I reached into my blood-soaked shirt, feeling at the place where I'd been stabbed. There was nothing but smooth, healthy... skin? No, it hadn't been skin for about three weeks. Whatever. I'd been saved, by some bullshit deus ex machina fate thing. I wanted to complain about it on principle, but I also didn't want to be dead. So... fine.

Calliope stumbled back into the room covered in blood, but while she looked tired and maybe bruised it didn't appear much of the blood was hers. "There are at least four left," she said, probably more, and they are gathered around a doorway - I could see Katrin and Errod through the opening, but it seemed that they were frozen in place. I do not know if the other two are in there with them, nor do I know if this was the effect of planar chaos or some attack by the Sahrger."

Well, fuck. "Okay. I guess we should get going and exterminate these dickwads."

Calliope helped me up, but didn't let go of my hand. "You almost died saving me. I know I have saved you as well, and I owe you nothing, but... I don't want you to die anymore. You should..." She looked frustrated, maybe even like she was mad at me. "You should be more careful. There is a way to delay these attacks, to force the Sahrger to leave you alone for a time. They would assume you do not know the words, but... I can teach you."

"Seems easier just to kill them, doesn't it?"

She punched me in the arm. "No. They will keep coming. The queen will never forgive you. You have to figure out a way to fix what is broken about the world, and you cannot do that while they hunt you day and night. Delay them until after the Grand Alignment, and either you will fail and the world will end, or you will succeed and you may be able to leverage that act to make them forgive you."

I really wanted to just kill them. "Ugh. Okay, okay. Fine."

Matlyn tapped me on the shoulder. "Um. Hi, what was that about the world ending?"

Calliope and I shared a look. "Nothing. it's fine, just normal Grand Alignment bullshit."

We hurried down the tunnels, Calliope trying to lead me to the others while also giving me a primer on Sahrger laws. We ended up back in Itzele briefly, and almost walked into Nusos which could have led to us getting totally lost and not being able to find out way back. Calliope wasn't amused. "I swear this place is moving around us," she said.

The first person we found was Grunkle, but he was currently incapacitated. There was a crushed Sahrger in his fist, which was almost as big around as a car - but the arm tapered off rapidly and his main body was still its usual size. He clearly didn't know what to do next. "I can't make the hand go back to normal," he said, "and it's too heavy for me to drag. Also too large to get through the door, I think. It might grow back if I cut it off, but what if it doesn't? I can access this brute's memories, why can't I figure out how to do this correctly?"

It was ridiculous, and I wanted a photo of it, but for now I just ignored him and kept walking. I wasn't sure how I felt about him finally getting Henden's Dumine working - it could be useful, but I fundamentally didn't trust Grunkle. He'd been helpful in getting us away from the fight in Poicelria's temple, and fairly harmless since then, but if betraying us was beneficial enough I was certain he'd do it.

Finally we came to a junction and could see where the Sahrger were. It wasn't the view Calliope had gotten before, so we couldn't see the others, but she assured me they were nearby and the fate threads - while not very straight in this spatially-contorted ruin - were at least going in that general direction and still attached to something. Closer, down an adjacent hall, I also noticed a doorway with a symbol over it that looked like it was probably a star; I made a mental note to check it after we were done dealing with the fey.

I glanced over at Calliope, and she nodded confidently. Okay. I took a deep breath, and yelled towards the Sahrger. "By the accord of the three courts, I invoke my right to speak before the gentry!"

The Sahrger spun to face me, and then they slowly started walking over. As they came fully into view around the corner and pillars I was disappointed to see there were five of them; I'd been hoping for less. The one in front tilted their head while looking at me, all the way sideways. "You think you can talk your way out of this? A traitor, who sold her own people to the humans? Who corrupted Glaistig and turned her against us?"

I looked them in the eyes. "By the accord of the three courts," I repeated, "I invoke my right to speak before the gentry."

They all sneered. "You play at following our laws," the front one said, "but this is nothing more than a mockery. You have never lived as part of our society. You are an outsider, a pretender."

"By the accord of the three courts, and for the third time, I invoke my right to speak before the gentry."

The Sahrger stopped, two in the back looking nervous but the others just glaring at me with unbridled hatred. "This right is ancient and very important," the front one said, "and it cannot be refused to you. You forget only one thing... it must be demanded before witnesses, and we do not plan on leaving any."

Ah. Yeah, that made sense. Some of this shit was magically binding in a way I didn't understand, like the adoption stuff, but obviously most things weren't unless you had the specific abilities to back it up. Sahrger had a strict cultural set of codes and rules I could theoretically take advantage of, but this wasn't going to be one of those times. At least, not while things were still in their favor. It was so much easier to kill us all and not mention my demand.

The first Sahrger lunged, probably feeling overconfident thanks to me having no visible weapons. It made sense to not begin with hurling potions and magic grenades when you might hurt your squadmates as badly as the target. I was right there, in front of them. Easy pickings.

Calliope's iron knife lashed out from behind the pillar next to me, catching the Sahrger in the throat. She was dead instantly, and I grabbed two bottles off her belt at random, throwing them into the Sahrger behind her. I'd been hoping to get all four of them since they'd been nice enough to clump together, but they reacted too quickly and were already scattering by the time the bottles exploded.

Calliope veered away, drawing one off with her, and one I just lost track of as my divination failed yet again, but the other two were hot on my tail despite the sparking cloud of magic that had burst from the potion bottles. It was clinging to them and clearly doing something, but whatever it was wasn't happening fast enough.

The stone wall next to me exploded as one of my pursuers gestured, and lightning arced into me from a twisted wand held by the other - I felt every muscle in my body spasm for a second, and it was only my weeks of training with Hugh that let me tumble and pop back to my feet without them quite being able to grab me. Thankfully, it had been more painful than actually damaging.

Divination cut out again and I noticed the hallway was darker than before, the stones crumbling and threatening to collapse. We were in Itzele again. I wasn't sure if this was yet another spot where the two planes had become merged, or if it was one big section that crossed through walls. Bare feet slapping against the rough stone - fuck them for ruining my shoes back in the entrance tunnel - I skidded around a corner and into some sort of magical lab.

Concentrating, I hid behind a stone table as I frantically tried to drop back into the prime plane. With no other exits, the Sahrger were being slow and cautious rather than darting directly into the room. Good. By the time one of them came into view they were translucent like a ghost, and then I was fully back in the first plane.

I stood and ran back the way I'd come, and when threadsight revealed purple squiggles embroidered into reality I began trying to carefully unravel them with a thread of my own, the way I had for the curses before. I heard footsteps getting closer and did my best to hurry, but it was delicate work. Finally the whole mess started to collapse, and if it had been a spell it probably would have just neatly unraveled and ceased to exist.

Instead, it was the residue of some ancient planar experiment gone totally wrong. I'd disrupted the pattern it had settled into, hopefully trapping those two Sahrger in Itzele, but the planar membrane was still all fucked up. It was possible it wouldn't do anything any time soon, or it might snap right back to Itzele, or it could even link to some other plane. For now it was too risky to fuck with further.

In my memory palace, Calliope ran up to my mind. "I wasn't able to kill them," she said, "and was hit with some sort of attack that has caused my joints to become stiff. I'm hiding for a moment to see if it wears off, if I fight like this I will lose immediately."

Ugh. I dragged her into my divination view, and we watched me run through the labyrinth of passages and little rooms. "This place is bigger than it should be," I said, "and I think they did it by melding the whole area with Nusos and Izele. Some of it had to be on purpose, but then whatever disaster wrecked this place scrambled it all. Also, I've hit two patches of altered gravity and seen full-on portals."

Calliope nodded. "And the plants," she said, "which should not be growing down here. I found a room filled with bones, and I suspect at times this place becomes flooded with monsters. We are fortunate that this is not the case at the moment. Turn here, this will take you back towards me and the others. I got close to them, close enough to see they are frozen in time. They move, slightly, but it is almost imperceptible and the light has a disturbing quality in that room, dark and slow."

"Okay," I said, "I can maybe unravel that."

She shook her head. "Not while we're fighting. It's too risky. The Sahrger had clearly been playing with them, throwing things into the field of slow time. They are surrounded by projectiles and potion bottles, if time resumes suddenly all of them will die. We need to find a way to block the incoming attacks, or leave the darts and daggers and other things frozen."

Fuck. I wasn't sure I even had that kind of mastery. I mainly just worried at things until they came apart, there was no way I could do it selectively. Well, that was a problem for later. Wait. If I couldn't help them, and if the Sahrger were expecting me to try, why was I headed back there at all? I'd just be walking into a trap.

Which meant I had to, instead, set a trap of my own.

I wasn't in the best situation to do that, of course, but there was exactly one terrible idea I could try. "Calliope, can you channel mana through objects?"

"I can, though it is much more difficult than it was before I lost wild magic."

It would have to do. I explained the plan to her and she started limping her way towards me, joints still protesting. The plan was stupid on multiple levels. It required me to find a planar lodestone, figure out how to use it, and then be capable of doing a specific thing with it I'd never done before - and then Calliope would have to also do something she'd never done before, which neither of us were sure would work or work well enough.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Plan B, if plan A predictably failed, was to just try to stab the remaining Sahrger to death. If I'd succeeded in trapping those two, it would only be two of them and so we'd have okay odds. If the others had found a way out of Itzele, either due to the connection snapping back or some other hallway being linked, we might be in trouble.

The first potential point of failure passed immediately - this was, for sure, the "star chamber" that Exposition had mentioned as being where the training lodestones were kept. There was a sort of orrery that took up the center of the room, with thirty-five nested glass rings. Each was filled with little glowing points of light, so that from the center if you looked up it would match the bands of stars in the night sky. To facilitate this, there was a sort of lounging platform.

Currently the majority were aligned, with nine - most of them near the outer edge - out of place. There were also controls, and I was dying to see if the device still worked - but I didn't have time. "Exposition, do you know where in the room the training lodestones are kept?"

"Query received. This one has no direct knowledge of this topic. One possible related entry located. Journal of Helik, initiate of the Eyes of Batasun, passage one hundred and forty-seven. 'I have not been able to activate the practice lodestone, and now I cannot put it back because I am terrible at math. I will need to ask for assistance, and they will all laugh at me. I will never be chosen to wield one of the bound pairs. I hate everything.'"

Bad at math... hmm. I ran to the controls for the orrery, and found that there was a giant drum of gears linked to symbols. "Exposition, can you read this?"

"Query received. It reads one hundred thirty-five million, two hundred twenty-five thousand, two hundred."

Wait. Okay, that was probably base-six. That number might be the absolute date; in addition to the Grand Alignment, the whole thing reset back to its starting point every twenty-three thousand, one hundred years. Local years; in Earth years it would be something like twenty-seven thousand and change. It had never happened - this upcoming Grand Alignment would be the halfway mark - and most people believed the world would end when it did, but the point was that they had an actual count of days all the way back to when the gods created the world.

Which meant the orrery might use that, and might also secretly be a lock for the lodestones. If this had something to do with the alignment of Areldeto, it would be a multiple of one thousand, six hundred and eighty - the number of days in one cycle for that plane. If I could just put in that number it would be easy, but since he referred to math it couldn't be that. It probably wasn't one of the Grand Alignment dates either, since that would be too simple and Areldeto would be aligned every time due to Quebristun's cycle - the thirty-sixth plane, the thing that defined a Grand Alignment - was evenly divisible by Areldeto's cycle. I'd have to convert to base six, and then try some different multiples...

"They're coming," Calliope yelled as she stumbled in, "all four of them!"

Or, I could skip the math. Slowing time as much as possible, I forced my mind into the base of the orrery via divination. There was something, some alchemical metal, that wove out the bottom like a wire and made its way under the floor tiles. I followed it to the wall, and up to a particular tile that had a hidden safe behind it. Great.

I ran over, twisting the dial on my bracer to the setting for Areldeto as I did. There was no clear way to open the panel aside from whatever fucking puzzle the orrery was hiding, so I jammed a throwing knife into the crack between tiles and pried the front off. Underneath it was metal, but the hinges were exposed in a stupid way that let me pop them apart and then wrench the door open the wrong way.

The Sahrger were rushing in, and the only reason I hadn't already been attacked was that the orrery gave me some cover. My hand closed around a small, round object and I poured myself into it. I thinned the barrier between planes with my bracer, and then focused on the lodestone and the idea of binding the two places into one. I'd seen it, when the fey spirit opened my eyes. All of the planes were overlapping, all the time. They just needed something to connect them.

There.

I couldn't fully comprehend what I was doing; that limitation I'd sensed before was still there, that "biological incompatibility" that was keeping me from truly seeing in four dimensions, but I could feel a pattern inside the lodestone much like the ones on my lutore. It engaged, and pulled my mana forcefully out to power itself. I could feel Areldeto, could feel the way it overlapped with the prime plane.

I'd expected it to be similar to opening the way between planes, like with Itzele where one faded into another, but it was actually much more like what I did with divination. Rather than the planar membrane and my lutore, it was two parts of the planar membrane - but the distinction was barely there at all. My lutore... was made of the same stuff?

I thought of the way I'd joined all the layers of my lutore, and something clicked. Suddenly, hundreds of gallons of gray goo was gushing out around me as I called it into this world. The strange stuff that suffused Areldeto, sloshing out in a huge circular wave around me. It cascaded over everything, covering the base of the orrery and slapping against the legs of the Sahrger, covering them up to the knees and slowing them down.

The stuff was a marvel. It could turn into anything - not just superficially, but really turning into anything you wanted. It just needed some mana, and had to be recently imported from Areldeto. Nice and fresh. A thrown dagger barely missed me, the attacker thrown off by the sudden appearance of the gray goo, but a blowdart got me just behind the ear. It was almost certainly poisoned.

Before more attacks could hit, I was already jumping up and grabbing one of the decorative sconces. "Now!" I yelled, and Calliope channeled every drop of mana she could through her iron knife. The goo responded. It contracted, growing more dense and tripping the Sahrger in the process. It became dark. Hard. Metallic.

I could feel it below me, this sudden layer of iron beneath my dangling feet. I lost hold of the divination, of all my abilities, and a headache began pounding away. It was so much iron, and Calliope's intent suffused it. Last Taste of Iron again earned her name, with one of the Sarhger literally trapped face-down in the block of metal. They burst into flames.

Huh. I... did not know that was a thing that could happen.

The others weren't faring much better, screaming before passing out with blood pouring from their eyes. It was gruesome, to say the least. One had been attempting to climb through the orrery, and had not only stayed upright but had only one leg stuck - even that was enough to ruin their day.

I was having trouble holding on. I knew that falling onto the iron wouldn't kill me, but with my bare feet it wouldn't be any fun either. I'd never been around anywhere near this much hostile iron, and it was making it hard to think. "Stop," I muttered, too quietly for Calliope to hear, "stop, stop, stop..."

And then arms were around me, pulling me from the sconce. "I did, half a minute past. Open your stupid eyes and stop whining."

My head was beginning to clear, but the headache would stay with me all day. I looked around, wincing, and could see that the iron had returned to being just gray good - and even that was draining away into grates in the floor. More was also arriving, slipping through from Areldeto, but that was fine. Whatever.

Calliope grabbed the last living Sahrger by the leg and dragged them out into the hall as I followed, and then kicked them awake. "You have failed. Now you have a new task."

I nodded. "By the accord of the three courts," I said, exhaustion coming through in my voice, "I invoke my right to speak before the gentry."

The Sahrger nodded frantically. "Yes. Yes. I will take word to the Queen of the Green Court."

Green? I almost asked, but then I realized why it wasn't the one expected. The White Queen wouldn't want to open herself to liability. She probably made the Green Queen do fucking everything - why have a figurehead that existed just to make sure you always win at political games if you're not going to take full advantage of it? It didn't matter, though. Not really. If the day ever came, it's not like I was getting out of this anyway.

"How many people did she send after me? A dozen?"

The Sahrger closed their eyes, slumped against a wall. "Fourteen."

"Okay. Cool. I want a month for every fucking one of you."

Their brow furrowed. "I don't... I don't understand."

"I demanded, three times, to have my rights. You refused. So we're going to set a date for this fucking trial, and I've been told I can set it a few months out. Well, you guys fucked up. So now I want to delay it by a month for each one of you assholes. And I know, you're going to say you need to take it back to the queen or some shit. But I think, if you're really smart, you'll just promise me right now."

There was a moment of silence, and then they nodded. "Fourteen months from today. The fifth of the first, just after the Grand Alignment."

Five hundred and four days until the trial. Good. The joke was on them, since the world was probably ending in exactly five hundred days. Pretty hard to have a trial when all of existence has collapsed. I shoo'd the Sahrger away, after taking all their little toys, and then went back into the star chamber to look for the practice lodestone.

I found it, and turned it over in my hand a few times. It looked just like I'd expected it to, which meant I also knew what I would find when I got to the others in their little temporal trap. Sure enough, Matlyn's sister was exactly as I'd pictured her. "Well that's a hell of a thing. Jesus. Okay, let's get you dummies out of this mess."

It turned out that, if I was careful, I could use the planar fuckery of this place to my advantage. Bit by bit, I shifted the alignment of the anomaly to another plane - Itzele and Nusos were both in alignment, but out of the two Itzele was the clear winner thanks to not needing any kind of doorway or portal. As each tiny part of the anomaly twisted to align with Itzele, the projectiles would fly off into that plane. I chipped away until I could get to my friends, and then pulled them all back.

Easy as pie.

They were disoriented, and injured, and still worried about the Sahrger. But I was just focused on Matlyn's sister so I could see the look on her face. She turned and saw me, her eyes going wide, and then the thing I least expected happened - she ran to me and crushed me in a hug.

"Oh, goat licker," Zoey sobbed, "I'm so glad you're okay! I thought those assholes killed you, or the spider monster ate you, or something! Fuck, Calliope, it's been years! Have you been here the whole time? Did you just get here? Wait, how are you here?" She turned to Matlyn, who - like the others - seemed totally confused. "Mattie, why didn't you tell me you'd found Calliope? Or... another Calliope? Hello. What's going on?"

Matlyn pointed at me, and then Calliope. "This is Connie Runelighter," she said in passable English, "and this other one is Zaile. I hired them to help us get to Earth."

"No, sorry. That one is technically Calliope Smith, but I'm the one you knew - we were switched at birth, it's a whole thing."

Matlyn's jaw dropped even further. "You speak English? And - wait, you're Calliope Smith? My sister has been looking for you, and you've been with us this whole time?"

"We all speak English," Katrin said, "other than Grunkle. And we know about Earth. We were worried your sister was working with Coelestis."

Zoey looked confused, so I helped her out. "The guys with the guns? I saw the pin you ended up with. I'm guessing it was from the jacket you grabbed when you fell into the spider pit?"

She shuddered. "Yes. Ugh. That fucking thing. It almost ate me, but the floor under me gave way and I had to crawl through this little narrow space filled with bugs. And yes, I kept the pin. I thought maybe someone would recognize it and say something to me, give me some sort of lead. I spent ages looking things up before I found out what that brooch you had was, and we didn't want to try going back to Earth without it because Matty here would get stuck."

Zoey still had an arm around me, like she was worried I'd disappear if she let go. "Zoey... don't take this the wrong way, but you seem..."

"Like less of a raging bitch? Yeah, they have some really good therapeutic drugs here. Also, I think it was good for me to have to start over, and the time in the tool shop made me get my hands dirty, and I probably just grew up some, too. I mean, it's been like four years. Wait, so are you coming back to Earth?"

I nodded. "Just temporarily. I wanted to find out who those guys were, and get do some shopping. But then I'm heading back here. My - the other Calliope - she's staying in my place."

Zoey's eyes narrowed. "Are you like, a fey changeling or something? Oh my god, that's so cool. Also, that makes a lot of sense somehow. You always had that vibe."

This was surreal. "Thanks? Anyway... guys, Nusos is aligned and there are enough doors around that I think I can get us in. We have our stuff - yes, Zoey, I grabbed the cash - and the tunnel back to the city is collapsed anyway. I don't have the planar lodestone to get back, but the dial on my bracer is made of the same stuff and now that I know how they work I'm not too worried - plus I might go steal it back from that asshole, Greg. So... what do you say we get this show on the road?"

And then I collapsed. From the poison. From the blowgun dart that had jabbed into my head.

I woke up not much later, with Matlyn force-feeding me some gross-tasting plants that were supposed to finish getting it all out of my system. Grunkle had been retrieved and given some time to get his hand back to the right size, and Calliope had looted the bodies, and Katrin had spent time examining the orrery. Errod had found a small ingot of high-zilura, the metal the lodestones were made from, and another caged spirit that Katrin talked to until it agreed to work for her. So it wasn't totally wasted time, at least.

Eventually we were all re-packed and ready to go, with me wearing a spare pair of shoes from Zoey. I managed to guide us back to the existing portal to Nusos I'd found earlier, which meant I didn't need to march us in circles or anything, and then I tried to remember all the warnings that Cyne had given us about Nusos.

"The most important thing about Nusos is to not be split up. Never lose sight of the rest of the group. Especially never close a door between you and the others, because when you open it again it will lead somewhere else. Uh. Don't use divination or perception abilities to look through walls. If you see any small white rectangular plaques on the walls... oh, fuck, was he talking about wall outlets and light switches and stuff? Man. Now I need to... anyway, fuck it. Let's go. Next stop, Earth."

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