I was in front of the Roundabout Haunted Mansion. What the hell was I doing there? My head was spinning, the thoughts coming at me from all sides, bouncing around in my mind to the point that I felt dizzy and just a little nauseous. Though to be fair, both of those might’ve been from more than just the confusion about my location. What was going on? Why was-- huh? One second I’d been with--oh, oh I was with Ceili, after going through that rift with Ehn. There was a lot of pain, and the Ankou brought me out to… no, they sent me off, split me into a whole bunch of different versions of myself. They duplicated me and sent me to various rifts all across the timeline. Plus there was something about having friends and family show up to help? I had no idea what that was about. Were they actually summoning people from the present--err… future? Whatever, were they summoning people from the time I was supposed to be living in and just sending them off to those time periods to help all those different copies of me? That was… huh.

And none of that explained why I was here right now. Why would they have sent me back to this place and time? Was there a rift near here? That seemed… odd, in so many ways. Wait, was this actually after I finished all those portals? Had I already been through all that and now I’d been sent back here since it was over? I was so dizzy and confused right then, was it possible I just couldn’t remember doing all that already? Or maybe my memory had been erased somehow.

There were so many options, so many possibilities for why I might have actually finished the entire rift situation and now just couldn’t remember it. But if I had finished all that, wouldn’t I have ended up on the Fomorian world with the others? Well, the others besides Ehn anyway. They’d made it there. They were in trouble. So why wasn’t I there, if this was after the rift thing? Was it after that part too? If so, why wouldn’t the others have shown up as well? Unless they were…

“Oy!” A small pink hand smacked my shoulder. “Don’t just sit there, I asked what happened! You were gone like less than an hour and then you suddenly showed up again? Did the portal break? Did the traitorous traitor do a traitor? He traitored all over you, didn’t he? I knew he would, I knew we couldn’t trust him! We should’ve thrown him in a pit full of monsters and let them eat him!”

“Assuming you mean Ehn, I don’t think that would’ve helped much,” I pointed out while rubbing my shoulder and sitting up. “And he’s not really a problem anymore. At least, not if the Ankou were right. I don’t--you haven’t seen Percy or Eurso, have you? Or a black human woman with braided hair, just a tiny bit shorter than me, goes by Mekkta or Dah. None of them showed up?”

“No one had time to show up!” Laein informed me. “I told you, it’s only been an hour since you left! Well, inside this place it’s been like an hour. It’s been more on the outside thanks to that time dilation spell. But still! It’s barely been any time at all. Did you win? Did you--did--” She seemed to pause, finally considering her next words before a hint of uncertainty and worry crossed her face. “What happened? Are the funny dead lady and the cool dinosaur okay? Nothing happened to them, right?” That was why she had been so aggressive to begin with, she was worried about Percy and Eurso. And who could blame her? As far as she was aware, we’d only set off an hour ago from her estimation, which would’ve been something like a few days outside. Now suddenly I had been teleported back into the Roundabout without either of them in tow, and to be honest I was probably acting pretty strange, thanks to that whole ‘being so dizzy I might throw up’ thing.

Yes, a voice in my head noted, she’s probably right to be a bit aggressive and suspicious now. Not that she isn’t usually aggressive and suspicious, but it’s even more justified at the moment.

Spook? I definitely recognized that particular Flique member voice. Spook was the version of me who had spent a lot of time playing bodyguard for the ghost of this rich regent-king guy and his family or something. It was a whole thing. Either way, he (Spook was a masculine-presenting member) had really embraced the role, and now went around like a cool secret service agent all the time.

I’m glad you think I’m cool, he informed me, but we should probably focus. It seems all of us inside here were jumbled up by the transportation and I ended up being thrown to the front. And if you don’t tell Laein what’s happening pretty soon, I think she might just up and combust in front of us. Which none of us in here particularly want to see happen. We can figure out the rest of what’s happening and why we’re here after she’s caught up and hopefully not losing it as much.

He had a point, but first things first, I focused on trying to summon several ghosts while picking myself up off the ground. Maybe they would know more about what had happened. Not to mention, I was specifically trying to summon Odysseus. It felt like if anyone would have answers about anything I might have forgotten or just missed somehow, it would probably be that guy.

He was there. So were Doctor Manakel and Seth, both of whom appeared alongside Odysseus. They were followed shortly by Jason, Chas, Emily, and Kaleigh, my Boscher ghosts. Grover and the ghost of Penny were right behind them. Ten ghosts, all appearing together and looking--oh, yeah they looked just as confused as I felt. They didn’t even have to say anything before I knew the truth. They didn’t understand what was going on or why we were here any more than I did.

Still, after telling Laein that I would explain as much as I could in just a minute (she pulled out an actual gold and ruby pocket watch to time me), I had a quick conversation with the ghosts. Sure enough, none of them, not even Odysseus, knew what was going on. They also thought it was strange that I’d ended up here and now. Doctor Manakel suggested the same thought I’d had, that we had actually finished all the rifts but didn’t remember any of it, so to us it was like no time had passed.

Focusing on Odysseus, I asked, “I assume you didn’t know anything about what was going to happen if Ehn went through that rift?” I knew he’d only agreed to tell the Dragon-Bonded where the rift was because Percy and I had asked him to. There wasn’t a lot of trust there. But I also didn’t think he was the type to risk the entire universe like that just because he didn’t like the guy. Hell, his conditions for doing it in the first place had included wanting to bring back multiple living original (pre-Cronus domination) Fomorian subjects in order to keep their species alive in some way. Something told me that hadn’t been any sort of trick just to make sure Ehn died. No, he really wanted to save those original Fomorians, and the rift thing had been the best chance for it.

“I did not,” the ancient ghost confirmed. Just like before, he really didn’t look much like a ghost. Sure, he was semi-transparent and all, but he had his full color like when he’d been alive. He wasn’t monochrome. I probably needed to ask him about that, when there was a free moment.

So sometime between the heat death of this universe and the creation of the next one, Spook put in. And speaking of time, Laein really is about to explode if she doesn’t get answers of her own.

Right, right, of course. Telling all the ghosts to focus on trying to figure out if we were missing anything (well, anything that we could actually put together now), I turned to focus on the agitated pink-skinned Necromancer girl herself. She was holding that pocket watch up and staring very intently at me. It was clearly taking everything she had not to literally jump up and start shaking me back and forth violently until some of the answers she was looking for finally popped out.

Take your time, tell her everything, Spook insisted. The rest of us are going through your memories in here, trying to see if there’s any sign of tampering or anything. No way to know for sure if we’d be able to spot it, but maybe we’ll get lucky. The point is, you’ve got the ghosts and us working on shaking this whole thing out. Take a minute to get Laein up to speed. Maybe she’ll know something, or just pick up something we missed. I mean, stranger things have happened.

Snorting despite myself, I gestured for Laein to walk with me. I needed to stretch my legs and just… move around a bit. Plus I wanted to assure myself that the rest of the Roundabout still looked okay. Call me paranoid. On the way, I started to tell her what had happened when we made it to the rift and went through. I told her everything about what Ceili had said, all the stuff about Ehn ignoring warnings, how his power was being sent to the Fomorians, that I was supposed to be duplicated a bunch of times and sent to all those rifts with friends, all of it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She’d already bounded ahead of me and spun to walk (and bounce) backwards, making a bunch of assorted noises of disbelief, disgust, shock, and more. Really, Laein was a great person to tell a story to if you liked an interactive audience. She gave a lot of very intense reactions and kept speaking up to add her own opinions. Plus there was the whole not staying still thing. Seriously, she kept jumping right in my face to blurt things like, ‘and then what happened?’ or ‘did it explode?’ I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go to the movies with her, but I kinda wanted to do it just to see how it went. Though it’d probably be a good idea to make sure we were the only ones at the theater so she wouldn’t sic a bunch of zombies on the first guy who shushed her.

Of course, thinking about taking her to the movies just made me think about going with Shiori and Avalon, which really didn't help with the whole focusing thing. Apparently I really needed a break if I kept getting distracted that easily. And that was without even knowing for certain just how much I had already actually been through. If there really was some sort of memory wipe going on, I could actually be subconsciously reacting to weeks and weeks of stuff that I couldn't even remember. All of which meant we really needed to figure out why I had shown up right back here at the Roundabout just like that.

Pushing all that out of my head, I continued to explain everything I could to my diminutive partner in Necromancy, all the way up through appearing right in front of her. I had to promise that I really didn't remember anything else, and that I definitely had no idea why I would have been sent here. She, of course, suggested the same thing we had considered about me maybe already finishing all that stuff but not remembering for some reason. I told her we were looking into that, and a brief check with Spook confirmed that they hadn't been able to come up with any proof of that.

Our walk had taken us around several of the buildings we had set up and all the way to the back gate. I used that moment to check that the time dilation spell was still active, but it wasn't. The Roundabout was moving along at the same chronological speed as the outside. Was that intentional? Had the Ankou turned off that spell so that I wouldn't be rushed along right out of the time period I was supposed to be in for whatever reason? Or did the spell just get interrupted by my arrival incidentally? Boy it sure would be nice if I had shown up with an explanation written up in a little note pinned to my shirt like I was a child sent home from school. Or, I dunno, just maybe Ceili could just show up and tell me what was going on in a straightforward, easily digestible way.

Yes, yes, that wasn't fair. Not in the least. They had completely saved me from what would have been a horrific, indescribably painful death. To say nothing of the whole stopping the Fomorians from ending up with Ehn’s dragon power thing. Or at least giving me the chance to stop that. The point was, they had already done more than enough. I just had to believe that they had a reason for not simply telling me why I was here. And if I was going to go with that, my best guess was that they had already told me. Which either meant there must be a rift around here, or my memory was erased. Which, yes, would put us basically back at square one. But hey, at least I went on the trip.

More importantly, I had a goal. The rest of the Flique could root through my memories to try to figure out if anything was missing, while the ghosts continued to consult one another on the same subject. That would cover that possibility. In the meantime, I was going to look around outside and try to figure out if there really was a rift anywhere nearby. Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be that simple, but we had to start somewhere. And hey, maybe the rift had appeared near the Roundabout just because Ehn had been here recently? I--no, I had no idea if that was a thing, but it sounded like it plausibly could be, and that was good enough for me to at least consider it. I didn’t have a lot to go on.

Laein, by that point, had summoned a large troll ghost and gave it enough energy to pick her up so she could sit on his shoulder. She was already pointing to the gate. “Well? If there's even the slightest chance we might be near one of these rifts, I'm going with you to look for it. Someone has to stop you from tripping into a cave full of world-ending mecha-spiders.” Okay, yeah, she definitely knew me, that was for sure. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her so many stories after all.

I started to walk that way, but she made a huffing sound. “You are a powerful Necromancer, an unstoppable force of the supernatural world, not a child out for an evening stroll with a puppy! What if someone sees you walking like that? We have our reputations to build and uphold!”

Coughing, I pointed out, “First of all, if anyone's around here to see me, we have a lot more issues to deal with. Especially if they know anything about how Necromancers should present themselves. We’re in the middle of nowhere Montana in the sixteen hundreds. And second…” I had to trail off then because Laein was using her secret weapon. Perched on that zombie troll shoulder, the pink-skinned, demon-looking girl leaned over and gave me the full force of her sad puppy dog eyes. And really, how the hell was I supposed to hold out against something like that?

So, I relented and focused for a moment to summon my own troll ghost. His name was Cowlick. Mostly because he had apparently really enjoyed licking cows back when he was alive. That was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place. I found his remains during the month I had been working with Laein to set this place up, right before Ehn took me through the rift. I left his ghost here at the Roundabout because he was very gentle. Not even just for a troll, Cowlick hated fighting. He’d basically sat there and let those assholes kill him rather than fight back when they found him--err, doing his thing with the cows in that field. Wait, that sounded wrong. Licking them. He was licking the--that didn’t sound much better, did it? Oh well, he was weird but he wasn’t violent at all. I didn’t want to take him into a situation where I might’ve had to throw him into it. And I certainly hadn’t wanted him to see the Fomorian homeworld at any point. But for now, maybe it was okay if he stretched his legs, so to speak. And we might see some cows.

I probably wasn’t going to let him lick them, even as a ghost. It tended to freak out the cows.

When I asked the troll if he wanted to give me a lift, the huge yellowish-gray ghostly figure beamed proudly and gave me an eager nod. I fed some energy into him, and he reached out to pick me up. Soon I was perched on his right shoulder, while Laein was on the left one of her own troll ghost so we could be near enough to talk to each other without raising our voices. We both made sure they had enough power to remain solid for awhile, then set out through the open gate.

We searched around the area surrounding the miniature city as thoroughly as possible. I had a few ghosts scour the forest, while the other girl sent a bunch of zombie animals scurrying about as well. All while we did a wide circuit and kept our eyes open. We were looking for anything at all out of the ordinary, anything that could possibly indicate there was a rift nearby. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it), nothing stood out. One of the ghosts found a small encampment of natives, but they were several miles away and seemed to simply be an ordinary Bystander hunting party, nothing untoward. Other than that, the whole territory was seemingly devoid of people. We did find more than one group of Alter animals, like a couple pegasi grazing in a clearing, or a small herd of Chamrosh, the part-bird, part-dog creatures, slumbering just outside a cave. That just reminded me of my very first hunt all the way back at Crossroads. Boy, had things changed a lot since then or what?

I had done my best to shake off that thought and focus by the time we made it back around to the area we had left from. We had searched several miles around the place and basically found bupkis. I still had no idea why I had appeared here, and that hadn’t helped at all. Well, it did let me clear my head, and gave Cowlick a chance to see some animals, even if they weren’t cows. He liked animals in general.

But there we were, back at the rear gate without anything concrete to show for the trip. Slipping down off the ghost troll and thanking him, I took a step out near a cluster of pretty flowers and exhaled. Okay, now what? I could try focusing really hard on asking the Ankou for instructions, but something told me that wouldn’t help. They’d already done what they could, or were willing to. I was probably missing something, but what?

I was just about to suggest we try again but move out a bit further, when something finally happened. Namely, two glowing figures appeared nearby. They came so suddenly that I jumped in surprise, before their forms resolved into being very recognizable.

“Shiori!?” I blurted, already throwing myself that way to embrace the girl while she was still orienting herself. “Senny!?” Yeah, both girls were there. I had to wave off Laein even as she was clearly preparing to send her troll ghost after them. “What--huh?”

Before either of them could say anything, a couple more glowing figures appeared. Roxa and Sean, along with their cyberforms. They looked startled about where they were, both blurting my name when they saw me there with the other two.

“F-Flick?” That was Shiori herself. “I don’t understand, what happened? We were just--”

At the same time, Sean was blurting, “We just got--”

That was when another glowing figure appeared. Only in this case, the glow was a burst of flame, like a fireball exploding nearby. When it faded, I saw… “Valley?”

“Yes,” Laein put in while sounding very confused and agitated, “we are in a valley, but what does that have to do with these people?”

“Oh good,” Avalon announced, “that worked. So I guess we’re the ones who made it first.”

“Who made--what--huh?” I squeezed Shiori, then stepped over to embrace the other girl. “Why were you on fire? What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Avalon blinked, then chuckled. “Right, you’re one of the Flicks who hasn’t been through all that.” She glanced over the others before returning her gaze to me. “We’ve already been through the rifts with another Felicity. It was a… whole thing. As for me… it’s a long story. But we were sent here because we still need to help you.”

“Help me… what?” I was still reeling from all this.

Lifting her chin, Avalon replied easily, “Help you set up this school, of course. Apparently the Ankou thought you could use a break, and some time to do that, with… friends. Some of the people who help you with the rifts will be sent here to work on the school with you.

“Flick, there’s no rift here. This is our vacation.”