By the time Batasun's Shelter came into view the next day it was getting late, and the group was split on whether or not we should push ahead so we could sleep in actual beds. The argument for making camp was that we were already ahead of schedule, and rumor had it that something about the rapid temperature change at night meant there were almost always awful sandstorms all along the ridge we had just come to the edge of. The argument in favor of continuing was that we could handle a little sand and dust, and even if we took our time getting down the steep section it would only be a few hours before we'd reach the city.

In the end, the moskar cast the deciding vote; while we discussed, they settled in and got cozy, and refused to get back up again. We probably could have forced them, but the more you forced them the worse behaved they were. Errod and Grunkle were on moskar feeding duty, which really meant it would just be Errod. Grunkle, instead, was pretending to have urgent business he had to talk to Matlyn about, and from past experience I was sure that business would last until all the dirty jobs were done.

The rest of us perched on the edge of a drop-off, where we could see the sun setting over Batasun's Shelter in the distance. It was pretty clearly a huge crater, with the town built at the bottom and the ridge around the outside further fortified with a wall. From our vantage point we got a great view of it, and of the totally empty dunes stretching off to the North. That would be the next leg of our journey.

"Hey Katrin, you know what made this crater?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure, no."

"I don't know the Imperial words for the stuff I want to ask about. That's been happening less and less. Uh... what do you call it when there's a... mountain, usually, and super hot molten rock comes out?"

Katrin looked at me like I was crazy.

"You have to have volcanoes here. You have to. There's mountains, there has to be geological activity. Tectonic plates, floating on magma." Probably she just hadn't heard of them. If there were no active volcanoes around, it could easily be something she'd just never learned about. "Okay, what about... rocks, that fall from above the air. Not from the moon, but from out there where the moon is."

"How would they have gotten up there in the first place?"

Right. They - supposedly - didn't have anything up in space other than the moon. According to Katrin even the sun was actually just a two-dimensional portal to Botara, a plane that was sort of the opposite of the one used to destroy everything with the doomsday device; rather than the void of Azaraze, Botara was all light and heat. I was still skeptical of all that, it didn't seem right that a flat portal could take the place of the sun without somehow looking wrong, but magic was stupid sometimes.

"Okay, so no meteors. Volcanoes are still a maybe, but that doesn't actually look like a caldera to me. It looks like a crater. So what would your guess be?"

She considered as the sun - whatever it was - finished disappearing under the horizon. "I suppose... some enormously powerful magical accident, maybe during one of the Grand Alignments. There have been a lot of disasters caused like that, with all the extra power available with the planes in alignment."

Human Calliope chose that moment to chime in, after being very quiet during the trip. "Today is a good day. Seven planes in alignment."

Seven planes arguably meant six, since the prime plane was always in alignment with itself. Still, that was a lot - most days, it was just the prime plane and one or two others. "Feels like a waste, we're going to a lost laboratory for people that fucked around with planar magic. Maybe having them in alignment would have come in handy. Or... wait, no. The dangerous shit is all caused by planar interactions, so it's probably best if we get there when nothing is happening."

She nodded. "Yes. A small waste, for us to have nothing to do with the extra energy and interactions, but the only thing you have been doing that could matter is attempting to reach other planes."

Well that was an idea. "Which planes are in alignment?"

Calliope ticked them off on her fingers. "Itzele, Nusos, Ematse, Uihene, Hudai, and the Bazaar."

The first three were easy to rule out. Itzele was in alignment every other day and I'd been there before. Nusos I'd even directly opened a door to. Ematse I didn't really want to physically go to, but regardless I had a strong connection to it. The other three were more interesting. Uihene was where Sige was from, but I didn't think they were super friendly to outsiders and anyway the jungle was supposedly impossible to navigate unless you had some sort of spatial sense. Hudai was, if my book on the planes was correct, an endless expanse of fluffy pink and purple clouds, lit by drifting balls of light. No gravity, no ground. That sounded cool, if useless, and I was hoping that with practice I could learn to bring the lack of gravity to me, rather than physically going there.

But the winner had to be the Bazaar. It only opened on the first of the month, and it was a huge marketplace. You couldn't open a portal to get there, you just sort of popped over, and you couldn't drag anything or anyone else with you - just whatever you were carrying. That wasn't the best thing for a marketplace, of course, since it meant you couldn't carry tons of goods over, but for some reason that was still what everyone used it for. Each stall was its own domain, claimed by someone that could never leave without forfeiting their spot - and possibly their lives, if they'd been there too long. You grew... adapted to it, somehow.

I wouldn't stay that long, of course. Just a quick visit, pop in and back out. You always arrived back on the prime plane within a couple yards of where you left, so there was no worry that I would get lost or anything. Although... probably best to move away from the ledge first. I warned the others, and while Calliope seemed to think it was a good idea Katrin was worried.

"Katrin, listen. People go there all the time. I won't even stay and look at stuff, it's supposed to be easier every time so I just need to go for a second. It only opens on the first of the month, and next month we're likely to still be on Earth."

She looked like she was considering it. "And what if you can get there, but can't figure out how to get back?"

"No, I read about it. Getting back is super easy, you just walk through one of the archways that line the edge of the Bazaar." Well. It was that easy while the place was aligned. But again, I'd only be staying for a moment.

Katrin made her concerned face, but she didn't technically say no. I seized the opportunity and spun the dial on my bracer, looking at the little golden symbols until I found the rune for the Bazaar. I concentrated, feeling for a path through the planar membrane, prodding with threads of magic.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, and again, and again. No dice. I was losing a little mana even though I wasn't really doing much, and so after a while Katrin even had to top me off - she also made me go back to the edge so I could look out and see the moonlight shining on a terrifying wall of scouring sand that covered the whole distance between us and Batasun's Shelter. Seemed like the moskar had made the right call. I returned to my spot, burned through most of my mana again, and then finally had to admit that it just wasn't happening. There was a reason people talked about how it was easier to get there every time you did it - the first one was a real bitch.

I rotated the dial on my bracer back to its default spot - Ematse, to strengthen my connection with my memory palace. "Well, fuck. I was really hoping that would work."

Calliope laughed. "Amazing that it did not. Everything comes so easily to you."

I wanted to argue, just on reflex, but I was aware that normal people had to work way harder for way longer before they could do anything remotely like me. It was maybe partly having three Dumines, and for sure partly the way I could talk to... whatever it was... when I unlocked new abilities. But there was one aspect of it I wasn't sure of. "Do you guys think I have a strange lutore?"

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

Katrin looked thoughtful, but Calliope immediately nodded. "It is enormous," she said, "like your domain in Ematse. Size there is supposed to be illusory, with your domain barely larger than outstretched arms. Yours... if we stood at opposite ends, we could be three dozen times that distance. I assume your parents somehow grafted your mind onto some ancient Sahrger's domain."

"Oh yeah. It's supposed to get bigger as you get older, right? Your lutore, and your domains in Ematse and Erima."

She nodded. "Somewhat. But even then, it should never reach the size it has with you."

Katrin chimed in. "That woman that measured your ability, back when we were first traveling together. She couldn't find the layers of your lutore... do you think she was just thrown off by its size?"

It seemed likely enough. Sahrger shenanigans was a distinct possibility, as was some retroactive fate bullshit. Either way, it was a good thing for me so I wasn't going to complain - and I certainly didn't have the energy to worry about why. We chatted more, and finally laid down to get some sleep. I left one mind watching over us with divination, and the other returned to the dreaded conspiracy corkboard.

I hadn't figured out anything more about the brooch, or Greg, or Coelestis, or any of that shit. I did feel like I had a basic timeline, at least. Bill, as one of his many jobs, did some work for Coelestis Acquisitions helping them track down items that were magical or related to Fantasyland. During that time, he ended up with the Jake Ross books and he never got around to handing them over. Maybe he thought they weren't actually important, or maybe it was around the time he quit, or... something.

Despite quitting, he stayed in touch with Greg for some reason... that reason possibly being memory tampering. He thought Greg was just a normal guy, rather than a fucking wizard, and Greg was using him for something. Thanks to my fate bullshit, I ended up with a magic brooch that was maybe actually headed for Bill. Then Zoey got on Coelestis' radar because of her video, and Greg quickly realized it was me that had Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. Some goons presumably came after me, realized I had both the book and the brooch, and then... somehow I ended up in the belly of the beast, where I stole some shit from them.

I escaped - go me - but lost the brooch. I destroyed a memory-altering device, burned the book, got captured by Greg, and then somehow escaped him trying to kill me... at which point he... changed his mind and wiped my memory instead? Hmm. I had to admit, it was possible that he had always planned on messing with my memories, and had just said he was going to kill me so he could watch me squirm or something. That would mean he was still a total dick, but maybe not a murderer.

I wasn't sure where this left me as far as Bill was concerned. If he was just a good guy that had been tangled up in something and was being manipulated by Greg, I should do something about it. I couldn't imagine he would deliberately be part of an organization that was... hmm. Wait. He didn't seem to like fantasy stuff, so was it possible that he would be happy to work for people that were trying to cover up magic? Really, the main thing I didn't think he'd go for was the memory tampering. Surely he would consider that to be unethical.

I'd been searching for more relevant memories all day, and I was burned out. I read some, and then allowed myself to drift away and dream some. I didn't have any revelations while I slept either, but there were some common themes - I was in a self-storage place, and when I rolled up one of the metal doors the inside of the unit was a diner. Greg was there, and he offered me a milkshake but when he slid the glass over it was filled with bleach. Zoey came over - we were at the school somehow, now - and she dumped the whole glass onto me before screaming as men in black suits swarmed in.

I grabbed her and we ran, down endless hallways and through a maze where something was chasing us, and when I got to the exit I turned and realized I was all alone - and what was worse, the exit led right to the monster that had been after us. As nightmares went it was pretty mild, I'd had way way worse. Honestly, the half of me that was watching us sleep had a worse time just because it was ridiculously boring.

One thing that was nice, though, was the way the stars looked. With seven planes aligned, and the slower-moving ones getting close in preparation for the Grand Alignment, the band of stars in the sky was almost as bright as if the world had a ring around it. I couldn't imagine how it would look when thirty-four planes all synched up.

In the morning, we packed quickly and headed down the ridge. Matlyn was extremely excited to see her sister, and the rest of us were looking forward to getting baths. It only took a few hours to get to the city, and I was pretty sure we would have been able to do it in the dark. There was a gate with guards, but they waved us through without interrupting the conversation they were having. Matlyn leapt from her moskar the second we were at the stable, and gestured in a vague way at everything and asked us to take care of things. She hurried off, and - continuing his grand tradition of avoiding work - Grunkle followed.

"Should I stick with her, just in case... something bad happens?" Errod asked, clearly unsure as to what that might be.

It wasn't a bad idea, but I was more worried that Matlyn's sister was working with Coelestis. "Let me do it, I want to be sneaky and see if I can watch them with divination. That way I can keep them safe, but also maybe find out what the fuck is going on and how they know about Earth."

I hurried away, and followed from a semi-discrete distance. They went into an inn, and then almost immediately came out and started walking somewhere else - I had to assume she wasn't sure which inn her sister was staying at. I continued to follow, but then someone passed by me polishing a silver pin. It was the same kind the Coelestis agent had been wearing in my vision, though this guy looked quite a bit scruffier.

I switched to following him.

He led me, first, to a general store where he picked up some sort of order. A kid that seemed to work there loaded a bunch of stuff onto a wagon drawn by a donkey-like critter, and the two of them headed back the other way across town, finally arriving at a courtyard with other wagons gathered in it. It was like a truck stop, almost, with most of the wagons covered up and gathering dust - though to be fair, everything seemed to be gathering quite a lot of dust all the time in Batasun's Shelter. The daily sandstorms were just too much for people to bother competing with.

More people were there, in similar clothes, and it was only then that I realized they were uniforms of some sort. There were two distinct types, one of which reminded me a lot of the Erathi uniforms I'd seen soldiers wearing. The others looked a bit like Halenvar uniforms, although all of them were kinda ratty and none had the little touches they were supposed to - Erathi uniforms normally had a sort of sash, and Halenvar uniforms had a stylized lizard skull emblem. It was like people had taken uniforms from two different countries and filed the serial numbers off.

One wagon was all loaded up with supplies, and hooked to two dinosaur-like creatures that might have been distantly related to moskar but which walked on four legs and didn't have any of the tufts of feathers that most moskar were adorned with. Every time any of them walked past this wagon, they would smack a large crate that had been set on the back and laugh. It was bizarre.

After a few minutes, more of them arrived on axe-headed moskar like we'd been riding - although these ones didn't have proper saddles or harnesses, just rope wrapped around them. Everyone laughed some more at some joke I couldn't hear, and then they all headed out. I followed a little longer, but they headed right for the Northern gate and out into the dunes. If I tried to keep following they would immediately see me, and anyway I needed to let the others know I'd found some people that might be connected to Coelestis Acquisitions.

I wandered back towards the stables but could see without going in that they weren't there anymore. I'd lost Matlyn ages ago, so I finally had to ping Calliope to my memory palace and have her give me directions to where she was. They hadn't met back up with Matlyn and Grunkle either, and had instead just found a comfortable place to sit in the shade. Once I was with them I explained what I'd found, but I had to admit I hadn't learned a lot about them. Once we were settled in an inn, I wanted to go back to investigate more.

Eventually, we started to worry and checked every inn in town - there were only four, and that was already stretching the definition of "inn" pretty far. Matlyn and Grunkle weren't at any of them. We went back to the stables, even though we'd been keeping an eye on the road in case they came by, and Errod trotted ahead to check inside while I talked to Katrin. He came back out a moment later looking very worried, with a stableboy following behind him cringing like he was expecting Errod to smack the shit out of him.

"Well," Errod said, "someone has stolen our moskar. The saddles and other gear were locked up, and the saddlebags and supplies are with us, so it's not as bad as -"

"Fuck!" I yelled, and started running. I could hear the others behind me, trying to keep up, but I didn't slow down. I made it back to where I'd seen the mysterious group of people, and only then realized I wasn't sure why I'd bothered hurrying. They were gone, of course - I'd watched them leave, hours ago. As everyone caught up, I turned to explain.

"I'm so stupid. I didn't recognize the moskar, I... I fucking saw these assholes come up riding them, I noticed they didn't have saddles, and... fuck! They're gone, headed North. Shit."

I wandered over to where they'd been, and realized the little courtyard was behind one of the inns. I walked inside, through the back door, and into the common area. It was empty, and dusty like the rest of the town. "Hey!" I yelled, waking the innkeeper up. "Those guys, that big group of guys that just left a few hours ago. They stayed here?"

She looked nervous. "I don't know anything about them. They kicked me out of my own inn, and barely paid me enough to repair the damage they did. Deserters, I think, or some mercenary group. Whatever they did, I can't help you."

"I saw... it was pretty much all guys. Did they have a woman with them? Not a soldier?"

The innkeeper nodded hesitantly. "Yes, a blonde woman - not the shiny gold hair of someone from Markonti, plain yellow. I never saw her out of the rooms, though."

Could be Matlyn's sister. Might not be. I just didn't know enough. I described Matlyn and Grunkle, but the innkeeper had been hiding in the cellar all morning. I paced the common room, and just when I was going to give up I saw something and stopped dead. There, on the grimy floor, was a patch of moss. It was growing on the floorboards, but it had formed perfectly into some symbols in Imperial.

It said 'KIDNAPPED'.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.