My prediction for a late night was correct and between the fight, the discoveries in the Grimoire di Magi e Mythe, and the dinner that followed, I was too exhausted to think when I flopped into bed. My Xp would keep until the morning, even though I was sure there were new spells for me to explore within the book’s pages. We had gone to a place called Sugarhus, and in addition to having some of the most well-seasoned, juicy, meat I’d enjoyed since arriving in Barbavia, their main draw were the zacharimancers in their employ; spellcasters who weave deserts together with magic as an art form. It was the kind of entertaining dining experience you’d expect at a Benihana, with dessert being the true main course as torrents of spun sugar wove around your table and ingredients baked themselves into delectable treats within seconds before your eyes. There were absolutely zacharimancy spells in the grimoire waiting for my perusal, and while they probably weren’t the wisest investment for my resources, I was at the very least curious to see how many I’d picked up, how they worked, and what they could do.

The morning didn’t grant me much opportunity to explore, either, as Red and I agreed to make one last shopping trip before getting back on the trail to our next destination; the city of Vil Kayman in the swampy country of Marekaj. The plan was to follow Triangle Road South a little ways into the only country in the Commonwealth I’d yet to visit, Senta. We’d find a town to resupply in before the elevation got too rough for reasonable traversal (and my aversion to heights), then head West into Marekaj, following the Highback Mountains to arrive at our destination and the next coliseum. It sounded simple enough on paper, and I was sure the Triangle Road portion would be as easy as the trip from Lion’s Head into Brum if not moreso, but I’d never spent a lot of time in anything resembling a swamp. There was the natural enthusiasm about experiencing something different, but also the concern about the impracticality of preferred clothing, being wet all the time, and the other numerous natural hazards of an untamed wilderness. Still, we needed to hit Vil Kayman to earn its League qualification for the tournament, and I had faith in Red’s expertise at navigating according to his counter-clockwise spiral as the best route to take.

We brought Wysteria and Grajo with us to ensure purchase of proper snacks for them both, just in case hunting for their preferred game got too difficult or scarce, and I knocked a few times to see if Tanis wanted to join us, but she was either too deep into dreamland or had already left on her own agenda. Several times during our exploration of mundane shops, examining the various refreshments and road food on offer, I considered bringing up the matter of the grimoire’s new chapter to Red. He was my friend, he was overall very reasonable and understanding as a person, and I honestly didn’t think it would come to much. ‘OK, chief, let’s take a look and see what’s what’, or ‘I don’t know, chief, can you undo it?’ Neither response concerned me too much, as I was too unfamiliar with the contents of the Companion Records to lament their loss, but the timing never quite felt right. I’d be ready to open my mouth, and suddenly another shopper or a helpful clerk would come within earshot and I’d get too paranoid about revealing the grimoire’s secrets and my own to say anything. There was also the matter of Tanis, which was slightly more sensitive. Despite the sound logic in doing so, we had lied to her about my memory and fudged the book’s utility. Untangling that, explaining the grimoire, and then talking to her about its newest addition was a lot to consider. As we made our way back to the inn, I was finding myself erring on the side of just figuring out a way to undo the application of Tanis and Red as my companions and forgetting the whole thing happened at all.

These considerations were jarred upon returning to our room and finding the door unexpectedly unlocked. There was no doubt in my mind I’d secured it when we left, no matter how much I was feeling the early-morning fog of a good night’s sleep; I was too hyper-cautious about the Grimoire di Magi e Mythe to forget a simple security measure like that. Red and I exchanged a silent glance of trepidation, and I closed my hand around one of the throwing knives in my pouch before pushing the door open wide. There, sitting on the bed cross-legged and facing the door, was Tanis Vex. One of her knives was in her hand as she idly fidgeted it around one of the metal bits of her armor, tugging and poking at it with all the anxious energy of a tapping foot or agitated pace. Her face was like stone or porcelain, emotionless and unmoving. Only her pupils slid upward to regard us as the door bounced softly into the wall, and I could swear the red shone with more inner light than usual, like stoked coals in a blistering furnace. The Grimoire di Magi e Mythe was in front of her, looking as innocuous as a smoking gun nestled on top of my bed’s downy comforter.

“We need to talk.” Her lips barely moved, yet every word struck like an invective.

Fire tried to light itself in my own chest; indignation at what was obviously a casual violation of my privacy chased swiftly by her gall at feeling like she was allowed to be the one upset by what she found when poking her nose where it ought not be stuck, but I swallowed and forced it to abate. Who knows what conclusions she was drawing, what hounds of catastrophic speculation were barking at her door. If she was willing to remain calm, the least I could do was to make an effort and meet her energy while we sussed things out. I turned to make sure the espers had made it into the room before closing and locking the door. My throat felt too dry, and it was clearly more than just the winter air, the impending shoe poised and ready to drop at any second. Guilt and fear mixed within me, along with a sting of failure to act responsibly that even in the moment I wasn’t sure was valid, welling up from the chest and expanding to fill every corner of my body. I felt like I was in trouble, a sensation I thought I’d have left behind once I hit adulthood but was clearly still susceptible to. ‘The worst of this is just a misunderstanding,’ I reminded myself, and swallowed.

“I know this is the most cliché opener in the book, but this really isn’t what it looks like.”

“It looks like you’ve been keeping some kind of weird encyclopedia on me,” she accused, then shook her head. “You told me it was a journal, but I didn’t think-- … the things you wrote in here are so… … how could you even know!? Figuring out I was with the circus is one thing, fine. I’m hardly a member of the House of Flies. But who told you about Mirismiza!?” I could tell she was about to roll into something else, all the emotion inside her breaking that uncracked exterior she had when we opened the door, and while interrupting someone who was in the middle of an angry rant was never a good call, she was starting to give away much more than I already knew.

“Tanis—”

“And my mother!?” She returned service with an interruption of her own. “Where the hell did you get that from? I don’t even know that! Did you just make me up a backstory, or did you cast some kind of divination spell on me!?”

“I didn’t cast any spell—”

“I trusted you, Glenn! I thought we were actually starting to mean something to one another, and then… and then I find this!?” She pointed her curved, black knife at the grimoire, face tightly scrunched together and eyes glassy.

“I’m pretty sure he was startin’ to trust you, too,” Red drawled. He had moved a fair distance from the both of us, leaning against the chest where the grimoire had spent most of our time in the Frosty Maiden. “But whatever it is you’re talkin’ about, you gotta admit breakin’ into his room an’ riflin’ through his personal belongings ain’t exactly a great display of integrity.”

“Oh, sure!” Tanis’ venom may have changed its target to Red with a turn of her head, but she maintained the momentum of emotion she had built. “I did a shifty thing and in doing so uncovered a way shiftier thing, but that makes me the bad guy!?”

“Nobody’s the bad guy,” I grumbled, holding out both hands in a patting motion in some sort of automatic attempt help calm the situation down with a gesture. My energy was trying to rise up and match hers, and I knew if we got to that point, it would be unnecessarily dramatic to say the least. Tanis flattened her mouth into an abrupt line, eyes still burning but willing to be cooperative for the time being. She sheathed her knife and folded her arms across her chest, waiting for me to continue. “This is a complicated situation, and I’m not gonna pretend like I’m happy about you going through my stuff, but we can talk about that in a moment. I have not read anything about you in that book. I didn’t write anything about you in the book, either.”

“Oh, sure. A book with a title in Old High Tongue is filled with pages of text written in Ruben that’s all about your own personal experiences and you didn’t put it there. Sure.”

“I didn’t—”

“Does Red know the stuff you wrote about him in there?”

“There’s stuff about me in there?” Red’s expression softened and his brows almost shot up to his ears. “But… you de-linked me. I thought it was all gone?”

“It was.” I gritted my teeth and held up my hands again, this time to stop any more questions or accusations from coming my way until I had a moment to explain. Red first, both because he was more surprised than upset, and I could explain it more quickly. “The grimoire… opened up to me after the fight with Alexsandr. I was messing around with it before dinner last night and it asked me to confirm you guys as being connected to me, which I didn’t realize would add a new chapter with all this information on both of you. I saw enough of it to get what it was, then stopped reading until we could all talk it out.”

“The book ‘opened up to you’?” Most of Tanis’ inflection was anger and disbelief, but I detected the slightest speck of intrigue in there that gave me hope we might see the other side of this thorny encounter without violence, or anyone storming out.

“Yes. The book is… well… I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot more than a journal, or whatever I said before.” I pressed my palms together and touched my fingertips to my forehead. It was a gesture I’d performed a lot in the last few years, a way to pull peace and rationality from my reserves when they seemed their emptiest. This was followed by closing my eyes to ground myself, taking a deep breath to prepare, and holding it until I was ready to open my eyes and begin talking about a complex subject. “Red and I lied to you about my past.” She started to speak, but I cut her off before more than a peep could escape. “I am sorry. In an ideal situation that wouldn’t have been my call, but you were a random stranger who was shadowing us for reasons I still don’t fully grasp asking questions we don’t have satisfying answers to because the truth of the matter is less believable than me having amnesia. I am not from this world.”

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“You have got to be kidding me,” Tanis shook her head with wild eyes. “I’ve seen a lot of people go a long way to cover up a lie… hell, I’ve done it myself. But this is a new low. How stupid do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” I sighed, closing my eyes again. “I don’t have a fantastic way to prove it to you, but it’s the truth. I got into an accident that probably should’ve killed me and instead of just dying like a normal person I wound up here. A few seconds later I met Red, then he found the grimoire, and, well…” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to decide how much of the insignificant minutia of deciding to become a professional chainer and shopping for clothes was relevant to share. “Actually, hang on…”

Even coming out of my lips, it felt false. It had been a long time since I gave any serious thought to the world from before; to Ohio and my family, to Michael… There were comparisons, obviously. My life here was vastly different than it used to be, and some things seemed like such baffling coincidences that I had a hard time shaking my thoughts free from overanalyzing every uncannily familiar word I heard, every concept that translated across whatever barrier I’d passed to arrive here. Like any history, my time before dropping into the wet earth outside of Willowbright would surely always be a part of me, but after twenty-eight days in the Commonwealth I didn’t mourn it so much. My focus was on the here and now; on Red, Wysteria, Grajo, and Tanis. On coliseums and magic spells and dealing with minor inconveniences and personal triumphs with the same amount of focus I’d have had if I only moved to a new state. On the future. My mind was a swarm of curious butterflies, and I’d long ago learned not to dwell on the road not traveled, instead focusing on the path I was on; doing something I could accomplish with what I had instead of wishing for different circumstances and better tools. I pulled the t-shirt I arrived wearing from the chest, turned the right side out, and handed it to Tanis.

“I’ve seen a lot of things in Barbavia that are almost the same as home. Stories, inventions, ideas, language… but where you have magic we have technology, and high-quality screenprinted t-shirts are one place where we don’t overlap.”

“You made this?” she asked, holding it up in front of her to scrutinize.

“No,” I chuckled. “I’m not nearly that talented. I bought it from an on-demand shirt printing store using mail that travels from one place to another in an instant. I paid for it with money I couldn’t actually physically hold and they shipped it out to me in a few weeks.”

“Who’s the clown?”

“That’s uh… that’s Kefka. He’s the villain in my favorite video game, Final Fantasy VI. Uhm… a video game is like a stage play without actors that you control certain aspects of. Like a tabletop war game that you can play all by yourself,” I added, remembering Red’s interpretation of an RPG. “I actually have him tattooed on my shoulder, too. He’s a dick in the story, but he’s really funny and is representative of something that’s very important to me.”

“Huh,” was all she managed, looking from the logo on the shirt to me and back again before returning the garment.

“Plus, I really like clowns,” I shrugged. Being plagued with mood swings meant I got to feel sheepish about the things I liked in the middle of having a serious conversation about magic books and broken trust.

“Well, at least I’ve got that going for me,” she sighed. “Look, magic shirt or not-“

“It’s not magic,” I corrected under my breath, but she kept rolling over me.

“-- that’s still a lot for me to swallow. I mean, you’re an arcanist. Couldn’t you just… conjure up some random piece of evidence to fool me into believing anything you want?”

“Well, no. I can’t. Actually, if you look at the book,” I picked it gingerly from its place on the bed, not wanting to startle or bump into Tanis and kick a hornet’s nest that seemed to be calming down. “Right here, this is my Spell Index. It’s all the spells I know how to use, as well as all the ones I’ve seen and could learn. There’s no sorcery for evidence conjuration in there, unless I happened to see somebody do it in the last twelve hours.” I passed the tome back to Tanis for her to peruse, and she looked up and down the pages for a few moments, briefly studying each block of game statistics and magical effects.

“Dude, why don’t you know Legerdemain? That sounds awesome.”

“There’s a lot of stuff in there that sounds awesome, but I only have so many things I can learn or improve, and it all runs on the same resource.”

“So, how does this work, exactly? You just… poke around in the book and suddenly you know how to cast a spell?”

“More or less,” I waved my head, rolling the marble of thought around to see if there was a better way to put it. “Everything in there is laid out like another kind of game, similar to Final Fantasy. At certain milestones I get a resource the book calls ‘experience’, and I can spend it to improve aspects of myself, the espers I’m linked to, and learn new spells.”

“All the results and none of the work. I like it,” she nodded before turning back to the Companion Index, and I took a step away to maintain what remained of my ignorance. “You really have no idea what it says about me in here?”

“Only what you told me when I walked in. I know you and Red each have entries, that your abilities are outlined, and that there are drawings of both of you. … and that you’re not naked in the drawing.”

“You checked the drawing to see if I was naked?” she raised a single eyebrow in an impressive arch.

“No, I checked the drawing to make sure you weren’t. As bad as you thought it looked when you read all that, how much worse would it have been if I somehow had an accurate depiction of your exposed nether-regions in my grimoire?”

“Touché.”

“I’m naked, right?” Red chimed in again, a few steps closer than he had been a moment ago. “I’d assume, anyhow. I’m almost always naked.”

“Yes on both accounts, but that’s literally all I know. I didn’t mean to put you guys in the book. I was messing around with something I thought was harmless and this whole chapter just… appeared. I didn’t want to put a damper on our celebration last night, and I wanted to talk to you guys about it today or… figure out a way to undo it or something, but when I tried to wake up Tanis she didn’t answer.”

“Right,” she nodded. “I was pretending to be asleep so I could break into your room and look at the grimoire after you left.”

“Yeah, about that.”

“It isn’t the first time I’ve done it,” she admitted with a tone that seemed to suggest it made today’s intrusion okay. “My boss had me tail you after I saw you casting spells in Lion’s Head. You told me you were trying to find someone to teach you magic on the cheap, and then later the same day I see you looking at your book and casting all kinds of spells on Wysteria. I told Sid about it, and he told me to steal the grimoire and bring it back to him.”

“Hang on, I didn’t say anything to you until we met in Varmveg—” and then it all slid into place. Her boss whose name was apparently Sid, her impressive reflexes and agility, how comfortable she acted around me… I looked at the pale baltic face in front of me and tried to imagine it a little darker, with a teal wig and a bell-laden, floppy costume. “… the circus is a front for organized crime. You’re the clown!”

“That’s me!” She kicked her voice up a little higher, made it a little more syrupy. I was surprised I didn’t recognize her from a lifetime of picking voice actors out of their various roles in cartoons and video games, but I’d had a lot on my mind. “And the circus isn’t a front for organized crime. It’s a circus. … that happens to be run by an unofficial thieves’ guild.”

“Operatin’ out in the open where the Houses can see ya?” Red inquired. “Bold.”

“Hence the circus. No better way to hide than in plain sight. Plus, when I put on the makeup and the contacts and the wig, most people assume I’m human. Nobody pays that much attention to humans in Teren Balt, definitely not enough to cast suspicion on them for running a guild without House oversight.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a smart way to go about doin’ things, I just said it was bold.”

“You’re not gonna rat me out, are you?” She shot Red a look, and I could see her muscles tense a little as though they might be about to throw down.

“Tch. Do I look like House material?”

“Don’t be coy. I’ve seen how you operate.”

“I ain’t an official member of nothin’, bein’ an esper an’ all,” he shrugged his tiny shoulders and spread his arms wide before gesturing to me. “Maybe you should work that out with Glenn, though. I ain’t the one whose book you tried to steal.”

“But I didn’t steal it! Glenn, I wasn’t lying to you the other night. I like you guys. I don’t know if I could steal from you without feeling like hot trash afterward.”

“But you still broke into my room to read the book.”

“It’s…” she cast her eyes downward, covering the truth of her emotion with thick, black lashes. “It’s interesting. Like, actually fascinating. Even when I just thought it was stuff you were writing down, the insight and the way it was all organized… the mysterious empty pages and the drawings.” Tanis hesitated again, perhaps searching for words to explain herself when honesty was becoming difficult with vulnerability. “It was wrong, and if I knew the truth about you, knew you better as a person before I started doing it… if you were my friend beforehand, I wouldn’t have done it. But that wasn’t how it played out.”

“You were my suspicious bodyguard and I was your amnesiac quarry.”

For a few minutes none of us spoke out loud, each with our heads down and eyes on something else, buried in our own thoughts. The dutiful, rule-adherent child version of myself that still lived somewhere inside me insisted there needed to be some form of punishment; obvious atonement and suffering for crimes committed. It just didn’t seem necessary. I could forgive her lies if she could forgive mine. I didn’t want to be mad at Tanis. and ultimately didn’t care that she was rooting around through my belongings. The only thing I had to hide was something I probably would’ve told her eventually anyhow. If anything, if we could continue to build rapport with one another, everything being out in the open made things easier. I didn’t have to feel like I was sneaking around every time I wanted to check on my experience, and especially now with the expanded access from Arcane Sight, I could dedicate more downtime to reviewing my options. Maybe even get the others’ opinions if I needed advice. A lot of the energy and fire I would’ve had a few years ago about this very turn of events just didn’t exist within me anymore. Maybe that made me more gullible, more of a doormat… but it also kept me from churning myself in rage, and I would rather have the tired clarity of an explosion diffused than the desperate shame of picking up the pieces after losing control.

“No more breaking and entering,” I said, making sure to wait until Tanis caught my eyes and nodded her understanding before going back to the chest. The shirt was returned to its home, and I pulled two opaque sheets of parchment from my supplies. “With everything out in the open now, I can promise I’ll try to take every other option before lying to you again. I don’t really like lying in the first place, so it’ll honestly be a relief for me. It would be cool if you could do the same.”

“I’ll…” she stopped and shook her head. “I can try.”

“Failure’s how we learn,” I shrugged. “I appreciate you resolving to do your best.”

“What’s with the paper, chief?”

“I’m blocking off your personal details in the book. I need to understand what all this means so we can make an informed decision about what to do. I don’t even know if this is something I can alter now that it’s been set, but if I can’t look at the book without being afraid I’m going to see some secret from your pasts, it’s only going to make things that much harder. I know it’s not a perfect solution, but hopefully you can trust me not to go peeking to slake my own personal curiosity the same way I’m going to trust you to respect my boundaries?”

“Yeah, I think we can do that. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I dunno if I said that already…”

“I appreciate it. I’m sorry, too. Life is weird and hard to handle in the best of times, and everything that’s happened in the last thirty days has thrown that even further afield for me.”

“I did what I felt was best,” shrugged Red. “I’m glad it’s all out in the open now, y’know. One less thing. But I’m not gonna apologize for protectin’ my friend the best way I knew how.”

“I would’ve done the same thing in your shoes,” Tanis nodded to red, then looked back to me. “So… we’re okay? Just like that? No time-outs, no noses in the corner?”

“Friendship isn’t a competition, Tanis.” I shook my head. “We both screwed up a little bit, but neither one of us wants to stop being friends, so… let’s just try not to screw up in the same way again and deal with everything else as it comes.”

“You’re a decent guy, Glenn Anura,” Tanis smiled warmly, the mirth reaching her eyes and setting them alight with an altogether different glow from the earlier furnace of rage. “I’m glad I didn’t steal your magic book.”