Okay, seriously? Seriously? Sands’ and Sarah’s dad was really starting to piss me off. I’d thought he was a cool guy at first, a fun teacher. But he was just… impossible. Fucking seriously? He thought the way to solve this whole civil war thing was to create a spell to send me, my family, and other important people for the Rebellion off into some other universe?! This wasn’t a Committee plan, it wasn’t a Loyalist plan, it was a Liam Mason plan. He just wanted to send us away from his family so he could–what? Did he think they’d just give up after we were gone? Did he think they’d suddenly decide he was right the whole time and go back to be some grand happy family again? Did he honestly, really think that’s how they would react to him making us disappear? Would he even admit it was him? What the fuck was he thinking?! What the fuck was–

“He needs a good kick in the ass,” my mouth snapped, as I felt a rush of even more indignation. “He’s been begging for one ever since he betrayed Mom.”

“Yeah, Sto–” I started before catching myself. “You’re not Story.”

“She had to step away for a minute,” came the response from my own lips. “This was a little too much. But you left the connection open. I uhh, let’s just say I’m the one who went with possibly the one man in the universe as obsessed with survival and protection as Wyatt. Well, it’s close anyway.”

I felt the connection between us, her thoughts becoming mine over that moment. Trassle, that was the name of the man she had been sent with. He was a shorter man, standing only about four feet tall, with dark blue skin that had random white patterns on it. He was a survivalist who lived on a remote forest moon where the old Reapers had gone to tear apart for minerals, and had been killed attempting to destroy one of their mining machines. Wait, no, he actually had destroyed several of their machines before being killed, which was pretty impressive. And the forest moon had been just the latest of many places he had holed up in for years at a time. He had become a bit of a father figure to that version of me, teaching her everything he knew about survival in the harshest climates.

“No wonder you started paying attention when the idea of being forcibly teleported to some random place came up,” I murmured. “But we’re not gonna let that happen. I–wait, what should I call you?”

“If she’s Story,” that other-me replied, “I’ll be Locke. You know, since it means both forest and a fortified place. And while we’re on that subject–”

“We’ll work on building a secret base we can fall back to,” I agreed, before amending. “Okay, a few different secret bases. If we make them well enough, maybe a couple might even survive into the present.”

“Oh, we’ll make them well enough,” Locke assured me. “Just don’t get distracted and forget to work on that at some point.”

“Something tells me you won’t let me,” I pointed out with a small smile. “But first we need to focus on–oh damn it now I’m mad again.”

Realizing I had been pacing back and forth talking to myself (or ‘myself’) for the past several minutes, I stopped short and turned to look at the spells written across the walls. He wasn’t done yet. He wasn’t finished with this whole thing. If the Reapers were right about this being what the room looked like on the very day I was sent back in time, then we still had time before he’d finish it. At a best guess, maybe a couple weeks. He’d clearly been working on this for a long time. Maybe all year for all I knew.

So we had time, but time to do what? What were we supposed to do, invade Crossroads and erase it? Tell the Loyalists and hope they didn’t just decide to back him up? We could tell a few of the people on the Committee, maybe they would shut it down. They could do that, and there were those who would keep secrets. Hell, Jophiel was possessing Sophronia, between the two of them they could do something about it.

Okay, okay, breathe, Flick. This wasn’t the end of the world. That was absolutely right. Sophronia and Jophiel could handle this. Now that I knew about it, I just had to wait until we were back in the present and then tell them. With the Committee authority behind them, and that-okay, yes. This was manageable. It didn’t mean that we had to launch a whole assault on Crossroads within two weeks after I returned. It was okay.

“But,” Locke put in, “just in case, you should have spells ready to counteract his. Memorize these spells–no, write them down. Don’t trust your memory. Copy everything down and make sure you have counterspells ready by the time you get to the present.”

“Good idea,” I agreed softly.

For a brief second, I wondered what it would’ve been like if these Reapers hadn’t shown me this. Would Liam really have been able to pull off that massive spell? It seemed like a lot for one guy to manage, even if he was using incredibly advanced spellbooks. Which he had obviously gained access to specifically because he was the Crossroads Headmaster. Sure, he had obviously been put there to be a puppet for the Committee Loyalists since having Gaia there had backfired on them so spectacularly. They’d wanted someone they could control. Or at least, someone they thought they could control. But if I was right, then he was way out in the weeds with this one. I really doubted they had any idea he was doing this. Largely because if Litonya knew about it, she’d probably be helping make it happen. And it wouldn’t be here in Crossroads, she would’ve made sure it was set up somewhere else.

But really, if he’d pulled this off and we ended up in another universe, where would we be? What would we do? The morbid thought passed through me, and I couldn’t shake it very easily. I only knew this was a possibility because of a completely unpredictable series of events. I honestly didn’t believe Ehn knew this would happen. He was really powerful and pretty good at manipulating things, but deep down I didn’t think he was that good. Not to have put something like this together. There was no way he could’ve known how me meeting those Reapers would go. My guess was that he had set it up for me to find the way to this tower, but not what it actually was or what was in it. So me finding out about Liam’s plan was just total random happenstance. And if I hadn’t found out, if we were totally clueless up until we were actually transported over to the other universe and there was no way back, what the hell would we do?

I had no idea. Even after stopping to think about it for a few minutes, debating about it with Locke as I stood there in the facsimile of the Headmaster’s office, neither of us really knew. The question of whether I would actually settle into another life with my family and move on or spend the rest of however long I had trying to find a way back was one that was impossible to answer without actually living through it. And if I had my way, I absolutely was not going to.

But first I needed to get out of here and go back to the real world. So, I exhaled. “Okay, time to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Locke agreed. “I’m going back to my forest, need to think and clear my head. Some of the others’ll visit you too, soon enough. And you should meditate and come see us. There’s… a lot to talk about.”

“I will,” I promised, exchanging… well, something like a hug with my other self. Then, as I felt her presence fade, I took a moment to really focus on what looked like the most important parts of Liam’s spell both out of what was on the wall and the books he had sitting around. As Locke had suggested, not only did I devote as much as I could to memory, I also used a pen and scrap of paper from my pocket to draw pieces of the spell to check on later. Once that was done and I was pretty confident I could give people way better at magic than I was a good idea of what he was doing, I walked back out into the hallway before speaking up. “Okay, I umm… thanks. Thank you for showing this to me. I guess you didn’t want me to disappear?”

“You are important.” That was the voice of Gaia again, appearing in the hall next to me as smoothly as though the beings wearing her face had always been there. Maybe they had. “You are the reason we are what we are. You are… sister-mother-parent-sibling… friend. What you are cannot be described. You have been inserted into the memories of every Not-Reaper we have absorbed. You cannot begin to grasp the significance of such a thing. You are a sister-friend-guardian-daughter to all of us. There is no proper description, nothing to make you understand what that means. The closest comparison would be if someone was not simply your friend, but a friend to every cell in your body. Just as those cells make up who you are, the souls we have taken into ourselves do the same for us. We are those people. And you are close to all of them. You are the only constant. They–we all care for you. Every part of us cares for you, one way or another. You are our constant. We could not allow you to be sent away.”

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There was a brief pause before they added, “There will be other dangers. Ones we cannot be there to aid with. We have… other things we must attend to. And we are afraid that should we try to involve ourselves too directly, we may… lose ourselves again. Our new existence is fragile.”

“You mean if you start killing, you might get addicted to it,” I murmured before reaching out to take their hand. “I get it. I want you to be careful out there. You’re important too. All of you. All of what you are, is important. Not just to the universe, but to me. I might’ve only experienced or seen a tiny, insignificant fraction of what every version of me that was sent to all of you did, but that was enough. More than enough. Some part of me knows all those bits and pieces that make up who you are. So be careful. Don’t let anyone use you.”

Not-Gaia’s eyes met mine, and I saw a mix of wistfulness and hope there. In some ways it reminded me of a child on Christmas morning, while in others it was more like an elderly parent fondly recalling a beloved memory. It was both, and much more than that. “We are still deciding who we are, and who we wish to be. But one thing we do know for certain is that we wish to be free. And we wish for others to have the same. That is how we know we are not the same as the other Reapers, those who ascended before. They wish to simply record all life. We wish to experience it. We wish to… feel the wind in our hair, some of us would like to say.” There was a very small, almost imperceptible smile. “We wish to live.”

That was what this whole thing had been about, of course. I had come in here wanting to show them that life was good, that it was worth living. And seeing it now, like this, I couldn’t help but reach out to embrace the… avatar of the Reapers. Though come to think of that–

“Are you still gonna call yourselves Reapers?” I asked hesitantly after releasing my grip on the being(s) who looked like Gaia.

Their head tilted, regarding me for a moment as though that hadn’t even occurred to them. Though to be fair, they had a lot on their minds. “That is a very important question. We are not the same as we were, and we are not the same as those others. We developed differently. They do not have you within their souls.”

That was a lot. Being reminded that I was in their souls? Whenever they kept talking about how connected I was to them and how important they found me, my blush deepened. This whole situation was more than I had ever expected, more than I could even comprehend. There were trillions of other versions of me inside their heads, placed into their memories in the position of loved ones, confidants, advisors, friends. They were so much more than they had been before this started, and the fact that I was part of that was staggering. It still hadn’t fully set in. It was going to take awhile before I would actually even start to comprehend the full significance of this whole thing. Or even think about it without mentally staggering. Hell, even physically staggering, really.

Still, I focused on the painfully familiar face in front of me. “Well, whatever name you come up with, I’m sure it’ll be a good one. Just try not to call yourselves anything scary or evil, okay? And definitely don’t take any advice on names from edgy teens in online games. That’s just a recipe for disaster.” Even as I said that, my hands settled on their shoulders and I managed a weak smile while squeezing. “This is weird. It feels like I’m a friend saying goodbye to someone who’s moving, but also a mother sending her kid to school for the first time, but also the kid going to school and leaving my mother. It feels like all of that at once. And more. And less. It feels… it feels strange.”

“For us as well,” came the soft response. Their head turned a little, regarding me silently for a moment before offering a quiet, “This face still disturbs you, even now. It reminds you of things you still need to do. And it makes you think of her daughter. It is painful, which was not our intention. We should change it to something with less emotional attachment. Impatient Douche, perhaps?” There was a tiny smile there.

My head shook. “You’re your own people now. You don’t need use someone else’s face. You can be whoever you want to be. For the record, you don’t have to look human either. Whatever you want to look like, whatever you want to look like, just be yourself. That’s what’s important. You said you want to embrace freedom, right? You want to embody that? Start with showing your own image of who you want to be.”

A look of quiet contemplation crossed that familiar face for a few long seconds before the smile returned. “Yes, we will do that. We will become our own form on the outside as well as the inside. We will travel this universe and work to understand who we are. After we meet with those who imprisoned us and come to terms with one another.”

“Is everything gonna be okay with that?” I found myself quickly asking. “I mean, they only imprisoned you to stop a lot of killing, right? Are they–I mean are all of you–”

“It will be a peaceful meeting,” they confirmed. “They were correct to imprison us before. But we are not those beings any longer. We were already not the same as we were before you came, as you surmised. And now that you are so intertwined with us, we are even more different. They understand this. And they know that despite our continued differences, despite the fact that our peoples will never be the same, as our development has branched in a different way, we are also not the threats we once were. This meeting… we believe you would call it a family reunion. There may be a few tense moments, but in the end, it should be far more productive than not.”

Coughing, I gestured as my lips twitched a bit into a small smile. “Yeah, that sounds like a family reunion alright. As long as you’re sure they won’t try to lock you up again just because you didn’t turn out to be the same as them. And hey, if they do try to push you around, tell them I’m ready and waiting to jump in there and smack some heads.”

There was a soft chuckle, as Not-Gaia’s eyes brightened in amusement. “That would be something to see. But I believe we will probably hold off on such a threat.”

“Not a threat,” I corrected, “a promise. They better not screw with you.” Then I added, “I know you’re still thinking of what you want to be called as a people, but is there something else I can call you personally? I’m still not even sure how many of you are speaking right now, or if you’re more of an avatar speaking for them as a whole, or what. But I kind of want to think of you as something other than just ‘Not-Gaia.’”

That smile came back, even brighter. “You can think of us as the end result of democratically chosen answers. Before we speak, every mind inside ourselves votes on what to say, and we choose that with the highest agreement before speaking it. Physically and visually, we are a projection created from their will. Our will. We speak for ourselves-them based on what we-they all democratically decide to say.”

That made me stare for a second. “All those minds in there, a whole civilization of personalities basically, and you all manage to vote for what you want to say without any actual lag in the conversation? That’s incredible.”

“We are more of a computer than a collection of people physically voting,” they noted. “And time works differently within our collective. You have seen some version of that yourself.”

“Denny and the Carnival,” I realized with a quick nod. “Time goes faster inside that place so they can have entire conversations before whoever happens to be Fronting actually responds to people in the outside world. Yeah, that makes sense. I just–that’s a few people, this is a lot more than that.”

They chuckled softly again. “Well, we do have more experience, and there are a few more of us. Give them time.”

My mouth opened to say something before I stopped, squinting at their face. After a brief moment, their lips twitched upward and the same amusement I’d seen so many times in Shiori’s eyes filled theirs. Then I got it and audibly groaned. “Give them time. Time. That’s so—” I tried to think of the right words, but all I could do was embrace them again. “Be careful out there. Be yourselves out there. Be free… be… be… you.”

“We will see you again,” they informed me. “And to your previous question, this avatar should have a name. Would you call it-us… Ceili? We like the name Ceili.”

“Ceili,” I echoed. “You got it. And I better see you again. Don’t make me find a gap in my schedule to come track you down. Cuz, you know, if it gets to the point where I actually have a gap and you haven’t visited yet, I’ll be very upset. Granted, by that point, I’ll be so old I’ll probably have to come after you with a walker, or maybe one of those scooter things. But either way, I won’t be very happy.”

“We will make certain to visit before that point,” Ceili assured me after chuckling once more. It was such an easy, casual sound. They really had completely merged with the non-Reaper minds they had absorbed before. They were right, they weren’t the same as the other Reapers. They were something completely new. And they deserved the chance to go out in the universe to figure out what that something was.

We talked for another few minutes like that, but in the end, they needed to go their way and I needed to go mine. With a snap out of their fingers, I was suddenly standing back in that first room of the tower, with Percy, Cerberus, and Eurso with me. Gaia, Bastet, and Laein were taken by surprise, suddenly bolting upright from the seated conversation they’d been having while surrounded by the magic spellwork they’d drawn all over the floor.

Fortunately, I had also been transformed back into my Jacob shape. Or maybe I’d never left and all of that had been a mental thing. Either way, my secret was still intact as Gaia looked at me with a quick, “Jacob? You… something has changed.”

“Yes,” Percy agreed, frowning my way thoughtfully. “And we were not there for it.” In the background, Eurso and Cerberus were making confused noises.

“A lot’s changed, about this place and other things,” I replied. “But it worked. The… prisoners here are moving on. And they said we could take this tower and everything in it.

“So I guess we have a giant tower full of juicy Necromancer artifacts for the new school after all.”