We took over a little restaurant the next morning, whose gimmick seemed to be that everything was served on a waffle. It brought back some memories of Bill, who had been very opinionated on breakfast foods - or maybe had pretended to be, to mess with me. The plan was to head to New York, sell as much gold as possible, check out Coelestis, and then go from there.

Buying a vehicle would be ridiculous if we were about to spend time in New York City, but public transportation options were limited on a Sunday. We could either wait and take the bus, or take the train in the afternoon. Given the fact that we'd broken into a place the night before, staying in town for a long time didn't seem like a fantastic idea. I was able to get tickets for everyone, and so far as I could tell online it was unlikely we'd be asked to show IDs. To be safe, Calliope practiced using curses to give us good luck - I managed to flip a quarter and get heads seven times in a row.

Doing a "won't get asked for ID" spell on every single person was a bit much, but she could skip me since I actually had one and at least mana wasn't an issue with Katrin around. Worst case scenario, we'd just go some other way. "It's clear that I'm going to have to keep the driver's license," I told Calliope, "because everywhere asks for them. But I can mail it to you when we're done if you need - I mean, you'll want to get a new one for New Jersey anyway, but it might still help to have this in the meantime."

She shrugged. "It is fine. We can focus on dealing with Coelestis for now."

"Sure, but... mom doesn't live that far from New York. You... if you don't want to wait, you can just go right away. It'll take you an hour or two, and you're there."

She shook her head, and I got the impression she was scared. Fair enough, honestly. I didn't press it, we could use the Probability magic. Speaking of magic... with the train not leaving until just after two in the afternoon, it was time for me to practice and try to figure out if I could template shit. I really didn't want to go back to fantasyland without hot chips and soda and a hundred other things.

Everyone took turns working with me, while the others wandered the town. Maybe it wasn't advisable, but there was no sign of anyone in Worthington Hardware Co. and if people had been looking for us they'd for sure go to the hotel. Besides, as individuals or pairs we mostly blended in with the tourists. Katrin not only attended church as a sort of anthropology thing, but after going to lunch came back telling me all about cameras and how they worked. Errod and Matlyn checked out a plant store and discovered gelato, and Calliope and Zoey did some practice on just being normal Earthlings again.

I finally loaned Grunkle the translation bracelet, and so he got to enjoy himself exploring town too.

Meanwhile, as each person returned to the spot I'd picked out and let me poke at their lutores, I started to make progress. There was something there, some interaction that I could feel. The problem was just that it wasn't the same as the planar membrane in the way I needed, and I couldn't figure out what was missing. It was almost like it was in the wrong direction, or... maybe I needed part of it to be coming from outside of Earth somehow.

I tried to talk to my Dumines, to that thing that presented me with options for development, but nothing happened - I couldn't improve my Dumine on Earth. I tried forcing my mind back to the memory palace, but holding it there was taking all of my concentration even after digging my bracers out of my backpack and turning the dial to Ematse. Thankfully, that gave me an idea. I called Zoey and had her come over, and made her give me the ring she'd been wearing. She said it was made to force her unfamiliar spirit into her domain, so...

As soon as I slipped it on, I could feel it working. It was anchoring my mind there somewhat, enough that I could spare some attention to do other things. Before, it had taken both minds to maintain the connection; one to push, one to hang on. Now, I still wouldn't be able to multitask as well as I normally could, since one mind would be maintaining the connection, but the other could look stuff up or - hopefully - make a template.

The next problem was the lack of a collective consciousness, but as Katrin had pointed out that couldn't really be the case. There had to be something here, because magic worked; the Clockmaker had done something to send his language out into the world and that reached to Earth some, but for it to work at all, or for the xCog+ programming language to open the door to it, there had to be a connection between people's minds.

I felt good about things, like I was moving towards an understanding, but I was also frustrated that I hadn't succeeded yet by the time we got on the train. It was objectively ridiculous - oh no, given a few hours I hadn't figured out how to do something totally new and foreign on a world without magic? What a fucking loser! Still, as silly as I knew it was to think I could have cracked it right away I was already worrying about the possibility I wouldn't ever figure it out.

None of us were asked for ID as we boarded the train, either because of Calliope's magic or just regular luck - there was no way to tell. We were on our way, but we wouldn't be in New York until around 10:30 at night at which point we'd need to head directly to the hotel. I spent the whole time researching how to sell gold, and it looked like getting cash wouldn't be the problem - it would be the limit on how much cash I could get at each place. I was still having trouble believing I had brought six million dollars worth of gold with us.

"Zoey, I'm probably going to have to just leave some of the gold with you. There's no way to convert it all."

She frowned, sticking her lip out. "Oh, boo. That's terrible news. How dare you saddle me with millions of dollars in gold? Bitch."

"Yeah, I'm the worst. I'll split whatever we can't liquidate between you and Calliope, and it'll probably be... a lot. I'm glad I brought it though, or at least some of it - the wads of twenty-dollar bills you brought are useful, but we're going through them faster than I expected."

The train tickets had been a hundred each, and we'd blown a surprising amount on shopping. New York was bound to be more expensive, and then we still needed to buy a car and travel across the country to drop Zoey off. If we couldn't break back into Nusos, we'd also have to use that gold just to get by for however long it took to figure things out - I was sure we'd get it before the Grand Alignment, though.

I spent the train ride answering questions about Earth, mostly. For the most part, everyone basically understood things. Sure, things were strange to them - but a store was a store, food was food, and people were people. The funniest question was one I didn't see coming, and it was about the cultural or religious significance of all the skeletons - it still being early in November, there were a number of Halloween decorations still on display.

I spent most of the day in my memory palace, trying to feel where the tether was pulling my spirit; I was convinced that reproducing what we'd done in Brinkmar when we scryed on Earth for a split second was the key to both templating items and to getting back to Nusos. I just had to find a way to pull the planar membrane towards me, somehow, until it overlapped us.

We arrived at Penn Station, or more specifically Moynihan Hall, and they gawked for a while at the crowds, the giant video billboards, all that shit. We weren't even outside yet. "Okay, everyone. I got us a hotel pretty close to here, and we're all in good shape, so we're going to just hike there. It's like a mile and a half down 9th avenue. We'll eat something on the way."

There was one more thing I needed to prepare them for, and I didn't like having to say it. "Guys, you know me. Mostly. I am not the responsible one. I don't want to be in charge of this. Actually, shit, Matlyn is my boss right now, so by all accounts she should be in charge. But... this is a very, very big city. You do not have cities this big where you come from. Whatever you're picturing, it's bigger than that, okay? There are like eight and a half million people here. We're going to be here for a few days, and I'm going to be busy selling gold.

"You're going to want to explore the city, and see all the museums and shit. That's great, there's a ton to see, and they're used to tourists acting like... well, tourists. But I'm not going to be the one to teach you how the subway works, or how to find your way back to the hotel. Zoey also does not know jack shit about New York. Zoey grew up in Phoenix, which is also a massive city but more... horizontal than vertical. They do not have proper public transportation. They do not have places you can just walk, either. It's a completely different thing.

"For that matter, I haven't been here - or somewhere equivalent - since I was twelve. Sorry, twelve in Earth years - oh! Right! That reminds me, some of you have been fucking up with money thanks to not understanding the base-ten system. First of all, to my dear brother Errod, how does it feel, motherfucker? Who can't count right now? But anyway, that was bad enough in whatever-the-fuck that charming little town was in Virginia, but with New York prices that's going to cause trouble fast. You have limited money, don't blow it all just because you're confused.

"Anyway, back to my original point. You don't know how to navigate a city like this. Learning the subway and shit is going to be hard. So, while I'm away... Zoey, Matlyn, and Errod in one group. Katrin, Calliope, and Grunkle in the other. Stick together. Once everyone has a little experience, I don't give a shit what you do. But for your first day in the Big Apple tomorrow, it's groups of three. Got it?"

Ugh, I felt like an adult or something. Gross. I'd picked the groups carefully; Zoey was the most capable despite her lack of experience with the East coast, mainly because she could navigate the Internet the best. Calliope was in second place, since I'd given her a bunch of life skills training in the memory palace, and if there were any gaps Katrin could fill them just by being super smart. Out of the remaining three, Grunkle went with Katrin and Calliope because neither one would take any shit from him, and Errod and Matlyn went together because she was very obviously trying to flirt with him and I figured he could stand to get laid.

The area we passed through didn't overwhelm them too much, but I was sad I wouldn't get to see their reactions to being surrounded by skyscrapers. I actually would have really enjoyed playing tour guide, at least a little, but I'd mapped out my day and selling whatever gold I could was going to take all of it.

I left without saying anything to the others in person, and instead messaged the group chat Zoey had set up to let them know I was on the move. Throughout the day that group chat was a source of great amusement, as Matlyn sent picture after picture and Katrin updated everyone on where their team was in granular detail. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, unlike me.

I was bored as shit, and stressed out.

As I'd expected, there was a hard limit on how much cash people had on hand even if they were in the business of selling gold. The ingots, while small in the grand scheme of things, were larger than a lot of the places could handle if I didn't want a check - and they weren't prepared to chop them into smaller pieces. At least there wasn't as much scrutiny about where it came from as I had expected; probably the Venn diagram of people who kept their wealth in gold bars and people who didn't like answering questions was just a circle.

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I spent two days dealing with that mess and getting as much cash as possible, all while I watched everyone else enjoy being tourists in the group chat. They were having fun, at least. No big issues or disasters. Calliope apparently caused some chaos by manipulating probability, but nobody knew she was the one to blame so when jerks kept tripping over things or spilling their drinks all over themselves it just looked like karma. And in a way, it was.

For myself, the only real hiccough was when some guys tried to mug me. They'd followed me from one of the places I was selling gold, and weren't good enough at it to go unnoticed. I was planning on just avoiding them, but I didn't want to run with the heavy backpack and I was right by a spot where - unless I was wrong - they were going to almost certainly charge out and grab my bag. If they'd been tipped off, they would know I had another bar of gold in there. Really, I had three because I was optimistic about how productive my day would be.

And so, in order to pick my own battlefield, I turned down a quiet side street and let them do their thing. Before they could actually get to me I already had a gold bar out and in my hand. "Hey guys, you following me for this thing?"

This was not how it was supposed to go. They all hesitated. They were wearing face masks and sunglasses, one had a knife, and one had his hand in his jacket pocket in a way that was clearly meant to convey that there was a gun in there. I couldn't decide if I was convinced, but it was best to assume the gun was real. I held the gold out, and the one with the knife came forward to take it.

When he put his hand on it, I grabbed his other wrist and pulled him towards me, headbutting him and breaking his nose while I twisted his wrist to make him drop the knife. I also swiveled us slightly so he was between me and the dude with the gun. He screamed - or gurgled angrily, anyway - and the apparently unarmed one ran to his rescue. I threw the gold bar at him, and he got to learn just how heavy that shit is as it hit him right in the mouth.

"Oh! Wow, looks like someone's going to be eating through a straw for a while. Here, take your friend back."

I shoved the guy I was holding forward, then kicked him into the guy with the invisible gun. Having a hand shoved deep into your jacket isn't great for catching a flailing, bloody man or for catching yourself when you fall over backwards, so he ended up on his ass. Unfortunately for him, I was right behind the thrown teammate and I kicked him in the face as I arrived. I leaned down, dug in the guy's pocket, and sure enough there really was a gun.

It did not look safe to use in the intended way, so I just pistol-whipped the two of them a few times before going back to the other guy. He was on his hands and knees, trying to gather some loose teeth, and I kicked him in the crotch for good measure before snatching up my gold bar. I wiped the handle of the gun on my shirt, just on principle, and then tossed it in a trash can as I passed. From somewhere on a balcony far above I heard clapping.

While I waited at each place, or traveled between them, or laid awake at night, I continued to spend time trying to figure out how to get my other magic to function on Earth the way I wanted. I felt like I was so fucking close. I ran into Katrin at the hotel late on the second day, by which time they'd abandoned the groups of three, and collapsed onto the bed with my head on her stomach.

"Oof," she said as I flopped onto her, "that was a mean thing to do to a woman who is clearly dying."

"Mph. What's killing you?"

She sighed. "The crowds in Sentortzi never bothered me, you know. Erathik, either. But here... there's not just people. There's sounds, and lights, and cars, and... it's so much, all the time. Not everywhere, I know, but spending even five minutes in a really bad spot makes the other spots worse, like I've used up my reserves so now the minor things are going to bother me too."

"I always kinda liked it. There's an energy to it, a sense of purpose. It feels good. But hey, before I leave you alone to recharge, I have a thing to bounce off of you. I normally sandwich reality between my lutore and the planar membrane, and use that to feel it and copy shit into my memory palace. Without the planar membrane I was thinking maybe I could use two lutores, because I'm increasingly convinced they're made of the same shit."

"Interesting theory. There was something in one of the books you copied... it was about planar travel leaving a mark on a layer of people's lutores, such that you could actually tell what planes someone has been to by inspecting their lutore. Not that many people can do that."

"Well, mine doesn't even have layers since I melded them all. But that's the thing, that trick I pulled with my lutore is a bit too specific. I don't think I can use it the way I do the divination. And even if I could, I think it wouldn't work if I didn't also have a similar ability working on the other person's lutore. So I'm fucked. I need... I don't know, I need to pull the planar membrane to us. I have that planar lodestone still, but it's busted now that it's been used."

"Why do you have it? Shouldn't it have gone into storage?"

"I had this sneaky idea, about it being a decoy if we find the Nusos one. I still don't know how I didn't have it, in that other memory. It used to magically come back to me, I must have stopped that somehow."

Katrin was quiet for a moment, but I knew her well enough to know it was the kind of quiet where she was thinking about something. Finally she spoke up, very slowly. "Can you get me into your memory palace?"

I thought about it, about how hard I had to push for it. "Maybe. Do you care if I replace your natural tether with a fate-aligned one? It wouldn't be attached to me, I wouldn't be spying on you or anything."

She agreed, and I converted her over. Then I made her put on Zoey's ring, which I'd still been wearing, and did my best to just haul her forcefully into my memory palace. Since I no longer was using the ring, it took all my concentration to do... but it worked. "Welcome! I'm having to hold you here, for some reason, even though the fate threads really should be able to pop on over without resistance. It's bullshit. Anyway... what did you need?"

"I think you can't concentrate enough while I'm here. I can come back when you're done, I need you to make a template of... the feeling of your lutore, and the feeling of how our lutores interact when they're overlapping, and... just, anything you can to capture that sensation. But I want you to think about what you were saying Betokat was trying to teach you, the thing about how the planes felt and what they were for. I want that, the underlying planar identity of your lutore, and mine, and where they meet."

That... was a lot. I let her go, and focused on what she'd asked. It took a while, and required bouncing back and forth between Earth and the memory palace, and poking through Katrin's lutore with my ghost and even reaching through her body to touch the inner layers; I kept the hand as insubstantial as possible and moved slowly, so it wouldn't fuck her up. Eventually I thought I had it, and managed to template out... something. It appeared as a crystal ball, and after managing to get Katrin back I handed it to her and we spent a very frustrating half an hour getting to the point where she felt like she could tap into it.

I felt the warm tingle of mana washing past me, and realized she was channeling a shit ton of mana through the burned-out planar lodestone. She wasn't an alchemist, or an artificer, but she'd been working on flavoring mana - aligning it towards some specific purpose. I could tell she was doing that now, because as the excess she didn't re-capture flowed into the room, something very strange was happening to my lutore.

"Uh... I think my lutore is spinning. Or something."

"Sorry," she said, "it's probably not, but your brain doesn't know how to interpret what you're feeling. I can't make alchemical metals, but this one is used because there are ways to align it with different planes. This... is not that. I'm trying to force it, with absurd amounts of mana. So long as it's right here, where our lutores overlap, I think there's a chance I can make this work. Not like it did before, exactly, but... well, we'll see. The problem is that I can't channel the mana directly, or I'll end up with crystals growing in me again. It's too much. So I'm just directing it as I align the mana to this intent, and that means a little is escaping into the room."

"That sounds very cool, but also... didn't you say that lots of loose mana is bad when it's aligned with some intent? Isn't that what fucked up the whole continent of Calnon? Isn't that what made the time mana age a version of me into dust?"

"I've got this. I won't let that happen. It's... a very manageable amount, compared to either of those examples."

"Okay. Fuck it, do your thing."

After a bit she stopped, and I could feel the excess mana start to drain away. She looked exhausted. I held the lodestone, which was disturbingly warm now, and closed my eyes. "I... holy fuck, yeah. It's not the divination thing, exactly... it's like the difference between seeing with my real eyes and seeing through Mister Creepy. Terrible resolution. But it's there, and there's something else. I can feel your lutore, I think. I'll have to play with this some more, I think."

The next morning I had to hit a few more appointments, but I arranged to meet up with everyone for lunch and planned on doing something fun with the whole group before dinner. After that, unless I had some kind of breakthrough, it would be time to plan out how we would infiltrate Coelestis. Getting the cash ran into a bit of a snag, though, because when I walked in the guy behind the counter was obviously one of the people that had tried to jump me.

His eyes went wide, and before he could say or do anything stupid I winked at him and smiled. "I was here yesterday, I'm back to sell some more gold? Your boss said he'd have more cash handy today."

He nodded, silently. This was the guy with the gun, and he'd probably gotten off the lightest of the three of them. I could see some bruises though. I waggled my eyebrows at him, just to make sure he knew I recognized him, and then the boss came out and we got down to business. The guy I'd pistol-whipped didn't say a word about it, and quickly found an excuse to hurry into the back. I got my money, headed outside, and then hid just around the corner and listened.

Sure enough, he came out a minute later. "She just came into the store," he hissed, clearly talking on his phone, "and she acted like everything was normal! No I didn't say anything, what the fuck was I going to say? I already told Sanders a whole fucking story about why I'm beat to shit." His voice was coming closer. "I don't know, man. The address was in fucking Arizona, and I'm not going to follow her again."

He turned the corner, and I grabbed the cell phone out of his hand. "Hey, he has to go. But if I ever see you again, I'm going to cut your balls off. I hope your nose feels better, say hi to your friend with the wrecked mouth."

I was guessing about which of them it was, but I assumed the guy who'd just had a gold bar launched into his face wasn't chatting on the phone. I hung up, handed the phone back to the guy, and smiled at him again. "Give me your wallet."

"What?"

"I'm robbing you. You're being mugged. If anyone asks, I'll say I was demanding to see your driver's license so I could report you to the police for attacking me and trying to rob me. You might want to make sure nobody asks."

He tried to puff himself up. "What makes you think -"

I put a knife to his throat. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me even pull it out. "What makes me think what? Hey, quick question for you. What kind of person has a shit ton of gold and wants cash only, and kicks three people's asses without worrying about the fact that they're armed? Hmm?" I stepped back and tucked the knife away. "Now give me your wallet."

He did.

I was late getting to the others, and they were all lounging around by the entrance to the Central Park Zoo. The castle-like building looked familiar for some reason, but I couldn't place it. "Zoey, god damn it, why are you getting food? I said we'd eat lunch together before we did the zoo and some museums."

She looked at the hot dog in her hand like she'd been caught stealing. "Well. I was getting it for... Errod... because he was pinned down by my sister and couldn't get it himself."

Matlyn jumped up from where she had, in fact, been obviously leaning on Errod. Her face was red. "Zee! I wasn't... we were just..."

I tossed Calliope the wallet I'd obtained. "Check it out, I mugged a guy."

She nodded in approval. "Excellent. Teach them to fear this face. Now I have somewhere to put my drivers license."

I fished it out and waved it at her. "This thing? This is mine, bitch. You can't drive for shit."

She nodded, looking sad. "Yes, I had a terrible teacher."

"Hey there, I worked with what I had."

Katrin was on her phone, but she spared us a glance. "Girls, stop fighting. Let's get food and get moving, so Grunkle can waste money at more gift shops."

I looked at Grunkle, and sure enough that classic tourist "I ♥ NEW YORK" shirt was peeking out from his open jacket. Wait. Wait. The castle, all these people, that shirt. I knew this.

"I already have food," Errod said, "because apparently Zoey bought the hot dog for me. Hand it over."

Calliope snatched the license out of my hand, but I was too distracted to stop her. This was... this was from...

"Say cheese!" Matlyn said, and I looked over to see her taking a photo of us. I wasn't sure where she'd learned 'say cheese', but that was way low down on the list of mysteries right now.

I took her phone, making her yelp a little, and pulled up the photo she'd just taken.

"I realized I didn't have a picture with everyone," she said, "and I was thinking I could send it to the group chat. Aww, but some people didn't look at the camera. We can do another, I guess."

I couldn't stop staring at the picture. "No," I said, "I think this is a nice candid shot." I'd seen it before, of course. I'd had it sitting in my memory palace for more than two months.

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