I didn't have Substance as one of my gifts, but since I'd combined one of my minds with one of my souls into a ghost it could do something related with its own form. It was already a little more... dense... than either half had been by themselves, and much like the little doughboy spirits I could shove some mana into it to make it even more solid. Mana wasn't something I had any significant amount of at the moment, but unlike a normal ghost that was driven by fractured memories and raw emotions, I was in control enough to just lend a little weight to the tips of my fingers once they were inside Klinec's head.

There was resistance - Klinec's lutore wanted to reject me, probably. But my lutore was bigger and I'd unified all its layers as the first thing I did - it had seemed like a wasted power but I could feel it now, feel how this uniform bubble around me completely disrupted the way a clash between us should have gone. It should have been us trying to decide who had the best Pokemon card, and instead I threw a whole binder at his face. Regardless of the details, the point was that my hand absolutely got up in there and... swished.

My body was suddenly there, and it dropped to the ground in an undignified way. We were in the hallway - the one I'd been headed for - and there was nobody else in sight, which was nice. I got my body up and as I did I tried to check on Klinec. He was laying on the ground, twitching but alive, and I wasn't sure how much actual physical harm I'd done. I wanted to finish him off, but the way to be sure about it would be slitting his throat and the last thing I needed was blood all over me - and anyway, I was in a hurry. Even if the real Helma didn't have a passphrase like Klinec and couldn't talk her way past the guards, surely it was only a matter of time before the alarm was raised. I grabbed everything I could from Klinec's pockets just on principle, punched him hard in the throat - that would probably kill him if nobody found him in the next few minutes - and hurried to the teleportation room.

I rotated the rune poles into position and stepped through, and then leaned back in and pulled one of the poles clean out and took it with me. I wasn't sure if that would work, but it couldn't hurt - worst case scenario it would trigger some minor alarm that made someone come and investigate, and they were about to do that anyway. The bigger worry was Helma getting out or someone finding Klinec, either of which would probably cause an immediate lockdown. I entered the teleportation room, and in my best Helma impression said, "I need to deliver an urgent message to Storm's Keep, passphrase crimson-scale-fourteen."

There was a small stone on a stand that I knew was a communication device; they were meant to be portable for emergencies, but otherwise sat there like a bluetooth speaker. As the teleportation specialist turned away from me I grabbed it and - frazzled and not thinking clearly - swallowed it like a pill. In my defense, I had needed to get it somewhere its sound would be muffled, and I wasn't sure I had time to figure out where on my person was safe - if he'd turned around right away and seen me cramming something into my pocket it would have been bad. Still, I felt pretty silly.

I walked to the center of the circle, and felt magical energy gathering around me. The world twisted, and I was on another platform - this one with three guards standing by in addition to its own teleportation specialist. They were clearly Empire soldiers, not Knights of the Storm - but that was expected. The first step had, presumably, just taken me back to the prime plane. Now I'd need to teleport one more time to actually get to my destination.

I repeated my request, and thankfully the passcode worked again - part of me was worried that it hadn't worked, actually, and they were just good actors that were about to teleport me into a secure cell, but I didn't have much of a choice other than to go with the flow. It was a little trickier with the guards there, but I once again snagged the communication node and swallowed it - and not a moment too soon, as muffled voices started coming from my stomach. With my skin, and the shirt, and the military coat, and my arms wrapped around? It was still somewhat audible - not the words, but the frantic tone. Two of the three guards heard it, but they couldn't seem to agree where it was coming from - they kept poking their heads out into the hallway.

Finally, one of them looked over at where the communication node should be. "Hey..." he said, and space twisted around me as I was teleported away.

I'd successfully made it to the dumbest part of my plan, made fully brain dead by the fact that the Empire was going to be appearing right behind me. I glanced around, trying to take stock of my situation - the chamber was huge hollow tower, with stone walls about ten feet high circling it so that knights with crossbows could keep an eye on new arrivals - there were three of them, and based on the way the crossbows were held they didn't seem to think I was any kind of threat. The second layer of walls, behind them, went up almost forty feet and were made from some sort of dark smoky glass that flickered with simulated lightning. I approved.

I walked towards the exit and was met with another knight and a guy in robes, the latter of which gave a minute bow. "To what do we owe the pleasure of a visit by the Endless Empire?"

"Most importantly," I said, "this teleportation room may be compromised - I'd recommend immediately shutting it down until we can confirm it's safe."

He frowned, but gestured to one of the crossbow guys. The floor suddenly changed shape, with some stones pushing upwards and others dropping down. "Compromised in what way?"

"Commander Klinec had the rune sequence, and he was just found murdered. We know that Halenvar wants to destroy all the portals into Brinkmar and also wants to steal Yesrin's Loom, and there's some reason to believe an agent from Halenvar - possibly Cyra - was influencing our guards. Some have become convinced that members of leadership are Sahrger in disguise, or are abruptly insisting that they need to be here at Storm's Keep. We're putting the whole place on lockdown for now. Thankfully, we don't believe it has had any impact on the forces in Brinkmar."

The chances of this cover story actually making them not let the Empire come through and get me were basically nonexistent, but it didn't seem like it could make things worse, and it seemed like I thrived on ridiculous longshots. If I'd made a cleaner getaway I wouldn't have risked it though, since I would have wanted to keep things chill. Ah well.

"This is very serious. Come, I'll alert the Elders - you can wait in their outer chambers while they discuss the situation, I'm sure they'll have questions for you."

"Thank you," I said, "but I also urgently need to talk to two of your prisoners - Katrin and Errod Runelighter?"

He looked a bit flustered - probably he didn't want to worry about this other request before resolving the first one. "Hmm. Caultrax! Escort her to the lobby of the prison wing, and let the Master of Chains know she's requesting an audience with some prisoners. Madame... Helma, correct? I apologize, I've forgotten your rank."

So Helma had been here and met these guys before. That was good. Did I know her rank from those foggy memories of the first timeline? Staff officer? That sounded right, so I went ahead and said it with confidence.

"Ah. Well, Staff Officer Helma, I will likely be sending someone to collect you shortly, so you may not be approved to meet with the prisoners before then. I hope you understand."

"Of course! Thank you." I peeled away and went with Caultrax, who was - like the other knights I'd seen - so wrapped up in armor that I couldn't make anything out. We headed down some spiral stairs and through a few checkpoints, and as we did I confirmed that Katrin and Errod's fate threads were pointing in that direction. Finally we reached a spartan but not unpleasant lobby, and he headed off alone to find the Master of Chains which was presumably the person in charge of the prisoners and not, for example, some BDSM thing.

I could tell that Katrin and Errod were close, because I had an extra point of reference now - threads were going from me to them, and from them to a door on the other side of the lobby. That had to be Katrin's spellbook and Errod's... wait, had they taken Errod's glove? Even if it was technically detatchable, his hand would die if it was kept too far away or if the docking device was removed from his wrist. Hmm. On impulse, I went to the door and knocked. A slit opened, revealing piercing eyes surrounded by dense wrinkles.

"Hi! I'm Staff Officer Helma, from the Empire. You have the items recovered from the Runelighter prisoners in there, correct?"

The slit closed, there were a few loud noises of bolts being slid in the door, and it opened up. The owner of the eyes was on the short side, and looked like he was well into his nineties. "Ah! Yes! Come in, come in. I'm still finishing my write-up of the bracers, they're fascinating! Excellent technique, but some odd choices I haven't figured out yet."

The room was something halfway between a workshop and an evidence lock-up, with caged shelves and tables covered in tools. Almost everything looked at least vaguely magical. Thanks to the threads I spotted what I was looking for right away - one terminated at a large metal box with an intimidating and clearly magical padlock, and the other ended at... a birdcage. Huh. The glove saw me looking at it and made a rude gesture, which implied it wasn't Errod in control. Wait. It could see me? That wasn't a total surprise, it had gone for help after getting cut off, but... it didn't have eyes or anything so I wasn't sure how that worked. The birdcage was hanging at eye level, and while it didn't have a padlock it was clear the release was impossible for the hand to reach.

"Ah! Yes! I believe that's the famed Swordsman, an artifact thought to be long lost. The hand is being kept alive for now so I can study it, but once the prisoner is executed I'm sure there will be quite the lively debate about who will get to use that item. It's said that the Swordsman somehow greatly amplifies your fighting skills, and while some of our knights would be too proud to take that assistance others will surely jump at the chance. The device keeping the hand alive has the same maker's mark as the bracers, see?"

He led me over to a workbench, where he was in the process of writing notes about some gorgeous bracers. They were metal, not surprisingly, but looked almost organic - swirls and twists of different colors gave the impression of roots or currents in the water, and the strange dial on one side could have just sprouted in place like a mushroom. I didn't even know what they did and I desperately wanted them. "They're beautiful. What are they?"

He patted the stack of papers. "That's what I'm figuring out. Reverse-engineering is never simple, and these things... they're wonderful. They interact with the planar membrane, but also through some sort of spiritual or mental connection - I think if you had a bonded spirit companion on another plane it would let you see through their eyes, though that impression may be skewed by me knowing what the other one does," he said, gesturing back at the bird cage, "but the tricky part is that it's mostly for mana efficiency, even though the range of abilities it works for can't possibly be used by a single person. Possibly they're meant to be passed back and forth, but that would be terribly wasteful and I can't imagine the artist that made them wanting that."

Okay, so these were made by... Talia Candecky? And they were with Katrin and Errod, so... were these what she was making for me? "Quite the mystery. What's the dial for?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Fine tuning, possibly. I believe it would make planar travel easier, one of the primary functions of the device is to thin the planar membrane while also... there's an interaction with the user's lutore, possibly? Regardless, the dial has one rune for each plane - even the ones that aren't accessible, which is interesting because they're on tuned high-zilura plates. Normally you can only tune zilura to a plane when you're on that plane or it's in alignment, and this device is too new for that to make sense. Possibly that part is salvaged from an older device, but it seems like an expensive way to do things - not that money was an object here, it's worth a fortune in metals alone - some of these are nearly impossible to find since the fall of the Empire."

What the actual fuck. Why would Talia have gone so overboard? He was getting really into showing me the details, so I carefully swiped a work glove off the bench behind me and stuffed it with a rag before hiding it in my coat. "Hey, can you take a look at something for me?" I asked, and pulled out the keychain from Mr. Bagmaw.

He took it, removed the actual key ring part, and put the little house under what appeared to be a microscope. I took the opportunity to swiftly pop the latch on the birdcage, and shove the decoy glove in there as the real one skittered off. I'd been hoping it would stick with me, but I couldn't exactly call out to it so I just watched the fate thread zip around the room - it looked like the glove was headed deeper into the mess of shelves. After a moment, the man straightened up.

"Well. It's made of aikurna, specifically low aikurna, though I suppose I don't need to specify."

"I don't know what that means, sorry."

"Neutral, low, and high are the three thresholds for mana density in alchemical metals. You know how alchemy works? No? They can liquefy mana crystals and meld them with mundane metals, so for every metal there's an alchemical metal. Some are harder to make than others, and the grade of mana crystal you use determines how it behaves but the difference is negligible until it hits a threshold. Pins!"

That last exclamation caught me off guard, but then he pulled out some coins and I realized what he was talking about.

"So, see, the one pin coin is purple because of the amount of mana used in its creation. Up through the eighteen pin coin it's neutral, then low up to six hundred forty-eight, and then above that is high - although in this case the only difference is in its durability, and it's minor. For other metals it can change the behavior entirely, and then there are alloys that change it further. Neutral aikurna is too weak to do anything, and high also seems to be useless although it's possible there's an alloy out there that hasn't been discovered yet, but for low aikurna? Here..."

He marked one side of the house keychain with a grease pencil, and then flipped it like a coin. It came up on the unmarked side, and he flipped it again. And again. And again. It was always the same side. "Now unless it's meant to do that, which it's probably not, which side it favors might change from day to day. But that shows the affinity this metal has with probability. As for the details... I'd say it's most likely a good luck charm because it's meant for someone specific, though I suppose it could be a bad luck charm given to someone as a... prank, or something. It wouldn't be powerful enough to have much of an impact either way on its own, though it might interact with other probability effects."

He handed it back. "That's just at a glance, of course - a deeper examination is hard with these little trinkets, especially if you want to keep them intact. It's actually easier to work on the bigger, more complicated devices because you can get a look at each part individually first."

Huh. So it was a luck charm, probably, and keyed to me specifically somehow. Klinec wouldn't have mentioned it if he'd been involved, but I still didn't see how it could be the same one Mr. Bagmaw gave me. So when would it have been swapped out, and why? Sadly, it wasn't something I had time to wonder about. My escort hadn't come back into the lobby yet - the door was still open and I could see out there - but it probably wouldn't be long and I hadn't thought of how to get the spellbook out. The fact that this guy had left the door open despite its multiple locks when he didn't really know me meant he wasn't a stickler for protocol, so maybe I could just... ask?

"Thanks. Back to the Runelighters, I understand there was a spellbook?"

"Indeed! Imagine, all these years of looking for it and they bring it right to us. I haven't been able to open it to validate its authenticity, but we feel fairly certain. I would have guessed it ended up in Halenvar, like the vault key, but we didn't have records of which knight the Savior of Brinkmar gave it to for safekeeping and - well, as long as we couldn't find it many were happy to assume that meant it was safe. There was talk of taking Yesrin's Loom and having someone sacrifice themselves to lock it away in one of Kertzale's largest cells, so there was always the chance something like that had been done with it. But having it here is better - though I doubt we'll leave it out like the Loom."

"Wait, leave it out? Is Yesrin's Loom just... sitting out somewhere?"

"Of course! Well, it's in a bit of a maze, of course. But the spellbook, well, that one doesn't have a particular fate tied to it so we'll most likely seal it away somewhere."

I was missing something. Not about the spellbook; I'd already been told that during the fall of Brinkmar people were sent away with various valuable or dangerous things, and I'd known that Katrin and Errod's family were from there, so it could make sense if it had been passed down with them. Katrin had said something about a secret compartment her father had never told her about, so... yeah. Fine. But the bit about the loom was bugging me. The options were sealing it away in a prison dimension forever, or leaving it out on display?

I thought back to the fight with Elrebar. My other mind pulled it up with divination so I could get the wording right. He'd said... "No prophesy is guaranteed; the loom was used and the world yet stands. We have killed a dozen that touched it, and the gods didn't show up to complain." Hmm. Killed a dozen who touched it, and it's on display? Why would you... oh. Jesus. They were trying to cheat fate. It's supposed to be used after the end of the world, so whenever someone seems too interested they kill them under the assumption that that person was part of the world ending? Maybe? It was fucked up, and based on what I'd read of Harmid's book it wouldn't even work, but... yeah, that could be what they were trying.

Also, this was the first I was really thinking about the fact he'd said it was used. He could have been referring to the Clockmaker, since Ulren had said he used it in a roundabout way. That, or one of the dozen-ish people they'd murdered for touching it had done something before dying. Well, at least he wasn't going to have to kill me for touching the spellbook. I asked to see it, and he winced.

"Ah, I really would love to - unfortunately it was, technically, entrusted to the remaining knights of Brinkmar and therefore I'm not supposed to allow anyone outside our order to touch it. There were two other orders, originally, but both are now... defunct."

One of the cages at the back of the room swung open.

"Hmm? Odd. Just a moment..." He walked back to it, and I followed closely behind. When we arrived, it was clear the cage was empty - unlike most of the others, which held all sorts of fascinating objects. It was like a cursed antique store, and as we approached I saw several had fate threads attached to them - some were leading off through the walls, and some were just drifting in the air and ended a foot or so away - probably looking for an impossible condition to be met. If I hadn't been in the middle of a rescue mission with enemies mere moment behind me, I would have loved to poke around longer.

But I really couldn't stay, so I just shoved the old man in the cage and locked it. The hand scurried up and slapped a padlock into place, then climbed onto my shoulder.

The old man was staring and sputtering. "This! You! You can't!"

"You seem nice," I said, grabbing the metal box with the spellbook in it and hurrying back over, "so I'd really rather not kill you. But if you don't open this thing right now shit is going to get ugly, and even if I don't kill you you might die just as a bystander. Do everyone here a favor, okay?"

"You... have the crown?" he asked.

"Honestly I don't know what you're talking about, but this doesn't belong to you and I'm taking it with me one way or another. If the knights see me carrying this big box, I'm going to have to murder them, and I won't really worry about that because they've already tried to steal this book from my friend once and seemed totally happy to kill me in the process."

"I seriously doubt that you could possibly -"

My ghost popped out of my body, right at his face. "OPEN THE FUCKING BOX!" it wailed, and he scrambled to get his hands through the bars far enough to tap out a pattern on the lock. It snapped open. "Thank you!" I said, still as the ghost, and then slid back into my body. I snatched the bracers and the paperwork about them from the table on my way by and shoved them into my bag then tossed the hand on the floor beside me as I made it to the door. "Lock it, come out through the slit!"

It followed directions, and I heard the bolts slapping into place before it squeezed through to join me - the disk at its wrist, the one connecting it to Errod, got caught and I had to bend it in a way that was probably going to leave a nasty bruise, but it seemed worth it to have the door sealed. It was possible I would have been able to reach through as a ghost and lock it, but the door was likely warded in some way and I was super low on mana. I stuffed the spellbook into my bag, and the hand crawled into my shirt - a little presumptuous there - then just as my ass hit the seat a knight walked in.

She wasn't wearing the full armor, but oddly she had a sort of belt and harness thing going on - I suspected it was some fancy thing that would let her snap the rest of the plate mail on without needing two assistants and a stepladder. "Greetings!" she bellowed, "I'm Gilra, Master of Chains. You wanted another audience with the prisoners?"

Another? Ah. Well, that checked out. Who else would Klinec have sent? "Yes, please. I think they have information vital to the current operation."

"I don't see why we can't do that. I've already asked for them to be brought up, they'll be in the interrogation room by the time we get there. Follow me." She closed and locked the door behind us, and then started chatting as we walked down the hall. "They're pleading self defense, and frankly the whole thing is a mess. Sorry the interrogator wasn't here when you visited last, but as it turned out it wouldn't have mattered. We couldn't read the boy's thoughts or force him to tell the truth, probably because of that device he's wearing but the head artificer won't let us take it off yet, he's fascinated by the thing. The girl... when we put a Dumine lock on her she somehow blasted it right off and then put the interrogator into a coma."

Holy shit. Good for Katrin.

"He's fine now, of course, and we got a new Dumine lock on the kid, but he's not eager to try again. We figured we'd do it after today's operation, and then assuming there's no surprises and you don't need them for your negotiations we'll do the execution right after we interrogate them. No point in letting them rot in a cell, we try to finish our business quickly and humanely."

We reached the room in question, and sure enough there were Katrin and Errod. Gilra looked them over, checking the chains on their hands and feet, and then nodded in satisfaction. "Okay, you can ask whatever you want but don't go any closer - there shouldn't be a way for them to get free, but I don't want any surprises. Especially don't let them grab your clothes or any of your items."

"Can we have some privacy? There are some delicate matters I need to discuss."

Gilra looked uncomfortable, but shooed the guards out and followed behind. The door was shut... and locked.

Errod lifted his chin defiantly. "We have nothing to say to you. I know what you're doing, and it's disgraceful. Calliope has offered to help, and you're planning to use us as leverage against her, aren't you?"

"Okay well first of all, make up your mind. Do you have nothing to say to me, or are you going ask me questions? Second, they did try to use you as leverage, and it did not go well for them."

Katrin and Errod had almost identical looks of astonishment - you could really tell they were siblings. I ran forward and hugged them as best I could, and was just about to try and figure out how to pick the locks when I realized there was a better way. Most Dumine locks could be removed by anyone that had a Dumine - and no lock on it - so happily I qualified. I popped Katrin's lock off and pulled out her spellbook as Errod's hand clicked onto his wrist. The book sprung open, and Katrin's eyes seemed to glow slightly before she uttered some words of High Imperial - the chains dropped to the ground, sliced clean through.

It looked like I hadn't been the only one training. I ran to the door and peeked through the tiny slit, only to see Gilra in a heated discussion with another knight. There was a lot of gesturing, and then Gilra shouted an order - the guards stepped away from the door to the interrogation room, faced it, and drew their hooked swords. A younger man burst into the room with a bundle, and Gilra began pulling pieces of armor out and snapping them into place.

"Bad news, guys. It's time."

Katrin grabbed my wrist with one hand and Errod's with another, and I felt mana surge into me. Errod gave a little shiver, then nodded. I yanked off the stupid hood and tightened my bag so it wouldn't swing around, clipped on the fancy bracers, then pulled out Helma's tiny knife - though with my mana no longer at rock bottom and everyone wearing armor I knew it was mostly going to be a ghost mode situation. I looked back at Errod. "Sorry man, I didn't have a chance to grab you a sword."

"It's okay," he said calmly, "I'll use one of theirs."

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