss with us.


    "Just a few more adjustments, dear. Here, try again."


    It was the same as far as I could tell, as were the next two. Finally one was different but worse, and then it was back to the same basic thing. Clearly Talia was doing something, but it had to be some very granular adjustments. She clicked one more gear, and I stepped back into my divination - then nearly fell over. I was seeing double, with one of the visions seemingly where I''d been about forty minutes prior - walking towards the building with this workspace in it. I snapped back to my body and shook my head, which was suddenly ringing.


    "Oh, man. That one... uh... something bad. I don''t know."


    Talia looked confused. "Sorry, dear. I don''t know what would have caused that. It should have just been a minor adjustment, if anything there would have only been a slight variation in your mana usage."


    I excused myself and headed outside, bumping into a few people as I hurried past with my head down. "Sorry," I murmured, "head exploding."


    When I got into the fresh air I felt a little better, and so I tried my divination again to see if it was fixed - once again there was the double vision, and I could see myself putting on the collar and picking up the rods. It was like there was some sort of delay. I stepped out into the memory palace and stared - everything was shaking.


    The furniture was only vibrating, but the smaller items were bouncing all around and then abruptly they stopped as a crack appeared in the air. It was just a hairline fracture, but it was like when a mirror was damaged and the two parts of the reflection no longer lined up properly - my vision of the room was skewed just a bit. Worse, I realized that on one side there were minor differences. The television was gone, there was an extra door in the wall, some notes pinned up like a conspiracy theorist''s board complete with red thread. I could only see it in bits and pieces as I looked around the crack - no, cracks. It was spreading.


    I popped back to the real world, though it felt like I could still reach out and touch the memory palace if I tried. Had Talia deliberately done something to me? No, if that had been her goal she could have just killed me. I put on that collar easily enough, it''s not like she would have had to tell me if that had been some arcane device made to... I don''t know, pop my head clean off. It could have been an accident, but she had seemed so confused - and from the admittedly little bit I understood about magic item creation a little tweak to some variable shouldn''t mess me up like this. Even if it had, why would it still be going?


    There was one easy troubleshooting step I could take, of course. I turned on my fate vision and sure enough, those were trippy as well. The threads were vibrating, and a few of them were actually branched off somehow which should be impossible. That seemed to imply it wasn''t Talia''s item, since I already knew artificers couldn''t tamper with fate threads using runes. There would have had to be a wild mage involved, which... well, could it be her? I didn''t think she was nearby, but it was possible she''d been able to do something through our connection.


    I tried the divination again, and it was still giving me double vision - I was testing with Talia and standing outside the building. Was it still just delayed by forty minutes or so? It was hard to say, because everything was a little fuzzy. Did I look different, somehow? Was I wearing different clothes? That didn''t make any sense. The other possibility would seem to be that I wasn''t really looking at divination at all, and was instead... what, dreaming? It was giving me a headache, and I was starting to think that nothing was actually wrong. It was entirely possible that I was just losing my mind.


    Back to the memory palace, with its spiderweb cracks everywhere. Then... were my memories damaged too? It seemed likely, since everything else was. I stepped into the hallway, pushing past some sort of resistance, and sure enough. The doors were crooked, there was some sort of red thread running along the floor to god knew where, and I could hear voices echoing indistinctly in the distance. I opened a door at random and stepped through, and it was a perfectly normal memory from when I was working at the hardware store. No cracks, nothing out of place.


    I leaned against the shelf of garden hoses and tried to think through what was happening. It didn''t feel like an attack, really. It was like a dream version of the memory palace had merged with the real one and... well, okay, even the ''real'' one was essentially a figment of my imagination. But it had been static. Consistent. Maybe it was a side effect of having three Dumines, or just some passing thing because I hadn''t been sleeping well. But even when I''d slept in the memory palace all the strange shit had been outside the windows, so something must have actually changed to cause this phenomenon.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    The memory was stable. That was a place to start. I could poke around, try some different memories, and see if any of them looked funny. First things first, something recent - I concentrated on finding a memory from the day before, and walked through another door. I was standing on a cliffside, overlooking an incredible crumbling city with perfect white spires reaching into the sky. What the fuck. There was something tickling at the back of my memory, something that should be in a city with pointy white towers. I saw it. At one end of the city there was the jagged broken shell of a crystal sphere - like an enormous snow globe. It was the focus point of the magic that kept the ancient city of Trallanar running. Trallanar, from the Jake Ross novels. This had to be Brinkmar.


    Well I sure as hell hadn''t been there yesterday.


    Tempting as it was to stay, I still needed to try and figure out what was happening to me. I tried another door at random and saw myself, younger, walking through an airport terminal wearing a high school gym outfit that said SCHOOL SCHOOL HIGH SCHOOL on it. I''d never been on a plane, the outfit made no sense - nor did the gold brooch pinned to it - and in fact the whole airport terminal looked wrong. There were no people, and the windows just looked into another terminal rather than a runway. Okay, this one had to be my imagination which meant the one of Brynnklar was probably just made up too - though I hadn''t thought I was that creative.


    Next I tried three different specific memories, and they all worked fine. So the doors were only doing something odd when I left it vague. I wasn''t sure what else to try that could teach me anything. I''d looked at recent memories, both specific and general, random doors, memories from right after I arrived in this world, memories from Earth. The last thing seemed to be trying one of the memories that had been tampered with.


    The best way to do that seemed like it would be to go to the last real memory I had before the tampering started, since that way I could see if things got blurry like normal at the end or turned into... I don''t know, me on the moon or something equally ridiculous. I found it no problem, and there I was just like last time I''d viewed this memory. Barely sixteen, handcuffed to a chair. I was sighing, and squirming. Finally a cop walked up to me - wait, had this been in the memory before?


    "Miss Smith," he said, "I''m getting kicked to voicemail boxes at CPS. If you can''t remember the name of your group home or case manager it''s going to be a bit, the emergency Child Protective Services lady is a bit overbooked tonight."


    I hesitated, then sighed. "I don''t know if he''ll... I have a number, he''s not my case manager anymore but maybe he knows someone?" And I rattled off Bill''s number. He''d put his personal cell number on the back of his card and at some point I''d memorized it, because he had seemed like the only halfway decent adult out there. The cop nodded and walked off, and then... it felt like the memory skipped a bit. Like I was fast-forwarding.


    "Hey, kid. Trespassing, vandalism, shoplifting, or general nuisance?" Bill was smiling when he walked in, because Bill always smiled. It was really my main complaint about him. Bill was always in a good mood, he was handsome in a very stereotypical and non-sexy way, and was enough of a boy scout to make Errod uncomfortable. Of course he had come down to the police station rather than just telling the cops who to call.


    He did make a phone call, though, which sounded from the teeny snippets I could catch like it was maybe with Child Protective Services. Then he talked to some police officers in a huddle for a bit, and finally came back over to me and crossed his arms in his standard "I''m being stern but I''m still your buddy" guidance counselor pose.


    "Okay, they''re letting you off with a warning. Um. So I hear you''re at Sunrise Peak, down by the river."


    "Right! Yeah, that was the name. I wasn''t there long, they... did not make a good impression."


    "Yeah. Well I had a few kids there, they didn''t make a good impression on me either. I... really don''t want to take you back there, kid. I talked to them and the guy on duty sounds like he wants to make you regret running off. You know you could always call me if he lays a hand on you, but there''s a lot he could do that wouldn''t really get him in trouble."


    "Yeah. It''s fine. I''ll figure it out."


    Bill looked nervous, for the first time I could remember. The smile slipped a little. "Do you know what ''kinship care'' is?"


    "Kin is, like, your family? I just have an uncle, and I don''t think he''ll take me back or he would''ve when mom disowned me."


    "Kinship care is partly for family, yeah, but it''s actually defined pretty loosely. It''s just foster care but you don''t get paid, and practically anyone that has any prior relationship with the kid can do it. Teachers, sometimes, or parents of friends."


    "Nope, none of those either."


    "... former case workers?"


    Well that couldn''t be right. That had to be a fake memory, there was just no way Bill would stroll in and invite me to live at his house just because I had been picked up for trespassing again. Right? Nobody spontaneously took on a foster kid, especially one they knew for a fact was a troubled piece of shit that ran away constantly and lit a kid''s hair on fire. I had to stop for a moment in surprise - I''d somehow forgotten about burning Kara''s braid off her head. The scene around me shifted to that day, and I quickly ran back into the hotel hallway before I had to see what I''d done. There were a lot of things I didn''t like thinking about from back then.


    I couldn''t use actual divination on memories from Earth, and anyway with divination acting funny I wasn''t sure it would mean anything. Still, if there was any chance that whatever was going on actually was showing me things that had been blurred out before it seemed like I should poke around some more. What was that memory I''d almost had before, something about bears and paperwork? I opened a door, and...


    I was in a car, in the back seat. It was an old car, like from the fifties but still in great shape. In the front passenger seat sat me, from... I don''t know, a few years ago. Almost certainly sixteen, since that''s where the memory block was. And in the driver''s seat was Bill, who I hadn''t seen since he quit being my case manager back when I was fourteen years old - unless that previous memory was accurate. It was silent, and felt... awkward. Finally the me in the front seat spoke up, sounding nervous. "Sorry Bill."


    "You need me to do the talk," Bill asked in his most dad-like of voices, "or do you think you remember it? It''s been a while."


    "Um. I think I have it still. Calliope Esmeralda Smith," younger me said, taking on a tone of voice that didn''t even come close to sounding like Bill, "You know I''m not just your case worker. I also care about you as a person."


    "The case worker line is a bit out of date," Bill said, "and your middle name isn''t Esmeralda."


    "I worry about what might happen to you, and there are a million ways you could die horribly out on the streets. Please stop doing this before you get raped to pieces."


    Bill winced. "That''s not quite the speech."


    "Quiet, young lady. I''m not finished. You could get shot, or accidentally take drugs that you thought were harmless candies, or be eaten by a bear. A drug dealer bear. With a gun. Think of the paperwork! Do you have any idea how much paperwork needs to be done when a child is mauled out on the streets? It''s terrible for my carpal tunnel."


    "That''s still not the speech," he said, "although I suspect the paperwork would be daunting."


    "You should return to the group home. It''s not that bad, and it''s just for another two years. Then you can run off to Hollywood and make it big as a movie star."


    "Strong finish."


    "Thanks."


    Bill took a deep breath. "But seriously¡­"


    "Hey, no, I already did the speech. No fair doing it again."


    He sighed. "But you made it a joke, and it''s not funny. I¡­ seriously, don''t scare me like that. Okay?"


    There was a pause, and when past me spoke it was barely a whisper. "Okay. You''re not kicking me out?"


    "Not even when you turn eighteen. You can be a loser and live with me until you''re thirty."


    I was living with Bill? Again, not a total shock but still strange. Sixteen-year-old me rubbed her eyes, which seemed to be watering up. Huh. "Yeah, okay."


    "Anyway," Bill said, "If I put up with Greg can you even imagine what you would have to do to make me tired of you?"


    Things... rippled... and we were outside of the car. We''d just parked, I thought, in the driveway of a typical Phoenix suburban house. It was dark, but still warm out - the heat that had been absorbed by the concrete all day would take all night to radiate back out in the summer. Memory-me sneered. "I know you''re a robot that isn''t programmed to hate, but fuck do I hate Greg."


    "Language," Bill said, "but yeah, that''s okay. He''s not a very nice guy. Greg had a really rough life, and he''s always worried something bad is going to happen. You remind him of being a kid, I think, and that reminds him of what that was like which was - as I mentioned - not very good. And I can''t say more than that, but just know it''s not personal. And I won''t make you go in there unless it''s an emergency."


    I nodded, but hesitated rather than going through the side door into the house. He had opened the door, but he noticed I was standing there and raised an eyebrow at me. I was still quiet, but I know myself well enough to recognize the face I made when I was trying to decide if it was worth making some comment. Finally I cracked. "Bill? Why did you stop being a case worker, really? What was Greg talking about?"


    Bill leaned inside to throw out a bag from a fast food place, and then let the door swing shut without actually going inside. He turned and walked over to the car and hopped onto the hood so he could lay against the windshield, then patted the spot next to him and memory-me climbed up. The few stars I could see past the light pollution were bright, and the air smelled like freshly mowed lawn. There were crickets chirping everywhere, and I had the sudden odd feeling like that car was a raft drifting down a calm, wide river - though when I looked around the memory hadn''t changed.


    "You joked, a few times, about me being too perfect. Well there''s something Greg and I have in common. I had a... bad childhood too, and my step mom and I fought a lot, and some stuff kinda stuck with me. And now, sometimes, things come back up that remind me of worse times and I maybe overreact. I''ve moved more than you''d expect, and I''ve quit a lot of jobs. I don''t run away the way that you do, and not for the same reasons, but we''re both chronic offenders. And probably Greg is right, that... I shouldn''t get you into a position where you could be hurt by that pattern of behavior."


    Memory-me nodded, then grinned a little. "Well, if it''s any consolation, without you I probably would have died a month ago from choking on asbestos and falling off an abandoned building into a dumpster filled with used needles."


    "No bears?"


    "The bears would come later, to scavenge my poor ruined corpse."


    They weren''t part of the same memory, or at least I was pretty sure they weren''t. Both involved Bill and the car, and both had a mention of bears and this Greg person. They''d just melded together somewhat. And yet again, it felt too detailed to just be made up on the fly but I wasn''t sure why I would be seeing my original memories suddenly. Something was going on, clearly, but I just couldn''t figure out what. I headed back to the memory palace which was still all fractured and strange, and just kind of paced around. Was this part of whatever had happened with the "Granch"?


    I was just about to leave when I saw something moving - it was only partially visible, bits and pieces coming into view past the cracks as it walked towards me. Finally the face appeared, and for a moment I assumed it was the wild mage but I quickly saw the differences - no scars, more put together, and most importantly she was smiling at me - but her eyes were shining, like she was holding back tears. I held a hand towards her and for just a moment felt our fingers entwine before she vanished and the room was back to normal - cracks gone, other door gone, everything as it was. She had been opening her mouth in that last second as if she wanted to tell me something - had it been something breaking into my mind past my defenses? It hadn''t felt hostile. It had felt familiar.


    And while some of the memories I''d found were nonsense, there was someone that looked just like me but had been to Brinkmar. The last time I''d seen her had been a vision in my head as she died, and I knew ghosts and magic and all sorts of other things were real in this world so it seemed possible I''d somehow just seen Connie again. I just wasn''t sure what that meant.

 CHAPTER 076: Finally, Some Proper Research

    I stared at the fate thread extending from me to Errod, which was jiggling and occasionally seeming to branch off into the city somewhere. All of the others were behaving themselves.


    "I don''t know why this last one is still acting up. The whole thing lasted eighteen, twenty-four minutes maybe," I said, remembering to round the time properly for once, "but even after a full night''s sleep I''ve got a holdout."


    Errod looked concerned. "I''m heading to a meeting with healer Rutlen and Talia Candecky after I do my exercises, to make some adjustments to my... wrist. I don''t know if this is something a healer can help with, but from what I understand she''s considered to be one of the best in the world. Even if she can''t help, someone there can - they have a whole team with different specialties. Do you want me to ask? I know I can''t mention the fate stuff specifically, but if the problem is more with your head or memories... I could try to feel it out."


    "She''d probably want to check around my Dumine, and that could lead to her detecting the extras. But... if you could ask her to come to the university without telling her why I''d like to talk to her."


    Not about the jiggly fate thread, though I wasn''t ready to get into the real reason with Errod. I wanted to know, essentially, if it was possible to bring Connie back to life. If her ghost was haunting me somehow, couldn''t we use magic to grow her a new body? We could even use mine as a template. I had a feeling it wasn''t that easy, but it seemed silly not to ask about it. Still, it was a thing I''d have to very carefully discuss in person.


    After some prompting from Katrin I had sent a note to Talia apologizing for my abrupt departure from our meeting the day before and letting her know Errod was willing to let her examine the glove so long as it was just looking and not any actual tampering, but I told Errod to apologize for me again anyway. With that he was off, and I was on my own again. Before dismissing my view of the fate threads I noted where Katrin''s was pointing - she was in the library, unsurprisingly, which is where I was heading next anyway.


    I wasn''t going to meet up with her just yet, instead popping in on Harmid Yanipliss to see if he had made any progress on the research topics I''d asked about. I hadn''t given him a full day, but I knew at any moment I could be whisked away to Hammersmith so I didn''t want to wait. Ducking into that little curved hallway around the outside of the library, I found his office and opened the door while knocking. The professor smiled when he looked up, but I could tell he was a bit flustered as well - the mess had grown, and he had multiple books carefully stacked with bookmarks all through them. Several of the bookmarks were improvised - I saw a fork in one, and what appeared to be a sock hanging out of another.


    "Ah! I have... some of your answers. Or preliminary answers, at any rate - each potential lead just means more research down the line if you want confirmation or details. I''ll start with the Granch. Nasty things, it turns out. Or possibly thing, singular. I don''t fully understand that yet, but it seems it makes copies of itself rather than truly reproducing. Sit, sit."


    I cleared off a chair and sat down, then waved for him to continue.


    "It''s a spirit that lives in Ematse, and may be a corrupted version of the more common oydirme. Oydirme cluster against the edges of domains in Ematse and feed off of dreams, turning into stand-ins for whatever people might appear in them. They''re harmless, their only effect is making dreams more vivid. Some people who can access their domains in Ematse apparently tame them, and train them to take on a persistent persona. They can act as sort of... servants."


    "Dream butlers sound cool. So what''s different with a Granch? Or the Granch?"


    "They try to break in and attack the mind. Typically it will target ones that are already compromised in some way, the old and infirm or people who have sustained attacks on their spirits. But some people do also use Granch deliberately, by turning their domain in Ematse into a colony. It serves as a deterrent against attacks, since the Granch will ruthlessly attack anything that feels threatening. Most often this was used by the kingdom of Halenvar, in order to protect state secrets; knowledge can be shifted from the physical brain into Ematse easily enough, and then that knowledge can be turned into the focal point for the Granch colony. Most things would be unaffected if done right, but anything that tries to access that specific bit of knowledge would be seen as a threat to the colony."


    "So... they''ve got a spirit monster just... breeding in their memories?"


    "In a sense, yes. It''s... not a popular method, as doing it wrong can result in the death of the host. It''s been around for a hundred years or so, it''s not clear if Halenvar created Granch or found it somewhere and put it to use."


    Cool. Great. "Okay, and if I knew someone that was a colony and they wanted to get rid of the Granch?"


    "That I have not found, yet. I can add it to the list."


    I sighed. "Please do." The good news is it made sense now. Someone had, deliberately, fucked with my memories and then attached the colony to some key bit of that hidden knowledge. When I''d built my mental defenses I''d specified that it would route uninvited guests to the most secure place, but when I tried to design a jail cell it hadn''t worked because there was already a much, much more secure location to send them.


    The wild mage seemed to be okay, and likewise in that brief moment I''d had Katrin and Errod in I hadn''t felt the Granch stirring. So I should be able to invite people in, and even the people who had poked at my memories some had been left alone - but if they went for the area that showed itself as storage units, where that core memory was encrypted, they''d get fucked. In a way it was good news; my security was way, way better than I''d planned on. But eventually I wanted to get at those memories myself, and I didn''t want to get lobotomized.


    "As for a place that is not a plane," he continued, "I have nothing yet. Or rather, I have several things that are likely just random legends or stories - I''ll have to look into them more. There''s some debate about whether or not the Queen of Candles'' domain is truly a plane, there''s the First World from some creation myths, there''s a tale of someone creating a new world through powerful spatial magic, things like that. I''ve just been making a list thus far, and haven''t had time to decide which ones are worth learning more about."


    "Fair enough. Uh. Narrow it down to places with little or no mana."


    "Noted. Off the top of my head I think that may narrow it down to just the creation myths and a supposed site accessible through a deep cave in Calnon, but I''ll have to get back to you later." He paused, having lost his train of thought. "Um. Ah, yes. Yesrin''s Loom. It''s a religious relic, currently held by the Knights of the Storm. It was said to be brought into the world by Yesrin herself when she incorporated into a human form, or was in fact the thing that created her human form. I can''t speak to the legitimacy of that story; Yesrin''s time on this world was during the Second Age so no actual records remain. Everything is a story of a story of a story. The Knights of the Storm were founded by a military order from Brinkmar, which fled during the collapse of that kingdom with the Loom. That implies it was one of the many treasures of Brinkmar, gathered by the Clockmaker."


    Everything kept coming back to this asshole, and a surprising amount circled back to Brinkmar specifically. "Okay so... what''s the timeline there? Like, when was the Clockmaker in Brinkmar versus the queen or whatever?"


    "The Clockmaker, after conquering the world, turned his attention to the other planes. Some surrendered to one degree or another, some fought - most of the planes are essentially uninhabited, of course. The three that put up the biggest fight were Brinkmar, Xeyul, and... I can never pronounce it right. The Queen of Candles'' domain, or the land that existed before it. Um." He pulled out a book, and flipped through the pages. "Ergizegigeiloek?"


    "Er... giz... e-gig... eye-lo-ek?"


    "Close. Ergizegigeiloek. Look, it''s just the Queen of Candles now. The rest of the plane was, so they say, razed to nothingness by the Clockmaker. Only she survived, somehow, and now her chambers are all that can be reached via planar travel - and even then only if she wills it. It''s not the only plane that the Clockmaker did that to, though if the stories are to be believed it was a bit less... aggressive... in other cases. Biltagiretzae was supposedly an uninhabitable plane made of nothing but toxic gas before the Clockmaker turned it into a perfect realm of metal boxes. Where were we?


    "Ah. Yes. So Brinkmar was inhabited by a powerful magic user and his followers, and because it was so secure the Clockmaker had trouble getting in. But he was able to launch an attack and clear them out, and turned it into a... research facility, of sorts. He constructed some cities, and tamed the font of mana there in order to have an endless supply of energy. This is how - I''ve told this backwards, somewhat - this is how he had the energy to defeat the Queen of Candles, temporarily as it turned out, and had confided in people that he was going to use that power to subjugate all the planes, turn the uninhabitable ones into specialized tools as he did with Biltagiretzae. Nusos could be turned into infinite identical housing units, Lenderatze into the perfect farm, things like that. But something went wrong, probably one of his many experiments, and his empire collapsed.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "This was just after the last Grand Alignment - mere months later. Some say he was consorting with demons, some say it was an attack from the Sahrger to prevent him from razing Xeyul, some say he tried to challenge the gods or enslave fate itself. We''ll never know, most likely. With the collapse of the Empire everyone tried to carve out their own piece, and it led to hundreds of years of war. Brinkmar remained apart, under the control of... supposedly the Clockmaker''s adopted daughter, though it''s doubtful she was his official heir or she would have presumably taken control of the Empire as a whole. She reigned for a very long time, being functionally immortal, and then died somewhat mysteriously leaving her daughter as the new queen.


    "The second queen of Brinkmar married a noble from Halenvar, had or adopted a son, or both - it''s unclear - and then a civil war with a powerful magic user most likely armed with the Clockmaker''s old artifacts led to the downfall of Brinkmar roughly... a hundred and sixty-two years ago?" I had to remind myself that that seemingly-specific number was just a result of them doing things in base six.


    "A few expeditions went back, over the years - mostly to try and recover mana batteries from the Crossroads - but the traps and curses left behind from the civil war had rendered the land uninhabitable. So, back to the start of this topic... when the one that was supposedly prophesied to be the savior of Brinkmar told everyone to evacuate, several important artifacts were taken by trusted knights so they could be hidden, destroyed, or kept safe for a future return. Yesrin''s Loom was one of them."


    Not a lot new there, but it was good to get a refresher and summary. I''d still want a book about it at some point. "Okay, so what''s the deal with the Loom then?"


    "It turns out I had a book on it already in my office, it was just buried. The Loom is shaped like a staff, or a polearm, or... well, a stick with a pointy end and a hooked end. In some art it''s two sticks connected by threads, thus the name, but it''s possible the other half was destroyed or lost. It''s supposedly inert, but will be used once more to create a new world when this one is eventually destroyed."


    Oh. Well, shit. That... had probably happened. Connie hadn''t even known she was fulfilling a prophesy.


    Harmid cleared his throat, breaking me out of my reverie. "I''m afraid that''s all I have for you at the moment. I hope some of that is useful in... giving you a more stable place to stand."


    I could just thank him and leave. He wasn''t asking me anything. But I knew I had been looking for an excuse to do this since I came in. It was why I''d come to see him, really. Hammersmith would probably know everything soon anyway, and if I wanted to have any chance of staying ahead of things I would need to trust some people. I simply didn''t have time to learn everything on my own. "I can see... threads. In the air. They connect people and things, and at first I wasn''t certain but now I know that it''s fate magic. I followed one to your door, that day."


    He sat back, eyes wide. "Ah. I see. And do you know why you can see them?"


    "Yes, but I''m not going to get into that. Suffice it to say it''s not something anyone else can do - I can''t teach it to you, and even if I told you how I gained the ability you couldn''t possibly arrange for anyone else to get it. I absolutely won''t discuss that part further, got it?"


    "If you change your mind obviously let me know, but I won''t press the issue. There''s plenty more to discuss without that, though I won''t lie - I''m disappointed. I would do anything to see what you see!"


    Aw, fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound. I reached a hand out and beckoned to him, and after a moment he placed his hand in mine and I closed my eyes. We briefly flickered into a hotel hallway by mistake, but before he could get a good look I had dragged him through door zero and back into his office. He leaned over to look at his body where it sat, eyes closed, behind the desk.


    "What an odd sensation. This isn''t something I''ve done before, though I''ve heard of it being used for... ah... entertainment purposes. I hope I don''t need to worry about Granch?"


    "I''m almost positive it''s fine. Okay, hang on to your hat. Remember, one word about this and you never get to see it again."


    He nodded, suddenly looking very serious, and then jumped back with a squawk when the lines appeared.


    "They''re beautiful! And... wait, there are so many coming from you... are they all fate related?"


    "No, but a lot of them are. You can see there''s a kind of shimmer to some of them, this opalescent sheen?"


    He nodded. "And do you know what any of them are attached to at the far end?"


    "Yeah. You met Errod, this one here goes to him. That one goes to his sister Katrin, plus they have one going between them. This one is made with a spell, it''s the one I need to get rid of, and I know where it goes too. We won''t be discussing details. The rest... I''m not sure. You can see several just kinda taper off into nothing, so I guess they''re not attached to anything."


    Harmid leaned uncomfortably close, too distracted by the lines to consider personal space. "Oh, they are."


    "Wait. How are you so sure if this is your first time seeing them? And what would they be attached to if they just end a few feet away?"


    He smiled and held a finger up, then rummaged through the books again - it seemed to only be the library proper that had the more powerful wards. "Ah, I can touch them. Good," he muttered, and flipped towards the back of one. His lips moved a little as he read something, then he nodded to himself and tossed the book aside. "Where was I? Right, so. Fate has often been referred to with language that implies it''s a line or tether between two things - I assume you''ve read enough in my book to know that? Good. So in most cases fate has a person, place, or thing that is an anchor, and then another that it connects to in order to achieve the desired result. Let''s start with something simple as an example.


    "You''ve got a chair, let''s say, and it''s fated to be sat in by the future king. The chair would be the anchor point, and then it would reach out with one of these threads to find someone that''s a likely candidate for becoming king and attach to them at the other end. It will need to guide that person to the chair, of course, and then keep manipulating events around them until they also get the crown. Clearly your view of these threads doesn''t show that manipulation, just the connection itself - with so many threads attached to you, who knows what that would look like.


    "Only the anchor point is unchangeable. If the chair picked someone, and that person was killed or otherwise became unsuitable, the chair would simply pick another. Er, the fate magic I mean. Clearly it''s not actually the chair picking anything. Meanwhile, if you burned the chair to ashes the fate line would be gone, utterly destroyed - so it matters which end is which. But everything we know says that the range is enormous and that an anchor point with no valid point to attach onto is constantly searching, which implies these little stubs are already attached - they''re fixed, pointing nice and straight at... well, that''s the question.


    "If I had to guess, I would say that you''re tethered to something or someone on other planes. The threads that seem to vanish aren''t actually ending, they''re extending in a direction we can''t perceive. Have you gone to another plane since you gained this sight? I know you mentioned Xeyul."


    "No, that was before. I haven''t been to any other planes since I started seeing the fate lines. Well, we''re kinda in Ematse right now but the view of the threads isn''t."


    "Well then, that''s an easy test! I''ll talk to some people and arrange a short trip for us, and my guess is that the ones that are currently extending off through the walls will disappear a few feet from you just like these others do." He excitedly began to gather some things from his desk, before presumably realizing that he wasn''t actually there and letting them fall to the floor.


    "That''s a good idea and I appreciate the offer, but I''m forbidden from leaving the university grounds at the moment - and when I can, I''m probably going to be hurried off to a secure location by Hammersmith."


    Professor Yanipliss looked pained. "Well, that ruins the next experiment I was about to suggest as well. Hmm. Maybe we could obtain permission from someone, if I can come up with an excuse that doesn''t disclose your ability."


    "Yeah, I don''t think they''re going to let me jaunt off to another plane."


    "No, I assume not - even if it''s a short trip - but the other thing we need is just physical distance. The university grounds, large though they are, won''t be enough... but maybe if they''ll let you out into the rest of the city it will work. Surely if we let guardsmen accompany us..."


    "Wait, what''s the experiment here?"


    "Ah! Sorry, of course. We''re going to get the university''s finest map and a compass, and I''m going to tell you exactly where those other threads are pointing."


    "Ah. Okay. Yeah, I had that thought after following that one to you but I didn''t have the chance to try it. Oh wait! I just thought of a reason we can give them. You said the other kids I rescued are here? Well who doesn''t like helping little kids, right? Get me the compass now, and I''ll have a... friend, I guess... do something to it to make it look vaguely magical. We''ll tell them only I can use it, but they''ll think it''s just the compass."


    He nodded thoughtfully. "That could work. Let me come up with the exact story, I would hate to feed Professor Gramod false information so I want to be careful." He turned to look at himself again, somewhat wistfully. "I see I don''t have any that appear to be fate threads. I won''t lie, that''s disappointing. Those two must be my mind and soul, and see - the colors at the end are the same as some of the others that vanish. It may indicate they''re leading to other planes, although that leaves the question of these ones on you that have a different color. Hmm. Well, with so many to study we may be able to determine some rules."


    "Yeah, no clue why I''ve got more than everyone else."


    "It''s a cascade," he said, "or I would assume so, at any rate. It''s a theory that has been proposed but has been very hard to study. The natural forces that manage fate are not infinite. So imagine you''re fated to become a demigod - and you very well may be, with how much you seem to be involved in. Once that''s the case, fate is already putting effort into guiding you along - and if it succeeds, you would be better positioned to fulfill another destiny by virtue of being more powerful or longer lived or... whatever... and so that fate thread attaches to you as well. Now there''s two of them working to keep you alive and moving towards a purpose, so you''re a better target for a third fate. And so on, and so on, until you have a whole collection. It would only work for fates that don''t conflict, of course, but especially for some extreme cases it would save a lot of effort. It could even be that seeing the lines of fate makes you a better target for them; if we''re about to check where they go you might investigate those places, and help to do fate''s job for it."


    We popped back out to the real world, and immediately Harmid reached over to the same book he had looked at while I had the fate lines up. He flipped to the section he''d checked before, and nodded. "Just as I thought. I''ve never read this book, and I''m sure you haven''t. So that was Perception... Spatial most likely, given the clarity of it, and obviously Thought. That accounts for three gifts - I know it wasn''t wild magic - but it also means that if you somehow unlocked fate magic in a Duminere you would have needed to have... seven? That''s not plausible, even if some of the wilder theories or stories turned out to be true the maximum would be six. So that''s one theory ruled out. Don''t worry, I''ll keep my promise - but I can''t help trying to think of what might have happened to you."


    Despite the risk I was taking, I smiled. He was so excited, and it felt good to have some fresh eyes on it. I waited while he grabbed a compass for me, and then headed out to try and find Katrin so I could get her caught up. Also, now that I knew it should be safe, it was time to finally invite her into my mind palace again. She was going to be so excited.

 CHAPTER 077: Debreifing

    "Okay, you''re ready?"


    I didn''t really need to ask; Katrin was practically vibrating. Errod, meanwhile, had decided to skip the visit to my mind palace - he said it was because of the Granch, but I was sure it was something else. Maybe I should have been suspicious, or concerned, or... something. But really I just didn''t care. I took Katrin''s hand, and we stepped into the bedroom.


    She immediately started poking at everything, examining not only the various trinkets I''d taken from memories to decorate the place but the - rather plain - architecture. I mean, it was just a room. But no, she was checking the baseboards and the window and the doors... all of it appeared to be fascinating to her. "And this is typical for a bedroom on Earth? What is this thing? What''s it made of?"


    "Uh, yes. That''s a Rubik''s Cube, it''s a puzzle and it''s made of plastic."


    This went on for a while, with her trying the bed (which she very much approved of) and finding the creepy statue in the closet (which she seemed bothered by). She played with the television for a bit even though it would only show static - it was the old boxy kind from before the screen just went blue, with actual dials on it - and spent twenty minutes staring out the window at the slightly indistinct residential street. Finally she was ready to explore the other rooms, but when she opened a door she was tackled by the weird anime-looking me that was seemingly carved from amber.


    "Oh, right. Her. She''s harmless, I think she''s just really excited to see you." She was also naked and a big fan of hugs, which was a bit awkward, but I was able to pry her loose and shoo her away. I''d decided that everyone who had shown up in football jerseys were the oydirme that Professor Yanipliss had told me about - basically spirits that played the part of figments in dreams sometimes. They had presumably been right up against the barrier of my domain here in Ematse, and when I''d tried to invite people in they''d tumbled through. It was the best theory I had, anyway, and it meant I could maybe assign one of them a role and have an assistant.


    "Okay, you want to see Earth. What memory could I... oh! Duh! Come over here, let me just center the memory in my head. I was eleven - Earth years, I don''t know what that would be off the top of my head here. Almost ten? I think? Anyway I ran away and got on a train."


    "A merchant train?" Katrin asked.


    "A... wait. What do you think a train is?"


    "A long string of wagons?"


    "Okay, no. It''s... well, kind of, but they''re hooked together and they run on a track, it''s... I''ll show you later." I tried to get the memory back to the forefront of my mind. "Things had been a little better at home, but I could tell my mom was headed for another... episode... and so I wanted to get out of there." I guided her out into the Long Haul Hotel but kept talking so she couldn''t pepper me with a million questions. "My goal in the short term was to make it up to this place I''d seen in movies a bunch of times, and in the long term I thought maybe I''d stay there forever and never go home. Turned out to be a real pain in the ass, you had to buy tickets and take multiple elevators and... you don''t know what I''m talking about. Anyway. I just snuck past people by acting like I was with someone further ahead and eventually I made it."


    I took a deep breath and opened the door, and we both stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State building.


    Katrin looked around curiously before walking to the metal bars and seeing New York City stretching away from her. The smile disappeared from her face. Clinging to the bars so tightly her knuckles were white, she went hand over hand to the corner so she could look in another direction. Her face was blank, but slowly a tinge of panic crept in. Finally she stumbled back, shaking her head, and just as I thought she was going to say something she saw an airplane flying by - I wasn''t actually sure if that was a part of the city planes could fly that close to, but like all my memories of Earth it wasn''t totally accurate. The airplane seemed to be the final straw, and she bolted through the door back into the hallway where she collapsed to the floor.


    "Sorry. Sorry, that was just... it was..." She took a deep breath, and tucked away some hair that had gone wild. "I knew you were from another world, I believed you, but that was... we were so high up! How high were we?"


    "Uh, rounding to something that''s a multiple of six for you, hang on. I don''t know exactly, call it twelve hundred feet? Is that a round number? No. Twelve hundred... ninety-six? Oh, also your feet aren''t the same as my feet so... fuck it, it''s like a hundred stories up."


    Katrin was almost hyperventilating. "That''s impossible. Even with alchemical metals, or magic, that would... and it just keeps going! I could see city all the way out to... oh, gods. How does that even work? Where are the city walls? And everything was... I don''t know, just all that glass and the lights and... it was too much."


    "Shit, Katrin. You''ve been so unflappable about this whole thing, I just never thought you''d have trouble with it. I figured I''d show you something really impressive, and... anyway, sorry I guess."


    She shook her head, and took a another breath. "No, it''s stupid. I feel silly now, I think... maybe I don''t like being high up, and it was just a lot to deal with all at once. I... I can go back. I think."


    I took her instead to a similar but less dizzying view, the top of South Mountain in Phoenix. It was still an endless expanse of city the likes of which Katrin could never have imagined, but we were standing on natural dirt and stone - and since it was Phoenix the buildings were mostly one or two stories. We sat there for a while, just chatting, and then she needed a break and we hopped back out to the real world. Despite the panic attack I considered the whole thing a success.


    Another day dawned without Hammersmith showing up, but I''d finally heard from Hugh in the form of a note. He wanted to meet, and had left a time and an address - it was within my permitted zone, so he probably knew about my restrictions. I headed over first thing, going the long way across the university grounds at a stroll - I expected to be waiting around for at least half an hour at my destination - but as I approached I saw Hugh already there. The address I''d been given turned out to just be a random street, and Hugh gestured to me to follow as he went into what appeared to be a vacant building.


    As soon as the door closed behind us, he was all smiles. "Calliope! I''m sorry I wasn''t able to see you sooner. You are all healed up, yes?"


    "Yeah, good as new. Thanks, for... well, for almost getting killed fighting the Behemoth. Or, Henden? Was that what you said his name was?"


    Hugh sighed, and nodded. "Yes. I was friends with his brother - Halenvar and Erathik share a border, and we were not always at war. But no need to thank me for fighting, I should be thanking you for giving me the opportunity to pummel him a bit."


    I sat down on one of the two chairs, and glanced around. It was a sort of office, though the bare interior confirmed it wasn''t in use. "So... why did you want to meet here? We could have gotten lunch somewhere." I had started to imagine the worst, Hugh being a pod person luring me into a trap or something.


    "Privacy. This room is warded, yes? It was obvious you had been interrogated, and there are some things we need to discuss."


    "Oh. Yeah. No, nothing too bad there. I blurted out the thing about the wild mage helping us, so we can''t use that again. But assuming Hammersmith - "


    "Lord Protector Hammersmith."


    "Assuming she hasn''t really discovered a secret new portal into Brinkmar we''re good. I made up stuff, convinced him I''m just one of several fakes and the real me doesn''t even look like this anymore."


    Hugh nodded. "Very impressive, to hold up against interrogation so well. But they have identified a body that was there in the basement with you, and they say he should have been able to view your memories - apparently he worked for the government here, doing not only that but assisting at trials and disputes by ensuring those who give testimony can only speak the truth. Interesting, yes?"


    "Yeah, he seemed pretty reluctant though, and when he saw they''d been torturing me he refused to do it so they killed him. It was..." I trailed off, trying to look traumatized and immediately realizing that I was, actually, feeling pretty fucking traumatized by the whole thing. In fact I could feel myself getting all worked up.


    "Terrible, I am sure. But only moments after you were rescued you were checked for lingering curses or enchantments and you had, in fact, been recently touched with thought magic."


    Could they do that? Was that a thing? But I couldn''t call him out on it, because then if it was real he''d be sure that guy had tampered with my memories. "I have thought magic, Hugh. And I put mental defenses in place."


    Again he nodded. "Of course. Very good, always protect your head in a fight, yes? You have become very skillful since we first met, Calliope Smith. And all this without the use of your gifts," he said - and with a loud click he placed the Dumine lock down on the table. "This was still on you when you were rescued."


    "Oh! Yeah, of course. They put it in the wrong place though, I have a decoy Dumine."


    "Yes, of course you do! An excellent precaution. Very useful, in this sort of situation, since the cheaper locks cannot tell the difference."


    I knew what Hugh was going to say next.


    "This, of course, is a null badge - a type of lock created by the old Empire, possibly the Clockmaker himself."


    "Okay. Well, I have a divination thing that can validate my memories. So, it''s fine. I''ll double check them right now if you want."


    "A perfect solution," he said, and held out his hand. "I believe you were able to let Katrin see for herself last night, yes?"


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    God damn it, he''d been spying on me again. My hand started shaking again under the table, and I was suddenly tempted to just tell him everything - not only because being questioned and needing to lie was about to bring on a panic attack, but also because... well, Hugh had been cool. Mostly. Apart from the poisoning. And even that was... well, I respected it. He already knew I was from somewhere strange, and he knew I was somehow involved in something with fate magic, and thanks to him getting nosy back on the boat he probably suspected something was strange about my gifts - although I had a whole story prepared for that, involving an artifact we found deep in the Necropolis.


    Really it was the time travel, the end of the world, and the extra Dumines. Oh, and me not being human. And Hammersmith already knew most of that, and would probably know about the Dumines the second she collected me. So none of it was going to be all that secret, in the long run. But I never just gave up when Hugh was kicking my ass, and honestly there was some part of me that said if I could fool him then I could get away from Hammersmith without being locked up and experimented on. Somehow.


    I popped into my mind palace and found the memory before pulling Hugh in, so he wouldn''t see anything else. I was going to have to prove I hadn''t been tampered with to someone now that the question had been raised, and if it did go poorly Hugh was the safest option. He noticed when the divination kicked in and everything got crisper - I''d considered trying to fabricate things, but I hadn''t practiced and I couldn''t really picture it fooling Hugh.


    With a deep breath I mentally hit play, and the man placed his hands on my head. "Okay, she has to tell the truth now."


    "First of all," memory-me said, "I''m not Calliope Smith. I''ve talked to her a few times, but I don''t really know her. The other woman that looked exactly like me, the one that stabbed Telen during the attack in Theramas and later killed him? That also wasn''t Calliope Smith. Our faces, our bodies, were magically changed to look like Calliope Smith - you might remember that your trackers said there was more than one person somehow. While you were chasing the two of us around the actual Calliope Smith was playing her own game. I told you I was just bait." I sounded a bit more manic and desperate than I''d remembered.


    I stopped the memory, and forcefully shut down the divination. "There. See? Did you think I got a bad decoy? Really, Hugh? You think I would spend the money on a fake Dumine - on something I was going to have magically grafted to my chest - and go for the cheap shit?"


    He had an insufferable smirk plastered onto his face. "Calliope, you should use this wonderful ability to see your reunion with Katrin. She was so very worried about you."


    "Well I''m low on mana, but I''ll put that on my to-do list."


    "No need. I can tell you, yes? She saw the healers running for you and shoved right up among them so she could contribute. It is good she has learned a healing spell, though from what the healer said when I asked him later it was not a particularly good one."


    "Yeah, well. It''ll save you from dying of blood loss."


    "Very true! Any soldier would welcome a quick and ugly healing job. And besides, sometimes scars can be good reminders. But. While I am sure Katrin had reasons for not healing her brother instead - possibly she was worried about making it hard to re-attach his hand - it is strange that, according to the healer, she just healed the back of your head."


    "Well that''s where I keep my brain, Hugh. It''s kind of important."


    "And then, rather than continuing to heal you, she braided your hair."


    "Okay. I''m sure it was getting everywhere at that point and yeah, you caught me, that''s where my actual Dumine is. I guess she was being a good friend and keeping it secret in case I had to pull the same trick on Ham... on Lord Protector Hammersmith, okay? Or do you think the Behemoth was slipping her notes in my hair?"


    He just raised an eyebrow. "I know the one on your chest is not a decoy, I had it tested while you were recovering. I told them I was worried it was damaged, yes? Checking the one on your head was harder, but worth the effort as it turned out. After that I could have given up, assumed I knew your secret, but I asked some careful questions... I know everything, Calliope Smith."


    Even in my memory palace my hand had started shaking. "I... god damn it, then why did we even have this whole conversation?"


    "Your chest, your head. And where is other one?"


    Fuck. Fuck, he knew. Or. Wait. No, I just wasn''t thinking clearly. This was Hugh being... Hugh. "Other what? I have no idea what you''re talking about." Had I already reacted? Had my stupid face given it away? Probably. I could pass it off as being some other secret, or...


    The memory skipped forward, and I was slumped forward with blood everywhere and Pogue getting out the thing that looked like a garlic press. It was too much. The questions, the constant prodding and poking and worrying about Hammersmith. I pinned my shaking hand under my armpit and shoved past Hugh out into the hallway. It felt like there was still blood running down my legs. "You know what? At least just... admit you were fishing, and totally full of shit."


    "Admit that it worked," he said, but his voice was gentle.


    "Almost worked. I could have just denied it."


    A hand rested - hesitantly - on my shoulder. "Denied what, precisely?"


    Fighting until the end. "Oh, right, you need me to say. Because you don''t know. Because you were fishing, and bluffing, and totally full of absolute horse shit."


    Hugh smiled. "I am always full of shit. We have that in common, yes? I know... that your gifts make no sense. And I suspect you have too many. And if I am right, then Lord Protector Hammersmith will soon know anyway, yes?"


    I wandered into the bedroom. I didn''t even care if he saw that bedroom from Earth anymore - it wouldn''t mean anything to him, wouldn''t answer his questions. "Fine. I don''t know why I didn''t tell you already. No, that''s a lie. It''s because part of it would make you want to hand me over to Hammersmith, and some of it just on principle I shouldn''t be telling to people. But, whatever. Here goes. Full disclosure.


    "That memory? That part wasn''t actually even helped by my mental defenses. That shit was all technically true. I''m not Calliope Smith, because I''m not even human. I''m a fucking Sargher and didn''t even know it and that''s why I''m here. The human kid I replaced yanked me here to... to kill me, I guess, though I still need to clear up exactly what the plan was. That''s the wild mage. But the first time she did it... uh, not the first time but the same time...


    "Okay, so there was another version of history. Which I know sounds crazy. And you weren''t sent for me, and things all happened differently, and the war lasted longer, and I helped Hammersmith get into Brinkmar but not until the day of the Grand Alignment. And it was too late, and they used a device there to... to destroy everything. The whole world, all the planes, everything. And another guy who had been working with Halenvar, I think he wanted to use that opportunity to go back in time in a way you wouldn''t be able to otherwise? But I killed him, and kinda did it myself. That version of me, I mean.


    "And she came back to the day I arrived, and she gave Hammersmith every bit of intel she could possibly ask for - and that''s why things have gone so well this time around. And she made you come get me because you were friends and she trusted you, but Hammersmith broke a promise - I see that look, and yeah, fine, I''m sure from her point of view she didn''t on some technicality - and so we bailed. But the other version of me died killing Telen, died twice because as part of training to stop the doomsday thing she learned to go back in time a little.


    "And I was wearing her Dumine when I got mine, and since we''re the same person it just attached to me, and it pulled the necklace it was on in too and it hurt so bad, so without really understanding I burned it out to go back in time a little. Inside the Duminere. So I got a third, too. And anyone that finds out is going to want to lock me up and experiment on me or something. So yeah, I don''t want to go back to Hammersmith, especially because she knew I wasn''t human and didn''t tell me. And she knew my memories had been tampered with, that a whole year of my life had been covered up, and she said nothing. I was having dreams, and getting confused about what was real and what wasn''t, and... she could have just told me."


    Hugh looked very serious. "This is not a particularly believable story, yes? But... it would explain why Lord Protector Hammersmith is so eager, and... my friend, if I take this on faith it still means the fate of the entire world is at stake... I will set aside for now that you said you would tell me the secret you were keeping if it impacted my safety and yet somehow did not think that the world ending qualified... but are you not at all worried? Surely you do not want to take the risk, yes?"


    "With Ulren dead and the war basically over it should be fine. They never had time to set up whatever they were doing. And anyway, is going with Hammersmith that much safer? I almost died right next to the fort, she only came out to chase Telen away when we were both in danger - I think she was perfectly willing to let me die so long as she had a backup. Then we broke out with literally just one person helping us, which doesn''t say a lot for her security. Plus, the version of me that had already saved the whole world? She could have done anything she wanted, but she helped out - and did Hammersmith tell her the truth?"


    Hugh shrugged, looking as uncertain as I''d ever seen him. "Possibly she... was not sure..."


    I pointed at the television, and somehow it came on. It was the same scene we''d just watched - well, a few minutes later. The man was still holding my head, and looking back at the Behemoth. "But I can see - anyone could, it''s extensive - there has been memory modification done. Years ago, most likely, it needs maintenance and repair."


    "Oh! And before that! I didn''t understand what he was saying at the time, but..."


    I gestured at the television again, and the channel flipped to show an awkward angle looking up from under a bed in the Bloody Boar Inn. A man with a pinched face was whispering with an important-looking woman. "I didn''t need to pry to see the... inconsistency. I don''t know if it''s trauma or state secrets or something else, but I''d like the chance to do a more thorough examination."


    "No, I''m sorry. She''s under the protection of the Endless Empire, if she knows something they want kept secret we can''t risk angering them right now. The war will be over soon, and we want things to go back to the old quiet trade agreement. They could sweep up half our cities as they march troops home if they really wanted to."


    "She needs professional intervention. There''s maintenance that needs to -"


    "No. That''s final. Now... wait, where did she go?"


    Again, I made the television change channels to show the tracker from Halenvar. "Sahrger have been known to copy others, it could even explain the interference if she were younger and the original were still alive, but the Empire wouldn''t use one. And it wouldn''t explain what I saw. There... may be something else. Edited memories, and some possibility of a colony of Granch."


    I gestured one last time to turn the television off, but it only changed the channel to some commercial for a diner so I reached over to hit the power button instead. "See? They said it, it was obvious. She had to know. Plus, Hammersmith is going to have someone examine my Dumines and I know some people can tell what you''ve got. Hugh, I have one nobody else could. Is she going to let that go? Or will she decide that - however distasteful it is - she needs to keep me locked up so I don''t fall into the wrong hands?"


    "Is this about fate? You mentioned the thread of fate from the wild mage, the... human Calliope Smith... but what I overheard on the boat implied there was more than one."


    In reply, I stepped us out into a view of the real room we were in - whatever wards Hugh had mentioned didn''t prevent it - and turned on my view of the fate threads so he could see them. Hugh just stared at them for a long time.


    "I don''t really like trusting authority figures, and I know it''s not fair, and you''ve been amazing, and logically I know Hammersmith is right to want me not running around but... but I don''t trust her in particular. And I don''t even know what to do about it, because I can''t just keep trying to run away... but I can''t go with her either."


    I kicked us out of my mind, and Hugh nodded a few times as if he was thinking to himself. "I... cannot justify letting you leave, Calliope. Not if it means the whole world is at risk, not even if that risk is low as you think it is. Lord Protector Hammersmith will be here in the next few days, I would think. Do not attempt to run."


    I stared blankly at the wall as he stood and left. I felt some very nasty thoughts building, but they didn''t have any force behind them. He''d been ready to let me go my own way, ready to trust me, but I''d been keeping the full truth from him. And he was right. It was selfish. Hell, Errod had said the same thing. How many times had I nearly died, kept alive only through unreliable probability magic or last minute miracles?


    I sat there feeling vaguely sorry for myself for a moment, but as I finally stood I saw that while Hugh had taken the lock, he''d left my lost gold nose ring in its place.

 CHAPTER 078: Triangulation

    Errod had asked healer Rutlen to come see me, but when he got back from that visit he warned me something was up.


    "I didn''t get the feeling it was anything bad, but... she was nervous. The whole time she was examining me something was off, and then when I said you wanted to talk to her she looked spooked. It''s probably nothing, but..."


    And now here I was talking to her, and yeah. She was being really strange. Most of her body language was nervous, but she was also making really intense eye contact.


    "Just a question," I said, "and I''d appreciate if you could keep it between us for now. Um. I was told once that people could be brought back to life, but only under some very specific circumstances. Is that right?"


    She nodded, still looking all squirrely. "Yes, but typically as soon as the body dies the spirits - mind and soul - snap together and cross over into the Necropolis. Sometimes they''ll stay as a ghost, but even then the melding is very hard to reverse. If you can''t restore the mind and soul it could still be possible to heal the body - assuming it''s largely intact - but the person would be what we call a husk. They don''t regenerate mana, and reportedly can''t use magic regardless. There are other effects, but the main issue is that without the mind and soul it''s considered to... well, it''s just not a full person anymore. On top of that, if the body was dead for any amount of time then without the mind they''re likely to have limited cognition; the brain cannot recover from being dead without the mind to rely on."


    I had a sneaking suspicion that everyone on Earth was a ''husk'', but that was something I could think about later. "Sure, sure. But if you had the ghost, it''s possible to tether it back to the body? And, I guess, split it apart into mind and soul again?"


    "Yes, it''s been done - not often, for obvious reasons."


    "And if you don''t have the body, could you create a new one? Like, let''s say the person had an identical twin, could you use them as a sort of template?"


    She looked nervous, and I wondered if this was a taboo subject. Was this unethical mad science shit? It seemed possible. "You would need at least part of the body to still be alive, though if you had... an identical twin, as you said, or something like that - then it would certainly help to fill in gaps."


    We didn''t have anything left from Connie, especially not something alive, but we were even closer than identical twins. "If they were perfectly similar, somehow... could one twin just... donate a body part to grow the body from?"


    She considered for a moment, then frowned. "This gets into something older and deeper than Imperial magic. The collective consciousness, the Common Local Understanding, whatever you call it - it would need to really think of the body part as belonging to that person. Even with a twin, that would likely not be the case. Also, for a fresh injury the connection between the part and the whole would be too strong, it would... know, for lack of a better term, that it belonged back on the body it had come from.


    "You would simultaneously need a metaphysical distance between the part and the body it came from, and a closeness to the spirits you wanted to attach to it. That could be possible, under some exotic circumstances, but... I think you can imagine why it''s never been done. The only people that have been brought back were dead for a very short time and their bodies were already largely intact."


    That didn''t sound great. If I could find Connie''s ghost I could look into it more, but I didn''t have high hopes. Rutlen seemed to notice how disappointed I looked, and put a hand on my shoulder.


    "To be clear, if anyone can do it, it would be my team. If you ever have someone in a bad situation and can get them to me quickly enough, I''ll of course do anything I can. I just wouldn''t want to promise you I can bring back someone that''s been dead for any amount of time without something... very special going on."


    I thanked her, and filed it away for later. There was no way I could realistically ask her to do anything right now, nor was I ready to try and explain that my "identical twin" had died and was possibly haunting me because we shared... not a soul, probably, but... what? Hmm. That was maybe a question worth asking. It wasn''t our mind or soul, it wasn''t our body, it wasn''t our lutore. What was the connection there? What made it so that, for example, I could remember when she went back in time?


    I got the compass sent to Talia but didn''t get a chance to speak to her in person, instead spending the day just trying to get back into knitting. It seemed to help keep my mind off of things, and keep my hands steady. I hadn''t managed to make anything too impressive, but I had a rapidly growing scarf that I was pretty proud of. When I did take a break I just got depressed - I felt like an asshole for wanting to run away, and I felt like a failure because I couldn''t even do it. Hell, there was no chance they weren''t going to move me via teleportation directly into a secure location, so I''d go from being stuck by the contract to being surrounded and already in prison.


    I couldn''t focus on research with Katrin, Errod was being a little weird still, and I certainly wasn''t going to try Hugh again. When Talia sent the compass back it was with a letter saying she was too busy working on our project to get together, which seemed like she was blowing me off - she''d made it pretty clear that it was a boring and easy job, but now it was super exciting and was going to take all of her time? Sure. Although, it was possible that she had been inspired by something and was... I don''t know, adding a smoothie maker to it.


    So I''d been walking around the university grounds and just people watching. It was nice, it reminded me a lot of our brief time in Theramas before the attack where I thought we were going to be able to just live in a cute apartment and be a very strange little family. Of course it was also similar to Theramas in the sense that there were guards always nearby and keeping a wary eye on me. I could feel myself slipping back into a funk, but thankfully I was distracted from my mood by a sudden attack. They came at me all at once - four of them, charging in and trying to tackle me by grappling my legs and waist.


    I scooped two of them under the arms, then used those two to grab a third. The last was wrapped around my left leg, but I used my right to pin them to me before collapsing backwards. "Hah! I''ve got you all now!" I yelled, drawing a few confused looks. The kids were laughing - well, not Roran but that was to be expected with his serious demeanor - and they all started talking over each other and trying to show me things. Tig made me almost weightless for a moment, and Yasna gave me a very small but beautiful crystalline flower she''d made. Lian hadn''t had the opportunity to practice her magic much, but excitedly showed me her new dress and told me about Twelve Towers. Roran was still close-lipped about what gifts he''d received but very quietly showed me a knife he''d stolen and was keeping handy "just in case" which was both tragic and... pretty relatable.


    Their keepers had caught up and were impatient, but it took a bit for everyone to be ready anyway. I had thought we would be going to the far edges of the city to triangulate the kids'' fate threads, but first they slapped some anti-divination hood over my head and took me into a building before spinning me in circles. When they removed it Moss In Bloom was there, as was the "magical" compass. I was instructed to indicate which direction Elba was in.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    We''d removed the actual needle from the compass in favor of some mystical flickering lights thanks to Talia, who had noted in the letter with it that she hoped whatever I was doing was more of a prank than a scam. When I flipped on the fate threads and lined everything up I was able to successfully point to where Elba was, and everyone seemed convinced. We just needed to get the official okay from the guards to suppress my oath, but they''d already received a preliminary approval.


    "I hope you trip and fall in moskar shit," Moss In Bloom said.


    I was going to ignore it, but I couldn''t make myself leave. That damn voice in my head, Bill''s influence on me, was picking at the back of my brain. I turned to Professor Gramod, the one in charge of the kids, and held out a hand to keep him from leaving. "Wait. You have to promise not to kill them."


    "Excuse me?"


    "You have to promise not to kill the Sargher. Once I point you to where they are, you have to swear - really swear - that they''ll be treated humanely. I know you have to keep them from cursing people, and I know they''re assholes. But they''re children. You understand?"


    He scoffed. "Well yes, technically, but -"


    Gramod stepped back and bumped into the wall, cutting himself off, and the guards tensed up. I realized too late I was leaning right into his face, but I only backed off the slightest bit. "Not technically. Actually. And I am telling you that no harm will come to them, because you''re going to try to teach them right and wrong and in the meantime they''re going to have decent food, and toys, and comfortable things that they can call their own. Or I will personally come back here and deal with you."


    He sputtered. "Are you - are you threatening me?"


    I hesitated, feeling a strange tightening in my head. "I''m magically restricted from breaking any laws in this city, so to be clear I am not currently planning on harming you and genuinely hope that there will be no reason to harm you in exactly one year when that magical contract expires. Let''s not call it a threat, let''s call it a deal. You agree to take care of them and treat them like you would treat some particularly shitty but redeemable human children, or I find some other way to get these kids home that doesn''t in any way help your research. And if you make this deal and then break it, then yeah. There might be consequences."


    Moss In Bloom was squinting at me, and then all at once her eyes went wide. Shit. Talking about making a deal with him was maybe pushing things too far. She didn''t say anything though, and Professor Gramod finally sputtered that of course he would treat them acceptably and shook my outstretched hand - it was like holding a dead fish. Harmid stepped in to say he would also keep an eye on them, and I knew my little stunt had also set his mind going. But whatever. I was leaving with Hammersmith soon anyway.


    We traveled around the city in a wagon, and stopped at three points along the city walls. Someone would set up surveying equipment, I would "calibrate" the compass which was actually just me checking all my fate lines for professor Yanipliss, and then one by one I''d check each of the kids. Between the surveying equipment and some supposedly very accurate maps, there was a good chance they would be able to triangulate everything - but some of the lines were moving a bit, and Errod''s was still all flaky, and ideally we would have measured at places way further apart so nothing was guaranteed.


    One line in particular was moving more than expected, but it was distinctive enough that I immediately realized which one it was. It was right after the second of three stops, so I was able to have a moment on the wagon to try and ping her.


    "You are getting better at this," she said as she appeared standing in the middle of the wagon next to me.


    "I''d fucking hope so, it''s basically the only thing I''ve been working on. I wanted to be training more, but I think this is going to pretty quickly plateau."


    I thought she was going to say something nasty, but she hesitated and then said, quieter than normal, "When I was learning magic, it was very hard to practice. I was not allowed to do anything but what I was told. And I found little tricks I could do, small things they would not notice. But it also stopped helping after a time."


    "You''re really impressive, you know."


    She sighed. "Not enough to kill you."


    "Well to be fair you came pretty close, and that last one in Theramas that went so wrong was probably partly me fucking with probability without realizing it. I''ve been trying to look back and see how much I did it, all the times I felt cold when I was in danger and then something saved me. Some I''m sure of, like I told this guy to choke to death after he stabbed me and he... he did. Some others, I don''t know. There was a fight in an alleyway where I think I made someone slip in a puddle? But maybe he just slipped normally."


    She nodded. "It was always hard for me to tell, but I assumed they knew."


    "Oh, they probably do. I think I''m just strange because... well, partly because you offed my parents pretty early on, but also I assume being on Earth made it harder to get things from the connection. It doesn''t matter, that magic is gone now. I could learn it again, I have the right gifts, but... I don''t know."


    "I will need to give up wild magic, I suppose, if I return to Earth."


    "I guess. I don''t know. I think there''s at least some magic on Earth, mana would be super low I''m sure - especially because the cities are so much bigger - but your soul and mind should stay connected and that could funnel some to you from their associated planes. I''ve been told wild magic is inefficient so it might be hard, but presumably you could still do some stuff. Or you could get a Dumine, and learn something that doesn''t take a lot in the first place."


    She laughed, just a single bark. "Breaking in to a Duminere is not possible, and I will not swear allegiance to any kingdom or empire."


    "Duh. Do you... I never know what you parts you''ve been following. You can use the new one - not new, but like, newly found - in Erathik. I have a guarantee of a certain number of guests, so I just have to send them your description and stuff. I don''t know if you''d actually want to, I mean you''ve put a ton of work into wild magic, but it''s an option." She looked... annoyed? Frustrated? I was getting the impression she didn''t like it when I was too nice to her, which was fair. She''d hated me forever and now I was trying to get all chummy? I''d punch my nose in. "Anyway, I can tell you''re near. What''s up?"


    "You had said you needed help, and I thought that either I could free you so you could make good on your promise... or possibly get here in time to watch you die. Whichever."


    "Well, bad news. I''m safe now but about to be bundled away by Hammersmith, and I can''t plot an escape because I''m stuck in a magical contract - and anyway it probably wouldn''t work. And, also, I do need to help save the world. But that should be done soon, on the first of the tenth."


    "That will be... eight planes aligned. A good day to do magic."


    "Yeah, well it''s just for the one plane. Brinkmar. I assume you''ve caught us talking about it at least a little. Anyway, after that hopefully I can get things taken care of. If you want to get the ball rolling before that you could talk to... where did he go? There, that guy. Professor Yanipliss. I haven''t told him about Earth, or about you, or about... me, being. Not human. But he knows I can see fate and is absolutely dying to learn more so if you can teach him anything about how to do that kind of magic he''d try and help."


    She rolled her eyes. "That uses ancient rune stones. They would be useless to him, and they need to be guided by the Sargher. They cannot use wild magic directly, but they... control... others."


    "Okay, but that just raises more questions. I thought they could only do the curse thing, how does that translate to fully controlling people?"


    "Curses, and some can make binding contracts. But regardless, how do you make a... an anvil, or a hammer, the first time? This is something they have developed over thousands of years. Like using bad tools to make better tools, over and over. They use children, mostly humans but also ones from other planes. They use devices, some stolen and some crafted for them ages ago. They use sites of power. Do not underestimate them just because they live in trees."


    It was quiet for the rest of the ride, but she spoke up as soon as the wagon stopped. "I will not kill you, Sargher. Go save the world, I can wait that long." With that she was gone, and I stepped down and got to work. After the final measurements were taken we headed back to the university, and only when everyone was off the cart did I see the guards relax.

 CHAPTER 079: Ties That Bind

    I knew it was my last day in Sentortzi by the time I was finished eating breakfast. It was nothing magical, just a subtle increase in the presence of guards and the knowledge that it had already taken longer than I''d counted on. I visited the stables on my way back to the inn and scratched each of the moskar in that spot they liked, Shitheel watching me carefully like it was a trap but still letting me do it. I climbed into my wagon, maybe for the last time, and just stood there for a moment thinking about how much I was going to miss it before realizing how silly that was - concentrating, I stepped into my memory palace and just like I''d envisioned there was a brand new door that led to a divination-perfect replica of the wagon - through the little windows I could see landscape rolling by.


    Run away, get dragged away, whatever. They couldn''t take my homes from me anymore.


    Once I got back to my room I changed into comfortable clothes and packed two more outfits, as well as a few other little trinkets and things in a pouch. I wasn''t bringing anything magical with me, under the assumption they wouldn''t let me take it anyway. Katrin and Errod were a little behind in English even though they''d made frankly amazing progress, so I even left the bracelet behind for them - I''d already become pretty fluent in Imperial without it, probably due to my own use of Comprehension and the fact it was made in part with the knowledge from a version of my own brain.


    I wasn''t sure if I would be picked up right away or if I''d have time to stop by and see Harmid in case he''d done more research, but just in case I pulled Katrin and Errod aside. "Before you leave town for wherever, can you check in with Professor Yanipliss? And then if you haven''t heard from Talia about the magic item I commissioned check with her too, and if she has it just... I guess bring it with you, and if I ever get out of this fucking mess I can find you by the fate threads. Um. If you run into the kids lie and tell them I''m fine, otherwise they''ll try and bust me out or something. Actually, on that note...


    "I think probably once Hammersmith sees my Dumines she''s going to find some excuse to keep me there - and the more I learn about the Empire the more it sounds like they fucking hate Sahrger so I''m probably already an enemy of the state or some shit. I''m pretty sure it would be legal to lock me up just for pretending to be human. So... don''t feel like you have to do something stupid. If I get out I get out, if not there''s probably nothing you can do. Whenever you''re done here, just go live your lives. Go to Erathik and date Lute, or go to Good Charl and join up with Mama Carnage like we talked about, or just... have an adventure for me, I don''t know.


    "I''m not sure why you stuck with me, but I appreciate it. It''s... it was nice, and honestly a new thing for me. But we''re not family, and you''re not obligated to worry about me. Not that my family ever seemed to feel obligated to... well, I guess they weren''t my family either so... Anyway. You bought me a few extra months, that''s more than I could have expected. And like I said, I can find you with the fate threads if I get out, if I want to reclaim my wagon or whatever. Until then, it''s best if we just call it here. Uh. I don''t know, this feels awkward. Sorry I was kinda bitchy back in the jungle. Um. I''m going to go."


    Errod rolled his eyes so hard I thought he was going to hurt himself, and blocked my way to the door while Katrin pulled out a long piece of yarn. I''d packed my knitting stuff, so she had to have stashed it away ahead of time. Why? They took the yarn between them, and - ignoring my questions - each held one of my hands and wrapped the yarn around so we were very loosely tied together.


    "I offer these bindings," Katrin said, "under the eyes of Yesrin. True blood and breath of the Runelighter family is given to you, now and forever, to accept or reject freely. May the gods and the soul of the world know us as kin, and our ancestors welcome you when this life ends." I tried to say something, but no sounds came out. Errod repeated the recitation, and then both of them kissed me on the forehead and cheek.


    "You''ll have to find your own first name," Errod said, "but you''ll always have our surname if you''re willing. As your brother, I promise that Lord Protector Hammersmith will release you on the first of the tenth after you open the way to Brinkmar for her, because otherwise on the second of the tenth we''ll set the Endless Empire ablaze."


    "That''s maybe a bit hyperbolic," Katrin added, "it would likely take us at least a week."


    The room was getting blurry. Stupid dust in my stupid eyes. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door - spared having to find my voice, I opened it and found exactly what I expected. Well, almost - there was only the one guard, which I felt a little insulted by. I''d assumed they would send at least three, even with me bound by an oath.


    "First Citizen Helma Patak would like a quick word with you," he said, "if you have a moment."


    A quick word. Of course. I turned and smiled at Katrin and Errod, still unable to put together a coherent sentence, and I slung my bag over my shoulder. I walked out, pulling the door closed behind me. Time to face the music. The panic, that tremble in my hand somehow left over from the torture and the old original fear of being trapped and the trauma of being shipped off to a new group home by CPS all mingled together, but I stepped out of my body and let it walk on auto-pilot so I could compose myself. We headed to the library of all places, and through a small door at the back that I hadn''t noticed before. I popped back into my body for better control as the guard led me down sloping narrow hallways that were clearly taking us below ground level, and I caught glimpses through some open doorways of dark rooms filled with shelves. It was an entire second library, under the first.


    I began to feel disoriented as the passage continued to take odd turns. Were we still under the library? Had we made it another level down? There were branching paths, but each direction looked the same to me. I turned on my view of the fate threads which helped somewhat, but I still felt sure I would get lost if I tried to retrace my steps without assistance. Finally we reached a hexagonal chamber, and the guard closed the door behind us. There was a door on each of the six walls, all identical, and if I hadn''t been watching the fate threads I never would have noticed when the whole chamber rotated - meaning the door we''d come through was actually two to my right now. There had to be magic involved, not just because the rotation had been smooth but because there''d been no sensation of movement at all.


    We walked up to one of the doors and went through, and a few moments later came to the first elevator I''d seen since Earth. I couldn''t see the mechanism since it was enclosed, so I wasn''t sure if it was pulleys or gravity magic or what. Whatever it was the ride was fairly smooth, and we seemed to go down about five more stories - unless the little bit of light I could see through a crack in the door had specifically been engineered to be misleading which, given the rest of the path we''d taken, was maybe a possibility. The doors opened, I stepped out, and they closed behind me without disgorging the guard.


    I was in a very nice lobby, with a receptionist behind a desk. It felt more like I was in an Earth office building, magical lighting cold like fluorescents and the marble tile of the floor something that wouldn''t be out of place in any bank. I half expected the woman behind the desk to have a telephone and a computer. She stood, smiling in a sort of blank corporate way, and gestured me forward.


    "Miss Smith," she said without any warmth, "I''m so glad you could make it. Your appointment with First Citizen Patak and, by extension, Lord Protector Hammersmith isn''t for another half-bell. There was someone else that wanted to meet you before you left our fine city - I hope you don''t mind the detour."


    Huh. Okay. I shrugged, and tried to look agreeable as I regretted leaving my armored jacket and other magic items behind. I hadn''t replaced my throwing knives yet, nor could I attack anyone with the contract in place, but I had the sudden sense that I was in danger. Wearing a normal dress and not having anything more dangerous than some knitting needles made me feel way too vulnerable. The woman stepped out from around the desk and led me to another elevator, but when the doors opened she held me back.


    "Not that one. It''s... not safe."


    The doors closed, and opened again a moment later. The cab looked identical, but this one seemed to have her seal of approval because she stepped on and gestured me forward. Was it another security thing? Some decoy trapped elevator car? Or, the extra-paranoid part of me asked, was it the exact same one and she was fucking with me? I stood next to her - I didn''t see a great alternative no matter how nervous I was - and we began to go downwards again. The moment the doors had fully shut, her whole demeanor changed and she went from cold and professional to mildly panicked.


    "Listen closely. He knows everything, whether or not he''ll admit it. If he asks you questions, for gods'' sake just tell the truth. It''s a game to him, to see who will lie. He... he hates being lied to. Please. I don''t know what he wants with you but just... be smart, give him whatever it is he wants, and I''m sure you''ll be okay. I''m sure of it." She didn''t sound sure at all.


    The doors opened before I could reply, and just like that she had a perfect smile plastered on her face as if nothing had happened. I stepped out, and in a repeat of the previous elevator with the guard she left without me. What the fuck? I was now in a small antechamber with some comfortable-looking benches and a large door of dark purple wood that was just slightly ajar. Well, screw it. I stepped forward and swung the door open. Beyond was a room of dark gray - almost black - stone, and cool blue lights. There were some chairs, but where I might have expected a table or desk or fireplace the back half of the room opened to what looked like a version of the library out of a nightmare.


    The shelves vanished into darkness above and below, and all of the books were identical silvery-black rectangles. Metal spiders climbed up and down the shelves, enormous and bearing human hands on the ends of every leg, and as I watched they retrieved or re-arranged books seemingly at random. It was incredibly badass, but it did make me wonder why the chairs were set up to be facing this bottomless pit of arachnid librarians.


    I didn''t have to wait long to find out; one of them came skittering into view at the lip of the pit, but unlike the others this one had a humanoid torso - slightly larger than a normal person, and very robotic, but clearly still meant to look like a human man. Interestingly, he wasn''t chiseled or scary or anything like that. He was a bit pudgy, and had bureaucrat vibes. "Greetings, Miss Smith. It is a pleasure to meet with you... again, or for the first time? An interesting question. My name is Sentortzi."


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    I flicked on my view of the fate threads again, and almost gasped. There were thousands of them, all coming from Sentortzi. They had an insubstantial look I recognized from experiments with Katrin - we''d taken it to mean they involved a branch of magic I couldn''t see, although I could still make out some colors. A strange orange hue, some white, and the faint shimmer of fate magic. They weren''t pure fate, that was for sure. Other threads were almost striped yellow and orange, and extended to the spiders off in the bottomless black library.


    I dropped view of the threads - there were too many, they were just getting in the way - and took a seat. "Is the city named after you, or are you named after the city?"


    He settled on to the ledge, mirroring the way I had sat in the chair.  "The former. Before there was a city, there was just me and what books I could salvage from the collapsing Empire. I had worked for the Clockmaker as a librarian, and in the chaos following his disappearance or death I was forced to set out alone in search of a safe place for my hoarded knowledge."


    "Cool. And now you''re a giant spider guy. Or... are you the whole swarm of spiders?"


    "Ah. A smart question, but one that is difficult to answer concisely. On the topic of potentially having more than one body, I had the pleasure of meeting with a Calliope Smith before this."


    So he wasn''t going to answer the question. I decided I''d take that to mean they were all, to some extent, him. "Yeah. She told me she was going to Sentortzi to talk to a demigod, so... I guess that would be you. I thought demigods had to promise not to fuck around with politics though - so why were you working with Hammersmith?"


    The humanoid torso bobbed in a sort of quarter-bow. "It is true, we accept certain limitations lest the Hunter devour us. But the spirit of the law is intended to prevent us from warring with each other over the prime plane, or subjugating normal humans and standing in the way of what many believe to be the intent of the gods - to have a world where average people can thrive and learn and experiment with magic. Thus, we can still have an impact on the world within some established guidelines. Some control parts - or the entirety - of other planes, and some are like myself; I stay here, beneath my city, and leave the political decisions to others. I serve as a guardian of knowledge without bias - or, without certain relevant kinds of bias. Those that know me may petition me for information, entering into the same fair contract that others do."


    I thought about all the threads. The contract I''d made hadn''t added a thread to me, but it could be he had a different method. Could I, possibly, follow those to everyone he had made a deal with? I hadn''t seen them when I was outside of the city though, which would make sense if we were deep enough. So, no following them - but I could remember what they looked like and possibly recognize them if I saw someone with one attached to them. "And what did Hammersmith want to know?"


    "Sadly, my work requires the strictest confidentiality."


    "Sure, but I was already here - right? You can at least tell me what I would have already known. I can assure you that we were, in a fundamental way, the same person."


    He froze, becoming disturbingly still. I took it as him hesitating, thinking. Was there meat under there somewhere, or down at the bottom of the shelves in the darkness? Or was he actually a robot? Connie hadn''t ever described him to me, but she''d implied she had the same question. After just a few seconds he began moving again. "In a fascinating turn of events, the details of the contract do not treat you as a separate entity. Very well. Broadly... she wanted to find out if the scenario that led to your presence was accurately described beyond what her own fact checking could establish, and she wanted to investigate likely outcomes for the various actions she could take. I was, of course, already looking into the situation before she told me about it."


    "You knew?"


    "Not details. I knew that the past, anything prior to noon on the first of the fifth, was inaccessible for viewing by my preferred methods. Applying more... force... to the equation eventually revealed the day of the upcoming Grand Alignment as if it was in the past, but there was too much interference to see anything clearly and the mana required was not sustainable. Looking even further back was somewhat easier, but I was still limited in what I could recover. It was immediately clear that the planes had been... reverted to an earlier state."


    "Okay. Well, you''re welcome - I bet being able to look at some part of the upcoming few years, even a different version of it, is invaluable to an information broker."


    "Less than you - or I - would think, unfortunately. But it is true that I have benefited from this unique occurrence. It has led to me doing much research on the possibility and effects of time travel, and how the universe handles apparent paradoxes. One of my professors that was most suited to this research was tragically killed, but I was able to recover some documents from his quarters. I have obscured his absence from the rest of the faculty, and had Professor Yanipliss take up the slack - I believe you know him?"


    Hmm. This seemed a lot like the kind of situation the woman in the elevator was warning me about. Still, I didn''t see any reason to offer up too much. If Harmid had told this guy about me I was going to murder him, but I didn''t think he would have done that. It was possible this demigod had the ability to spy on everything in the university - it would be weird if he couldn''t, now that I thought about it - but I didn''t need to assume he had the time and bandwidth to actually do so. "I talked to him, yeah. I didn''t tell him about what''s going on, I just happened to run into him and he loaned me a book."


    He tilted his head, and one of his fucked up spider legs tapped against the edge of the floor. "I see."


    "Look, it''s cool to meet you and everything, honestly, but can we cut to the chase? You called me here for a reason, I''m sure."


    "Yes. I have a job to offer you, Miss Smith. A simple delivery. If you will enter into a binding contract with me, and promise to deliver a package to me the next time we meet, then I will in turn offer you a favor - with some limitations, of course, but most favors you might request would be easily within my considerable power."


    I shook my head. "I''m not a fan of binding contracts, if I''m honest. What would the package be, and where would I need to go to pick it up? I''m probably going to be stuck in a cell thanks to Hammersmith, unless your favor could get me out of that."


    "The package would be this," he said, and held up one of those silvery-black book-like things I had seen the spiders re-arranging, "and I could indeed order guards to free you from your other obligation if you choose that as your favor. I could even guarantee safe passage out of the city via my personal teleportation chamber to a destination of your choice, so you would not need to risk encountering the Endless Empire''s forces."


    "Wait. You''re going to give me that thing, and then you want me to give it back to you?"


    "When next you meet me, yes."


    I didn''t like it. At all. It was too good to be true, for one thing, and also felt like some kind of trap. "No. Not unless you tell me what it is and what it can do."


    "I will not divulge specifics, but... very well. It is similar to what it appears to be - it is stored knowledge."


    "Stored how? It''s not a book, I''m sure. I''m assuming it''s magic, and I''m saying that I want to know the specifics before I agree to this. Is it volatile? How do you recover the knowledge, does it just cram it into your head if you accidentally open it or is there a device it slots into or what?"


    He froze for a split second. "Have you seen fabrication templates before? Magical prototypes?"


    "Yeah, I saw a shop full of them last time I was here. They like... capture the essence of an object, so people can fabricate them perfectly with magic even if they''re complicated. Right?"


    "Essentially correct, and fundamentally what I am holding. I would encourage you to learn more about them, the concept is fascinating."


    "Why don''t you just tell me now? Look, I''m going to be a pain in the ass about this. We''re talking about making a binding contract and me agreeing to maybe carry this with me for... however long, under gods know what conditions. I want details. You''re an information broker, give me some information."


    He froze again, for longer this time. "It would be best if this information came from elsewhere."


    I stood up, stretching. "Well, I have a busy day. It''s been nice though. In the future, you should offer your guests a drink or something." I turned and started walking for the door, but I didn''t get far before he called out.


    "Wait. It would be acceptable for me to explain the concept to you. I learned the foundations of it long ago, before the collapse of the old Empire." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself; I wasn''t sure what the big deal was since this clearly wasn''t a big secret, they sold this shit in stores. "Templates can encode a frozen moment of the common local understanding, that collective consciousness that helps to guide and interpret magic. Someone who has only seen an egg in passing could try to create one from memory, but with nothing but their own knowledge - having only seen the shell - would never get the inside correct. The common local understanding would fill in those gaps, but if it was an exotic egg from far-off lands it would still come out wrong because there are limitations of time and space - and so it would have the internal structure of a better known, local egg. Templates are used instead to capture this understanding and transport it to other places and times. In addition, if they are for a physical object they can be made with the assistance of other skills to capture its structure in perfect clarity."


    If it was for a physical object. But it didn''t need to be, right? He''d said this was knowledge, so you could somehow make a template of just pure thought. Huh.  "What happens to the original? Like, is that your only copy of a memory or something? Is that why you want me to bring it back to you, you just want to forget for a while?"


    "A copy can be made and restored, if desired. I will not be discussing further details. The offer of a favor is quite generous."


    The spiders moving those things around... he''d made cloud storage for his brain. I had too, in a way, since I was building that whole fake hotel in Ematse... but this was something else. He was an information broker that was also... how old? Fifteen hundred Earth years, minimum. It wasn''t just fifteen hundred years of memories though, it was all the accumulated knowledge he could get his hands on. Could you even stay sane if you remembered it all at once? Could you keep it organized and find anything? Maybe that''s what he was doing, turning it into a physical library so he could move things around or store them for later without having to fully know them all the time.


    I realized I''d been staring into the distance, thinking. Well, time to either go for it or demand to leave. "The contract would need to be simple. No bullshit, no tricks. I want to write it myself."


    "Acceptable." A strange ivory sphere drifted into view from behind him, and settled down in front of me. "This will allow you to make a binding contract. It is a very rare artifact, very old. Only a handful are still in existence. Place your hand on it and state the words, and I will do the same."


    I took a moment to think about it. I didn''t want to try and trick him, but I did want to leave myself a little wiggle room if possible. Best to just word it simply, and go from there. "You will immediately grant me a favor that is within your power and that you might grant any other very important and favored petitioner, to the best of your ability and without further cost. You will not try to twist this favor or use our interactions today against me in any way, or otherwise seek to harm or imprison me. In return, I vow to take the knowledge you give me and deliver it back to you the next time I see you, making all reasonable efforts to keep it safe until that time."


    He did the freezing thing again for a moment, but then said - hesitantly - "This is acceptable." I remembered to turn my view of the fate threads back on before he finished agreeing, and saw a thread spinning itself out of the sphere. It attached to both of us and pulled tight, popping free of the sphere as it did. Huh. Okay, this was it. All I had to do was say the word, and I''d be able to teleport right out from under Hammersmith''s clutches.


    And it didn''t feel right.

 CHAPTER 080: [REDACTED] Runelighter and the Leftover Apocalypse

    "Okay, for my favor..."


    I felt freedom calling to me, that ticket to anywhere I wanted to go. I could teleport right to the guru if I still wanted to try talking to her, or to the far side of the world. I could demand he send Katrin and Errod with me, even. And Errod... would be pissed. I thought of him, of my... my brother, now, and what he would say when he found out I was bailing on my responsibility to save the world. Hugh had given me shit about it, too. And I wanted to be angry about it, but they were right. I was just trying to get out of it because I was scared, because I was traumatized, because of my stupid past that was chaining me to...


    Wait. I pinged my Dumines, and didn''t get a very clear answer. That was interesting. Was it just that I didn''t quite know what to ask for? Was there something strange about it? Or... was it more about technique than pure magic?


    "For my favor," I said before I could change my mind, "I want you to teach me how to package up thoughts and memories into templates."


    While the use that had made me think of it was probably redundant - I could maybe learn to separate out my torture trauma eventually just by use of Thought magic - the idea of being able to just bundle up bad memories and then put them back if I changed my mind made it feel way safer. On top of that, since he''d said it was possible to duplicate them I could even give other people memories of Earth to view. With my divination I could probably make templates of physical objects easily and then just... well, I wasn''t sure if they''d appear in person or if I''d have to export them somehow but I could figure that out. Hell, given the fact that I''d seen signs of Earth stuff in Nusos I should even be able to find a way to template things from there. I could make a vending machine of Earth shit with the right magic items. Hot chips. Elastic-band underwear. A working solar phone charger.


    I could also try and box up the fucked up memories to get them out of the way - which might make it easier to recover the originals - and I could try to use it to archive whatever the Granch were attached to... unless that just made them kill me. Uh. That would be an experiment for way later. Still, it seemed like a very cool ability and if I wasn''t going to be able to just query whatever was on the other end of the Dumines for how to do it this might be the only chance I got to learn how.


    Sentortzi didn''t move for almost a minute, and then I noticed the new thread was shivering, shaking almost like the one that went to Errod. Finally Sentotzi''s eyes flared with light, and he screamed wordlessly.


    "Uh. Is there a problem?"


    "This is... the wording of the contract is flawed. I demand we form a new bargain."


    "Okay, no. Are you saying you''re not going to hold up your end of the deal?"


    He twisted strangely, as if fighting against something. "I... this knowledge cannot come from me. No. No. I will not have my plans ruined this way. Ask another favor."


    "Why? Tell me what''s going on."


    "Yes. Yes. I will tell you, as part of the bargain. Put your hand on the sphere, I will word the binding properly this time."


    "Oh fuck off, you think I''m falling for that shit? No. You tell me what''s happening right now, and then - if I''m feeling generous - I''ll make another deal."


    "You were supposed to ask for your freedom!" he shouted. "You fear imprisonment. You hate being bound. You have an established history of fleeing from authority!"


    Ah. He hadn''t wanted to give me anything, not really. Hell, this whole delivery probably wouldn''t work if I was going to Hammersmith. "Well look, if you want to break the contract that''s keeping me in your city or work out something with Hammersmith be my guest - but I''m not paying for it. That will have to be all on your end."


    "I see. I see. Very clever. Fine. I will have guards brought down to release you from your contract. But I also have concerns about the favor you have requested, and its effect upon our bargain. It may render the agreement invalid, and so we must make a new one."


    "Keep up your end of the deal first, and then maybe you can convince me to make an additional agreement. Otherwise why would I trust you?"


    He shook slightly, and a strange grinding noise came from inside the spider part of his body. Finally one of the many hands punched the floor, and he seemed to slump. "Very well. The agreement does force this. We can fix the issues in the second agreement. This can be salvaged. I must know, in order to teach you - do you have any of the gifts of Thought, Comprehension, Fabrication, Binding, or Command?"


    I didn''t really want to tell him, but it made sense he would need to know. "If you spread this knowledge about me, I would consider that to violate the agreement."


    "Unfortunately, I agree. Your answer to this question is safe with me, unless I should learn about your gifts independently from another source at a future date."


    Huh. Yeah, that checked out. "I''ve got Thought, Comprehension, and Binding."


    He nodded. "I assumed you had Thought by now, but was uncertain of what complimentary gifts you had acquired. Fine. Stand by."


    After a moment, a spider came skittering up - human hands slapping their metal fingers against the stone. It handed Sentortzi one of the strange book-like rectangles and he held it out, nervously. "This has been modified, to allow the knowledge to be absorbed by you. I must move it into your domain in Ematse, which I have a device for. You can use the device yourself or I can, but either way you must allow my mind into your domain."


    I told him to do it - I was curious about the device but didn''t feel like trusting it. After a moment the rectangle vanished from his hands, and he reached out for me. Fuck it. I invited him into my mind palace, which I was interested to find I could access - he had clearly disabled some warding temporarily. I managed to drop us into the tiny wagon to give him as little of a view as possible, and realized belatedly that he might not fit. As it turned out, though, he appeared as human rather than a spider-centaur robot. He looked... unremarkable. He also looked pissed. He held out the rectangle, and it began to... unfold. I felt a pressure building, and then all at once it popped like when your ears clear after being stuffed up.


    And I knew. "Holy shit. Okay. Wow. Uh, that''ll do, I guess. Out of my head."


    I would need to unlock something in my Dumine to get the full use out of it, but I knew, deep in my head, exactly what and how. I even knew specifics about the technique, as if I''d learned from practicing it over time. I didn''t yet know if it would be successful at everything I wanted, and I wouldn''t be able to make them physically without a magic item since I didn''t have Fabrication. I could, maybe, invite someone with Fabrication into my head and pass templates to them? Eh, I was pretty wealthy - I''d just have the damn device made at some point. In the meantime I''d still be able to box up thoughts, ideas, and memories and just store them as inert objects in my memory palace.


    The elevator opened in the antechamber, and three guards came marching in. Oh, right. Very efficiently they reviewed a copy of my contract that Sentortzi pulled out of nowhere, and they released me from it verbally. Sure enough, I felt a subtle pressure lift off of me. I was free. He dismissed the guards before handing me the template I was supposed to deliver to him.


    "Now, let us discuss where you would like to be teleported to, and we can formulate the new agreement along with a small additional favor for your trouble."


    "Just a moment, please." I pulled up my Dumines, and felt a pattern snap into place as I pictured it. I spent a moment tweaking it some, customizing to take into account my unique set of abilities, and was thrilled to realize that it would actually take virtually no potential. My initial suspicions had been right, I could package up memories and concepts to some extent without using my Dumines at all - but they would have to be fully contained in my domain in Ematse.


    Instead, the far more useful bits required me to be able to do a sort of broad sweep of Comprehension and Thought to ''ping'' the Common Local Understanding, although as I communed with that force behind the Dumines it got more and more complicated. Some probability to incorporate variety in the item or concept being compiled, as usual a little Perception to help me process everything, but then some Fate that I felt was somehow in there to... extend further, pull meaning from times and places I otherwise wouldn''t reach. Huh.


    I felt the ability burn into my lutore, and immediately decided to try it out. I wanted... my experience of being tortured. But I didn''t want to forget it happened. Right away I felt something interesting, which was that it mostly wasn''t in my body - it was already stored in my mind palace. I''d heard references to this, the idea that people who made heavy use of Thought magic eventually weren''t even really storing memories in their physical brain anymore, but it was still a strange and slightly disturbing thought. Then again, it did mean I was going to be extremely resistant to brain damage.


    It was easier than expected, honestly, because the feelings I was looking for were so... raw. The very thing that made me want to excise them also made it easy to do. As I pulled at it and collected it, I had to make sure I didn''t trigger the more active magic and try to pull in the concept of torture in a broader sense, or experiences of torture from the collective consciousness. I wanted my personal trauma only. I could feel, for the first time, that connection to my soul in addition to the one that went to my mind. Could I possess that one, too? See my domain in Erima the way my mind palace was my domain in Ematse? The question would have to wait, but it was interesting to know some of my trauma was stored there.


    And then... everything felt calm and blank. I was holding what looked like Pogue''s roll of tools, but it was one solid piece of blood-stained wood. I opened a drawer in the desk and tucked it away, and tried thinking about my time in that chair. I could remember it, but it was like someone had described it to me - or like I''d watched it in a movie. I could also remember my hand shaking, but had a hard time really calling up the feeling that had gone with it. Fucking with my mind was maybe a slippery slope, but if I was careful and kept the stored stuff around so I could restore them it was... probably okay?


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    It felt too easy, like it was cheating somehow, but what was magic for if not cheating? And who said getting past trauma had to be long and difficult if there was an easier way? My other issues, of course, probably weren''t things I could just package up. They were from multiple events, and they were older - fully folded into who I was as a person. I suspected trying to separate out that kind of stuff would lobotomize me, if it worked at all. Still, it was pretty fucking cool and I was looking forward to figuring out what all I could do with it.


    I opened my eyes, back in Sentortzi''s lair. He was still waiting for me to tell him where I wanted to teleport, and even without the most recent trauma I felt my pulse increase at the thought of Hammersmith locking me up. Good - a lot of that fear was actually totally reasonable. Still, I had the clarity I needed to remember what was important and why I hadn''t asked for an escape when I''d picked a favor. Gods, that felt like an hour ago and it couldn''t have been more than ten minutes.


    I took a deep breath. "Actually, Sentortzi, I''m going to go with Hammersmith. It sucks, and I''m scared, but it needs to be done."


    "What? Unacceptable! You do not arrive in Brinkmar until the Grand Alignment!"


    He hadn''t said must not. He''d said I do not. Like it was foretold, or like... wait. I remembered what Connie had said, about feeling like she was supposed to go back in time. "Hang on, is this a time loop thing? I''ve got news for you, asshole. There''s no loop. Maybe there was supposed to be, but she didn''t do that. She remade the world, she didn''t go back in time. That was Ulren''s thing, and fuck that guy. I''m going to open the door to Brinkmar, Hammersmith''s guys are going to shut down the planar whatever before it''s even online, and that''s it. No destroying the world, no going back in time, nothing."


    Sentortzi climbed fully over the ledge into the chamber with me, shoving the chairs aside. I took a small step back before deciding to stand firm - the deal had specifically said he couldn''t harm me or imprison me. If he had still been made of meat, he would have been foaming at the mouth. "There will be a loop. There must be, for the world to survive."


    "But it wouldn''t survive. A loop would by definition include destroying everything again."


    "Only while time is repaired. Fate detests uncaused events, and already it becomes desperate. The Clockmaker, and other scholars of his time, did rigorous testing and had mathematically and experimentally proven that time travel was impossible. The flow of time could be increased or decreased, and could be brought to nearly a standstill - but past a certain point the mana cost increased exponentially, and going backwards in time would take infinite mana - literally. Over the years several scholars at the university I established studied this and did their own experiments, and when their results differed they sometimes insisted they had discovered something new, and sometimes decided they had made a mistake. And then Professor Ulren found something interesting."


    He leaned in until his face was almost touching mine, for dramatic effect. "The data was changing in a somewhat predictable curve. Time was becoming more fragile, more malleable, the closer we came to the Grand Alignment. Something had happened, or was continuing to happen, that was weakening time itself. It could have been something at the previous Grand Alignment, since that event always involves some strange and dangerous experiments. It could also, given the nature of time, be something at the upcoming Grand Alignment."


    "Professor Ulren? He worked at... oh. So you''re in on his plan."


    "Bah! I would never. He was counting on the planes collapsing to eliminate all previously existing influences. It is a work of utter disregard for the gods and humanity alike - the theory is sound, making yourself the sole influence on the Common Local Understanding while also thwarting the natural forces that guide reality... but at what cost? At what risk? No. Had I known his plans, I would have destroyed him."


    "Okay, great. So... you don''t want that shit to happen again. You want me to fix this. Also, with him dead I don''t think it can happen again regardless - which you should be happy about. That fucking thing the Clockmaker made for... I think he was using it to wipe out entire planes, like the one the Queen of Candles was on or the one that''s just used for storage now, needs to be destroyed. Why don''t you want me going there?"


    He backed off, slightly. "If you stop it now, the world ends regardless. Normally, we need only to reach the Grand Alignment for the problem to be fixed. It is a time of renewal, and a time where the gods archive the world that has passed, much like the trick you... just learned." He''d hesitated there. What had he been about to say? "While time travel was always thought to be impossible, the fundamental forces of the world can reach back and make small stabilizing changes to events. Resolve minor paradoxes. Even these cannot reach backwards beyond the barrier of the Grand Alignment, because time itself starts anew. My concern is with that process failing.


    "Thanks to the actions of your past self, the grand cycle is now too long by seven hundred and twenty days. What are the tolerances for reality? It is impossible for me to say. At best this will be nothing but a minor footnote for the gods, a slight inconsistency they muse over before moving on with their great experiment. But at worst... it will cause the Grand Alignment to fail, to throw the universe from its gears, to collapse all of reality and destroy everything we know. And so you must go back in time, truly back, and not extend the Grand Alignment again. This reality must not continue to exist. You can make the loop, make it stable and take as many tries as you''d like. I will assist you."


    Oh. Oh, I see. "That''s what you want me to deliver to you. It''s a backup of some of your most important memories. You want me to let the world end, enough to go back in time anyway, and then give you your memories of all this back. And then... no, you said you wanted it to be a loop. You could kill me, or something, and have the new me do the same thing. Is that it? Am I close? You want to make a loop where you''re the only one that remembers. And you don''t want me to be able to do the same thing."


    "Not quite, but close enough. I would have eventually let the loop close safely, once I had done everything in my power to ensure an ideal future. You are correct that I did not want an additional variable, but... if we work together, if you take my advice and are careful with your actions, you can remain on the loop as well. Merge your memories with your past self each time, replace their mind and soul with yours and abandon the older body to keep things consistent. In fact... this may already be conforming to a loop. You could take on the role of your duplicate. Call yourself Connie, as I believe she did."


    "And die killing Telen?"


    "You could change some things. Minor variances, incrementing each loop. With my assistance, careful adjustments could be made. There may be some... inconsistencies, self-caused or uncaused events, but if we minimize them we can still prevent further damage to time. We will leave it better than it is currently; there are some paradoxes we must clean up, repair, further back. Events that happened before your arrival. With careful use of Professor Ulren''s notes and my vast wealth of information, we can plan everything. Listen, child. You have no choice. Let the world end again, to save the world. You must do this, and if you must, then why not keep me as an ally?"


    "Why should I believe you? You weren''t going to tell me before, either because it''s bullshit or because you wanted to keep me as some sort of fucking pawn. You''re no better than Ulren. You say he was reckless, but you''re literally suggesting we do the same thing again. You don''t even know that the world is at risk. I heard... you can talk to the gods, right? I know I was told that. Have you asked them about this?"


    "The gods... speak to very few. And they have not made contact with any of my agents that I sent to the Observatory of Jenkutierra. But the damage to the world is certain, and the risk is extremely high. The Grand Alignment will mark the end of all reality. Your other self saved the world from one apocalypse, but left another in her wake. I do not approve of Ulren''s methods, but now that it has happened once there is no further risk to making it part of a stable loop. Not if done correctly, and if we continue to strengthen time in other ways."


    It was too much to process, and I still didn''t really believe him. It still seemed likely he''d been working with Ulren, that this was all some fucked up plan. "You''ve promised not to imprison me. I want to leave, now."


    He froze again for a moment, and then as the elevator doors opened once more - presumably due to some signal he''d given - he smiled. "My plan may have failed, but you will do what you must. Fate will force your hand. Our bargain is proof of that."


    Fate could go fuck itself. I got into the elevator and it began taking me back up. I got to the lobby and stormed past the receptionist, who tried to say something bland and pleasant to me. "Eat me, lady. That was a nice act in the elevator though. Pretty convincing, but it wasn''t enough to get me to do what your boss wanted."


    Her face twisted into a sneer. Yeah, that''s what I thought.


    I climbed onto the next elevator, which spit me out in a completely different hallway than I''d been in on the way down. A guard was there to lead me to an exit, and as we walked I thought about the last thing Sentortzi had said. I flicked on my view of the fate threads again, and the one that should have gone towards Sentortzi faded into nothingness a few inches away, with a green tint. Huh. Had he gone to another plane? Or...


    The door opened, and I was almost blinded by light streaming in. The guard led me along the streets towards the edge of the university grounds, as my mind raced. Once again, there were too many things happening. There were parts of that conversation that were bothering me, but the more immediate looming threat of Hammersmith drowned everything out and made it hard to think. The time loop shit or the threat of the world ending just from being out of synch was bad enough, but there were a million smaller comments that kept itching at my brain. And what did Professor Yanipliss know about... oh. Fuck.


    "Wait. Stop. We have to go back to the university. Professor Harmid Yanipliss is in danger, or maybe already dead."


    The guard sighed. "Nice try. Let''s go, they''re waiting."


    "I''m not fucking around. It''s urgent." I turned, not waiting for a reply, and like lightning he grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip.


    "Your sudden revelation isn''t fooling anyone," he said.


    I turned and managed to headbutt him, while simultaneously hooking his leg with mine and pulling him off balance. He fell as planned, but his grip didn''t falter and he took me with him. The headbutt had been sloppy and I''d hurt my head as much as his, plus for good measure he followed up with a punch to my kidney. He was stronger than me, armored, and armed. I was just deciding that I was fucked when I heard a tiny voice raise in fury.


    "Get your fucking hands off of her!" Roran yelled, and the guard''s eyes went glassy as he released me. "Now choke yourself," he continued, and sure enough the guard clamped his hands over his own throat and started squeezing.


    I stumbled up, and ran towards Roran. "Don''t kill him, okay? Knife!" Roran tossed me a knife - what a good kid - and I bolted as fast as I could towards the library. I decided I had to plan for the worst and tried something risky, switching to divination and trusting my practice at auto-pilot to keep me from tripping and slamming into the cobblestones. I pinged the wild mage, and then felt a spike of panic as I looked behind me and saw another guard running towards me at supernatural speeds. Just as he was about to reach me he flipped through the air - arms windmilling, a look of panic on his face - and then slammed back down with a terrible crunch. What an unfortunate time for gravity to fluctuate.


    "Thanks Tig!" I yelled behind me, and turned down a smaller alley between two buildings to hopefully slow down any other pursuit - although I wanted them to follow, ideally, since I might need the backup.


    After a few seconds the wild mage appeared, standing in place as the university grounds flew past us. "It is inconvenient to stop and meditate whenever you call me. Why are you running?"


    "If you''re still here, please. The library, that professor I pointed out. I think he''s about to be murdered."


    She blinked out, hopefully to come help but... for all I knew she was just annoyed I''d bothered her. Finally I reached the library again, and only a moment later I burst through Harmid''s door. He was there on the floor, skin tinted a horrifying greenish color and surrounded by a puddle of his own vomit. I flipped him onto his side and there was a faint, sputtering cough - well, he wasn''t quite dead yet, so that was something. I was still crouched there, panting, when I heard the sound of footsteps behind me along with a more subtle noise. A jingling, that I''d previously thought might be chain mail under the man''s robes. I knew better now. I remembered where I''d heard that sound before.


    "Hey Ulren," I said.

 CHAPTER 081: Before I Kill You, Mister Bond...

    "When did you figure out who I was?" Ulren asked, and I - metaphorically - let out a held breath. For a second I had thought he was going to say "who?" and I''d have to re-calibrate and come up with another theory, which wouldn''t have necessarily been a bad thing; I wouldn''t have been sad to learn Ulren actually was dead. Still, it was reassuring to know I was starting to get a handle on things. I''d heard this evil-looking motherfucker talking to Harmid about a report for the ''dean'' and saying he''d been on sabbatical. Then Sentortzi had told me Harmid was working on something Ulren had started, and that he''d not told anyone what Ulren had been involved in or that he was dead.


    But really, the thing that had made me sure was the sound of the chains from the rig Connie used to wear, the one she''d taken from Ulren''s lab. Now I was desperately trying to think of what it was supposed to do before she repurposed it, and what vulnerabilities it might have. I knew where I could have the best chances of breaking it, but jabbing the metal chains with a knife was unlikely to work and manually unbuckling it would be hard unless I could get his robe off. Best to just stab him in the face, probably.


    I didn''t feel like directly answering his question. "So you know I didn''t recognize you, despite our... history."


    "I know you''re not the one that almost killed me, yes. I''m still going to have to destroy you, of course - when I realized Sentortzi had summoned you I thought I''d have to leave you for later, but even if you had been sent somewhere from his private teleportation chamber I would have murdered you at some point."


    Having caught my breath and concealed the knife, I turned to face him finally. "And you still would have poisoned Harmid."


    He tsked. "Not if I''d known you were going to come here. I did that because I had to hurry and ambush you on your way to be collected by Lord Protector Hammersmith at the teleportation complex - and then at the last second you made me expend a lot of energy to get back here in time. I didn''t expect you to get away from the guards somehow and run back the way you came. You must be quite slippery."


    He hadn''t seen the actual fight, then.  He might not know the guards were right behind me.  "Sorry for the inconvenience, I''d hate to make my assassination more work than it needs to be. But... wait, if you weren''t going to otherwise, why poison Harmid now?"


    "I''m leaving after this, and he''s one of the only people that saw me after my ''death''. But a professor brutally stabbed in his own office draws too much attention, whereas it''s plausible he got a tainted batch of kul''quet." He smiled and pulled out a long, thin dagger. "Someone having you killed, meanwhile, is so likely it wouldn''t cause much of a stir at all - so I was free to use whatever methods I wanted. Had I known you''d be here, killing Harmid by more direct means would have been fine as they would consider him an unfortunate bystander. This is actually the least convenient combination, but... well, maybe they''ll think he was poisoned so the assassin could lie in wait for you here? I''m sure it will all work out."


    He seemed to enjoy monologuing, like this was a fucking movie. That was fine by me, I just had to keep him talking for another minute or two. "So you... did something to the report he was writing, to mislead Sentortzi somehow. And you want me to not go with Hammersmith to stop Halenvar, because you want to destroy the world again and go back in time yourself. But... why not kill me sooner? Why mess with Sentortzi?"


    "I only... recovered... recently. Your other self did quite a number on me; I was very nearly destroyed. Her and her little team shouldn''t have been able to get to me, they should have been focused on Gilbrecht Halenvar. I had assumed they would all go towards him and be either killed by Tindelus or obliterated when the Hierophants of Oblivion set off the device, but the Endless Empire spared a strike team for my laboratory. I''m flattered, really."


    That... would imply he was the original Ulren, from the previous timeline. That should be impossible.


    "As for Sentortzi," he continued, "I barely misled him at all. If anything, I worked to make some things a bit more obvious to him. Did he tell you that the world will end if you stop me? I doubt you''ll believe me, but that part is true. You''re going to die either way, and so my killing you here is doing the world a favor. I need to ensure that I get to do things right this time, a task your duplicate has made... exceedingly difficult. Still, I have time."


    "Yeah, he said something about that, but honestly I think both of you are full of shit. He''s going off the intel you gave him, and you''re pretty motivated to lie. You want me to believe all of reality is on the verge of collapse, but the most I''ve seen is someone go back in time in a very localized way like... thirty seconds."


    "Oh I assure you, the state of things is... dire. This isn''t entirely your fault; the Clockmaker made a mistake, I believe, and was unable to fix it before his empire collapsed. All of the damage to time, the fragile nature of our current existence, is because of this. Your twin''s fumbling and misuse of my device would also be a problem, but would not have been possible if reality had been in a healthy state. It''s of no concern, regardless. I will go back, all the way back, and prevent this disaster before it can happen. The only remaining paradox will be myself, and while that would already be within tolerances it can also be remedied with the use of Yesrin''s Loom. I had hoped you would go and obtain that for me, but... I will find another way."


    "So, what, you want to re-write all of history back to the last Grand Alignment?"


    "Of course! All of this is a mistake. The Clockmaker''s vision can still come to pass!  I assume Sentortzi instead wants to go back what, just the year and a half over and over?  Possibly a bit further, but if so he likely wanted to keep the rest of history the same. He certainly wouldn''t want to return to being a normal human librarian. He has too much to lose, and surely wouldn''t be willing to trust that the Clockmaker would reward him for saving the Old Empire. He is, in short, a greedy fool."


    "Oh, sure. You''re not greedy or foolish at all, you''re just destroying the whole world so daddy will tell you what a good boy you are. Gotcha."


    He sneered. "Well, if we''re done talking like civilized people I suppose it''s time to kill you. I hope you didn''t think this conversation was buying you time or giving reinforcements a chance to reach you? I assure you time is not moving for anything outside of this room, not beyond a crawl. No one is coming to save you, and you are bound by oath not to harm me."


    Okay so the bad news was that he was fucking with time, but the good news was that he thought the binding oath was still in place. Also good news, this dick was like Mr. Hoover from high school. The number of times I asked him questions about his stupid hobbies and got him to ramble on so long we skipped a quiz or homework was astounding, and it never stopped working. Even if nobody outside was ever going to arrive to help, I was at least giving myself time to think and learning stuff that could be important if I somehow lived through this.


    "I''ll get the Loom for you, if that''s what you want. My duplicate was able to use it just fine, but If any random person could they would have; it''s my understanding Yesrin''s Loom has just been a trophy piece for however-many cycles. What makes you think you don''t need me?"


    "First, it''s said that the Loom is fated to be used after the world is destroyed. I plan on forcing that condition, and will then be the only person available to use it; fate will have no choice but to settle on me. Second, the Clockmaker used it in a... roundabout way. It may have been the thing that led to the folk tales about the Lever of Ages, in fact. He, as you suggest, could not use it directly - but he incorporated it into one of his devices. He believed altering the future was easier than altering the past, and that he could take advantage of fate to set a particular possible future as the true one. It''s that device, actually, that Halenvar is after. He wants to finish what the Clockmaker started, and make a future where his kingdom is destined to be prosperous and rule over everyone else."


    "And he wanted you to fix it for him, right?"


    "Yes. I couldn''t, as it turned out, although I lied and used him to gather more and more resources. Parts have been destroyed, or hidden away, or sealed behind an impossible planar lock. It didn''t matter. I learned so much from it, and we obtained Yesrin''s Loom which was the only part I needed that I couldn''t make myself. But then your duplicate was too stupid to use the device properly, and rather than go back in time she somehow re-created the world from a random point in the past. Impressive in its own way, but objectively worse than using my creation for its intended purpose."


    So he also didn''t know it was the day I arrived on this world, and probably didn''t know about Earth at all. I stepped into my mind palace - specifically the divination room - and felt my mana just pouring out. It had to be something about the time manipulation. Was he speeding up time for us, or slowing it down for everyone else? It seemed like it would have to be the former, there was no way he was powerful enough to fuck with time across the whole plane.


    But that raised an issue, probably related to my suddenly spiking use of mana. I wasn''t on that plane anymore, not really - I was watching my body via the planar membrane from my domain in Ematse. That meant that as soon as I''d popped into my mind palace I should have been going at normal speed and, from Ulren''s point of view, just zoned out and stared straight ahead since my mind wouldn''t be sped up like he was. And yet, that hadn''t happened.


    I remembered talking to Cyne about the fact that some planes had different laws of reality, and he''d mentioned time passed differently in some and was even variable in a few cases. It made sense, for a plane built around the concepts of dream and thought. I focused, trying to make sure I would stay synched up with his speed. I hadn''t specifically unlocked any ability for this, but I''d been working on increasing my control over this domain in general and this should, in theory, just be part of that. Slowly I felt the mana use decrease, as if it was settling in, although it remained far higher than it normally would be. Hmm.


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    Okay, what else could I say to keep him talking? "She did more than just that. And she told me how to use the Loom, actually use it directly rather than needing to do some shitty workaround like the Clockmaker or your device."


    He seemed to be considering this, but he was still looking at me like he''d scraped me off of his shoe so I wasn''t hopeful. He looked up at the ceiling, the way so many people do when they''re thinking, and I decided there wasn''t going to be a better time. I stabbed him in the neck, which was shockingly easy - I''d been so worried, but this guy was a fucking professor.  He was the evil mastermind, and he hadn''t brought henchmen.  The knife went all the way through his throat, a killing blow for sure.  Problem fucking solved.


    And then I saw time revert, just like it had with Connie.


    Before, I had seen it because we were somehow connected. This time, I was sure it was because I was piloting my body from Ematse and the alteration of time simply didn''t reach other planes. I immediately swung again, but knowing he''d guard his neck I tried to cram it upwards under his rib cage - sure enough, he leaned back and moved his own dagger into place to parry and was totally caught off guard by my change in tactics.  Again the hit was solid, and while it wouldn''t kill him quite as quickly as the neck shot - the knife wasn''t long enough to get up to his heart or anything - it should be enough to fuck him up.


    He rewound again. No wonder he''d been fine with chatting so much, he could go back multiple times. How could I ever kill him? This time I feigned like I was going for the neck again but slammed my knee into his balls and stabbed into his side, and then time... stopped. I was still able to watch, since I''d locked that flow of time in, but I couldn''t communicate with my body. Ulren stepped back, clutching his perforated liver and staring at me in horror.


    "How... how could she... ugh. Fuck! Okay, okay. This is fine. I can just kill her now. Filthy brat will... shit, that hurts."


    He seemed to be trying to decide on the best position to be in, and I suspected he wasn''t able to just murder me while I was frozen. He''d waited a second to freeze me, in fact, until I had pulled the knife out to stab again. Maybe we couldn''t be too connected or he wouldn''t be able to isolate himself? I took a second to pull his robe off - not in reality, just in the divination replica - and got a look at the temporal harness thing. It looked basically like it had when Connie had it, but I noted that the time mana was in three smaller containers rather than one larger one. They were totally opaque, so I couldn''t tell if he had visibly degraded the mana by doing all this crazy shit.


    His robe flickered back into existence - that sort of thing tended to happen when I was looking at a live view - and I tried to get ready. Mentally, anyway. Physically I was still a fucking statue. He got into position behind and to the side of me - the small office made it impossible for him to be completely at my back - and prepared to jab the dagger directly into my brain. I focused and could see, just barely, my muscles starting to tense. Time was clearly still flowing around me, albeit extremely slowly. I had questions about how this worked with the air - shouldn''t it be a solid wall all around Ulren? How was he talking and moving? But the answer was probably something unsatisfying about Imperial magic taking shit like that into account somehow.


    Time sped up, slightly, although he kept himself faster than me. Dick. That was going to mean I couldn''t stab fast enough, or dodge. And then there was a light, a glow that filled the little office as a worm of blazing blue energy zipped through the air towards Ulren. Time nearly stopped again, but while the jagged line slowed it was visibly moving even as everything else seemed to halt. After all, electricity moved pretty fucking fast. One of Harmid''s eyes was open, just a slit, and the blinding arc of electricity was originating from his outstretched finger. Hell yeah.


    Ulren panicked and moved, but the line shifted to follow him. He was faster than it, but only barely - and he was painting himself into a corner. Finally he grabbed a metal tray from a sort of tea service and flung it at the lightning - the tray stopped in the air as soon as he let go, but the lightning connected to it and shot out wildly, no longer able to follow him and instead seeking only to ground itself. A stray thread of it still hit Ulren and he yelped, and for a moment time returned to normal - the lightning was immediately gone, and I lunged forward and did the only thing I could think of - I stuck a finger into his side.


    He howled from the pain and tried to shake me free, but I''d hooked my finger deep into the knife wound and was already stabbing from the other side - I''d ended up behind him, and while he managed to jab me in the arm it was a terrible angle and didn''t do a lot of damage. I could feel, somehow, time shifting around us - but as I''d hoped, with my finger literally inside him he couldn''t disentangle my body from the magic and was taking me with him. Get fucked, asshole.


    He slammed me against the wall and I lost my knife, but I just reached around into the opening of his robes and fumbled for the release on his harness - I knew exactly where it was, after all, and I''d watched Connie take it off plenty of times. Just as the latch flipped he knocked me loose and I fell to the ground, but before he could get the latch fastened again the door burst open and a ripple of purple energy slammed him against the far wall where he shattered a bookshelf and - from the sound of it - most of his ribs.


    The wild mage was standing in the doorway, face invisible behind her mask. I wondered, not for the first time, how she''d gotten our hair to be that crazy green color. "She is mine," she said, and red lightning shot out from her hand into Ulren''s collapsed body. It wasn''t like the clean bright bolt Harmid had made, it was a web of spidery mini-lightnings that crawled all over him and lit his robes on fire.


    I heard a click as he somehow snapped the harness back into place, and watched from Ematse as he smacked the burning bits of his robe and then shakily stood from the floor. His nose was gushing blood, and he was limping badly as he carefully navigated around the wild mage who was very nearly blocking the doorway. Getting past her was clearly agony in his badly injured state, and he made the most pathetic whimpering noises I''d ever heard. Good. He did finally get past, unfortunately, and I heard him limp away a few steps before time snapped back to normal. The wild mage stepped back into the hall and looked around, then came back in. "He is gone."


    With one threat gone, I remembered that I''d called in backup from someone who wanted to murder me. Time to be extra nice. "Thank you. So much. I owe you... well, more. You should go though, the guards are probably almost here and I know you don''t want to get tangled up in this. I''ll pay you back, I swear it."


    She glanced down at Harmid, then at me.  She nodded and left without a word, and sure enough a moment later some guards burst in. They found me covered in blood, in an absolutely trashed office, cradling the unconscious body of Professor Yanipliss. It probably didn''t look great, but what were they going to do? Arrest me? "Ignore the blood, he''s been poisoned. Get a healer, and if you see Professor Ulren you need to kill him on sight. I mean, I know you won''t listen to me on that part, but I want to be able to say I told you so when you don''t do it and he murders you."


    One of them gave Yanipliss a potion, but the other one clearly didn''t think it would do anything for poison and was already using some magical communication device to demand a healer. I just tuned them out. My mana had run dry, so I couldn''t fully ignore them by retreating into my mind palace, but they gave up on asking me questions pretty quickly. A healer arrived and took Harmid away, and almost as an afterthought reached over and healed my sliced arm - I felt a few more minor injuries I''d taken fade away as well.


    I made the guards take me to a bathroom where I stripped out of my bloody dress and washed up before putting on another outfit from my bag, and then it was time to head to my meeting with Hammersmith. Nothing had changed about that, and in fact if anything it was vital I get there so Ulren couldn''t show up again and kill me while time was frozen all around us. I figured with the extent of his injuries and the utter humiliation of his defeat he wouldn''t want to try right away, and in fact since he hadn''t rewound time again he was probably getting low on mana. Though he had to have used a massive amount to mess with time as much as he had.


    Actually, Connie had talked about how stabilized mana crystals gave off a little mana - like interest on a savings account - but using more than that would weaken the mana crystals and they''d give off less after that until you eventually used them up completely.  It was possible he''d burned through actual valuable resources in that fight, and would need to get more before he could do it again.  I couldn''t count on that, though.  Best to assume he had some unlimited pile of the stuff sitting around just in case.


    As we walked I made the guards promise not to punish Tig or Roran or any of the other kids that might have tried to slow them down or kill them. They said everyone was fine and, given the fact that Harmid really had looked like he was poisoned, it seemed clear I was trying to act in defense of the city rather than attacking it. It was a shitty way to apologize and, again, it wasn''t like they would have been able to do anything about it regardless since I''d been promised to Hammersmith. But whatever, at least it meant if I ever got away from the Endless Empire I could visit Sentortzi again.


    We headed out of the university grounds, to a huge building that reminded me of a train station. We marched inside, down a hall, and into a hexagonal domed room that appeared to be some sort of lobby with passages leading in all directions. Helma Patak was there, and smiled at me with only a hint of nervousness.


    "Hey, I have a message for Sentortzi. Say it just like this. The older Ulren is alive, and helped write Harmid''s report. Got that?"


    She was taken aback, but nodded and repeated it exactly. Good. I was still annoyed at Sentortzi, and was slightly worried that he would join forces with Ulren so he could offer the same deal he''d offered me, but it seemed like that was unlikely. They wouldn''t get along well enough. Patak and I just stood there for a moment, and I felt like I was forgetting something. I was so wiped out, I wasn''t sure I was thinking clearly. It was probably nothing.


    As the doors at the end of one of the halls were thrown open, I finally remembered. "Shit, also tell my friends! And, uh, get them under guard. Like, don''t imprison them if they want to leave but... fuck, here she comes."


    As nervous as I was, I was still floored by Hammersmith. The metallic silver skin, the enormous shoulders, the action hero muscles. The deep, vibrant blue of her perfectly tailored uniform with its cape and silver trim. She looked mad but relieved, like a disappointed parent, and behind her I saw a flash of light in the room she''d come from before more soldiers swarmed out. She wasn''t taking chances.


    Before she could reach me, however, there was a commotion and I turned to see Hugh marching at nearly a run. He was... in uniform? Hugh was wearing a golden breastplate, and had a magnificent red cape. His boots were polished, his mustache was waxed... he looked almost like an entirely different person. Hammersmith held an arm out to stop the soldiers that had been preparing to charge at Hugh, and raised an eyebrow.


    "Hugh. Are you... here in some official capacity?"


    Hugh bowed as he reached me. "I am, Lord Protector Hammersmith. I''ve come out of retirement this morning, yes? Pardon me for the interruption, this will only take a moment."


    He grabbed me roughly by the arm, and pulled the front of my dress down enough to slap the Dumine lock onto me. "Calliope Smith, you are hereby placed under arrest for conspiracy, treason, two counts of accessory to murder, and one count of robbery - for your involvement in the incident at the Golden Cask Auction House."

 CHAPTER 082: Give and Take

    It had been a hell of a day, and it wasn''t even lunchtime. I''d been adopted by Katrin and Errod, met a demigod and made a deal with him, learned how to package up concepts into an archive so I could remove trauma from my mind, found out the world might be doomed due to Connie''s flawed method of saving it, got into a fight with a chronomancer from a dead timeline that I''d been sure was already taken care of - a fight which ended in my favor due to the intervention of the human version of me I''d taken the place of as a child - and, finally, I''d just been arrested by Hugh as I tried to turn myself over to be imprisoned by Hammersmith. It was a lot.


    It was so much, in fact, that my brain just shut off and didn''t even try to process it. I didn''t try to figure out why, or what the plan was, or what I should be doing in response. I just stood there with a stupid look on my face. Helma Patak wasn''t any better, she was opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water - if I''d just walked in and didn''t have context I would have tried the Heimlich maneuver under the assumption she was choking on something.


    Hammersmith, cool as a cucumber and making us both look bad, just sighed. "Hugh," she started, only for him to cut her off.


    "Carol," he said. The soldiers behind her, upon hearing Hugh casually use her first name, looked like they wanted to sneak out of the room before a fight started. Also... Carol? Really? It was way too much of a mom name for someone that looked like she''d stepped right out of a superhero movie.


    Hammersmith shook her head. "Of course. You''re out of retirement. My apologies, lieutenant. High Guardsman, respectfully, what the fuck is this about? Is this some sort of last minute political positioning? First Citizen Patak, was there a dispute about the agreement you made with Erathik?"


    She sputtered. "No! They ceded to the Endless Empire without any requests!"


    "Well," Hugh said, "new information has come to light. Obviously I would never stand in the way of the Endless Empire in this matter, but as the girl is a citizen of Erathik and has now been arrested for crimes there... I''m afraid she will need to stay under my protection. I can escort her to wherever you need, but I will be present for any interrogations, any physical or mental inspections, things like that. I''m sure it won''t be any trouble, yes?"


    I was generally low on emotions even on the best of days, and this one had wrung me out like an old rag. But as my poor battered brain finally processed what Hugh was saying, and the fact he''d locked one of my Dumines despite knowing that wouldn''t do jack shit... I felt like I was going to cry.


    Her face now absolutely blank, Hammersmith called someone forward - Rylan, I''d head that name back when I was eavesdropping on her and Connie in the Cheese Cave back in Theramas - and an opaque dome appeared over the three of us. "Okay, we''re secure. What''s actually going on?"


    Hugh sighed, and looked... apologetic. "You fucked up. You made a bad call, yes? I know about the other timeline, and about the risk to this one."


    Before he could continue, Hammersmith held up a hand. "We have a briefing prepared for Erathik, and plan on -"


    "That is not why I am here, although the Primarch was... unamused that the Endless Empire has not extended their allies the trust they are due as part of the treaty. But I am here to discuss this young woman. I understand that Calliope must be protected - but you should have told her about what she is, who she is."


    At ''what she is'', Hammersmith glanced at me as her mouth tightened. I couldn''t decide what that facial expression meant, if it was chagrin or annoyance or what. "I made the call I had to make," she said, "I couldn''t give her another reason to have a mental breakdown or run off."


    Hugh shrugged. "As I said, you made a bad call. I... had an opportunity, the other day, to hear from several different experts in memory extraction who - relax, they saw nothing they should not have - but they all said the same thing. The collapse of the altered memories is well underway, and it needs repair or removal. You don''t want her to have a breakdown? She was filled with conflicting memories! They were coming out in dreams, she didn''t know what was real! It was a mistake. You mistreated a soldier under your care, however good your intentions, and you have lost any chance that she will ever trust you. That is the cost, for you.


    "Worse, most of the problems that have come since are the result not of Calliope''s mistakes, but of agents that were hostile to her for reasons you made sure she could not understand. Calliope has acted selfishly and erratically. But she is young, and was trying to fight a side of her she didn''t know existed. And during all of this, she neutralized that threat - she even fought me, risked her safety, in order to do so. Had she been properly informed, who knows? Her sister might be alive. Many of your soldiers might be alive.


    "And so, I am doing what I must to ensure she is properly protected while in your possession. She has always maintained that she would do what needs to be done, as her other self did once before. We agree that she cannot run around the continent causing trouble, but you will need to accept your responsibility in this situation. That means putting me in charge of her."


    Hammersmith looked frustrated and impatient, her perfect metallic face furrowed. "What was the threat? How was it neutralized? This is the first that I''m -"


    "Stop. Stop. That''s just the thing I have been telling you, yes? You have lost her trust, and now you don''t get to ask those questions. Nor will I allow you to tamper with her head to get answers that way. You could ask for an official report from the Primarch, and I''m sure she will extend you all the cooperation and courtesy that your empire has shown to her." Oooh, shade. It was good to have confirmation that Hammersmith hadn''t been telling her allies everything. "In the meantime Calliope will wait with you, patiently, and then open the way into Brinkmar. And when the threat is over you will thank her and let her go, and I will retire once more, yes?"


    Hammersmith took an incredibly deep breath, which was a sight to see from someone with shoulders that broad. I half expected when she let it out it would blow us all across the room. "You had to charge in here and make a scene?"


    Hugh grinned. "Would it have worked otherwise? Besides, I hadn''t decided for certain until this morning, and you have to admit you like my cape, yes?"


    She raised an eyebrow. "Mine is better. Let''s go, the teleportation circle is waiting."


    We teleported three times, and each time switched rooms and mages. Only Hammersmith, Hugh, and myself experienced the whole journey. Even more, when we finally arrived at our destination it was underground with no windows. I found a moment to check the fate threads in case I could guess at where we were or at least how far we were from Katrin and Errod, but all of them trailed off into nothingness. So, another plane.


    Really, it made sense. I was still emotionally overwhelmed about Hugh standing up to Hammersmith on my behalf, especially considering how much he respected her, but the more I thought about it the clearer it was that part of her mistake had been building the new contract on top of Connie''s old one and trying to keep those promises. She should have told us what was going on, yeah, and she should have... I don''t know. Recognized that Connie was hanging on by a thread, I guess? But being logical she also should have had us locked up somewhere like this from the start. Agreeing in theory wasn''t making me like it any more, though. It felt like being shipped off to prison.


    Between the first and second teleports, I''d been ushered to a cubicle and told to change clothes. Hugh had made sure he was the one to supervise, although I was mortified when I realized he really was going to watch me change. But it felt very businesslike, and he stayed a few feet away. He let them know I hadn''t palmed anything or transferred anything from one outfit to the other, and made sure they in turn swore I''d get my belongings back. This meant I was wearing a one size fits all outfit that looked like cheap pajamas and some slippers that felt like they were made out of cardboard. Looking cool or pretty had never been the most important thing to me, but that didn''t mean I was completely indifferent - on those rare occasions I ended up wearing something really nice I did feel better about myself, and the reverse was also true for this awful outfit.


    I didn''t get to see where they would have put me if Hugh hadn''t come along, because instead we sat and waited awkwardly next to a guard checkpoint while a suite with two bedrooms was arranged. Hugh took the one on the left, I got the one on the right, and there was a tiny living area in-between. The toilet was just a nice seat over a chamber pot, though there was some sort of ventilation to keep the odor from getting into other rooms. There was no kitchen, and as with the rest of the facility so far, no windows.


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    That first day, or half day, I didn''t do much of anything. I couldn''t reach my memory palace, but even if I''d been able to I realized right after checking the fate threads that it was possible someone would somehow detect that I was using magic despite the lock. I needed to lay low, especially at first, and if that meant being bored - since all my books were in the memory palace - then that would just make it even more legitimate. I did ask for my stuff back, so I would at least have The Paradox of Fate to read and my knitting stuff to entertain me, but I was told that would all arrive the next day after being thoroughly checked.


    I wondered what they would make of Sentortzi''s template - I hadn''t had a chance to examine it, but I was assuming he had a way of making sure nobody else could read it. If not, that was his fuck-up. I''d vowed to "make all reasonable efforts to keep it safe", and considering the attack from Ulren and Sentortzi''s own guards escorting me to the teleportation hub I hadn''t had a lot of other options. Even if I''d had a chance to hand it off to someone else, it wasn''t clear that would be more safe. It did get me thinking, though, and so I told Hugh I had some important intel for Hammersmith.


    She was presumably busy - if I understood right she was one third of the leadership of the Endless Empire... Eternal Empire? No. Endless, right? The words were almost the same in Imperial, but I was sure someone would be annoyed if I used the wrong one. Anyway, I expected to meet with some slightly lower-ranking person but instead was invited to lunch with Hammersmith herself. Hugh, as promised, tagged along. She asked if my room was acceptable in a tone that made it clear she was being polite rather than actually asking, which might have annoyed me if I thought other people here were in the lap of luxury. Really, the room was fine other than the lack of windows which I was certain nobody had.


    After that we ate in silence for a few minutes - strips of the generic red meat and some root vegetables covered in a sort of gravy, nothing fancy but not bad - and then she dabbed her lips with a napkin and prepared to get down to business. "So, I hear you have some intelligence you''d like to share?"


    "Not exactly," I said apologetically, "I actually have some intelligence I''d like to sell you."


    Hammersmith was unamused, her lips a tight line. "I see."


    "I''ll make you a deal," I said, "and I promise it''ll be worth it. I''m not interested in antagonizing you or trying to squeeze too much out of you."


    "If this is important information, you could be risking lives by withholding it."


    "Oh, we''re going to talk about withholding important information? Great, let''s talk about that. Were you going to tell me I''m a Sahrger and that my memories had been fucked with? No, I guess not. So I don''t want to hear about it. You''re worried about risking lives by not knowing everything? Then I guess you''d better agree to my terms, or that blood is on your hands - not mine."


    "And what are those terms?" she asked, back to looking calm and reasonable.


    "I''m going to make a list of people. You, without seeing that list, are going to agree ahead of time that the Endless Empire is going to give them... shit, I absorbed most of the language between using it and just wearing the bracelet, but I don''t know this one. A... release from any crimes they may have committed."


    "A pardon?" she asked, the word having similar enough roots to ones I remembered for me to know it was the right one.


    "Yeah, a pardon. You promise to leave them out of this, and not charge them with any crimes. Once you''ve done that, I''ll tell you what I''ve been up to. You''ll also have to promise that you''ll let me go once I''ve opened the way to Brinkmar - if you fuck this up and need me to open it again, we need to negotiate a new agreement because I''m not staying in this windowless tomb the whole time. On that note, I want access to a room where the wards are a little lighter and where I can have Hugh take the lock off my Dumine; I know you want it warded against most stuff, but surely you have places where people can have their mind and soul reach out to their domains and speed up mana regeneration. I want to be sure I can train a little, improve my magic while I''m here."


    She nodded. "We can do all that, but we would need to scan your Dumine to determine what gifts you have and ensure it''s safe."


    "Nope! Not on the table. If your guys are too incompetent to deal with me having access to my Dumine in a single room of your choice then your security is just as bad as it was in Theramas, and that''s your problem not mine. Deal with it. In fact, just because you asked I''m also not to be observed with any special senses. You can have someone keep eyes on me, of course, but you''ll swear that nobody is going to be trying to use magical senses on me or scan me in any way."


    "Absolutely unacceptable. You want to mock our security and then put ridiculous limits on it?"


    I took another bite of lunch, and chewed extra slowly. When I finally swallowed, I looked back up at her. "You''re right," I said, "that''s a pretty crazy thing for me to ask. Sucks to be you, I guess. See, I have vital knowledge that you need to have in order to be prepared. That''s not bullshit, I''ll swear to it. You need to know what I know, and I want my privacy. You''ve got me surrounded by soldiers, confined to rooms except when I''m being escorted, and I came here willingly."


    She rolled her eyes. "You were bound by an oath not to leave the grounds of the Grand University, you hardly could have resisted."


    "Just shows what you know, your intelligence team is slacking off." I took another bite, talking around my food. "See, this is why you need to make this deal. I was fully free of any oaths and capable of sneaking out of the city and vanishing if I''d wanted to. Hell, earlier in the day yesterday I attacked a guard and ditched him. I, uh... I had a good reason."


    Hammersmith stood up without a word and walked out. Hugh seemed amused by this, but didn''t say anything either. Unsure of what was going on, I figured I might as well finish eating and so I did that, and then just as I wiped the last of the gravy off my plate with a piece of flatbread Hammersmith returned. She looked defeated.


    "Sentortzi confirmed?" Hugh asked, grinning.


    Hammersmith sighed, sitting back down and idly poking at her meal. "Technically they refused to confirm, but I talked to some contacts and I can add three and three. If she was able to attack a guard and ignore his orders, even with good cause, it would imply she was not under oath - or that the oath was deeply flawed, though that seems less likely in my opinion. And so... I am willing to come to an agreement with you, although we''ll need to be careful to define the details in such a way that it won''t compromise our security."


    I nodded. "And for my end, that I only have to tell you the shit I think is actually relevant - I''m not going to get into personal shit more than I need to. Also, that pardon is going to have to come with a promise that you won''t rat me out to any other nations for any crimes I mention committing there."


    She pushed her plate aside. "This is giving me a headache already, and - no offense - I''m concerned that I''m going to regret making this bargain. I''ll need to go to the capitol, an old edict from the Clockmaker that carried forward means I can''t make a binding deal with the Sahrger without approval from the other Custodians of the Empire."


    I wasn''t sure how I felt about that, but whatever. I asked her to follow up on me getting my shit back, and sure enough a few hours later I was delivered my bag. Pretty much everything was accounted for, with two exceptions. The template from Sentortzi was gone, which wasn''t a shock, and something was missing from my little pouch of trinkets. Yasna''s crystalline flower, a feather from Shitheel, the hollow stone hexagon that used to frame Connie''s Dumine when it was around my neck, an old Tactics piece I''d found in the ruined city where we''d made camp, and a six-sided die I''d taken from the guard''s break room in the lost vault where we found the Duminere were all there as expected. But my keychain was gone.


    Mister Bagmaw had given it to me, to celebrate me getting my own apartment - it was shaped like a little house from a kid''s drawing, and I''d used it to hold the key for the chest in the wagon as well as my key for the apartment above Mila''s shop. It was nothing valuable, other than the fact it was one of the few things I had from Earth. In fact, it was possible that it being from Earth was the problem. Everything else I''d brought with me was either destroyed, in a vault in Erathik, or tucked away in the wagon. Still, if they didn''t give it back at the end of all this I was going to cut someone.


    After getting changed and putting my bag in a little nook in the wall, the boredom started to seriously sink in and with it the feeling of being a caged animal. That first afternoon had been fine, and then the morning I''d been distracted with the upcoming meeting, but now I was just sitting and waiting to hear back and realizing how little there was to entertain me. Up until I had my knitting supplies and The Paradox of Fate I could pretend those would keep me busy, but now that they were in my hands I wasn''t in the mood. I wanted to take a walk. I wanted to climb a tree. I wanted to find a little hole in the wall restaurant.


    Basically, I wanted to do anything that I couldn''t possibly do here.


    I stepped into the little common room between our bedrooms and called out to Hugh. "Hugh, I''m bored and I wanna leave." I didn''t even try to not sound like a petulant child. Hell, I leaned into it - I figured Hugh would appreciate the honesty. His door opened and he stepped out, and immediately I was flying through the air at the rock wall behind me. I tilted my head forward and tucked my elbows in but still hit hard, dropping to the ground in a heap.


    "Not bad," he said, "for your first advanced falling lesson."


    Oh, shit. I''d forgotten about his falling lessons - though those had just been how to drop to the ground or get knocked down in a way that I could quickly recover from, they hadn''t involved me being force-launched at a wall. Thus the ''advanced'' part, I guess. I started to get to my feet and before I was at all ready he rocketed me at another wall - I twisted midair and almost landed on my feet, but succeeded only in twisting my ankle. Was he trying to just be a good teacher, or was he getting revenge?


    It looked like I was going to find out, but either way I was already regretting telling him I was bored.

 CHAPTER 083: One More Deal

    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.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    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.

 NOT A CHAPTER, JUST A NOTE

    I''m going to delete this "chapter" soon.


    I forgot I had un-scheduled the chapter for today to make changes. At the time I figured I''d find time to do it soon, no problem, even though there was a good reason I was scheduling so many chapters ahead of time.


    Yeah, sure, I''d be busy.  But not THAT busy.  If nothing else I''d be in a hotel for the last few nights, right?


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Anyway, everything that could go wrong with selling my house and buying a new one did, or at least threatened to.  The drive across the country went badly on the first day (torrential rain, snow storms, pea soup fog) which messed up our schedule so we were getting in to the hotel after midnight and then waking up at the crack of dawn.


    But we got caught up, and a few hours ago I signed all the paperwork so I''m not homeless anymore like I was all weekend.


    I''ll probably go look the chapter over and get it uploaded tomorrow, but it''s also possible I''ll sleep for 72 hours straight.

 CHAPTER 084: Gonna Fly Now

    I looked at the whiteboard in annoyance and threw a marker at it, but since I hadn''t bothered to aim it pinged off the corner and skittered across the intricate tile floor of the Nokarash, the "hall of desks" in Erathik. Bells pealed out in the courtyard, and a faint murmuring of conversation drifted in from the next room - although I knew that if I went looking for the source it would always be one more room away.


    The whiteboard had started as a list of goals, but three weeks in to my imprisonment it felt like it was taunting me.


    I''d started counting on the eighteenth - the day after making the deal with Hammersmith - since that was the first full day I had access to the training room and, by extension, my memory palace. The remaining time almost broke down into nine of the six-day weeks they did here, with just a few days left over. The day before Brinkmar was in alignment would presumably see us either preparing or traveling though, and obviously the day of didn''t really count. In addition to my goals, I had a section on the whiteboard for each week where I could document how stir-crazy I was feeling. It was an old therapy thing that I''d never followed through on, because at the time I was still in my "fuck you I''m going to sneak out the fire exit instead of even pretending to listen" phase.


    It painted a bleak picture. At the end of week one, I was giving myself a freak-out score of two out of ten and was honestly pretty proud of that. No panic attacks, and I''d only even gotten seriously antsy and started planning escape routes when it was late at night and I couldn''t sleep. The anxiety ticked up to three when I did try to plan an escape though, because I didn''t actually know how the hell I could manage it especially since if I was seriously thinking of doing anything Barick the human threat detector would presumably shove me back into my room. But week two was way worse, and here at the end of week three I was sitting at a very uncomfortable seven point five. I wanted out.


    I just had to keep distracting myself.


    Hugh kept me busy most of the day with combat training, exercising, and strange quizzes where he would describe a situation and ask what I would do before explaining in detail precisely how that would get me brutally killed. I kind of enjoyed that part, but the rest of it was wearing thin and I was starting to really hate Hugh - I would have hated him even more if his ruthless training routine wasn''t clearly working. I was, in fact, starting to feel like a badass.


    Even so, with so much time dedicated to fighting and working out I had made very little progress towards my goals other than figuring out what they were. At first it seemed like a silver lining that some of them had uncertain dependencies or had limited time I could work on them per day; it meant I didn''t really need to worry much about priorities. I''d chip away at everything, mix things up as I got bored or burned out or ran low on mana, and just see where it got me - after all, I had nine weeks to kill.


    But as I''d worked, it seemed like I always ran out of either time or mana before I could make any real progress. Worse, just to add insult to injury, one of the few experiments that had gone well had also fucked me over. I could now consistently fuck with the flow of time in Ematse, and it was driving me crazy. Before, I''d managed to tie the speed of time to someone else in close proximity to my body - it was flaky, but it worked. With no time shenanigans going on around me it had taken some playing around, but I''d finally gotten it down enough that I could spend about five minutes of prime-plane time to experience three hours of memory palace time.


    That was enough to blow through all my mana, and at the rate I was recovering it that gave me about eight hours of extra time per day. At first I was thrilled - surely there were people out there that had dedicated resources to having time-out zones in other planes, places where you could duck in for a few hours to get a week''s worth of work done. Even if mine was more limited, it was a super valuable resource. And then I realized the problem.


    I was already stressing out about being trapped for nine weeks, and now it was going to be more like eleven because I was tacking on eight extra hours every day. Using my mind palace was supposed to be a helpful break, but it wasn''t enough of one to make up for adding that kind of time. I''d hop into the healing pod, either to heal an injury or just deal with the aches of over-exercising, spend a few hours working on my projects, and then go right back to Hugh''s training. Thirty-two hours a day, give or take. It was... bad.


    I''d also tried using the time differential in combat with Hugh, which was a mixed success at best. I could see things in super slow motion and react to Hugh''s attacks with impossible speed, so that was nice. The end result, however, was that he still kicked my ass while I also pulled half the muscles in my body and got way more injured when he chucked me at a wall. The problem, in a nutshell, was that my mind was seeing everything in slow motion but there was still a strict limit on how fast my body could move; when I tried to force it, my muscles tended to damage themselves and then I also was manually controlling myself in a way that prevented me from reflexively reacting to being hurled at the scenery.


    Someday I wanted to unlock the ability to apply altered physics from other planes to the area around my body, which in this case would mean having a bubble of faster time - but my upcoming potential was all spoken for since I''d decided I needed to learn more about the fate threads. I didn''t have the potential to unlock use of those yet, and even if I had I wasn''t satisfied with what that helpful entity on the other side of my Dumines was offering. I just couldn''t articulate why.


    It was possible I was just being picky as part of going stir crazy.


    I opened a door back to the main area of my mind palace and shoved the whiteboard through, since leaving it in a temporary area like the reproduction of a building in Erathik might cause it to vanish when I left. There was one obvious thing on the list for me to work on, which I''d been putting some hours into every day. It didn''t require me to spend any potential, it was useful, and it was frustrating as hell. Was it too much to ask to be able to instantly gain every useful skill in the world without putting in any effort?


    I had learned how to package up concepts from the collective consciousness, but shoving them into my own head wasn''t as easy as I had hoped. I could reach out and poll the Common Local Understanding for what ''red'' meant, and I could make a template for it, but I couldn''t insert that understanding into my own brain - and what I really wanted to do it with was far more complicated than just a color. That was one of the reasons I''d been trying to spend time in a divination-perfect memory of Erathik; I wanted to see if I could absorb the language via divination.


    So far no luck, and because Comprehension had a focus on language and there would be a hundred thousand people in the area that all spoke it, that should in theory be the easiest thing I could pick. I felt certain I could make the template in person, even if implanting that knowledge into myself might be beyond me at the moment, but if I could do it to old memories? That would be unbelievably useful. It was staying on the whiteboard for sure, it couldn''t hurt to practice a little each day.


    It was hard for me to get into the right mindset, because I was too distracted by my need to get the hell out of the... prison? Fortress? Facility? I still didn''t know what it was actually for or which plane it was on, and had only seen a tiny bit of it. I reached out for the Common Local Understanding and realized I was pinging it for the concepts of freedom, or escape, of travel. Ugh. I tried to shift my thoughts, and felt myself start to...


    Did I fall asleep? Had I slept in my mind palace? I was low enough on mana that I had to drop the time difference so I''d have a little for my evening activities, and was holding a brass keyring with a single key on it. Huh. I felt... better. More relaxed. I was down to a two or three on the panic scale again, like zoning out while poking at the collective consciousness had centered me or something. I wanted to take a closer look and maybe unpack the keyring to get a better idea of what I''d put in there, but since I was out of mana I might not have time to put it all back and that could leave me back in a shitty mindset until tomorrow since our day was almost done.


    Sighing, I opened my eyes in the healing pod and climbed out. Physically, I felt great - if I''d tried to work out this much on Earth I would have done more harm than good, but with the frequent magical healing I was building muscle wiping out exhaustion as if I''d had a day off between every round. The pod was way better than the platform I''d had in the wagon, and probably guzzled mana; I imagined Hammersmith getting a mana bill at the end of the month and losing her shit. Really, if I understood correctly, it would be a report from someone in charge of maintaining and replacing mana batteries somewhere in the facility which was... pretty close to getting a bill, right?


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I practiced throwing knives - my magic ones were gone but my swifly growing muscles were embedding them deeper and deeper into the targets - and then threw my last one at Hugh just in case he had let his guard down. He hadn''t, which meant the knife dropped straight down and clattered on the floor.


    "That was a lazy attempt," he said, "which tells me that you are becoming bored again, yes?"


    Every time he decided I was bored he would add some new challenge, and they all sucked. "Hugh, it''s been three weeks of non-stop fighting and working out. Of course I''m bored. But I''m bored of that stuff, so adding more of it isn''t going to help. I''m feeling less... squirmy... right now though, so maybe just give me some more time to work in my mind palace?"


    He chuckled. "Such an amusing name you''ve given it."


    "It''s a... memory technique, from my old home. Some people imagined a house or something and pictured information they wanted to remember being in some specific place. I tried it at some point, but it didn''t really work out. But this is similar, since it looks like places I know and my memories are stored there."


    He nodded. "I never was able to guess where you came from. You said it was not Agiodyne," that was - apparently - an island where a lot of the demigods hung out, "or anywhere on Calnon, or the moon, or any of the planes. I am running out of places to guess, yes? Hmm. Today... ah! Monduhile. It must be."


    "I''ve never heard of it, sorry."


    "From an ancient tale, about the creation of the world. The gods found an endless space, and in it a dead world. It had no magic, and yet life somehow survived there. Life so determined that it could exist without mana, without the touch of the gods, completely on its own surrounded by the void. And the gods saw humans there, without the spark of true life and magic. Hollow shells, struggling to survive, devoid of soul or mind. Out of... pity, or curiosity, or some unknowable desire of the gods... they took some and breathed magic into them and found that the creatures could hold it, and could possibly learn to use it. And so they created the planes, to find if these pathetic animals could adapt to a world with magic and learn to wield it.


    "Of course, even if the story is founded on truth there should not be any left on that barren rock. The gods would have collected them all, and any left behind would surely have died off over the ages without magic. But... if some had returned, some forgotten expedition, they could still be there. It would explain your lack of knowledge about the planes or magic, yes? I have not often thought of Monduhile, but I would have sooner had we completed our trip to Theramas together."


    "Oh yeah? Why is that?"


    "They have an orrery of the planes there that references it. Most visualizations of the planes put the prime plane at the center, yes? But the one in Theramas, it has a boulder at the center to symbolize the dead world the gods pulled us from."


    I remembered that. It was enormous, and Katrin had used it to explain the planes to me in more detail. Huh. Harmid had mentioned some creation myths being a possibility for Earth, and it did seem to meet the requirements I''d set forth - no magic, and not one of the planes.


    "Honestly, Hugh? That might be it. We don''t call it that, and it''s far from barren, but... could be that the gods collected people from there to make this place. It would explain a lot, actually. But nobody there knows about this place, or at least almost nobody."


    He looked thoughtful. "Can you show me? You shared a memory with me, before."


    "Yeah, not a problem. I''m low on mana but that doesn''t take much so long as I''m not doing any divination shit or fucking with time. I can''t do the divination thing there anyway, since the planes don''t overlap with it. Normally I''d keep it secret, but Hammersmith already knows a fair amount so... it might even be better to have someone not in the Empire know. You have to trust me on some stuff though, you have to... it would be really fucking bad for people to try and invade. My world would win, Hugh, and I like it here better."


    A bushy eyebrow raised all the way up. "You think some people from a dead world would defeat this one, when they have no magic?"


    "Yes. I mean, as long as they could establish a... I don''t know the imperial word for ''beachhead''. If they had a secure place to invade from, a portal you couldn''t get to and close easily. That would probably be the hard part for them, especially if people popped in from other planes to attack. But their regular soldiers would obliterate yours, and their weapons would probably overwhelm your magical barriers, and then... well, they''d learn magic after a while."


    He looked skeptical, so I just held out my hand.


    I decided to give him the same first view as Katrin, and we stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State building. Unlike Katrin, Hugh held it together. He just walked around for a bit, examining the view, and then nodded. "I see," he said, "and this is... just one city?"


    "I mean it''s a particularly big one, but yeah. There''s... I don''t know how to say the number of people. It''s too big, I genuinely don''t know if there''s a word for ''billion''. It''s like..." I did my base six conversions as best I could. I wrote it down, it was three hundred and forty, followed by ten zeros. I handed the paper to Hugh. "That''s how many people there are on this planet. I think, if I did the math right. But I''m pretty sure I did."


    He stared at the number for a long time, and then looked out across New York again. "I see."


    It was the most subdued I''d ever seen Hugh be.


    "Listen, that''s some heavy shit. Let me show you some fun stuff, or we can go to a memory of Erathik and you can take me on a tour and teach me some words."


    He nodded slowly. "I will not speak of this to anyone, for the time being. I will have to discuss it with the Primarch, but I will focus on the danger that the Endless Empire might seek to access it and encourage a treaty that requires both governments to maintain secrecy and not send any... exploratory missions... without protections in place for both worlds. But in the meantime, I realize now I have neglected an important tool in our training."


    Oh no. "No, Hugh, this is where I go to relax."


    "And now it can be where you go to practice skills we cannot in the training room, yes?"


    "Hugh you suck. I''m not a machine, I can''t do this all day every day."


    He nodded. "Not yet, you cannot. We will fix that. You are tangled in destiny, Calliope. I will see you become strong enough to sever those ties, should you wish."


    I perked up. That... wasn''t what I expected him to say. "Huh. Okay well... I do like the sound of that."


    "I thought you might. Now, let us go to Theramas, so you can attempt to scale the walls of the fortress. Then we will assess your swimming, your knot-tying... ah, and we can practice wilderness survival!"


    At least it seemed like the next six weeks would have some variety to them now. We didn''t have enough time to actually do all that stuff, but I popped him around to a few locations until he''d found some he wanted to use the next day. After that I booted him out of my head, and prepared to go back to my room for the night. I updated the whiteboard, and prepared to do my evening trick - it was one of the other goals I''d actually accomplished in the past few weeks. I picked a book I wanted to read, tucked it into my shirt, and clutched it as tightly as possible.


    "This book belongs with me," I muttered, "It''s part of my outfit. It''s an accessory."


    I stepped back to my body, and we left the training room. As we did, my mind and soul were snapped back into me by the wards - but I prevented my mind from fully overlapping with my body. As it had a few times before, my mind ended up floating alongside my body as we walked. I''d noticed, that first time in the library, that my mind had still been wearing clothes like it was in Ematse. And so, logically, it could bring other things with it.


    We made it back to the room and I carefully had my mind pull the book out and hold it open. I could only see it while my thread sight was up, but that had been taking less and less mana. I had at least another hour before I was completely drained. It would have been easier to just be in my mind to read, but for whatever reason the way to use the least mana was to leave my consciousness in my body and have my mind stand there all blank-faced and hold up the book, turning pages. It was creepy as hell, and reminded me of the other stray version of me that was wandering the halls of my memories with an equally blank expression.


    If I lost concentration too long, my mind would drift back to overlap my body and the book would be gone when I made it pop out again. Not the clothes though, so maybe there was a way to make things like the book more permanent with practice. It was already on the whiteboard. I settled in and watched as my mind turned to the page I''d left off at.


    "Six more weeks," I said to myself. "I can do this."

 CHAPTER 085: The All-Seeing Eye

    Another week had gone by, and I''d gotten frustrated with the templating ability.


    I did feel like I''d made some progress, but I kept getting sidetracked and it was all the fault of that stupid keychain. Every time I tried to mess with it I zoned out and ended up feeling... well, pretty fucking good honestly. Not contented exactly, but... satisfied. Purposeful. It was possible I''d subconsciously found a way to dump all my anxiety about being trapped somewhere into it, but if so I wasn''t sure how. I''d finally attempted to unpack it even though I was worried it would dump all that anxiety back on me at once, and instead I just blanked out for fifteen or twenty minutes.


    That had led me to suspect that there might be some special category of template that worked differently, something about it being a vibe rather than specific information or memories? Or maybe it was a function of my mind palace, like it had partly created this thing automatically. To test that, I tried unpacking some objects that were already around the first time I''d entered my mind palace since they had to be in some way a construct of my subconscious. I tried the television first, and while it didn''t unpack the way a template would it did give me a brief flash of watching that television in the real-world version of the room.


    The television had been Bill''s, I was sure of it. It was old, but it had been one of the first things he''d bought with his own money after getting a job so he''d kept it around.


    The little gold brooch not only didn''t unpack or give me any memories, but it felt super impossible to do anything with - like I was trying to do origami with a steel plate. It was too... dense, or something. Finally, I tried it on the creepy statue in the closet and almost felt like there was something there - but it was somehow too large and deep and confusing for me to unfold correctly, and after a moment I stumbled away from it with a pounding headache - no small feat considering I wasn''t even using a physical body. I also found that I was holding a framed photograph.


    It was me, and Connie, and Errod, and Katrin... and my old bully from high school, Zoey, and the Behemoth. We were all wearing Earth clothes, with the Behemoth smiling - not in his crazy way, but more like a normal human - in a "I ? NEW YORK" shirt, and Katrin just barely looking up from a cell phone. Zoey was handing Errod a hot dog, while Connie or I - I was having trouble deciding which was which - held up our drivers license and gave a thumbs-up. It was honestly a very cute photo despite the presence of two of my worst enemies, but it left a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.


    I hadn''t thought about them. Katrin and Errod were not only the best friends I''d ever had, but they were family now... and I''d barely thought about them at all in four weeks. It was partly an out of sight out of mind thing, and partly me being self-centered and shitty, and partly that I just didn''t want to. After all, what if Ulren had killed them? Or what if they were enjoying their time without me so much they wouldn''t want to see me again? Or what if they wanted to, and I wanted to, and Hammersmith wouldn''t allow it?


    It was easier to just focus on what was in front of me. After all, I couldn''t contact them anyway. The only person I could reach out to would be... hmm. I sent out a ping, hesitantly. She responded almost immediately. "You are not here, when I check."


    "Yeah. I guess lately I haven''t been here a lot, especially in terms of time on the prime plane. I''ve been fucking with time here, I don''t know if it''ll work with you as well - I''ve been using my mind here to do most of my thinking these days, unless I''ve misunderstood how it works."


    She nodded. "Your body is still very important, not everything transfers to your mind or soul. But yes, it is an ability many cultivate. Have you made progress in eliminating the link between us?"


    Right down to business. "I have enough potential built up to start messing with it, I think, but it... feels wrong. I''m trying to make sure I do it in the right way. But also... I don''t know, I wanted to see if you knew anything about how Katrin and Errod are doing. Or Harmid, I guess, since he looked like shit when I left him. It would suck if it turned out he died anyway."


    Human Calliope looked bored. "He is very annoying, but healthy. He is too excitable, and I am not used to traveling with others, but we have exchanged some spells which was nice."


    "Wait, you''re traveling with him?"


    "I was going to leave you a note, but." She shrugged, and it was clear she wasn''t going to elaborate on why that hadn''t happened. "Harmid and his bodyguard and I snuck out of the city and have traveled to the ruins of Poicelria''s fortress."


    "Oh! With the guru person! That''s where I wanted to go before shit went wrong. I know Harmid has been there before, I didn''t really get the impression he was all that impressed but it seemed like it was worth a shot."


    She sneered. "The woman is a fountain of meaningless platitudes, I suspect she knows nothing of any value. We are supposed to be meeting with her again shortly, but I feel increasingly certain this process is only being dragged out in order to cajole more ''donations'' out of us. I was hoping you finally reaching out today meant you had a plan. Your request for help on the fifteenth of the eighth seemed significant, but nothing has come of it. If we must wait for the fifteenth of the second I will be... disappointed."


    "I don''t know why those dates are important. Are some special planes aligned or something?"


    She had started pacing as she ranted about the guru, but at that question she stopped dead and slowly turned to face me with an incredulous look on her face. "You... do not know?"


    "No. I''m still pretty new to all this shit, remember?"


    "The fifteenth of the second is our birthday. The ritual that bound us required that we were born at the same instant, I thought maybe breaking it without ending either of our lives might be linked to that same day. That makes the fifteenth of the eighth its counterpoint at the far side of the year, and so I thought that you asking me to help you might have had some... meaning. It was a stupid idea, a pointless superstition."


    "That can''t be right. My birthday was on... oh. No, okay, I was thinking about Earth years. I celebrated a birthday on the first of the fifth, so I was thinking of that. So it''s on the fifteenth of the second? You''re sure?"


    She nodded. "The sixth of the ninth. And to answer your other question, no, there are no important planes aligned. It is a terrible day for magic from that perspective." She sighed. "Are you asking me for advice? With your feeling that your options are wrong? I know very little about how Dumines offer up branches in magic, and even if I did it would not cover anything touching on Fate."


    I perched on the desk, and tried to gather my thoughts. "The thing that''s kind of... being pushed forward... when I think about it is a way to create connections with Fate. And at first I thought that would be cool, and that I could do stuff like fate myself to win every fight I was ever in. It wouldn''t be a guarantee, sure, but it would presumably add a little extra push of probability to things. But then I was remembering what I read in Harmid''s book, and I don''t think that''s right. Fate... it has to be leading to something specific. It can''t be that open-ended, or I don''t think it''s meant to be.


    "And I guess that''s why I''m also worried that learning to make new fates wouldn''t help me break existing ones; the end is part of the fate, they''re not supposed to be cut prematurely. Killing someone to end a fate is... it''s a workaround, I think, not an intended ending. So either there''s another condition built in to our thing already, or what we''re dealing with isn''t quite the same as what I''m thinking of as Fate magic. If it''s the former, then I should be focused on trying to read the threads, understand all the rules of them. That could be good to do regardless, I know Harmid was using a map to try and chart out where some were leading from me but it would be even easier to just touch one and know what it''s trying to do.


    "But if it''s the latter... I see the threads in all different colors, and only some of them seem to be truly about some sort of destiny. The one that connects us, it''s got shades of Comprehension and Spirit and Perception - all the shit you''d expect if it''s joining our thoughts. I don''t see anything that makes us look the same, but maybe I just can''t see that because it''s not one of my gifts or maybe it was a one time thing unlike the rest. The point is, it''s not... I don''t think it''s a fate thing, really. I think it''s other magic, but on the same layer of reality as fate. Hiding there so that it can last basically forever and not be seen by anyone else.


    "So maybe... maybe what I need is the ability to do that. To mess with magic that''s on that layer, somehow. I think if I focus too much on just fate itself I''m not going to be able to help you. I don''t know that I can do the other thing, though. I think it would count as wild magic, which you''re not supposed to be able to do with a Dumine. If I can, though, maybe I can make new ones with all sorts of different abilities. It would be really great, if it''s possible - and I think that might be the best way to help you.


    "My concern is that even if I''m currently growing in potential faster than a normal person that''s not going to be the case forever and I don''t know when I''ll hit a wall. So if I make the wrong choice, it could be that it''s going to be really hard to back up and do the right one - and I don''t want you getting impatient and going back to trying to murder me. To be clear, I''ve been genuine about wanting to help you and I''ve even made some choices that are inconvenient for me and my friends to do that, but if you do change your mind and try to kill me again I''ll fucking end you. No offense."


    She shrugged, looking totally unconcerned. "I assumed as much. I could have killed you the last time we saw each other in person, it would have been very easy. I have committed to giving you some time - so long as I think you are working towards it I will not end that time prematurely." She looked around the room and sighed. "I will return to my body. It is almost time for us to see the charlatan again, and I will ask if she knows anything about using fate-like magic to do other things."


    "Wait! Can I... can I see? I think I can probably make this place match your location, the same way we can spy through each other''s eyes. I just want to watch as you meet with her."


    "No!" The word was said a little too enthusiastically, and she seemed to have caught herself off-guard with it. "I... do not wish to feel you in my head."


    "It might be different, if I do it this way. You might even be able to keep an eye on me, sort of." There was a pause as she seemed to be considering it, but from the sneer on her face I didn''t have high hopes. I decided to change the subject and see if she warmed up to the idea when I wasn''t pressuring her. "I almost forgot, do you know where Katrin and Errod are?"


    "They remained in the city for a few days, and then left abruptly. I saw them both leave, but did not investigate where they were going or why."


    Hmm. Well, at least Ulren hadn''t killed them. Human Calliope departed without saying goodbye, and I decided to finish the last thing I''d been meaning to do with the templating ability so I could give it a rest - boxing up my fake memories. So far as I could tell, the Granch wouldn''t be a problem as long as I didn''t dig below the surface. Some false memories might quality, but if so it would be ones that were carefully crafted, not the long stretches of blurry "Generic Group Home Memories, Do Not Look Closely" that I was targeting.


    It was surprisingly easy once I got started, since they all had a similar feel. It was like waving a stick around to collect all the cobwebs; no matter how many there were or how dense it looked, a few swipes clumped everything up into a fairly tiny ball. When I was done I opened my eyes to find I was holding a snowglobe, with the inside so foggy I couldn''t make out what the scene was supposed to be. It was appropriate, at least. I dropped it in a desk drawer, not that I thought I''d ever want to do anything with it.


    My head felt... clearer. I didn''t think it would let me immediately recover any of the real memories, but at least the fake shit wasn''t getting in the way anymore. Not the generic stuff, anyway. I''d been planning on doing that for a while, but I had thought it might take longer and Hugh had been using up more and more of my time over the last week since he''d been making me let him in to my mind palace. I''d insisted on taking a break today to reset and go over my goals, and it was nice to have a break from him.


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    Not that he wasn''t helping - hell, the ideas he''d been coming up with on how to train inside my mind were amazing. I''d been breaking into buildings, mostly, but he''d found ways to add little challenges like they were escape rooms. Hugh couldn''t change anything in my mind palace directly, but through careful direction of my divination he would gather resources and set up obstacles. Most recently, I''d been forced to sneak down a street in Erathik to where Hugh was sipping a cup of juice. Without him seeing me, or hearing me, while I was covered in bells. In no more than five minutes.


    He had very deliberately left things that would help with the bells scattered around in plain sight starting a third of the way down the street, and what he probably wanted me to do was only deal with the bells I could easily reach and remove quickly before sneaking over and getting the better tools that would allow me to speed up. In particular, the big fluffy furs would have almost certainly muffled everything if I put them on right, allowing me to move way more quickly for the remainder of the road. There were also some scissors, which would have been nice since he''d forbidden me from ripping my shirt and that made just yanking the bells off risky - but I didn''t want to use scissors. Some other things scattered around I was less sure about - why a box of candles? He''d put them there very deliberately.


    Anyway, I ignored all that stuff and carefully removed as many bells as I could get to without pulling something or falling down, and then snuck into the restaurant I''d spotted a couple doors down. I''d eaten there in real life, and they had a huge vat of batter they''d ladle out onto a griddle. It was really good, but in this case I wasn''t there to eat. I flopped - carefully - into the batter vat, and once the viscous glop had thoroughly coated all the bells I just speed-shuffled towards Hugh.


    In theory he was supposed to blast me back down the street if he saw me - his powers sort of kind of worked in my mind palace if I let them - but in practice by the time he heard me coming and turned around he staring at a humanoid slime monster and was so caught off guard I was able to lunge and slap him with a batter-filled palm. It splattered everywhere, and he begrudgingly admitted defeat. So it hadn''t been all bad, and that disgusting move had earned me a reprieve.


    As I was updating the whiteboard to reflect my disposal of the generic false memories, the real Calliope popped in again. She was avoiding eye contact, and fidgeting.


    "Harmid has asked me to allow you to view our surroundings through the binding," she said, "so you can see our talk with the charlatan. For what good it will do. I will allow this. Once."


    And she vanished again.


    I reached out to that connection, and tried to figure out the best way to use it. Looking directly through her eyes was kinda creepy, and also I didn''t like that I had no control over where she looked. Ideally I''d get a divination-perfect view, but immediately I could tell that wouldn''t be an option. I would have to settle for a middle ground, and make it like my memories where I could stand off to the side. Anything she wasn''t actually looking at might not be completely accurate, but it would feel more natural.


    I got it online after only a minute or two, and sure enough there was Professor Yanipliss. His fake Dumine was still on his forehead, but if it weren''t for that I might not have recognized him right away. He was wearing travel-worn clothes, and had some very messy facial hair. He''d also lost a lot of weight, going from "kinda skinny" to "skeletal".


    "He looks like shit, is he dying?"


    I couldn''t see the wild mage''s expression since in the real world she was wearing that wooden mask, but she seemed confused. She stepped back, looking around, and then - very slowly - turned to face where I was standing even though from her point of view there wouldn''t be anyone there. "No. His recovery from being poisoned was interrupted, but he is healed enough. His only risk of death is from me stabbing him in his sleep for snoring. He is distressingly loud, even when I try to keep distance from him."


    Harmid looked surprised, and tried to turn to face me but got his aim a bit off. "Ah! Cal..." he paused, and looked nervously at the wild mage. "Miss... um. This is awkward."


    "Yes," the wild mage said, "because she has continued to use my name even after knowing she has no right."


    "Shit, I knew this was going to happen. Listen. Everyone is calling me Calliope. They have my whole life. And my double switched to Connie, but that was an inside thing that was kind of about muddled memories of you and also now she''s dead and I don''t want to call myself by her name. And I could pick a new one, I''ve lied about my name plenty of times, but I... don''t want to. I have a new last name, one that''s actually legitimately mine, so you can either call me Calliope Runelighter or pick a name to call me that''s not going to piss you off. But either way, you''re still going to run into people that call me by your name and I''m not always going to stop and explain it to them. Okay?"


    She rolled her eyes and sneered. I decided to take that as "no problem, I completely understand!"


    Harmid made another attempt. "I wanted to thank you for saving my life, and to let you know that I... well, that I don''t have any concerns about your... heritage. The children''s home towns were all identified, by the way, and I have notes on the other readings we took. I also had some books for you, but I unfortunately left them behind."


    "Ooh! Ask if they were in his office when we saved him from that prick Ulren."


    She passed it along, reluctantly.


    "Yes, actually, all but one. They were stacked on the corner of my desk closest to the door."


    Hell yeah. I could use divination to pick those up later. As I was about to ask some follow-up questions, another person entered the room. They were in mismatched armor that still somehow looked super cool rather than silly for being all different types, like some post-apocalyptic warlord. A helmet covered their face, and the inside of the helmet was just black rather than showing any part of their eyes. In case that wasn''t badass enough, they had four different kinds of swords strapped to them which - even moreso than the armor - really should have looked ridiculous or like they were some sort of tryhard edgelord. But again, they just looked badass.


    "Whoa, is this the bodyguard you mentioned?"


    "Yes," the wild mage said, "I was skeptical, but he killed five men who attempted to rob us on the road here in a manner that was... impressive to me. His attempt to persuade them to surrender made me think he was afraid to fight, but once they moved on him things ended very quickly. Sadly, he will not remove the armor for any reason."


    A sigh came from the helmet, followed by a deep voice. "Calliope, I mean no disrespect."


    "And yet you turn down a generous offer. Bah. At any rate, other than being celibate he is an acceptable traveling companion. He does not snore, like this one."


    "I don''t mean to interrupt your conversation with... your invisible friend? But the guru''s attendants say she''ll see you now."


    We walked outside, and I got my first view of the area. They''d been in a sort of log cabin, but once we stepped out I could see a mountain range stretching off in the distance beneath us - we were on a flattened peak that had clearly been made with magic, as if a giant had chopped off the top of the mountain and smoothed it off. There were ancient-looking frozen trees, all clearly dead and covered in ice; we were clearly above the tree line, so I had to assume that in the past some magic had kept the plants alive. A path led to a large temple-like structure made of the same stone as the mountain, but there were clear signs that it had seen better days.


    A mound of rubble circled the whole thing, with only a few small sections standing to reveal it had been a thick wall. The temple itself was all domes and towers, but half of the towers had collapsed - often into a dome - meaning it didn''t look like there were many untouched sections. The center appeared to be largely intact at a glance, but even there I could see signs of decay where the edges were all crumbled and chipped. As we approached I noticed a section where there was a bit of strange-looking greenish metal as trim, and I realized what had happened - someone had stripped most of the metal off and sold it or something, like they were ripping the copper out of an abandoned house.


    Inside, there were hundreds of banners strung up everywhere in eye-popping colors and layers of carpets lining the path we followed - and it was a good thing, because otherwise the place would have been a maze. The actual architecture wasn''t that confusing, but ceilings or floors had collapsed everywhere and so we had to take a circuitous route to get anywhere. As we traveled, we passed through an inner courtyard where I caught a glimpse of the most gorgeous airship I could have ever imagined.


    "Oh my god. Yes. No, no, don''t keep walking! Go to the airship. It''s an airship, right? We''re on top of a mountain, it has to be. Look at it! No! My baby! I''ll come back for you!"


    And then it was out of sight. I felt like not letting me see it up close should make us even for the whole changeling thing. We continued to wind around, and when we finally reached what was clearly the main chamber - I could see the high ceilings and extra-large banners - it was blocked off by a fallen pillar. Instead we made a sharp turn through a hole in the wall into a nine-sided room where seven of the sides had ornate carved patterns. Probably the side we''d come through used to, before someone violently remodeled.


    The attendants were about what I pictured, very fit young men and women that looked like the kind of teenagers that join cults. The guru, though... that one caught me off guard. She was also young, maybe in her late twenties, and was barely wearing anything. Some strips of silk were artistically arranged over her, but they didn''t leave anything to the imagination. And it wasn''t like in Erathik, where I''d seen women just walking around topless - that was almost always done in a way that was super casual, whereas something about the presentation here was overtly sexual. She was on a throne which was in turn on a raised dais, so despite being seated and fairly petite she loomed over the room.


    "Welcome back, seekers of Poicelria''s knowledge. I sense... another presence."


    She closed her eyes, and a third eye opened in her forehead. It was... well, an eye. It wasn''t a glowing symbol or a ghostly manifestation, it was just a totally normal eyeball. It maybe didn''t match the other two, but I hadn''t gotten a good look.


    "Holy shit. That''s a hell of a thing. Can she see me?"


    "I doubt she can," the wild mage said in English, "I still believe she is a charlatan."


    The guru tilted her head as if she was straining to listen. "Too few planes are aligned for me to speak with you directly, traveler. If your party would like to stay until the twenty-fifth of this month I should have the strength to commune with you."


    "This is what she does. While we are here, we must pay her people for all supplies and for lodging. So she comes up with excuses, and we must stay a little longer, a little longer, a little longer."


    "Got it. Still, if you''re already here... you might as well ask, right?"


    She sighed, but switched back to Imperial and tried to explain the idea of magic being done on the same layer of reality as fate. The guru nodded along, and then closed her third eye and opened the others again. "I know of what you speak. While many of Poicelria''s records were destroyed, we do have information on this topic. I will have my attendants gather what they can, and we can reconvene in one week''s time to discuss..."


    Harmid rolled his eyes. He didn''t look surprised at this answer. "We''re leaving in the morning, either way. You can tell us anything you know, or be honest about knowing nothing, and we''ll drop another donation on our way out. Or you can keep up this game, and we''ll just leave. You did this same thing to me last time I was here."


    The guru looked offended, but not half so much as the attendants. They were clearly ready to throw down, although I noted that none of them were actually coming any closer. After a moment, the guru sent them all into some other room behind the throne, and her posture shifted as she slouched. "Fine. I do actually know something about this one, so it''ll be... three hundred and twenty-four pins."


    The bodyguard spoke up. "Three reds is unacceptable when we have no reason to trust you. One red, or I tell my companions here a story about the twelve families."


    The guru''s third eye shot open as she stared at the bodyguard in shock. "Who the fuck... two red, and you tell me where you heard that story."


    "One, and I''ll tell you afterwards. Or we can just leave, and I can tell whoever I pass on the road."


    The guru glared with all three eyes - the middle one seemed to have some sort of nearly invisible pseudo-eyebrow that let it get in on the expression - but there was no way to win a staring contest against a helmet. "Ugh, fine! Money first."


    They clearly didn''t actually have a red on them, so they picked out four of the yellows and one orange. Once the guru had the little triangular coins, she sighed. "I don''t actually know all that much anyway. Back before the last Grand Alignment, the Clockmaker stormed this place. He took almost everything that wasn''t glued down, just left some old decorations, the busted flyer, and some shit in a secret basement he missed even with those fancy glasses. Probably was going to come back to go through brick by brick at some point, if his shit hadn''t collapsed like a year later. He had done what you''re asking about, but he couldn''t... manipulate things, once they were in place. He seemed pleased when he left, I guess he found what he wanted here. Whatever it was, he took it."


    "You were here?" Harmid asked.


    "Yeah. I looked different back then, but... yeah. Anyway, he either found a way to fix his problem or something just as good. But he for sure said he was doing magic with fate shit. I can show you guys some murals and stuff that he made copies of, the ones he didn''t just rip out of the walls I mean, but you might want to pass on it - that secret basement I mentioned? It had shit warning about people being doomed if they fucked with some of Poicelria''s old experiments. And the Empire collapsed so soon after he left here, you know?"


    I felt something pulling at me. I shifted my awareness, and could hear Hugh telling me that Klinec was going to do an inspection. That asshole. He was someone important at the base, probably he was in charge whenever Hammersmith wasn''t there, and he really didn''t like that I had any kind of privacy. He wasn''t a complete dick, but he liked to do random inspections and ask questions I refused to answer - I wasn''t sure at what point it started to count as interrogating rather than making conversation, but he was determined to balance right on the line.


    "Fuck. Okay, I have to go. Can you see if they''ll let you look at those murals and the basement and stuff? I''ll work on things on my end."


    I sat up in the real world, and looked at Hugh. "That couldn''t have come at a worse time. Can I just kill Klinec and be done with it?"


    "No."


    "You ruin everything. Also, you know that guru I wanted to visit?" I think I''m really glad I skipped it. They suck."

 BONUS: Calliopes Notes on Her Development

    Merged Lutore Layers: I did this as part of trying to bypass the problems I was having with my Dumines, and as far as I can tell there''s no further benefit. To be fair, I haven''t really researched a lot about how the lutore works and what the layers mean, so this could come in handy later. For all I know it''s also helping with the scrying stuff, since that uses my lutore, and also it''s possible my layers were fucked up to begin with since that lady Katrin and I paid to look at me way back in Handoleren made some comments.


    Comprehension of Dumine Back-End: Had to do this one so I could do anything else properly. Most people who meditate on their Dumine see a plain blue nothingness with a hexagon on it, but I see the flickery edges of all three blue fields and a crazy squirmy 4d mess in-between. This ability has let me understand and communicate with it more, and I think that''s also allowed me to better fine-tune the abilities I can unlock. It might also mean I can fuck up and get abilities that aren''t optimized or are actually actively bad for me. Sometimes it even feels like I''m having a conversation with something when I try to plan out abilities.


    Threadsight: Got this one by accident, but it''s been very interesting. Lets me visually perceive types of magic that I have a gift for, as colorful lines. Fate-related threads have a sort of opalescent shimmer to them, and things that use multiple areas of magic either look like multiple colors or some shade in-between OR this strange "it''s completely green but also completely blue" thing that would be impossible in the real world, which I guess just shows the limitations of trying to perceive magic by color-coding it. I can for sure see the spirit threads that connect people''s minds and souls to their bodies, and fate stuff, and some spells being cast. Also, it can let me see spirits that would otherwise be invisible.


    Sometimes I can see a sort of gap or half-visible thing where there''s a type of magic I don''t have a gift for. Comprehension can let people cast spells of any kind, so shouldn''t I be able to see everything? Something to look into. I upgraded the sight some to see a little more detail at one point, maybe I could upgrade again to see other types of magic. Maybe not though, because of how this ability was originally "designed".


    Minor Learning Boost: This is a teeny one. I managed to slightly increase my ability to learn new stuff, mainly languages. It''s very minor, I was just trying to copy Katrin. It should also let me start learning to read her spellbook if I tried, but I''d still be shitty at it and I''ve been too busy with my own stuff. If I wanted to really focus on spellcasting or programming with runes I''d need to put way more potential into it. But I dunno, maybe at some point I''ll up this some and learn enough to do something simple like light fires.


    Memory Palace: My favorite. It was already there, really, because it''s my mind''s domain in Ematse. By default, unless I make it reel back in or I enter an area that has really heavy planar warding beyond what''s needed to prevent actual travel, my mind just lives there all the time. But this ability lets me shift my active consciousness into my mind rather than my body, which has loads of benefits. I can have a private fort, enjoy some Earth foods, etc. Also the more I use it the better I get at manipulating things in Ematse, and the more my meat brain passes stuff off to my mind. That means if someone stabs me through my head so long as it doesn''t kill me it can probably be healed with no brain damage. I should look into doing the same with my soul, since that supposedly handles other aspects of myself that currently aren''t being backed up. Most recently I''ve gotten good at making time pass faster in my memory palace, so that I can plot and scheme without missing anything in the "real" world.


    Memory Palace Upgrades:


    * My memories are now accessible via the memory palace, and will be much harder for anything to fuck with. It doesn''t do anything to help with the existing tampered memories.


    * My memory palace keeps getting bigger - right now I don''t think the memory areas continue to exist when I''m not there, I think the hallways modeled after the Long Haul Hotel generate on the fly but the bedroom areas are always static. But I''ve added to those, and I don''t think I could have done that right away.


    * Visitor passes - I can invite other people''s minds in, for Katrin and Errod and Hugh I think I need to be touching them but for Human!Callie she can just pop over, due to the spell connecting us. I tried reaching out to Katrin via a fate thread and it didn''t work or she didn''t answer. I haven''t tried just being in proximity without holding hands, I think it might work within my lutore even if we''re not touching.


    * Mental security - it can shunt unwanted visitors to a jail cell, but actually since there was already a high security area in my memory palace that someone else put there it''s sending people to that. That area looks like a self-storage unit for some reason, and is populated by Granch which are some sort of territorial spirits that... reproduce via mitosis maybe? And they totally ate a guy''s mind. Super fucked up, but don''t seem interested in bothering anyone I let in on purpose. My mental security currently doesn''t keep people from doing surface level stuff, like forcing me to tell the truth.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Scrying / Divination: This works on the area where the planar membrane overlaps my lutore, and is enhanced with Temporal magic to reach indefinitely(?) into the past. I can only use it via my memory palace, because I linked it to that stuff to make it work better and cheaper. That being said, I don''t think of it as just an upgrade to my memory palace, because it''s too cool and important. I can''t use this on places where I can''t touch the planar membrane (so far that''s Earth and a few heavily warded areas, note on those in a minute). Mana cost increases if I push my perception through walls for some reason, but that doesn''t seem to be an issue for smaller stuff like books which means I can retroactively go back and read stuff I didn''t even pick up when I was there.


    I''m not sure if the divination handles everything right. How good are the physics reproductions? Will volatile chemicals explode? Would electronics work? What about magnets? Hugh was able to use his magic in Ematse, but I had to kind of... will it... to work. So if I do divination and pick up a magic item? Actually hang on. Okay no, they don''t work right. But runes are runes, so they should work in Ematse, right? I might just have to re-activate them or something, and if they were relying on being written on some specific material that would be a problem since it''s not REALLY that material here. For sure something I need to experiment more with. The point is, for mundane shit like books I can take the copy from the divination thing and carry it into a static area like my bedroom so it will stick around and I can read it whenever without further mana expenditure. Objects grabbed from memories without using divination are like bad AI reproductions, and are likely to be fucked up in some way. I grabbed a copy of Jake Ross and the Sword of Destiny and every page was just filled with scribbles.


    Note on Warding and Stuff: If I''m in a heavily warded area like the library in Sentortzi or First Citizen Patak''s office or almost anywhere in this fucking place I''m stuck in right now (other than the practice room) my mind and soul get yanked back to my body and, unless I force them to stay out, they''ll overlap with it and be essentially invisible inside me. Not having your mind and soul in their domains in Ematse and Erima means a huge reduction to your mana regeneration though, so very few places bother with this. It''s not needed to prevent physical planar travel, which is what they''re usually actually warding against.


    Because of my practice with mind shit, I can pilot my mind around even in these areas - but since the divination and memory stuff is linked to my memory palace and that''s in Ematse, my options are limited. I can kinda poke at things, but even though I''m looking at the actual real world if I try to open a book it won''t work - I feel like since my mind is all ephemeral and shit I should be able to just shove my face between the pages, but there''s a concept of self that gets in the way. If I made myself all floppy and shit, it''s possible healing magic wouldn''t work right on me anymore. I dunno, I didn''t get a very good explanation of that. Anyway, the point is that even without my memory palace I can look around corners and stuff - I just can''t open books or lift up stuff to look under them accurately.


    Templating: I can gather information from either myself, or the Common Local Understanding, and box it up into a sort of totem thingy. If I just do this on myself, it doesn''t seem to even really be using my Dumines and it takes basically no mana - it''s an extension of my abilities within Ematse. If I do reach out to the Common Local Understanding, I''ll get a way more comprehensive take but it uses mana. If I just do it on memories they''re gone unless I un-pack them, and while I can in theory make a duplicate of the totem thingy and only unpack one of them I haven''t practiced with that. For other things, especially when I''m reaching out for info from the collective consciousness, I''m not stealing or destroying that information. No luck using it through divination (boo) but I think it might combine with divination so long as I''m also looking at the present - which means I''ll probably be able to template physical objects. Actually, I should test that in the training room some time.


    Un-packing stuff is something I haven''t practiced a lot. The original ability I got from Sentortzi just sank right in when I unpacked it for some reason, and if I could figure that out I could learn all sorts of skills without having to do all that tedious practice and shit. But so far, nothing. Some things seem easier to unpack, but I don''t know why. Trickiest thing so far is the creepy statue in my memory palace, but that maybe follows different rules since it wasn''t actually packaged up by that ability in the first place - if I do manage to unpack it, I suspect it will tell me what fucked up part of my subconscious called it into being in the first place. Not sure I want the answer to that.

 CHAPTER 086: Home Court Advantage

    Hugh had offered me up several little nuggets of respect over the time we''d known each other, but there was always the feeling that he mostly thought I was a child still, and in over my head. That - to be fair - had mostly been true so far. But now? The time had come to decisively kick Hugh''s ass. I wasn''t going to be satisfied with getting one cheap shot in, I needed to humiliate him. I wanted to make sure he would never forget it, and never again look at me like I was just some kid - no, he needed to feel at least a little fear when he saw me coming.


    Well... maybe fear was too much to ask. But caution, at least.


    It had started as ''I wish Hugh would back off just a little on the training'' but after five weeks of being thrown around like a rag doll for most of the day my thoughts had gone feral. The challenges in my memory palace had been a nice break, but the damage was done and I wasn''t going to be able to go back to just wanting to win. I was out for blood.


    We''d been spending a little time climbing buildings in Theramas, with Hugh trying to catch up and pull me off. He wasn''t using his Force powers to just blast me off the building, but he was using Velocity to speed himself up. That was good, because it was something he didn''t do a lot when we were sparring - the room wasn''t really big enough for him to need it. He''d make his attacks faster, sure, but the way he used it when he wasn''t taking a swing was different, slightly. And I needed to feel as many variations on his power as possible.


    "You are being sloppy, Calliope!" he yelled as he grabbed my heel.


    I was, in fact, being sloppy - but I wasn''t about to tell him I was multitasking. I hurtled towards the ground, and slammed down into a pile of blankets. I''d tried to just make the ground soft, but for some reason it hadn''t worked very well. I was almost certain that my mind wouldn''t die from a simple fall within its own domain, but ''almost certain'' wasn''t good enough for me when the risk was so high. I was thinking a lot about how all that worked, and what would or wouldn''t actually damage things in my memory palace. I didn''t want to fuck up and destroy Hugh''s mind or anything.


    Even setting my current project aside, I''d want to know what to expect if I ever started traveling to other planes or screwing around with spirits; the next ability on my list would hopefully let me tether some spirits if I didn''t fuck it up. Going off of some bits I''d read in the books Harmid had gathered as well as some stuff Cyne and Sige had talked about, I''d put together a basic understanding. Everything seemed to be based on one of two things: how physically ''real'' something was, and how much oomph it was packing.


    The ''oomph'' factor was - at least in part - what the Substance gift acted on, though the uses I''d seen of it were more about altering something''s density. Segozertze, the bat-bear things that I''d been nearly killed by right after meeting Hugh, manipulated it to effectively alter their weight. Same with that one Halenvar asshole with the giant morning star, he was almost certainly making it more or less buoyant to float around.


    Aestrid had used it too, if I understood right, combining it with Force to make herself extra invulnerable and immovable. Spirits with extra mana to spare used it more like that, becoming more substantive even without actual substance. It made them a little harder to kill, and maybe let them physically attack things they''d otherwise pass through - like those amoeba things I''d seen that one guy controlling. My mind couldn''t do that much, though I could maybe learn to do it, but within my memory palace it would naturally have an extra pseudo-realness that should mean it was hard to damage. Human Callie had stuck a knife in it, though. That hadn''t been great.


    Thankfully the knife had also been made from ephemeral matter and didn''t have any extra ''oomph'', plus a great thing about my mind not being physical was that while it kinda had organs it wasn''t actually using them for anything in particular. It had them because it was matching my body, not because it needed a liver or lungs or anything. Spirits in places like Nusos that were almost physical - and could even pass as physical in the prime plane for a while before they started to degrade - I think had more need for actual biology. Or... maybe it was a tradeoff between having to use mana to sustain yourself, and needing less mana but having to have guts and all the issues that come with them - like caring more if they had a knife shoved through them.


    Either way, here in my memory palace the worst thing that was likely to happen to Hugh or I would be that we take some dramatic injury that forces the mind to flee back to the body for safety. I''d fully suppressed that reflex a while ago, and while almost all our regular sparring where I might get a hit on Hugh happened in our actual bodies because Hugh worried I might not be able to play fair when I was - not necessarily on a conscious level - controlling little things about the memory palace like it was my dream, he had still gotten "injured" enough times to figure it out.


    In a pinch, I was pretty sure I could hold someone in my memory palace once they were there, so long as they didn''t struggle - but I would want to be careful about that since at some level of damage a mind could, actually, be destroyed. So long as no actual magical attacks were incoming and nobody had smuggled in a weapon made of more substantive material it was unlikely, though.


    I headed back up the wall, with Hugh waiting until I got to a certain point we''d marked before he came after me. The wall wasn''t a perfect recreation of anything in Theramas, I''d tweaked it and made it more interesting. I was getting better at that, although I still found it almost impossible to make something from scratch. I had to start with a wall from a memory and then mess with it, for some reason. I''d made a few little things, but even then it was hit and miss. I was pretty sure it was just going to be a matter of practice, that I wouldn''t need to unlock anything with my Dumines.


    Practice was fine, so long as it felt like I was getting somewhere. I''d hit a wall when it came to the knitting, probably because I didn''t have anyone to learn from. I couldn''t use the templating thing to just give myself skills, at least not yet, but maybe I could give them to the spirits in my head and then have them teach me? After all, those things were already pulling memories from me to be part of my dreams, right? It should be easy for them. Hmm.


    I pretended to slip and dangled for a moment, and then as Hugh reached for me I dropped onto his head and took him down with me. It wasn''t how the game was supposed to work, but it was funny.


    "Gah! Calliope, you too eagerly sacrifice yourself to defeat an opponent. It may have worked on me when you stabbed yourself, but in any other situation it would have been pointless, yes?"


    "That was one time. And this time, I guess, but that doesn''t count."


    "And when you used yourself as bait to defeat the bounty hunters?"


    "I had that under control. That wasn''t a sacrifice thing."


    "And when you lit the building you were in on fire?"


    "Also not a sacrifice, I had no intention of sticking around and burning to death. That was just arson. Benevolent arson. Anyway, you wouldn''t want me to not use the tools available to me, right? This is a place where we can''t really die, so making us both fall is a valid tactic."


    Hugh arched an eyebrow. "The goal was to touch the flag at the top of the wall, Calliope."


    "A valid tactic," I repeated, "but setting that aside and just agreeing that I''m right, since we''re talking about us getting hurt and this place being fake I have a question for you. I was just thinking about how most injuries here aren''t a big deal because our organs are just for show, but really they''re for some sort of mind-body link that makes healing better by telling the magic what your healthy body should look like, right?"


    He nodded, so I continued. "And I know magical changes to physical appearance would typically revert unless you either got multiple treatments or had your mind molded to match - they said that wouldn''t be a problem with little beneficial stuff like fixing my allergies, but like... if you paid an enhancer to turn your skin blue or something. And then presumably for the same reason, with the mind not updating right away, any longer-term injury you for some reason didn''t get fixed might be fine at first but after a while it would get mapped to your mind, and at that point it would be hard to heal since it doesn''t match. right?"


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "I am no expert on these things, but I believe that is all correct." He narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously. "What are you getting at?"


    "I have more control over my mind every day. Could I skip going to an enhancer and just change how I look via my mind? Like, I know it wouldn''t happen right away but as I got healed and stuff it would try to match this version of me, right? Could I make myself super healthy, or taller, or give myself horns and fangs and stuff?"


    Hugh sighed. "I knew a young soldier who had just gotten a dud in the Duminere, and felt that he needed to be able to better contribute. That he was not special enough if he did not have magic at his fingertips. He went to a new and... very affordable... enhancer, and had changes made. They did not have the correct gifts to alter the mind''s image of the body, but he asked someone else to do that part afterwards to make it permanent.


    "One or both made a mistake. He had intended to have retractable claws - among other enhancements - but after being healed during training he attempted to show them off and his own fingers simply... exploded. Ah, that may be too strong a word, yes? But it was a terrible sight. They healed him again, and he found himself still in terrible pain. Something wrong with the tendons or muscles that controlled the new claws, I believe. It took a great deal of time to arrange a visit with a healer that could override the changes he had made, though I had my suspicions that they were not in any rush. They wanted to be sure he learned the lesson.


    "In the end, they had to copy someone else''s fingers - a difficult procedure. There was no record of what, precisely, his own had once looked like. A small concern, but I know I would be bothered somewhat by losing even that tiny part of myself unintentionally. So, could you do it? Possibly. Even that stupid young man had the help of an enhancer, but it may be possible to make changes just with alterations to the mind. The body would be trying to re-imprint itself on the mind, somewhat, until it matched one way or another. And most healing would not notice the changes, healing only those parts that were truly injured. It would be possible to have the changes show up in little bits and pieces, so they would at best look bad and at worst cause physical injury. I would suggest against it."


    I leaned back against the wall to take all that in. "Well, shit. Okay, so no fucking around with that I guess. For sure not anything important. Man, how do beginner enhancers even learn stuff without fucking up and ruining someone''s body? I guess just start with really simple stuff and find someone to train under?" I''d gotten my hair cut for free by people training to become barbers or stylists, and I kept finding myself thinking about that in this context. Would people volunteer for body modifications from enhancers in training? Were there poor people out there that would just volunteer as practice dummies?


    Hugh wanted to shift gears back to sparring in the real world, probably because he didn''t want me trying to tamper with my self-image. Cosmetic stuff, though... I could try to go all the way back and scry on myself as an infant, see what I looked like. What my parents looked like. I wouldn''t want to go full Sargher, but maybe shift things a little towards my original appearance? Or if I was going to take the Runelighter name, I could borrow a little from Katrin and Errod - enough to make myself look like a cousin or something, anyway. Then again... better to pay a professional, probably. I had the money.


    Anyway, that was a thought for another time. Right now I needed to kick Hugh''s ass. "Okay, okay. We''ll go back to our stupid meat bodies and smack them around."


    Just like that we were back in the training room, standing up from the bench we''d chosen to sit on while we played around in my memory palace. Hugh paced around a moment, stretching, and then stopped suddenly. His eyes scanned the room, as if for some hidden threat. Uh-oh. Well, better distract him. I threw a knife, and Hugh flicked it out of the air before dismissively gesturing and launching me at the wall. I landed perfectly and launched back off, throwing another knife as I did.


    Rather than flicking this one away, Hugh sent it back at me - but it was off-target, and I ignored it. I rolled back to my feet as I landed and sprinted at him, knowing that he rarely passed up an opportunity for melee combat if I pushed for it. Sure enough, he let me get in close before trying to punch my kidney into paste. He missed as I contorted myself, and a look of surprise crossed his face - followed quickly by my fist. I hit him like a freight train, and he staggered a little before trying to force-push me away.


    The look of surprise shifted to concentration as he realized I''d hooked my leg around his to keep him from launching me, and I buried my other knee in his groin before he could react. He flipped both of us over to slam into the ground, but he had no way of realizing I''d put a knife between us - the landing did far more harm to him than me. We rolled apart, and now he was looking wary. He felt the bloody wound in his side, and tilted his head to look at me like I was some strange puzzle. Shit. He had to know. Nothing to do but attack, and hope he wasn''t really sure.


    I ran to the rack of practice weapons and grabbed another stack of throwing knives to make sure he didn''t worry about where they were coming from. He would assume the others I''d thrown had been stashed around my person, like I tended to do. It was part of the game, actually, with him trying to find them all when it was time to leave the training room. These ones would be easy to locate since I was planning on sticking them into his lungs. I threw one I knew would miss just to keep him on his toes, and then charged directly towards him, dropping and sliding at the last second and stabbing his leg as I reached it.


    Hugh let out an annoyed grunt, probably very frustrated by my unexpected speed and strength. He swung downwards, planning on making me into a pancake before I could get back on my feet, but again I was just barely to the side of where he expected and the blast of force did nothing. I grabbed his arm and pulled myself up by it, planting a knife into his left lung. Hah. I felt a strain, and Hugh got a solid hit in while I was distracted by it - I had to keep it together, just a moment longer. I hit the wall and bounced off, and I felt the strain subside. Yeah, that made sense. As soon as he''s winning he thinks everything is okay.


    Another knife went flying and was deflected, and then we were clashing together again with his force-assisted knee rocketing towards my face. I punched it out of the way enough to slide by and stick a knife in his other lung, and that strain reappeared. I fought it, grinning at Hugh''s shocked expression, and then... fuck. Fuck! I felt the Granch stirring. It sensed prey, squirming in my memory palace. Held in place. Helpless.


    "Whoops, sorry. Talk to you in a second!" I violently booted Hugh from the divination-perfect replica of the practice room I''d been maintaining, and let out a deep breath. That had gone pretty well, all things considered. He''d known something was wrong, but clearly he wasn''t certain what. All my practice with him, using the same skills as the templating to let him feed my memory palace more and more information on how his powers should feel and replicating their effects. Draining his mana wasn''t possible, and if the fight had gone on any longer that would have given me away for sure, but with him under attack and not having experienced active divination here much it would have felt real enough. If only the Granch hadn''t woken up, I could have held him a little longer.


    Speaking of... it was still stalking around, somewhere. Or one of them was - in theory I had a whole colony. I''d read what little Harmid had dug up about it, but it wasn''t a lot more than he''d already told me. It was almost certainly from Brinkmar, and almost certainly an engineered spirit rather than natural. Halenvar, as the last nation to have access to the cursed and blighted Brinkmar, had obtained some and used them as a very fucked up form of mental security. This, combined with the fact that I had access to Brinkmar, had made me wonder if somehow my parents had made some deal when I was little. I wasn''t sure what the point of that would be, and it didn''t really fit with the timeline since the memories I was sure had been tampered with didn''t happen until I was sixteen.


    I''d poked at those a little, but it hadn''t been my main priority. I just didn''t have time for everything, and I figured it was better to try and learn how to get the most out of all my abilities right away since it seemed likely I was either going to be in constant danger or locked up somewhere I wanted to get out of. Not that being locked up had been bothering me too much, as long as I took some time each day to meditate with that old key ring.


    Finally I felt the Granch settle down and go dormant, and I popped back to my body. Hugh was already up and staring at me.


    "That... was almost convincing. Almost."


    "Oh come on, I had you. Yes, I know, I saw you looking around at first. I''m not saying you didn''t feel like something was off. But if you''d known, if you''d been at all sure, that fight would have gone way differently."


    "I was certain, by the end." He sounded like he was lying.


    "Bullshit. I saw the look on your face."


    Hugh grimaced, and sat next to me again. "That was more about the way you prevented me from leaving, yes? A terrifying ability."


    "Yeah, well, it''s one I can''t use again. It uh... woke up the Granch. And anyway, I''m more interested in learning to pull people in there against their will - you were in there willingly, that won''t help in a bad situation. I kinda did it once, but the guy was already halfway in - I''d rather do it in a normal fight, take someone by surprise."


    "If it were that easy, I suspect it would be a common tactic. The opposite is easier, forcing your way into the mind of another - but your tricks would be limited, in their domain."


    "Well, it''s on my big list of things to work on just below ''kick Hugh''s ass so hard I see true fear in his eyes''. I guess I can check that one off."


    He looked like he was about to argue, and then sighed. "I would be a hypocrite of the worst sort if I accused you of cheating, yes? Fine. We will call this a success, and you may have more control over the training schedule as promised."


    Finally.

 CHAPTER 087: Threadcraft

    I''d been looking at that non-euclidean gulf between my Dumines for so long that I was going to be dizzy when I opened my eyes and tried to see the real world. That feeling like a distant voice at the end of a long passage was almost forming words as it argued with me, and the lines flickering between the fixed points of my gifts had started to make sense and then come full circle to being incomprehensible again.


    Could I gain the ability to make fate threads? Yes. Could I also make threads that tethered spirits to things? Sure. Could I make threads that tethered spirits, but using the fate layer? Absolutely not, also here''s how you would do it if you want. I took that as a yes; it was the basic Dumine functions trying to say no and the "voice" showing me how - I''d already done things that fell into that category. So the next question would be, can I unlock one ability that lets me do both of those things?


    Begrudgingly, it seemed to acknowledge I could.


    Okay, but there was also that spell on me that bound me to human Calliope. Could I do that? No (yes, here''s how). But no, that was totally different and what I wanted was that, and the spirit stuff in general, and the fate stuff, and... whatever else could be done. Just all of it. It kept trying to give me as little as possible, some tightly-defined ability rather than "do magic but with thread thingies". I tried to force it, in a way that I hadn''t since the initial struggle to unlock anything at all. "Come on you motherfucker, give me what I want! The Clockmaker could do it, which means it''s possible."


    And it answered me.


    It still wasn''t actual words, quite, but it was far closer than it had been. It felt... a little exasperated, maybe?


    This build is missing a key Perception component due to biological incompatibility. You would have no way of clearly understanding what you were doing, and would lack any of the guardrails that come with other magic granted via Dumines.


    Oh. Huh. I''d gotten a pretty clear "you can''t do that", or "you don''t have enough potential for that", and those hadn''t really been words either. But those had come from the Dumines, and this was from that other thing. I''d felt like we were having a conversation once or twice, but this was... something else. Also, it still wasn''t stopping me - maybe it couldn''t. There was a pattern there, and if I pushed I could imprint it. It was mostly Fate and Comprehension, with the usual offshoots towards other gifts. This thing, this intelligence that seemed to be in charge of designing the abilities people unlocked, was trying to tell me I''d regret this choice. Should I listen?


    I''d gotten as far as I had by taking some outrageous swings and doing things I wasn''t supposed to be able to do. This could be another step towards that, something that would give me power to get away from the people that would control me. But also, one of these days I was going to seriously fuck up and get myself killed. I so wanted to be the super special protagonist - it was why I had started practicing throwing knives in the alley by the Long Haul Hotel and tried to learn parkour until it nearly got me killed falling off a roof. It was why I''d written that embarrassing fan fiction of the Jake Ross books. Ugh. And now here I was, looking pretty damn special and having abilities nobody else had and I wanted more. I wanted all of it, and was going to overreach and ruin things.


    I tried to focus my thoughts and transmit them to whatever was at the other end of the connection. "I want to do this eventually. I''ll find a way. What can I do now, that will still lay the groundwork for it? I want all my abilities to work together as much as possible so they''re efficient and stuff."


    The lines squirmed around in their impossible way, and several patterns repeated in a cycle. The same... shape... was underlying all of them. After a moment, the lines reset and only that unifying pattern remained. The message seemed clear enough, and it was connected to the right gifts so... fuck it. I snagged it. I opened my eyes and turned on the threadsight, and tried to do something. I wasn''t sure what. After a moment a thread appeared in my hand, devoid of all color. Not clear, and not white or black, just... no color at all. Yet another reminder that this perception of color didn''t have anything to do with light or my eyes.


    I could stretch it, but I couldn''t figure out how to attach it to anything. It would just slide off and float there, nearly weightless but still drifting slightly downwards in an almost imperceptible way. If I dropped it completely, it evaporated away. Hmm. I made another, and tried to force some color into it. This would be for spirit stuff, and spirit was yellow. And... nothing. I could focus on the color, or focus on the intent, or both. There was no response. I let it go and made another, concentrating on spirt stuff the whole time. Nope, colorless shitty noodle.


    I didn''t get frustrated; this was kinda expected, as I''d asked for some power that could be adapted into the others. It made sense it might have limited use on its own, and it hadn''t used as much of my potential as I was expecting. The only part that worried me was that I couldn''t see that opalescent shimmer that would indicate it was working the way fate did. That was a pretty important part. I looked at the fate threads as I worked, just in case keeping them in mind could help somehow, and tried to spin up another new one.


    My mana plummeted.


    It didn''t quite bottom out, but it was close. I''d been basically at full, and just making one little thread had nearly drained my entire reserve. It was hard to put a number on, but it felt like... maybe 75% of my maximum? But there it was, a colorless fate thread that I couldn''t do anything with. Was it worth it? Kinda! It was a great proof of concept at the very least, and it was possible I could make it do something if I kept playing.


    Except then I kept playing, and it didn''t do jack shit.


    I did manage to make a sort of cat''s cradle thing with it, although I still couldn''t seem to touch any of the other threads. I couldn''t get it to adhere to anything, even myself, and eventually dropped it while messing around - it wasn''t easy to drop by accident since it floated with my hand like some sort of static electricity effect, but I''d been trying to tie it around the other threads and just sort of let go of both ends at once by mistake. When I finally had enough mana to make another, I created it with the firm intent for it to connect me and Hugh. I held Hugh''s image in my mind, his name, his whole vibe. This line would tie us together. It would go from me to him. It would.


    The line formed, and drifted quickly towards Hugh as it attached firmly to my core. I watched, fascinated, as it got all the way over to him and pulled taut as it gained purchase... and then fell apart into nothingness. Huh. I had to admit it was possible that there was a need for a purpose or a duration or something - I''d told it that it needed to be attached to me at one end and Hugh at the other, so it did that. But then? Well, its goal in life was achieved and it had nothing else to do. Hmm.


    I only had time for one more attempt before we''d be done in the practice room for the day, and at that point my mana regeneration would be practically nothing. I meditated on my Dumines again, and prepared to add something. Fate was tempting, but I was still thinking through what I would do with it that wouldn''t turn into some ridiculous monkey''s paw situation. Meanwhile the spirit thing would be useful, was pretty cheap in terms of potential, and I could experiment with it on the little doughboy guys that sometimes showed up in the practice room.


    I could also try to see if I could make something like the link between human Calliope and myself, but I didn''t want that exactly anyway. A quick query of my Dumines turned into a longer back and forth, and I managed to define what I wanted. A multi-purpose thread that could connect two people or spirits, and would facilitate the transfer of information in whatever directions I chose - I wanted the option of making it one-way or letting it go back and forth. Eventually I felt pretty sure we were on the same page and this thing would let me get all the good parts of the link the Sargher had made, but it was going to tap me out of potential for now. That... was probably fine.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I wanted the actual fate stuff, sure, and I wanted a way to sever or destroy threads but that part hadn''t been on offer regardless. In the meantime, making my own would give me a better idea of what I needed to do. And the fate stuff... it could wait. I opened my eyes and looked around, finding a little doughboy spirit nearby. First I wanted to see if I could do the cheap version, the non-fate type of thread. I concentrated, and watched it spool out of nowhere and bind the two of us together. And then... I felt my mana draining. Fast. I cut it off, and watched the thread dissolve. Well, shit.


    Meanwhile, the little spirit was looking... less little. I watched, fascinated, as the other doughboys swarmed it and tried to eat it - the battle was fierce, but the little guy I''d connected to eventually came out on top and devoured his cousins. He then tried to gnaw on me, and I could almost feel it. It was like I was being gently gummed by a baby ghost. I flicked at it, and that seemed to annoy but not really hurt it - there seemed to be a strange threshold where ephemeral matter was just barely solid enough to touch, but not yet solid enough to destroy. The interesting thing was that a little past that threshold a gentle tap would likely obliterate it, since I was so much more real than it.


    A few more flicks sent it running off to look for something less feisty to attack, and I tried to think about what had gone wrong. It had been dirt cheap to make the thread, but then cost a fortune to keep it going - the opposite of when I made one on the fate layer. Well, I''d always known that one of the advantages to the fate stuff was that it just lasted forever for free. But then... the link between my body and my mind wasn''t a fate thing, and it didn''t cost me anything - right? Probably there were books in the library at Sentortzi about this. It could partly be that the connection was way simpler than what I was trying to do - I''d made this thing custom with all sorts of bells and whistles. Maybe it was also being paid all the time, so we just didn''t notice? But then in an area with basically no mana surely we''d feel it.


    It could be taking from the connection between planes, but... no, because there were times that your mind and soul were on the same plane as your body. Hmm. Could that be it? I''d been told your mana regeneration was lower if your mind and soul were on the same plane as you because you weren''t benefitting from the cross-planar stuff. But what if the actual mechanism for that difference was that your regen was largely going towards paying for the link when it would otherwise be counteracted by that planar mana? I knew from experience that when you used more than you had you''d burn through some of the life mana that your body held, and if you used it all it would potentially kill you.


    I did a few exercises while I tried to think about what to do next, and waited for my mana to replenish. When I had finally gained back the amount that had gushed out during my brief experiment, I pulled my mind back to my body but didn''t let it overlap - I wanted to see the thread. Could I re-make it, if something ever severed it? Would it be a problem if I used my special type, instead of whatever this natural one was? It did a lot of the same stuff, so the connection would be basically the same, right? I concentrated on it, trying to see more of what it was doing, but other than the colors I wasn''t getting anything. If I made one of my fancy threads right next to it would I see the difference better?


    I started to spin up one of my fancy threads, using the extra mana to make it on the fate layer. I wanted it to connect me to my mind, so I could feel both connections at once and try to figure out if I was missing something, but as it formed something abruptly went wrong. They merged. The existing thread was pulled in, and I could see it bend as it was pulled in an impossible direction. I frantically tried to cut off the magic, but the mana was already spent and the thread was forming whether I wanted it to or not. It happened in an instant, just barely long enough for my panic to trigger.


    And... I felt fine. I shifted to my mind and back. I hopped into my memory palace. It was... normal. Well, close to normal - I felt like I had that extra level of control I''d built in, like I could toggle whether or not information passed between my body and mind. I''d done some of that manually in the past with the old connection, trying to shut out pain or immerse myself deeper into my memory palace, but this was like having a physical dial I could turn. All my senses, my memories, anything that might pass through the link could be turned on or off with a thought. Nice.


    Before I could celebrate, Klinec barged in. He had a title, probably one I was supposed to be using, but I hadn''t been paying any attention when he was first introduced and couldn''t be bothered to ask since then. Commander, probably, or Base Commander, or Head Lackey. This was twice in one week that he''d showed up, when we had sometimes gone for a well over a week without a single one of his little visits. His assistant, or second in command or whatever was with him, and as always she looked so familiar.


    I wasn''t in my body, but was watching the room via divination - I''d wanted to practice piloting myself around remotely in case that felt different with the new thread - so I was able to get up nice and close to examine her. Her skin was a darker brown than I''d seen on most people here, and her hair was not only copper colored but had a metallic sheen. A very steep, flat nose that looked like something you''d see on a caricature but wasn''t actually ugly or anything, just... surprisingly geometric. I''d for sure remember a face like that. She wore a uniform like the others, but never full armor and no visible weapons. Not a soldier, though presumably everyone here knew how to fight.


    I had my body up and watching them too, so they wouldn''t suspect I was also using divination - I wasn''t sure what they did or didn''t know about my abilities. I piloted my body a little closer to them, and gave the minimal bow, almost just a head nod. The corners of his mouth tightened for a moment, but then he smiled.


    "Calliope, I hope your training is going well?"


    He had something in a bag, tucked into his belt behind him. What was that? "Yeah, same as the other day. Does Hammersmith need me for something?"


    I was dropping her name on purpose - I suspected she had told him to leave us alone, and he didn''t like someone else swooping in to his facility and giving orders. He clearly also hated my special arrangement. He wasn''t great at hiding his emotions, not if you were paying attention, and subtly reminding him that I only had to give a shit about what Hammersmith said always caused him to tense for a second.


    "No, Lord Protector Hammersmith isn''t the reason I''m here. I wanted to volunteer to spend some time with you, possibly give you some guidance to prepare you for the upcoming operation."


    "I assumed someone would do that closer to time and it would be mandatory," I said, "is this... mandatory?"


    Another little mini-frown before the smile took over again. "No, of course not. But it may be good for you to have a little extra attention, when the day arrives I think things are likely to be quite busy."


    I was still pacing around him invisibly. He wore armor but no helmet, and his armor was embellished. It wasn''t a lot, just these little touches you''d see if you looked close. It was also shiny as hell, in a way that told me he either had it shined for hours every morning or there was some special work done on it. I was betting on the latter. I managed to pull the mystery bag from his belt - in the divination view, not in reality - and was only slightly surprised to find myself looking at some iron manacles. Cool.


    "Yeah. Yeah it''ll probably be really busy, for sure. I''ll think about it, we''re about done for today regardless."


    Was he planning on binding me in iron? He couldn''t. Not against Hammersmith''s orders, and she was... mostly... forced to play nice by the oath. There were loopholes of course, and he could always take matters into his own hands, but... no. No, more likely he just liked having them as a contingency, or at worst thought he could use them on me when the job was done. The oath for sure forbade that, but... loopholes.


    Hugh took the hint and grabbed his things, and we walked out with Klinec and his assistant. I was still watching him closely, keeping an eye on him from behind so that he couldn''t try to pull anything while I...


    Wait.


    What the fuck.


    My body stumbled, and I quickly righted it. "Sorry, it''s been a long day of practice. Must be getting clumsy."


    I hurried up, and headed to my room and inside. I was still watching from outside my body. My mind was still in my memory palace. The wards should have yanked my mind back as soon as we left the room - I quickly confirmed that they had, for my soul. Hugh was looking at me funny, he knew something was up. He probably wouldn''t ask though, he liked to try and figure out what I was up to. I wasn''t sure how to pull my soul out of my body, and I couldn''t see the thread while it was in there, but I''d have to give it the same treatment as soon as possible. It didn''t matter right away, I was out of mana regardless. Oh. Mana. What would this do to my rate of regeneration? It should at least count as my mind being in Ematse - since it was - but would it be even more since the thread connecting it to my body was on the Fate layer, or was that going to fuck things up somehow and make me not get any mana at all from there?


    I told Hugh I was going to go to bed early. It was going to be a long night of experimenting.

 CHAPTER 088: Making Friends

    "Okay here''s where we stand," I said to the overly affectionate anime-looking amber statue of me, "I''ve confirmed that my mana regeneration is slightly higher with my mind attached via the special thread, and I''ve connected my soul as well just by targeting the couple inches that I could see of it before it fades away. But this tells us something else important, doesn''t it?"


    She nodded, but showed no actual sign of understanding.


    "It tells us that the threads can cross into other planes as they''re attaching, at least if they''re modifying one that already does. So now the bigger question is... can I target Katrin and Errod somehow? If I did, they''d be able to join me here in the memory palace any time they wanted. Not that Errod ever wanted to. Could I use the fate threads that go to them as a guide? Would I fuck them up somehow? Also, Katrin was pissed about me spying on her that one time, would she be mad about this thing? No, right? It would have to be no. This is just awesome. I wouldn''t use it for anything bad."


    The amber version of me nodded solemnly, still with a certain vacancy behind its eyes. It was pretty cool, when it would sit still for a few minutes. It really did look carved somehow, with little... facets, kind of. Not like it was a low-poly model in a video game or anything, very much like a deliberate artistic choice someone might make when chiseling a sculpture. She was currently sitting on the ground, hugging my leg.


    "The other option would be one of you guys. You already kinda look like me, and it would be good to have a backup mind - right? The books Harmid had made reference to people having more than one, but not in any detail. Sentortzi for sure had some sort of swarm, though that might have been something completely different. And I know Sige told me there were planes people went to to bind spirits to themselves, but those were supposed to... do stuff. He mentioned one making you grow fangs, and I don''t want to fuck with that shit unless I''m sure of what I''m doing.


    "You guys seem pretty tame, and are almost certainly just those dream figment spirits which I know people have used for stuff before. But it''s permanent right now, until I can figure out how to break these things, and that means if it goes badly I have to destroy you. And I''m actually fine with that mostly, but there''s a teeny part of me that thinks it might be fucked up. I could use one of the doughboys instead, there are plenty around and I wouldn''t mind squishing them, but that one got really hostile and it was starting to get bigger and more solid too. If I can''t turn the connection off, and it runs through the wall or something it''ll probably just eat all the other spirits on this plane."


    I felt funny, like there was something I was supposed to remember. "I''m getting off track. Okay. How would I find a spirit that''s safe to experiment on? I could just snag another oydirme like you guys, but one that doesn''t look like me. I don''t know if that counts as less fucked up or not. Would you give a shit if I linked to some random spirit that''s the same kind as you, and then possibly had to murder them? You for sure at least meet the bare minimum requirements for being sentient, but how... sapient... are you?"


    It had mainly run around and hugged me or visitors, but I''d seen it go into a rage once when it walked into a bad memory I''d been poking into, and one time I found it in my old bedroom from mom''s house crying. It seemed to be, basically, nothing but a bundle of emotions. Since it appeared to like it in my memory palace, it was generally very happy - but was that it? Was there anything deeper? The other one, the one that looked like a normal version of me - give or take, there were some differences - just wandered my memories dispassionately. It seemed... interested... but fundamentally without goals. They were very different, but I''d been assuming both were oydirme. If one of them wasn''t, it was probably the amber one - the rest of the things that showed up wearing football jerseys all looked human, so this thing was the outlier.


    Although... they had all been a bit more animated than the one that was just wandering around. Maybe because they were already copying people, and the others were just starting to copy me? But then, shouldn''t it have fully developed by now if that was the case? I just didn''t know enough. It could be something about my memory palace being so... defined... was inhibiting the way they normally worked - and in fact, Harmid had said they usually pressed up against the edges of a domain, not that they went all the way inside. That also led to another question - how to pull another one in to compare and possibly experiment on.


    It ended up taking way longer than I expected for a few reasons. I did still have other stuff I was working on, and Hugh was still making me train at least some, and I got frustrated and quit trying for a bit, and finally - when I figured out my problem - it turned out to have a limited window of time I could work on it each day. The trick was that they''d only show up when I was sleeping, and it wasn''t enough to have my body sleeping; I had to let me consciousness start to actually drift away.


    It''s really hard to stay alert while also letting yourself fall asleep as it turns out, and if I fucked it up I''d just end up waking up in the morning having missed my chance. I tried reaching out to invite them in, the way I did for Katrin or Hugh, but if I concentrated too much it seemed to freak them out and they''d scatter. Or at least, that''s what it felt like; I was getting glimpses of them out the windows of my memory palace, which normally showed a slightly fluid AI-generated looking street on Earth. Instead, as my body slept, random things would show up out there - and some were people. Were they oydirme? Presumably!


    The other issue I was trying to figure out was how to tether them at all. I''d been experimenting, and my magic was still firmly originating with my body which needed to be out cold. The idea was that once the oydirme was in my memory palace it would stay put, I could wake up, and...? The threads could reach across planes, at least if they were fate threads, and I''d been able to tether my mind and soul - but those were using the existing threads, and they were a part of me. For a random disconnected spirit, did I need to identify it some special way? I was hopeful that it would just work when the time came.


    I was laying on my bed in the main room, the recreation of the bedroom from Bill''s house, and looking at the little crack in the ceiling. It had been one of the first things I''d noticed, back when my memory palace was just this one room. It had felt familiar, and so... specific. How many times had I laid in the real version of this bed and stared at the ceiling? Was I happy? What went wrong? I''d cleared away the false memories, leaving nothing but fog behind - whatever was left of the real memories that had been covered up, scrambled and worthless. Could I restore them now? Thought and Temporal, maybe, to get retroactive perfect recall? I was out of potential at the moment anyway, and I wouldn''t want to try it until I was sure it wouldn''t trigger the Granch to eat me.


    Everything started to feel loose, fluid, and with the help of many nights of practice I just stared at the crack. Relax. Don''t fall asleep, but don''t wake up either. Like holding on to a dream after you''ve realized you''re dreaming. After a moment, I slowly stood and walked to the window while keeping my mind blank. It wasn''t going to work anyway, so I didn''t need to overthink it or stress about it. Early on, when I''d first unlocked the ability to get to my memory palace, I''d opened the door to the outside while dreaming and interacted with a figment that looked like the elote man from one of the neighborhoods I''d lived in. I was just going to do that again, but through the window.


    I opened the window and leaned out, still masterfully maintaining my state of meditative relaxation. Instead of Jesus the elote man, it was Tony. Tony had sold drugs near Universal Servicing Systems when I lived there, and he''d bought me food a few times. He''d have fast food delivered, and if I was hanging out chatting with him he''d add on an extra burger or something. Nothing fancy, just the cheap kind, but it was nice. And he''d always toss me the food rather than making me come over to get it, because he''d noticed I wouldn''t stand within grabbing range of him, and he didn''t make a big deal out of it.


    But I grabbed him this time, just swung my arm out and grabbed his and pulled like I was helping him sneak through the window, and he climbed on in. I''d been struggling with this task for weeks, and just like that it was over. No problem. I closed the window quickly, suddenly pretty awake, and not-Tony looked around. He was nodding approvingly and poking at things a bit, and I just watched him for a moment before he suddenly spoke up.


    "Not bad. Better than that old office building, right?"


    "Yeah."


    "I kept it safe for you, sis. Whenever you need it back."


    Was this random dream nonsense, or something else? "You can give it to me now," I said, just in case he''d hand me something interesting.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    He handed me a hamburger. Well, that worked too.


    As I continued to try and talk to him, it became clear quickly that he was pretty dumb. He had the general vibe of Tony, mostly, but his knowledge was extremely limited. It was like a mediocre chatbot - for the expected stuff he''d reply realistically, but as soon as I threw a curveball at him he broke down.


    "Hey Tony, how''s business?" I''d asked him that every time I''d seen him, and he always replied the same way.


    "I''ll be a billionaire by Wednesday."


    "I ate a wallet full of dishwashers, wings and all."


    He nodded. "I was just about to order something."


    There was something about him, something that was nagging at me. The way he''d turned into Tony so easily, and had all the surface level stuff just right. I couldn''t put my finger on it, but that felt... not familiar, exactly, but... Hmm. I finally walked over and just took a chance, wrapping my arms around him and concentrating. There were layers, there, like the oydirme was wearing a Tony suit. And I could... pull... here.


    The illusion unraveled, and Tony faded away leaving a gray, lumpy humanoid devoid of all features. It was like the someone had set out to make a person out of clay, and had just mashed together the basic shape but hadn''t begun actually working on it yet. I let go and it stumbled away, and then just... stood there. I stepped forward and grabbed it by the wrist, closing my eyes and concentrating. And... there. I opened my eyes, and Mila was standing in front of me.


    "Hello, dear. I think I may be a little lost."


    It had been so easy. Of course it had, it was so close to what I did when I was making or unpacking templates - grab a concept and distill it down, package up all the relevant information about it. I could just peel the identity off this thing and slap a new one on as many times as I wanted. It made a lot of sense that it would work in the same way, but it was still a little crazy that I... oh. Oh shit. Fuck.


    I was being manipulated.


    It was probably the fate threads, since I would notice if someone was fucking with my mind. Little tweaks to probability, little adjustments of probability. Things that might have happened anyway, singled out of the endless sea of options and pushed in front of me. How many things had to come together for me to have this skill? Why had I asked Sentortzi for it? And I still didn''t know why fate would care, since being able to re-skin oydirme had to just be another link in the chain. What was I supposed to use it for?


    I took a mental step back. Was I being paranoid? Coincidences happened, this didn''t have to mean anything. I''d made Sentorzi give me the skill because it sounded useful, and here it was being useful. It could be as simple as that. Even if it wasn''t a use I would have guessed would exist. More importantly, it just... didn''t matter unless I knew what destiny it was working towards. If it was something beneficial to me, then I wouldn''t want to fight it anyway except - if I was being honest - kinda on principle just because I didn''t like being handled by people even when those people were actually magical forces of reality.


    And if it was a destiny I didn''t want? I wanted to figure out how to break fate threads anyway. I needed to set that concern aside for now, because wondering if everything that happened around me might be influenced by fate would be maddening and useless.


    I stripped Mila off the oydirme - it didn''t seem to care - and looked it over. Without anything imprinted on it, it seemed content to just stand there. I needed to decide if it was okay to experiment on this thing, and possibly have to kill it. I''d relied pretty heavily on this list of internalized rules about what was and wasn''t okay in society because I''d realized I personally wasn''t super bothered by anything; mostly I just lacked in the kind of empathy where you felt something just because someone else did. I could see someone was sad and think, "oh, they''re sad" no problem, and I could get sad or happy or whatever myself, but I''d never seen someone upset or excited or anything and genuinely just felt the same on their behalf.


    And probably because of that, and because - even if I didn''t remember it - I''d been raised by Sargher for the first few years of my life, I did some really nasty shit to people when I was a kid. Everyone stole shit sometimes, but I''d steal things purely to cause people anguish. I think it was just... interesting... to be able to cause emotions in people, and negative emotions were easier. It''s always simpler to destroy something than to build it, after all. Like a cat idly shoving things off of counters, I would make up and spread nasty rumors to see if I could start a fight or wait to go down the slide until someone was passing so I could "accidentally" slam into them.


    I got a little better over time, just because at some point you realize that you have to fake it so you''re not always in trouble. And then I met Bill, and before the missing memories when he was my case worker he was just so... good. And he didn''t seem to give a shit that I wasn''t - or he did, but he didn''t act like it was the most important thing about me or like it meant he could write me off. And from what little fragments of my time with him after that I could remember, he''d known that I didn''t care the same way that other people did. And probably because of that, I''d tried. Actually tried, for years, to follow the rules and be a decent person.


    And it had worked out pretty well. Katrin and Errod wouldn''t have wanted to be family with the old me, and I did care about them. I was genuinely sad when I thought about the idea that something bad might happen to them, and genuinely happy when we were together. Was it the same as with... humans? Probably not. Or not with an average, "normal" human anyway - but I''d never met one of those anyway. And now I had to ask myself about a situation I had no rules for, and try to guess if Bill or Katrin or Errod would care about me fucking with this oydirme, and at the same time know that I for sure didn''t actually give a shit and nobody would ever need to know but me anyway. So it didn''t matter, except that it very much did.


    Ugh.


    I poked at it, and it stumbled back a step and just continued standing there. "Okay fuck it, I''m going to do this. And if you freak out and turn on me, I''m gonna kill you and then probably never tell anyone in case that turns out to be... bad. Fingers crossed you''re basically a fungus or something."


    I woke up in the real world, and then back in the memory palace I dragged the oydirme into a live divination view of my room and lined my mind up with my body.  This was going to work.  I remotely controlled my body while looking at the oydirme, and spun up a thread.  It reached out, the end fuzzing purple as it vanished - for a split second I thought I could see it extend past that point, inside my mind palace, but then it was gone.  I felt the connection take hold, and I started tweaking what could pass through.  I didn''t want any thoughts flowing through, especially from it to me.


    It rippled, and snapped into my form.  Great, another me.  Just what I needed.  Except... wait.  The others didn''t have that feeling, like I could strip off the layer of what they were pretending to be.  Were they not oydirme?  I''d been ready to decide the amber one wasn''t, but... was it neither of them?  I wanted to go find it and check, but I needed to decide what to do with this one first.


    "Oh, you can leave me here," it said, "I''m cool.  Sorry to freak you out, but I''m getting your surface thoughts some.  Anyway now that I''m you I can tell you that I don''t really think there was anything else in here.  Like... it?  I?  Whatever this was was alive, kinda, but this is for sure the most it ever had a thought about something.  Honestly I''d say crank it up, I think if you keep it up I''ll basically just be a copy of you."


    "You''re not going to try to kill me and take my place?"


    "Nah.  It wouldn''t work, first of all - you die and I''m and the thread snaps, then I''d just go back to being this brain dead leech thing.  But second, I''m nearly you right now.  You like the idea of having a copy of you, someone that understands you and isn''t gonna get judgey and shit.  Also you might be a little bit of a narcissist, but again - no judgement here.  Anyway, I think you''re right - the others can''t be oydirme.  We should totally check on that."


    I narrowed my eyes at the copy of me standing there.  "I don''t know if I''m ready to have you talking about what ''we'' should do, since you practically didn''t exist a minute ago."


    It rolled its eyes.  "Look, trust me.  I''m in here, and it''s free real estate.  Switch the thread settings so that it flows both ways and you''ll just have two bodies here.  It won''t be ''we'' even, it''ll just be you.  The only reason we''re having a conversation right now is that the flow is restricted, you''re funneling some of yourself into this spirit and you''re not getting anything back so I have to just tell you.  But I''m serious, you''ve already overwritten what little was here.  The little flow of thoughts and personality coming from your end might as well be a pressure washer with how... open... this spirit is.  Was?  I feel like I might have firmed up some due to the connection."


    I very hesitantly tried to get some thought to flow the other way - I wasn''t ready to commit to the duplicate''s plan, but I figured I should be able to get just a taste without it being a problem.  Instead, it was like looking at a mirror in another mirror where as they tilt to face each other the background arcs off into infinity.  This resonant echo hit me and without even meaning to I somehow leaned into it until the floodgates were fully open and I was staring at myself from both sides.


    "Whoa," we said, "this is fucked up.  Wow.  Okay the original is... shit it''s hard to only point with one body at a time.  Shit, why did I do that?  That feedback is dangerous, I can''t believe I opened up all the way by accident.  It''s like I leaned over something and lost my balance.  Also this is going to give me a headache.  Can I..."


    I tried to dial back the connection some, and it was... jarring.  It worked though, and we fell out of synch.  "Okay," the other one said, "keep it right there for now but I think we might want to tweak it some.  Fuck, it feels strange to be the fake one.  I mean it didn''t a minute ago I guess, but after we were the same person it''s strange we''re not.  What am I?  Ugh.  No, it''s fine, I''m not going to freak out or anything.  No trying to kill me.  I think... let''s see how this works, because if we can find a way to have just enough trickle back and forth we can stay on the same page and I can... I don''t know, try to read some of these books here and find out if you get the knowledge."


    I only hesitated a moment before nodding.  "Not surprisingly, I like the way you think."

 CHAPTER 089: Where The Heart Is

    "And what is the capitol city of Erathik?" Hugh asked, and broke my nose.


    "Gah! Fuck! No wait, that''s a trick question," I said, blood streaming down my face, "Erathik is the capitol of Erathik. You dick."


    "Bah. Name calling? You should have been able to answer and dodge my attack, Calliope."


    He was right, but I couldn''t tell him why I was fucking up. I couldn''t even lie and say I was staying up late, because he knew when I went to sleep, and I couldn''t tell a slightly truer lie and say I was fucking around in my memory palace at night because he still didn''t know I''d figured out how to get in there from our rooms. Basically I had to just act like I was an idiot all of a sudden, and Hugh was going to decide that was because he''d let me deviate from his sadistic training regimen for most of the day.


    Well, no. No, Hugh was too smart for that. But he would certainly still say he''d decided that, in the hopes of pressuring me into telling him what was really going on. I''d missed more and more trivia questions and attacks as the afternoon progressed, and while he might believe I''d forgotten the difference between Tahikk (creepy organic parasite implants) and Tarmestal (a plane of nothing but rock known for mining and penal colonies) I didn''t have a good reason for mixing up the Free States with the Coastal Alliance - it had been a softball question. He had to be curious.


    Really it was my fault for scheduling the day badly, since the pattern had already become clear. I excused myself to go to the healing pod and fix my nose, and a moment later was in my memory palace. "Okay, the plans for a clone army are for sure on hold."


    "I know," my duplicate said as she approached, "it''s hitting me too. Seems like it''s about six hours, give or take. We could run a few more duplicates maybe before it was an issue, but right now it doesn''t seem like it would be worth it. You ready?"


    "No, dumbass. We''re supposed to update the whiteboard first."


    She sighed. "Right. Right. See, this is the problem."


    "You''re telling me? I just had my nose broken by Hugh because of this... memory leak, or whatever it is."


    I''d been tweaking the settings on the connection to my oydirme duplicate and had gotten it to what seemed like the optimal setup, but it still caused problems after a while. If we didn''t occasionally synch up so it was one unified consciousness controlling both the oydirme and my mind, I got more and more distracted while the duplicate got... dumber. Nothing too bad, she wasn''t going to forget how to talk or anything - she just went into stoner mode and zoned out or forgot stuff.


    "Okay," she said, "I wanted to go for something we for certain hadn''t read before, and there was a book in the pile about one of the planes."


    "Ugh," I moaned, "not more trivia. I was just doing trivia with Hugh."


    She ignored my protests, of course. "Question one! How many families of great spirits are there?"


    "Fuck you. Twelve? No, five. I don''t know."


    "Holy shit! Yes! To both! There were twelve, I guess because everything has to be a fucking multiple of six here, and then some got killed and now there''s probably five."


    "Only probably?"


    "Eh. The queen of the Sargher took one over somehow but it only kinda counts, and there are two that are only presumed wiped out. One are these tall skinny guys that look like robes with eyeballs for heads, like just one giant eye, and the other are these things that look like a more animalistic version of Bowser."


    "What, seriously?"


    "Kinda? Spiky turtle shells, lion heads. Six legs though, and a long tail. Still, they''re... Bowser-esque, in a fishy way. Anyway for those two families there''s at least a few members that just vanished and might theoretically show up someday. None of that sounds familiar?"


    It did not. "Nah, but getting the number right feels important. Something is getting through passively, so having you read a ton of shit is still a good plan."


    "Except it''s boring as fuck, most of these books are just so dry. You can''t make me do the shit you''re not willing to do, because I''m still you and I''m also not going to be willing to do it. Anyway. I wrote down some more questions, we can both take the quiz after we synch up and see what stuck." There seemed to be a minor loss in information when we synched up, but I didn''t think that was a guaranteed thing. It was worse the longer we waited, so it was probably part of the same problem that made me distracted or her spacey.


    "Okay," I said, "whiteboard time. I... did very little. Hugh has been needy today. I can''t tell if there''s a change in my mana regeneration, or if there''s more or less environmental mana here in the memory palace. I wish Katrin could check it somehow, but even if she were here I think she might need to be physically in the memory palace and if she was she''d presumably smash everything to pieces or fall through it like smoke or something, I''m not even sure which. Anyway, if we did consider the clone army plan we''d need to get that checked. Even if the link itself is free, you might be pulling some mana passively like... eating. The other two probably are, too."


    "I still don''t know what they are," she said, "but I got distracted reading about Enimondoa. I wanna go there, it''s like fairyland. Uh, not the Xeyul kind. That was a fairy forest place. I mean fairyland like... it''s all these crazy spirits and alien landscapes and shit, and the spirits are way more... I don''t know, they have cities and shit. Speaking of. Don''t kill me or anything - or if you do you have to do it while we''re synched so I''m not an independent personality dying - but maybe this just isn''t the right spirit for doing this shit. Our mind is... y''know, our mind. This thing is just a dream spirit. Can we get more minds?"


    I''d been wondering the same thing, not surprisingly. We had these talks right before synching to make the most of our diverging thought processes, but a lot of the ideas we had were still basically the same. "Ethically? No idea. But ghosts are more... people-y than minds are alone, so maybe we can make you combine with another spirit?"


    She nodded, launching into the next part of that train of thought - we hadn''t diverged enough this time. "But they only do that when the body dies and the lutore collapses. Can you stitch them together after the fact? Did the stuff from Harmid''s office have anything on that kind of thing? Why am I asking you, you don''t remember either."


    Whatever books we had were what she could check - the copy couldn''t use divination, which kinda made sense. It couldn''t control the body, and also I couldn''t pull it to my body the way I could with my mind. We had quite the library building in the memory palace, but it was spotty at best; some of the books were hyper specific, and others were too general. Any given topic was probably at least mentioned in passing, but not what you really needed. I''d tried to use divination on the actual library, but it was still not letting me - I needed to figure out what the exact rules were there. It seemed like any wards that fully separated my lutore from the planar membrane would keep me from using that ability, but I''d been able to keep using it once started after shifting my mind''s thread to the fate layer.


    That implied that I was somehow breaching the wards, not just bypassing them.


    I''d been able to go back and use divination on myself in the room and hallway since then, although the mana cost was significantly higher and I had a hard time getting through walls. It had still let me peek a little into some new areas, but I hadn''t done it much. "I should do that," I said aloud, and then clarified in case my double hadn''t been thinking about the same thing, "go spy on shit now that divination kinda sorta works here."


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    "Yeah, why haven''t we done that more? Although... could get us in trouble with... uh, the trouble detector guy."


    "Barick."


    "Yeah, him. Sorry. I''m getting dumb, can we synch up please?"


    I was sure there were some other topics we were supposed to be covering, but we''d waited too long and were getting scatterbrained. I could prevent that side effect by doing as much as possible to isolate the copy from my thoughts, but I was still sure this would be useful and I also didn''t really like the idea of her diverging too far. "Yeah, fuck it. Ugh, we''re bad at this. Katrin would have written up proper scientific plans and shit, and kept us to it. Oh! Wait, I remember what I was supposed to talk about."


    The duplicate looked annoyed, just another reminder that I preferred being the "real" one. It was fine, she could wait a few minutes before we synched up and reset. "Okay so as far as the range goes - I tried making a regular flavorless thread go to Katrin, since it should just ping her and then unravel. Nothing. It wouldn''t form properly."


    "Wait, with or without the fate layer?"


    "Without. And then I did it with, and it worked fine. So the fate layer is needed to make it find people you''re not in range of. Though obviously I don''t know the actual range yet. But this raises another question, which is... should we be tagging people every time we have enough mana? I could spy on anyone, right? Hammersmith even, like... world leaders and shit."


    "Except human Callie managed to reverse it on you."


    "She... yeah. But it took her years, and that thread isn''t as... customizable... as mine. It''s wild magic and made to do a specific job that should have ended a decade ago. No wonder it''s busted. Mine would be able to turn the connection on and off."


    "You hope."


    "Yeah. Yeah. And if I''m wrong, and still don''t know how to get rid of them... but still, it''s something to keep in mind."


    "For sure. Could you use it on people on Earth?"


    "Fuck. Maybe? Okay this is good, see? This is why we talk to ourselves when we''ve spent some time apart. Okay, that''s my new action item."


    "Breaking out the corporate lingo? Reminds me of when we''d pretend we were working at Universal Servicing Systems."


    With that memory in mind, we clasped hands and I opened the floodgates so we were sharing everything in both directions. The method I''d worked out was to stay that way for five minutes or so, separate and have a minute of silence to gather ourselves, do some sort of test to see what we''d retained from both sides - though the loss was always greater from the duplicate''s side - and then head out to work on whatever. I had to do something for those five minutes of course, so I usually used that time to do my meditation with the old keychain template - I still wasn''t sure why it relaxed me so much, but whatever.


    The duplicate could do the templating thing somewhat, which wasn''t a shock - I''d already figured out that doing it on a local scale didn''t really use my Dumine, and the oydirme did something related naturally. Doing it while synched up was a little tricky, but I felt like that just made it good practice. When we were done, I realized it had been longer than I thought but thankfully Hugh hadn''t bothered me - I''d been in the habit of doing these meetings with time cranked up as much as I could so in the outside world it hadn''t been a suspiciously long time. Still, it was long enough he''d know I was dicking around in my memory palace.


    Well, whatever. Let him wonder.


    I headed back to my body and went through the motions of working with Hugh, and since I''d synched up so recently I wasn''t distracted by memory leak, but I was still not at my best. Something was nagging at me, and the more I thought about the feeling the more certain I was that there was some idea I was struggling to integrate - something that both me and the duplicate had some part of, but I now needed to put together. It was maddening, this sense that there was a jigsaw puzzle scattered in front of me but I didn''t have the first clue what it was even supposed to look like.


    When we got back to our rooms at the end of the night, I headed straight back to my memory palace even though I knew Hugh had to be getting suspicious about what I was doing. I found the duplicate sitting in the pile of books, flipping through one.


    "The only one I could find is the source he had for the Granch," she said, "and I think it might be helpful. Halenvar started using them around the time they were sneaking back into Brinkmar, and the Clockmaker was known to work with this demigod named Arvoh who is some sort of expert on the planes and spirits and shit. So. It''s possible, maybe, that they were made there? I mean, people do seem to agree they were manufactured somehow. And if there''s notes of any kind, anything about how you change oydirme, well. That''s what I am, right? Could be we can beef me up some, get me closer to being like your mind."


    That was it.


    "You said it earlier, that we need more minds. Right. And I was talking about how far the fate threads could reach, and possible targets. Oh my god. Yeah. This might work."


    "You''re doing the thing, where you talk in partial sentences. I can''t hear your thoughts right now, fucking spit it out."


    "Sorry. Uh. I already have two minds."


    She dropped her book. "No. Wait. Would that work? Is Connie''s... it would be a ghost, right?"


    "Sure, but that''s even better - right? I mean... yeah, ghosts tend to be kinda emotional and flaky. But they''re smart, and once we have her tethered we can... I don''t know, keep her stable. If she even needs it."


    My double was nodding. "Right, when I - you - we - talked to her right after she died she seemed fine. Calm, actually. And then when we saw her for a second... I mean, if that''s what that was, I''m not a hundred percent sure, she was smiling and... yeah, probably it''s fine."


    "And if we can get her back, keep her stable, then maybe we can have Rutlen grow her a new body and put her in. And we''d still be linked, but that''s fine."


    "Man, I should probably be trying to... I don''t know, be your less impulsive side and talk you out of this? But I''m too excited about the idea. You should do the flavorless fate thread first, just to see if it connects to anything. As a test."


    I dropped back into my body and spun up a plain fate thread, feeling my mana plummet. I was looking for Connie''s ghost, a mix of her body and soul. I tried to picture her as I''d seen her after she died, and for good measure imagined the ghost I''d talked to in the Necropolis. The thread formed, and... seemed to just wave back and forth feebly in the air for a minute or two before unraveling. Shit. It couldn''t find her. Had she moved on? Gone to the plane of the dead, on the other side of the pit in the Necropolis?


    It was possible even fate threads couldn''t reach there. Hell, it was possible they couldn''t target dead people at all; I''d been told that when someone died the fate threads attached to them fell away and looked for a new target, but was that because they had to or because dead people suck at getting anything done? It could also be that the way they attached to a living person was different from how they attached to a spirit, and so death would disrupt it. There were a hundred more possibilities I wasn''t educated enough to even think of, probably.


    Regardless, I wasn''t about to give up that quickly. If she hadn''t moved on, where would she be? Still in that basement in Zistarne, maybe? But no, I''d seen her since then. Probably. If that was true, it implied she was with me somehow - and that would make some sense, since I was pretty sure we''d had the same domain in Ematse and Erima. I''d had a dream about her before I knew she existed, shared a nightmare about the damage done to her by the temporal mana. And it might have been how I remembered what happened when she rewound time.


    So her mind had been in the place that later became my memory palace, and her soul had been in the same place as mine. When she died they should have been pulled out and combined into a ghost before descending into the plane of the dead, but maybe it got stuck? If not in my mind palace, which had for sure been empty when I got there, then maybe in its equivalent in Erima. I''d never really tried remotely tapping into my soul other than confirming I couldn''t do it the same way I did to my mind, but that was before I''d added the new thread.


    I should be able to now. And even if Connie''s ghost wasn''t hanging out there, it was a chance to see another plane. Honestly I should have done it sooner.


    I opened my eyes to a world of swirling colors, the walls of my spherical domain visible all around me. It was like watching an out of focus movie, fragments of things from my life projected onto the walls in shapes of fire. Where the mind was concrete, this spirit was abstract and focused on emotions. It was... beautiful. I turned, feeling like I was floating, and scanned the entire domain - it didn''t take long, since I was just hovering in the center and the rest was empty. I couldn''t say for sure if the border was twenty feet away or a mile, but I felt sure I would see anything else in there with me.


    Just as luminous as the rest of the world around me, I saw my own hands glowing with this amazing light. Like the rest of Erima, it was an impression of the physical world rather than trying to match it perfectly - but for that it was no less accurate. My fingers were longer, wrists more delicate, and that inner glow shone through translucent skin of orange and gold. It was so familiar, and as I looked closer I realized why. The glow had distracted me so much, but I could imagine what that skin would look like if the light were snuffed out. The strange proportions, the crystalline material, the little facets like marks of a chisel.


    My soul was carved from amber.

 CHAPTER 090: The Plural of Calliope

    All four inhabitants of my memory palace were gathered in the cramped space of the vardo wagon, whose real-world counterpart was presumably still being used by Katrin and Errod somewhere. I glanced out the window, not for the first time, and wondered if the dream scenery out there was anything like the landscape they were traveling through. Were they just relaxing somewhere? Having a leisurely breakfast and planning their day? Something deep inside me ached for a moment, but I dismissed it. That was silly. I was learning crazy new magic shit, and getting super badass training with Hugh, and I''d maybe just found Connie''s... something. This was great. This was exciting. It was everything I''d ever wanted, since I was a dumb kid playing with stolen knives in the alley and imagining that I was the protagonist of an adventure story. This was me living the dream.


    Though at the moment, this was me leaning against the door so nobody slipped out. My duplicate was sitting on the fold-down bunk, the quiet Calliope-spirit was laying on the lower bunk, and the anime-looking one was on the floor, playing with the chalk Elba had left behind. I''d just finished giving my duplicate the news about what I''d seen in Erima the night before, and was waiting on her to chime in. I''d deliberately waited until it was almost time for us to synch up, since I was hoping for as different a perspective as she could give. I''d already found that we simply didn''t diverge that much, though. At best I was getting some new ideas at the very start of brainstorming things, but then we''d quickly end up back on the same page.


    "I don''t know," my duplicate finally said, "she seems too happy to be Connie''s soul. I mean, don''t get me wrong - Connie still kept fairly positive most of the time, but I kinda got the feeling that underneath it all she was more... stabby. Like when she would flip out and then rewind time? This one hugs people a bunch."


    I''d thought of that one already. "Sure, but think where she is. We''re in a safe place, surrounded by our favorite people - ourselves - and she can just do whatever she wants and poke around in nice memories. If she''s mostly emotion-based, I think it''s reasonable she''d be happy here."


    "I guess. So you think the other one is her mind?"


    I looked at it, just laying there silently. "I think. I know it doesn''t seem like much, but remember that she didn''t have Thought magic or anything. There''s probably something in there, but without its connection to her body and soul it just... does this. Which is why I think I should bind her soul and mind together - as a ghost she''ll probably be able to talk to us again."


    There was an obvious problem with that theory, which my duplicate immediately brought up. "But we did already talk to her, which would imply she was a ghost, which would mean... like, what happened? She got torn back into two parts?"


    "For all I know she wasn''t even really dead yet. That whole conversation happened in the instant the temporal mana exploded. Or, I don''t know, she was briefly a ghost and then all that excess mana fucked her up?"


    The duplicate continued to voice my concerns for me. "And then we thought we saw her again, when your magic went all wonky during your session with Talia. Although... we were in the mind palace, and so were these guys. So maybe that was them fusing back together for a minute? Could that have been what caused everything to glitch out? Is it a bad idea to deliberately make that happen again? That one thread still doesn''t look right."


    I shrugged, not having anything to add. We were working with very little information, and there were a lot of questions. "I want to know why they arrived with all those other guys. Were all the others oydirme, and meanwhile her soul and mind had been hovering on the edges of my domain with them, and... I don''t know. I''m just making up stories over here."


    "They were all wearing the football jerseys," the duplicate said thoughtfully. The soul had almost immediately stripped naked, and the mind - if that''s what it was - had left the jersey on for a while but had eventually shown up wearing the same outfit I had first appeared in after unlocking my memory palace. Some jeans and a gym shirt that looked a decade or two out of date and said, where the name of the high school would have been, "SCHOOoL SCHOOL scHIGH SCHOOL". But yeah, they''d been wearing the jerseys like the others.


    "That was probably some stray thought of mine though. It might not mean anything. Actually, yeah, it for sure doesn''t because wasn''t Errod wearing one too?"


    The other me started to nod, and then froze. "Oh. Shit."


    Oh. Oh shit indeed. Was this Errod''s fault somehow? Katrin hadn''t been wearing a jersey. Human Callie hadn''t. And then Errod had refused to try going into my memory palace again after that. "What would that mean?" I asked, not really expecting an answer. "And how the fuck would it also involve Connie''s ghost? Or ghost-parts. Whatever."


    "They tried to take the mind and soul with them when they left. But one of them also grabbed human Callie and she stabbed him really bad so they just bailed. Where do you think they were taking them? Where did they go?"


    "I... the glove, maybe? It for sure moves on its own."


    "You think the glove is filled with spirits or ghosts or little guys or something?"


    It was as good a guess as I could come up with under the circumstances. It just didn''t help us much. It made me want to tether Errod and pull him in to talk, but it was also arguably a very good reminder of why that sort of thing could be dangerous. Would it pull in a whole bunch of people in football jerseys? And, like human Calliope, would they learn to get in without being expressly invited? I could tag Katrin instead, and make her ask. That was tempting. I wasn''t too scared of having Katrin be able to get into my brain, because I was pretty sure I could trust her to ask first. We could set up an entry lounge, with a... doorbell or something. But a bunch of mysterious guys that might live in a glove? Nope.


    "I just realized I don''t know how to tether these two. I think at least one of them would need to be there with my body. Right? Because - "


    "- Because it''s originating there and it doesn''t feel like we can direct both ends to somewhere distant, yeah. But maybe we can? We just haven''t tried. Actually, we haven''t tried doing anything where our body wasn''t the anchor point yet, even in person. It doesn''t feel like a restriction instinctively, but it might be."


    "Or if it''s not it might be something we fuck up. Yeah. Okay, so we need to be responsible and test. Shit."


    But that just brought me back to the original problem, which was that I didn''t have anything safe to test on. Half the shit I wanted to test also involved tethering stuff to myself or things I cared about, and with the threads being permanent at this point that wasn''t really a great move either. Although... there was one thing I could try and do. It was a terrible idea, deeply irresponsible. It was reckless and stupid and very, very tempting. And it would be scientifically interesting, because it would answer some questions about how threads behaved under some very strange circumstances. If it didn''t kill me.


    I felt pretty sure it wouldn''t kill me.


    I explained it to my duplicate, who also thought it was a terrible idea and wanted to see what would happen. "Oh fuck this could be so cool, or so bad. Could we roll dice about it? With all these fate threads, wouldn''t they make sure you don''t kill yourself in a stupid way?"


    It was a thought I''d had a few times. The trick was, I didn''t know for sure it worked like that and I also would need to seriously mean it; it had to be a situation where I was one hundred percent dedicated to following through regardless of what the dice or coin flip or whatever had to say. And then when I got the answer, I still wouldn''t know if it meant anything. If I flipped a coin and got tails, how would I tell the difference between it just landing the way it did due to regular chance and it being influenced? Even if fate could do that, and it seemed like it should be able to, what if fate was too weak a force to work all at once like that? What if it relied on longer term but smaller adjustments? Or what if fate was fine with me fucking up?


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    That was a real concern. Sure, it probably didn''t want me dead. But could there be a world where it wanted me to be crazy or injured or something? Absolutely. That could drive me to do stuff I otherwise wouldn''t, seek out different powers and people. I really needed to figure out what all the threads were for. Wait. "Hey, am I being dumb or was there nothing in Harmid''s office about where the fate threads went? Even if he didn''t finish, I should have found something."


    "You think he''s still with wild Callie? You could ping her. I should be able to ping her, not sure why you get all the body stuff - it''s the same link now."


    "Okay let''s synch up first. I want to be at my best, and also you''re starting to get bitter about not being me and that''s annoying."


    "Yeah, it gets worse over time because I keep thinking ''oh, I''ll just use divination to... whatever...'' and then I can''t. Each time it''s fine, but it really grates after a while."


    I rolled my eyes. "I know, I remember all this shit too."


    "No. I thought that too, but it''s different in the moment. It''s fine, we''re probably going to slowly get used to it."


    We did the merge, and the memory test, and all that shit. Then I had no excuses left to not ping human Calliope, so I did that and waited. Nothing. I popped out, ate breakfast with Hugh, headed past Barick the trouble-detector, and then let Hugh dramatically remove the Dumine lock as if it meant anything. Best to keep up appearances. I immediately popped back into my memory palace but there was still no response, so I got some of the sparring out of the way to make Hugh happy.


    "You have hit a plateau, yes?" he said when we took a break.


    "Yeah. I think so. Partly I''m trying to figure out some ways to use my memory palace," I said, a minor lie but I had to explain all my time there and didn''t want to discuss the spirit clone things, "since my win against you there isn''t exactly something I can reproduce in a real fight."


    He nodded. "The divination in particular has potential. I have learned to notice when you are making your body move while in that other place," he said, "and I have met those who can have their body do a task while their mind places its attention elsewhere. I would like to use this last week before the alignment to train with your body unattended, or with as little attention as you need to give it."


    "Wait. You want to fight my body when it''s on auto-pilot?"


    "An interesting term. Yes! I would go easy on you, yes? It would be no replacement for your undivided attention, but in an emergency - if you are under mental attack, for example."


    "Hell yeah, that sounds amazing. I had trouble even getting it to walk at first, but the day I got here at one point I had it running and it even avoided some stuff without me thinking about it. I haven''t been directly practicing it lately, but it''s probably gotten a little better just from me using my abilities so much."


    "There are other opportunities to use your divination in combat. Have you considered any?"


    It felt like a test - he was almost certainly thinking of something specific. "I had the thought that I could like... make things I wanted to pay attention to be in color while everything else was black and white, or add little visual indicators to things, but I had to think about it too hard. I used it to get a look under Ulren''s robes so I could see how the device he was using looked, but copies of magic items don''t work in my memory palace so I can''t figure out what something does that way. Um. You remember kicking my ass when I tried to mess with my perception of time, I haven''t come up with a solution for that. It''s still potentially useful I guess - especially if you can get my body fighting on its own."


    "It is related to time, but it is something you cannot yet do. You have Probability and Temporal affinities?"


    "Yeah."


    "Then what is stopping you from learning how to see what your opponent is about to do?"


    A lack of free potential, and a laundry list of other things I''d been working on. But... yeah, that should probably be extremely high on the list. Still, even without that I was starting to feel really good about myself. I''d held my own okay against those new recruits that attacked us on the road when I first arrived, but since then things had been... mixed. I mostly let other people do the fighting in the Necropolis and Zistarne, and while I got some good shots in during the fight on the way to Sentortzi it ended with me being squished by the Behemoth. But now?


    Okay, the Behemoth would still squish me like an overripe banana.


    But someone else, someone who wasn''t the size of a minivan and didn''t regenerate instantly? Yeah, I felt good about my odds. Part of it was that Hugh''s relentless training had gotten me in better shape than I''d ever thought I could be in - normally someone training that hard would just injure themselves, but with frequent rests in a top-tier healing device I''d been able to seriously bulk up. I didn''t look like a bodybuilder or anything, but the muscles were... pretty noticeable. I''d lost my magic throwing knives with the force push effect when I was captured, but at this point I could sink a totally mundane knife pretty deep in the target. I was still going to get more of those magic ones, though.


    My aim had improved, but if someone got in close they were in extra trouble. Maybe I couldn''t beat Hugh in a fair fight, but I was consistently getting hits in now which was pretty damn impressive. That man had built up his powers specifically for combat, and had boatloads of experience. There was always going to be someone better, stronger, whatever - but I was going to be that someone for a whole lot of people now. It almost made the last eight weeks of torture worth it.


    Because of that confidence, it was strange to watch Hugh come at me like he was fighting a toddler. He was doing mostly open-hand slaps and shoves, and I was struggling to not pay too much attention; if I watched closely I''d reflexively give my body commands, so I had to sort of hover nearby where the fight was in the corner of my eye. Not watching via divination at all was off the table - when I''d tried that, my body did nothing more than flinching. Hugh was moving fast enough to register as an attack but no faster, because he wanted to make sure that any attempt to dodge would be rewarded. By the end of the day I could tell he''d sped up a little which was a good sign, but it was too early to say what the actual rate of improvement would be.


    The last thing we tried, though I didn''t tell him what exactly I was doing, was to have my duplicate watch the fight while I left the area entirely. I''d found that as long as I started the divination I could leave it up while I went to other parts of my memory palace, so I laid in bed and read a book until I ran out of mana. The experiment was a success - even though my duplicate couldn''t directly control the body, having her watch closely meant it reacted way faster and even took a few counter-swings. This wasn''t some huge breakthrough, since I couldn''t think of a situation where I couldn''t just control the body directly while my duplicate did whatever else I needed, but it was still good to know.


    Klinec and his head lackey showed up at the end of the day, just to ruin my otherwise good mood. Worse, he seemed to be in a good mood as well which made me suspicious. I was tempted to check him for iron again, but I was running on empty and I liked to have at least a smidgen of mana on hand for an emergency on principle. He mused on the fact that there were only five full days left before the alignment, offered me a private meeting again, and then left with a smirk that was... worrying. Even Hugh looked like he''d just caught a whiff of a fresh turd. I was on edge on the walk back to the room, but nothing happened. Of course not, they needed me. For now.


    I''d thought a lot about ways they could break our deal, and none of them felt likely. Still, I wasn''t going to relax until I was free.


    Back in our rooms, I ate dinner and then ducked into my memory palace - I''d regained a little more mana, but even if I hadn''t it cost me almost nothing to be in the memory palace so long as I didn''t use divination or anything. I was just heading for the book pile when the wild mage popped in.


    "I felt you seeking me earlier, but I was busy."


    Well, good thing it hadn''t been an emergency I guess. "Yeah, uh. Are you still with Harmid?"


    "Not at the moment, but I may visit him in Sentortzi after I take care of some business. He believes it is safe for him there again, and for some reason wishes to return to his job."


    "Damn. Okay. Well, I''ve kinda made some progress but I don''t think you''re going to like it. I can make fate stuff now, including reproducing the cool parts of the spell that''s connecting us, but I still don''t know how to break them. I''m working on it. Actually... there''s a thing I could try. I could try to replace the connection we already have with my new one, and that one I can just... shut off. It would still be there, but I can make it so nothing is coming across. I''d still try to figure out how to cut it entirely, but in the meantime you''d know we''re actually separate."


    She stared at me for what felt like fifteen minutes before nodding curtly.


    "I can''t do it right now, it''s hugely expensive. But I''ll give it a shot tomorrow or something. If it works... well, I guess it would make the most sense to not turn everything off right away - not until we''ve talked about it, anyway. Just because... well, if we need to arrange a way to get in touch."


    She was fidgeting like she was nervous, but her brow was creased and she was frowning. I couldn''t decide if she was angry or constipated. "You offered me something, before. You said... you would teach me about the life you left behind."


    "Oh! Yeah. Yeah, that''s fine. I know you''ve seen bits and pieces but... what do you want to know. Like, my - your - social security number and stuff?"


    Still scowling and fidgeting, looking anywhere but in my eyes, she muttered something unintelligible. I asked her to repeat herself, and she sighed. "I... need to know how to... shop for food, and use a bank, and... how to use a phone?" It was like admitting that had done physical harm to her.


    Part of me wanted to laugh at her; she''d been so eager to kill me, and now she wanted me to teach her basic life skills? But then a little fragment of a memory floated through my mind, Bill helping me make a grocery list. "Yeah," I said, "I can do that. Let''s do a few hours every night. Come on, we''ll start with some of the basic shit and work our way up to how to bullshit your way through an interview..."