Despite them not being very common, Good Charl did have an area set aside for airships. We'd needed to land just outside of the city and chat with the guards about it first to figure out the rules - I didn't want to just fly over the place and have them lob whatever the fantasy equivalent of anti-aircraft missiles was at me - but it turned out to be pretty straightforward. The area was enclosed by a smaller wall and patrolled by guards, and I'd unhooked my fate thread from the controls so it couldn't be flown away, but even so I didn't want to leave the ship unattended. Thankfully Grunkle was a wanted criminal and was more than willing to stay on the ship, though of course I wasn't going to fully trust him either.

"Okay listen. By now you know I can weave fate threads. I've attached one to you, one to the body you're in, and one to our power source. If you try anything, you'll die. Soon if I'm alive to hunt you down, but even if I'm dead the fate threads will take care of it eventually. No, wipe that hurt look off your face. We both know you're a con artist that steals people's bodies, plus we barely know each other. But... if you stay put and feed Shitheel so that he can eat anyone that tries to come on board other than us, we'll get you all set up with good drugs and a comfortable bed."

It was absolute bullshit, of course. I didn't want to tether myself to this parasite thing or the Behemoth, and even if I did I couldn't curse them. Well, not yet. Someday, maybe. I figured he just needed a little nudge to keep him honest, and soon we'd figure out what the fuck to do with him. Part of me kinda wanted him to hand him over and collect the bounty, but I wasn't sure what to do about Grunkle himself; even if he was a grifter, was that enough of a reason to kill him? If not, was I obligated to get him a new body? If I didn't do either, and just tossed him aside somewhere, was I responsible if he took over someone else?

They were complicated questions, and right now I was on vacation.

Errod and I spent some time getting supplies for the ship, which included furniture. I'd planned on keeping things simple, but almost immediately upon starting to take measurements I realized that I really needed to have everything custom-made. Part of me insisted it was a waste of money, but the rest of me shouted that voice down - I was planning on keeping this airship forever and having it be my home, so I might as well make it comfortable. Also I was rich, and the rooms had odd dimensions, and some of the furniture would need to be made like the stuff on boats so everything didn't spill out if it got windy out there.

Errod actually agreed, and we had a really nice time going to every woodworker and examining their showcases. There were five bedrooms on board, with the one at the front being huge - that was mine - and then two on each side. Under that level, there was a cargo area and a bathroom where the toilet literally just opened to the air below.

Thinking about that led us down a rabbit hole of all the gadgets we could install - like a toilet that we could use when parked somewhere because it transmuted our waste into something less disgusting. For that, though, we needed a consult with an artificer. While shopping around for one we came across the same Enhancer that had done work on me the last time we were here, to permanently remove my allergies and do some other tweaks.

I really wanted my face back, but... hmm. I pinged human Callie, and after a few minutes she showed up. "What do you want?"

"Gosh," I said in my best overly-sweet sarcastic tone, "I'm so glad you got out of Brinkmar alive! The last time I talked to you you were in a really bad spot, so this is a big relief!"

"I would have known if you had died," she said, looking bored.

"Awesome, and if I'd been taken over by some fucked up hive mind construct, do you think you would have been able to stop it from controlling you through our connection?"

Her eyes went wide. "I... that... of course. I have practiced for years to be the master of that binding." She didn't look convinced.

"Yeah, but I've been practicing too. And also, at this point I can replace it with one of my own - I was going to do that, remember? So I could turn it off and you could be free of me? But then you wanted life skills lessons for Earth. You're welcome for that, too."

"You owed me, for stealing my life. And you clearly have not learned, since you still wear the face of another."

"At some point I'm going to have the argument with you about whether or not it's fair to hold me responsible for shit that happened when I was practically a toddler and that I didn't even understand anything about. But for now... the face issue is actually why I contacted you. Here, step into the divination room. Okay see, this is an Enhancer. I'm here to get rid of this face, I only borrowed it to escape and rescue my friends. But they're rescued now, and I want to get back to... well, that's the thing. I want to get my old face back, but that's actually your face.

"So my options are to pick a new face that doesn't belong to anyone else, which is going to feel strange, or go back to the one I'm comfortable with and piss you off. It's like the name thing. Everyone knows me as Calliope - hell, I know me as Calliope - and even though it should be easy to just pick a new name I don't want to. I went by Connie when there was two of me, and that was fine because... I'd kinda accepted the fact that I was dying, and 'Connie' was what I called my imaginary sister - you, sort of, though I didn't really understand - and I had the other me right there.

"And before that, I lied about my name plenty of times to keep out of trouble. But that was always short term stuff, it was identities that I was already planning on dropping. Calliope is what I've been my whole life."

There was that little flash of anger from her that I was expecting, but it faded quickly. She leaned against the wall, looking somehow petulant. "So go find your true name, then."

"I did, but it's awful. I'm not using it. Also, I guess for the face I could go back and see what my parents looked like and what I looked like before I was sent to Earth - I kinda briefly pulled that ritual up but I was busy doing something else at the same time so I didn't really look at myself. But... I don't give a shit about that either. Also, I don't want to look at my parents and think about what might have happened and how mad I am that they did that to me and whether or not I would have just grown up to kidnap children.

"What I'm saying is... this is all big shit, and I'll have to figure it out, but for now can I please just put my face back the way it was? Just temporarily, and then I'll start figuring out what I want to look like long term. In fact, come here to Good Charl. I said it before, we can make a day of it. You get those scars removed, help me pick a new face, and then if I haven't figured out how to get into Nusos by myself we can hire someone and we'll get you back to Earth."

Her nose wrinkled. "What is that smell?"

"Bleach. I don't know why. I'll deal with it in a bit, my memories are accessible now but they're hard to sort through."

She sighed. "The scars are not from your parents. I gave them to myself, so that my face would be my own. So that we would be different, so that my mother would know I was not you if I found my way back to her. I did not want her to..."

"To treat you like she treated me?"

She straightened up abruptly, and walked away without looking at me - back through the door into my memory palace. As she left, she muttered over her shoulder. "You may borrow the face, for now. I will meet you in Good Charl in two or three weeks."

I hadn't been sure I wanted to stay that long, but whatever. I wasn't going to piss on the olive branch she was offering. Besides, the custom furniture would probably take a month anyway. I went into the Enhancer's place, confirmed she could do a walk-in, and then on impulse made a few very minor cosmetic tweaks to my mind and ghost before telling her to get me into alignment.

She told me whoever had altered my face had done a hack job of it - if only she knew - but then got to work and was done fairly quickly. "There you are. This settled in well, I could feel it. Normally there's a little drift that corrects itself over time, but I think I really nailed it here. You're familiar, now... you were in with your twin a few months back, right?"

I didn't feel like making conversation about that whole mess, but I did end up chatting for a second about various modifications people commonly had done. Night vision sounded cool, though apparently it was hard to do in a way that wouldn't mess up how you saw colors and anyway with my divination I didn't really need it. But it got stranger from there...

"Yeah, practically anything you would currently think of as inedible," the Enhancer said. "However... well, not to be crude, but some stuff makes a real mess when it comes out the other end."

"I can understand the benefit of being able to eat almost anything if you're going to be out in the wilderness, but I'm guessing that's not what you're talking about."

"Oh, no. Well that too, sure, but I'm saying... metals, rocks, all kinds of toxic sludge. Of course, being able to safely digest it isn't the same as being able to really live off of it, so in a lot of cases it's more of a party trick. To do it right, you'd want to be able to transmute other materials into something you can digest - but that's beyond what base Enhancement can pull off. Maybe if you bonded with an avatar spirit, but those always have both physical and mental effects."

She sold me a self-published book on what all could be realistically done, and I paid for it happily before remembering I could have just copied it with divination. It was worth it just for the illustrations, but most of it was pretty ridiculous and would only last for a month or so before you'd need to get it professionally reverted - otherwise you'd end up with it trying to revert itself and the halfway stages would be potentially very unpleasant. Grunkle could, maybe, learn to do that stuff since the Behemoth had to have Enhancement... and presumably Fabrication... and possibly something else.

I moved on, my newly adjusted body feeling like a new outfit that still needed to go through the wash once to be actually comfortable, and managed to find an artificer who was willing to take a look at the airship. He looked like he was at least in his nineties, and given the availability of magical health care in this world that probably meant he was well over a hundred - while not everyone could get the kind of treatment that significantly extended your lifespan, based on what I was paying this dude he absolutely could arrange whatever he needed. He introduced himself as Brin Telemet Ranket, and set expectations for our relationship in a very stiff and formal way.

That lasted until he got to the airship.

"This is utterly amazing," he said, visibly shaking with excitement. "This... the whole ship is an artifact." He leaned in close to the wall yet again, squinting and running a finger along the wood grain. "It's possible this was - or is - a large and powerful spirit, bound into physical form... or, no, melded with a physical form. Willingly? Unwillingly? I'll need to bring more instruments. It most likely can repair itself, at least from minor damage, though it may have certain weaknesses. I may need to find a copy of... bah, what was the name? There's a book on the spirit barges of the twelve kingdoms, I've never read it but I've seen it referenced. I presume this isn't one of them, given the lack of a gigantic ethereal creature hovering over it, but it may be related."

Stolen novel; please report.

I ducked into Grunkle's room. "Yo. Is this thing a 'spirit barge' from the twelve kingdoms, and should it have a big spirit creature thing attached to it?"

He yawned, looking up from the book he was reading - it was basically a trashy romance novel. "Yeah. At some point it would have had its own Usmun'kiti magically harnessed to it, so you could pilot the ship between planes. Well, a few of the planes. Not sure if there are any left though, or how you would harness one."

"Anything else you want to tell me about it, so I don't waste this guy's time? He's supposed to be helping us hook up the healing platform and stuff."

Grunkle sneered. "You could tell him it's stolen."

"Salvaged. And you said it was trash, and if I hadn't gotten it working you would have died."

He looked back down at his book, but he clearly wasn't actually reading. "Bullshit, I wouldn't have called it trash. I'm sure I said it was busted, but this boat was a big draw for visitors. And I only would have died because you dumped a bunch of homicidal assholes in my lap."

Part of me really did feel sorry for him - but only part of me. "Fine. I can't say I think it was a bad call in the moment, given the situation we were in and what we knew, but I'm sorry that it led to your place getting trashed. Mainly for those people you brainwashed that got killed though, since they're the ones that clearly got the worst out of this. But I won't apologize for claiming this ship, and I don't count it as stolen. That's a fate thing."

"Just because you're fated to do something doesn't mean it's right to do it. Imagine there's some poor kid who snuck out of the city and got lost in the wilderness, and you came across him starving to death and relying on one last loaf of bread to survive. You look at him and see, wait, you're fated to eat that whole piece of bread. That's your bread, fate said so."

"Oh, fuck off," I said, but he wasn't wrong. "The starving kid thing is a bit over the top, but... okay, sure, I'll concede that 'this was fated for me' is a shitty argument for ownership."

Grunkle looked up, suddenly nervous. "Well. I mean. It's not a terrible argument." The expression passed quickly, and he was back to being smug. "But in this case, I have the better claim because it's been mine since just before the last Grand Alignment."

"Okay. I'll keep it a little longer than that, then, and you'll have to stop complaining. Seriously though, I gotta get back to the guy. Anything I should know? This is going to help deck this place out, including your room. Unless you like sleeping on the floor?"

He turned back a page, clearly trying to find where he'd left off actually reading rather than pretending to. "Nah. Since it never worked for me, I don't know a lot about it. People came and studied it sometimes, and probably some of them published, but I was only interested if it was going to get it flying. Oh, there is one thing you should know - it's past lunchtime and you promised you'd get me some steak."

I ignored him and went back to the Brin Telemet Ranket, who was gently tapping the walls at seemingly random spots. "I'll have to return later," he said, "and in the end it may take... oh, a week probably. But I believe there are mana veins in the walls, an old method that's not used with Imperial magic. It's not incompatible, however, so long as you're just looking to channel mana from one place to another. I'd have to make sure to do a survey so I don't put too great a load in the wrong spot, but in theory I should be able to link other magic devices to the same power source. That is what you wanted, correct?"

"Yeah. It seems to do some basic environmental stuff already, but I have that healing thing I showed you, and then I was thinking about some luxury items. A nice kitchen somewhere - I guess in the rear room on the cargo level by the toilet - and then waste recycling and something that can make water and food. I know a lot of that is probably easier as standalone things, but... well, call me eccentric."

Really I just wanted to take full advantage of the mana battery by hooking everything to it, but I was delaying talking about that. He had some paperwork swearing that he was bound by a pretty boilerplate client confidentiality oath, but for something as important as an overcharged mana battery from Brinkmar I wasn't going to be satisfied with that. I was already working on a more thorough contract now that he was hooked, and I figured I could swing him past the oath-maker's shop as soon as he was done with his preliminary assessment. The sooner the better, since even if he didn't know exactly how we were powering it he'd have to know it was something potent.

Errod split off to get cleaning supplies, leaving me to make small talk with the old artificer - he'd shifted back to a more formal attitude, but there was still a sort of spring to his step. We found the oath-maker's shop right where he'd said it would be, but I was surprised to realize it was attached to a larger building that advertised itself as Mama Carnage's Ethical Mercenaries. A large archway led into a courtyard, where the actual entrance presumably was. The oath-maker's office had its own entrance, though, so we went in to take care of business.

My mind had had plenty of time to draft up an airtight agreement, and while the oath-maker did suggest a few tweaks she seemed impressed with it overall which made me involuntarily preen a little. Who would have thought I'd be so eager to get praise for writing up a legal agreement? Brin Telemet Ranket didn't seem fazed by how thorough it was, and agreed to it happily - at which point I asked for some privacy, since the oaths were already sworn in a heavily warded room.

"Okay listen, we can talk more later but here's the main thing I wanted to tell you under oath. The ship is currently being powered by a mana battery we found in Brinkmar, so there's... no practical limit to how many devices we can power."

He raised an eyebrow, but didn't seem as shocked as I would have thought. "I wondered. Airships are quite greedy, especially ones with as many small features as yours. And I'd heard rumors of some chaos in Brinkmar during this past alignment... hmm. Well, I should warn you - the mana batteries from Brinkmar have become quite rare over the years since they became unavailable, but it is a badly kept secret that this is because as so they show signs of degrading everyone who owns one attempts to use it to make more.

"There are well known and immutable laws about what grade of crystal you can form based on the density of the mana around you, and that means using one mana crystal to make another will always result in a lower grade. This would normally be more than acceptable - the mana batteries from Brinkmar are easily grade ten which should create grade seven crystals. However, they have invisible runes carved into them that prevent them from decaying, and these also limit the density of the output which means you can only produce grade five crystals - far less valuable, though still worthwhile.

"Sadly, sooner or later every battery seems to encounter someone that is too greedy to be satisfied. They attempt to modify them, or somehow bypass this limitation, and... well. Grade ten mana crystals shouldn't be able to exist, they aren't stable on this plane. Much like any mana crystals on Boluq, once their structure is damaged they immediately sublimate. It's invariably catastrophic."

Well that didn't sound good. "So you're saying that if this thing breaks, it... what, floods the area with super-dense mana? But it's neutral, right? It doesn't have any kind of intent or concept imprinted on it, so it won't cause anything to happen."

"No, but it will almost immediately start to re-crystalize at a lower grade and will cover quite a large area in crystals - including the inside of people's lungs, critical parts of magic items, and so forth. Of course, because of this, some were surely also destroyed as acts of war or sabotage. However it happens, the governments in charge always swear that they still have it to maintain power, or they say it was broken by mistake - but of course there would be no reason for it to be in any situation where it could break. They're quite durable, you need to be trying."

I found myself picturing the blast of energy from the Diamond Palace that almost killed Jeort, and the fight that followed. Had the battery been damaged? Then, or before that during some other combat? It was creating crystals everywhere, and had almost killed Katrin. But... the artificer had made it sound like the whole mana battery would have just gone off at once, and that hadn't happened. Was it possible to be just a little bit broken? If so, would it eventually degrade and give out? That would be bad, if we were using it to fly. Hmm.

Once our business was concluded, I set half of me to making a divination copy of the mana battery and peeling layers away - that one wasn't made of actual mana, so it was safe to take a better look at. While I started on that project, I wandered over through the archway into a beautiful courtyard, filled with giant blue ceramic pots. Each had some strange plant growing inside, and one appeared to be rapidly entombing a struggling bird in vines. Huh. I headed to the main entrance of Mama Carnage's Ethical Mercenaries, but stopped as I reached the doorway.

I wasn't allowed in there.

Ditching the mana battery for the moment, I used divination to check - sure enough, there were two iron knives over the door. I could force it, but it would give me a splitting headache for a whole day and there wasn't really anything I needed from Mama Carnage. I'd thought maybe Errod could arrange a meeting with her to ask about what books to read for inspiration on knightly vows, and... if I was being honest... I had imagined I might pick up a few odd jobs even though I didn't need the money.

It was silly, but I wanted to be an adventurer. Work for a guild, doing quests. Maybe there was some village that was being attacked by monsters, or something. But it was just an idle fantasy and I didn't want a headache - nor did it seem like my prospects for employment were very good if they were blocking Sahrger from entering. I turned, and was halfway across the courtyard when all the color drained out of everything and three people were suddenly outlined in yellow.

Ah, fuck.

They were moving to cut off my exit, and while they didn't look outwardly hostile they all had this confident energy that said they could become hostile very easily. If they were employees of Mama Carnage they had to follow at least some rules, but that wasn't super reassuring. First of all, it was possible that all of those only applied to being on a job. Second, even if not they were probably subjective to some extent, and it was possible these guys could still be trying to collect a bounty on me or something. But the third thing was that it was very possible they'd noticed I couldn't pass the door... and it would make a lot of sense for there to not be any rules against them thrashing a Sahrger, given our reputation.

"Oh is this how it works here? People come and stand in your way when you try to leave? I thought Mama Carnage had a better reputation than that. Let's not do this shit - I haven't hurt anyone, and I'm just trying to leave."

Look at me, being so mature instead of trying to kick their asses. I recognized a few from the meeting where we'd picked people for the Duminere job, which had been at some sort of rental hall a few blocks away. Unfortunately, Aestrid had sort of shut that meeting down before I'd gotten any useful information on what they could do. There were the three original people, but two more had wandered over from somewhere and looked like they were probably going to join up to make it five on one. Not good odds.

"Sorry lady," a man with a single oversized metal gauntlet said, "I think we've caught ourself a Sahrger. So I think, probably, you have hurt people."

My mind was clearly working overtime, as all their weapons were highlighted in red along with a few possible weak spots. "What I meant to say is that I haven't hurt any of you. Yet. I don't know that I can take on all five of you, but if you insist on fighting I can guarantee I'll kill two of you. As in, I will literally murder you so that anyone dumb enough to love you will have to take time off work to escort your corpse to the Necropolis. They'll cry the whole way there and back, and they'll only be comforted by the idea that you're safe in the afterlife. But here's the thing. You won't be."

I stepped my ghost out, and with a spectral wail said, "Because I'm going to tear your soul to little pieces after I kill you!" One of them turned and ran. Nice. "Four on one now. Those odds are getting worse, you sure you don't want to just let me leave?"

I heard the door open at the other end of the courtyard, but I didn't want to turn around while these fuckers were threatening me. I felt a strange feeling from my mind - I wasn't synched up since it was operating at a different rate of time, but it was still strange to get such a mixed sense. Anticipation? Worry? Excitement? Joy? There was clearly something potentially good happening, but I wasn't totally sure. Why wasn't I telling me about it? Did I want it to be a fucking surprise or something?

"Oh, you've fucking got that wrong. It's not four on one." I knew that voice. The thugs all smiled, happy to see they had reinforcements, and then the other shoe dropped. "It's two on four. And those are some bad fucking odds for these prime plane shitsuckers. Good to see you, Callie."

A wall of muscles, thinly covered in orange fur, stepped to my side as the others began to look very, very worried. "It's fucking amazing to see you, Sige."

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