I blinked.

“Um…what?”

I hoped I sounded incredulous. But the way Keshry was looking at me didn’t change.

“Why would you say that?” I pressed.

“Because I’ve seen your dreams.”

“Again, what?”

Her eyes skirted past me and I followed her gaze, toward our pair of guards—neither of whom were facing our way—and all the kobolds milling about beyond them. No one seemed to be paying us much attention. Keshry looked to me again.

“Well I am sorry,” she said in a hush. “But last night was my first with Innate Dreamsight, and I don’t have much control over it, yet. I have always wanted to meet someone like you. Will you tell me everything?”

I forced a laugh.

“Wait, you think because I have weird dreams that I’m some kind of alien? That I’m not really me?”

What did I dream about last night? Oh right. Dying in a bunch of heights and exposure-related scenarios. Oh, and maybe something about high school. An endless high school that I couldn’t escape from and that had way too many gymnasiums.

Keshry tilted her head as she regarded me, lowered her already soft voice.

“Of course you are you. But you are a different you. From a different place. You don’t have to be false with me, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

I stared at her, astounded. Considering.

If I could only be sure I could trust her, it would be incredibly helpful to have someone around who knew what was really going on with me. With whom I could be entirely honest. But if I couldn’t trust her, there was no knowing what might happen. The fact that she seemed accepting of and even excited about my otherworldly status boded well, but then again, there was a good chance that she was an outlier among her people. She certainly seemed like one.

“Do you promise?” I whispered. “Swear to keep anything I say to you about this between us?”

“I vow it,” she said eagerly, making a little sign in the air with her pinky claw.

“Alright,” I said. “I have more questions for you before I’ll be ready to answer any of yours. But first I need to pee. And drink some water. And I suppose we better start worrying about food too, while we’re at it. Once the necessities are taken care of, we can talk.”

“Ah, hm.” Keshry looked vaguely troubled, dreamy gaze drifting past me again. “Well, I relieved myself over the edge a little while ago. And there’s some rain water pooled in the rocks over there and there.” She gestured to the far right and left of the ledge, where jagged upthrusts of raw mountain rock arose, penning us in on our end of the tier and blocking us from getting around to any of the lower ones at the other side of the mountaintop.

Desperate as I was, going to the bathroom off the edge of the world while totally exposed for everyone to see and then filling up on raw rain water was very much not how I wanted to start my first full day of my new life.

“Wait,” I said, frowning as I peered back at all the others. “where are all of them going to relieve themselves? We’re not allowed to go inside, and I don’t remember seeing any greenroom areas up here.”

“I think they are just using one of the lower tiers.”

“Ew.”

Scrunching my nose, I looked around.

Might as well try the most obvious thing first. Though I know it won’t work.

“Hey,” I called, dragging myself to my feet and going over to our self-appointed guards. “I need to pee. You can let me by for at least that much, right? I’ll come back.”

One of the guards, a beige skyborn, laughed.

“Mmm, I don’t think so,” sneered the other, a lanky winged mauve bastard.

I sighed, turned away from them. Eyed the edge.

“Are the sigils still working?”

“They’re getting a little weak,” admitted Keshry.

“How can you tell?”

She smiled, as though the confirmation of my unfamiliarity with this world pleased her.

“Just focus on them, and wonder about it.”

So, I did—taking a few reluctant steps closer so that I could see them better.

And the moment I framed the wordless question in my mind, a very clear impression presented itself before my awareness. The impression that the sigils were almost out of power—mana—and that soon they would cease to function entirely. I don’t really know how to describe what those impressions felt like any more than I could describe a color to someone who’s never seen one. But they were as clear and obvious to me then as a giant red bull’s-eye would have been.

“Shit.”

“You can,” said Keshry. “I’ll look away.”

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I sputtered.

“No! I mean, there is no way I am doing that or anything else near the ledge with the sigils about to go out.”

“Oh. Well, we can replenish them. I’ve never done it before, but anyone can, once they have a Gem. They say Opals are best at it, of course.”

“Won’t that make it reflect the pee back at me, though?”

Keshry giggled. “No, they only stop us from going over. Deepborn, I mean.”

“Alright,” I said dubiously, eying the sigils again. “How do I do it? Replenish them?”

“I’ll do it with you,” she said. “Just focus on it, like before, but this time think about your mana going into it.”

“My mana? How much do I have?”

“With one Gem, we produce one hundred a day, assuming we’ve had enough rest.”

“We as in kobolds, or we as in deepborn?”

“Deepborn.”

Adding mana production rates of increase to my list of questions for later, I focused on the sigils again. Visualization was something I was good at. I’d had a lot of practice. And the instant I began, the actual mana transfer did too—power flowing from my body in a cool rush. Beside me, I could sense Keshry doing the same, although for her the process was halting and slow. In less than a minute, we were done—most of the mana having come from me. Without even having to wonder about it, I could feel that I’d used almost three-quarters of my day’s supply.

“Alright…um, if you could turn around now, that would be great,” I said when we were done. “And could you, like…stand in front of me and sort of block everyone’s view a bit, maybe? Please?”

“Mhm,” said Keshry, turning around.

“Thank you. So much.”

Breath held and stomach churning, I tested the sigils by reaching my hand out beyond the edge, braced sideways so that I wasn’t facing directly out over the drop. There was resistance there, not so much that it stopped me from reaching beyond, but I could feel that it was as it had been the previous night. It should still stop a fall.

Gods, this is humiliating.

Taking a deep breath, I turned to face away from the ledge, edging backward slowly and infinitesimally, until I felt resistance again. Keshry began to hum, whether to entertain herself or as a courtesy, I couldn’t be sure. I finished up as quickly and discreetly as I could manage, thanking my imaginary kobold gods that all I had to do was pee. I wondered if kobold digestion might be something like a snake’s, and if perhaps I could get by the whole eight days on just the last night’s meal. Given my mammalian qualities, though, it seemed unlikely.

When I was done, I thanked Keshry again before wandering over to inspect the rocky barrier to the left. There was indeed water pooling in the many crags and indents, and it looked pretty inoffensive. Hoping kobold physiology also protected me from the hazards of drinking untreated rainwater, I lapped some of it up. It was weirdly satisfying, cold and faintly rock-flavored, but I would still do terrible things for some coffee.

Taking a step back, I peered up the rocky incline. With all those little indents and ledges, it didn’t actually look like it would be too hard to climb. And if I could climb up and over it, I could possibly get around to the other tiers, or even onto the rooftop, if I wanted.

But that would mean going even higher up. On a steep, uneven surface. If there were sigils, that wouldn’t be so bad…and for all I knew, there could be. But the edge of the unhewn rock was higher up and extended further than the clean, carved ledge of the tier. To find out if there were any sigils up there, I would have to climb.

A particularly large snore from behind me triggered an idea.

Or someone else could fly.

Padding over to the still-sleeping skyborn, I crouched at his side and peered at him. He was a deep, warm brown-ish color, his scales washed over with a layer of iridescence.

1Gem Garnet

“Do you think he’ll be mad if I wake him up?” I asked in a hush as Keshry came up behind me.

“Perhaps,” she said.

I huffed. Very helpful.

My impatience and curiosity had me deeply tempted to nudge him awake anyway. But I resisted, deciding he’d be more inclined to do me favors if I wasn’t an annoying little shit about it. So instead I went back to the rocks and sat down, cross legged and tail curled around me, with my back against them. Looking over to Keshry, I patted the spot next to me.

“Guess now’s a good time to talk worlds,” I said as she trotted over. The Jade kobold beamed, hurrying to take the spot I’d indicated.

“First, I need to know how you knew. Exactly. Is it something any kobold can do, or any Jade? Do I have to worry about other people being able to tell? What’ll happen to me if anyone else finds out?”

“Oh, that is a lot of questions. Let’s see…”

Keshry took a moment, seemingly gathering her thoughts.

“How I knew is that I saw your dreams, as I have said. My thrice-great grandmother is a strong dreamseer. She always knew I’d be a Jade like her, and she taught me about all of the things you can learn from someone’s dreams. Told me stories about the rarest dreamers of all. The ones who bring visions with them from other worlds.” Her eyes glimmered with excitement as she spoke, looking at and yet somehow past me.

”Many are just travelers in the sleeping realm, getting glimpses from the lives of their other selves and then returning. But others change over fully, in waking life. They trade places or merge with another facet.”

“Another facet?”

She gave me a bit of an odd look at that, as though I’d asked a question with a painfully obvious answer and she was a bit concerned for my sanity.

“Yes, the countless other facets of the aetherial gem that is their soul. How can you not know this, when you have clearly merged? All of your memory-flavored dreams before yesterday come from another world. All of them.”

“Er, well, yeah, but I was going off a guess when I made the leap. A made-up paradigm loosely based on a bastardized version of a legitimate theory. It’s just kinda weird to hear it confirmed as fact.”

Keshry tilted her head just a bit.

“Hm. What was your next question, again?”

“Can anyone else—”

“Ah, yes, that’s right. Well, all Jades have Innate Dreamsight, but it only happened by accident between us because we slept in contact with one another. Another low-rank Jade would have to sleep beside you too, to see your dreams, and a more advanced one would have to go out of their way to seek you out in the sleeping world in order to see anything, and that is unlikely unless you give them a reason to.”

I loosed a sigh of relief at that. It wasn’t the greatest news, but not the worst, either.

“And what was the last? Oh yes. I cannot be sure of all that will happen if others find out. I think some will be fascinated. Others will be suspicious and wary of you, and think you are not one of us and shouldn’t be here. But that’s the case anyway, isn’t it? Hm. And I suppose some will just be glad the old Zia is gone.”

“But I wouldn’t like, get burned at the stake, or anything?”

“Burned? Is that how you deal with travelers in your world?”

“Er…” I was going to say no, but…I mean, I wasn’t sure how true that was. “Maybe sometimes?”

“No, I do not think you would be burned into steaks. But perhaps you might be expelled, and so never have a coven. And your clan might reject you. But then again, they might not.”

“Oooookay then. Let’s just stick to the whole not-telling-anyone thing, then.”

“Yes.”

The chainsaw snoring, which I’d begun to filter out as background noise, abruptly stopped. As one, Keshry and I looked over at the skyborn kobold where he still lay sprawled out on the stone, eyes now open to reveal a startling shade of ice-blue.

For half a second, I panicked.

Don’t be stupid. He’s all the way over there, you’ve been whispering, and the wind is loud as hell. There’s no way he heard.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he called over, grinning as he caught our gaze. “Your secret’s safe with me.”