In the end, I was sleeping in the tent again by the cart, when I slipped into a dream that wasn't a dream.

It was obvious that it was a dream, and less obvious that it wasn't. I was in darkness, and a weird collection of unhappy bones--not a skeleton, a floating, bouncing, unhappy collection--approached, swirling around like it was nothing and everything, somehow both in the middle of everything that was going on and also entirely idle. It approached me like I was just standing around doing nothing, and when it approached me, I flashed back to high school, and being cornered by the lockers by a big man in a letter jacket.

Only, the big man was a skull and a collection of bones with no particular pattern behind them.

What did you do? There were suddenly eyes in the skull, eyes that seemed empty of meaning or intent, but not lacking in soul. In that dreamlike way, I know it was referring to the attack on the Grand Vizier, and... moreover, I knew what it was asking.

"Who are you?" I asked instead of answering, not entirely of my own will.

Bones, it answered, and boy wasn't that an obvious answer to an obvious question. Well, screw me for even trying, I guess.

I didn't stop trying just because I'd been rebuffed, though I got the impression I wouldn't get exactly the answer I was looking for. "Well," I said, "but you could be a ghost, or a spirit, or a companion beast of some kind..."

The bones rearranged themselves into a series of pointed, sharpened ribs angled at me like long fingers. There are some gods who would answer, the bones said. I'm not them. What did you do?

I studied the bone spirit or bone god, or whatever, and after a minute, my mind just sort of... spooled out a bunch of information. I could tell, though, that most of it went over the head of the thing, and so the words that came out of my mind were simpler. "You know what cells are--no, okay. Within bones are living tissue, and within living tissue are... instructions. But some powers that pass into and through living tissues can... rewrite rules."

There was a sudden light behind the eyes. You can change destiny?

I shook my head. "The power I used is not... control," I tried to put it simply. "It's chaos. And tissue affected by chaos becomes warped and kills itself."

Ah... The bones did away with the spear-rib-fingers and became again a floating sack of rattling bones, if the sack itself was invisible. A poison on the nature of life. A fitting death for a man poisoning his own world.

I nodded, since he was more or less correct, for all that I was positive none of that helped him understand mutation, DNA, radioactivity, non-visible light, or anything else this planet hadn't learned yet. It was, when it came down to it, a poison, just... one without an antidote, exactly.

The bone god turned away from me and wandered in a straight line, making bone rattle noises that still managed to sound like an old man mumbling to himself. And then...

And then he was there.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen him, of course. Everyone in our little group of five had had a face-to-face with the god that summoned us here. But when my head panned over and he was lounging there on a setee, watching me, it felt like the first time, in a way. Maybe because he didn't seem surprised, despite it all. Despite radioactivity and me going rogue, despite some god of bones wandering by and me casually explaining something to him... this was the one who had stolen us from our home and left us here.

He gestured to a big steaming mug of coffee and a box of donuts on a coffee table set in front of him, and in the dream, I didn't even hesitate. I'd finished them, luxuriating in every bite and every sip, before I realized that he hadn't said anything.

He stood up and tugged on his black business suit, and suddenly I was sitting down on my own settee, in my old clothes, and looking out the window from my uncle's office aboard the space elevator, watching a starship come in to dock. Only... that memory felt strange, too. There was no question it was my own memory, but... it didn't feel right.

"To quote an old friend," the god said, and his voice was off, bleary like I was drugged, "perspective is one of the most important things a mortal can offer. Not insight exactly, or knowledge, though those are important. Perspective is what defines us, and multiple perspectives are what grant us the ability to see the world unclouded by the ideologues that wish to confuse our senses."

"You are right, in that way, that we wanted you to leave," he gestured, and suddenly, the view out the window shifted to a nightmare--flames flicking at the edges of the window as if the office, and the space elevator it was on, were suddenly towards the ground, and the wall and window disintegrated as re-entry tore them all away. "You don't have to do what we asked. That was part of the deal, too. You are an outsider, a Fool," he flicked a tarot card in front of me, which also burned up in the atmosphere, and I realized we were hanging aflame above the ground, hurtling towards it but growing no closer. "and in the end, it's up to you what you decide to do."

He turned and walked towards me, and my mind wondered what he was walking on--but he was walking on a mirror image of himself, each half pulled the other direction, each step carefully placed no the other's foot so that they would support one another. I thought both reflections had halos, and both had devil horns, but did it really matter which it was, if it wasn't both?

"But do remember that when you change the world," both voices echoed, and suddenly there were a dozen of them, like branches of a tree stemming from the trunk that was also him, and the same in his reflection, two trees held together by the force of gravity, "it stays changed."

And then I woke up, and... well... to summarize what happened after, I had diarrhea. Food poisoning, I guess; several people in camp had it, I guess something we ate was tainted. I'll spare you the details of that, except that a lot of us ended up squatting over latrines, and a lot of effort was made to secure clean water for us all to drink. But oh, god, the stench, and the noise, and all of us trying not to look at the mess or each other... I don't even want to talk about the day that followed. It was a nightmare.

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All that made it difficult, in principle but not in fact, to know that the dream was real, but I knew. It was; I could feel it, and it had answered an important question for me: that I wasn't, despite what some people might have said or thought, going against the gods' wishes. That I could, and maybe should, be my own person aside from the... whole heroes thing. And that maybe... maybe it would prove to be important, if someone ended up manipulating the heroes, or the church, or someone else, in the end. A deliberate rogue element... and surely I had been chosen for that role, just as the others were chosen, each for their own reasons.

Still, as I emerged from the latrines smelling of filth, I also couldn't ignore the nagging thought that all that was just my own diseased mind playing tricks. I couldn't, didn't dare forget that dream, but I couldn't help worrying about the timing of it. It was, unfortunately, the kind of thing where I had to either gamble on the possibility of being wrong, or somehow force a more direct answer... even though it felt like I'd just received a direct answer, if an unsettlingly deniable one.

Anyway, I rejoined the proceedings about halfway through the day, to discover that discussions had been half-delayed about how the caravan was going to split. I made my voice heard in terms of where I'd be going, but none of the people headed to Bur'jaal seemed interested in hosting me the way Haal did, not that he did a lot except let me ride in his wagon and give me a space under a tent to sleep in. The others... seemed leery of strangers, even though I'd been quiet and polite so far.

Haal gave me some cash at the end of the day for having stood guard, but that was about it. I suppose I could have pressured the guy whose goods I saved, but I didn't even know for sure how much money I'd saved him. It could have been golds' worth of jewelry, or only a few silvers; I didn't really worry too much about it. One way or another, given my artifact, I had no concern that I was going to run out of money or be unable to make my way.

Soon enough, I found myself in a troubled sleep, but without any even remotely prophetic dreams. It was just sort of an unpleasant night; it wasn't as though my guts were still crawling, though maybe they were a little sour. Maybe I was worried about what was coming, but... nothing worse than that.

When the morning came and packing up was done, the caravan left the way it entered, but in reverse. The last carts were turned about in their spaces and left first, splitting into two as the group got to a major road intersection. Haal was now near the front of the line, so I was basically the first to split off, but I stood aside and let a more experienced caravaner take the actual lead, merging back in with traffic after the second wagon had passed.

Without a wagon to help, I was walking, but it wasn't so bad. Others were walking too, and the pace was steady, and the road was even. Although I was certainly tired out by midday from all the walking, I wasn't in such poor shape that this would kill me.

I ended up with some blisters on my feet, but with careful and intense focus, I was able to use the bracers to fix that when we stopped at midday. It wasn't something the power was supposed to be useful for--healing was not among its blessings, I could tell--but I was able to very gently study it with some kind of psychic sense, getting a feel for the structure there, and then gently force the skin to reattach where the rubbing had made the layers split. I didn't know for sure that that was the right way to deal with a blister, but a fluid-filled sack would only rupture given the rest of the walking I still had to do.

By the end of the day, I definitely missed Haal and the wagon, but at least my blisters hadn't ruptured, and I was able to repair my feet again. Mostly, I missed socks; the king's maids had demanded that we all dress like locals after we were summoned, and our old clothes were whisked away. The shoes at least fit well, but they could have done with a layer in between, for all that it wasn't their style locally, and especially at court.

Again, I knew I could probably have cheated and made socks from nothing at all, but instead I asked around and was able to find someone who would sell me a small amount of plain cotton cloth, enough to wrap both feet in. The woman who handled cutting off the large bolt that she had seemed sympathetic, but said there was no way I could get long enough pieces to accomplish a decent foot-wrap. She would have to cut up, along the length of the bolt of cloth, and they weren't willing to do that for the few coins I'd agreed to spend. Narrowing a large section of the cloth bolt for all future purchases would only make their business in the future more difficult.

I agreed and accepted the same length in shorter pieces, then when nobody was looking too closely, used Fabricate to make socks of the resulting raw cloth. It would be awkward if they noticed, since there was no way to explain how I'd done it, but nobody was particularly keen to talk with me anyway, much less about my feet. That boded poorly for the three days it would take to get to Kurnal--three days that, at the moment, was looking somewhere between hours and years of subjective time. Sometimes, the day passed easily, and sometimes...

I slept on the ground, near enough a campfire not to be too cold overnight, but not close enough to be comfortable.

The next day I took a couple short breaks just to check on my feet, moving up the column when I was walking and pausing to check my feet and letting it pass me by while I worked. Between the socks and this light maintenance, my feet didn't get any worse, though I noticed my socks getting soggy with sweat. This, too, I was able to handle with Fabricate, drawing water and skin oils out and away. Keeping my feet dry through the day seemed to make the walk more comfortable, which was a nice side benefit.

Our second night camping, we were on a low hill, and by the general hubbub I was able to tell that something was amiss. It turned out to be nothing, though we weren't sure of that all through the night; there were some nomads watching us from nearby, and the guards were nervous they would attack. They didn't, though some of the guards went without sleep, keeping an eye on them.

By halfway through the third day, it was clear we were approaching hillier areas, but things remained dry. In the distance, there were mountains as well, including in the direction we were going, but... fewer. As the third and fourth days proceeded, it became obvious exactly where we were going, and I was amused to find that there was a tall, flat-topped mountain or narrow mesa not far from the village or small town that we were approaching. It was large, but not enormous; certainly a thousand feet high, but not ten or even five. It didn't look climbable without magic, though; the sides of it were almost sheer, in almost every direction that I could see from our approach.

Kurnal, as Haal had promised, was only a little town next to a largeish spring, one that fed a small creek leading away. As had probably happened in Amash, a couple elders, one obviously a mayor or appointed leader, and a poorly equipped soldier-type man came forward to meet with the caravan leaders. Water and food was negotiated for, and then some of the eyes of the caravan turned to me, and I stepped forward.

"I am looking for a place to make a living," I said. "I was told this place was peaceful."

I wasn't sure whether to expect relief or disdain; some small towns don't like outsiders, while others need all the help they can get. The confused looks between the elders seemed like a mix of the two. "We always have need of some extra help," the mayor said, stepping forward, "but there is nothing in particular that we are missing, so I cannot promise you a good job here. What is it that you are capable of?"

"A number of things," I said. "I have a bit of magic, and I am also willing to work. I am looking for a place where I can grow stronger in peace." When the elders didn't seem to be particularly happy with the way I phrased that, I added, "I won't cause any trouble, I promise."

"We do not have anything in the way of mages out here. If you are looking to learn, we cannot help with that." The mayor paused. "But by the same token, there may be some things you can help with. For now," he raised his arms and forced a smile, "I welcome you."

He wasn't quite the only one there that was looking positive about the whole thing, but they weren't a majority.