I'd expected Glaistig to be happy, but she was pacing and twitchy.

"Is there a problem?" I asked. "I thought you wanted to be free?"

She turned to stare at me with those alien eyes, and then a manic giggle escaped her lips as her wings twitched. "Yes. Yes. But... I did not believe you. Oh, gods beyond. The favor. It is too much, the obligation is too great! Ask it now. You must, I cannot bear the imbalance indefinitely!"

I felt like my jaw was going to hit the floor. She'd just flat out told me I had a super strong bargaining position, and one that would get stronger if I let her squirm for a few years. For a spirit that may have given rise to the Sahrger, she was surprisingly bad at this - or was just that rattled. It was interesting that she even cared, but I chalked it up to some spirit thing; there were too many kinds, and they all had their own rules, and I didn't know basically any of it.

"Oh, speaking of. I'd better give you that name I promised you, so you can't say I didn't finish my end of things. The Queen of the White Court is named Hirora'tetik Lahanangoe, if you didn't already know."

Betokat had let that slip when we were talking about the spirit families in Enimondoa. If I was understanding what they'd said and what Glaistig had said, I'd just bumped the queen out of her seat with the twelve families. Man, if she hadn't wanted me dead before she sure as fuck would now. Once again, the spirit giggled in an unhinged way.

"I can feel the truth of it. Yes. That bitch will regret holding me to our bargain so long past its need. Everything she asks of me, I will make her pay blood for."

Oh yeah. Yeah, she's gonna fuck me up real good. And I couldn't even use iron, since it would work on me too. As fun as it was to fuck over these baby stealing pricks, I had maybe taken too big of a swing. "Listen, I'm thrilled to hear you're going to make her life miserable. Really. But we need to get moving so they don't catch us here, so I need that information I'd asked for."

"The favor..."

"Yeah, no chance of us talking about that until I get the other stuff. I think I probably already know the part about reaching Earth, and even if I don't we might learn it from where we're going next, so let's start with the other thing. I've been trying to find a way to tether my mind to my domain in Ematse for a while, and I can't quite get it. It feels like something I should be able to do, and I can see you're attached to this place at the center of the clearing - this is a domain, right?"

She nodded. "It is. Many falsely believe this plane has no domains, but it has thirty-six. Each had its own attendant spirit, and each spirit could use the power of their domain to inscribe the language of the gods onto mortal's lutores. The spirits would occasionally be challenged and perish, leaving their domain to drift upon the surface of the world until another claimed it. And then... the Clockmaker came, and began to execute the spirits one by one. He hid the domains, bound them to mindless spirits that he could fully control, and named himself the sole keeper of the keys to power. I know the location only of the one he held for himself, at the heart of his power. The rest, bound into 'Dumineres', are invisible to me."

Glaistig walked to the center of the clearing, and pointed at the spot where that thread connected. It wasn't clear if she somehow knew I could see it, or if she just didn't care. "You have methods to tie a link, I assume. If that is so, I can guess your difficulty. Mortals have a weakness, being so bound to time. You are not seeking a single point on this plane, but a line that runs through it. Through the plane, and through time itself. This line will not be visible to you, since it goes in directions your mind cannot fully comprehend, but if you are to slip a chain around it you must somehow visualize it. I cannot tell you the way, precisely, but I swear that knowing what you look for will guide you there."

Huh. Okay, not immediately useful but with Temporal, Planar, Perception, and Comprehension there was surely something I could learn to do. And she was probably right - knowing what I was looking for would be enough. "Okay. Yeah, that should help. What about the Earth thing?"

"A similar problem," she said, "in that you must think of a direction that cannot exist in your normal conceptualization of the world. For you, the planes are distinct and all around you. You must think of a place that is away from the planes, outside of everything. There is a point you can reach towards..."

"The planar antipodes, yeah. No, I've done that once and was able to see Earth, but it was hard and I couldn't really control where I was looking. I was hoping you could give me a more elegant way, or more... dexterity... with it. You were able to find a child that met your criteria and perfectly switch them with another kid, even in a world that - unless I'm really wrong - has essentially no mana. I don't think I could pull anything like that off."

Glaistig leaned back, appraising me. "Very impressive. There is something I can do, but it may not work thanks to the shackles the Duminere has placed on you. Stand still."

She grabbed me by the head before I could object, and the world began to melt. I saw the alarmed look on Katrin's face for only a moment before she turned, instead, into a horrible impossible long shape, this thing that was Katrin but also a human centipede, a tube of meat, a billion Katrins strung together in a chain that tapered off to nothingness at the ends - in one direction she grew smaller until she was a child, a toddler, an infant, an embryo. In the other she grew older and then spread out in a cloud as her decayed body dispersed on the wind. I remembered that view I'd had while holding Yesrin's Loom, of the threads extending across reality and, in some cases, being abruptly cut.

"Focus on me, mortal."

Glaistig's voice was as solid as a mountain, and I stared at her. The chain was here too, but easier to look at - it went forever, never a child or corpse. Here was something eternal, endless, unchanging. Except... was it? I focused, and after a moment I could see the spot where there was an imperfection. A seam. There had been a break, and the two ends were sewn back together. That was where the world had ended and been remade.

Her hands shifted on my head and everything changed again. Now she was only in two places, but as I tore my eyes away I could see that most of us were in at least three. The copies stood together, but in a direction I couldn't explain. I saw my soul, my mind, my ghost. They were here with me, even while being in Ematse and Erima. The planes were here. They were all here, all the time. The membrane that separated them wasn't a wall, but a field. I'd known that, sort of, but seeing how everything overlapped made something click.

Finally she released me, and I stumbled to the ground. "Fuck. Wow. That was awful, thank you."

She nodded. "You held up better than I would have expected. I thought I would have needed to stop far sooner, have you already developed advanced sight? A way to look in directions beyond the physical?"

I had, kinda. "Sort of. To look at the patterns in my lutore."

"Ah! Yes, that is somewhat related. I had thought the Dumines prevented mortals from seeing the language of the gods, but this is welcome news. Look now, and see if the gift I have added can be seen."

I closed my eyes and concentrated, and found that twisting mess of lines linking the glowing stars of my nine gifts. Sifting through the interconnected layers, I found my various abilities. The big crazy squiggle was my memory palace and its connected stuff, the simpler one that linked to every gift was my threadsight... but what was the little blob off to the side? It was loose, drifting, and I was suddenly sure that I needed to hook it up somehow. I concentrated and tried to tell my Dumines to examine it and I got a strange reply coming from that distant point on another plane. That pseudo-voice that occasionally touched my mind when I was meditating on my Dumines.

This build is missing a key Perception component due to biological incompatibility.

It was the same thing it had said when I'd tried to find a way to just do general spellcasting with threads. "Uh. It's there, but I think I need something different about my brain before I can use it. And I'm not crazy about having anyone fuck with my brain. Also, it's not like I'd want to see everything that way all the time."

She sighed. "A shame, but not surprising. Still, I consider my debt paid, for this particular topic. That brings us to the favor."

"Look, I know you want this off your ledger. I get it. But the whole point of a favor is to hold onto it for later."

Calliope pulled me aside, out of the circle of stones, and whispered to me. Hmm. I stepped back over to Glaistig. It wasn't what I'd normally call a favor, but it was worth a shot - and probably it was better to use this up now, rather than holding onto it for a rainy day and then dying or something without ever getting to use it.

"Okay Glaistig, I have an offer. Rather than a one-time favor, you agree to always treat me as a trusted and respected friend in our dealings. You also promise you'll never do anything to help the Sahrger kidnap people ever again. I know there are other ways, I know they have more rune stone things other places, but yours is special, and I don't want them to have it."

She tilted her head, like a dog. "To treat you as a trusted and respected friend..."

"You know my intent, on this one. It doesn't matter if you actually have friends."

She nodded. "Yes. These terms are acceptable, in place of the favor, but the treatment will be reciprocal."

I reached a hand out, palm up as she had before. "Deal. I treat you right, you treat me right, neither of us fucks over the other one. And no more Sahrger changelings."

She placed her hand in mine, and then smiled with her pointed teeth. "Done. And so, as a friend, I say to you... run. They are here for you."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Fuck. All of us immediately turned and started running except for Matlyn, who stayed to bow. "It was an honor to meet you," she said, and was maybe going to say something else but Errod scooped her up and slung her over his shoulder. He was also carrying the still-sleeping human child, which meant he wouldn't be helping us fight. A shame, as the Sahrger had already arrived at the far side of the circle of megaliths.

The one in front muttered a curse in a language I felt I should know but didn't, and with my threadsight I saw a tangle of Probability and Binding slap against Katrin and shatter apart as one of her anti-curse charms triggered. The next Sahrger turned to Glaistig and shouted, "Spirit! I command you to hrrk-"

Whatever the command was going to be, it was cut off as Glaistig thrust a spectral arm into them and yanked the mind from their body, the translucent form twitching before having its head bitten off. Glaistig loomed over the now very nervous Sahrger. "It is time you remembered how to address me with respect," she said, "a lesson I will greatly enjoy teaching after all this time."

I lost sight as we crested the hill and ducked back between the trees, but I could hear screams. Unfortunately, we ran right into more Sahrger that had been approaching from the other side. Calliope immediately lived up to her new name, driving an iron dagger into the chest of the first attacker - the light went out from their eyes instantly, as if the cursed touch of that metal inside them had just instantly snuffed them out. Katrin, instead, was focusing on shielding Errod and herself, so I went on the offensive and began throwing daggers.

They were nimble, and willing to fight through grave injuries, but I was stronger than them. As soon as they closed with us I slipped back into Hugh's training and began brutally pummeling them, crushing windpipes and breaking bones. I still had threadsight up, and could see the curses flying around us. Most were destroyed by the charms we wore, but one tied itself around Katrin. I let my body go into auto-pilot mode despite the drop in fighting skill I knew it would cause, and had my ghost attack anyone that slipped past while my mind slowed things down and looked closely at Katrin's curse.

Calliope had said she was going to curse us to give me practice dealing with them, but we hadn't gotten to it yet. Now I was going to just have to learn on the fly; this could be something extremely dangerous, given the ways I'd fucked people over even before knowing what I was doing. Could I direct Katrin's attention to it, so she could drain the mana from the area? Possibly. But as I looked at it more closely, a different lesson from Hugh floated to the top of my mind. Knot tying.

I spun up a thread of my own, and began weaving it into the curse. Between loops of the blue and white thread, around the top, and... I pulled. The curse unraveled, and then attempted to re-tie itself but made it only halfway before falling apart entirely. Huh. Looks like I didn't need any practice after all.

The Sahrger just kept coming, and more and more curses slipped through in addition to some knives and arrows. One went off right away, before I could get to it, and Calliope tripped and fell onto her own knife. Another caused a large branch to fall onto Errod, and while he managed to deflect it with his shoulder to keep the people he was carrying safe it meant he had to drop them and he was momentarily stunned, leading to him getting hit by arrows that miraculously found every gap in his armor. I could see threads of probability on those as well, that flickered out as the arrows found their mark.

Just when I was starting to worry that all was lost, Sige came barreling through the woods. Thank god for that big furry bastard. He launched towards us, between the trees, and only too late did I realize he was attacking us. If my mind had been doing overwatch duty with divination like normal, rather than helping me direct threads to undo curses, I would have had time slowed down and could have figured out right away that this was not, in fact, my friend Sige. But in the dark and chaos, I saw a huge shirtless orange furry guy and made an assumption. Maybe I was a little racist and thought all U'rmun looked alike, I don't know.

He hit like a wrecking ball, flinging the already injured Errod away and into the trunk of a tree before grabbing Calliope by the leg and whipping her against a rock. I wanted to help, but even with my ghost and body fighting separately I was barely holding my own. It wasn't a matter of skill, but of numbers; more Sahrger were arriving every second. "I need space!" I yelled, and a dome of energy appeared around me just before a wave of force sent the Sahrger flying. God, Katrin was so great.

I hauled Calliope up since the U'rmun was seemingly distracted with a massive thorny vine that had quickly grown to cover his whole lower half - thanks Matlyn - and I pulled the dagger out of her with one hand while pulling out a healing potion with the other. I felt my skin blistering, and for a moment I lost threadsight, but as soon as I dropped the dagger the pain began to fade. Fucking iron. With Calliope back up, I turned back to fighting the horde that had recovered from Katrin's force blast. I'd wanted to check on Errod as well, but there was no time.

Thankfully, a second later I saw him back on his feet. With a determined look on his face, he strode towards the U'rmun and swung his sword - twisting it so the flat end would hit. Time seemed to stop as the blade was filled with impossible weight, a loud crack like thunder filling the air. The blow collapsed the U'mun's chest all the way to his spine, and then the rest of the body caught up to physics and was hurled at ridiculous speed into the oncoming Sahrger as it was torn apart. The impact of the enormous corpse killed a dozen of them outright, and sent the rest flying.

Holy shit.

More thorny vines were growing between us and the Sahrger, and I was able to switch to full time curse duty as Errod and Calliope killed anyone that managed to force their way over the bodies and through the vicious wall of plants. Katrin had climbed on a boulder for better visibility and was raining destruction down on the archers further back, while still sparing some attention for the occasional shield. It had quickly gone from a losing battle to a massacre, and once Errod turned and killed an invisible assassin that had been sneaking up behind us they all broke and fled.

As everyone else ran for the secret passage, I grabbed as many of my knives as I could easily find - I was short at least one if I was counting right - and then tried to search the now-visible assassin's body, but I couldn't find some sort of invisibility ring I could steal. Bullshit. I was the last one to the exit, but Matlyn insisted on being behind me so she could make plants grow up over the passage as we closed it. I wasn't sure what good it would do, but it couldn't hurt. I gave everyone a once-over looking for curses, Katrin used her healing spell on some minor injuries, and Errod and I used some of the expensive healing potions since we had a lot of deep wounds that Katrin's spell would have left stiff with scars.

I was worried the whole climb down, expecting to find the Sahrger waiting for us at the bottom, but when we finally arrived the coast was clear. We still needed to get back to the ship, and the rescued kid - who was finally waking up after we accidentally banged her head into the rock navigating a tight part of the passage - didn't have a breathing thing.

"Matlyn, can you make a plant thing for her, like you're using?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm barely going to have enough mana for myself after everything I did up there, and it doesn't work passively. We could make multiple trips?"

That would work, but it would suck. I looked over at the kid, who was whispering with Calliope. She looked terrified. I could give her the diving helmet since it was easy to use, and then someone could bring it back to me. I didn't like the idea of us being separated, though. Eh, fuck it. "Okay, fishbowl helmet for the kid. Everyone out, and then someone can bring the helmet back to me."

Errod handed his breathing device over to Calliope, so she was now holding two of the metal seashells. "Hold on to the child, make sure she doesn't try to get away or pull off the breather. I'm going to share the helmet with my sister." He walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. "We take turns with it, holding our breath in-between. We'll be slower than the others, but faster than making a trip back to get you."

That... did seem like it could work. The helmet magically kept water out and was also made to be neutrally buoyant in water so the air in it wouldn't yank it instantly up to the surface. That meant there was nothing that would stop us from passing it back and forth. Katrin took it and made sure it was fully charged, and then we all jumped into the water and navigated the flooded tunnel until we were back out in the open ocean. It was much darker than when we'd made our way here, but we knew what direction land was in and didn't need to see much. I was a bit embarrassed to find that I was awful at holding my breath, but Errod didn't seem to be much better.

Once more I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Sahrger to be waiting for us in the little cove we surfaced in or for them to be swarming the airship when we got back to it. But... it was fine. Nothing happened. I didn't want to jinx it by talking about it, but I was so confused. Sure, it hadn't gone perfectly, but considering how stupid and impulsive the mission had been it was fucking amazing how little had gone wrong. Sige's relief when he saw us was obvious despite his attempt to play it cool, and I caught him checking everyone over as we lifted off.

"It's fine, Sige. It went fine."

He arched an eyebrow at me. "Some of your gear is damaged, and you're not using your fucking right hand."

Calliope winced as she realized why, but I waved her off. "It's fine. I burned it on something, it'll feel better soon. We did what we were there for, and it honestly went better than I could have expected. Human Calliope is almost Sahrger Calliope now though."

Her eyes blazed. "I am not! It is a name only! The spirit said I would have to live in Xeyul for years for the curse of iron to take hold, and even if it did I would never be one of them. Never!"

"You know I'm fucking with you, right? Okay, I get it, it's a sore subject. Anyway, do you... know what she gave you?"

She looked off into the distance for a moment, and then slowly nodded. "I believe so. I was not willing to test it in combat, nor do I think it would work as well against Sahrger. I will show you soon."

Sige pointed at me. "She said combat. I knew it, I knew you were in a fucking fight."

"Fine, yes. And there was an U'rmun there too, I guess working for the Sahrger. Bigger than you, even, and super strong. Are all you guys fighters?"

He leaned against the wall. "Not everyone, no, but there's a... ranking system. When you hit a certain age you have to fight in a tournament, and it determines the pecking order for your whole fucking life. It's based on how many rounds you win, how many times you get hit, shit like that. There's this whole fucking book of rules, some are obvious and some are these fucking hyper-specific things you're supposed to remember. And the judges are assholes about it, they'll drop you a rank if you miss a rule. There was one that was written down wrong, they still fucking enforced it even though it made no sense. They fixed it after that tournament, but... it's a fucking joke, and I hate it."

"So everyone has to fight?"

"You can forfeit, but it means you're always the lowest of the fucking low. You can also put it off, for a pretty long time anyway, but past a certain age it's actually worse to have avoided the tournament. It's a shitty fucking system, and we should be smart enough to know it. I mean, fuck, the people that don't feel like beating each other up have the least say in how things work? I'm sure you can imagine what that leads to. Only the highest rank can enter the temples, and only people who enter the temples can take the trial to be an elder, and only the elders would be able to really change anything. So they would have to decide to destroy the same fucking system that gave them power in the first place. I'm glad I left."

"You're just pissed you did badly at the trial, huh?"

He grinned, with those big square teeth. "I forfeited, then immediately challenged my opponent to spar and kicked his fucking ass. Just to show I didn't forfeit out of cowardice. Did the same thing the next day, and the next. You have to win three rounds against your assigned opponent to get a rank that's worth anything, so I wanted to show that I could have done it. But I only actually hit him once during an official match, because I didn't want him to get an unearned perfect score."

That... was pretty badass, actually. "Okay, you've made your point, you're cooler than me."

Calliope was squinting at me. I turned to look at her, but she just kept squinting. Finally she spoke up. "Sneeze."

I sneezed. Huh. I turned on my threadsight, and told her to do it again. As soon as she told me to sneeze, a tangle of blue and white flew at me - a curse. It hit and immediately went off, probably because it was so simple. As I sneezed once more, Sige perked up. "Is that a Command thing, or a Probability thing?"

"Probability," Calliope and I said at the same time.

Sige grinned even bigger. "Does it work on dice?"

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