Mama Carnage finished reading over the surprisingly thick report in front of her, and it vanished - replaced by her already-lit pipe. She was one of the only people I'd seen smoking in this world, and whatever was in the bowl smelled amazing. I was cold down to my bones thanks to having nearly no mana in my system - part of the treatment for the slag exposure - but I'd had time to rest while we waited for Sige and again while we traveled back to Good Charl via Heregie.

Finding what was going on at the airship hadn't been a pleasant surprise, but I'd just put it off and gone to a hotel instead because I didn't have the energy to deal with it. That was for after this meeting. Well, breakfast first maybe. But then there would be a reckoning for Grunkle and his... friends.

Mama Carnage vanished her pipe. 'Well, let's start at the end. They've dropped the charges for your subversion of the wards, officially because they considered stopping this merchant an emergency but unofficially because they're embarrassed she was selling slag out in the open and - probably - also embarrassed that their wards let you through."

I wasn't sure how much of that had been due to Nusos being particularly easy to exit, the prime plane being easy to enter, the wards being shoddy, or my fate threads ducking around wards. Could be one of them, could be all of them. Part of me wanted to experiment more, but Mama's next comment ruined that idea.

"In the future, you should be aware that that was a damn stupid idea. Failure is, thankfully, the most likely outcome. But if you succeed, you could break the wards entirely so they have to be remade - you'll have to pay for it and it's not cheap, and they'll put you in jail besides - and even worse, if the wards don't fail, when they reassert themselves they can cause some very destructive effects right where you're standing."

I thought about that loud thunderclap, and wondered what else might have happened to me. "Understood. I won't do it again, unless it's life and death for everyone involved."

She nodded. "Good enough. Okay. Next, they're working on tracking down everyone that bought one of those tainted baubles. Good news for us, we had someone we could offer so you'll be getting a referral bonus. As for the merchant, she's negotiating for some leniency, she's trying to get sent to Tarmestal rather than just being executed. I'll tell you, I don't much like killing people over crimes - seems a waste - but I can't be bothered to stick my nose in on this one. If she gets to live and work in the mines, hopefully she'll learn her lesson. If they kill her... well, she must have known what she was risking."

Errod looked annoyed. "Why would she do that? Why take that risk?"

Mama shrugged. "People are stupid, sometimes. There's plenty of city-states around that will let you become a full citizen in just a few years, give you guaranteed food and once a year healing at worst. Hell, some have on site healers and proper schools and everything. There's no need to turn to crime, especially not that sort of thing. She told the authorities she went to that place just to scavenge for parts to sell, and found the slag and... well. Apparently she was saving up for an entry ticket to the Duminere here in Good Charl, had been turned down from the one in Twelve Towers and didn't think she'd have better luck elsewhere.

"Let's see... they found the owner of that building with the slag, he's dead. Natural causes, probably. His son was supposed to take things from there, but I guess the mana battery for the portal was cheap and had to be replaced regularly and he fumbled the finances. Then he had to keep taking slag and lying about it to get more money, but fumbled that too. Basically, he's an idiot. No clue what will happen to him.

"That brings us to the clean-up that's going to be required. Again, we'll be able to offer some of our own for assistance which is good for the company. There's also a standing bounty for reporting any incident with improper storage of slag, you'll get that as a bonus. They're most likely going to wall off that whole part of the woods and put dampeners in to drain the mana, and then... I don't know, maybe during the Grand Alignment someone will have enough juice to send the whole thing away. Not our business, but we'll keep an eye on it."

This was the second ecological disaster I'd been involved in. I hadn't thought much about what had happened with the dangerous artifacts storage room in Storm's Keep, but Hammersmith had made sure I knew it was a serious crime. Technically, someone could still come after me for it - but in that case at least it was all in one spot in whatever remained of Storm's Keep, rather than out in the woods and possibly spread all over by wildlife. Dealing with it would be much easier.

Hammersmith had also offered us a full pardon, but I wasn't sure that could apply to the slag pit I'd made since I honestly wasn't even sure whose territory Storm's Keep was in - not to mention the fact that she probably hadn't made our pardon official before being mind controlled.

Mama Carnage, now for some reason holding what looked like a turtle shell, dismissed Sige but made Errod and I stick around. Once he was gone, she popped some paints into existence and started decorating the shell. "Time for a performance review, since this was your first job. I had Sige write up a report - not his strong suit, bless the boy but he's not a writer - and I also made sure he got some written feedback from Elder Pelton in Pell's Orchard, and Keeper of the Keys Gimmult in Haminshast. He's... well, he's like the person between the guards and the judges.

"The good news is that everyone thought you did a great job. Not a lot of notes, other than 'please don't force your way through people's wards' which we've already discussed. Errod, put yourself out there more. You're a charming boy, and very talented. Speak up, be confident." I saw his left hand smack his leg in a playful way. That, I was pretty sure, was an 'I told you so' from the ghosts.

"Calliope... don't be mad at Sige for snitching, it's for your own good, but he told me you almost went and took justice into your own hands. Sounds like you needed the oath to stop you, but in all fairness that's partly what it's there for. That, and so our customers know what to expect. At any rate, I also know you stood back and didn't interfere when the time came. I don't know if that's because you truly reconsidered or if it's because you didn't trust yourself, but either one is fine for now. I'm more worried about what would have happened if your teammates hadn't agreed to let you go through Nusos."

I hesitated. "I... if Errod had fought me hard enough I wouldn't have gone. But... I think maybe I would have been a bitch about it the whole way back to Haminshast."

Mama nodded. "Very self-aware of you to say so. Yes, that's the impression I had too. You need to work on that a little, on remembering that you're part of a team and that you might need to set aside your way of doing things even if you think it's the right way. But. You're no worse than a lot of other hotheads we have here, and probably that awareness and willingness to honestly answer me about it means you're just fine.

"I have a job that you might be interested in for... sentimental reasons. It's going to sound a bit familiar. Two young girls, sisters, are looking to get some people to do a longshot job. One where they won't talk about all the details, and pay would be dependent on getting a big score. There's something they need to retrieve, and then they need to go through Nusos to get to another location they won't divulge."

Holy shit. What the hell? It sounded like a perfect duplicate of the Duminere job. Did I want to be on the other side of that, being the hired... muscle? Planar expert? I guess Errod would be Aestrid in this scenario, I would be Sige, and Sige - being the more experienced one - would be Cyne.

Mama Carnage vanished the turtle shell and stood up. "Think about it, they're in town now and having tryouts in the same meeting hall we used for you guys. You remember where it is? Good."

We headed out, and rather than get food we angled towards the airship. We had to deal with this sooner rather than later. The tents set up all across the deck were visible from a distance, but thankfully the singing was quiet enough it wasn't disturbing anyone. When I got to the actual ship, someone stepped in my way.

"My apologies. If you are here to consult with the enlightened one, you must first purify your lutore. I can offer the enlightened one's special balm for these purposes, although as the materials are quite rare I must insist on a donation of -"

I twisted his thumb around and shoved him aside. "This is my ship, asshole. Grunkle! The party is over!"

We were forced to go up a docking ramp to the deck because the rear cargo door was shut and I didn't know how to open it from the outside. At the top, mixed in with the tents, I saw several people in prayer and lighting various things on fire in big metal braziers. "Where the fuck is Shitheel? He should be eating all these motherfuckers."

But Shitheel, it turned out, was a traitor. I found him laying in a giant nest of cushions, with flower wreaths around his neck. When he saw me he actually looked nervous, and clawed most of the wreaths off. "No, don't give me that. Too little, too late. You should have been biting all these people. You're useless."

Hiss, said Shitheel.

I went down belowdecks and broke the nose of another bouncer before finding Grunkle. He was on a raised platform, sitting cross-legged and showing off his third eye to everyone. "So you see," he said, "currency is a perversion of the natural order. When you spend your time counting pins, scrambling for coins, you stunt the growth of you... oh. Hey, Calliope. Uh. So, listen. Here's the thing."

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"They have five minutes to be gone, or I'm going to start biting their noses off. Explain to them that that's a very literal threat. And where are the workers? Where are the people that are supposed to be building and installing our shit?"

Grunkle winced. "Well, funny story. First, see, most of that stuff is done in a workshop somewhere and then it's just brought here at the last minute. And most of it isn't done yet. But also... uh..."

Some of the gathered supplicants looked very nervous, and a little embarrassed.

"These are the workers? These are them? Seriously?"

"Well, some of them."

"Okay everyone, you're going to leave. You're going to go make sure you haven't been fired, and then if this is still a job you're supposed to be working on you're going to come back dressed for it, rather than all the flower crowns and bare chests. If you never were supposed to be here, just leave. This asshole is a con artist. He has a Tahikk implant, that's all. He's not wise, and he's certainly not enlightened."

Some of them looked like they wanted to protest, but Grunkle was shooing them out - I caught him winking at a few but... well, I could deal with that later. If it made them leave without causing trouble that was fine for now. Once they were all gone, Grunkle glared at me.

"An implant? Seriously? That's insulting. Those fleshsculptors in Tahikk are impressive from what I've heard, but it's all... parasites and shit."

Errod couldn't let this one slide. "But by definition, aren't you a parasite?"

Grunkle looked deeply hurt - a fascinating expression to see on the Behemoth's body - but could only sputter in reply. Errod and I left before he could get his words together, and Errod acted as a bouncer to make sure nobody was taking anything off the ship that didn't belong to them. That turned out to not really be a problem, thankfully, and actually the bigger issue was all the abandoned items like tents and cushions and a whole clothesline full of clothes. Were they going to come back for it? Could I just throw it all out?"

Grunkle made it up onto the deck, but as he started to speak I cut him off. "No cults. No scams. That's final. I'm not going to argue about it. I know we fucked up your whole thing, but this is how it works now. I'm letting you stay with us, since I don't know what to do with you, but while you're here you're not going to pull this shit." I took a deep breath. "Okay, what was the take?"

He looked confused for a second, but then the false expression dropped away as he decided that wasn't going to work on me. "Ugh, fine. Last I counted it was six thousand, four hundred and eighty pins. But someone ran out for supplies, so really I don't have most of -"

"Nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty pins. Now." I held out my hand.

"I just told you I don't have that much!" he yelled, and I just kept standing there.

"This is... argh, you're the fucking worst, you know that? Fine." He stormed back downstairs, and came up a moment later with seven full hexagonal sets of orange coins as well as an eighth of mixed colors.

I really liked the way that the little triangular coins could clip together into a stick or hexagon. The mass of orange coins meant he either had way more tucked away - which would be extremely impressive - or it meant he'd been getting them changed out to keep his money compact. He could have gone with the red or dark red coins, which were six hundred forty-eight pins or one thousand, two hundred and ninety-six pins respectively, but those were sometimes harder to spend - like trying to break a hundred dollar bill on Earth. Or, I guess for the dark red, a two hundred dollar bill.

"Obviously we have concerns about you just running around since you steal people's bodies and you're currently in one that's a wanted war criminal. But... where are you actually from, originally? Do you have family or something?"

Grunkle scowled. "Based on the fact that I can't fly this thing myself, I do probably have some family left. But that's all the more reason to stay with you jerks until I get this figured out. I was really hoping my family was all dead by now."

I was curious, but I decided to let it slide for now. This wasn't the best time for a productive conversation. Sige came over that night for dinner, and his awe at the airship made me feel very good. "This is fucking incredible. Not sure about the moskar, it keeps growling at me whenever I get to close to you. Is that... just to ride on when you land somewhere? Or is it a pet?"

"He's... kind of a pet. He saved my life a while back, and I guess I appreciate his bad attitude. I don't know what the plan is for him long term, but he's been surprisingly well behaved on the airship and he really likes to fly."

Sige nodded. "Well they have those feathers on their arms, maybe he likes to pretend he has real wings. Man. It's fucking strange to see the Behemoth just pop up here and snag a drink. That's a hell of a thing. I think he remembers me, did you see the look I got?"

I had. It passed quickly, but Grunkle made himself scarce afterwards. He'd just come up to snitch some of our food, even though I'd sent some down to him earlier. "What about this job? Sounds a lot like the one you went on for us."

"Almost fucking spooky. But yeah, I like the longshots. I guess it's the gambling thing. I managed to get some details even though they're not posted yet, sounds like they want someone with Planar and someone to use some kind of device - I didn't get details on that one. And then there's some... it's an optional step, some thing they're after that they want to find. They're not specifically hiring for muscle, so Errod might be out and you might be competing with me. Still, you can get to Nusos now."

"Yeah, I need to practice and see if I can get to other planes. I think I'm going to need a better feel for them. Brinkmar I know, but that one you can't really get to without it being aligned. Itzele I was only in that one time with you, but I might be able to try."

"It's an easy one, but you don't want to go from here. This airship has only been parked here for a week or so, if it exists in Itzele at all it'll be barely solid. You'll fall right fucking through."

I could remember that most things in Itzele looked run down and decaying but were otherwise a mirror of the prime plane. I hadn't thought much about how that worked. "So if I build a house, over time it'll just appear in Itzele?"

"Sure, something like that. But then it'll never be quite right, or as sturdy as it should be. And anything that moves around a lot won't be there, plus places with lots of stuff changing all the time - like a mail sorting place, maybe - will be covered in this gross cobweb kind of shit. It's like it just keeps trying to make whatever is there, but doesn't finish before it's gone. Leaves a residue. Things are also way less accurate in cities because of the wards, so it's mainly just empty shells of buildings. We can try it later, outside the walls."

I couldn't though, because the stupid device I was wearing to treat my slag exposure was keeping me from having any mana. The squiggles... it could have been my imagination, but they did look smaller. The mana involved was very low, nothing like what I'd been exposed to with the time mana, and so it was possible the little fucked up area simply wouldn't do anything at all. Still, no fucking around in other planes for me.

Instead we got a little wasted, and Grunkle eventually joined, and with all the leftover cushions and shit from the cultists the deck was actually a really nice party spot. I missed Katrin suddenly, but instead a different person arrived to join us.

"You are embarrassing," the real Calliope said, "and I already regret coming."

She'd just popped up over the side, her wild bright green hair visible around the sides of the wooden mask. I was used to seeing her looking more like me - well, aside from all the scars - and I was also pretty high, so she caught me off guard. "Hey! You! Hang on, I fell down. Hold on. Don't go. Guys! Guys, this is my - shit, I'm stuck on something - this is my step sister Calliope! It's... call me something else while she's here. I can be Connie. Or I can be Shitheel and Shitheel can be Errod and...fuck, am I still on the ground?"

She sighed, and looked back at the city as if seriously considering just leaving. Unfortunately for her, I managed to get to my feet and crushed her in an incredibly awkward hug. She just stood perfectly still for a moment and took it, and then her skin became electrified somehow and I was forced to jump away.

Grunkle was just pointing at her in surprise. "Hey I know you! Wait, I know you twice! Yeah! You were at my temple with that professor guy, and the bodyguard with the mismatched armor. And then... this body knows you from before that, weren't you trying to kill her? Calliope, this witch was trying to kill you."

"Shhhhh, shhh. No, it's Connie so she doesn't get mad. She's pointy when she's mad. It's fine, she was only trying to kill me because my parents kidnapped her and she thought she had to kill me to get home. But it's fine now, we made up and she killed my parents and I'm going to get her back to my mom, not my dead mom but her mom - I mean she was my mom but not really, I was sort of kidnapped too. Except backwards. Reverse kidnapping. Wait, that's rescuing, this wasn't that."

Human Calliope sighed. "She is a Sahrger changeling sent to take my place as a child, but she was abandoned and forgot she was not human. I have graciously decided not to kill her, unlike the Sahrger who have declared her an enemy of the people and wish to put her on trial and execute her."

I took a second to process that. "Wait. Wait, what? Since when? They said... sorry, I'm not high. I mean I am high, I'm not... not high. Whatever. We were cool, because they said we would be all even. So they can't be mad at me for rescuing those kids."

Grunkle's eyebrows went up. "You rescued kids from the Sahrger?"

Sige slapped him on the back. "It was fucking wild, she didn't tell anyone else what she was doing and we had to get the fuck out of there with them coming after us. I probably can't go to that whole fucking plane anymore, but... eh. I never liked them anyway."

Calliope had a seat, and shifted the wooden mask a bit to the side to pop some food into her mouth. "They have secret communication methods," she said while she chewed, "and I know how to access some of them. They say you betrayed your people and helped humans capture Sahrger children."

I sat down again and tried to lean against Sige but slid off by mistake so that I was just flat on my back. "Oh, yeah. No, that's true. I did do that. I made them promise to treat them nice though, if that helps."

She laughed. "It does not."

"Well, shit. More people who want me dead. Okay. So that's... the Knights of the Storm if there are any left, and Ulren the mad scientist time wizard, and the evil Tindelus hive mind thing, and probably some leftover people from Halenvar, and maybe the Hierophants of Oblivion but maybe they're chill - I mean if I was trying to end the world I couldn't be bothered to hold a grudge against everyone that wanted to stop me, right? Um. Yeah, and uh, the Sahrger obviously, and... oh! And a demigod in a tube, because I kicked his ass. He probably doesn't know that yet though, so I've got time on that one. Am I missing anyone?"

Grunkle shrugged. "The guy I took this body from sure as fuck wanted to kill you, and technically he's still alive."

Shitheel hissed, as if trying to join in on the count of people that wanted to kill me, but I knew he was secretly a softie. Errod started counting on his fingers, lost in thought, and Calliope shrugged. "Me," she said, "I am just not going to do it myself any longer."

"Oh shut up, we're friends now," I said, still on my back looking up at the stars. "We're going to go get makeovers together so I have a new face and you have your old face, and then we're going to hang out and be friends and kill people that piss us off together. And it'll be like Connie didn't die, only different because you're not her. I'm her. I mean I'm going to be called that for you while you're around, and also I ate her ghost. Or she ate mine, or both. It's fine. We're us."

There was an awkward silence after that, punctuated suddenly by an arrow to my chest, just half an inch from my heart. I looked down at it, and then tried to sit up but realized it had pinned me to the deck of the ship. Huh. "Which one of the people that want me dead uses arrows?" I mumbled, and then everyone else realized what had happened and things got very... excited.

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