Errod showed off some of his purchases over dinner, which was from a place that was the closest yet to Earth fast food; almost-hamburgers wrapped in paper. They weren't quite as good as an actual burger, mainly because of the bread being too thick and crunchy, but they weren't bad. I'd made the mistake of not watching Elba while he and Katrin got the food, and she'd once again had a mysterious "accident" that got mud on my blanket despite it never leaving the wagon and there being no mud on her shoes. I just rolled my eyes and did my best to clean it.

I'd been nearly holding my breath waiting to see what kind of magic sword Errod had, but it turned out he hadn't gotten one - instead he had purchased a totally mundane weapon with no magic powers whatsoever. "The magic swords I looked at were... well, some were cruel," he said, "and some used too much mana - don't say it, I know Katrin will be able to recharge things but it's not that simple. One I looked at didn't have a limiter and pulled from your personal mana, so you could theoretically kill yourself by hitting someone else with it. And then some were too flashy, and some were... well they were made by people that probably make great necklaces but didn't know how to make a weapon."

"And how would you know? You're a blacksmith now?"

Errod looked embarrassed. "No, I... I don't know. They didn't feel right."

"Fine. So you spent your money on a boring non-magic sword, and what else?"

He looked like he wanted to argue about the sword being boring which probably meant it was a very well-made weapon, but he thought better of it and just answered the question. "Well, I already have that shield brooch which I keep forgetting to get recharged. But on top of that I got a very nice chain mail shirt with entropic powers so I'm less likely to die if someone throws a lightning bolt at me. I thought about doing more, since you've made it clear the goal is to spend all of our money as quickly as possible..."

"We literally can't run out of money," I interjected, "because even if I drain the bank - which I haven't done - there's the stipend. Like, forever."

"Well I couldn't think of anything good that doesn't need to be custom-made anyway," he continued, "other than maybe having an enhancer give me night vision or make me double jointed or something and... well, once you start spending money on that sort of thing you tend to end up looking like some sort of monster. It's maybe a little addictive. Anyway, the point is I saved some money for when you get us into trouble and we have to buy our way out or something. Oh and while you were getting your ridiculous spider thing -"

"Mister Creepy." I was actually kind of enjoying him giving me shit about my purchases, but he was absolutely going to put some respect on Mister Creepy's name.

" - I got the mundane supplies and had a leatherworker take measurements so I could get a matching glove for this thing. If it's going to be stuck on my hand I might as well have a pair of them."

"We could look for someone to take it off."

"Yes. Well." He sighed and attempted to pace around, but inside the wagon there wasn't room for proper pacing. There was barely more room than you needed to turn in place. "I considered it, but it's an extra expense and I didn't know who to go to so... it's fine. I don't think it's dangerous."

It seemed reckless, but I had to admit there was a part of me - a pretty big part - that would have wanted to do the same in the hopes it would turn out to be some sort of massively powerful artifact. "Do you know what it does yet?"

"Ah. No, not exactly. Maybe nothing. Um. I have to go and check on our supplies, make sure everything is packed. I know Katrin wanted to go to the university tomorrow before we left the city, and then we really should get back on the road so we can get Elba home."

That reminded me, I wanted to talk to him about Elba while Katrin was taking her to the bathroom. "Hey, did she give you any trouble? She smeared mud on my blanket."

He shrugged. "Nothing too bad. She hid my boots."

"She was fine for so long, did the dishes and went right to bed when we asked. I don't know what's going on with her. I feel like it started right after she almost got eaten by those cat things, but for the life of me I can't think of why that would make her start fucking with us."

"Who knows. People are complicated, even when they're little. I got some games and things, maybe we can keep her busy with those for the last few days until we get to her village. In fact, being so close is probably the issue - I'm sure she's just nervous and... well, I don't know why losing or ruining things would make that better."

When I was seven I had told my mom I wanted presents for Christmas - something that hadn't happened the previous year - and she had just stared at me for a minute and then put on a Christmas song. "I'm gettin' nuthin' for Christmas... mommy and daddy are mad...." for a few minutes I took it as a good sign. Holiday music! Maybe we'd put up a tree and stockings and I'd get a dog or cat so I didn't have to steal them from the neighbors. Then I realized she'd just put the song on repeat and thought about what song she'd chosen. "I'm gettin' nuthin' for Christmas, 'cause I aint been nuthin' but bad..." it kept singing, and when mom finally came back out of her room she just went out to get herself some dinner somewhere. I left it running, waiting for her, but I fell asleep and didn't wake up until three in the morning. She was back in her room, with the door locked.

Anyway, that must have been on my mind because I had a nightmare where I was my mom, and Elba was me. She asked for dinner and I told her dinner was for kids that didn't ruin my blanket with mud, and then I just watched her smash windows by swinging the toaster around like a morning star while that fucking song played. The scene finally ended when I threw her back to the Sahrger and woke up crying. I'd gone for almost a week without nightmares, so I figured I was due.

In the morning we headed to the university and let Katrin talk to several people in increasingly frustrated tones until finally they allowed us to pay for the privilege of walking around in the library. It was worth it. I was very tempted to steal some books - they wouldn't let us actually check any out - but I didn't want to get banned or anything and I didn't want to assume there wasn't some terrifying demonic library policeman thing. The whole place was a work of art, with three huge stories of dark wooden shelves polished to a nearly mirror shine. The floors were some sort of swirly blue stone, and a massive golden seal was set into the center of the main room - I was sure I'd seen the symbol before but couldn't tell where.

Magically accessing my memories was high on the to-do list but I wasn't there yet, so trying to look up the seal would have to wait. All I could do was see threads hanging in the air, and pop into... my mind, or Ematse, or whatever it was. Although... it seemed possible I could copy the seal into my mind palace to look at later. I concentrated and closed my eyes, but something felt off. There was resistance of some sort, and when I pushed I felt strangely lightheaded. I opened my eyes and rather than my mind I was still looking at the library - but I couldn't move. I tried to look around, and somehow my vision started to pivot without my head turning; a sense of vertigo overwhelmed me and suddenly my eyes snapped open again - my real eyes this time. Huh.

Something had stopped me from doing it right, or something was broken. Curious, I tried pulling up my view of the threads instead but that worked as it should. I walked around a bit and found several very thin lines that criss-crossed the room, plus one that was attached to the librarian and pointed back into the restricted part of the library. I could see my own threads as well, going to Errod and Katrin and gods knew where else. Including that new one that had appeared after we entered the city, which was... moving.

I'd seen them move before, a little, but this one was moving enough that its other end had to either be very close, or going ridiculously fast. Close seemed more likely. "Errod, c'mere. Katrin said I wasn't allowed to run off and do anything crazy without an escort, so you have to come with me."

"We're in a library, what are you doing that's dangerous?"

"I'm following one of those thread things. It's probably fine, but... well, you know me. Could lead me to a monster or the Behemoth or a killer cyborg or something."

"A killer what?"

"Nothing. Let's go."

I followed the thread to a wall, and then circled around until I found a door to go through. That resulted in a dead end, so I had to go back out through the library and then try a different door which also didn't get me anywhere. Errod seemed amused. "Well this is quite the adventure."

"Shut up. It goes right through the walls, okay? It just follows the most direct path, so it's hard to figure out how to get from here to there."

"Should we leave the library?"

"I... don't know. It seems like it has to be close. But yeah, I guess let's go outside and get another perspective."

We headed out, and sure enough the line pointed back to the building - but from the outside I could see that there were other entrances that were closer to where the thread was going, so we picked the one that looked the most heavily used under the assumption it wouldn't be a door we'd be arrested for walking through. Sure enough it just led to a plain and rather dim hallway, which circled around the building with various offices and storage rooms lining it.

I stopped in front of a door with YANIPLISS stenciled on it and nodded at Errod. Taking a deep breath I knocked on the door... and the thread snapped. There was a jingling sound like a little bell from inside the office, and then a loud cursing and a noise like someone had just slammed into a shelf and knocked every last item off.

"Don't go!" yelled a slightly muffled voice, "I'm coming! Wait!"

There was another crash and a few more swear words, and then the door opened to reveal a tall thin man with a blank Dumine in the center of his forehead - the first time I'd seen someone place a Dumine so visibly. He looked at me, then at Errod, then at me again.

"Shit," he said, "I didn't think there would be two of you. Which one knocked? It's very important. You? No. You? Okay just say something. This is my life's work, here."

I wasn't ready for this level of urgency, nor did I want to get tangled up in any shenanigans. "Um. We might have the wrong door."

"From your perspective?" The man mused, "Quite possibly. But from my perspective, you're exactly where you should be. I've been waiting for you. Please, please. Come in so we can talk. I'm professor Harmid Yanipliss, and I spent every bit of money and goodwill I had to my name on a device that one of you just triggered by knocking on my door. So come in. Really."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

We shared a look and both shrugged at the same time, which made me giggle a little. Errod gestured for the professor to lead the way and we went in, finding a fairly small office in much better shape than I had been prepared for; the crashing noises had been caused by a single piece of furniture tipping over and its drawers sliding out, and the actual mess was minimal. Harmid took a moment to right it and push a few of the drawers back in - one had fallen all the way out and he just kicked it under a chair - and then he sat behind the desk and stared at us with wide eyes.

"It's very exciting to meet you. I've been waiting for almost twenty years, and of course there wasn't a guarantee it would work at all. Do you know what I'm referring to?"

"Should we?" Errod asked.

"Probably not, but I can't be certain. What do you know about fate? Destiny? The machinations of the gods?"

I kicked Errod under the desk in case he was thinking about saying he was destined to become the world's greatest swordsman, or even mention that we followed a mysterious thread here. "I know what all those words mean." I said.

He looked disappointed. "Ah. Well, that isn't a great start."

Errod nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry. Maybe if you told us what the door-knocking device is?"

"Was. It's ruined now. Don't worry, it's not something I'm mad about or want to charge you for or anything; it was a spell, bound into a complex runelike matrix. It was supposed to ring a bell when someone knocked on my door who could teach me about fate magic - or more specifically, organized and reproducible fate magic. Currently it can only be done with wild magic, since there are no known spells or runes for it in High Imperial."

He sat up a little straighter, and I got the impression he was settling into a speech he'd given many times. "Fate magic is similar to probability magic, but it exists on another layer of the magical substrate of the world. That makes it very hard to detect, measure, or manipulate in any way - to the point that many do not believe it exists. It ensures certain events happen, by manipulating not just a small area but the entire web of planes."

"So it just takes away free will?"

He waggled his head a little in a gesture I took as 'kinda but not really'. "I've found that most people who talk about free will have never bothered to define it, so it's hard to answer that question. How would you define free will? How would you know if you did or didn't have it?"

I wasn't ready for a pop quiz. "It's... being able to do what you want, without other people forcing you."

"So someone in prison has no free will?"

"They do, I guess. But... hmm. I guess I think of it like responsibility? Like if you could say - fairly - that something was someone's fault then you're saying they had free will. Kinda. Wait, maybe that's backwards - you need to have free will to be responsible for something. Am I defining this in a circle?"

"A bit, I think. Try this. If I offer a bowl of candied berries and a bowl of overcooked kinat to a child, do they have free will even though I know exactly which bowl they're going to pick?"

"Depends. Did you overcook the kinat on purpose just to make sure they wouldn't go for it?"

He laughed. "Excellent question! I think we can set aside the semantics of free will, you don't want to get into a discussion about how professional philosophers define it. I would say that for our purposes, fate is the thing that overcooks the kinat. It nudges, when an event was already likely. So from your point of view you believe you are not being influenced, and you continue to act in ways that you might have anyway, but some particular goal is achieved."

"Like a bell ringing."

He sighed. "Like a person that is supposed to be able to teach me about fate, knocking on my door. The bell simply detected when the spell had ended. But it seems neither of you have anything to teach me, so I have to ask myself what went wrong. Do you know something without knowing it? Can you teach me, but not yet? Maybe this very conversation will spur you on to research it. Hmm. Since I wanted to cast the net wide, I wasn't very specific about exactly what you would be able to teach me - I had hoped it would be clear as soon as you arrived. I pictured another scholar knocking on my door, maybe one who had read my book and wanted to compare notes." He squinted at each of us. "And then again, it is possible the spell simply failed. The problem with a field of magic you can't detect or interact with is that you also can't be certain it's doing what you want it to. The person that cast it might have slipped up, and you two could be here because you can teach me about... I don't know, how to tie a better knot."

He leaned back, deep in thought. I waited a moment but it didn't seem like he was going to say anything else, and so I tried to get the conversation going again. "Hey, so if you can get a wild mage to make a fate magic thing can you just make it your fate to become fabulously wealthy?"

He nodded. "You can. In theory. The magic is tricky, and expensive, and you can't be sure it worked. Even if you do become rich it will seem like something that was going to happen anyway, so you might suspect the spell was a waste of time. Plus there's no guarantee - some things simply aren't going to happen. But I think the biggest reason it isn't used more is that you have no control over the exact manner in which it happens... if you ask for money, you don't know that you'll be able to keep it or use it. It could also be that you get some money but in a way you wouldn't have wanted - compensation from your loved one being wrongfully executed, for example. But still, the magic is used. Prophesies, strict requirements on magic items, and of course it's naturally occurring as well; I've been working on some experiments with time manipulation, and minor paradoxes are self-correcting."

I thought about what Connie had said about the universe trying to keep time stable, but decided I wasn't going to get into that with someone I didn't know. "So this semi-sentient force is out there manipulating everything to happen a particular way?"

Harmid stood and retrieved something that looked like a sugar bowl from the top of a cabinet. "Some things, yes." He removed the lid and placed the bowl on the desk before sitting again. "These are crystalized honey treats, they're quite delicious. Feel free." He popped one in his mouth and chewed for a moment, holding up a finger when I tried to speak. Finally he finished and smiled at us. "Several things just happened, and could have happened another way. I could have dropped the bowl, we could have all taken one at the same time, I could have let you speak while I was chewing - or you could have ignored my gesture and spoken regardless - and had you spoken I could have tried to reply with my mouth full. Chances are, nothing about what I just did was at all impacted by fate. But if fate had been trying to achieve something and one of those changes would have moved it closer? Well, then it might have given events a little push."

"So what does it want?"

"Sometimes just to keep the world running properly, as with the discrepancies after time manipulation. Otherwise, whatever the magic is telling it to. There's a magical hammer in Uldgarted that can only be picked up by the rightful heir to the platinum throne, for example, and so that fate magic is - if we understand correctly - reaching out to find that person all the time. And since the royal family was obliterated hundreds of years ago and the platinum throne destroyed, it will seek them forever."

Errod looked thoughtful. "Could you just make a new platinum throne?"

"An excellent question. In this case someone tried, I believe, but without knowing the exact way it was defined they haven't been successful. It's the 'rightful' part of 'rightful heir' that's probably causing trouble; depending on how they defined that it's easily possible that it can never be achieved. Fate magic doesn't guarantee something will happen, just works towards it. But in another case, you could absolutely do something to become a valid target. People have tried it with various prophesies, and have succeeded at times. But from what we can tell - which is admittedly shaky - once fate magic has latched onto you it's unlikely to just switch to someone else even if they're a better match now. That's why historically if someone is the presumed chosen of a beneficial prophesy they're often assassinated - you arrange an alternate person favorable to your cause that would meet the criteria and then kill the current one and hope for the best."

It was obvious that at least some of the threads I was seeing were part of this fate magic, which I'd already known was a possibility. But much like telling people about Earth I wasn't so sure it was a good idea to spout off and draw attention to myself. What if they vivisected me? Or, okay, probably not that - but they might lock me up for research or force me to do fate magic for them. And if they dug into my brain to find out how I knew about it that could lead to all sorts of things. Would they start traveling to Earth? Would people from Earth come here? What if it led to a war? Although... surely someone already knew about Earth - right? Most people obviously didn't, but we were at a university with a huge library. Maybe it would be beneficial to have a friend at this place.

"Well do you have any books on fate magic I could borrow? Maybe it would jog something in my memory and I could help you out."

He sat up a little straighter. "So it was you that knocked?"

Aw, shit. "I wasn't going to tell you that."

He smiled. "I have a copy of possibly the finest book on fate magic that has ever been written, by a scholar of unparalleled talent and intelligence. You can keep it, but... let's be honest. You know something you're not telling me. I would never force someone to share information against their will, but I believe that the exchange of knowledge is one of the greatest goods in this world."

"And if that knowledge is dangerous? Or sharing it is?"

Harmid nodded. "That question has come up many times, and I don't think there's a single answer. All we can do is our best, and hope that we make the right choices. At the very least, I can tell you that my interest is not driven by greed or ambition. I just want to know how the world works, and fate magic is closer to the underpinning of the universe." He reached into the desk and pulled out a fairly thick book, sliding it over to me. "So. Read it, think on it, and please - come back to see me. If what you know is dangerous, we can talk through it together and hopefully find a way to prevent that danger."

We thanked him and headed out to find Katrin, whispering back and forth about the conversation.

"Are you thinking about telling him?" Errod asked.

"Kinda? At some point I need to figure this stuff out. I think I need to put some mental defenses in place first, and then... if these lines are fate magic, that means I can learn to make them and cause all sorts of things to happen. Potentially."

"Right, assuming you do it correctly. It doesn't really explain why we all have the lines already though, does it? Unless it works backwards somehow?"

"Some might be unrelated, that ability touches all my gifts. But... " I thought about the color of the thread that had snapped. Silvery white, with hints of turquoise - that was what a lot of them looked like. "Hmm. Okay, so... mental defenses, but then I could learn to read the threads and see what they're attached to - or what they want."

"That seems like a good idea, if any of them are bad we could - "

"- shove it right up your ass!" a voice yelled, with no buildup or any sign of the first half of the sentence. We both turned to look and there, in the middle of the courtyard that was squeezed between the side of the library and some sort of amphitheater, stood a thin hooded figure and a huge man in armor - both spattered with what appeared to be tar and holding a short staff between them. It was a little under five feet long and thin, and covered thickly with whatever that black oozing gunk was. The larger figure released it, and turned to look around like he wasn't sure of what he was seeing.

"What the hell are you doing?" the cloaked one yelled - obviously the same voice as the prior outburst - "We have to be precise about this! How does this help?"

"This is it," the other said, "this is where she... ah. And there she is." He was looking right at me.

"That's not how this works! She's already read the book," they said with an offhand gesture at the large book I was carrying. I hadn't read it of course, not in the two minutes since it had been given to me, but if the dude in the armor wanted to stop me it didn't seem like telling him that would help much.

"Errod, we should maybe run."

We both turned and began to hurry away but the mystery man charged. He was huge, though it wasn't clear how much of that was muscle and how much was the padding and armor. It was plate, but looked less thorough than Telen's armor; there were large gaps where I could see chain mail or leather peeking through, and he had no helmet which meant we could see his ridiculously bushy mustache and angry scowl.

"Stop, both of you!" the man bellowed.

We didn't. I grabbed Errod by the wrist and dragged him along, bursting through a doorway into a vacant lecture hall and then out the back into a sort of garden. Who puts a little garden behind a classroom? There were other doors, so we picked one and of course got a gardening closet. I could hear feet thudding closer and pulled the door shut behind us rather than try to make it to another exit.

"You cannot hide," the voice said, "and you cannot escape your sins. Either of you. You think you can protect your sister, Errod? Your death at my hand is already assured. And she will be close behind you."

I leaned close to Errod to whisper to him, "Hey buddy, just a hunch but this choad may be looking for your sister rather than me. Which means the book I'm holding is probably not the one he's concerned about. Where, exactly, is her fucking spellbook from?"

Errod sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut. "I wish I knew."