"Please tell me you didn't promise these kids they would learn magic."

We were sitting around a campfire, somewhere Southeast of the Necropolis. Cyne looked like I had given him a migraine.

"I'm going to be able to get them access to a Duminere for sure, it's fine." We were back to eating the jerky, because with the extra kids and the emergency lift out of the pit Connie was out of cash. Mila had offered to chip in the money from the statue she'd delivered in Good Charl to cover any additional expenses, but the rest of the journey was supposed to be basically free - assuming we didn't run into any other problems that delayed us much.

"Calliope, I know you come from an area with little exposure to Dumineres, but surely you at least know the basics of how they work." He sat down near me, rubbing his temples. "I'd gathered that you expect to gain access to a Duminere as a result of this journey - presumably in return for recovering some valuable cultural artifact - but even if that happens, and even if you can get the children access as well, the vast majority of people that enter a Dumine come away with a blank. A dud. Whatever term you want to use. It is most likely that none of these children will learn any kind of magic."

I nodded, thinking. I'd mentioned that to the kids, technically, but it was clear they were all expecting to learn magic and that was... probably mostly my fault. I'd slipped into telling them all the options, and gotten distracted by talking possible builds. The kids were surprisingly practical for the most part, but there was a lively discussion about the possible uses of Affinity, specifically the reasons one might choose to have an affinity with Roran's nose.

I could worry about something going wrong with me due to my link to Connie, and I could picture people getting duds in theory - it felt like Errod getting one would be right in line with his disastrous lack of progress towards becoming a master swordsman - but with the kids it just seemed right. I realized I probably just... really wanted to give them something to look forward to. It was bad logic, and I knew it, but while I was happy to call out bad logic in others it was harder with my own shitty choices.

"You're right. I fucked up. But they will, absolutely, have access to a Duminere. So how about this. You and Sige and Connie talk to them about how the Duminere works - I probably did a rotten job other than rattling off a list of possible gifts - and as part of that I'll be the bad guy and make it super clear that the most likely option by far is a dud."

"I am talented at knowing when I hear a falsehood and I must say, your confidence in securing this reward is reassuring. I will see if Mister Laleah is willing to educate the rescued children with me, but I have a request to make. If you cannot locate their parents, when this is over I'd like to take them with me to the Sithlan House in Twelve Towers. I was raised there, after my parents passed away, and can vouch for them."

Hadn't he said he came from a monastery? I didn't know how I felt about that sort of thing. Although, Cyne seemed okay and anyway if they were pacifists they at least were unlikely to beat the kids. "Let's say Yasna there gets frustrated and stabs one of the adults with a fork. What happens?"

"They would give her blunted forks, and talk to her to determine the root of her anger."

"And if Tig sneaks out to hunt squirrels and eat them?"

"It would be frowned upon, but the monks at the Sithlan House do not believe in forcing beliefs - or in corporal punishment. He would be subjected to some disapproving looks, but little more."

"I guess that sounds as good as anything. Yeah, no problem." And of course it was, actually, going to be a problem - I could already feel it. I was going to have to hand these kids over to what was essentially an orphanage, and that was going to trigger all sorts of feelings and I was probably going to freak out. But that was a while away, and there were randomly some days I was more able to ignore my trauma so I could cross my fingers for that.

Katrin and Errod and I joined the kids, and it was only a little awkward. Being lectured at by Cyne in particular with Sige and Connie chiming in or disagreeing from time to time made it feel like we were... I don't know, on some sort of field trip. I certainly didn't feel like I was an adult on an important and exciting quest across an alien land.

Cyne's descriptions of the different gifts were a bit dry and technical, but Sige was of course the exact opposite. So Cyne would say something like "Fabrication converts mana to physical matter, as guided by either a template or a mental image maintained by the user. By default this form is what we call ephemeral matter which is unstable and will begin to lose coherence once the flow of mana has ceased, but with modifications to the ability through the development of the Dumine one can extend this time or even make the effect permanent. As some other planes contain ephemeral matter that degrades quickly when returned to the prime plane, fabrication is useful for importing foreign materials by granting them a more permanent form. It can also be used alongside gifts that borrow matter from elsewhere, such as growth, to enhance them and extend their normal limits."

And then Sige would say "Fucking good money in making some kinds of metal, no fucking joke. I knew a guy that used it to make this slippery shit too, not a fucking person alive that could stand on that stuff - just fucking falling all over each other, absolutely fucking hilarious. Good for combat and for parties, am I right?"

Sige was way more positive about the ones like affinity that weren't particularly useful on their own. "Naw, affinity and binding and shit are fucking amazing. Yeah, sure, they'd be garbage by themselves - but you put just a little of your training into them and you can get so fucking much more out of your main ability. It's a fucking... a force multiplier, you know? It's not three plus three, it's three times three. But just, like, in some limited way. And you can build it up however you want - I don't know how it works exactly but it seems like you can pick practically anything when it comes to affinity. Materials, creatures, emotions - there was this fucking guy, had affinity with spiders and... Influence, I think? Long fucking story, but nobody messed with that guy more than once."

"Yes. Well." Cyne looked like he wasn't sure how to follow that one. "Let's remember that as Calliope has mentioned it's only roughly every one in six people that get a Dumine at all, and most of them receive only one gift. So you most likely will not need to worry about finding interesting combinations. Having one gift is only slightly less powerful than having two; there is a limited amount a Dumine can be built up regardless of how many gifts it grants - so for example, while my own abilities are more diverse because I have chosen to learn both healing and planar travel, I will never be as powerful at either of those as someone that has focused on a single specialty - even if they only have the one gift.

"Your capacity to learn more abilities or expand on the ones you already have will grow with practice, but also with age - as the domains of your mind and soul grow so too does your lutore, which is where the Dumine inscribes abilities. The difference over a normal lifetime is small, and the Dumine caps it at a certain size, but as you are particularly young it will still be somewhat noticeable as you grow into adulthood. Normally you would be older, and would be limited in your options by the agreement made when entering the Duminere. Miss Smith's promise of unrestricted choice is... unusual... but not unheard of. Still, I would suggest that the most common gifts such as growth and transmutation are common for a reason, and you should at least consider what would be a guaranteed benefit to your community."

Roran was not particularly concerned about serving his community. He wanted to summon spirits, and in particular wanted to know if he could bind them to tools to make them do all his chores for him. Tig was asking questions about the radiance gift, but again rather than anything practical it seemed like he was just a bit of a pyromaniac. Some had questions about thought magic which was complicated, but the mood took a turn when I realized what they were really asking was "can I erase my memories of being with the Sahrger".

Katrin made it clear her top priority was Comprehension for spellcasting which I knew, but she was still torn when it came to potential secondary options - Mana had good synergy, as did Thought, but she also wasn't sure she wanted to go for the obvious choices. Errod was still certain he was destined to be the greatest fighter ever known although he had been better about keeping it to himself - especially around anyone that had seen him attempt to fight, or knew how he had lost his toe - and so he was only considering ones that would help with that. Perception, Density, and Velocity were his current front-runners. Katrin was trying to politely talk him out of Velocity, as it had a steep learning curve and she was pretty convinced he was going to injure or kill himself.

I had this sudden terrible mental image of all of them getting duds - statistically it was likely enough. And there was still some concern about the possibility that I might not be able to get one at all, since whatever guiding force was behind magic clearly counted Connie and I as the same person for some purposes - whether or not I was somehow using her Dumine. But I set those thoughts aside since it seemed like a night for being hopeful. Eventually everyone curled up in or under the wagon and went to sleep, other than Sige who was on watch.

"Connie," I murmured at her as I began to drift off, "how close are we?"

"There's a town we'll reach tomorrow, if it's not warded I think we can go into Nusos from there. Most small towns aren't warded against planar travel I think, so odds are good. But Cyne says we have to wait until we get there and look around."

Stolen story; please report.

"Have you been to Nusos?"

"Nah. Besetie for training reasons, and Brinkmar for... you know, world saving reasons. And Biltagiretzae which is just like, a storage unit."

I took a moment to make sure I was speaking in English - the bracelet would translate automatically if I let it, and being half asleep already I didn't want to slip. "I still think it's strange we have so little to offer this world. Earth has all this advanced technology and... I don't know, these guys mostly have it figured out. Earlier Tig said electricity seemed useless unless you were fighting someone and I wanted to say no, electricity is so useful, but... is it? I mean, the only thing I personally know how to make is a light bulb and as far as I can tell making a magic light isn't a big deal."

"It would still be useful in a big city where things are already competing for the low ambient mana, but... yeah, probably not worth it if that was all you were using it for. And you'd have to run the generator, and that would also be best done with magic - I think a flywheel would be really easy with runes, but surely they've already done that. Do you know why the Clockmaker was called the Clockmaker?"

"Uh. He... made clocks?"

"Yup. Before he took over the world, when everything was different languages of wild magic, he made clocks. Supposedly, anyway - it was thousands of years ago. He made totally mundane non-magical clocks, and nobody knew he had developed his own magical language. And then he somehow... the details are probably bullshit... but he somehow got to Quebristun, the plane with the longest cycle. It's the one that makes it count as the Grand Alignment, and you basically can't get there except on that day which is every, like... I forget in years and don't want to do math, but it's every fifteen thousand four hundred months. These months, the thirty-six day ones. So a long fucking time.

"And he got in there, and the story goes that there's this spot where the most powerful magic user would sit and they'd fight over it because whoever is there? Their magic language automatically is way stronger. Somehow. Something something common local understanding. I don't know. And the Clockmaker goes up there with this gift, a clock obviously, and secretly it's got all these runes in it and as soon as he gets in there - and they all think he can't do magic, right - it supplants the other guy's language and starts working.

"And he locked that shit down, magically made a... copy of himself? Or split out his soul from his body? I don't know. And even today, part of him or a copy of him is parked there and making sure the language stays the same and stays dominant. But my point, which I have totally gotten away from, is that the written version of his language - the runes and stuff - work with machines. He made clockwork stuff where as gears turned different runes would come into alignment and do different things. Like you can turn dials and have stuff trigger. It's tricky to do right, but if you get good at it? Holy shit.

"Katrin's book is like that, you've seen how the little tile things can move. It's actually... honestly it's probably ridiculously valuable. I have no idea where she got it, I asked and she got all squirrely. That's probably why they got murdered in my timeline, the wrong people saw it and decided to just take it or maybe... I'm already way off topic here but remind me to tell you about the report I read, and the monument in Spinehollow. You wouldn't have believed me before, but now that we've been traveling with Mila... anyway.

"So all the way back to what we were saying. Earth technology is possible, but at some point you'd still be better off using runes in fancy clockwork devices. You just need someone really talented, and you need a mana source. Back in the day that would have been these battery things from Brinkmar, but the place they were made got sabotaged by the baddie from the Jake Ross books. The real one, I mean. If we get a chance, once we've fixed shit, that would be a good thing to look into. Go in there, find a battery that still works. I could build us a mecha or a power plant or... I don't know, make a whole fucking amusement park."

She was starting to mumble, and was clearly falling asleep. I snuggled in, and let myself pass out. For once I didn't have any dreams I remembered, but I woke up with that impending doom feeling I'd had back before we left the Necropolis. Even knowing it was probably just paranoia combined with the horror of watching Aestrid die I was on edge, but as the day went on and nothing happened I relaxed. Finally I got a much needed distraction later in the day when I saw a massive structure reaching across the landscape. It was enormous, arches upon arches that stretched as far as I could see.

"What the fuck is that?"

Sige laughed. "It's an aqueduct. Fucking huge, right? Goes from some big fucking lake all the way to Rentat. Must have been a fucking bitch to build, though it's way lower to the ground for most of the way."

I'd seen some pictures of old Roman aqueducts and this was remarkably similar which made sense - arches are used for a reason, and it's not like you're going to get crazy and experimental with something as straightforward as an aqueduct - but it was still surreal as we approached and then traveled under it. I'd been in Phoenix since I was twelve, and even the oldest buildings I saw there were mostly under a hundred years old and totally unimpressive.

Our little refugees were equally interested, having seen no construction that didn't involve a treehouse for the past however many years. They were dealing with their ordeal pretty well as far as I could tell, though they were still having nightmares and Lilan insisted there was a Sahrger watching her "over there" - she was consistent about the direction, though she got confused if we asked her for any details and there was for sure nobody following us. We reached the town of Zistarne in the late afternoon, and rented a room that was - rather than something like a hotel room - just a big open room with some blankets piled on the floor. Still, it meant we didn't have to worry about bugs as much.

Cyne was unhappy - he said it was possible to get to Nusos from almost anywhere, but the more people you were trying to transport the trickier it was for some reason. Cyne by himself could maybe just open a random door on the first try - and he did in fact try that, just in case - but with all of us nearby he had to find the ideal setup. It should be indoors. There should be room to walk from one room to another, preferably in a continuous path rather than one that forced you to turn and go back out the way you came. The building should be one that wasn't too unique, and the windows should be covered.

The town of Zistarne was mostly small houses with only a few rooms, so Cyne was worried it would be a huge pain. Nusos wouldn't be aligned for five more days though, and we weren't waiting that long. It would be possible regardless, it might just take some time and some extra mana. Connie was thinking about selling the wagon, since we'd decided even if the next town was better it wasn't worth the extra travel time, but it was already late and so Mila just paid for a room so we could have actual beds and try for Nusos in the morning.

Right before turned in we got some arguably good news, which was that Zistarne was built on the ruins of a larger, older city and therefore had a stretch of road underground with connections to some disused sewers and some old basements and storage areas. Cyne said we could take a look in the morning but it was possible it would work for getting us in.

There was no night life, no interesting shops, nothing in particular to do - and we were out of money anyway. So I went to bed early, wishing I had something to read. "Now that I know at least some of it was real I want to read the Jake Ross books again."

"No shit," Callie replied, without bothering to open her eyes. "I tried to get some of the details from this world out of Errod but he's... pretty spotty. Could hit a proper library at some point, once all the urgent stuff is over. But you can go see Brinkmar yourself, especially once the war is officially over. One of us has to, to get the soldiers in so they can clean up Halenvar's last holdout guys and make sure they don't get into that vault with the doomsday thingy. But then after that? So far as I know at that point we'll be the only ones able to get in and out. I mean the place is cursed and shit, but either we can fix it or just not stick around too long at a time. We can treat it as our own personal clubhouse, maybe find one of those batteries we were talking about last night or just dick around in the palace."

I drifted off with that exciting thought in my head, and my dreams were actually pleasant for most of the night. But then... there was a familiar feeling. I could see the room we were in, but I wasn't there - someone else had taken my place, and was wearing a mask of my face. The others didn't know it wasn't really me. I hurried away, out of the town, and up into the hills. There, hidden away, I found four cloaked figures trekking along avoiding the road. They looked up as I approached and I could see who it was - Telen in his ever-present plate armor, the Behemoth now shrunken back down almost to a normal human size, and two other Halanvar soldiers.

"You've found them?" Telen asked me. "Good. We can strike while they still sleep."

I sat bolt upright. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I shook Connie awake, then threw one of my shoes at Errod. "We have to get up. We have to go. They're coming."

Sige sat up, still blinking. "Who's fucking coming?"

"General Telen, the Behemoth, two others. They're in the hills, maybe fifteen minutes out. Less if he teleports them."

Sige was up instantly, as the others were still looking around unsure of why they had been awakened. "Okay cool. Behemoth, huh? Always wanted to fight that guy. Sure he can be the size of a fucking house and heals faster than you can hurt him and is super fucking strong and everything but... I don't know, I'm pretty sure I can take him."

Connie had a hand on my shoulder. "How do you know this?"

"I... don't know. I had a dream, but I'm just... I'm certain it was real. Is real."

She looked annoyed. "We can't see the future. I think it was probably just a dream."

Cyne stamped his boots on, shaking his head. "Regardless, I think we should not settle for 'probably' in this case. I see no harm in being cautious."

Connie sighed, but then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Better safe than sorry. Everyone up. If they're actually that close we can't take the wagon out of town so... into Nusos?"

"I suppose. Hopefully this storage area in the ruins beneath the town will suffice."

The kids looked nervous, and had their whittling knives out in shaky hands. We hadn't truly unpacked so it didn't take long to get moving. Cyne, Errod, Katrin, and the kids all headed to the wagon to grab some supplies while Connie, Mila, and I went to break into the ruins. Mila made short work of the door by popping the hinges out of the surrounding stone, and we hurried down the stairs.

There was, as promised, a long hall with some side passages and little wooden doors. From Cyne's description of how we would enter Nusos this looked fairly promising. We left Mila down there to look for the best place to walk back and forth, and headed up to find the others - just in time to see General Telen striding through the town gates.