Once the predator realizes it can’t overpower me and take the arcana crystal—which, yes, it does try to do—it resumes talking to itself in its creepy mind-meld sort of way. It’s like in its time spent apart the two halves diverged, forming two slightly different identities, and now they have to get back on the same page again. It’s as eerie as it is fascinating.

The smaller, original predator is filling in the bigger version on the semi-truce we’d forged, with regards to it not sucking up all my mana if I agree to not starve it back into Between or try to Attune its void. Not that either of these are much of an option anymore. Even assuming I could stop it from sapping all my mana away if I tried anything, I now need the predator’s cooperation in Emrox. Besides, I guess it’s not the worst deal to lose a few points of mana here and there in exchange for a large quantity of void at my disposal. The mixing of my Attuned void with the predator’s void apparently allows me to control all of it, at least to a clunky extent, but that’s only because I’m the dominant mind. If I want true, precise control, I need the predator working with me. Best to keep the peace for now.

While Zyneth is gone, I spend my time practicing the alphabet and waiting for my mana stores to recover. Learning the language serves as a backup in case my translator gets destroyed and Zyneth isn’t around to understand my signs, but more importantly, there’s a message I need to write.

By the time evening sets in, the predator has fully merged back into one entity again. Or maybe it never was one entity to begin with. The way it refers to itself as we, I wonder if there were actually many more minds that once lived in this creature, only to eventually be absorbed into its homogenous identity.

What that might imply about my fate makes me shiver.

Zyneth returns before I start to panic too much, with a healed arm and bags under his eyes. He wearily greets me, drops off some food, and then collapses into bed. Rezira had mentioned before how much healing can take it out of a person. I haven’t experienced that myself, but I suspect a general lack of biology might be the culprit.

And then, I wait.

I spend the night slowly waiting for my mana to recover enough to fix all the broken bits of my body. Chips off my hands, fractures in my leg. I have to fully reform the inverted-pyramid shape I’d been using for my head before, only broken a few days ago, which already seems so distant. My vial is also now healed, thanks to the level up, so I store that away in my pouch once my new head is functional. I briefly consider making or getting my hands on a new bottle for the void, though I don’t much see the point in that now. There’s enough void to fill ten bottles. Instead, I add the void to joints scattered across my glass body; this time it’s enough to reinforce every piece of glass I have, with a handful of void to spare. I hide the rest away beneath my cloak. That will have to be good enough.

The next morning, Zyneth stares at the arcana crystal while he eats breakfast, but when he finally speaks, it’s not about Gillow.

“We should go shopping.”

That’s about the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. “What about laying low? We could head back to Bluevine, see Noli and Rezira.”

“I’d considered that as well, but I don’t think using the telepad now would be wise. It’s a natural checkpoint for people intending to leave Miasmere; we’d be far more likely to be found that way than if we lost ourselves in the population of the city. If we relocate to an inn further from the Athenaeum, I believe we should be safe for the next few days.” He gestures to the torn and bloodied shirt draped over the back of the chair. “Also, I am running low on shirts.”

“Getting out of here sounds great,” I say. “And so do clothes. Speaking of which…”

“Yes, yes,” Zyneth chuckles. “We’re getting you some pants finally.”

“And a shirt,” I say.

“And a shirt.”

“And a cloak.”

“You already have a cloak.”

I stick my finger through a hole in the fabric. Then three more.

“Ah,” Zyneth says. “Point taken.”

Now that getting out of this room is even an option, I can’t help but feel a little excited. God, when was the last time I did something normal?

“Well what are we waiting for?” I say. “Let us ditch this dump.”

Zyneth starts gathering up the last of his things. “You know this is a fairly nice inn, right?”

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“That is debatable,” I say. “Did you even glance under the bed? That dust build up is going to give someone an asthma attack. And my boots make sticky sounds when I walk across the main floor!”

Zyneth laughs as he finishes gathering up his things. I stuff my bag with my books and the arcana crystal, then sling it over my shoulder. Only after I’ve picked everything up do I realize what I’ve done: I can actually lift the bag. With one hand. Without dropping it. All that void really is helping. Huh.

“Your world must be truly luxurious,” Zyneth says as we leave the inn. He heads in a direction away from the Athenaeum—and away from Gillow’s side of town. “The level of cleanliness you expect I’ve only seen in a palace.”

I think about Los Angeles. The parties. The lights. The traffic. The pollution. “It has its ups and downs. So you have been in a palace, huh?”

“You’re changing the subject,” Zyneth says.

“And now you are.”

“You sound like a child,” Zyneth teases. But he indulges me. “I grew up in the high courts of Mount Shale. The politics were unbearable, and were a large factor in why I left.”

I wait for him to continue, but apparently that’s as much as info as he decides is relevant to this conversation. “Oh, come on,” I say. “You cannot stop there. What was Mount Shale like? Your childhood? Give me the details!”

Zyneth chuckles lightly, but the smile falls away fast. After a moment of thoughtful silence, he reluctantly continues. “Mount Shale is a large cambion city that, quite intentionally, doesn’t have a telepad. The Queens prefer their privacy, which has led to a somewhat cloistered environment. Everyone grew up knowing everyone else. Any action or word of mine was a reflection on the family.” He grimaces. “I was raised… in a rather privileged environment, though I did not fully appreciate it at the time. What was nearly unbounded freedom, I mistook for suffocation. Respect for isolation. Power for obligation. I… rebelled. It’s why I ultimately left—and how I ended up falling in with the likes of Gillow. Seeking an escape from my responsibilities, I found those who embodied the adventure I sought. They were free spirits—the fringes of society, I thought.” He shakes his head. “Criminals, the lot of them. I was simply too callow to see it at the time.”

That might be the most I’ve ever heard Zyneth speak about his past. I’m impressed—and also bursting with a thousand more questions.

“What about you?” Zyneth asks before I have the chance. “Where did you grow up?”

I guess fair’s fair. “A small, rural town in the middle of my country,” I say. “Not like, Noli and Rezira level of rural. But for my world, it was pretty small. Like you said, everyone knew everyone. Less politics and more… gossip. When I finally came out, my parents knew before I even got home.” I say it like it’s a joke, but the memory is still tinged with resentment. You’d think it wouldn’t bother me anymore after all these years.

“Came out of what?” Zyneth asks.

I laugh. “The ice cream shop, obviously.” Zyneth looks even more confused. Oh shit. “Wait, you are serious?”

“I am not following what ice cream has to do with your parents.”

“Out of the closet,” I explain. “When I first admitted I was gay, the friend I told pretty much immediately outed me to the rest of the school and the news spread like wildfire.”

Zyneth frowns. “Outed? Why was this news? I still don’t understand.”

“Wow. Okay.” I absently touch my vial. “I mean, I noticed everyone here seemed pretty accepting, but I guess I figured I just got lucky. Met the right people. Is it like this everywhere? No one has an issue with same-sex relationships?”

Zyneth looks horrified. “Why would we?”

Oh, buddy, buckle up. I give him an extremely brief snapshot of the current state of affairs back home: homophobia, racism, sexism—and all the other isms and phobias I can think of. Zyneth looks progressively more and more aghast.

“My opinion of your world has significantly diminished,” he finally says.

I laugh. “Yeah, it was not all sunshine and rainbows. But you are telling me your whole planet lives in some kind of bigotry-free utopia?” As much as I’d love that, I find it a little hard to swallow.

“Of course not,” Zyneth says, his expression darkening. “Similar veins of xenophobia to the ones you mentioned have certainly stained our history as well. Although, much intolerance was lessened with the re-discovery of telepads. Linking major cities across the continent has led to a blending of values, at least on a macro scale. There are some pockets of isolated communities where such bigotry may still exist, however they would be considered fringe. Even so, we still manage to find plenty of differences to take issue with in other ways. Some kingdoms have generations of bad blood between them that won’t be so easily healed with a few telepads.”

“Okay, so not completely perfect,” I tease. “It is strangely comforting to hear that. Maybe our world is just a few telepads away from solving some of our problems too.”

“Perhaps,” Zyneth says. “Though it would be disingenuous of me to imply they’ve solved all our problems. When the gods clash, worshipers on all sides get pulled into the fray.”

“Sorry,” I say, “When the gods do what now?”

“When the heavens become restless, and the gods fight,” Zyneth says, as if this is fucking obvious. Now it’s his turn to pause and look at me. “Ah. Is that not something you commonly experience?”

“Commonly?!” I cry. “Gods?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Wait, do you not have gods on your world?”

“I mean, yes,” I say. “Probably. It is complicated. But they do not treat Earth as their personal boxing ring.”

“Probably?” Zyneth repeats. “What, have you never met one?”

“You have?”

We regard each other, equally disquieted.

“Okay,” I say. “There is a lot we need to unpack here.”

Zyneth nods. “I suspect this will take more than a brief chat in the marketplace to untangle.”

I raise a hand to my head, instinctively reaching to run my fingers through my hair. Instead my hand clinks against my glass, and I awkwardly lower it.

“I think I might need to learn sooner rather than later,” I say, something Yedzaquib had said coming to mind. I hadn’t really thought much of it then, but if the gods of this world are something out of Greek legend, ready to come fuck up your day at a moment’s notice, the comment is abruptly taking on much more real and dire implications. “Yedzaquib said the gods would not be happy to learn about the bond between me and the predator. Do you know what he meant by that?”

Zyneth grimaces. “Nothing good.”

And on that cheery note, we finally enter the bazaar.