Okay, so after getting Laein’s backstory and finding out that she came from what amounted to a whole species of pacifists before essentially being abused and enslaved so long she had transformed herself into a fictional version of the Necromancers she had read about in stories, I kind of wanted to hug her. To be fair, I’d wanted to hug her before that because she just looked and sounded so adorable, but now it was even worse. It was all I could do to keep my hands to myself. But the other thing her story had convinced me of was that I should absolutely not do anything to her that she didn’t like or ask for. She and her people had had their own choices and opinions dismissed and cast aside for so long, and now she was the only survivor of her little clan. No matter what happened, I couldn’t treat her like those monsters had, even accidentally.

Still, I wanted to show her that she didn’t have to completely embrace those dark impulses and ideas, that not everyone out there was bad and that she could still have friends. But that was going to take time. For the moment, I simply let her keep thinking that going along with this Necromancer school idea was the best way for her to get the power she needed to eventually take over the world or whatever she was leaning toward. I kind of had a feeling that embracing this role she had cast herself in with this whole evil overlord idea was her best way of coping with everything she’d lost. And I’d be damned before I unceremoniously yanked that away from her. The time for that sort of conversation would come much later, when we knew each other a lot better.

At the very least, she was going along with things for now and had agreed to play nice. I even made sure she knew that forcing any of my ghosts to do anything against their will was against the rules, and that the moment she hurt any of them, our truce would be over. I wasn’t rude about it or anything, of course. But I did make it clear that they were under my protection. Which she obviously thought was a little weird and wasn’t afraid of saying so. But she did seem to understand that pushing things wasn’t in her best interest. She might not be willing to admit out loud that I was a stronger Necromancer than she was, but we both knew who would win if it came down to an actual fight. Which was another reason she’d agreed to this whole school thing.

Obviously, if we were going to set up a school for Necromancy, we needed a safe and reliable place to put that school. Which was where that Tower Of Lashra Vaeil came in. If it was supposed to be some big treasure horde of Necromancer artifacts, it would probably have everything we needed to set up a place to train Necromancers, right? Maybe even the tower itself. That’s what I was hoping, anyway. If we got there and it turned out to be a dump, or just a bad place, I’d rethink.

But first we had to actually find the place. And we couldn’t exactly call up Fahsteth’s ghost to interrogate him, thanks to his safety measures against that sort of thing. Instead, we needed Gaia to use her Technopathy on the intact ship and the components he’d left behind to see if she could find any coordinates. But we also couldn’t let her accidentally run across any information that might accidentally screw over the timeline. Even she didn’t want that. It was like trying to read ahead in a book to find the color of someone’s sweater without reading key plot details about who died or anything like that. Skimming for certain words without spoiling important things at the same time.

So, we were dealing with that by having Percy help. She would be the one actually reading what was put up on the screens, while Gaia simply unlocked things without paying attention to what was there. Keeping up with the book example, she was turning the pages and holding it up in front of Percy for her to read while looking off to the side and humming to distract herself. But hey, if I was going to trust anyone from the past to be able to resist the temptation to peek on what might happen going forward so they could change it… there were a few on the list, and Gaia was basically at the top. We were lucky she was the one who went to that cave.

Or, well, not lucky at all because Ehn obviously made sure that happened. But still.

At the same time those two were at the intact ship (I had dropped them off over there) looking for details about that tower, Cerberus, some of my ghosts, and most of those independent zombies I had created had their own job. They were going to be going through the crash site and the long ditch the falling ship had created to look for anything that might have those Pale Ship coordinates on it. Not that I could do anything with that at the moment, but it felt important to grab just in case. I had paired two zombies up with one ghost each, and essentially programmed the zombies to use those shovels to dig wherever their attached ghost directed them. The ghosts could use their intangibility to move through the dirt looking for any buried computers, pads, anything that might hold data like that. Then they would direct their zombies to dig until they were close to the object, then stop the digging before the ghosts would use just enough of the energy I’d given them to tug the object out. Once it was out, they would give the vocal command for the zombie to carry the object over to one central location. Once the rest of us were back from taking care of everything else, we’d look through what they’d found to see if the coordinates of where Occillo had been dropped off were on any of them. It was a useful division of labor, at least.

Laein was very impressed by my ability to tell the zombies to react to specific commands, even coming from ghosts. Especially since they wouldn’t listen to the same vocal commands from anyone else. I told her about how it had to do with the ghosts already being connected to me, that they had some of my magic inside them so the zombies read them as being me. It was a trick I’d learned from Doctor Manakel. Apparently in all the stories she had read, the Necromancer never trusted their own ghosts enough to give them command over another part of their army.

In any case, while Gaia and Percy were busy sorting through that stuff and trying to find the location of that tower, and my ghosts and zombies were looking for the Pale Ship coordinates, I had my own job to do. Namely, returning those Native American people to their village and making sure Aylen’s mother, Sonoma, was safe.

I wasn’t going alone either. Well, obviously not since I was taking Eurso and those former prisoners along with. But Laein was going too. Mostly because I wanted to keep an eye on her, and so she could undo the things she had done to ‘prepare’ the land around the villages for the attack that wasn’t going to happen now. She had set the place up to ensure that Sonoma’s eventual ghost wouldn’t be able to escape, and I didn’t want that to end up causing problems for other ghosts down the line. Laien, for her part, actually preened a bit when I implied that what she had done might last a lot longer than she had intended it to just because she was stronger than she thought.

Obviously, I also wanted her to show me what she had done and talk me through it. I coached that as part of this whole Necromancy school thing. Which also seemed to help. She liked the idea that I needed her to teach me things. And that I (or Doctor Manakel) would teach her other things that she didn’t know about in exchange.

So, after informing the seven Native American people (with a little help from the ghost who could talk to them, Utatci) of what we were going to do, I took another look at the coordinates that Percy had produced. One of the computers on the crashed ship that still worked had what amounted to a three dimensional map function, and I was able to plug the latitude and longitude into that to get a view of the area. That showed me both images of the land, and exactly where it was on a globe. Which, in this case, was about ten miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere around where the border between Texas and Mexico would one day be. I wasn’t sure exactly where that was considering I didn’t have my North American geography memorized, but from what I did recall from the map in my head, it was pretty close.

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When I showed those pictures to the former prisoners, they recognized the general area. They also had a lot of questions about what the glowing frozen images were, but we couldn’t really get into that. I just told them it was like magical paintings and they went along with that. Mostly, I was pretty sure, because they desperately wanted to get back to their homes and didn’t really care too much about the details. Which was fair. If I was them and had gone through all this without even any of the context I had for simple modern technology, let alone magic and sci-fi tech, I’d probably want to go home too. Especially when it was clear that I had no way of keeping up with any of that.

Once I was certain that I had the best idea I could get about precisely where that village was, I made sure all seven former prisoners, Eurso, and Laein were standing close to me. Obviously, the Native Americans weren’t exactly super-enthused about standing near the small girl who had helped Fahsteth and his people abduct them in the first place. And, I think she sort of freaked them out in general. Which was also fair, given her everything. But to their credit, they came as close as they dared, watching her intently (she was making faces back at them and snickering a little bit at their reactions) while I focused on thinking about the area I had seen. I thought about that spot on the map as well as the detailed pictures, keeping them firmly in my mind.

And just like that, with a simple thought, we were there. The landscape around us instantly and unceremoniously changed from the inside of that crashed ship to an open field with low hills in the distance. Honestly, it didn’t look that different from where we had been, aside from the heat. It was definitely a good bit warmer here than it had been in Wyoming, that was for sure.

But while I might not have been able to tell much of a difference in the landscape visually, the guys I had brought with definitely could. They instantly forgot all their nervousness about what was going on and spread out to start whooping and cheering loudly. One of them tilted his head back and cupped his hands to his mouth to make loud coyote sounds, while several others literally jumped up and down. They looked like a bunch of sports fans celebrating after a touchdown or a championship or something. It was pretty adorable. Maybe that was a weird thing to call it, but yeah. I liked seeing them happy. Especially considering what they had been through. We could stand to let them be happy for a bit.

Laein, on the other hand, dryly remarked, “And they wonder how we could possibly have found and captured them.”

Without looking that way, I replied, “Yeah, a whole group of innocent people ripped away from their homes and imprisoned in a scary place by someone much stronger and more dangerous than they could possibly comprehend, just to be used. That sounds rough. No wonder they’re happy to get away from that situation.”

The smaller Necromancer girl didn’t give any audible reaction to that. But I saw her turn away out of the corner of my eyes. So maybe she was thinking about it. I certainly wasn’t going to push any harder than that.

Instead, I gave the guys around us another few moments to get their bearings and celebrate before raising my hand for their attention. As I did so, Utatci flickered into being next to me. That time, these guys barely reacted. I wasn’t sure if that was more because they were getting accustomed to seeing my ghosts, or because they were basically on their home turf and felt more comfortable. Probably a mix of both, to be honest. Instead of jumping at his appearance, they immediately started blurting questions and comments in their own rapid-fire language.

Utatci once again had to get them to slow down and repeat themselves once or twice, but finally nodded and turned to me to translate. “They say they can find their way back to their villages from here and would like to thank you for all your help. If you are ever near their homes, they will welcome you inside and introduce you to their people.”

There was another round of commentary, which he listened to before adding, “They would invite you to come with them now, but they know you are busy.” As he said that, his eyes glanced toward Laein briefly, and I knew they were also a bit concerned about having her around their people. And it was probably telling that they seemed to hold little if any such worry about the armored raptor standing behind me.

I asked if they were sure they didn’t want an escort, just in case, but they insisted on traveling with only one another. Apparently it was something about getting back in touch with their own land, walking upon the ground, speaking with the animals, and so forth. Which I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, with the way the Bystander Effect was, they very well might forget details about what had happened to them once they got away from it and a little time passed. I knew it wasn’t quite as strong here on the opposite side of the world from where it had started just yet, but it was still extant. From what I’d heard, the Bystander Effect functioned a bit like a virus. When enough people from its starting area carried it into other areas, it would spread out from there and become stronger as it infected more of them. With its current level over here on a new continent, it couldn’t outright make people who saw magical things immediately forget them or replace what was right in front of them. Instead, it waited until they were away from that situation, then quietly rewrote their memories just enough that anything supernatural seemed to be more like dreams and stories. It also worked more on certain people than it did on others, further complicating the whole issue.

There wasn’t much I could do about all that, obviously. So I just watched them set off before turning to Laein. “Okay, first thing’s first. We need to undo what you did to the land. Do you know how to get there from here?”

“Yes, yes,” she confirmed while holding her hand up. A small silver coin was cupped in her palm, and when the small pink girl spoke a word I didn’t recognize, it began to glow with an azure light before flying off ahead of us. “Come on then, it won’t wait forever.” Already, the coin was moving, as she beckoned for me to hurry up.

So, I trailed after her, with Eurso right behind me. The raptor was looking around worriedly as we moved, keeping an eye on what looked like a hawk gliding in the distance. “Is that spell tracking where you’ve been, a marker you put down, or the magic you used?” I asked curiously.

She, in turn, gave me a sharp look. “Is this your way of cheating our arrangement? You request magical tutelage from me without providing anything in return?”

“Nope,” I assured her. “I told you, I want all of us to learn everything we all know. It’s the only way we’ll be ready to stop the Fomorians. You’re gonna learn every bit of Necromancy we can find, I promise. I was just asking what sort of spell that was and how it works so I’d know what we should be watching for.”

Laein still seemed suspicious, but finally acquiesced with a grunt. “Hm. Well, fine. I suppose there’s little harm to be done with such information. And if we are to be allies in our eventual conquest of this galaxy, you must be brought up to some level of acceptable knowledge. I can’t run our interstellar empire all by myself. The coin is tracking my own magic. I narrowed it down to a specific spell. It’s meant to be used to track when something you make is stolen by another, so you may capture the vermin and enact your rightful vengeance!” Her voice rose through all of that, hands rising in the air as she made some sort of purple-white electricity dance between her fingers.

Before I could respond to that, Eurso made a noise that drew my attention. That bird was flying over, coming down toward us. As it did so, the bird shifted. It didn’t look like a hawk anymore. It looked like a crow. A crow which immediately shifted into a human form as she landed about twenty feet away.

“Would you mind,” Sonoma began, “explaining who you are and what you’re doing here?”