I stared at the screen of my phone. It was actually charging. "I need one of these, do you have the design? Like, a blueprint I can give to an artificer to make?"

We were in Nusos, in some sort of fancy lounge. We'd closed and blocked the doors, and were getting settled down for some much-needed sleep. There had been a part of me that had thought we'd be able to get to Earth in just an hour or so, but instead we'd taken ages just getting to regular buildings; at first everything had been ancient ruins like where we'd started, and we'd encountered countless monsters. Most were these giant beetle things that weren't actually hard to kill individually, but which traveled in huge swarms and didn't see to care that their buddies were getting stomped.

Errod swung his sword down over and over, but could only hit one or two at a time; I found myself wishing we'd been in an open space so he could have done some sort of big swipe, but when the next batch attacked while we were in exactly such a spot I realized that it was no help at all. They just spread and came at us from all sides, and Errod still couldn't do a very good sweeping attack because they were too close to the ground.

It had been a slog, for sure, but in the end it was more annoying than anything else. The real problem wasn't that they were hard to deal with, but that they made it difficult to keep the right mindset; traveling in Nusos was all about visualization and intent, and we kept picturing dark ruins filled with swarms of bugs. Now we had gotten out of there, but everyone was too exhausted to start getting closer to Earth. We also needed to figure out exactly where we were aiming for.

"I don't have a blueprint for the charger, no," Zoey said, "but Mattie can give you the name of the person who made it. I'm sure they kept notes and will make one for you. You'll need the cord though, so grab one on Earth. Actually, I guess you can get solar chargers too."

That was true, they were already on my list. "Man. This is so fucking strange. I can't believe we're just sitting here talking."

Zoey grinned. "You mean the fact that we've both been living in some fantasy world, or me being alive, or just that we're not fighting?"

"The first and last ones," I said, "because I didn't even remember you'd died - almost died - until the other day. My memories were wiped by those Coelestis assholes."

Her eyes bugged out. "They did what? Hang on, how much did you remember?"

Hoo boy. "They took everything about magic, and that book I was always reading, and the guy I was living with. They dumped me off at a group home with a little over a year scrubbed away, except for stuff at school and some other bits and pieces."

Matlyn came over to listen to the story, settling down next to her adopted sister. "Was it a spellbook?"

"No. It was a fictionalized retelling of what happened leading up to the evacuation of Brinkmar, with the biggest change being a happy ending."

Zoey looked confused, but Matlyn filled in the holes. "It's another plane, I guess we've never talked about it much. There was a country there, for a really long time. All the way from the last Grand Alignment, when the Old Empire collapsed, up until a few hundred years ago. They exported mana batteries, but dad said they were designed to fail after a certain amount of time so you'd need more. Some of them had to have been permanent though, because I know most really big cities have one that runs a lot of the ongoing enchantments and devices. Dad lost a lot of money investing in a group that was going to try and make more on Boluq, even though mana crystals don't form there. They had some crazy plan that didn't pan out, and he couldn't recover his investment. Instead, we technically own a sad little building there."

Zoey nodded. "That sounds a little familiar. He... said there were squatters, and he couldn't be bothered to kick them out, so he'd sent them a letter asking them to just not destroy it or sell it for parts. Anyway... about the book, if it was the one you were reading that was in English for sure, I would have remembered if it wasn't. Did people from here go to Earth and write it?"

"No fucking clue. The main character of the book, Jake Ross, was pulled there from Earth and at the end he returned. But in the real world, rather than defeating the evil wizard and the queen throwing a party and everyone being happy, they all had to evacuate and the queen got killed and nobody knows what happened to Jake Ross or the evil wizard. If he did go back to Earth it's possible he told someone and they wrote it down, but it could also be some random descendant of one of the knights that was just a minor character in the book. Probably not more removed than that, given the things in there that were accurate."

She didn't look satisfied with that answer. "But... why bother erasing your memory of it, if it was a published series? Who cares, the information was already out there."

"The third book in the trilogy was really hard to find," I replied, "but I don't remember why - if I ever knew. They immediately stopped printing it, or something? My theory is that it was too accurate, there was some secret thing tucked away in there that someone didn't want people to know about. Right now my best guess is the Heart of Brinkmar. It came up kinda out of nowhere, and wasn't in the first two. The book said Jake Ross took it back to Earth with him to hide it, so I'm thinking maybe they don't want people who know it's real to come looking for this thing."

She still didn't seem to like this explanation. "So what, they tracked down every single person who had ever read the book and wiped their memories? Even if they stopped printing it right away, there would have been advance copies, and proofreading copies, and... I don't know, shit like that. And if even one big fan got a hold of the book they'd make copies. If they had the Heart of Brinkmar, they could just hide it super well. If they didn't, why would they care? Did it give, like, specific directions to find it?"

"Nope. The book ended with him arriving back on Earth, reverted to the exact moment he left. No further mention of the Heart."

"Well then, that's stupid. All that work. Just let people read it, who gives a shit? Anyway, they fucked up and let you get a hold of the book, then... caught you after I fell in the spider pit, and wiped your memory, and took the book. And then you... still ended up here?"

I thought for a second. How much to tell her? It seemed like there wasn't really any reason not to just spill it. Most of it, anyway. Matlyn was listening, but she seemed cool and she already knew some from Zoey. Plus, she was going to learn more once we got to Earth - especially if I needed to convince her to let us veer away from the specific job we were supposedly on. "I got the book from the guy I was living with, my... call it a foster parent, that's close enough. He used to work for Coelestis and must have tracked it down for them but then kept it when he quit, for some reason. I don't know how much he knew about all this shit, but he for sure clocked that I wasn't human and didn't fucking tell me.

"That kinda calls everything into question, but... he really was just a case manager when I met him, and I think he was serious when he said he'd quit Coelestis and didn't like them and thought they were out of business. But he also, before I lived with him, took me to Greg when he figured out what I was. Greg is important in Coelestis, but I don't know in what way. Pretty sure someone referred to him as 'the Director' but I could be wrong. I should go find the memory of that meeting with Bill and Greg, but I'm too pissed at him right now.

"Anyway. No, they didn't catch me after the spider thing. I got away. I figured out where their secret lair was, broke in, and stole some magic items from them. I also grabbed shit of their computer. After I got away there's a bit I still haven't found the memory for, but then I arranged a meeting with them, burned the book, convinced them I lost the brooch even though it was impossible to lose and they were magically making me tell the truth - it's possible I erased some of my own memories - and then Greg tried to kill me.

"I don't know why he changed his mind, but after that I end up dumped at a group home way across the city. No memories of living with Bill, no memories of the brooch or the Jake Ross books or Nusos. I carried on like a normal person, but there was some programmed thing that made me want to go to get my memories touched up every year on my birthday. I thought I was getting a free milkshake, like I full on hallucinated being in a diner. But on my eighteenth birthday, instead, the human kid that I switched places with tried to switch us back. It didn't work how she wanted, so she stayed here - here generally, not in Nusos obviously - and I ended up almost dead in the snow somewhere.

"I... okay this part gets strange, so I'm going to tell it in chronological order. I met Katrin and Errod, but then they got murdered in an alley by... I think by Halenvar spies looking for her spellbook. They'd tried to get it before, but Katrin and Errod's dad stopped them."

Zoey and Matlyn both arched eyebrows at me, perfectly synchronized, and then looked over at Katrin and Errod. "They look pretty alive to me," Zoey said, "are we talking about the same people?"

"I know. Just stay with me. So I got blamed for it, and while getting questioned I mentioned Brinkmar; I said I was from the same place as Jake Ross, from the books, because I'm hoping to avoid talking about Earth. But the Endless Empire had been looking for someone that could open the portals into Brinkmar, and they hear about this and figure I'm their ticket in. Sure enough, turns out I can open it. At the time, I figured it was because I was from Earth. Now... it's maybe that my Sahrger parents or ancestors stole the ability, but also... well, I'm not getting into that speculation right now.

"The Empire wanted to get there because the ruler of Halenvar was there, and he was fucking with some dangerous stuff the Clockmaker left locked up. He wants to use this thing that... it's a machine that supposedly helps you mess with fate, and maybe has some fundamental force of fate trapped in it - like if you could imprison the concept of gravity - and he was so sure this would be like some genie he could use to make all his dreams come true that he was willing to work with super dangerous shitty people.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Meanwhile, the Empire wants to just keep me in a cell. Well, a nice room, but I hate being forced to stay in one place. So I meet this woman, Helma, and she helps me convince them to make me part of the team - this multi-national task force where they're looking for anyone doing apocalyptic shit at the Grand Alignment. And I realize that one of Halenvar's guys, Ulren, is trying to do some fucked up time travel thing. I convince them that we should also go after him, and not just focus on Halenvar, partly by learning to go back in time a teeny bit - like thirty seconds, but that's still supposed to be impossible.

"They let me go with them, into Brinkmar, on the day of the Grand Alignment. Yes, I know that hasn't happened yet. Hang on. Since there's no second shot at things, they don't need me anymore. They let me tag along with one team and we go for Ulren's lab. We get there, Ulren gets thrown into the power supply of his own time machine but the rest of my team is killed. And then..." and then, I let the world end. I killed Helma, who had only ever been nice to me. "the whole world fucking ends, because Halenvar was a dick and worked with these cultists, the Hierophants of Oblivion. They hooked up a planar terraforming device to the Crossroads, the vortex of power where they make the mana batteries, and somehow overwrote all the planes with Azeraze, a plane of pure nothingness.

"But Ulren, he was counting on this. This was part of the time machine, it wouldn't have worked right if there was still a bunch of shit in the way. His lab is shielded from the magical entropy, although not for long because as soon as the Grand Alignment ends it would instantly run out of energy and he'd lose out of the link to Quebristun which is the plane where the meaning behind magic languages comes from. And he needs that, because with him being the only person left in existence he can use that to make sure magic works just the way he wants it to.

"Except instead, it's me there. So I fuck around, and figure out that rather than re-loading the whole universe from the previous Grand Alignment so the Clockmaker is still in charge, I can link it to some other point in time. And there's something already there, some magical code documented, and it's referring to putting someone back to where they were taken from. This, it turns out, is part of the device Halenvar wanted. I'll skip the details for now. But I realize I can use basically that same thing to target the moment I arrived on this world from Earth.

"So I do that, bam, and everyone is saved. We're two years into the past, Ulren is alive again but I kill him and blow up his lab - and almost myself - and run through one of the evacuation portals back to the prime plane, where I realize the magic radiation from the lab blowing up is killing me by aging me to dust. I convince someone to teleport me to the Empire before I die, convince them that I have vital information so they'll save me, and then - as a condition for my help - make them send someone to check if another me has appeared right where I did the first time."

Zoey looked confused, but Matlyn's expression was more what I would call 'horrified'. "The whole world... and you just... went backwards or re-made it or... we all just forgot?"

It was less 'forgot' and more 'totally obliterated and then re-made in an earlier state', but that would just upset her more. "I don't know exactly what happened to you, but I know Steel Tooth was mostly burned down in a battle. So even before the world temporarily ending, that version was worse for you. I don't really have answers. Even right after doing it, I wasn't sure how the time reset worked. There had been little things... people mentioning they saw me when I hadn't been there, stuff like that, that made me think I was maybe supposed to go back in time. But this wasn't that, because I'd already totally changed things.

"It seemed like there was a decent chance there was another me, laying in the snow and bleeding like I had been a few years ago. And with things changed, it was possible she'd just die there. Also they couldn't fix the time radiation shit, not permanently. I wasn't optimistic about my long term survival, and I became obsessed with the idea that the other me, who didn't need to make a deal with the Empire, needed to be able to go on adventures and have fun with this shit.

"Meanwhile, other me - younger me, new timeline me - also meets Katrin and Errod. They don't die this time, we all meet the old timeline me, and then after Halenvar attacks and some shit goes down, we end up fleeing the Empire. Older me has a plan, she's kept a journal with notes on the shit that's going to happen as we approach the Grand Alignment. Stuff has changed, and a lot of it is useless, but there were these guys that found a lost Duminere. Real assholes, and one of them... I need to look up the details, especially since he almost killed us at one point, but he had something planned for the Grand Alignment. Helma was looking into it, in the original timeline. Anyway, we went and found the lost Duminere first."

Matlyn interrupted. "That's how you got that job? Or, not even a job - you were the employer?"

"Yeah. Surprise, I'm rich now. Anyway, on the way to do that, we passed through Xeyul and I rescued some kids they'd kidnapped - still not knowing that I was a Sahrger myself. We had to go down into the Necropolis, and one of the people we hired died fighting a huge horde of zombies. Then while we were getting ready to go into Nusos, Halenvar attacked us. The older me destroyed herself to kill General Telen, but then we were able to get away and make it to the Duminere.

"Halenvar kept hunting me, the Behemoth - you've heard of him? I bet you don't know what he looks like, though. No, don't worry about it, it's a joke I might or might not explain to you. Okay, well, he captured me and tortured me some. Errod got me out of there by being a total badass and cutting his own hand off... actually, hang on. Errod! I'm telling them about your hand, you can let it run around if you want. Ah, here it comes. Hey. I'm telling these two the whole story so far, but I officially challenge you to Tactics later."

The hand bobbed in agreement, and then settled between Matlyn and Zoey to listen. Zoey stopped me before I could really get going again. "Sorry, is the hand... its own thing?"

"It is. They are. It's a bunch of ghosts in there, don't worry about it. They're cool. So, Errod saves my ass and we end up in Sentortzi, with me under house arrest. In the meantime, I kinda skipped this, I've reached out to the human Calliope Smith, the one that I replaced and that was trying to kill me, and she agreed to hold off and let me try and fix things. Which I still haven't been able to do. We're chill now, though. Look at her over there. That mask hanging from her belt? She wore that thing for years, said she wasn't going to take it off until she could kill me and get her face back. And now she's actually laughing about something with Katrin.

"Right before I'm supposed to be handed over to the Empire - they still want me to open the portal to Brinkmar - Ulren shows up. The old Ulren, from the other timeline. He's alive somehow, was just launched through time or something, and he wants to kill me. Human Calliope saves me, I go to some other plane and wait for weeks until it's time to get everyone to Brinkmar. Then, after I've done that for them, this asshole says that he's going to make me stick around indefinitely and if I don't he'll have Katrin and Errod killed.

"They'd ended up captured by the Knights of the Storm, some old group of guys obsessed with stopping the world from ending. But one of them had tried to kill us, and we'd killed him in self defense, and so they put Katrin and Errod on trial and were going to execute them as soon as the Empire said they weren't needed. So what I probably should have done was stall until Lord Protector Hammersmith came back and made a deal with her, but what I actually did was merge with the ghost of myself from the other timeline, break out of the secure facility, rescue Katrin and Errod, and run away through a portal to Brinkmar."

The hand made a gesture that, so far as I could tell from the few times I'd seen it, was the equivalent of throwing up horns to tell someone something was metal as fuck. Matlyn was nodding along, probably a bit surprised but with the advantage of having been with us for the thing with the fey spirit. Zoey, meanwhile, looked both skeptical and a little freaked out.

"While we were there, Halenvar released some ancient thing - probably the thing that caused the collapse of the Old Empire. Matlyn, I know I already told you this part. It's a hive mind thing, or a mind-controlling thing, and it took over Lord Protector Hammersmith and most of the soldiers there in Brinkmar. We got away, with the help of Grunkle who is, I might as well tell you, also some sort of body-snatching spirit monster. He took over the Behemoth, who was trying to eat me at the time. Surprise! Anyway, we got an airship started up and flew away, and met Matlyn, and that's about it.

"There's shit I left out, like getting fucked up by some slag so that part of my chest is a plant. Or the bounty hunters that tried to kill us and captured Katrin and Errod that one time. Or the time Telen beheaded a guy while I was hiding in the next room. Or all the shit with me slowly getting memories back." Or the fact that I had three Dumines, and could see lines of fate. I wasn't going to go there with them, not right now and probably not ever. "But that's the main story. I've been here since the first of the fifth, not counting the old timeline... which I only sort of remember. It's like I watched on television, or read it in a book. I know a lot of it, more every day, but it's not very detailed unless I go searching for the memory."

Matlyn tilted her head as she - without thinking about it - pet the disembodied hand that was now leaning against her leg. "You keep talking about finding memories, or looking for them. Is this some sort of Thought magic?"

Well, no point in hiding this ability. In fact, I'd already been planning on using it in the morning, to get everyone picturing Earth architecture properly. "Take my hands, guys. I'm going to show you."

Matlyn was no problem, popping right into my memory palace. But Zoey... something was wrong. She was slippery, or shaped wrong, or not where I expected her to be. It was like reaching for a light switch in the dark and feeling a lump of Jell-O stuck to the wall instead. I wasn't sure what to do. "Zoey, do you have... this is probably rude, but are you a husk?"

She scowled. "I don't get why people here care, but... maybe? I assume it's because I'm from Earth and we don't have all this magic shit there. They talk about minds and souls like they're so important, but as far as I can tell they're just spirit parasites. Oh no, my parasites won't go to the afterlife when I die! Boo hoo! But like, they don't even know anything about the afterlife. It's just another plane, and that plane might suck. What if it's hell? What if the spirits there immediately get ripped apart or something? How is this something I should care about?"

She sighed, and leaned back more. "They made me do these exercises, this meditation thing meant to awaken your mind and soul, to send them to their domains. That maybe kinda worked, but also didn't. Everyone seemed confused. So then Mattie's dad - total sweetheart, actually adopted me - he took me to some specialist and they said they said they thought maybe my mind and soul had merged like a ghost, and they made a thing to force it into either Erima or Ematse. It's this ring here, see? And I guess it kinda wobbles from one to the other, if it's real at all. I couldn't care less, but it was so important to him that I not be a husk that I just went with it. I still think the person who made the ring might be full of shit, and I might not have anything at all."

Huh. "Okay, well... take the ring off, for a sec. Let me try again."

She did, and I reached out. There was... something. It still felt wrong, but now I felt like I could get a grip on it. I pulled, tensing whatever passed for muscles when magic was involved, and Zoey popped into my memory palace. She was bright blue, and very slightly translucent. What the fuck?

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