I decided, for the moment, to not think too much about the photo.

The last time I'd thought that I was having some sort of premonition of the future it had turned out to be my connection to Calliope. That wouldn't explain this one, but it was a reminder that I shouldn't jump to conclusions. My current thought was that it was some sort of bullshit fate thing, but that was about as vague as a theory could get. I did remember that I'd first found myself holding the photo after investigating the creepy statue that might or might not have been me, the one that had been in my memory palace from the start.

Investigating that statue further was possible, and I'd do it eventually, but since it was harder on Earth and I already had a lot of stuff going on it seemed wise to just leave it until we were back. It had waited this long, it could wait a little longer. Instead, I had a fucking lovely day going to a tiny zoo and some big museums. In the evening, despite it being a Wednesday, the crowds in the streets were incredibly dense. Christmas decorations were already up all over and the mood was vacillating between festive and hostile depending on how much of a rush people were in and how badly the fantasylanders were gawking.

I was glad that they hadn't gotten totally used to New York in those first two days. At one point Errod confided in me that some of the ghosts in his glove were freaking the fuck out, while others were having an amazing time and making all sorts of demands - typically they left him alone unless there was an emergency or Errod was trying to actively learn something new, but Earth had them overwhelmed.

There were a few final things on the to-do list, and so we decided to have one last day before trying to break into Coelestis. We'd already looked up the address and Katrin had even swung past it while recording on her phone, and the place looked deserted. It was in a small building with the windows all bricked up, and no signs or anything on it. Getting in was going to be tricky, if not impossible - I was really counting on the security having glaring holes like it did at the self-storage place.

There was another reason we were waiting, though, and as we left the little Chinese restaurant we'd ended up in for dinner I pulled Calliope aside to tell her. "Hey. I didn't get you a ticket for the crazy artsy thing tomorrow afternoon. The thing where we're going to watch the sun set from some sort of mirror room a hundred stories up, while Katrin has a panic attack? You're skipping it, because tomorrow morning the two of us are getting breakfast and then... we're going to take a train to New Jersey and drop you off."

She looked shocked. "What? We need to get into Coelestis' headquarters first!"

"And if things go wrong, and they see my face? Think about what Zoey said; she has a perfect alibi right now, because she's also in Arizona. You're planning on staying here on Earth, and if you're with me, that could get fucked up - before you ever get to see mom again. After all this time of you wanting to get back to her. But if you go home tomorrow, and then make sure you're out in public with her when I go into Coelestis, you're in the clear. I'll still make sure to let you know what we find, of course, and if things go well enough I might even meet up with you before we head to Arizona. But you need to let us do this without you."

She nodded. "I'm scared," she said, "what if she... what if... if she doesn't know me, or doesn't want me back?"

I knew that I should comfort her, but all I could think was that having a mom that didn't want me was what I'd had the whole time. I just mumbled something about it being fine, kind of a shitty attempt if I'm honest, and then awkwardly changed the subject. Another amazing interaction, like a very normal and healthy person. Gold star.

While waiting for the subway, I tried to distract myself from my failure with Calliope by pondering again on the problem of how to tap into the Common Local Understanding while on Earth. I reached out, trying to feel the throngs of people all around me. Nothing. I pulled out the lodestone Katrin had beefed up and held it tight, and reached out again. I'd been able to do this before, better than anyone else. I even used Fate magic in it a little, letting me reach further than anyone else. I was the fucking master at this shit, why couldn't I do it now?

Oh.

Something was happening. Something out of my control.

There were microscopic lutores all around me, and I could feel them pulling towards me. It was those spirits, like the one Zoey had; they had spread here, somehow, like parasites feeding off the miniscule magical potential that Earth humans had. They weren't minds, or souls, or really much of anything - but they were there, these little underformed dormant spirits, and that was enough to give everyone some tiny form of a lutore. And now I was calling to them.

That's what the lodestones did, after all. But it wasn't all they did. They bound things together.

I felt my mana plummeting, and I couldn't stop it. I grabbed Katrin. "Mana. Mana, now! It's going to drain me dry!"

She dumped everything she had into me, and if anything the pull just increased. "More. All of it. Maybe, maybe... align it like you did the other day? To the lutores?"

She pulled us back into a shadowy corner, and I felt the mana battery pumping out energy. Katrin, once again, was just trying to rapidly alter the mana's alignment and intent rather than directly channeling it through herself. If it was aligned with the right thing it would be more efficient, if it was more efficient it would use less, if it would use less it would maybe not kill me.

The mana started to split. The stuff Katrin was managing to shift was going directly through the lodestone, while it also pulled more through me - but for that stuff I could feel it seizing on my gifts, on my Binding and Fate and Thought and Comprehension and Spirit... a dam had broken, and all I could do was hang on. I could feel my lutore burning, and I knew I was channeling too much mana. I wasn't going to grow crystals in me, because it was all getting used, but my body was never meant to have this much scouring through my veins.

Having my ghost seemed to help, as it shared the load somehow. Even so, it was agony. I was dimly aware of the others gathered around me, of trains arriving and departing, of time having passed, but the flow didn't slow, didn't give me one second of relief, and I felt like if I tried to force it my very being would be ablated away, burned to ash. So I just kept going.

Eventually, I was delirious and hallucinating. I was seeing things, places, people, that I didn't recognize. I was outside in a dark field, tucked into a bed, at a party on a roof, swimming in a lake, watching the sun set over an unfamiliar mountain, eating dinner by the ocean. Katrin was looking so, so tired, but she kept channeling the mana and the lodestone was soaking it up eagerly. Even so, the walls of the subway were glittering slightly. Tiny crystals were forming.

I managed to stutter out a question, and was told it had been hours. Hours. That wasn't healthy for me or Katrin. We were going to die if this kept up. How many hours had it been, and how much longer could we stay alive? I couldn't make my mouth form the words to ask, and probably nobody knew the answer to the second half of the question anyway.

The visions I was having, the hallucinations, were of people at all times of day now. Foreign cities, strange foods. Children in school, speaking languages I didn't know. Adults at jobs I didn't understand. More people sleeping, people fucking, people crying and laughing and shitting and fighting. It just kept going. I wrenched enough control away to flick threadsight on, hoping to understand, and saw an expanding spiderweb of impossibly thin threads all around me, like a cloud. So many threads. The color was hard to make out, given the size, but at a minimum I could say it wasn't a combination I'd seen before.

As Zoey moved, the threads attached and detached from her. At any given moment there were at least three, but unlike everything I'd ever seen before it just kept changing. None were going to the rest of us, not even to Calliope. So it wasn't just about being from Earth... but it could be about having one of those blue translucent spirits. Calliope had an actual mind and soul, possibly because she'd been in fantasyland since a very early age - it was possible she also had one of the Earth spirits, but probably not.

It didn't fully make sense to me, but one thing was clear - the lodestone was trying to bind things together, and it wasn't going to stop because I wasn't compatible. I could feel it now, it was trying to pull things to me and instead just yanking everything else together. Could I complete the circuit by forcing it to include me? Did I want that? It seemed dangerous. Was it dangerous for everyone else? Was I fucking up Earth?

I had to understand what it was doing better.

I reached out as best I could, fighting through the pain and all the visions, and could tell the teeny spirits were changing. They weren't like Zoey's, hers had been forced to mimic a mind. These ones had been nothing, the equivalent of a barnacle on the side of a ship. Now... they were feeding on this connection, being molded by it. I felt as one was converted, and reached out to its neighbors. They were spreading the change, like a virus, but they still seemed mostly inert.

I slipped back into a daze, losing myself. I was dimly aware of Katrin starting to falter, and people on the subway platform starting to point at the crystals that were now much more than just sparkles. And then, when I felt like I had nothing left to give and was preparing to die, I was brought back to the present moment by an impossible searing pain. The lodestone had melted.

Everyone heard me screaming, and I managed to yell something about my phone battery exploding as my friends shuffled me out of the subway. A potion was forced into my mouth - I almost resisted because I knew we had to be almost out after most of us had used them in the Temple of Convergence, but then I looked down at my hand. Yeah, that... needed a potion.

At some point, we were back at the hotel. I didn't know how we'd gotten there.

And then it was Saturday morning. Somehow. I'd missed all of Thursday and Friday, with only the dimmest memories of people taking turns making sure I'd had water and made it to the bathroom. Katrin was next to me, in similar shape. "Hey. Sorry about that."

She nodded. "No, I'm sorry. It must have been because of what I did to the lodestone."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"It was... a very complicated reaction between multiple things, I don't think we could have predicted it. You okay?"

"I think. It's actually not as bad as when we were escaping in the airship, because I kept most of the mana outside of myself. But I still channeled too much directly, and for too long. What about you?"

I took a moment to assess myself. "I think... I think a lot of the excess was bounced around through my memory palace, so I'm in the same boat as you. Sore, overcooked, but not dying. I... may have permanently altered all life on Earth, though."

She frowned. "That can't be right. Eight billion people, give or take? You'd need far more mana than anything that battery could output. It's very impressive, yes, but nothing like that."

I turned on threadsight again, and could see that faint web passing through the hotel room. "I don't know. It linked into the little proto-spirit things, and they... helped."

"But they couldn't have much mana either, right?"

"They have some, or they wouldn't exist. They must be feeding off of the people, which means the people of Earth naturally have some small amount of mana. Or it's coming from places like you saw in the store, I don't know. The point is, the spirits are... sharing it, in a web. I think. It's formed some sort of network, with the spirits as little nodes. The question... the question is if it's going to break down over time, or keep building. If the spirits are fundamentally changed, it's possible they'll keep this going."

I looked at my phone to check the time, and then messaged Calliope to tell her I was awake and expecting to meet her downstairs in half an hour so we could go have a little family reunion. I desperately needed to shower, but other than that I wasn't going to put this off any longer. Time to pull the band-aid and get it over with. And then, tonight, we could try to get into Coelestis.

Matlyn came into the bathroom while I was showering to check on me, because nobody from Fanasyland had any idea why that would be a problem. "Katrin said you're going out? Are you sure? What even happened to you, I could barely understand anything you said?"

"I was trying to figure out the templating thing, and I tried something experimental, and it... went badly." I reached out around the shower curtain. "hand me a towel, would you?"

She did, and then stood there fretting. "Oh, it's my fault. It's fine, please don't try again. The templating would have been helpful, but seed packets and samples are more than enough. I already have a collection that will keep us busy for a dozen dozen years."

A dozen-dozen, it occurred to me, was a very fantasyland number and yet I was pretty sure we had a specific word for it on Earth too. A gross? Right? I wasn't entirely certain that was the right number off the top of my head. I climbed out of the shower, all wrapped up, and picked up my phone to check if I was right. "It's fine, I can't try that same thing again anyway since the lodestone melted and took half my hand with it. I can keep working on it, I'll just do it in a more responsible - and more boring - way."

Idly, as I tapped on my phone - I was right about how much a gross was - I tried templating it... and had to lower myself to the floor to keep from falling down. Matlyn crouched down next to me, calling for Katrin, but I shook my head. "No, no, I'm okay. I... just tapped into the Common Local Understanding, but... here on Earth it's... something different now. Holy fuck. Hey, uh. I can do your templates now. Really, really well. I don't know how far I'm reaching, but even if it's just New York there's nothing you could possibly want to know that someone here couldn't tell you. Wow, that's a fucking rush."

There was a knock on the door, and then I heard Katrin open it and Zoey rushed through, finding me a moment later still on the floor. "Hey," she said, somewhat urgently, "did you just think about cell phones really hard? Because for a second I knew everything about cell phones. Everything. All of it. And then it was just... gone."

Well, that was interesting. "Uh... yes. How did you know it was me?"

"I don't know!" She looked pretty distressed.

"Fuck, I need to get dressed. Did this happen to everyone? Did I just dump the world's knowledge of cell phones into every brain on Earth?" How many car crashes had I just caused?

I got dressed as fast as I could, and while I did Katrin watched the city out our window. "I think it's fine," she said, "everyone seems pretty calm. Well, not that man, but I suspect he's just unpleasant. They're all just... doing normal things. If everyone had felt it the way Zoey did, they would have reacted - and they would have seen each other react and talked about it, and then panic would have set in. You're fine."

I knew she was probably right, but I had one more thing I wanted to test. I met up with Calliope, filled her in as we walked to the station, and then - a mile from the hotel - I got a bag of spicy chips and templated it. The rush of information was disorienting, but I managed to stay standing through it and even watch the people around me. Nobody reacted, not even the ones right next to us. A moment later, Zoey called. "Hot chips? Really?"

Calliope and I barely spoke on the way to mom's house. I could feel old anxiety building inside me, making me want to run, and Calliope wasn't any better - just for different reasons. By the time we got to walking distance, we were so frazzled that we were going super slowly. "This is ridiculous, we're going to take all day walking this last little bit. Go faster."

"You go faster," she said, "I am walking at the same pace as you."

"You've looked miserable since we got to Earth," I said, "are you sure you even want to do this? We could just turn around."

She shook her head. "I have just been depressed. Zoey called it doomscrolling. The world here, the way it works, the things in the news... I am not pleased. But I will stay, and make the world better. By myself, if needed."

"Well, you can keep that smaller mana battery we gave you. So if nothing else, you can make a killing at the casino."

She smirked. "Yes. Among other things."

We eventually arrived, despite our best efforts, and I found myself staring at my old house. It looked better than it had when I left, more taken care of. Part of me wondered if someone else lived there now, but I knew it would be mom. She would never leave, not so long as she had hope that her real daughter might find her again. I felt some deep bubbling pit of anger and shame and sadness inside me, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'd given up on mom years ago, and now I even knew she had been right. It was fine, I didn't even need to talk to her.

The two of us stepped up to the door in unison, and I knocked. I could already feel that there was something over the door - great-grandma's old scissors, maybe, or a horseshoe. Iron, soaked in hatred. It radiated out at me through the wood. A car was there, and based on the search I'd done online she was working from home, but I had to knock again before we heard someone approaching.

The door opened, and there she was. Older than I remembered, smaller than I remembered, but still the same person. She looked at us, eyes wide, and then burst into tears as she grabbed Calliope in a hug. She hadn't hesitated at all, hadn't for one second thought it might be me. We looked the same other than the length of our hair, my Erathi nose ring, little cosmetic things that couldn't possibly mean anything to her - and yet, she knew.

It felt like being stabbed in the heart.

Calliope was crying too, and I found myself just awkwardly standing there watching this moment that probably should have been touching. I didn't feel touched, I felt angry. "Hello to you too, mom."

She looked at me - surprised, then angry, then... something in-between. She held Calliope closer, as if trying to protect her. "What do you want? What do I need to pay? Just tell me."

Oh, for fuck's sake. "The price? The price? The price is that you have to remember what a shitty mom you were. But I don't think you care."

Now she looked pissed. "You stole my child! You, you, you did horrible things, all while pretending to be her!"

Calliope tried to cut in, but she was too hesitant and we just yelled over her. "I didn't steal shit! I was a child! I had no fucking clue what was going on, and you didn't tell me! Nobody told me! Over and over and over, nobody tells me! I only found out after your precious angel there tried to murder me for the fourth time, and guess what? I fucking told her I'd take her home. I'm so sorry you had to deal with a difficult kid, but maybe I would have been better with a mom that didn't hate me!"

She laughed. "So you had to make a deal to bring her back to prevent her from killing you. That explains it. And you have the audacity to pretend you were just a child, and not some sort of... fucking demon? You took everything from me! You ruined everything, destroyed everything. You tortured animals, you - you - you took my teeth!"

And she pulled her dentures out. Huh. Calliope had made a reference to me stealing mom's teeth, but I still didn't remember it. That was... fucking wild. What kind of curse had I put on her, to cause that? Jesus. It did take a little of the wind out of my sails. "Okay, yes, fine. I sucked. I was a bad kid. Maybe you could have tried to fix that, instead of deciding to slice my neck with iron scissors! And for the fucking record, mom," she flinched whenever I called her that, I'd forgotten, "I didn't make a deal. Not like that, anyway. I told her I'd bring her home because it was the right thing to do, because someone who wasn't a shitty parent took the time to treat me like I was worth something, and they taught me to be better. Like you could have.

"We could have figured it out together. You could have let me be your daughter, and told me I had a sister out there, and we could have found some way to rescue her - the two of us. I've rescued other kids from them, did you know that? I'm at war with them, they have a price on my head. I've actually done something about it, while you settled for being mean to a child. Congratulations.

"And I know you'll never feel bad for what you did to me, so let me just tell you this: Calliope could see through my eyes. The whole time. She could look through my eyes, and see the mother she missed, and what did she see? Huh? She got to see you staring back at her telling her she was a monster, telling her she was evil, that you hated her. She never saw you smile, never saw you do a single nice thing. That's what she knows about you. That's the example you set. You could have been showing her anything, and you showed her hate, day after day. Good job, mom."

I turned and started walking away, eyes so blurry from tears that I was worried I'd trip on something. I heard footsteps behind me, and a hand came down on my shoulder. "Wait here," Calliope said, "just for a moment more."

She left, and I did as she asked. I didn't turn around, though. There was a muffled sound of arguing - not heated, more confused - and then I felt something approaching from behind, like a flame building into a bonfire. Before I'd left Earth, I'd barely noticed iron unless I tried to push past it when it had been deliberately set as a barrier to the fey. Now... something had changed. Maybe after I went to Xeyul, or maybe after I'd been burned by it a few more times. Hell, maybe it was just me being more aware of magic.

There was iron behind me, and it was powerful.

I was half expecting to be stabbed in the back, but I stood there waiting. Calliope came around in front of me, and she was holding great-grandma's antique scissors in one hand, and her wooden mask in the other. "This will hurt," she said, "but I don't know how to make it mean what it needs to. I don't know if Earth cultures have the right rituals, I don't know if the gods can hear us here... but even if it is just for us."

She placed the mask in my left hand, and the scissors on the palm of my right before closing her own hand over them as I tried not to scream. I could feel the vitriol that had been poured into them over the years, maybe over lifetimes. Had grandmother believed in the fey? Great-grandmother? Mom believed for a reason, she must have gotten it from somewhere. Normal people on Earth didn't just jump to deciding their kid was a changeling.

Calliope put her forehead on mine, and looked into my eyes as I continued to cry - now partly from the pain. I could feel blisters forming, skin peeling where it touched the scissors. "We have been raised in our anger and fear," she said, "and you have broken that. Those who do not fear do not know true bravery, it is often said, and I think that it must also be true that doing the right thing when your nature does not compel you is a higher and greater feat. We have saved each other's lives, and you have stood against the enemies of my family even though they were your blood, because you know blood is the weakest and least meaningful of bonds.

"I hated that you had my face, my name. But you gave me back my face, and you gave me a new name to spite the Sahrger. And so... I give you them, to keep. You are my sister, Calliope, now and forever. When you leave this world, you will take my love and my wrath with you as your shield and your blade."

She stepped back, and I looked down at my hand where the scissors were laying. They were cold, inert. My skin was still red, somewhat, but that was quickly fading as well. "What... what the fuck just happened?"

She shrugged. "Ancient magic, sister. Older than the Sahrger. From the first tribes, when Calnon was new and magic was wild, families passed down their blades to a champion. We are bound, now, in a way far stronger than the chain that was forced on us. Go, wielding iron that cares for you, that knows you as I do and not just as a Sahrger."

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