We ended up using the emergency beacon and paying for a lift out once we were back to where we started. There was no real question - we'd had several other minor incidents, everyone was out of mana, and morale was rock bottom. I suspect it would have been that way even if Aestrid hadn't died, just from the increasing distress of trekking day after day through darkness, but with the added toll of constantly coming up one short on a headcount before adjusting I think there would have been a mutiny if Connie had insisted on climbing the rest of the way. We'd just have to make sure nothing else cost us any money until the job was done, which in theory was possible.

The sun was low in the sky, and I sat and waited for it to go down enjoying every last second of actual daylight before I headed back to the outer ring of the city. I'd asked Katrin to break the news about Aestrid to her brother, and had handed off my backpack to Sige - I just wanted to wander around where there were people and lights and open sky.

I purchased a meat pie of some sort from a street vendor and ate it so fast I burned myself, then bought a second one and savored it. He also had a pitcher of pale pink juice that tasted vaguely tropical and which I promptly forgot the name of. After that, the next stop in my quest to avoid going back to our rented house was locating a bathhouse with some mostly-private nooks. The one I selected even had a laundry service, so by the time I was finished scrubbing the top few layers of grime off and then soaking for a while I had something clean to change into. I'd been a little worried about handing over my irreplaceable jeans, but if they'd seemed odd at least they hadn't been interesting enough to steal.

Even in the city the stars were brighter than anything I'd seen on Earth other than the camping trips, and those had stopped when I was still pretty young. I kept almost bumping into things because I was too busy watching the sky. No big or little dippers, no Orion's belt. Those were basically the stars visible in Phoenix, but even if I had known every constellation there was no question that the whole sky was different - not even counting that ridiculous moon with its oceans and forests - or, well, green stuff anyway. The moon wasn't visible at the moment, though, other than as a faint glow blocked by buildings.

There was a dense streak of stars all across the sky, not like the MIlky Way but still a distinct band. In fact, the further away you got from that line the less stars there were until it was unnaturally sparse. There were, maybe, some other bands at different angles now that I was looking - much thinner and fainter but odd... hmm. I climbed up onto a low wall and leaned against one of the decorative flourishes that stuck up, so I could better stargaze. Was one band of stars moving sideways? It was slow, but... maybe some of them were rings around the planet, and others weren't. That would possibly explain it. I resolved to keep a closer eye on the stars - I could ask someone, but this didn't seem important and it would feel good to figure it out myself.

Eventually I had to start thinking about some things I'd been avoiding, starting with - had I used magic? The woman we paid to measure my capacity had thought so, and Sige certainly believed I had. But I hadn't noticed anything, so... maybe I had just spent mana on nothing at all? That seemed possible. It would have to have been wild magic, which would mean a high failure rate. Maybe I'd just sort of flailed wildly with raw magic and accomplished nothing.

But if - just hypothetically - me telling that thing to dive into the pit had somehow caused the accident that sent him to his death... could I kill people by yelling at them? What if I was just angry at someone, and without thinking I cursed them somehow? It seemed both terrifying and ridiculous. And, I had to admit, a little cool. If it really did only happen right when I was on the verge of death that would mean it wasn't so bad. Chances are it would always be against a person that was actively trying to murder me, though it did seem like there would be the chance of some misunderstanding or collateral damage.

What kind of magic would that be, to make something happen? It wasn't mind control, he hadn't jumped. So... probability? I could ask Connie how that worked, she had... oh. She had it. And I could remember when she rewound time. Was I... using her Dumine, somehow? That couldn't be right. Could it? It had to be attached to work, Connie had mentioned people avoided getting them on their arms or legs for fear they'd be cut off. But it was attached to Connie, and Connie was somehow metaphysically attached to me so... maybe.

I hopped down and ran for a minute, then slowed and tried to compose myself while still looking for our rental house. I still wasn't ready to talk about Aestrid, especially with Errod since he had obviously had a bit of a crush on her, so I snuck in quietly and located Connie - with a few glares and signals from across the room, I crudely communicated that I needed her outside and snuck away again. She came out looking worried.

"You okay? We were about to send a search party."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm good. Listen, Sige thinks - I think - that maybe I did magic."

She raised an eyebrow at me and grinned. "What, you manage to cast a spell? All that practice with Katrin has paid off, I guess. I studied with Katrin - my timeline's Katrin - but I could never get it to click."

"No. I think, maybe, that I used your Dumine? Somehow? I think it was a probability thing."

Connie shook her head. "I... doubt that. You remembering when I rewind is strange, but actually accessing my Dumine would be on a whole other level. You can't see it, right?"

"See it?"

"The... interface. It's not words or anything, not like when you first get one, but there's a sort of feeling of symbols you can't quite see, and a hexagon, and... blue. You can call it up it if you try, and you have to sort of focus on it when you try to learn something new. It's how you can tell if what you want is possible, and if you're developed enough to do it yet."

I closed my eyes and concentrated, but just saw the back side of my eyelids. "Uh. No. Nothing like that for sure."

"So I'd say the more likely thing, if it wasn't a spell you learned from Katrin's book, would be wild magic. It's not really normal to do that by accident either though, there's still a sort of language to it. The only other option would be that just like other planes people from Earth have natural magic, but that would be pretty silly. How would we even develop it? Earth doesn't have mana."

I had to think about that one. I still thought a connection to Connie was the most plausible answer, but was it possible people from Earth - or some percentage of them - had magic and just didn't know it? Billions of people could theoretically have access to magic and just lack the mana to do anything about it. If so it was good that I'd only recently entered a world with mana, since as a kid if I had discovered that ability I would have murdered half the people I met. Not only did I have some dim memories of just being a total asshole, with some of the mean girls in the group homes and the ones that made my life miserable in school there would have been an absolute trail of corpses.

I chuckled at the thought of all my bullies dropping dead and leaving me confused. Yeah, whatever the change was now I clearly hadn't been able to do anything on Earth. Zoey would have had a heart attack by the third time she called me "goat licker". Hell, even the time Sarah Harkin tried to drown me I didn't do anything to her - I would have put a whammy on that bitch for sure... I sat up and nearly fell off the wall I'd perched on. "Oh fuck. Fuck. What the fuck."

Connie looked around like we were about to be attacked by zombies. "What?"

"Okay, so Sige said me being cold was because I used too much mana, and I said it was just a fear response thing."

"Yeah, I mean. I can think of a few times. God, remember when we fell off that building trying to learn parkour?"

"Yeah, sure. But... is he right? Is that cold the same kind of cold you feel when you use too much mana?"

Connie looked almost annoyed. "It's... I mean, cold is cold. I guess it's similar. I haven't felt it in a long time, so it's hard to compare. I think all this time running around nearly getting killed has given me some callouses."

"How long? Since you felt that, I mean? Is it maybe since you got your Dumine? Because once you have a Dumine your capacity starts going up faster, right?"

"Shit Callie," she said, "I don't know if I've felt it since then. I don't almost die often enough to think about it. I guess if you - we - were doing wild magic when we were on the verge of death after getting here we might have written it off as just being that. I'd say it's possible but very unlikely - but if so, what would it have done?"

I paced around for a moment, and then decided to get right to the point. "It's not just Sige. The lady that Katrin and I paid to check my mana capacity said I had used too much some time recently. And there... there have been some close calls, where things just sort of worked out. Like. I don't know," I struggled to think of an example, "Like when I met Errod, the guy was going to kill me and then I remember feeling like there was ice in my veins and right then he stepped into a puddle and slipped. And this last time... I told that possessed guy to jump in the pit and then I was super cold and something knocked him in there."

"Right, okay. Could be a coincidence, could be wild magic. Probably isn't you somehow using my Dumine but who the fuck knows. We already talked about that, what's your point?"

"What if I didn't just confuse it with feeling cold because I was scared? What if that's always what that feeling was? What if we've been using magic for a long time?"

"That's... Callie, that is a ridiculous question."

"Do you remember Sarah Harkin?"

"The bitch that literally tried to drown me? Yes. And see, she didn't have an aneurysm or anything. I one hundred percent would have burst a blood vessel in her brain if I could go all Carrie."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"We couldn't, because we were out of mana."

"Callie. My younger dumber self. Sweetheart. There is no mana on Earth. No magic."

"Why did she try to drown us?"

Connie hesitated. "Sarah's hair fell out and she thought we put something in her shampoo."

"And she thought it was us because...?"

"Because I said something like... 'I hope your fucking hair falls out you skanky bitch' I believe. Someone must have overheard, and then put some Nair or some shit in her conditioner."

"So we said we wanted her hair to fall out, and then it fell out. Right?"

"That's... Callie, there's no magic on Earth."

"You don't know that, though! Also you're me, you should be agreeing with me."

Connie laughed, and I tried to glare but then laughed instead, and it was a few minutes before we could speak clearly again. Connie took a deep breath, and I could see my 'let's play a game' look on her face. "Okay Callie. Let's say it was magic somehow. Let's say that - uh, Sarah was right after mom found her little legal loophole so we were in Phoenix - let's say that there's some source of mana in Phoenix, Arizona of all places and we got all charged up and then also somehow managed to do a perfect curse without training in wild magic. Fine. So what?"

"So what? Seriously?"

"In the end, it doesn't matter. Soon you'll have your own Dumine, and you were never going back to Earth anyway - right?"

"Right. Sure. It would just... I don't know, it seems like it means something. You know when we were little, and we'd make up stories about how we were special and... I don't know, our father was a secret agent who was going to come and bust us out of the group home as soon as he was done his mission, or we had a sister that was waiting in our secret fort in the woods for us, or we were actually a princess because our mom was next in line to the throne of wherever but we'd been kidnapped and... whatever stupid shit. I think... well, the idea that we might have actually been special, that we might have done something magical back on Earth has me all wound up. I guess you're not as excited because you can already like... go back in time or whatever."

She leaned against the wall with a sigh. "I guess. And also... you know I went through some bullshit that was worse that what you've done so far - I guess not worse than the fucking Necropolis stuff, but I mean on a normal day to day basis. And at the end, when I realized I might be going back in time, I got all wrapped up in the idea that you would get to have the more perfect version of that adventure. You could skip the hardcore training, and being scared and alone, and not being able to eat anything, and the loyalty oath. And I've built that image up in my head so now... you talk about Earth, I'm worried you're going to go back and just be normal."

I pulled her in for a hug and we just stood there a moment. "I'm not going back. There's nothing for me there, except for underwear with elastic waistbands and hot chips. I do miss those. But anyway you're right, it probably was just a coincidence. If you could do magic on Earth, we'd know about it."

"Yeah, all that secret world of magic shit is fun to read about but no way could you keep actual magic from everyone. But I guess... if everyone from Earth can potentially do magic and we were just... better at it? Maybe that's why we ended up here. Maybe anyone who starts to actually be able to do shit gets yanked into Fantasyland, you know? So there you go, you're special because you just happened to cross some threshold of squeezing some magic from the teeny bit of mana that must be floating around Phoenix, Arizona. Funny, to hear everyone talk you'd think it would have been Sedona."

I almost said something about a ridiculous theory, something semi-formed in my head about the temporal aspect of her Dumine letting us use the probability part before she actually had it. But even if time travel was real that seemed needlessly complicated, so I let it go.

Connie started walking back towards the house, and waved for me to follow. "Speaking of magic, you need to start seriously thinking about what you're going to take when we reach the Duminere - it's coming up soon. Tomorrow we hang out here, get all rested up, and then we'll head to whatever little shitty town is nearby that we think doesn't have wards preventing travel to and from Nusos. There's only a couple to choose from. Probably a few days' travel, and then going through Nusos should take most of a day from what I've heard. That means you'll have magic - actual magic - in less than a week. Say, the tenth or eleventh of the month probably." She'd said 'tenth' after a slight pause, probably converting back to base-10.

"Okay yeah, let's talk about it. Is Errod okay?"

"He's... taking it as well as I would have expected. I think he feels bad for not being there, and he tried to convince us that we needed to mount a rescue expedition until Katrin had a talk with him."

"Sorry I bailed for that talk, I should have helped."

"Fuck, I'm just mad you thought of it first. I sure as hell didn't want to be there for it. What do we know about being emotional support? I just... patted his arm awkwardly, it was awful."

"Well, I should get it over with. Fingers crossed I don't fuck this up."

Being aware of the situation ahead of time meant I wasn't going to mangle the social script too egregiously, but that didn't mean I was actually good at comforting anyone. Thankfully it turned out not to matter - I found Errod and gave him a hug, then caught myself off guard by randomly crying - not bawling or anything, but pretty noticeably leaking - and that seemed to be the right thing to do because he just nodded and we went to our beds.

As was pretty typical I had some fucked up dreams, most of which involved me being back down in the Necropolis while everyone in the group slipped and fell off into the pit one by one. At the end of the dream I realized it was happening because I was looking at them, and therefore my fault. So that wasn't great. The one memorable outlier was a dream where I was sitting at a table in a cute little kitchen, doing homework with Bill.

"It's about the mana levels on Earth," I said, "but I can't figure out how to get the answer."

Bill nodded, and pushed down on the table - it dented inwards as if it was made of rubber, which didn't seem odd to me at all in the dream. "It's all just gravity. See, when there's only one source it bends everything. So other stuff, well, it kinda rolls in towards the biggest or most powerful thing."

"I guess that explains Greg's collection," I said.

Bill looked sad. "Yeah. Well. Speaking of, kiddo, I think it's time to put you back."

We got up and walked down some stairs that hadn't been there before, and found ourselves in the Necropolis which now had flickering fluorescent lights. He pulled on a mausoleum door that rolled up into the ceiling with a metallic rattle, and inside there were shelves stretching off into the distance - each with a mummified body on it. I knew, as soon as I looked, that they were all kids that had thought they were going to be heroes and go on fun magical adventures like in a book. They all had magic items laying on them - swords, amulets, rings. One for each. There was a shelf with no body on it, just a little golden brooch - it was laying there upside down, and I could see there was blood on the pin. I picked it up, sighed, and climbed onto the shelf.

When I woke up in the morning, I decided to pay the others back for my disappearing act the night before and volunteered to spend all day with the refugee kids while Errod and Katrin and Connie wandered the city. I just kinda ignored them at first, but after a few hours I'd finally learned their names and we were getting to know each other. Of course, being stuck finally spending real time with the kids rather than just trying to read the spellbook or throwing things at Errod while they were off on the other side of the room was getting me all worked up. How could it not?

Roran and Tig, the two boys, had obtained knives from somewhere while I was gone and were whittling sticks down to little pointy nubs for no apparent purpose. Elba was braiding Lilan's hair, and Yasna was brushing mine. The somewhat traditionally gendered choice of activities was a temporary coincidence; Tig had been braiding flower crowns earlier - the flowers almost certainly stolen from a memorial for the dead - and Elba had been practicing throwing forks at a target she'd made across the room before the others complained about the noise.

"And we're going to get magic?" Yasna asked for the fifth time.

"If you're lucky. And then we'll make sure you're somewhere nice, and have some people try to find your parents. But don't... don't get your hopes up, okay?"

"You said you went back to your mom after you were taken away though, right?"

The others stopped what they were doing and listened intently. I'd made some comments, and they were fascinated with the idea that I had also spent time in strange places with other kids. I'd tried to make it clear that what happened to me and what they had gone through had practically nothing in common, but it they kept wanting to hear more.

"Well. My mom... she had something wrong with her head. She thought that I was..." I felt the scissors pressed up against my neck again. Nope. Not getting into that. "She wasn't taking care of me like she should. So I wasn't... I wasn't kidnapped like you were, though I guess at the time I felt like I had been. And a few of the people I had to stay with were bad, though not as bad as the Sahrger. But yeah, they sent me back to my mom and said she should try again."

She'd been scared of getting in trouble, and for some reason didn't want to get officially stripped of parental rights, but still didn't want me around. So she had sent me to live with her brother at the Long Haul Hotel, and when I got sent back to her after that she tried for a while before kicking me out right before my eleventh birthday - so it was back into foster care, first at a foster home and then shortly after a group home since the foster parents didn't appreciate me stealing the car. For a barely eleven year old kid I maintain I did a damn good job driving. But then it was back to mom again, and she did so much better for a while. Until that manic day where she announced the road trip to Arizona.

She didn't lie to me about it, she didn't try to hide anything. She was abandoning me again, but this time it would be legal and therefore final. And honestly, it was the best time I'd had with her since I turned six. We stopped at little roadside tourist traps. She got me ice cream along with my lunch when we got food, and didn't get mad when some dripped on the seat. I was twelve by then, and smart enough to know things hadn't magically been fixed, but assumed that my mom's plan was just to ditch me on the opposite side of the country so that they couldn't send me back somehow. Instead, just before we reached Phoenix we stopped for lunch and she walked me through it.

There had been some well-meaning politicians that were concerned over new mothers abandoning their babies just after being born, in dumpsters or wherever. So they made a law, one that pretty much every state had a version of - they called them "safe haven" laws - that said if you dropped your kid off at a hospital or some other designated places you didn't have to worry about child abandonment charges or anything. No questions asked, you give up the kid and you don't get in trouble. In most states this specified an age, but for whatever reason the one that had just passed in Arizona merely said "child" which meant at twelve I could still be left on the fire department steps. They changed the wording after that, but I never saw my mom again.

I didn't think I could explain all that to our little refugees, so I settled for just telling them that even if things didn't work out quite how they imagined, somehow it would all be okay eventually. I even mostly believed it.

"But I remember where my parents are," Elba said, "I remember the town. So I can go back, right?"

I thought of all the things that could go wrong. Her parents could have died, or moved, or might think she had been somehow tainted by her time with the Sahrger - I wasn't sure what sort of superstitions people had. "We'll do our best. Now get as much sleep as you can tonight. Tomorrow we have a lot of ground to cover, and the day after that you get to go to another plane."

They all looked excited, but for the first time I wasn't eager for this next leg of the journey. Something felt off, like dark clouds on the horizon. I couldn't shake the thought that Aestrid wouldn't be the only one missing by the time we reached the Duminere.